Echoing bells

At the risk of a repeated topic becoming annoying like the tintinnabulation of bells between classes, you are encouraged to read on with additional, possibly interesting information regarding bells in schools. If you haven't read the first blog on this topic, click here:

http://fieldtrips.blogspot.com/2004/09/hells-bells-sometimes-less-really-is.html

The first blog discussed the addition of bells between classes at Johnson Creek's upper school took about 15 minutes to write and questioned the value of bells in today's educational setting. It also suggested that the previous lack of bells was a non-monetary asset, a characterisitic to which many of the nation's leading schools aspire. Ironically, many reviews say that it is one of the characteristics that schools will want to replicate.

Since then a minor amount of additional research has yielded more information, if only to see how the matter fits in context. As it turns out it is usually a factor or a descriptor that people use to tell, write or brag about their school. It is a situation which adds to a school's percieved and educational value.

In the last bell blog one school was used as an example of what many schools are aspiring to. It referred to New Tech High School near Napa, California, using their lack of class change signals as an initial bragging point.

Find more about that school here:

http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/novdec03/articles.asp?article=spotlightschool

A School Design Planning site called Learning By Design again has the assumption that school can exist without class change signals, especially in the small school environment.

In an essay entitled Smaller, Saner Schools it talks about

"...
a rural school board (that) agreed to authorize what has become one of the nation's most noted secondary schools: Minnesota New Country School (MNCS). This secondary charter school enrolls about 125 students in grades seven through 12. It is run as a co-op, with faculty members "owning" the school, setting their own salaries and working conditions.

Each school year starts with a family/student/advisor conference. The conferences help students develop a plan for how they will make progress toward graduation, which is based entirely on demonstration of skill and knowledge.

There are no grades or bells. Each student has a workstation with a computer. Students work individually or in small groups on projects that help them achieve the required mastery. Teachers see themselves as facilitators and coaches, moving from student to student throughout the day. Every six weeks the school has a presentation night, during which students share information they've learned. Each student makes a presentation at least three times per year. The presentations often include computer graphics and PowerPoint. Students have become so sophisticated that some of them have been hired by local businesses to create Web sites."

This site can be found here: http://www.asbj.com/lbd/2002/inprint/smaller.html

In another article, Kathleen Cushman writes:

It's all too easy to bury oneself in the details of the schedule and forget the kids themselves. If we think hard about how they learn best, we must confront some uncomfortable truths. The clock does not direct or control learning, nor do the artificial cycles of terms and tests and report cards. In fact, sometimes those things-all integral to the very idea of a school schedule-often interrupt and impede the way kids learn.

"The simpler a high school schedule is, the better," asserts Ted Sizer. "Just because it's so complex, it must be solved as a matter between particular teachers and particular kids. Why not create a few long blocks, then keep all decisions about the 'bells and whistles' as close to the kids as possible? If I'm teaching history and some students need to go to band, I would just keeping on doing something special in class with the kids who don't go."

To create such conditions, schools might have to undergo a fundamental attitude shift. A learner's individual needs would matter more than the orderly processing of groups. The emotional investment of students in their work would matter more than what time they start and stop it, or where they carried it out. We would think of learning as continuous and connected, not delineated by bells, course boundaries, or exam dates. And everyone in a school community would be doing it all the time.

By the way, this site touches on many educational issues about scheduling. Read it here:

http://www.essentialschools.org/cs/resources/view/ces_res/15


In St. Louis' Carr Lane Middle School is known as the 'school without bells' and it's mission statement describes the school "...where students are viewed as valued present and future citizens of a global society."

It's unfortunate that we take for granted one of several characteristics that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (yes, that Bill Gates) is pushing for in funding the establishment of new small schools. They began the initiative after studies indicate that large urban schools, and schools which have a higher enrollment as a result of excessive consolidation, have higher dropout rates and that there is a direct link to poverty and a lack of achievement as a high school enrollment becomes excessive. But it isn't the school population alone which has this impact - it is the infrastructure and the non-educational aspects that can have a negative effect on education.

In the web site "Students Learning in Small Schools" a report indicates that many of these new schools are pushing to have what already exists in many Wisconsin rural schools, or is readily available without any cash outlay. It says:

More than personalization and the absence of bells

What first catches the eye when one enters a small school is the personalization it affords. Both the needs of individual students and the passions of individual teachers seem to find uncustomary breathing room. A first-time visitor might also be struck by what appears to be less structure than larger high schools employ: students and adults may mix more freely; no bells may mark the start and end of classes; courses may break from curricular conventions or may not even exist at all. Repeat visitors learn that in most small schools a complex infrastructure actually puts order in these freedoms.

