Dickinson and Seaford Teachers Named Finalists in First Annual Prestwick House Delaware English Teacher of the Year Award

Smyrna, DE, June 29, 2010 -- Today Smyrna-based publishing company Prestwick House, Inc., is proud to announce three finalists for the first annual Prestwick House Delaware English Teacher of the Year Award. The honored teachers are Jennifer Bower of Seaford Middle School, Kristen Zerbe of John Dickinson High School, and Harry Brake of Seaford High School.

Each school within the state of Delaware was allowed one submission chosen by the English department chairperson. Each nomination was then carefully reviewed by the Prestwick House Delaware Teacher of the Year Committee, and three finalists were selected.

All of the nominees we reviewed were outstanding and should be proud to be deemed worthy of recognition by their department chairperson. While it was a difficult choice to make, these three finalists best represent the exemplary teaching that goes on every day in the state of Delaware. I congratulate them for their selection and thank them all on behalf of Prestwick House for their continued dedication in their classrooms.

These outstanding educators, both innovative and effective in their classrooms, stand as role models for other teachers in the Delaware community.

"All of the nominees we reviewed were outstanding and should be proud to be deemed worthy of recognition by their department chairperson," remarked General Manager Keith Bergstrom. "While it was a difficult choice to make, these three finalists best represent the exemplary teaching that goes on every day in the state of Delaware. I congratulate them for their selection and thank them all on behalf of Prestwick House for their continued dedication in their classrooms."

Among her many roles, Kristen Zerbe is the advisor of the creative writing program at Dickinson High School and has had more than 20 of her students' works appear in national publications. She is also responsible for orchestrating an Advanced Placement Literature and Composition class; her students now account for the majority of Dickinson's successful AP exam scores. Outside of her classroom, Ms Zerbe can be found participating in virtually every school-sponsored event, encouraging her students to give back to a worthy cause and leading by example.

Harry Brake, a secondary English teacher at Seaford High School, has worked very hard to tie art and technology into classroom curriculum, securing various grants to fund opportunities like educational field trips for his students. Mr. Brake is also heavily involved as an advisor for a variety of student organizations, including Relay for Life and Key Club. He is both the founder and advisor of Seaford's PAVE club (Peers Actively Volunteering and Educating). In addition to his work at Seaford High School, Mr. Brake is also well known because of his speaking engagements at conferences, such as the National Council for Teachers of English Convention, the National Writing Center Conference, and the Bloomsburg University Reading Conference.

Jennifer Bower, a teacher who specializes in media and writing, has served as the Language Arts Department chair at Seaford Middle School for the past six years. An advocate for the Learning-Focused Solutions Initiative, Mrs. Bower has used her skills to effectively address varied learning styles in her classroom through the use of technology, art, and language. Mrs. Bowers is also an active member of the school leadership team, a member of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the Diamond State Reading Association, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the Seaford Education Association.

The winner of the Delaware English Teacher of the Year Award will be announced on Wednesday, July 21, 2010, during the Prestwick House-sponsored Teacher Appreciation Night at the Delaware Shakespeare Festival.

"Through reviewing nominations, we have gained an even greater appreciation for the amount of talent and dedication that Delaware teachers bring to our schools each year" says CEO Jason Scott. "These outstanding educators, both innovative and effective in their classrooms, stand as role models for other teachers in the Delaware community."

Along with recognition for their efforts in conjunction with the Shakespeare Festival performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth and a plaque commemorating their achievements, the winning teacher will also receive a new Apple iPad fully loaded with Prestwick House digital teaching materials. All finalists will be featured on the Prestwick House website, blog, and in the Footnotes monthly email newsletter.

About Prestwick House - Founded in 1983 by a former Dover High School administrator, Prestwick House is a leader in educational publishing. With a focus on helping English teachers in grades 9-12, Prestwick House publishes the largest selection of literature teaching guides in the country, a line of classic novels, and hundreds of other educational products. Find out more at www.prestwickhouse.com.

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If you’d like more information about this topic or to schedule an interview, please call Keith Bergstrom at 302/659-2070 ext 131 or e-mail Keith at keith@prestwickhouse.com

Tuesday Trivia

1. Which author once ran for mayor of Oakland California in 1901 under the Social Party ticket?
2. Who is the only author to win the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year?
3. Which author’s father left his family under the pretense of going out to buy a pack of cigarettes?
4. True or False: The Theban plays, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone are a trilogy written by Sophocles.

Which Irish writer and poet lived and traveled with his future wife for almost thirty years before actually marrying her?

James Joyce and his chambermaid Nora Barnacle began their relationship in 1907 but did not marry until 1931.

