2012 senior class photos
2012 West Carrollton graduation
Home of the Week
Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > October
October 2005
Pitching in for Katrina cleanup
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
Scott Elliott selliott@DaytonDailyNews.com
Wearing plastic gloves and a white dust mask, high school student Kristin Myers-Young was shoveling gobs of wet, moldy junk out the window into big, stinking piles of mess to be hauled away by wheelbarrow.
In the yard, Janice — the woman who grew up in this house — was struggling to reclaim a moldy, water-stained bedroom door from the junk pile and waving Kristin over to help. They pulled it loose and flipped it over, revealing a large carving on the door’s front of Jesus Christ crucified.
“My dad carved that,� Janice said, looking through swollen, red eyes. “I can’t get rid of it. I know I’m an old, crazy Southern lady, but I just can’t get rid of it.�
It was then that Kristin understood what they were really doing that weekend in Pascagoula, Miss.
“We were throwing out years of memories,� she said. “We spent a day and a half throwing her whole childhood out the window.�
Practically from the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Miami Valley schools have been raising money, collecting supplies and filling trucks with food and water.
But now, as the hard work of reconstruction really begins, some area high school students are going further, visiting the devastated areas, seeing it all firsthand and pitching in with their own sweat and muscle.
Along the way, they’re learning life lessons and discovering something about themselves and their place in the world.
About 10 students from the Dayton Early College Academy, an experimental city high school on the University of Dayton campus, just returned from a trip to the coastal city of Pascagoula. And earlier this month, about a half-dozen kids from Stivers School for the Arts made a similar voyage to Hattiesburg, Miss.
Even weeks after the storm, the devastation is shocking, Stivers senior Alicia Simmons said.
“In Dayton, when we have snow storms people clear the streets and make one path down the middle,� she said. “It was like that, except with dirt, trees and debris.�
The Stivers trip was organized by Bert Schroeder, the mother of Stivers junior Megan Schroeder, who persuaded the L.C. Charters bus company and two drivers to transport a group and a load of supplies donated mostly through the school community.
“There were so many little lessons the kids saw,� Shroeder said. “The biggest gift was the spirit of the people down there. They were laughing, smiling and grateful for what they had. They considered themselves blessed. That was mind-boggling to me.�
P.R. Frank, the computer teacher who organized the DECA trip through Aley United Methodist Church in Beavercreek, said he hoped the kids would employ their talents and perhaps explore their career interests while taking part in the relief effort.
And some did, including a couple of kids interested in photography who took pictures on the trip. Others interested in film shot video.
Both the Stivers and DECA groups are planning to create documentary films about their experiences. The DECA kids also kept journals. They earned community service credits, required each year by the school, although most of the students involved already have long records of community service.
The Stivers group is planning to show its documentary film at a fundraising event this year that they hope will include music and dance performance by other students. They hope to raise money for more trips.
Alicia, who will major in premed in college and hopes to be a pediatric surgeon, said she was most affected by her conversation with a woman who had just connected with a teenage daughter. She had become separated during their escape from New Orleans and turned up in California.
“To see a child ripped away from her parents, it really reinforced for me that I want to do something with kids,� she said.
Dainjer Slye, a second-year student at DECA, has long known she wanted a career where she could help others and was considering psychology or social work. But in Mississippi, she saw the difference the Red Cross and other nonprofit groups could make.
“It made me think hard about the people who have these jobs,� she said.
“They help people all the time with disasters all over the world. I’ve thought about a lot of different careers since I’ve been down there.�
Mike Howard, a third-year student at DECA, and Dy’Mand Montgomery, a second-year student, already have well defined career goals. He hopes to be a police officer; she wants a job as an auto mechanic.
But they found they could use their skills to help rehabilitate Janice’s home. After all, cops and mechanics are, at their core, specialized problem solvers.
And they were faced with a tough problem.
Janice’s long driveway was covered with piles of wet leaves, mud and debris that needed to be cleared. It was a big job that probably required a plow.
So, together, they built one. Mike found a garden rake and they lashed it to a large piece of plywood. Six of them then used it to clear the mess. “We had to put a lot of butt behind it, but it worked like a little bulldozer,� Mike said.
Permalink | | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, My Favorite DDN Stories
A tragic day
Four teens in a stolen car died Sunday in an awful crash. Three attended Huber Heights schools and the fourth is a recent transfer to Fairborn. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about what happened. None of these young boys was old enough to drive and there is some indication a fifth person may have been in the car with them and fled, possibly the driver.
I used to cover police early in my career. Cops deal with all sorts of difficulties and tragedies and develop a thick skin. But its cases like this that hit everyone hardest because it is just so senseless. I recall a similar crash that I covered — multiple teens killed in a car wreck after on a rural road after a dance. A friend was a grief counselor who was sent in to talk to the cops and EMS workers who worked the scene. Even she was struck by how deeply they were affected by what they saw that night. And these were tough, tough men and women who see bad things all the time. It’s just so hard when it involves young people.
I really feel for the kids and staff at the affected schools today. Incidents like these make no sense.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: School Violence
Ohio State’s misses
Last Saturday, I wrote that I thought Ohio State had really missed on Javon Ringer, the former Chaminade-Julienne running back now starring at Michigan State.
Under the comments to that post, Denise pointed me to an interesting article in the Columbus Dispatch about other OSU recruiting misses. The story uses Ohio kid and Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn as an example of how kids sometimes get away for very good reasons, and how its not always bad if a good kid goes somewhere else.
It’s an interesting view into recruiting priorities. The DDN today wrote about Minnesota’s QB, who is bitter about not being recruited by OSU. Another example of one that got away not in the Dispatch story that fits here is Brandon Harrison, also a C-J product. A couple weeks ago, I happened to be in Ann Arbor and went to see a Michigan game. There was Harrison already starting for Michigan at safety as a true freshman.
I think he has gotten an early chance because of injuries. And OSU’s defense is so much better than Michigan’s that he’d probably not get much playing time had he gone to Ohio State. I don’t know how much OSU even recruited Harrison, but this is probably another example of an Ohio kid that got away but was a better fit elsewhere — even at a hated rival like Michigan.
