HAMPSHIRE — There were no desks in the classroom. Just a teacher, about 30 students, a blue star flag and a question written on the chalkboard: “What have you done to earn to earn the right to sit at your desk?” When the students answered that question, their teacher told them, they could have their desks. It wasn’t their grades or their behavior. It wasn’t even their good looks, Colorado-based filmmaker Larry Cappetto added. At the end of the day, it was the veterans of the U.S. military who carried the students’ desks into the classroom. It was the very men and women who had paid the price for their freedoms, for those desks, who had fought for their “right to go to school and get a free education,” Cappetto said. That happened in 2005 in Martha Cothran’s social studies classroom at Robinson High School in Little Rock, Ark. The story checks out on snopes.com, and, the filmmaker said, he talked to Cothran himself. He asked the teacher if anyone ever had made a film based on her story, he said. And no one had — at least, not until Cappetto started filming “Where Are The Desks?” last week at Hampshire High School, casting students and teachers from the high school and Hampshire Middle School, as well as a number of area veterans. It was a story he’s wanted to film for some time, he said, like the stories of veterans he has told in his award-winning documentaries. That’s because, he said, “If we don’t remember, we forget.” For the rest of the story, visit The Courier-News. Photo credit: Michael Smart for Sun-Times Media.

Hampshire students get role in film on veterans (Sun-Times Media)

One in four people will appear on a TV show in their lifetime, according to a statistic Shannon Wapole of DeKalb read. So when she was stuck inside on a rainy day this May at her parents’ home in Elgin, watching a “Four Weddings” marathon on TLC, the then-bride-to-be said, “I was just thinking, ‘What a once-in-a-lifetime experience to say I’d been on reality TV!’ ” And now she can: Wapole and her husband Andy Stoker’s Nov. 11 wedding will be featured on a new episode of the show, at 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27. “Four Weddings” sends four very different brides from the same area to each others’ weddings to choose the best, scoring everything from the food to the dress. The highest-scoring bride and her groom at the end of the episode win a dream honeymoon. Eight episodes into the marathon, Wapole checked out the show’s website and saw it was filming an upcoming episode in the Chicago area. She filled out a short questionnaire online and got a phone call from the show about an hour later, she said. Four months, a longer questionnaire and a Skype interview later, Wapole and Stoker learned their wedding would be featured on “Four Weddings.” “When I was going through it,” Wapole said of her then-fiance, “he was really supportive, and then when I told him we got picked, he said, ‘Are you serious?’ ” But then, she said, “He was very laid back to the 10th degree.” For the rest of the story visit The Courier-News. Photo credit: Submitted to Sun-Times Media.

Area bride’s one of ‘Four Weddings’ on TLC show (Sun-Times Media)

Found bullets put Burlington, Elgin schools on lockdown (Sun-Times Media)

U46 eyes college, work readiness (Sun-Times Media)

ELGIN — Ushma Shah invoked universal design in her debut before the School District U46 Board of Education at Monday’s regular school board meeting. That’s the architectural idea that designing a building to be accessible for people with disabilities — “with the widest and most inclusive vision” — really makes it better for everyone who uses it, Shah said. Curb cuts aren’t just used by people in wheelchairs, she pointed out, but also by people pushing strollers or carts. It’s also the idea behind Shah’s controversial position, created this summer, as the Elgin school district’s chief of equity and social justice. “These ideas are beginning to be translated into the field of teaching and learning. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach, universal design for learning asks, ‘How can we design curriculum and classroom experiences that are as effective and inclusive as possible?’ ” she said. “When we do this in the design of our curriculum and how we design our classroom instruction, then we will serve the needs of more students and we’ll see better results for everyone.” Monday night, Shah called her role a “facilitator,” a part of the national conversation about how to close the achievement gaps between white and mostly Hispanic and black students. That’s not a position unique to U46, she told The Courier-News in an interview Tuesday. Similar positions are “beginning to pop up” in school districts in Highland Park and Boston, she said. But it is one that has brought some controversy to Illinois’ second-largest school district, which created the position with a six-figure annual salary even as it has made some tough budget cuts. Those come as the state has reduced or fallen behind in its payments to the district in the past few years. For the rest of the story, visit The Courier-News. Photo credit: Kevin D. Sherman for Sun-Times Media.

