My Charter School - Part 1 (Athletics)

    My future charter school needs a lot of work and planning.  What makes up a school what makes it good and what makes it bad?  I know very few people read this blog, but one day maybe I make a charter school and people read this in order to understand it.  First, I'm going to spend a significant amount of digital ink on EXTRA curriculars.

    The first football game was between Yale and Harvard.  It wasn't nigh unto professional sports.  I cannot imagine those students spending more than a couple of hours a week practicing and they were the only teams that filled out a team that year.  Soon many others would join.  Other schools in the last century and a half have had football teams much faster.  Yale and Harvard were open over a hundred years a piece before they started playing intramural sports.  But even colleges that were started between 1850 and 1950 started small, a college, that focused and grew and changed and added sports over time.  Now new schools race to have athletic programs.  

   And high school follow along the same trajectory.  They had no programs in small towns, then they had small programs, then they had large programs.  Now, middle schools have programs that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.  The costs are in some ways hidden by the labor.  Four coaches in athletics means $200,000+ but they also teach.  Well, some of them.  They use trainors from the high school, their gear is nike, or under armour, the kids bring in some money, they fund raise.  Middle school programs now I would guess cost more even with inflation than college programs did say 75 years ago.  Sounds like a long time?  High school programs I believe cost more than college did 35 years ago, is my guess.  There are exceptions.  Big college verses little high school might not be close, but the point is there is an unquestionable gradual growth.  And there doesn't seem to be a limiting principle.  

    Why would there be a limiting principle.  The more colleges spend on athletics, the more they get from advertising dollars for being on TV.  The more they're on TV the more students that matriculate.  The more students the more money, the more money the more athletic potential.  The more they get from donors.  High schools and middle schools get a great deal of prestige from Athletics for some unknown reason.  The average person cannot name which school was last years high school state champ unless it was your school.  The kids care so much about winning district in middle school, but who cares.  It is no great predictor of Division 1 success or professional potential.  Who cares?  Almost everyone does.  If the money is to indicate interest then teachers, parents, students, voters, and everyone else cares who wins.

    So...everyone is wrong.  Especially in the school setting.  Athletic programs were invented between the world wars and especially after WWII to teach discipline and athletic ability to a large swath of society.  Our schools are failing in this.  Football is failing in this.  Football creates prima donnas who don't listen or respect, do not achieve in the classroom.  Coaches are trying to get players to play whether they pass or not.  Coaches are leaning on admin and teachers to pass students so they can play.  There are reasons for kids to play, to learn discipline and respect, to work off some excess energy, to have an outlet for aggression and even corporal punishment.  But it should always be subservient to education.  Students who cannot read and do math on level shouldn't be double blocking athletics, but reading and math.  

    Athletics are therefore beneficial, but must serve the school.  Athletics must prepare boys and girls for all futures rather than a future in professional sports.  So in my charter school there will be no sports against other schools.  I think organizing games within the school will be much cheaper, will tamp down any fame that students may achieve for a couple of touchdowns on Friday night.  Basketball played within a single school will allow many students of varying skill levels to make an impact.  It is terrible that so many students don't play any sports and then they don't have any athletic activity in their boring PE class.  The Gym teacher doesn't push this class, many times because they cannot be useful to them on a team.  

    I know there are some students who come to school for sports.  I know there are some students who achieve in the classroom in order to play on the team although that number is shrinking.  To them, I think this could be even better than the system we have now.  If games are played daily at school among students then there is always the opportunity to achieve and play.  Because many students also practice in order to play.  Let them practice for half a class and then play everyday, there are too many, most schools, who are so business, they rarely scrimmage.  That is also bad for kids.  But what if a scrimmage isn't good enough, and what if two or three students dominate the games?  Play a bigger game after school.  Have a blue team and a red team within your school.  Trade players to resist factions.  And believe it or not, there are a lot of dominate players in intermural sports.

