Choose Carefully! As published in Sunday Eunice News on November 30, 2014

As the holiday season begins, our television stations, movie theaters and sales racks are filled with touching holiday stories that melt the heart, and sometimes, make you think about how you could be a better person.

Already, we're watched our umpteenth rerun of “The Wizard of Oz,” “Charlie Brown's Christmas,” “The Christmas Carol,” and maybe even some of the crazy comedies, “Home Alone,” and “A Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Adults may be watching “The Preacher's Wife,” with Cary Grant as the preacher. I have to admit, I really enjoyed the version with Whitney Houston as the preacher's wife.

All of these movies have a redeeming message – even if there may be a gory moment or two in the story line.

Which brings me to question the current rage for “Hunger Games” books and movies. I've listened to my students describe their class-assigned “Hunger Games” often enough to NOT want to read the book or watch the movie. Students recount their memories as we walk from building to building, but, I hear no redeeming value or myth in this series of young adult fiction. All I hear is: do whatever you have to do to survive. Kill or be killed. Trust no one.

For some reason, the third movie of the “Hunger Games” series was released last weekend – not what you would expect for the start of our Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. But, how is it possible, at a time when our purpose should be the teaching of human values that helped our first American settlers to survive, that “Hunger Games” grossed the highest earnings of the year?

I finally decided to watch the movies, read the books, and consult with colleagues to determine whether I was too biased to make this claim. But, my colleagues agree with me: “Hunger Games” has no socially redeeming value. The novels and the screenplays are franchises, business entertainment ventures designed to be as depraved as necessary to rake in profits.

“May the odds be always in your favor,” that cynical phrase spoken to young teens who are forced to kill each other if they want to survive, truly epitomizes the “dystopian” future depicted in this story. The story teaches our youth that cooperation, support, interdependence will get you killed. Social manipulation, cunning, ruthlessness, and the willingness to kill first will keep you alive. Worst of all, the books teach our youth that this is the only way you can survive.

The American Thanksgiving legends that we celebrated this week are the healthiest antidote to this sick futuristic vision. Europeans would never have survived their first years in America if they took up the “Hunger Games” mentality.

I come from the state of Pennsylvania, Where William Penn and his wife Hannah established one of the first colonies, embracing the Quaker philosophy of brotherhood and peace-making. We never see adequate portrayals, but, the first Thanksgivings were celebrations with Native Americans who helped Europeans to adapt to their wild, but harsh new surroundings.

As a Philadelphia native, I was raised to believe that cooperation and interdependence are key to survival. Our very own Benjamin Franklin established the nation's first cooperative fire stations, libraries, hospitals, universities, post offices and an insurance company. Ben Franklin not only helped birth the United States of America by signing the Constitution – he helped it survive by teaching us to cooperate, share, and distribute burdens and risks in a way that ensures the survival of all who strive.

These are the stories our children need to be taught during our Thanksgiving holidays, and throughout the year.

But, alas, I am told children do not want to learn about their history. They want gory, futuristic science fiction or dystopian fairy tales.

Really? Then why, when we watch “Frozen,” do our kids watch with apt attention? Why, when the nation is torn apart with racial strive, do our kids watch “Hairspray” and lip-synch to the lyrics? Why, when we sing the Chipmunks “Christmas Time is Here,” do the kids laugh with warmth and the feeling of safety?

No one can force us to read the books or watch the movies, thank goodness, because we do not live in the totalitarian state depicted in “Hunger Games.” But, children really are healthier when they are steered away from this sick, anti-human philosophy of life towards stories that affirm humanity despite its flaws. Because, when we learn how to live cooperatively, despite our flaws, the odds are good that we will not only survive, but we can all thrive together.

Speaking of flawed mythical characters, have you seen “Fred Claus?” I can't imagine a better movie for families who cope with sibling rivalry. Here's to your family friendly viewing!

Leaders Take Care of their People: Commentary Published in Sunday Eunice News on November 16, 2014

Every Veterans Day, I participate in local celebrations to remember and to honor military mentors who taught me how to be a successful Army officer, and later, a successful public school teacher.

The late General John Stanford (retired) is always on my mind during these ceremonies. When I ran a child development center and other family support programs at Oakland Army Base, General Stanford chose to be my mentor. He elevated my education programs as central to the health of our military organization.

General Stanford often gathered his officers in his home, or at the Officers Club, to discuss his philosophy of leadership: take care of your people, and your people will work very hard to accomplish the mission.

When he retired, Stanford became Superintendent of the Seattle Public School District, with the mission to turn this failing school district around. He put his “people first” philosophy into practice, including the same walk-around management style he used to motivate demoralized Army soldiers who suffered from public disrespect and institutional neglect for more than a decade after the Vietnam war.

General Stanford was so successful as an education leader that he gave the 1996 Education Speech at the National Democratic Convention, and he was cited in many textbooks as a model education leader. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, corporate leaders wanted to reward Gen. John Stanford with a $500,000 bonus. Stanford turned down this money, flatly stating: give it to my teachers, put it in education programs.

Evangeline Parish teachers have not received step increases for more than four years. Some of us experienced pay cuts, even though we've taken on extra duties, our student loads were increased, and we raised our student test scores year after year after year. Our band programs have been severely cut, and there were two massive teacher lay-offs after the economy crashed.

When the state imposes its new health plan, all teachers and staff will take another pay cut, as our governor has chosen to dishonestly balance his budget on the backs of teachers, aides, and support staff.

When the pay cuts, lay-offs, and program cuts were necessary for the survival of our school district during harsh economic times, I was more than willing to do my fair share of belt-tightening.

I don't have children, and I put a good chunk of my pay back into my band classroom, in the hope that we can rebuild our music programs in this parish – because music cutbacks in the past six years have really hurt our students, and it is really hard to rebuild a band program once you completely cut it from your budget.

But, now, I am not so sure the pay freeze is necessary. What caused me to change my mind about our status quo?

It was reported that the Evangeline Parish School Board found it in their heart to award our superintendent, Ms. Toni Hamlin, a 3% salary increase – as a reward for our school district's improved performance scores.

Our buck-trending success was not created in a vacuum, that is, in the Superintendent's office. Our scores went up because teachers, aides, cooks, janitors all went the extra mile on a daily basis.

If the board felt it necessary to give Ms. Hamlin, our highest paid executive this increase to cover the “cost of living,” then, the board should do the same for ALL staff members. If rewards are to be dished out, they should be dished out equitably to every person on the staff.

Sadly, coaches, teachers with extra duties are being told there is no money for fair compensation for their extra effort. Yet, the Evangeline Parish School Board Central Office is giving itself raises and new contracts with built-in salary increases.

