by Julia Steiny

Three years ago, prior to enrolling her son in the middle school, Phyllis Penhallow often had reason to be at the school just as lunch was over.

“I’d pull up, park, and the doors to the cafeteria would open.  Teaching assistants herded the kids out to some grass.  There was no real equipment, just a bin with 2 wiffle balls, no bats; 3 rubber balls, two deflated, no pump.  The kids stood there for about 7 minutes and then got herded back in.  I imagined herding cows out to graze.  Except that they couldn’t graze.  They stood.  I noticed the kids looked kind of sad, uninvolved, and not wanting to be there.”

Julia Steiny

And that, my friends, was those kids’ recess.

No running, whooping, cartwheels (it was grass), 4-square, tag, or card games.  No double-dutch jump rope, kids sharing the latest dance moves, or showoffs doing whatever solo physical feat it is they do best.  No explosion of pent-up energy.

Even worse, there was little visible socializing.  Research argues that a key feature of recess breaks — K-12 — is for kids to learn how to interact with one another directly, with adults only hovering supportively in the background.

And if all this seems like something kids can do outside of school time, read the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) passionate advocacy piece, The Critical Role of Recess in Schools.  Please note the word “critical.”  Breaks should take place at school — K-12.

During May is Mental Health Month, be aware that pediatricians believe recess should be treated with serious respect — or academics, physical, social, and mental health will suffer.

As it happens, Penhallow is a lecturer at the University of Rhode Island in the Human Development and Family Studies Department.  A specialist in early childhood, she consults with the State’s Department of Ed on early-learning standards.  She’s teaches about how children develop in happy, healthy, high-performance ways.  And she knows that national studies say recess is dying.  The time is being cut or eliminated and reallocated to academics.  Even where there is recess, obsessive-compulsive safety policies forbid running run around or doing anything deem remotely risky.  So the practices at Penhallow’s school, Chariho Middle School, merely reflect current thinking, however unfun.

But change was imperative.  So Penhallow started talking to other parents who, not surprisingly, knew little of the research on the subject.  But some — probably those with the super-wriggly boys — felt the kids should be more physical.

Everyone agrees that pre-school kids need to be very active, running, tumbling, making stuff.  But then they go to kindergarten and first grade and sit.  Teachers move and talk, but kids sit.  Yes, they get gym — often as little as schools can legally get away with.  But the AAP argues that structured sports and gym time is still very adult driven, serving its own instructional purpose.  Gym is no substitute for real recess with opportunities for kid-driven choices about what to do with each other, in, as Penhallow puts it, “adult-free space.”

Penhallow and her parent colleagues admit that, out of frustration, they were too aggressive in how they tried to make changes.  “You have to hear about the school’s obstacles, their structure, time in the day.”  (Always good advice, Parents.)  But eventually, the recess advocates won sympathy from the school’s administration and Chariho’s Superintendent.  The district lengthened the time a bit, and parents helped fill the bins with items for quick sports like badminton.

But the District’s most innovative move was to hire the Boston group, Playworkers, to train adults in supporting unstructured time.  Playworkers’ motto is:  “Make Recess Count.”  Their site has many relevant research studies and testimonials from happy principals, mostly from low-income schools where recess has all but died out as a casualty of testing mania.  Those principals adore how a rich recess experience improved discipline, liberating clear-headed time for academics.  Investing in adults who supervise recess gives kids’ free-time world a bit of structure and much more support.  Staying out of kids’ business and intervening only when asked or it’s necessary is a skill, like any.  And playing is essential — for all of us.

The efforts worked.  Kids report that recess is way more fun — not perfect yet, but a real break.

Obesity is epidemic, but we won’t let kids run around.  Violence, low graduations rates and a high proportion of disaffected youth are alarming, but schools rarely think about supporting kids’ mental health.  Skills for healthy conflict resolution seem to be at an all-time low — witness Congress — but kids have no time for supported social life.  Recess isn’t just rejuvenating, fun and relaxing.  It’s instructive in its own right.

At a panel discussing recess — where I met Penhallow — a pediatrician in the audience, Dr. William Hollinshead, suggested that parents ask their doctors to write prescriptions for recess.  Perhaps the schools will listen to doctors.

Because too few others are concerned that eliminating recess is making kids fat, school-hating and nuts.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street.

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by Julia Steiny

When a character flaw appears in ourselves or others, our instinct is to blame Mom.  I know that’s my own boys’ working theory.  But, as it turns out, hard science is on their side.

Researchers who work with lab rats have long known that some rats are cooperative and social while others are nasty and aggressive.  And everything in between, like humans.  So certain researchers have been investigating the origins of these differences in social character.

Julia Steiny

You got it:  Mom.

When rat babies are born, their mothers lick them in a mammalian bonding gesture like human cuddling and caressing.  Some go at it truly, madly, deeply.  Others, more indifferent, lick their offspring with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  As the babies get older, they start venturing away from Mom to seek adventures of their own.  Even good rat moms don’t hover, prevent them from taking risks, adjudicate their kids’ fights, or do their homework, so to speak.  But when the little rat does run into trouble — with a predator, a fall or a fight — they return for a good dose of licking.  The licking lowers their stress level, assures them someone’s there for them, and rebuilds the confidence they need to get back out and cope with reality.

