In This Issue:
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L.A. UNIFIED ADOPTS FREE HISTORY CURRICULUM FROM STANFORD UNIVERSITY + dt’s 2¢ |
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2B
or not, Part II: ANNOUNCING THE NEXT PHASE OF THE PROGRAM TO BUY MORE
DIGITAL DEVICES WAS THE EASY PART. CARRYING IT OUT IS ANOTHER ISSUE |
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Time-out: SCHOOLS RECONSIDER RECESS AS A TOOL FOR DISCIPLINE |
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'HAPPY VALLEY': FIND YOUR OWN ANSWERS TO UNSETTLING CULTURAL QUESTIONS |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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Casting about for stuff to write about I came across
an article from a year ago July that comes from me to you and the LAUSD
Powers-That-Be exactly 18 months too late: 7 BIG MISTAKES K-12
EDUCATION NEEDS TO AVOID IN 1:1 COMPUTING PLANS [http://bit.ly/1w4zWG1]
I don’t know what the equivalent word of “Trifecta” for seven instances is (“¿Septfecta?") …but here’s the example of one:
#7: Follow Functionality, Not Fads, In Choosing Tech
#6: Touch Shouldn't Trump All Else (Keyboards anyone?)
#5: What Do Repair, Replacement, Support Costs Look Like for a Platform?
(The LAUSD Apple contract looked at short term Repair. Replacement and
Support – and ignored long term.)
#4: Lack of Staff Professional Development is Like Tossing Money Away
#3: Collaboration Should Be a Focus of Every 1:1 Plan
#2: Flipped Classrooms Are Here to Stay (Devices must go home for 1:1 to work.)
#1: Stop Focusing on Consuming Content -- Producing It Matters Much More.
WHICH KIND OF SEGUES INTO THE NEW STANFORD HISTORY CURRICULUM …and to
David Tokofsky’s gift horse’s mouth inspection. [story follows]
• I know it’s free …but did you see what they did to our Bruins?
• Wasn’t MiSiS “free” also?
• History of course isn’t tested in the great English Language Arts,
Math and a little bit o’ Science (+ the FitnessGram) Standardized
Testing Regime …so maybe free IS the right price for History Curriculum!
• As John Arbuckle said: “You get what you pay for.”
TUESDAY’S BOARD MEETING SHOULDV'E PROVED INTERESTING ...except it got
postponed for a week! Someone was bound to to have asked some sort of
question about the iPads for All/CCTP Phase 2B return-from-the-grave.
Miracle or malevolence? I know we are in the middle of a honeymoon with
the new superintendent ...but this plays like some drawing room farce
where the old lady love of the previous superintendent makes a surprise
appearance on the arm of the new one! What is the Board of Ed to say or
think? We won't know 'til next week!
“THE PROBLEM IS: FERPA (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act –
which theoretically protects student privacy) IS ‘HOPELESSLY OUT OF
DATE,’ said David Hoffman, global privacy officer for Intel Corp.” http://politi.co/1rJvru0
That is a problem, one of many.
BUT THIS IS THANKSGIVING WEEK – and I’m sure there are many readers who
will be thankful to return to school after a week with children and
once-a-year relatives and pre-and-actual-and-post Black Friday
doorbusters underfoot. I’m also sure the IT crew is really looking
forward to impact of all the new MiSiS fixes plus the Cyber Monday
online shopping on the LAUSD servers.
4LAKIDS is THANKFUL FOR EDUCATORS LIKE DR. GENEVIEVE SHEPHERD, a true
hero of multicultural understanding in LAUSD. She is retiring from
LAUSD after 55 years of service and leadership.
Dr. Shepherd was instrumental in getting national recognition for the
Tuskegee Airmen and in naming the magnet school at Dublin ES after
former Mayor Tom Bradley. She has been principal of Dublin/ Tom Bradley
Global Awareness Magnet School since 1985 and served as director of the
District’s Title I Program for Intergroup Education.
Dr. Shepherd is a long time educator and community activist who is known
locally, statewide and nationwide. She – not literally but actually -
wrote the book on multicultural education in LAUSD:
Multi-Cultural-Bilingual-Selected Reference Guide for-Los Angeles
Unified Schools.
She’s a member of that most troublemaking of Greek campus organizations:
The National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa. Dr Shepherd was inducted into
the Hall of Fame of Who's Who in Black Los Angeles at The Staples
Center in 2008 and was honored as Distinguished Educator of the Year
Award at California State University, Los Angeles, also in 2008.