NO PASS NO PLAY

    I have a student named E.  He's tall, like 6'1 which is tall for an 8th grader.  I've never seen him play basketball, but he seems like he'd be good at least on defense with his size and apparent agility.  First day of school he said, he wanted to be a coach, a player, or a soldier.  He never talks out of turn, but he doesn't work.  He doesn't seem to care to turn work in.  The young boy would benefit from failing in class, because he needs to realize why he needs to perform in well in class.  But I truly wish he could figure that out without failing a nine weeks.  If he would play outside of UIL and on the school team, then he could sit out a day or a week, because faculty told him he couldn't play for a short period of time.  Not three weeks, or six weeks, or a unfigurable term that no one can figure out in UIL which is arbitrary.  The punishment, the consequences, should fit the crime.  E and others should receive swifter, simpler, more direct consequences for misbehavior, or lack of effort in the classroom.

COACHES

    In many middle schools there are 9 coaches.  Four for the boys, four for the girls, and one more for tennis or golf.  When I was a kid, 2 coaches coached 7th grade football, and 2 coached 8th grade football.  Now four coach 7th in the morning and the same four coach the 8th in the afternoon.  This is unwise.  Our coaches are becoming less educators and more coaches.  When these programs started 60 and 70 years ago there was a single coach for all the intramural sports and PE.  That is also unwise, coaches can't have impact on too many students.  That is why there should be more teacher coaches not less.  How many teachers could be utilized to coach a single class?  Two teacher coaches per period one man, one woman now there are 14 to 16 teacher coaches.  Who has the most authority in the classroom?  Teacher coaches.  Who are the most beloved after leaving school typically?  Teacher coaches.  When I have a behavior problem with an athlete who do we call?  Teacher coaches.  Now there are no stipends which are trash anyway for coaches.  There are no students who are receiving special treatment because they're 'taking us to state.'  There are students who practice a wide range of athletic pursuits, with a wide range of skill and interest levels, taught by a wide variety of teachers who cannot help, but keep their main focus on education, because they only coach an hour, but also dole out some consequences, and positive rewarding activities to students who're achieving in the classroom.

READY FOR WHATEVER

    I think football is wrong for students.  It does hurt too much.  There is brain damage with every hit.  The linemen aren't getting exercise.  Concussions and broken bones are too common.  One of my favorite movies is Necessary Roughness.  Scott Bacula is a college Quarterback and he's 40.  There are two antagonists for the football team.  One is the Texas State, the other is their own dean.  He doesn't think that college's hard earned money should be used on the barbarity of football.  I watched it when I was young and hated that guy, but I agree with him as I get old enough to be the arm of the armadillos.  No football, yes basketball, yes track, yes soccer, no hockey, yes relays and cross training, yes hiking, yes boxing with gear and hitting bags more than each other, yes field events including javelin.  Yes tag and wall ball, yes ping pong and cross country.  Yes gymnastics maybe swimming.  Yes wrestling yes volleyball.

TITLE NINE

    Girls will train with boys and will play in PE with boys.  When preparing for afterschool, more competitive games, there should be girls, boys, and co-ed.  

ANTS SPECIALIZE

    One hard fast rule for me is that I don't think kids should have to choose.  When I was part of a high school program as a student in the late 90's there was time to be an athlete and a nerd in the band or orchestra.  I think that is essential to the cultivation of students and societal members.  When I was part of a high school program as a coach (admittedly supporting role) in 2018 the time to be engaged in multiple activities was dead and dying out.  When I was in high school there were football players who pulled off their pads at halftime and marched with the band.  That is highly irregular these days.  Band members and football players both think they should specialize more to be ready for the next level.  This is a bad practice of our educational system.  It is tragic.  I think it should be reversed and it will be in my charter school.  Time will be alloted to make sure students can participate in multiple extracurriculars.  Will students be as competitive in state competitions?  No, thank God.

Cashing in on Education

"Why can't I just quit school and go to work?"

Ever hear that from your high schooler?  Maybe your 3rd grader?  

