Across the Great Divide

Tubby and His Players Could Learn Something There.

Hard to escape the contrast between two local college basketball programs featured on the front page of today's sports section.

A portion of Tubby Smith's team probably could've benefited from time on Jay Pivec's team. And some time across town probably wouldn't hurt the UofM men's coach, either.

But for lack of $118,000 to fund the program, the top community college program in the nation (in more ways than one) will shut down next year.

With his multi-million-dollars-a-year contract, Tubby will pick up more than that with his side jobs — or spill that much on his way to court hearings.

Is Nidal a Symptom of a Broken System?

Isn't this strange?

Nidal Hassan, the US Army psychiatrist who is the sole suspect in the Ft. Hood shootings, is 39 years old and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1997, when he was 27 years old.

It's not unheard of for older graduates to enter medical school after a career change, but Nidal had just finished his undergrad. What was he doing before that?

No one I can find seems to have asked.

And here's a related point. Psychiatry as a specialty is becoming increasingly devalued. Maybe it has always attracted more than its share of impaired personalities, but with the shambles of the mental health treatment system and lousy reimbursement for treatment, the psychiatry is having trouble attracting the best and the brightest.

According to one soon-to-retire shrink, the residency programs are starting to be filled by foreign students with dodgy academic backgrounds. Add to that the social roots and cultural specificity that may have to come into play for successful treatment, and you can see we are heading for a bigger problem than one possibly psychotic guy slipping through his program.

The Speech They Don't Want Their Kids to Hear Tomorrow.

“The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child,” said Brett Curtis, an engineer from Pearland, Tex., who said he would keep his three children home.

“I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”

– "Some Parents Oppose Obama School Speech," New York Times

Here's an excerpt from that hideously manipulative presidential speech:

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. 

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. 

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. 

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. 

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Light Duty.

I'm planning on doing lighter posting as I work on some stuff that is more directly in service to people than a blog, as well as some writing that no one is going to see for a while.

Here's a story about a therapy program run by my sister-in-law that uses horses to help rehabilitate Iraqi vets who have come back with multiple injuries and issues.

I also heard some top teachers on MPR talk today about what the standardized tests really tell us about what's happening in our schools — especially for individual kids and their progress.

As one put it, more or less, the tests represent one snapshot in time. We are taking individual snapshots of each student's progress in the classroom every day and every child is different. Suppose you have a benchmark for children tying their shoes, and on the day of the test, one child can and other can't. If the other child does it a few days later, does that mean the first child is more intelligent?

This certainly squares with my experience in the pre-school classroom. Each kid is in a different place and is progressing at a different rate. What I do that's of any value is to help each kid move forward from the place they are in that moment. It is total fantasy to think that the group of kids should move at the same rate to the same points, and if they haven't, the school or teacher is failing to do its job.

I understand why individual parents may be critical of schools, teachers and classrooms. But it is eye-opening  to spend extended time with a group of kids who are not your own and with people who may not have your abilities and advantages.

How Do Communities Thrive: By Maximizing Wealth or Redistributing it?

The comments at This Road is Designed to Kill You have drifted a bit off topic — from the safety effects of traffic roundabouts to incentives for people to live closer to work to flight from city schools to the influence of school district size on student achievement. (Go ahead and read them if you haven't. I won't make many explicit references here.)

Running through the discussion is a divide that often surfaces here, and in fact simmers under most of what passes for debate in politics today. Whether the topic is health care, schools, the economy, taxes or infrastructure, it boils down to the merits of government intervention versus free market solutions as ways to solve big problems.

Another, less common way to put it is this: Communities thrive by redistributing wealth or by maximizing opportunities to accumulate wealth.

For example, Mark and Jeff had a back-and-forth over whether a single, large school district that allocated dollars first to lagging schools would help improve student performance, especially in inner city schools.

Mark says: "Turn all contiguous metropolitan areas into a single school district, with funding prioritized so as to deal with the lowest performing schools first."

Jeff responds: "The measure that shows the greatest correlation with school performance isn't funding, and it isn't class size. It's school district size. Kids in smaller school districts do far better."

