Friday Assorted Links

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

1. Can Prep Schools Fight the Class War?

“We’ve been talking about this for a long time, about infusing our program with a greater sense of redeeming purpose. . . and approaching it from a perspective of student well-being with a better sense of why students are going about this work.’’

2. Hands on Children’s Museum Awarded Grant for Early Stem Learning Program.

Looks excellent, but it does beg a question. When (and how) will we start introducing science, tech, engineering, and math into the womb? Seems like a missed opportunity.

3. The 7 most inflammatory things Roy Moore has said.

Alabama’s finest. Roy Moore loves God and Donald Trump. I do not understand what those two have to do with each other.

4. Is there a doctor in my pocket?

“The drive to create an AI (artificial intelligence) doctor is simple. It would allow patients around the world much greater access to medical assistance. There is a global shortage of 7.2m health-care workers, a figure that will almost double by 2035. It takes only one AI doctor capable of diagnosing even a handful of common conditions to make this shortage less of a problem. Digital diagnosis can be scaled far more rapidly than doctors can be trained. The world’s first AI doctor will be asking you to say “aaah” sooner than you think.”

5. The Other Arnold: Palmer’s daughter reflects on the chasm between the brand and the man.

“. . . over time his work became being whoever other people needed him to be. He didn’t have an ideology.”

The Key to Teaching Middle School

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

In 1999, I traveled in Japan for two weeks with twenty plus other social studies educators, including Ken V, a crazy funny middle school teacher from Winnipeg, Canada. Before departing for Tokyo, we met in a San Fransisco airport hotel conference room to share our respective curriculum research projects. Afterwards, I went straight up to V and said something to the effect of, “That was excellent, super clear and succinct. Thank you.” From that moment on, we were boyz.

Fast forward a week. On a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, V fell asleep with his suit coat thrown over an adjacent seat. I pounced, stuffing a hundred cheap, thin, plastic umbrella rain bags inside all of his jacket pockets. Then I instructed everyone to sporadically ask him for one at our afternoon meeting with the mayor of Hiroshima.

We’ve stayed in touch ever since, even reuniting in Victoria about five years ago. Staying in touch means he sends me sports updates—baseball, football, curling, Nascar primarily, on almost a weekly basis. Canadians are funnier than everyone else, so no surprise his missives are basically one long strand of wickedly funny puns.

A year or two ago, he revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer. His positive attitude was incredibly inspiring and proved integral in his recovery. He’s retired from the classroom, but not the Prairie baseball fields where he doubles up as player and umpire extraordinaire.

Recently, he wrote:

“Filipino Fastball…………….. Sept. 10, I did the Dish for both Medal Games. The Bronze game featured 2 nice teams, who hadn’t played nor practised since mid Aug. At the end of the 4th, the score was 15-6. At the end of the 5th, it was 15-13. It ended after 7, but took way too long. No issues, however it was a hot day, and the Fun was yet to come……..The Gold game featured 2 good teams, who don’t like each other. The eventual winning team began to whine immediately about EVERY call. I finally had a talk with the catcher, and told him to inform his teammates there would be dire consequences if it continued.”

I love the image of V laying down the law. It prompted me to ask “What’s harder to manage a Filipino fast pitch game or a middle school classroom?” He turned on that question and went deep:

“I would rather face a Filipino uprising led by North Korea, catered by ISIS, during a Mexican Earthquake, than manage a Middle Years classroom.”

The first rule of middle school teaching. Always be a little more crazy and funny than them.

Friday Assorted Links

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

1. A Teacher’s Struggle With Student Anxiety.

“Anxiety has become the most significant obstacle to learning among my adolescent students. In a teaching career spanning more than 30 years, I have watched as it has usurped attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which itself displaced “dyslexia,” as the diagnosis I encounter most often among struggling students. In contrast to dyslexia or ADHD, for which I have developed effective teaching strategies, anxiety in students leaves me feeling powerless. As a new school year kicks off, I am left wondering how anxiety has become so prevalent so quickly. What can I do about it? Might my teaching actually contribute to it?”

It doesn’t appear as if Doyle is familiar with Twenge’s recent work on how smart phones contribute to adolescents’ anxiety.

