The OACHE Blog

I recently had the pleasure of viewing more than 50 quilts of Nina Maxine Green Groves.  Maxine’s quilts have been featured in numerous newspapers, magazine articles and exhibitions throughout the tri-state area and served as the inspiration for the "Quilt Barn Project," where painted replicas of quilt squares are placed on barns throughout southern Ohio.  My pictures do not do justice to the wonderful artistry involved in Maxine’s quilts; I encourage you to visit the exhibit on display throughout 2008 in the Bob Evans Farms Homestead Museum in Rio Grande, Ohio.

Donna Sue Groves, Maxine’s daughter, initiated the Quilt Barn Project in Adams County, and although it’s in the early stages, a National quilt Barn Trail (or as some call it, the Clothesline of Quilt Barns) is spreading and now encompasses 16 counties in Ohio.  There are 23 states currently participating in their own quilt barn trail projects.  It is estimated that over 1500 colorful quilt squares now adorn barns, flood walls, and other significant farm and community buildings.  All projects are similar but they are shaped by each community’s own values, vision, heritage, and cultural assets.

An Education Week article  "Motivating Students in the Middle Years" by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo (March 18, 2008) addresses the middle grades as vital to the success in high school and college access. The article speaks to the decade of work after a national group was formed to put more rigor into middle schools and how the educators are still searching for the right blend of academic and developmental strategies.

Please visit the article at the link below. How can we adjust our college access work to make sure the middle school students are supported in both the developmental and academic worlds? Are there programs in your region that are working?

http://lnk.edweek.org/edweek/index.html?url=/ew/articles/2008/03/19/28middle_ep.h27.html&tkn=WYbWCXAVwMUzDwkbunjKFhAFBuD%2BvFS3

One of the big topics in today’s education world is P-16.  What does that mean?  It is a term used to describe the efforts to connect three largely disconnected levels of education - pre-school, K12, and college.  The goal is to create a more integrated, seamless education system, not by creating yet another set of rules and agreements and programs to follow, but to find better ways of making existing programs work together.

Ohio has several P-16 councils in existence and efforts are underway with OACHE’s help to establish some P-16 councils in the rural Appalachian region of Ohio.   While OACHE continues to put together resources and information for a page dedicated to P-16 initiatives, you can visit Ohio’s Partnership for Continued Learning to learn more about P-16 efforts in Ohio.

Welcome to the newly redesigned OACHE website! As you can see, our site has a fresh new look and feel. But even more than that, I’d like to point out some valuable new interactive features that I hope you will make use of.

Of course, you’ve discovered the blog. For those who aren’t familiar with blogs, this feature provides a forum to introduce topics of mutual interest and enable you to post responses, as well as read others’ responses. While the posts will often be OACHE staff, we’ll also occasionally invite guest bloggers to post on topics related to college access.

Another new resource is our online calendar. We will try to keep this calendar updated with events of the OACHE and grantees, as well as other dates of general interest to those in education and college access. We also invite you to submit events for possible addition to the calendar.

Finally, please check out our new scholarship database and Ideas That Work sections. The scholarship database will be updated with information on scholarships available to students in Appalachian Ohio; in addition to basic details such as deadlines, general eligibility criteria and deadlines, you will find links to get more information and apply. Our new Ideas That Work section showcases low- and no-cost activities that have proven effective at encouraging more students to aspire to and prepare for college. We are currently populating this section with activities submitted by K-12 schools and colleges across our region. We also welcome your submittals.

Finally, please note that you can subscribe to an RSS feed (see link in the right-hand sidebar) that will notify you (via email or in your RSS feed aggregator) when this blog has been updated. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for our news updates.

We’re excited about our new website, and we hope you will take advantage of all the resources and interactivity features it has to offer. Now it’s your turn...

Brenda S. Haas

OACHE Executive Director