students

Leave a comment Posted on parents, schools, students

There was a special ed teacher who was dressed as a clown—literally.

You read that headline right. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ll say it again.

I knew I was in trouble when I walked into the classroom and spotted a special education teacher dressed up as a clown.

This is just one bizarre sight I’ve seen in my job as a university supervisor of secondary school student teachers that gives me pause about how far standards have fallen in public schools since I retired four years ago.

When the pandemic forced the temporary closure of schools, officials tiptoed around accountability, treating students with kid gloves for fear of triggering mental health wildfires.

Initially, such a policy of not failing students in 2020 who didn’t turn in work or show up for class seemed compassionate.   But the pandemic has been over for a while now, and returning to normalcy doesn’t have a timetable yet. Students are taking advantage of how the system is babying them and society will pay the price with fewer educated people.

If you read about how high school graduation rates have increased in recent years, don’t believe what you are reading.  Schools are handing out diplomas like flyers shoved underneath cars’ wiper blades.  Diplomas are no longer proof that a student has learned anything.

Parents are assuming their children are productive during the school day, but much of their time in classrooms is wasted.  They would be shocked to see the what’s happening. 

Walk into any classroom and you would be more likely to observe a babysitter not an educator.

Teachers seem paralyzed in monitoring students.  Students and even staff members (see “teacher dressed as a clown”) are doing whatever makes them feel good.

  • Kids arriving to class never once removing the backpack off their shoulders as if ready to exit the class before their seat is even warm.
  • Several wear over the ear headphones or in the ear devices, some cover their full head with hats or hoodies (which hide the devices).
  • A constant flow of kids leaving to use the restroom, transferring the pass to the next one like a baton in a relay race, never once forgetting to bring their phones though frequently forgetting to bring their materials to class. 

And all of this while the teacher is up front delivering a lesson that clearly is not reaching its intended audience.

Once I saw a girl—presto, change-o—pull out a handful of McDonald’s fries out of her bag, pass some to her seatmate, then drop the rest down her mouth without detection of the teacher.  The smell alone was a distraction.  This magic trick occurred when students were reading aloud The Diary of Anne Frank.  How could a student concentrate on this sensitive material when all her brain power is consumed with not getting caught doing something that is wrong? 

When I checked with the student teacher about this matter, his response was “I have to choose my battles.”

If he is willing to overlook this, just what battle is he willing to fight for?

Teachers have waved the white flag in terms of controlling students’ addiction to technology. 

Within seconds of a teacher asking a student to leave her phone alone, her fingers are quickly back touching the device.  One student asked her teacher to take away her phone because she didn’t have enough self-control to do it herself.

Right in front of me a girl was facetiming with another student in another classroom.  That meant two classrooms had students running amok.

Kids using laptops are quite adept at clicking from one screen to a next just as a teacher approaches.  Such flipping behavior scrambles their minds resulting in an inability to focus on school work.

Not helping the situation is that some schools have made it a policy to have bowls of free food such as bananas and cheerios placed near the door so kids can grab something before sitting down, thus encouraging eating during class. One time an adult aide went around and picked up all of their food trash . . . for 10th graders.  Not only do they not have to pay for the food, they also don’t have to clean up after themselves.  What’s going to happen to these kids when they will be on their own?

The one lesson students have learned in recent times is that there are no consequences, ramifications or penalties for disrespecting school—they are in charge of the classroom. 

When I point out to student teachers the importance of setting high expectations and training students to be in learning-mode, I get bewildered looks as if I’m asking them something that they are not only powerless to do, but, worse, disinterested in doing.

To them, I appear as an anachronism dressed in a sports jacket, dress pants and dress shoes, so whatever advice I may pass along disappears after our debriefing; clearly, whatever I have to offer is “old-school.”

For college students thinking about becoming teachers, the first pre-requisite should be to visit a classroom for an hour.  It may open up their eyes NOT to enter the profession.

Based on what I’ve been observing as a university supervisor, I sleep well at night assured that my decision to retire was not pre-mature.

Leave a comment Posted on Public Education, students, teachers, teaching

Teaching is Hard but Necessary

Every time the new school year commences you can count on two things:

  • Impatient parents honking horns as they drop off their children at school.
  • A newspaper op-ed piece talking about how hard teaching is.

Almost without fail, the piece is written by someone who has never taught.

As someone who has taught for 31 years, I can vouch for how hard teaching is.  But it’s not necessarily because of unruly students, demanding parents, or overreaching politicians.

For me the hardest part of teaching was the demands that I put on myself. 

