With Thanksgiving approaching, I thought I would compile some fun things for families to do with their time together. Grab your oven mittens, glue sticks and cold-weather gear because it’s time to celebrate!

Recipes for a plentiful, and delicious, Thanksgiving meal (straight from my mother’s own cookbook):

Apple Cranberry Crisp

Ingredients:

1½ cups Quick cooking oats; 1/2 cup brown sugar; 1/3 cup all-purpose flour; 1 tsp ground cinnamon; 1/3 cup butter-flavored shortening, melted; 1 tbs water; 1 16 oz. can whole berry cranberry sauce; 2 tbs cornstarch; and 5 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

Directions:

1) Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

2) In a medium bowl, mix together oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Stir in the melted shortening and water to form a crumbly mixture.

3) In a large sauce pan, mix together the cranberry sauce and corn starch. Bring to a boil and then remove from heat. Stir in the apples and spread into an 8 x 8 glass baking dish. Crumble the oat mixture over the apples.

4) Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the apples are tender.

5) Serve warm. Makes approximately six servings.

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar; 1 cup butter; 1 egg; 1 tsp vanilla; 1 cup pumpkin; 2 cups flour; 1 tsp baking soda; 1 tsp baking powder; 1½ tsp of cinnamon; 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1) Mix together sugar, butter, egg, and vanilla. Add the pumpkin.

2) Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. Add this to the other ingredients and mix in chocolate chips.

3) Spoon out 1 tsp of mixture onto cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Makes approximately 30-36 cookies.

Green Bean Casserole

Ingredients:

2 cans of cut green beans; 1 can cream of mushroom soup; 1 cup milk; 1 tsp pepper; 1 can of French’s Original French Fried Onions

Directions:

1) Drain the beans.

2) Combine beans, soup, milk and pepper. Pour into baking pan and bake uncovered at 350 degrees for one hour.

3) Top with remaining onions. Bake for another five minutes. Makes approximately 8 servings.

Craft ideas can be found at the following Web sites:

www.holidash.com/thanksgiving/crafts/10-thanksgiving-crafts

www.bhg.com/holidays/thanksgiving/crafts/

Decorating tips can be found at the following Web sites:

www.bhg.com/holidays/thanksgiving/indoor-decorating/

www.bhg.com/holidays/thanksgiving/outdoor-decorations/

Also, stop by the Columbia Jaycees Holiday Parade downtown this Sunday. Participants will line up at 1 p.m., the parade will begin at 3 p.m. Those interested in registering for the parade, go to columbiamojaycees.com/.

Although the news never sleeps, it does in fact eat.

Like most every other student in Columbia and every person in the United States, the staff of the Missourian who contribute to this blog will celebrate Thanksgiving next week.

While they travel home and back again, this blog will be on hiatus. But the Monday after Thanksgiving, reporters will resume posting about local issues in K-12 education.

From 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 3, Columbia Public Schools will host World Cafe, a community event where the public can share their input regarding the school district’s strategic plans for the next five years.

Held at the Activities and Recreation Center at 1701 W. Ash Street, members of the community sit around a table to participate in a dialogue about the specifics of the district’s plans.

Those interested in attending are asked to RSVP to Linda Chickos by calling 573-214-3400 or by e-mail at lchickos@columbia.k12.mo.us

Hickman High School is hosting a food drive tomorrow to collect food for the Salvation Army.

A competition among 23 classes will be held. For more information, please contact Maria McMahon at 214-3008.

A large bulletin board hangs in the main office of Blue Ridge Elementary School. You can’t miss it. It bears dozens of labeled photographs of Blue Ridge teachers and staff, each one with a warm smile.

That board represents the community at Blue Ridge: warm. welcoming. friendly.

Last week, Blue Ridge hosted a book fair and parent-teacher conferences, which was the perfect opportunity to observe different members of the school’s community – teachers, parents and students – come together.

Blue Ridge’s conferences, like those at every Columbia public elementary and middle school, were held after school Thursday as well as Friday morning. Students did not attend classes Friday because of the conferences, according to the district’s Web site.

Although the book fair ran the whole week, the majority of sales occur during the conferences, said Rebecca Bevel-Smith, library media specialist at Blue Ridge. Bevel-Smith coordinates the book fair with the help of the Parent-Teacher Association.

