So, I just got the decision of what school looks like for my kids as they come back to school in the fall, and it’s really missing something. The district that they are in has told parents that kids can either return as normal with social distancing practices in the fall or go all virtual. The worst part of it though is that we as parents have to make that decision by July 10. There is no middle ground. There is no hybrid approach. With where we are with this virus, how can we really make an informed decision? 
    I have so many things to consider here. To start, I am working with two different age groups that have two different needs. I have a son who will be going into second grade, but
I also have two daughters in middle school. I am not going to lie and say virtual learning for my son was easy. He is one of those little boys who typically bounces off every wall in a room, and his teachers have always been able to get more out of him academically than my wife and I have when trying to do things at home. He needs school. He needs that structured environment, but what will that even look like? Is requiring 2nd graders to wear a mask, sit in the same seat all day long, and not do anything collaboratively even effective?  If he is just going to just sit at his desk all day and do worksheets, I think it may be more effective to keep him here, but it really is an impossible choice.
    For my middle school girls, I think in-person instruction is important, but I think they can still get effective instruction in a digital format. My big question is what value does going to school have for them? It’s all going to be about what the instruction actually looks like. Are they going to be able to move around and collaborate? Are they going to be doing the exact same things they can get online? Will the social distancing guidelines implemented be so miserable that they will actually be happier at home? Without an idea of what instruction looks like, how can I possibly answer these questions?
    I think the other thing that we have to weigh fully here is the health and safety of teachers. Do you know one of the first things that happened in the metro Atlanta area to make school closures a real possibility? It was a teacher collapsing because of COVID complications in a South Fulton school, and guess what? If it happens again, I think we are right back where we started with remote instruction. Will kids who were in person, be able to transition quickly? I have my doubts. I think this also is going to factor in the quality of the online instruction because of this. Naturally, my first thought is that all the best tech-savvy teachers would be the ones who pursue the online route. I think it’s more likely that it’s the ones where health is an issue whether they are ready or not.
    On top of all this, how in the heck are we supposed to make this decision with the trends that are happening with the virus as a whole in the Southeast? It’s climbing past levels that got us here in the first place, and unless people start really adhering to health professionals’ guidelines, it’s likely to climb even further. A perfect example: masks. The governor of Georgia and Mayor of Atlanta came out today and asked people to wear masks. Do you know how many I really see when I go to the grocery store? It’s less than 50%. How am I supposed to make an all or nothing decision with that? It’s likely the virus is just going to be a worse problem without major intervention, but do we really think that is coming?
    With all those factors, it brings me back to a hybrid. I want my kids to go back to school. I need them to go back to school, but why can’t they go part-time? My wife actually works for a church with a school attached, and I think that school has the perfect model. Split each school into 2 halves, Team A and Team B. You could do it by grade level or some other factor. Have team A come Monday and Tuesday, deep clean Wednesday, and then have team B come Thursday and Friday. The rest of the time students move to virtual instruction. It gives kids both and it also gives janitorial staff the time to make sure cleaning is actually done right. It also puts me as a parent in a position I am comfortable with. Cobb County Schools, I hope you consider it!

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       Student creation is about more than just creating to create. You should want to create for a purpose. You should want to create for understanding and meaning. You should want to create to make the world a better place, and it all starts by building a scenario for the creation. Scenarios should always be your starting place.
      What do I mean by that? I see student projects all the time that are “just create something about the topic.” That topic could be anything, but what the teacher is going to get is always the same: bad power points and bad videos. What if you actually made them create for an audience? What if you made them solve a real-world problem? You could get more than just bad tech tools with regurgitated information. 
      To me, this takes me back to my days in the Social Studies classroom. In Social Studies, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of just having kids do a presentation to regurgitate information You have seen them a million times. They tend to have bad backgrounds, arguably plagiarized text, and images that just look weird. I thought there had to be more, and what I came to is that there had to be a scenario to create to. Instead of just giving them a topic, I gave them an audience. I put them in the history. They had to critically think like the people they were studying and like they were there.
      Does this sound hard? Well, it isn’t. There are thousands of scenarios you could use in any topic, but I found one that was always a good starting place if I got stuck: The United Nations. Think about it, they have a hand in everything. They work with plenty of data to tie math in. They are worried about the planet which ties in Science, and they are involved in politics which ties in Social Studies. With ELA, you can adapt grammar and writing projects to almost anything. It means you can have all four CORE subjects covered in one audience.
       The UN has even made it easier. They have published a set of 17 goals that they have for the planet by 2030. These are a great starting place! It sums up the world's problems beautifully and gives you a great place for kids to start solving them. There is also a massive teaching community around them, so you don’t even have to create all of the activities yourself!
      These can even be used for coding scenarios, and Tynker has done just that. Check out the Hour of Code projects based on the SDG's at https://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/