At this time of turmoil and mistreatment of Louisiana's teachers and support staff, I miss my mentor, General John Stanford. But, on this Veteran's Day, I am vowing to honor his memory by working for fair treatment of all education professionals. The future success of our school district depends on the fair and equitable treatment of all our employees – not just the handful at the top.

I will always be grateful that General John Stanford taught me first hand his first principle of leadership: if you take good care of your people, they will work hard to accomplish the mission.

It's time for the Evangeline Parish School Board to take care of its people. I hope they will choose to do so, because our students' success is at stake.

"Threat is Real" Published in Sunday Eunice News on October 19, 2014

With constant media coverage of the Ebola virus, you may have missed news reports that the Pentagon released its Climate Change Report, assessing international threats to our security when coastlines, water supplies, floodplains are impacted by sudden climate events.

It's hard to imagine this august Republican institution having the fortitude to admit that climate change is a very real threat to American security – especially before an election.

But, climate change is real. Everyone in Louisiana knows this first hand. We lived through terrible storms that destroyed large segments of New Orleans. Our coastal lands are disappearing at an unbelievable rate. Our children carefully assess storm threats to determine whether they should be happy for a weather holiday, or fearful that they might lose their roof or their house. Again.

The Pentagon does not prescribe actions we can take to prevent climate change in its report. It boldly claims the effects of climate change are real, and they are here to stay.

The military is not only worried about the impact of climate change on its overseas bases. It is worried that countries can be overrun with terrorists when climate change destabilizes foreign governments.

This may be hard for Americans to imagine, since our media focused on the hundreds of thousands of humanitarian deeds committed by our citizens who responded to the Hurricane Katrina disaster with compassion and the belief that we owed survivors every effort to restore their communities to their former glory.

But, most of the effects of climate change do not happen with sudden events like Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Most of the effects are gradual: water sources dry up. Land is swallowed up by the oceans.

Louisiana's coastal land is disappearing at a frightening rate, but, we don't seem to notice it, because it's not happening within a 24 hour news cycle.

Our nation still believes in safety nets and emergency humanitarian response. When communities lose their water, we ship in water and ice. When towns are flooded, we ship in shelter, water, ice, food, and thousands of workers to help get the town back to some semblance of normalcy.

In its report, our Department of Defense claims that most of the 63 or more nations where our military has bases will be completely destabilized and vulnerable to terrorism. Why? Because these countries do not have that same capacity to rush in and save their people from climate change disasters as we do in this country.

When I served at Fort Polk as the first female chaplain in the Second Armed Cavalry Regiment, I learned a lot from the men and women who ran water purification and other basic operations necessary for humans to live in areas where water is contaminated.

There were a couple of huge disasters along the Mississippi River that put our country on notice about the reality of climate change. Our water purifiers chomped at the bit after every disaster, hoping they would be sent up to Minnesota and other northern states to help restore clean water to the region.

Thank goodness, we still believe in the Common Wealth as a nation. Thank goodness, we still believe in working for the Common Good. Because whether or not this nation embraces the Pentagon's Report on Climate Change, disasters will continue to happen in our nation and abroad.

As long as we continue to believe that it is our duty to work to save our people from the impacts of climate change disasters, we won't have to worry about Terrorists taking over our communities.

But, how do we teach the leaders of the 63-plus nations where we have military bases that their first duty as a government is to protect their people, their resources from the very real damage to their nations inflicted by climate change?

How do we pull together as a nation and as a world community, and rise above the foolish politics of climate-change denial, and work proactively to prevent the devastation that comes with disappearing coastal land, contaminated water, flooded towns and cities, and the diseases that happen when our safe water supplies are contaminated?

I would love to hear our politicians and our elected officials address these questions with common sense answers that reflect our highest values as Americans. We deserve nothing less.

http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf

Secretary White Bends the AP Facts: Published in Thursday Eunice News on Auguest 16, 2014

   Did you watch John White’s interpretation of Louisiana’s “Advanced Placement” scores on TV last week? Secretary of Education White is claiming a success because Louisiana moved from near bottom to about 38th in the number of high school juniors and seniors taking AP placement courses last year (2013-14).

Sounds like an amazing improvement, except for one thing: The vast majority of Louisiana’s AP test takers fail the test.

Our high schools are forced to enroll students in this commercial, for-profit program on the theory that “rigorous” AP classes will prepare our students for college success. Our school performance score depends on the number of students who take and pass AP classes.

White thinks we should celebrate that our state ranks 38th for participation rate. (The accolade comes from the company that designs and sells the classes to our state.) But, the percentage of students who actually passed the tests declined from 34.1% in 2013 to to 30.3% in 2014.

I solidly believe that human beings learn from failure. But I don’t understand how White is serving our students by forcing them to take classes they are not prepared to pass. Professional educators (White is a Teach for America survivor and a political appointee) would never claim they were successful as teachers if only 30% of their students passed their classes.

Can you imagine being forced to put a certain kind of roofing on your house, and then, after the first rain, you discover only 30.3% of your roof works to prevent water damage? Secretary White forced you to put that roof on your house, and he claims success, because at least, your shed is still dry.

Can you imagine being forced to buy a certain brand of Thailand crawfish, only to find that 69% of the product is not consumable? Metaphorically speaking, Secretary White is forcing you to buy that product, and he claims he did a good thing because his corporate backers told him Thailand crawfish is a better crawfish than our own home-grown products.

Why did news outlets participate in White’s deception about our rankings? Why did the media fail to check the facts before giving this con man free press? We may rank 38th in the number of students taxpayers subsidized for AP classes, but we are 49th in passing rate.

White is hiding data and facts from the public. Data that should be on the state website is missing.

Every week, I check the Louisiana Department of Education website to see if White has the courage to post real information about our school and district performance on state LEAP, End of Course tests, and college preparatory ACT and Advanced Placement (AP) tests.

Alas, when you go the state website, you can only find clear, honest data for the school years prior to White’s takeover of the Louisiana Department of Education.

Google helped me track down the real facts from the College Board, facts printed as a table by The Times Picayune. The passing rate for all those taking the AP test in Louisiana was down four percent; women passing declined by 3 percent, African Americans by almost 1 percent.

If White would give us the true data, parents and teachers could work together to fix the problems that contribute to our declining scores.

If AP courses are necessary for the neighborhood schools to survive, for example, they need to be run properly. All AP instructors would need to be exempt from White’s mandatory “COMPASS” teacher evaluation system.   I was trained by the lead AP Music Theory test designer. He insisted that students could only pass the music test if they engaged in rigorous drill and kill. When I explained his teaching methods would get us fired as Louisiana public school teachers, he had a few choice words to describe the foolish COMPASS rubric that is dragging down our achievement scores.

AP classes need to be run as full-year classes. Louisiana high schools embraced the one-semester block program, making it impossible for teachers to do adequate instruction and review before the tests are administered in the spring.

