A Rainbow from Akil
I've been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles this week because my grandmother is in the hospital for a few days. She's much better today.
My cousin's son, Akil, drew a rainbow that is on the wall of her room at the hospital.
January 14, 2006
January 12, 2006
Re-New Orleans
College sudents returned to New Orleans this week. Loyola Univeristy, which is the university that I attended, was expecting 90% of its students to return.
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article about one family who took their daughter to start classes at Loyola University in New Orleans for the second time.
Once they had returned safely to New York, the Linns' friends said they would be crazy to send their daughter back to New Orleans. Ms. Brathwaite spent the semester taking courses at Saint Peter's College, in New Jersey. But she and the Linns were determined that she would return to Loyola. Ms. Brathwaite says she had already made friends there. And she wanted to get involved in helping the community recover....
A few days after leaving New Orleans for the second time, Ms. Blake-Linn was still prone to crying. "You can't go through something like this in life and not think constantly about the individuals you met and what you saw," she says.On the plane home, she says, she broke down. "I was glad to let it out. And I felt really good after that." What makes her feel even better is talking to her daughter on the telephone, hearing her excitement about her classes and her friends.
"She's doing so well and she's very happy she made the decision to go back," her mother says. That, she says, was the closure she really needed.
Loyola has a fascinating series of upcoming lectures dealing with the city and the storm.
December 20, 2005
Justin Berry
Kurt Eichenwald’s report in the New York Times on Justin Berry is absolutely powerful and shouldn’t be missed. Eichenwald wrote a masterful series of articles on Berry and the online world he entered for five years through his webcam. The Times also posted a video interview with Justin.
It’s a troubling piece for a few reasons:
- It’s painful to read about the place that loneliness took Justin.
- The article indicates that Justin is one of many kids who has gotten into an underworld online.
- Also, I’m conflicted because, as an educator, I see the Internet as a potentially useful and creative tool that can be used for educational exchanges that are good. The conflict is troubling.
In case you missed the article, or you don’t want to register with the Times, here’s the gist:
When Justin Berry was thirteen years old, he acquired a free webcam to use on the Internet. He was a lonely boy and he saw this as a way to make new friends. However, within minutes of going “live” he was contacted by an adult. The story gets deeper and Justin began to reap financial and other material benefits from engaging people he met online.
Kurt Eichenwald met Justin while doing research for the Times. In a sense, Eichenwald rescued Justin and got him into therapy for drug use and found legal help that eventually got Justin and his story to the FBI.
Justin is now nineteen and is living with his mother in Bakersfield. He has reconnected with his church and is preparing to attend college.
I hope that readers will take the time to read Justin’s story. I’m sure that it’ll be told widely and I suspect that Eichenwald will write a book on it.
December 15, 2005
Big Day
Lots of news today:
- Drake got into Puget Sound
- Joe got into Santa Clara
- Audrey got into Colby
- Charlotte got into SMU
- Kevin got into MIT and
- Evan got into Lehigh.
There's lots of other news ... but this is the teaser.
December 13, 2005
Excitement in Central Pennsylvania
Greg Hogan, president of the sophomore class at pricey, private Lehigh University, an accomplished cellist, son of a pastor, last week added another mark of distinction to his résumé: Bank robbery suspect.This story gets my attention because Lehigh's dean of admission is a very good friend of mine and a former roommate's father is a professor, and some of my brightest students currently attend Lehigh, and a number of my current students are in the applicant pool for next year's class.
It seems that Lehigh's sophomore class pesident, and the son of a Baptist minister, is suspected of robbing a bank last week.
There really are things going on in Bethlehem and Allentown Pennsylvania!
December 12, 2005
"Feeling Safe" Online
The Chronicle of Higher Education carried an interesting article this morning about a study at Emory University and the University of North Carolina on the effectiveness of anonymous online depression-screening of students by university psychologists. Early results are that it is effective in reaching students who are reluctant to seek face-to-face help with their troubles.
