My friend Maria of Natural Math and I are teaching a class on blogging for our local coop. Today we visited a number of blogs by teenagers or younger that have won awards, gotten some important local or national coverage, and/or have helped their authors achieve their goals or have an impact on the world. I thought I would list them for others who are looking for some inspiration for what young people are doing with their blogs.
I've divided them into several categories:
Personal/Diary-Like Blogs
These are blogs that basically deal with the life, interests, events, and musings of it author. Here are two example that were nominated for national awards:
Castles, Quills, and Cameras: This is written by an 8th grade homeschool students. In addition to her interest in writing, other key passions she has are books (Quills) and movies (Cameras). Castles contains everything else: her schoolwork, her spiritual beliefs, and other random events or thoughts.
Oh Clementine: (Warning--this blog does have some mild profanity, so don't visit if that offends you or is against your family's rules): Clementine is a quirky, highly right-brained 16 year old Canadian high schooler who loves dinosaurs, video games, music, and neon. She is passionate about her politics, which are liberal, but is not loving her high school education.
These examples illustrate some important points about writing interesting and successful personal blogs. The main thing is, you have to have something interesting and valuable to say. It helps to be humorous and to provide helpful information, to be honest about yourself and your weaknesses or failures as well as your successes, and to include content or thoughts that are relevant to the experience or interests of your readers.
Project or Cause Blogs
These are blogs that done to chronicle some other larger project, fundraising, educational, or social or environmental cause. Here are two by younger populations:
Team PyroTech: Team PyroTech is a local team of high schoolers competing in the FIRST FRC national robotics competition. While the primary emphasis of the project is the construct and program large robots to perform the tasks required by the contest, the teams get extra points for having exemplary supporting media, such as videos, websites, and blogs.
Wyatt Workman: Now, this one is just adorable. A seven-year-old boy living in California who is concerned about the oceans decided to make a claymation film, publish a book, and sell his clay figures at an art show, with all the proceeds going to an environmental nonprofit. His blog has updates about the media coverage of his work (he's been interviewed on television and national newspapers) and the funds he has raised (over $3,000 at last report).
Project or cause blogs generally support some larger effort, but are a great way to get media exposure or to get the word out to a larger audience than the ones who may be directly involved with the project.
Food Blogs
Food is one of the most popular topics for blogging, and that is true for teenagers as well as adults. These two have both been nominated for national awards and mentioned in local media:
Foodie at 15 (Now 18): Nick started sharing his recipe, cooking tips, impressions of great restaurants, and other food items when he was 15. Now he is 18 and finishing up his senior year before heading to the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he plans to get the business acumen to go with his fantastic cooking and eventually open his own restaurant. If you read his post on his ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, where he shares not only his personal experience with such cookies, his researching and adapting of the recipes of other famous chefs, his explanation of the science behind the changes he made, and the recipe itself, I'm sure you'll have no doubts that he will do exactly that.
17 (now 18) and Baking: Elissa, who is now a college student, doesn't plan a career in food, but is instead pursuing a journalism degree. With the degree of professionalism her blog shows, she also seems assured of a bright future. Her writing is good, her photographs of the food are GORGEOUS, and the recipes are luscious!
Personal Passion and/or Expertise Blogs
These two are example about how becoming an expert in a field that you love can really pay off:
Laura's Life: When she was in second grade, Laura decided that she wanted to read all the Newbery Award winning books before she was in middle school. Well, she did, and posted reviews of all of them on her blog. Now she is working her way through the Fuse#8 Top 100 Children's Novels, as well as participating in Mock Newbery each year. With hundreds of reviews on her site already, Laura is known by authors and people like the head of the ALA, and receives many free books now to review. Oh, and she's only 10 years old. Pretty amazing...
Style Rookie: This is the queen of the successful teen blogs. Tavi started blogging about fashion when she was 11, and has since been featured in the New York Times, Pop Magazine, French Vogue, and a number of other media. This has led to her getting invited to front row seats at New York Fashion Week and the opportunity to write a Fashion Week article for Harper's Bazaar. She also has designers sending her all kind of clothes and accessories. Now 14 and in high school, Tavi is still going strong, sometimes getting 50,000 hits per day on her blog.
So there are some samples of outstanding blogs by teenagers or younger. Have I missed any other teen or younger blogs that really stand out? Add them to the comments below.
Showing posts with label high schoolers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high schoolers. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Why Wake County Board Should Continue Accreditation with AdvancedED
All in all, it hasn't been a good week for the Wake County Board of Education.