Jeff is correct that studies show smaller school districts tend to have better student achievement, but size matters only insofar as it negatively affects the factors that really produce learning outcomes.

It's worth noting that school districts usually are large because a) they were formed to encompass large city boundaries with their diverse populations and the education challenges that go with them. Or b) they were consolidated from smaller districts experiencing enrollment declines, substandard offerings or funding issues that led them to seek economies of scale. In both cases, upsized districts are a consequence of factors other than pure pursuit of improved student achievement.

Mark is talking about disparity of income between districts, not size; a super district would be just one way to redistribute money to aid lower-performing schools. Of course, a similar move — giving more responsibility for school funding to the state — was tried and then has been slowly dismantled by Gov. Pawlenty. But redistributing school aid dollars isn't really the whole answer, either. Living in economically advantaged communities tends to be accompanied by other factors that relate to school performance, and these advantages are more difficult to export — or to benefit students who are bused in to those communities.

Growth & Justice delivered a research-based report last year that summarized three factors that were most critical for getting students from pre-K all the way through college. Each of these has financial implications, not necessarily tied to what we think of as "school funding."

Quality academic preparation and alignment. Children receiving sustained quality instruction, rigorous curriculum, and meaningful, ongoing assessments are more likely to succeed at the next education level.
Social supports. Relationships between children and adults in early childhood, school, and non-school settings are significant to academic success. Parents contribute to a child’s educational success when they are involved with care providers, teachers, mentors, and tutors.
Access and financial support. Access to quality providers, programs, and institutions places children and students in a position to take advantage of learning opportunities. But limited financial means can be a barrier to access. Subsidized childcare, preschool, and post-secondary tuition grants expand access to quality learning experiences for students at all income levels.

To over-simplify my point, I'd say the education discussion drifted toward comfortable positions for Mark and Jeff, but got richer as they shared the research and the complexities became more evident.

In another post, I'll discuss one other angle their discussion raised — taking personal credit for successes and blaming government for failures.

The Shelter Report: Flushing Paper Towels.

Jon Tevlin, writing about odd bouts of school discipline directed at adults, included the Eagan principal who made a 6-year-old unclog a toilet the kid had stuffed with paper towels. The school board thought his action was inappropriate and degrading to the student and voted unanimously to fire the principal.

I beg to differ, and if there are teachers or administrators out there with similar cases weighing on them, I'd be happy to serve as an expert witness.

I've found myself in a similar situation many times. The only reason I haven't made my three-to-five-year-olds fish paper towels out of the toilet is... Well, actually, there are a lot of reasons.

Here's a diagram of the washroom at the shelter preschool where I volunteer. I say washroom because it's used far more for washing than for the toilet. 

 

We do a lot of hand washing — to teach good hygiene and prevent spread of disease in the classroom. During my morning shift, I'll supervise up to 20 kids through three wash cycles — four, if I stay through lunch. I'm not only directing traffic in the bathroom; I'm keeping track of who has washed and who's taken advantage of the chaos to slip away for snack or lunch.

If there are extra volunteers, I may get some help. Usually, I'm on my own.

Preventing paper towels from being flushed is not my first concern, but it's always in the back of my head. Literally.

The following description is a simplified version of how it usually goes.