Well-licked rat babies grow up pleasantly-socialized, curious, and fun to be around.  Oh and btw, they live longer.  Poorly-parented rats become high-strung, fearful, aggressive, and at worst, full-on violent.

I first heard of these experiments years ago at a lecture by Richard Tremblay, a research psychologist from the University of Montreal.  He studied the origin of aggression which, he argued, could be greatly reduced with affectionate parenting.

With a charming French accent and naughty pleasure, Tremblay often repeated the word “lick.”  As George Orwell’s book 1984 exploited so well, rats hold an especially dark, yucky place in our imaginations.  So, at Tremblay’s lecture, even super-open-minded Brown University folks were squirming with a lot of “eeuuu!”

Still, there it is:  nurture affects nature.  Or, as the biologists put it, epigenetic events strongly affect how your genes are expressed.  Your DNA is what makes you you.  But your Mom can make you way better.  (Actually, I already knew that.)

More recently, RadioLab produced a terrific interview with researchers Michael Meaney, from McGill, and Frances Champagne, from Columbia, who’d also researched the effects of good and bad rat parenting.  Their technique was to switch the rat babies of affectionate moms and indifferent ones.

Like most of us, rat moms parent much as they were parented.  So the ones who got a lot of affection, tend to give affection generously, thereby reproducing a bloodline of pleasant rats with affectionate DNA.  Similarly, aggressive DNA is passed on by indifferent rat moms.

Yes, humans can make rational choices about such things, but surely you know people who complain bitterly about how they were parented, and then turn to their own kids and neglect, constrict or criticize them in exactly the same ways.  Parenting styles are largely inherited.

The researchers found that when affectionate moms licked and cared for babies born of indifferent mothers, those babies became more trusting and social than would have been their genetically-determined path.  If DNA is genetic software, the epigenetic environment can alter the code.  The good-mom’s loving tongue licking the aggressive mom’s baby lets the genes “express” themselves, as the scientists say, in a river of neuronal bio-chemistry that produces pleasure, reassurance and calm.  The born-nervous baby calms down, fears less and trusts that she will be comforted if she falls down and goes boom.  The researchers’ switcheroo reprogrammed a baby’s aggressive DNA inheritance, allowing her to be a good parent herself some day.  (And vice versa.)

Assuming rats have something to teach us about ourselves, which I do, we have three take-aways.  First, moms need to know that affectionate nuzzling is far more likely to send their kids to Stanford than Einstein videos or toddler academic tutoring (which totally exists, if you didn’t know).  Second, that humans can change their behavior if they so choose.  Reluctant moms who are indisposed towards goofy baby-play need to get over it.  Seriously.  They need to suck it up and learn to lick their little rat.  Third, and perhaps most important, if a kid isn’t getting their cortisol level reduced by a generously-licking mom, the extended family or community absolutely must find someone to step in.  Otherwise aggression or other mental-health issues will follow.

And when that happens, once again, folks will point fingers and, that’s right, blame Mom.

So, on the occasion of May is Mental Health Month — and especially on Mother’s Day — let us heartily commend those profoundly affectionate moms, who don’t hover, but do console.  Because above all, we need a nation of well-licked rats.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street.

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by Julia Steiny

May is national Mental Health month.

Full disclosure:  For years I’ve served on the board of the RI Mental Health Association (RIMHA).  Why?  Because I believe that bar none, the biggest missed opportunity in schools and education is supporting the kids’ AND the adults’ mental health.  After all, what does anyone use to teach or learn if not their mental facilities?  Absent robust mental health, precious little learning takes place.  I’m astounded this issue never became high priority.

Julia Steiny

So, I’ve been planning on writing about this foundational subject throughout May.

Then, as it happened, I started having a mental meltdown of my own — in a life-happens way, not a diagnosable mental illness.  Still, as you well know, feeling “crazy” disrupts even a reasonably healthy person’s ability to think straight.

So imagine the quality of thought-processing among adults and kids, especially in urban schools, where at least some are traumatized, bullied, depressed.

In my case, a family member very dear to me had broken with us, furious for reasons I still don’t understand, leaving me helpless to right whatever was wrong.  I can deal with conflict, but not silence.  Nothing makes me crazier than sudden, angry, no-end-in-sight, door-slammed-in-your-face disconnection.

Years ago I read that Dr. Daniel Siegel calls this state “toxic rupture.”  What a relief to have a term for it.  Elsewhere, researcher Denise Johnston explained how violence was fundamentally frustrated attachment.  I get why people shoot their ex-lovers.  It’s not an excuse, but radical disconnection seriously unhinges the best of us.

Anyhow, I snapped a few weeks ago and rather than rampaging destructively, acted out by buying two airline tickets to Puebla, Mexico.  Fortunately, I could postpone painting my shabby house and instead seek asylum to clear my noisy head.

While not a conventional tourist destination for Americans, Puebla is a surprisingly intact 16th-century city built by the Spanish conquistadores.  Gorgeous architecture, museums, preserved homes and cityscapes.  Beauty is calming.  Warm weather was soothing after New England’s unusually grueling winter.