Our Secretary of Education may have forced all these conflicting changes on our public schools with good intentions, but, in every instance, the outcome has been disastrous.

Our children’s future is at stake. We cannot afford to put them in situations where 70% fail because of bad policies and bad financial investments.

It’s time for the media to stop re-telling John’s Big White Lie.

For more information you can google these sites:

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/10/louisiana_sees_some_improvemen.html

http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/rtn/10th-annual/10th-annual-ap-report-state-supplement-louisiana.pdf

No thanks, Bill Gates!

Bill Gates was on MSNBC's “Morning Joe,” and in his efforts to promote the “Common Core,” he proved that corporate billionaires are as qualified to run our nation's public schools as donkeys are qualified to design his Microsoft software.

Gates insisted that until US schools embrace “Common Core” we will always lag behind twenty or more countries in our scores on a test that is wrongly used to generate education policy in the United States.  The test is “Trends in International Mathematics and Science.”

Then, Mr. Gates proceeded to contradict himself by insisting that American education needed to copy the Korean, Singapore and Peoples Republic of China school designs – because he does NOT believe America has the right teaching strategies for academic success.

How did Bill Gates contradict himself?

Gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars to campaign  vigorously to impose “Common Core”  teaching methods on US teachers.   Bill Gates wants to walk into any classroom in the United States and see it filled with sharply focused eager children who work independently, inventing new math ideas without any direct instruction from teachers.

As if every child were a Baby Bill Gates, or a Baby Beethoven, or a Baby Einstein,  Common Core proponents believe our children will “invent” new mathematics with no time spent learning math facts. Or, they will write symphonies without learning to read music.  Or, they will become astronauts with endless hands-on lab experiences, and very little time spent acquiring foundational knowledge.

There's no doubt in my mind that every teacher in Louisiana WOULD embrace the “Common Core” discovery teaching methods if our schools were wealthy like the private schools where Bill Gates sends his children.  If American schools were run like Finland's public schools where every student is given exactly the same amount of classroom materials, computers and teachers, we could probably replace Finland as the top scoring nation.

When MSNBC interviewers asked Bill Gates if he wanted the US to follow the Finnish model of public education to improve our science and math scores, he flatly said “No!”  

Bill Gates wants American public schools to become more like Singapore, South Korea and People's Republic of China public schools.

His incredulous host asked why, and Bill Gates gave these answers:  1) they have better school demographics, 2) their schools are cheaper to run because they pack 40 to 50 students in a classroom.  

Singapore, South Korea and China do not embrace the Common Core in any way.  In fact, these countries use very rigid rote memorization models.  If you've ever been to South Korea or the People's Republic of China to observe their schools, you would know firsthand that the mass majority of students engage in memorization, vocabulary building, mastery of the written English language, and strict adherence to traditional mathematics methods.   There is no diversity in their schools.  Students with disabilities are put in orphanages.

Children in these countries DO NOT spend hours a day in the gym or on the football fields after school.  They DO NOT spend weeks preparing for homecoming, proms, all night basketball tournaments, school day golf matches, etc.  Instead, students with college potential have NO free time.  NO social time.  Early in the morning, they walk to private academic tutors.  After school, until six or seven p.m. students walk to private academic tutors to ensure they mastered materials required for university entrance exams.

The South Korean birth rate is the lowest in the world.  Policy analysts attribute this fact to the agony families go through once their children enter the public school grind of tutoring, testing, memorizing, testing some more.  The South Korean government is discouraging college education, because the country already has too many college graduates who cannot find jobs.

Obsessive focus on teaching math, English and science will not guarantee academic success in our children, nor will it improve the American economy.

Why would Gates preach “Common Core,” and then, contradict himself by rejecting Finland's success model and instead, pushing for standardized tests, large class sizes, and Korean-style drill-and-kill instruction?   Well, Finland does not believe in high stakes tests.  There's no market in Finland for Bill Gates to “monetize” education for his own personal gain.

But, Americans have to decide for themselves.  Do we want our children to be educated the Chinese way?  The Korean way?  The Finnish way? Or, the American way?  If we believe in the American public education model with its traditional wealth of art, music, dance, sports, vocation and industrial arts classes, we must fight to save it.

Bomb Threats Are Not Jokes - Published in Sunday Eunice News on September 28, 2014

A plague recently invaded Louisiana. Teenagers have been making bomb threats in our public schools at an alarming rate across the nation.  In the past few weeks, we've had four bomb threats in Rapides Parish. Other threats were made in Baton Rouge, Slidell, and most recently, Mamou.

Not surprisingly, the threats have typically been naïve hoaxes. Students left notes, drawings, email messages or phone calls to convey an impending threat to the school on a beautiful sunny afternoon, knowing full well that our buildings would be evacuated.

Or, they conspired with their friends to call in threats from some remote location.

In their teenage minds, the scares were only meant to guarantee free social time with their friends for a few hours until buildings, lockers, cars, and individuals are screened by professional bomb squads. In their thoughtless minds, creating a bomb scare was easier than taking that weekly quiz in French or Physics.

Fortunately, in every recent Louisiana bomb scare, the bomb threats proved to be pranks. No one was physically harmed. But, no one can afford to treat these stunts as if they are “normal teenage pranks.”

In the moment, no one does. Administrators, teachers, police, fire departments, state and federal agencies all work swiftly to move our children to safety, and to scour the premises for any trace of weapons that can hurt our students.

Parents converge outside safety zones to pick up their children when they get word that schools are under lock down.

But, when these scares are over, the real work begins: investigations to figure out who made the threats. Then, criminal prosecution of the prankster “to the full extent of the law.” The Louisiana penal code prescribes the following punishments for bomb threats:

100. Whoever willfully communicates or causes to be communicated such a threat thereby causing either the evacuation or serious disruption of a school, school related event, school transportation, or a dwelling, building, place of assembly, facility or public transport, or an aircraft, ship or common carrier, or willfully communicates or causes serious public inconvenience or alarm, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than 3 years nor more than 20 years or imprisonment in the house of correction for not less than 6 months nor more than 21/2 years, or by fine of not less than $1,000 nor more than $50,000, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Our children need to be taught the difference between a harmless prank and a serious crime. It is up to our parents and guardians to set limits on their children's sense of humor. It is up to our parents and guardians to teach their children right from wrong.

If your child turns out to be the prankster, it will be too late to argue to the judge “this was just normal teenage behavior.” Your child will do the time if they did the crime.

Bomb threats are NOT jokes. Bomb threats are acts of terrorism. To paraphrase Willy Nelson, “Mama don't let your children grow up to be terrorists.”

Curbside Recycling - Published in Eunice Sunday News on Sunday, September 20, 2014

Our schools do a great job of teaching students the importance of recycling.  By sixth grade, my students often make suggestions about how to “reduce, reuse, and recycle.”

