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ILI Weekly Updates |
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From ILI Project Coordinator Bob Kovar |
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Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ We have a group of about 15 LUHS ILI students (freshman through seniors!) who are doing an ILI Community Service Learning Overnight tonight at Camp Nawakwa in Lac du Flambeau. The students will meet at LUHS after school and then head over to the Lake of the Torches to volunteer for their annual Children’s Halloween party this evening. Our students are really excited to help out and their being there will send a great message of unity and community to all of the children they help tonight. This is another opportunity for them to exhibit their positive role modeling for younger children, as well as the rest of the community through their service. Connecting youth to their community is the strongest protective factor we can reinforce and provide opportunity for. They will then spend the night at Camp Nawakwa, who has been incredibly kind to once again give us their facility at no cost! After a morning of activities at Camp, the students will return home by 1pm tomorrow. There will also be some ILI Volunteers helping at this event as well as North Lakeland’s Kornstalk Karnival so we’re spread out this evening and looking forward to seeing many of you with your children!
§ There are two noteworthy articles regarding very positive recent actions by the LUHS school Board in today’s Lakeland Times that concern issues we have actively been advocating for along with others in the community. The first is that the LUHS school board has accepted a no-cut policy for freshman sports and the second is that the LUHS Board will have a process for public involvement into the hiring process for the new Superintendent. These are both very positive and exciting developments that have the potential to greatly improve life for incoming 9th grade students (no cuts policy) as well as relations with the community-at-large (community input). We applaud the school Board and administration for taking a proactive approach on these important issues and will do our best to help in any way possible!
§ On Monday ILI staff met with the planning group from the Northwoods Universalist Unitarian Church who are bringing Peggy McIntosh to the Lakeland Area to share a podium with Ernie to discuss “White Privilege” on Martin Luther King Jr day in January. We discussed logistics and ideas for the format of her visit. We’re really excited for this event-it should really be interesting and awakening for many.
§ On Wednesday evening we hosted the 9th Lakeland Area Community Meeting in LdF at the new Wellness Center. It is really a beautiful facility and we had a good turnout and an even better discussion. We’ll get the minutes out early next week to you.
§ The Friends of ILI newsletter is DONE!! It took us much longer than we anticipated because we had to spend quite a few hours sorting mailing lists. Since we are saving so much on the postage this year we decided to try and send out our biggest mailing ever-6000 folks will be receiving the newsletter! This is easily double the amount we have done in the past so it will be interesting to see what kind of response we get. Thanks Alice for sorting through literally thousands of names at warp speed-at one point this week she turned around and said “My gosh there a LOT of last names in the world!”.
§ We finished the funding requests this week for our big funding request push to all of our local organizations and churches beginning next week. We have a new look to these local requests-with an ILI QUICKFACTS sheet that allows local members to see “at-a-glance” our program through pictures and bulleted stats about our program.
§ We attended the LUHS Citizenship Committee meeting on Wednesday and it was a really good meeting. Some very interesting things coming out of this including an innovative way to include the youth voice in helping to define citizenship through a survey that we will develop that will be given to all LUHS students for their input. We discussed the possibility of doing this during a class period (social studies?) that may be devoted to the issue where the teacher and students discuss the idea of citizenship and then at the end of the class they take this survey as one possible idea. We also discussed working with all of the elementary schools to try and involve their 7th and 8th graders in the survey (student council groups?) in this process. We could also include community members in all this through a variety of way (Our community meetings for example), school staff, businesses, etc so that we end up with a very inclusive, representative idea of what citizenship means. We then discussed ways to rework the LUHS Student Handbook so that there is some delineation between the discipline portion (with an emphasis on restorative methods) and the positive aspects of what citizenship look like for students and staff. We will meet again in 2 weeks to discuss how we devise the survey so that we can handle deciphering the results! This is an excellent approach to the process of building ownership from not only within our school buildings but within and between the communities as well. We’ll keep you posted!
§ We received $250 this week from the Friends of ILI this week to honor a very dear and special person in our lives that we lost to cancer 17 years ago and who would have been 50 years old this week-thank you so much!
§ We received $1000 this week from the Chippewa Valley Bank. They have supported ILI for a few years running now and we are very honored that they have decided to continue their support-thank you!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. This should be in the mail by the end of next week. Really!
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Wednesday October 31: LUHS Activity Period. LUHS Multi-Purpose Room. 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 31: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: We have an ILI Volunteer meeting on Monday October 29 at 10am at the GLITC office-looking forward to seeing you there!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $306,122.56 of our $374,055 budget.
§ FOR MORE INFORMATION and the latest session calendar please check the ILI website at www.ilileadership.org.
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural Leadership
Initiative
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
2007-2008
Weekly Update
Friday October 19, 2007
Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ On Monday and Tuesday this week ILI staff facilitated our first set of 6th grade sessions, and on Wednesday we facilitated an activity period session as well as our after school leadership class-another great week of sessions! These will be the last elementary sessions until December due to WKCE testing at the area schools over the next 6 weeks. We will continue with our high school ILI sessions (except next Wednesday the 24th which will be cancelled due to 10th grade testing).
