Tag: Arts & Culture

Homeschoolers cooperate

As efforts to improve West Virginia’s standing in the ranks of academic achievement continue, some parents are opting out of the public school option and…

As efforts to improve West Virginia’s standing in the ranks of academic achievement continue, some parents are opting out of the public school option and homeschooling their children instead.

“‘Homeschool’ is a misnomer. We’re rarely home! It’s not like we’re sitting at home just by ourselves, looking at each other. We’re out there every day.” –Homeschool mom, Ericka Rhodes-Edwards

Ericka Rhodes-Edwards decided to homeschool her two young children, but says making that decision wasn’t easy. She had to overcome misconceptions, do a lot of research, commit to an education plan, make sacrifices. She says she and her husband had to recognize priorities.

“I loved school,” Rhodes says. “I really enjoyed going to school.  I loved my friends. I didn’t want my son to miss out on THAT. That was my fear—that he was going to miss out on something really fun and special. So I think this program, LEAP, did it for me. If this weren’t available, I’m not sure I would have made the same decision.”

Rhodes found LEAP—Learn, Explore, and Play—in Marion County, a new co-op for homeschooling families.

LEAP

In West Virginia, school is mandatory for kids 5 to 17. But anyone with a high school diploma or GED can homeschool their own kids. Parents or guardians just have to prove that the methods they choose are effective with annual testing and/or a portfolio review. So that’s what founder and co-coordinator of LEAP Erika Fishel decided to do.

Fishel says her husband was brought up homeschooled, so it’s not a foreign concept. But after a brush with some bullying in the public school system, Fishel contacted her county’s board of education to make arrangements to homeschool her son.

So Fishel started a new co-op for homeschooled kids ages 4-8. $125 per family per semester pays for basic supplies and covers facility fees. The group meets once a week from 10-2. Parents collaborate to offer classes in the morning, then they eat lunch together, and in the afternoon they play, or field trips, or venture to the nearby park.

“Being able to see your kid have that moment where they GET it?  That’s priceless.” –LEAP co-coordinator Erika Fishel

Science, art, reading, and geography are among the subjects LEAP is exploring in this pilot year. Rhodes says her son Kaleb LOVES LEAP.

LEARNING

“The information that they’re learning here is good information to have but it’s not like they’re going to be tested on Venice in Kindergarten. Right now, it’s just, this is HOW you learn. This is a learning environment. It’s not necessarily important what they learn; it’s that they’re learning to learn,” Rhodes says.

The environment at the co-op sort of harkens back to the days of the one-room school house where a wide age range existed in a single class. Rhodes says the diverse age range creates social dynamics that bear edifying benefits.

“These kids range in age from 2 – 10 years old. So there’re probably about 15 kids here on a full day. We’ve not had any discipline issues, no one cries, no one fights, no one is mean, no one is hurt. They have good role models in the older kids and the older kids feel responsible for the younger kids. There’s compassion. That’s what they’re learning and it’s really beautiful,” Rhodes says.

SUPPORT

Dani Glaeser is also a coordinator of LEAP along with Erika Fishel. Glaeser has been homeschooling her kids for several years and has been involved with other co-ops as well. She stresses the importance of the co-op’s function as a support group for families. Glaeser says it’s important to be able to compare notes, as well as interact with other kids and adults.

“It’s a support network.” –LEAP co-coordinator Dani Glaeser

“If your child loves dinosaurs so you spent a full year studying every sort of dinosaur that exists, but that’s not on the test! Regular school systems, they don’t teach like that,” Glaeser says. “So it’s a support network. You’re always wondering if you’re doing enough. As a mom you’re always wondering and homeschooling, to have a support system is really important because then you can have somebody just say, ‘You’re doing just fine.’”

Glaeser explains that there are many different types of co-ops throughout the state, secular and religious, who interact in a variety of ways, but for her family, LEAP is a good fit.  She says her daughter is easily overwhelmed by to too much sensory information and so the small co-op provides a gentle environment for her to learn to socialize and make friends.

LEAP kids at Rich’s Farm

“We were at Rich Farms a couple weeks ago, and she is terrified of slides. And she was in this big bouncy house with a slide. I thought she would just stay in the first part but then I came around and she was sitting at the top of her slide with her sister Hunter, her friend Gavin, and Kaleb, from here, and they were talking about her being scared. Kaleb puts his arm around her and says, ‘We’ll do it together.’ And they all come down the slide together. She went on that slide the rest of the afternoon,” Glaeser remembers.

“So I watch these kids here and their gentleness and their kindness when they play together and tell stories together and THAT is what it’s all about—kids coming together and reaching out.”

Festival of Ideas lecture to focus on WVU’s struggle to self govern

As part of Mountaineer Week at West Virginia University, WVU’s Festival of Ideas lecture series will host the author of a new book about WVU’s history over the last six decades.

Ronald Lewis is Professor Emeritus of history at WVU and the author of the new book, “Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II.” In the book, Lewis focuses on three significant factors that influenced the university and others like it across the nation:

  • Growth
  • Diversification
  • Commercialization

“These are actually transformative periods of higher education,” said Lewis. “Where after them, higher education is no longer the same than the period before.”

