A Great Photo Site

Everyone knows Google and its image search function, but did you know http://www.flickr.com/, a great photo site where photographers from around the world have uploaded literally millions of pictures? Because many of these interesting and beautiful photos are tagged by location or topic, you can search for a picture you want accordingly. If your search term has more than one word, you can put quotation marks around your search phrase. That way, the photos called up will more precisely match what you are looking for.

You can then further search your term by changing from the default "Everyone's Uploads" to "The Getty Images Collection" for high-quality photos.

I think these real-life photos can provide academic content for classroom teachers when looking for an image to explain an object, for example. Innovative teachers can even use the site when creating a technology-integrated assignment.

By the way, not only is the site fun to explore, it also allows anyone to create a free account to share some of their own photos.

That's America

America may be the great melting pot, but it hasn't always fully embraced the immigrants who have arrived on its shores and helped build its foundations. For years, there have been heated debates over everything from how many visas the government should issue to whether newcomers to America are stealing jobs and lowering wages for U.S. citizens.

Indeed, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum rose to national prominence partly on his support for building a barrier along the border with Mexico. On the other side of the debate, the Obama administration has pledged to make creating a path for illegal immigrants to become legal a top priority.

But no matter where people stand on the immigration issue there is one thing that isn't up for debate: Foreign-born entrepreneurs have founded some of the nation's biggest companies, and have been responsible for employing millions of Americans over the course of U.S. history.

Click here to read the rest of this Smart Money report in a slide-show format.

A Chair's Parting Words

As I wrap up a two-year stint as your dept. chair, I would like to share a few random thoughts with you all.

First of all, I think I'm a better person for having served as a dept. chair. I've learned to look at a bigger picture than just my small area--be it the evening programs I supervise or my role as a classroom teacher--when making decisions that concern others. I've grown in my knowledge of the various dynamics and interactions between departments and offices at the college level and the division level. Within our department, I've gained insight into how different programs operate and how staff relate to one another. All this increased awareness will continue to help me in advocating for our students and for our staff.

Ultimately, our dept.--no, our calling--is about improving odds of succeeding. The existence of any ESL dept. along with its unique programs and operations is proof that someone cares enough to intervene intensively to prepare language-minority students linguistically, academically, and culturally on their upward-bound educational journey. It's not about providing employment for those who view winning the next contract as an end in itself.

For a long time, I've insisted that actions of our dept. be transparent, that our communications be open, participatory, and responsive, and that the way we organize ourselves be strengthened. I believe we have been well on our way to realizing this multi-faceted goal.

A dept. chair can't do it solo. So I'd like to thank all those who have helped with it during the last couple of years. A very special thank-you to our ADA, Monica Colon, for providing top-notch services, which are exactly what an ESL Dept. chair needs and wants. I would also like to thank all the classified staff and faculty for making the ESL Dept. the fantastic department that it is!

Ours is indeed a high-quality dept., one that has now matured to a point where, even if there is disagreement in a few rare policy issues, for example, folks still trust each other and interact as professional equals. Like many colleagues in the dept., in handling complaints and offering advice, I have been trying to abide by these three criteria: Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

Because of the current state budget troubles, bean counters have once again reared their confused heads. In their haste to equate our dept. with, say, the Dept. of Behavioral Sciences, some in the administration have blurred a very clear difference between the students who have special needs and want to come to us to take our ESL courses for help and others who do not have the special needs and are required to take Religious Studies 102 to meet a degree requirement, for example. Of course, with our high level of support emphasizing approaches that are more hands-on, more human-contact, and more welcoming, we will never win the race to the cheapest department on campus. But we can win the race to the most highly valued department!

Carol Lowther will become our new chair on Wednesday. She will bring fresh ideas and energy to the position. As a matter of fact, she has already made plans to visit many off-site classes, including in Ramona on her first day as chair, no less. As the dept. changes hands, Carol has also told me to keep administering this dept. blog, which I will turn into more of a resource/idea sharing forum.