The approach proved effective because it allowed the students to establish rapport with a counselor before making face-to-face contact, researchers say. The online intervention also allowed students to hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Many said they had avoided traditional therapy because they feared that their fellow students might stigmatize them for seeking treatment. Using the Internet for personal interactions is second nature to students who constantly send e-mail messages.I don't know the ends and outs of this study, but I have a couple of thoughts on why it might be easier for some people to open up online:"This is how students communicate these days," says Jan A. Sedway, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at North Carolina who was the co-investigator in the study. "And to not have that as an option for counselling leaves a lot of students out."
- I think that there is a “crisis” of listening our culture, or rather not listening. What I mean by this is that often when a person listens to someone else, they use that as a jumping off point to tell what’s on their mind – which is usually not related to what the person who is trying to talk wants to say. So the person who took the risk of opening up is left listening to something unrelated to what they had to talk about. And, they’re also left thinking that their life and troubles are worth keeping the other person’s attention.
- Related to this is something I read a few years back on the success of online dating. An informal report was that couples who started their relationship online felt that they communicated better. The assumptions drawn by the report was precisely what I noted in the first point: each person felt that they were able their own story without being distracted by other things. Evidently, there is a need to “tell one’s own story” in our society.
My thoughts aren’t to the depth of the Emory and UNC studies, however, they’re thoughts I’ve come to from talking to students, especially, and from observing conversations that go on around me.
Learning to listen is an important developmental skill.
December 09, 2005
Tulane Reorganizes/Loyola Raises Funds
Although I did not take classes at Tulane, I had a lot of Tulane friends as an undergraduate. Loyola University, my university, and Tulane are side by side on St. Charles Avenue in "Uptown" New Orleans. The universities are literally right next to each other. In fact, the story goes that the Jesuits who formed Loyola sold Tulane the land to build the university.
Loyola came through the storm in better shape than the other New Orleans universities, with almost no physical damage to the campus. Tulane's sustained some damage, but it wasn't as heavy as that of Xavier or Dillard, the other private universities in the city.
Loyola did spend $30 million paying faculty and staff and maintaining benefits last semester. The University has launched fund raising to recoup those expenses. Here is a flash movie Loyola has posted that includes a soulful/New Orleans piano background.
Here are excerpts from The Chronicle of Higher Education on Tulane University's reorganization following The Disaster as they call Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:
On Thursday university officials announced a sweeping restructuring that will slice $60-million from the annual budget and will result in the layoffs of 233 faculty members, the elimination of 14 doctoral programs and 5 undergraduate majors, and the suspension of 8 athletics teams.
- The university will go from 45 doctoral programs to 18. Fourteen will be totally eliminated: in economics, English, French, historical preservation, law, political science, sociology, water resources planning management, social work, and five in engineering. Other Ph.D. programs will be combined.
- At the undergraduate level, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering will be reorganized into two new schools: the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Science and Engineering. Five undergraduate majors will be eliminated, four in engineering, plus exercise-and-sports sciences.
- Of the 233 faculty members laid off, 53 are from academic departments and 180 are from the medical school. The medical school took the biggest hit because the smaller population of New Orleans will result in fewer patients and less revenue, Mr. Cowen said.
- All undergraduates will enter the university through a newly created undergraduate college, rather than through applications to individual schools.
- The university will maintain all 16 of its athletics teams, but temporarily suspend training and competition in eight: men's and women's golf, men's and women's tennis, women's swimming and diving, women's soccer, and men's track and field. The teams will compete for the last time in the spring, and the university will continue to honor the scholarships of athletes even after they stop competing. By keeping all the teams, the university meets the minimum required to stay in Division I-A of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Longtime observers of higher education say that such an overnight transformation of a major research university like Tulane is unprecedented in the modern history of academe in the United States.
"You have to go back to the Civil War, when William & Mary closed for a few years, to see anything comparable," said David W. Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.
Whether Tulane will be able to remain a major research university is a big question. Although the institution is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, with an $810-million endowment, Tulane is "not starting from a position of strength, at the top of the heap," Mr. Breneman said. The cutbacks, coming at a time when so many universities aspire to be among the top institutions in the country, are "a horrible blow" to whatever Tulane's ambitions were before Katrina.
