Why isn't God in Schools?

I get to see images like this on Facebook all the time.  What’s worse are the ill-informed people that like or comment about how schools are terrible because we don’t allow prayer or God in our public schools.  Another one of my favorites is that we don’t say the pledge because the word ”God” is in it.  The reality is that these folks just don’t know what goes on in schools.  I have on occasion commented back on these images and posts to inform them that it is required by law to allow a moment of silence each day and the pledge must be recited each day.  In my building we do this every day.

I rarely will let readers into my personal religious beliefs because I am a very secular Christian.  That doesn't mean I am a Christian of convenience, it means that I try to live the gospel by example in the world we live in and do nothing to throw my faith into other’s faces.  Just this once I am going to break from my comfort zone to challenge those who think God is not in schools.

Let’s look only at my school because that’s all I know.  Every day I have several tables of students who pray before lunch.  Hand in hand, macho boys praying.  During the month of December our students raised over $1000 for charitable causes in our community.  Several students give up their lunch time to help our intellectually disabled students eat and do PE.  Every Tuesday dozens of kids meet with a youth minister for First Priority, a faith based club that meets at recess time for worship.  All of these activities are Godly and many students take part.  They are not forced to, they willingly participate because they are strong in their faith.

The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. (Psalms 145:18)  These kids understand this.  Even at school, beyond church walls they call on him.  They are not afraid of the stigma, not afraid of being made fun of.  They take God with them when they leave home. 

My friends the question should not be why isn’t there God in schools, it should be why God doesn't go to school with our kids?  “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Exodus 33:14).  I have a number of kids that cuss and disobey at school but then come and tell me on Monday how great church was.  This is prime example of how kids are not taking God with them everywhere they go.  As a school administrator I can’t tell them how to worship or who to worship and so on.  That must be done in the home.  If people want God in schools, they must teach their children how to take him with them when they walk out of the house.  They will not be alone and they will not be told that they cannot do so.  The United States Supreme Court has protected a student's right to worship but as a matter of separation of church and state, the school cannot lead them in worship.  It is is simple as that.  Parents: encourage your kids to take God to school.  Don't blame the school for this task not being done.

Who Teaches Kids How to Behave?

Like any other red-blooded American, when I feel personally challenged I take it to Facebook.  Actually I don’t but I was particularly challenged this week by one of my parents and I did ask the philosophical question that was burning in my mind.  Should schools be teaching students to have a sense of social justice and fairness or should be just let them handle problems how they handle it?  This is not really a huge dilemma.  This question is always being asked when it comes to content.  Should we teach skills or should we provide opportunities for student to learn through experience?  With behavior this is a little touchier as the result can lead to consequences and broken hearts. 

I appreciated the comments my Facebook friends left in regards to the question.  One could not take a side on the issue, “whose idea of social justice are we talking about?” he asked.  That’s a fair question considering that parenting values and cultural norms can be different from place to place.  A couple favored the old days of paddling.  While I love telling my old paddling stories to my students, it is to no avail.  We can reminisce all we want but in Illinois, corporal punishment is against the school code.  The other distinction to be made is that my small sample of commenters are your typical middle class, well adjusted, good parenting adults.  There is no representation from the other family structures that I work with and they are the majority believe it or not.  There are more blended families and single parent families than ever before.  That’s not a bad thing but the ideology will generally be different than my commenters.

I guess the question evolves into who is the catalyst for change in how we teach children to behave?  Is it the institution of school or home?  I mentioned paddling but that is going by the wayside.  There are only 19 states that still allow paddling and Mississippi leads the way with the number of students “hit”.  Did eliminating paddling cause the poor behavior that we complain about?  The current debate is whether or not it is actual discipline or child abuse.  With more than half the states not allowing child abuse, I mean corporal punishment, it seem as if the people of that persuasion are winning that battle with their legislators.

What about out of school suspensions?  There is an attack on those too.  Research is showing that using out of school suspensions 1) target minority students, 2) increase poor student behaviors, 3) lead to low academic achievement and 4) make them feel unwelcome at school.  No link to follow below.  Google it and you will find the evidence.  You might find information on the new Illinois law that requires schools to track the minority students suspended to ensure they are not disproportionately suspending minority students.  So it seems that there is a disconnect between what families and schools believe is effective behavior modification for kids.