I'll leave you with a quotation from the founder of Oreck, who famously said, "Things are never as bad as they seem to the pessimist and never as good as they seem to the optimist." I know I can speak for Carol and myself when I say that we are both realists and we are hopeful about our dept.'s future.

Once again, it has been my great pleasure to serve the dept. these past two years! Best of luck to Carol for a successful term as the ESL Dept. head!

(photo courtesy of Shayla)

Touch

I'd just like to parlay off of Lee's earlier message about student retention which is growing more critical everyday. And this week, as we returned to school, I was reminded of something so simple yet something that I'd never thought of until it happened spontaneously a couple of years ago - and that is the power of touch. Now, as students leave class, I make a point of saying good-bye. It's so simple, but it's very meaningful. I make eye contact and reach out and shake their hands. At first, some don't know what to do, but by Thursday - even given the late hour and how tired we all are - they wait to leave until they can say good-bye. For years, when I dismissed a class, I would turn and begin to wipe off the board - in a sense, shutting down. Only fellow teachers know what a demanding performance teaching is, and I'm as grateful as the next person to see the evening draw to a close, so I would - in a sense, turn off. Now, I take a couple of extra moments to let every student know that I was glad to see them, and they respond. They light up. And I believe it helps them come back the next time they're tired and thinking about just staying home for the evening. Old gray mare's advice for the summer: reach out and touch someone!

Palomar Summer School to Commence Monday

Summer is here, and summer school at Palomar opens tomorrow. For the next six weeks, more than 1,600 students will be studying with us in over 70 classes offered by our department. The credit and INEA students will be in class for eight weeks, as always. Like you, I always anticipate a new session with a profound sense of excitement and gratitude--excited about the new ways I will try to teach my students and grateful to our classified staff who did an excellent job of building our classes by working hard through the break. I would like to thank all of our classified staff for their hard work!

No doubt budget reductions in public education in our state continue to stir fears that no one will be well served. Fortunately, President Deegan believes that Palomar's goal is to continue to serve the maximum number of students that we can afford to serve as best that we can.

June 30 will mark the first time Palomar terminates all student and temporary employees (formerly called short-term hourly workers) on a yearly basis. Only a limited number of such employees will be approved to be rehired for the new fiscal year. They will be subject to background checks as well as newly established uniform hourly rates and skill level requirements. The new process will take some time, so if your program depends on these employees to be operational, you should plan accordingly.

We all know these are unusual times and that we will all need to pull together to get through the next couple of years. We should all look carefully at how we can contribute and conserve wherever possible. I'd like to get my fellow teachers to respond to these few questions:

1. Do I know my students' current telephone numbers in case I need to call them to increase student attendance?
   
2. Do I have a way to remind myself to take the markers, erasers, etc. that I brought with me at the end of the day?
   
3. Do I have a way to put handouts online for my students to print out themselves?

On the health front, people all over the world are still coming down with the swine flu. So talk up these precautions in your class:

1. Cover coughs and sneezes.
   
2. Wash hands frequently.
   
3. Stay home when sick.

Theresa Gonzalez of the County's Health Dept. is available to give an hour-long presentation to any weekday class, both AM and PM, on the topic of lead poisoning for children. Her talk covers basic information about the topic of lead poisoning as well as why take children for a test and how to ask doctors questions in English. She is Spanish-English bilingual and can be contacted directly at (619)515-6576 to make arrangements for her class visit.

This next bit of information is especially for colleagues who work in Escondido. The retiring person at the helms in Escondido, Theo Brockett, has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. She is currently making normal progress on her recovery from surgery, however. Let's all send healing thoughts her way. If you want to send a card, please email me or ask your program coordinator for her mailing address.

Thanks. And have a great start of summer school!

