Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern MichiganThe Morel mushroom hunting season is likely close to being done for the year, but that doesn’t mean the outdoor fun in Northern Michigan is over.
June 7 and 8 is Michigan’s free fishing weekend. No license required to go fishing. Grab your pole and favorite bait or lures and head to your favorite fishing spot.
Finally, the National Asparagus Festival is happening in Hart, Michigan, this weekend, June 6 through 8. The warmer weather has brought in plenty of asparagus plus there will be lots of other fun activities all three days of the festival.
Whatever you’re doing this weekend, make sure to have lots of fun.
Democratic candidate for governor Mark Schauer has made both written and verbal requests to debate his opponent Rick Snyder. So far Snyder has refused to even acknowledge the requests have been made stating he’s far too busy being governor to waste time campaigning to keep his job. In fact, it’s possible Snyder may try to ignore Mark Schauer completely by pretending there is no election in November at all.
It’s not just that the governor is busy, but his personality also hinders him from being an effective political campaigner. Being a politician is really hard for Rick Snyder; it’s much easier to pretend not to be a politician, call the opponent a politician like it’s a bad thing and go on about how it’s a waste of time to even acknowledge Mark Schauer at all. Off the cuff speaking is also very difficult. It takes time and preparation with carefully crafted talking points to make the governor sound like he’s not a complete introverted shut-in. Or you know, a nerd. Snyder says he’s busy fixing Detroit and roads, because both are crumbling before his eyes and so far what he’s tried to do hasn’t begun to remedy either problem. His plans for Detroit are deteriorating so badly and quickly, it may be what sinks him this November.
Snyder running an anti-political “I’m too busy doing the job to campaign for the job” campaign is not a new strategy. Ignoring political opponents is also the preferred method of running for office used by President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. In 2010 when ten opponents ran against him for president of the country, the single televised debate scheduled had one candidate distinctly missing – Alexander Lukashenko. Just like Rick Snyder, he used the same rhetoric to diminish the political viability of the other candidates by refusing to acknowledge any of them were a real thing he had to be concerned about – and he was too busy being president of Belarus to be bothered.
Lukashenko is called the “Last Dictator of Europe.” He rules his country completely, personally appointing people to oversee both business and governmental agencies. These appointees answer to nobody but him. Rick Snyder also does something similar with the emergency managers he personally appoints to cities and school districts. Just like with Lukashenko’s government appointments, Snyder’s emergency managers only have to answer to him.
The people of Michigan deserve the opportunity to see both candidates together and debating the issues that matter to this state. Choosing to ignore his political opponent and refusing to debate Mark Schauer doesn’t show Rick Snyder’s strength, it exposes his weakness as a candidate and as governor. Michigan deserves a Governor who isn’t afraid to face his opponents. Michigan needs to elect Mark Schauer on November 4th.
Dean Vanderstelt knows the meaning of hard work and leadership. He wants to put his experience and skills to work for West Michigan, which is why he’s announced his candidacy for Michigan’s second congressional district.
Vanderstelt grew up in Muskegon. He was raised by a single mother and is the youngest of five children. He worked a variety of jobs from picking fruit to working in factories. Vanderstelt earned an advanced degree in business administration. By the time he retired, he oversaw 1,000 employees for General Dynamics Land Systems. Vanderstelt is a member of Occupy The Lake Shore. He used his activism to educate and inform people about income inequality and the influence of corporate money in campaign finance.
Like many people living in West Michigan, Dean Vanderstelt is frustrated with what he recognizes to be a lack of leadership with the current congressman for the second district. That frustration motivated him to run for congress against Bill Huizenga, who has used his office to promote the agenda of big business and Wall Street instead of the people he represents in West Michigan. With the lack of progress in Washington, the government shutdown and no effort to pass laws that would promote job growth, Dean Vanderstelt is determined to win the second congressional district for West Michigan and bring the change to Washington that will move the country and Michigan forward.
To learn more about Dean Vanderstelt and volunteer to help with his campaign, you can visit his website.
Reinventing The Curriculum Wheel: The Continuing Story of Dr. Steve Ingersoll
Saturday , 31, May 2014 Dr. Ingersoll, Section 16 2 CommentsWhen you’re an optometrist in the charter school business and your business model is based on selling parents eyeglasses for their children and curing them of ADHD with your own personal brand of vision therapy, it becomes necessary to also develop curriculum that supports the education concepts of that model. Dr Ingersoll claims to have done just that with a web-based tool called Icon Curriculum Mapping.