I have decided to put my money on teaching the behaviors we need to see out of our kids.  Not my favorite ones but those that will translate into successful adult lives.  While society is disagreeing, there are still kids to teach and a huge responsibility for schools to make them successful. Haven’t you seen the nation’s test scores compared to other nations?  We suck at doing school(Insert sarcasm).  A sound approach to school and peers will make them good students and people.  Schools now have to balance social skills and content while everyone else dukes it out over what is right and wrong with schools.  So the next time I’m told that I’m creating a school of tattle tails and sissies, I will say yes I am.  I believe in conflict resolution before fighting and not the other way around.  If you punch out your boss every time you are mad, you will be unemployed.  If you can’t read, write or do any math you might still be unemployed.  They are related skills and must be taught in schools.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934191.html

Common Core Frustration

Now the that the school year has started and the homework routine is taking shape, tempers are flaring over the Common Core.  I completely understand people's frustrations and can sympathize.  I have been helping my daughter with her math just about every night and the days of doing drill and kill are over.  She is not being assigned 30 problems with the goal in mind to simply get an answer right.  Now, students are asked to rethink how they find answers and to be critical of their own work.  As a building administrator I am in no real position to take a side as to whether or not the standards are "good" or "bad".  I have the task of making sure my teachers have the tools to teach them to my students.  In this post I would like to offer some Common Core thought to fellow parents from a person in a unique position to see it a different way.

First off, the Common Core is not a bad thing on its face.  The way it has played out has given us a bad taste in our mouths.  You see, when No Child Left Behind was the mandate, all the states had their own standards but were held to a national expectation.  In essence, a state could have very easy standards to help their kids test into compliance or a very difficult set of standards and hurt their kids and schools.  There had to be a level playing field if a national mandate was to be fair.  It became a political issue when the transition began, people got mad about harder homework and the fight against Obamacare started to fizzle.  There always has to be a boogeyman.

I will use my daughter as my example.  The last sheet I helped her with was multiplying base ten exponents.  This was daunting to my 5th grader because it was new.  A quick Googling of the Common Core State Standards would show that this is to be taught in the 5th grade.  It is also to be covered in 3rd and 4th grade too.  It was  because the school had not yet moved completely into the CCSS and jumping into them was a shock to the system.  It's a completely new skill that will not look new to the next classes to come in.

There also seems to be a "new" way to do math with the common core.  I will say that the reason for this is two fold.  Yes, the CCSS do ask kids to think more critically about the process of math.  Yes the CCSS do seem to be a year beyond what kids were doing last year.  My question is this, is it wrong to expect more out of our kids?  The other way to look at it is that schools rushed to purchase CCSS aligned textbooks.  My personal approach was to let our teachers review the standards, examine the materials they had and be able to answer the question, "do we have what we need?"  The answer was yes because teachers are still artists and content experts.  If we rush to buy new books then everyone feels like a robot to the CCSS.  Creative teachers know how to make it work.  Besides how much has math changed?  Textbook profits are soaring right now because we were looking for a magic bullet.

Right now we are upset over the transition to the CCSS.  The idea is not a bad one.  Our kids do need to have better critical thinking skills and new careers require more math and technical skills.  It cant be the worst thing in the world.  We will survive this and another new movement in about ten years.

My sole disappointment with President Obama

A Facebook friend posted an article about the job growth in the coal industry despite the alleged war on coal that was taking place.  I re-posted it and of course it met some opposition from a coal company employee.  I respect his position because he works in the coal industry.  Even if I don't agree with the coal company owner's tactics, i do respect the man in the trenches everyday.  In my response I realized that in the same span of time that the article was referring, thousands of education jobs have been taken and the nature of schooling is being rewritten as we speak.  Now we are in my trenches.

I agree with Diane Ravitch in her book "Reign of Error" that the election of Barack Obama was a disappointment for education.  Don't get me wrong, I am an Obama supporter.  I voted for him twice.  I believe his values guide his leadership and my values closely match up to his. However, the appointment of Arne Duncan led to a flurry of education policies that encourage too much testing and expanding charter schools, both of which lead to the privatization of our schools.  

Schools cannot become big business like everything else in our lives.  Schools seem to the the last people centered organizations we have and allowing companies to take over in the name of so-called accountability, will crumble our democracy.  Dr. King on e said that a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We need to act to protect the last sacred piece of our democracy, schools.  How you ask, in the voting booth.

I could care less which side of the isle you lean on.  Don't be fooled by election politics.  Demand that real issues are addressed.  Here are some issues that effect education and don't be fooled by the talking heads. 