After the first three days of the week being either early release, cancelled, or opened late due to ice, school were having a rocky week. Then Wednesday night, the Board had another public meeting filled with angry and concerned parents. This time the contention was over statements by some of the Board that they might just choose to drop their accredited status, rather than answer the questions being posed by AdvancED, the accrediting agency for the Wake system. The Board majority's compromise decision was to write a letter to AdvancED regarding the restrictions under which they would agree to cooperate with the agency's attempts to investigate charges of racial discrimination and improper board procedures lodged by the state's NAACP chapter. Less than 24 hours later, the Board received AdvancED's response, which was basically "Sorry, Charlie." I'm sure it was stated in more appropriate legalese, but AdvancED could have reduced it to the immortal words of the Jeffrey Rush character in my favorite movie of the moment, The King's Speech, when he said, "My game, my turf, my rules." That is, the whole point of accreditation is to have an experienced, unbiased, outside team of educational experts look at the operation of a school to assure the public of its quality (or alert them to lack thereof). They can't really do that if the schools they are examining tell them what parts of the system they can and can not look into.
Then, on Friday, the head educator in the entire country, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, chose to single out Wake Country among all the public school systems in the country to question its commitment to racial equity. And this was not an off-hand comment captured on someone's iPhone; it was stated in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post expressing his concerns about the WCPSS as depicted in a Washington Post article that I mentioned earlier this week. (Click here to see the letter in the Washington Post.)
Although it may not seem like it, I really try hard to understand the point of view of the Republican majority on the School Board, and I do my best to see them in their best light. Nonetheless, I have to say that I think it would be foolish for the Board to continue down this destructive path towards non-accreditation. There are three major arguments against pursuing this course of action:
1. Lack of Accreditation Will Hurt Graduating Students
Accreditation is the accepted procedure for colleges to know you are coming from a respectable school system. Losing your accreditation--or voluntarily withdrawing from accreditation when under an investigation--makes the system look fishy. Board Chair Margiotta, in his ignorance?arrogance? I don't know, I'm having a hard time finding a more neutral term here, states that since Wake County is so big, he is sure that colleges won't stop excepting Wake County graduates. He's probably right--for schools in North Carolina. I'm sure there's no way that NC State or UNC is going to ban all Wake County schools from their campuses, nor will ECU or probably Duke or other colleges in the state. But that understanding of this special situation will fade the further from North Carolina the high school students are looking to roam. Some colleges, especially the highly competitive ones, have an automatic "kick-out" of candidates from non-accredited schools...one way to keep the numbers manageable. Will they go back and make an exception for Wake County students? I don't know, but if I had a child graduating in the next year or so, I wouldn't want to count on it.
Furthermore, there are some programs, loans, internships, and scholarships that have legal requirements that students graduate from accredited schools (sometimes with exceptions for homeschoolers). They don't have any choice about it--Wake County students will not be eligible for those. So, sure, if you have a child who graduates from Wake County, is only interested in going to a North Carolina college, and doesn't need these restricted loans or scholarships, whether the schools are accredited or not probably doesn't make that much difference. But I think there are a lot of North Carolina high schoolers who don't fit into that category.
2. AdvancED is NOT Your Enemy; They Could Even Turn Out to Be Your Best Friend
AdvancED is not reviewing the operation to come in and tell the Board what to do or to tell them how to assign students to schools. AdvancED is supposed to be like a mediator or arbitrator; someone from the outside who can look at the issues with an impartial eye and give a ruling on which side is right. For months now, the NAACP, leading the charge for many other critics, has charged that the Board acted against its own established procedures and agreed to a policy that will lead to racially discriminatory education. The Board responded that they followed the correct procedures and have their arguments about how the new school assignments will benefit all students in the county. The NAACP has one set of statistics backing up their side; the Board has another set backing up their contentions. Whose figures are right? Were procedures followed or not? The latter question, at least, seems like there should be a simple yes or no answer to it. But we have been given no answer, nor even a suggestion of how we are going to achieve such an answer; instead, we have month after month of each side arguing over the same points and making no headway in proving their points.
Enter AdvancED. THAT is their job--to answer that question (among others). If the Board REALLY believes they have followed the appropriate procedures, and they REALLY believe their statistics are more valid than the ones of their critics, they should welcome AdvancED to come and tell the public, The Board is right, they did things properly, and their figures are appropriate. If AdvancED backed up their decision, that would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the critics. Maybe we could even move on and get something accomplished. However, as I stated in an earlier post, this is not the first time that the Board majority acts like people outside their own ranks are out to get them.