The Dispatch story explains how the recruiting focus for running backs was always elsewhere and not very focused on Ringer. Everytime I watch OSU’s flat running game, I can’t help but think Ringer in the backfield could help right now. But perhaps some of these other RB recruits will pan out.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Computer: your kid has “disorders”
Imagine your teenager comes home from school looking depressed. You ask what’s wrong. She says, “Oh, it’s just my social anxiety disorder.” What?
Yes, she tells you, she has social anxiety disorder. And also obsessive compulsive disorder.
What are you talking about, you ask? Who is telling you this?
They told me at school!
And no, it wasn’t a psychologist, social worker or even the school nurse that told her. It was: a computer! They call it TeenScreen.
Yesterday, I complained about computerized scoring of tests. Now one Indiana school is taking things even further with the computer. They’re letting the computer diagnose you kid’s alleged mental problems!
A civil liberties group called The Rutherford Institute that is suing the South Bend, Ind., school district on behalf of 15-year-old Chelsa Rhodes, described what occurred:
“Students were divided into groups of 10-15, herded into classrooms and placed in front of computers. After completing the examination and being escorted into a private hallway by an employee of Madison Center, Chelsea was informed that based on her responses that she liked to clean and didn’t like to party very much, she suffered from at least two mental health problems, obsessive compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder.
Chelsea was also told that if her condition worsened, her mother should take her to the Madison Center for treatment. According to Chelsea, a majority of the students who were subjected to the TeenScreen exam were also told that they were suffering from some sort of mental or social “disorder.�?
I am amazed first of all that anyone would think a computer could diagnose mental disorders, and that a school district would buy into this, and that it would subject kids to such a test without parental consent or without having the results explained to the kids by some kind of professional.
TeenScreen bills itself as a suicide prevention system. But I found one blogger who alleges TeenScreen is backed by drug companies who would love to see more kids taking meds.
How do you think you would react if this happened at your child’s school?
UPDATE: TeenScreen’s director responds to this post.
Permalink | Comments (97) | Categories: Student Health and Safety
Tested to death
Over at Jenny D’s blog she is mixing it up with an anti-testing blogger who runs Schools Matter. Jenny is very pro-No Child Left Behind, believing we need test data to see what’s really going on in the classroom, information that was largely hidden before NCLB.
I’m going to expand here on comments I posted at Jenny’s blog.
In support of Jenny’s view, the subgroup reporting requirement is a great example of how NCLB shines light where there was once only darkness. It says every school must report results for all its minority groups — black, hispanic, special ed, English language learners, etc.
Suburban schools, for instance, for years ignored struggling minority kids and trumpeted their nice-looking overall passing rates on standardized tests. Now NCLB subgroup reporting shows just how badly some of their kids are doing and exposes the need to address this real achievement gap even in within good schools.
But there is reason to be concerned about how our education systems are being reshaped around the new goal of passing standardized tests.
First, it takes an incredible amount of time away from classroom instruction.
My first grader’s teacher frequently assesses and reassess her class of 16 kids at various points during the school day by administering time-intensive, one-on-one exams that assess the kids’ reading and math skills. The time this takes is a continuing problem for teachers.
The rest of the class, during these times, works on their own rather than being engaged with the teacher.
And, even more concerning is the question of how good the information we get from standardized tests really is, particularly on state exams. In writing about standardized tests, here’s what I’ve found — the technology of testing is simply not up to the task of answering the questions we expect them to answer.
I’m talking about questions like — can these third graders read? A multiple choice state standardized test is an awful way to judge whether a nine-year-old can read. Yet we take for granted that the results of a state third grade exam can answer the question — can our third graders read? For an example read this from the series I wrote last year with my colleague Mark Fisher.
And where is all this testing going? It’s going online. Via computer, kids will take more and more assessments in class on top of state standardized tests. And increasingly, those tests will be scored by computer, even writing tests and test that require essay responses. To see how unprepared the testing industry is to score tests automatically, check out what happened when I put one of these programs to the test.
So these are some of the problems with the way the nation has tilted under NCLB. We have given over an incredible amount of classroom time to testing and made passing tests the primary end goal of our K-12 education operation. But there is no reason to believe this makes our kids better educated, or better economic competitors in the world market.
The counter argument is this: without these tests, how would we even begin to guess how our kids are doing? That’s often Jenny D’s mantra, and it’s a fair, and tough, question for the testing critics.
Maybe there’s a middle ground here. We certainly need some measures of student progress. I think we need MUCH better measures than we have now to make the judgments about kids that we are now making. Maybe all that will take is time and research.
On the other hand, perhaps an all-engrossing focus on standardized testing is tilting too far in the other direction.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Testing
Under the big tent
I almost forgot to point you to the latest Carnival of Education, which is up over at The Education Wonks blog.
Next week, the Wonks have generously offered to let me host the carnival, so you’ll be able to find your weekly round up of the best education blogging here next Wednesday.
Permalink | | Categories: The Carnival of Education
Learning from Michael Jordan
Just how much Michael Jordan do you want to see in your kid when it comes to sports?
The television news magazine 60 Minutes had a rare extended interview with Michael Jordan Sunday night. He talked about his basketball success, his ill-fated try at baseball, his obsession with lowering his golf handicap and, for the first time, he acknowledged he sometimes goes too far when he’s gambling.
Jordan summed himself up in all these areas — basketball, baseball, golf and gambling — by quoting his later father’s reply when asked by a reporter if he thought Michael had a gambling problem. “Michael has a competition problem,” was the elder Jordan’s nail-on-the-head answer.
Michael Jordan didn’t just want to win, he wanted to destroy everything in his way. The great athletes somehow find a way to channel all their emotions into the competitive moment — to dunk a basketball, throw a baseball, run with a football or kick a soccer ball with a your-life-depends-on-it fervor that borders on obsession.
So my seven-year-old has been playing soccer for three years, and suddenly she’s realized that she could be better than she is, and that she wants to be good. Claire notices now in a way that she has not before, that the best players on the field do things better than everyone else. She wants to be one of those kids.
First she started asking me to practice with her on the side during her sister’s games. And she actually complained when rain canceled her own team’s practice. Claire’s eager to learn, which I like, and we’ve worked on the important skills.
But here’s the thing. I don’t think she’s too far behind the best players when it comes to soccer skill or athleticism. I think where she’s different is in attitude.
