Wellness Archive

Author Jonathan Kozol often speaks about the role of grandparents, particularly grandmothers, in his research on children in some of the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods. Grandmothers are often the stabilizing force in young lives already scarred by poverty, violence, and the relentless inequities in school and society, he says.

In honor of Grandparent’s Day, which was Sept. 9, the U.S. Census Bureau released some facts and figures that show just how many children are being raised by their elders, often without a parent present. Consider:

• Eight percent of children in the U.S. live with a grandparent, and more than half of those children live in the grandparent’s home.

• There are 5.7 million grandparents who have grandchildren under the age of 18 living with them. Two and a half million of these grandparents are responsible for the basic needs—food, clothing, shelter—of at least one of the children who live there.

• Of those who are caretakers of their grandchildren, 496,000 live below the poverty line. Some 753,000 have a disability, and 545,000 speak a language other than English.

The influence of grandparents—whatever form it takes--simply cannot be underestimated.

And there’s one important lesson that Kozol has learned from his many visits with inner-city families (and as someone who was partly raised by a grandmother, I can certainly concur): If a grandmother invites you to dinner or offers you food, you better eat. Even if you have just had a meal or are not hungry—you don’t argue, you just eat.

Joetta Sack-Min, associate editor

Educators often see the same trends circle back around every few years or decades. It’s now taken about 80 years for the push for community schools to come back into vogue, but community planners and leaders are realizing that school facilities can play host to many types of activities, for many ages.

Each year, the American Architectural Foundation and the Knowledgeworks Foundation honor a school and community that have built an exemplary example with its Richard Riley Award, named for the former U.S. Secretary of Education. Riley’s pet project since leaving office in 2000 has been facilitating community partnerships and advocating for better school buildings.

This year’s winner is Rosa Parks School at New Columbia Community Campus in Portland, Ore. The campus includes a new K-6 school, Boys and Girls Club, and a community center that offers a variety of classes and programs for non-school-aged residents.

Financing of the project also used a partnership: The campus was built on land donated by the Housing Authority of Portland and construction was paid for with market tax credits, which give investors tax breaks in exchange for a low-income community development project.

And perhaps most impressive, the facility has received a Gold LEED certification for its sustainable design and environmental practices—something that will give back to the community for generations.

For more information about community schools and an update of how schools in New Orleans are being rebuilt as the centerpieces of their neighborhoods, there’s a terrific article in October’s ASBJ written by architect Steven Binger and Martin Blank and Amy Berg from the Coalition for Community Schools. For more information about this school or the award, check out AAF’s website at www.archfoundation.org.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Rural America, bless its heart, has been blamed for many things in education. The wide open spaces, lack of cultural diversity, and comparatively downbeat social scene have made it difficult to attract qualified staff and keep them. Economies of scale make the buying power weaker in rural areas, which are defined as any town with fewer than 25,000 people and a good distance from any major city.

And though they educate more than 40 percent of the country’s students, rural school districts receive about half that amount from the federal government. Where’s the love?

Now comes one more challenge. In the September issue of Obesity Research, university researchers found that kids in rural areas were more likely to have weight issues than city kids. Go figure. The study used data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, identifying 46,000 youngsters who were at 5 and older. Of that group, almost 18,000 or 18 percent were overweight or obese, and from that group, researchers determined rural kids were 25 percent more likely to have weight problems than their city counterparts.

What gives? “We don’t know the reasons why,” the study’s co-author Dr. Martin Lipsky told the Rockford Register Star. “Rural children may have less access to healthier foods … they may lack diversity in fresh fruits and vegetables … sometimes there is less opportunity for physical activity like sports, a sidewalk to walk on or even having a park.”

Well, there may be some other indicators. The study also found that rural overweight children were also more likely live in homes well below the poverty line, to not have access to healthcare, and to use the computer for non-school work and watch television for more than three hours a day.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

“Write about my school!” my daughter says, all excited, as I’m trying to get her to bed.

I’ve told her before what I do for a living, but it’s never made quite the impression as right now. Unfortunately, “right now” is nearly 9 p.m. -- way too late for a first grader on a school night -- so I dismiss her suggestion, as parents are prone to do, with an “OK. Sure, I will.”

The next night at dinner, she’s drawing a picture.

“How do you spell ‘elementary?’”

I tell her.

“Three Es?”

“Yes, three Es.”

She gives the crayon drawing to me, and it does indeed look like the entrance to her elementary school in Arlington, Va. Great, I say. I’ll take it to work.

“It’s to remind you to write about my school,” she emphasizes.

I was going to write today about this article in Education Next and its monumentally unfair comparison of -- of all people -- Richard Rothstein, a dogged advocate for poor children, and Charles Murray, co-author of the infamous Bell Curve. See, Ed Next says, they both say there are limits on what schools can do to help the poor, and…. But that can wait. I’ll tell you instead about my daughter’s school, McKinley Elementary, and her first day of kindergarten last year.

Like all parents preparing to enter the world of public education, we were, to put it mildly, nervous. And a lot of our fears were concentrated on the thought of putting our just-turned-5-year-old on that big yellow bus. (Would she be scared? Probably, seeing as how we were reacting.)

The first day came, and it was raining in torrents. But we felt we had to put her on the bus anyway, even though we could have easily driven her. The kindergarten teachers were supposed to ride the buses that day, we reasoned, and if she missed it she might be even more frightened on Day Two.

So there we were -- my wife and I, our elder daughter in her newly purchased raincoat, her then-2-year-old sister in her stroller with the plastic tarp all over it -- trudging through the downpour to the bus stop.