This site has fascinating information about findings regarding the assets of small schools. Read more about it here:

http://www.whatkidscando.org/portfoliosmallschools/portfoliohome.html


Alright, you are already at your computer reading this blog so all you have to do is click on the links provided to read about one characteristic of what the leading schools are including to enhance the educational environment (or print it out and take it with you to read later). Additionally, there is information there on many of the other characterisitics of these schools, many of which Johnson Creek already has in place. But are they at risk, too?

Just as education never ends, neither does homework. If nothing else, read the info, and just be aware of factors that can have an impact on education. It's exciting to see what is happening as these new schools develop - it's just as exciting as the educational efforts put forth locally. Let us do nothing to limit those local efforts.

Best to all,

Lloyd
27SEP04

Why Lloyd doesn't cover sports

Often, when sauntering amongst the communities that make up my news beats, people ask why I don’t do sports.

Of course at that point they have answered their own question – I don’t do sports. Report on it, that is.

First and most importantly in becoming a sports reporter one must know something – specifically the game.

Actually, I have done a fair amount of sports photography, but in my oft dual capacity of being a pictures and words guy, I am seriously lacking in sports words.

The reason I don’t know the games, or haven’t taken the time to learn are unknown. I must qualify this, too. What I have never learned are the chief games that hit the front pages of local papers. So if it’s football, baseball, tennis, volleyball, softball, basketball and a myriad of other mainstream sports, one at times would do just as well to put teams of dancing zombies on the field or floor and strap to my head a loudspeaker connected to the Chicago Transit Authority for 90 minutes for the sense I make of it.

Yet I find things interesting when I do attend, and those things are the ones I would center my sports news article on.

To illustrate this I have written a mock sports story on a fictitious game between the Marshall High School Cardinals and the Lake Mills L-Cats - two non fictitious teams. The names I use will indeed be fictitious, but any names that do exist on either of these two teams will be complete and utter coincidence. Here goes:

LAKE MILLS – With a cool faint breeze coming out of the north, the Marshall Cardinals flew in to touch down on the grid-iron of the Lake Mills L-Cats. The question looming over the field was whether the L-Cats would devour those red birds from western Dane County.

Having done research with those whom are evidently not fans of the Marshall team, it was originally thought that the school colors – red and white – were symbolic of our patriotic history with red standing for blood and white for bandages. Still another apparent non-Cardinal fan suggested that the name was based on a layer of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. While this suggestion was summarily dismissed, the nagging fact remained that Nashotah Seminary’s team is the known as the Black Monks.

Two and two quickly became four as their logo with the crested red bird of the north made it safely evident that they weren’t a group of young ornithologists – in addition to the logos, there simply was not a pair of binoculars in the bunch.

From the other side of the field the Lake Mills L-Cats crawled ready to pounce. After previous research on this team, the origins of their mascot name dating from WW II is well known. The reigning question about their name: Why do they keep it?

Really. Even they must be tiring of explaining what an L-Cat is. And half of them don’t know, making up such rubbish as “it’s a polite way to say ‘Hell-Cat,’” or “it stands for the L of Lake Mills.” Come on. Then they’d be called the LM-Cats, wouldn’t they? Even during the depression budgetary constraints didn’t get bad enough that letters had to be cut from team mascot names.

So the rival between these two moderate sized school teams - scientific names Cardinalis cardinalis v. Felis "L" catus -began as the Cardinals’ red and white set out to clash with the L-Cats’ blue and gold.

And what a clash – just the sight of red, white, blue and gold together on that field of green was enough to make an interior decorator nauseous.

At that point conjecture sets in as to the advantage of each teams color scheme on the psyche of the opposing team.

Apparently overpaid, and wanting to flaunt it, an official pulled a silver dollar out of his pocket and offered a coin toss to determine who would be kicking off.

Without first inspecting the coin, the captains of each team yelled out their preferred coin face as it was in mid-air. Lake Mills won the toss and elected to kick.

The kicker’s impact sent the oblong ball, euphemistically called ‘the pigskin’ deep into Marshall’s half of the field.