My brother was a fine baseball player and a much better hitter than me. In a rare moment of brotherly honesty, I once dropped all my bravado and flat asked him why he was a better. I remember very clearly what he said, because I honestly found it kind of shocking.
“You need to go to the plate thinking attack,” he said. “Think of your worst enemy, someone you HATE. Imagine the baseball is their face and that you’re going to smash it with the bat. Try to kill the baseball. It is your enemy.”
I have to admit, I never thought of hitting in those terms. My goal was always to be technically perfect — wait for the right pitch, swing level, keep my head down, keep my front foot in, close my front shoulder.
But technical perfection will only get you so far. You have to have fire, competitiveness, emotion in your game to be among the best. Even, to some degree, in seven-year-old soccer.
But teaching Claire these things at her age runs counter to almost everything else she’s been taught. We tell her all day long to share, help others, take turns, be fair. But success on the soccer field ultimately means taking from others, beating them, turning opponents into losers.
To be honest, the one-time athlete in me wishes I’d have figured this out earlier, while there was still time to alter my on-field demeanor, before more laid back habits took hold. But is it too early, at age seven, to start to teach her about real competitiveness and the things that come with it — hustle, aggression, intimidation?
Watching Roger Clemens pitch in the World Series may have answered this for me.
After an extreme close up on Clemens’ intense face, Claire asked me a funny question. She wanted to know why Roger Clemens didn’t shave his stubbily beard before the game. Here was my chance. I tried to explain “intimidation” — that Clemens wanted to look tough, a little scary even. I told her it was part of a look, an icy stare, to make the batter a little nervous and maybe give Clemens a little edge.
She seemed totally stumped. So maybe we’ll stick to skills wait a year on the other stuff.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Young Children
Bush’s brother and the ex-Kremlin insider
OK, just think about this for a moment. The president’s brother and a former Kremlin insider are going into business to help teach Russian children.
Here’s an excerpt from the Moscow Times:
Kremlin outcast Boris Berezovsky and Neil Bush, the scandal-tainted brother of the U.S. president, have joined forces in an educational software company that they are trying to promote in the former Soviet Union.
With the unusual partnership, Berezovsky most certainly has succeeded in further annoying President Vladimir Putin, who counts George W. Bush as a friend.
The investment in Bush’s company, Ignite!, also sees him joining a well-connected group of former and current shareholders such as former President George H.W. Bush and major Asian and Middle East financiers, at a time when Berezovsky claims he has been struggling to gain permission to travel to the United States.
The flip side for Berezovsky is that he has become a shareholder in a U.S. company that has come under criticism in the United States for dumbing down schoolwork and for peddling political ties.
In recent months, Berezovsky has helped Neil Bush take his company on a tour of countries from the former Soviet Union that have spun out of Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Yep, I’d say the iron curtain has certainly come down! Of course, every president does need a Billy Carter or Roger Clinton moment.
Permalink | | Categories: Online Learning
Skip diapers, go straight to the potty
It’s a cheapskate parent’s dream — no more diapers after three months!
I wonder what they’d think about this over at the DDN’s motherhood blog? Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times story about a small national movement toward very early potty training (sorry, you’ll have to be a Times subscriber to read the full story):
For many parents in the United States, the idea of potty training before a baby is able to walk, or even before age 2, is not just horrifying but reprehensible — a sure nightmare for parents and baby, not to mention a direct route from the crib to the psychiatrist’s couch. But a growing number of parents are experimenting with infant potty training, seeing it as more sanitary, ecologically correct and likely to strengthen bonds between parent and child.
About 2,000 people across the country have joined Internet groups and e-mail lists to learn more about the techniques of encouraging a baby — too young to walk or talk — to go in a toilet, a sink or a pot. Through a nonprofit group, Diaper Free Baby (www.diaperfreebaby.org), 77 local groups have formed in 35 states to encourage the practice. One author’s how-to books on the subject have sold about 50,000 copies.
The story is really interesting. It says the U.S. is the anomaly — that many nations around the world start potty training very early. To other nations it might even seem unnatural, all this diapering.
But what would the Supernanny say?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Young Children
Why did OSU pass on Ringer?
Indulge me today, on a football Saturday, while I veer into realm of academics and college sports. This caught my eye in a Dayton Daily News story last week after the Ohio State-Michigan State game:
OSU invested much time in recruiting Michigan State freshman Javon Ringer, who many consider the best Dayton-bred running back since Keith Byars.
“(We) were very interested,” Tressel said. “We thought he was a great player.”
Asked if his staff was unable to get Ringer past the increasingly strict OSU admission standards, as is commonly believed, Tressel said, “No comment.”
The implication from Tressel is that OSU’s “tough academic standards” were the only reason Chaminade-Julienne High School product Javon Ringer ended up playing at Michigan State instead of suiting up for the Bucks.
I’m not buying this.
Ringer has been quoted repeatedly saying OSU was his first choice. Basically, it was the kid’s dream to go there. So I don’t know how much time and effort OSU needed to invest recruting him. If they had really wanted Ringer, they would have had him.
And as for academic standards, here’s what I know — Ringer is a true freshman who is eligible and playing for a Big Ten rival. Does OSU have much tougher academic standards that would keep them from landing an eligible football recruit they really wanted, a kid who was going to qualify and play for a competitor?
I think not.
Here’s what I think. It’s Ryan Brewer all over again.
Maybe you remember Brewer, the Troy High School product who broke all sorts of high school rushing records. He was simply the best football player in the state his senior year. But OSU passed on him because at 5-9 and 200 pounds, they thought he was too small. Brewer went on to have a solid career playing at South Carolina for Lou Holtz and helped get John Cooper fired when he had more than 200 all-purpose yards against OSU in a bowl game.
Ringer is about the same size as Brewer was — 5-9 and 195 pounds. And like Brewer, he’s just a good football player and a great kid. And he’s lightning fast. He’s only been the best freshman offensive player in the Big Ten this year.
And he’ll have three more years to run against the Buckeyes.
Update: Ringer had 104 yards rushing on 18 carries today in a MSU loss to Northwestern. He got twice as many carries as any other MSU back, apparently settling in as the Spartans’ top rushing option. OSU is near the bottom in rushing in the Big Ten.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Punk parents ruin the prom
I saw this on The Education Wonks blog and when I told a teacher friend about it, she just went nuts.