I cared deeply about teaching.  It saved me when I was a child.  It saved me when I didn’t have a career.  And it saved me with a decent pension in my retirement.

Most of all, it gave me such a profound sense of importance.  Here I was with 150 kids each day, with the responsibility of taking care of their minds.  That is incredibly stressful.  Except, the nervousness was a good nervousness.

I could not wait to get to work each day.  Teaching kept my mind running at high revolutions.  It’s why once I retired I knew I’d have to find other ways to keep my mind sharp.  Nothing I’ve come up with so far has matched the intensity of working in a classroom.

After a half a year into my retirement, I began working as a university supervisor of student teachers.  It allows me a way to keep a toe in public education by working with young teachers, something I have always enjoyed.

As I sit in a classroom observing the teacher in training trying to figure out if the lesson is working or not, I look at the youngsters sitting in their desks and think to myself how lucky these kids are to have a magician in the room—the educator who is doing her level best in keeping them engaged with material she feels deserves their attention.

The job of teaching has definitely gotten more difficult for myriad reasons.   For me, the attention span of people not just children has diminished precipitously due to technology making it difficult to capture students’ focus and keep it there for extended periods of time.

The trick to teaching today is figuring out how best to keep them involved in learning about things they don’t yet understand nor care about.  The teacher is a guardian of knowledge that she passes down to young people.

That knowledge may be subject matter-based—math formulas, scientific theories, world histories—but more importantly is value-based:  goodness, kindness, decency.

I’ve often said that the classroom is a sanctuary, a place that does not resemble life as it is, rather life as it should be.

That is what drove me to work as hard as I could.  I had a very limited time—180 hours in a year—to get kids to improve themselves as people.

And that is what makes teaching so difficult yet at the same time so rewarding.  Teaching is not for everybody, and certainly not everybody who teaches is effective.  Still, parents should thank heaven for the army of teachers out there who do care, who do give their all, making sure the time spent with their children will be fruitful.

If only a small number of students grow up to be better versions of themselves due to a nurturing teacher, it positively impacts all of us.

Leave a comment Posted on Back to School Night, parents, schools, students

Back to School, Back to Parent Apathy

Imagine if schools made it incredibly easy for parents to attend the two main evening events each year—Back to School Night and Open House—by allowing them to do so from the comfort of their own homes.  How large the turnout would be!

Oh, wait a minute, that availability has already been in place for over a year via Zoom.

The result?  Lower turnout than when parents had to drive over to the school after dinner and walk from classroom to classroom.

At my son’s Back to School Night, there were on average five parents on the video board for each of the six classes.  And my son has four Advanced Placement classes where supposedly the most motivated students are and, one would think, the more involved parents are.

All parents had to do was stop bingeing on “Hacks” and take 90 minutes out of their lives to get to know their children’s teachers.  In other words, show some minor interest in their children’s education.

The conclusion to draw from such a low turnout is that a majority of parents are apathetic and/or lazy.

It’s surprising but not surprising.

If parents don’t care about their children’s education, think of other parenting areas where they come up short in.  I don’t know, things like being selfless, helping others, believing in God and in this country, and, yes, even wearing masks and getting Covid vaccines.

Already too many parents allow their children electronic devices at too early of an age, then look the other way at their children’s internet surfing habits, even allowing them to go into their own rooms, shut the door, and disappear for hours—completely unsupervised.

These children then grow up expecting to do whatever they want to do without barriers or consequences.

And all of society suffers when our culture overflows with these self-absorbed individuals.

Parents need to take a more active role in their children’s lives, starting with getting to know the adults who end up spending more time with their offspring than the parents do themselves:  the teachers.

Leave a comment Posted on classrooms, coronavirus, COVID-19, March 13, 2020, schools, students, teachers

March 13, 2020 – The Day America’s Classrooms Stood Still

Last year at this time, I was still teaching in a classroom with my students.  An ordinary event that only now a year later seems extraordinary.

I marvel at how that final week of me as a classroom teacher after 31 years transpired.

I find it fascinating how the last day of real school was a Friday the 13th.  If you wrote that for a movie, it would seem cliched.

Where I worked, it was the last day of the third quarter, a shortened day ending around 12:30 p.m., right before the start of a one-week spring break vacation.

For the past couple of days, rumors were flying that schools would stay closed an additional week or two, and that schools would not resume until early April.

Two unusual events happened to me during that last week.

