Whatever Flips Your Waffle (192)
Have you ever said or written something and then realized it didn’t come across the way you intended? After my April 14 column, I was made very aware that had happened.
So you don’t have to dig through your recycling, I was venting about some systems in education for knowing what’s happening with students (or not knowing in most cases) and how we’re expected to respond, as well as how this links in with some ways students find to not complete work. I tried to string together too many disparate threads, and my message was lost.
As many of you know, I never send in a first draft, and the column I sent in that week was pretty different from how it started out. I made some wholesale changes to some of my beginning ideas based on how thoughts flowed as I wrote, and I also made some big changes to wording, trying to get my message just right. I failed.
To some people who contacted me, I came across as insensitive to those with mental health issues. How dare I not allow a child to go see a counselor or therapist when they asked? In retrospect, I should have mentioned how earlier this year we heard that we should not just allow anyone who asked to leave to see those people unless they had a pass. This segment of our staff is so overloaded, which is why, a week before that, I had implored our legislators to give more money to schools to expand in that area.
The caveat to all this is that if we see something that would indicate there is a need right now, we could certainly send them at least to the office. I’ve done that before, just the same as I would with a child who is physically ill.
I was asked by someone if I feel I’m qualified to determine if someone is having a serious enough issue to warrant this. While I’m not certified like others, all teachers have some background in that area, we’ve had training in noting some of these characteristics, and I’ve been working with kids for two decades which has allowed me to see much.
A concerned reader asked me how I would feel if I denied a student the ability to leave and go see someone, and later on that student did something terrible to him or herself or someone else. Of course, I would feel horrible. I know many issues don’t follow a schedule. However, think about this from another perspective. What happens if I allow a student to leave who is not expected somewhere else and that student never ends up there? What if that same terrible scenario from before happens in this case?
We’re getting to the point in schools today where any kid in the hall needs an escort. If I send a child to the office, I call down to alert them, but that’s still no guarantee they’ll make it. I like how our band director will come and escort students to a band lesson – they’re always on time and never take a detour!
We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. So many teachers have been burned by kids who claim a need to leave and don’t end up where they say that we’re hesitant. A large part of the point I was trying to get across in that column was the lack of communication in this area. I know there are data privacy issues at play here. As I told one e-mailer though, it’s not that we’re nosy, but if we know NOTHING of what’s going on, how do we help?
At the very least, a list of students who usually see these important staff members would be helpful in sorting through the morass. There might even be priority ratings for students who are having some extremely serious and sensitive issues. Granted, this would be changing all the time, but that’s similar to my grades changing every time I plug in a new assignment.
And this was the other side of the responses I heard; they weren’t all negative! A number of my fellow teachers cited a desire to be more helpful through more knowledge. We care about and value our students, and it’s frustrating to constantly be told there’s a reason for a behavior but that we can’t know that reason. I was told by others that they agreed it’s not much of a reach to assume laziness and obstinate behavior when work isn’t getting done or attitudes are flaring when we’re not even aware the child is seeing someone about some issues. Of course we’ll react in a manner consistent with our normal classroom management techniques.
It’s a little like being given a stack of boards and some hardware and then being told to build something without any directions. We have the materials (the students) but not the knowledge to create the best design possible. Obviously, the school’s hands are tied in relation to some data, but many teachers approached me and said there has to be more available to us than what we get. The consensus was that if we’re part of the team in educating and helping these kids, we have to be more than the kid looking in at the dance, wishing he or she could go in.
My dad taught me the Latin phrase, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” which he used to recite in church. It is an acknowledgement of fault, which I hereby offer. I’m at fault for not being really clear on the meaning of my column, and I apologize for raising the ire of some of my faithful readers. I’m so passionate about items I perceive as problems that I too often forget to scale back and think about how others will view my comments. I sincerely hope all involved can work together to better help all our students.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is parsiology, which means the deliberate use of unclearness in one’s writing, as in, “The columnist didn’t intend for the parsiology which led to misinterpretation of his writing.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
A couple of years ago, I wrote about my Grandma Ann Hacker. She’s always been a special lady, and she’s on the cusp of a very special event – her 90th birthday!
Just stop and think about that – 90 years old! I’m nearly halfway there, but I’d consider it a minor miracle if I made it that long. Grandma is just incredible though. The summer after I wrote my column, she moved from her house to a senior community. She’s still able to do everything for herself and has been talking about buying a new car. It’ll be very exciting to see all her family and friends celebrate her special day this weekend.
So what does it mean to become a nonagenarian? Grandma was born in 1926, a year that might not stick out in our history books, but one that was chock full of interesting events. For example, Winnie-the-Pooh was first published. That’s right, the lovable bear of Christopher Robin made his debut the same year as my grandma! Even cooler to me, Harper Lee was born the day before my grandma! Lee, who recently died, was the author of the greatest novel of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird. Other famous people born in 1926 included Hugh Hefner, famous playboy; Marilyn Monroe, famous heartthrob; and Fidel Castro, famous dictator of Cuba. On the other end of the spectrum, famous escape artist Harry Houdini died in 1926.
The first demonstration of a television set was performed early in 1926. Wow – Grandma’s been around as long as TV! Just like our kids can say the Internet has always been around, Grandma can claim television and her were always tuned in.
It was a big year for automobiles. Route 66 was created, running from Chicago to Los Angeles. Pontiac cars were first produced. The Kelly Blue Book was first published with car values. And Henry Ford first started the 40-hour work week for his employees. It was just a year later, in 1927, that the final Model T car rolled off the assembly line and Ford really started to diversify. But I guess we have Ford to thank for what our typical working time looks like 90 years later.
A few other important occurrences happened the year my grandma was born. Hirohito was crowned emperor of Japan. Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. Robert Goddard fired off the first liquid fuel rocket, leading to all the space exploration we have today. Just think about that: As long as the first steps of flying into space have been happening, Grandma was taking her first steps in the world as well.
My readers all know how much I despise standardized testing. Well, it all started back in 1926 when the first SAT test was administered to students in the United States. I don’t think President Calvin Coolidge or the rest of the government was responsible for it though. I’m pretty sure Grandma never took the SAT, but her intelligence is unsurpassed. Who needs a test to be smart?
The population of the United States in 1926 was 115 million people, compared to about 323 million people 90 years later. In other words, our country’s population has nearly tripled in the past 90 years. What might it be like 90 years from now? And think about that: there are babies being born right now who might live that long and look back at 2016 and what was happening. What will we have left them?