She said the most popular books this year are the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

“The kids are very excited to see all the new books at the fair and the new books in the library,” Bevel-Smith said.

Teachers also have the opportunity to get new books for their classrooms. The classroom with the most parents who visit and sign in at the book fair receives $50 to purchase books. A classroom from both preschool through second grade and third through fifth grade wins the competition.

“The teachers get very into it,” Bevel-Smith said. “I’ve seen teachers escort parents to the library to sign up.”

If parents weren’t with their children at the book fair, they were likely attending conferences with their child’s teacher.

Parents and teachers alike said their favorite part of Blue Ridge was the people that comprise the school community.

“I love the community of people and the people I work with,” third grade teacher Jessica Krueger said while waiting for a parent to arrive at her classroom for a conference.

JeorgeAnn Clark, a parent of a Title 1 preschooler at Blue Ridge, said there is a difference in Blue Ridge teachers compared with teachers from other schools.

“I like the teachers’ involvement with the parents and children,” Clark said. “More so than other schools.”

Blue Ridge seems like a close-knit community with the common goal of helping students learn in a positive environment.

“My No. 1 favorite thing about Blue Ridge is the students,” Bevel-Smith said, motioning toward a drawing one of the students made that names her “Best Librarian.”

“They make me smile and make me happy,” she said.

Educators choose one union [Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader]

Rockwood won’t get more vaccine [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

Eagles cross country program soaring [The Examiner of Independence, Mo.]

Linda Ronstadt makes a case for music education [The Kansas City Star]

Seventh Graders learn about decision-making through Junior Achievement [Southeast Missourian of Cape Girardeau, Mo.]

In July, Columbia Public Schools, the Police Department and the district decided to eliminate the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program due to concerns about time constraints in patrolling Columbia’s middle and junior high schools.

Originally, the eight-school resource officers for the school district’s high schools, middle and junior high schools also taught the DARE program at many of the elementary schools.

“It was more a consolidation of time,” said Officer John Warner, a school resource officer at West Junior High and the former DARE coordinator for Columbia.

Each school resource officer is assigned a secondary school, Warner said. When the DARE program was eliminated the school district asked that the officers not be absent from their schools.

“Realistically, we haven’t really changed anything, we are simply in our assigned schools more,” Warner said.

According the DARE Web site, the program goes beyond traditional programs that focus on drug abuse and violence prevention. The Web site said the program gives children skills needed to recognize and resist situations that could lead to involvement in gangs or violent activities.

Before the termination of the program, DARE was part of the fifth-grade curriculum at many Columbia elementary schools for more than 20 years.

“My personal belief is that we’re missing a big piece: connecting with students,” Warner said. “The DARE program was more than talking about drugs and drug use, it was about the connection I made with students that will end up at my school.”

Warner said it is hard to translate the program elimination in terms of the number of arrests that have been made. He said it was all about the connections — that citizens on the street want to see officers they recognize. It is similarly true that students respond positively when they see a police officer they are familiar with, he said.

One option suggested by the school district to replace DARE was for schools to include drug and violence prevention in the health curriculum.

“We have a committee, including parents, teachers and the district, that is working on the program. They will be looking at what they want to include in the curriculum,” said Patty Cornell, K-5 coordinator for physical education and elementary health.

Cornell, who is also a physical education teacher at Paxton Keeley Elementary, said it is too early to tell whether eliminating the DARE program has had any influence on students. However, the advantage is that schools can progress the curriculum beyond the fifth-grade level.

“It is good to have that foundation of information before they run into the challenges of middle school,” Cornell said.

Threats of stranger danger can be just as real when you are online as when you are off.

That was a message Thursday night during parent teacher conferences, where librarian Cathie Loesing hosted four Internet safety sessions at Paxton Keeley Elementary School.

The sessions were held every hour starting at 4 p.m. with the last session at 7 p.m. They were not held in response to the incident in which Paxton Keeley students snorted candy.

“We’ve had them every year for a number of years, and, in other years, we’ve had it in conjunction with our literacy night in January,” Loesing said. “One year the PTA asked me to come in and do a presentation to the whole PTA, and one year we did it as a part of a principal’s coffee that we had once a month on Friday morning.”