Curriculum mapping for members of the education profession means a system of developing a model of the curriculum for a given subject and grade that can be used to review and modify content and assessment by the teacher as they teach. For people unfamiliar to what the process looks like, it will have learning outcomes, state education content standards, materials used, and a process of instruction and assessment plotted out on a grid of columns and rows.
Is this what Dr. Ingersoll developed with his curriculum mapping software? Not even close. He’s used a term that means one thing for educators and attached it to something completely different. According to Ingersoll, this is what a curriculum map is:
Icon Curriculum Mapping is a system of reorganizing lesson content and delivery from traditional “part to whole” to “whole to part” methodology to better match human thinking. Lessons are organized in non-linear iconic arrays called image maps. Image maps represent whole units as visual mnemonic devices that provide an organizing framework into which lesson details are linked.
Non-linear arrays … maps representing units as visual mnemonic devices that provide a framework into which lesson details are linked. Could the doctor be talking about concept maps? Let’s see what else Dr. Ingersoll has to say about his model compared to traditional teaching methods, which apparently never use graphic organizers according to him.
Contrast the structure of Icon Curriculum Maps methodology with traditional school instructional methods, which teach in text symbols, not images, part-to-whole, and in linear outlines.
So the doctor claims traditional schools don’t use concept maps – or as he calls them, curriculum maps – but Icon Curriculum Mapping does because that is how humans actually think and learn. It may help to read up on Ingersoll’s idea of how people learn, and why his way is better than research-based, professionally developed teaching methods and curriculum currently being used in schools he doesn’t own.
The problem according to Ingersoll is lesson content is presented in linear language-based part to whole text symbols, and we don’t think that way, we think in pictures. What he means is when children first learn to read, they master letter recognition and sounds, then words through phonics instruction and we’re wasting their time. Children are better off learning in a non-linear fashion, and we should be using pictures instead of text symbols. An example he gives is a face clock verses a digital clock. In order to read the time on a face clock, you have to look at the whole clock first, and then look at where the hands are pointing on the clock to tell time. With a digital clock, that’s not necessary and you only need to look at the part that is showing the time. This is why learning with a face clock (whole to part) is better than a digital clock (part to whole). Another example, when you look at a chair, you don’t look at just the legs, then the back, and finally the seat, you look at the entire chair. Traditional education according to Ingersoll forces the child to only look at the chair back without looking at the seat and legs.
The demonstration video on the Icon website doesn’t offer a glimpse of what these curriculum image maps look like, but the doodles that change in the website’s header seem to be the images used in the software, based on the few examples that are publicly available. These images then are the “face clock” whole to part curriculum that children need to learn, because it better matches their thinking.
There is no research offered that demonstrates the effectiveness of this curriculum. No publicly available peer review exists. So how do educators know this system actually works? Academic test scores at Ingersoll’s charter schools that use this curriculum software and Integrated Visual Learning curriculum materials exclusively are below the state average.
It’s especially troubling when excellent, research-based graphic curriculum exists that’s widely used in Special Education programs in Michigan public schools and only costs half the price of Icon Curriculum Mapping. Does Ingersoll’s curriculum work well? Feedback from current or former teachers of his charter schools could be really helpful to better understand how this system works.
Which then brings up the question, just how well does Steve Ingersoll’s charter schools accommodate special learners?
On Tuesday, May 28, Governor Snyder signed a new law that gradually raises the minimum wage to $9.25 per hour by 2018. Republicans concerned that a successful petition circulated by Raise Michigan would succeed as a ballot proposal in November, so quickly rammed their bill through the state legislature at lame duck 2012 speed to stop the will of the people on more than one front. The ballot initiative would gradually raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2017, tie future minimum wage increases to inflation, and finally bring up tipped employee wages to 100% of minimum wage.
State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville admitted he introduced the bill to kill the people’s petition initiative. Michigan’s current legislature doesn’t care much for what the citizens of the state want or even need, like a living wage. Michigan workers will have to endure the lowest, slowest gradual wage hike in the country. By 2019, $9.25 will only have the same buying power as $8.50 has today. Michigan minimum wage earners will still be living below poverty.
