Idiotocracy

Idiotocracy is a movie starring Luke Wilson and while it may be fiction I think it's message is clear. This country is going to hell in a hand basket. Tonight I am thinking about one of the reasons for this decline. Dr Benjamin Carson said tonight that "The politically correct "everyone's a winner" philosophy is destroying the fabric of our society" I believe it is also creating self centered, disrespectful children who think they are entitled to things without an ounce of work. NCLB (No Child Left Behind) is leaving whole groups of students behind. State and Education laws are too. A teacher who has high expectations is lauded until too many student fail to rise to the expectation. Then they are told that something is wrong with their teaching because too many fail. No wonder you hear about weak minded people who cheat on the State Tests. No one likes to get beaten down after they have worked themselves ragged. A very smart person once said "the best teacher is not necessarily the one with all the children passing their class. It could be that that teacher ensures that they students have a passing grade so they don't have to deal with the hassle of parents" Yes Teachers can be more engaging, motivating and a "Guide on the Side. We can spend untold hours looking at data, making all our decisions driven by that data, making materials and working to do our job the best we can for each individual child in our care. We can learn new tricks. We can have a loving, deep relationship with our students. We can be teacher, counselor and cheerleader. We can be all these things and yet feel like we am being told we are not good enough. If only we were more engaging, our lessons more interesting and geared toward each individual and if we had greater relationships with students we would reach them all....... But the reality is more complicated than that. Our students come to us with baggage; fatherless, motherless, poor, abused, hungry, parents or siblings in trouble with the law. Our kids spend hours alone as latch key kids as parent or guardian works to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. Some parents don't parent. Our kids are angry and hurt and starved for love in some cases. Our kids are spending countless hours playing violent first person shooters and watching graphic murders, rapes and crimes on TV. Some students get passed from grade to grade because holding them back makes the likelihood that they will drop out rise. Laws and statutes set arbitrary lines that schools must abide by even when it doesn't make sense. Some students simply were born with deficits in intellectual capabilities. Not all students will achieve a passing rate on any state assessment even if you legislate it. NCLB was well intended just not well thought out. A speaker came to our school district to talk about culture but most in attendance heard him mostly speak about race. During his PD he said that (I paraphrase here) African American students and other minorities have trouble in schools because the standards and expectation are those of middle class whites..... He argued that we needed to change our standards and expectations to more reflect where the kids are coming from. . Reality check!! These children must learn to conform to those "middle class white" standard because that is the world they live in. Right or wrong, fair or not; That is the world in which they will have to compete for jobs. This is a free country and employers have the right to have some standards that must be met if you want them to employ you. The ability to read, write and reason are chief among them. They will also expect appropriate dress for the job and adherence to the rules. They will be expected to be well spoken and well groomed. They will expect the people they employ to be motivated, self starters and team players When students are not raised with much in the way of morals and values.they end up with the morals and values they find on the street. These values tend to be that "I can do anything I please and if you try to stop me you are disrespecting me and I can injure or slander you as payback" Kids are shooting kids dead for the shoes on their feet, We are losing a whole generation of students to the "do it if it feels good" philosophy. The trend today in Education is that we can't look at those things as we try to educate the child. These are things we have no control over and I totally agree that it is true. But you can't just sweep it under the carpet and say it doesn't matter in the classroom. Whether we talk about it openly or not that Elephant is sitting in the room with us. Parents are the most influence people in their children's life. As teachers we have your child a year or two and then they are gone. A parent must stand up and say to their child that failing is not an option. Disrespecting your teacher and classmates will earn some form of punishment. Parents need to discipline their children when they do wrong and celebrate them when they do right. Parents must say what they mean and mean what they say. If a standard is broken or a line crossed there must be consequences. If a parent threatens a consequence they must follow through. To fix the schools we need to do everything we can as educators and this country needs to do something about the cultural crisis. What crisis you ask? The crisis of the loss of the family unit and the beliefs and values that built this country. That's all I will say now, I will leave the rest for another day. God Bless.

ADHD or Sleep Deprivation? Worth Another Look!

People use to call me the Nap Nazi. I was and am proud of that nickname. With three small children each a year apart and a teenage son, I didn't play around when it came to feeding my children and getting them to their beds for nap. Most days we played at the park with another group of moms with young children. We would eat a picnic that was packed with fruits, veggies and crackers then we would say good bye to our friends and be home by 11:45 am where we washed up, got a drink and headed for bed. The girls and I would sleep for about 2 hours. Bedtime started around 7:00pm. Full tummies and washed bodies were tucked into bed and the 'Lullaby Magic" cassette was plugged in and played loud enough that it could be heard in every room. The girls always slept till almost 7 am then the whole routine started over. We had read somewhere that habituating your child to the same music played every night at bedtime would be useful when change of location due to traveling. Sure enough we could load the kids into the car at 3:30 am, plug in that cassette and the girls would sleep until 8am or so, ready for us to pull over and eat breakfast. Funniest of all on a trip to Santa Fe New Mexico that same cassette worked on my teenage son. We could turn that tape on and he would go to sleep as quickly as the girls. I ran across a story in the Sunday Review http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/diagnosing-the-wrong-deficit.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=1& And was struck by this paragraph. "For some people — especially children — sleep deprivation does not necessarily cause lethargy; instead they become hyperactive and unfocused. Researchers and reporters are increasingly seeing connections between dysfunctional sleep and what looks like A.D.H.D., but those links are taking a long time to be understood by parents and doctors." Vatsal G. Thakkar is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the N.Y.U. School of Medicine. It is no secret that sleep helps rejuvenate the mind and body. Just talk to some new mother who is awake every hour and a half with her newborn. Sometimes post part em depression is just lack of continuous uninterrupted sleep. When given 6 hours of sleep the mood is often raised and reason returns. Maybe it is just my husbands and my stellar parenting that raised polite young ladies who could sit still and quiet in a room. But I believe that the strict adherence to our sleep schedule (and an obsessive control of health eating) played a large part. At nearly 15 years old the youngest still puts herself to bed around 7 pm every night. As a teacher of 5th graders I routinely hear from them that they stay up till hours of the night. Some of the most distracted and unfocused are among these. Then there is the problem of the students who can't keep their eyes open and their heads raised. These kids are missing so much of the learning happening in the classroom. So before you take your child to the doctor for ADHD give this simple plan a try. Set a bedtime that will allow your child to get at least 10 hours of sleep. Your child will insist that they can't sleep, they will fight you tooth and nail. You are the parent. Put your foot down. The second crucial step is to wake them up around the same time every day. 6 am on school days, no later than 7 am on weekends. Retrain their body clock and you might be surprised at how much calmer and nicer you child can be. WAKE UP AMERICA! Our kids need to sleep!