11D

Girls and Sports

The Times had a crappy article on girls and sports this week. The cover of the magazine has a picture of girl with her head wrapped in gauze getting bonked on the head with the ball. Ouch.

I skimmed through five pages of stories of how girls are getting terribly injuring playing sports. I was looking for the point somewhere. Way back towards the end of the article after it jumped to the page before the crossword puzzle, it said something about how coaches need to train girls differently than boys and then things will be fine. 

How many people read that article to the end to find that point? How many people saw the cover, read the first couple pages, and walked away saying "girls shouldn't play sports"?

The first paragraph of that article should have been a quote from one of the injured girls talking about how important sports were to her life and how she willingly put up with torn ligaments and stress fractures, because she loved winning games.

My knees are destroyed from running nearly fifty miles a week all through high school and into college. My back was so fucked up in my senior year that I could barely walk at the end of the cross country season. What did I gain from all that pain? A whole lot of self confidence. A work ethic. Leadership skills. It sure beat waving pom-poms around.

I have a box of medals up in my attic and two scrapbooks of press clippings. Each scrapbook has been carefully marked to note which races I won and which ones I earned a personal best. Twenty years later, I still remember my time for the mile, two mile, and cross country.

Warrior-girls rule, even if they limp a little.

The Reserve Pool Teachers

There are 600 teachers in the New York City school system that don't have permanent teaching positions, but are still collecting full salaries and benefits. The school system is shelling out $81 million over two years to these reserve pool teachers. These teachers have had their positions eliminated, due to personnel shifts, and until they find new employment, they have to be available to substitute.

A new report suggests that many of these teachers didn't even apply for jobs this year and may be unemployable for a whole range of reasons.

Randi Weingarten of the UFT defends this practice.

5% of the workers at my husband's company will be let go this year. Downsizing is a bitch, but it's the real world.

The Middle Class Crunch

Here's a fabulous Elizabeth Warren speech discussing the main concepts from the Two Income Trap. She compares a family in 1970 with a family today. In short, we have less disposable money, despite having two incomes. Health insurance and housing costs are killing us. We're spending more on houses not for the granite counter tops, but for the schools. Families would rather live next to toxic waste dump in order to have better schools for their kids. College is now a mandatory requirement for middle class status and college is expensive. If someone loses their job, there is no safety net, and the family ends up going bankrupt.

Families with kids are under enormous financial stress.  She thinks we're moving from a three class society to a two class society. (via Corrente and Wendy)

 

In Defense of NCLB

There are many tragedies that have followed the War in Iraq. The 4,000+ dead American soldiers and the countless dead Iraqis are top on the list. Further down the list is the demise of education reform.

Before this war started, education reform was high on the political agenda in this country. Every political opinion poll showed that Americans cared about it. Education reform was on every politician's todo list. The media carried countless stories about schools. The panels for education policy at the political science conferences were packed. NCLB was supported by a bipartisan group and its only critics were the teachers' unions.

Now everybody has forgotten about education reform, and NCLB is considered, rightly or wrongly, as a failure. It will be decades before anything that ambitious is tried again.

Harry Brighouse writes that at least two positive outcomes have come out of NCLB -- more data and slightly more equity.

Like Harry, I think that we have to go beyond the now tired criticisms of NCLB -- teaching to the test, unfunded mandate -- and think about a feasible replacement.

The Cookie Police

We've been talking about the difference between parents and schools in upper middle class towns v. middle class towns. Here's another difference for the list -- the cookie police.

Ian's birthday is next week. When it's Jonah's birthday, I drop lift a couple dozen Dunkin Donuts at his school and drive away. Ian is bussed to the upper middle class school district. For Ian's birthday, I've been given a list of "acceptable foods." This list includes air popped popcorn and carrot sticks. NO CUPCAKES! NO DUNKIN DONUTS!

My buddy in the super rich school district on Long Island was telling me about a recent Board of Education meeting where parents were demanding the same rigid food codes that Ian has.

I love my friend, but she's a food Nazi. She said, "Laura, can you believe that one woman got up and said that if the school forced parents to only bring in brown bread for lunch, her kids wouldn't eat anything. What woman feeds her kids white bread in this day and age." Um... Raising my hand.