But she proudly says that the most gratifying aspect of her career is seeing her students succeed.
"Anything a mind can conceive, and then can believe, can be achieved,"
has been the motto of Dr. Genevieve A. Shepherd, almost since birth.
According to her biography, she began her teaching career at the age of
five. Every time she and friends played school, she walked in with her
frayed book and announced, "I'm the teacher and if you don't let me
teach, I'm going home." She practiced teaching on 3 year olds, trees,
animals and anything else around willing to be taught.
At nineteen, she was told by a counselor that she could not be a
teacher. On the steps of a bungalow at Los Angeles City College, the
motto flashed across her mind and silently she said to herself, "Just
watch and see." That was the true beginning of her teaching career.
Dr. Shepherd is a native Angelino. Her educational experience includes:
an Associate of Arts degree from Los Angeles City College, a Bachelor of
Arts degree from California State College, Los Angeles; Master of
Science, Pepperdine University; and a Ph.D. from Golden State
University.
So much for never being a teacher.
She is married to Rev. Edell Shepherd; together they are the proud
parents of three children, Edell Lugene, a musician; Deborah, School
Teacher and Jaime Shepherd, Technology Coordinator.
Dr. Shepherd is much sought after as a guest speaker and lecturer. She
has conducted numerous workshops and seminars throughout the city, state
and nation.
Her most requested sessions include: Believers, Receivers, Achievers
(Building Self-Esteem), Survival of the Endangered Species (the Black
Male Child), A Multi-Ethnic look at Education and Practice What You
Teach (for teachers only). Her dynamic message captures, inspires,
enthralls and challenges audiences to Wake Up, Sit Up, Shape Up, Sweeten
Up, Fire Up and Go MAD (Make A Difference) in Society.
She transforms audiences as her motivational message impacts lives.
Additionally Dr. Shepherd works closely with high school students
preparing to take the SAT tests. After her motivating presentation,
students are challenged to increase their test scores.
Dr Shepherd is retiring at the end of this year, but no one believes for
a minute she will slow down. At her church, he serves as Sunday School
Superintendent and Corporate Secretary; Board Member, Corporate
Executive and Vice President of Our Authors Study Club; she’s a member
of Council of Black Administrators, Associated Administrators of Los
Angeles, California School Administrators, National Education
Association, National Association of University Women,; Board Chairman
of the Y.M.C.A. Metro L.A., 28th Street/Crenshaw Branch and Vice
President and Instructor - Aenon Bible College.
Dr. Shepherd is also a poet, an example follows. It isn’t Kipling or
Wordsworth, but like all real art, it is True. Like all true art, it is
Real.
Leave No Child Behind
© Dr. Genevieve Shepherd
To say “Leave No Child Behind” sounds just fine.
But what are we really trying to say
each and every day?
That we have no other choice!
Every child has the right to excel.
Children can do well
If it’s truly to be
It depends on you, it depends on me.
To turn things around and do things differently.
To expect nothing less than the very best.
To teach, monitor, test and assess.
To catch the child caught betwixt and between.
To snatch them back with a sheer determined gleam.
Always saying, yes you can!
I’ve taught you so well
Now I know what you can do.
Walk in my footsteps each and every day.
I’ll role model what you need to do and say.
I’ll show you why you must achieve.
I’ll teach you exactly how to succeed.
Ill always endeavor to answer every question you ask.
I’ll be there to support you and see you through each task.
Sometimes I’ll have to go out far on the limb to reach
But wherever you are,
No matter how far.
Patiently, I will teach.
I will teach you all you need to know.
In this classroom there is no such word as slow.
L.D. is not Learning Disabled
But Leaning Differently
I know you are capable
Physically, socially and mentally.
What I teach you today will return to me in a better way.
And so I’m determined
And I’ve made up my mind
From this day forward
NO CHILD WILL BE LEFT BEHIND!
Thank you Dr. Shepherd.
¡Onward/Adelante! - smf
L.A. UNIFIED ADOPTS FREE HISTORY CURRICULUM FROM STANFORD UNIVERSITY + dt’s 2¢
By Teresa Watanabe, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1yc3DmR
Nov.26, 2014 :: Venice High sophomore Vanessa Pepperdine had always
hated history class: the dry lectures, the boring textbooks, the
forgettable factoids about famous dead people.
"You just read out of the textbook, and it wasn't interesting," Vanessa said.