But I’d forgotten that what is most healing, most heartening about Mexico is the families’ warmth with one another.  Everyone holds hands, links arms — parents and kids, grandmothers and teenage boys, friends and lovers, married and not.  People maimed by birth defects, missing limbs and developmental delays stroll with the others, tethered firmly by family solidarity.  My husband and I ambled repeatedly through the zocalo, observing happy family groups enjoying each other as much as we savored the art and antiquities.  Moms publically nuzzle little ones, both of them giggling.  Discrete nursing takes place all over.  Fathers and grandfathers, in heavy boots and plaster-splotched clothing, proudly hold the hands of impeccably-dressed children, including teenagers.

Mexican public spaces offer families opportunities to connect with one another as abundant as the exotic offerings in the open-air markets.  Parents spoil the kids with one of the vendors’ toys to keep a group of them entertained, so grown-ups can chat with one another.  When it was time to go home, one mom called her son saying, “Victor, mi vida (my life),” we’re leaving now, in a tone of voice that means Now.  Firm, but so affectionate.

The Mexicans seem scrupulous about taking ugly fights indoors.  You never see the public nastiness that has become normal here in the U.S..

They cultivate connection.  They look content, not stressed, angry or in high rebellion.  I imagine, though I have no way of knowing, they have strong mental health.

Mind you, I realize that Mexican students are in no way lighting the boards with their terrific test results.  Mexico’s new president Enrique Nieto is gung-ho about improving education, but he’ll have a tough go.  My husband finally asked me to quit mentioning it every time a flock of school-age kids were up late on a school night or seemingly not going to school at all.  My sister, who’s lived off and on in Mexico for years, says, “The Mexicans could care less about self-improvement; they’d much rather stay home and play with the new baby.”  A sweeping generalization, to be sure.

But surely a balance could be struck between the pleasure Mexicans take in their families, and the way some of our ambitious families — and schools — drive the kids to perform.  Hanging out is fun, but so is the feeling of having mastered a task, a musical instrument, or any physical or intellectual challenge.  Short-term experiences of successful mastery would make schooling far more appealing to kids than the relentless, droning push to produce performance results that will one day, in some abstract future, yield a lot of money.

We are sentient beings, hard-wired in our mammalian brains to be attached — to one another and to personal passions.  Regaining my own mental health will mean healing the disconnection that distresses me still.  In the meantime, I feel palpably how my somewhat-obsessive yearning disrupts my thinking.   How on earth can promoting mental health be ignored as the platform on which all else educational is built?  I’ve wondered this for years.

There is no health without mental health is this year’s slogan for RIMHA’s May campaign this year.  So true; so timely.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street.

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by Julia Steiny

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody, under heavily-armed guard.  His body is in shambles.  He and his now-dead brother were acting as though they were in their own violent action movie, complete with a car chase and shoot-outs.  Trying to be macho heroes to God only knows who.

Julia Steiny

Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old engineering student, sustained gunshot wounds to his head, legs, hand and throat.  He can not speak, communicating only by writing.  Whatever life he might have had is probably over.  The courts have video surveillance tapes and other evidence already.  We can be fairly confident he’ll never be free again.  Except in a prison context, love and joy are over.  Hard to imagine what sort of peace he’ll ever have.

It was a horrible week for Boston.  And the nation is fresh from Sandy Hook.  Seemingly, there are more frequent acts of random, senseless violence.  Not surprisingly, officials and the public are expressing themselves with strong, righteous, sometimes enraged emotions.

I totally understand Boston’s mayor wanting “to throw the book at him.”  And if I were the mother of the murdered 8-year-old, or the wife of the MIT cop, or one of the nearly 200 maimed victims, I’m sure I would be crazed with rage, grief and a thousand other emotions.  That’s only human.

The victims’ stories must be heard and honored.  My deepest condolences and sympathies go to them and their families.

But I’m finding the bloodlust currently flowing from the blogosphere and the “comments” sections on the conventional press to be scarier even than the next act of unpredictable violence.

U.S. Senators want Tsarnaev tried as an enemy combatant, which is not even legal.  I understand how emotionally satisfying such a suggestion may be, but surely it’s irresponsibly inflammatory.

The sensation of righteousness is strangely pleasurable, but it can encourage bloodlust.  If we indulge in expressing vengefulness out loud, we’ll reap what we sow with our kids.

Because no retribution will bring back the dead or heal the injured.  And retribution all too often reaps yet more retribution.

Wanting vengeance, while understandable, is itself a fierce enemy.  Such feelings threaten our social fabric as much if not more than the offenders’ acts of violence.

I cringe when urban children express their right, even obligation to be aggressive, even violent.  Their parents taught them that whenever they feel under attack, to attack right back, only harder.  Don’t be weak.  Don’t do anything so stupid as walking away.  Even though a lot of these kids are at least nominally Catholic, turning the other cheek would be for chumps.  Survival depends on being more aggressive than the other guy.  Get vengeance quickly and fiercely, or the other guy will get you.

And that’s certainly the message of a lot of the action movies.

Of course, half the time, the “attack” that got the kid in trouble in the first place was entirely imagined.  “She disrespected me” might have been just a jostle in the hallway, a joke gone wrong, or perceived dirty look.  Feeling attacked matters more than what actually happened.  Kids don’t know that feelings are just feelings, and that acting on them can have serious consequences.

So, however understandable, indulging in highly emotional expressions of vengeance only gives kids and others license to be vengeful themselves.

Retribution is endlessly cyclical.  Tit for tat.  An eye for an eye.

Mahatma Ghandi said, “An eye for an eye ends in making everyone blind.”

