March 2007

Staying in the Game

If you call Sylvia Colston-Still while she’s out (and she often is), listen carefully to the end of her answering machine message: “Today is the beginning of the rest of your life.”

The former physical education teacher-turned-school counselor lives by those words, determined to live each day to the fullest. She has already raised a family, served 20 years in the Army Reserves, and earned a doctorate degree in counseling psychology, at a time when few women—and even fewer African-American women—could do so. All the while, she’s kept up with her lifelong passion for basketball. A star player on her high school team in the 1950s, Colston-Still, now 72, still loves the game, which she plays three to four times a week. “I think I’ll be playing basketball until I reach 100,” she says.

Colston-Still has a full life off the court, too. She sits on several boards in her home state of New Jersey, including the Fort Dix Retiree Council and the Pensauken Library Board. She adopted a family affected by Hurricane Katrina. In fact, shortly before she spoke to This Active Life, Colston-Still had returned from a New Orleans trip to visit her adopted family, where she took the family’s children on a shopping trip. She recalls, “I enjoyed all those hugs.”

Above all, she loves spending time with her own family. She helps out taking care of her 15 grandchildren and roots for her nephew, Marcus Colston, who plays football for the New Orleans Saints.

But Colston-Still has already set a few more goals for herself. She thinks she’d “like to learn how to ride a motorcycle and get into some square dancing.”

“Retirement is a time in your life to do bigger and better things,” she says. “It’s a time for change.”

—Carrie Addington

The Power of Imagination

As a school teacher for more than 36 years and a Cub Scout leader for 23 years, George Cipolletti felt the people he could best relate to were seven-year-olds. “I have a little bit of kid in me,” says the New Jersey native.

The youngsters he taught clearly related to him, too. His students were at his bedside during his recovery from an automobile accident in the late 1950s. Part of his therapy was playing games when they came to visit. “Young kids can inject a spirit into you that you don’t know you have.”

That spirit found its way into a story Cipolletti wrote called Once Upon an Elephant. In 1955, he first imagined the fairy tale about an unlikely hero, a princess, a scoundrel, and an elephant who saves the day and developed the story over the years as he told it to his own children. His vision came to full fruition when he published it as a children’s book last year. Cipolletti remembers, “My grandchildren inspired me to do this. They said, ‘Gramps, go ahead.’”

To bring the story to the page, Cipolletti collaborated with his now-grown granddaughter, artist and animator Suzanne Cipolletti, who illustrated it.

What’s next for this 82-year-old who “gets bored easily”?

“I just want to enjoy life. I love life. Why get mad? It takes too much energy,” he chuckles.

—Carrie Addington

March 2007

Making the Difference

When colleagues talk to me about the work they’re doing with NEA-Retired’s Intergenerational Mentoring Program, the word I hear most often is “gratifying.” I’m pleased to hear that retirees are enjoying becoming mentors to beginning teachers. And I encourage more of you to do so. There is an urgent need.

If you haven’t heard the current statistics, prepare to be shocked. Nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession in the first five years, and 20 percent after just the first year. Why? We know that low pay is a factor. And so is being overwhelmed by the realities of teaching in today’s classrooms. These newcomers are confronted with the mandates of No Child Left Behind, which only adds to their anxieties about job performance.

That’s where we come in. Retired teachers can help support fledgling teachers in those crucial beginning years. We can serve as a resource and a sounding board. We can advise or just listen. Sometimes that makes all the difference. As Janet Kilgus from Illinois-Retired said, “Just because you don’t go to work every day doesn’t mean you’re not an educator with experience, information, and fantastic ideas.... You still got it, so share it.”

Our Intergenerational Mentoring Program is one of the key ways that we can support the NEA Student Program. These are the new members who will keep NEA strong and determine its future.

States that don’t yet have intergenerational mentoring should look into the NEA-Retired grant program, which offers up to $5,000 for start-up money. That’s how most of the existing programs got off the ground. The mentoring program in Arizona is only three years old, but we’re already seeing the benefits and working to expand to Tucson.

You can help a teacher through those first five years. Remember what Janet Kilgus said: You still got it, so share it!

—Barbara Matteson
matteson@dakotacom.net

March 2007

Phyllis Winkler

Background
I teach first grade in Vernon, Connecticut, and plan to retire in eight years. I’ve been president, vice president, and grievance officer for my local, and I’m currently on the CEA state board of directors.

