Saturday, November 21, 2009

Students Need More Mentors





Weekly Elixir – Rotary Club of Parry Sound
…for the week of November 23, 2009




Teacher of the Year tells Jacksonville, FL, Rotary that
students need more mentors


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Editor’s Comment - This is where the hands-on Service Above Self is clearly seen – when it’s not so important to write a check for Rotary projects. Instead, it is important to give of yourself – your time, your talents – and make a lasting impression upon one individual at a time!

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11/19/2009 - by Max Marbut - Staff Writer
http://www.jaxdailyrecord.com
mmarbut@baileypub.com



When she stepped to the podium at Monday’s meeting of the Rotary Club of Jacksonville, Marjorie Nolan looked at the audience and said, “There are people in this room from all different backgrounds, but the one uniting element is that we have all had our lives touched by a teacher.

Just about everyone remembers the teacher who taught them to read.”

At left - Rotary Club of Jacksonville member and former Superintendent of Duval County Public Schools John Fryer introduced Marjorie Nolan, the school district’s 2009-10 Teacher of the Year.

Nolan is the 2009-10 Duval County Public Schools Teacher of the Year. During her 30-year career in education she has been recognized for excellence several times.

-- Nolan was the 1995-96 Raines High School Teacher of the Year
-- She was a finalist for the county’s top honor in 1996.
-- She was First Coast High School’s Teacher of the Year for 2004-05 as well as
-- She was a also a finalist for the Duval County title in 2004-05.
-- In 2005 Nolan was the recipient of the Gladys Prior Award for Teaching Excellence.

Nolan recently expanded her focus from teaching children to coaching other teachers at First Coast High School to improve their skills and impact more students. She specializes in reading education, a part of the public school experience she said must be improved.

“Almost 9,000 public school teachers in Duval County work every day to prepare our future local workforce,” said Nolan, who added the average public school student in America reads two grade levels below their actual grade level.

“Here in Duval County, there are 1,000 high school students who are still in a reading class of some type. It’s important to establish the foundation of reading in elementary school. By the time a student is in high school, teaching them to read is a very difficult process. Kids have to understand that when you learn to read you can learn anything else,” she said.

Many things have changed since Nolan began her teaching career at Raines in 1978 but some things have not. Nolan recalled her first contract for $7,200 a year and said salaries are still low for teachers. That is causing many people without formal education in the art to enter the classroom and many see it as a temporary career, said Nolan.

“It’s a teacher’s job to inspire and motivate children to learn, but fifty percent of our teachers didn’t earn a degree in education,” she added. “Low salaries make it hard to attract talented teachers.”

Nolan said other than awards like Teacher of the Year, there are few incentives for teachers to strive for excellence. Those who wish to specialize in teaching remedial reading must complete 300 hours of specialized training but are not compensated for their extra effort.

“And they know they will spend their careers working with the most challenged students,” she added.

When asked what she would do if by some miracle the budget for public schools was doubled, Nolan quickly replied, “I’d make sure there were smaller classes, no more than 15 students per class if they are failing the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test).

“I would also go to Barnes & Noble and buy books the students said they wanted to read. In some student’s homes the only book in their household is the telephone book.”

Nolan also said she thinks there’s too much emphasis on getting every student into college. Other courses of study in high school that would prepare some students for jobs, in the building trades for instance, would be helpful for many students.


“We need programs for students that aren’t just academic,” she added. “I know that’s not a popular stance but that’s what I’ve seen in more than 30 years in the classroom.”

Club member John Fryer is a former superintendent of Duval County Public Schools and an education consultant. He said he believes the common characteristic among poorly-performing students is they don’t set and achieve goals.

“The ability to help children develop goals can help teachers do a better job,” he commented.

Nolan agreed and called on the club members to volunteer their time to help students.

“There is a great need for mentors. When we see truancy or straight Fs on a report card clearly there is no mentoring or supervision in that student’s home. Hundreds of children at my school alone could use a mentor,” she said.