I know one thing that won’t be the same: the work ethic that Grandma and others of her generation have. These are hard-working folks who had to battle for everything they got growing up. It wasn’t too long into Grandma’s illustrious career as a person that the Great Depression hit. How many of us in our padded lifestyles would have lasted long back then? Not many, I’d wager.
An incredible woman, an incredible life. I have so much respect for Grandma. I know she’s lived her life to its fullest and is someone to look up to and emulate. If I’m lucky enough to live as long, it will be in no small part due to her influence. But I’m not satisfied. I keep telling Grandma I expect to be there to celebrate when she becomes a centenarian! And if you still see my face in this paper in ten years, you’d best believe I’ll have something to say about Grandma Ann again! Happy birthday, Grandma! I love you and can’t wait to celebrate with you now and for many years to come!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is petrichor, which means the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell, as in, “The petrichor in the air was welcome in April, just in time for Grandma’s birthday.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
Last week, I wrote about the increasing burden on teachers, in part leading to a shortage in the profession. Part of this dealt with all the other hats we have to wear. If you don’t mind, I’d like to expand on that this week and be a bit brusque in my outlook.
When I started teaching 20 years ago, many of the problems we had to keep an eye on were in dealing with kids whose parents were going through a split. We’d hear about this and always be aware of how tough that might be, showing empathy and knowing that sometimes there might be unusual actions from these students. We didn’t judge; we just tried to help guide the students through this difficult time in their lives.
Today we aren’t told about these things. We also don’t know about many other outside issues which might influence a child’s behavior such as problems with the law, suicidal tendencies, and a cornucopia of other areas of concern, many of which we veterans never dreamed of having to deal with.
And that’s part of the problem: we get told to keep an eye on someone, but often not why. This is in large part due to privacy concerns. Sometimes parents give permission for us to know what’s going on, but most times we don’t have a clue. This is detrimental to our ability to help. What exactly should we be noticing? It certainly varies from one scenario to the next.
Back to the original example, what I look for in a child in a household going through a divorce is vastly different than what I should see in a kid who had a parent arrested the night before or the student who has hinted at wanting to take his or her own life. Teenagers act funny and different on the best of days; if we know more specifics, there are some crucial variances we can spot.
Sometimes living in our small communities gives us the chance to know what is going on, even if we’re not told. Word spreads quickly about town, and we often learn more from students coming to us to talk about something than we do from any administrator. I understand some need for privacy in some situations, but then I’d rather not know there’s even something occurring. I’d be more likely to notice something being off if I didn’t have a long list of kids who have issues that I can’t know the details about. Either tell me what’s going on or don’t tell me anything at all.
And here’s where the problem becomes exacerbated. There are many cases where the school is treating some students with extreme examples of kid gloves. And the kids know it. An increasing number of them will look for as many crutches as they can to avoid the tasks placed before them. It’s gotten to the point where, if a student asks to see a counselor or therapist on staff, I just say no unless they have a pass from that person. These kids figure they can use the fact that we teachers don’t know much, if anything, about their situation to wander about and miss class consistently.
Hey, I get it. There are some serious problems with a greater amount of our students than ever before, many of them related to mental health. But we’re including many kids under these umbrellas because they’ve learned how to work the system. I fill out paperwork all the time about kids looking to qualify for special services and most of it is laughable, but required by the government.
I sat at a meeting for a student recently where the child was asked about why work wasn’t being completed. Too many leading questions were asked: “Is it too hard? Do you not understand it?” This is like asking your young child if specific areas of the body hurt. Rather than ask if their ears or their tummy hurt, a parent should ask the child to tell where it hurts; otherwise, they will tend to agree with anything you suggest.
The same was happening at this meeting. I spoke up, as I am wont to do, and gave my theory: a mixture of stubbornness and laziness. The work wasn’t always easy, but the student had shown previous ability to do it just fine. Let’s not rule out the obvious reasons right away. Again, some of these kids are getting pretty good at getting what they want, which is less responsibility.
I often tell students that excuses are like belly buttons: we all have them, but they don’t do us much good anymore. If I had a dollar for every kid who had an iPad about to run out of charge, I’d be a lot closer to retirement. Why wasn’t your iPad charged last night? Is your phone fully charged? You know, there’s another set of holes in the same outlet where you should plug in your VERY IMPORTANT device that you need for school. Every one of us has forgotten to charge up something at some point, but the repeat offenders for that and non-completion of school work are troubling, along with their excuses.
Sometimes a child is just trying to get out of work and we’re handing them excuses. Stop trying to make everybody feel like singing “Kumbaya” and get to the heart of the problem. Otherwise, leave us out of it.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is apricity, which means the warmth of the sun, as in, “On an otherwise dreary day, the teacher stepped out into the sudden apricity caused by a parting of clouds and found a smile.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
I had the opportunity to travel to St. Paul recently and chat with some of our local legislators regarding education issues. It was my first time doing this, but it was a great experience to have the people who create our laws take some time to listen to the people those laws affect.
An area of concern that I and other teachers from the area shared with the politicians was in regards to attracting teachers and teacher retention. There is a teacher shortage all over the state, especially in subjects like math, science, and special education. NRHEG has had a difficult time filling some of these spots recently, and we are in the same boat as many other districts.
Part of the problem is money. People with a math or science degree can make more outside of education, so why would they want to teach?
Okay, I’ve heard it all before. Teachers get their summers off, they get other breaks during the year, and they work shorter days than other private-sector employees.
You’re right. We do work fewer days than many people, 186 contracted days here vs. an average person with four weeks of vacation working about 240 days. We get a week or so off at Christmas and usually a mini-break around Easter. If the weather terrorists don’t attack, there are some other scattered days to create three-day weekends, but not many. There are a number of days kids aren’t in school but teachers are.
We have an eight-hour workday with a half hour lunch. But we also take a lot home with us many nights. There are times I leave school when I’m able, but I’ve got some solid work ahead of me doing some correcting. There are times I prefer doing that at home, which is why I trade my desk at school for my kitchen table. That way I can do the laundry, cook supper, or other chores at the same time.
So are we overpaid? According to the National Education Association, the average starting teacher in Minnesota makes about $34,000. The average teacher overall brings in about $52,000. There’s been a big to-do made lately about St. Paul teachers averaging $75,000 yearly. I can tell you this much: there’s not a teacher in our area making anything close to that! Of course, we haven’t had nearly 50 teachers attacked by students this year either like the St. Paul district has. I’ll take less money for less of that, thank you very much.