Apparently, a Marianist Catholic High School in New York State has cancelled the prom. This all started last spring when the principal of Kellenberg High School on Long Island, N.Y. learned that 46 kids had together made a $10,000 down payment to rent a house in the Hamptons for $20,000 for a post-prom drunken bash. (The Marianist religious order also runs the University of Dayton.)
Well, school officials forced the kids to cancel their reservation, but later they found that parents rented a Hamptons house anyway. That was too much for the principal to take. If these parents who refuse to listen to school officials want a prom, they’ll have to plan it on their own.
Here is an excerpt from his letter to parents:
“Over the years parents have become more active in creating the “prom experience,� from personally signing for houses for a three day drug/sex/alcohol bash, to mothers making motel reservations for their sons and daughters for after prom get-togethers, to fathers signing the contract for Captain Jim’s booze-cruise out of Huntington for an after prom adventure.
We have become convinced that some parents support this type of activity, some tolerate it, prefer not to see it, or dismiss it as part of growing up. Some have expressed the view that it is better to lose one’s virginity and get drunk before going to college, so that parents can be around to help. You figure!
There are also pre-prom cocktail parties (real cocktails!) sponsored by parents. The limosine to the prom is also well stocked, often with parents’ knowledge. Seniors often enter the limosine with a present from home, just in case they run short.
Each year it gets worse - becomes more exaggerated, more expensive, more emotionally traumatic. It would not have gotten this far if a significant portion of parents, either explicitly or tacitly, did not accept it or tolerate it. We are withdrawing from the battle and allowing the parents full responsibility. KMHS is willing to sponsor a prom, but not an orgy.�
The teachers I know are always telling me these kinds of stories, about how irresponsible some parents can be, that they will work against teachers and administrators, fight the rules and generally make it more difficult to educate kids. Too few parents today stand with teachers and administrators and reinforce the rules at home, they say.
Still, I’m pretty amazed that traditions have to be ended because parents permit or even encourage abuses at this level.
But should it have to come to this?
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: The Parent-Teacher Divide
Report: Ohio kids getting smarter
If it ticked a few people off last week when I blogged about a report that said Ohio was getting dumber, well I’ve got good news.
Results yesterday of an important national test showed Ohio kids are doing much better in math. The results also have me wondering, are Ohio’s state math tests too hard?
These new scores are for fourth and eighth graders who took the NAEP, sometimes called the “Nation’s Report Card.” It’s a national test given every two years in all 50 states to gague academic growth. NAEP is a very valuable test because it has been given for more than 30 years in essentially the same format so the results over time are comparable. And it allows us to compare states to each other. NAEP is also a pretty hard test.
Ohio ranked among the top 20 states on all four tests — reading and math in fourth and eighth grade. Fourth grade reading made a dramatic jump — up 11 points since 2002. And if you go back to 1992, Ohio made a huge gain of 27 points in math, and milder gains of six points over those 13 years in reading at both grade levels.
Unlike the more flighty report I cited last week, the NAEP is a serious measure of how Ohio compares, and the kids did well.
The other great thing about the NAEP, is you can lay the results down against a state’s own tests and see how they measure up. Both Ohio’s state tests and NAEP use the same passing standard — you must score “profiicient” or better.
Well, on the NAEP, 84 percent of fourth graders scored proficient in math while 65.5 percent did so on Ohio’s test. At eighth grade, 74 percent were proficient on NAEP, but just 60 percent on the state test.
Remember, the NAEP is widely considered to be a pretty hard test. So if our kids are doing that well on it, but scoring poorly on our own tests, perhaps our own tests are a bit too hard.
This was clear last year when Mark Fisher and I wrote about how 76 percent of Ohio 10th graders failed the first offering of the Ohio Graduation Test’s math section. The state later lowered the passing score significantly to be sure enough kids passed, and avoided a statewide revolt against the test.
Setting passing scores on state tests is a very inexact science. But the NAEP offers a good guideline to judge test rigor. The question now is, should Ohio lower the passing score on more math tests?
Permalink | | Categories: Testing
The people’s stadium
At last night’s Dayton school board meeting, there were a few concerns about the board’s plan to run Welcome Stadium in partnership with the University of Dayton and the port authority.
People were uneasy because of the unique history of the stadium. It was largely paid for by individual contriubtions and fund-raising — more than $400,000, which was really big money back in 1949. My editor last night, Fraizer Smith, asked an interesting question. How many stadiums anywhere in the U.S. were funded in this way, with individual contributions rather than tax money or private financing?
Welcome Stadium is pretty unique. And the school board says their plan will protect the community’s investment going forward. Those who spoke last night want assurances that the stadium will always remain a school district asset.
Here’s a little bit that was cut from my story, in which school board president Gail Littlejohn explains the board’s rationale:
School board president Gail Littlejohn emphasized that the deal lasts for 10 years and the the district will remain the sole owner of the stadium and parking lot that surrounds it.
“The only way to reform Dayton Public Schools is to stay focused on education,” she said. “A lot of other things are required to run the stadium and we are not as good at it as we ought to be. It’s been run at a loss that means we take money out of the classroom to support it. We can’t continue to do that.”
Littlejohn said she hoped the renovations and new partners would help the district add value to the stadium.
“What were looking for from UD is expertise,” she said. “That’s what we don’t have. they can train us to manage that stadium more effectively.”
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Sports and Athletics
Apply to college, for free!
I recently discovered the provocatively-named personal finance blog called I will teach you to be rich. Mostly, its just sound financial tips and practical advice for entrepreneurs. Ramit, the author, is himself a bright, Stanford-educated entrepreneur. Today he is writing about reducing barriers to success in your life.
To illustrate a point, he told this great little story about how he applied to top colleges without racking up hundreds of dollars in application fees. It’s a strategy others might want to try:
Do you make things more complicated than they have to be?
“I’m not going to apply to Stanford/Harvard/etc because even if I got in, I couldn’t afford it. Plus, it’s expensive to apply.”
Apart from being completely wrong, that sentiment takes the approach of someone throwing their arms up and saying “There’s not much I can do! Might as well give up!” Give me a break. I’d rather have someone say “How we can we make this work?” and then find clever ways to solve the problem.