1.  The Common Core is not a political issue.  It became a political issue when the Tea Party was running out of ideas.  The standards are not all bad for Illinois. They are much better written that the old ones and we do need a universal set of standards if the Feds will continue to run with No Child Left Behind. 

2.  School funding.  Schools cannot adequately be measured unless they are funded equally.  No child in Illinois is better than the other but the current funding formula allows that type of thinking. School funding reform must take place to make sure the kids in poorer districts have the same shot as everyone else.  

3.  Poverty is a universally concerning issue but it impacts a child's education more than most people realize.  If you candidate is not working to grow the middle class and reduce poverty stricken families in this state or our county, they should not be your candidate.  

Partisan politics has ruined many aspects of our nation, but to play games with schools and kids is a whole other level of unforgivable. Demand more of our leaders.  I still support president Obama even if I completely disagree with his education policy. I believe he can guide us to a bigger middle class and that good old fashioned prosperity that our grandparents used to tell us about. If I have to try and create mindless robots that know how to test well, at least they will be well fed and provided for.

What's Wrong With These Crazy Kids? (Part 3)

The final contribution to the question, What’s wrong with these crazy kids?, would be grown ups.  Yes, adults are what’s wrong with these crazy kids.  While we find ways to blame the crumbling of society and social institutions for this mess, we fail to see our own miscues.  Let me give you a micro example of what I mean.  Recently, Gov. Pat Quinn signed another bullying bill into law.  More regulations for schools that have little to do with what they are supposed to be learning.  All this government intervention when the predominant risk factors for one to become a bully are found in the home, not at school.  Factors such as seeing abuse in the home, permissive parenting, and enduring sibling bullying are key predictors.  Despite this we take aim at our legislatures and simply provide them with something to chat about come election time.  When will we look in the mirror?

Lets take a look at some data trends concerning the behaviors and attitudes among young adults.  You know, the ones that will have children.  In a national survey conducted as recently as 2011, 77% of women felt that having a child out of wedlock was okay.  70% of men felt the same way.  This is a growing attitude despite what we know about how well kids do in two-parent households.  More kids are raised in poverty in a single parent household and are less likely to be read to as a small child.  Shouldn’t the percentage of the not okays be this much?  The percentage of women who are married at the time of their first born is down and the number of women who are co-habitating is up.  That’s not to say that the child is not being loved and supported but the institution of marriage is not perceived as valuable as it once was.  We know what the divorce rate is but do we know the consequence of it?  Only about 75% of men reported that they contribute child support regularly.  That’s the response from the men.  I would have loved to see the response from the women if I could have found it.  It is also reported that 1.9 million children live in homes that are headed up by a relative that is not the child’s parent.  Our homes are breaking.  You can blame it on the economy but we have been on this slide for a while now.

 What is it that will not allow us to look at ourselves before we lay blame on the government, or the schools or whatever comes along?  Is it easier to lobby a state legislature to pass a law that is vague before we form family support groups in our communities?  I’ve said before that we need to keep our eye on the ball.  The stakes are higher when it comes to our kids.  To keep with the same analogy, why worry about who makes the ball and not worry if we are swinging at the right pitch.  These crazy kids need us to parent them and be champions of the values that help them to be better kids.  If we don’t have our house in order, they won’t either.

 

http://www.childstats.gov/index.asp

http://www.aarp.org/relationships/grandparenting/info-12-2010/more_grandparents_raising_grandchildren.html

What's Wrong With These Crazy Kids? (Part 2)

For part two of this extended post I would like to focus on my profession.  My disclaimer is that this point of view has nothing to do with my job or how I carry it out.  This is simply an observation of a social ill that I happen to have a front row seat for.

Schools are changing.  Well, lets say schools are being forced to change.  There is a movement in this country to demand customer service in our schools.  The school house has always been the place where middle class values and local culture has been transmitted to the students who will become the future of that community.  Those days are gone in most communities.  Lets look at some examples.

Schools have become the bad guy.  I check my news feeds everyday looking for education related news.  When I step outside the news of my professional sources and look at mainstream media, I will always find stories about schools.  The problem is that these stories are about the very small percentage of incidents of when people do lousy things in schools.  Throwing away lunches, school shootings, sexual offenses against students and so on.  This is what is broadcast to the masses and shapes public opinion.  Don't get me wrong, when bad things happen there needs to be an appropriate response to protect our children but school coverage is much like airline crash coverage.  When a jet goes down resulting in casualties, there is a huge uproar and there should be to a degree.  I realize that people lose loved ones and it is very hurtful to the parties involved but these incidents are a very few compared to the number flights that operate smoothly everyday.  Schools are the same way.  For every one student that is genuinely affected by a lousy teacher, a hundred million are either taught or saved from their difficult environment.  The problem is that all teachers pay the price when one teacher screws up.