FYI Article Taken from the State Controller's Newsletter

Economic Reality: California Being Hit From Two Directions

By Christopher Thornberg
Founding Principal, Beacon Economics
Chair, Controller’s Council of Economic Advisors

The budget problems in California are currently some of the worst in the nation, leading many to ask how much the economy is to blame for the shortfall. In the short span of two years, California’s General Fund budget has declined from $102 billion to $86 billion. Is California mired in a worse cycle than the rest of the nation, and is that in turn driving the worse-than-average state and local budget problems?

The answer is, yes, the state is facing a harsher economic crisis than most other areas of the nation. California is at the crossroads of the two primary drivers of the national downturn, feeling both the collapse in employment in traditionally cyclical industries such as construction and manufacturing, while also suffering from a greater-than-average decline in asset values, which drives down consumer spending faster than the national average.

Consider first the primary evidence of the state’s economic downturn: California’s low-performing labor markets. While the peak in national payroll employment occurred in December of 2007 – roughly the time the recession began – California’s payroll had already began to drop six months earlier. The nation has shed just over 4% of its labor force to date, while California employment is down by almost 5%.

Unemployment also reflects the difference between California’s and the national economy. In California, unemployment has risen by over 6.5 percentage points, compared to 4.5 percentage points for the nation overall. At 11%, California’s unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the U.S. It is hardly surprising that California has seen a sharp drop (down 7.5% as of April 2009) in its personal income tax collections, particularly given the progressive nature of its tax structure. The severity of the economic impact is in part due to California’s exposure to the housing bubble. Few other states saw the same rise and fall in prices, or the same degree of expansion and contraction in construction and related employment. California’s housing market was thrown into a tailspin by the mortgage industry debacle that unfolded over the past three years. By our estimates over a third of all subprime and Alt-A lending (by value) took place in California, causing a huge surge in construction and home prices. Now, at the back end of the real estate debacle, California is suffering worse than many other regions. The collapse in new construction has already taken a harder toll on the state: Permits for residential construction are off 86% from their peak, compared to 70% for the nation overall. Nonresidential construction permits also fell sharply over the past year. Together, these two trends have caused the state to lose 26% of its construction jobs, compared to 16% for the nation overall.

As a result of the influx of subprime lending, the state is going through a severe foreclosure crisis that makes a quick turnaround in this sector seem unlikely. Three percent of all households in the state have been foreclosed on, and another 600,000 to 800,000 homes could meet the same fate in the next two years. This not only displaces families, but puts a strain on local authorities who must deal with empty structures, crime and blight.

The labor problem in California will continue to worsen in the coming months. The other major cyclical sectors – manufacturing and transportation –have held close to national trends. Yet while banking and housing have come close to a bottom, there has been a sharp collapse in both exports and imports in recent months. California’s economy is closely tied to trade: More manufacturing exports come from this state compared to others, and Los Angeles County’s two ports combined are some of the largest in the world. This stress on trade will continue to add to the state’s labor woes.

The other side of the nation’s economic problem is consumer spending. Savings rates in the U.S. dropped from 9% percent in the early 1990s to nothing in 2005 as high asset price appreciation gave Americans a false sense of financial security. When assets lost value, Americans started to do what they should have done all along – save. Here again, California is finding itself hurt worse than other states.

Consider the most basic source of household wealth – homes. Prices in California have already fallen 40% from their peak, as opposed to slightly more than 25% for the nation. Given California’s high home prices at the market’s peak, the asset loss can be three times greater for the California homeowner than it is for the average American.

This large asset loss has affected the state’s consumer spending. Taxable sales in California were down 11% in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to just a 5% decline in nominal spending on all durable and non-durable goods and an 8% percent drop in retail sales nationwide. It is no surprise that California has lost 7% of its retail workforce, compared to an average 4% loss for the nation overall.

California has a fundamentally strong economy and will surely recover in the coming years, but the depth of its current problems cannot be underestimated. It will take a number of years for the economy to fully recover from this downturn and, as a result, so too will state revenues take time to recover.