3. Guess What? You're Going to Have to Answer those Questions Even If You Drop Your Accreditation
Let us not forget that this fight with AdvancED is not the only regulatory problem the Board has on their plate. The U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has not just one, but TWO, investigations of Wake County pending--one for racial discrimination, another for sexual discrimination (in interscholastic sports). And while you can chose to drop your accreditation rather than answer those pesky questions from AdvancED, you can't just opt out of a Civil Right discrimination suit brought by the US government....a suit that will be bound to ask all those same questions and MORE.
This is where Secretary Duncan's letter is so significant. As I've said before, I grew up in the Washington DC area, so I am fluent in DC-ese. Therefore, allow me to translate this letter. This letter is a warning to Wake County not to try to blow off and bluster through these discrimination complaints. There is NO WAY Secretary Duncan would mention Wake County in that context without someone in his office having checked into the case and decided that there were legitimate reasons for concern that the system was racially discriminating.
So the Board can stick their heads in the sand if they want and force AdvancED to leave--at the expense of Wake County graduates. But you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be at least an investigation, if not a lawsuit, coming from the federal Office of Civil Rights. And refusing to cooperate with AdvancED will make the suits in DC even more suspicious that there is something rotten in the county of Wake.
The best thing the Board could do for the schools, the public, and particularly for ITSELF is to get out of its own way and cooperate with AdvancED. But will it? As my Magic 8 Ball says, "Cannot predict now."
PS--
On a happier and less complicated note--today is my son's 12th birthday! Happy Birthday to Him! But it makes me kind of sad to think that this is the last year before he turns into a teenager...
After the first three days of the week being either early release, cancelled, or opened late due to ice, school were having a rocky week. Then Wednesday night, the Board had another public meeting filled with angry and concerned parents. This time the contention was over statements by some of the Board that they might just choose to drop their accredited status, rather than answer the questions being posed by AdvancED, the accrediting agency for the Wake system. The Board majority's compromise decision was to write a letter to AdvancED regarding the restrictions under which they would agree to cooperate with the agency's attempts to investigate charges of racial discrimination and improper board procedures lodged by the state's NAACP chapter. Less than 24 hours later, the Board received AdvancED's response, which was basically "Sorry, Charlie." I'm sure it was stated in more appropriate legalese, but AdvancED could have reduced it to the immortal words of the Jeffrey Rush character in my favorite movie of the moment, The King's Speech, when he said, "My game, my turf, my rules." That is, the whole point of accreditation is to have an experienced, unbiased, outside team of educational experts look at the operation of a school to assure the public of its quality (or alert them to lack thereof). They can't really do that if the schools they are examining tell them what parts of the system they can and can not look into.
Then, on Friday, the head educator in the entire country, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, chose to single out Wake Country among all the public school systems in the country to question its commitment to racial equity. And this was not an off-hand comment captured on someone's iPhone; it was stated in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post expressing his concerns about the WCPSS as depicted in a Washington Post article that I mentioned earlier this week. (Click here to see the letter in the Washington Post.)
Although it may not seem like it, I really try hard to understand the point of view of the Republican majority on the School Board, and I do my best to see them in their best light. Nonetheless, I have to say that I think it would be foolish for the Board to continue down this destructive path towards non-accreditation. There are three major arguments against pursuing this course of action:
1. Lack of Accreditation Will Hurt Graduating Students
Accreditation is the accepted procedure for colleges to know you are coming from a respectable school system. Losing your accreditation--or voluntarily withdrawing from accreditation when under an investigation--makes the system look fishy. Board Chair Margiotta, in his ignorance?arrogance? I don't know, I'm having a hard time finding a more neutral term here, states that since Wake County is so big, he is sure that colleges won't stop excepting Wake County graduates. He's probably right--for schools in North Carolina. I'm sure there's no way that NC State or UNC is going to ban all Wake County schools from their campuses, nor will ECU or probably Duke or other colleges in the state. But that understanding of this special situation will fade the further from North Carolina the high school students are looking to roam. Some colleges, especially the highly competitive ones, have an automatic "kick-out" of candidates from non-accredited schools...one way to keep the numbers manageable. Will they go back and make an exception for Wake County students? I don't know, but if I had a child graduating in the next year or so, I wouldn't want to count on it.
