Posts from — August 2010

I have noted in the past that athletics can serve as a great teaching tool for young people as it provides lessons that cannot always be learned in the classroom. Amidst the competition and physical demands, great coaches can teach youngsters about what it means to collectively strive for a team goal while sacrificing individual gain and even more importantly, how to dust oneself off when he or she falls short of the expectations they have placed on themselves.

But the sorry state of Division I college sports, from the poor graduation rates of athletes to the salaries being paid coaches who have a record of NCAA rules violations to game forfeitures in the name of money, has become nothing short of mind boggling.

A focus on money has led many institutions down a path that teaches nothing about the essence of athletics. Instead, at too may institutions, Division I athletics is about winning at whatever cost, a mindset that has college athletics selling its soul to the highest bidders.

One Shining Light

But at some schools there are still coaches who understand that there is more to athletics that winning and losing. Indeed, there are many individuals who no doubt understand that their leadership can help their young athletes become better people in addition to making them better players.

Andy Talley, the head football coach at Villanova in Philadelphia represents just such a man. Talley was reportedly so affected by a radio show nearly 20 years ago that promoted the dire need for donors of all types that he instituted a bone marrow donor program on campus.

As for his football players, Talley makes participation as a donor a part of his greater football program. His efforts to get a program started has led to nearly 20,000 potential donors who have been tested and entered into the national registry.

Those efforts have led to at least three of his tested players over that period becoming donor matches for someone in need. It is the story of one such donor this past year that demonstrates the difference a coach can make in the life of an individual.

Star Athlete

One of Talley’s most talented athletes, Matt Szczur got his cheek swabbed when he was a freshman as part of the coach’s marrow donor program. Szczur was not a highly recruited football player but the young man had demonstrated incredible talent on the baseball diamond – so much talent that he was drafted out of high school by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But instead of the world of professional baseball Szczur opted to attend college where he wanted to play football and baseball. He was such a strong athlete that he worked his way onto the football field as a freshman before settling into his main sport, baseball.

The hard-working athlete soon became a star, a legitimate two-sport professional prospect, for the Wildcats programs. But as rare as two sport athletes are, Szczur was actually rarer still.

Because he learned that despite there being just a 1 in 80,000 chance he’d be a match for a stricken patient he was in fact a match for an infant girl. And once he found out, his response was truly something special.

“As soon as I heard that, I was so excited,” Szczur reportedly told Dan Gelston at the Associated Press. “I was so pumped. My roommate was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? It’s like you were drafted or something.’”

Initially, the donation was to take place during the team’s postseason football run. Both Talley and Szczur deemed the chance to help save the life of a little girl to be more important than winning a football title.

But as luck would have it, medical scheduling changes allowed him to play and help his team to the national title. For his part, he was voted the Most Outstanding Player in the FCS National Championship game.

Instead, the procedure was moved to May where he ended up missing 10 games out of the Wildcats’ baseball season. Those missed games came right before the Major League Baseball draft.

Confidentially rules prevent Szczur from knowing who he specifically donated his stem cells to. He does know the little girl is between 1 and 2 years old and that a year from now he can be told who she is. At that time he could also be given contact info so as to be able to get in touch with her.

There is much more to the Szczur story including his being drafted again, this time by the Chicago Cubs, the bonus he received and his playing minor league baseball. His first major purchase with his baseball money was a necklace for a childhood friend who has also been battling leukemia, a young lady who has been in remission for five years.

He purchased the chain with a dove (representing faith) on it at Tiffany’s. And if he should have the chance to meet one very special youngster next May, it is his goal to deliver a similar gift to her as well.

A Team and a Coach Worth Rooting For

This incredible young man has since returned to Villanova for the upcoming football season (NCAA rules allow athletes to play professionally in one sport while remaining an amateur in another). He, of course, will be playing for Andy Talley, a man who understands what it means to be an educator and leader.

It needs to be said that for his part the coach was presented the Person of the Decade Award by the Temple Bone Marrow Transplant Program of Temple University Hospital last spring.

And after winning one championship last year, his team is ranked number one for the upcoming season in a number of FCS preseason polls.

Both are truly more significant forms of recognition than I could ever offer. But one thing is for sure, this native Mainer has found one college program he can root for come fall.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education – Mark Twain.

Our new, wired world has brought forth many positives. One of the simplest, yet powerful, of the new tools available is the ability to bookmark worthy Internet materials for future use.

Even more powerful is the ability to share those materials indirectly through the use of sites like Delicious. We subscribe so as to have the most popular education bookmarks forwarded to us on a daily basis.

Over the last few days, two noteworthy pieces have proven most popular. The first is a copy of a speech given by a teenager at her graduation. The class valedictorian’s address essentially articulated that famous quote from one of America’s most celebrated writers, Mark Twain.

The second piece drawing extensive attention involved a visual representation of what it means to study for a Ph.D. While far less incendiary, it nonetheless gave this reader some very negative vibes.

But the two in total offer a very important lesson for those who work with young people.

The Speech

The valedictory address from Erica Goldson begins with this simple little story:

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years ” The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty years.”

“But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the student.

“Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” Replied the Master, “When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”

Offering rare insight for one so young, Goldson acknowledges that book learning is not the same as wisdom. The valedictorian notes that her position at the top of the class is not as meaningful as most would have it.

“…in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. … I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it.”

Of course, what makes the speech so impressive is how unassuming this young thinker is. Yes it is a scathing rebuke, but it is clear that this young lady is someone of merit, even if she wants to toss her class ranking on the scrap heap. She clearly did more than learn how to regurgitate facts, developing some incredible thinking skills along the way.

In mid-stream, she further displays wisdom beyond her years as she turns to those who helped shape her education over the last few years:

”For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.”

And most notably, she in turn gives thanks to her classmates for the role they played in who she has become to date:

“So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.”

Everyone involved in the field of education should read and contemplate the content put forward in this magnificent speech.

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.

Biased to a fault, I think educators are a special breed of people. One of the strengths the best teachers display is the ability to break down sophisticated ideas into easy to assemble chunks.

Such is the case with the second piece earning so much attention, Matt Might’s post. In it the assistant professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah shares with readers a presentation he uses each fall to explain to first-year Ph.D. students just what a Ph.D. is.

Given the challenges of articulating such a concept in words, Might uses a great set of visuals to express the concept concretely. The visuals represent another element that great teachers consistently employ, the concept of modeling.

The model in fact may do the job too well. By the time his concentric circles and protruding radii reach the outer point where the Ph.D. appears, the bump that forms represents yet another analogy we have heard all too often (something about the pimple on the behind of…).

Indeed, while the presentation completely expresses what it means to earn a Ph.D., it does not conjure up positive educational thoughts for this writer. Instead, it reeks of what the young lady so artfully railed against, book-learning versus what we might call wisdom.

Even the bachelor’s degree imagery is less than flattering to this reader. My guess is it would reinforce the notion of those who see a college degree as a waste of time for so many students.

And the final image? Well it articulates that pimple analogy far too well.

The Educational Challenge

In a nutshell, these two pieces represent the challenge teachers and professors face as they seek to motivate the next generation. There is little doubt that pure knowledge is not necessarily a bad thing – not for individuals and certainly not for society as a whole.

But the world will move forward only when knowledge is combined with that element we have come to call wisdom. As educators, our task is to understand this critical difference, to be certain that we instill in our charges an understanding that there is a difference between these two concepts.

Perhaps our system does promote one without the other – after all we do seem to place so much emphasis on the accomplishment (high school graduation, earning a Ph.D., or becoming class valedictorian) that we have little opportunity to recognize the process. But that is where individuals can and should make a difference.

The question is – what do you place the greatest emphasis on with the students in your classroom?

Are you interested in giving your children practice time on some of those all important keyboarding skills? At the same time, have you made the move to support the open source movement and left those from expensive proprietary operating systems behind?

Today you can easily accomplish both as open source modules continue to explode. If you are operating in a Linux based environment you can offer your kids any one of these five free keyboarding/typing modules to help him or her develop those 21st century skills.

GNU Typist

GNU Typist or gtypist offers a number of typing exercises that will help your youngster learn to type correctly. It has typing tutorials in Czech, English for both the Qwerty and Dvorak keyboard, Russian, Spanish, German, French and Norwegian.

The software allows for the modification of existing tutorials and the ability to create new ones according to your child’s needs and your skills.

TuxType

Designed with elementary students in mind, TuxType is great for helping inexperienced youngsters navigate their way around the keyboard. Offering basic typing lessons as well as a couple of typing games, TuxTyping actually will work with both Windows and the Mac OS X software in addition to Linux.

Klavaro

Klavaro is another free touch typing tutorial that is both keyboard and language independent. The site notes that such a step saves computer memory in addition to time and money.

The latest release offers incredible internationalization: English, Bangla/Bengali, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Urdu and Vietnamese. It also offers the following keyboard layouts: Qwerty, Dvorak, qwertz, azerty, jtsuken and AlphaGrip5.

A basic type of course is available for memorizing proper finger positioning on the keyboard in addition to other exercises that focus on adaptability, velocity and fluidness. To be sure to appeal to the competitive nature of children, progress charts and scoring schemes are available.

Though the software works with both Windows and Linux operating systems, it does not feature game formats, something we think appeals more to youngsters.

TypeFaster

This free typing tutorial comes in three separate versions: Standard, Accessible and Spanish. The site notes that the program focuses on teaching students how to touch-type.

Once again, this free open source option supports multiple keyboard layouts including Danish, Finnish, French, French-Belgian, German, Hebrew (no lesson files), Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese, along with UK-English, US-Dvorak and US-English.

Also featuring a 3D typing game, TypeFaster can score progress and features an option that allows for the practice of the least accurate or slowest key uses. If you want to get the whole family involved, check out the multi-user option that allows each family member their own login which then stores the progress of each user.

TypeFaster also operates on both Windows and Linux operating systems.

KTouch

KTouch is yet another option that focuses on touch-type. Claiming to offer an easy way to learn to type quickly and correctly, the software begins by honing in on a few keys at a time.

KTouch features the keys to press as well as the appropriate fingers to use to hit a specific key. KTouch is part of the KDE-EDU package and is included in most linux distributions that include KDE.