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Friday, October 11, 2013

AbsoluteBearing

How do you command your ship during a vicious Pacific Ocean storm off the California coast so that you avoid contact with other ships attempting to navigate the same storm? And how do you do this with radar down, white spray lashing at your face like hot pellets from monster waves dead ahead and men missing from your radar detection spaces? Such was the challenge for Lt. Stephen Wheatley, Officer-of-the-Deck of USS Latner, DD-952, a Forrest Sherman class destroyer, during a horrendous storm off Catalina Island at the end of the Cold War in 1990. Wheatley was under the Captain's Night Orders to report all unknown surface contacts, known as "Skunks," to him when within three nautical miles. But events,weather and loss of focus intervened. The result was Latner came into "extremis," the situation where any maneuvering by one of two ships will result in collision. The resulting events were tragic for one wandering engine man on board Latner and devastating for Wheatley, who then faced a most contentious general court-martial, a military legal process than can result in dismissal from the service, or more dire, in death. "I'll kill the sonofabitch," thought Wheatley about the prosecutor. Wheatley's misadventure leads to his search for personal redemption and reclaiming his professional bearing. His is the story of The Caine Mutiny and The Poseidon Adventure. "You'll all be killed!" urges his new love interest as Wheatley sets off from a pier on San Francisco for a Pacific Target range where a former troop carrier is about to be deep-sixed by the Navy. Absolute Bearing is now an Amazon.com selection. Read Excerpts from Chapter One in subsequent blogs.

AbsoluteBearing

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Boston First Responders


First responders rushed toward danger at 4 hours, 4 minutes and 45 seconds after the beginning of the Boston Marathon on a much celebrated Patriots Day.

The bombers had detonated two vicious devices designed to maim human beings and, indeed, what medical personnel from local hospitals found was carnage unseen since their days in Iraq or Afghanistan.


Theirs is the courage not merely of a profession, a badge, a uniform, but of character, of strong moral courage and dedication to protecting all of us who sometimes take their service for granted.

But there were other immediate responders.  The managers, wait staff and bartenders of a new restaurant to Boylston Street, Forum, were at what we now call “ground zero.”  One of the staff was looking out the window toward the green mail box and, without hearing anything, saw a ball of orange/yellow flame and his mouth was soon filled with the grit of devastation.

All Forum employees did what professional first responders do, they went to the danger, to the devastation, toward those in terrible need.  When told by local police to evacuate, they refused and proceeded to tend to the wounded, some of whom had been sitting out on their patio for a bird’s eye view of those strong, determined, goal-driven men and women who were finishing perhaps their first marathon, the dream of a life-time.
The crew of the restaurant as well as others who were ambulatory after the blast rushed to help, taking off belts to act as tourniquets which, in many cases probably saved people from bleeding to death.  Nearby Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell and Lingzhi Lu lay wounded and dying.  

It’s hard for those of us who watched story unfold on television to imagine what these first responders saw and the bravery they showed in the face of these terrorist acts.   As so many of us thought following 9/11, maybe there are other bombs to be set off?

But, almost mindless of their own safety, these men and women of Boston (police, fire, EMS, medics) gathered about the sick, the severely injured and the dying to offer comfort and assistance as we hope that we would were we on the spot. 


They held victims in their hands, stroking faces, smoothing their hair and telling them, as best they could with all the hope they could muster, that they would survive to live another day, to enjoy Spring as it continued to bloom in all its effulgence.

The warmth of a hand, face and body is that human touch that forever binds us one to another.  This is the blessing of community, of togetherness of our humanity.  These are the relationships that say we are of one family.

We must, in this day and age of world-wide terrorism be prepared to do what all the professionals, bystanders and men and women of Forum restaurant did--go to the carnage and be a human presence of comfort and care for people who might very well be facing their last moments on earth, who might be taking their final breaths, who might be taking a last few seconds glance at the great blue sky above, usually so representative of the infinite possibilities of life in America.




Monday, April 1, 2013

Atlanta Outrage


Two years ago while working in an Atlanta suburban elementary school to foster inquiry-based instruction and curricula, I heard stories about cheating on standardized test within the city school system.  There was no proof, only rumors at that time.

Now, according to Michael Winerip in The New York Times (3/30/13) 35 school personnel have been indicted for doing just that: cheating on standardized test scores.

What were clues?  “. . .extraordinary increases in test scores from one year to the next, along with a high number of erasures on answering sheets from wrong to right.” (p. A13)

Here’s how it worked.  Students in elementary and middle schools took the high stakes tests in reading and math.  Some did well and others posted enough wrong answers to indicate sub-par achievement.  These scores were subsequently changed to indicate performances at norm or above.

How?  Teachers closeted themselves in rooms without windows and erased the incorrect responses and penciled in the correct answers.  All the while school administrators were standing guard at the door.  Principals even wore gloves while handling the test papers.

Results?  Many schools posted scores that met or exceeding given norms, showing their students to be proficient when they were not.

Principals were rewarded. Teachers received tenure and bonuses. Those whose schools failed suffered consequences, many losing their jobs.  “Low score---out the door,” noted one involved teacher.  You can imagine the psychological pressures on teachers and administrators. 

How did this happen?  The allegations are that leadership, including the Superintendent, so insisted upon superior performance, with “no excuses,” that cheating proliferated.



 The practice supposedly began in 2004.  Said one involved teacher, “The cheating had been going on so long, we considered it part of our job.”  That was the norm, test score sheets, erasers, closed doors and protective gloves.

What’s sad is that the district took these means to boost students’ performance,  giving all a false sense of achievement, especially the students.

The outrage is that district leadership has thereby cheated its students out of the instructional work needed to learn how to read, write and compute satisfactorily.

The further outrage is that these leaders and teachers garnered for themselves all of the kudos, while their children suffered.  “Look at us!” they proclaimed.  “Our students performed at or above their grade levels!  They’ve improved so dramatically!  We must be doing something right!”  NOT.

They cheated the kids out of their anticipated growth had the district taught them the basics as they should have done.  The leadership gave up on the kids and said to themselves, “The only way to get these children to succeed is to cheat!”

Shame on them!

High expectations are splendid and they certainly are what we need in order to ensure that all students, regardless of SES, talent, learning abilities and the like, succeed. 

Honest educators about the land are working with determination, skill, art, research and persistence to ensure that all children succeed to the best of their ability.  The record of KIPP schools and others (P21 districts, for example) attest to our successes with all students.

We want all kids to grow up to be curious, and to pursue meaningful inquiries in all their classes.  But we’ll never get there so long as high stakes tests are the measurement for teachers’ and administrators’ performance.

In some districts standardized tests are counting 50% of a teacher’s evaluation.  Here in NYC it may be 20%.  State legislators might take a lesson from Atlanta about the over-riding impact of high stakes testing and their detrimental effects on some of our students.

Leaders should foster amongst all educators the alternative means of observing students’ growth in 21st century skills: inquiry, problem solving, critical/creative thinking.  We do see such growth in kindergarten teachers observing and tracking students’ growth in asking good questions; sixth and eighth grade teachers monitoring students’ abilities to think critically; and high school teachers who challenge students to create their own math problems, and  to analyze data in literature and physics classes.  (See How Do We Know They’re Getting Better? Assessment for 21st Century Minds, K-8: www.morecuriousminds.com



Students need to be able to ask good questions, think analytically and creatively, to be entrepreneurs and innovators.  In order to achieve these goals we need to buckle down and ensure that all our children can read, write and compute skillfully.