On Tuesday, March 10, I had two guest speakers from Cal State Northridge give a one-hour presentation to my 10th grade English students about an upcoming concert that some of them were going to see.  “Violins of Hope” was a traveling exhibit from Israel which was coming to the West Coast for the first time.  Dozens of violins saved from the Holocaust and restored by a master violinmaker would be on display and, more amazingly, played in live concerts around the Los Angeles region.

One of the guest speakers was a violinist who played during the presentation on one of those rescued violins.  It was quite an emotional moment for my students and I.

What made the proceedings surreal was that a city official was invited to watch the mini-concert, and as he came close to me to shake my hand, I temporarily hesitated thinking about the news reports flooding the airwaves about the importance not to shake people’s hands since this new coronavirus spreads through contact.  Yet, shake his hand I did, more focused on not embarrassing him than my own health concerns.  As soon as I could, I sterilized that hand yet still worried throughout the day that I may have caught Covid.

Two days later, March 12, Glendale Unified held its last official school event, the Scholastic Bowl, where five-member teams from all four high schools compete in a game show-like setting on stage in a school auditorium answering questions from an array of academic categories.

I was the coach of Hoover’s team and, like another Hollywood moment, my students won the competition to cap off my 12-year run as coach—what a send-off.

However, a pall was over the two-hour proceedings because the district had announced that no one would be allowed to watch the Bowl in person due to virus concerns.  Only the parents of the students were in attendance to add their sparse applause to the cavernous auditorium.

Less than 16 hours, “have a nice spring break” would be the final words I would ever say to students in my classroom.

Now that is not a Hollywood ending to a 31-year career.  But who knew what was to transpire?

Leave a comment Posted on Back to School Night, parents, students, teachers

Back to School Night (well, sort of)

My wife and I just had Back to School Night (BTSN) for our 17-year-old son who is a junior.   The schedule was the same as in the past where parents follow their child’s daily schedule from Pers. 1 through 6 spending 10 minutes in each class.

Unlike in the past, it was a virtual BTSN from the comfort of our den.  Teachers had the option of holding a live Zoom meeting or posting a video.  Two of our son’s teachers had live sessions while the others videotaped their presentations.  Either way was fine with me.  A parent can easily get a glimpse of a teacher’s personality on tape or live. 

I found the live sessions stranger due to parents who chose to show themselves on camera with attention-diverting backgrounds distracting the rest of us.  The videos had more information allowing teachers to use more visuals economically, though one teacher displayed long blocks of text which she then proceeded to read each word out loud, not a good practice.

As a parent, I have always enjoyed BTSN, finding it exciting to meet the educators who will temporarily spend time with my child and help mold him into a more learned individual.

As a now former teacher, I can’t help but judge which teachers I think will connect with my son and which will not.  Not every teacher can connect with every child.

However, having done 11 weeks of distance learning, I recognize the challenges all teachers face in this anxious period of time in which we live.  We all have to be patient and have faith that in due time things will return to normal and children will return to school.  In the meantime, support your child’s teachers as much as you can.  Emailing a quick “thank you for teaching my child during these difficult times” can brighten a teacher’s day.

Leave a comment Posted on Burbank Leader, Glendale News Press, students, teachers, Uncategorized

Column Ends, Blog Continues

As many of you know by now, the Glendale News-Press, the Burbank Leader and the

La Canada Valley Sun will no longer be published.

This means that you are reading my last column, a column I have written since early 2011.

At that time, the Times was trying out something called the 818 Bloggers and I was part of that crew.

My column, originally called “The Crosby Chronicles,” became “The Whiteboard Jungle”  by 2013.  The main focus was education, but I covered an array of issues that impacted young people.

Even though I wasn’t compensated much for my near decade-long tenure, I took seriously the responsibility of having a voice in the community.

Every other week I would agonize over the column; as any writer will tell you, good writing comes from good revisions.

Early drafts often totaled 1,500 words, too many for a 600-word column.  However, it is easier to delete words than add them, advice I often pass on to my students.

It is also easier to have a meticulous editor, my wife Sherry.

I feel bad for newspapers who have struggled mightily the past few decades with dwindling ad revenue and readership.  Losing journalists is not healthy in a democracy.  Nowadays, more people access internet posts controlled by those who are anything but real journalists.

Next time there is corruption in the cities of Burbank or Glendale, who will report on it?

The public will suffer without the fourth estate as its watchdog, especially at a time when real news gets mislabeled as fake news.

When my editor called me Thursday evening about the paper’s demise, it coincidentally was the same day I turned in my retirement papers to the Glendale Unified offices.  How strange is that?