2. There’s nothing more addictively soothing than watching someone flipping homes on HGTV.

“HGTV was the third-most-popular network on cable television in 2016, a 24/7 testament to the powers of Target chic, the open-plan kitchen, and social conservatism. It unspools with the same bland cheerfulness as Leave It to Beaver, and its heart is in the same place. Many viewers — in red states and blue cities, in rent-controlled studio apartments and 6,000-square-foot McMansions — confess it’s a bedtime ritual, prelude to a night spent dreaming of ceramic-tile backsplashes and double-sink vanities. Over the past two years, it has become such a ratings and advertising sensation that it is largely responsible for the recent sale, this summer, of its parent company, Scripps Networks Interactive, to Discovery Communications for $11.9 billion.”

I confess, I’m an HGTV-er.

3. A university president held a dinner for black students—and set the table with cotton stalks and collard greens. I propose a term for this. . . macro aggression.

4. Even jellyfish sleep.

5. Evan Osnos’s take-aways from a trip to North Korea. Long time Pressing Pausers will know I’ve been a long time observer of North Korea. Osnos’s report is interesting throughout. He reports that if Kim Jong Un’s picture appears in a newspaper, North Koreans must avoid creasing his face. And being in a wheelchair disqualifies you from living in Pyonyang, the capital. Monitors on the city’s perimeter limit movement in and out of the capital. Most importantly, Osnos’s reporting strongly suggests North Korea wants better relations with the U.S. Which makes Trump’s approach—increasingly provocative threats—the exact wrong one at the wrong time. Heaven help us, and especially, the South Koreans.

Columbus and Graduation

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

You dig independent and foreign films, you don’t even mind subtitles, and you have four hours to kill. Here’s your 2017 double feature extraordinaire.

Columbus is a beautiful, slow paced film that explores how to balance personal ambition and family commitment. Columbus, Indiana, not Ohio. Showing now in independent theaters. Two thumbs up from Alison Byrnes who was the only Millennial at her screening.

From the NYT review:

“Jin (John Cho), an English-to-Korean book translator in Seoul, travels to Columbus after his father, an architecture historian, collapses while in town for a talk. As Jin waits to find out whether his semi-estranged father will ever regain consciousness, he strikes up a friendship with Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a tour guide and lifelong Columbus resident. A year out of high school, she is tempted to leave to study architecture, but she fears for the well-being of her unpredictable blue-collar mother (Michelle Forbes), for whom she cooks and essentially looks after.”

Graduation provides a lasting feel for life in Romania, and by extension, many other countries where people’s daily lives are shaped by connections and corruption. It also explores how to balance personal ambition and family commitment.

From the NYT review:

“You might think of Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) as a helicopter parent, a father whose heavy investment in his daughter’s success seems both laudable and a little frightening. For Romeo, a doctor in a provincial Romanian city, Eliza (Maria Dragus) — his only child, in her last year of high school — represents his only basket and all the eggs inside. He clings to the faith that his thwarted ambition, his battered idealism and his dented self-esteem will all be vindicated if Eliza wins a competitive scholarship to study in England. He and his depressive wife, Magda (Lia Bugnar), who lived in exile before their return to Romania after the end of Communism, are not up to leaving again. Eliza’s escape would be an antidote to her father’s disappointment with the spiritually and morally desolate place his country has become.”

Available on Netflix.

The Right Way To Have Difficult Conversations

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

The first step, according to Celeste Headlee:

“. . . be curious and have a genuine willingness to learn something from someone else—even someone with whom you vehemently disagree. I’m a mixed-race woman, just a few generations removed from slavery, but I’ve had valuable conversations with segregationists and members of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.”

Headlee adds:

“Another crucial skill in difficult conversations is to resist the impulse to constantly decide whether you agree with what someone else is saying. The purpose of listening is to understand, not to determine whether someone else is right or wrong, an ally or an opponent.

Often, we decide very quickly whether we will agree with someone. We listen for certain words that might be clues to their politics or faith and use them to categorize people, trying to figure out who thinks like we do and who thinks differently. But these snap judgments usually aren’t very accurate, and they close us off from getting a more complete picture.

Psychologists call this tendency to lump people into groups the ‘halo and horns effect.’ When we approve of some salient quality of another person, we are more likely to judge them positively in other respects. The opposite is true as well.”

Headlee’s book, “We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations that Matter” is out today.

What Endures?