But Mr. Cowen strongly disagreed with the assessment that Tulane's plan would shrink the institution's standing over the long run. Decisions about which programs to eliminate or combine were made based on reviews completed over the past several years.
"We basically cut the programs that were not the strongest," he said. In a way, the hurricane prompted the university to make decisions it could not make before the storm hit. "Under the current way universities operate, you can't make these decisions under normal circumstances," he said. "It takes an event like this."
He said the university would establish a new program called the Partnership for the Transformation of Urban Communities, that will support educational, outreach, and research programs stemming from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. The institution will also add a community-service requirement for all students and an interdisciplinary seminar for freshmen.
December 07, 2005
"Intelligent Design" Professor Attacked
I've posted a new podcast.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported this story:
The University of Kansas religion professor whose proposed course on the "mythology" of intelligent design sparked an uproar last month said he was beaten up early Monday morning by two men who were angry over his disparaging remarks about Christians....Mr. Mirecki, who is chairman of the religious-studies department at Kansas, had proposed a course called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Other Religious Mythologies." The title itself angered intelligent-design proponents, who objected to being lumped in with "other religious mythologies."
My latest podcast addresses this incident.The podcast is longer than it should be. But, if you listen to it and can't spend an entire 40 minutes, be sure to fast forward to the end to listen to Coco Mbassi.
Music in this podcast includes:
- Theologians Wilco
- A Lack of Color Death Cab for Cutie
- Nothing But the Blood Jars of Clay with the Blind Boys of Alabama
- Jesus of Suburbia Green Day
- Prayer Sarah McLachlan
- Mbaki Coco Mbassi
- Iwiye Coco Mbassi
December 05, 2005
"Early Decision" Now Playing in Santa Monica
From The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles:
In New York, parents tell horror stories about the pressure to get their 5-year-old kids into the right kindergartens, the kind attended by Woody Allen’s kids. In Los Angeles, the social cachet may be even more skewed.“So and so from the Lakers’ kid goes to some school,” says playwright David Levinson, whose play, “Early Decision,” at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, has tapped into the Zeitgeist about the mania surrounding college admissions.
“I never really think of the Lakers as being emblematic of the world’s greatest scholars,” says Levinson, yet to some going to school with the child of a Laker or a big-time Hollywood director seems to suggest a bizarre status.
December 04, 2005
Politics, or the Beach?
I'm rarely political in public. I'd rather go to the beach.
However, Brian brought up a recent discussion in his AP Gov class about the candidates up are running for the open seat in the 48th congressional district, to replace Chris Cox who is now head of the SEC. The district includes the southern Orange County coastal communities.
Brian made a vague reference to candidate Jim Gilchrist that solicited strong responses from a few of us who read his weblog. Gilchrist is the candidate for the American Independent Party, which was formed by George Wallace when he ran for president in the late 1960's. The party exists in its original incarnation only in California. It has been known in other states as the Constitution Party, the U. S. Taxpayer's Party and the American Party. Gilchrist has chosen Mexican immigration as his firecracker issue. He formed the Minuteman Project to gap holes in Arizona's border with Mexico, which is a project that California's governor gives a thumb's up.
Candidates who run for office and are elected on single issues often are slow-learners when it comes to shifting to broad concerns. Political careers are rarely successful or healthy when they're built on lightning rod issues. I think that California's current "Govinator" has found that out in short order.
Well, enough rambling. It's time to go to the beach.
November 30, 2005
Westmont: C.S. Lewis’ Wardrobe Goes on Display
My first appointment as a college admissions officer was at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA.
This article was posted on Westmont's website:
Movers will be packing up a special Westmont wardrobe this week for a brief engagement at the Cerritos Library in hopes of inspiring youngsters to read. Westmont’s wardrobe was once owned by C.S. Lewis and closely matches the description of the one in his book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”“The Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” hits the big screen, Friday, Dec. 9. Westmont’s wardrobe was featured in this month’s National Geographic.
Westmont acquired the famed wardrobe in 1974 with the help of former professor Arthur Lynip who was in England studying British literature. The wardrobe was taken apart and shipped to the United States, and it has been housed in Westmont’s Reynolds Hall.