We need to step back, take a deep breath, and try to understand what on earth the Tsarnaev brothers were thinking.

Because rational understanding is the obligation and discipline of civilized people.  It’s too bad that common enemies unite us more easily than common understanding.  Because ultimately, understanding why these atrocities are happening is our only real shot at preventing them.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street%

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by Julia Steiny

Marc Armitage, “playwork” expert, has the affect of an over-sized mischievous boy who’s got a Totally Great Idea.  Home-based in Britain, he’s one of the world’s premier experts in the arts and sciences of play.

Perhaps you’re wondering why wasting time needs a science at all.

Julia Steiny

Armitage spoke recently at the Providence Children’s Museum, a whistle stop on his lecture-training tour in the U.S. to help us ex-Puritan Americans embrace play.  His deliciously sonorous Welsh accent — think Richard Burton, if you’re old enough — is especially fun as he announces the title of his talk:  “Keep calm and play on.”

He pitches a mock snit because the Museum’s asked him to explain the theory of play and playwork — cue theatrical yawn.  He’d much rather train people to play and do playwork.  Much more hands-on.  Much more adult giggling.

He tells a fascinating, crazy-quilt history of academia’s interest in the study of play.  The motley collection of scientists and thinkers on the subject range from zoologists to urban planners.  European colleges and universities offer degrees for professional playworkers.

But first, Armitage asks us to think back to our own favorite places to play.  My imagination took me on a lovely tour through my childhood haunts — certain tidepools, two enchanting garages, and the huge abandoned house that the City eventually tore down and turned into a useless park.

He makes two big points about our collection of fun-filled spots.  First, that most places were outdoors — rivers, woods, water, or trees with rooms made from droopy branches.  Indoor spots were tucked away in attics, basements, and forgotten nooks.  No one fondly remembers institutional settings like daycares, schools, or even public parks.

Secondly, he notes that our favorite spots were off somewhere, out of sight of the adults.  Hmmm.

Armitage explains, ” Play goes on underneath our noses and we don’t even know about it.  And there’s an evolutionary reason for this:  If we knew what our kids were doing, we would stop them.  Because dodgy stuff is what children do.  Evolution wants them to play.”  Meaning, get out there and encounter reality for good and ill.

But wait.  If play is especially robust with no adults around, what’s a playworker?

Play is the work of childhood — according to Piaget, Montessori and others — so playworkers support that work.  They don’t interfere, organize or direct.  But they don’t abandon the kids either, providing adult supervision at a mutually-comfortable distance.

Armitage says, “Playwork is about allowing children to do what they know they need to do, but making sure the conditions are right for them to do it.  Playworkers observe what children want to do, and teach them how, when necessary.  For example, how to put out a fire.  The reason why teenagers burn buildings down is because they’ve always wanted to play with fire, but don’t know how to control it because they’ve never had any experience with it.”

With great theatrics, Armitage shows us the difference a conventional teacher and a playworker.  As the teacher, he sets down an imaginary box of jump ropes for a group of children.  He explains that there are short ones for individual jumping, and longer ones to be held by two children.  There’s double-Dutch.  Perhaps he instructs them about the songs and games that go with jump-rope games.

By contrast, a playworker puts the box in the midst of the kids, backs off, and shuts up.  He watches to see what they do.  They might tie the ropes onto something for dragging, swinging or something else.  If they want help, the playworker works with them figuring out what they can do to make it work.  No enabling.

And if they get into a snag with each other, hopefully the playworker has what Armitage charmingly calls “pastoral” skills to help them reconcile on their own terms.

“Our (adult) heads work in a very different way than children’s do.  The word ‘safe’ does not get mentioned when they are playing.  They also never use ‘stimulating’ or ‘creative’ or ‘educational’ or ‘heathy.’  What children mean by play is not what adults mean.  Playing is what children do.  They don’t need a reason to do it.  They don’t have an end result in mind.

“We have to have an agenda because,” he notes wryly, “that’s where the funding comes from.”

Armitage trains a variety of people how to work with kids and youth in a playworking style.  But in Europe, cities and towns hire professional playworkers to support parks, school playgrounds, wherever kids gather.  These adults make play places safe and fun.  And they could become a high-functioning grown-up pal for those kids who have too few adult relationships in their lives.

Can you imagine American cities and towns investing in kids like that?

American kids’ joy is at least as important as their silly test scores.  Playworkers deployed to recess, parks and youth haunts would keep everyone far safer, and maybe happier than we are now.  The kids could fulfill their evolutionary mandate.  The adults could keep calm and play on.  Good message.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

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The classroom reverberates with a lot of boom, bang, thwring, crash!  When the door opens, kids seem to be watching a big-screen video game.  Their 8th-grade computer-science teacher, Patrick Culliname, slips out, quickly shutting the door against the noise.

His students are a little fried from completing their final projects using HTML and javascript — common fare at the Advanced Academy of Math and Science (AMSA).  So Culliname is taking it easy with a movie, TRON, that re-enforces prior knowledge.

Julia Steiny

Oh, c’mon, “re-enforces prior knowledge” with a video-game war movie?  Lincoln, maybe.  October Sky, if you want to stay sciencey, but TRON?