Furthermore, there are some programs, loans, internships, and scholarships that have legal requirements that students graduate from accredited schools (sometimes with exceptions for homeschoolers). They don't have any choice about it--Wake County students will not be eligible for those. So, sure, if you have a child who graduates from Wake County, is only interested in going to a North Carolina college, and doesn't need these restricted loans or scholarships, whether the schools are accredited or not probably doesn't make that much difference. But I think there are a lot of North Carolina high schoolers who don't fit into that category.
2. AdvancED is NOT Your Enemy; They Could Even Turn Out to Be Your Best Friend
AdvancED is not reviewing the operation to come in and tell the Board what to do or to tell them how to assign students to schools. AdvancED is supposed to be like a mediator or arbitrator; someone from the outside who can look at the issues with an impartial eye and give a ruling on which side is right. For months now, the NAACP, leading the charge for many other critics, has charged that the Board acted against its own established procedures and agreed to a policy that will lead to racially discriminatory education. The Board responded that they followed the correct procedures and have their arguments about how the new school assignments will benefit all students in the county. The NAACP has one set of statistics backing up their side; the Board has another set backing up their contentions. Whose figures are right? Were procedures followed or not? The latter question, at least, seems like there should be a simple yes or no answer to it. But we have been given no answer, nor even a suggestion of how we are going to achieve such an answer; instead, we have month after month of each side arguing over the same points and making no headway in proving their points.
Enter AdvancED. THAT is their job--to answer that question (among others). If the Board REALLY believes they have followed the appropriate procedures, and they REALLY believe their statistics are more valid than the ones of their critics, they should welcome AdvancED to come and tell the public, The Board is right, they did things properly, and their figures are appropriate. If AdvancED backed up their decision, that would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the critics. Maybe we could even move on and get something accomplished. However, as I stated in an earlier post, this is not the first time that the Board majority acts like people outside their own ranks are out to get them.
3. Guess What? You're Going to Have to Answer those Questions Even If You Drop Your Accreditation
Let us not forget that this fight with AdvancED is not the only regulatory problem the Board has on their plate. The U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has not just one, but TWO, investigations of Wake County pending--one for racial discrimination, another for sexual discrimination (in interscholastic sports). And while you can chose to drop your accreditation rather than answer those pesky questions from AdvancED, you can't just opt out of a Civil Right discrimination suit brought by the US government....a suit that will be bound to ask all those same questions and MORE.
This is where Secretary Duncan's letter is so significant. As I've said before, I grew up in the Washington DC area, so I am fluent in DC-ese. Therefore, allow me to translate this letter. This letter is a warning to Wake County not to try to blow off and bluster through these discrimination complaints. There is NO WAY Secretary Duncan would mention Wake County in that context without someone in his office having checked into the case and decided that there were legitimate reasons for concern that the system was racially discriminating.
So the Board can stick their heads in the sand if they want and force AdvancED to leave--at the expense of Wake County graduates. But you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be at least an investigation, if not a lawsuit, coming from the federal Office of Civil Rights. And refusing to cooperate with AdvancED will make the suits in DC even more suspicious that there is something rotten in the county of Wake.
The best thing the Board could do for the schools, the public, and particularly for ITSELF is to get out of its own way and cooperate with AdvancED. But will it? As my Magic 8 Ball says, "Cannot predict now."
PS--
On a happier and less complicated note--today is my son's 12th birthday! Happy Birthday to Him! But it makes me kind of sad to think that this is the last year before he turns into a teenager...
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Curriculum Resource: They Called Themselves the K.K.K.
If you are looking for a terrific resource on a difficult subject--racism, Reconstruction, and the history of American hate groups--I wholeheartedly recommend Susan Campbell Bartoletti's new book, They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group. Bartoletti is no stranger to substantive non-fiction books for adolescents; she won a Newbery Honor for her 2005 publication of Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow. But she has done such a great job on this book, it is no wonder that it is also on many people's short list for another potential Newbery Award.
According to the author, the inspiration for the book came when she saw a statue of the renowned Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also supposedly the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and wondered to herself, "Where are the memorials for the victims of KKK violence?" After finding out from the Southern Poverty Law Center that there were no such memorials, Bertoletti knew that she had to write this book.
However, what is great about this book is that Bertoletti tries to understand the complex history of this paramilitary white suprematist group from both sides. Her book explores how common, ordinary, usually decent people could get involved in such a violent group, and even believe that they were doing God's work. It also demonstrates the strength and courage of common, ordinary people, both black and white, who stood up against the Klan. Her work contains much more information about the politics behind Reconstruction than is usually available for middle school or high school history. And the work is all the more effective by the even-handed way she approaches the topic, allowing young people to draw their own conclusions rather than preaching to them.