She said, "On the 100th day of school, the kindergarten teacher had them lick a lollypop 100 times. Why a lollypop? Couldn't they have counted buttons?"

She really believes that nutrition should be part of the curriculum and that kids should be taught that cupcakes and donuts are evil things.

Fingernails on a blackboard.

I want my school to teach my kid how to add and how to read. I don't want anybody telling me what I should feed my kid. My kids are doing just fine, thank you. They get their fruits and vegetables everyday and a donut doesn't ruin their appetite. They have no cavities and are slim and muscular.

What's so difficult about moderation?

Regional Education

We were talking about metropolitan governments this week in my State and Local politics class and education on the blog. I've got a post that combines both topics.

When Ian was two and a half, he was diagnosed with a severe speech delay. He had a few months of the state's Early Intervention program, which was a disaster.

When he turned three, the town was given the responsibility for his education. The town had a special education pre-school where they dumped all the kids with special needs. The problem was that each kid had something different and needed their own particular type of help. Ian was especially odd, since he couldn't talk at all, but could read. The teacher hadn't encountered anyone like Ian before. For two years, he did not receive appropriate treatment.

Then it was time for Kindergarten. A sympathetic administrator put him into a special program outside the district. It's a regional special education program that deals with kids who are just like Ian. It's within the public school system, but it collects the one kid in town A with Ian's issues and another kid in town B with Ian's issues and puts them all in one classroom.

After two weeks in the new school, we noticed improvements in Ian's speech. His handwriting was outstanding. He was happier. He was doing so well that by November, we had revised his IEP.

What are they doing differently? Well, the program is geared toward kids with speech problems. The teacher and I correspond daily about his progress. They focus on social skills and keep the academic goals high. If he gets upset, they write down what they want him to do, since his readings skills are much higher than his audio-processing skills. They have highly trained assistants in the room. His classmates are more like him. His classroom is in a regular school, so he plays with regular kids at recess. The teacher is trained to deal specifically with kids like Ian and not kids with the range of other special education problems. He's doing more challenging academic work than Jonah did in Kindergarten. We want to keep Ian in this program for as long as possible.

Despite the wonderfulness of this regional program, there are a lot of forces that prevent more programs like this from starting up. Our town isn't all that thrilled about its tax money traveling outside the town. Well, that's the biggest problem and the only one worth talking about. It's money. People want the money kept local.

We're in the midst of a horrid budget problem in New Jersey. Corzine has been floating one proposal after another to deal with the upcoming doom. One proposal that went no where was to increase the tolls on the local highways.

Another proposal was to consolidate services among the ridiculous amount of small towns in New Jersey. Does each town really need its own police department and its own school district? No. It would be much more efficient to merge the administration of those programs. And, judging from Ian's experience, it would have much better outcomes. But this proposal hasn't gone anywhere either, because of the entrenched interests in local towns and the localist political culture in New Jersey.

Ian's school model could be expanded to meet the needs of all sorts of kids -- the highly gifted, athletic, artistic. Schools could be set up to attract parents who want a traditional education versus those who want a more progressive agenda. Too bad there are so many forces working against this system.

Keeping Up With the Jones' Schools

Last Friday night, I deposited the kids at my folks' house and drove into the city to meet my husband and some friends at the Landmark Tavern. It was a splendid evening. I caught up with Andrew and Eliza whom I haven't seen in far too long. We all met on the Jacob Javitts playground in Washington Heights when our oldest kids were just toddling around the slides. Some of my favorite people in the world I met at that playground, and I still miss those days.

Sadly, nearly all those friends moved away from the old 'hood in search of better schools for our kids. Andrew and Eliza moved out to Ridgew--. After several months of a fruitless search for an affordable shack in Ridgew--, we ended up in a nearby town with a reputation for good schools and a good commute into Manhattan. The population was more working class and the homes were more modest than Ridgew--, but all assured me that the schools were fine.

At the bar, I talked with Andrew and his new friends. We compared notes about our kids' new interests, how big they had grown, the color of their hair, and what they were doing in school. Andrew's kids were getting much more than mine were. His third grader had nightly writing assignments. The parents were regularly invited into the classroom to work with the kids. My kid can't even get his teacher to check his homework. He has no writing assignments.

