In Remembrance of 911

As long as I live I will never forget that feeling of absolute terror in the pit of my stomach when I turned on the television the early morning of September 11, 2001, to pictures of the World Trade Center towers being hit by those planes, and how frightened I was when I finally realized that our beloved America was under attack. Can it really have been ten years, a whole decade, since that horrible day when the “evil ones” tore at our hearts with their attacks on New York and Washington D.C.? While it seems in some ways like it was just yesterday, in many ways it feels like that day was a hundred years ago, and so much has changed since then about what it means to live as an American. We live now in a more cynical world, a world with less freedom, a world where the very idea of terrorists attacking Americans on our own soil is no longer a far-fetched notion.

For the first time since World War II those of us who work in the public arena are being charged with the responsibility to be vigilant each and every day against actual terrorist attacks on our public buildings, in our malls, and, yes, against our school houses. Even in places like Roseburg (perhaps especially in places like Roseburg) we educators are training ourselves to look at the world through different and more worldly eyes than before the horror of 9/11, and we are gradually coming to understand that life may never be the same again.

But my heart goes out most especially to our children, the little ones who may never know what it was like to be able to walk around their neighborhoods without being frightened and suspicious of strangers, who will probably never experience boarding an airplane without x-rays and pat-downs, and who live in a world where the next terror strike is a matter of “when” not “if”. I am saddened that every day and for the rest of their lives our children will surely see and hear how much Americans are despised by angry men and women who shout their hatred toward the United States and who would strike us down if only given the chance. We are all frightened speechless by what we witness on the news each evening, and I can only imagine how terrifying it must for a child living in these times.

So on this day as we remember the horrors of 9/11 and honor our fallen heroes, I am not going to ask you to pay special attention for terrorists lurking among us. I am not even going to ask you to talk with your children about those brave men and women who on that day and every day since have sacrificed their lives for us. Instead, let September 11, 2011, be the day we, every one of us, simply and unashamedly love our children. Let this be remembered by our kids as the day we enveloped them in a blanket of love so strong that just for this one day they felt secure again, and protected, and safe. It may very well be the most important gift we can give them, and the most respectful way we can remember those who fell ten short years ago.

We’ll talk again…

Larry Parsons
Superintendent
Roseburg Public Schools

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Parenthood

Some of my favorite memories as a young father include times spent with my kids when they were five or six years old. At that age their Mom and I were the center of their universe and they genuinely loved spending time with us. Whether it was playing catch, taking a Sunday drive for ice-cream, or just running to greet me as I came through the door after a long day of work, I knew my kids loved me and truly enjoyed being with me. Life was good.

Then came one by one their 13th birthday, and almost over night my children began treating their mother and me as if we had suddenly grown three heads and were covered in boils. Instead of begging to spend time with us, they balked at anything that smacked of family time, and their lives revolved almost exclusively around their friends (I didn’t even know my kids had “best friends”). Family trips, when we could convince them to go at all, had to include a friend, and time that these new teenagers used to spend with us was replaced by countless hours huddled in the secrecy of their rooms or on the telephone re-visiting every nuance of their day with their latest best friend.

By the time I had gone through virtually the same scenario with each of my four children I realized that this radical change in personality was really just a part of growing up. All kids when they get to be about junior high school age crave the kinship of other kids their own age, even sometimes (okay, often) to the exclusion of their own families. We parents do well to remind ourselves that we have done nothing wrong; This “I hate my parents” phase is just a rite of passage almost every teenager must experience. They do get over it in a few years, I have discovered, although it is an absolute understatement to say that those teenage years can be painful because we can feel so excluded from their lives.

But some parents do make one critical mistake when their kids reach adolescence and start to pull away. While it is very natural for a parent to “back out” of their children’s lives given how much teenagers try and convince us to just leave them alone, many parents don’t pay enough attention to the friends with whom their teenagers start spending so much of their time. The truth is, at this age these friends have enormous power over them and they have a massive influence on your youngster’s behavior. In fact, if a parent wants to learn more about their child’s true behavior they need only to observe how their friends are acting.