But during a recent period of World History, Vanessa and her classmates
were engaged in excited discussion about the 1896 Battle of Adwa between
Ethiopia and Italy. Their teacher, Daniel Buccieri, showed them an
illustration of the event and peppered them with questions.
Who do you think won? How do the American and Ethiopian accounts differ
and why? How was Ethiopia able to defeat Italy in this pushback of
European imperialism?
With that, the students became sleuthing historians in search of truth rather than passive recipients of a droning lecture.
That's the aim of a free, online Stanford University curriculum that is
picking up steam nationally as educators grapple with widespread
evidence of historical illiteracy among U.S. students.
Only about a third of Los Angeles Unified School District high schoolers
were proficient on state standardized U.S. and world history tests last
year; nationally, 12% were proficient in U.S. history in the 2010
National Assessment of Educational Progress exam.
L.A. Unified became the curriculum's largest booster this year when it
signed an 18-month, $140,000 contract with the Stanford History
Education Group for training and collaborating on more lesson plans. So
far, 385 teachers and administrators — including about 40% of the social
science instructors in the nation's second-largest school system — have
attended Stanford-led workshops this year.
Nationally, the curriculum has been downloaded 1.7 million times by
educators in all 50 states since the program was launched in 2009.
As the teaching of history comes under national scrutiny, with critics
attacking the new Advanced Placement U.S. history guidelines as
anti-American, the Stanford program takes no sides. With more than 100
ready-made lesson plans covering a range of U.S. and world events, the
curriculum features a central historical question and provides primary
documents for students to use in shaping their own answers, backed by
evidence.
Was ancient Athens truly democratic? Were the "Dark Ages" really dark?
Why did Chinese students support the Cultural Revolution? Did Abraham
Lincoln actually believe in racial equality? What made the Vietnam War
so contentious?
"This overturns the traditional textbook," said Sam Wineburg, the
Stanford education professor whose research more than two decades ago
laid the groundwork for the approach. "Students explore questions with
original documents and cultivate a sense of literacy and how to develop
sound judgment."
In a 2001 book, Wineburg argued that students must be trained to
question history in order to understand it, just as professionals do;
the curriculum is called "Reading Like a Historian." The ability to
question the credibility of information and its sources, he said, is
critically relevant in today's digital age — judging claims, for
instance, that President Obama was born in Kenya.
The Stanford group has also developed free assessments, more than 65 so
far, that gauge mastery of the targeted skills through short essay
questions rather than traditional multiple-choice tests. In a test run
five years ago, 236 students in five San Francisco high schools using
the curriculum outperformed peers in factual knowledge and reading
comprehension compared with those in traditional classes, Wineburg said.
For school systems such as L.A. Unified, the curriculum came at an
opportune time — just as the district is shifting to new learning
standards known as Common Core. The standards focus on cultivating such
skills as reading complex texts and integrating and evaluating
information from multiple sources.
"The Stanford curriculum aligns almost perfectly with Common Core," said
Kieley Jackson, a district coordinator of social science curriculum.
Not all teachers have embraced the lessons. Some say they take too long,
typically four days, although Stanford trainers say they can be adapted
for one or two. Others say they are short on content. And some
instructors prefer their approach of lectures and textbooks. Only about a
quarter of social science teachers at Hollywood High use the
curriculum, said Neil Fitzpatrick, the department chair.
But Fitzpatrick and many of the 60 colleagues who attended a training
this month praised the curriculum and shared ideas on how they modified
it — actions that Stanford fully supports — with bingo games, film
clips, Play-Doh, poetry, poster sets, Google images.
Buccieri, of Venice High, said he added the Italian perspective of the
Battle of Adwa to further enrich the lesson. He said he began
incorporating elements of Wineburg's approach after reading his book
more than a decade ago and found the Stanford curriculum on his own four
years ago.
"History isn't a set of answers I'm passing down to kids," he said.
"It's more a set of questions and problems. To me, that's more
exciting."
Many students seem to agree. Michael Corley, a history teacher at
Polytechnic High in Sun Valley, said nearly 90% of about 100 students he
polled preferred the Stanford curriculum over their textbook.
Students don't feel they can argue with the textbook, he said. But using
the Stanford lesson on Prohibition to debate why the 18th Amendment
banning alcohol was adopted and evaluating perspectives about it from a
medical doctor, anti-saloon activist and children's rights advocate? Now
that excites them, he said.