I came into this profession with my eyes wide open. I never expected to become rich as a teacher. When I attained my Master’s degree, I moved over on our salary schedule to a point where I make a good wage. Not great, but not anything to be sour grapes about. This is an area where teachers have some control over their salaries; if we further our education, we get an increase in pay. It costs plenty to get those credits, but that change in salary is for the rest of our careers.
There are other issues though. When I started teaching 20 years ago, I got to do just that: teach. I had a nice level of freedom over my curriculum, taught my classes every day, went home to do some correcting some evenings, and that was that.
Today, however, the school has become more of a community resource center. I’m not just a teacher. Some days I have to be a counselor, a nurse, a police officer, and even a parent (not just to my own child!). How so?
We’re constantly on the look-out for the deteriorating mental health of so many students based on outside factors; we have to listen closely and try to keep track of which kids are having issues, but without knowing too much because of privacy concerns. I get to diagnose injuries at recess and when kids mess around in the halls and get hurt. Some teachers have to break up fights and deal with other illegal activities. And some kids just need someone to talk to because they receive either no attention or all negative attention at home and don’t have great parent figures in their lives.
Now throw the heightened expectations placed on teachers by the government in addition to all that. Who would want to do this job, even with all that supposed time off? If you’re starting college and thinking about teaching, would it be worth it? Many young people are saying no. They see what the state requires of teachers and what the salary is and say, “No, thank you.”
As we told our legislators, salary isn’t the only factor here. The state needs to take some of this burden off teachers and give money to schools to hire more support staff such as counselors, therapists, and nurses. That way the people who love to teach (like me) can go back to doing that and doing it well. Get rid of all the other items on our plates and the meat and potatoes that are left will be especially good. And that will be attractive to people entering the profession, which is what we need most of all.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is yerk, which means a sudden movement, as in, “The teacher spied a yerk in the hall during class, which meant another fight had erupted.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
I like a good zone defense in basketball. Notice I used the adjective “good.” When a zone is run effectively, it forces teams to shoot from the outside more, which makes shooting percentage generally go down. However, every zone has holes in it which good teams can exploit. Once a team has figured out how to counter your zone, you have no choice as a coach except to change things up defensively.
Which is what made watching our Lady Gophers from the University of Minnesota so frustrating this year. I get it – we have a horse in the race with Carlie Wagner and want to see her succeed, which is one reason I get so passionate when I watch them, almost the same as I do while watching the Vikings or Twins.
Anybody with any amount of basketball knowledge who also watched the Gophers probably shouted at some point, “Stop with the zone defense! Man up!” I know I did, and I heard many people around me saying some variation on that at their final game, a loss to the Coyotes of South Dakota. Coach Marlene Stallings continued her obstinate ways by staying in the 2-3 match-up zone, even when the Coyotes repeatedly found the hole at the free-throw line for shots and demonstrated superior cross-court passing to find the open shooters on the outside.
The other way a zone sometimes hurts you is in the rebounding department, and that was a major Achilles’ heel for our home team this year. When you are in a man defense, you are always close to a player and can box out when a shot goes up. With a zone, you sometimes find yourself in space, which means the offense also has unguarded people who can crash the boards and get the easy rebound.
In conversations with Carlie, I’ve gotten the sense that the team might not like the zone much either. Again, to use it at times is a good idea, but you’ve got to switch things up and keep the other team guessing. My gosh, we were able to do it at the junior high level the last couple of years. We didn’t run a great zone, but we’d throw it on at times, always ready to return to a man defense at a moment’s notice.
Just look at our high school ladies in their section loss to NYA. Our zone wasn’t working as planned because one of their players seemingly couldn’t miss from outside. Onika switched it up and had one of our players face-guard that girl, which shut her down for a while. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough, but that ability to change what isn’t working, even when you look at it as your bread and butter, is what good coaches do.
The oft-used phrase is that defense wins championships. We see that played out time and again across all sports. What’s the first thing Mike Zimmer did when he took over as coach of the Vikings? He revamped the defense. Even without a great offense the past two seasons, the Vikings almost always had a chance to win. Now he’s revamping the offense, and that balance is what we loyal fans hope will result in a trip to the Super Bowl in the next couple of years.
When the Twins were winning consistently earlier this century, defense was the name of the game. They were always near the top in fielding percentage and rarely made errors. That has slipped recently. When the team started so poorly last season, they weren’t even making the routine plays at times; I remember watching an outfielder drop a normal fly ball, the kind that Little League kids make every day. The team’s defense improved as the season went on, but that early stretch cost them the playoffs.
Now they’ve put their best power hitter, Miguel Sano, in the outfield, where he is shaky at best. The Twins traded away a good defensive outfielder and signed another power hitter, but it’ll be interesting to see how this puzzle fits together. At the end of last season, our boys had one of the best defensive outfields in the game but little pop at the plate. Will the tradeoff of defense for offense result in more wins? That’s what we’ll hope for.
As a coach, I always set defensive goals for my teams. If we learned the basics of defense and played well at that end of the court or out in the field, we were going to have success. It would take all the players to buy in; good teams find weak points in your defense and exploit them. It’s hard to hide a bad defensive player in basketball, and the baseball always manages to find that kid who is afraid of a batted ball.
Hopefully all the teams we root for in Minnesota will focus on those defensive fundamentals. We’d all love to see the Twins and Vikings make runs in the playoffs, and defense will jumpstart those chances. And I know we’re all interested in seeing how Carlie adjusts to being the center point of the Gopher offense next year, but deep down we know defense will win out and she wants to be a winner more than anything.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is alar, which means relating to the armpit, as in, “The zone defense could also be known as an alar defense since all players’ hands should be held high.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
There is a group of 6th-grade girls currently waging a peaceful protest at lunch. They felt they were being treated unfairly in when they were allowed to get in the lunch line, so they all started bringing cold lunch. They’ve kept this up for over a week, though I’m not sure it will have any impact if/when they decide to eat hot lunch again. Still, their tenacity is admirable.
This current protest reminded me of one we tried when I was in middle school. It seemed like we had nuggets of some kind at least once a week, if not more. That year we experienced nuggets from chicken, turkey, pizza, ham and cheese, and even fish. My grade had had enough. We picked a day and said we were all eating hot lunch, but then brought forth our cold lunches once we reached the cafeteria. The cooks and administration were furious at our deception; after all, that was a lot of food that went to waste. However, our point had been made, and the number of times nuggets appeared on our trays went down significantly.
