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July 05, 2009

Facebook; teachers and students friending

Students give teachers access to their Facebook pages, the example being a discussion in Sunday's New York Times. Personally, I don't think it is appropriate for minors and adults to disclose personal information on Facebook, the most basic reason being adult responsibility for information a minor discloses. In a perfect world, sure, it could be both healthy and interesting to pierce the veil, if you will. But kids can reveal too much or resort to hyperbole, even be operating their Facebook account under the legal age of 13. It's problematic. It doesn't have to be, and I am sure that there are undiscovered uses for the medium that could be beneficial. Countless technological applications await which could easily be part of everyday learning, but schools are still experimenting with so much. For now, it's all we can do just to keep mothers from texting their sons while the boys are in class. Sheesh. 

June 30, 2009

"...but my hard drive crashed! I don't have my paper."

"What will they think of next?" asked Bruce Ryan ('80). I'm afraid to imagine. 

It is encouraging to know that now our students can buy a corrupted file to show a parent or teacher that the computer "ate your homework and you deserve an extension." Of course, the crafty mind behind the entrepreneurial product has gone to great lengths to ensure that it comes in different sizes to make the file the right size based on the length of paper that's due. Thanks to blog friend, Bruce, for bringing it to our attention.

June 22, 2009

"...but I need my cell phone for school."

O, really? According to Joel Benenson of Common Sense Mediaguess what kids are doing in class with those phones? Hmmm. Of course, parents would never text their child while he's in class, would they? 

June 21, 2009

MUS grad sees the big picture

Wake the boys, turn off the tube, let in the dog. Everyone sit down, and someone read this out-load to the family.

Paul Tudor Jones on Failure

Posted using ShareThis

June 20, 2009

To save and invest

This comes in from the June 18 New York Times:

Rhodes College in Memphis economizes — and gives students work experience — by hiring students in 25 professional staff positions, saving $725,000 a year. And the College of Wooster in Ohio is trying to hold on to financially struggling students, and their tuition dollars, by offering minimum-wage summer jobs in its “WooCorps,” which has almost 200 students painting rooms, landscaping and growing vegetables this summer. WooCorps students will get an extra $1,000 in their financial aid packages — and help the college complete more maintenance projects than usual.

That's just a sampling of some good thinking on the part of small colleges across the United States as they adjust to financial realities. MUS, a not-for-profit, tuition-based institution, functions along similar lines as these college institutions. We receive no federal or state funding, and as dollars are more limited, we must be more cautious and more thoughtful of our budget.

Sounds like there is limited blood on the tracks with these small college cutbacks from what I read. I've long thought that MUS could enact more student engagement benefiting maintenance as students could reasonably police their own messes more. Four years ago in the Lower School, we began a weekly dining room lunch clean-up crew assigned by homerooms and rotated throughout the year. We built on that by initiating Campus Beautification, maintaining the same lunch responsibilities and adding to each study hall period a before and after walk-around, policing the halls and stalls. While we don't claim any cost savings yet, we at least have the boys in a position to grow alert to their surroundings, initiating some platform where they experience responsibility for their messes. Hopefully, the campus looks cleaner as well.

As the boys invest time and energy into contributing to maintenance, we think the real investment is towards their gradual emotional intelligence as they have some liturgy to break the middle-school narcissism that comes naturally with this age. Too often, they think only of themselves. We're partially to blame as we assign individual homework and record individual marks per student. We expect each boy to keep up with his own stuff, to lan his work and to work his plan It's easy to see why they can act somewhat neurotic and self-absorbed. Campus Beautification aims to break into that temptation and encourage a team ethos during the academic day. The duality is something they must learn to navigate as they mature. If we put some dollar savings into the mix for their understanding, that could be a worthy project.

June 19, 2009

Access to Liberation and Learning

As I write this morning, I'm hemmed in by more than the serene Hudson River view to my west and the steady hum of Manhattan's Upper West Side, Broadway @ W. 70th, to my east. Below me are papers strewn about, and I'm surrounded by texts and notebooks of education policy, philosophy, and practice, word-ly weapons of my trade. In front of me, if you'll allow the completion of the image, are two years of slugging through numerous school-related issues for the intended benefit to MUS and its unique role in the lives of our students and their families.

My family joins me this summer in New York as I study at Columbia in their program for Independent Schools. It takes me about twenty minutes from door-to-door via the 1 subway, and the gradual approach as I walk to the Teachers College buildings amongst the classically-inspired, urban Columbia campus moves me into an appropriate frame of mind for deep immersion into the luxury of slowing down from the dailies and focusing on learning from experienced mentors and peers. It's a lot of work, and the pace is frantic, but I ain't complaining. I've very fortunate.