The bus arrived and it was … huge. And, as my daughter gamely stepped on, we realized that she was the only child on the bus, even though it had made at least four stops. Evidently, the other parents had sensibly decided to drive their kids to school.

Oh, and there was no teacher, either. We had it wrong: The teachers were riding the buses home, in the afternoon.

Mr. Jose, the kindly bus driver nearing retirement, could read our faces. He looked down at us, a near-silhouette in the driver’s seat.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll take care of your baby.”

And that was it; the huge yellow bus turned the corner with a roar, and we said goodbye. I can’t adequately describe the emotions I felt at that moment, but I’m sure you can understand. It was a mix of apprehension and pride, a little sadness, and this overwhelming feeling that were joining something much bigger than us.

As school board members, teachers, principals, and administrators, you serve that “something much bigger than ourselves” that is public school. There is no one -- no one -- who has a more important job than you.

You take care of my baby.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

I did not want to watch “Friday Night Lights.”

I’m a big fan of H.G. Bissinger’s 1990 nonfiction book, which told the story of a northwest Texas football team and its obsessive fans. I also enjoyed the 2004 film based on Bissinger’s book, but I had no interest in a fictionalized TV version.

I didn’t, it turns out, want to go home again.

My family is scattered across the state, from the petroleum-fueled Gulf Coast to the barren West Texas town of Albany to Longview’s piney woods in the east. Football was, is, and forever shall be “it,” especially in tiny communities where there is little more to do than sit and watch cars rust.

Yes, that last statement is overly simplified, just like the one from the person who says, “The only reason you have December, January, and February is to celebrate Jesus’ birth and to mark the time between the playoffs and the start of spring practice.” (I know that statement isn’t true because I spent almost a decade in North Carolina, where people live for December through February because that’s the heart of ACC basketball season.)

Texas was my home state for 28 years. I felt caught in a dead end trap, living in a refinery town where the small world loomed large. It’s a place that offered two post-high school options: Live here and work in the plants, or get the hell out and don’t come back.

Again, that’s overly simplified. But as a young boy, especially one with an ill father who could not be there to show me the ropes, it felt stifling. I was an outsider in my own hometown.

That’s why I didn’t want to watch “Friday Night Lights.” But, traveling back and forth this summer to Texas to see my dad, who was dying of cancer, I purchased the first season on DVD. But why look at fiction when I could see reality in bright, living, humid color?

Then, last weekend, two months after my father died, I saw a few minutes of the Oklahoma-Texas game at a restaurant. I thought immediately of Dad; he refused to miss any UT game that was on, sitting in his chair in his Longhorns coat, a football fan until the end.

After Oklahoma won by 7, I started thinking again about growing up in Texas. The next night, I went and found those DVDs. Four bleary eyed days later, fueled by insomnia and the fictional Dillon Panthers, I’m ready for season 2. And you should be, too.

This show captures the little details of small town life so beautifully – the rebellion, confessions, religion, community, mistakes, and connections between neighbors, family, and friends.

The marriage between the coach and his wife, a high school counselor, feels real. The other characters, all of whom have flaws and redeeming qualities, sometimes in equal measure, are archetypes of those we all know.

This is a show that makes me cringe with realization and smile privately at its reflection: When I’m watching, I do have a little piece of home with me.

Glenn Cook, Editor-in-Chief

It’s easy to see where things went wrong after the fact, especially as an outsider. But what baffles me is why school authorities at Cleveland’s SuccessTech Academy didn’t see trouble brewing before it was too late and they became a site of school violence. Maybe it’s not a fair question to ask but consider the clues.

Asa H. Coon was just a freshman at the Ohio magnet high school, but he’d already made quite an impression, and it wasn’t a good one. Described as sullen and strange by his classmates, the 14-year-old dressed in gothic fashion, sporting trench coats and black fingernails.

While his garb alone didn’t deserve attention from school officials, his accompanying behavior should have. Last year, he was suspended after attempting to assault a fellow student. Court records revealed that Coon suffered mental health problems, had threatened to commit suicide, and didn’t regularly take his medication.

Coon’s disciplinary problems continued this school year at SuccessTech, where he apparently got into a few scuffles with other students, for which he was suspended on Monday. Upon suspension, Coon purportedly made a series of threats, intimating that he would blow up the school, stab people, and otherwise retaliate in a violent manner.

Several students tried to tell the principal of Coon’s threats but could not get to her because she was busy. And by Wednesday, it was too late; two students and two teachers suffered gunshot wounds and Coon, after going on an armed rampage through the school, shot and killed himself.

I’m not trying to beat up school administrators who have their hands full with the day-to-day operations of a school, but this seems like an incident that should never have happened.

A 1999 joint report by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education found that in 80 percent of student-led attacks on schools, at least one person had knowledge of what was going to happen. In Coon’s case, it sounds like he broadcasted his intentions loud and clear. Those should’ve been words, given Coon’s history, school officials took seriously.

School safety experts routinely state that good intelligence and awareness is one of the best ways to prevent school violence. In this situation, it seemed like while those were in place, administrators failed to act on them in a timely manner. It’s a lesson for us all.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

When I was an elementary student, I walked more than five miles, up a steep incline, through brush and rugged terrain, in the snow and sleet to get to my school. OK, I’m exaggerating a little bit. But as a grade-schooler, I did hoof it to school, tracing nearly a mile-long path from my home to the school’s campus … and I wasn’t the only one.

Pretty much, everyone in my neighborhood walked to school--- even the cootie boys. That stopped, though, once I went on to junior high, which was a significant distance from my home, requiring me to take the bus. Luckily, it was around this time that I got involved in sports.