One way Bertoletti achieves this is by relying heavily on first-hand accounts and primary source materials. She uses quotes from both proponents and victims of the Klan in a masterful way. And while she doesn't gloss over the violence and death of this terrible time in our history, she also doesn't focus on it so much that it becomes too intense for a middle school audience.
Bertoletti's book is a much-needed addition to the middle school or high school history curriculum about the aftermath of the Civil War. But it is also a valuable resource for talking about current events. I love that she identifies the KKK as "an American terrorist group"--a great wake-up call for our post 9/11 youth who think all terrorists come from outside our borders. The book also contains a Civil Rights Timeline and a comprehensive Bibliography and Notes section that is also useful in extending the dialogue.
So this may not seem like the kind of book you want to be reading during our holly, jolly holidays. But the author, who besides writing about the Klan and Hitler's youth has also tackled such difficult topics as famine, youth labor rights, and working in a coal mine, says that the only way she knows to deal with the dark is to try to shine a light on it. As we approach the winter solstice, it's great to know that we have this outstanding reference to help shine some light on some of our nation's darkest hours.
According to the author, the inspiration for the book came when she saw a statue of the renowned Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also supposedly the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and wondered to herself, "Where are the memorials for the victims of KKK violence?" After finding out from the Southern Poverty Law Center that there were no such memorials, Bertoletti knew that she had to write this book.
However, what is great about this book is that Bertoletti tries to understand the complex history of this paramilitary white suprematist group from both sides. Her book explores how common, ordinary, usually decent people could get involved in such a violent group, and even believe that they were doing God's work. It also demonstrates the strength and courage of common, ordinary people, both black and white, who stood up against the Klan. Her work contains much more information about the politics behind Reconstruction than is usually available for middle school or high school history. And the work is all the more effective by the even-handed way she approaches the topic, allowing young people to draw their own conclusions rather than preaching to them.
One way Bertoletti achieves this is by relying heavily on first-hand accounts and primary source materials. She uses quotes from both proponents and victims of the Klan in a masterful way. And while she doesn't gloss over the violence and death of this terrible time in our history, she also doesn't focus on it so much that it becomes too intense for a middle school audience.
Bertoletti's book is a much-needed addition to the middle school or high school history curriculum about the aftermath of the Civil War. But it is also a valuable resource for talking about current events. I love that she identifies the KKK as "an American terrorist group"--a great wake-up call for our post 9/11 youth who think all terrorists come from outside our borders. The book also contains a Civil Rights Timeline and a comprehensive Bibliography and Notes section that is also useful in extending the dialogue.
So this may not seem like the kind of book you want to be reading during our holly, jolly holidays. But the author, who besides writing about the Klan and Hitler's youth has also tackled such difficult topics as famine, youth labor rights, and working in a coal mine, says that the only way she knows to deal with the dark is to try to shine a light on it. As we approach the winter solstice, it's great to know that we have this outstanding reference to help shine some light on some of our nation's darkest hours.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
The Kids Are All Right
I hope people enjoyed my eight nights of book reviews for Hanukkah. It was kind of fun to focus on one things for a while, as well as finally writing reviews of all these great books we've been reading. I really recommend the Mock Newbery Book Club program--it encourages your middle schooler (and probably you as well, at least if you are like our family) to catch up with some wonderful new books, and has us all reaching for different types of book than we typically read.
But now, back to other educational issues. However, I'm still in a holiday mood, so I don't want to go on a rant against educational policies I disagree with right now. So I thought tonight maybe I would give parents a gift--the gift of reducing our guilt about all the ways we are messing up our children.
This gift comes via one of my favorite educational writers, Alfie Kohn (oft mentioned in this blog). He posted a new article on his website recently pointing out that all the woes of today's educational critics--high school graduates who can't read, employers who find high school graduates incapable of performing even entry-level jobs, grade inflation, falling standards, yada yada yada--have been railed about for years. That is, critics were saying the same things about the problems with the education system during Eisenhower's time (and in some cases, even earlier) as they are saying now. So while it is obviously unacceptable to have high school graduates who can't read, at least it is not just a recent phenomenon that our generation has created.
