The Case of the Chronically Tardy Teacher

Apparently punctuality is not an important job requirement to teach public school in New Jersey these days.  As proof of this, we have Mr. Arnold Anderson.

Over the past two years, Mr. Anderson was late to his job 111 times – 46 last school year and another 65 the prior year. Anderson, who teaches at Roosevelt Elementary School in New Brunswick, NJ, is paid a handsome $90,000 a year.

This sum, however, appears to be not enough to get him out of bed and to work in the same timely fashion you’d expect of, say, the school’s students.

Losing Track of Time

Mr. Anderson blamed his consistent and chronic tardiness on eating breakfast in the morning and losing track of time. He called his morning routine a "bad habit" but defended his recording saying he was often just a minute or two late to school, but still was prepared and made it to class on time. 

The school tried to fire Mr. Anderson. At face value, I would say this appears to be a reasonable course of action. However, an arbiter, appointed to oversee this situation between the school district and teacher’s union, ruled on August 19 not to fire Mr. Anderson. Instead, the arbiter decided to suspend him without pay until January.

The arbiter found that school officials did not provide Mr. Anderson with due process by giving him formal notice of his inefficiency and did not give him 90 days to correct the issue before seeking to terminate him.

It appears from news accounts (including this article in the UK’s Daily Mail, proving that news travels fast) that Mr. Anderson argued that the quality of his teaching outweighed his tardiness. The arbiter wasn’t buying this and criticized his claim. 

Due Process

So, three cheers for due process, I guess, right? I certainly don’t know all the facts here. Of course, any situation in which someone might lose his or her job, it’s important to get the facts right.

But can you honestly think of any job you can be late to for over 100 times in two years and NOT get shown the door? How about 50 times? Heck, how about 25?

Apparently the only job you can pull off this kind of behavior -- at least in this case -- is teaching.

Showing Up

I have worked in education for over 20 years. I have taught school at many different levels and in both school and corporate settings. There is a simple truth about teaching that I’ve observed. You need to show up.

By “show up” I mean that it’s essential to bring energy, enthusiasm and a positive mindset to teaching. If you fail to do this, students know right away. In almost every case, they check out.

Students of all ages read their teachers. They take their cues from them. A teacher who does not show up provides the students with explicit permission to not show up themselves. It’s pretty simple.

In Mr. Anderson’s case, a 15-year teaching veteran, his not “showing up” is at an entirely different level. He literally did not show up on time. Inexplicably, he can’t motivate himself to be on time to teach elementary age students. What message does that send them?

I personally know plenty of people who would love Mr. Anderson’s job and his more than ample salary. The only thing worse than Mr. Anderson’s track record, his apparent lackluster attitude and feeble excuse for his tardiness is the fact that we have a system that makes is so hard to actually do the right thing and fire someone for this kind of clearly irresponsible and idiotic behavior.

Elvis Presley, Pete Rose and Hiroshima/Nagasaki

Sunday August 16 marks the 38^th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. I realize that his influence on music was monumental, but I don’t really have any strong feelings or poignant memories specifically about Elvis.

The one exception, though, is the day he died in 1977. Each year when this date comes, it sparks a very specific memory for me.

Credit: www.albumartexchange.com

I was 12 years old. That day, my two brothers and I drove with our parents to Wisconsin to watch a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. I recall being in the backseat of my father’s car – likely in the middle given my birth order – when the news report of Elvis’ death came on the radio.

The Brewers game was over. They lost as I recall. We were driving along slowly through heavy traffic outside County Stadium when the announcer said Elvis died that afternoon. He was found unresponsive in the bathroom of his home in Memphis, Tennessee.

He was 42 years old. The King was dead.

I remember my parents talking about this in the front seat. My brothers and I rode in silence, each of them slouched against the windows, me slumped back against the seat during the 90-minute drive home watching the white highway lights and green road signs float past.

In spite of the Elvis news, it had been a great day.  At that age, baseball was my life. My Dad’s brother was the head of marketing for the Milwaukee Brewers, and he regularly got us tickets.  Two years earlier – on July 15, 1975 – we attended the All-Star Game at County Stadium courtesy of Uncle Dick. This entire experience was literally the highlight of my childhood.

We sat just rows behind the first base dugout where I was able to see all of my heroes up close – Joe Morgan, Vida Blue, Johnny Bench, Steve Garvey, Rollie Fingers, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, Catfish Hunter and others.

They were all there, along with Chicago Cubs third baseman Bill Madlock, the eventual co-MVP of the game, which the National League won 6-3, aided by Madlock’s key two-run single.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Last fall I was able to revisit this baseball memory for a few moments by meeting someone who not only attended the game, but also played in it – Pete Rose.