Or maybe it wasn’t luck. Officials of the federally funded Safe Routes to School program believe that offering kids the opportunity to walk or bike to school can be the catalyst to students incorporating physical activity into their life over the long haul.

According to the program, about half of all students walked or biked to school in 1969, but today more than half of students are brought to school in private cars. This shift has not only increased traffic congestion and lowered air quality around schools, it also has made kids lazy and contributed to the high rates of childhood obesity.

To combat these negative side effects, the federal government has allocated $612 million through the Safe Routes to School program, which works with states to take away some of the obstacles hindering walking or biking to school, whether it means building sidewalks or creating incentives for kids and families. Check out the details on their homepage here: http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/index.htm. to see what your state and community is doing.

Today, my commute to work is way too long for me to do anything truly ambitious, but when all is said is done, I do end up walking nearly a mile each way to get to my office. I guess some things never really change.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Since the death of a 17-year-old Virginia high school student from a drug-resistant staph infection—and a federal report revealed such infections are more common and deadly than thought—the reaction of school officials has alternated between anxiety and downright alarm.

But, if public health officials are correct, the proper response is simply vigilance.

As school leaders will learn in the upcoming issue of School Board News, more and more students and teachers infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are being reported across the nation. And MRSA is deadly, killing nearly 19,000 Americans each year.

But let’s put it in perspective. Influenza—the common flu—kills 36,000 people annually. What’s more, MRSA is treatable, despite its resistance to penicillin and some other antibiotics. Finally, the risks of infection are greatly reduced if students are encouraged to practice good hygiene, such as washing their hands and keeping open wounds covered.

Indeed, public health officials note that, for all the legitimate concerns about this new “superbug,” school officials will learn to cope, just as they did when the first HIV-infected students showed up in schools. As far as MRSA is concerned, infected students can return to school once they’re under treatment, and in most instances, school officials aren't going to have to shut down to disinfect schools.

Amy Garcia, executive director of the National Association of School Nurses, puts it all in perspective: “There are other infections that are easily spread in the school setting, so schools should have policies and procedures in place for dealing with MRSA but also tuberculosis, influenza, and other serious illnesses.”

Del Stover, Senior Editor

I always find fascinating what Census Bureau surveys reveal. In the latest analysis of data collected in 2004, it seems parents are taking ever more active roles in their child’s education and upbringing, in general. That’s good news since studies have proven that parent involvement is incredibly important to student success.

For instance, the number of children under the age of 12 who had restrictions on the content and quantity of television they viewed increased by more than 10 percent from more than a decade ago. Even teenagers had to live with more restrictions on their television viewing, which went up by 7 percent from 1994 to 47 percent.

Meanwhile, more than half of respondents reported reading an average of six or more times a week to 3- to 5-year-olds and seven or more times per week to children who were between 1 and 2 years old.

And more kids are participating in extracurricular activities like music, dance, computer, and language lessons than a decade ago; rising from 24 to 33 percent for 6- to 11-year-olds -- though the figures are higher for wealthier and Asian families.

To check out the data, go to the Census Bureau at www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/2004_detailedtables.html .

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

I am the parent of a 10-year-old who has been diagnosed as bipolar.

There, I wrote it.

It wasn’t easy. And I’m sure that someone, somewhere, will read this and tell me what a terrible parent I am. That I should rule with a firm hand. That I should not give my child pharmaceuticals to regulate her moods. That the world of child psychiatry is ruled by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

An article in Monday’s Los Angeles Times -- “Are We Too Quick to Medicate Children?” (www.latimes.com/features/la-he-psychkids5nov05,0,4453070.story?coll=la-tot-features&track=ntothtml) -- all but tells me that. Hoping against hope, I read the story, thinking it might provide a balanced look at dealing with children and mental illness.

But there’s no balance in this debate. The article notes that “Mental-health professionals have long warned that the stigma of mental illness and the cost of its treatment have left millions of Americans with psychiatric disorders to suffer untreated.”

In the same paragraph, it cites critics who say child psychiatry is in the middle of a “scourge of overdiagnosis” and warns that people will be less likely to “accept youthful misfits for who they are and to help them adapt without prescribing drugs or attaching labels.”

"I don't want to face her as an adult and say I didn't do everything I could to make her well. I feel like I'm answering to her future self," says the parent of an 11-year-old girl. "But so much of this is a crapshoot. No one wants to feel that their child is a guinea pig."

I know how that parent feels. It was an agonizing decision to have our child treated for her disorder, to see her have to take four drugs every day. It’s also agonizing to see this sweet, smart, gifted child whose brain runs 10,000 mph derail, overwhelmed by anger, anxiety, or an internal/external blip in her universe that appears from nowhere.

It’s agonizing to see how her moods affect her siblings and the rest of her family, to know that – like clockwork – something bad will happen if she doesn’t take her meds by a certain time because she just can’t maintain control. Not won’t, but can’t.

It’s just as agonizing to see how many who are so quick to judge, to say that what’s right for them should be right for everyone else. Just look in the comments section after the article and you’ll see what I mean.

The Times article, like countless others, raises legitimate questions about a legitimate debate. But it fails to capture the nuance and the internal struggles parents face when they make decisions like this. If our children are our future, we owe it to them to do everything we can, without casting blanket judgments on others.

Glenn Cook, Editor-in-Chief

Earlier this week, Swiss researchers released the findings of a survey they disseminated to more than 5,000 Switzerland youth. In essence, the study (conducted in 2002) determined among those 16- to 20-year-olds who smoked marijuana only, marijuana and cigarettes, or abstained from both, the group who solely smoked marijuana were “more socially driven … significantly more likely to practice sports and they have a better relationship with their peers,” than those who smoked neither.