Actually a real-life computer geek wrote the 1982′s TRON, which features characters using real computer terms instead of sci-fi babble. The story’s hero is broken down into a data stream so he can enter a computer to chase and defeat a nefarious software pirate.  The movie memorably reiterates the terms, even as kids scoff at the antiquated special-effects.

And if not TRON, what?  The few schools that do teach computer science (CS) cobble together free software, relevant books and movies, to create curricula the way birds build nests — with any sturdy materials they can find.

For the record, Russia, India and Israel, among other countries, already have CS across the grades in their schools.  Talk about leaving U.S. children behind!

Insane though it sounds, no nationally-vetted introductory course existed until now.  While only published in 2010, Exploring Computer Science (ECS) is going viral.

I asked the curriculum’s co-author, Gail Chapman, what took American schools so long.  She said:  “There are plenty of places that offer resources — as if teachers have time to research how to integrate CS into their courses.  Our group spent years probing and choosing certain materials.  Nothing in our curriculum is original, but the sequence and strategy was designed to capture the interest of girls and minorities.”

Originally funded by the National Science Foundation — who else? — ECS grew out of the work of the Computer Science Equity Alliance (CSEA), a group determined to democratize the skills that are now the gateway into the 21st century economy.  (I told their story last week.)

AMSA’s Kelly Powers is a CSEA chapter head for the state of Massachusetts.  Even though her own school already has CS for grades 6-11, she too is passionate about closing the stark equity gap for young people under-represented in the field of computer science.

Chapman experimented extensively with using materials — like TRON — to teach in low-income Los Angeles schools.  “Because kids are on devices all the time, we assume they know what computer science is.  They don’t.”

And computers have a way of making people feel stupid, a super turn-off.

“We got together a group from colleges and high schools to identify the right topics.  No one had ever done anything like this.  We had input and ideas, but we were starting from scratch.”  Building that bird’s nest.

So ECS begins hands off the keyboard, just talking.  “We ask what kind of knowledge kids bring to the table.  Every kid brings something.  We don’t assume any prior knowledge of computer science.  But we can talk about how computers get used in a variety of settings.  About privacy and problem-solving skills.”

I notice the curriculum, which is up online in its entirety, spends a full two weeks exploring “What is intelligence?”  Good question.  Then, with hands on the keyboard, the course goes on to such topics as algorithms and abstraction, and the connections between math and CS.

Chapman says, “Really, there’s nothing else out there you can just pick up.  The online curriculum does have everything, including daily, 55-minute lesson plans, designed for traditional high schools.  Although, we think the course is more effective when teachers also have the professional development we offer.”

So why isn’t CS in every secondary school?

Chapman sighs and concedes that the biggest remaining problem is determining what a computer-science course could displace.  English?  History?  Afterschool sports and clubs?  It’s a hard question that must be answered.  AMSA solves the problem with a weird schedule and a longer day, typical of charter schools.

The NSF hopes every high school will teach this course or some other like it so all kids are exposed to the subject.  They believe that computer science should count as a science credit or combined math and science.

Currently the course is taught in the cities of L.A., Santa Clara, and Washington DC, and in Utah, Oregon, and Maryland.

And coming soon, Massachusetts.  At a big business-tech meeting, Kelly Powers had the opportunity to press Governor Deval Patrick to commit to making computer science a high school graduation requirement.

With little hesitation, he said yes.

Good answer.  Let’s see if and how it plays out in MA.

The Exploratory course is not the be-all, end-all, but it’s a concrete and long-overdue start.  Gail Chapman welcomes questions and would love to share the work.  Contact her at:  chapgail@gmail.com.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: At Last! A Computer Science Course for All Kids appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

“Education will only prepare people for life in a democracy when education itself is also democratic.”

– John Dewey, in 1916, Democracy and Education.

“I think minorities are… are scared, you know, to jump into the (computer-science) future because what it looks like is only Caucasians should be in that industry.”

– Nia, an African-American student in a Los Angeles high school.

During the late 1990′s, Dr. Jane Margolis, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, studied why so few women were entering computer science and related fields.  Using a feminist perspective, she unearthed disincentives for women to get under the hood of a computer.  She published her results in the 1999 book, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women and Computing.

But in the course of her studies, the equally remarkable absence of certain minorities did not escape her notice.

Julia Steiny

Actually, to this day, students taking computer science are overwhelmingly White and Asian males.  Hmmmm.

In 2000, the National Science Foundation (NSF) was also worried about why Latino and African-American students were so miserably represented in computer science classes.

More generally, the NSF was super-concerned about students fleeing the field as a result of the dot.com bust.  Too few students were in the pipeline before the bust.  They knew that the “tech crash” meant only a temporary decline in the ability of skate-boarding coders to become overnight gagillionaires.  Venture capital went dry, but the need for computer scientists was still ballooning.

So the NSF funded Margolis’ new project:  “Out of the Loop:  Why are so Few Underrepresented High School Students Learning Computer Science?”

She assembled a team of social scientists based in Los Angeles.  They spent three years studying three big, overcrowded, public high schools, following and interviewing 185 students in total, with the blessing and cooperation of the LA Unified School District (LAUSD).

One school was predominantly low-income Latino, and another low-income Black.  The third was also predominantly low-income and minority, but in a swanky neighborhood full of Tinseltown mansions.  Poor kids were bused in from elsewhere.