We all have things we don’t like, but most of us are content to vent to our family, friends, and co-workers without actually doing much to effect change. To organize a protest takes work and dedication along with buy-in from everyone you are trying to involve. If you think you’re going to have 25 people for an event and only eight show up, the impact will be significantly less. Do all these potential protestors want to put themselves out there? Do they really believe that strongly in the cause?
We’ve seen an increasing number of protests in the news lately. It seems like there are some folks who are so eager to get their 15 minutes of fame that they will find something to shout about in a loud fashion. The Black Lives Matter protests seem to have simmered down lately, but they were splashed in the news pages and television programs for a long time. As I’ve written before in this space, getting bent out of shape every time some delinquent threatens a police officer and gets shot for it seems to be an overreaction. Study the facts before running out with picket signs.
And these protests that should be peaceful, protests which our Constitution allows us to do, too often escalate into violence when every Tom, Dick, and Harry get wind of it and decide it’s a good opportunity to run rampant and do stupid things without repercussions. “If I’m part of this large group and shout something inflammatory or shove someone and get things started, I can sit back and watch the wanton mayhem,” seems to be the thought process of some. I wonder how many people at some of these BLM protests actually believe in the cause.
Then there are the protestors against our presidential candidates. I haven’t really formed a strong opinion on who will receive my vote in November, but I know this much. Donald Trump is a blowhard and Hillary Clinton is shifty, but they have put themselves out there to run for the highest office in the land. You don’t have to like them or respect them; it seems hard to do with either one, but to incite rage and violence because you disagree with them seems foolish. It’s possible to plan a protest and let people know how you feel without anger entering the arena. Work hard to convince others that this person is not the right person for the job.
You know, to protest something is a great gift in our country, but people just have to remember to follow some rules. We have many freedoms in the United States, but the right to assemble and protest something does not give you the right to disobey other laws. A well-organized protest can have a profound impact. Social media is so ubiquitous that it’s a great place to make others aware of the event. Checking with local officials about area laws that might apply, such as the use of amplified sound, is vital to keep everything peaceable. Letting the media know is always a good thing, as long as you don’t plan on acting foolish as soon as the cameras are turned on.
Look at the lunchroom examples from earlier. While my grade didn’t check on rules and ended up angering people, we ended up getting what we wanted. Still, I have a feeling we could’ve gotten the lunch menu changed without going as far as we did. The current group of 6th graders is following the rules, they have let the powers that be know what they are doing, and they are not acting crazy about it. Will they get what they are seeking? Only time will tell!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is demotic, which means relating to common people, as in, “The demonstration struck a chord with the demotic population and quickly gained support.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
Recently I was at a local establishment to participate in the weekly poker tournament. We had a small crowd, so the noise level was low in the back room, making it easier to hear other customers in the main lounge.
I was heartened to overhear a conversation among a group of ladies, most of whom still have children in our school district, talking about the horrible grammar they see on texts and social media. (I wasn’t eavesdropping; if you knew these ladies, you’d realize that it was hard NOT to hear them, since it was a regular “hurricane” of activity.) They kept listing words that people use incorrectly, many of them homonyms. You remember homonyms, right? They’re those fun words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Let’s review, shall we? After all, those ladies were pretty accurate in the most egregious errors that we all see.
Your/You’re: Anything with a contraction is really pretty simple, if you take the time to think for a moment. You know that the apostrophe is a substitute for some letters, so just read it with those letters to see if your sentence makes sense. In this case, if you can say “you are,” you use the contraction. Without that apostrophe, you are showing possession, such as, “Your dog is dirty.” If you used the contraction there, you would be saying, “You are dog is dirty.”
It’s/Its: And of course there’s an exception to every rule. This one confuses many people. For so many words in the English language, using an apostrophe can show possession. “The house’s windows” is one example. However, if you are showing possession with the very vague word “it,” you do not use an apostrophe: “Its windows.” That is done in order to differentiate it from the contraction. “It’s a great movie,” is the same as saying, “It is a great movie.”
There/Their/They’re: You’ve got to love when there are three choices, right? Again, start with the contraction. If you can say “they are,” you use the form with an apostrophe. “They’re going to the game,” can also be, “They are going to the game.” If you are showing possession, you would say, “Their tickets are in the front row.” Everything else leads to the default version, the one most often used. “There are your seats.” It often shows location.
Then/Than: This one is so tough because, even though the words should be pronounced differently, most people don’t. “Than” is a comparative word. “She is smarter than her boss,” compares the intelligence level of one person to another. “Then” can show order or something in addition. “We went to the mall. Then we came home.”
Affect/Effect: Here is another set of words which are pronounced the same, but shouldn’t be. “Affect” is a verb; “effect” is a noun. “His parents had a big effect on his attitude by grounding him,” shows the word as a thing. “His parents were able to affect his attitude through grounding,” shows the word as an action.
Loose/Lose: These words don’t sound alike and don’t even have similar meanings, but are so often mixed up. “Loose” shows that something is too large, while “lose” means that you didn’t gain a victory or that you no longer have something. “If your pants are too loose, you might lose them!”
Could’ve/Should’ve/Would’ve: Here’s how I too often see these: could of, should of, would of. The issue here is that when we pronounce the contractions of could have, should have, and would have, we say them like the way they’re usually written incorrectly.
Here/Hear: Another homonym here! “Here” is a location: “Here is the buried treasure!” On the other hand, if you are listening, “You will hear the directions clearly.”
Borrow/Loan: A line that makes me grate my teeth is, “I borrowed him my fill in the blank.” No, you didn’t. You loaned him that item. He borrowed it from you. Always remember: borrow from, loan to.
I know, I know, I’m a grammar freak. However, as we stray more and more from proper usage of our language, we lose our place in this world. English is a difficult language because it has so many instances like the above examples. Many other languages are much more clear. We have always had a fluid language, but these rapid changes in misuse scare me.
There are some things that have changed in our lifetimes. It’s more acceptable to end a sentence in a preposition. Many people lean toward using “their” as a possessive word if you’re not sure if the person possessing something is male or female. However, to simply not know which word to use is laziness. We’re all in such a hurry to send our messages that, many times, that extra second to think about which version of a word to use is not in the plans.