Our state Department of Environmental Quality encourages recycling at home, in the office, in schools and in the community.  It has many suggestions for products that can be donated to charities, and suggestions for composting to give a second life to our yard clippings and other organic materials that could enrich our garden soil.

I’ve often wondered why we have two trash pick-ups per week in Eunice, but, no curbside recycling.  To recycle, we have to haul our recycled glass, paper, plastic and electronic items to the recycling center.

Don’t get me wrong.  Our trash pickup service is wonderful, and very dependable.  And, I am always amazed when I see tree limb piles picked up after storms, regular as clockwork.

And, our St. Landry Recycling Centers are beautiful sites – sparkling clean, very well- organized.  But, their hours of operation are not compatible with work schedules for many adults.  To use these centers, I have to store my recycled bins for months at a time until that rare day comes along when I am off before the Center is closed.

Curbside recycling benefit s most of our working families, and it can be handled in different ways.  Some towns provide two or three bins to each home.  On designated days, residents set out their sorted recycle products for pick up.   This model is known to increase recycling participation, and to reduce the use of landfills.

There is a town in Pennsylvania that makes it even easier for families to recycle.  Residents are given one bin per household.  All the family’s recycle products are placed in that one bin, then, sorted at the town’s recycling centers by paid staff.  This town’s financial manager proved that this model of curbside pickup of single bins with sorting at the recycle center was actually more cost effective. But, it also encouraged more people to use the program, saving the town landfill costs.

There are other ways for us to reduce our trash volume, perhaps making it easier for the town to switch to curbside recycling collection days.

To encourage reduced purchase of unnecessary packaging and disposable products, the town of Vineyard Haven used to sell $2 tickets for each trash can they emptied.  We could recycle all we wanted for free, but, for trash destined for the landfill, we had to pay $2 per can.  No ticket, no pickup.

At first I thought this was ridiculous, and I was sure it would be more expensive for the home owner than the old fashioned monthly fee that we were charged for water and sewage. 

But, paying by the can to dispose trash proved to be quite effective in changing the habits of home dwellers.  Even though I moved away decades ago, I still limit trash accumulation by avoiding unnecessary packaging, and by using reusable containers, dishware, etc.

Some towns make it easy to dispose of toxic waste and electronics by having special curbside pickup of these materials on designated days each year.    And, of course, Eunice and every other town has thrift stores where we can drop off our “gently used” reusable clothes and furniture.

Why am I raising this concern for your consideration?  Because soon, we will be voting for City Council members and other elected officials.

A few years ago, a politician knocked on my door one day to ask for my vote for City Council.  I told him I would vote for him if he would support curbside recycling.  It hasn’t happened yet, but, there is an election coming up.

I’d go to council meetings to make proposals myself, but, I would like to know if this idea would benefit your family.  If you support the idea of curbside recycling, please tell your candidates.  And, I hope you will send me an email at marie.deyoung@gmail.com.    If there is enough interest, I will do my own fair share of advocating for this practical change to our Eunice Recycling programs.

That September Morn... Published in Sunday Eunice News on September 14, 2014

Alan Jackson's song, “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning on that September Morn?” came to mind this week as we approached the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Life was idyllic for me as a first year rural teacher on that September morn. Teaching band and choir to about 175 students, I drove 45 miles on narrow, hilly country roads, greeting deer, horses, cows, llamas and alpacas as they poked their noses out on the roads to see who was intruding on their playground.

Although I just finished extended weekend Army Reserve duty in Omaha, Nebraska, my peaceful drive to school on Tuesday morning reminded me it was a good choice to put military life behind me.

As I neared school, NPR announcers began describing a plane accident in lower Manhattan. I switched stations, as I did not want to cloud my brilliantly sunny day with images of a major plane accident.

In my first hour, junior high band students ran into the class, and begged me to turn on the television to watch “the Terrorist Attack in New York.” After checking with my colleagues to confirm what was happening, I declined to turn on our classroom television. “No, you can watch this tonight with your parents. Let's take out our instruments.”

We played the National Anthem, with reverence. Then, the band played “God Bless the U.S.A., which we were learning for Veteran's Day. All day long, my students sang and played patriotic and faith-filled songs. The choir sang “Amazing Grace,” and “From a Distance.” Fifth graders were not concerned at all that the world had stopped turning. They honked on their clarinet mouthpieces and buzzed their trumpet mouthpieces as if they were in the woods hunting ducks with their families.

That afternoon, I drove 40 miles to the university for my french horn lesson, numb from listening to sober radio reports. My very young professor probably thought I was being ultra-dramatic when I said to him, “We are at war. The most intelligent thing that happened today was that the airlines were shut down once we figured out we were being attacked.”

Later in the week, my high school students wanted to discuss the attacks in class. They had all kinds of theories about who our enemies were. When I told my students I performed many wedding ceremonies at the World Trade Center Towers, and so, it saddened me to think of all the couples who might have been at the site on that day, they asked why I was crazy enough to move to rural America. They could not imagine how a world traveler could choose to live in such remote conditions where “nothing ever happens!”

“Ah, but, that's why I moved to rural America,” I told them. “Nothing like that would ever happen to us out here. We are safe from all that chaos and violence.”

I never promoted military service after Nine-Eleven, because I could not imagine putting my students in harm's way. It is my hope, as a teacher, to provide possibilities that have nothing to do with war and violence.

On Nine-Eleven anniversaries, I often play Alan Jackson's tender ballad, because it expresses the deepest American values that enrich us, and it puts us in touch with the humanity that will bring us real safety and security in this world:

I'm just a singer of simple songs

I'm not a real political man

I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell

You the difference in Iraq and Iran.

But I know Jesus and I talk to God

And I remember this from when I was young

Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us

And the greatest is love.

Thirteen years later, we still can't tell the difference between Iraq and Iran. I don't know if it is possible to turn our national hearts and minds toward the path of love, but, I sure do think we have to try.

We owe it to our young troops who served faithfully to end this war. We owe our young soldiers a plan for peace so they can come back to the best America has to offer – quiet living in the middle of “nowhere” rural towns where they can safely raise their children to sing simple songs about faith, hope, and love. 

The Four B's of School Leadership: My Sunday Eunice News Column for September 7, 2014

Most school improvement programs today require school principals to become “instructional leaders.” This is quite a shift from traditional expectations for rural superintendents and building principals.

Before the No Child Left Behind Act was passed and signed into law by President George Bush, K-12 school leaders across the nation spent most of their time satisfying parents' concerns about school logistics and school discipline.

Over the years, I've seen principals and small town superintendents work ungodly hours just dealing with beans, balls, buses and behavior issues.