“I think people are so fascinated by the Narnia stories because they open a door, as it were, to another world,” says Paul Delaney, professor of English. “The wardrobe is real. But it opens a door to a world not merely real but true.”
The wardrobe will be on display from Dec. 5 through Dec. 9 as part of the library’s Operation Read—C.S. Lewis Exhibit. Other Lewis artifacts will also be on display.
Movers will be packing the wardrobe, Wednesday, Nov. 30, for its moving date the following day.
November 15, 2005
Oh, Kevin!
I always have a camera around my office, and students feel comfortable using it. Almost always I find photos on the memory card that I didn't take.
Tommy takes the most pictures and he took some today during lunch today. (BTW - photos by Tommy are NEVER flattering because he's usually pretty annoying when he has a camera in hand.) Kevin got hold of the photos, and, during one of his many moments of boredom, he posted this adapted photo on his Flickr.
November 14, 2005
Rebecca Goetz: "It's OK to Blog"
Rebecca [(a)musings of a grad student] is a grad student at Harvard and she blogs.
Rebecca wrote an article that appears in this week's The Chronicle of Higher Education on academic blogging. She writes in response to prior Chronicle articles that warned academic job-seekers to keep a low profile on the web because popping up too high on Google could come back and bite you in the job search.
Rebecca counters that blogging can be a helpful way to connect with other academics and communities of people who share similar interests. She's quite proud that her blog attracts a readership that extends beyond her family. And she encourages academic search committees not to fear making a job offer to a blogger.
The meaning and purpose behind a blog is, of course, in the eye of a blogger. For every blogger who posts only serious scholarly material, there will be many more bloggers like me who mix the personal and the professional in fun and quirky ways. My advice to job committees: If you have a blogger in your pool, give the candidacy serious consideration. Job seekers who blog are thoughtful, interesting people who are fascinated by the possibilities that this new medium has for enhancing their personal and professional lives. Do not fear the blog; embrace it. You'll be glad you did.I admit that I blog with plenty of filters because I am an academic, who is in a public position, and I blog under my real name, and I know that my readers are not a controlled audience. Although I've had a web presence since the mid 90's when Robby helped me put up my first homepage at MIT, I didn't start blogging until I stopped working at universities and moved into an independent secondary school - which made the filters more important.
I also have to admit that I’d like to see blogging brought into the academic mainstream. I like seeing kids having healthy expression on the web that is thoughtfully interactive and fun. The hidden areas of the blogsphere that encourage anonymous voyeurism are frightening, but that shouldn’t condemn the entire medium.
Bravo! Rebecca for making a good point.
November 11, 2005
Arts & Letters Daily
The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes a daily service of
philosophy, aesthetics, langugage, ideas, criticism, history, music, art, trends, breakthroughs, disputes, gossip
Arts & Letters Daily aggregates lots of interesting stuff. For example, today there is an article from Der Spiegel on the globalization of taste and how American winemakers are making inroads into European markets.
Another is this article on instinct and proof as an elastic concept.
November 09, 2005
Out of Uniform
It's Homecoming Week at St. Margaret's. Besides the Big Game on Friday night, each day of Spirit Week has a theme and kids can be out of uniform, which is a treat like non other to most of the students in upper school. The themes have been Geeks and Freaks and Decades, so far. Today is Super Heroes. Tomorrow is crazy socks and ties.
Here are some scenes from the week so far. As some of the kids have noted, it's amazing what you can find in your closet.
Oh, and there's this massive new science center and field house going up adjacent to the upper school building.
November 04, 2005
The $100 Laptop for Students
October 31, 2005
The Art of Liberal Arts
Day one of the College Board Forum ended with a colloquium, which was a conversation with Lawrence Weschler, David Byrne, Thelma Golden and Sarah Vowell.
Here’s a brief bio on each:
- Lawrence Weschler, the moderator, is a graduate of University of California: Santa Cruz. He covered politics and culture for The New Yorker for twenty years, retired, and is currently the director of New York University’s Institute for the Humanities.