I was at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas returning from a work trip. I strolled through the crowded waiting area by the gate looking for a seat before my flight home to Chicago.

As I sat down in those classically uncomfortable, thinly padded waiting area seats, I looked up to see Rose directly across from me. He was dressed in a funky Reds cap, gold-framed snazzy glasses, a plush hip-hop style warm-up suit and alligator skin cowboy boots. He was stylin’.

Credit: Daniel Case, 2008

Instinctively, within two seconds I blurted, “Mr. Rose.” I was part star-struck and part arrested by the visuals of his clothing ensemble. I was also tumbling backward to being a 10-year-old baseball fan.

The now 74-year-old Rose nodded to me subtly and for the next 30 minutes we talked, discussing in random fashion the blizzard hitting the East Coast, his work in Las Vegas and his trip to a sports memorabilia show in Chicago.

I didn’t bring up gambling, the Hall of Fame or Bud Selig (who hired my Uncle Dick back in 1972) – figuring these topics would shut down our nice chat pretty quickly. I didn’t ask Rose for an autograph or ask him for a picture. I figured this could easily start a flood of interest from others in the waiting area and generate a lot of unwanted attention. It would have ended our conversation.

At one point, I asked him about the 1975 All-Star game.

“Where was it?” he asked.

“County Stadium,” I replied quickly, adding rapid-fire details about Henry Kissinger being there, how the National League won 6-3 and that the Cubs’ Bill Madlock and New York Mets pitcher Jon Matlack were co-MVPs.

Rose smiled and nodded. “I remember,” he said.

Clearly he didn’t remember quite as well as me, I thought. For me that day is burned in my brain. For Rose, I have to imagine, it was just one of his 3,562 games he played in over a 23-year career.

Charlie Hustle

As we spoke, I searched his face for that intense competitor that earned him the nickname “Charlie Hustle,” that hard-charging player who lowered his shoulder and bowled over Cleveland Indians catcher Ray Fosse on the final play of the 1970 All-Star Game. The collision injured Fosse and many believe shortened his career, but Rose’s play won what was an exhibition game at the time for the National League.

I could see that fiery guy – especially when he bristled watching dozens of people stand up and surge forward as the gate announcer began boarding those passengers blessed with airline status. “There’s no way all these people are in first class,” he muttered to me in an annoyed, mildly competitive tone.

The Half-Life of Gambling on Baseball

This year I watched the All-Star game and saw Rose step out onto the field of the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati and receive a huge ovation from his hometown crowd. Seeing this made me wonder how long his ban from baseball will last. For 26 years, Rose has been toxic to baseball because he gambled on the outcome of games.

Is he less radioactive now? Is it possible that the nuclear winter around Pete Rose is starting to thaw particularly under a new Commissioner of Baseball? Is it possible that Rose – as baseball’s all-time leader in total hits with 4,256 – will make it to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame before he dies?

In baseball, I don’t know what the half-life is for gambling on games. I don’t know if it’s less or more than the half-life of using steroids or other performance enhancing drugs.

It does make me ponder broader questions like – how long do grudges last? How long do we hold onto certain events from the past, which have created both lasting memories and accompanying attitudes for us?

Asking these questions makes me think of other recent big anniversaries – the 70^th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). In dropping those two nuclear bombs, between 129,000 and 246,000 people were killed. The world was never the same.

Back in 1945, Pete Rose was 4 years old. Elvis Presley was 10 years old– the same age I was when I sat in Milwaukee watching in awe that memorable All-Star game.

I have to figure that Elvis remembered those bombs dropping, just like so many millions of others did. It’s possible he carried the images of those two mushroom clouds and ensuing human carnage with him the rest of his life. Certainly others did as well.

Memories are tricky that way. Some, like mine, you crave to remember. An annual date or a random encounter with someone sparks the memory back to life and it plays out in your mind like it was yesterday.

Other memories linger in a much less desirable way.  They hang around and  – despite our best efforts to rid our minds of them – we are never actually able to forget.

From "Let It Go" to "Let Her Code"

 If you’re like me and have 1 or more daughters under the age of 10, it’s highly probable that any of the following are true:

• Despite not actually trying, you’ve committed the lyrics of the smash hit song “Let it Go” from the movie Frozen to memory and find yourself at odd times during the day humming it without realizing what you’re doing

• You’ve yielded to your daughter’s plea to either throw a “Frozen-themed” party or, despite harboring doubts, went ahead and purchased her an Elsa costume complete with a golden-braided wig

Well, fellow parents of young daughters, I have a challenge for you. Give your daughters a Frozen gift that will last a lot longer than their Frozen pajamas or the plastic Frozen cups and dishware that are bound to melt when you mistakenly put them on the bottom rack of the dishwasher.

