Rules are rules. Especially for Coaches.

Yahoo News has a short piece decrying the horrible tactics of some high school league:

With his stepfather in jail, Brown spent a year at South Kent School in Connecticut, then decided he needed to start over, so he moved to Southern California. After a season at Simi Valley (Calif.) Stoneridge Prep, where the Brooklyn native was a boarding student, Brown was left with nowhere to go when Endres learned of his precarious situation. Without thinking twice, the coach did what he thought was right: He took in a teen in need, regardless of who he was on the court. Now, both the player and coach are being punished for what is virtually universally recognized as a truly samaritan act.

Well, actually, the kid is a pretty good basketball player and they transferred him after the residency deadline and the coach expected everyone to happily go along with it because, of course, he wouldn't have an ulterior motive. It's just a coincidence the kid would be the best one on the team, right?

Here's a thought: If you really want to help the kid, give him a home and send him to school. Next year, his residency requirements will have been met and he can become whatever player he was destined to be. The education he gets will be worth far more in the long run than a single season on the basketball team in the hands of a fool who can't figure out why this "truly Samaritan act" might look a little sketchy. And why can't this genius think of anything good that might happen except for the kid's being able to play?

As reported by the Times, the Marmonte League principals didn't even let Endres speak at the hearing set up to decide whether or not to approve a waiver of CIF residency requirements which would allow him to play for Thousand Oaks.

Maybe this video helped them decide:

Common Sense on Drug Stats

Every once in a while we get hit with the workshop that exists only to justify its own existence, while keeping the presenter employed. The drug-scare workshop is the prime candidate.

1. Funny About Money went to one. They said 50% of CC students are coming to class stoned or high on multiple drugs.
2. Our Drug Awareness Dude from the community center showed up with two suitcases of things to look for and police-approved fake samples of paraphernalia. 
3. The ex-cop came in to show us those brain scans of druggies vs non-druggies. "Look at the "holes" in this one and at the nice smooth brain over here."
4. The ex-druggie claimed to have taken this entire list of drugs and abused his kid, and here she is to confirm that he was an asshole. The poor girl stands there looking embarrassed as hell as he lists all the signs of alcoholism and drug use in your students and describes how he used to mistreat his family while under the influence.

All this time, I'm thinking, "Calm down. Scare tactics only work for a few minutes until people start thinking again." It burns me up. Here we are paying this clown a couple thousand to preach bullshit and take up a lot of time. Isn't there a better use of our resources?

The ex-druggie is spouting utter crap, trying to make himself look better in his own eyes. His daughter is still being abused and I have no sympathy for him. He's telling us the signs of alcoholism - slanty eyes in kids - and the admin are eating it up. No one is surprised when the email comes by the next day ... "Please stop asking kids about their parents' alcoholism." He's telling the kids the dangers of drugs and how they'll ruin your life. Most of the kids noticed he's getting paid a couple grand to speak to a gynasium full of kids for an hour. A few also noticed that he "wants to come back a lot because this is the worst school in the whole state and I'd really like to come back often to help you guys." Gee, thanks.

The ex-cop has gotten hold of some pictures that scare the bejeezus out of him, except that he doesn't understand them. "Look at the holes in this kid's brain." then, the best line, "See the awful colors? Those are caused by drugs."

Ahhh, it's a computer generated scan of activity levels, Dude. It's a graph. The colors were chosen for contrast. There are no physical holes, just activity levels below an arbitrary cutoff.

Then, there were the line graphs. No vertical or horizontal scale, no mention of what was actually being measured. "This is a graph of memory for a kid on drugs." Me: "Time in days, months? Number of items, type of items, first 800 digits of pi? What memories, what kind of mental tasks?" Him: "I don't know. I just got these graphs from their website." Me: "...."

But wait, there's more. There's the community anti-drug crusader.

Apparently, according to him, our students are taking any or all of over a hundred different types of drugs. He had displays in the two suitcases so therefore he must be telling the truth. We had problems: meth, heroin, speed, downers, pot, booze, cocaine, peyote, mushrooms, wine coolers and hard lemonade, injectables, glue and other inhalants -- even (this is no shit) "Some girls are soaking their hair scrunchies in gasoline so they can sit in class and sniff the fumes all period." Really? Don't you think someone might notice that? Doesn't this seem a bit far fetched?

So I asked him, "According to what you have seen and found, according to what the Police Chief standing next to you has seen and found, according to what the kids themselves tell you about what they've heard other kids are doing, what is really happening in this town?" "Alcohol, mostly. Marijuana."

What about the other things you're showing us? "Well, there was that one kid three years ago." Here's a little math for you: 100 - 2 = 98% bullshit.

Funny with Money was told by the college people responsible for policing and preventing it, that about fifty percent of students in a community college classroom, at any given time, are likely to be abusing some kind of drug, legally purchased or not, often more than one something.

"Substances" range from meth to over-the-counter cold pills and nostrums. So, the homeopathic "cold medicine" that contains less of anything useful or harmful than does the average placebo is also lumped into the statistic. And probably Hall's and Ricola.

Anyone else wondering why these geniuses are telling us all this? Maybe to justify their own salaries through irony? If this is such a problem, why haven't they done anything about it?

And seriously? Most community college kids are there on borrowed money and many are working fulltime, desperate for an education. They aren't going to class wasted, they're going to class tired. If they were wasted, they wouldn't bother going to class.

Why do I complain? Because overloading the classroom teacher with trivial bullshit that has no bearing on anything in their classroom is a lose-lose situation.


If you have us looking for wraiths that do not exist, then we will find those wraiths anyway and waste time, effort, soul, and most importantly, trust, barking up the wrong trees. Everyone loses.


If you tell us that slanty eyes in kids are a sure sign of parental alcoholism, then that is what the faculty will see. Don't be surprised if parents thus accused do not take it well.