The national average price paid per pupil across the US is $12,612.  That means each kid costs that much every year.  This starts out at the upper end where New York spends $24,000 per pupil including a ton of money for pensions.  Utah is in last place, or is it first place?  They spend $7,628 per student.  *Stats from educationdata.org

America is not getting its money's worth.  Nope.  In large cities like New York, New York where students are costing $24,000 per student per year 80% are graduating and 80% of those can read.  Wow.  You know I'm actually surprised it's that high.  Maybe there is some statistical...creativity.  Maybe there are affluent schools bringing the average up.  Maybe there are some really good charter and private schools that just get it done.  Then again, exclusive private schools shouldn't even effect those statistics.  Maybe if the US used vouchers and we SHOULD use vouchers.  

Heck, maybe the numbers are fudged.  I'd believe that.  I just read 13 Ways of Going on a Field Trip.  Seems like there are some heroic and idealistic teachers in New York fighting a tsunami, but the tsunami is winning.  I've heard horror stories from people who work at Title 1 schools, and movies, and articles, and my own experiences these past five years at Title 1 schools.  

My personal assessment is that students and parents lack motivation.  Some students will do well for themselves.  Some students will do well for their parents.  Some students will do well to play sports or do the arts.  All of that adds up to maybe 50% and still few of those have an intrinsic motivation to retain knowledge rather than to score well on the test and dump their knowledge.  Still even that doesn't deal with the other 50% ish who aren't motivated by parents, sports, or anything else. 

Here's one idea.  Let's pay the students $500 a year to get A's and B's and good attendance.  Say $80 bucks per six weeks if they get A's and B's and only 2 absences, no more than 5 tardies.  They can lose out one or two Marking Periods and fix it in the others.  What about paying parents the same amount?  Now moms and dads are motivated to send their kids to bed on time, and get to school on time, and encourage them to do homework each night.  Maybe parents could even sit down with the kids regularly and look at their grades to hold them accountable.  

There does seem to be something perverse about paying students and parents to succeed.  After all we're already giving them something that has the ability to really do amazing things. Just go look up quotes about the value of education and you'll see Erasmus said, "The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth."  "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave. -Fredrick Douglas.  "A child without an education is like a bird without wings."  "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."   So should America pay its people to take this great thing?  Yeah.  

We already pay kids the price of the school building, team sports, pensions, teacher's salaries, counselors, and admin. We pay too much to try to grow their motivations instead of just trying to pay them to be motivated.  Let's buy their motivations.  

I often think, 'I could teach 40 students at a time in all of my classes IF each student was as good as HN, MI, or DS (initials used to protect identities).  You've had students like that, right?  What if they all were?  What if they were pressing you for all they might incidentally need to know instead of asking if they'll really need all this?  What if they self-regulated class and other student's behavior so that they could all hear and succeed?  What if they tried to butter you up, but were also conscientiously trying to not look like they were?  What if they all vied to be the teacher's pet?  Would teachers need as much pay and as much support staff?  Nope.

Could this lead to cheating?  For example, a teacher offers a good grade for part of the cash?  Yes.  But would you want to trust a student to keep quiet about that?  I wouldn't.  Could students and parents make a scene and argue?  Could rotating teachers and standardized testing be used to back up all teacher data?  Yes.  

It wouldn't have to be every school or even every school in one state.  It would just have to be a couple of charters to create the experiment.  I know there would be tons of teachers, parents, and students titillated by the opportunity. Then again, I didn't even ask Google if it was legal.

End Secondary School

I don't think there should be secondary school anymore.

Why would someone have secondary school?  Well, to teach the students everything they would need in life.  Really.  That sounds impossible.  Maybe we endeavor to teach citizens the things that make them fit the definition of educated.  However, schools largely don't do that.  Schools probably never did, or how many students can pass the same calculus exams that proved mastery one month later?  

And what does it take to teach the students these things?  It takes motivated students and only barely competent teachers.  It takes supportive parents who encourage and partner with students and teachers.  Over the decades the motivation of students has dropped, the buy in of the parents has flopped, and the competency of the teachers has gone up.  These statements are addressing averages.

Now there are teachers who don't do much.  They are at these failure factories in inner cities and they are working with too many students who don't care.  They lost the battle and their job is to shift the blame and cover the truth.  If America doesn't know, schools in inner cities are broken.  