“Move Forward by 200 pixels…”

Have your daughter create a program that lets Elsa skate.

The lesson is part of Code.org’s Code Studio where anyone can learn how to create a simple computer program. Started in 2013, Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color.

On their site, after a catchy introduction to programming featuring Lyndsey – who is, yes, both a fashion model and a programmer – students can jump in and start creating instructions that help Elsa skate up a storm before their very eyes.

Last month, I wrote about sending my two daughters, ages 7 and 9, to an ID Tech Introduction to Robotics camp for a week. The good news is they loved it. I had written about my not-so-secret motivation of wanting to pique their interest in technology and programming given this is where the future jobs and money will be.  

Open, High-Paying Jobs

According to Code.org, by 2020 the U.S. job market will have 1.4 million computing-related jobs and only 400,000 computer science majors. Also, while 57% of bachelor degrees are earned by women, a mere 12% of all college computer science graduates are women.

Not only are technology jobs going to be both abundant and unfilled in the future, but they already are well-represented among the highest-paying jobs on the market. According to Glassdoor’s inaugural 25Highest Playing Jobs In Demand report, 14 are tech jobs, including Software Architect ($131,099 average base salary), Software Development Manager ($123,747), Solutions Architect ($121,522), Analytics Manager ($115,725) and IT Manager ($115,642).

The kicker is that most schools don’t have computer science classes. How weird is that? Per Code.org, computer science classes cannot count toward high school math or science graduation requirements in 26 of our 50 states. This seems so incredibly unwise and ridiculous, I think I could vomit.

Let Her Teach Herself

So, what to do? Parents, this is where you can jump in. Find a timely moment to interrupt your daughter’s play with her Elsa doll, sit her down in front of the computer (Elsa  gown and wig optional, of course) and let her teach herself how to code. After she masters the Elsa skating program (and she will), here are some other things to try:

• Code.org – Through the site’s Code Studio there are also 20 1-hour classes on computer basics. There are also links to local classes as well.

Scratch

• Scratch – This is a free program created at the MIT Media lab targeted for 8-16 year olds. Anyone can use it though. Scratch lets you program interactive stories, games and animations.

• Codecademy – An online education company that teaches students how to code. It boasts that it’s helped millions to date. Take a minute to listen to their stories. They are pretty compelling. 

• Harvard’s CS50 Course – This is a free course delivered via edX that, according to the course description is, an “introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming for majors and non-majors alike, with or without prior programming experience. An entry-level course taught by David J. Malan, CS50 teaches students how to think algorithmically and solve problems efficiently.”

Codin Games

• Play Coding Games – People like games. Kids love them. Games also can be a great way to learn programming skills as they offer very real-time feedback and rewards. Sites like Codin Games and CodeCombat are great for both boys and girls.

“Let Her Code…Let Her Code”

So, give those a shot. I will note that this fall, my wife and I are taking our daughters to Disney World. It will be a first for all four of us. As we stroll through all the wonder that is Disney, I am quite sure I’ll be thinking about a dozen years in the future when, perhaps, my post-college daughters are programming the next version of Disney’s mobile app or devising a new mobile e-payment system.

Perhaps even as a way to coax that vision into reality I’ll start to hum and then even sing out loud, “Let her code…let her code…” Maybe that won’t be as catchy, but the delayed payoff makes up for it.

By the way, mark your calendars -- Frozen 2 in 2018. #LetHerCode

Franklin at 47: The Inspiring Integration of Peanuts

Birthdays are special. Having just hit the dubious milestone of 50 last month, the feeling is fresh for me.  But on July 31, Franklin turned 47 years old and it’s cause not only to celebrate, but to recall how he came to be in the first place.

Franklin is the African-American boy that Charles M. Schulz introduced to his famous Peanuts comic strip in 1968. It’s fair to say Franklin has aged well. Or, well, not at all.

But the story of how young Franklin came to be in Schulz’s world famous comic strip alongside the likes of Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy and Lucy is not one I knew before reading an article in the Washington Post last week.  The author, Post columnist and cartoonist Michael Cavna, did a spectacular job.

“I Needed to Do Something”

In the article, Cavna tells the story of how Franklin was born from the political upheaval and strained race relations of the 1960s. He was the idea of a retired teacher living in Los Angeles named Harriet Glickman.