Of the numerous and varied themes we dig into, a constant reminder comes in the essential, recurring theme of "access." Independent school students and their families often have access to the very best our society offers. Much of that access is outside of the classroom and without the restrictive arm of government constraints. In other words, simply by the relationships our people develop at MUS, access becomes available to the people, places, and things which make navigating life a lot easier. Ultimately, access to a steady income based upon the foundation of a solid education towards individual ability and its associated civic responsibility become the norm for MUS graduates. These people make the world a better place by pouring themselves out to their families, their professions, and their communities. We're used to the cycle, and we expect a gradual, progressive improvement while holding on to cherished traditions.

How did all this opportunity begin? Access, I argue. Access to the freedom even to begin the dynamic process of learning and its associated discipline and industriousness required for any individual to achieve. Hope and belief of attaining lofty goals supports the effort, and, in my opinion which is shared by MUS folks, parents and families are essential to any of this ever getting off the ground.

However, we all are painfully aware that some children are stuck, and try as the most noble program can promise, access to the aforementioned cycle is denied to an increasing number each year for complex factors, many of which may be beyond repair. That said, leave it to a storied product of our state's Land Grant university, Chris Whittle, to break into the mix and offer some access.

Thursday's Wall Street Journal offers more gas to the raging fire that is the continuing decline of American math and science scores as compared to their international peers, and the book review of Liberated Learning encapsulates, even mentions directly, some of what I have had to read and write concerning the state of our country's education policy and practice. Web-based solutions connecting limited-access students to capable teachers are showing dividends. Authors Terry Moe and John Chubb, who works for Whittle's Edison Learning, present some practical ways to provide access to better schooling, potentially even to MUS students. I think they're on to something.

While Independent Schools are largely immune to the effects of the public education inertia and associated political bedfellows, Independent School children and their families live in a larger reality to which they are not immune, that being one where access to that which they themselves are accustomed is being denied to fellow citizens, future citizens with whom they must live, move, and have their being. As the separate and unequal chasm grows, maybe some of us can be spurred to specific actions of access that reverse the international and domestic slide our children face.   

June 13, 2009

ROSEMOND: Stone Age ways still apply to kids

ROSEMOND: Stone Age ways still apply to kids - Washington Times Shared via AddThis : I read this article this morning, and I tried this sharing application for the posting. Glad it worked.

As many of us are about to spend some time in airports over the next few weeks, I thougt that the end of this Rosemond piece resonated in particular. It's application extends beyond his specific example to all of us parents with school-age kids. 

June 05, 2009

Schools taking a cue from business

So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year? Don’t ask anyone who signs the checks in any school around our region. They’ll probably say something like, “O, about three or four!”

It really is interesting how tolerant our society is of expected rates of teacher pay. We all know some teachers who weren’t worth paying minimum wage, and we’ve known some whose performance is literally difficult to put a price on. Well, a New York City public charter school is giving a big salary boost a try in an effort to attract better talent. With employment-at-will and expected longer hours for these teachers, the New York effort sounds like the employment reality of MUS parents.

Freedom, dignity, and a common humanity

Do your children respond to the name of a particular place currently making its way in the news, Tiananmen Square? 

Do you remember where you were in May 1989 when the now-famous image beamed across the television airwaves? I suggest you take the time to consider the opportunity to do so with your boys as more of a moral obligation than a passing idea. Our freedoms that we have inherited in America are precious, and many of our ancestors, like the sole man against the column of tanks, stood in the face of similar opposition over the last 230 years to get us where we are today. Many of them died in circumstances that would test us beyond anything we have experienced in our modern lives. Our kids need to be reminded. They shouldn't feel guilty. Far from it. However, they should feed their growing exercise of learning what it means to be grateful, to both God and man, for the excess and opportunities we are allowed today. Who knows... maybe our children will one day be in the same position as our forefathers, possibly even that of the lone Chinese freedom-fighter. 

June 02, 2009

Wise advice from a swimming official

Friend of the Blog (F.O.B) Bruce Ryan ('80) is always good for a ripe suggestion to our audience, and recently he brought up a healthy reminder which I want to call to your attention. Being the start of June, many of us are likely to encounter a swim meet or two, and to that end, if we cheer at said swim meet, let us remember that the setting is a microcosm of much more going on around us. I really enjoyed this piece. Hope you do as well. 

May 27, 2009

Summer reading lists

Here they are: Download Summer Reading 7th The List

Download Summer Reading 8th The List

Enjoy some great selections for the summer. A big thanks goes to MUS English instructor, Elizabeth Crosby, who took on a significant project of reviewing past selections, adding new offerings, and providing brief descriptions of the titles.

Rantzow helps land varsity gold

Coaches Tyler and Bakke report with smiles some outstanding news from last week's Spring Fling in Nashville. James Rantzow ('14) ran the second leg on the state champion 4 x 200 team. His split was around 23.5. He is also a member of the 2009 State Champion track team.This is the first time an MUS eighth-grader has accomplished this feat with his feet. Congratulations, James!