§ A really cool thing is happening right now-LUHS principal Todd Kleinhans asked ILI to help with the resolution of an issue that occurred between LUHS students from Lac du Flambeau. LUHS is working with us as well as Northwoods Restorative Justice to begin bringing a more restorative approach for students to resolve their issues. In this case, Ernie has approached a circle of elder women in Lac du Flambeau who have a lot of experience in helping youth resolve issues and are willing to come together to help resolve this case through a healing circle. We are so pleased that the school has encouraged this process to occur-it could be the beginning of many such school/community partnerships that are critical for the health and wellness of our youth and families. Empowering the community, and respecting cultural traditions, resources and process as part of the solution, is the key to unlocking many barriers and we genuinely applaud LUHS for helping make all this possible.
§ We met today with a few folks from the Northwoods Universalist Unitarian Church who are bringing Peggy McIntosh to the Lakeland Area on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to share a podium with Ernie about the issue of White Privilege. We discussed logistics for her visit to the Lakeland area and how we are going to promote this event.
§ We are putting some extra work into our Friends of ILI Newsletter because some of the mailing lists we are using require us to reformat them for Hahn Printing’s software. Hopefully by the end of business today we’ll have three lists to send to Hahn that they will sort out the duplicates for: Vilas tons, Oneida towns and our own ILI list of previous Friends and school families in the Lakeland District. Thank goodness Alice can type with all of her fingers!
§ Speaking of Alice, she received the Miigiizi Award from GLITC staff as the new “Employee of the Month”. She really deserves this award and many others-congrats Alice!!
§ We prepared funding requests this week for Marshfield Clinic and are beginning to organize for our big funding request push to all of our local organizations and churches beginning next week.
§ Bob went to Wausau yesterday for a regional meeting regarding Americorps and Serve Wisconsin. We are considering writing an Americorps grant-they are pretty interesting, we could pay LUHS ILI Mentors for their community service as facilitators and they could also receive $$ towards higher education. It would cost our program dollars as well however, so we need to look at it more closely. We’ll work with the folks in Madison to see what we can come up with.
§ We received $500 this week from the River Valley State Bank of Minocqua. They are a new donor to the ILI effort and we are really pleased that they have chosen to support us with such a generous donation. Thank you to River Valley State Bank!
§ We received $350 this week from the Wisconsin Education Association Professional Development Academy. They have supported ILI for a few years running now and we are very honored that they have decided to continue their support-thank you!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. This should be in the mail by the end of next week.
§ ILI In the Media: LUHS ILI student Jazmyn Deragon was nominated by Craig as one of the LUHS Students of the Month-there’s a nice picture of her with a short story about he nominated her in the 10/16/07 Lakeland Times.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Wednesday October 24: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Friday-Saturday October 26-27: LUHS ILI Overnight. Camp Nawakwa.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: Thank you to John and Gretchen Spickerman, Joe Strauss and Joyce Barnes for helping cook all the food this week for the 6th grade groups-you are all just awesome! We’ll be sending a meeting notice out next week-we’re going to discuss a few projects that we need some help with during the month of November.
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $304,872.56 of our $374,055 budget.
§
FOR
MORE
INFORMATION and the latest session calendar please
check the ILI
website at www.ilileadership.org.
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural Leadership
Initiative
Intercultural
Leadership Initiative 2007-2008
Weekly Update
Friday October 12, 2007
Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday this week ILI staff facilitated our first set of 5th grade sessions, and on Wednesday we facilitated an activity period session as well as our after school leadership class-a great week of sessions!
§ On Wednesday we took the Friends of ILI newsletter to Hahn Printing in Eagle River. They now are able to do the whole thing, including labels and mailing and still save us hundreds of dollars! They can mail each piece out at half the price that we can do it from GLITC so we’re going to go with them for the whole project this year. ILI staff will work on merging a few mailing lists (we’re once again getting lists from both Oneida and Vilas Counties) and then Hahn has the software to merge them all and sort out duplicates and bad addresses. So we should have this all done and in the mail next week!
§ We prepared and sent out funding requests this week for Chippewa Valley Bank and Howard Young Health Care Foundation.
§ A few years ago the Northwoods Niijii Enterprise Community gave ILI a $5000 donation to kickstart what became the Lakeland area transition program. The seed money helped get the 8th Grade Transition Day in May followed by the 9th grade Freshman Orientation Transition Day in September going and accepted by all of the Lakeland area schools. It’s a great success story and this week they asked us for a recap and pictures because they are going to highlight the project in a brochure they are developing to help attract more dollars. We’re really excited about all this and honored that they are picking this project-out of all their projects-to highlight. It says a lot about what can happen when our whole community works together across school boundaries to provide opportunities for our youth!
§ We received $3000 this week from the Wisconsin Indian Education Association. They have supported ILI for quite a few years now and we truly appreciate their continued, very generous support! WIEA is a really active organization doing great things across our state and you can check them out at www.wiea.org . Thank you to all the folks at WIEA!
§ We received $1250 this week from the Lake of the Torches Charity Golf Classic. This is also a really wonderful event that supports three other charities in the Lakeland Area. LOTC folks are incredibly philanthropic and we are truly appreciative of their continued support as well-thank you!
§ We received $50 this week as part of the 2007-08 Friends of ILI-its really nice to see this continuing support since we haven’t even sent out our newsletter yet-thank you!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. This should be in the mail by the end of next week.