Which American short story writer was convicted and imprisoned for embezzlement?


O. Henry was convicted and imprisoned for embezzlement. During his time in prison in Columbus, Ohio, he began to write his short stories for which he became famous.

Which Canadian writer was abandoned as a child?


Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, lost her mother at two years old and was abandoned by her father because he wanted to remarry and begin a new family. Montgomery’s books are based on her own life as an orphan living on Prince Edward Island.

Which writer was once a freight train hopping hobo, arrested for vagrancy in Niagara Falls?
In addition to a stint as a hobo, Jack London was also a seaman before educating himself and attending University of California at Berkley.

Where in the World is... Maya Angelou

Where in the World is

Maya Angelou?

Maya Angelou, an eminent voice in African American literature, has composed numerous poems and autobiographical novels throughout her lifetime, the most famous being I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Unlike some writers, who disseminate their ideas through their text alone—certainly an admirable feat in itself—Angelou put her words into action, becoming a prominent figure in the Civil Rights movement.

While the last time most of the public saw Angelou was at the recitation of her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, or when she directed the major motion picture Down in the Delta in 1998, Angelou has by no means disappeared from the world of art and literature, nor stopped spreading her message about racial equality. Recently, she gave a talk called “Saving the Race: The Human Race” at the Riverside Church in New York City on November 7, 2009, and also narrated a film called “The Black Candle: A Kwanzaa Celebration,” which not only discusses the holiday, but the importance of family, heritage, and tradition in the lives of African Americans. Additionally, as the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University, she gave the keynote address at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration on January 18, 2010.

Tuesday Trivia

1. Which Irish writer and poet lived and traveled with his future wife for almost thirty years before actually marrying her?
2. Which American short story writer was convicted and imprisoned for embezzlement?
3. Which Canadian writer was abandoned as a child?
4. Which writer was once a freight train hopping hobo, arrested for vagrancy in Niagara Falls?

According to Maeve Binchy, if she could be any historical figure who would she choose?
Josephine Bonaparte

These notorious Shakespearean siblings probably take their name from the Old English word for “fate” or “personal destiny.”
The Wyrd or “Weird” sisters from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

The 1956 science fiction film classic, Forbidden Planet is an interplanetary adaptation of which Shakespearean favorite?
The Tempest

Which female writer was the first woman registered to vote in Concord, New Hampshire?

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1832. A suffragette, Alcott was living in Concord, New Hampshire in 1879, where she registered for and voted in the Concord school election.


What was George Eliot's real name?

Mary Ann Evans used the pseudonym George Eliot.

Don't Miss It!

Do you remember in Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby—the first time Nick drives over to Tom and Daisy’s East Egg mansion—Daisy ponders: “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it”?

Well, the “longest day of the year,” aka the Summer Solstice, is today.

Don’t miss it!

Where in the World is Susanna Clarke?

Where in the World is

Susanna Clarke?

In 2004, Susanna Clarke published her first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a story of two rival magicians in England during the Napoleonic Wars.

The book was well-received by critics, spent eleven weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and won numerous awards, including Time’s Best Novel of the Year (2004) and the Hugo Award for Best Novel (2004). Two years later, Clarke published a collection of short stories entitled, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (2006), which while viewed favorably by critics, was not as popular with readers as her novel. Since then, Clarke has been residing with her husband and fellow writer, Colin Greenland, in Cambridge. She recently published an essay in A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen (2009), and it is rumored that she is writing a sequel to Strange & Norrell. Clarke makes the following comment on her website:

There are new characters to be introduced, though probably some old friends will appear too. I’d like to move down the social scale a bit. Strange and Norrell were both rich, with pots of money and big estates. Some of the characters in the second book have to struggle a bit harder to keep body and soul together. I expect there’ll be more about John Uskglass, the Raven King, and about how magic develops in England.

There is no set release date for the upcoming novel, nor can it be confirmed that Clarke has finished writing, but fans eagerly await Clarke's big return.

Image of Susanna Clarke taken by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, March 11, 2006.

Tuesday Trivia

1. According to Maeve Binchy, if she could be any historical figure who would she choose?
2. Which notorious Shakespearean siblings probably take their name from the Old English word for “fate” or “personal destiny”?
3. The 1956 science fiction film classic, Forbidden Planet is an interplanetary adaptation of which Shakespearean favorite?
4. Which female writer was the first woman registered to vote in Concord, New Hampshire?
5. What was George Eliot's real name?

Contrary to his express desire, instead of being buried privately in the cathedral of his childhood home, this British author is honored in Westminster Abbey’s famous “Poet’s Corner.”