The study, published in this month’s issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Medicine, appears to contradict the widely-held belief that marijuana is a gateway drug and its use can lead to experimentation in other drugs … which leads me to my point and our current ASBJ cover story, “Politics and Research.”

Just about any topic can be spun, stretched, dissected, or altered in some way to achieve different results, as Senior Editor Del Stover discovered in reporting on the field of education research. That’s not to say there isn’t merit or value in many of these reports, even the bad ones.

Nor am I saying the Swiss researchers who conducted the marijuana-use survey were purposefully trying to skew the findings, or that what they found isn’t true. It just may only be true for that small group. In Switzerland, marijuana-use has risen among that age group, in contrast to the decline it has made among American teens.

Research can only tell us so much, and it’s up to you as savvy consumers of the literature to determine what to take from it and what to leave behind.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

The girl perched atop the huge iron anchor in our neighborhood park looked about 6 or 7. My 3-year-old son, jumping up to scale the structure, brushed her dangling foot with his head.

“Shoo, shoo,” the girl shouted, kicking out her foot.

Standing near my son, I felt a sudden flash of anger. “Use your words to ask him to move,” I snapped. “He’s not a cat.”

My response was sharp and loud enough to elicit an apology from the girl’s nanny and a look of embarrassment from my husband and my older son.

Yes, I’m a helicopter parent. I won’t shy away from the label. I read my 9-year-old’s books (the Lemony Snicket series right now), watch television with him (“The Suite Life of Zach and Cody”), and check his homework. When he has a test, I help him study (I now know what kinds of clouds accompany cold and warm fronts). I’ve been a room parent since kindergarten. My younger boy goes to a cooperative preschool where I volunteer with the other helicopter moms in the classroom every month.

I could go overboard if I’m not careful, but Lori Drew’s example should make everyone pause. The 48-year-old mother from Dardenne, Mo., took the notion of parent involvement to a sickening extreme. Incensed that a 13-year-old girl had abruptly broken off her friendship with her daughter, Drew invented an imaginary boyfriend through a fake MySpace account, according to the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/28hoax.html?_r=1&oref=slogin).

The “boyfriend” wooed the girl online for several weeks before turning on her, sending her cruel messages and telling her “The world would be a better place without you.” The eighth-grade girl, who’d been battling weight problems and depression, hanged herself in her bedroom closet.

I grew up in the 1970s, and I’m not nostalgic for the days when most adults, including educators, believed bullying was a problem children needed to solve among themselves. I witnessed, and was the victim of, many acts of cruelty that children perpetrate on each other. Teachers and other adults shrugged their shoulders and looked the other way.

I wrote an article in ASBJ about bullying nearly a decade ago and was pleased to discover that the prevailing attitudes had changed. Now, most educators, child advocates, and mental health professionals say that adults can and should intervene. And that’s especially true now that bullies are equipped with high-tech tools – cell phones, texting devices, and social networking accounts.

Many bullied children are set up to be victims by their families long before they get to school. I don’t hover around my boys at the playground. But if I see someone bigger or stronger harming my preschooler (yes, that includes a little girl trying to kick him in the head), I’ll intervene. I want my boys to know I’ll protect them.

But what to say about a woman whose warped sense of maternal protection drove her to the prolonged torment of a troubled eighth-grader? There are no words.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

Brian Jackson stood barely taller than many of the middle school students he was coaching at the moment. But he had no trouble getting the group of energetic students to listen.

It’s not everyday you get to shoot a real bow and arrow in the back of school. To be honest, with school security being in a heightened state, it’s not everywhere that you see this either. But this is Tahlequah, Okla., where they make conscious effort to preserve the traditions of life.

Indian life, that is. On the easternmost edge of the state, Tahlequah is the capital and the heart of the Cherokee Nation, where I went to gain inspiration and insight for the current ASBJ cover story, “Trail to Progress.”

It turned out to be an ideal place, not only because of its history (the town marks the end of the Trail of Tears) but also because of its spirit and optimism, which is imbued in people like Jackson, a Cherokee member.

Nearly banished to prison on drug charges, Jackson was given a second chance and has apparently made use of it by crisscrossing the country as a motivational speaker and winning not one but two Guinness World Records for blowing up hot water bottles no less.

The archery lessons he teaches the middle school students today is a fun activity that camouflages what he’s really trying to get across. “If I set the target too close, they’d maybe hit it on their first or second try,” he says. “But if I set it just beyond their reach they’ll keep trying and it’ll give them something to shoot for.”

It’s all about setting goals and working towards them, even ones that seem out of reach, Jackson says.

“I ask them how many people do you know who are Guinness World Record holders? Then I ask them how many do you know who’ve tried?”

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

For more than a decade, educators and non-profits have successfully kept teen pregnancy rates down, but new figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control show that not only has the decline halted, it has risen for the first time in 14 years.

Between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for girls 15 to 19 climbed 3 percent from 40.5 births per 1,000 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. Prior to that, teen births had dropped 34 percent from a peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991.

It is a source of concern for many for obvious reasons. Not only is teen pregnancy the number one reason girls drop out of school, but also only 77 percent of the children born to teen parents will receive their diplomas, compared to 89 percent of children born to older parents.

Pat Paluzzi, president of the D.C. based-Healthy Teen Network (a non-profit that works to prevent teen pregnancy and provide parenting skills to those who have a child) said it’s not necessarily that teens are trying to get pregnant.