      This blog is for my friend the Social Studies teacher. Many times your the red-headed stepchild of the core content group, but if we can take anything from the current state of affairs, you are so important. You might be the last ones to get new standards, but you are going to be the first ones that kids actually use coming straight out of high school. 
      This isn't to say the others aren't important, but think of the first ways someone can participate in the greater society. It's things like registering to vote, registering for selective service, and getting into the federal student loans program. All of them are things that may need advocacy, and we have to teach our students to advocate and participate.
     No matter what you believe with the current state of the US government the abundantly clear thing is that we need to do an even better job of teaching civics. The impeachment inquiry is s a perfect example of this. It's clear that many Americans don't fully understand that process, and that lack of understanding is helping both sides manipulate both the process and messaging with it.
      We are constantly hearing a lot about the process. The thing to understand though is that the process right now is like a grand jury. It's about finding enough evidence to see if you can take it to trial, but because it's already being tried in the public conscious people think that things should look like a full trial. That's the not the way things are laid out in the constitution, yet many Americans don't realize that. It allows both sides to manipulate the message to benefit their point of view.
      We hear the argument of fake news and bias all the time. In reality, it's there on both sides of the argument. The problem we are all having is that we aren't teaching civics well enough which makes it almost impossible for folks to decipher what is real and fake. We have to keep up that fight because in an age of endless media, knowing civics is the only thing that will let you know what is real and true.
         We are getting to a point where teaching civics is going to be the only thing that saves us. The old saying ignorance is bliss does not apply here. If you don't know how things work you just can't decipher through the noise.
​         Civics Teachers: Keep up the fight! You don't know how important you are!

      So last week was all about academics and colleges. The blog for this week is all about athletics. The NCAA needs some changes. I have seen the need for change at every level; first as an athlete, then as a high school coach, and now as a parent. Is change likely, no, but we can always hold out hope.
      I have a daughter who is interested in playing a sport that's going to require her to be on a club team to make her high school team.  That's crazy, right? There's a whole lot of money involved there, but it's also the place that she would have to go to be seen by colleges. It's crazy to me that we have to think about that in seventh grade. The problem is that if I don't, it's highly likely we are putting her in a place where she won't make her high school team. I have to keep up with the Jones, or my daughter may not get where she wants to be. As a parent, I feel like I have to try and help her do that, even though I may need to give them both an arm and a leg. 
     There has been a lot of talk about reforming the NCAA to benefit the athlete today. Just recently, California passed a law that gives athletes the ability to benefit from their likeness. That's a slippery slope. While the NCAA is a huge business, there won't be enough to go around to make that process very fair or equal. It's easy to be the Quarterback at Alabama and profit, but what if you are the Volleyball player at that same school? Those sports don't tend to be very lucrative and the group that will let you make money off of your standing as an athlete is very niche. I think there are some ways to reform that process and I include it below, but I also include 4 other things that will make a real difference.

1) Take Club Teams Out of It
      I don't necessarily have a problem with club teams as a whole. I think getting extra practice is not a bad thing, but the NCAA can make one small change that lets every kid have a chance to be successful. They need to force NCAA coaches to recruit from high schools.
       We want athletics to be about learning life lessons, and we have worked our selves into a place where they learn a lesson that isn't positive: obtaining your dreams is infinitely harder the less affluent you are. Club teams are ridiculously expensive, and unless it's a sport with a lot of potential money in the future, the cost is going to be incurred by the parent. The sports that have that potential money in the future (like men's basketball) have 
       This is especially prevalent in sports where the “sponsorship money” just isn't there. Think about where the state champions in sports like baseball, volleyball, soccer, and swimming are in your state. I can guess with almost certainty that they come from affluent urban areas, and there is a reason for that.
       Those kids are playing a crazy number of games on traveling club teams, and that gap is just going to keep growing as the NCAA loosens rules on recruiting for club events. Parents will do it because they want kids to play at the level and they dream of having the crazy cost of college paid for. It's a matter of weighing your options
       Do you know what sport has the smallest amount of this and the most parity? It's actually football. College coaches still have to recruit from high schools because playing that many games in a contact sport just isn't feasible. It's the sport where the gap between the have and have nots is the smallest, but the scary thing is the rise of 7 on 7 tournaments and special camps may be changing that. The NCAA can head that off by simply making coaches recruit from high schools. Maybe they can do that for every sport.

2. Spending caps
       One of the scariest things that is happening to the sport today is that the financial gap between certain programs is starting to trickle up to colleges. It's always been there in high schools as the parents of affluent schools can make their programs whatever it hey want, but now it's trickling up even more to college athletics and the effects can be a little scary
      Take college football as an example. There is a reason Alabama, Clemson, and others are winning. They are spending folks under the table. Their coaches have ridiculous salaries, their facilities are insane, and they have extra staff that isn't necessarily what others have across the board.
       Why if the NCAA put a spending cap in place? The NBA and NFL have them and their parity could never be better. MLB doesn't and the big teams dominant. If the NCAA had spending caps it would improve parity, and it would also redirect funds to actually educating kids which makes us all better.