I left the bar a little sick. The next day, I set up a meeting with the school principal to discuss curriculum. Steve and I also discussed whether we should sign up Jonah for enrichment classes and whether we should move.

On the one hand, we really like having regular people for neighbors. I like that my kid isn't growing up thinking that all parents are doctors or lawyers. He doesn't have the entitlement and the arrogance of the kids that I grew up with. There are such high expectations for kids in those schools that a number of my high school classmates lost their marbles in college. Every once in a while, I get one of the kids from Andrew's town in my college classes, and they think that they are better than they are. On the other hand, it would nice if my kid learned how to write a proper essay.

I'm going to meet with the principal on Thursday. She's a smart woman, so I'm curious what she'll say.

Weekend Journal

A couple of weeks ago, Jonah came home with an assignment for a project. He had to drive around town taking pictures of five buildings in our community and seven community workers. Then he had to print up the pictures and adhere them to a poster board with some labels.

Since not many eight year old are able to drive a car, take pictures, or print pictures on photo stock paper, this was really a project for the parents. Thanks a lot, Miss C.!

Of course, this project was put off until the night before. Both kids were driven around town in the pouring rain and in near darkness. We shot pictures of the library and the borough hall and the local church. I surfed around the web looking for pictures of policemen and firemen. I let Jonah pick which librarian picture to use, though I suggested that he ignore the pictures of librarians making out with each other.

Two hours later, Steve came home in the rain with the poster board. I printed out the pictures and showed Jonah how to neatly glue stick the pictures onto the poster board and arrange them, so that it didn't look like the local church was crushing the policeman. He was very proud of the final effect. I drove him into school the next day, so the poster didn't get mashed on the school bus.

I thought it looked okay. My kid wouldn't be shamed at school the next day. But who knew what the other posters looked like? Mrs. Coyle and Mrs. McSheer could have conspired to make something super fancy.

This had to be the dumbest projects ever. I spent hours of work on a third grade poster that really had no educational impact on my child. But what really ticked me off was that I only got a B+ on the project.

At the ripe old age of 42, you would think that I would just let this roll off my back. But no, I sent Miss C. a series of e-mails protesting my grade. It was not exactly clear from the original assignment sheet that each individual object needed to be labeled. Why had she taken off points for not doing something extra? It took me days to get over getting a B+ in a third grade class.

Effort and Intelligence

Random screams and shouts signal that the school bus has let the children out at the corner. I pull myself away from the computer and holler out the door, "Joooo-naaaah!" He says good-bye to his buddies and dumps his backpack at the front door. Thus begins the long march of homework, sports activities, and dinner before bed.

I have to brace myself for homework activities. I'm always a bit tired by that point, because I've put in a full day at the college, but there are worksheets that have to be completed and spelling words to be memorized. Jonah's brain is all rattled from the state of nature on the school bus and isn't ready for neat, orderly homework. His teacher puts smiley faces on his work without checking it, so I have to make sure that he really gets the work.

Thimbles, Needles, Aprons, and All Other Strange Things

Ian is in a great, new school. The staff at his special education kindergarten is working very hard to improve his speech. I'm so happy with the program that I'm rethinking my prior commitment to inclusion. I just had a meeting with his school, because he has already met all of his yearly goals. (Thanks for the link, Dave. I'll write a post about it next week.)

His teachers often use worksheets for reading and speech. Ian is supposed to identify an object and explain what that object is used for. The problem is that the worksheets assume that kids come in contact with a mom who's a good housekeeper. Someone who sews holes in their jeans, instead of tossing them out and buying a new pair. Someone who cooks nice meals and protects her clothes with an apron. Someone who regularly sweeps and mops the floor, instead of leaving it for the cleaning lady. Someone who irons shirts, instead of dropping them off at the drycleaner. Poor Ian doesn't have one of those moms.

As his therapists drill Ian with new words and phrases, he's coming across completely alien objects. Needles, thread, thimbles, mops, irons, aprons, dusters. What is that weird shit?

Objects that Ian is familiar with: takeout menus, wine bottles, cell phones, Blackberries, computers, scanners, color-coded calendars, remotes, drive through windows, and game systems.