Greetings to the Quatsino Crowd!

Hi, Everyone. Now that I know that we want to continue to use the Lottie Blog, I have sent an invitation to Virginia's new email address and she should be able to post soon. A new option has appeared to allow me to grant admin privileges to other members, and I have done so. Now Wendy, Heather, Ivy, and Sandy should be able to change the blog format and edit posts. As soon as Virginia accepts the invitation and becomes a member of the blog, I will do that for her as well. What is really important is that each of you should now have the ability to invite others to the blog. To do this, get the person's email address and go to the "settings" tab. There you will find another tab called "permissions". There is a place there to enter the email address of the person your want to invite. Remind them that they will need to set up a Google account if they don't have one and that it is very important to remember the email address and the password they use when they do it. Sometimes a password has been taken and people have to try several. When one is finally accepted they have forgotten which one it was. I have my students write down each version and cross each one out if it is rejected. If you've ever had a Google account attached to an email address and can't remember the password, it seems to be hard to get it to work. What you can do is ask for an invitation to be sent to another email address, if you have more than one. So...I hope that's not too much information. Have a great time in Quatsino and I look forward to hearing about it.

Scholarship idea

Hi All,
At our recent executive meeting, we talked about a proposal to use some of our interest income for a scholarship (or two) for university/college students. There are a number of questions:

1. For whom should it be awarded? Teacher education students or undergraduates in general? Rural students or those who are interested in teaching in a rural area?
Here's an idea: How about offering it as a stipend/bursary for a student to live-out during the practicum?

2. How much ought it to be? We generate between $700 and $900 annually in interest income. We could offer two $250 bursaries, or maybe one at $500. If the above idea for a living-out allowance is followed, do either of these amounts make sense?

3. What criteria ought to be used to adjudicate the applications? Who would do the adjudication? I wonder if we could ask for a 500-750 word essay on some topic of relevance to rural education? It could be a new topic each year or a standard statement about interest in rural education as a career choice. Would the winning (and maybe runner-up) essays be printed in the Root?

4. Do we want to rule that a person can only earn it once?

We can also consider some other ideas entirely for this money...ideas welcome.

Wendy