When it came to my college applications, it was about $50/application. In a middle-class family, that adds up quick. You know what I did? I didn’t enclose the application fee. Instead, I put a note in my application explaining my situation and asking if they could help. And I told them that if they couldn’t help, would they please let me know and I’d find a way to send the fee in.
What’s the worst they could say—no? And of course, you can guess how many colleges asked to send the fee in: 0.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Jason Collier, gone too soon
A decade ago, when I was working at the Troy (Ohio) Daily News and barely scraping by on a small newspaper salary, I used to cover high school football and basketball games on the weekends for extra cash. It wasn’t much money — $20 a game before they took out taxes — but it was also fun. This was in largely rural Miami County and I was often covering passionate grudge matches between small school rivals.
And if you go to enough high school games, every once in a while you see something that makes you take notice. Sometimes it’s a kid who’s just a step ahead everyone skill-wise, or a player who just seems to have an innate sense for the game. Or sometimes it’s a kid who is just so much bigger than everyone else that you just sense they are going places.
Jason Collier was 17 the first time I saw him play basketball and he was all of those things and more. Collier, the 7-foot giant who went on to play in the NBA, shockingly died Saturday at age 28.
Anyone who walked in to the old, shadowy Milton-Union High School gym that day 11 years ago would have felt the buzz. I nearly crashed into University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins walking to my seat near top of the wooden bleachers. Legendary Indiana coach Bobby Knight was there, too. Other spotted Bobby Cremins, coach of Georgia Tech, and coaches from Ohio State, Notre Dame and a handful of other top college programs. The gym was jam-packed in the tiny rural burg of 6,000 people, many just wanting to see what all the fuss over Collier was about.
Out on the court, Collier warmed up silently, making three-pointer after three-pointer. That was part of the attraction for recruiters. Here was a big guy with a smooth jumpshot who could actually make the long shot. But that strength was later viewed as a weakness once he headed off for college ball at Indiana. Knight hounded Collier for being “soft,” not rebounding enough and not mixing it up inside.
Indiana under the volatile Knight was an odd choice for mild-mannered Collier, and it ultimately proved to be a bad fit. This was the leading edge of Knight’s implosion that led to his firing at Indiana. Collier was a rare Indiana player of that day who refused to put up with Knight’s abuse. Where he led, others would follow until Knight was shown the door. In late 1997, Collier announced he would leave Indiana and narrowed his transfer choices to Georgia Tech, where his dad played college basketball in Atlanta, and the University of Dayton, just down the road from his hometown of Springfield, Ohio. He picked Georgia Tech.
Weridly, had Collier gone to UD, he would have filled a void at center left when Chris Daniels died suddenly just months before in January of 1997. The parallels to Collier’s death are creepy. Daniels, age 22, was just a bit shorter than Collier at 6-foot-10. Like Collier, he has recently undergone an intense conditioning program, gotten into great shape and was playing the best basketball of his career. And like Collier, he awoke gasping for breath in the middle of the night and died of an apparent heart attack.
It made me wonder today whether these incredibly tall men, with uniquely stretched out physiques, aren’t perhaps somehow more physiologically at risk when the put themselves through physical stress. I suppose, it’s just coincidence that Daniels’ and Collier’s stories briefly intersected and later ended so similarly.
Permalink | | Categories: Sports and Athletics
Symphony of the best
If you read this blog regularly, you’re familiar with the The Carnival of Education, a weekly complication of the week’s best education blog posts usually hosted by the The Education Wonks blog.
Recently, I discovered some other weekly collections much like this, including the Best of Me Symphony where bloggers who write about a whole variety of topics submit their best post from two months ago. I submitted a post from my blog just to see how this one worked. Some of the posts in this collection are pretty interesting.
Permalink | | Categories: The Carnival of Education
Report: Ohio getting dumber
According to an annual ranking, Ohio is getting dumber faster than any other state. Ohio fell 11 spots from 20th smartest state last year to 31st smartest this year. No other state fell as far down the list as Ohio.
Unfortunately, the list does not have a state-by-state explanation of the ranking that specifically explains how Ohio got its score. The ranking is based on 21 factors, mostly stuff like how many kids pass state tests, graduation rate, student-teacher ratio, school spending on instruction and teacher pay compared to pay for other jobs.
Ohio ranks behind both Dakotas, Michigan, Indiana, Wyoming and South Carolina. On the other hand we are ahead of California, Utah, Kentucky, West Virginia and Illinois. Vermont was No. 1 and Arizona ranked last.
It sure seems to me like Ohio ought to be higher than No. 30. Where do you think we should be ranked?
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Testing
Put your quarter down and spin the wheel …
The latest Carnival of Education is up at my pal JennyD’s blog. The carnival is a weekly collection of the best education blog entries from last week. Check it out!
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: The Carnival of Education
Good vs. evil and other great stories
I stumbled across a PBS special one Saturday afternoon, bored with the football game I was watching. It was the diary of a World War II pilot, read by the man himself. He was telling a story so mesmerizing I could not switch away. He was flying a fighter along the European front, escorting bombers back from a bombing run, if I remember right. It was the end of a long trip and he was running low on fuel. His radio crackled. Someone was calling for help. Urgently.
Down on the ground, a small group of American soldiers were pinned down and the enemy was rolling a tank into position to obliterate them. The pilot called back, told him there was little he could do to help. He didn’t have the right kind of weaponry. The only way he could destroy the tank was to dive down low practically on top of the tank. It was a dangerous, difficult long shot. “If you don’t try it, we’re all going to be dead,” the ground commander replied.
So the pilot gave it a try. He dipped and dove until he was nearly on top of the tank, dropped his only bomb and pulled up hard as the blast shook the plane. He barely held it together, stabilized and peeked back out the window. The men on the ground were jumping and waving.
Years later, on the GI Bill, the pilot enrolled in college and was moving in to an apartment with his wife when he met the next door neighbor. They got to talking about the army and the pilot described the type of plane he had flown. The neighbor grew serious. “I owe my life to one of your guys,” he said, and he began to tell the story of a pilot who destroyed a tank just before it took aim at him and his men. The pilot stopped him mid-story … and finished the story for him. This was the commander from the other end of the radio that day in Europe. The commander’s eyes welled with tears and grabbed him in a bear hug.
What a story. History is filled with amazing tales like this.
And yet, how many of our kids recoil at the word “history,” telling us how “boring” it all is.
