Little Boys That Want to Become Professional Athletes

I have 4 boys in my family that wanted to become professional athletes then they were in grade school.  Three of them neglected academic.  Two of them were anatomically not correct for football or basketball: too short and small with no history of sport achievement in the family.  Two of the boys were adopted.  Both of them had fathers that were Ohio State football players.  They have the genetics but was something missing. They are now in their twenties and neither one of them became football players.

Both of my nephews squandered their public school opportunity.  Chris wanted to be a Architect. He was expelled from the local community college.  Josh became a mountain climber.  When they were in public school there father was on the school board and their mother was a Math teacher.

I knew when the boys were obsessed with sports that the probability of them being able to be professional and prospering was a low.  Josh, the mountain climber travels with his personals on his back and lives in a tent.  Of the four boys, they is only one that took education seriously.

I saw it unfolding and had no influence in effectively stopping what was about to happen.  When sports have a high priority, then the long term consequences can be devastating. Give sports a low priority.

Did they read the book?

Hopefully you have a teenager that should be reading.  I have wonderful books that contain valuable knowledge that I  reference. You likely know of a book with knowledge that would benefit a teenager you care about. But, if you gave them the book, how would you know if they read it?

Try this.  About two thirds into the book write these words. [Congratulations, you have read enough of this book to have earned the right to receive $50.  Email me or phone and we will have lunch.  At that time, I will give you the $50.  This offer expires on this date. (include an expiration date)  Sign.]

Now, give them the book and wait.  After the expiration date,  if you have not heard from them, you make contact.  I am sure you will know what to say.

Afterwards, let us know what happened by posting your experience on this Blog.

Prerequisite Knowledge

Prerequisite: something required beforehand.  In the case of knowledge, it is knowledge that is required to understand what is being taught.  One part of that would be vocabulary.  If you did not know the definition of prerequisite, then you would not know what I am writing about.  If you were in a classroom where I was talking about the importance of prerequisite knowledge and did now its meaning, you would not know what I was talking about there either.  Hopefully, you understand the importance of prerequisite knowledge.

I watch and listen to experienced professional educators teaching students. Sometimes they are middle school students and the teacher is presenting a lesson that a college student level.  Is there any wonder why their students have a bewildered look on their face?

Knowledge is incremental. Do I have to explain that too?  Figure it out.

I cringe when I see teachers overshooting their students. Is there any wonder why standardized test scores are declining?

This is Flounder.

Flounder and I go to the Home Depot. We go to a lot a places.  His favorite place to go  is to Key Vista nature park where he gets to run on the beach and met other dogs.

He is almost as smart as a 5th grader.

Recently Pasco county spent $4.3 million on Math text books.

I was issued text books beginning when I was in Jr. High and expected to study them, bring them to class, care for them (writing or drawing in them was not acceptable) and return them at the end of the school year in a condition that indicated only normal use.  If something was done to the text that condemned it, then it was destroyed and the student was billed for the cost of the text.  (If someone had written F**** you on a critical page, then the text was destroyed.) 

I witnessed the end of my nephew's 9th grade year when text books were suppose to be returned.  Every text that he had been issued was gone.  I over hear his mother, a math teacher in the same school giving a long explanation that resulted in not having to pay for the missing texts. 

I've been wondering how long the text had been missing.  Whatever that length of time; that was how long it had been since Josh had not been studying his text books and doing assigned home work.  He graduated that year and eventually graduated from High School.  He is now a professional mountain climber.

I Wonder ....

There seems to be nothing positive to write about.  Every education seed has something wrong with it. School will be starting soon.  I sure hope you have used your summer wisely. This school year appears to be more challenging than last. I would not want to be a student, teacher or an administrator. I'm really somewhat of a spectator to a tragedy.

Education Is The Purpose Of Testing.

That statement should be obviously wrong.  Florida school administrators and politicians have had an obsession with testing every since Florida's governor Jeb Bush buddied-up with a Florida college professor in the Department of Education.  Now the purpose of education has been lost.  Hopefully, it will be rediscovered.

Bay area school letter grades released.

School district's FCAT grade slips

Your pay, your career, your economic future is dependent on a test score: a test you did not write and a test you did not take.  Strangers wrote the test, administered the test and scored the test.

The Pluses of Getting It Wrong

I had a college math professor who would pose a question on a topic we hadn't learned yet.  We would then spend the next half-hour trying to collectively come up with the solution as he shot down wrong answer after wrong answer.  If you are so intent on find the answer, when you finally get it, it sticks!

Very Troubling

More than two-thirds of Texas schoolchildren flunked the state's physical fitness test this year, a troubling trend that doctors worry could get worse with the Legislature loosening the requirements for high school gym class.  You can read the full story at this link.  Most Texas Students Failing

Constructionism is very important.

I'll explain later.

Baseline Test Score

The first thing you need to do is take a full-length diagnostic test in the most testlike conditions possible.

Constructionism

Constructionist learning is inspired by the constructivist theory that individual learners construct mental models to understand the world around them. However, constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are also active in making tangible objects in the real world. In this sense, constructionism is connected with experiential learning and builds on some of the ideas of Jean Piaget.

After only 5 hours searching the internet ....

The most remarkable result of the experiment emerged when Small repeatd the tests six days later.  In the interim, the novices had agreed to spend an hour a day online, searching the Internet.  The new scans revealed that their brain activity had changed dramatically; it now resembled that of the veteran surfers. "Five hours on the Internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains."  source:  Wired, June, 2010

Florida's 2013 Graduation Requirements

Under new graduation requirement signed into law last month, students by 2013 will be required to take tough science and math courses and pass end-of-course exams to earn their high school diplomas.  I wonder what impact Marcelo Gleiser's book, A Tear at teh Edge of Creation, will have on this since it is about to obsolete science text books and how science is taught. Who said science was static?

Teacher Beating a Student

Some people should not be school teachers.

Teacher Beating a Student

All teachers should read this book!

                                A Tear at the Edge of Creation by Marcelo Gleiser

"Cherish this book.  With powerful clarity Gleiser argues that there is a profound link in Western science between monotheism and scientific search for a Theory of Everything.  He argues persuaively that we must give up this dream. This my auger a profound transformation in our understanding of the world."  source: Stuart Kaufan, a fellow of the Royal Society.

This is also going to have a profound effect on what and how you teach your students science.

Meet that author at this link: Marcelo-Gleiser.

Many home-schoolers are really dropouts!

More than 22,620 Texas secondary students who stopped showing up for class in 2008 were excluded from the state's dropout statistics because administrators said they were being home-schooled, according to Texas Education Agency figures.

But that's where the scrutiny of this growing population seems to end, leaving some experts convinced that schools are disguising thousands of middle and high school dropouts in this hands-off category.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

States have been struggling with huge budget gaps since 2008, but this year could be worse as federal stimulus funds wind down.



Until now, stimulus money spared governors and state lawmakers from making some of the most brutal budget cuts. But with this lifeline running out, officials are looking at making significant cutbacks to public services, particularly schools and health programs.   source:  CNNMoney.com

It is true!

Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse race coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

School improvement and rating system

Hi Mike,


I found out that the purpose of grading student's has changed since we were students and teachers. The only people that can understand it are professional educators that are not distracted. I don't think it is possible for a K-12 student to understand it. If a student attempted to understand it, they would likely be told that 'it's none of their business'.

There is also a complicated method of grading schools. It's called the School improvement and rating system. I wonder who is behind that.

Stephen