How does this manifest itself?  Lets take this perception and apply it to behavior management in school.  When I was a kid, we were swatted with a paddle and it was completely agreeable with our communities because corporal punishment was acceptable in the home.  Growing distrust has eroded the symbiotic relationship that the school and home used to have.  Our house rule was that if you got it at school you would get it twice when you got home.  This is not a call to bring back swatting but there is big difference between then and now.  Now, if you got punished at school there has to be a legal team set up, online petitions, and appearances at school board meetings just to prove my baby didn't do what that dumb school says he/she did.  Schools are forced to change.  They have to spend a great deal of time bridging these gaps with the community and developing creative discipline solutions to prevent the drama and distraction that an angry parent has created.  Schools and parents need to be on the same page.  When we are not, the kids see it and use it as a tool.

Here is one of my favorites, sports and coaches.  We have a problem of spending too much time on bad coaches and not seeing how good the good ones actually are.  Yes there are bad coaches but that could be a series of books rather than a series of blogs.  My very first angry parent experience as an administrator was over football and ironically my worst ever school experience was over football.  The dad of a 5'2", 100 pound freshman was very upset that his son was not getting to practice with the varsity squad.  His could can do this, do that, run this fast and so on.  My simple response that maybe the coach did not feel he was ready for that type of environment and that he should focus on the playing opportunities that he was getting for a kid his size.  This was not good enough.  He went on a rant and explained to me that the football coach from a neighboring town has already told him that he would love to have his son and would play him on the varsity team.  He went on to say that if this school would not recognize his talent, then he would move him to that district.  My response: tell them we said hi.  I probably shouldn't have said that but my disdain for customer service in schools would not let me hold my mouth.  The truth is over the last seven years I have had several students leave my schools for what they consider to be greener pastures.  They have come to find out their personal troubles with schools always follow them.

My fear is becoming a business opportunity.  When opportunists see this conflict a chance to make money always follows.  Its the American way.  There is a movement to privatize schools in this country and my friends, this is not good.  The boom in charter schools and increasing calls for choice are making a corporate enterprise out of one of the last pure things in this country.  I recently posted a story to my Twitter page about the FBI conducting raids on a charter school company(?) and my thoughts were of corruption.  Some of these schools were in Illinois and tied to Mike Madigan.  We already put up with this crap in every other aspect of our lives and now we must keep it from over taking our schools.  A very good once over of the pros and cons of school privatization can be found at http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-education-be-privatized but I will tell you that I feel it is not a good path to travel.

Schools are a community building enterprise and if we don't treat it that way, it will become a money making enterprise.  We all have to step up and show responsibility for OUR kids or we wont have that opportunity any more.  Our loss of the old sense of community and trust helps make crazy kids and we all share an obligation to get it back.

http://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/13/fbi-raids-19-gulen-charter-schools-in-midwest/

What's Wrong With These Crazy Kids? (Part 1)

As an educator and administrator I often hear parents ask this question, "What wrong with these kids these days?"  The answers do not lie far from us but we seem to always miss the ball.  In the first part of this three part blog, I would like to look at the most powerful thing in our kids lives, media.

Media surrounds us.  From the first days of television to the information that gets shoved into our smartphones waiting for us to consume it.  It is all around us literally.  This is not a bad thing but what has come through media over the past few decades is a matter of discussion.  Lets take television to begin with.  In 1956 when Elvis appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, his trademark pelvis was shoved off of the screen.  By the third time he appeared on the show, cameras would only show his upper half.  Fast forward to the last ten years or so.  I often joke with my students that the M in MTV stands for Morse Code.  Why, because every time I turn it on all I hear is beeps.  That's not to mention the pervasive conduct and dastardly moral situations that arise in many reality programming that is aired.  I hear what you are saying, well that's cable television and if you pay for it should be allowed a little more leeway.   What about network television?  I saw in the popular show "Scandal" a couple having sex doggystyle over an office table.  That makes the hips of Elvis look a little tame to me.  My point is, the evolution television content is troubling and the examples of such could go on and on.