He added that the Stanford curriculum seems to especially engage boys,
perhaps by appealing to their competitive "gamer mentality," and said
his students who typically earn Cs and Ds also do well because the
lessons spark their interest. "You can see what they're truly capable
of," he said.
At Venice High, Buccieri's 10th grade students said their teacher's
approach has completely changed their attitude toward history.
Rosio Salas said she had 10 substitutes in one year who did nothing but
assign textbook readings and worksheets. She didn't remember anything
she learned. "You just did it because you had to do it."
Now, students say history is exciting. They understand it. They even
remember it — as classmate James Gregorio proved by explaining that a
Serbian terrorist's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
ignited World War I.
"You're not just sitting there having to listen to him," sophomore Drew
Anderson said. "You get to figure things out for yourself."
____________
●●David Tokofsky’s 2¢ | from Letters to the Editor of the LA Times | http://lat.ms/1xXlDyE
HISTORY CLASSES DON'T NEED TO BE 'GAMIFIED'
28 Nov. 2014 :: To the editor: The article describing some students at
Venice High School playing games to access world history saddens those
who believe history need not be "gamified," put online to download and
reduced in scope to stimulate thought and engagement in classrooms.
("L.A. Unified adopts free history curriculum from Stanford University,"
Nov. 26)
To the generalist, the lesson presented — in which students play the
role of history detective — appeared captivating. A keen eye, however,
would recognize that a lesson presented for nearly five days has to come
at the expense of learning many other standards and eras. Without a
textbook, who would know that other eras were deleted and not being
taught?
History methodology revisionists argue that "less is more," and they are
right with respect to deepening engagement. But unfortunately they
often inadvertently diminish content and scope in service to their hip
methods.
Sadly for students, educational fads often repeat themselves as history
does: the first time as a tragedy and the second time as farce.
David Tokofsky, Los Angeles
►The writer, a former California Teacher of the Year, was a member of
the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education for 12 years.
Before that he taught History and coached the Soccer and national
champion Academic Decathlon teams at Marshall High School.
2B or not, Part II: ANNOUNCING THE NEXT PHASE OF THE
PROGRAM TO BUY MORE DIGITAL DEVICES WAS THE EASY PART. CARRYING IT OUT
IS ANOTHER ISSUE
FOR LAUSD, MORE CHROMEBOOKS, IPADS MEANS MORE CONFUSION
by Vanessa Romo, LA School Report | http://bit.ly/1vOn3AD
Posted on November 25, 2014 4:41 pm :: While LA Unified Superintendent
Ramon Cortines was pretty clear on how he expected it to proceed,
others in the district are not so sure.
• SUPERINTENDENT DEASY: “Moving forward, we will no longer utilize our current contract with Apple Inc.”
• BOARDMEMBER ZIMMER: “[The Apple/Pearson/LAUSD contract] was absolutely
cancelled. The resumption of the iPad contract, as it was, will never
get through the Board of Education.”
• FACILITIES DIRECTOR HOVATTER: “There was never any cancellation of a contract, and the contract was never suspended.”
• STOTHER MARTIN IN COOL HAND LUKE: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
The district’s Chief Facilities Director says the choice of devices
might not be so wide as Cortines suggested, and at least one board
member is uncertain how it will all play out. Last week Cortines gave
the go-ahead to spend capital improvement funds to outfit 27 schools
with tablet devices and 21 schools with laptops — the so-called Phase
2B. The so-called Phase 2A authorized devices for 11 schools.
In a written statement, Cortines said school principals “will be key in
determining which educational tools are best for their school
communities” and added that this round would include “more options than
previous phases.”
But Mark Hovatter, the facilities director whose department oversees the
procurement of devices, says school leaders will only have two choices:
iPads pre-loaded with Pearson curriculum or Chromebooks with content
developed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
“Those are the only two that are within the budget that the board has
authorized,” Hovatter told LA School Report. “They already approved
Phase 2B under that contract.”
The board approved expanding the iPad program in January, allocating
$114 million to the project. Under the existing contract the price tag
on each Apple tablet is about $780 with all the bells and whistles,
including a nearly indestructible protective case and keyboard. A
Chromebook is about $100 dollars cheaper.
But how can iPads be part of the deal if the district’s contract with Apple was halted by former superintendent John Deasy?
Never happened, said Hovatter.
“There was never any cancellation of a contract, and the contract was
never suspended,” he said. “We just made the determination not to place
an order against that contract.”