This is especially true, for example, around drug use. From time to time I have a conversation with a parent who will tell me that her child doesn’t do drugs even though her son’s or daughter’s friends do. The truth is kids who do drugs don’t routinely pal around with kids who don’t do drugs, gang bangers don’t run with non-bangers, and kids who habitually break the law aren’t best friends with kids who obey the rules.

So, here’s an important measuring stick to find out what kind of young person your child is becoming: watch his or her friends closely. If the friends are respectful and studious, your child will likely be the same and you can count your blessings. But if your child’s friends exhibit behaviors that do not fit your vision of how your child should behave, chances are your youngster is doing exactly the same thing when you aren’t around.

When that happens I urge you to talk immediately with your teenager about your concerns. You may want to reinforce the family values you taught them when they were young (and they still thought you were smart) and to re-emphasize your expectations for his or her behavior even when you aren’t around. With any luck, and with vigilance and courage, you can help your teenager exit adolescence as a wonderful young adult, and you can actually regain your sanity until your next child turns thirteen.

We’ll talk again…

Larry Parsons
Superintendent
Roseburg Public Schools

The Fight of Our Lives

I love being around young people. In fact, I’ve spent almost 40 years as a teacher, principal, and superintendent working with children from pre-school to graduate school. But in spite of my great affection for their energy and the kind of optimism that only comes from being young, I wouldn’t want to be a teenager today given how complicated and convoluted our world has become. For example, when we “mature adults” were kids it was immediately clear who were the “good guys” and who were the “bad guys” (i.e., America good, communism bad; Guys in white hats good, cowboys in black hats bad).

Today’s kids face more temptations and confusing messages in a week than we did during our whole adolescence in the early 1960’s. Rap music (whose 15 minutes of fame surely must be almost over) regularly degrades women and consistently promotes physical confrontation, and it seems as if every television program from cartoons to sitcoms screams sex and violence with every sick joke or “R” rated image. By the end of high school, for example, the average student has watched 15,000 hours of television and has witnessed 18,000 violent television deaths. And today’s comedians have convinced our kids that it isn’t really humorous unless someone else is being made fun of. It is nothing short of a miracle our children are as well adjusted as they are, yes?

Is it any wonder that so many of our children have grown up believing that bullying and violence are the only real conflict resolution techniques available to them? Should we be surprised, based on what they see almost everywhere they look, that most kids believe they have no choice but to resort to violence by fighting when they perceive someone has “dis’d” them (translation: treated them disrespectfully)?

Add to that the misinterpretation by many of us “old folks” that fighting today is still harmless, more like the squabbles we remembered as kids. When I got into a fistfight with Bill Pepper my junior year of high school, we shook hands and double-dated that same night. But things are much different today. Unless you live in a cave you know that today’s fights have a much more sinister and more dangerous tone than ever before. In the school setting these fights may end up involving dozens of people on and off campus, and more often than not may require hours and hours of administrative and teacher time that could have been used to help children with math or reading.

I have come to believe that no fight is harmless, and I believe we can never allow our children to believe either with our silence or by our words that we condone violence of any kind. We must teach our kids how to solve problems with words not fists, with ideas not threats. If society cannot or will not teach our young people that fighting is not the solution to their problems, our grandchildren and their children will surely be destined to live in the future we have created.

We’ll talk again…

Larry

A Parent’s Worst Nightmare

Fifteen years ago this coming fall my beautiful daughter Lindsay, my precious little girl, died from a rare type of bone cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma.  She celebrated her 16^th birthday that fall of 1995 not with a “Sweet Sixteen” party surrounded by friends and overflowing with excitement about starting her junior year of high school, but instead strapped to a lonely hospital bed in Seattle’s Children’s Hospital with five toxic chemicals pumping through her body, chemicals that made her so sick she could barely raise her head.  

September 27, the day she died, plays over and over in my brain, an awful nightmare that will not go away even after all these years.  I remember like it was yesterday the horrible conversation with the doctor who told us at 6:00 a.m. that our little girl would die today, the hysterical bargains I tried to make with God to take me instead of her, and the frantic attempts to get her brother to her bedside before she died. I also remember watching her vital signs weaken on the monitor as her life slipped away, and I remember watching in horror as Lindsay took her last breath surrounded by all those who loved her so very much. 