If you tell us that 95% of our students are on drugs right now (via the ex-druggie, with the principal standing right next to him, nodding wisely), then we will misinterpret tired or worried or frustrated as "drugged." If you tell us that we should report everything, then an awful lot of nonsense will get thrown into the system -- parents will be called, kids will be called in, DYS will have to be notified -- because a kid had a fight with his girlfriend and didn't sleep well for the last two weeks.

That's how you lose when you are dealing with students.

You lose. YOU. LOSE.

Kids won't open up when they really need help. They will fall into the patterns you accuse them of. The parents will learn to NEVER trust the faculty or the school. The kids will withdraw from all of the possible support. Your school will take on a whole new feel and no one will like it.

If you try and tell students that the brain doesn't stop growing until the age of 25, so "Students shouldn't drink until then," you will come off as loony and hypocritical. Kids watch TV on Sunday for the football. We shouldn't expect the other messages to magically disappear: Alcohol is cool and very desirable and the perfect home has hundreds of cans in the fridge, strength and power are all-important (steroids and other PEDS), and women are supposed to dress like that.

If your presentation is mostly hyperbole and loaded with graphs you don't understand, your rhetoric will pass right on by. Kids are good at ignoring adult exaggeration and they hate hypocrisy.

Kids laugh at the lameness of the "Eggs on Drugs" commercials. They don't listen to teachers who bullshit them.

Is there a problem in my school? Yep.
Should the school discuss it? Yep.
Should we do something? Absolutely.

If you have information for us in the school, we will gladly listen to it and do our best to act on it.  Just follow one simple rule:

"Tell me the truth without exaggerating and stop wasting my time."

Once more into the Breach of Contract

I feel that we have a Contract with Students to teach them as much as possible. For ESL/ELL students, this means English. This country runs all it's systems in English, with a patchy cobweb of translated documents inhabiting the corners of our bureaucracy. Colleges are run in English. Businesses are run in English. Media are run in English. Laws are written in English and court cases are judged in English. (Sure, they're translated. Do you trust that translator with your freedom? What if he went to the same school you did and the same program and learned just as much?)

ASBJ: has an article about the struggles of ELL students to pass the state competency tests. The article is called "A Race Against Time" referring to the need to take tests soon after starting at school.

Butler estimates that a mid-level student, with average intelligence and moderate literacy in their home language, will be in ELL classes about seven years. Research shows it takes five to seven years to gain competency in English.

Which leads me to ask, "Why?" The answer is "Because they're not focusing on English."

The kid is in the US and will have to take tests in English. If he's a good student and works hard, he'll go to college - in English. Why are we teaching him math in Spanish or Vietnamese? Let him take all his time to learn English. No science. No math. No history. A class of grammar. A class of reading. Back to writing. Speaking and enunciation. A math class in English - one he has already mastered the math of and is taking for the English.

It is better to take a year off from math and science and history than to take four or seven more years to learn English. He's already at the ninth or tenth grade in math skills. He'll not lose that. His math skills are probably better than his classmates' anyway because his old math teachers didn't mess around with calculators and group learning and fuzzy math. (Yes, it's a stereotype but the reality is too often true to that stereotype. Remember the South Park episode where the Mexican day laborers teach math better than Mr. Garrison? priceless.)

As a final point, look at the language program at Middlebury College or any competent college. Total Immersion. Why? It's the best way.

Here are your choices to use the time he's got:
A) Math and science classes in which the language problem will limit him to maybe a half year of progress and lots of time staring at the wall.
B) English classes in which he'll make several years of progress, which will then allow him to take those math and science classes NEXT year.

Nevertheless, Georgia requires high school students to take the district’s graduation exams after they have been enrolled for only one year, beginning in 10th grade. Norcross’ ELL students struggle to pass any of the seven required subjects, particularly the writing exam.

I'll bet many of them pass the math tests anyway.

English, and Bilingual education.

For generations, the French have fiercely guarded their language against the horreurs anglais. But France's education minister yesterday admitted for the first time that the secret to success is speaking better English. Xavier Darcos claimed poor English is now a 'handicap' because all international business is conducted in the language, and said French schools would offer extra lessons during the holidays. He also admitted that, because of globalisation, very few people outside France will being able to speak French in the future.

Daily Mail link

Can we now extend that to this country? How many businesses can you get a job with if you only speak Spanish? How many US colleges will award a degree if the student only speaks Chinese? How many stores, restaurants, policemen, neighbors, and other daily conversationalists will be able to deal a friend who only speaks Vietnamese?

Can we admit finally that the use of English is the biggest key to success in this country and that putting off the learning of English is more damaging to the future of a student than probably anything else? Can we understand that allowing a kid to get through high school without a clear command of English is essentially committing him to a life of only watching Telemundo and only getting jobs in businesses that cater exclusively to Hispanics - a vanishingly small portion of the job market.

So why do we still insist that every ESL ELL (English Language Learner, because we all know that changing what we call them makes all the difference) student get a bilingual education? All students who can't speak English should get 7 straight periods of English. Nothing else. This phase might even take a couple of months. It's called a crash course and it's effective.

When they get enough to make it in a math class, add one. When they can handle a social studies class at an ESL-level, do it.

Think back to your own time - you took one class of French and then everything else in English. How much did you learn? Maybe enough to not get lost the Metro but nowhere near enough to matriculate at the Sorbonne. Giving them one period of English and six other courses taught in Spanish, knowing they're going home to a home that doesn't speak English and knowing he's surrounded with friends who also don't speak any English? That's just prolonging the time until that kid learns the language. It may even be too late.

Try going to any other country and demand that people teach you in English - oh, wait, they all know enough English that you can get by.

But then, what do I know?