- David Byrne was born in Scotland and is the co-founder of the Talking Heads, the band he led from 1976 to 1988. He is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
- Thelma Golden attended independent school on Long Island and is a graduate of Smith College. She is chief curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem. She previously served as a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
- Sarah Vowell is absolutely fascinating, in my mind. She was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Her parents moved to Bozeman, Montana when she was eleven – a college town with a library. She didn’t have the talent to make it in music and started writing music reviews for the Montana State student newspaper and eventually starting writing essays for National Public Radio’s This American Life. She was the voice of Violet Parr in The Incredibles and this summer she was an editorial page writer for the New York Times.
The conversation was on teachers who inspired them. Thelma Golden has an art history teacher who took her students to art museums in New York City – less as field trips, but more as encountering the world beyond the textbook. Sarah Vowell had the music teacher who had the heart to tell her to hang up her trumpet and move on from performing music, which led her to writing about music.
However, Lawrence Weschler made a critical point at the end of the colloquium when he talked about his daughter’s experience as a student taking AP World History and AP Art History: The students were excited by the French Revolution in AP World History, but the teacher couldn’t spend time to explore the particular subject because of the race to make it to the exam. And, in the Art History class, his daughter came up with an assignment to write multiple choice questions on a topic being discussed. Again, to better prepare for the exam. His point was that college courses are not taught that way.
It was a wonderful conversation with fascinating presenters. However, I don't think that the College Board is able to understand that its AP curriculum isn't producing intellectual excitement the way that these panelists experienced it with inspirational teachers.
I'm not a fan of the Advanced Placement program and these types of conversations leave me torn each year. I know that school are not going to get rid of the Advanced Placement program, but hearing the message of inspiring teaches touches me deeply each time I hear it.
October 30, 2005
Report From the Colleges
This is a great article on students who were discplaced from New Orleans.
Around the country, host schools have worked hard to make the students feel welcome. Loyola of Chicago, which accommodated about 300, hosted a Midwest-themed welcome barbecue and a party to watch a New Orleans Saints football game. Washington & Lee University had Cajun night in the dining hall. Santa Clara University in California gave students skateboards and offered a one-time class called "Skateboard Etiquette 101" -- figuring it would help students both get around and feel more Californian.Amherst took its visitors shopping for the winter clothes they suddenly needed, and is even paying for them to fly home for Thanksgiving. In the classroom, it organized tutorials to help them catch up after missing the first two weeks of class. College officials say the students are doing fine academically.
I wore a Loyola University New Orleans sweatshirt last night because it's fairly cool here in New York. A lot of people stopped to ask me if was displaced by the storm. A number of university admissions deans told me about kids who were displaced and are enrolled at their institutions. The dean from the University of Puget Sound told me about a pariticular student from Loyola that they enrolled. The student is a premed, applying to medical school, who is in his senior year; he has endeared himself to the Puget Sound faculty and they don't want him to return to New Orleans in January.
October 24, 2005
Richmond
So I get a call this morning from an admisisons officer at Richmond University in London.
The conversation goes like this:
We’re putting together a counselor advisory group and your name came up.
Can we fly you to London to visit the university during your spring break in March?
I said “Yes.”
Richmond is an American University in London.
October 21, 2005
iTunes from The Farm
Apple has essentially given Stanford Univerity its own section of the iTunes store: http://itunes.stanford.edu.
October 18, 2005
At the British Consul-General's House
I was invited to an event tonight in Los Angeles at the British Consul-General's home. It was fascinating.
First, let me tell you how I got invited. My friend, Gareth works for the British government's enterprside development mission in Orange County. Gareth, who is Irish, and who was a tutor at Leeds University, got me an invitation for this event, which was for Queen's University of Belfast, Ireland. It was Queen's first event in California and Gareth thought that since I work with kids who are choosing colleges, I should learn about Queens. I'm glad that I went and I had a great time.
I was one of the only non-Queens University people there and the only person who works with kids in the process of picking their university.
The Consul-General is Bob Pierce. Bob moved to Los Angeles four months ago. He has had a long history as a diplomat and was the key player for the British government in Belfast managing the Northern Ireland peace process. His wife is an American from Virginia.