While this article is good, an even better one was something in the same vein he wrote this summer. In that article he addresses the often-heard criticism that today's parents are too permissive and indulgent, and that today's students are entitled, smug, out of touch with reality, and out-and-out spoiled rotten. Well, Kohn traces the exact same complaints about overindulgent parents and what he calls "undisciplined narcissists" even farther back, to over a century ago. It seems that educational experts have been blaming parents for ruining their children's work ethic for nearly as long as we've had mandatory universal public education.
Kohn points out a couple of holes in this line of criticism. First, there is no data--in fact, there has never been any attempt to collective information on parenting styles in a systematic way that could be used to rate a parent as "permissive" versus a "disciplinarian" in all these many long years that critics have been decrying the failures of successive generations of parents. What little research has been done in this area hardly suggests that parents are awash in overindulgence; Kohn cites a 1995 study of parents of preschoolers in which 94% admitted that they spank or hit their children.
For this complaint, however, Kohn does have an explanation. He discusses a 2010 article in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science by Brent Roberts, Grant Edmonds, and Emily Grijalva of the University of Illinois. These researchers argue that such critics are confusing developmental differences with generational differences. That is, young people, on the whole, are more self-centered and self-concerned, laxidasical, and unfocused than older professionals (such as these professional critics) because of age-related developmental differences; most only become less self-involved and more focused as they get older. So, yes, there is a difference between the younger generation and the older one--but it is function of age, rather than a result of differences in parenting styles (or anything to do with their parents, really). But as the young generation matures and eventually is replaced by a new young generation, they, too, will start shaking their heads and making pronouncements like "these young kids these days DON'T.... or SHOULD.... well, you get the picture.
So, parents, you are off the hook for that one. If your tweens or teens or even college students or recent graduates are driving you crazy with their lack of responsibility and their inability to get over themselves, don't beat yourself up for being a bad parent. Most likely, they are just being kids--which is what they are, no matter how early our society starts the whole "get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job" pressure on them. Apparently we did the same things to our parents (that's not how we remember it, of course, but we probably did), just like they did to our grandparents, who did the same thing to our great-grandparents...and on and on.
So, Alfie Kohn, thank you once again for helping us keep things in perspective.
But now, back to other educational issues. However, I'm still in a holiday mood, so I don't want to go on a rant against educational policies I disagree with right now. So I thought tonight maybe I would give parents a gift--the gift of reducing our guilt about all the ways we are messing up our children.
This gift comes via one of my favorite educational writers, Alfie Kohn (oft mentioned in this blog). He posted a new article on his website recently pointing out that all the woes of today's educational critics--high school graduates who can't read, employers who find high school graduates incapable of performing even entry-level jobs, grade inflation, falling standards, yada yada yada--have been railed about for years. That is, critics were saying the same things about the problems with the education system during Eisenhower's time (and in some cases, even earlier) as they are saying now. So while it is obviously unacceptable to have high school graduates who can't read, at least it is not just a recent phenomenon that our generation has created.
While this article is good, an even better one was something in the same vein he wrote this summer. In that article he addresses the often-heard criticism that today's parents are too permissive and indulgent, and that today's students are entitled, smug, out of touch with reality, and out-and-out spoiled rotten. Well, Kohn traces the exact same complaints about overindulgent parents and what he calls "undisciplined narcissists" even farther back, to over a century ago. It seems that educational experts have been blaming parents for ruining their children's work ethic for nearly as long as we've had mandatory universal public education.
Kohn points out a couple of holes in this line of criticism. First, there is no data--in fact, there has never been any attempt to collective information on parenting styles in a systematic way that could be used to rate a parent as "permissive" versus a "disciplinarian" in all these many long years that critics have been decrying the failures of successive generations of parents. What little research has been done in this area hardly suggests that parents are awash in overindulgence; Kohn cites a 1995 study of parents of preschoolers in which 94% admitted that they spank or hit their children.
For this complaint, however, Kohn does have an explanation. He discusses a 2010 article in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science by Brent Roberts, Grant Edmonds, and Emily Grijalva of the University of Illinois. These researchers argue that such critics are confusing developmental differences with generational differences. That is, young people, on the whole, are more self-centered and self-concerned, laxidasical, and unfocused than older professionals (such as these professional critics) because of age-related developmental differences; most only become less self-involved and more focused as they get older. So, yes, there is a difference between the younger generation and the older one--but it is function of age, rather than a result of differences in parenting styles (or anything to do with their parents, really). But as the young generation matures and eventually is replaced by a new young generation, they, too, will start shaking their heads and making pronouncements like "these young kids these days DON'T.... or SHOULD.... well, you get the picture.