Many people tell me they are frightened to post on my Facebook page or send me an email because they think I’ll judge them based on their mistakes. I can’t help but notice the grievous errors I’ve written about, but I try to reserve judgement! However, it wouldn’t hurt any of us to take a few spare seconds to make sure we’ve got the right word.
Thanks to those ladies for the inspiration this week. Perhaps I should’ve paid more attention to my cards though; I was the first player out!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is brio, which means vigor or vivacity, as in, “He corrected papers with such brio that the red pen sliced through the words that were wrong.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
That magical feeling is in the air again as we travel through March and toward April. What’s that, you say? Is it March Madness, a great time to be a basketball fan? Is it spring training, foreshadowing another fabulous season of baseball? Why no, it’s testing season in Minnesota, which means it’s time for my 4th annual rant about standardized testing.
Since last we walked this path in this space, much has changed in educational testing, though it seems like we’re standing still. The federal government at long last got rid of the hated No Child Left Behind law. This brainchild of former president GW Bush stated that EVERY child will meet a basic level of reading and math. Everyone in education knew that this was bound to fail. There are so many students with special needs of varying levels that it was impossible to reach 100%.
NCLB was replaced this year with the Every Student Succeeds Act. The main thrust of this legislation was giving states more power in determining the education schools taught. Previously the federal government linked all sorts of measures with funding to schools. However, upon closer look, the ESSA still maintains many of the same requirements, just couching them in terms to make it look like the feds are giving up control.
Many areas of the new law say that states can determine what will be used to fulfill requirements. However, most of us realize that departments of education will simply maintain the course they’ve set since they’ve done all the legwork to get here. It’s not likely that many states will overhaul the overbearing system of testing they put in place as a result of NCLB. Would you do more work if what you had was acceptable?
So we’re still stuck with annual testing in grades 3-8 in reading and math as well as one more shot in high school. There will still be science tests three different times, even though many schools scaled way back on their science curriculum in elementary school because of NCLB. There is, however, one possible bright spot that I noticed as I combed through the ESSA.
This new law allows states to allow schools to use adaptive testing instead of standardized tests. What’s the difference? On a standardized test, every student has all the same questions. (On a side note, Minnesota has been notorious about adding “extra” stories on the reading MCAs, trying to figure out good ones to use in the future. This angers me since it forces kids to take even longer on a test they hate. These extra stories don’t count in their score, but they don’t know which are the extras. My calls to the Minnesota Department of Education have fallen on deaf ears. “What’s the big deal?” seems to be their mantra.)
An adaptive test is a much better measure of a student’s progress. We’ve gone through a battery of different options at NRHEG. We started with the NWEA test, using it 2-3 times a year to see how kids were progressing. We moved to the FAST test last year, mainly because of pricing, but it has proved to be ineffective. We are now looking at STAR testing, which looks to be a good product, providing us plenty of data that we need, not only for our regular base of students, but also for special education testing.
Adaptive tests change based on the individual student. If that student gets a question of two wrong, the test adjusts, trying to find the level the child can attain. If the student continues to answer correctly, the test becomes more difficult, again trying to find the ceiling on the student’s ability. It’s a great measuring stick and really provides a much better glimpse into each student’s ability.
The funny thing to me is that, over the years, when I look at adaptive test scores of my students, I see great progress and meeting levels of expectations. Those same kids take the MCA tests and don’t fare nearly as well. Wait, what? The adaptive tests are taken three times a year (and still don’t take as long as an average MCA test), so even if a student is having a bad day and bombs out once, you will likely see that aberration and note how, outside of that instance, there is increased ability or not, depending on the child.
The big question is, will Minnesota realize the value of these adaptive tests and give the go-ahead to use them? I’m guessing no, at least not right away. Why? It’s money. I’m not sure for how long MDE has a contract with Pearson, the big standardized testing company, but you can bet your bottom dollar that we won’t see a sniff of change until that’s up. I’d also guess that MDE will be hesitant to give up that ghost since the legislature would likely cut their budget even more.
That’s one thing good our state did last year was cut MDE’s testing budget. That helped eliminate some extra tests that only kept our kids filling in bubbles more than usual. Hopefully our state can also regain its progressive attitude toward education and give local districts more choice in how to test our students. If wishes were fishes…
Word of the Week: This week’s word is hebetate, which means to grow dull or stupid, as in, “The student felt he hebetated more and more with each year of MCA testing.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
My hero moment in sports struck early in life. I was about 13 when I approached the plate in the last inning with the bases loaded, two outs, and my team down by three. I smacked a hit over the left fielder and raced around the bases. As I slid into third, knowing we had tied the game, I saw the throw in get past the third baseman. I promptly jumped up and headed for home.
That was dumb. A decent throw would have gotten me easily. Luckily, it was offline. The catcher tried to grab it and swipe tag me. He missed the ball but got my face, literally knocking me on top of home to score the winning run (after we held them in the bottom of the inning). It was pretty exciting and what every ballplayer dreams of at the end of a game.
I was reminded of this while watching our Minnesota Golden Gophers and local hero Carlie Wagner in recent weeks. In a short stretch of time, we’ve been treated to Rachel Banham going off for a national record 60 points against Northwestern, knocking down a game-winning three-pointer against Iowa, and finally seeing our very own Carlie hit the winning shot against Ohio State.
What’s it like to be a hero? There are different kinds of heroes. When you hit the winning shot or knock in that winning run, that hero moment is there right now. In interviews after the Iowa game, Banham said that moment is just crazy, but it’s also something she’s practiced and dreamed about, even as a youngster shooting in her driveway. She’s become something of a national hero, getting featured by ESPN and tweeted at by Kobe Bryant.
Of course, we NRHEG folks were not shocked when Carlie hit that game-winner against a nationally-ranked team. After all, she’s Carlie! We saw her come up clutch time and again in high school, most memorably with her performance in the state championship game against Braham. I asked her what it felt like to be a hero in games like that.
“It was just so exhilarating and crazy because it was the #5 team in the country! It is definitely the best feeling ever and a moment I will never forget!” When asked about the difference between the Ohio State shot and the state championship game, Wagner replied, “The feeling actually was a little bit different for me just in that I made the shot at a higher level, the collegiate level.”
So you have heroes and then you have heroes. Carlie and Rachel are not just heroes based on individual games. They are heroes based on their body of work and also their status as role models. Because of ladies like them, there are countless young girls both in our area and across the state who will go out to their driveways this summer and practice the sideways fade and the drive and pull-up shots that won games.