But where the battle to educate is still being waged, public schools expected less and less and less.  In some academic game of high jump the children will keep adjusting to the lowered bar until they are refusing to jump centimeters.  They have and they do play limbo until they simply won't engage the bar.  School isn't teaching the minimum basic skills because there is no reason for the students to learn.  

So just end secondary school requirements.  Stop sending millions of kids who don't want to go to school to learn something they don't want to learn.  If kids want to go to middle school or high school or if their parents are highly motivated for them to go then they can go.  Then teachers wouldn't be spending out-sized time trying to make oppositional defiant teens pass arbitrary requirements.  Teachers can focus on the students who WANT to be there.  Students can get what they need.  The bills would be cut.  The arbitrary nature of grades can be amended up instead of down for the first time in decades.  

Just change schools to Primary (K-3rd) and Senior (4th-6th) and finally Remedial (7th).  In primary students will spend a lot of their time in the same way they do now.  However, maybe with more emphasis put on fewer grade levels there can be more teachers per student.  One teacher teaching 10-15...with a helper.  Sounds great! Student citizens need only to gain powers of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

It's all they need.  To read with good vocabulary and understanding for simple facts.  The idea that all 16 year olds can engage with Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Dickens is ludacris.  As surely as the idea that all 50 year olds can.  To do basic math well enough to mentally balance a checkbook.  To write opinions and feelings.  The list of requirements isn't large, and yet elementary schools are pushing some algebraic ideas into the lower levels so they'll be ready for them in secondary school.  That's crazy. Members of our society don't lament thirty year olds who can't find a hypotenuse, but America rightly cringes when we hear of high school grads who cannot read and write at a third grade level.  Forget the first problem and attack the second.  

Senior School (4th thru 6th) would be the time for high-stakes, standardized testing.  Students would need to prove their mastery of all ESSENTIAL (meaning a lot of them aren't essential) knowledge and skills.  Just as today this should be based on teachers grades, formative assessments, and standardized testing.  State testing would continue and increase in these early grades as children are proving mastery and schools are graded for their capability.  This makes politicians and test-writer lobbyists happy.

7th Grade would be for the ones who couldn't get through.  And as their peers move on they would be given more focus and attention.  Diagnosticians could give extra time.  Master teachers could be employed.  Summer school could be elongated.  The light at the end of the tunnel could be shown to them.  Once they get it they...

If a student doesn't choose to continue traditional, but re envisioned secondary school.  Send them to get a job.  They could be making their own money, helping their families, or a bit of both.  In my class I tell my kids that if they don't get through high school they'll probably only work menial jobs.  But some kids don't find this threatening.  Let's let them work at Domino's pizza, or Starbucks, or a grocery store, or where ever, for half of minimum wage.  Simply tie a juvenile minimum wage to the federal minimum wage.  Now a 12 or 13 year old kid can work for five years instead of secondary school. Kids can become apprentice construction workers, plumbers, daycare, animal groomers, or anything else  They can make more than minimum wage if their employers find them valuable.  

I can envision assistant managers taking over a fast food restaurant when they turn 18 because they've been working there 6 years.  General Manager may not happen until they go to business classes for a year or two, but that's way better than starting that trajectory at age 19.  

Plus, I'm tired of college graduates working at Starbucks.  Lets let them forgo Harvard and start butchering names right away.

Maybe you also don't let them vote until they pass their school.  I know sounds racially charged because it used to be, but I like the idea of the school graduation earning something.  How about you can't get a job until you graduate 6th grade and you can't vote until you can read the candidates positions.  Maybe people will care more about their vote if they all had to earn it.

Maybe they would care more about school if it earned them something.       

All I want for Christmas, I didn't get.

Brethren,

                Did you get what you wanted for Christmas?

Have you ever noticed that there aren’t a lot of stories in the Bible about people who couldn’t perform miracles, who didn’t get they wanted?  Yes, I know there’s that time when Jesus couldn’t do any miracles, it says because the people had no faith in Mark 6, but even there he still put his hands on some people and healed them.  I know there was that time when Peter couldn’t walk on water but then he could with Jesus.  There was that time that the disciples couldn’t drive out a demon, but Jesus could with prayer.    Do you remember that time that Moses lifted his staff and walked into the Red Sea and got wet (I made that up.  It’s not in the Bible.)?