Why did you become active in NEA Pre-Retired?
It’s my feeling that to be fully involved as a teacher means being active both in and out of the classroom, and active after retirement, too. NEA-Retired members are working with the legislature to improve public education for my students and to improve my job. I see the results—and I see the continuing urgency of activism, particularly after the damage done by the No Child Left Behind law. My students and I are benefiting now from the work of NEA-Retired members, and I believe I need to help keep that process going once I leave the classroom.

Roz Fishman

Background
I taught high school government and economics for 37 years in Floyds Knob, Indiana. I was president of my local Association, a district council chair, a member of the ISTA state board, and member of the NEA Resolutions Committee. I’m currently president of my local Retired Association. 

How are you enjoying retirement?
I love being retired, but I also love staying connected to education issues. So I split my time between vacationing—to places like Prague and Warsaw —and activism for NEA-Retired. I was heavily involved in campaigning before the November elections and now in ongoing legislative work. In Indiana, the Retired Association is working to win real prescription drug coverage for seniors, and we are always fighting attacks on public education, such as voucher schemes or attempted cuts to school budgets. I’m also active in the Indiana Council for Social Studies, which keeps me connected to the field in which I taught.

Paul Zastrow

Background
I taught high school science for 31 years, and was chair of the science department at my school in Hood River, Oregon. I served as president of my local Association and on the OEA state board.

Which NEA-Retired activities interest you most?
Too many to count, I think. I’m still a natural activist, so I keep busy with NEA political and legislative work, and I’m also active in a group that works to fight rural poverty. NEA-Retired members are essential to the mechanics of protecting public education. Teachers are in class when the legislature is in session, but I’m available, and like all our Retired members, I take an awful lot of experience with me when I go to lobby on issues that affect our schools and kids. It would feel like a waste to stop drawing on that experience when the need in our school districts is so great.

March 2007

Make It a Double

Playing with a partner makes tennis an ideal sport for seniors.

Although most promotional slogans bear more hot air than truth, “tennis, the sport for a lifetime” is a notable exception.   As long as you can run a little, or at least shuffle, you can continue to play and enjoy tennis. Sweden ’s former King Gustav played well into his 90s, and 85- and 90-year-olds compete regularly in national tournaments—even in singles.

For the great majority of retirees, however, doubles is the tennis game of choice. Doubles has numerous advantages. You need “cover” only half the court—and can conveniently call “Yours!” when a shot is just out of reach. With two on a side, it’s easier to keep the ball in play. If you’re playing poorly, you can hope your partner can propel your team to victory; if that doesn’t happen, you can—silently, one hopes—blame him or her. Most seniors want to play doubles, so you have a wider pool of players than for singles.

Far from least, doubles is a great social sport. Except in tournaments, you’re playing for fun, not blood, and all levels of players, from “hit and giggle” novices to semi-professionals, enjoy the communal good feeling that accompanies a hard-fought point.

“The social side is very, very important to me,” says Nancy Howell, an NEA-Retired member in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. “Tennis offers one of the most important of my groups of friends.” Through her two regular doubles games she plays each week, plus substituting in others, Howell plays with at least a dozen different women each week. Somebody invariably brings post-match snacks, “or we go out for a meal together.”

NEA-Retired member Linda Tavares, who lives in Hawaii, quickly ticks off the reasons she loves tennis: “The exercise really helps people our age stay in shape. The relationships you form on the court are healthy and good. There’s plenty of good humor and laughter. Even your mind gets sharper—thinking of where you should serve and hit your next your shot and where the opponent will hit his or hers.” Tavares sums up: “I’ll be 66 soon, but I don’t feel it. And tennis is a big part of why I don’t.”

Unless you play at a pricey country club, tennis is a lot less expensive than either golf or skiing. In most cities and towns, courts are plentiful, and the tennis “boom” that crowded them in the late ’70s is long gone. That makes it easier to get a court when you want one.

Tennis lessons—good ones—aren’t cheap, but you shouldn’t need many to get to a point where you can enjoy playing. If you can hit the ball fairly consistently, and you don’t intend to play singles, don’t spend much on individual sessions. Smart teaching pros offer doubles lessons that mix instruction on strokes with tips on the strategy and shotmaking that make doubles a special game. Your entire group can hire a pro for a couple of hours, or you can get a spot in a group he or she is forming.