“But neither are they trying not to,” she says. “There’s a lot of ambivalence.” Part of it is an absence of goal setting and planning for the future, though looking ahead can be a difficult thing to ask kids who are in bad situations today, she says.

“If you don’t have a set of goals, and your neighborhoods are desolate, and your schools are horrible, if that’s your life, what goals are you going to have?” Paluzzi wonders.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Why does it seem that research these days reveals one disturbing trend after another? On Tuesday, a new national survey was released that shows while drug abuse among teens has declined in many areas, no progress has been made against the abuse of prescription painkillers.

Conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute of Social Research and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the 33rd annual Monitoring the Future survey found that abuse of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin is second only to marijuana, which is the most widely used narcotic.

Researchers first began asking teens about OxyContin in 2002, and since that time the reported use has been erratic. In 2007, the figures were actually higher than they were five years ago. At least one in 20 high school seniors reported trying the drug in the past year. Meanwhile, one in 10 high school seniors acknowledged using Vicodin, whose abuse has continued to stay at recent peak levels.

Even scarier, the use of MDMA or ecstasy among teens has risen once again, marking a trend of gradual increases in the last several years that suggest adolescents have become comfortable with the narcotic and don’t deem it a risk.

Researchers polled nearly 50,000 students from 403 secondary schools. To view the complete report, go to www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6225.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

I ventured out on my first holiday gift shopping bonanza this weekend. I like to get an early start. It took no more than an hour before my head was spinning; too many stores, too many products, too many people. It was overwhelming.

It’s easy to lose sight of what the holidays mean amid this frenzy of shopping … unless you’re a student at Lafayette Park Middle School in Kokomo, Ind. Staff members there challenge their kids to understand the power and need to give to those less fortunate.

And this goes beyond a simple canned food drive. Members of the National Junior Honor Society will sing Christmas carols and give Christmas cards to the residents of a local retirement home. The eighth-graders in Carol Deditch's classes made books to attach to teddy bears given to children staying at a local hospital.

And seventh-grade English teacher Nicole Mundy has tasked her students with researching charities and then creating a fundraising and marketing plan that they pitch to their classmates. The students then select the charity with the best idea and then execute the plan.

It’s nice to know that there are schools and teachers (and I’m sure there are many more out there) that are teaching students one of the most critical lessons of all time: the importance of giving back.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Clear off the desk. Change your outgoing message on the voicemail and inbox. Secure any personal items. These are the simple things we do to prepare for a break from work. If it were only that simple. Unfortunately, vacations are usually preceded by marathon work days and stress and bookended by, you guessed it, more marathon work days and stress. It’s probably why, according to a Boston College survey, more than a quarter of Americans don’t even bother taking vacation at all.

Holiday breaks are automatically built into public school calendars, eliminating the need to hem and haw on whether to take two, three, or any days off after Christmas. The guaranteed time off, however, doesn’t guarantee some of you won’t actually bring work home. Resist the urge.

Consider this (doesn’t that sound like a commercial?): 40 percent of workers reported their jobs as “very” or “extremely” stressful, with about a quarter of all surveyed considering work the number one stress in their life. Job pressures are believed to be responsible for 30 percent of back pain, 20 percent of fatigue, and 13 percent of headaches. Finally, it’s been estimated (and this is an old statistic) that work-related stress costs the job market more than $300 billion a year.

Convinced yet? I hope so. So as we draw into the New Year, turn off your BlackBerry, don’t log on to the system, delay going over those documents.

Instead, go to the movies, read a good book, and spend time with loved ones. Enjoy the break … we certainly will. See you next year!

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

When you think about it, life is really just a series of transitions; small and large, habitual and deliberate. After reading this blog, as you do every morning, I’m sure you’ll transition into a productive work day, now armed with valuable information.

Unlike the gentle transitions of morning to work day, eased by a cup of coffee, certain transitions in life can be confusing and distressing. As if the physical, emotional, and developmental changes that kids experience during puberty aren’t enough, these tweens and teens must also navigate their way through a whole new set of academic expectations and environments when they enter middle and high school.

Shepherded well, kids can come out the other side of these changes, more mature and able to handle the next big challenge. But executed with little oversight, the leaps that students make into higher academic settings can end with them falling flat on their face.

The challenges and possible remedies are explored in my January story, “The Transition Years.”

“You can’t expect people to walk into a new job and know what to do,” says Patrick Akos, an education professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a former middle school counselor. “There’s training and there’s help navigating the system. Why wouldn’t we do the same thing for students?”

The good news is more and more school districts are catching on to that fact. Chicago Public Schools, for instance, is in the midst of pulling together a $10 million plan to help ease the transition eighth-graders make into high school. The proposal, which is still being hashed out, would provide up to three weeks of orientation activities before the incoming freshmen begin their first day of school. Officials there hope the initiative helps curb the high absence rates, which jump from an average of 10 days for eighth-graders to 27 skipped days for ninth-graders.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Maternity leave for high school students? Now that’s a policy issue that I’m certain every school board member is eager to address.

One day you might get your chance. For now, though, it’s the Denver school board that’s being asked by pregnant students to provide them with at least four weeks of maternity leave “so they can heal, bond with their newborns, and not be penalized for unexcused absences.”

That’s how The Denver Post reports it. And, after an initial reaction that varied between “you’ve got to be kidding” and “what’s the world coming to,” I think I see their point.

The Denver Public Schools has no system-wide policy concerning teen moms, the Post reports, and at one high school, students apparently are left with a bad choice: show up at school as soon as they’re out of the hospital—or be docked for unexcused absences.