Studying participation in K-12 computer science (CS) is totally easy because there’s only one course:  Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS).  Yes, rare schools have created a CS curricula of their own, but they’re all one-offs, not replicated, not nationally recognized.  The APCS course is offered towards the end of high school, to the sort of smarties who take AP, college-level classes.  Only hot-shot juniors and seniors have a prayer of learning a byte of computer science before college.

One of the three L.A. schools had an APCS program with anemic enrollment.  Another had none.  The third — guess which? — had a robust APCS program, mainly filled with students who did live in the mansions but who, for whatever reason, weren’t going to private schools.

The problem wasn’t a lack of computer equipment.  Nationally, the quantity and quality of computers in low-income public schools has vastly improved.  But better equipment does not teach computational skills, nor can it raise low expectations.  Mostly it serves computer “literacy,” helping kids practice word-processing, PowerPoint and spreadsheets.

Computer “science” is the ability to tell a computer what you want it to do and how to do it, in computer language.

Computing is the key to opportunity in the 21st century.  Certain students are sailing into that future — those that Nia the high school student mentioned.  The others are becoming what math Professor Robert Moses calls the “designated serfs of the information age.”

We have yet another ugly racial divide.

Margolis’ team documented a chasm of inequality.  So they formed a new group, the Computer Science Equity Alliance (CSEA), whose mission was to increase minority participation in APCS in the L.A. schools.

For three years, they ran summer institutes for teachers, collected an army of tutors to prep kids for APCS, and conducted Saturday academies.  They got terrific results — quadrupling the number of Latinos and doubling the number of Blacks taking APCS.  By 2007, 8 percent of all California females who took the APCS exam came from L.A, thanks to them.

In 2008, they captured the story of this gargantuan effort in Stuck in the Shallow End — Education, Race and Computing.

But they realized that  APCS, coming at the end of high school, is way too late to nudge more kids into computer science.  Fortunately, after years of working directly with students, CSEA had picked up tons of tricks to intrigue and engage novices in the fun of computational thinking.  So they shifted their attention to assembling these newfound techniques into a 9th-grade course that would introduce and acclimate students to the subject.  A 9th-grade introductory course would at least prepared students to take APCS later on, if they want.  And computer science burnishes any college application, giving these kids a leg up.

And not a moment too soon.  We don’t need more workplace ghettos for people with brown skin and stunted educations.

So next week we’ll talk to a co-author of the 2010 final product of CSEA’s efforts, the Exploring Computer Science course.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

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by Julia Steiny

Back in the day, the high-tech innovation that rocked my world was a self-correcting typewriter.  Mere keystrokes replaced the black-ink ribbon with a white-out tape so I could erase mistakes by typing.  Absolute bliss for someone living a writing-intensive life.

Today, super-sophisticated computers and electronics are everywhere.  Literally.  Devices are in everyone’s hands (to an annoying extent), implanted in people’s bodies, and managing all manner of data-heavy work like traffic, government databases, massive communications systems, and more.

Julia Steiny

Electronic technology has become the lifeblood of all developed economies.  Even nature-bound work — landscape gardeners, wedding florists and farmers — use computers for billing, research, ordering supplies, advertising their wares.

Ubiquitous.  Critical to everyone’s daily life.

So you would think that America’s K-12 education system would be frantically preparing students for all manner of computer skills, from software engineers to hardware experts.  But how many schools do you know that routinely offer computer science in their curriculum, to most students?

For years now, the business community has been pushing educators to get more students into STEM fields — without great success.  STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  The remarkable dearth of qualified employees in these areas means that even during the recent recession, thousands of jobs went begging for lack of trained applicants.

But in last December’s presentation to the Massachusetts’ Governor’s STEM Council, an industry group, the MASS Tech Hub, made the point that the foundational problem is the lack of computer science.  “Computing is both the biggest job sector of STEM today and has the largest future growth expectations.  ..  Tech isn’t just an industry or a job function, it’s part of nearly every aspect of our economy.”  No STEM job gets done without computer science.

Massachusetts, btw, has perhaps the best trained technology workforce in the country.  Its tech sector produces nearly 20 percent of their Gross Domestic Product.  But they are scrambling for workers.

Between 2010-2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the current 900,000 software engineering jobs to grow by 30 percent.  The 300,000 computer and information systems managerial jobs will grow 18 percent.  Database administrators, 31 percent.  And that’s not even counting the civil engineers or biochemists and biophysicisists.

Hey, it’s not even considering the Information Technology (IT) person that virtually every organization now needs on staff or available for hire.

Ask any business who needs software engineers if they can find workers.  Mighty slim pickings.  Anecdotally, my data pals report that their new hires are largely self-taught.  Schools are very little help with this problem.

So an industry group has resorted to selling computer science via celebrity gods.  Check out the aptly-named video What Most Schools Don’t Teach on code.org.  Super-celebrities like Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, a basketball and a rap star talk about feeling like superstars when they first could make miracles happen on their computer screen.  Anyone, they assert, can read, do math, and program.  Coding is not the exclusive province of nerds and geniuses.  And even if you don’t enter a STEM field, the skills will support any field you choose.

Oh, and the not-so-subtle underlying message is that you too can be obscenely wealthy, famous, and work in cool places with live bands, pools and free lunch.

It quotes the late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple:  “Everyone in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.”

Now that I agree with.

