Summercore
2004
NYC
an on-line diary of my adventures in NYC ... Steve Bergen
| | Summercore
2004 |
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This is yet one more reminder that we are now enrolling people for
Summercore in just ONE session, July 12-16 in NYC ... the Florida one is
full and we have cancelled the other one as part of yet another
Summercore tradition which Lynne and I have now nicknamed "get a life"
;-) We expect to incorporate many Laptop Teaching and Schoolwide
Strategies into this July 12-16 session based on our experiences in the
innovate Chapin LIP program (see more info in the BLOG)
Topic One
all is well with us,
in fact, quite well ... Lynne and I have been thinking that 2004 -- our
20th Summercore year -- has been treating us quite well ... first the
Patriots win the Superbowl in February, then our son Sam lands a summer
intern job with the NY Knicks, then our daughter Sarah gets into Harvard
Law School ... who knows, perhaps this will be the year that the Red Sox
break the curse and win the World Series in October ... we are indeed
surrounded by all sorts of NY sports fans and it refreshing -- in a
girls school where 90% of the faculty is female -- to have yet one more
reminder of what I have always believed in terms of a significant number
of females being just as passionate about sports ... I have fourth grade
girls who line up outside of my office before the Yankees played the Red
Sox this year just to tell me "hey Mr. Bergen, your team is going down
this weekend" ... and Lynne and I have both encountered (Lynne is now
finishing her first year at Chapin as computer faculty trainer) numerous
female faculty colleagues who are as sports-fixated as the two of us ...
in any case, 2004 has been good to us so far and we hope for you as
well!
Topic Two
My transition to Chapin from Nobles is now just about 2 years in the
making but feels in some ways like it has been 10 years ... in
essentially starting over with a school that was at baby steps with
technology, my mantra has been to try to redo each piece of the plan
with more quality than I did before -- e.g. the pioneer program,
video-conferencing, the curriculum for the students, the laptop program,
the projector program and of course a big emphasis on humanware and
faculty training ... so far, all is going quite well ... I find myself
surrounded by a plethora of wonderfully supportive and engaging
colleagues and administrators
In fact, our LIP
program which we are just finishing is one of the neatest and most
exciting eduational initiatives I have ever been involved in ... LIP at
Chapin stands for Laptop Immmersion Program and it is our attempt in the
middle school in infuse a huge amount of technology into one particular
year ... several of us chose the sixth grade ("class 6") because the
girls are "old enough to carry the laptop around with them each day but
not yet cynical to drop their engagement" ... we at Chapin purchased 60
laptops to make this work and they are owned by the school ... the girls
rarely take them home and each evening we recharge the laptops in carts
... the girls have these wonderful cases which they carry on their
shoulder during the day as they go through the six floor Chapin buidling
... Lynne works with the teachers in grade six ("humanware" is the
priority of course) to help create numerous technology projects ...this
combination of providing the girls with laptops, having a building that
is totally 100% quality wireless, having a dedicated faculty computer
trainer (Lynne) to help create and support projects and having a
computer proficiency course (CP6) is a Bill Belicek environment
...perhaps I will write a sequel to Moneyball to be called TechnoBall in
which I try to share the confluent strategies and philosophy behind LIP
in terms of creating a successful computer pilot project to help move a
school in the right direction ... and to think that the first day I was
to present this idea to the head of the middle school, I came to her
office and before I could realize I was sick with an unexpected flu, I
vomited about one gallon of "stuff" right in front of her on the floor
of her office forcing her to immediately leave the office and forcing me
to go home for the day ... this was in my fifth month of Chapin ;-)
Topic Three
One of my fears in making this job transition was leaving my Boston Home
connection behind ... last year was a total mishap as I had organized a
Chapin team to walk and push in the 2003 Marathon only to have my back
give out with about 5 days to go ... this was the only back setback I
had experienceding in two years and it had to happen just 5 days before
the Boston marathon trip last year ... perhaps a message from G-d or
perhaps another opportunity to make crisis into opportunity ... I could
not stand up for 48 hours after it happened and Lynne ended up coming
down to NYC for a make shift Passover as I recuperated in bed ... how
bizarre was this but fortunately, it led to the Dorchester Day parade in
June as a fortuitious plan B where 6 Chapin students, several parents
and me drove to the Boston Home on a Sunday ... it was truly a wonderful
day
Topic Four
This year we are doing
that as our main event ... the girls in my class 6 laptop program research multiple
sclerosis and created PowerPoint presentations on MS and the Boston Home
... more recently, they have
been working at creating Forrest Gump pictures for the many residents of
the Boston Home putting then into artificial scenes according to their
requests ... we are going up in exactly two weeks on Sunday June 6th to
present the pictures and push in the Dorchester Day parade and raise
money for the Boston Home ... see info at the very bottom of this BLOG if you want
to help support us!