By law, the Secretary of State must review the signatures collected and declare the petition valid for the November 4 ballot. Richardville’s attempt to thwart the Michigan Constitution and the will of the people may be unconstitutional. It is likely voters will still see the proposal this November and be able to vote, which is a problem for Michigan Republicans and why they quickly passed their minimum wage law. The opportunity to vote on raising Michigan’s minimum wage will bring out more people to the polls, and that is bad news for Republicans. The people who will vote in favor of the new law will also likely vote for Democratic candidates; two million more votes went to Democratic candidates in this state than did for Republicans in 2012. High voter turnout is the last thing Michigan Republicans want.
Democrats in the state legislature did win a small victory in modifying Richardville’s bill with the addition of tying future minimum wage raises to inflation. Unfortunately, tipped employees will still only make 38% of minimum wage, with a top increase of $3.52 per hour. The Michigan Restaurant Association was happy with the news that restaurant owners in Michigan won’t have to pay servers a living wage and will continue to rely on their customers to subsidize their employees’ pay.
Raise Michigan’s ballot proposal would lift nearly 100,000 Michigan workers out of poverty and provide a real boost to the state’s economy. Republicans claiming that higher wages hurt small business forget that most new job creation comes from small businesses, not the large corporations that received all the tax cuts in the state. Small business owners deserve and could really use some tax credits, but are always overlooked because they can’t afford to write the large campaign contribution checks.
Raise Michigan submitted the petition signatures on the same day Snyder signed Richardville’s bill into law. The chances Michigan voters will still have the opportunity vote for a real minimum wage hike on November 4th are good, provided our elected officials follow the law rather than stick to their own political agenda.
One of the joys of living “Up North” is there’s plenty of wildlife to enjoy. For anyone who lives near our great Northern Michigan forests, this means plenty of animals and birds may come to visit. They will also help themselves to anything edible, whether you want them to have it or not.
And then, there’s the poor beastie that just has bad luck. A Blue Racer twisted in the garden’s deer fence.
It took a pair of heavy duty shears, patience, and being mindful of where this beautiful Blue Racer’s head was at all times to get it free of the deer fence. A call to the DNR for help didn’t do much good; no one available unless you are willing to pay $75 for the service call.
Eventually, with lots of slow, careful snips with the shears the snake gradually became free of the deer fence. Without the fence the deer eats the garden, with the fence at least one snake a year gets wrapped up.
For this snake, there was a happy ending.
May your parades and cookouts be dry. Rain headed this way, but that won’t dampen Northern Michigan’s spirits.
Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lon Johnson will be in the Northern Lower Peninsula visiting Democrats in different locations. Here is his schedule for tonight until the end of the week:
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
6 pm – 7:30 pm – Grand Traverse County Democratic Party, Minerva’s Restaurant, Park Place Hotel, Traverse City
Thursday, May 22, 2014
9 am – 10:30 am – Kalkaska County Democratic Party, Trout Town Cafe, Kalkaska
12 pm – 1:30 pm – Otsego County Democratic Party, F.O.P. Building, Gaylord
3:30 pm – Interview with the Petoskey News-Review
6 pm – 7:30 pm – Charlevoix and Emmet County Democratic Parties, 121 W. Lake Street, Petoskey
Friday, May 23, 2014
12 pm – 1:30 pm – Alcona County Democratic Party, The Holistic Center, Harrisville
3 pm – Interview with the Alpena News
4 pm – Interview with WBKB
6 pm – 7:30 pm – Alpena and Presque Isle Democratic Parties, Linda Ayres’ home in Alpena.
Contact MDP staff for details. For more info you can visit the Michigan Democratic Party Website or contact G.T. Long at midemparty@michigandems.com
Optometrist Turned Educator: The Continuing Story Of Dr. Steve Ingersoll
Monday , 19, May 2014 Dr. Ingersoll, Section 16 4 CommentsGREETINGS DELTA CHARTER SCHOOL VISITORS! Please click this link for an update on the Steve Ingersoll story.
Michigan has lots of charter schools. The state leads the United States in charter school creation. These schools are advertised to parents as an alternative to public education often offering specialties such as fine arts and science, or focusing on students with special needs. Charter schools draw people from different occupations and walks of life into the education business. Dr. Steven Ingersoll, an optometrist currently living in Traverse City, Michigan, and facing felony fraud charges, is one of those people. He combined his expertise of vision therapy and education and came up with a model for charter schools that develops children’s vision so they can better focus on learning. According to Dr. Ingersoll, his methods have dramatic results with students who suffer from ADHD
The main component of Ingersoll’s charter schools is Integrated Visual Learning. IVL according to Ingersoll is a “visual therapy with a cognitive finish.” Vision therapy is a method of retraining the eyes to work together in order to strengthen vision, which enables a person to stay focused and process information more efficiently. This is why every student at one of Dr. Ingersoll’s schools receives an eye exam. This is not uncommon; schools have vision screening for students. Dr. Ingersoll however gives students full eye examinations. In fact, every school operated by Dr. Ingersoll has a full optometry lab.
