March 2015 Meeting Notes

Massachusetts Asian American Educator’s Association Meeting
Dorcester, MA
March 23, 2015
5:30PM - 7:30PM

Google Group: maaea@googlegroups.com

People in Attendance: Go Sasaki, Katie Li, Ann Cheng, Dzung Nguyen, Tuyet Dinh, Andrea

Agenda:
Check-ins
Member Support Time
New Superintendent
Plan Spring and Summer Events

TAG Conference May 30, 2015 at the Curley in JP
Will be more of an unconference - Less structured
Maybe present on Model Minority Myth, Needs of APA students

New Superintendent - Tommy Chang
What is he like?
Michelle Wu met with Tommy Chang

Goal: Put together a presentation similar to what happened with Superintendent Johnson

Last time:
Presentation by Peter Kiang
Student Panel - addressing model minority/
Q&A
History of MAAEA

New meeting:
Present it as the START of the dialog with him
Asks for Superintendent Chang
-bimonthly meeting

Program:
Panel: Chinese and Viet, Work the ELL/SPED angle, 
Issues to think about: Being APA on the East Coast vs Being APA on the West Coast, hiring educators and staff to represent the demographics of the populations, school closings affecting APA community badly - Vietnamese SEI strand, Cambodian strand, vietnamese SEI being taught by white and black teachers.  Charlestown Chinese SEI teachers don’t speak cantonese.
Fact sheet about concerns

To do list:
Step 0: Katie look into when we can get Peter Kiang
Step 0.5: Katie and Go look into Rosanne Tung
Go will send letter to district asking for info (cc-Jessica, other folks)
Step 1: Figure out when he can find a day time date (Let’s choose date)

Schools with large numbers of APA students:
(Quincy Elementary
Quincy Upper
Charlestown
Mather
Excel
Boston Latin
Latin Academy
O’Bryant
Kenny
Murphy
Holland
Boston International
Everett
Edwards, Rogers, Warren Prescott)


School Closings:
Holland

Losing APA teachers: 
Bilingual program closure
SEI strands lost:
-Cambodian SEI
Vietnamese SEI at Holland

Protecting SEI Vietnamese program at Mather

SEI Programs - 
Charlestown Chinese SEI
Not enough Cantonese speakers

Vietnamese 
Mather (K1-5) has Vietnamese SEI
Excel has high population of Vietnamese SEI students, no Vietnamese teacher) (23% asian)

Latin Academy 
-No Cantonese Speaking Staff

Latin School (28% APA)
O’Bryant

New Vietnamese SEI Strand at the Kenny
Teachers white and black

SEI/SPED

SIFE

APA dropout
Chinese community in Boston and poverty


Based on BPS report card - 79 grade for APA (over 75% goal)
BPS - AA dropout rate - 5.8 black - 11, latino 18% 9.1 PI

Need for AA Counslors, 
Agatha Tong - Quincy Upper
Sharon Cho - Latin Academy
Charlestown

Letter to Ceronne Daly asking for data
E-mail superintendent, Ceronne, Emily Causalbasch

Breakdown of staff and teachers (teachers, counselors, etc.), 
location (ethnic groups)
Racial and ethnic breakdown and language skills for staffing - what does that mean?  % for teachers, counselors, admin, Dudley St., paras, etc. and their location.
How many bilingual special ed teachers speaking asian languages
Disaggregated student ethnic group information - for APA’s dropout rates, attendance rates, graduation rates, suspension and expulsion, IEP’s, EL numbers, referrals to counseling, 
Ethnic groups of students at various schools, what schools serve different students - 
Ethnic background and language skills of SEI unit teachers.
Ethnic background and lanague skills of teachers at these schools:
any school with >5% APA population
Special Ed interpreters


Next Meeting 4/13 from 5pm to 7pm.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Asian students and special education

Image
Here's a link to a great article on some important work being done on Asian American students with special needs in schools. Spotlight on Lusa Lo, a MAAEA member and professor at the Graduate College of Education at UMass Boston! excerpts from "Asian Students Left behind on Special Education" By Tracy Jan Globe Staff / February 9, 2008 Asians make up 9 percent of students in Boston schools, but only 3 percent of those enrolled in special education, a disparity that has led to fears that many are not getting the help they need. On a recent night, after a dinner of eggrolls and noodles, a special-education professor from the University of Massachusetts at Boston lectured the parents in their native Cantonese on the importance of understanding their children's Individualized Education Plans. She passed out sample forms, translated into Chinese, along with a glossary of terms like autism, benchmarks, and accommodation. The hope is that these pa...
Read more

BAASIC Conference Workshop Session

Representin' on the Front Lines: Why We Do It as APA Educators Oct 2, 2010, 2:15AM - 3:30PM MIT Campus, Bldg. 2, Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA . BAASIC Conference Workshop Session Panelists: Kristina Buenafe, Sarah Chang, Chris Tsang, Dzung Nguyen, Jessica Tang Why is it important for Asian Americans to consider becoming educators? The demographic data provides some of the urgency. According to James A. Banks and Cheryl A. McGee Banks in Multicultural Issues in Education: Issues and Perspectives (2007), although 4% of K-12 students in the United States are Asian/Pacific Islander, only 1% of teaching force is Asian/Pacific Islander. Come and hear from a panel of educators from the Massachusetts Asian American Educators Association (MAAEA). They will discuss their organization, tell stories of what brought them into education and share what is both satisfying and challenging about their jobs. Hear from educators from the Josiah Quincy Upper School, ...
Read more