So if computer science is a necessary skill, right up there with reading and writing, why isn’t it pervasive in schools?

For the most comprehensive answer, see Running on Empty — The Failure to Teach K–12 Computer Science in the Digital Age.  It says, for example, that even as “we move toward an ever-more computing-intensive, … most states treat high school computer science courses as simply an elective and not part of a student’s core education.”

Our system is greatly hampered by the fact that “government policies underpinning the K–12 education system are deeply confused, conflicted, or inadequate to teach engaging computer science as an academic subject.”

Only 9 states allow computer science to count towards math or science requirements.

If anything, since NCLB’s demand that all kids perform proficiently, according to state standards, computer science has gotten increasingly pushed out of the school day, at best into elective courses — that displace music and art — or after-school clubs.

There’s no room for computer science in the conventional 6, 7-period secondary-school day, with its curriculum rooted in the 19th century.

Although, Russia, India and Israel, among others, found ways of embedding it in their schools, K-12.

America’s reputation as the nation of innovators is receding.  The K-12 system needs a re-boot, and not just more tinkering around the edges.

Thoughts on a partial solution next week.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: We’ll Never Achieve STEM Goals Without Computer Science appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

For 11 years, Kelly Powers has had her dream job teaching computer science.  But not without a big, illustrative glitch.

Five years ago, the private girls school in Massachusetts where she was working decided to eliminate the subject.  Since no one else was teaching programming, why on earth should they?  They figured that students needed only what’s considered “computer literacy,” a grasp of the basics — Word, Excel, PowerPoint.  The science of computing was not important.

Julia Steiny

Bad decision.  Their loss.

Some high schools offer Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science, an elective for smarties.  Maybe web design for a semester.  But true computer-science (c.s.) courses are rare as hens’ teeth.  So, sigh, Powers had to get real.  She had a B.A. in both math and computer science, and an M.B.A. in information systems, but she enrolled in a program that would beef up her credentials for teaching math in public middle schools.

Then fate stepped in.  The Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School (AMSA) was advertising for a computer-science teacher.  Bliss!  Or more appropriately, mutual bliss, since capable K-12 computer-science teachers as hard to find as c.s. teaching jobs.

Her main new duty was to oversee their c.s curriculum, taught every year in grades 6 – 11.  In truth, she had to build one.  As recently as 4 years ago, the one nationally-developed K-12 Introductory course had not yet gelled.  AMSA middle-schoolers were stuck using introductory college materials.

“When I got there, they were using compilers and writing code.  The tools weren’t kid-friendly.”

Powers had experienced this problem at her other school.  “Writing code is really frustrating for kids.  It looks like writing, only harder, and it has to be perfect to work.  It’s way too text-based to be a good way to start learning.  Kids need visualization tools, where you can drag images and blocks of code to build artifacts that work.  I go to a lot of professional development partly to find out about the slew of tools available for free.  There’s Scratch at MIT and Alice from Carnegie-Mellon.”

The key to teaching kids this science is changing their attitudes.  Especially among the girls.  It’s best to start as early as possible, before that “I can’t” mindset has taken root.  “People say, kids in 6th grade can’t do programming.  Actually kids in 4th can.”

So teachers help students “believe that they can use technology to innovate, to create.  They practice it and keep practicing it until they believe.  And when they do, the level of engagement from the kids is just magical.  They’re like sponges.”

The secret is to teach one concept, but then have the kids make something they can see, touch, manipulate, use — distilled hands-on learning.  “Our students don’t learn a (computer) language for its own sake.  They always need to do a task that requires the language.”

Starting with AppInventor, 6th-graders learn very basic skills by building a simple phone app of their own choice.  They can drop and drag blocks of code or icons indicating certain functions.  They can build weather apps or upload pictures of the teachers and throw pies at them.  In any case, there it is:  you made something.  You programmed.  Be done with self-doubt.

Powers says, “We teach them to solve problems.  How to approach a problem, break it down.  This is applicable to every aspect of their life.”

For example, “Computational thinking (integral to c.s.) is very creative.  We give problems like:  here’s a list of 10 songs that they know.  Okay, organize them.  One kid gets a piece of paper and puts them down in alphabetical order.  Good solution.  Another uses Excel.  Yet another has some other tool.  Good.  Okay, what if you have 100 songs?  Now the paper-pencil kid is struggling.  How about 1,000?  Now a million.  This is a great conversation.  The kids have to think about how to solve this problem.  It’s just awesome when a student solves a problem in a totally different way than I would.”

For the record, AMSA students kick butt on the 10th grade MCAS statewide exams.  All of them, not just math and science.

Because learning computer science teaches kids how to think.  The science itself teaches the 21st century skills, which are:  critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration.

Could all the money and effort being pumped into education reform be missing something?  Like, say, computer science?

Which is a little silly considering what a piece of cake it is to intrigue a distracted middle-schooler with electronics.  As Powers says, “We find it easiest to integrate c.s. from the get-go.  Kids love the creative nature of computing.”

So kids love it.  The academic results are great.  But this nation has a dearth of computer science courses for K-12  (Not so Russia, Israel and India).  Next week we’ll look at the crisis this situation is causing in the business world.

In the meantime, note that the introductory Exploring Computer Science course — aimed at 9th-graders — will be offered July 29th – August 2nd.  For details and registration, contact Kelly Powers at K.Powers@amsacs.org .