1. The kids queue up to the sink, jockeying for position on the two-step stool that allows them to reach the water,  soap and paper towels. I station myself between the sink and the trash receptacle to help the kid at the basin adjust the water temperature, take a minimal amount of liquid soap, spend time washing instead of playing and getting all the soap off before grabbing the towels.
2. I try to maintain a reasonably orderly line with only one kid washing and one kid on the lower step. Sometimes I succeed. I also have to regulate the soap dispenser use by kids jumping the line to stand under it and pump away. It's fun to push the button and get a handful of soap. One push is sufficient for washing; three are the norm; four and above are deviant. At the end of the shift, there is a large puddle of soap on the floor that never made it into a hand — or a face.
3. The paper towel dispenser is on the wall next to the soap. Two towels are more than adequate for drying. Some kids will pull towels until you make them stop. Others pull them before they've washed. A few will run away without using any.
4. Also on the wall is the light switch, which has a motion sensor and an override switch. Some days, it's popular to turn off the lights, other days, not. Don't know what accounts for the difference. Last week, the sensor was haywire and turning the light off. I yelled at a couple kids for hitting the switch until they protested they were turning the light back on.
5. If I have to step away from my station for a second — to break up a squabble, turn the light on or deal with some other mischief — a kid invariably sneaks to the side of the sink and tries to wash... the quicker to get to snack. Since they don't have soap on their hands and it's disorderly to boot, that's not allowed. When they're sent back in the degenerating line, they may be crying.
6. For a kid who's in no hurry, the handicap access bars around the toilet can serve as bathroom monkey bars — a fun but unsafe place to stand.
7. The toilet is not supposed to be used while the group is washing. Because it has an explosive, institutional-strength flush, it's fun to flush just for the noise it makes. When towels are tossed in, they can be gone before you know it, particularly if one kid tosses and the other mans the flush handle. If I told a kid to retrieve the towels from the bowl, they're be gone before I finished my sentence. So I grab them myself.

It makes me happy to think that in a year or two, these kids might still be stuffing the toilet but will put off flushing long enough for the principal to get there and teach them a lesson I never had time to teach.

Today's Preschool Lesson.

Something was different about preschool yesterday. It took awhile before I could put my finger on it.

Each week brings a different mix of kids. Some regulars mixed with new ones and others you haven't seen for awhile. The day started with the usual mixture of crying, hammering, teachers being nudged with books to read, action figures jumping on each other.

Then I saw this new kid knock down a smaller boy and snatch the truck he was playing with. The boy struggled to his feet and was hit in the head with the toy.

A teacher moved over to separate the two, but the bigger boy (his name was 'Cuda) stuck a "wait a minute" finger in the teacher's face and whipped out a cell phone. He hit a speed dial number, spoke briefly into the phone and then handed it to the teacher, who listened for a few moments, nodding.

She returned the phone to the 'Cuda, who now had his foot on the other boy's chest.

Then she clapped her hands and sang, "Time for snack!"

Usually, I help patrol the pre-snack hand washing routine, where kids crowd around the sink in the rest room. Washing is required before eating, but many of the kids go through it on the chance they'll be able to extract four squirts of soap from the dispenser and make a sink  full of bubbles. Others see it as an opportunity to flush paper towels down the toilet.

As I moved to my station, kids weren't crowding to get at the soap as usual or knocking each other off the little step stool that allows them to reach the sink. I quickly ushered three through the wash-and-dry sequence and then returned to the classroom in search of the dalliers.

To my surprise, they were already eating their snacks.

"J-Lo hasn't washed yet," I said to the lead teacher.

"Oh, we don't make them wash any more," she said. "They're free to choose. If they get sick, it's their problem, not the school's."

"But what about spreading disease?" I asked. The preschool is a germ soup just waiting to boil over.

She paused to dispense more Mountain Dew, marshmallows and gummi worms. "Not the school's responsibility," she said.

"They'll still show up in our clinic or the emergency room at Hennepin. The whole place could come down sick! Isn't that at least the Shelter's responsibility?"

"Not for long," she said evenly.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't have time to explain it to you. It happened last Friday. We've been acquired by a group of investors who've converted it to a free market preschool. The entire shelter may be next."

"That was fast."

"The market is fast," she recited. "And efficient."

"But what about the children?"

Her eyes narrowed. "What about the children... what about the children... what about the children," she sang to the cadence of na-nuh na-nuh boo boo, her tone becoming more nasal with each repetition. "That's what people always say when they see a change they don't like. Well, that's no excuse for wasting reasources and overpaying incompetent teachers."

"But... you're a teacher," I sputtered.

"Not any more," she said. "I'm an under-assistant associate director, and if I can make this place go, they'll hire me full-time at headquarters."

"I thought you already were full-time."