Now, I don’t think high school students deserve a free pass for having a baby. But, then again, it does no one any good if there’s no accommodation or assistance given to an overwhelmed teen. We don’t need to add to the nation’s appalling dropout rate.

Of course, many schools have a handle on this issue. Some place pregnant students or new moms in specialized programs or run schools designed to work with these students. Others create individualized education plans for new moms or work more informally, bringing counselors, parents, and teens together to work out a reasonable strategy to keep the student in school.

In Denver, a district spokesperson said the district is looking to make its attendance policy “friendlier” to new moms, and school board member Michelle Moss got to the core of the issue: “Clearly, as a district, we have to look at what is going on with our young women. We’ve got to look at the birth-control issue and teen pregnancy and how we best help them deal with it and still graduate.”

That sounds about right. But I hope any policy change avoids the term “maternity leave.” It’s an expression that sounds like an entitlement. And, frankly, anything that makes teen pregnancy and motherhood seem normal and acceptable—as opposed to the personal tragedy it is—just doesn’t sit well.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

Chicago’s curfew proposal wouldn’t have meant anything to me. With a police officer for a father and an expert, though not professional, sleuth as a mother, my time outside the home was monitored, regulated, and restricted up until the day I left for college.

Even without the presence of cell phones, GPS devices, and other handy technological tools, my parents always knew where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing. I felt it was ruining my social life at the time, but their strict oversight no doubt kept me out of trouble and poised for greater success in life.

That’s the kind of the thinking behind Mayor Richard Daley’s plan to rollback the curfew for kids under 17, by a half-hour to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends. “If I save one child, it’s all worth the criticism,” Daley said at a news conference at a South Side Chicago high school on Tuesday.

Though the Windy City’s homicide rate was down in 2007, a significant portion of the victims were youth -- 24 of them Chicago Public School students gunned down after dark.
Chicago isn’t the only city to use curfews as a means to address youth violence. In a 1997 survey (yes, it’s old but it’s the latest study conducted), 276 of 347 responding cities reported having curfews, with about 90 percent of them saying the enforcement helps keep the streets safer. About half said youth crime had dropped since the institution of a curfew.

In Chicago, the curfew restrictions have been in place for quite some time and have expanded to include parents, who could face fines if their child is out past the prescribed time. For my parents, it was never an issue. The consequences for being late in my home were higher than any Daley could dole out. But then, I guess, so were the rewards.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

There was a lot of sound and fury coming out of Washington on Monday in response to President Bush’s 2009 budget for children’s programs, but just what it signifies is hard to say.

“The president’s budget proposal, released this morning, confirms our worst fears,” said an Afterschool Alliance news release. It noted the administration would cut after-school funding by 27 percent and convert the $800 million remaining in the 21st Century Community Centers into a voucher system for after-school programs. An official from First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy group, told CongressNow that the move would further destabilize after-school funding by making these funding sources more unpredictable.

First Focus also came out with its own rather alarming e-mail, saying the Bush cuts would include, among other things, a $700 million -- or 12.5 percent -- reduction in discretionary health programs that help children and a $640 million (38 percent) cut in child welfare.

“As the economy worsens, dramatically cutting child health, education, welfare and safety programs is not the answer,” First Focus said.

Scary? A little. But remember that Bush won’t be around come Jan. 21, 2009, the fiscal year begins in October (just a month before the presidential election), and the Democratic controlled Congress has no intention of making these kind of drastic cuts.

“He doesn’t have us over a barrel this year, because either a President Clinton or a President Obama will have to deal with us next year,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told USA Today. “We are not going to be held hostage to this unreasonableness of this president.”

He didn’t say what would happen under a President McCain.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

I don’t look for these things, I promise. I just seem to stumble upon them … with great frequency. So here’s another one to add to the growing list of legislative absurdities.

This one comes from Tennessee and the mind of state Rep. Stacey Campfield, who apparently is a font of sound ideas. Last week, he filed a bill that, if passed, would prohibit public elementary and middle schools from providing “any instruction or materials discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.”

Campfield said he threw the proposal into the hopper after learning the National Education Association had approved a resolution recommending sex-ed classes in schools include the diversity of gender identification and sexual orientation issues.

It was apparently too revolutionary for Campfield.

“I think the schools should stick to the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. And maybe some civics,” Campfield told the Memphis Flyer.

Gee, thanks for including civics into mix. Perhaps, the good lawmaker should brush up more on this subject, since his proposal would infringe on the powers of local school boards, a conflict that did not go unnoticed.

“Why does [Campfield] feel the need to take control of what’s taught in a school system away from local boards of education and away from local communities?” asked Earl Wiman, president of the Tennessee Education Association in the Memphis Flyer.

Of even bigger concern Wiman said, was the alienation the bill could fuel among gay students and their parents. “We have such a high adolescent suicide rate, and a large number of those killing themselves are struggling with sexual orientation.”

I’ll say this for Campfield: if anything he is consistent. A few years back, he proposed issuing death certificates for aborted fetuses and then in 2005 caused a ruckus by equating the state’s Black Caucus to the Ku Klux Klan because they wouldn’t allow him to join because he is white.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Stuck on the fourth floor

Something called “Counseling” occupied a fourth-floor warren of my aging high school in suburban St. Louis. Whenever I was on that floor -- which wasn’t often, as it had a depressing, “attic-y” kind of feel -- I might see an adult or two emerge from those offices, but I could only guess at what they did.

I learned a little more during my junior year, when Mr. P., my patrician English teacher (who, I discovered at about that moment, doubled as one of those mysterious counselors) sat me down for my “College Conference” and announced where I should go to school.