Interesting Jacksonville Rotary Club History -
1912

With only 40 Rotary clubs in the nation, and only New Orleans in the south, the Chicago club sent a prominent member to Jacksonville to assist in chartering a new club. On February 13, 1912, at the Windsor Hotel downtown at Hemming Park, 14 charter members met and officially organized.

George Clark was elected as the club's first president, and he served two years. Later he was named President Emeritus. Clark remained active until 1928 when he was granted an honorary lifetime membership.

The club met weekly at the Windsor Hotel and later at the Aragon Hotel. The club dues were set at $10 per year, not including lunch. Lunch added another $15 per year to the cost of membership.

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Rotary Club of Jacksonville meets every Monday - 12:30 p.m. (lunch at Noon)
Omni Hotel of Jacksonville (downtown) - 245 Water Street. Tel. 904-355-6664

Source: http://www.jaxrotary.org/

The Rotary Foundation's Beginning


Weekly Elixir – Rotary Club of Parry Sound
…for the week of November 16, 2009


The Rotary Foundation's Beginning

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Some magnificent projects grow from very small seeds. The Rotary Foundation had that sort of modest beginning.



In 1917, RI President Arch Klumph told the delegates to the Atlanta Convention that “it seems eminently proper that we should accept endowments for the purpose of doing good in the world.” The response was polite and favourable, but the fund was slow to materialize.

A year later, the “Rotary Endowment Fund,” as it was first labelled, received its first contribution of US $26.50 from the Rotary Club of Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A., which was the balance of the Kansas City Convention account following the 1918 annual meeting. Additional small amounts were annually contributed, but after six years, it is reported that the endowment fund had only reached US $700.

A decade later, The Rotary Foundation was formally established at the 1928 Minneapolis Convention. In the next four years, the Foundation fund grew to US $50,000. In 1937, a US $2 million goal was announced for The Rotary Foundation, but these plans were cut short and abandoned with the outbreak of World War II.

In 1947, upon the death of Paul Harris, a new era opened for The Rotar Foundation as memorial gifts poured in to honour the founder of Rotary. From that time, The Rotary Foundation has been achieving its noble objective of furthering “understanding and friendly relations between peoples of different nations.”

By 1954, the Foundation received for the first time a half million dollars in contributions in a single year, and in 1965, a million dollars was received.

It is staggering to imagine that from those humble beginnings, The Rotary Foundation is now receiving more than US $65 million each year for educational and humanitarian work around the world.

Source: The ABCs of Rotary

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The mission of The Rotary Foundation is to enable Rotarians to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education, and the alleviation of poverty.

The Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation supported solely by voluntary contributions from Rotarians and friends of the Foundation who share its vision of a better world.

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Below, Frank Devlyn, second from right -- Rotary International President 2000-01 and Chairman, The Rotary Foundation 2005-06 -- visits the gravesite of Arch Klumph in Cleveland, Ohio.

In November of 2007, PRIP Devlyn journeyed to Cleveland, Ohio, USA, to participate in a variety of Rotary club and Rotary Foundation events.

While, there, he and PRID T.D. Griley had the opportunity to visit the grave site of the Father of the Rotary Foundation, PRIP Arch Klumph.

Others in the photo are unidentified.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Rotary clubs sponsor Perlman concert to raise ‘End Polio Now’ funds



Weekly Elixir – Rotary Club of Parry Sound

…for the week of November 9, 2009

Rotary clubs sponsor Perlman concert to raise ‘End Polio Now’ funds

By MELODY PARKER, melody.parker@wcfcourier.com | Cedar Falls, Iowa,

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - Four area Rotary clubs are using violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman's sold-out concert Sunday to bring attention to the "End Polio Now" campaign.

The superstar musician, who contracted polio at age 4, will perform at the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Center on the University of Northern Iowa campus.

