The James Logan Courier

By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Unified School District Public Information Officer

The Board of Education on Tuesday night received a report on Professional Learning Communities, teams of educators meeting during collaboration time to work on improving student achievement.

Using an inquiry cycle - "plan, teach, reflect, apply" - these grade-level and subject-matter teams seek to answer four "critical corollary questions": 1) What is it we expect students to learn? 2) How will we know when they have learned it? 3) How will we respond when they don't learn it? 4) How will we respond when they already know it?

ACTIVITIES:
“Chemistry Tutors” needed for Logan’s after school tutoring program. Earn Community Service hours with flexible days and hours, Tues-Wed-Thurs from 3:00-4:30 and Saturday 8:30-12:30. Please come by room 77.

CLUB:
GSA meets this Friday at 3:00 in Room 52. We are having a white elephant gift exchange.

Reviewed by Jessica Stewart, Courier Book Editor

Chrismukkah: The Official Guide to the Worlds Most-Beloved Holiday by Gersh Kuntzman
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Sasquatch Books; 1st edition (September 26, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 157061489X
ISBN-13: 978-1570614897

“All around the country, Americans are celebrating Chrismukkah like never before. The Goldstein-Sanchezes of Millburn, Massachusetts, ring in the holiday by eating extra-salty potatoes on a large mound of dirt. The D’Allesandro-Weinbergs of Rapid City, South Dakota, mark the day by singing Chrismukkah carols to their neighbors and returning perfectly suitable presents. The Gifford-Halberstams of Miami, Florida, bring a twist to the Measuring of the Children—a Chrismukkah ritual since the 1300s—by placing the record of everyone’s height in an envelope, mailing it to themselves, and not opening it until the next Chrismukkah, at which time they delight in comparing the new season’s statistics with those from the year past. And Evan Tarnovsky-Jones of Hibbing, Minnesota, simply sits in a dark room and smokes hashish.”

Editors' Note: Each week, The Courier spotlights new materials arriving, or soon to arrive, in the Media Center.
Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (February 7, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670033766
ISBN-13: 978-0670033768

From Penguin Books:
Garnering a vast amount of attention from young people and parents, and from book buyers across the country, Smashed became a media sensation and a New York Times bestseller. Eye-opening and utterly gripping, Koren Zailckas’s story is that of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who routinely use booze as a shortcut to courage and a stand-in for good judgment.

With one stiff sip of Southern Comfort at the age of fourteen, Zailckas is initiated into the world of drinking. From then on, she will drink faithfully, fanatically. In high school, her experimentation will lead to a stomach pumping. In college, her excess will give way to a pattern of self-poisoning that will grow more destructive each year. At age twenty-two, Zailckas will wake up in an unfamiliar apartment in New York City, elbow her friend who is passed out next to her, and ask, "Where are we?" Smashed is a sober look at how she got there and, after years of blackouts and smashups, what it took for her to realize she had to stop drinking. Smashed is an astonishing literary debut destined to become a classic.

By Jessica Stewart, Courier Book Editor

The year 2006 has been a great year for books, non-fiction and fiction alike. The favorites appear to be about dieting and food, the “sectarian violence” in Iraq, and memoirs. Sadly, these topics do not interest me, so I find myself reading books published before 2006. Although I have read many excellent books this year, only five of them really stand out in my mind.

My favorite by far is The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. It is the very well written story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. The insanity of Dr. W. C. Minor is quite clear, but so is his humanity. He is also very clearly an intelligent man, quite possibly the Einstein of the English language. It really shows how there is more to a person who is not right in the head than just their mental illness. It is definitely the best book I read all year.

By Michael Matza
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

Jimmy Carter has a bull's-eye on his back. Critics are taking shots. But that's OK, the former president said, because the rising volleys aimed at him are boosting sales of his latest book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

More important, the burst of publicity focuses on issues he feels need an honest airing, issues widely hashed over in Israel, but given short shrift in the United States.

Targeted by defenders of Israel who say the title is inflammatory and the text full of spin, Carter, 82, is under attack for a volume whose goal is "to provoke debate" about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offer proposals, via U.S. mediation, to revive peace talks that have been frozen for six years.

ZaSu Pitts (January 3,1894 (?) – June 7, 1963) was a United States movie actress. She was one of the more popular stars of the early motion picture era.

Name and birth date
Her unusual first name was coined from parts of the names "Eliza" and "Susan", female relatives who both wanted Pitts's mother to name the child after them. In many film credits and articles, her name was rendered as Zazu Pitts or Zasu Pitts. Though her name is commonly mispronounced as "Zazz-oo", in her 1930s film shorts with Thelma Todd (see below) it is clearly pronounced on-screen (by Todd) as "ZAY-sue;" her name was also consistently pronounced "ZAY-sue" during her recurrent guest appearences on Fibber McGee and Molly's show in 1939.

Watch Zasu Pitts' in the 1942 film, So's Your Aunt Emma, streaming free from the Internet Archive.