Loesing regularly helps students during their time in the library learn how to be safe when they are using the Internet. Loesing hosted the sessions to both brief parents on how she teaches students Internet safety at school and also to inform them on how to make the Internet safer at home.

Loesing let parents know that she reviews Internet risks with students, such as:

• Spending too much time on the Internet
• Giving out personal information
• Being aware of strangers
• How to deal with receiving hurtful messages, along with not sending them
• Viewing inappropriate material
• Becoming a target by sharing too much information

Loesing also advised parents to keep their children safe at home by:

• Placing the home computer in plain sight
• Being knowledgeable about the computer programs the children are using
• Utilizing safety features such as filters and pop-up blockers, as well as having one family e-mail and password until the children are old enough to have their own

The Columbia Public School District has site filtering and pop-up blocking software that, according to Loesing, makes using the Internet at school probably safer than anywhere else. Paxton Keeley uses NetSmartz.org for its Internet safety curriculum because the district encourages it, though other schools in the district use other sites, Loesing said.

The turnout for the 4 p.m. session was small, and there were no parents at the 5 p.m. session.

“The things that we’re using are available online, so a lot of parents can educate themselves and feel comfortable doing that,” Loesing said.

Parents that were present were interested in how they could also obtain filtering and pop-up blocking software and if there was a way to prevent their children from being able to click on links on a safe Web site that could lead them to other inappropriate Web sites.

“I just take an interest in my child, and I want to make sure that she has all the tools that she needs to be safe on the Internet,” said Alyssa Sapp, a parent of a Paxton Keeley student. “I want to be an aware parent and not a passive parent and be active with what she knows and how to keep her safe”

A study released by the National Center for Education Statistics found that Missouri uses some of the most rigorous standards in the United States to measure the academic proficiency of its students.

The report focused on the 2005 and 2007 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is currently the only measure available for comparing state standards in academic efficiency, said Chip Sharp, Columbia Public Schools’ secondary math coordinator.

The report showed that Missouri has the second most difficult standards set for reading and math at the fourth-grade level and the fourth most stringent math standards for eighth-graders.

Read more at the Missourian’s Web site.

Hickman High School held its second Speak Your Mind forum this year, focusing on the issue of Tasers. Discussion involved the appropriate use of these devices, with the students in the audience greatly outnumbering the adults.

Looking around Hickman Commons, I wondered if Tasers were an issue that students at Hickman were truly passionate about, or if most students attended the forum simply to receive extra credit for their classes. As groups like The Coalition to Control Tasers pushes legislation to ban these devices from use by police officers in Columbia,are high school students old enough to understand, or care about the issue?

It turns out many of them did.

Dawn Law, a senior at Hickman, concerned about the use of Tasers at school, said that her fellow students agree with her.

“Everyone that I have asked, they all say the same thing. They would like for them not to use Tasers in school,” Law said. “Here they use Tasers and then ask questions.”

Daniel Huang, a sophomore, attended to hear multiple perspectives on the issue.

“I think this forum is great for someone to understand the other side’s point of view and maybe it can be used to refute their view as well,” Huang said.

Marshaye Devereaux, another senior at Hickman, said she thinks there are ways for police officers to do their jobs without the use of Tasers.

“I believe if (police officers) were trained otherwise, like before they were Tasering, then I don’t think (Tasers) should be used now,” Devereaux said. “I think you can restrain people without a Taser.”

Devereaux also believed that her fellow students were passionate about the issue.

“I think everyone is passionate about (Tasers) because it is something that has been an issue ever since they have came out and they’ve been used, so I think there will be a lot more people who think the same as me.”

She agreed with Huang about the benefits of the Speak Your Mind forum.

“It gives the youth time to talk about how they feel about issues that adults around Columbia talk about on a normal basis,” she said.

Not all students in attendance were as involved in the forum as Devereaux. A handful of students left as soon as the floor opened up for questions, while others didn’t seem to pay much attention to what was being said, talking among themselves. Nonetheless, Hickman English teacher George Frissell, who helped organize the event, believes the event is a great opportunity for students.

“They have the opportunity to speak to adults who are experts in the area and to hear different positions and then they really should do even maybe more research and decide for themselves,” Frissell said.