These leaders were successful most of the time because they treated their teachers as professionals, and they saw themselves as agents who gathered resources and ran school logistics in such a manner that teachers could easily and independently plan and deliver instruction consistent with state academic standards.

When NCLB became law, there was a lot of resistance to the idea that school administrators had to become instructional leaders. I've heard many a superintendent and principal insist that they had no time to be Chief Educator. To keep their jobs, they had to spend most of their time satisfying parental concerns about beans, balls, buses, and behavior. Their tenure depended on the satisfaction of parents and school board members, based on their overall management of cafeteria, sports, transportation, and school discipline issues.

But, the paradigm shift is not at all a bad idea. It's just badly implemented most of the time, because public schools rarely have the financial resources to expand their administrations to invest in instructional leadership at the building or school district level.

The State of Louisiana Board of Education, for example, implemented rigid policies about how teachers should teach, with the expectation that classroom instruction would flow the same way in every classroom regardless of subject, student ability, or access to textbooks and computers. Every classroom, every student should look, act, and perform the same way, as if teachers were packaging McDonald's Hamburgers rather than developing the minds and hearts of children.

And, now, using the “Compass” evaluation system, Louisiana has completely undermined the value of instructional leadership, as it was intended to push our schools to higher levels of achievement.

Under “Compass,” principals are supposed to walk around with their clipboards, and downgrade teacher effectiveness if they notice any deviation from the teaching formula that our State Superintendent of Education now requires of all teachers – whether or not the deviation produced better learning in the classroom.

The Compass system encourages principals to downgrade teachers if they engage in direct instruction – even when research shows that at-risk students make greater achievement gains when teachers use direct instruction methods.

Under “Compass,” principals are supposed to walk around with their clipboards, and downgrade teacher effectiveness if they notice that a teacher is not using technology – whether or not the school provides the teacher with technology.

Even when teachers produce high levels of achievement in their students, our state education superintendent has instructed principals to still downgrade teacher evaluations, on the bizarre theory that teachers will work harder if you devalue their accomplishments.

Sadly, there are a few school administrators in Louisiana who have embraced this negative instruction leader model, because their own evaluations now depend on compliance with the Compass System. Is it any wonder that school teachers are leaving the profession they love in droves?

At the outset of NCLB, there was much discussion about whether or not schools needed to have larger administrative staffs in order to accomplish this major shift of responsibilities for top administrators.  Other industries have much smaller supervisor to staff ratios, the reasoning went. So, if we really wanted to improve classroom instruction, we needed to reduce the number of teachers each principal supervises, to make it possible for principals to more closely monitor their teachers.

My own dissertation results showed an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent on administration – the more more money spent on administration, the lower the math and reading scores. Conversely, the more money that was spent inside the classroom, the higher the achievement.

Of course, money spent in the classroom needs to be spent wisely on instruction materials, smaller class sizes, highly-trained, certified teachers and student support systems.

Since the Compass evaluation system was implemented under Superintendent John White, Louisiana's teaching profession is being reduced to a cookie cutter recipe of behaviors that are not based in research, history, psychology, or best practices. Rather than providing instructional leadership, White expects principals to monitor superficial behaviors of teachers and students, with the expectation that both will move and act with robotic precision.

Our children and our schools performed much better when our teachers were permitted to act as professionals. Until Louisiana's administrators are allowed to be positive instructional leaders to their team of professional, certified teachers, it may be best for administrators to focus on what they do best: keep everybody happy with a steady flow of beans, balls,buses, and behavioral interventions.

Sugar Loading At Recess - Eunice Sunday News Commentary Published Aug 24 2014

No matter where your child goes to public school these days, there are all kinds of restrictions about what they can eat during the day.

Typically, students can not bring their own canned or bottled beverages.  But, they can bring their own sandwiches or packed lunches. They can not buy bottled water in the lunch room. If they are thirsty, they must sip from the school fountain before they sit down with their peers.

Classic lunch favorites, such as green beans dripping in bacon fat, or nachos with generous helpings of cheese and sour cream disappeared from school lunches years ago.  Tacos and burgers are now made according to strict dietary guidelines - both are dry and crumbly as if our school children were already diagnosed as cardiac patients.

Last time I taught in New Orleans, fresh vegetables were not served to students.  One advantage of teaching in rural schools is that we usually have real vegetables on our menu every day. But, according to new guidelines, fresh salads will typically consist of a few lettuce leaves and a slice of tomato.  A fruit serving typically consists of a condiment cup filled with a few slices of orange or apple.

I haven't seen bacon bits in my school lunch vegetables in a decade.  Last year, sugar content in flavored milk and juice was reduced so much, I wondered if I should bring my own sweetner to the table.

Since the new school fitness craze took effect, homemade cinnamon rolls have been reduced to two-bite portions.  Federal USDA lunch guidelines suggest lunch chicken, beef, pork,and shrimp portions be reduced to one ounce servings - another two or three bite portion.

Pasta and bread portions were reduced so much that adults and kids alike question whether they are getting a healthy lunch or a quick snack in the cafeteria, because they are still hungry after eating their stinty Weight Watchers portions.

Last but not least, school lunch desserts have become a thing of the past. Once in a while graham crackers or a ginger snap cookie will appear at the end of the food line, right before we charge our bird food lunches to our school lunch accounts.  But, for the most part, fruit doubles as a dessert.

It is quite an understatement to say that school lunches have changed drastically these past few years.  Across these United States you can read many reports about disatisfaction with school lunches, because they are so  utterly lacking in serious calorie content -- however more nutritious they might be.

At afternoon recess, students stand in long lines to buy candy, sugar sodas, and other junk food, because they are still feeling the pangs of hunger.

Most public schools benefit from this irony, because recess junk food sales produce huge profits for cash-strapped school budgets. But obviously, the amount of candy and soda cosumed through school fundraising canteens essentailly cancels out any health benefit sought by mandating strict caloric intake in the school cafeteria.

If America is real in its quest to reduce medical costs by reducing childhood obesity, I don't think it will ever be enough to impose starvation diets in the lunch room.

A better option would be to provide enough protein, compex starch, and vegetables in our school lunches to fill our kids' tummies. At the same time, we would need to provide our schools with enough funding to cover the cost of building maintenance, sports programs, enrichment activities, etc.Policies to promote healthy eating habits in our children deserve praise, no question. 

Children shouldn't have to buy cokes and sugary snacks in order to fix wiring or repair buildings. Because they will eventually pay a huge personal price when their diets result in diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Of course, We will pay that price, too, in skyrocketing medical and disability costs. 

We may need to look beyond the lunch room to the recess sugar fix in order to cure what ails many of our kids: their access to junk food that calms their food cravings but does nothing to build healthy bodies or strong minds.

How does that saying go, "An ounce of prevention is worth of pound of cure?"  When it comes to childhood obesity, we may need to look beyond the lunch room to the recess candy stand to get to the heart of prevention.