The first school where Dr. Ingersoll used his new IVL model was at Livingston Developmental Academy in Howell, Michigan. This school was co-founded with Chuck Stockwell. The school implemented Steve Ingersoll’s three-phase approach and had incredible results. According to Ingersoll, 90% of students who were diagnosed with ADHD no longer exhibited the characteristics of ADHD; the students were able to stay focused and had greater success with their schoolwork. Combined with William Glasser education theory and character building education, Dr. Ingersoll went on to establish another charter school in Traverse City with his co founder in IVL, Mark Noss, O.D. In 2011 he opened Bay City Academy and used the same education model there. In all of these schools the same amazing claims were made that students through IVL were able to stay focused and found learning easier. Ingersoll in fact stresses the importance of students being trained to work with what he calls a visual learning style, and that other learning styles force children to use incorrect coping skills that make learning more difficult.
It wasn’t easy finding information about IVL. There is no Wikipedia article about this method of retraining students to learn. The Facebook Page hasn’t been updated in a year. Only through finding information from a Canadian Optometry Clinic in Vancouver that uses IVL was it possible to find a link to Dr. Ingersoll’s Excel Institute. Educators and vision therapists who want to learn Dr. Ingersoll’s method take classes at one of three locations in Michigan – Traverse City, Farmington Hills, and Battle Creek.
Steve Ingersoll’s claims that the majority of students diagnosed with ADHD are misdiagnosed and suffer from poor vision development doesn’t take into consideration that there are different types of ADHD and the condition can come from different causes. Children diagnosed with ADHD have gone through a series of tests performed by pediatric psychiatrists and neurologists. For these children who attend Ingersoll’s schools and were “cured” of ADHD through the Doctor’s IVL method, it would be worthwhile to find out how those children progressed through school once they no longer were part of his program.
Intergrated Visual Learning is only the beginning of Dr. Steve Ingersoll’s total visual learning education model. He has developed other parts of this program, including curriculum and software.
Retired Major General Jerry Cannon is the Democratic Party candidate running for U.S Congress in Michigan’s first district. He will be facing incumbent Dan Benisheck, who has held the office since 2011.
Jerry Cannon is a retired Marine. He served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970. In 1977 he joined the Army National Guard and became sheriff of Kalkaska County, a position he held until 2004. Cannon’s military career includes serving as commander in Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. Through his decades of service to his country and the citizens of Kalkaska County, Jerry Cannon knows the importance of public service and that it requires listening to people and focusing on their concerns and needs.
Jerry Cannon’s campaign is focused like a laser on three things: The economy, District #1 and helping the middle class. The economic recovery in Northern Michigan isn’t doing as well as in other parts of the state. District #1 residents grapple with a 11.5% unemployment rate as businesses and factories have closed and jobs disappear. Jerry Cannon wants to promote diversifying the economy that will provide year round jobs for Northern Michigan. Cannon also believes raising the minimum wage is a must, and supporting small business by making it easier to obtain financing will give the economy the boost it needs.
In education Cannon wants colleges to work more closely with businesses to develop new technical training for the changing job market. He also wants programs in place that makes education more affordable for people who need education and training to find a job.
The middle class has taken a hard economic hit in the United States, and that’s especially true in Northern Michigan. For District #1, Cannon will work to ensure to lessen the tax burden on the middle class and the elderly. They shouldn’t be picking up the slack for wasteful spending and corporate tax cuts. Jerry Cannon supports equal pay for women and tax credits to businesses that hire veterans. Cannon also believes that the Affordable Care Act isn’t a perfect law, but it’s better than what Americans had before it existed. He would like to see parts of it fixed to make it better.
Jerry Cannon is just the person Northern Michigan needs to represent them in Washington. He has decades of dedicated service and understands what that means when representing the people. Do what’s best for District #1 and elect Jerry Cannon to United States Congress. To learn more about Jerry Cannon, you can visit his campaign web site.