§ ILI In the Media: There’s a nice article in the October issue of the LdF Youth News highlighting the Lake of the Torches Charity Golf Classic. There’s a great picture in there of LUHS ILI students Shanae Hickman and Jazmyn Deragon. Shanae spoke in front of the crowd about her experiences at the LdF Youth Center (one of the charities supported by this event) and Jazmyn spoke on behalf of ILI. We’re really very proud of both of these wonderful young women!
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o
Monday
October 15: LdF/AVW/MHLT
6th Grade ILI. LUHS School Forest (weather permitting-Plan B will be
Camp
Jorn-we will call by 7:00am). 9am-2pm.
o Tuesday October 16: LdF/NLES 6th Grade. LUHS School Forest (weather permitting-Plan B will be Camp Jorn-we will call by 7:00am).. 9am-2pm.
o Wednesday October 17: LUHS ILI Activity Period Junior/Senior. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 17: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS
Transition: o Tuesday October 16: LdF/NLES 6th Grade. LUHS School Forest (weather permitting-Plan B will be Camp Jorn-we will call by 7:00am).. 9am-2pm.
o Wednesday October 17: LUHS ILI Activity Period Junior/Senior. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 17: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: We’ll call you in the morning of the sessions next week to double check locality of the sessions with regards to the weather.
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $302,772.56 of our $374,055 budget.
§ FOR MORE INFORMATION and the latest session calendar please check the ILI website at www.ilileadership.org.
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural Leadership
Initiative
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
2007-2008
Weekly
UpdateFriday
October 5, 2007
Here’s
what has been going on
in ILI this week-
§
We’re
still working on resetting our email lists up so bear with us. If you
are still
getting duplicates please let us know and we can work on it from our
end.
§ ILI Volunteer Audrey Williams has worked hard with a number of other community members to bring Peggy McIntosh to the Lakeland Area during Martin Luther King, Jr. day in January. Ms McIntosh is a well known author and lecturer about white privilege. She has committed to come here and we are working on setting up a community presentation. Ms McIntosh has requested that Ernie St. Germaine join her to present the Ojibwe perspective and we think this will be an excellent opportunity for students, parents, teachers and others in our community to learn from two extremely qualified scholars. The total cost of this is going to be $5000: with Ms McIntosh donating her share ($2500) to her program and Ernie donating his share ($2500) to ILI. So far, Audrey and her group have raised $4000. ILI staff has committed to raising $1000 for this outstanding event-we will be contacting many of you in the near future to help us reach our goal!
§ On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday this week ILI staff facilitated our first set of 4th grade sessions-a great week with incredibly cooperative weather!
§ On Monday afternoon we were invited to meet at LUHS for the LUHS Citizenship Committee meeting. Once again this week there was a poor turnout for the meeting, including representation from LUHS. We finally did meet after waiting 45 minutes and we had questions regarding the purpose and direction of this committee. It is still not entirely clear what the purpose or end product of this effort is but we are working on it together. There is now a Building Citizenship Committee made up of LUHS staff but apparently that group will not meet directly with our group. LUHS administration is now looking to back off on the weekly meetings for our group and set up the next meeting for the end of this month.
§ On Tuesday night ILI staff went to the NLES Open House-a great opportunity to see NLES ILI students and their parents together and answer any questions or concerns about our program.
§ On Wednesday we facilitated the activity session. Our ILI After School program is getting off to a slow start. With the school year being new, students have been getting used to their new schedules, we’ve had homecoming and other events as well. We’re going to focus on just meeting on Wednesdays for awhile until we build up some momentum. ILI staff is working on a project focused approach to help connect students.
§ On Wednesday night we were invited to attend the NLES long range planning meeting. There was a great turnout of about 50 people who worked on identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to NLES school over the next years. It was really gratifying to see ILI mentioned a number of times as one of the strengths of the school. Cultural isolation of students in the school was also mentioned several times as a weakness as well as an opportunity! We hope ILI can keep filling that niche.
§ The Friends of ILI newsletter is in final draft form and we’ll be bringing to Hahn printing in Eagle River next week. We’ll also be working with Vilas County to get an updated version of the taxroll for mailing labels.
§ We have quite a pile of permission forms from ILI students this week-we’re working to update our database for emails, volunteer opportunities etc. Thanks to the teachers for getting these all back to us!
§ We were contacted this week by Veronica Kinsel, the Juvenile Justice case manager for the Youth program at the St. Croix Tribe. She is interested in what we do with ILI and we’re looking forward to getting to know her and the good work she does for the St. Croix youth.
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: There’s a nice article in the LUHS Thunderbird Newsletter that came out today. We will have an article in each one this year to keep parents and students informed of our efforts.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Monday October 8: LdF/AVW/MHLT 5th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Tuesday October 9: LdF/NLES 5th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Wednesday October 10: LUHS ILI Activity Period Freshman/Sophomore. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 10: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: We’ll be calling you next week to set up a date for the mailing.
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,722.56 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down AGAIN from last week due to year-end revisions).