Copyrighted August 20, 2014

Hazing Does Not Build Great Teams -- Published in Sunday Eunice News on August 17, 2014

You may have seen the Ohio State University Band animate half- time with their amazing Michael Jackson moonwalk. It is hard to imagine that this extraordinary band is under investigation for serious hazing activities, but, they are.

This time of year, bands, spirit clubs and sports teams are practicing hard and doing all kinds of activities to build team spirit. In college, freshmen are shopping around for clubs and fraternities for social support. All organizations have initiation rites to welcome new members and help them feel like they fully belong. These rites should be public, safe, and designed to build positive social relationships.

Too many organizations still confuse welcoming initiation rites with hazing, which is why we are still reading about il- legal hazing practices in high schools and colleges across the U.S.A.

What’s the difference? If an initiation rite is safe, no one will be harmed physically, emotionally, or socially. The persons inducted to a group will feel that they belong, that they have a positive role in the group, and that their time spent with the group can blossom into lifetime friendships.

Hazing causes physical or psychological harm. In Louisiana, hazing is illegal, thank goodness. Those who haze or permit hazing can be fined and/or imprisoned for 10-30 days if convicted. Students who haze can be expelled from school.

Sadly, our most popular leaders and students can be caught up in hazing incidents. Students who want desperately to belong will go along with hazing if they think they will be accepted by their peers.

Teachers, coaches, band directors have tolerated the practice, or actively encouraged hazing in the misguided belief that hazing is a form of discipline or character-building. But, hazing does not build strong character. Hazing creates an abusive atmosphere of meanness and intimidation.

Some of us are old enough to remember relatives who served in the military during its worse days – the Vietnam era, when soldiers were physically abused and psychologically demeaned. After that war, there was a severe leadership crisis. But, the Army worked hard to change its culture for the better.

I was lucky to attend Officer Candidate School at “Fort Benning’s School for Boys” in the early 1980's – when the military worked hard to create a positive training culture – welcoming of diversity, welcoming of men and women who brought all kinds of skills and talent to their lives as soldiers.

Of course, soldiers were rated for their character traits, then, as now. We studied all kinds of reflections from leaders who kept their soldiers together in battle. I learned my best leadership lessons there. The first was how to correct behavior in my subordinates. We were required not only to memorize, but to live up to Schofield’s Definition of Discipline:

The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instructions and to give commands in such a manner and in such a tone of voice as to inspire in the soldier no feeling but and intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey. The one mode or other of dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due others cannot fail to inspire in them regard for himself; while he who feels, and hence manifests, disrespect toward other, especially his inferiors, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.

There’s no question in my mind that those teachers and coaches who have tolerated hazing in the past had very good, but very misguided intentions. They wanted to build discipline in their organization. But in fact, if discipline happened, it was in spite of the hazing.

As a parent, let your child know that under no circumstances should they participate in or be victim to any kind of hazing. Hazing is not welcoming. It is not good discipline. Hazing is a crime, not worthy of any sport or extracurricular activity in your child’s life. No matter how much prestige that group has in the moment, at some point, their hazing culture will be exposed.

Hopefully, before serious damage is done.

Begin Anew with Self-Confidence! - Sunday Eunice News Commentary published August 10, 2014

The new school year is upon us! We've stuffed our backpacks and classrooms with supplies and gadgets. We bought new clothes, new shoes, new accessories to mark our new beginning.  We are gradually adjusting our bed and wake-up times to conform to the demands of our school bus schedules. We've stopped by the office to pick up our schedules, pay fees, drop money in the school lunch account.

What's left?  Attitude adjustment.  Did we spend enough time this summer reflecting on our school experiences to get rid of our tired negative attitudes that may have crept up on us sometime between prom night and the last day of school?

Believe it or not, student, parent, teacher and community attitudes towards learning are highly predictive of student success.

When children have high “self-efficacy” beliefs, that is, the belief that they can accomplish academic tasks, they tend to perform much better in school.  They have a clear view of what their strengths and weaknesses are, and they know what they have to do each day to improve their skills and knowledge.

Children who have confidence in their self-efficacy can persist and work hard to solve school problems.   They have academic “resilience,” the ability to hang in there when the going gets tough.

There have been many studies that show that parents and teachers need to have  high self-efficacy ratings, too, for themselves and for their children if their children are to believe that they are strong learners.

When parents or teachers start with the premise “this child can't learn this,” the child is less likely to learn what is considered within their grasp by education experts.   Hence, it is important to foster positive “self-efficacy” beliefs in ourselves as well as our children and our students.

How do we do this?  For one, it is very important that materials taught are age and developmentally appropriate.  There's no sense in thrusting a third grader into a college level romantic literature class and telling them, “they can do it,” because the material is too advanced for their stage of life. They would not fail, but, they would believe they failed.  Teaching materials that are timely to a child's development is key to instilling self-efficacy in each child.

Students must also be taught how to figure out their own mistakes, how to build knowledge by looking for strategies and solutions if they discover they were off-base.  To do this, we must teach them to be confident in their study habits, persistent in their goal of understanding, and joyful that they have this God-given ability to learn new things every day.

Why bring this up at the start of the year?  I recently attended a celebration at my elementary school. A group of us talked about old times (40-50 years ago) as if we were still living in that era, when nuns slapped the wrists of naughty students, and publicly berated students for missing answers in ways that were so cruel, my classmates still felt the sting when we gathered on that reunion

Many of my peers had parents and teachers who told them over and over “you are not college material.”   They did not go to college.  My own parents were oddly different, expecting us to do our school work, and to prove our smarts by reading big books and writing from our imagination.  “You can do anything you put your mind to,” was their mantra whenever we were discouraged about our homework or our standing at school.

When kids come to school today,  they need to know that they ARE capable of learning, and that they will gain much by believing in their own hard work in the classroom and at the homework table.  They need to know that making mistakes is a huge part of learning.  Children should be encouraged to make many mistakes, and taught how to fix their own mistakes.

No question, the start of the school year is the best time for us to renew our partnership as parents, teachers, and the community responsible for educating all our children.  As we do so, let's promise each other to teach our children self-efficacy, and help them, thereby, to develop a deep and lasting love of learning.

Author's note: Last week I said Louisiana pays schools based on a single head count day.  In fact, the state bases it's payment on three head-count days, but the principle and the outcomes are the same: lower attendance rates and lower school performance scores.

Copyright August 6, 2014

Time to Change School Head Count: My Aug 3, 2014 Commentary in Sunday Eunice News

     Average daily attendance in Louisiana public schools is lower than it should be. This is not a good thing. Poor school attendance hurts not only the child who misses too much instruction -- it hurts the whole school.