Courtesy Peanuts Worldwide

Glickman, who is alive and well at 88-years-old today, knew kids. In addition to teaching, she had three children of her own. She knew the power of comics to kids. She also knew that black and white kids didn’t necessarily visualize themselves as being in the same classroom.

In the article, she explained that after the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King she felt shaken and overwhelmed. She felt like she had to do something.

She did.

On April 15, Glickman wrote to Charles Schulz and asked him to consider using the wide reach of his popular comic strip to introduce a black child and show to the world that we can all actually get along. She began her heartfelt, poignant letter as follows:

“Since the death of Martin Luther King, I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help change those conditions in our society which led to the assassination and which contribute to the vast sea of misunderstanding, fear, hate and violence.”

Her letter was kind, direct and respectful. She knew Schulz had no obligation to do anything, but she clearly hoped he would like the idea. And, in fact, he did.

On April 26 Schulz wrote Glickman back thanking her. He said it was a good idea, but he could not do it. He explained that he and other cartoonists would like to include a black character (“Negro” as he stated in his letter), but he feared that it would come across as patronizing to blacks. (To view images of the original letters between Glickman and Schulz, see the Washington Post story.)

He concluded his letter to Glickman writing, “I don’t know what the solution is.”

Fortunately, Glickman did. She wrote Schulz back telling him she planned to pass along his letter to African American friends of hers. She told her friends to write Schulz and share their views. They did. They urged Schulz to integrate Peanuts.

Peanuts Worldwide/UFS & Universal UClick

The letters persuaded Schulz. He got to work on Franklin and revealed his plans to United Features Syndicate, the company that distributed Peanuts to publications worldwide, reaching tens of millions of people. The company questioned Schulz’s decision, but according to Glickman, Schulz told them, “Either you run it the way I drew it or I quit.”

Franklin was born July 31, 1968, appearing on a summer beach with Charlie Brown. Glickman’s idea came to life. Her persistence paid off.

What’s in a Picture?

Peanuts Worldwide

Now, one might wonder, “How much progress in race relations in America can be attributed to including Franklin in Peanuts” True, it’s impossible to tell.

I will say this. It provided a generation of children – specifically my generation – a visual of how we can all get along. When I was a child, for example, I did not know any black children. My neighborhood north of Chicago was all white. My schools were all white.  I do remember seeing Franklin in the comic section. I noticed him. I am sure others did as well.

Detractors might suggest this was just window dressing. The visual presence of a black face amidst an otherwise white comic strip does nothing, they might say.  I would challenge this by suggesting that what we see around us does matter. Visuals do have an impact. They do mean something. They help us see differently, think differently and, perhaps, act differently.

As evidence I would reference another situation involving something visual – a flag.  I see the recent removal of the Confederate flag from flying atop the South Carolina Capitol buildings and also from the capitol grounds in Alabama as people acknowledging that visuals matter.

In this case, removing the Confederate from view acknowledges that we need to distance ourselves from our past of racial prejudice in this country.

The sad commonality between removing the confederate flag from our view in 2015 and Glickman’s letter to Charles Schulz in 1968 is that they both arose from tragedy. King’s death in Memphis, Tennessee spurred many changes, including Glickman's letter and the birth of Franklin. The racially-charged killing of 9 blacks in a South Carolina church led to lowering the Confederate flag and likely more changes.

Part of the legacy of those 9 people killed on June 17 at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina will forever be positive change. Some will say it’s what’s in people’s hearts that truly matters. That’s true. However, what people see matters too. For blacks everywhere, to see that Confederate flag all these years atop government buildings is an insult and a reminder of a violent, unjust and divided past.

I would argue that similar to how the arrival of Franklin has helped some people see a more integrated future, the absence of the visual image of a Confederate flag over the next 47 years will help more people visualize a better future – a future that people like Martin Luther King, Harriett Glickman and Rev. Clementa Pinckney were already able to see quite clearly.

(My thanks to Michael Cavna @comicriffs)

The Brilliance of Collective Intelligence: Hot Toddies All Around!

During a dinner conversation earlier this week with colleagues, I was reminded about the power of collective knowledge and intelligence.  It was an otherwise unremarkable comment about one person’s recent discovery of a hot toddy that sent me down the rabbit hole.

In the days following this dinner, I found myself thinking about three distinct people, their views and what they have in common: (1) Russian investor Yuri Milner and his quest to find life on other planets; (2) learning guru John Seely Brown and his articulate thoughts on the beauty and value of shared knowledge; and (3) computer programming icon Eric Raymond and his firm belief in the “Bazaar approach” to programming and building better software.