But these same girls will also want to be like Carlie and Rachel in other ways. Both ladies exhibit decorum and class. They are not just great basketball players, but great people. And that’s what we want out of our heroes.
And then there are HEROES. It’s fine to admire and emulate sports stars, but the real heroes live among us and are easily accessible. Look at our volunteer firefighters in the area. We all hope the only time we have to interact with them is at social functions and out and about in the community. But we also know that they will risk their lives in case of a fire or accident and never expect a reward.
Our ambulance services follow along those lines. Again, we don’t really want to see these people when they are responding to a call, but we know we can count on them to do everything in their power to save lives. I’ve seen some of them in action at school in some scary situations, and their level of calm and professionalism makes me confident that if/when I need them, I’ll be in good hands.
Our local police are another source of heroes. While that’s certainly a paid position, it can’t be an easy choice to go down that career path. They can face life and death situations, even in small towns. Think of all the crime they have prevented, just by their presence. They, too, will be there whenever we need them, and we should appreciate all they do in service.
They are surely many other heroes that we know. Everyone has people to look up to and root on, from the sports fields and floors to professionals in many occupations who provide a beacon of hope and an example of what it takes to be at a high level. The best heroes are the ones who step up in crucial situations, even if they don’t always succeed. They don’t seek out the accolades, but are happy in the knowledge that they have made a difference. Thank you to all our heroes!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is affluenza, which means a lack of motivation and dissatisfaction, especially among young wealthy people, as in, “Luckily, affluenza did not strike the newly-drafted WNBA player, and she worked hard to live up to her paycheck.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
I’m tired. Very, very tired. We’ve reached the end of our junior high basketball season, a grueling road that started back in November and has finished off 22 games and numerous practices later.
I knew I wanted to coach when I logged all those hours on the bench back in my varsity sports days. I learned so much by watching the games from that vantage point and listening to my coaches discuss strategy. Interacting with various coaches while in college only added to my budding knowledge base.
By the time I hung up my whistle this year, I had coached basketball for a total of 20 seasons. I had three different teams in college, spent 11 years coaching junior high at NRHEG before stepping back for a couple years, worked with my daughter’s grade for four years of elementary basketball, and have now finished off two more years in junior high as Jayna and her teammates get ready to move on to high school basketball.
And I’m done. I still love the coaching experience, but it’s becoming more and more exhausting the older I get. Every coach I know puts all of himself or herself into the job, and I’m no exception. My sleeping habits during the season probably mimic other coaches as well; they’re not very consistent, depending on how the game went that night or what’s coming up the next day.
Even though I had figured this would be it before the season began, my decision was confirmed by seeing the excellent job Kate Quam did in her first year of coaching with me. It’s rare to see someone with such a natural gift to relate to kids in conjunction with the knowledge and skills to push those kids to a new level in that sport. I know that the girls I coached this season will be in good hands next year, as well as other girls moving their way up through the program.
The program is the key. We’ve built a basketball program here at NRHEG that is envied around the area. I actually had a rival coach ask me how much pressure we have as coaches to win. I was a little shocked by the question because the answer is none. The only pressure with wins and losses comes from me and my players, who are motivated to succeed.
I like to look at the program in three-year chunks. For example, when I look at my daughter’s group, I also look at the team ahead and the team behind them and try to envision who will remain on varsity and how that combined group will look. That’s a little difficult at times because you’re never quite sure who will still be there, but there are some kids that you feel you can count on all the way through.
And that future is bright. I see the talent in these three-year groupings that, if they continue to work on their games, will be very competitive for years to come, going all the way down to our youngest levels. Success begets success, and when younger kids see the teams ahead of them having fun and winning ballgames, they are motivated to do the same.
I’ve poured my heart and soul into our girls’ basketball program over all these years. I used to think I would want to coach varsity at some point, but that idea left my head long ago. Working with the younger levels has been so rewarding without all the outside pressure that goes with a high school job. Whatever my legacy is remains unimportant to me. Over these 20 seasons, I’ve coached around 200 unique individuals. I hope that most of those kids have found those seasons to be a good experience; you never get 100% satisfaction, but hope for a high number.
Those coach/player relationships can be special. It’s so different from the teacher/student relationship because you have kids going into battle for you. When you get players to really buy into what you’re asking of them, it’s a great feeling. I’ve had so many seasons where my players will pop in most mornings just to talk hoops… and then they keep stopping by when the season is over.
It’s very cool that two of my former players are coaching in the system: Kate and our varsity coach, Onika Peterson. Every season I have given awards for defense and hustle players; it’s no coincidence that those two ladies are both former hustle award winners. Those are the kids who buy in and really get it. They give their all every moment of every practice and every game. They’re not always the most talented players, but they provide the intangibles that are associated with winning teams.
And I’ve been able to finish off with a team that has shown me those intangibles. Every game was difficult to pick out hustle winners because all my girls gave their all. If there’s a happy ending to coaching, it’s having a team like that. And I’m a pretty happy guy right now.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is Addisonian, which means having clarity and elegance, as in, “The coach was quite Addisonian during the game; the players understood everything he said and admired his confident stride along the sideline.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
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The biggest question following Super Bowl 50? It wasn’t whether the Denver Broncos could return to the big game next year or if Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers would learn from their mistakes and make their own return. No, it centered around Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning: Would that be his last game as a professional football player?
It seems likely, given that he’s closing in on 40 years old. Wait, what? At the ripe old age of 42, I don’t often get asked if I’ll be retiring soon. Okay, sometimes my students ask, possibly out of hope.
When it comes to pro sports, retirement most often arrives before the magic number of 40. Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers’ all-star player, will settle down at the age of 37 after this season of basketball. Kevin Garnett of the Minnesota Timberwolves also looks to be done, and since the Wolves will once again not be in the playoffs, it looks like Garnett’s run will end prior to him turning 40 in May.
Naturally, professional athletes take quite a beating, and they also rely on their athleticism to do their jobs. Most of us hit our athletic peak sometime between 18-25. I don’t need to be in shape to teach, though it, like many of your jobs, can be exhausting. Athletes are also financially secure pretty early in their careers, if they don’t blow all their millions of dollars on extravagances. Many of us are wondering how we might be able to afford retirement when that day arrives, not how many cars we might own or how many thousands of square feet our house(s) might be.