There was so much left unfinished about her short life, yet she showed us every day before she got sick the remarkable woman she surely would have become.  Sadly, though, I only showed her glimpses of the kind of father I wanted to be.  You see, I thought I had all the time in the world to be an involved, engaged father.  I was in those days busy trying to build my career as an educator, convincing myself along the way that I would make up to her (and to the rest of my family) my absences night after night, weekend after weekend, month after month.  I told myself a thousand times it was okay that I was at work instead of with my kids because in a few years, I reasoned, I would definitely have the time to be the kind of father I should be.  She was taken from us long before I could even begin to fulfill my promise.

While telling this story of Lindsay’s death is admittedly cathartic for me, I do have another reason for making public this most private of tragedies.  You see, I promised my daughter on the day we buried her that I would spend my life reminding parents to seize every opportunity to spend time with their children, to be better than I was at parenting.  Too late I realized being with your child doesn’t have to include an expensive trip, or a shopping spree, or even a whole weekend of fun activities.  It can mean just going for a walk, eating a meal together, taking in a movie, or simply spending time just talking.  Trust me, the most precious gift you can give your child can’t be purchased by writing a check.

 More than you can ever know I wish I had known that 15 years ago.

 We’ll talk again…

Larry

Preparing Our Kids for Their Future

In the late 1980’s I served for two years as the principal at Aberdeen High School on Grays Harbor, Washington.  While the kids were absolutely wonderful, the city of Aberdeen was deeply depressed economically, it rained all the time, and unemployment, crime, and despair were rampant.  The good and decent folks of Aberdeen seemed oddly resigned to their problems, most of which were a direct result of a catastrophic lack of jobs on the harbor.  In fact, a neighbor friend, as we were talking about schools one day, told me a story that has stayed with me all these years.  In 1968 his only son was a senior at Aberdeen High and the young man came to his dad in the spring of that year to announce that he had dropped out of school.  The very next day my neighbor’s son was able to pick from any one of 18 lumber mills operating in the Aberdeen area and he went to work earning on his first day on the job more than many of his former teachers. 

My neighbor next described his grandson who just that week had done exactly the same thing his father had done two decades earlier; he dropped out of school in his senior year, convinced he could find work and carve out a good life just like his father had done.  Unfortunately, instead of several lumber mills from which to choose, the young man found only one still operating, and it had not hired in almost two years.  Happily, we were able to convince the young man to return to school where he eventually graduated from high school and enrolled in the local community college.   

I’m told that in 2009 even that lone lumber mill in Aberdeen has closed, and yet kids continue to drop out of school in Aberdeen and in towns just like it all over America believing that the world will somehow revert back to the 1960’s when it was possible to find and build a career without a high school diploma.  The truth is, a high school diploma without further training is not enough in today’s world, and it most certainly will not be adequate for the future in which our children and grandchildren will live and work.  While a four-year college degree is not always a prerequisite for success depending on one’s career choice, virtually every viable career will require training beyond high school.

Up to the early 1960’s a high school diploma was seen as all that was needed to start one’s career.  Today the high school diploma is truly a basic educational benchmark which allows our children to move to the next phase of their career preparation whether that is college, technical schooling, or internships.  The problem is that we parents sometimes view our world and our children’s futures through the lens of our own youth, a time when for most of us a high school diploma was enough. 

From an early age we do our little ones a great service by clearly articulating our expectations that their education must include schooling beyond high school, and by holding to those expectations in every conversation with them month after month, year after year.  Even though kids may seem to do everything in their power to convince us otherwise, they actually do listen to us “old folks”.  In fact, parents are children’s primary source of wisdom about their world long into adulthood.  It’s an awesome responsibility, isn’t it! 

 We’ll talk again…

 Larry

Creating Schools of Joy

A couple years ago I was chagrined when a local radio announcer in another town where I was superintendent announced that he was sad to report kids “had to go to school today” because the snow storm that had been predicted did not materialize.  I realize he was only making a joke, but I get really hooked when media folks, parents, and even sometimes folks who work in schools make comments that imply that going to school is a negative, a bad thing, almost a punishment.  Since when is school torture?  Why aren’t the news people saying, “Good news, kids, no snow today so you get to go to school!”  Okay, maybe that is too much to ask for, but why does our society just assume going to school is tedious and boring?  For a lot of kids school is a great experience, right?