They were gracious hosts for this intimate event.
Their home is in fashionable Hancock Park, in the Wilshire district of Los Angeles, near Beverly Hills. I enjoyed seeing that part of Los Angeles.
October 16, 2005
A Chance Encounter on the Boat to Santa Catalina
This article was in Sunday's Orange County Register. It's about an encounter the writer had with seventh grade students in our middle school.
This article makes some points that are similar to Kevin's thoughts that I posted about.
Sunday, October 16, 2005 Sandy McDaniel: These kids received the right modelingMy friend Christina and I were on the Catalina Flyer headed for the island and we had been playing cards for about 30 minutes when four seventh-grade boys asked us what we were playing.
"Gin rummy," we answered.The boys walked away but returned shortly, dropping $1 bills onto the table, "Can we ante up?" they asked. Christina and I laughed, pushed their money back to them and scooted over to accommodate their energetic bodies.
We decided to play 21. The boys were excitable, which drew a large group of their friends over to our table. The seventh-graders, all 120 of them onboard, were from St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano; they were on a three-day science outing to Santa Catalina Island.
The time flew by. There was heckling, cheering, coaching and a general celebration over each card that was played. All the young people were kind and respectful. As we pulled into the harbor, the game ended. All the young people, especially those who were playing cards, thanked us profusely for letting them play.
I laughed, touching my heart as I spoke, "Today is my birthday, and you were the party. I thank you!" The boys started it, too low and slightly off-key, and then the girls joined into a robust chorus of "Happy Birthday." My heart was full and remained so all day, remembering a short period of time when a group of young people made my world a better place.
The headlines are filled with tragedies and travesties, some perpetuated by our youth. While it is clear that we are raising a generation of children who are less thoughtful and kind, there are exceptions.
How do you teach children thoughtfulness and kindness? By modeling. Your children watch you! Your reactions, your attitudes, your negative and positive behavior patterns and your beliefs are soaked up by the little sponges with two legs, your children.
Do you connect and interact with the people who service your life? Do you call the checker at the market by name? Do you thank someone who assists you with something? Do you stop to help an elderly person navigate a doorway or put groceries into a car?
Do you listen when someone is talking to you? Do you speak only kind words, especially behind someone's back? Are you argumentative and defensive when someone talks to you?
When you get angry, do you communicate your feelings? Or do those feelings go underground and pop up in explosive reactions or comments? If you ask a child what is wrong, do you jump all over that child's answer with a put-down or negative comment? Do you get too angry about some things?
Children do not know how to be in the world, so they follow the people around them. As they grow older, you won't wonder what traits and qualities you modeled for your children because they will be mirroring back to you everything they learned.
Kevin Muses on Honor
I enjoy being in a school community particularly because I am arround people who are learning new things and who are, often, thinking big thoughts.
Being part of a community with students during their upper school years is even more rewarding because moral consciousness (to borrow a term from somewhere) emerges in some of them along the way.
Kevin, who is always thoughtful, has posted musings sparked by Friday's Honor Assembly.
The best censorship is the kind you do yourself.
Like I could comment on the fact that, at our honor assembly, Geoff spoke, at one point the importance of respecting everyone. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes that "Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be." Therefore if we are to respect everyone, that is to say give a complacent acceptance of their ideologies and views, we are not loving someone. Christianity teaches that we should "love your neighbor" - that this is not simply to respect them, but to support them. I understand that Geoff entirely meant this, he meant we should love our neighbors, etc, etc. But I just want to emphasize how difficult it is to truly love your neighbors, to love your enemies. To help them, to understand their interests, to be connected to them is love. And if we are merely going to respect them, to simply acknowledge their existence, then we are failing to truly love our neighbors, which is more difficult, but ultimately more enriching goal.
September 25, 2005
WOTD: gimcrack
Dictionary.com/Word of the Day: gimcrack
gimcrack\JIM-krak\, noun:
A showy but useless or worthless object; a gewgaw.
adjective:
Tastelessly showy; cheap; gaudy.