3. Get the shoe and apparel companies to cool it
      Again, the money tap is open and it's hurting the sport. The shoe/apparel companies are in a mad rush to get every team they can to sign up, and that money means they can dictate what they want. The scary thing is it keeps trickling down to high schools.
     I have seen a growing number of high schools in the past couple of years take money from shoe companies, and I honestly don't blame them. They get better deals on uniforms and apparel. It brings brand value. The problem is though, is it's continuing to add to the haves and have not mentality of society. No apparel company is going to put its name on a high school that has a poor reputation. They want a nice suburban school. 
     You can also see the influence they have over the major money sports. Football and Basketball both have apparel money pouring into them, they want that next major star to start with them from a young age, and they are doing anything they can to make that happen. They also know those suburban kids they are sponsoring at a suburban high school are much more likely to have the affluence that it takes to be future customers. Is that really fair?
    The NCAA can curb all of that. I am not saying that they have to end it. Just curb it. Put some restrictions in place on what Universities can do with the shoe companies. Restrict how coaches recruit from their events. What they do, tends to trickle down.

4. Paying athletes (Sort of)
       There are lots of conversations going on around paying college athletes, but that is an incredibly slippery slope. It's easy to say pay Tua Tagovailoa at Alabama because the university is already making a killing off of him, but how do you pay that swimmer at the same University where there is very little money coming in?
     I think the key is to walk a really fine line. You need to give them the chance to make money off their likeness, but there also needs to be rules to keep outside influence out, to prevent the shady agents, friends, and keep away the other hanger ones. These are kids and the NCAA must protect them.
      It means that the athletes should be able to hold a job, they should be able to get an appearance fee for going to a car dealership, and they should be able to make money off YouTube content. They should not, however, be able to just get paid for their skills. There has to be a transaction of some service. They have to do some type of work to actually get the money. Having to do something will teach them better lessons for the real world, and isn't that what the NCAA is supposed to be.

5. Improve Real-World Training
     The goal with NCAA athletes should not be to get to the pros. It needs to be to get out into the real world and make a difference. Athletics teaches all kinds of lessons about life, yet the NCAA doesn't require any expansion on that.
       Schools do things like teaching their players about financial, literacy, the law, and making a difference in the community individually. The NCAA can make a huge difference by just making that a requirement. They could require pieces of training that really set these kids up, and they can even go as far as making something like community service an eligibility requirement.
      Getting those kids to have a huge heart to help people will make a huge difference in our world. No matter what sport they play, some people look up to them. Maybe the NCAA can help us build that type of community 

     The blog this week is all about failure. It's something we all hate, but in the end, it makes us better. It also means we have to take the time to give a person enough space to make sure they can recover and improve from that fall. It's going to happen, so why not use it as a learning experience rather than a judging experience. 
     The idea for this blog really started with my beloved Florida State Seminoles. I did not go to school there, but they have always been my team. Both my parents were graduates, and the only reason I did not go, there was simply because I was not good enough to play there. 
     If you have not seen, they are failing. They have a new coach, Willie Taggart, who is in his second year, and it's easily the hardest to watch Florida State team that I have ever seen. Folks are calling for Willie to get fired. 
      I know college sports are a ruthless game but is this fair to him?  He has not had time to implement his ideas fully. He has not had time to fail and learn from it. He has not had time to take what he learned and apply it for the better. He might have experience, but each new set of people and places brings its own challenges.
     Being the educator I am, that lack of rope Willie is getting led me back to both education and my own career. I think we as both a society and in this education field that we have all chosen, don't let folks fail enough. We judge people by their failures when really we should judge them by their progress. You can tell the real winners by the ones who do everything they can to not fail the same way twice.
  Is there a place that shows this more than in the education field? If you are or were in the classroom, think back to your first days in the classroom. Where you good at what you do? I know I wasn't. I sucked. I had a great student teaching year, and I thought I could just conquer it. My first year was alot of failing though. 
I did not want to fail.  I was not satisfied with being bad or just average. I tried to make things better continually, and those little improvements got me to a point where I was somewhat (are we ever fully?) satisfied after ten years. Yes, it took 10 years.
     Teaching is a hard profession, yet right now, we judge people based on data and numbers. If we keep doing that, we are going to continue to drive educators out of the field. Educators should be judged on their ability to improve. If they have that want to, they will be fine. They may need a little guidance (that's what a good administrator does), but they will eventually get there. 
     Students are the exact same way. We repeatedly give them numbers and data that signify if they are good or bad. Why do we do that? Think about the student who regularly gets those bad marks. It's easy for them to fall in the trap of not believing and not caring. Why can't we have a system that lets them know they made a mistake or got something wrong, and then allows them to fix it. We need to let them grow, not take away their spirit.
       This is something that even society needs to take hold of. Unless someone is super well trained, they are going to do a lot of failing at first. If they have the right drive that won't happen for long, though. They will learn from their mistakes and try new things. We need to give everyone the ability to do that. 
     Let's change society. Failure isn't a bad thing. It only becomes bad if you don't have the drive to change it. We should remember that we deal with both students and teachers.