     How?  When children don’t come to school, teachers must go back and re-teach significant chunks of material – making it hard for those who do come to school every day to learn as much as they should.

True, children who miss too many days receive makeup instruction. It is also true that “recovery instruction time” costs our school extra money. Recovery instruction time rarely brings a child with chronic absenteeism up to “grade level expectations.”

     There’s no substitute for showing up and participating in class when it comes to being successful on tests. But, showing up is also a basic work skill that must be learned and practiced if our youth are to be properly prepared for the adult world of work.

     Louisiana state laws seem harsh when it comes to punishing parents who allow their children to stay home too often without valid excuses. Some school districts in Louisiana use the courts as a remedy, because it is the only tool available at this time to pressure parents to send their children to school once absenteeism has gotten out of hand. Parents can be fined or jailed for allowing their children to be chronically absent without valid excuses.

     But, we need alternative strategies to solve the problem of chronic school absenteeism -- strategies that directly focus on interventions that will promote daily student attendance and prevent court actions later on.

     Teachers should not be blamed when children fail to come to school, so, it seems fair that the failing grades of chronically absent students are not counted against them in their teacher evaluations.

     But, when chronic absentee test scores are not counted in teacher evaluations, the problem of chronic absenteeism is temporarily avoided, not solved. A school’s performance score will be lower when there is chronic absenteeism because the students who don’t come to school naturally score lower on state tests. Until we fix our state evaluation system, all of our students –those who come to school and those who don’t are included in our school performance score.  Our school reputation is hurt by those who don’t come to school.

     How do we solve this problem of excessive student absenteeism?  For one thing, we need to identify this root cause of truancy in Louisiana that is often ignored.

     Presently, school attendance rates are lower in Louisiana because there are no immediate and direct consequences for any school or school district that tolerates high rates of truancy. Lower school performance scores happen so late in the education cycle that they are as useful as beating a dead horse.

     School districts must be incentivized to address the problem of chronic absenteeism as early as possible so that interventions focus on correcting absenteeism before it gets out of hand.

     Louisiana schools are funded annually for every student who is enrolled on a particular day in October. Whether or not a child comes to school for the remainder of the year, if that child is enrolled in the school on the designated head count day in October, the school is paid in full for the year for that child.

     The same thing happens for online public schools. K-12, INC and other “approved” online schools receive annualized payments whether or not they teach students for a full year.  We would be better off ensuring that educational services were actually delivered before sending our annual state tax dollars to any K-12 teaching institution.

     Other states tackled their chronic low attendance problems by changing school payment formulae from a single head count day once per year to what is called “Average Daily Membership,” or ADM.

     With the ADM model, school districts receive funds for the days when students actually attend classes throughout the year, rather than for just one day, annual head count day.

     It is too easy for busy administrators to defer action when a student is chronically absent in a funding system that pays the district in full using the annual headcount method. The ADM model would ensure that school administrators and school board members take the issue of chronic absenteeism seriously by managing the daily attendance of all students enrolled in their schools on a daily basis – not waiting to react until a child’s absenteeism is out of control.

     Money talks in our society. But, money should also walk -- especially when school districts, charter schools, and online K-12 alternative schools cannot demonstrate they did everything in their power to work with parents to get their children to school every day as the law requires.

Copyright July 30, 2014

Education Should Do No Harm - My Sunday Eunice News Commentary published July 27, 2014

Should Louisiana taxpayers “keep it simple,” and allow high-priced Common Core education contracts to be funded in violation of our state contracting laws?

That was the suggestion of Stephen Waguespack, LABI President, when he argued last Sunday that it was too late to remedy the badly designed Common Core Program by canceling the sole-source contracts the way our governor, Bobby Jindal, chose to do. 

Mr. Waguespack does not seem to be aware of the public testimony of teachers, parents, and administrators who are clearly making the case that Louisiana's Common Core Program was disastrously adopted, recklessly imposed, without adequate design input from teachers, subject-matter experts, or education testing experts. 

There have been dozens of hearings, media interviews, and expert testimonies in which education leaders argued that the Common Core Program is hurting our state public education system.

The legislature tried to halt the program, but, so many state legislators are financially beholding to education industry lobbyists, they dared not cross their patrons by voting down the Common Core, as their constituents asked them to.

Governor Bobby Jindal chose to halt the Common Core with a legal strategy.  He vowed to restore some modicum of democratic process to the next phase of planning for Louisiana's public schools.

But, now, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is trying to force the Common Core through – no matter what the people and the experts say.

Enter Mr. Waguespack, spokesperson for the Louisiana Business Institute: Go through with the Common Core, because we've already invested four years in it.  “It's just that simple.”

Mr. Waguespack did not address any of the critical concerns presented by dozens of nationally recognized educators.  He ignored concerns expressed by thousands of teachers and parents who are worried that the Common Core is not age appropriate for younger school children, but at the same time, not rigorous enough for high school age children.

He minimized our concerns using the label “doubts,” then proceeded to argue we should do the easy thing: spend hundreds of millions of dollars MORE on tests that were never subject to scrutiny by experts in the field of education.

I can think of several disasters that resulted from this kind of thinking, this kind of inattention to fundamental design flaws.

Do you remember the Challenger Shuttle that was torn apart minutes after takeoff, killing six astronauts and the first teacher to travel in space?  Days before takeoff, NASA engineers were still debating design flaws.  NASA management chose to go through with the launch, because it was just that simple:  they were fearful of the embarrassment guaranteed if there was another delayed take-off due to an inexpensive design flaw.

Do you remember our shock and awe as a nation, when the City of New Orleans was submerged under water – because design flaws in the New Orleans Levees resulted in devastating floods after Hurricane Katrina?  Three months BEFORE Katrina, scientists were testifying that MRGO, a dirt moving project that was supposed to make it easier for ships to navigate to the port were rarely used, and they actually created a funnel for storm waters to surge through – guaranteeing major flooding.  MRGO was nicknamed “Trojan Horse.”  Warnings to correct the design flaw were not heeded.  We know the rest of the story.

So many complex engineering plans have design flaws, but, we ignore them because “It's just that simple:”  Disasters rarely happen.

Do you remember our disbelief as a nation when the Deepwater Horizon wells ruptured?  This engineering project was rushed.  Warnings of impending danger by trained staff were ignored. In the interest of getting oil to market quicker, managers took the simple solution.  They rushed a job and ignored reports of design flaws.   Eleven workers were killed. 

The Deepwater Horizon Disaster caused one of the worst environmental crises in American History. 

There's no reason to rush the Common Core Program through, now that design flaws and contracting flaws have been made obvious to our legislators, our Governor, and our parents and community leaders.

Sometimes, it's smart to pull the plug on badly engineered structures.  It's just as smart to pull the plug on badly designed education programs.