As if pre-determined Marshall’s Einer Tingvold caught the ball and dropped to one knee as if incapacitated, leading one to believe more than ever before that the two battling teams should very seriously reconsider their uniform color schemes.

But it turned out that Tingvold was okay, and there was evidently no animosity over his fake injury.

After the initial play both teams went into a huddle. It is never entirely possible to understand what is discussed in the huddle. One of the last bastions of closed meetings in public, despite the fact we live in a Democracy and that the rule applies even in teams of institutions like public schools and universities, it continues to be overlooked by legislators and members of the country’s free press.

Returning from the huddle it was apparent that the young players used the time to make decisions without letting the general public in on the outcome. But it was equally unknown to each team and the spectators, providing some sort of equity to the huddle situation.

Lake Mills lined up flanking the ball as center John Behling leaned into to the oblong orb and QB Oscar Stanke moved in to a rather colloquial position behind Behling - a refreshing departure from the all to large effort to remain politically correct in public behavior.

Barking out what is evidently his locker combination, Behling apparently became annoyed with Stanke, snapping the ball into Stanke’s hands. Stanke moved back but was shortly bowled over by the Card’s junior Orin Sorenson.

Moving ahead less than a couple yards, Lake Mills tried this again, with Behling equally annoyed by Stanke spewing another locker combination. Again Sorenson moved in to take down Stanke.

Evidence of a grudge-match ensued as the scene repeated itself, demonstrating Stanke’s uncanny ability to memorize locker combinations.

With unimaginative choreography taking place under the lights on the field, another bit of sports related news seemed to be developing over at the concession stand.

It seems that the local boosters had introduced an entirely new menu. While including the usual popcorn and bagged savory snacks, along with a variety of soft drinks, this year they offered pizza, hot dogs, brats and natchos.

A surplus in the booster budget evidently allowed for the purchase of a couple small pizza ovens.


The menu indicated that the offerings included pepperoni, sausage and a vegetarian pizza. However concessions director and parent Marian Tomlinson said to this point in the season the vegetarian pizza was a rare sale, leading her to believe that the menu would be geared entirely toward the carnivores in the crowd next season.

Even though this crowd made it hard to discuss the matter with bouts of yelling, cheers and jeers overpowering customer orders at the food stand, Mrs. Tomlinson was able to point out a little recipe secret with the natcho sauce.

Letting the “L-Cat” out of the bag, she noted that the usual #10 can of commercial natcho sauce was the base, but then she pointed out that the special zing in the sauce’s flavor was due to the addition of whole capers and several drops of Tobasco sauce, “…just enough to warm up the cool fall air,” Tomlinson said.

Of course, along with the regular fare, there are home baked desserts, that booster members bring to donate to the concession stand.

The mother of new student and football team member Bobby Behrends, Mrs. Becky Behrends, introduced a new flavor to the mix.

While Rice Crispy bars are a perennial favorite, Behrends tried to explain the simple but tasteful ingredient, at first difficult to understand as the fans kept coming to their feet and howling at the field.

But with perseverance, the secret ingredient was revealed as a touch of pumpkin pie spice, giving the old standby treat an added dimension.

"It's okay I suppose, if you like that sort of thing," Mrs. Tomlinson said of Behrends' treat, indicating it may be an acquired taste for some.

Kudos and bravos continued to go to the deserving concessionaires as these new items along with the former snacks sold consitently, albeit difficult for anyone to give or take orders with all of the noise near the field.

Fortunately it all came to a crescendo right near the end, followed by a welcomed silence on a crisp autumn evening as the stands emptied, the stadium lights extinguished, leaving only the echoes of athletic exuberance and the faint smell of popcorn and bratwurst in the air.

(Editor’s note: The final score of last Friday’s game: Lake Mills 24, Marshall 26 sending the Cardinals to the state finals.)

Alright, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. It has been my honor to cover a variety of events over the years.The news bug bit me while living on the island of Guam. Prior to that I had been a music major with an emphasis on opera - needless to say there were limited operatic opportunities on Guam or the Commonwealth of the Mariannas, leaving me with the choice of pursuing a career in music elsewhere for a period of two or more years, or staying with my high school sweetheart and wife (who has at this point put up with me for 31 years) who was at the time assigned to Andersen AFB, Guam as a member of the USAF.