In his book, Lewis explains that federal programs after World War II, such as the GI Bill, allowed millions of people to attend college and led to WVU’s expansion.

The expansion forced WVU and other schools across the nation to expand facilities, create programs and hire more faculty.  But Lewis says the usual pipeline of middle class white males who went to college dried up in the 1960’s and diversification of WVU’s student body came into play.

“I mean the United States was transformed by the civil rights movement,” Lewis said. “…the university has changed but I think it is because the country has changed profoundly.”

This expansion and diversification happened so dramatically that it revolutionized WVU’s infrastructure and ideology. Lewis also explains how one trend led to another, and that’s where we come to his third theme: commercialization.  As public funding for public institutions, including WVU, has decreased in recent years, universities are looking at other sources for revenue, including grants, tuition and fundraising.  Lewis also says this time period has universities thinking more like a business.

“It’s not really a business even though it kind of has to run like one. We don’t manufacture things, we generate knowledge and technology through research so that’s why we have to find a way for it to work for us,” said Lewis.

But according to Lewis, there is a fourth influential factor to WVU’s aspirations to be a great university.  The struggle for self-governance is the focus of Lewis’s Festival of Ideas lecture Tuesday, Nov. 5.

“Self-governance is recognized by most higher education experts as one of the key ingredients in becoming a great university, that distinguishes a great university,” Lewis said.

According to Lewis, WVU struggled to govern itself in the 1970’s when the Board of Regents in Charleston controlled some of the university’s operations.  Lewis will discuss more past and present-day issues that impact WVU’s quest to be among the great universities in the country at the Festival of Ideas lecture in the Mountainlair Ballrooms at 7:30 p.m.

Diane Jeanty is a Journalism Student at West Virginia University.

WVU law school promotes cultural ties with Mexico’s University of Guanajuato

West Virginia University’s College of Law hosted three visiting professors from the University of Guanajuato last week. “Mexico Week” at the law school featured lectures and panel discussions giving students an opportunity to better understand life south of the border.

Perhaps the longest standing relationship WVU has with a sister school abroad is with the University of Guanajuato. In continuing with that tradition, professors from the school in the small university town of Guanajuato came to share their world with students.

La Ley

Patricia Bengné is a professor of law at the University of Guanajuato who has made several trips to Morgantown over the years. She came to Morgantown to dispel cultural misconceptions, to impart a sense of the history of Mexico, and also to give students a sense of that country’s legal system.

“Mexico and the US, we do not follow the same legal system,” Bengné explained. “Mexico is under the civilian tradition, and the US has a common law system. The main difference in my opinion is that the legal system here in the US is based on the judge-made law.  I mean the judges can make the law. And in Mexico it is very different; we have to follow very rigid statutes—the legal rules, I mean, we call codigo. It’s a very rigid system where we have to find the solution to the problem in these books.”

Bengné explains that the origins of Mexico’s legal system are both ancient and classical, based on the Roman and French legal systems. She says the Mexican system shares more in common with other legal systems throughout the world than with the Common Law system in the U.S.—especially those law systems practiced in Latin America and most of continental Europe.

Bengné says efforts are underway in Mexico to change the legal system into one more flexible and efficient.

“I have been in Chile recently and in Chile it took ten years to transition from one system to another. So in Mexico I think it will take much more time than that. It’s not easy to do that—to change the mind and way of thinking of lawyers, police officers, magistrates, every person involved in the judicial branch? It’s not easy, believe me.”

But Bengné has seen some relatively rapid changes in Mexico. She was among four women in a class of fifty who graduated from the law school in Guanajuato in 1978.  

“Being a female lawyer in those years? Oh it was impossible in Mexico. When I went to practice law—because you need to practice in order to know what you’re doing—I was like an invisible woman. It was very, very difficult.”

But today, Bengné says 56 percent of the students graduating from the law school in Guanajuato are women, and today more than ever, women are taking up judicial roles.

“Let me tell you, in my home town in the state of Guanajuato we have a woman as the president of the court—tribunal local estatal, we say. She was the president of the state court in Guanajuato and she was my student. We are very proud of having that,” Bengné said.

El Gobierno

“We have been a democracy roughly for more than 20 years or so, so we’re still a baby democracy,” says Fernando Patrón, the Director of the Public Management Department of the Law, Politics, and Government Division at the university.

Patrón also spoke with students about changes and challenges Mexico faces. He talked about the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which was the dominant political party in Mexico for most of the 20th century, during which time Mexico was run under an authoritative rule.

“My perspective is that there is no peril of regression to authoritarianism in Mexico whatsoever, considering, of course, what this party’s return to power means,” Patrón said. “I think that the political system is mature enough to hold democracy. Our main concern in Mexico is not with the political system, but with the rule of law, for instance, corruption, transparency, accountability, poverty, which are not minor problems. No they’re very serious, big problems. So in order to consolidate democracy, we really need to improve those aspects of our country, otherwise our democracy could be in peril.”

The culminating event of Mexico Week at the law school was a panel discussion which included topics such as engineering in Mexico, the role of indigenous people politically, as well as organized crime.