So, parents, you are off the hook for that one. If your tweens or teens or even college students or recent graduates are driving you crazy with their lack of responsibility and their inability to get over themselves, don't beat yourself up for being a bad parent. Most likely, they are just being kids--which is what they are, no matter how early our society starts the whole "get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job" pressure on them. Apparently we did the same things to our parents (that's not how we remember it, of course, but we probably did), just like they did to our grandparents, who did the same thing to our great-grandparents...and on and on.
So, Alfie Kohn, thank you once again for helping us keep things in perspective.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Hanukkah Book Review: Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
Like the protagonist in Mockingbird, the narrator of Out of My Mind has some special challenges that make other students in her school dismiss her, unaware of the incredible gifts she holds inside. In the case of ten-year-old Melody, she has a photography memory and is probably the smartest child in the school. Unfortunately, due to her severe Cerebral Palsy, which has rendered her incapable of speech or writing, Melody has never been able to communicate her inner brilliance to anyone else. So instead of winning praise for her outstanding memory, she is shunted into Special Education classes that some years can be valuable, but other years nothing but a boring waste of time--depending on the attitude of her teacher. She also sometimes attends part of a regular classroom, where the other students tend to either shun or mock her. But despite the difficulties and frustrations, Melody searches for a way to prove herself to the world around her.
This is another good book. Some of the passages are quite poetic, especially when Melody describes how words feel to her, or how she associates music with different colors (which is a real condition, called synethesia, that many musical talents, including Leonard Berstein, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, and Duke Ellington, apparently share). Of course, since it is told in the first person, we readers get to hear what is going on in Melody's head, which is much more fluid language than the more silted conversations Mockingbird's Caitlin carries on with herself. And it covers many the same themes about about not underestimating either oneself or others, being less judgmental about people with differences, and the difficulty in status and relationships that is so prevalent in middle school, obvious disability or not.
And I'm suspecting that it is easier for middle schoolers to learn those lessons from Melody rather than the more-difficult-to-get-in-synch-with Caitlin, even those Melody's handicap is more extreme. I'm thinking that is why most of the middle schoolers I know prefer this book to Mockingbird (which I prefer). I don't know whether that kind of thing figures into the Newbery committee or not. But my personal advice, as a parent, is to give Out of My Mind to your tweens, and save Mockingbird for your teens.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Career Exploration Resources: Interest and Values Profilers
I had mentioned in a previous post that middle school is a good time for students to start exploring their future careers. I ran into an interesting online source that might help them in that task.
The O*NET Online website, developed by the US Department of Labor, bills itself as "the nation's primary source of occupational information." It has a wealth of information about different occupations, skills required in different fields, and such topics as apprenticeships and education. The information and assessment tests on the site are linked to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' comprehensive database entitled the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-2011. The Handbook projects the job outlook for a plethora of different occupations up to 2018, as well as containing such valuable information as average salary, educational or experiential requirements, etc.
My favorite part of O*NET are the online career assessment tools they have. One, the Computerized Interest Profiler (CIP), asks questions about what you would or would not like to do for work, and then suggests occupations that fit with your interests. It categorizes your specific interests into six different themes that suggest what aspects of jobs are most important to you personally. So, for example, when I took the test, I scored VERY high on Social, fairly high on Artistic and Investigative---and got ZERO (0) points in both Realistic and Conventional (scores that I'm sure will shock those who know me).
The other assessment is the Work Importance Profiler (WIP), which is more an assessment of the values that are important to you....that is, such factors as job security, on-the-job training, recognition, or advancement, the ability to work alone and/or independently, those sorts of things. I think this one might be trickier for students to answer, because you have to rank things in relative importance, which is harder than just saying whether or not you like to do something. I think it may also be hard for them to consider some of these factors if they haven't had any experience working.
But still, I find these things fascinating. In my case, my top work values were, in order:
Achievement--The Achievement work value involves the need to use your individual abilities and have a feeling of accomplishment.
Relationships--The Relationships work value includes the need for friendly co-workers, to be able to help others, and not be forced to go against your sense of right and wrong.
Independence--The Independence work value refers to the need to do tasks on your own and use creativity in the workplace. It also involves the need to get a job where you can make your own decisions.
My less important values, in order, were:
Recognition--The Recognition work value involves the need to have the opportunity for advancement, obtain prestige, and have the potential for leadership.