“University of Rochester!”

In the end, I didn’t follow his advice, although I’m sure the University of Rochester is a fine place (albeit a trifle chilly). No, I went instead to sunny Southern California -- “for the surfing,” as I recall; though when I arrived I realized the area around the school had no water to speak of, merely miles of desert and craggy mountains that revealed their outlines only when the smog began to clear.

As Bogey put it in Casablanca: “I was misinformed.”

I tell this story to show how far the field of school counseling and mental health services has come since I was in school. Certainly, the defects in my high school counseling program are obvious now, with the most blatant being…. well, I didn’t even know what counselors did! That’s how marginalized they were from the core mission of the school.

Unfortunately, as I show in my March cover story on school mental health, the work of counselors, school psychologists, and social workers is still too often relegated to a kind of ancillary status in the school. But that’s changing. In places like Harrisburg, Pa., the schools aren’t just trying to help students with specific behavioral problems (an important job, to be sure) but also addressing the emotional and behavioral health needs of all students.

It shouldn’t be an either/or proposition: either provide services to students with serious problems or serve the whole school, says Howard Adelman, co-director of the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA. Instead, schools must adopt a “comprehensive, multifaceted, and cohesive approach that can effectively address barriers to learning,” says the center publication Mental Health in Schools: Much More Than Services for a Few. “To do less is to make values such as 'We want all children to succeed' and 'No child left behind' simply rhetorical statements.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

One in 10 students may be suffering from a condition known as “impaired working memory”—and that’s having a negative impact on their academic performance.

So report researchers in a news release from Durham University in the United Kingdom. They also say this impairment is rarely identified by teachers, who are more likely to view affected children “as inattentive or as having lower levels of intelligence.”

So what is working memory? According to MedicineNet.com, working memory—or short-term memory—is “a system for temporarily storing information and managing the information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks.”

Translation: If you are told two numbers, you remember them, and you multiply those numbers in your head, you’re using your working memory.

It’s pretty obvious that a student’s classroom success depends somewhat on his or her ability to follow a teacher’s instructions, do some quick mental calculations, or remember what’s been said in a classroom lecture long enough to write it down.

“Working memory is a bit like a mental jotting pad, and how good this is in someone will either ease their path to learning or seriously prevent them from learning,” Dr. Tracy Alloway, head of the research team, is quoted as saying.

So how practical is this information for you? Well, some of your teachers will be familiar with the basic concept of working memory and instruction, and some special education teachers will have learned something about this condition.

But it can’t hurt to point out that the condition may be more common than they think—and isn’t the same thing as attention deficit disorder (ADD), although the challenges for students can appear similar. Also, it turns out that there are checklists available that your teachers can use to identify children who may have this problem, and there are diagnostic tools available to confirm such suspicions.

And, finally, there are instructional techniques to help students cope with this impairment.

All anyone needs to do is a little more research.

It might prove worthwhile. As Alloway notes, “early identification of these children will be a major step toward addressing underachievement. It will mean teachers can adapt their methods to help the children’s learning before they fall too far behind their peers.”

Del Stover, Senior Editor

French toast, pancakes, and Eggs Benedict. I’ve always loved breakfast, but until just a few years ago I enjoyed these morning staples well after sunup and sometimes not at all. In fact, as a teenager my eating habits were atrocious. I not only skipped breakfast but often lunch, as well.

Bad mistake and one quantified by a new study published in this month’s journal of Pediatrics. Over five years, researchers followed the diet and weight patterns of 2,216 teens from Minneapolis-St. Paul public schools.

They discovered that the kids who ate breakfast on a regular basis had a lower body mass index and gained less weight than those who skipped the meal. The early morning noshers also tended to be more physically active than their counterparts.

Coincidence? Correlation? It’s too early say, but the scant research thus far seems to corroborate the old anecdote that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. With childhood obesity rates almost tripling over the last 20 years, any movement toward a healthier lifestyle among today’s youth is critical.

I certainly made my move several years back, and with fair consistency consume breakfast almost on a daily basis. Though, these days my breakfast choices have grown, as well, to healthier alternatives like oatmeal, muesli, and scrambled egg whites.

Check out the School Nutrition Association’s campaign for school breakfast, which officially ends today, for more good reasons on why you should promote eating breakfast at your school.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

I’ve never considered myself to be a “gamer,” (an avid video game player for all you non-hip folks.) In fact, I’ve regarded the craze with bemusement and not a small amount of consternation. “What is this world coming to?,” I say to myself, in my best grumpy old man impersonation. Well, my attitude has changed somewhat.

It happened, innocently enough, during a recent family vacation. I was introduced to the latest interactive gaming system on the market. I bowled. I boxed. I played tennis. And the next day, I couldn’t raise my arm, which was surprising to someone who considers themselves fairly active.

These are the kinds of technologies that schools are beginning to take a serious look at and implement into their physical education programs, as I discovered and reported for the current issue of ASBJ. http://www.asbj.com/MainMenuCategory/Archive/2008/March/PhysTech.aspx

In fact, West Virginia is leading the trend, by including Dance, Dance Revolution, a sort of Simon-says of the feet, at every public school in the state. Make it fun, make it exciting, make it relevant, that’s been the mantra of many educators desperate to engage disconnected students--- and it seems inactive ones, too.

Of course, there’s some concern among the purists. People should learn to love or at least appreciate x for x sake, for goodness sake! I admit it. I sort of thought that way, too, especially as it relates to physical activity. Exercising may not always be the most exciting to do, but it should be a priority because it’s important to your health. Period. End of story.

