Letters

Teaching Pre K-8, Apr 2000

What a Year!

Oh, what I've missed by not reading Teaching K 8 this year! I recently immersed myself in a colleague's copies of the magazine, and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over article after article.

Your author interviews are so well written, conveying your deep appreciation of each person. Imagine having the insight to get to Christopher Paul Curtis before he won the Newbery and Coretta Scott King awards! Just before the awards were announced, I'd sent my grandson a copy of Buds Not Buddy, and I'm going to hunt up Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures for my grandchildren too.

Paula Carter's article, "Their Sense of Wonder Still Intact," in the September issue, touched me deeply and expressed my sentiments exactly. There were so many other outstanding stories, including "A Behavioral Plan for David" by Marion Lee Caldwell and the September 1999 cover story "A Special Role for Specialists." (Team 5 confers like the very best private school I once worked in: the Brearly School in New York).

Teaching K-8 still has ideas a teacher can put into practice tomorrow morning (like Word Walls, a mainstreaming checklist, etc.) and many practical ideas, always with a firm educational philosophy underneath, such as inclusion of parents or emphasis on children and their learning.

Your Readers' Choice issue (coming May 2000) sounds molto inviting! I could go on and on!

Barbara Pontecorvo

via e-mail

$125 Million Mistake

NASA scientists probably would not have destroyed a $125 million Mars "Orbiter" by confusing met ric system and English system measurements if they had learned metric measurement in Isabel Imfeld's sixth grade class, as described in her article, "Take the Metrics and Run," which appeared in your January 2000 issue.

Richard Siegelman

East Norwich, NY

Tote Bags

Remember those wonder ful green tote bags you offered with subscriptions several years ago? I still use mine and it's getting rather threadbare. I liked mine so much that I got my daughter-in-law one, too.

Is it still possible to get them? I am a subscriber and I still love your magazine.

Linda Petteway

High Springs FL

Editor's note: Thanks for your land words. Yes, the green tote bags are still available. There's a full-page advertisement for them in our March issue (page 93). We think the price mentioned in the ad is the best offer you can get. Just fill out the coupon, send it with your check for $9.98 (plus $,2 s/h) to Teaching K 8, P.O. Box 182, 2300 West Fifth Avenue, Columbus, OH 43216-0182, and the tote bag will be on its way.