§ ILI Volunteer Audrey Williams has worked hard with a number of other community members to bring Peggy McIntosh to the Lakeland Area during Martin Luther King, Jr. day in January. Ms McIntosh is a well known author and lecturer about white privilege. She has committed to come here and we are working on setting up a community presentation. Ms McIntosh has requested that Ernie St. Germaine join her to present the Ojibwe perspective and we think this will be an excellent opportunity for students, parents, teachers and others in our community to learn from two extremely qualified scholars. The total cost of this is going to be $5000: with Ms McIntosh donating her share ($2500) to her program and Ernie donating his share ($2500) to ILI. So far, Audrey and her group have raised $4000. ILI staff has committed to raising $1000 for this outstanding event-we will be contacting many of you in the near future to help us reach our goal!
§ On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday this week ILI staff facilitated our first set of 4th grade sessions-a great week with incredibly cooperative weather!
§ On Monday afternoon we were invited to meet at LUHS for the LUHS Citizenship Committee meeting. Once again this week there was a poor turnout for the meeting, including representation from LUHS. We finally did meet after waiting 45 minutes and we had questions regarding the purpose and direction of this committee. It is still not entirely clear what the purpose or end product of this effort is but we are working on it together. There is now a Building Citizenship Committee made up of LUHS staff but apparently that group will not meet directly with our group. LUHS administration is now looking to back off on the weekly meetings for our group and set up the next meeting for the end of this month.
§ On Tuesday night ILI staff went to the NLES Open House-a great opportunity to see NLES ILI students and their parents together and answer any questions or concerns about our program.
§ On Wednesday we facilitated the activity session. Our ILI After School program is getting off to a slow start. With the school year being new, students have been getting used to their new schedules, we’ve had homecoming and other events as well. We’re going to focus on just meeting on Wednesdays for awhile until we build up some momentum. ILI staff is working on a project focused approach to help connect students.
§ On Wednesday night we were invited to attend the NLES long range planning meeting. There was a great turnout of about 50 people who worked on identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to NLES school over the next years. It was really gratifying to see ILI mentioned a number of times as one of the strengths of the school. Cultural isolation of students in the school was also mentioned several times as a weakness as well as an opportunity! We hope ILI can keep filling that niche.
§ The Friends of ILI newsletter is in final draft form and we’ll be bringing to Hahn printing in Eagle River next week. We’ll also be working with Vilas County to get an updated version of the taxroll for mailing labels.
§ We have quite a pile of permission forms from ILI students this week-we’re working to update our database for emails, volunteer opportunities etc. Thanks to the teachers for getting these all back to us!
§ We were contacted this week by Veronica Kinsel, the Juvenile Justice case manager for the Youth program at the St. Croix Tribe. She is interested in what we do with ILI and we’re looking forward to getting to know her and the good work she does for the St. Croix youth.
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: There’s a nice article in the LUHS Thunderbird Newsletter that came out today. We will have an article in each one this year to keep parents and students informed of our efforts.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Monday October 8: LdF/AVW/MHLT 5th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Tuesday October 9: LdF/NLES 5th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Wednesday October 10: LUHS ILI Activity Period Freshman/Sophomore. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 10: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: We’ll be calling you next week to set up a date for the mailing.
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,722.56 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down AGAIN from last week due to year-end revisions).
§
FOR
MORE
INFORMATION and the latest session calendar please
check the ILI
website at www.ilileadership.org.
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural
Leadership Initiative2007-2008
Weekly
UpdateFriday
September 28, 2007
Here’s
what has been going on
in ILI this week-
§ We apologize for duplicate emails that some of you are receiving-our new email system definitely has some bugs and we appreciate your patience as we work them out. Please let us know if you are having any problems sending emails to us so we can try and deal with that too-thanks J
§ On Monday ILI staff met at LUHS to prepare for the community meeting and the 6th grade conference.
§ On Tuesday Bob and Alice completed the 2006-07 year end work on the budget. We went through all of the expenses for the year and made sure that our books balanced with GLITC. We also finalized the Friends of ILI newsletter this week-we should be getting that to the printer next week.
§ We hosted the 8th Community Wide Prevention Meeting on Tuesday at LUHS. It was a good meeting. Fred Maulson (GLIFWC) and Mike MacKenzie (Wis DNR) got us off to a good start by sharing their very interesting story of how the state and the Tribes have formed a very strong working collaboration. From there, the group moved forward on action steps following the DPI Citizenship Plan Toolkit. We have revived the four action committees: AODA, Youth, Parents and Racism. We’ll get the minutes out to you early next week.
§ On Wednesday we were part of the 3rd Annual 6th Grade Conference on Positive Alternatives at Camp Jorn. What a beautiful day! All the 6th graders from Vilas County were there with their teachers along with a wonderful group of volunteers including two Vilas County Supervisors which was really nice! There were 6 “breakout” sessions for the students-two of which were ILI facilitated. We had a large group of students every 40 minutes (for 40 minutes) and a small group of students every 20 minutes (for 20 minutes). Other breakout sessions included: AODA Resistance Skills; Positive Action; Teen Court and Nicolet College. There were also 6 exhibitors set up for students to browse through: therapy dogs, Discovery Center, George Brown Ojibwe Museum, YMCA, Vilas County 4-H and Spinning. It was an excellent day hosted by the Vilas County Youth Coalition who did an amazing job of setting the whole thing up.