With scientific advances what they are, a number of athletes are looking at extending their careers longer than usual. Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots, who will turn 39 prior to the start of the next NFL season, has speculated he might be able to play another seven years. With the right diet and workouts, some athletes are able to go beyond the normal lifespan of an athletic career. Just think about Nolan Ryan, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, who was 46 when he retired from baseball. And he didn’t just hang on; the man threw two no-hitters in his 40s!
Why keep playing sports so long when you have more money than you know what to do with? What else are they going to do? What would I do if I could retire at the end of this school year? There are certainly bucket-list items to accomplish, but in reality, I’d have to get at least a part-time job. This is what we see with many retirees. They’re not just going to sit at home watching TV. Heck, my dad went right back to work after he retired. It wasn’t anything close to full-time, but it was something to keep busy and keep a little cash flow going as well.
So many people look forward to retirement and then realize they can’t afford to retire when they want. Insurance plays a big role, but the ability to save for retirement is not often on people’s minds when they’re in their 20s and 30s. I grew up watching my parents save money and learned all about 401K funds. A co-worker got me started on my own retirement account in my second year of teaching. I want to be able to retire when the time comes that my pension will kick in. I can’t count on Social Security, so there sometimes have to be sacrifices now so I can enjoy life someday without work.
I can imagine I’ll still work after retiring, but the beauty is you can often dictate just how much you want to work. Many substitute teachers are retired educators, and they love the ability to be able to say no if they’ve got plans or just don’t feel like it. When I reach that age, maybe I’ll feel like writing more novels and be able to do that at my leisure; who knows?
Many of these athletes don’t have hobbies or other options. Some go into coaching or broadcasting, but if you retire at 40, you hope to have half your life left, at least. How will you fill that time without going crazy? Maybe that’s why it’s not a slam dunk for Manning to retire on top after winning a Super Bowl.
Whenever one decides to retire, it’s a tremendous decision. It’s easy for us to sit back and say, “Why not retire? Now’s the time!” But I’m betting that will be a more and more difficult choice to make in the years to come. Best of luck to Manning, Bryant, and any of you nearing that point!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is contumacy (thanks to Galen Spinler!), which means disrespect for authority, as in, “The constant contumacy the teacher saw in her classroom helped make her decision to retire easy.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
My long-time readers are aware that Valentine’s Day is my least favorite of all holidays. It’s merely a Hallmark holiday and a cash grab that makes people in a committed relationship feel obligated to spend money on dying flowers and helps people not in a relationship feel depressed.
Still, I couldn’t help but sit up and take notice when I saw a story in the Star Tribune last week about an elementary school in St. Paul eliminating the celebration of holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween. The principal there said that they only want to celebrate holidays that are “inclusive of our student population.” To be fair, that particular school is largely made up of minority students, with only 4% white students.
Does that mean people of other races don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day? I find that hard to believe. I may not like the holiday, but it was always something to look forward to in elementary school. Who really cared about the cheap cards? We wanted the candy that went with them! Is that a good reason for keeping these celebrations in schools? No, of course not. The better reason is to occasionally have the kids lift their heads from their studies and find ways to have fun.
I do understand some religious concerns with holidays like Halloween. Even Christmas, in a school that is largely dominated by an Asian population (52%) as that one is, might not be a holiday that is celebrated by a majority. It’s difficult if your family opposes recognition of those events and your child sits out of activities that all the other children participate in.
Teaching and living in a school district that is largely white and mostly Christian is a different ball of wax. I still call it Christmas break every year. I attend Christmas concerts where we often get to hear variations on Christian Christmas songs. It warms my heart that we continue this; I still remember Mark Rud leading the choir in “The Hallelujah Chorus” every year.
Have we become too politically correct in this country? The easy answer is yes; so many people are constantly worried about offending others that they edit everything they say. (Clearly, this columnist does not fall in that category!) I saw a meme a month or so ago that proclaimed the past year of 2015 as the year everyone was offended by something. Too true.
Upon deeper reading into the original article, I found out the St. Paul school district discourages “lavish programs and festivities, and shall strive to eliminate them,” except for mandated holidays such as Martin Luther King Day, Veterans Day, and the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln. Those are important days to recognize and celebrate, but what happens when politically correct mavens remove the fun celebrations?
Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan schools have even eliminated birthday celebrations. Their reason? Some kids can’t afford to bring in treats for everyone and thus feel left out. Remember the good old days when Mom would make some homemade goodies for you to bring in to school on your special day? With a birthday early in the school year, I always felt like I set the bar high with the sweet stuff my mom would make, always excellent. Now I have to buy Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies because we can’t trust folks not to poison all our students. Food allergies are always given as another reason, but I suspect one reason we have more of those than ever is the amount of processed food we shove down our gullets instead of making more from scratch.
I can see no problem with changing Halloween to some kind of harvest/fall celebration. But I think it’s important to retain a recognition of Thanksgiving as a holiday. That’s not just because it’s my favorite, but because it’s part of our country’s history. If we’re going to stop celebrating Christmas in schools, we might as well remove the “In God We Trust” slogan from our currency. The United States has freedom of religion, sure, but it is a country founded on Christian principles, and we should continue to note that in school.
And Valentine’s Day? Well, my kids will be out of elementary school after this year, so I don’t really care. But I do know it’s a fun day for kids, and sometimes education needs more chances to have fun, even for an hour on the most over-rated holiday of them all.
Speaking of kids, a happy golden birthday to Anton this week! He’s waiting for his letter from Hogwarts since he plans on attending this fall, now that he’s finally old enough!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is unco, which has many meanings, including news, as in, “The parents were astounded at the unco that holiday celebrations would no longer occur.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
This past week was the 30th anniversary of the disaster of the space shuttle Challenger. When events like that come up, we always think about what the world was like that many years ago. The world of 1986 was dramatically different than the one we currently occupy.
Things change rapidly in our world today. I saw an ad for a T-shirt the other day that said, “When I was your age, the Internet sounded like skaweeerewerrt.” Does anybody even have dial-up service anymore to get online? I can’t imagine, but it really wasn’t that long ago that most of us were listening to that sound emerge from our modems.
Just think: the Internet actually had its beginnings in the early 1960s, so it’s older than this columnist! However, it began being used more by non-government people in the early 1990s. For anyone 25 or younger, the Internet as we think of it has been around their entire lives. And with it have come a variety of words that we use as part of everyday language and feel like they’ve been part of our vocabulary for much longer than they really have. Here we go!