That is a difficult position for board member Steve Zimmer to square. “It was absolutely cancelled,” he told LA School Report.
In August, Deasy said he was halting the iPad program and the
corresponding deal with Apple and Pearson, amid questions about the
bidding process.
At the time, Deasy told the school board, “Moving forward, we will no
longer utilize our current contract with Apple Inc.…Not only will this
decision enable us to take advantage of an ever-changing marketplace and
technology.”
For Zimmer, Deasy’s actions indisputably put an end to the deal with the
companies. Furthermore, Zimmer added, “the resumption of the iPad
contract, as it was, will never get through the Board of Education.”
Beyond that, Zimmer says he doesn’t believe the Pearson curriculum actually exists.
“Until I have it in front of me, until I see it demonstrated with a real
child at every grade level, then the Pearson curriculum does not
exist,” he said. “I have never seen it. I have never held it. I have
never seen a child use it.”
But Hovatter contends that without any action by the board, the contract remains in place.
“The board never made the decision not to move forward, it was the [former] Superintendent who made that decision,” he said.
“If there had been a board action that had directed us not to move
forward then of course, we would have to go back to the board” for
approval to continue under the existing contracts, he added.
In other words, Cortines is not required to return to the board for
another round of approval. That means Zimmer, other board members, or
principals and teachers who had hoped for a better deal or different
type of device, will have to wait a little longer.
The district intends to re-open the bidding process to new vendors and
curriculum developers for Phase 3 of the one-to-one program. A timeline
for that has yet to be determined.
The Common Core Technology Project team is scheduled to meet on Monday
to discuss the rollout and set a timeline for the project.
●●smf: The Board of Education meets on Tuesday. In closed session. The open session meeting was postponed until Dec. 9th.
Time-out: SCHOOLS RECONSIDER RECESS AS A TOOL FOR DISCIPLINE
by Kimberly Beltran, SI&A Cabinet Report | http://bit.ly/11yipso
November 24, 2014 :: (Calif.) It’s been a time-tested disciplinary
tactic for teachers for decades but as concerns over taking recess away
from misbehaving students continue to mount, more and more school
districts across the nation are seeking to modify the practice or
restrict it altogether.
Among the latest local educational agencies to take on the increasingly
controversial subject, Berkeley Unified School District last week
adopted a new policy limiting the amount of time a student may be kept
from recess for misconduct.
“A clear and adopted board policy is what is required for teachers to be
able to use recess restriction in limited and appropriate situations,”
Pasquale Scuderi, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational
services, wrote in a memo to the board late last week. “The proposed
policy ensures among other things, that no student will ever be
prohibited for more than 10 minutes of any activity in a single day.”
The issue represents a collision of goals within the education community
and exposes the pitfalls of making any one change independent of
competing concerns.
Some child advocates argue, for instance, that restricting a pupil’s
recess time runs counter to federal and state initiatives aimed at
increasing students’ physical activity – a position supported by
research showing playtime reduces obesity and improves mental function
in the classroom.
Critics also complain that punishment is meted out in a haphazard manner
– some kids are being kept from recess for not completing homework
assignments, others for behavioral challenges –neither of which is
typically grounded in clear policy.
Many educators say recess restriction works and is one of few tools
teachers have to control behavior in a classroom with between 20 and 30
students.
Board members at Connecticut’s Wallingford Public Schools, for example,
recently realized that a wellness policy adopted in 2006 to meet federal
child nutrition requirements prohibits the district from denying recess
as a form of discipline. In June, Gov. Dannel Malloy signed into law a
bill requiring school boards to adopt, as they “deem appropriate,”
policies “concerning the issue regarding any school employee being
involved in preventing a student from participating in the entire time
devoted to physical exercise in the regular school day.”
Trustees are now working to devise a policy that complies with both
mandates but leaves in place the option for teachers to use recess time
as an incentive for good behavior.
“I don’t see what the problem is if a child stays at the wall,”
Wallingford board member Michael Votto told the local Record-Journal.
“If they stand by the wall for 10 minutes, I don’t think it’s a big
deal.’
Other than an obligation to “administer student discipline without
discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin,” there is
no federal law dictating school discipline policies, and while some
states have laws on their books giving teachers authority to remove
problem students from the classroom most leave the specifics up to local
districts.
California’s Education Code, for example, doesn’t dictate policy on
recess restriction but rather simply states that: “The governing board
of a school district may adopt reasonable rules and regulations to
authorize a teacher to restrict for disciplinary purposes the time a
pupil under his or her supervision is allowed for recess.”