"I was, but now I'm on commission. No benefits or base pay, but there's a huge upside. I can get you in on it if you can recruit me some more volunteers"

I noticed kids were lining up outside the rest room. Some were squirming and holding their crotches. 'Cuda stood in the doorway. From one kid, he demanded a matchbox car before letting him in. He extracted a quarter from another. A girl gave up her stash of gummi worms when it was her turn.

Another girl was crying and jumping up and down. She apparently had nothing to offer 'Cuda. Then he smacked her.

I jumped in and seized 'Cuda's upraised fist. I grabbed his phone hand, too.

"He hit me!" the girl moaned.

"She hit me first," 'Cuda said evenly.

"He said, 'show me your booty.'"

"We don't want to hear words like that in preschool," I said sternly.

'Cuda was not impressed. "Then you're a crybaby," he said.

"I'm not a crybaby. Do I look like a crybaby?"

He looked me stone cold in the eye and said, "Everybody's a crybaby."

Shelter Report: Syllables and Bru-tal-i-ty.

Down at the shelter today, things started out okay. Kids were sharing and being cooperative. I made Play-Doh turtles for some. We had a reading period in which the kids rapped out the number of syllables for words like seeds (click), broccoli (click-click) and tomato (click-click).

I was willing to cut some slack for the mis-syllabification of  brock-lee, but I had to file a protest over t'may-doh. I'm only a volunteer, but I'm also an English major, after all, and I've never forgotten the day I missed when they covered syllables in third grade. The teacher let a girl in class bring me up to speed, and she did a good job. I've been impeccable on hyphenation and click-click-clicks ever since.

One boy in the class is pretty disruptive. He's been known to bite and he's quick to hit others, often clawing at the face. He has a strong tendency to grab a toy he wants, but that's just not the way we do it. During reading time, he's restless, purposely intruding into the space of other kids and being a distraction rather than paying attention.

All the kids have their moments of this, but D requires a constant watchful eye. While we're trying to work with him every day to socialize him better, the more immediate focus of attention is to make sure he doesn't hurt someone or cause discord and disrespect to spread.

We were outside on the playground where my role is to be more physical with the kids. Some days that means keeping balls aloft or spotting kids on the equipment. Others, I might be a monster chasing them around. Or making sure they only pretend to eat the wood chip birthday cake. Today, I was giving shoulder rides, letting kids admire their height in the reflection of the windows, pull leaves off the lone tree or grab ahold of the brick pillars and then pretend to fall so I could catch them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lead teacher snatch D and sit him down decisively on a bench. It was a familiar move — remove him abruptly from where he's causing trouble and isolate him. A quick grab-and-plop contains an element of surprise and a little reminder that adults really do have the upper hand. Once he starts acting out, D doesn't respond to subtle appeals to reason, but he'll listen a bit once he's been cowed.

On the other side of the fence, residents come outside to smoke. Literally, the no-smoking sign in the playground is back-to-back with the smokers' benches.

A very large woman sharing a cigarette with another woman saw the teacher sit D down. She started shouting about how the teacher had jerked him and slammed him on the bench. I'm calling D's mother to tell her how they're beating her son. That's why I won't put my kids in day care! (No. I'll make them sit out on the hot concrete while I smoke cigarettes and ignore them.)

She stormed around trying to enlist other people to join her outrage. D's mother, who was at work, no doubt got a call from Angrywoman and was needlessly distressed over this. The teacher may face a complaint. She was asking us, did you see it? Did I sit him down too hard?

We've all done the same thing with D when he had to be separated from the other kids. We're firm and we don't take his crap. But we also see the good in him and keep trying to bring more of that out, to teach him how to play with others, to show him that bad actions have consequences. We have a responsibility to keep all the kids safe.

Angrywoman is living in a shelter with her kids. Maybe there's no man around. She's hugely overweight and has a bit of a beard. Life isn't going well for her right now. She's got to fell pretty powerless.

So she sees a white woman act roughly toward a black kid, and she's not going to stand for it. Her outrage is genuine and her protest feels righteous. In this case, she's going to make a difference.

I get all that. But in this case, she's wrong.

A Sore Throat Called Hope.