It all begin when we were doing ninth grade oral
reports in Geometry. One student had a number of visuals to enhance her
presentation on topology and so she had taken a bagel and highlighted it
visually since the bagel and a coffee cup are "topologically
equivalent." At the end of class, she asked me if she should throw it
away or what and I said I would take it, since I was getting hungry and
had to meet with the other math teachers to grade the projects.
After eating half the bagel breaking off tiny chunks so that I could
avoid the paper pieces, my colleague and friend said "Hey, Steve, be
careful of THOSE things." Well I looked down and realized he was
referring to the dots which I thought were candy dots. Now for the first
time in 30 minutes, I realized they were tiny thumbtacks and not candy
dots. My friend told I better get to the nurse promptly since I had just
consumed a bunch of them. The nurse of course sent me to hospital
down the street to get x-rays which revealed at least one of the tacks.
I spent the afternoon in the hospital where they insisted on keeping me
overnight scaring me by saying that if one of the tacks caused internal
bleeding, I would be in major trouble ... I stayed for a while but had
to deliver an important presentation at Chapin in the afternoon and so I
checked out, signing a disclaimer form for the hospital ... I was
feeling fine and not side effects from ingesting the tacks ... I decided
on my own that the hospital was being too OCD cautious and I would go
back that night to my apartment and rest, calling my doorman every hour
on the hour that I was alive ... I told him if he did not hear from me
at one of the preset times to come upstairs and investigate or to send
an ambulence ... this went on from 6pm to 10pm but then my friend from
Chapin called me to tell me I was an idiot and I should go back to the
hospital ... so I went back at 10pm to check back in and spend the night
in the emergency room ... I brought my reading material and was prepared
to act like a big kid and check in ... unfortunately or perhaps
fortunately, I waited in the emergency room for two hours thru midnight
just reading and watching television ... at that time I was so sick and
tired of the day's events and my own stupidity at not knowing the
difference between candy dots and tiny thumbtacks that I just went home
and went to sleep the next day, I went to my regular NYC doctor and
called Lynne on the phone to tell her (she lived in Massachusetts the
first year I was at Chapin) ... my doctor said that this was not as
abnormal as it might seem and and that he was not too worried and that
"all things will pass" ... Lynne told me what I expected -- that I was
an idiot -- and she proceed to find quotes and examples on the web of
various small children and mentally challenged adults who had also
ingested metal objects
3.141592 653589 79323846 26433832
79502884 1971693 in the spirit of
Lynne and me turning 53 this year, one of my latest songs is about
getting older and the fact that we cannot maintain this Summercore
intensity life style for that many more years ... we have made a
conscious decision this year to eliminate one week of Summercore and
take a little breather this summer not having my friend and guitar
teacher Bob Lasher to record with, I have evolved my own Plan B on this
one and have been working with my various doormen on voice recording the
songs ... I come home from swimming at 7am and have a new lyric that one
of the doormen in my apartment is generous enough to voice record with
me ... his name is Eric and he figures this might become his 15 minutes
of fame if we make it to the top ... Lynne, of course, refuses to listen
to any of these new tunes unless I bribe her perhaps by agreeing to go
shopping for new shirts ... I have even gotten a second doorman to sing
a verse with me and then a third doorman -- in the tradition of American
Idol is the judge, comparing the quality of the two of them in
competition ;-)
I have also been
successful at Chapin in getting SOME colleagues to join me in SOME of my
music attempts, at least the ones that have not been influenced by Lynne
... one particular colleague and friend gave me the saying "fix the
problem not the blame" which I latched onto since it represents the best
of quadrant 1234 thinking and red auerbach management 101 ... I of
course turned it into a song to the tune of "home on the range" and
finally cajoled a Chapin colleague and friend named Josephine to voice
record it with me ...