Make sure, though, that everybody in that group plays at roughly your level. In doubles lessons, as in doubles itself, remember this maxim: the game is only as good as its weakest player.

A final tip: be careful choosing a partner for mixed (one man, one woman) doubles. “Mixed” has strained many a sound marriage, as in “How did you miss that one, DEAR!?”

—Roger M. Williams

Get in the Game

Racquets—If you’re a beginner, buy from a tennis shop. Prices will be higher than elsewhere, but salespeople there provide the best advice. Intermediate and advanced players should consider the shops, too, because they offer “demo” racquets; you can borrow several before choosing one. Racquets often come with strings, and better players usually replace them with higher-quality ones strung to the player’s preferred tension. 

Lessons—a sound investment if you find a pro whose teaching style clicks with you. To avoid overload, concentrate on only one or two weaknesses at a time. A savvy pro won’t attempt, or even want, to remake your entire game. He or she will instead build on your strengths and accept a less-than-classic stroke if it gets the job done. Don’t try to apply what you’ve just learned during matches; instead, find a hitting partner or a backboard.  If doubles is your game, take doubles lessons.

Competition—Accept offers of games from somewhat-weaker players, so you can work on your problematic shots (partly by playing to the other guy’s strengths.) For real match play, join the U.S. Tennis Association, which sponsors team leagues at various levels throughout the country. Membership is inexpensive, and you’ll meet people you can later hit with for fun.

March 2007

By Kristen Loschert

As mentors, retired educators support the next generation of teachers.

Gloria Holland remembers well her first years as a middle school teacher. Unfortunately, those memories aren’t fond ones.

“The first few years of teaching were hell for me. I had no direction. I had no one to talk to,” says Holland, a retired English and social studies teacher in Salem, Oregon. “I felt like I was thrown to the wolves. I was out there in this teaching world very alone.”

Despite feeling isolated and lost, Holland survived those early classroom experiences and had a successful 30-year career teaching junior and senior high school students. After she retired, Holland wanted to make sure future teachers didn’t go it alone the way she did. So a year and a half ago she volunteered to mentor a student teacher at Western Oregon University as part of a new mentoring program organized by NEA-Retired-Oregon.

“It keeps you connected with the world of education, and I’m finding so much joy in it,” Holland says of her time as a mentor. “When I’m with [my protégé], she provides me with the idealism that we all had when we first went into teaching. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time, the benefits are really wonderful, and it’s fun.”

The Oregon program is one of the latest to join the Intergenerational Teacher Mentoring Project, an effort launched by NEA-Retired in 2003 to pair retired educators with junior and senior college students studying to become teachers. The mentor-student pairs work together for three years, taking the aspiring educators through their student teaching and those critical first years in the classroom.

“The key to this whole program is to retain our young teachers beyond the five-year mark. Typically, that is when a lot of teachers leave the profession,” says Judy Nathe, a retired elementary teacher and coordinator for Oregon ’s intergenerational mentoring program. “If we provide a lot of support during those early years, then they will feel confident to stay on and move on in the profession.”

It’s a tall order, but research from organizations such as the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz shows that having a mentor can reduce a new teacher’s risk of leaving the profession by as much as 30 percent, while also providing a novice educator valuable support and greater job satisfaction.

But you don’t have to tell that to Stephanie Ehrick, a first-year English teacher in Chandler  , Arizona. Even as a student at Arizona State University, Ehrick knew that a strong support network would make the difference between surviving and thriving as a new teacher. So as a junior, she signed up for the intergenerational mentoring program organized by the Arizona Education Association-Retired. She’s been working with her mentor, retired English teacher John Campbell, ever since.   

“I feel certain that if I didn’t have John in my life, I would be talking myself out of teaching right now,” says Ehrick. “He has so much wisdom and knowledge, and he’s very willing to give insightful advice….In our profession, we are bombarded by so much stuff that we forget to ask for help and we drown. It’s such an amazing experience when you have someone in your life…who is always there for you.”

In fact, Ehrick feels so strongly about her relationship with Campbell  that she even invited him to her wedding. 

“The one thing I really like about the mentoring program is it lets natural relationships develop,” she says. “I just took to John and I have so much respect for him.”

Campbell  likewise has enjoyed his friendship with Ehrick. But being a mentor also helps him appreciate how hard today’s aspiring teachers must work to earn their certification and satisfy the teaching standards outlined by the No Child Left Behind law.