September 23, 2005
Writely
September 14, 2005
My Secret to Happiness
BBC NEWS: Philosophy students 'a happy lot'
Yep, I was a philosophy major at Loyola.
July 21, 2005
Failsafe
They're losing their minds in the UK, as well:
LONDON (Reuters) -- The word “fail” should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase “deferred success” to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.
Reuters posted this under the heading: Get ready to e-mail this one to your friends...
June 30, 2005
Digital Tsunami Hits Austin
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the University of Texas is the latest university to pack up the books, move them out of the library and put in computer clusters, lounge chairs and coffee shops.
June 29, 2005
think Venture Grants
I wasn't aware of MTV's partnership with AmeriCorps. My friend, Owen, who came to MTV from the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency that covers AmeriCorps and other service organizations, hadn't mentioned this to me.
This program appears to offer kids an opportunity to start something in their communities.
June 21, 2005
Distract Them Til They Learn Something
True, I’m a geek; I actively nurture my fascination with technology; and I have lots of gadgets around me even as I write this post.
However, I still enjoy sitting down to read a book. I get pleasure out of “seeing” an image in my mind’s eye. And I’m glad that I have the concentration and interest to do so.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: An Education Course Puts Students in Director's Chairs
As a future teacher, Kara L. VanLoozen spends a lot of time thinking of ways to keep students from nodding off at their desks. With that in mind, her project for an education course at the University of Texas at Austin has a driving beat, cool special effects, and a story line that should keep even the most reluctant learners sitting up straight.
This project at the University of Texas appears, in my mind, to “throw in the towel” and accept that students can’t concentrate.
My cynical side concluded, as I first read this article: Oh, they’ve taken a page from the Mega-Church play book, which uses as many visual aids, lighting effects and tricks as possible to keep folks “alert” through their short, yet casual and entertaining, services.
June 12, 2005
Commencement
Starting with lunch on Monarch Bay, Graduation Day at St. Margaret's (<--photos) was just fine.
June 11, 2005
Baccalaureate
>div>If you look at the photos I took last night, you’ll notice that I’ve started to let my hair grow out, despite the "salt and pepper" notes of maturity – and despite that it reveals much more salt than pepper!
However, being the Californian that I am, the look is nicely highlighted by my rich summer hue.
"Mr. A" with Kenton, David, Alex, Sean, Kyle and Coleman
Last night was Baccalaureate for the Class of 2005. St. Margaret’s is the first school that I’ve worked at that has had baccalaureate. It is a religious service. The service was accented by full academic and ecclesiastical regalia. The kids and their parents felt the pomp and, clearly, it is honoring to them.
A student spoke as did the Reverend Canon. (I love the “high church” aspects of working at an Episcopal school!)
Some of my wonderful colleagues: Mollee, Jim and Peter
Graduation will be held outside at 5:00 this evening.
April 29, 2005
Even the Education Sec'y Needs a Little Help
The New York Times > Education > 'Soccer Mom' Education Chief Plays Hardball
At the press breakfast in April, she swept in guzzling a large Starbucks coffee and fielded questions in a refreshingly unassuming manner. She was asked how she would help her 17-year-old daughter select a college."It's a confusing process," she answered. "I'm the doggone secretary of education, and I'm fumbling around at Barnes & Noble trying to find the book to figure it out."
This makes me feel like a doggone specialist.
April 24, 2005
Time to Choose
I spent a good part of three days this past week helping Stu Silverstein of the Los Angeles Times research this article on seniors making a final college choice by the end of this week. He did a nice job.
Like lots of ambitious high school seniors, Joe Kelly applied to a passel of colleges for this coming fall, 16 in all. And with his strong record at St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, he was accepted by half of his choices.
But making a decision is proving complicated as Kelly faces the annual May 1 pick-your-school deadline widely enforced by four-year campuses around the country.
February 13, 2005
Parents Behaving Badly
The uncomfortable image of the hovering mother, being far too physically close to her (in most cases) son - is something that I see almost every day working in a so-called elite private school.