It was my intent to be a photojournalist, which is what I tell people I am to this day. But during every editorial relationship someone has found out that I can write a complete sentence, roping me into the additional role of reporter/writer. It has allowed me to cover happenings in the Pacific, and over the past 20 plus years I have covered communities and individuals at their best and coversely, sometimes tragically, at their worst.

After returning to Wisconsin, touching on agricultural journalism seemed to go hand in hand with the decade we owned a farm and started a family.

The journey continues with mainstream magazine and newspaper work making every assignment an adventure. The nature of this journey doesn’t allow me to always report happy news or to share pleasant photographs. But it has allowed me to share facts about fascinating individuals and events with untold numbers of readers.

It can be difficult when we, my colleagues and I, must report unpopular truths. But having lived places where the press is not independent of the current rule, it becomes obvious that it is much easier to deliver unpopular truths and have readers feel they can trust the source, than to modify information and toss every ounce of that commodity of credibility and public trust out the window.

And if we are wrong, we want to hear about it. I’m merely a journalist, and the newspaper work I do is usually related to events or people in the area's small communities. But community news is “where it’s at” precisely because of this.

If Sam Donaldson gets something wrong in his large market reporting, the only person he’s accountable to is his producer or the person who signs his paycheck. If my colleagues and I need to clarify something, there is a great likelihood that we will see the subject of our stories in the near future in the same or only slightly different venue, providing an accountability directly to the readership.

“The Media” is and are something too broad to make general statements about, but it is important to remember that ‘freedom of the press’ is not a freedom set aside for those in the forth estate. It is a freedom set aside for everyone, with journalists and publications only the tools to help you enjoy that right. If you don’t insist on it, it could disappear.

It goes without saying that freedom of the press, when it comes to sports reporting, is generally better off if I stay in the realm of general news and the variety it offers. If I had leaned that way, it would probably have been in the style of the late Howard Cosell, but even he would likely have missed out on the secret ingredient in the Rice Crispy bars.

Best to all,
Lloyd
# # #
21SEP04 LS

Lloyd

Hells, Bells
---Sometimes less really is more...
(Commentary/Editorial)

Today was the first day of the 2004-05 school year. The time when teachers and students gather for the first time since departing on the unknown adventures that summer would hold.

The last moments before the first class are a time of anticipation and excitement triggered by the smell of freshly waxed floors, newly painted areas and the aroma of the ink wafting from new textbooks, almost as if the information and ideas within had vapors of their own making the air heady with ideas for potential treks of the new learning experiences that lay ahead.

But that special time of anticipation before launching into a new year was shattered at the Johnson Creek upper school by an annoyance, a new bell system signaling the beginning of classes. After asking about it, hoping that it was some sort of mistake, it was most dissappointing to hear that a noise had been implemented to signal class times.

If I haven't written about it, I know that I have talked about an unquantifiable yet very tangible characteristic of institutions like Johnson Creek Schools, one I call the "Charm Factor."

The charm factors at Johnson Creek Schools include the fact that grades K through 12 are on the same campus, which has promoted the use of upper class mentors and student aides at the lower grade levels. It has minimized class rank issues and streamlined the students' vision in understanding the route through the grades.

Johnson Creek school charm factors include situations held unique where a student can be a successful athlete, musician, thespian and maintain an interest in agrarian roots by belonging to and being successful in FFA.

Another is a built in support system, where everyone knows everyone in the school, with an enrollment of fewer than 600. That support system includes parents knowing parents and students knowing all the district families and realizing that a lapse in behavior will be addressed by all levels of peers and families in addition to school staff. This has kept the need for pre-emptive excessive rule making to a minimum. It is also the type of built in support system that held the school together a few years ago when a student perished in an auto accident, where in a larger institution the loss may have gone unnoticed by the majority.

And of course the small student to teacher ratio is what education experts dream of and dream for getting closer to the goal of individualized education (although with ongoing budget constraints this becomes more difficult to maintain as the old solution of consolidating schools becomes more like herding cattle to go through the motions of providing an education...).

Last year I remained silent as "security cameras" were installed in the hallways of the upper school. Reports indicate they did catch perpetrators of ongoing vandalism, as they record images from those hallways for days at a time. However one wonders if the cameras have deterred any acts vandalism or misbehavior. I sighed at their installation as they had the potential to undermine the charm factors that reinforce what the school stands for. But one also wonders how many events may have occurred in an attempt to outsmart the intrusive cameras, easily construed as a general vote of no confidence.