But if I were to be truthful I‘d have to admit that for a fair number of kids, going to school isn’t the glorious experience we’d like it to be.  The $64,000 question, then, is why?  Why are the same children who are thrilled to come to school at six years old at risk of becoming burned out learners at 16?  Why do students so often take only the minimum requirements needed to graduate?  Why do some members of our community seem to not respect the teaching profession any more?

Of course, the answers to those questions are probably a lot more complicated than can be identified here.  I suspect some of our problems are actually public perceptions borne from the media which so often sensationalizes the very small percentage of immoral or incompetent educators who give us all a black eye.  Also, everyone has gone to school at one time or another, so everyone thinks they are familiar with how education works.  At the same time, I think we educators haven’t always done as good a job as we might have “connecting the dots” for kids so they see the relationship between what they are learning and the “real world”.  Being in school, therefore, just doesn’t seem relevant for far too many kids.  Lack of relevancy leads to boredom, and boredom causes apathy and ultimately a bad schooling experience.

For the past several years I have come to believe there is another important piece missing if education is to rise to the level of respect it deserves: We must create schools of joy.  Coming to school should be fun, it must be challenging (there is great satisfaction in doing something hard) and, yes, it needs to make sense for kids.  Today’s students see more sights and sounds and colors and smells just going to McDonalds for a burger than many of us “old folks” experienced in our whole adolescence.  Our schools must first reflect the techno-rich world in which our children are growing up.   At the same time, school houses must be exhilarating places where kids are challenged, where we teach exploration rather than rote, and where classrooms are each day filled the possibilities of learning rather than focusing on just following the rules.

When I visit schools my happiest moments come when I see classrooms filled with laughter, with high expectations, and with relevancy.  I get absolutely thrilled when I see classrooms become places where kids are asked to think beyond the “who” and “what” and are engaged in the ”why” and the “what does this mean?” questions.  These are the classrooms where there is an air of excitement and wonder about what’s going to happen next.  I so respect those teachers who have high expectations for kids and who with a happy heart accept their role in helping kids meet those expectations.  When classrooms have these attributes, when the whole campus buys into the notion of learning as an exciting journey and actually lives that expectation, then we begin to truly see schools of joy.

By the way, schools of joy aren’t just for the kids.  School ought to be joyous places for the adults who work there as well.  Working in a positive school where colleagues hold each other to high expectations and where we all accept the responsibility to lift each other up professionally and emotionally helps to create the sense of family that is so critical to a joyous school.

I know we can consistently create schools of joy because I have seen it done.  They do, in fact, exist.  I have witnessed schools where the adults are positive, life-long learners who can’t wait to teach whoever comes through their doors, places where kids see why they are learning and are challenged to be better than they ever thought they could be.  No classroom is joyous every day; I get that.  But every Roseburg classroom and every one of our twelve schools should strive to be joyous each and every time children walk through our doors. Don’t the adult who work there and the kids whose futures live there deserve that?

We’ll talk again,

Larry

Is Homework Obsolete?

I received a familiar telephone call the other day from a parent concerned that her upper elementary student would be required to do homework.  Her thinking was that students ought to do their school work exclusively at school, and that the evenings should be for families.  Actually, I do understand her point of view, and it’s hard to argue that kids shouldn’t spend time with their parents and their siblings in the evenings.  However, I don’t believe it has to be an “either/or” conversation.  I believe children can enjoy their families and still benefit from doing some homework as part of their evening routine.  With that in mind, what follows is an article (updated for Roseburg) that I wrote a couple years ago to explain my reasons for promoting homework as part of the schooling experience.  Mostly, I am anxious to hear from you teachers, parents, students, and patrons about what you believe about homework.  Do you believe homework is outdated?  Do kids benefit from it?  Does homework create an unreasonable burden on parents?  Please, let’s hear from you.  Here’s my original article published first in 2005: 

Homework: Busy Work or Valuable Learning Tool?