Parts of Monongahela National Forest closed for logging

Hunters and anglers who use the Monongahela National Forest will have to avoid a large area while timber is being harvested. The U.S. Forest Service and…

Hunters and anglers who use the Monongahela National Forest will have to avoid a large area while timber is being harvested.
 
     The U.S. Forest Service and the state Division of Natural Resources say they’ll have to steer clear because of safety concerns while helicopters move logs.
 
     The work was set to begin Friday and could last as long as six weeks, depending on weather.
 
     The Forest Service says the closed area is bounded by state Route 150, the Williams River, Little Laurel Creek, the National Forest boundary north of Edray, and Forest Road 115B.
 
     The Williams River Road will not be closed.
 
     District Ranger Rondi Fischer apologizes for any inconvenience but says safety is more important.
 
     Travelers should also expect delays of up to an hour on state Route 50.
 

Huntington Prep and Head Coach Rob Fulford tip-off 5th season

High school basketball powerhouse Huntington Prep tipped-off its fifth season last night in Huntington.Rob Fulford grew up in Mullens, West Virginia. A…

   

 High school basketball powerhouse Huntington Prep tipped-off its fifth season last night in Huntington.

Rob Fulford grew up in Mullens, West Virginia. A town known for its basketball prowess to those involved with the sport around the state. Its home to the D’Antoni family and former Marshall great and current Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach Mike D’Antoni and others like Jerome Anderson who had a short stint in the NBA.

“Just coming from Mullens, it’s just different, we’re extremely competitive in everything we do, we can go on and on about just how competitive that town is and the county really, but Mullens more so than the county,” Fulford said.

Fulford is the Head Coach for Huntington St. Joseph’s Prep. It’s a prep basketball team that Fulford established at the private catholic school located in downtown Huntington. In just the 5th season the team is recognized on a national scale and spent much of last season ranked first in the nation. The team only plays a national schedule and doesn’t compete with in-state schools. Fulford said the success is something he never expected when he decided pharmaceutical sales wasn’t for him and coaching basketball was.

"It's the competitive nature of it all, I always wanted to coach," Fulford said.

  “It’s the competitive nature of it all, I always wanted to coach, I was in pharmaceutical sales and made a ton of money and I just hated the job. So got out of that and started coaching and I don’t make any money, but I love it and I think it’s just my up-bringing,” Fulford said.

Fulford started at Mountain State Academy in Beckley where he established a prep school. There he was able to recruit basketball talent from around the country and world to southern West Virginia. After 4 years there and dwindling opportunities, he decided things had to change. The next step was to move things to Huntington. In a new city, things have blossomed for Fulford and Huntington Prep where stars like last years number 1 overall recruit Andrew Wiggins have shined.

Fulford said the biggest challenge in establishing the program hasn’t been the national recognition, getting recruits or getting his kids into reputable college programs, but it’s the community’s lack of interest or confusion about what the program is about.

“I think it’s gradually going away because they understand the type of kids that we’re getting, they’re good kids, high character kids, they’re great academic kids and I think it’s taken some time for people to grasp what the program is. I think our involvement with St. Joe has helped the community support,” Fulford said.

Fulford thinks things may begin to change this season as they’ll play more home games in the Huntington area. Over the first four seasons they’ve played homes games at a variety of gyms in the area that allowed for bigger crowds than St. Joseph’s gym would allow. This year he says they’ll play some games in the small St. Joe gym and others at the Civic Arena downtown after establishing an agreement with Huntington Mayor Steve Williams. Fulford is excited to see if his team can live up to expectations they’ve set for themselves over the past four seasons.

“The expectations are obviously high, but I think people in the community and really ourselves are anxious to see what this team will do and how they respond because they’ve heard it. That’s all they’ve heard since they’ve arrived in Huntington, is how do you compare to last year’s team,” Fulford said.

He said the ultimate goal is to be the best team in the country.

“We had a really good team last year and we were preseason number one in a few polls and I think we’ll be preseason 1-5 this year in some polls and that’s our ultimate goal is to win a national championship and to continue to bring in high character kids that make the state proud,” Fulford said.

Wednesday night Huntington Prep took care of Bluefield College’s Junior Varsity team, 99 to 52.

Trailer: Two Dollar Radio's 'The Greenbrier Ghost'

The company that published Crapalachia by West Virginia writer Scott McClanahan is venturing into film and one of their first projects will be based on the legend of a Greenbrier County woman murdered in 1897.

Zona Heaster Shue was declared as murdered  after the court heard testimony from the victim’s mother, who  argued that her daughter’s spirit appeared to tell the truth behind her death. Shue’s Husband, Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue (also known as Edward) was convicted of murder and sentenced to the West Virginia State Penitentary in Moundsville. Edward died March 13, 1900 of an unknown epidemic at the prison.

The state  erected a state historical marker near the cemetery in which Zona Shue is buried. It reads:

Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue. Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition’s account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.    

Co-produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s very own Chris Oxley, The Greenbrier Ghost was heavily mentioned by McClanahan in his memoir based on growing up in southern West Virginia, Crapalachia.

Here’s the trailer from McClanahan and Oxley:

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