click here
to see the lyrics and listen to FIX THE PROBLEM NOT THE BLAME
hope all is well ... let me know if you have
anyone who might be interested in Summercore 2004 ... if you would like
to support us in our fundraiser for the Boston Home, please send e-mail
to me at
Steve
p.s. here is the official 2004 form
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Topic Five
If you didn't hear what happened to me in May 2003 (I think it was May 2003) with my geometry
students and the bagel, I will share the story -- in all of its glory --
here yet again!
bagel.jpg
bagelpick2.jpg 
bagelpix.jpg
ruler.JPG 
sbeatingbagel.jpg 
tack.jpg Topic Six
as for our Boston/NYC life, we do the commute virtually every Sunday and
Friday ... we have chosen to keep our house in Lexington MA which has
now turned into a weekend get-a-way chock-filled with 20 years of
memories and tons of stuff which would never fit into our small NYC
apartment ... it is refreshing each weekend to catch up with Boston
sports radio, the Boston Globe and get out of the city ... the commute
takes between 3.5 and 5 hours and so far has been under control ... our
best time was when we left Boston the night the Patriots won the
SuperBowl in Feburary, arriving in NYC at 2am ... next year, the big
dilemma will be the New England Patriots games many of which start at
4pm and finish at 7pm ... Lynne is not sure yet if she wants to leave
after the game and get back to NYC by midnight or leave Sunday morning
and watch the games in NYC (never our first choice)
Topic Seven
one of the many joys at
Chapin has been the presence of little kids ...this year I went into the
first grade class (again) and talked about loving numbers and why March
14 (PI day) was special for me ... I taught the first grade girls about
the fact that there are MANY numbers between 3 and 4 and that one of
them was given a special name called PI ... I taught them to count from
1 to 10 the "adult way" which of course is 1,2,3, PI, 4, 5,6,7,8,9,10
... they started calling me Mister PI and would greet me as Mister PI
every time I would return the next Wednesday ... I also taught them to
see how far they could double numbers by going 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 and
so on ... what is amazing
is that these same girls months later still come up to me in the hallway
and say "hi Mister PI, 1,2,3, PI , 4, 5" ... I even had two Chapin girls
stop me at a bus stop on York Avenue to remind me about PI ... this
occasional teaching of first gradetruly has been a COGNAC moment for
those of you who know about that metaphor
Roses are Red, Violets are blue
3.141592
PI is a number that is mighty fine
653589
Practice this often
until it sticks
79323846
Practice when you swim since there's
nothing else to do
26433832
Let no one ignorant of geometry
enter this door 79502884
Numbers rule the universe, Pythagoras made
the decree
1971693
Topic Eight
in any case, here is the latest tune, intended to be half-serious
... click
here to see the lyrics and listen to ALTER KAAKER
Topic Nine
with your gold, silver or bronze pledge and
send checks to Steve Bergen, PO Box E, Lexington MA 02420 ...
p.s. hope all is well ... let me know if you have anyone who might
be interested in Summercore 2004 ... if you would like to support me in
the fundraiser for the Boston Home -- some of you will remember Dianne
and Colleen who were the JUDGES at the Summercore drawing contest --
here is the official 2004 form
Hi! I will be one of over 15 people to help push our
friends from the Boston Home with multiple sclerosis in their
wheelchairs in the 2004 Dorchester Day Parade. If you would like to
SPONSOR ME and support this marathon walk on Sunday, June 6th, 2004
helping us raise money for technology for the residents
(video-conferencing, Dragon Dictate, microphones, computers) please make
an e-mail pledge of $100 (gold) or $10 (silver) or $1 (bronze) by
sending an e-mail note to
; thanks much but please do
NOT send any money yet. We need to see if we can make it from NYC to
Boston that day before asking you to send the actual donation! Every
dollar counts -- we love pledges of any size! Anyone who makes a "gold
pledge" will receive a copy of Colleen Power's Autobiography which the
Chapin girls are now producing. A student at my former school began it
and finally we are finishing it: Crossing the Digital Divide. You can
read more about Colleen's book-to-be and our June 6 plans on the web
page of www.summercore.com/bh
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