“It’s a neat way to give back to a profession that gave me a whole lot,” says Campbell. “I’m just glad I’m taking part in it. It’s keeping me young.”

Increasingly, NEA-Retired members nationwide say they feel the same way.

So far, teams from 28 states have received training on developing their own mentoring programs with help from Generations United, a Washington, D.C., policy group, and the Temple University Center for Intergenerational Learning—partners for the Intergenerational Teacher Mentoring Project. States that complete the training can apply for up to $5,000 in grant funds to support their programs. The national project currently has 12 programs up and running and six others preparing for implementation.

“Ultimately, we want to have our groups start the programs and then have them institutionalized into the local school systems,” as has happened in Hampton, Virginia, and Jefferson County, Kentucky, says Todd Crenshaw, organizational specialist for NEA-Retired.

To help more programs get off the ground, NEA-Retired created a new Intergenerational Mentoring Toolkit loaded with information for developing effective mentoring programs. The manual includes tips on recruiting, selecting, and training participants, as well as examples of best practices from existing mentoring programs. Every Retired and Active NEA affiliate will receive a copy of the toolkit, while college and university chapters of the NEA Student Program will receive copies of a companion CD-ROM.

Last year, NEA-Retired also trained six members as mentoring trainers who now can help other state Associations implement and enhance their own intergenerational mentoring programs.

Janet Kilgus, a retired math teacher from Illinois, was one of them.

“Just because you don’t go to work every day doesn’t mean you’re not an educator with experience, information, and fantastic ideas that can help kids and teachers in public schools,” says Kilgus. “You’re still an educator. You still got it, so share it.”

During the 1998–99 school year, Retired and Student members of the Illinois Education Association began planning the state intergenerational mentoring program,   Mentoring Educators for Tomorrow’s Success (METS). The group piloted the program the following two years. METS now supports roughly 100 students mentored by about 75 retirees, like Kilgus and retired kindergarten teacher Linda Walcher.   

Being a mentor “makes me feel like I am still doing something worthwhile,” says Walcher, who also completed NEA-Retired’s trainer program. “When I retired I didn’t really retire from my love of teaching, and I just think it’s a really important thing to help these young teachers get a good start.”

Tammy Pullen, one of Kilgus’ mentees, agrees. “One thing I have gained from being in the mentoring program is self-confidence in my teaching,” says Pullen, a senior at Bradley University. “The program also has helped me learn how to network and how valuable networking is in education.”

Unlike the mentoring programs in Oregon and Arizona, which emphasize face-to-face meetings between mentors and students, the Illinois program uses technology, partly by design and partly out of necessity. Most of the program’s mentors live in the Chicago suburbs, while the students attend school in the central and southern parts of the state. Consequently, mentors communicate with students primarily by phone and e-mail, which overcomes any distance barriers and has helped expand the pool of potential mentors.

“I have IEA retirees who live in Texas  and Florida who participate as mentors,” says Kilgus, coordinator of the METS program since 2004. “It doesn’t matter where you live. If you have the advice to give to students, that is all that matters.” 

And now Kilgus’ mentors have another platform for passing along their wisdom and experience. In February, IEA-Retired unveiled the Living Library Project, an online file system where mentors can store their best classroom ideas. So far, 30 mentors have created virtual “file cabinets” filled with their favorite lesson plans, behavior management strategies, worksheets, and classroom activity guides ready and waiting for the student mentees to download. 

“It’s giving the retirees the chance to know they still are educators and still have a lot to offer,” says Kilgus. “And it’s giving the students frontline access to those years of wonderful experience.”

Plus, once students register with the Living Library, they can access it indefinitely, even after they graduate and start teaching, which provides them with an additional level of support, Kilgus adds. She wants to target active teachers nearing retirement and encourage them to start their own file cabinets, which she hopes will keep them involved in the project once they retire.

The Living Library will not replace the one-on-one contact between mentors and their students, though, says Kilgus. Instead, she believes the project will enhance the METS program by offering retirees and

students another way to participate. Now retirees have the option of volunteering as mentors, creating file cabinets for the Living Library, or both, while students can choose a mentor, access to the online materials, or both, based on the level of support and involvement they need, Kilgus says.