Today, disappointment killed the excitement of the first day of school when the evidence of the school schedule bell system became apparent, knocking the legs out from under the charm the school once held.

Across the nation, new schools are striving for characteristics like the ability to have class changes with no bells. The Scholastic Administrator website-

http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/novdec03/articles.asp?article=spotlightschool

-describes a new school in the Napa Valley, California as having "an open school culture" and a "celebrated model for replication."

The first part of a description of the New California school says it is,

"...AN OASIS OF LEARNING
Walk through the doors of New Tech High's low-key building and you'll find a welcoming environment. With no bells to signal transitions between class periods, the hallways are peaceful and unhurried."

And they are replicating what we used to have. These are characteristics leading schools are striving to have, and we are letting those characteristics dwindle.
Flexibility has been a key to the success of the Johnson Creek school district. In every instance where one has compared the local schools to a larger district, I have been able to counter with a plus directly related to the intimacy and adaptability of the district.

The class size coupled with a block schedule, allowing four 90 minute classes during a day with time for lunch and co-hort or homeroom activities, while having some bugs has the advantages first of being a relaxed atmosphere more conducive to learning. It allows for entire cooking projects to be completed, impromptu field trips to collect samples for science classes, time for lecture and lab work and precious time for rehearsals. There are some shorter classes creating a modified block schedule, but as a whole as reported in previous school board meetings, grades have gone up and the number of people on honor roll have increased while using this system. It has allowed students to concentrate on four areas of study at a time instead of the typical eight in a fragmented schedule of bits and pieces.

Up to this time, everyone has presumed that students and teachers could tell time. And when it was time for classes to change, students changed classes BUT it was done after a teacher completed a thought or an assignment, or a group returned from an impromptu outside lecture or fieldtrip.

These are among the things we are teaching students to understand: When they get to college there are no bells, they must figure out how to be where and when on their continued journey through education and life or they miss out. There are no bells out there. Yes there are deadlines, the trains, planes and busses leave on a schedule, taxes are due April 15 and the curtain goes up after the overture. And some people miss out...

Are the class bells an effort to have fewer tardiness reports? I hope not, because tardiness exists, has existed and will exist everywhere in this nation's schools. It isn't something that can be stopped with bells. Go to any school and it will be a concern of a few people, but an accepted fact by most educators. This is not to say that chronic tardiness is acceptable in schools if for the only fact that it disrupts classes and staggers the momentum of all of the students.

One of the chief factors, a charm factor if you will, that I used to brag about regarding Johnson Creek Schools was that there WERE NO BELLS signaling class changes. It was as though they were making the effort to raise the students' level up to accepting and understanding schedules, leading by example instead of forcing through a mold. In fact I used tell people that the only thing resembling a bell or signal, when it worked, was a large grandfather clock in one of the upper school hallways.

Now we have another vote of no confidence tossed at students, students who are becoming more sophisticated every year.

Why must we head for the lowest common denominator? Sure all area schools may have bells. But hasn't Johnson Creek maintained a standard that says we don't need them? The ongoing the assumption that the majority of students will do the right thing at the right time is the reason tour companies, transportation firms and hotels have written to the schools regularly to compliment the school and the students for their exceptional behavior compared to student groups from other schools when on trips and performing tours.

It is dismaying that the importance of students' timeliness has begun to supersede what they do after they arrive, because only a fraction of learning happens within the set time frame of the classroom. Students follow good teachers out on their own time to test the thermo-dynamics of shelters they built as part of a science project. They make the extra effort to attend rehearsals of musicals nightly, taking the energy of pros as teachers provide examples, often not realizing where the time has gone. They work between classes to gather resources for international humanitarian efforts. Students clammor to see Shakespeare performed in a setting realistic to the Bard's lifetime. They represent the young people of potential career choices who take part in competitions across the state and nation with the extra time and guidance from teachers. It is continued proof that school is and should be a verb - not just a place, or a building where one goes for a specific period of time.

The class bells will have a limiting effect, and have already diminished what remains of the district charm factors. They are the factors in a school system that can make people invest in a home and relocate a family -as our family did. It could have an impact in the future growth of the schools as other families make decisions on moving...or maybe not.

Once a gem is covered or lost no one knows it was there.

There are times when people familiar with what exists don't recognize the glowing and positive facets as assets until they are gone, and that is a shame.

-Lloyd Schultz
2SEP04