Here’s what that tells me — not enough teachers are using the right strategies to bring history to life for kids. They too often find it to be rote and irrelevant to their lives. But it doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be.
I’ve been thinking about history since attending a seminar Monday on the quality of history instruction.
There are lots of ways to make history real to kids. It can be done using something as simple as a $10 bill.
For me, it was the study of World War II that really stirred a love for history. Any kid who has ever enjoyed a Star Wars film or the Lord of the Rings books can appreciate the WWII story — Heroes vs. villains, the forces of evil vs. the forces for good locked in a battle to save the world and preserve freedom.
But a lot of it had to do with the inspired teachers I had, including the story telling English teacher and WWII vet Mr. Doherty. (You can read about Mr. Doherty here, here and here)
If PBS and the History Channel can figure out a way to make history relevant and not boring, it seems to me teachers with passion for the subject can do the same.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
The war of the words over what kids need to know
I have a friend who edits social studies textbooks for a living. You know what the hardest part of her job is? Crafting the language so it doesn’t offend anyone.
Wars are really tough. Textbook companies don’t like it when one side “attacks” the other and it’s certainly too charged to say the soldiers on one side or the other were “killed.” In textbooks, “a battle occurred” or an army “was defeated.” At least in textbooks that anyone wants to sell to states or school districts.
Every school subject area has its political squabbles, whether it’s “new math” vs “old math” or the music teacher I had in elementary school who caused a stir by teaching us Beatles songs instead of traditional choir hymns.
But nowhere is the debate more heated, and more political, than in history.
On Monday this week, I spent the morning at an interesting seminar on the quality of history and civics instruction put on by the Fordham Foundation and the University of Dayton School of Education..
As a special treat, I got to meet the famed education blogger JennyD, who was in attendance.
The panels tilted conservative, so there was a lot of bashing of “social studies” for watering down history with a lot of nonsense.
The classic conservative view is that we have dropped too many key historical facts that kids need to know in order to really understand the context of history to make room in the curriculum for softball, feel-good multicultural studies. One of the speakers argued explicitly that we must go back to teaching more about “dead white guys.”
And that’s the major liberal complaint — that the tradition version of history in American classrooms has been preposterously narrow, over emphasizing the story of early American elites while ignoring other fascinating and compelling histories of the common man, minorities and women, not to mention leaving out much detailed discussion of the history of the rest of the world.
We’re not likely to get consensus any time soon. Ask any 10 scholars, or for that matter regular joes, for the top 20 most important history lessons our kids need to know and you’re not likely to get two identical lists. Sadly, that’s not even the core debate going on.
The problem is that the real war being fought in history is not over what kids need to know to be good citizens. The real fight is over political ideology and the front line is every word in every history text our kids read.
Education Week last month wrote about a Texan named Neal Frey who dissects 50 textbook pages a day, combing over every paragraph for evidence of liberal bias and firing off complaint letters to publishers and state officials on behalf of a conservative religious group for which he works.
Frey, for instance, flags the word “fetus” — he prefers a more human term like “developing baby” — and references to homosexuality, same-sex marriage or adoption. He even complains when abstinence is referred to as a “preferred” behavior rather than the stronger term “expected.”
Yes, history is a full-blown political battlefield, complete with vigorous lobbying. And left behind is what our kids really need to know to live and compete in the ever-shrinking world.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Is campus free speech in danger?
With pressure from legislators who were threatening to write a law, Ohio colleges have pre-emptively created a policy protecting student’s free speech.
But the question is whether this is a real problem on campus, or a manufactured one.
The change is being pushed by conservatives who believe most college professors are liberals with the goal of stamping out conservative ideology in their students. Certainly, there are professors with strong ideological viewpoints. I’m sure there are some who cross the line.
But as the son of a college professor and the brother of two more, I have to say I think the number of professors who try to impose their views, liberal or conservative, are very small. Most of these folks are real pros, and can handle a student who disagrees. And for those who cross the line, there already should be rules in place to deal with them.
But I’m not on an Ohio college campus every day. Is there something else gong on?
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Losing your (unhealthy) lunch
None other than the Terminator is taking on unhealthy student lunches.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month signed a bill that banned junk food and soft drinks in public schools. And last week the Washington Post had a story about the trend toward healthier lunches.
The amount of junk food readily available to our kids has really gotten out of hand.
On Saturday, all three of my kids played youth soccer. Each parent on each team is assigned a day to bring “snack” for after the game. I think oranges or bananas would be a great post-game snack, but the more common treats are Gatorade and cookies.
This just seems to defeat the purpose of exercise. What’s the point of having the kids run around for an hour just to have them replace all the calories they burned an more with the post-game snack?
And school lunchrooms are no better. These days kids commonly eat chips and soft drinks for lunch. Meanwhile, the days of gym class (and exercise) five days a week are largely gone. What remaining gym there is, some school leaders and parents are fighting against. They don’t want kids wasting instruction time in gym. It’s not unusual for kids to take gym in the summer or get a waiver if they are on a sports team.
These are some of the reasons kids are so overweight and unhealthy.
So the move toward healthier lunch, at least, is a welcome change for many. As an anti-carb, Atkins lover, I’m not sure the sugary fruit juices and sports drinks allowed even under these new rules are much better than soft drinks, but hey, at least they’re trying.
Do you think its time more states took control of school lunch nutrition?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Sports and Athletics
Seeing the parent as a customer
In today’s Dayton Daily News, I wrote about National Heritage Academies, perhaps the nation’s most successful charter school company. NHA is making money and growing fast. I wanted to know why.
Proponents of charter schools say that competition will force schools to pay attention to parent needs — to treat them as customers. NHA schools are a business and they need to entice students to choose their school to survive. So their schools are designed around two central purposes — marketing their schools to attract parents and creating an atmosphere that will keep them coming back.
The schools have very nice “parent rooms.” Other schools have tried that. But the difference is these schools will find a way to integrate a parent into their operation in the way they want, whether it be four hours of volunteering a day or the ability to give their child her diabetes shots without making an appointment.
The NHA parents I talked to complained that traditional public schools throw up lots of barriers. As one told me, they want parents when they want them — to run a picnic or cheer for a band performance. Otherwise, they’d rather you just go away.