“By working with my mentees I get ideas for what to put into the Living Library,” adds Walcher, who helped develop the project. “But it’s not just little capsules of mentors and mentees [anymore]. It’s a whole network of sharing.”

Nebraska : The Model Mentor

When NEA-Retired launched the Intergenerational Teacher Mentoring Project in 2003, the Nebraska State Education Association-Retired (NSEA-R) didn’t hesitate to sign up. Since then, more than 40 student-retiree pairs have participated in Nebraska  ’s program, which has become the model for intergenerational mentoring programs nationwide. 

That’s not surprising, given the program’s success rate. During the past four years, 43 students have enrolled in Nebraska ’s mentoring program. Of those, 18 are either teaching full-time or as substitutes, while 20 are still in school or completing their student teaching. Nebraska’s program currently draws students from four universities—Midlands Lutheran College in Fremont, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the College of St. Mary’s in Omaha, and the University of Nebraska at Kearney—and pairs them with retirees in the three college towns. But state organizers plan to open the mentoring program to NEA Student members at all of Nebraska ’s teacher training schools and recruit additional mentors statewide.

As the pool of mentors expands, organizers will conduct a yearly mentor training at a central location, while still providing mentors with monthly learning sessions at sites throughout the state. In the meantime, mentors and their students attend regular workshops together as well as a fall kick-off event and spring celebration picnic. This fall, NSEA-R also began a newsletter to help improve communication between the students, retirees, and the mentoring program’s planning team.

Being an Effective Mentor

If you think mentoring an aspiring teacher is for you, here are a few tips for building a successful relationship with your student.

Understand your role. “We don’t mediate. We don’t judge. We don’t evaluate. We’re just there for support,” says mentor Gloria Holland in Oregon  . Mentors do not supervise or grade a student teacher’s performance. Instead, think of yourself as a confidante providing helpful advice and a soft shoulder to lean on. 

Reach out. Don’t be afraid to make the first move and contact your student, says Ashley Evett, a junior at Illinois State University. Also, don’t worry if you don’t hear back from your student right away. Students often become overloaded with coursework and teaching placements and may struggle to stay in touch. A short e-mail checking on your student’s progress and frame of mind helps a lot.

Trust your instincts and experience.“Don’t worry that you don’t know what to say. The student will ask you questions,” says Linda Walcher, a mentor in Illinois. “Just put yourself out there and be open and warm. They really are just very young and very new and they can use any advice that worked for you.”

Tools of the Trade

Start-up state mentoring programs now have even more resources at their disposal! NEA-Retired released its Intergenerational Mentoring Toolkit earlier this year. The toolkit includes a manual with a step-by-step guide for planning and implementing local mentoring programs, worksheets, and checklists for monitoring progress.

Coordinators also will find helpful information on recruiting, training, and matching participants, including sample mentor applications and interview questions.

The toolkit also offers materials for evaluating a program’s effectiveness, tips on managing a budget, and a comprehensive list of print and online resources. For more information or to receive a copy, contact your state affiliate.

March 2007

Worth Fighting For

Cissy Lacks went from the classroom to the courtroom to fight for First Amendment rights. She reflects on her historic case and where we are today.

In the mid 1990s, Dr. Cecilia (Cissy) Lacks was an award-winning and appreciated English teacher who had taught more than 20 years in St. Louis, Missouri ’s Ferguson-Florissant School District. She’d been named by the Dow-Jones Newspaper Fund as one of the top student newspaper advisors in the country, and her students had won awards for journalism and creative writing.

But her name would soon be broadcast across the country for quite a different reason. She was fired from Berkeley High School in March of 1995 when administrators charged that she had violated the student code when she allowed students to write and perform dramatic works that used obscenities. That’s the short version of a complex, five-year legal struggle that signaled Cissy Lacks’ transition from teacher to First Amendment advocate. The jury found in her favor but its decision was later reversed by a court of appeals.

Now, more than a decade after the case began, "This Active Life" asked Lacks, “Was it worth it?”

“For sure it was worth it,” Lacks said without hesitation. “Standing up for what I knew was sound teaching was important, and making everything public was important, too.” Lacks was hailed a First Amendment hero on evening news programs and honored with the prestigious PEN First Amendment Award for the lengths she went to defend the creative process she had fostered in her classroom. “One of the legacies [of the court case] for me personally is that my integrity remained intact.”