How about that time you prayed to God for something in his name and it didn’t happen even if it wouldn’t have been miraculous, like praying for someone you love to turn back to the Lord.  Or maybe you’ve prayed that God might help someone to forgive you, and they didn’t.  In the Bible, I wish God could have sprinkled a couple of stories about not getting what we wanted when we asked for it.  

Turns out that in his infinite wisdom he did.

Paul tells us that all of Creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed, and it still is presumably.  Paul also longed to see a bunch of people and wasn’t able to before the end.  Imagine Moses, this tired old fossil, walking up a mountain to see a land flowing with milk and honey, a Promised Land, that he wasn’t able to see after 40 years of anticipation.  You think he plead for God to change his mind?  How does it feel that God didn’t give you what you really wanted now?  That car, health insurance, life without a softball-sized tumor, life without divorce, life with both parents:  Do you think your hurts and hang-ups, addictions and heartaches can stand up to Moses’?

How about this one?  God, having made all things, made you in his image.  He created you to be like him and he is wild about you.  He thinks you are fantasmic.  He loves you with an everlasting love.  He loves each and every hair on your head.  Yeah, he got what he really wanted. 

But think of all those people on the ‘naughty list.’  God loves them too and a lot of them aren’t going to be under the Christmas tree.  Millions won’t make it into his stocking.  All he wants for Christmas is us yet the world is full of the faithless and the enemies of God who he never really thought of as enemies.  Those far from God, ‘WON’T be home for Christmas.’  When you think about what you didn’t get that you really wanted, think about the yearning God has for the sinner.  See if you can wrap one up for him next Christmas.     

When you can't see God he's still there

Brethren, my son Ender is cute as a button.  He’s had my heart ever since he got yanked into the world. And he likes me too.  He always has big smiles for me.  He gives me really nice dry burps faster than anyone else.  He likes our ceiling fan more than me, but I’m no chopped liver, according to him. 

Ender and I spend a lot of time together.  His mom works part-time and I’m home for the summer since I’m a school teacher; so there are five hours a day that I get to play Mr. Mom.  We really like our time together.   

His nap is usually after we’re back from a long walk and I’ve fed him, burped him, changed him, and worked him out with tummy time and a stuffed bee he likes to abuse.  It usually happens in his room.  I know from experience the nap is going to be between 30 and 45 minutes.  

This is my time.  I really like to cut loose right about now because I know the grind is going to continue in just a bit so…  I wash his bottles and pacifiers, make him a pitcher of formula, wash his clothes sometimes, start to prepare lunch, put a bottle in the warmer, tiptoe everywhere, text my wife things about the morning since she tracks his meals and diaper changes, and sometimes get ready to go on an errand with him.  Sometime during this ‘me time,’ he starts crying. 

He wakes up alone and scared so he cries out.  You know if he really thought about what I was doing he probably would think I was taking ‘me time.’  He probably thinks I’m watching soap operas, doing my nails, or weight lifting.  ‘Dad is probably reading some esoteric history tome.’ (I love personifying my son (I know it’s not really personifying because he IS a person.).) 

So I’ve noticed that my son doesn’t realize that when I’m not with him I’m still taking care of him.  You know this, even when you’re at work you’re taking care of your kids, aren’t you?  Rent isn’t going to pay itself, right?  Sometimes the most important things we do to take care of our children is stuff they can’t see us doing. 

Sometimes our heavenly father seems to be very far from us.  We are in the desert and he is nowhere to be found.  We are taking up our crosses and following after him and he is forsaking us.  We’re going through personal tragedies like dead loved ones or divorce or unemployment and God has left us in our crib and shut the door.

But God is the Father and even when he isn’t taking care of you he IS taking care of you.  He is filling your life with providence even when he feels far away.  He is making sure that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Get the bad stuff out

Brethren, get ready for an article about bowel movements.