Legal experts on both sides of the debate interpret this law
differently, with those opposed to the punishment arguing the intent is
that if a district doesn’t have a policy specifically addressing it then
they don’t have the right to use it.
Berkeley Unified School District’s policy adoption last week follows a
push two years ago by the mother of a kindergartner who was repeatedly
being kept from recess for misbehaving. She, like many parents focused
on the issue, has said it’s often the kids acting out in class that need
recess the most.
“It’s not effective,” Sinead O’Sullivan told Berkeleyside.com, an
independent local news site that covered last week’s discussion by the
school board. “The kids who get [recess taken away] are the high-energy
kids who can’t control their bodies. It’s the last punishment they
need.”
Similar arguments were made in August when the Grand Island school board
in Nebraska approved a revised wellness policy that allows a child to
be removed from the playground if he or she gets in a fight with another
student, but denies the use of restricted recess as punishment for
misbehavior during other parts of the school day.
The new rules in Berkeley are similar to several in policies adopted by a
host of other California districts and less restrictive than some
others, including Palo Alto, which in October rewrote its student
discipline rules to ban the practice of taking away recess time as a
disciplinary measure “unless the safety and health of the student or
other students are at risk.”
Berkeley Unified’s policy allows recess restriction only after the
teacher or administrator seeks alternative disciplinary actions
“consistent with our positive behavioral support systems,” and requires
all schools to create guidelines within their individual PBIS plans to
“create a positive recess behavior plan which analyzes behavioral
function, additional environmental supports needed and/or alternative
consequences.
Other regulations in the policy include:
• Recess restriction shall not be used as a penalty for incomplete homework.
• The student shall remain under employee supervision during the time of the consequence.
• The student shall be given adequate time to use the restroom and get a drink or eat lunch, as appropriate.
• Teachers shall inform a site administrator in writing of any student
who has their recess restricted. When a student has their recess
restricted either two times per week or three times a month, parents or
caregivers will be notified and the site Response To Intervention team
or the administrator will review that information and seek alternative
means to address the needs of the student.
• A student will not be restricted for more than half of any given
recess period wherein the consequence is assigned, and a maximum of 10
minutes of restriction per day should be adhered to in all uses.
• Recess participation may not be restricted for students where such a
consequence is explicitly prohibited by a student’s IEP or 504 plan.
• Data will be reviewed annually following the passage of the policy and data will include data disaggregated by ethnicity.
“Staff is not putting forth a policy to encourage the use of recess
restriction as a corrective action,” Berkeley’s Scuderi wrote in a memo
to the board and district superintendent Donald Evans. “However, a clear
and thoughtful policy being put in place will allow teachers and
administrators some discretion to apply the consequence in a limited way
where it is reasonable and appropriate to do so.”
'HAPPY VALLEY': FIND YOUR OWN ANSWERS TO UNSETTLING CULTURAL QUESTIONS
By Steven Zeitchik, LA Times | http://lat.ms/1rBWE7r
●● smf: The documentary feature “Happy Valley” is not about public
education, but 4LAKids is recommending it anyway. It’s also not really
about college football or Joe Paterno or Jerry Sandusky or the
University of Pennsylvania or child sexual abuse. It’s about the
perfect-storm/ critical-mass collision of all those people, places and
things – and the fallout therefrom. It’s about uneasy truth that must be
told. It’s not an easy picture to watch and totally inappropriate for
the holiday season; you should see it anyway.
______________
28 February 2014 :: Around their Brooklyn home, the documentary
filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev and his wife have developed a kind of code phrase
-- a "thumbnail," they call it -- for how people talk about the Jerry
Sandusky affair. "Rhythmic slapping” is the term, and, picking up on a
descriptor used by the key witness and former assistant coach Mike
McQueary, it sums up people’s reflexive need to seek out the prurient
aspects of the controversy.
And yet there is also, Bar-Lev has found, a desire for distance, an
interest in lamenting or condemning aspects of the case so that people
feel better about it, feel as if it’s something that happens far away
from their own lives and consciousness.
I think one of the things that really stands out about Sandusky is how
everyone thinks that someone else was culpable ... And really we're all
responsible in some way. - Amir Bar-Lev, documentary filmmaker
“I think one of the things that really stands out about Sandusky is how
everyone thinks that someone else was culpable,” Bar-Lev said in an
interview here last week, returning home after weeks on the road with
the film. “And really we’re all responsible in some way.”