My daughter started first grade this year at a Kettering public school. So far, I like the school and her teacher. When I asked about volunteering in the classroom on days when I work at night, the teacher was quick to accept my offer.
Still, I was struck on the first day of school, when a bunch of parents were helping their kids settle into their desks, that the teacher had these instructions for the rest of the week:
“It’s fine that you brought them to the classroom today, but tomorrow, please drop them at the end of the hallway. By the end of the week, please drop them at the front door. This will keep down congestion in the hallways and help them them learn their way around the school.”
This is perfectly practical. But it also sends a subtle, possibly even unintended, message: Parents should stay out of the classroom. In the story, a public school official says parents are welcome in the schools, but “have to realize teachers are there to do a job, and that’s to educate the children.”
That’s also a parents job. And active parents can be an asset. NHA would argue it’s not that hard to integrate their talents into the school. And they’d argue traditional schools could learn from the way successful charters interact with parents.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Can they bring the Bengals to Dayton?
It took months of delicate negotiations, but Dayton Public Schools and the University of Dayton finally brokered a deal that they hope will guarantee the future success of the stadium they share next to UD Arena — Welcome Stadium.
If their plan works, they hope in a few years Welcome will be a premier destination for sporting events. Of course, they want it to continue to host major high school sports like track meets and state football playoff games. But the hope is that a renovated stadium can attract new events.
And the down the line the big prize could be Bengals training camp.
The Bengals training camp used to be at Wilmington College but lately has been held in Georgetown, Ky. Dayton seems like an even better location for the camp — its closer and the bigger city has more amenities.
If Welcome can be turned into a high quality small stadium, it could be a great fit for the Bengals. It’s a potential win-win-win, bringing cash and visibility to the district and UD, creating a better training camp home for the Bengals and offering a lot of excitement for local fans.
That’s still a long way off. The $1 million they’ll spend right now should correct cracked cement, chipping paint and old seats. New turf, a high priority, will probably cost another $1 million. And then press box upgrades are also needed, as are better concessions. That’s before putting any new bells and whistles in place.
Under the deal between UD and DPS, all non-ticket revenue (concessions, parking, etc.,) will be plowed back into a new fund for maintenance and upgrades. So the key to quicker renovations is success with events — the more money-makers Welcome hosts, the more money for improvements.
That’s where UD comes in. They have a fine marketing staff at UD Arena which now will bring its talents to the Welcome Stadium effort.
If the partnership works, Welcome could become a really valuable amenity for the community.
Permalink | | Categories: Dayton Public Schools, Dayton Public Schools, Sports and Athletics
Sex in Ohio despite abstinence class
There was an interesting story in Education Week last month about Ohio middle school kids who had gone through an abstinence program.
(Note: if you are not an Ed Week subscriber, you’ll need to register as a guest to view this story. You can also view the study results at the American Journal of Health Behavior where it was published.)
Case Western Reserve researchers followed up with Cleveland (city and suburban) kids who had gone through the For Keeps program, which trains kids to abstain from sex until marriage. They found the kids in the program engaged in sexual activity at about the same rate as kids who did not have the program.
However, they did find kids who already had sex before they had the program had sex with fewer partners after participating in For Keeps than did those kids who never had the program.
School is a good place to provide kids with information they’ll need in life. But some of what schools do gets pretty far afield from their primary mission of imparting academic skills.
What to teach kids about sex in school is a tough question. Should schools teach abstinence only like this program or more practical lessons about condoms and sexually transmitted disease? Or should this be taught in school at all?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Sex Education
A culture of fear for our kids
It’s been a scary couple of weeks for parents in Dayton.
Two high profile cases — an alleged child rape and a six-year-old child abduction case dominated the headlines and reminded everyone of the need to keep their children safe.
But sometimes I think we take it too far.
When I was nine, I walked about three miles to school across a college campus and through the main downtown area with my brothers, who were ages 8 and 6. If a parent allowed that today, many people would probably consider them negligent.
We’ve gotten more and more fearful of letting our children out of our sight. To an extent, the increased vigilance is a good thing. But I knew it had gone too far when my newspaper published a story last year about a local outfit that was offering self defense classes for kids, beginning at age 4!
There’s a point at which I think we are no longer giving our kids practical advice and safeguards. Teaching four-year-olds self defense moves is going over the edge. A child that young needs to learn some basic precautions. They don’t need to be taught to view all strangers as potential attackers that they may need to fight off.
How do I know? Because crime statistics bear it out.
A quick Internet search brought up this article from the Mayo Clinic about child safety. Quoting data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, it says stranger abductions are exceedingly rare — just 15 percent of all cases. Most children who are abducted are taken by a family member or friend and it’s often part of a custody battle.
In fact, in the Dayton rape case, the attacker turned out to be known to the victim.
Interestingly, stranger abductions are more likely to be older kids. Fifty-eight percent were age 12 or older and 65 percent were girls.
In almost all reported abduction cases (99 percent), the children are found within a few hours or at most a few days. Just 7,000 kids are considered long-term “missing” by the center. That’s out of 73 million kids in the U.S. That means the odds are very good this will never happen to your kids.
If you read the Mayo Clinic story, it has a long list of helpful tips for parents to follow to safeguard their kids without terrifying them.
My advice, simply, is to take precautions but raise your children to be confident, not afraid. Don’t teach them that there is a world of strangers out there wishing to do them harm.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
The Carnival is open
This week’s Carnival of Education is now up at the Education Wonks blog. It’s an excellent weekly roundup of the best blog post from last week on education. Check it out.
Permalink | | Categories: The Carnival of Education
Private busing would cost schools more
Dayton schools finally have in black and white what they’ve been telling people for years — that it would cost them more than twice as much to hire a private busing company, or use their own buses, to transport high school students.
Right now, high school kids are given RTA passes. RTA sells them to the district at a discount. The whole contract costs the district $1 million. Private bus company bids start at more than $3 million.
RTA is under pressure from downtown business to find other options for high school kids, many of whom pass through downtown on the way to school. Business owners believe the kids are part of the problem with unruliness near the downtown bus shelters on Main Street.
But the school district has long maintained that the kids riding the bus to school are not the problem. They say the troublemakers are largely adults and truants and that problems at the bus stops are a law enforcement issue. They also point out that over the past five years the district has closed Patterson High School on First Street and temporarily relocated Stivers to the Five Oaks neighborhood during construction at its site on Fifth Street.