Designing equity (Sun-Times Media)

LAKE IN THE HILLS — The fifth-graders in Jamie Soprych’s classroom at Lincoln Prairie Elementary School already have learned about fairy tales, folk tales and tall tales. Last week, the students learned about mythology, writing stories and drawing pictures of their own gods and goddesses. Sitting back-to-back on the floor, they read their stories to their partners, trying to guess the other’s god or goddess. When they finished, they pushed their backs into their partner’s, trying to rise to their feet as Soprych clapped and cheered on students Sofia Nichols and Sarah Tenuta: “Push! Push! Push!” They lined up, calling out a word that described their god or goddess and peeling off to a different part of the room as the teacher passed, then huddling up in the middle of the classroom for a cheer. Finally, they pushed their desks back to the center of the classroom for a pop quiz. “If you were to come in as a stranger, you’d be like, ‘What are you doing? It’s so chaotic!’ But it’s not,” Soprych said. There’s a method to the teacher’s madness. “It’s kinesthetic, visual and auditory. When you hit all those types, you hit all learners,” she explained. That method is called Quantum Learning, and it’s one of Community Unit School District 300’s top priorities this school year. Priority shift Those priorities — announced by members of the superintendent’s new Teaching and Learning Leadership Team at the District 300 Staff Rally at the start of the school year — include the district’s restructured special education program. They also include RtI and PBIS, which are intervention programs for students struggling with learning or behavior; and aligning curriculum and testing with the Common Core Standards adopted last year by the state of Illinois. Quantum Learning is a five-part teaching and learning methodology that addresses all learning styles. District 300 first offered a five-day summer training in the methodology about 12 years ago, according to Audrey Lakin, the district’s facilitator for the implementation of Quantum Learning. Then came a different district administration, financial difficulties and a priority shift, Lakin said. The Carpentersville-area school district “never lost contact with” Quantum Learning, she said; it just outsourced its training to National Louis University, on that school’s Elgin campus. Between 1999 and 2010, about 350 District 300 employees were trained in Quantum Learning, Lakin said. This summer alone, the district trained more than 100, including staff from every school, she said. That’s because, the facilitator said, when Superintendent Michael Bregy took charge of the district this school year, he announced another shift in the district’s top priority — back to core teaching and learning. That included the creation of the Teaching and Learning Leadership Team. It also included a new goal for Quantum Learning. “Over the next five years, we would train everybody — that’s not just our teachers, but our administrators and our support staff,” Lakin said. “What we’re trying to do now is implement Quantum Learning so it’s not an intimidating thing. It’s part of the way we do things. It’s not an add-on. It’s a part of the way we do business.” For the rest of the story, visit The Courier-News. Photo credit: Michael Smart for Sun-Times Media.

D300 makes Quantum leap in priorities this school year (Sun-Times Media)

Technology upgrade in U-46 (Sun-Times Media)

ELGIN — Illinois Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon has released a report on the state of the state’s community colleges, and has proposed a number of reforms summing up her fact-finding tour of every community college in the state over the past year. That report found that four out of five recent high school graduates who enter such colleges do not complete a certificate or degree within three years, making community colleges, in Simon’s words, “revolving doors.” “We’re doing a good job of getting all types of students into the doors of community colleges,” she said in a written statement. “But now we need to do a better job of moving them across the stage at graduation with a certificate or degree that leads to a good-paying job here in Illinois.” To do that, Simon’s report lays out four steps community colleges can take to “focus on the finish.” She set a goal to increase the number or working-age adults in Illinois with certificates or college degrees from 41 percent to 60 percent by 2015. And she singled out several programs at Elgin Community College, which she visited in late September, both in her report and in remarks she made Thursday morning at The City Club in Chicago. “We have a lot of strong professionals at the college who have worked on this a long time and finally, they are being recognized,” Elgin Community College President David Sam said. “It’s a step ahead of many places, and we are pleased with that.” The lieutenant governor’s report puts ECC about in the middle of the 48 community colleges in Illinois for certificate and degree completion. ECC awarded certificates or associate’s degrees to 25 percent of students in three years or less between fall 2007 and fall 2010, Simon said. That’s a percentage that has held steady over the past decade, even as enrollment at the school has grown, according to ECC spokesman Jeff Julian. The community college awarded 2,529 total certificates and degrees in 2011, compared to 1,793 in 2008, according to the college. And, Julian noted, that puts the Elgin school at the top of the community colleges in the Chicago area. For the rest of the story, visit The Courier-News.

Lt. governor encourages community colleges to ‘focus on the finish,’ touts programs at ECC (Sun-Times Media)

Second child abduction attempt reported in D300 (Sun-Times Media)

Customer love for this local businesss wins grant for Nick’s Pizza (Sun-Times Media)