Support--The Support work value involves the need for a supportive company, be comfortable with management's style of supervision, and a competent, considerate, and fair management.
Working Conditions--The Working Conditions work value refers to the need to have your pay comparable to others, and have job security and good working conditions. You also need to be busy all the time and have many different types of tasks on the job.
Again, I would say that assessment is pretty spot on. After all, no one who highly values Recognition, Support, and Working Conditions would ever end up homeschooling!
You can download the CIP and the WIP from O*NET to run on your own computer, but I also found two state employment agencies where you could just do it online. The information links to job or educational opportunities in that state, but I think the overall suggestions for matching occupations are the same, and I didn't want to bother with downloading and installing the software. So I took the CIP at the Washington State Employment Security Department site and the WIP at Career Zone California.
It is a fun exercise to do, just to see what they suggest. For example, according to my WIP results, I should be working in music theater....which is funny, because it is a love of mine, but I lack the talent to work in that field. Being a middle school teacher, while not incompatible with my values, was way down on the list, but being a postsecondary teacher was fairly high up. And one of the top suggestions for both my CIP and WIP was Meeting and Convention Planner, which is a job I think I would enjoy--and, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, would make from 50-100% MORE than being a school teacher.
Anyway, I think such tools are a good way to diversify students' viewpoints about the careers they might consider.
The O*NET Online website, developed by the US Department of Labor, bills itself as "the nation's primary source of occupational information." It has a wealth of information about different occupations, skills required in different fields, and such topics as apprenticeships and education. The information and assessment tests on the site are linked to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' comprehensive database entitled the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-2011. The Handbook projects the job outlook for a plethora of different occupations up to 2018, as well as containing such valuable information as average salary, educational or experiential requirements, etc.
My favorite part of O*NET are the online career assessment tools they have. One, the Computerized Interest Profiler (CIP), asks questions about what you would or would not like to do for work, and then suggests occupations that fit with your interests. It categorizes your specific interests into six different themes that suggest what aspects of jobs are most important to you personally. So, for example, when I took the test, I scored VERY high on Social, fairly high on Artistic and Investigative---and got ZERO (0) points in both Realistic and Conventional (scores that I'm sure will shock those who know me).
The other assessment is the Work Importance Profiler (WIP), which is more an assessment of the values that are important to you....that is, such factors as job security, on-the-job training, recognition, or advancement, the ability to work alone and/or independently, those sorts of things. I think this one might be trickier for students to answer, because you have to rank things in relative importance, which is harder than just saying whether or not you like to do something. I think it may also be hard for them to consider some of these factors if they haven't had any experience working.
But still, I find these things fascinating. In my case, my top work values were, in order:
Achievement--The Achievement work value involves the need to use your individual abilities and have a feeling of accomplishment.
Relationships--The Relationships work value includes the need for friendly co-workers, to be able to help others, and not be forced to go against your sense of right and wrong.
Independence--The Independence work value refers to the need to do tasks on your own and use creativity in the workplace. It also involves the need to get a job where you can make your own decisions.
My less important values, in order, were:
Recognition--The Recognition work value involves the need to have the opportunity for advancement, obtain prestige, and have the potential for leadership.
Support--The Support work value involves the need for a supportive company, be comfortable with management's style of supervision, and a competent, considerate, and fair management.
Working Conditions--The Working Conditions work value refers to the need to have your pay comparable to others, and have job security and good working conditions. You also need to be busy all the time and have many different types of tasks on the job.
Again, I would say that assessment is pretty spot on. After all, no one who highly values Recognition, Support, and Working Conditions would ever end up homeschooling!
You can download the CIP and the WIP from O*NET to run on your own computer, but I also found two state employment agencies where you could just do it online. The information links to job or educational opportunities in that state, but I think the overall suggestions for matching occupations are the same, and I didn't want to bother with downloading and installing the software. So I took the CIP at the Washington State Employment Security Department site and the WIP at Career Zone California.
It is a fun exercise to do, just to see what they suggest. For example, according to my WIP results, I should be working in music theater....which is funny, because it is a love of mine, but I lack the talent to work in that field. Being a middle school teacher, while not incompatible with my values, was way down on the list, but being a postsecondary teacher was fairly high up. And one of the top suggestions for both my CIP and WIP was Meeting and Convention Planner, which is a job I think I would enjoy--and, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, would make from 50-100% MORE than being a school teacher.
Anyway, I think such tools are a good way to diversify students' viewpoints about the careers they might consider.
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