 Much has changed about the American educational experience since our parents went to school.  In the first seventy-five years of the 20^th century, for example, schools were designed largely to produce workers who could endure the repetitive tasks of the factory assembly line or other similar jobs where thinking was not particularly a requisite.  To better equip future adults with the endurance needed to succeed in the work force, students spent countless hours memorizing facts (in 1968 I had to memorize the 50 states and their capitals for no apparent reason), and doing hours of what seemed like pointless homework assignments.  While not entirely so, at least a part of the reason for homework back then was to help develop self-discipline in preparation for the often boring work force routine they would enter. 

Few would argue these days that the demands of the 21^st century work world are much different from even twenty years ago.  Virtually every job in today’s work force requires an employee who can think, who can be self-motivated, and who has the “people skills” to be a successful part of a team.  Public schools are, therefore, changing the ways they educate their children to answer the call for a thinking, motivated graduate.  In light of that, some both inside and outside the educational community are questioning what role homework ought to have in this new educational world.  Does homework even matter anymore?  Isn’t it the school’s responsibility to educate children during the school day and not expect parents to supervise homework in the evening?  Finally, is homework obsolete, as outdated as chalkboards and “school marms”?  Actually, quite the opposite is true.   

Authors of the book, Classroom Instruction That Works (2001), conducted a meta-analysis (in other words, they studied several similar studies) about homework and found that homework does produce beneficial results for students in grades as low as the second grade.  At the high school level, in fact, consistent homework accounted for an achievement gain for the student of an impressive 24 percentile points!  Even at the elementary level homework produced beneficial results of up to six percentile points improvement. 

Importantly, the book concludes by saying that even though there is certainly a practical (and ethical) limit to the amount of homework that should be assigned, the more homework students do at the high school level, the better their achievement.  In fact, the authors go on to say that for high school-age students, “For about every 30 minutes of ‘additional’ homework a student does per night, his or her overall grade point average (GPA) increases about a half a point.  This means that if a student with a G.P.A. of 2.00 increases the amount of homework she does by 30 minutes per night, her G.P.A. will rise to 2.50″ (p63)

Certainly the amount of homework assigned to students should be different from elementary to middle school to high school.  But even for our elementary-age students one study says, “Homework for young children should help them develop good study habits, foster positive attitudes toward school, and communicate to students the idea that learning takes place at home as well as at school.” (Marzano, et. al., p. 62).  And for all children, because schooling occupies only about 13% of the waking hours of the first 18 years of life (which is less, by the way, than the amount of time students spend watching television), learning opportunities such as homework must extend beyond the confines of the school day if we are to prepare our children for a future that we can’t even imagine today.

The bottom line is this: Homework is a valuable part of the schooling experience, and students who regularly do homework do significantly better in school.  We in Roseburg Public Schools will continue to create relevant, age-appropriate homework activities to help prepare students to be life-long learners.  Please reinforce to your children your expectation that they take homework seriously, and help them develop a disciplined approach to doing it every night as part of their educational experience.  What a great way to help partner with Roseburg Public Schools to prepare our children for a rapidly changing future!

We’ll Talk Again,

Larry  

On Why I Became a Teacher…

When I was five years old I developed severe and mysterious hip pain in both legs and spent several days in a Portland hospital.  After a misdiagnosis of cancer (that was an interesting few days for me and my parents!), I was finally diagnosed with a hip disorder that forced me to spend the next six months confined to bed in a body cast, and I had to start first grade several weeks late (we didn’t have kindergarten back then).  I was forced to start school on crutches because one hip had healed while the other was still not strong enough to walk on, and I admit to being a little shaky on them and more than a little scared.  And, in fact, I did struggle some at first making friends; nine weeks is a lifetime when you are six, and the other kids had already developed childhood friendships that it took me some time to become part of.