 Green Bank Telescope
(Credit: Geremia at English Wikipedia)

First, the hot toddy. Sumesh was here from India working in Chicago. He had just discovered a delicious hot toddy at a nearby watering hole and assumed it was a local drink. His colleague Rajeev, however, explained to us both that the toddy actually has its roots in India where sap from palm trees is fermented to make the drink. From there it made its way west.

This was news to both Sumesh and me,  and it made me smile at how much smarter we are as a collective than as mere individuals. If each of us at the dinner table that night scribbled down all the information in each of our heads, the resulting stacks of notebooks would be mind-boggling. We all know a lot and often that knowledge sits quietly in our heads unspoken and unshared.

“Breakthrough Listen”

Enter into my head Yuri Milner. He’s the 53-year-old Russian billionaire who just plopped down $100 million to answer what he believes is the world’s largest unanswered question: is there life on other planets? Through his “Breakthrough Listen” project, Milner’s money will buy a team of scientists, rent expensive time at three massive high-tech telescopes (in West Virginia, New South Wales, Australia and California) and scan 10 times more of the sky than has been scanned before in hopes of picking up faint pings from other planets that just might indicate life.

Will it work? Who knows? But the world’s top astronomers and scientist, including legendary physicist Stephen Hawking, are behind him. And this won’t be a closed door, scientist-only operation. In the spirit of collective intelligence, we mere amateurs can help.

The Breakthrough team plans to employ the 9 million home computers through the “SETI at Home” project. Started in 1999 at the University of California at Berkley, SETI (standing for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been analyzing radio signals in search of life on other planets. Through its free downloadable screen saver, SETI taps into idle time on people’s computers to analyze data.

Experts say that to date only thousands of the Milky Way’s 200 billion stars have been analyzed. Milner’s project plans to survey 1 million stars closest to earth and the center of the Milky Way and also listen to 100 galaxies farther away.

The Power of Knowledge Sharing

John Seely Brown
(Credit: "JSBJI4" by Joi Ito via Wikipedia)

Milner’s approach builds on the work of the past and will leverage the efforts of many. This is what led me to John Seely Brown and his thoughts on how we build new knowledge. Brown, a former director of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) who earned a math and physics degree from Brown University and a PHD in computer science from the University of Michigan, points out that every document we produce is related to another that’s come before. We see this in footnotes, annotations and text references to other authors and previous works.

To Brown, learning is about discussion and dialogue within a community of people.

Brown wrote, “…perhaps most important, shared documents often provide the basis for disagreement within a community – thereby representing not the ending, but the beginning of a process of negotiation, learning and knowledge sharing.”

I would expect as the “Breakthrough Listen” team harvests data from the telescopes, there will be plenty of debate, discussion and knowledge sharing. And the fact that the data itself will be shared with millions via SETI at Home, I think that somehow, at least in principle, Eric Raymond would be pleased.

How Bazaar? 

Raymond is a computer software developer and advocate of the open source movement. The editor of “The New Hacker’s Dictionary,” Raymond has been an outspoken advocate of one of the core beliefs that unite computer hackers. They believe strongly in information sharing -- both as an ideal and as a practical strategy.

“Hacker,” of course, has a negative connotation these days as it’s associated with security breaches, break-ins and stolen personal and financial data. But the hacker movement itself is not bad. Hacking is an intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and circumventing limitations of programming systems to extend their capabilities.

Part of what perturbs hackers is closed systems, secrecy and keeping knowledge and information confined to only a few people. In his book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” Raymond contrasts what he calls the Cathedral approach to software development from the Bazaar approach. In the Cathedral approach, access to source code is highly restricted to very few developers who can view it, improve it and search for bugs that cause it to function poorly.

Hot Toddy
(Credit: "Hot toddy" by Patrick Truby via Wikipedia)

By contrast, the Bazaar approach is open and many have access. By adopting a more shared, collective approach, the code for these systems improves much more quickly and bugs are eliminated much faster. Raymond states, “With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”  In this case, collective intelligence, effort and knowledge sharing has a practical result.

We can all debate the pros and cons of whether certain computer systems should be either open or closed to many viewers. However, clearly as a collective, we’re smarter. Our knowledge expands exponentially when we’re open to including more and more people. Look, for example, at current trends around crowd-sourcing – the idea of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by getting input or contributions from a large group of people – typically online.

Together we’re more intelligent. We’re better, hands-down. Now, to Milner’s “Breakthrough Listen” project, time will tell whether that collective intelligence will be confined to just the 7+ million minds here on earth or opened up to the minds out there that we have yet to find.

The day we do find them, though, I’d like to be the first to buy them a hot toddy. That is, unless Sumesh beats me to it.