Bar-Lev has become an expert in the notorious case and its fallout. His
new movie, "Happy Valley," which opened in theaters in Los Angeles last
weekend, takes a look at the ways — some obvious, some subtle — our
culture participated in the incident, and in fact continues to do so. As
top-tier football institutions have been shaken by assault scandals and
alleged cover-ups in the past few months — the Ray Rice and Adrian
Peterson affairs, among others — “Happy Valley” speaks to a charged set
of questions that were hardly put to rest when Sandusky was sent away on
a long prison sentence in 2012.
Sandusky, of course, was the Penn State defensive coach who almost three
years ago was found guilty on 45 charges of sexual abuse. The
many-tentacled scandal that led to that courtroom moment — particularly
the tentacle that involved legendary Penn State head football coach Joe
Paterno, who it turned out had been made aware of Sandusky’s activities
years before but did little to stop them — was a watershed event. It
rocked the university’s State College campus, raised difficult questions
about the culture of modern athletics and brought down Paterno, who saw
his job and legacy vanish seemingly overnight, then died shortly after.
“Happy Valley” (the title is an ironic nod to the Penn State nickname)
is not especially interested in issues of criminal guilt — those have
long been established — but in the ways the town, the media and society
at large responded to the incident. Through his months of filming on the
Penn State campus, Bar-Lev discovers uncomfortable cultural truths in
the various explanations and rationalizations.
'Happy Valley'
Most notably, he unveils what he and a Penn State professor named Matt
Jordan call a “shaming spectacle” — the idea that in public
condemnations of Sandusky, people can feel better about the event and
its outlier status without undergoing a more difficult process of
self-scrutiny.
In both making the film and tracking the reactions since it premiered at
the Sundance Film Festival in January, the director says he’s most
noticed an innate discomfort with the subject. That is not, he said,
simply because of the nature of child sex abuse, but because of how
Sandusky went about his crimes. Instead of blunt force, Sandusky used a
variety of seduction techniques, building trust with boys through the
many perks of Division I Athletics and a nonprofit he founded for
underprivileged youth.
“Sandusky was recruiting young men in the way that was not that
different from how this country recruits young men to college football
programs,” Bar-Lev said. “He may have been doing it for a different
purpose, but he was borrowing from the playbook of Paterno and other
football coaches regarded as heroes.”
Bar-Lev added: “In some ways I think had these been more literal rapes,
where Sandusky physically held them down, we would be able to talk about
it more."
With football reigning supreme at Penn State, the Sandusky scandal
raises the question of whether beloved programs at high-end schools
operate above the law, its instructors shielded by the bubble of fandom
and its administrators willing to look the other way when presented with
evidence of wrongdoing. (Incidentally, these are also issues explored
in this fall’s indie breakout, “Whiplash.")
We say that Joe Paterno put blinders on, but we all put blinders on to
inequities all around us. I think that's what makes this so
fundamentally difficult to deal with. - Amir Bar-Lev
The Rice and Peterson cases raise similar questions. The running backs’
superstar status among their respective fan bases seemed to offer them
wide berth to engage in the acts of domestic abuse they've been accused
of. Questions about how much the Ravens and Vikings organizations — not
to mention NFL commissioner Roger Goodell — knew about their activities
have dogged the case and continue to draw criticism to the league.
But where many football fans are eager to see these scandals as the acts
of lone deviants, Bar-Lev views them broadly — very broadly.
Sandusky’s actions, he notes, were over the years enabled not just by a
football program that was deemed above the law but by a larger economic
system.
“I’m sure something like this could just as easily happen in more
socialist cultures as well,” said Bar-Lev, who speaks in an articulate,
at times academic, manner. “But there is a class component to the story.
It’s not an accident that Sandusky went outside his world, to the other
side of the tracks, to find many of his victims.” There was, Bar-Lev
argues, a wide gulf between the redoubt of privilege that Sandusky
occupied and the impoverished football-playing world many of his victims
came from, and the director concludes that the exploitation of this gap
was key to his crimes.
Matt Sandusky, the coach's adopted son, is a key figure in the film.
Coming from a hardscrabble family, he was adopted by Sandusky and his
wife and given a new life before he was, he says, abused by him.
Matt Sandusky has begun to break his public silence by appearing with
Bar-Lev at screenings and talking about the abuse he suffered; he
describes in the film the cult of personality that lay at the heart of
the scandal.