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

The post Julia Steiny: Computer Science Dazzles Students, Boosts Achievement appeared first on Education News.

by Julia Steiny

Social studies teacher Dawn Casey-Rowe has a power plant’s energy packed into a petite frame.  Her students at Davies vocational school come for the hands-on learning of marketable skills.  Last spring she started exploring ways to intrigue disengaged students with jazzier lessons, while aligning her work more closely to Common Core.  Her meteoric rise through the EdTech landscape began then.

Julia Steiny

And it culminated a week ago Sunday when she won first-place honors at the East Coast’s largest Startup Weekend Edu.  Startup Weekends are global events where entrepreneurs gather for 54 hours, competing to see who can build the most viable business plan.  So many entrepreneurs were interested in education technology, the EdTechies broke off into their own events.  Think: Iron Chef or Project Runway for nerds and teachers, without TV.   The judges at the March 1 were technology rock-stars, district superintendents and the like.

Casey-Rowe gave her two-minute pitch for a business called BetaMatch, worked with a team over the weekend, and flat-out won.  Meteoric.

Her story starts with an outdated textbook.  “Rather than charging the taxpayer to replace old textbooks, these days I can make my own.  I think that in the digital age, that’s my job.”

Fortunately Davies had just installed much new technology, opening up a cyber world of resources.  While asking friends’ advice about online learning, Casey-Rowe was invited to beta-test Learnist, which helps anybody, including educators, “curate” their own materials.  It was love at first site.

“Curating” mimics museum curation.  Instead of collecting hardcopies of Picasso’s early work, Deco artifacts, or treasures from ancient Mesopotamia, teachers can electronically collect them, along with supporting materials.

See Casey-Rowe’s unit on Protest for an example, with its documents, videos, songs, and links to other Learnist collections.  She wrote an excellent outline of the advantages of this electronic textbook strategy in “10 ways to use Learnist in the Classroom.”  Number 3 is “Make it Real,” which notes that the “boards” — curated collections — can include answers to kids’ time-worn question “Why do I need to know this?”  The board can show how the information is essential to certain real-world jobs.

It’s very cool; check it out.

But 66 percent of Davies’ students are low-income.  Won’t kids lacking smart technology at home fall further behind?  Casey-Rowe is emphatic, “I’m sick of using the digital divide as an excuse not to assign work that needs technology.  When students have absolutely no access to technology out of school, I’m flexible.  They can take extra time, or come in early in the morning, use the library, or borrow.  You can’t just let them not use technology.  The expectation of technology skills is industry standard for any industry.  If I’m not getting my kids ready to be hired, what am I doing?”

So refreshing.  Especially since the kids are loving this way of learning.

And when they and their teacher run into problems with Learnist, company officials call to pick Casey-Rowe’s brain for solutions.  “Learnist was using Facebook as their log-in.  Are you kidding?  Schools don’t allow Facebook.  (A hotbed of cyber bullying.)  But everyone else uses Facebook.  So without talking to a classroom teacher, how would they know?  They need to understand my needs in the classroom and to get feedback about how their product is working.  I call them up; they make it better.”

If only the rest of the education industry were so responsive.  Not that she’s complaining; I am.

In any case, that was the seed for her great idea:  Couldn’t we use technology to connect EdTech entrepreneurs to real classroom teachers — with something like a dating service?  Thus:  BetaMatch.

Yearning merely to immerse herself in the EdTech world, she decided to go to New York’s Startup Weekend.  But another friend urged her to go ahead and pitch her idea.  Ooooo.  Challenging.  Well, oka-ay.  On Friday night, Casey-Rowe was one of almost 50 people — teachers, entrepreneurs, developers, marketers — who got two minutes each to pitch their ideas.

Hers was among 18 ideas chosen for further development.  “I was really lucky.  Four developers joined our team; two marketing people, a front end designer.”

Late Sunday afternoon, the teams got four minutes to make a final pitch.  Then they waited, anxiously, eating dinner while the judges decided which was the best.  “Frankly, I thought our idea was the most boring.  Everyone else’s was about games and flash.”

When the time for the final verdict came, she and her team sweated through hearing about the Honorable Mention, the Second Place winner, and finally:  themselves.  They won!

“I was so honored they liked my idea.”

Amazing, isn’t it, that working classroom teachers are so isolated and undervalued, no one had previously thought to connect them to the hoards currently making educational apps?

“EdTech is awesome, but it has to be employed correctly. It does not substitute for quality lessons; it augments them. Whatever happens, I will continue to reflect about how it can improve my teaching.  As far as my future in EdTech, this year was such a whirlwind for me in terms of gaining access, falling in love, and realizing that I, one person, can make an impact here.” She’s pretty sure she doesn’t have time to start a new business on top of teaching.

But keep on trucking, girl.  We need so many more like you.

Julia Steiny is a freelance columnist whose work also regularly appears at GoLocalProv.com and GoLocalWorcester.com. She is the founding director of the Youth Restoration Project, a restorative-practices initiative, currently building a demonstration project in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She consults for schools and government initiatives, including regular work for The Providence Plan for whom she analyzes data. For more detail, see juliasteiny.com or contact her at juliasteiny@gmail.com or c/o GoLocalProv, 44 Weybosset Street, Providence, RI 02903.

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