Yes, come June 12th, after 31 years, I will return to being a private citizen, no longer a public school teacher.  Except for the first 2 weeks in September of 1989 at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles (noted for calculus teacher Jaime Escalante), I have spent all of my career at Hoover High School in Glendale.

I had several ideas for future columns lined up including one about my retirement from teaching.  Now this is a column about my retirement from working.

When people ask me, “are you sure you want to do this” my response:  it is time.  While I still have my health and enjoy my job, I’d rather leave a little too early than stay a little too late.  Besides, as Vin Scully often commented, we are all living day to day.  No one knows what our expiration is.

Still, I do feel that I have something to share, wisdom to pass on, mentoring to perform.

Veteran teachers bring a unique view that only time and experience can nurture.  A reservoir of talented and imaginative people should be tapped at a time when invention of a new way of structuring schools and teaching students is already underway, if only districts would use them in leadership roles.  It is a precious resource too often taken for granted and overlooked.

I want to thank former editor Dan Evans who hired me as well as current editor Mark Kellam.

Most of all, I thank you for reading what was on my mind.   With apologies to Maytag repairmen, writers are the loneliest guys in town.  We perform alone not knowing if anyone out there cares about the words we string together.  Each kind email received made my day.

I cling to the belief that former students now in their 20s, 30s and 40s remember something from the days with Mr. Crosby that has made a positive impact in their lives.  I know their being in my classroom made one in mine.

For those of you who are interested, I will continue writing my blog, the CrosbyChronicles.org, and plan on writing more books.  Email briancrosby1958@gmail.com.

God bless and stay well.

 

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on coronavirus, Distance Learning, Remote Learning, schools, social distancing, students, teachers, teaching

The Birth of Remote Learning

As I write these words I am completing the first week of teaching in a completely new way—without students.

Over the coming weeks I will share with you my successes and pitfalls teaching in a virtual classroom.  Right now, my head is still throbbing with how quickly the world has changed in just a few short weeks.

Recall that old Chicago song, “Does Anybody Really Knows What Time it is?”  That’s how life feels like:  is it morning or afternoon, Wednesday or Thursday, and does the word “weekend” mean anything anymore.

Have you noticed how quiet it is in your neighborhood lately?  Eerily quiet.  Cars are parked in front of houses but there are no people, reminiscent of the first Twilight Zone episode, “Where is Everybody?”

Social distancing hits older folks harder.  Those under 25 have been practicing social distancing most of their lives through texting and apps like Skype and Face Time.  In fact, they are more comfortable not speaking over the phone or seeing each other in person.  Can you imagine how people would have dealt with social distancing just 20 years ago?

Never before has the use of technology been so vital than during this shutdown of America.  Parents who used to shudder at the number of hours their children spent on their devices now view those electronic menaces as lifelines, especially as they scramble how to do their jobs at home.

However, no workers have had to revolutionize their occupations on such a grand scale as have teachers.

Welcome to the birth of remote (or distance) learning which has kicked off all across America this week.

Teachers, students, parents, and school officials are all experimenting with a brand new form of learning all at the same time.  It must be what astronauts felt like when first going into outer space.

Imagine doing a job you have been performing for several years and being told you have one week to do the same job in a completely new way.  It is a humongous undertaking.  New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza described it well, telling the New York Times that “we are literally flying the plane as we’re building the plane.”

One of the negative aspects of the teaching profession that I have addressed frequently is the lack of trust school officials have in allowing teachers to determine how best to serve their clientele, the students.  Too often top-down education trends are forced down the throats of educators with little input.  Teachers are supposed to behave like good soldiers, following the orders of their superiors.

Since this online revolution came out of nowhere so suddenly, education officials were clueless how to proceed.

Credit goes to Glendale Unified School District for stepping out of the way and allowing teachers to decide how to teach remotely.

The district provided teachers with a panoply of webinars and other resources from which an educator could pick and choose which ones to use.  For those with an advanced case of technophobia, the district gave teachers the option of handing out printed materials even though that meant figuring out how and when to deliver them to students.

Never before in all my 31 years have I been so entrusted to make professional decisions on what is best for me in reaching out to my students.

Well, teachers, I hope you are paying attention.  Take advantage of a situation which may never come your way again.   Everyone—students, parents, even principals and superintendents—are counting on you to teach kids in a way that has never been done before.

Once this health crisis is over, and school officials see how heroic teachers met this challenge, hopefully teachers’ stature will rise.