Last week following my volunteer gig, I came down with a rip-roaring case of pink eye. (Think two eye sockets full of aioli-drenched shrimp.) Thursday as I cycled in for a return engagement, I began to reflect on the string of low-grade colds and scratchy throats I've had all year — and began to think about whether my commitment to working with homeless pre-schoolers might be permanently wearing me down.

Maybe, I should rethink this.

On this day, about half the kids were new. And though I work hard against having any "favorites," some of the kids I was hoping to see were not there. One of the first boys — let's call him Carlo — was trying to escape because he wanted to be with his mother. I held him and tried to distract him. We are like rodeo clowns in that respect. Eventually he calmed down. Before long, he was with Alicia, and unaccountably, they held hands all day. Then it was on to Devon, who is a handful ("raised by wolves," says one volunteer, not unkindly). Today, he pissed in the wood chips on the playground.

A new boy — Johnny Buffalo is close enough — is only three, but may weigh close to 60 pounds already. His language is reasonably advanced for his age, but his emotional maturity is fragile. He lumbers into situations and tries to impose his will, then shrieks when things don't work his way.

Tre is the same age but tiny and mischievous. He's had recent trouble with toilet training, so he was being rewarded for going to the bathroom. Now, he wants to be in there all the time. He's sweet and open and his pants are way too big.

Sienna came late and was clinging to her mother. It looked like she would never let her go. But soon we were bonded. She sat with me during song time and she showed me how her mom taught her how to tie her shoes. I showed her how my mom taught me. Funny, we both wore Airwalks.

Jess and Javon both knew their letters very well. For some of the kids this age, the alphabet is still a string of arbitrary sounds in a jingle. They could tell lower case letters that matched with the capitals. Javon carried Woody from Toy Story all day. Jess's hoodie needed washing, I could see as I supervised one of the day's many hand washings.

Elise had a nail job, hand and foot, that an Edina matron would've been very happy with. Marlon's dad had done him a custom cut that had me considering asking for an introduction. Both happy, bright kids.

A giant beach ball was introduced on the playground. The kids ran around trying to keep it aloft. Cole cried because he wasn't getting his turn every time he wanted. The group thing just hasn't clicked with him yet. Princess had some unspecified trouble, too. There was contact during the scrums, but this was something else. She worked it through before I could figure it out with her.

There was a lot more to the day. The kitchen sent up 12 meatballs for 13 kids and Jess was the unlucky one. She was crying when I headed out. The meatball reinforcements were still on the way.

This stuff is trivial, chaotic, repetitious, unpredictable, infectious, touching, funny, deep. These kids are precious, maddening, inspiring, loving, undisciplined, hungry, bright.

Spend a day like this and you will never, ever scoff at Hope.

And you will go back the next Thursday, sore throat and all.

The New Torture.

Lost amid the Cheney Family Torture Tour and GOP grandstanding with the "Keep the Terrorists out of America Act" is an announcement from the University of Wyoming that its Cheney International Center (CIC) has named John Yoo to the newly endowed Cheney Chair of Enhanced Interrogation Studies. 

"Enhanced Interrogation Studies is an exciting new multi-disciplinary field," said CIC director Jane Goodwell. "Recent events have dramatized the importance of finding enhanced techniques that will be effective in interrogating fanatical stateless combatants. Too many current methods rely on brutal centuries-old practices and do not take into account advances in medicine, brain science, bio-stimulation technology and bridging cultural differences. 

"Vice President Cheney has passed the torch to his alma mater, and we are proud to take up his quest for information that will keep America safe.

"Professor Yoo has demonstrated a profound understanding of the legal and ethical dimensions of exacting confessions and actionable intelligence without torture. In his work at the center, he will collaborate with a diverse cohort of UW researchers and thinkers, ranging from physical education, photography and music to corrections, livestock studies and destination management." 

The CIC is located in the school's Health Sciences Building, where "putting the departments together would allow them to do more than they would if they were apart."

*****

Okay, I might've stretched a few details. But this torture story is real.

Next Sunday, Katherine Kersten returns to the Strib with a weekly op-ed column. So does Nick Coleman. Although the ad says "familiar faces in new places," one of the faces looks to have had a makeover.