§ We met Wednesday at LUHS for the weekly Citizenship Committee meeting. Not much happened this week because the administrators were busy dealing with students-our meetings have been at 1pm and its been hard for them to attend as issues with students arise and that is their first priority as it should be. We asked Jon Berg to clarify the purpose of the committee for us before the next meeting so we can have a clearer picture of what we are going to be doing. We are going to change the time of our meetings to Mondays from 4pm-5pm to accommodate everyone.
§ We received another installment for $1000 of the Wisconsin Community Fund grant we were awarded last spring. Thanks to WCF for their continued support!
§ Article of the Week: SCHOOL DISCIPLINE TOUGHER ON AFRICAN AMERICANS
America’s schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when it comes to disciplinary sanctions (think suspensions and expulsions), according to recent data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-05 school year, reports Howard Witt in the Chicago Tribune. On average, African American New Jersey public school students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled, Minnesota black public school students are suspended six times as often as whites, and in Iowa, black students, who constitute only five percent of public school enrollment, account for 22 percent of suspended students. In every state except Idaho, black students are suspended in numbers greater than would be expected given their proportion of the student body. In 21 states alone, the percentage of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the student body. Unfortunately, this is not purely a socioeconomic issue, as middle- and upper-class black students are being disciplined more often that their white peers as well. Russell Skiba, widely regarded as the foremost authority on school discipline and race, says "we can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism." The problem goes way beyond being unfair to black youths, as research shows that a history of school suspensions is a strong predictor of future trouble, or the first step on the "school-to-prison pipeline" for black youths. Additionally, few districts across the country have recognized the stark inequity in school discipline. One district that has done something is the Austin (Texas) Independent School District. When school administrators realized blacks accounted for 37 percent of students sent to punitive alternative schools, yet only 14 percent of the district’s population, they introduced a program aimed at encouraging positive student behaviors rather then punishing negative ones. At one school, disciplinary referrals dropped from 520 in 2001-02 to just 20 last year.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070924discipline,0,22104.story-coll=chi_tab01_layout
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Monday October 1: LdF/NLES 4th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Tuesday October 2: LdF/MHLT 4th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Wednesday October 3: LUHS ILI Activity Period Junior/Senior. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 3: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Thursday October 4: LdF/AVW 4th Grade ILI. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Thursday October 4: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: Thanks to ILI volunteers John and Gretchen Spickerman, Dick and Joan Fahning and Cindy Brodhead for helping out with the 6th grade conference-you all are just awesome!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,722.56 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down AGAIN from last week due to year-end revisions).
Top of Page
Intercultural Leadership Initiative§ We apologize for duplicate emails that some of you are receiving-our new email system definitely has some bugs and we appreciate your patience as we work them out. Please let us know if you are having any problems sending emails to us so we can try and deal with that too-thanks J
§ On Monday ILI staff met at LUHS to prepare for the community meeting and the 6th grade conference.
§ On Tuesday Bob and Alice completed the 2006-07 year end work on the budget. We went through all of the expenses for the year and made sure that our books balanced with GLITC. We also finalized the Friends of ILI newsletter this week-we should be getting that to the printer next week.
§ We hosted the 8th Community Wide Prevention Meeting on Tuesday at LUHS. It was a good meeting. Fred Maulson (GLIFWC) and Mike MacKenzie (Wis DNR) got us off to a good start by sharing their very interesting story of how the state and the Tribes have formed a very strong working collaboration. From there, the group moved forward on action steps following the DPI Citizenship Plan Toolkit. We have revived the four action committees: AODA, Youth, Parents and Racism. We’ll get the minutes out to you early next week.
§ On Wednesday we were part of the 3rd Annual 6th Grade Conference on Positive Alternatives at Camp Jorn. What a beautiful day! All the 6th graders from Vilas County were there with their teachers along with a wonderful group of volunteers including two Vilas County Supervisors which was really nice! There were 6 “breakout” sessions for the students-two of which were ILI facilitated. We had a large group of students every 40 minutes (for 40 minutes) and a small group of students every 20 minutes (for 20 minutes). Other breakout sessions included: AODA Resistance Skills; Positive Action; Teen Court and Nicolet College. There were also 6 exhibitors set up for students to browse through: therapy dogs, Discovery Center, George Brown Ojibwe Museum, YMCA, Vilas County 4-H and Spinning. It was an excellent day hosted by the Vilas County Youth Coalition who did an amazing job of setting the whole thing up.
§ We met Wednesday at LUHS for the weekly Citizenship Committee meeting. Not much happened this week because the administrators were busy dealing with students-our meetings have been at 1pm and its been hard for them to attend as issues with students arise and that is their first priority as it should be. We asked Jon Berg to clarify the purpose of the committee for us before the next meeting so we can have a clearer picture of what we are going to be doing. We are going to change the time of our meetings to Mondays from 4pm-5pm to accommodate everyone.
§ We received another installment for $1000 of the Wisconsin Community Fund grant we were awarded last spring. Thanks to WCF for their continued support!