Let’s show everyone what we can do.  Make the country proud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on coronavirus, COVID-19, Gov. Gavin Newsom, pandemic, schools, students, teachers, teaching

Living through a Pandemic

Incredible how our lives teeming with jobs, errands and recreation can be instantaneously wiped clean, filtered down to only one concern:  “Do we have enough toilet paper to get us through the week?”

Going to work and school, eating out, attending movies and concerts, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, observing religious traditions—all halted.  Freeze frame life as we know it.

And the places that remain open such as grocery stores are scenes from a bad end-of-the-world Netflix show.

My son and I have traveled to market to market to cobble together meat, eggs, and peanut butter, standing in lines, standing apart.  We drove by two gun stores in Burbank, each with a line of people outside.  Just what kind of world are we living in?

One where terms like coronavirus, COVID-19 and social distancing have been added to our existence.

It is dizzying to think how much has transpired in the past week.  Gov. Newsom said on Tuesday that schools are unlikely to reopen this academic year.

Funny how the last school day was Friday the 13th.  At that time, it was clear that schools would not resume soon after spring break.  As my students left, I joked to them “Happy Fourth of July!” not knowing how prescient that was.

State testing has been cancelled, the College Board plans on administering Advanced Placement tests online, and graduation ceremonies—well, who knows?

Never before will so many people have to rely on technology to keep them connected to their work and their loved ones.

Glendale Unified teachers scheduled to return to work on March 23 most likely will remain at home, watching webinars on how to design online lessons to salvage the remaining weeks of the spring semester.

A life without doing whatever we want is unchartered territory for all but those old enough to have lived through World War II and the Great Depression.   They remember rationing of tires and sugar, meatless meals and gasless days.  It was not uncommon to ask Americans to sacrifice for the greater good.

The closest most people alive today can relate to any kind of sacrifice would have been the rationing of gas during the oil crisis of 1973 when drivers were only allowed to buy gas based on the odd/even last number on their license plate.

So the idea of giving something up even temporarily is a habit alien to most.  That partially explains why some people, mainly young ones, are not heeding the advice of government officials to stay home unless absolutely necessary.

While we want to believe that during a crisis people’s better parts rise to the occasion, toilet paper hoarding proves otherwise.  How many 24-packs of toilet paper do people need?  Thinking of other people is an ancient practice it seems.

There is a scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life” when the stock market crashes and people run into the Bailey Building and Loan to take their money out.  George pleads with his customers not to drain the limited bank’s money supply, but to only ask for small amounts to get them by in the short-term.  While some take all of their money, others think about George and other customers by limiting their withdrawals.

That’s the kind of neighborly attitude we need right now.

If we are to get through what possibly may be the worst pandemic since 1918 when over 675,000 Americans died out of 103 million, we all have to sacrifice for the greater good.

As I tell my students, the one comforting aspect when studying disasters in history is that we know when they ended.   Yes, the Civil War was horrible, but it was only 4 years long.  But those alive in the 1860s had no idea how long that tragedy would last.

Not knowing how long the current health crisis will last creates anxiety in us.  We don’t know what the coming months will bring.

The one constant that has helped my family cope with this health crisis has been our dog Noble.  He doesn’t care about COVID-19, only that his bowl has food, he has a walk, goes for a car ride, and plays with rope toys.   How delightful to be blissfully ignorant of the dramatic changes we are all enduring.

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on schools, students, teachers, teaching

Foul-mouthed Teens Pollute Learning Environment

Where I work, teachers are encouraged to stand outside their classroom doors to greet students every day, every period.   While I usually do this, more recently I end up inside my classroom with the door shut, shielding myself from the barrage of vulgarities vomiting from high school students.

Just the other day as I stood outside my door, a couple of students were shouting the s-word repeatedly.

As the boys walked past me, I asked them to watch their language.  So what did they do when rounding the corner?   Shouted the expletive even louder.

Welcome to high school 2020, where incalcitrant students run amuck and the adults have lost control of the school campus.

With the erosion of school discipline comes the rise of student misbehavior; neither fear nor shame of consequences or punishments inhibits it.  There isn’t a hair of a hesitation in some students saying whatever they want whenever they want.

I have mentioned before, the environment on public school campuses will only get worse once Gov. Newsom’s new bill kicks in on July 1 when defying a teacher will barely register a disciplinary action.

Each new law limiting schools doling out suspensions is emboldening hooligans to wreak havoc in and out of the classroom.

