Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Baruti Kafele: a Principled Principal

Newark's Principal Kafele:  
Transforming Mis Education Into Quality Education


Greetings family,

The Milken Family Foundation spent a day at Newark Tech filming a few months back.  Check out the short clip.  After 9 hours of filming, the following clip is the finished product.  Hope you like it.

I might add that I am EXTEREMELY proud of our State Standardized test results for juniors which were released last Friday – 93% of our students were proficient in Language Arts and 82% in math.  This is truly phenomenal!  I might also add that for our seniors, after retakes of the test, 100% passed Language Arts and 88% passed math.  Kudos to the Newark Tech staff and students for a job well done!


Principal Kafele

"I'm on FIRE!!!"

Author – Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life
http://www.principalkafele.com


--------------------------
BIO--


Principal Baruti Kafele, whose African first name means "teacher" is on a personal mission to motivate, educate and empower teachers, counselors, administrators and parents of Black and Latino children the world over.
As an educator, Principal Kafele has excelled in the capacity of teacher and principal. As a teacher in East Orange, NJ, he was selected as the East Orange School District and Essex County Public Schools Teacher of the Year. He was also selected for Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers six times. As a principal, he led the transformation of four different New Jersey public schools, including his current school, “The Mighty” Newark Tech, which has been recognized twice by U.S. News and World Report Magazine as one of America's best high schools.
As a writer, Principal Kafele is the author of five books which include:  A Handbook for Teachers of African American ChildrenA Black Parent’s Handbook to Educating Your Children (Outside of the Classroom), and his new best seller, Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life. 
As a speaker, Principal Kafele is on fire!  He has "fired up" countless audiences with his empowering message of "extraordinary achievement" for over twenty years. He conducts professional development workshops for educators at major national conferences and school districts throughout the U.S. regularly. He also conducts parenting workshops, male empowerment seminars and student motivational assemblies in addition to his empowering keynote addresses.
As a family man, Principal Kafele is happily married to his wife Kimberley and is the proud father of his three children, Baruti, Jabari and Kibriya.
Finally, Principal Kafele earned his B.S. degree in Management Science/Marketing from Kean University and his M.A. degree in Educational Administration from New Jersey City University. He is also the recipient of numerous educational, professional and community awards, including the prestigious Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award in 2009 and the City of Dickinson, Texas proclaiming February 8, 1998 as "Baruti Kafele Day!"

Sunday, May 16, 2010

ED Cartoon of the Week

"Race to the Top" Is Bottoming Out
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Protesting Black Cleveland Hi School Youth Get Red-Baited by Corporate Media
  
NOTE: It is becoming clearer everyday that our fight for a free quality public education for all New Yorkers is not a lonely battle. From Puerto Rico to Los Angeles to Cleveland, students, educators, parents and communityfolk are resisting the cutbacks, charterizing and criminalizing of our youth. Here is just one example of the growing resistance movement....

NOTE: This video is visually shaky but has a decent audio.



ClevelandFIST May 15, 2010 — This video shows students from Collinwood High School gathering in a crowd of several hundred chanting save our schools! Later, Martha Grevatt is shown responding the media attempts to claim the protest was part of Caleb Maupins communist agenda. 

Devin Branch, a local organizer with the October 22nd Coalition, is seen engaging in a discussion with a leader of the local SEIU. Devin Branch says "I am ready to accept a level of disorganization the part of the youth to make up for the lack of militancy and the complacency of the adults." 

Devin Branch makes it clear that he feels the attacks on local Marxists and Cleveland FIST for supporting the student led protest are hypocritical, when NAACP and other forces ignored the students demands and have done very little to stop the destruction of the Cleveland Public School system.

•  Call
the Fifth District Police station, 216-623-5618 & 216-623-6500 to demand all charges against the students be dropped and to protest the brutal treatment of the students. 

•  Call the Cleveland Board of Education, 216-574-8000 and Collinwood High School, 216-451-8782 to demand the suspensions be rescinded and that Seth Barlekamp not be threatened with expulsion.

http://www.clevelandfist.blogspot.com
http://www.fistyouth.org
http://www.workers.org