"If people thought of Joe Paterno as God, Jerry was like Jesus," he
says. "They could do whatever they wanted, they could do no wrong." Just
being near Jerry Sandusky, the young man notes, gave him a sense of
importance and power.
As Bar-Lev has toured the country — he even took the film to State
College recently, where he found a mostly receptive audience, and some
scattered protesters — he has encountered many people, even those with
no connection to Penn State, who'd rather avoid the subject. He said he
believes the reaction is telling of the scandal itself.
"There’s something about the failings of everyone in this case that come
close to a lot of our own failings," he said. "We say that Joe Paterno
put blinders on, but we all put blinders on to inequities all around us.
I think that's what makes this so fundamentally difficult to deal
with.”
The director has developed a specialty in what might be called hero
revisionism — he previously directed “The Tillman Story,” which took
another look at the popular legend around the late soldier and football
player Pat Tillman, and is currently working on a documentary about the
Grateful Dead that reevaluates the mythos of Jerry Garcia and the
relationship between the band and its followers. (Bar-Lev,
interestingly, is not a big sports fan but is a hard-core music
devotee.)
It is in these areas of fan worship that he says we find something
uniquely American, even human. Among the many other implications of
Sandusky, after all, is a pulling back of the hero veil.
"I think the underlying questions of the movie is 'Can we still go on?
Is it OK to cheer now that we know all that we know?'" Bar-Lev offers no
easy answers. But all of us who have ever admired and rooted for a
public figure will now find ourselves asking questions.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
IS DIGITAL LEARNING MORE COST-EFFECTIVE? MAYBE NOT | http://bit.ly/1pCzOvm
ONLINE EDUCATION RUN AMOK? Private companies want to scoop up your child's data | http://bit.ly/1yxe9pQ
SANDY HOOK FINALLY PUTS LOCAL LAUSD SCHOOLS ON ALERT …TWO YEARS LATER | http://bit.ly/1z5hdIk
Diane Ravitch: “Texas Approves Textbooks That Acknowledge Moses as One of Our Founding Fathers” | http://bit.ly/1v5hUSC
From the wonderful folks who brought you NCLB+Common Core: U.S. PROPOSES
NEW GUIDELINES ON TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS : US Dept of Ed proposes
rules that would shift money to colleges ranking higher on educating
teachers …and (Surprise! Surprise!!) Eli Broad likes ‘em! | | http://bit.ly/1yvLOjT
Debate > RESOLVED: EMBRACE THE COMMON CORE; Urgency vs. Following-through on what we’ve already started | http://bit.ly/1FCvGgP
No Turkey Left Behind>NCTQ: NATIONAL COUNCIL ON THANKSGIVING QUALITY (Part I) …And yes, Virginia, there is a part II+II I http://bit.ly/1rsNgDg
HOUSE OF BLUES FOUNDATION TO GIVE AWAY MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS SO STUDENTS CAN PRACTICE AT HOME | http://bit.ly/1AWrpXw
LESSONS FROM LOS ANGELES’ SCHOOL RECORDS DISASTER | http://bit.ly/1xLTfj6
SAN FRANCISCO USD, UNION AGREE TO 12% PAY RAISE OVER 3 YEARS FOR TEACHERS AND ASSISTANTS | http://bit.ly/1vOAXCO
2B or not: ANNOUNCING THE NEXT PHASE OF PROGRAM TO BUY MORE iPADS WAS THE EASY PART. CARRYING IT OUT IS ANOTHER ISSUE http://bit.ly/1ycoZAG
FORMER SUPT. TRAVELED ON PRIVATE FOUNDATION’S FUND | http://bit.ly/1ycgdCO
L.A. UNIFIED ADOPTS FREE HISTORY CURRICULUM FROM STANFORD UNIVERSITY | http://bit.ly/11UCdHw
Red Queen: IT’S NOT THE INSTITUTIONS, IT’S THE WAY WE LET THEM BE
MANAGED | "We need to recognize not only where the buck should stop, but
demand accountability once it gets there." | http://bit.ly/11QnhsO
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
Regular Board Meeting including Closed Session items - December 2, 2014 - 10:00 a.m. -
Regular Board Meeting - December 2, 2014 - RESCHEDULED TO DECEMBER 9, 2014
Start: 12/09/2014 10:00 am
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
George.McKenna@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Monica.Ratliff@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress,
senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find
your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these
thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
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