§ Article of the Week: SCHOOL DISCIPLINE TOUGHER ON AFRICAN AMERICANS
America’s schools remain as unequal as they have ever been when it comes to disciplinary sanctions (think suspensions and expulsions), according to recent data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-05 school year, reports Howard Witt in the Chicago Tribune. On average, African American New Jersey public school students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled, Minnesota black public school students are suspended six times as often as whites, and in Iowa, black students, who constitute only five percent of public school enrollment, account for 22 percent of suspended students. In every state except Idaho, black students are suspended in numbers greater than would be expected given their proportion of the student body. In 21 states alone, the percentage of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the student body. Unfortunately, this is not purely a socioeconomic issue, as middle- and upper-class black students are being disciplined more often that their white peers as well. Russell Skiba, widely regarded as the foremost authority on school discipline and race, says "we can call it structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism." The problem goes way beyond being unfair to black youths, as research shows that a history of school suspensions is a strong predictor of future trouble, or the first step on the "school-to-prison pipeline" for black youths. Additionally, few districts across the country have recognized the stark inequity in school discipline. One district that has done something is the Austin (Texas) Independent School District. When school administrators realized blacks accounted for 37 percent of students sent to punitive alternative schools, yet only 14 percent of the district’s population, they introduced a program aimed at encouraging positive student behaviors rather then punishing negative ones. At one school, disciplinary referrals dropped from 520 in 2001-02 to just 20 last year.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070924discipline,0,22104.story-coll=chi_tab01_layout
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Monday October 1: LdF/NLES 4th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Tuesday October 2: LdF/MHLT 4th Grade. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Wednesday October 3: LUHS ILI Activity Period Junior/Senior. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday October 3: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Thursday October 4: LdF/AVW 4th Grade ILI. Camp Jorn. 9am-2pm. Includes afternoon trip to cranberry marsh.
o Thursday October 4: After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: Thanks to ILI volunteers John and Gretchen Spickerman, Dick and Joan Fahning and Cindy Brodhead for helping out with the 6th grade conference-you all are just awesome!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,722.56 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down AGAIN from last week due to year-end revisions).
§
FOR
MORE
INFORMATION and the latest session calendar please
check the ILI
website at www.ilileadership.org.
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural Leadership
InitiativeTop of Page
2007-2008
Weekly
UpdateFriday
September 21, 2007
Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ You are all invited to attend the next community wide meeting to be held Tuesday September 25 at Lakeland Union High School from 5:30pm until 8:00pm. We will start with food in the commons and then move the meeting into the library where the acoustics are better. We will be using our four action committees to begin work on a DPI toolkit for building a community plan-it is very exciting! Hope to see you all there!
§ ILI staff spent the week preparing for our upcoming fall sessions. We are also working on an After School Curriculum project and Craig has completed work on aligning this curriculum with a number of academic standards including state standards.
§ We met on Tuesday to discuss the Citizenship Committee and did some research online where we discovered the DPI toolkit mentioned above that is specific for developing a Citizenship Plan but really addresses our issues and needs well. We talked about ways to bring this into our community meetings.
§ The ILI LUHS After School Learning Center will be open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 3:45pm - 6:00pm in LUHS student services. On Tuesday and Thursday Ms. Nancy Miller (Extended Resources) and Mr. Buzz Brooks (Retired Engineer/Math Tutor) will be helping the students. At this point, on Wednesdays Ms. Katie Taburrino will be helping the students. We are working with LUHS Karen Baker on having a Math and English teacher there to help with those subjects. We served hundreds of students in this program last year.
§ ILI staff is working with LUHS administrative staff on bringing a restorative process to an incident that occurred two weeks ago between students in the high school.
§ ILI staff attended the AVW Open House this week to share our project and meet with parents.
§ Bob was in Madison on Thursday to attend State Superintendent Burmaster “state of education” address in the capitol rotunda. She was very strongly opposed to the effects that No Child Left Behind is having on our students by having such a focus on academics and not the whole child. She also made some strong statements urging the legislature to do their job and pass a budget. If schools don’t get their budget by September 28, some $600 million will have to be raised through property taxes to cover the cost of paying teachers etc. She was also very critical of the 15 years of revenue caps and how it has eroded our educational system. On the good side of the ledger, Wisconsin is still right up there in the top tier of states when it comes to education and achievement in spite of all these obstacles.
§ Bob met with folks at the UW PEOPLE program on Thursday as well. This is an amazing project whose focus is to bring minority students into the UW-Madison system. Their method is to begin working with students when they are in middle school (the 7 middle school students from LdF we talked about a few weeks ago were part of this program this past summer) and then all through high school. If students are accepted into Madison (last year 130 PEOPLE students applied and 86 got in!) they get a 5 year full scholarship. This program is extremely successful and it truly engages students. There are currently 9 LUHS students from LdF in this program and we will work with UW to help make sure we can provide any help these students need on our end here. We talked about some innovative ideas and way to connect ILI and this project-we’ll keep you posted but this could really be an amazing partnership!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are done with our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events: ILI staff will split up on a number of projects this week:
o Wednesday September 26: All area 6th Grade Conference. 9am-2pm. CAMP JORN.
o Wednesday September 26 LUHS ILI Activity Period Freshman/Sophomore. LUHS 9:45-10:15am.
o Wednesday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Thursday September 27 After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: Thanks so much for responding to help for the 6th Grade Conference at Camp Jorn!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,209.45 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down from last week after year-end revisions).