I was 12 once and I could not be completely sheltered from dirty words.  I remember sneaking my NWA and 2 Live Crew tapes into my room and listening to it them for hours on end.  The difference today is that back then, you had to sneak those tapes around and today you just have to turn on the radio.  The lyrics in many pop songs may not have feature the F word or the N word but you can definitely tell what is being said around the loose efforts of censorship that does take place.  Take the song "Guerilla" by Bruno Mars as an example.  No cuss words but we know exactly what he is talking about.  My 10 year old daughter knows every word somehow so I tunr the station if it comes on.  I try not to keep up with pop music but I feel like I have to.  There is some dance/techno song out now that has no words except for the line "We're just f**king animals!" in it.  Seriously?  Maybe I am now officially old but come on man.

Here's a can of worms - the internet.  Wow the questionable content flows like wine doesn't it?  We as parents can have some control over my first two examples but this one is a bit of a trick.  You can get any crazy thing you want off of the world wide web and there are very few safeguards for parents.  Well, I should say few that the kids have not yet figured a way around yet.  My son and daughter love the game Minecraft on their iPads.  I think its great.  It is a great tool to foster creativity if you can deal with all the lingo and zombie stuff.  Like any body, when you want to improve your space on Minecraft you simply go to the internet and surely you can find ideas.  My five year old discovered this and he found Youtube videos with walkthroughs and how to's. Great right?  Wrong, the narrator used scores of profanity in his video and we had to shut it down.  Now, it is fair to say that my five year has no clue what those words mean but we cannot let him think that it is acceptable language.  If we let is slide, we are letting the internet do our parenting and that is what has been happing with our kids.  They are cultured to believe sex and being sexy is normal, then we send them to school and tell them its not.  We wonder why they are so frustrated.

Who is to blame for all of this?  There has to be a scapegoat.  First I will say look in the mirror and I need to as well.  We have to be the change we want to see.  That's should sound familiar.  There is a reason though that we have went from covering Elvis' hips in the 50's to allowing cartoon characters in South Park to have gay sex on screen.  As always, follow the money.  The FCC determines the standards for censorship and over the past few decades it has gotten way more liberal.  Now you Obama haters should not start any new bumper stickers just yet.  I said past few decades.  A review of congressional contributions by the media industry shows a large growth from 1998 to now.  The largest donor is Comcast.  The largest recipient, Alison Grimes who is running against Mitch McConnell for a Kentucky Senate seat.  Traditionally they contribute more to Democrats but the flow of money is troubling.  Just like anything else that smells funny in this country, we should be looking for the campaign money.  Are we willing to solve the problem politically?  Is there a lobby for people that just a want a shot at raising their kids right?  the answer is no and that's why it continues.  Sometimes parenting has to be done in the voting booth.


http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=B02
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/07/31/censorship/

Title Dictates Behavior, I Think

I recently saw that Mary K Letourneau was in the news and it took me back a ways.  You remember her.  The teachers that had sex with a 12 year old student, served prison time, a number of related Lifetime movies followed, she married the young man and had children with him.  She was arrested Sunday night and booked into jail early Monday for failing to appear in court for a suspended driver's license case. 

If you were or are a teacher I know enraged you were that she conducted herself in those days because it gave all teachers a bad name.  We were lumped in with her behavior like all policemen were after Rodney King.  But just like Randall, from the movie Clerks, says "title does not dictate behavior."  Even though we are talking about convenience store employees, Randall is right.  Title does not dictate behavior especially if you look at some our more recent local folks that should have lived by this mantra.

Lets not forget Perry County Sheriff was caught in a car with a man allegedly engaged in a sex act in Caseyville.  What about Pastor Joshua Swain who allegedly took more that $100,000 from his church?  I could have chose a ton more of these small town examples where some feel that their title exempts there behavior.  These folks, like me, choose a life that allows them to serve the public and the common good and when you are in these positions you cannot take the Randall approach.  I am very aware of my behavior and what it could to do not only my professional life but my family.

Randall, although I adored your sentiment when I was 18 working in a gas station but I'm a grown up now and I can't roll with you.  I will dig the movie out occasionally and laugh hysterically like I always have but I have kids now and title must help dictate my behavior.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/perry-county-sheriff-cited-in-caseyville-for-alleged-public-sex/article_5597249a-2aa1-11e1-8445-001a4bcf6878.html

http://news.wsiu.org/post/carbondale-pastor-accused-theft

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/mary-kay-letourneau-teacher-jailed_n_4550740.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Et5S_alCE (Warning-Explicit Content)