Louisiana Lowers the Bar in Education: A Simple Solution

2009-06-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

Now that the dust has begun to settle from the 2009 Louisiana Legislative session one thing is abundantly clear: Legislators' creative critical thinking skills are left wanting when it comes to Education.

One of the big issues that got our state its annual public thrashing was the creation of a two track (college bound and non-college bound) diploma system (Click here to read "Not going to college? How about a 'career diploma' from high school?" from The Christian Science Monitor ). Louisiana has evidently tried this this two tracked system before and over time realized that it was not a good idea. Listening to the Moon Griffon show I heard a called that was irritated that no current legislators seemed, in the caller's opinion, to have been aware of the failed Louisiana two track system. The caller was irritated because one of his son's that had academic potential chose the easier non-college diploma route and when he was unable to get into college later, lived to regret the bad decision. The Moon Griffon caller is still bitter. Let's face it, many high school students do not realize the vast cultural difference between high school and college.
High school systems are setup for obvious liability issues to be more restrictive because they are responsible for people who are not legally adults. A teenage does not think about these things and that is why the college experience can not be forecast.

But, the problem that the legislators were trying to tackle was of an entirely different nature. Namely: too many of Louisiana's students are dropping out before they complete high school and those student's high school experiences have done very little to make them successful in the working world. The problem with the Louisiana legislature's response was that it was lazy and lacked any sort of creative solution.
It was tantamount to throwing in the towel. A characteristic statement of what the legislature did would be "All our kids aren't going to college. Heck, we don't even want all our kids to go to college. Who will do the 'real' work that needs to get done? Let's just give em more wood shop classes like we used to have and give em a diploma so someone will hire em." Here's a Bubba check - If you don't see anything wrong with that statement, you might be a Bubba. I don't know if it will make you feel any better but I do not totally disagree with the statement so I am kind of a Bubba too. But here is the more creative solution that I have been promising atleast between the lines for this entire piece. We do need to train our students to be carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and we also need to provide more practical skills in areas of computer science. When I say practical skills in computer science I do not mean just how to turn the computer on and maybe build a PowerPoint presentation or find a website. I also include: how to build a website, how to build a computer from components, how to build a basic database, how to do some basic programming with html, xml, javascript, actionscript, PHP, etc. and how to do basic network administration/computer maintenance tasks. The solution is require all students to take a tracked class each year in one of these skill areas. (e.g. "the plumbing track" plumbing 1 your freshman year, plumbing 2 your sophomore year, plumbing 3 your junior year, and plumbing 4 your senior year) I could have used that plumbing stuff when my toilet overflowed my freshman year at LSU. I can hear the objections already: where are we going to get money for all those programs? In case you have not heard in these tough times the federal government is actually increasing education dollars for teaching practical skills and even more money for lessons that we can develop online. Click here to read "U.S. Push for Free Online Courses" from Inside Higher Ed) Another clear option in my scheme is ROTC. Military service is mandatory in some places like Israel and a military option is not a bad choice whether you are college bound or not.

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A Great Soccer Coach, part 1

2009-04-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard someone say or thought: "I'm just not cut out to be a great coach." or "That coach I just lost to is just a natural born coach."? While the debate may rage on forever about whether some is a "natural born coach" or not, you can be a great coach! In part one of becoming a great soccer coach we will examine your preparation for practice and providing a routine structure for practice.

Overview:
Follow a great coach for a while and you will notice that his/her players are confident in their coach and during a practice they know where they are supposed to be and what they are expected to be doing. My six-year-old son is beginning his third season of soccer with the same coach. In the first two seasons Coach Wilcher's South Bossier Panther soccer team has a record of 20 wins, 1 loss, and 1 tie. She would modestly tell you that it is because she has great players and though some of the Panther's star soccer players did not play in the second season, on each team we did have some skilled players. (For the record, without three of our top scorers for the second season Coach Wilcher's team went undefeated and untied. ) The truth is that almost all of the teams we played had skilled players. What those teams lacked was a coach as good as Coach Wilcher. Coach Wilcher comes to practice prepared and she provides a solid routine structure for practice.

Be Prepared:
One of the first things I have noticed about Coach Wilcher and other great coaches is that they are always at practice before the first player arrives and they are always the last to leave. Though Coach Wilcher is a volunteer parent coach, by the time we arrive at practice she has setup orange cones on the filed, a portable soccer goal, a sideline bench for the water bottles, and sometimes has even painted lines on the field. Aside from a few orange cones and an extra soccer ball or two you may not need to do all of that but, the point is that it is obvious that Coach Wilcher has put some time into thinking about practice. The lessons here are arrive 10 to 15 minutes before your players, have a plan of action, and prepare the field (e.g. set out some orange cones for a drill).

Provide a Routine Structured Practice:
It is much easier to prepare for practice if you first determine how all practices should progress.
Using Coach Wilcher as an example again, every practice the Panthers: circle up and do stretching exercises, then run a lap around the field, have a water break, work on skills and drill, water break, scrimage (coach divides the kids into two teams that practice against each other, she also rotates who plays what position during the scrimage), another lap around the field, and finish with a group circle. After two or three practices the players know what to do and when to expect to do it. Within each of these basic segments of practice there are variations in skill drills and team building takes place at various points in practice. We will discuss skill drills and team building in future posts but if you do not have a soccer practice routine, try this one - Warmup (group circle stretches and a lap around the field) - Skill Drills - Scrimage - Finale (final lap and group circle).

Being prepared and establishing a routine structure for practice are the first two steps to becoming a great soccer coach.
Return to Soccer Coach Central . . .

The Full Article

Louisiana Lowers the Bar in Education: A Simple Solution

A Great Soccer Coach, part 1