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

Thomas C. Corley asks why are some people rich and some people poor? Following a five-year long research project, he concocted a supposed blueprint for becoming wealthy. Unsurprisingly, his findings have found a large audience.

Most interesting to me about his methodology is what he doesn’t do or ask. He never tells any wealthy individual’s story; consequently, they remain mythical superior beings. Corley’s work contributes to the myth that wealthy people’s lives are way better than everyone else’s. It’s as if the wealthy have no experience with negative emotions; failed relationships; existential crises; health challenges; and even death. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett will live forever won’t they?

People need a philosophy of wealth more than a blueprint. How much is enough? Wealth towards what ends? What endures?

Sentence to Ponder

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

Always start strong. Josh Levin of Slate in ESPN is letting conservative trolls win:

“On Friday morning, the president of the United States brought his considerable idiocy to bear on the chief preoccupation of his White House tenure: people on cable TV who say things that hurt his feelings.”

Friday Assorted Links

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

1. The first year of college. “There I was, alone, with all these people around.”

2. Why teachers need their freedom.

“Alice and I decided to take the risk . . . . The mandated curriculum, we decided, would never be enough to encourage our students to love reading and writing.”

“When Alice and I decided to teach outrageously, our attitudes about our work improved, which data suggests improved our students’ attitudes. Teaching outrageously, it seems, also put us at a decreased risk for burnout because it allowed us to take control of our craft.”

3. I’m down with yoga and and I’m down with dogs, but spare me the Doga.

4. A 24 year old woman rode 86,573.2 miles, for an average of 237.19 miles per day for 365 straight days. Mostly on a 7 mile loop in Tampa, FL. Mind numbing.

Sunday’s Salish Sea Swim

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Ron Byrnes

Moving from the burbs to the rural coast was my idea. The Good Wife was perfectly content in our old crib. I promised to reassess in two years, now six months and counting.

To her credit, she’s giving our new location an honest effort. She’s met way more neighbors than me; she picks free-range fruit; she’s turned into a kayaker extraordinaire; and today, she went Next Level.

A neighbor-friend swam across our Budd Inlet (and back) a couple of years ago with his cousin. Then he repeated the feat a month ago with his daughter. That second crossing was all the inspiration the Gal Pal needed. She started talking about her attempt, but I have to confess, it didn’t totally register until a few days ago. Selflessly, neighbor-friend volunteered to swim with her and his wife and son signed on to escort the two of them in double kayaks.

At the last minute, even though I’m not in great swim shape, I decided to join in the fun. So Sunday morning at 9:19a I took off for the Cooper Point bluff following the lead of my intrepid kayak escort famous on Instagram as “Smoothie Girl”. I thought the 1.5 mile crossing would take me somewhere between 40-45 minutes.

At 100m I thought it was too damn cold for 90 minutes, but I acclimated quickly afterwards, and despite some cold pockets, the temp wasn’t an issue. The conditions, as you can see below, were perfect. Apart from a few boat wakes, the water was so still it was like swimming in our small, protected, go-to lake. Not so perfect was the gradual breakdown of my already sorry stroke; swimming over two giant jellies about 10-15′ below me; and some rando vegetation. The rookie that I am, I also thought a harmless seagull was going to dive bomb me.

I broke my cadence a lot because it took Smoothie Girl and me awhile to sync up. Note to self, build in a simulation swim or two. Forty-eight minutes later, I touched down on the Cooper Point shore. A few minutes after that I reversed course, telling SG, “I think I can make it back.”

The highlight of the return was crossing up with the Good Wife. I never thought we’d kiss in the middle of the Salish Sea. SG ripped me for not sighting better, but I told her it was up to her to sheepdog me, at which point, things improved. I tried to settle into a rhythm. The sun came out which made the view of the Capital Building six miles away even more scenic. I started counting breaths to 100, over and over. Touched terra firma in 1:41, quite a bit slower than guessed.

Way more impressive than my feat was the Gal Pal’s. Without her initiative I never would’ve spent Sunday morning in the middle of the Salish. It’s a tough physical feat and she nailed it, commenting more on how beautiful it was than how tough. Like fine wine, she’s coming into her own as a hiker, errand running cyclist, Gull Harbor kayaker, and open water swimmer.

Thanks to TM, AL, and CM, and SG, for the escorting and the Good Wife for living life to the fullest all Sunday morning.

Pre-swim navigating.