Charles Dickens




What was Pulitzer Prize-Winning author John Sanford’s reason for deciding to become a writer?


His journalism schooling was paid for by the Army.



The 2009 British independent film Bright Star dramatizes the short-lived romance between which consumptive romantic poet and his girlfriend?



Bright Star is the story of John Keats, Fanny Brawne, and their three year romance and engagement, lasting from December 1818 until Keats’s death in February 1821.



Though not the first to express the sentiment, this British novelist and playwright is credited with coining the phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”



Edward Bulwer-Lytton is credited, but the idea for the phrase can be traced back to the Greek poet Euripides, who said, "The tongue is mightier than the blade." Similarly Shakespeare writes in Hamlet "[...] many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills" and Robert Burton wrote in The Anatomy of Melancholy, "From this it is clear how much more cruel the pen may be than the sword."



What does Jane Smiley say she would be doing if she were not a writer?



She would choose to raise horses.

Class Photo 2010: Prestwick House Takes to the High Seas

Each year the art department comes up with a concept and creates a "class photo" of all current PH employees. In years past, PH staffers have been recast as a group from a retirement home, school children, and even the characters from the Beatle's Seargent Pepper album cover.


This year, PH has taken to the high seas in honor of our newly revised Treasure Island cover — so we are going with a pirate theme. Each week we will be adding more individual class photos and outtakes to our Facebook page leading up to the big reveal of the entire project!

Check out some of the photos below or visit Facebook to see the complete album!

Why We Need Common Standards

by Douglas Grudzina


Well, the big “ed-news” the past couple of weeks is, of course, the release of the final draft Common Core State Standards. These are the product of a year-long cooperative effort of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, for people who like initials) and the National Governors Association (NGA, pretty dull initials by comparison).

They figure pretty prominently in the federal government’s “Race to the Top” initiative. You can see the standards here.
I actually think they’re pretty good standards. Of course, I’m in the camp that wholeheartedly endorses the idea of common, national standards for education. Here’s why.

First of all, despite a lot of the verbiage of those who oppose such standards, national standards are not new. What we now call the College Board was founded in 1900 with the express purpose of codifying college-entrance standards. Their intent was not to inform member colleges what they should look for in their applicants but to inform high schools across the country what they were looking for. (Their efforts, of course, resulted in the development of the SAT.)

Did the standards assumed by the College Board in the development of their College Entrance Exam have an impact on state and local educational policy and practice? (Well, come on, you know it did!)

Advanced Placement is another long-embraced program founded upon common, national standards. The College Board began offering advanced placement exams in the 1950s. High Schools responded by adapting their curricula and offering AP courses very shortly thereafter.

More recently, but still more than four decades ago, the foundation of the International Baccalaureate program was an attempt to establish high and consistent standards for “internationally mobile students preparing for university”.

Even the ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery) offered in many high schools to students who are considering enlistment after graduation, is a form of national standard that has implications for what a graduating high school senior needs to “know and be able to do” in order to enter the military field of his or her choice.

So, the United States has had de facto national standards for more than a century. Some schools and districts have adopted international standards since 1968. The push for common standards is not new. I firmly believe that the ongoing push for common standards (New Standards Project, NCTE/IRA Standards for the English Language Arts) is a good thing—a very good thing.

In addition, common national standards are fair. I’m tempted to say “equitable,” but that’s one of those emotionally charged words that cloud the issue more than open conversation. One of the main reasons those Ivy League colleges joined forces in 1900 to form the “College Entrance Examination Board” was that they were finding too many applicants who were simply academically unqualified to enter college. The colleges suspected that the schools graduating these students were not intentionally holding the students back but were simply unaware of what their graduates needed to “know and be able to do.”

The CEEB, therefore, codified their standards and developed their exam as a means of helping these schools give their students a fairer chance at college.

The result was, ostensibly, improved education and increased opportunities for a number of students.

Moreover, (sorry, but I’m running out of transitional phrases) common standards admit to certain truths about our society that local control advocates often disregard: how utterly un-unique our children are, and how transient our population is.

One of the most common arguments of those who oppose common standards is that adults in the local community know best their children’s ability and limitations. They know their children’s future and can best determine what their children need to know (and be able to do).

However, do we really believe that sixteen-year-olds in Oxnard, California, are significantly different from sixteen-year-olds in Biloxi, Mississippi, or Painted Post, New York? I’m not talking about superficial differences like manners of dress, favorite foods and music, or regional accents. I’m talking about significant differences—differences in intellectual capacity, emotional and psychological development, physical growth, and so on.

