Spotlight On Member Richard Wilson Winner: Creative Expressions Contest Richard writes: I am a special education teacher and spend most of my day team teaching Math and Language Arts in 5th and 6th grades.  Over the last four years, we have been using GLSEN’s No Name Calling Week materials.  This year, we were the recipients of GLSEN’s Creative Expressions Contest First Place Award School or School District for bullying prevention.  The core of our program has been to use the book The Misfits as a shared novel, and over the past two years, we have included a parent-student book club, using the book.  We have read the book in school, our parents read it at home, and we met once a week through the month of January to discuss the book, bullying issues, and literacy strategies.  I have also published articles about the project in the NJEA Review and the journal of the New Jersey Principals and Supervisor’s Association.

The project will be featured on Classroom Close UP NJ, which is a television show co-produced by NJEA and New Jersey Network (Public television).  It will air on Monday, April 28th and and Saturday, May 3rd, but will also be available on the web throughout the week at:
http://www .njn.net/television/njnseries/classroomcloseup/  .  I imagine the segment will be about four to five minutes.

This is the blurb from NJN...

Show #18 April 28 & May 26 at 6:30 p.m. and May 3 & 31 at 9 a.m.
Parent-Student Book Club - Haviland Avenue School (Audubon) sixth graders and their parents are part of a book club that focuses on the book The Misfits. This book club not only helps parents understand the kind of bullying, name calling and harassment that today’s children face, it also provides parents and children with a common language for discuss ing good literature.

Please read on for more info on this distinguishing honor of Richard, his students, parents and school.

More about this Creative Expressions Winner.