Smart teachers know not to engage with students who are not their own.  If a teacher chooses to interact with students misbehaving, the situation quickly devolves into a high blood pressure scenario where confrontation and defiance is the rule, and thuggery thrives.  The bad kids go unpunished while the attentive teachers who try to hold students accountable go unsupported.

Students who don’t even know me, see a man as old as their uncle or grandfather, dressed formally in a sports jacket and a tie, who clearly is either a teacher or an administrator, yet my appearance does not matter.  Respecting one’s elders or authority figures is not a behavior practiced in the home or elsewhere.

These foul-mouthed teens don’t care about the feelings of their peers who may not want to hear f-this and f-that all day long at their school.  Oddly, there is a small patch of greenery on campus called the Peace Garden.  And it is there where one will find some of the raunchiest language on a daily basis.  So much for the peace.

It doesn’t help that we have a president who is foul-mouthed, saying “bull—” on live television without concern that children will hear his words.

Schools have cracked down on bullying and sexual harassment, but need to ensure that all disrespectful language is intolerable.

During my conference period recently, I noticed two male students walking ahead of me, brazenly walking past the open gate to the staff parking lot and exiting the campus.

Not one but two security guards were there.  One of the students said “have a nice day” as they exited the campus.

I asked one of the guards if those students just cut class.

He said, “Oh, yes.  They do it all the time.  But our hands are tied.  We are told not to approach them.”

If schools don’t hold the high standard that their campuses are safe havens for non-threatening words and actions, similar to places of worship, then schools fail.  Often it is the one place where they will learn how to be decent and empathetic and kind.  Foul language pollutes the atmosphere of learning which all schools should aspire to.

Once they graduate high school, the opportunity to teach young people how to behave civilly will have vanished, and they will march into society at large, less humane than earlier generations.

 

 

Leave a comment Posted on students, teachers

Diverse Students United in Bowl Goal

For the 29th straight year, Glendale Unified will host the Scholastic Bowl at Glendale High School on Monday night.  Televised locally, this is the biggest academic competition among the district’s four high schools:  Clark Magnet, Crescenta Valley, Glendale, and Hoover.

Having a night that showcases the talents of bright students is welcoming.  Smart kids often get the short end of the education stick; gifted education receives the least funding of any ability-level group.  Yet these high-achieving students are the ones who make their schools shine.  Most aspects of a school that principals brag about have a large amount to do with the contributions of these fine young people.

The first part of the competition takes place a week before the main event when all five-member teams write a one-hour timed essay.  Points earned from this writing are added to each school’s score the following week when the teams converge on stage to answer 25 questions in a group round where collaboration is allowed, then another 50 questions in a buzzer round when only individuals answer.  Two points are awarded for correct answers; one point deduction for incorrect responses.

Each member of the winning team wins $500, second place $250, third place $150, and fourth place $100.  Knapp, Peterson & Clarke, Oakmont League, Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club, Dan Levin Trust, Parker Anderson Enrichment, and Sylvan Learning Center contribute to the awards.

Most years Channel 4 weathercaster Fritz Coleman has served as quizmaster.  This year the emcee will be Channel 7’s weekday anchor Phillip Palmer.

When I was asked by the principal to coach the Hoover’s team back in 2008, I had no idea that I would still be doing it 11 years later.

While I have had the good fortune of having two teams win the competition, for me the joy of being involved with this program is the opportunity to work with some of the brightest young people.  They enjoy each other’s company and have fun showing off their knowledge.

The lowest point occurred two years ago when one of my students forgot to save the essay on the computer which ended up costing us another championship.  This was especially bitter since I was the coach who championed transitioning from handwritten papers to using laptops.

As coach, my main job is selecting the team.  I hold tryouts where I seek five students who collectively are able to answer questions in the five main categories of art, literature, history, science, and math.

For months, we hold after-school practices twice a week where the team watches past Scholastic Bowls, answering the questions “live.”  One team member tracks correct and incorrect answers for each category so we can figure out which students will be stronger in the group round versus the buzzer round (only four students are allowed on stage at any one time).

We even practice using buzzers.  I also give them practice essays which we later evaluate according to the Bowl’s writing rubric.

This year’s team happens to be all-male, comprised of three seniors and two sophomores, each student a different ethnicity—a delightful coincidence.  Their collegiality proves that students from various backgrounds can work well together pursuing a common goal:  to win the Bowl.

It is an important reminder to those who only know Hoover from recent negative headlines that positive experiences also happen on campus.

If you want to see another side of Hoover, come to the Scholastic Bowl this Monday at Glendale High School at 7:00 p.m.  The future will be present on stage representing all 1,600 of their fellow students.