But she fears that teachers and students’ freedom of expression are still very much at risk in today’s schools. “I think fear in classrooms has gotten worse,” she said. “The most unfortunate result is that there is a lot of self-censorship among teachers and students.” Ultimately, Lacks added, students’ education will suffer in a censored environment. “We don't help students become good decision-makers or critical thinkers that way. From a civics perspective and as a learning technique, censorship and self-censorship are educationally unsound.”

After losing her job and the court case, Lacks didn’t return to the classroom. While Lacks concedes there’s no way to replace the satisfaction of having a daily impact on students’ lives, she has found a way to use her writing ability in a new educational capacity. She now works with Dr. William Catalona at the Urological Research Foundation (URF) to support research and patient education about prostate cancer. Lacks is pleased to be reporting on the latest research on the genetics of prostate cancer in a publication called Quest (free subscriptions are available by signing up at: www.drcatalona.com). “The educational work I do for URF is a way of changing men’s medical health worldwide. It’s absolutely inspiring and satisfying work.”

—Carrie Addington

Read More

Cissy Lacks wrote about her legal case in a thoughtful essay, “Words Can Never Hurt Me”:

“Why I became a lightning rod is connected to a complex set of factors involving race, school politics, cultural struggles, teachers’ roles, authority concerns, denial mechanisms, power issues, and numerous other influences and stresses in our society.

No matter what circumstances were stirring the pot, one premise should have been of the utmost importance: Teaching students to understand voice would help them know who they were and that self-knowledge would enable them to find a place for themselves in the world.... Because some people might not like hearing what the students had to say, or how they said it, was no reason to stop the conversation. The entire country seemed to recognize the importance of this issue.”

From Silent No More: Voices of Courage in American Schools, edited by ReLeah Cossett Lent and Gloria Pipkin. Published by Heinemann, 2003.

March 2007

Protect Yourself from the Con Artist

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) receives more than half a million complaints of consumer fraud and identity theft on an annual basis. Consumers reported more than $600 million in losses in the past year (average of $350 per person). Internet-related fraud is topping old-school swindles such as vacation scams.

What type of information are con artists trying to obtain?

In the majority of cases, the scammer is trying to obtain your credit card account numbers so they can buy their own goods and services. Recently scammers have been asking for the three-digit number on the back of the credit card; scammers use this number for verification when purchasing over the phone or on the Internet. Scammers are also interested in any other type of personal information: name (including mother’s maiden name) and address, bank account numbers, and personal identification numbers.

Should I carry my Social Security Card?

No. A growing problem is the proliferation of identity theft through the use of a real person’s Social Security number. It’s best to keep your card in a secure place, such as a safe deposit box at your local bank.

What else can I do to protect myself?

If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Individuals, especially senior citizens, need to be wary of offers from strangers. The best protection anyone has is not to provide any personal information over the phone, mail, or Internet unless they initiate the correspondence.

—Doug Terwilliger

Top 10 Scams of 2006

According to ConsumerAffairs.com, the top 10 scams of 2006 were:

1. Fake Lottery Scam. This scam promises the victim they have won thousands of dollars in a foreign lottery; the victim needs to send money to cover the “taxes.”
2. Phishing-Vishing Scams. Identity thieves “phish” for a consumer’s personal information, normally by sending a fake e-mail from a bank, credit union, or online payment service requesting account verification.
3. Phony Job Scam. Employment offers done online without a formal interview are ripe for fraud.
4. Negative Option Scams. These scams offer free goods or services, but those who accept are automatically signed up for something.
5. Nigerian 419 Scams. This scam continues to make the list because victims continue to send money to a foreign country (recently Nigeria ) for a promise of a higher return.
6. Pump & Dump Scam.  Scammers e-mail hot stock tips to unsuspecting victims. The victims buy the stocks, thus raising the stock price, and then the scammer sells for a profit (and a loss to the victim).
7. Bogus Fuel-Saving Devices. Many products that claim to save fuel don’t work, or worse, may damage your car engine.
8. Grandparents Scam.  Grandparents are contacted on the phone by someone claiming to be their family member, who then coerces them to send money.
9. Oprah Ticket Scam. Victims receive e-mails that they could win tickets to The Oprah Winfrey Show after submitting personal information.
10. Craigslist Scam. This new version of the fake check scam is marketed on craigslist.org. Victims receive a phony check from one party and send a real check of their own money to another.