Do different states produce different species of sixteen-year-old? Of course not. Even those superficial differences all but disappear in the age of electronic media, social networking, and the like. Now, if we honestly believe that kids in California are smarter—more mature, better able—than kids in New York (or vice versa), and if we honestly believe that kids in Painted Post are smarter—etc.—than kids in Elmira (or vice versa), we have a case for unique state or local standards.

If, however, we recognize that a kid is a kid is a kid, then not so much.

Let’s look again at the impetus behind the foundation of the College Board. The representatives of the original member schools apparently did not believe that New York and Mississippi teens were ready for college, but California teens in the same age group and with the same number of years in school weren’t.

If the United States Military Entrance Processing Command maintained a tacit understanding that students in Mississippi were developmentally slower (or faster) than their California or New York counterparts, they would probably require the ASVAB to be administered later (or earlier) in Benton than in Bakersfield or Beacon.

Fact is, given some individual variance in the first appearance of facial hair or the last adolescent tantrum, kids everywhere are pretty much the same; and if a tenth-grader in Maine can be expected to formulate a coherent thesis and cite four facts in support of it, so can a tenth-grader in Missouri.

Not only are our children and teenagers vapidly similar from state to state and region to region, their parents are curiously nomadic. Think about it; probably every single person reading this post (yes, both of you—hi, Mom!) knows kids who have transferred from one school to another, probably across state lines, and have found themselves significantly behind—or significantly ahead—of their new class.

Unless there has been a change in grade level, shouldn’t the new school be pretty much in synch with the old?

You might convince me that each state or district should establish its own standards if you could show me that your kids are uniquely smart or uniquely stupid. You might convince me that each state or district should establish its own standards if you could show me that the kids graduating from your high school were by and large the same kids who’d entered your kindergarten thirteen years earlier and would live, work, retire, and die locally.

As soon as you admit, however, that during the course of your district’s thirteen-year course of study, you’re going to be taking in transfer students and bidding farewell to others, as soon as you concede that your high school graduates are very likely to leave town and live their adult lives elsewhere (and, conversely, that a significant number of the adults in your community grew up and went to school elsewhere), then you have to admit that maintaining your own insular set of educational standards is probably not in the best interests of the public you serve.

Consider the original goal of the International Baccalaureate program: to provide a consistent quality of education to “internationally mobile” students. I taught in a military town, and I had many students who were coming to me straight from Germany, Japan, or the UK. I also had a handful who left me for those countries. I also had many, many students who were coming to my district (in Delaware) from Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc., etc., etc. So transient was the population of my district that, every year at senior awards night, we recognized the few students who had been with us from kindergarten through graduation.

My district may have been extreme, but it was not unique.

Military families move. Corporate families move. Transience (and I dislike that word because it connotes a kind of seediness that I do not intend) is increasing in the United States, not decreasing. Some sources estimate that a “typical” family relocates every three to five years. This means that these families’ children will attend school in no fewer than three districts—probably in three states—before they graduate. If we insist on maintaining our own unique and discrete standards, without keeping an eye to the left, the right, the north, the south, then we are fostering the frustration of our kids’ being significantly behind or significantly ahead of their new classmates when they move.

In other words, we’re part of the problem.

Now, let’s be clear that I am by no means advocating a common, national curriculum. A curriculum specifies whether we utilize a descriptivist or prescriptivist approach to grammar, whether we use a vocabulary and writing series or take a more “whole language” approach. A curriculum would specify that Julius Caesar be our students’ eighth-grade introduction to Shakespeare and To Kill a Mockingbird the tenth-grade United States novel.

Those are all local decisions, and they should be. The local school’s curriculum must be allowed to reflect the local community’s interests and values. None of our working models of standards—the SAT, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate, the ASVAB—impose this level of specificity on their participating schools. (I. B. does call its program a “curriculum,” but their grade-by-grade requirements are still broad enough to be tailored to meet the local community’s needs.)

Indeed, if the Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association (I like words better than initials), or the College Board, or the International Baccalaureate Organization (or anyone else for that matter) dictates that all tenth-graders read A Tale of Two Cities and memorize ten words a week from the Funk and Wagnalls Word-a-Day Classroom Pocket Dictionary and Style Book, then the Biloxi Public School and the Oxnard Union High School Districts have just cause to complain. But to recognize the knowledge and skills colleges expect their incoming students to have; to publicize what the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines expect their recruits to know and be able to do; and to propose that every high school in every school district in every state in the nation has an obligation to help every student gain those skills and knowledge is necessary and just.