The concert is sponsored by the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Waverly Rotary clubs as a fundraiser. The clubs and individual members contributed $10,000 for the sponsorship. Proceeds will help match a $355 million challenge to Rotary International from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.



In addition, area Rotarians will host a presentation at 4 p.m. Sunday at Maucker Union on the UNI campus, followed by a dinner. Dr. Robert Scott of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, will be the guest. Scott chaired Rotary Foundation's International Polio Plus Committee for two years and travels globally to raise funds. He'll be joined by Cedar Falls resident Doug Oberman, a retired attorney and polio victim. His appearance is conditional on his health.

"Eradicating polio worldwide has been Rotary's major objective for more than 20 years, and we've nearly accomplished it. There are four countries - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria - were we are still working, and in certain parts of those countries, polio cases have been drastically decreased. Our focus is to generate dollars and raise awareness because many people have forgotten about polio," said Roger Kueter, chairman of End Polio Now, District 5970. His wife is a polio victim.

In 1985 Rotarians set out to raise $120 million to immunize children worldwide against polio. Working with their partners, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two billion doses of the Sabin vaccine have been administered, reducing the number of countries where polio is endemic from 165 to four. A real-time polio case count is on the Web at http://www.polioeradication.org/casecount.asp.

Rotarian Dave Buck and his wife Ruth traveled to northern India in 1999 to work with doctors in clinics administering the vaccine.

"Children came in and we gave them each two drops on the tongue and marked their fingernails with a purple marker to show they had been vaccinated," Buck said. "Then we went door-to-door, and we were quite well received. Rotary is making a very strong effort to eradicate the disease."

Source = http://www.wcfcourier.com/news/
Rotary Club of Waterloo, Iowa - http://www.clubrunner.ca/CPrg/home/homeF.asp?cid=4444
Rotary Club of Cedar Falls, Iowa - http://www.cedarfallsrotary.org/cfr/
http://www.waverlyrotary.org/

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About Itzhak Perlman and Polio


The world falls in love with music when Itzhak Perlman takes up his violin. A superstar by any standard and a rarity in the classical field, Perlman has taken hold of the public imagination as few violin virtuosos ever have, bringing joy to millions with his playing.

Having lost the use of his legs after falling victim to polio at the age of four, Perlman always sits as he plays. But he never fails to bring audiences to their feet.

Perlman's tone has been described as aristocratic, but his playing is decidedly populist: from the most jaded music lovers to the youngest initiates whose love of music Perlman loves to encourage, it is all but impossible to remain unmoved by the musician and his music. His adventurous repertory encompasses virtually the entire classical repertory for the violin as well as some of the most challenging and exciting music of today. A master of baroque, classical, romantic and modern music, he also has lavished his intensely joyful string sounds on everything from the brave old world of klezmer to the limitless frontiers of jazz.

His own arrangements of Scott Joplin's ragtime classics have added immeasurably to performance tradition of the American repertory. His heartrending violin solos in the John Williams soundtrack score for Steve Spielberg's Oscar-winning picture Schindler's List proved to be one of Perlman's own proudest achievements. His most surprising, so far, has been his operatic debut, as a bass, singing the small role of the Jailer in James Levine's recording of Puccini's Tosca starring Renata Scotto and Placido Domingo.

Source - http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=showIndividual&entity_id=3472&source_type=A

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Perlman contracted polio at the age of four. He made a good recovery, learning to walk with the use of crutches. Today, he generally uses crutches for mobility and plays the violin while seated.

In 1987, he joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for their concerts in Warsaw and Budapest, as well as other Eastern bloc countries. He toured with the IPO in the spring of 1990 for their first-ever performance in the USSR, with concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, and toured with the IPO again in 1994, performing in China and India.

Source - http://its-a-raggedy-life.blogspot.com/2007/10/itzhak-perlman.html

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Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic – the Concert to End Polio


This December, world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will take the stage in New York's Lincoln Center for the Concert to End Polio. The cause is especially close to Perlman's heart, given his personal battle to overcome polio as a small child.

