Thursday, January 20,2011

Will it take Superman to fix Lansing's schools?

by Gretchen Cochran

While Superman is fixing the nation’s schools, could he also swoop into Lansing and, faster than a speeding bullet, bypass the district’s school board, leap across the gaping budget hole, shake up the city’s somnolent citizens and create a globally connected school system for the coming century?.

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Wednesday, December 15,2010

Word economy: New Fiction 440 offers challenges for local authors

by Gretchen Cochran

English composition teachers take heart. The Lansing area has had its first public taste of flash fiction and the samples were clever, funny, imaginative, poignant and, at all times, pithy. The event was the kick-off for a series of monthly happenings; the next will take place Jan.

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Wednesday, December 8,2010

Public ed in the 21st century

Old school chats with new school when discussing … schools

by Gretchen Cochran

School budgets are shrinking and the tools are changing, but still their fervor for lighting a fire of understanding in a young mind was contagious. They talked of inner city challenges confronted by school boards and trying to teach bored children who are bombarded with electronic stimulation.

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Thursday, November 4,2010

A gathering for moderation

East Lansing holds a satellite “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

by Gretchen Cochran

Thursday, Nov. 4 — Mid-Michigan political junkies gathered Saturday at Reno’s East Side in East Lansing to become part of comedians Jon Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”

Good teachers need good digs

This is a sidebar to Gretchen Cochran's Story 'What makes a great teacher?'

by Gretchen Cochran

Ask teachers how important the condition of their building is and they’ll say, “A good teacher can teach anywhere.” But dig a little deeper and the responses become more reflective. Educators say that, most of all, a dilapidated school building sends a message to the st...

What makes a great teacher?

Just follow around two local middle school teachers, who exemplify standards set forth by national education associations

by Gretchen Cochran

So it was heartening to catch an invigorated teacher, Linda Mondel, 47, telling Lansing Sunrise Rotarians about her Fulbright scholarship to India. The Lansing School District teacher was vibrant, dynamic and imbued with enthusiasm.

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Wednesday, September 22,2010

Shaking the shakes

A new detoxification center to open with hopes of reducing burden on police, paramedics

by Gretchen Cochran

A new place will open in Lansing soon where area police and paramedics can take drunken people to get sober. Wedged between Domino’s Pizza and a big red house at 810 W. Saginaw St., the 11-bed clinic will be welcomed as much for what it does as for what it doesn’t do.

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Wednesday, August 4,2010

Single stream dream

Lansing seeks to reinvent its recycling operations

by Gretchen Cochran

The wedding is over. The gifts are stowed. And now the bride has a mountain of empty boxes. Lansing’s recycling trucks won’t pick up cardboard, so she loads the waffle iron box and about 20 others into her car and hauls them to the Recycling Transfer Station.

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Wednesday, July 21,2010

Graceful aging

Overcoming the "multi-billiondollar-aging-industrial complex"

by Gretchen Cochran

trekking down to the Eastside’s Allen Neighborhood Center in Lansing. There he is meeting up with Peggy Woods, 85, and about 20 others for the weekly Discovery Group meeting. It is an interest group for seniors that has become a social lifeline for some.

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Wednesday, June 30,2010

A revival

An old Old Town church is reborn with a new congregation

by Gretchen Cochran

Now, 147 years later, Lansing’s North Presbyterian Church, seated on the corner of Grand River and Washington Avenues in Old Town, is ground zero for an ecumenical saga plotted on a theme of multiculturalism and diversity.

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