We need common standards, not because everyone needs to read Macbeth but because there is a fundamental inequity (okay, there’s that word, sorry!) in one tenth-grader’s being taught how to analyze the narrative structure of a play with flashbacks (like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman) and another being asked to identify the characters’ names and relationships in a young adult novel like Johnny Tremain.

Those are both true examples of current tenth graders I know personally. I think the disparity in what is being expected of them and what they are being taught to do speak volumes in favor of common standards.

I’m just saying …

Where in the World is... J.K. Rowling

Where in the World Is

J.K. Rowling

After completing the seventh and final Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007), Rowling wrote The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2008), an anthology of children’s stories in the wizarding world. (Potter fans might also recognize the book as the one Albus Dumbledore left Hermione in Deathly Hallows). Her characters and stories remain popular, and fans eagerly await the newest Harry Potter blockbuster and the Orlando theme park; however, the beloved author has been been frequently in the media spotlight.


Recently, J.K. Rowling has become involved in a billion-dollar lawsuit, in which the estate of the late author Adrian Jacobs has accused her of plagiarizing a story entitled Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land in her book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Bloomsbury Publisher, however, affirms that the claim is without merit and the case should be dismissed.


Additionally, Rowling appeared at the Annual White House Easter Egg Roll, at which she read selections from Harry Potter and answered questions. It is rumored that J.K. Rowling is writing again, but on a project that is not Potter-related. Her last update on her personal Twitter account reads, “This is the real me, but you won’t be hearing from me often I am afraid, as pen and paper is my priority at the moment.”

Tuesday Trivia

1. Contrary to his express desire, instead of being buried privately in the cathedral of his childhood home, which British author is honored in Westminster Abbey’s famous Poet’s Corner?
2. What was Pulitzer Prize-Winning author John Sanford’s reason for deciding to become a writer?
3. The 2009 British independent film Bright Star dramatizes the short-lived romance between which consumptive Romantic poet and his girlfriend?
4. Though not the first to express the sentiment, this British novelist and playwright is credited with coining the phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
5. What does Jane Smiley say she would be doing if she were not a writer?

Which poet held the high office of Poet Laureate of England for 30 years but is best remembered for his anthropomorphic children’s story?
Robert Southey, prestigious poet, is best remembered for his story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."

Contrary to popular belief – and Boston tour guides’ hype – which famous “author” of children’s poetry was probably not a seventeenth-century Boston housewife and is probably not buried in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston?
Tourists to Boston, Massachusetts often hear that the original Mother Goose was the wife of an Isaac Goose, either named Elizabeth Foster Goose (1665-1758) or Mary Goose (1648 -1690) who is interred at the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street. It is not likely that either of these women is the original Mother Goose, since some of the famous nursery rhymes predate the 17th century.

In which Grimm Brothers’ tale do the heroine’s nemeses cut off their toe and heel respectively and then have their eyes gouged out by vengeful birds?
In the Grimm Brother’s version of Cinderella, the wicked stepsisters cut off their toes to fit into the slipper. Two pigeons alert the Prince to the deception by pecking the stepsisters' eyes out.

Which author’s favorite snack is cheese doodles?
Janet Evanovich

Which British poet’s wife was illiterate and signed her wedding certificate with an "X"?
William Blake’s wife was illiterate and also unable to conceive. Because of her inability to bear children, Blake advocated bringing a “second wife” into the household so that he could have children.

Tuesday Trivia

1. Which poet held the high office of Poet Laureate of England for 30 years but is best remembered for his anthropomorphic children's story?
2. Contrary to popular belief – and Boston tour guides’ hype – which famous “author” of children's poetry was probably not a seventeenth-century Boston housewife and is probably not buried in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston?
3. In which Grimm Brothers’ tale do the heroine’s nemeses cut off their toe and heel respectively and then have their eyes gouged out by vengeful birds?
4. Which author’s favorite snack is cheese doodles?
5. Which British poet’s wife was illiterate and signed her wedding certificate with an "X"?

Who is the woman in the photo on the cover of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter?
Tan’s grandmother is the woman featured on the cover of the book in a sepia-toned photo circa 1905.

Who said "I do my best writing at night, jacked up on caffeine, utterly alone."?
Colin Harrison, editor of Harper's Magazine and the author of Break and Enter.

What is Cormac McCarthy's real first name?
Cormac McCarthy was originally named Charles after his father, but changed his name to Cormac after the Irish King.

In which magazine was Chris Bohjalian, author of New York Times bestseller Skeletons at the Feast, first published?
Cosmopolitan

The only life-sized stature of which beloved British author is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?
Charles Dickens