As they enter their classrooms, they see cards with photographs of the day's lunch choices on a bulletin board. They place a Velcro-wooden spoon with their name on it next to their choice. Kathy Rech, an Orange Elementary kindergarten teacher, calls it a lifesaver. The system is also designed to teach about graphs. When all the students have chosen their lunches, the cards and spoons form a graph showing which lunch option is most popular.
Teachers can track popularity on monthly graphs.
Hein created the system four years ago. Public school educators and charter schools usually go together like oil and water-at best. But charter schools are public schools, ones that often have useful ideas to share, as well as much to learn from other public schools. So staffers from NEA's Teaching and Learning unit set out to develop guidelines to help these two wary groups learn together, in the interest of improving education for all children. With research help from SRI International, and cooperation from 10 charter schools, these NEA staffers created Project Connect, a two-year effort to develop ways to improve communication between charter schools and other public schools.