From Time Magazine: Parents Behaving Badly
It was a beautiful late morning last May when Richard Hawley, headmaster at University School in Cleveland, Ohio, saw the flock of mothers entering the building, eager and beaming. "I ask what brings them to our halls," he recalls. "They tell me that this is the last day the seniors will be eating lunch together at school and they have come to watch. To watch their boys eat lunch? I ask. Yes, they tell me emphatically. At that moment, a group of lounging seniors spot their mothers coming their way. One of them approaches his mother, his hands forming an approximation of a crucifix. 'No,' he says firmly to his mother. 'You can't do this. You've got to go home.' As his mother draws near, he hisses in embarrassment, 'Mother, you have no life!' His mother's smile broadens. 'You are my life, dear.'"
February 06, 2005
Fat, Drunk and Stupid
"Fat, Drunk and Stupid is no way to go through life, son."- Dean Vernon Wormer
National Lampoon's Animal House
National Public Radio had a piece on actor John Vernon and reported his death earlier this week.
As an edcator with a history in higher education, I have to acknowledge Dean Wormer's passing.
February 05, 2005
Garden State and Other Stuff
OK, so I picked up on this later than everyone else. The Garden State Soundtrack is amazing.
One of my students brought his copy in for me to listen to. It's a great compilation.
A couple of people have brought up questions about the school I work at. They're interested in the amount of "kid contact" that I write about. I have to admit, this school is unusal in that regard. For the most part, students are very comfortable spending time in the administration area of the school, and we're comfortable having them here. As an example, there's a chess set in the principal's office. It's common that he's working away at his desk during paper work or computer work, and students will have a chess match going on in the other half of his office.
My office has an extra desk that students use to study or hang out at if I'm not in an appointment or on a confidential phone call. And, I have a very nice deck off of my office with double doors that open up to the deck. Since we generally have very good weather here in Orange County, my deck is usable most of the year. Yesterday, a small army of 11th graders came in with their lunches and iPods and we had lunch on my deck. It was about 75 degrees here yesterday, in case those of you who are having a different type of winter are interested in knowing about the weather.
That's the way our school works. I'm glad of that. Since St. Margaret's is relatively a small school, we know our students pretty well.
So, now you know.
January 26, 2005
Occasional Quotes: Harry Crews
"Nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design."
January 15, 2005
College Prowler
I forgot to mention that I talked with Luke Skurman the other day. Luke is the young entrepreneur and founder of College Prowler.
Luke and most of his staff are recent gradates of Carnegie-Mellon University and took this on as their first job out of college.
The company and their guide books have gotten a lot of national press. I was interviewed by the Washington Post last year when I worked at Sidwell Friends School.
Roland Allen, director of college counseling at Sidwell Friends School, says the Prowler series is popular.Luke and I talked about a new project he hopes to launch."It's like the Cliffs Notes of college guides," he says. "The books offer a perspective that kids can relate to."
While the guides they produce are cool, Luke, Chris and the Prowlers are pretty cool and are worth checking out.
January 14, 2005
Secret to a Happy Life
This piece from the San Francisco Chronicle reports on a middle school career day in Palo Alto, which is the community next to Stanford University. Actually, the school is named for Leland Stanford's wife, Jane.
Here's the article: PALO ALTO / Bump, grind your way to riches, students told
Maybe we should put it to a vote:
Talking to middle school students about a career as an exoctic dancer whose earning power increases with bust size...
A) Appropriate
or
B) Inappropriate
The school blames the substitute teacher, who was in charge of the classroom at the time, for allowing the presentation to head south.
December 11, 2004
Talk Back: The LA Tour
I mentioned that I was on a tour of seven Los Angeles area colleges this past week but I hadn't posted on them. Here're some quick thoughts:
Chapman University, Orange: A couple of good professional friends, who I call The Mikes, have been running the admissions show at Chapman for a long time. Chapman is a university whose time has come. The university has done some impressive fund-raising and made vast improvements to the physical plant. The new film school is rapidly becoming a major player in the Los Angeles film school market.
Coincidental to the university's emergence, the city of Orange, which lies at the border of Chapman's campus, woke up to find itself r