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ ILI staff and our families would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to the friends and family of LUHS student John “Sonny” Theobald who tragically passed away last weekend in a car accident. We had a steady stream of students come through our office this week who wanted to talk through their grief and just hang out, a very sad week for many, many people in the community.
§ We heard from Anne Johnson and Chelsea Nehm this week-2 ILI students who have taken their dreams abroad to other countries. Anne is studying at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (Bei Wai) this semester, and so far, she says she’s having a wonderful (if exhausting) time. Chinese is hard!!! Although she’s the only student from Macalester College at Bei Wai, her studies there are part of a year long program called “Globalization in Comparative Perspective” where 9 other Mac students and Anne are studying around the world this fall and then will reunite in the Netherlands in the spring to study globalization, human rights etc…Chelsea is in Slovakia and having a great time learning about new cultures, languages and more! Way to go-we just love hearing about students who are taking their ILI actions and spreading them around the globe!
§ We met with the newly formed LUHS Citizenship Committee this week which was very interesting. We’ll keep you informed of our progress, right now the group is working on a mission statement and defining what “citizenship” means. There seems to be a lot of discussion promoting a more restorative approach to discipline at LUHS in this group which we are strong advocates for.
§ ILI staff continues to meet to work on curriculum for our upcoming elementary sessions-the first of which start the first week of October.
§ Article of the week: TEACHERS REALLY ARE KEY TO PUPILS’ SUCCESS
The achievement gap between black and white students has continued to be an incredible problem with little solution in America, while many educators and community leaders remain confounded as to how to close the gap. The findings of a two-year study of performance among black students in Pittsburgh, Pa. may provide some help, as they reveal that teachers are the best predictors of student success. In fact, reports Mike Wereschagin in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the report found that average tests scores varied as much as 59 points between high-achieving and low-achieving classrooms. Robert Strauss, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, who led the study, believes that in Pittsburgh, good teachers are successful regardless of the ethnicity of the pupil. However, he is quick to caution against whiplash reactions to the wide disparities in classroom test scores – "[he] is not saying, to one of these teachers in the lower quadrant, ‘Off with her head.’" The findings at least appear to provide a baseline for Pittsburgh Public Schools to begin addressing their achievement gap, which has grown since the mid-1990s. Randall Taylor, school board member, proposed continuing the study in the hope of defining the tactics teachers in high-achieving classrooms were using to capture success.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/pittsburgh/print_526792.html
§ We attended the North Lakeland School PTC meeting on Thursday and presented our annual funding request to them for ILI. They approved $1000 for this school year. A huge thank you goes out to them for their continued and steady support of ILI-we couldn’t do ILI at NLES without their help!
§ We submitted funding requests this week to North Lakeland Education Foundation and the Positive Alternatives Coalition.
§ We received a check this week from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation for $3000 for this school year. We are very grateful for their continued support of ILI-thank you!
§ We received a check for $500 this week from the Lakeland Kiwanis Club. It was fun sitting in on their meeting and listening to all the good things they have planned for the community-so many of our service organizations do an incredible amount of good for everyone. Thank you Kiwanis for your support!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are almost done with work on our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Wednesday September 19 LUHS ILI Activity Period Junior/Seniors. LUHS 9:45-10:15am. Multi-purpose room.
o Wednesday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Thursday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: Thanks so much for responding to help for the 6th Grade Conference at Camp Jorn!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,209.45 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down from last week after year-end revisions).
§
FOR
MORE
INFORMATION!! Please
check the ILI
website at www.ilileadership.org.2007-2008
Weekly
UpdateFriday September 14, 2007
Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ ILI staff and our families would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to the friends and family of LUHS student John “Sonny” Theobald who tragically passed away last weekend in a car accident. We had a steady stream of students come through our office this week who wanted to talk through their grief and just hang out, a very sad week for many, many people in the community.
§ We heard from Anne Johnson and Chelsea Nehm this week-2 ILI students who have taken their dreams abroad to other countries. Anne is studying at the Beijing Foreign Studies University (Bei Wai) this semester, and so far, she says she’s having a wonderful (if exhausting) time. Chinese is hard!!! Although she’s the only student from Macalester College at Bei Wai, her studies there are part of a year long program called “Globalization in Comparative Perspective” where 9 other Mac students and Anne are studying around the world this fall and then will reunite in the Netherlands in the spring to study globalization, human rights etc…Chelsea is in Slovakia and having a great time learning about new cultures, languages and more! Way to go-we just love hearing about students who are taking their ILI actions and spreading them around the globe!
§ We met with the newly formed LUHS Citizenship Committee this week which was very interesting. We’ll keep you informed of our progress, right now the group is working on a mission statement and defining what “citizenship” means. There seems to be a lot of discussion promoting a more restorative approach to discipline at LUHS in this group which we are strong advocates for.
§ ILI staff continues to meet to work on curriculum for our upcoming elementary sessions-the first of which start the first week of October.