• Selfie – This ability to take a picture of oneself with a phone or other electronic device has only been a word since 2013. An entire industry has grown out of it with the proliferation of selfie sticks. Luckily, my phone isn’t advanced enough to be able to take a selfie, but I always find it amusing watching teenagers do this. The faces they make resemble people taking a tour of a rendering plant.
• Hashtag – For us older folks, this is the pound sign on our telephones. However, I have no doubt that someday I’ll hear an automated voice on a phone call tell me to hit the hashtag sign after I’ve entered my account number! This is used to link and search things easier on Twitter. Again, while I technically have a Twitter account, I don’t think I’ve tweeted more than a dozen things in five years.
• Unfriend – This was the word of the year in 2009 and refers to people eliminating you from their list of friends on Facebook. I’m sure it’s also used on other social media platforms and probably by people in real life. After all, kids don’t break up with each other face-to-face anymore, or even by note, but rather by text or tweet. I suppose that’s a form of unfriending too!
• Google – Believe it or not, this has been around since 1998, but has really increased in usage in the past decade, becoming an “official” word in 2006. We use it to talk about looking up information online, even though there are plenty of you who don’t use Google as your official search engine.
• Bromance – This is a special, non-romantic relationship between two men. In doing research on it, I found that it started after a season of the reality show Big Brother, and, as Emily Stamm put it so eloquently online, a bromance is, “that flutter that filled their heart(s) when they talked about sports and stuff.”
• Muggle – While most people think this term started with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series in referring to non-magical people, it actually dates back to the 1920s in New Orleans, where people used it to refer to marijuana. Magical, indeed! The definition has increased since Harry Potter to include any group of people who don’t have the same particular skill set or knowledge as a specific group.
• Staycation – This word has been around since 2003, but found popularity when gas prices were so high. Folks couldn’t afford to drive all over the country for vacation and sure couldn’t afford airline tickets, so they started looking for ways to relax close to home. Maybe with gas prices dropping, the use of this word will decrease.
• Hater – This word allegedly started in the late 1990s in rap music, alluding to those who were jealous of someone or something else. I see this in student writing often, especially in more informal writing like our blogs. Which leads to…
• Blog – These online discussions and writings began in the late 1990s as well, but were originally called weblogs. As with so much Internet-related these days, it was inevitable that a long word like weblog would have to be shortened, right?
Surprised by any of these? Probably not if you’re my age or older. But it makes me wonder how many new words will come about in 2016 that we’ll accept as a regular part of our language within a couple years.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is dox, another relatively new word, which means to gather and publish someone’s personal information with malicious intent, as in, “The hacker doxed the unsuspecting person online and quickly shared all that info with other ruffians.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most well-known of ligaments in the human body these days. Hardly a week goes by without hearing about some athlete at some level of sports who has torn his or her ACL. It’s an extremely important ligament because it connects your femur to your tibia (in layman’s terms, your thighbone to your shinbone).
The knee is also comprised of the medial collateral ligament (MCL), the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), and the lateral collateral ligament (LCL). That’s not counting the lateral meniscus and medial meniscus, which are not quite as crucial, but still oft injured. Take a look at your knee and think about all the alphabet soup which makes up the parts of that joint that we take for granted.
Anyone with knee pain does not take it for granted though. I had some issues about a decade ago where I would be in pain for 2-3 days following any umpiring or officiating. That wasn’t going to work well in an active lifestyle, and I was concerned that one of those many components of my knee had a tear. After an MRI, it was determined that I had a lot of fluid build-up, likely from years of activity and diving around on ballfields and basketball courts. The solution? Wear a knee brace when I’m active, and it’s worked pretty well.
Michelle tore her lateral meniscus a year ago and had surgery to have it removed. Sometimes that tear is not a big deal, but hers was flipped around and causing extreme pain. Doctors cannot fix a torn meniscus, and my wife has managed just fine without it. Another reason the knee is so complicated: why have it if you don’t need it?
Here’s a larger question: why do there seem to be so many more knee injuries these days, especially in our youth? Growing up, can any of you remember someone who tore their ACL? I’m sure it happened, but not anywhere near the frequency of today.
There are plenty of injuries that are considered acute injuries, meaning some trauma has occurred, whether it’s another player landing on you, a sudden awkward fall, or another happening that was unexpected and not routine. When Jayna broke her arm, it was from falling off her bike. When I broke my elbow, I landed directly on it falling down after a shot in basketball. These are unavoidable.
However, there are also overuse injuries, and I think this is where so many tears and sprains come into play today. I haven’t found any conclusive studies done on this, but when you look at some of the history of youth sports, overuse would be a common theme.
I’ve written before about the importance of not just focusing on one sport, but we also have the overabundance of year-round opportunities for kids who not only play 2-3 sports, but play them far outside their seasons. Volleyball and basketball can become 12-month sports if one so desires. Soccer and gymnastics also can be run most months. There are even winter baseball and softball leagues indoors.
Why is this bad? Isn’t it good for kids to have more chances to get better at the sports they love? Maybe not. When I see kids run from school to sports practice after school to a different sports practice somewhere else, that’s concerning. We certainly want to keep kids active; it’s better than sitting in front of a screen incessantly. But kids also need downtime. If they go, go, go, something has to give, and it’s often parts of those precious joints that hold us together.
Really major knee injuries should really only occur in young people because of acute trauma. But so many are tearing ligaments with a wrong step or turn, and one can’t help but wonder if those ligaments have been so overused already that they’re easier to tear. Again, there’s no conclusive evidence yet about that, but it makes me go hmmm.
One problem is there is more and more pressure on coaches and kids to keep improving and get to a high level of competition. Coaches have access to their players for much of the summer, a time that used to be off-limits. Whether they want to or not, if a coach does not have summer-long activities, he or she will be questioned if the team does not succeed. Again, there’s a point where kids can be too active.
In addition, we’re making active time too organized. Remember when we just would run around and organize our own games and activities? When things are too structured all the time, that too can lead to overuse; the kids are often being very repetitive instead of being creative and changing things up.
I did have someone remind me that sports today, especially for girls, are much more physical and competitive. Still, I wonder if we scaled back just a bit, if we might keep our kids more healthy. Either way, it’s unfortunate that we have to worry about the ABCs of our bodies so much and not just those in books.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is macrology, which means long and tiresome talk, as in, “The coach was sick of the macrology she was hearing about her players participating in too many games year-round.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!