But that’s not really the story.  On that first day in the fall of 1956 as I hobbled into the first grade classroom at Willamette Grammar School I saw her.  Her name was Miss Wallace and she had ruby red lips, and she smelled really good, and she was my teacher, and I was head over heels in love with her.  I remember her telling my mom that because I was starting school weeks late I was going to need help learning to read, otherwise it would surely affect me throughout my schooling.  Without even hesitating she said she would tutor me for a half hour after school three days a week until I caught up, and so she did. 

Make no mistake, Dorothy Wallace was no push over.  She held me to high academic and behavioral standards and when I would complain in my childish way about the crutches and how hard it was, she would have none of it.  She told me, in part because at that time we really didn’t know if I would ever walk normally again, that life was hard and that feeling sorry for myself was just a waste of energy.  On the other hand, I did notice that every time I had to climb the stairs (our classroom was in the basement) she coincidentally seemed to be right behind me.  I remember her saying to me more than once that the only obstacles I would have in my life were the ones I created in my own mind.  I didn’t really understand what she meant back then, but over the years her words would inspire me in the classroom, on the athletic field, and in my personal life.  By the end of first grade thanks to the dedication of Dorothy Wallace I was well on my way to having an outstanding school experience for the next eleven years.  I owe it all to her.

But here’s the rest of the story:  Decades later when I finally had enough sense to realize what she had meant to me I got out my old school pictures and discovered to my surprise that Dorothy Wallace was a pleasant but not outstandingly beautiful woman.  More importantly, for the very first time I realized that her hands were deformed from what looked to be arthritis, and she must have been in great pain every day as she completed her teaching duties. No wonder she didn’t “cut me any slack” around my possible physical issues; she knew what it would take to survive in the real world and she wanted to prepare me for the harsh realities of life while she taught me to read.  Tragically, and to my shame, she died before I could thank her for all she did for me. 

So as corny as it sounds I have dedicated my career as an educator to her memory.  What a remarkable teacher she was, and I can only pray that I might influence young lives half as much as she did mine.  Miss Wallace, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  After all these years I still love you.

We’ll talk again,

Larry

In the Beginning…

So here we go.  Actually I had planned on beginning this blog back in early September as school began, but it just didn’t work out.  Okay, the truth is I couldn’t figure out how to do it, and I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t know how.  Little kids, for goodness sake, are blogging, but no, not me.  In fact, I’m told e-mails and blogs are now both ”out” and tweeting and twittering are “in”.  When I was in school the only tweeting we did was when the burritos from lunch got to us.  I feel so old.

Anyway, for now I am going to content myself with  this blog thing, and I hope you will join me.  If I understand it, this offers an opportunity for me to create an online journal of my personal and/or professional thoughts and musings.  The best part is you can join me in those musings by adding your own ideas and thoughts.   I don’t want to commit to a hard and fast schedule (i.e., once a week), but I’m thinking I may want to add something every few days.  And yes, it has occurred to me that it is very possible that no one will every read this and I may be just talking to myself.  I can live with that.  Actually, I suspect this may be kind of cathartic whether or not anyone else participates, although I am looking forward to talking with other folks.

I really don’t have this big plan about what I want to talk about, and I think that is part of what appeals to me about blogging.   I know that I definitely don’t want this to just become some kind of district newsletter.  That would seem like a waste of an opportunity for folks to get to know me and what I am about, and for me to hear from you. 

Actually, if I am going to be completely honest (and I am) I didn’t start this blog sooner for a couple other reasons; First, with the bargaining issues we have been dealing with I didn’t want this blog to become about bargaining.  Second, the 14th anniversary of my daughter’s death was this September 27th, and it was a particularly difficult time personally.  She would have been 30 years old this past month, and I miss her every day.  I admit to not feeling very social for a few weeks this fall and it has just been the past day or so that I feel like talking.   Lindsay was my only daughter and she was daddy’s girl.   It’s funny, some  years I do just fine with the anniversary of  her death, and some not so much.  This was one of those “not so much” years.

Anyway, enough for now.  By the way, I can’t figure out how to do spell check yet, so I apologize for any misspellings.  I had the bad luck when I got here, of being assigned an especially stupid computer, and I am constantly trying ot overcome its shortcomings.  I seem to have the same bad luck with computers everywhere I go.  Go figure.

We’ll talk again,

Larry