§ Article of the week: TEACHERS REALLY ARE KEY TO PUPILS’ SUCCESS
The achievement gap between black and white students has continued to be an incredible problem with little solution in America, while many educators and community leaders remain confounded as to how to close the gap. The findings of a two-year study of performance among black students in Pittsburgh, Pa. may provide some help, as they reveal that teachers are the best predictors of student success. In fact, reports Mike Wereschagin in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the report found that average tests scores varied as much as 59 points between high-achieving and low-achieving classrooms. Robert Strauss, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, who led the study, believes that in Pittsburgh, good teachers are successful regardless of the ethnicity of the pupil. However, he is quick to caution against whiplash reactions to the wide disparities in classroom test scores – "[he] is not saying, to one of these teachers in the lower quadrant, ‘Off with her head.’" The findings at least appear to provide a baseline for Pittsburgh Public Schools to begin addressing their achievement gap, which has grown since the mid-1990s. Randall Taylor, school board member, proposed continuing the study in the hope of defining the tactics teachers in high-achieving classrooms were using to capture success.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/pittsburgh/print_526792.html
§ We attended the North Lakeland School PTC meeting on Thursday and presented our annual funding request to them for ILI. They approved $1000 for this school year. A huge thank you goes out to them for their continued and steady support of ILI-we couldn’t do ILI at NLES without their help!
§ We submitted funding requests this week to North Lakeland Education Foundation and the Positive Alternatives Coalition.
§ We received a check this week from Wisconsin Public Service Foundation for $3000 for this school year. We are very grateful for their continued support of ILI-thank you!
§ We received a check for $500 this week from the Lakeland Kiwanis Club. It was fun sitting in on their meeting and listening to all the good things they have planned for the community-so many of our service organizations do an incredible amount of good for everyone. Thank you Kiwanis for your support!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are almost done with work on our 07-08 membership drive newsletter. We will be notifying ILI volunteers of some dates to come help us put the mailing together shortly.
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Wednesday September 19 LUHS ILI Activity Period Junior/Seniors. LUHS 9:45-10:15am. Multi-purpose room.
o Wednesday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Thursday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: Thanks so much for responding to help for the 6th Grade Conference at Camp Jorn!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $299,209.45 of our $374,055 budget (note: this changed down from last week after year-end revisions).
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Here’s what has been going on in ILI this week-
§ The GLITC office will be closed on Friday September 7 and we will not have access to email until Monday. So here’s our update a day early!
§ School started this week and we are beginning our 10th ILI school year! On Tuesday all of the Freshman were at LUHS for their orientation Day. It was great to see so many familiar faces. In the mid-morning, the whole class was assembled in the auditorium to view the DVD made by ILI Interns Summer Shepstone and Courtney Olson from footage filmed during the May 2007 8th Grade Transition day in the LUHS school forest. Mr. Kleinhans introduced ILI staff and then asked how many students in the room were in ILI during their grade school years-most of the hands went up! Some kids held up 2 hands! Everyone really loved the DVD-it showed them having fun, working together, getting stuck in the muck and reminding them that the word for their class is “Excellence”. Craig then spoke briefly about their opportunities to join ILI in LUHS. Mr. Kleinhans then reminded the students that ILI staff here is to help with all their issues and encouraged them to seek us out. It was really nice. Next the students went to the field house for a “Club Fair” where they could learn about all the activities LUHS has to offer them. The ILI booth had a large poster full of pictures of these students when they were in ILI from 4th grade on up. The kids really liked this-they were bringing all their friends over to show them what they looked like!
§ We met on Wednesday with administrators from LdF school who expressed a concern about our schedule for this year. We will be working with all of the schools this year to identify some new options for next year that may take students out of the building less during the year. The concern is that too much academic time is missed while out of the building during the 3 ILI session days. ILI staff will work to help LdF students make up work they miss while attending ILI sessions. We will use a combination of ILI volunteers and LUHS mentors to help accomplish this.
§ Bob was invited to attend State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster’s State of Education Address down in Madison on September 20.
§ Heres some dates for the combined NLES/LdF football team if you’d like to go cheer them on: Thursday September 6th @ LdF at 4pm Tuesday September 11th @ NLS at 4pm. We also would encourage you to cheer the other teams they play as well (AVW, MHLT) where there are many ILI students as well. We know all these students are good friends and deserve our good cheer!
§ We received a check this week from UW-LaCrosse for the ILI/UW LaCrosse Summer Camp that we hosted in July for $14468.72. Our thanks to them, especially Guy Wolf and Ned Reese for their continued partnership with us and we look forward to next summer with great anticipation!
§ We received $3000 this week from the HJ Hagge Foundation-they have been strong supporters of ILI for many years now and we truly appreciate their continued support-thank you!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: We are continuing work on our 07-08 membership drive newsletter which we hope to have out soon!
§ ILI In the Media: nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
o Wednesday September 12 LUHS ILI Activity Period Freshman/Sophomores. LUHS 9:45-10:15am. Multi-purpose room.
o Wednesday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
o Thursday After School Leadership: LUHS ILI Office. 3:45-5:45pm.
§ ILI/LUHS Transition: Nothing to report this week.
§ ILI Volunteers: We need HELP for the annual 6th Grade Conference on September 26 at Camp Jorn - please call Bob if you can help (we know some of you already are planning on it!)
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: ILI currently runs on a 2-year budget cycle. We have a two-year budget in order to keep our focus on the importance of sustaining our project beyond one year at a time. We currently have raised $306263.45 of our $374,055 budget.
§ FOR MORE INFORMATION!! Please check the ILI website at www.ilileadership.org.
Bob Kovar, Project
Director
Intercultural Leadership
Initiative