Those moves took a lot of kids off the streets of downtown, yet complaints continue.
To the school board, the RTA partnership makes sense. It costs both the district and the RTA some money, but it reliably gets kids to school.
Most controversial in the report released Tuesday was the suggestion that high school busing be dropped altogether and kids should be responsible to get to schools on their own.
School board president Gail Littlejohn has already nixed that idea.
What do you think is the best way to solve the high school busing problem?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Don’t save for you kid’s college?
The New York Times says stop saving for your children’s college and instead save more for your retirement.
I have to admit I have a hard time with this.
When each of my kids were born, my wife and I set aside some money in a 529 college savings plan and began contributing monthly. My fear is always that the kids will do well enough to get into a great college, say a Michigan or a Notre Dame, but not qualify for enough financial aid. I can’t stand the thought of having to tell them they can only go to a state college because we just didn’t save any money for them.
It drives me crazy when my friends tell me they think their kids should just pay for school themselves, that it would be a good character builder for them. Yes, but what if it forces them to choose a lower quality college? It seems to me that the better education they get, the better their chances of success in life. My main goal is help them to get the best education possible.
But I have to admit, the Times story makes some sense.
In a nutshell, the story says if you saved up the $140,000 it would take to send your kid to an Ivy League school, you’d end up paying every bit of it. But if you saved nothing, you’d probably get financial aid and end up paying just a fraction of the $140,000.
That’s the crazy way financial aid works. The more you save, the more you pay.
Instead of saving in a college fund, experts in the Times story say save more in your 401K. Come college time, you can always take a loan. Come retirement time, a loan is not an option if you’re short.
I’ll be talking this over with my financial advisor. But I’d love to know what your plan is for paying for college.
Permalink | | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Is Ohio an “Island of Ignorance?”
A pro-evolution group called “Defend the Constitution” has ranked Ohio No. 5 on its list of the top 10 “islands of ignorance” in America because of the Ohio State Board of Education’s decision to require science teachers to provide a “critical analysis” of evolution to their students.
Here’s an excerpt from their report on Ohio:
“The 547-page model curriculum, including the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” lesson plan, was passed by a 13-5 vote.
Plans for these lessons include “spurious critiques of evolution that scientific experts have rejected and that were explicitly opposed by the National Academy of Sciences.” The National Academy of Sciences sent a letter to the governor of Ohio saying that the curriculum was defective and had no place in the science classroom.”
We rank behind Dover, Penn., Cobb County, Ga., and Shelby County, Tenn., three school districts that require students to read or hear disclaimers warning kids that evolution is just a theory. We rank behind one other state, Kansas, where a creationist majority on the school board have also added curriculum on intelligent design.
So should Ohio be embarrassed or proud of this ranking?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Evolution vs. Intelligent Design
Elian Gonzalez interview tonight
Don’t miss the Elian Gonzalez interview tonight on 60 Minutes (on CBS at 7 p.m.). Elian is now 11 years old and if you wondered what he was thinking back when he was five and all this intrigue was swirling around him, you have to watch.
I saw excerpts of the interview on the CBS morning show. Among other things, Elian says he desperately wanted to be with his father from the very beginning and he has no good memories of his time in Florida. He said he was very scared the night officers seized him but that he was thrilled when they told him he was going home. On the other hand, he calls Fidel Castro a “friend and father figure” and it’s clear he’s been made into a poster child for Cuba by Castro. So perhaps that explains some of his loyalty.
Either way, it appears the interview will provide an interesting look into the mind of a child who gets caught up in a political battle beyond his comprehension.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Young Children
Race and young children
Here’s what Milwaukee teacher Rita Tenorio’s first graders think they “know” when it comes to race: They believe it’s better to be light skinned than dark.
Tenorio’s article in a magazine called Rethinking Schools (I first spotted a shorter version in NEA Today) centers around an issue I find fascinating — do very young children notice racial differences and sense racial bias or stereotypes?
The short answer is yes.
This was the subject for one of the most interesting education stories I’ve ever written — a story about a program to reduce racial prejudice by focusing on early elementary school children in Springfield.
I remember talking to kindergarten teachers about their kids and they were adamant — six year olds did not notice race, they were very accepting and inclusive, the teachers told me. Then I showed them the research study led by University of Dayton professor Ron Katsuyama. Here’s an except from the story I wrote in 1998 for the Springfield News Sun:
“The study showed they are affected by the stereotypes of society while even their teachers often don’t sense it. On one test, researchers asked children to choose between a picture of a black child and of a white child for a playmate.
“In schools with high minority enrollment (29 to 40 percent), there was no preference,” said Katsuyama. “Schools with low minority enrollment (5 to 10 percent), there was a two-to-one preference for white children over black — even among black children. That was kind of surprising to me.”
When asked how their students would fair on these tests, teachers universally predicted they would choose fairly, picking black playmates as often as white ones.
“That blacks would prefer white playmates is a red flag,” Katsuyama said. “It indicates a prevailing stereotype in our society.”
The research showed as children get older, they increasingly become more aware of race as a source of tension, Katsuyama said. For the study, participants were shown a picture of two children fighting and asked to explain what happened. Third graders were much more likely than kindergartners to include racial factors in their account of how the fight started.
Katsuyama said some cultural or racial tension is natural. Programs like Reaching Our Children aim to impart skills to children to deal with others when tension arises.
“Some conflict may be inevitable when people of diverse backgrounds interact,” he said. “It’s the working through conflict that leads to greater understanding and appreciation of differences. Children are so receptive to these types of experiences.”
There are many lessons here. Among them:
—This is a strong argument for creating diverse schools. As the study showed, when diverse kids attended school together, they tended to understand each other more and show less bias. It’s schools with very low diversity that show the worst signs of bias, which then leads to prejudice.
—We must understand that bias is subtle. It’s not that most people of one race actively hate people of other races. And most acts of prejudice are not violent, they’re small unfairnesses that accumulate, causing frustrations to build.
—It’s up to us, as adults, to create change. Your kids, even your very young kids, observe you much more closely than you might notice. They internalize your preferences and make them their own. They want to be like you.
Modeling good behaviors in your daily life is among the best lessons your child can ever learn.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Teaching and Learning