Truth is, though, many need more of an incentive than that and if technology can jumpstart exercise, so be it. Stranger things have happened. I’m now considering guitar lessons, after a few hours as a Guitar Hero.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

While some schools are using video games as a contemporary way to motivate children to exercise, schools in San Diego are adopting a classic approach.

Some San Diego students are taking part in before-school running clubs—spending the 15 to 20 minutes between the time they get dropped off in the morning and the time they begin classes to jog a few laps around the track.

The before-school clubs are organized by educators and members of the community concerned about childhood obesity.

In most cases, the clubs simply require someone to count laps—keeping costs to schools at a minimum, say the San Diego Union-Tribune. Without a doubt they’re far less expensive than a dozen Nintendo Wiis.

Before-school running clubs have added educational benefits too. According to experts, exercise can help students perform better academically.

“Exercise is like giving them a little bit of Ritalin, a little bit of Prozac,” John Ratey of the Harvard Medical School told the Union-Tribune. “They both work to help the learner stay in the chair.”

Mary Beason, principal of Loma Elementary School, is not only supportive of her school’s club, she’s a member. Beason runs with her students two mornings a week.

Talk about leading by example.

Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern

Energy in a can: Should it be banned?

More and more children, hyperactive and easily distracted, are being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and sent to school with a dose of Ritalin.

But what about children who are sleep-deprived and sluggish? Where do they turn? To Monsters, Rockstars, and Red Bulls.

Energy drinks are gaining popularity among students—even those as young as 12. Unfortunately, these caffeine-heavy beverages give kids more than wings.

According to a story in the Miami Herald, four teenagers from Falcon Cove Middle School in Broward County, Fla., were sent to the hospital after consuming an energy drink called Redline, which also claims to burn fat. The students were sweating heavily and their hearts were racing.

Now, the Broward County School Board is considering banning high-octane energy drinks from schools.

School board members are also getting support —in the form of $25,000—from an unlikely source. Jack Owoc, CEO of VPX/Redline, the company that makes Redline, has donated the money to help enact the ban, says the Herald.

“Energy drinks are made for adults only,” Owoc, a former Broward County teacher, told the Herald. “Children should derive enough energy from a healthy diet, daily exercise, and eight hours or more of sleep.”

Older readers may be wondering why preteens, inherently youthful and energetic, need a chemical boost to make it through the day. The answer is they don’t.

Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern

I just finished reading Jodi Picoult’s book, Nineteen Minutes. If you have anything to do with education, or if you’re a parent, you need to read this book -- now.

Picoult’s 2007 bestseller chronicles a horrific school shooting incident and its aftermath. A meticulous researcher, Picoult imbues the shooter, a brutally bullied boy named Peter, with a sense of humanity that seems almost impossible, especially considering that he goes to school one day and guns down 10 classmates.

The hardest parts of the book to read were the passages about Peter’s relentless torment at the hands of his fellow classmates, starting in the first day of kindergarten when one of them throws his Superman lunchbox out of the school bus window. In fact, I wanted to skip those passages entirely.

In this impulse, I’m like most adults, probably. We don’t want to believe our children are capable of this cruelty, so we look away.

Of course, it is happening. Read the recent New York Times article, “A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly,” about a young man in Fayetteville, Ark. Elements of his daily torture were sickeningly similar to the fictional Peter’s abuse.

In an interview with ASBJ in January, Picoult said: “As a mom, I saw all three of my kids face bullying—and it begged the question: In a post-Columbine world, why haven’t we figured this out yet?

School officials will point to their bullying policies, of course, and every district should have them. But these policies are a starting point, not the end. During the shooter’s trial at the end of Nineteen Minutes, the defense lawyer memorably demonstrates why. No matter how air-tight your policy is, it’s utterly meaningless when adults -- whether they secretly identify with the bullies, they not-so-secretly don’t like the bullied child, or because it reminds them too much of their own childhood torment -- turn the other way when a child desperately needs help.

Is bullying occurring in your schools? Are you willing to take a hard look – and not turn away if you see something that makes you uncomfortable, if you see something you know is wrong?

The bullied kids can’t look away. They live with this every day. If you don’t protect them, no one will.

Why haven’t we figured this out yet?

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

You’ve probably seen the autism awareness logo, the ribbon with multicolored puzzle pieces that’s popping up on car bumpers, T-shirts, and all sorts of items. It’s all part of a well-financed and coordinated campaign to not only boost awareness but also find a cure.

It seems like autism came out of the blue a few years ago—in fact, the rate of the disability has increased some 900 percent in the last decade. It’s now estimated to affect about one in 150 students, mainly boys, as I explained in our recent story, “The Cost of Autism.”

But every report seems to unleash more frantic questions than answers: Why the sudden increase? Have there always been children and adults with autism who were just thought to be a little “off”? What causes autism? What can be done to treat it? What is the cure?

Unfortunately, right now researchers are still struggling with the first question, trying to figure out just how many children have autism, whether some regions of the country actually have higher incidences or are just more apt to make a diagnosis, and whether there’s been a sudden increase or just acknowledgement of the disorder, which varies widely from highly intelligent children whose social abilities are somewhat idiosyncratic to very low-functioning children with multiple disabilities.

But some researchers worry that the quest for a cure is overshadowing the fact that children with autism can greatly benefit from readily available treatments and interventions.

“There are no definitive answers to anything—but we haven’t met anybody with autism who can’t improve and improve significantly” with the right interventions, said Lee Grossman, the executive director of the Autism Society of America.

Edward Carr, a psychology professor and researcher at the State University of New York-Stony Brook, notes that some 90 to 10