The show is the joint effort of international humanitarian organization Rotary International and cause entertainment agency Commit Media. Rotary has been committed to eradicating polio for almost 20 years, since launching the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988 with the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and UNICEF.

Over the last 20 years, the fight against global polio has had incredible success. In the 1980s, polio affected a thousand new children around the world every day. Today, smaller and smaller numbers of new cases are reported each year. However, the fight isn't over -- polio still remains endemic in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

Tickets for the concert range from $70 to $200 dollars and are available for sale now. Rotary International is also accepting contributions toward the eradication of polio around the globe, made extra easy by their option to donate five dollars from your cell phone. Rotary International hopes to raise $200 million to match the challenge of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's $355 million grants. These funds will go directly to provide polio vaccines around the world.

This story was originally posted on Causecast.org

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/itzhak-perlman-and-the-ne_n_323151.html&cp



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…And this last bit is from www.rotary.org – About Polio

Although the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has faced sobering challenges in the past year, officials say it is moving forward in key political, technical, financial, and operational areas.

Stepped-up efforts to end the disease in the four endemic countries -- Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan -- are paying off, they say.

"Rotary International has played an extraordinarily special role [in the GPEI], not just as one of the initiators but in bringing financial resources, political advocacy, and volunteerism on the ground to getting the job done," said Dr. Bruce Aylward, director of the GPEI at the World Health Organization, speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in June.

Aylward said that all levels of government in the four countries are committing unprecedented support for the polio eradication effort by monitoring the performance of immunization activities and holding local authorities accountable for the results.

According to WHO, the incidence of polio in India in 2009 has dropped by 28 percent to 284 cases as of 8 September, compared with 397 cases over the same period a year ago. Monthly immunization campaigns in the highest-risk areas have reduced wild poliovirus type 1 -- the more dangerous of the two remaining strains -- to record lows. Type 1 causes paralysis in about 1 out of every 200 children infected, versus 1 out of every 1,000 children with type 3.

In Nigeria, the incidence of polio has decreased by 41 percent to 379 cases, from 646 cases a year ago. By early 2009, the proportion of unimmunized children in the highest-risk states had fallen below 10 percent for the first time.

Unrest along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has resulted in a slight increase in the number of cases in both countries in the past year. Between large-scale immunization campaigns, however, teams have exploited lulls in the conflict to enter normally inaccessible areas and give children an additional dose of vaccine. In Afghanistan, the wild poliovirus is endemic only in the south, and about 80 percent of children live in polio-free areas.

Rotarians in Pakistan have encouraged the national government to give strong support to ending polio. In early 2009, Pakistan launched the Prime Minister's Action Plan for Polio Eradication. On behalf of Rotary International in August, International PolioPlus Committee Chair Robert S. Scott recognized Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, with a Polio Eradication Champion Award for his outstanding support for a polio-free world.

A new vaccine will be introduced in India as early as November to help stop the transmission of the type 1 and type 3 wild polioviruses. (Type 2 has been eradicated globally except in Nigeria.) This bivalent vaccine, health officials believe, will multiply the gains made during the past year toward eradicating polio. Intended to complement, not replace, monovalent and trivalent vaccines already in use, the bivalent vaccine will also be considered for Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.
Worldwide, the number of polio cases has dropped from more than 350,000 in 1988, when the GPEI began, to 1,651 in 2008.

"This is a great improvement from the worst days of polio epidemics," said Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair Glenn E. Estess Sr. "But it is not good enough, and it will not be good enough until the number is zero. We cannot pause or slacken our efforts."

Global health experts are calling the push to end polio "the final inch," in light of the remaining 1 percent of cases that are the most difficult and expensive to prevent. Rotary's US$200 Million Challenge, which ends 30 June 2012, is seen as crucial to the initiative's success.

"This is an absolutely devastating disease that affects the poorest, most marginalized communities in the world," Aylward said. "We have the tools to eliminate it forever."