The late Lois Williams Murphy’s most recent great grandchild was born after her death and the two, barring any eschatological or afterlife theological issues, were able to spend a little time getting to know each other in heaven before I got to meet my four-month old.  Ender is my first baby but I have had a lot of nieces and nephews.  The differences between your kids and sibling’s kids are legion.  One of the more surprising ones was that I like to change Ender’s diaper and I feared and loathed changing any of the other rascals related to me. 

‘Wait…you mean you’re happy to do it because you love him?’  No.  I like to change his poopy pants.  My little dude has difficulty going number two on a regular basis and so when he does I react as if I’ve won the lottery.  I throw a party all by myself.  My kid must think it’s very strange.  Daddy comes in and takes care of my business and starts whooping and hollering. 

So Uncle Drew doesn’t like to handle the poo but Daddy is happy to get in there and unload my kid’s load.  What changed?  I think it’s got to do something with my intimate knowledge of my child.  I know he doesn’t go often enough and so I know how important it is for him to go.  It isn’t good if a person can’t get that waste out of themselves so a good father is genuinely and sincerely ecstatic to put two hands in my son’s number two.

God is like that with us, Brethren.  You have this sin living in you.  It doesn’t belong inside.  Just like your waste system we have toilets for letting out the waste. The sin which so easily entangles needs to get out too.  Your body can’t work right without getting rid of the junk and your soul can’t work right if you’re not letting out the sin through the chute of confession. 

Now hold on a minute.  I am not encouraging you to get rid of that sin through the sacrament of confession, although if I’m honest, all God’s people need more confession.  This time I want you to notice Ender doesn’t doodoo on purpose to get rid of the junk.  (Actually, sometimes I suspect he does poop on purpose like if he waits five minutes after his mom leaves.) 

I’d like you to notice, this time, how joyous God is to see you get rid of the waste.  God celebrates your evacuations of guilt. God joyously reacts to any time you get on straight paths.  His, ‘Creation waits in eager expectation for the Sons of God to be revealed, (NIV) or it is waiting, ‘With excitement (ERV).’  If you didn’t know, your father is crazy about you and intimate with your being in a way another shepherd could never be.  Your Daddy can’t wait for you to get rid of all that baggage.    

Wayfarer November

Brethren,

    Christ once said, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have trouble, but take heart.  I have overcome the world.” 

That verse used to scare me.  I used to not have much trouble.  I thought, ‘Does Christ want me to seek out trouble?’  I was thinking that my life was too easy and simple.  I never was arrested for my faith.  I hadn’t even given all that I had.  I never fed or visited the least of these in prison.  I never needed saving from the den of lions or the fiery furnace because I was never worth throwing into a den or a furnace in the first place. 

    Why do I feel like such a bad Christian when I feel good?  Am I a bad Christian when I feel good?  The brother of my brother (how am I related to James), my brother in the Lord, once said, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds because you know that testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”  Those are the kind of passages that make me think about punching the devil in the nose.  It makes me want to make my life a Rocky-like montage of acts of faith and service.  They make me think that if my life isn’t difficult then I must be doing something wrong. 

    But like I said that verse used to scare me because my life didn’t feel too troubled.  Now that verse scares me because I have trouble, but I’m not sure the troubles are the right kind.  Here I am, angry that my students at the school I work at don’t have supportive parents and it’s quasi-difficult for me to do anything to make them invest.  Or today my wife and I are having heart wrenching problems and I can’t help, but suspect that the troubles this world was supposed to have are being drowned out by the one’s it actually has.

    But then I remember what God cares most about.  It’s relationship.  He sent his one and only son so that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have ever lasting life.  He sent his son to save the church and exist in community forever.  He created the church to model the communion of saints.  He cares about relationships.

So I know that my students and my wife ARE the troubles he cares about.  I know that God CARES about these things.  I know that God wants me to take heart because He has overcome the world.  I know that GOD wants me to consider these trials pure joy.      This IS how I punch the devil in the nose; by being as supportive of these kids as I can and working through the difficult times with my wife because it produces perseverance.  I know that perseverance can make me mature and complete. And it still scares me, but one day I might not lack anything.