SUBMITTED NEWS RELEASE
David C. Berliner, educational psychologist and much-requested speaker and nationally known author on topics of academic achievement and poverty, will be the lunch hour keynote speaker at the western Nevada regional Food Summit in Silver Springs on Oct. 23, 2012. The summit is free and open to the public and will take place at the Silver Stage High School at 3755 West Spruce Street. Participants are asked to RSVP to reserve a seat at the event by calling Christy McGill at (775) 351-8242 or 246-7550.
Educators, parents, health care providers, and staff with any social service agency will find Bernliner’s lunch hour keynote address at the Food Summit of special interest. Bernliner is a Regents’ Professor of Education Emeritus at Arizona State University, and has also taught at Stanford University and universities in Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Spain, etc. He’s authored over 200 published articles, and is the co-author of many books, including best -sellers like “The Manufactured Crisis” and “Collateral Damage: How High Stakes Testing Corrupts American Education.” He is the winner of numerous awards, most notably the Brock Award and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Award for “distinguished contributions to education”, and the National Education Association’s (NEA) “Friend of Education” Award.
Teachers, administrators and social workers may be familiar with Berliner’s articles such as “Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success”. Berliner posits that ” ’out-of-school factors’ play a powerful role in generating existing achievement gaps, and if these factors are not attended to with equal vigor, our national aspirations [of narrowing the achievement gap between lower income and middle-class students] will be thwarted…Six out-of-school factors common among the poor that significantly affect the health and learning opportunities of children, and accordingly limit what schools can accomplish on their own: (1) low birth-weight and non-genetic prenatal influences on children; (2) inadequate medical, dental, and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4)environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6)neighborhood characteristics.” Berliner goes on to suggest ways communities can support their local schools so that students can achieve academically. He writes, “Extended learning opportunities, such as quality preschool, after school, and summer school programs can help to mitigate some of the harm caused by the first six factors…Efforts to improve educational outcomes in these schools, attempting to drive change through test-based accountability, are thus unlikely to succeed unless accompanied by policies to address the out-of-school factors that negatively affect large numbers of our nations’ students.”
Lunch Menu from Local Farms: The lunch for the Summit is free of charge, although donations are welcomed. All of the ingredients are from local growers and will be prepared by local chefs at the Dayton Dust Devil Diner’s culinary arts kitchen. The menu includes Pumpkin and Sunchoke soup, purple potatoes with garlic and rosemary, green salad with tomatillo vinaigrette, corn bread, zucchini bread, Scottish scones with local jam and butter and local honey from Anna Holley. The tea is from Davidson’s Organics in Reno and the coffee is from from Alpen Sierra Mountain Roasted Coffee in Minden.
When and Where: The Food Summit takes place on Oct. 23 between 8:00am and 4pm and includes dozens of speakers from the region, state and nation sharing their efforts to develop a sustainable food system that supports the health, nutrition and economic development of western Nevada, while also supporting local agricultural producers. Other speakers include editor and publisher of Edible Reno-Tahoe magazine Amanda Burden, Ron Woods Family Resource Center director Joyce Buckingham, Virginia City poet Shaun Griffin, Great Basin Community Co-op of Reno’s Amber Sallaberry, Food Bank of Northern Nevada’s Kristi Jamason, Sarah Adlerfarmers from GirlFarm of Reno, Holley Family Farms, Hungry Mother Organics, Churchille Buttes Organics, etc.