In the short run, superintendents and directors and public leaders may be red-cheeked with embarrassment at the sudden change of course.  After all, they've been forced to publicly endorse a very badly designed program that is already doing a lot of harm to our children.

But, in the long run, we can produce lasting positive changes in our schools by adopting research-based curriculum and testing strategies that meet the real needs of our diverse students and our 21st century workforce  --- without doing harm in the process.

Public Education should do no harm.  It's just that simple.

Copyright July 22, 2014  

Harassment is Not Terrorism

My colleague, Deanna Vandiver recently wrote of her experience with protesters who disrupted Sunday services by spewing words of condemnation at the congregation.  She characterized the experience as "religious terrorism."   Another colleague, Krista Tavis, echoed the description of Operation Save America's "direct action"  of negative proselytizing in our Untiarian Universalist Sanctuary.

I respectfully disagree with how this event is characterized by my colleagues and by UUs who engage in social media to promote our faith.

Terrorism is a vast overstatement of what happened in First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans.  There is no question that the behavior of Operation Save America was outrageous, disrespectful, and a harrassing form of public speech.

But, while their behavior as described most certainly was disruptive, it clearly was NOT terroristic.   We should not inflate the meaning of fundamentalist intruders'  pesky drama to a level that only improves their odds of achieving media celebrity.

Media celebrity would be a win for these rude proselytizers.  Do we want that?

I've been at public events, such as Lansdowne pride parades, when fundamentalists tried to grab media attention by spewing hate speech to our gathered crowds.  One fanatic was so offensive that a town personage pressed charges against him.  The case was thrown out, as it should have been, because the court ruled that hate speech, however offensive,  is protected speech - hate speech is NOT terrorism. 

Similarly, I belonged to the Paulist Center Roman Catholic Church back in the day when some of our church members were hauled into court and jailed for committing acts of civil disobedience they committed to protest the Vietnam War.

Specifically, The Camden 28, with the help of an FBI informant, broke into Camden FBI offices to destroy draft records as a moral statement against Vietnam War (imitating previous actions by Jesuit priests Revs. Dan and Phil Berrigan).

In 1971, The U.S. government tried to characterize the "Camden 28"  acts of civil disobedience as conspiracy.  Our government leveled additional exaggerated charges to ensure prison terms of 47 years for each defendent - hoping, thereby, to trim the sails of peace activists who were gaining public favor.

"The Camden 28" spent eleven months in jail during the trial.  But, no one can dispute their success in using the media to turn the tide of public opinion against the War.  They successfully staged a media show trial to make their moral case against the Vietnam War,   They were eventually acquitted  once the  FBI informant who trained them to enter the FBI building surreptitiously admitted in court that he trained the group under the direction of FBI authorities who hoped that they could discredit the Peace Movement once this group was indicted for illegally entering a federal building and destroying government property (draft records).

Civil Disobedience is a time honored social justice strategy.  We could say that our very own Henry David Thoreau invented this tactic to draw attention to immoral government policies in the 19th century.  But, if you read the "Trial of Sophocles"  or "Antigone," you might agree with me that there have always been people of conscience who were willing to do outrageous, illegal things to make a moral statement of conscience in the hope of convincing authorities to change their evil ways.

As a young US Army duty officer at Oakland Army Base, I once had to monitor protections for Martin Sheen and his entourage when they protested the presence of nuclear missiles on the base.  Our official government position was that there were no missiles on the base.  I was just a lieutenant, so, I had no knowledge either way.

At the time, I thought Martin Sheen exaggerated his own importance when he protested by carrying the Cross of Christ up and down past all our base access points.  But, by 1985, the US government knew exactly how to minimize the importance of Sheen's protest: we were instructed to be respectful, to provide security to keep the protesters safe, and to just ignore them, or escort them off the property if they became too disruptive.

I offer these contrary examples to make this point: speech acts, however offensive they may seem, are an important means of conveying moral messages to the general public.

Sometimes, we are on the right side of history as UUs, making statements to end horrific government behaviors.  Justice has prevailed time and again when our government tried to stem our protests by relabeling sincere acts of civil disobedience as dangerous, threatening behaviors. Time and again, juries and the court of public opinion refused to accept false threatening characterizations of sincere, morally motivated behaviors when it could be proved there was no imminent danger when the speech was uttered.

Sometimes, we are on the receiving end of history, experiencing some of the free speech tactics that we have used over the decades to stop war, stop production of nuclear weapons, stop racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution of marginalized faith communities.

But, face it.  We taught the religious right everything they know about media attention-getting strategies.

There's no turning back.  All we can do now is beat them at their own game when they use civil disobedience tactics against us.

We have to use smart tactics when we are confronted with obnoxious speech acts.  Call a spade a spade, but, DO NOT let a spade think it has the power of a stacked deck of cards.

Operation Save America behaved shamefully in our New Orleans UU sanctuary.  But, they were not terrorists. Do not label them as such, thereby, letting them think we fear them.

They were haters.  They came to spew hate in a church that preaches the Gospel of Love.

It makes NO sense to overplay our hand by exaggerating the significance of rude, obnoxious public speech acts committed in our sanctuaries.  We can't play the Fear card, and expect to win against bigotry.

Because even in a deck of cards that seems stacked against our minority faith, Love ALWAYS trumps Fear. Love ALWAYS trumps Hate.

May Love triumph today.

Living With Guns: My Commentary Published in July 13 Sunday Eunice News

As a military chaplain, I prayed over too many people who were murdered by their spouses, lovers, or friends. I know first hand that guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
People with guns kill the most people, though.
People with guns kill their spouses, their children, their best friends, their co-workers, their lovers, their neighbors, and even strangers who have done nothing to offend them but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For some strange reason, in the United States of America, we act as if it’s perfectly normal for gun owners to shoot at people when they are mad or sad.
We read in the paper that a man kills his estranged wife, then himself. Ho-hum. Who won last night’s game?
We read that a middle-class man kills four or more of his children. Ho-hum. What’s for dinner?
Our absolute allegiance to the Second Amendment leads us to falsely believe that high murder rates are inevitable if we are to protect our absolute right to bear arms.
But, in fact, the opposite is true.
We can bring down the murder rates in our society and in our state if we do a few things differently: First, we must teach our citizens how to cope with conflict, anger, disappointment without resorting to violence. In states and communities where children, teens and adults are taught it is NEVER okay to hit, attack or shoot another person, murder rates are much lower.
Second, we must provide interventions when we see early signs that a disgruntled youth or adult uses violence against animals or other humans no matter what their “reason” for resorting to violence.
Third, we must demand that the community costs of murder and gun violence are transparent to all taxpayers.
When someone kills their intimate partner, that person may go to jail, but, taxpayers are twice punished. We pay for the criminal trials, prison costs, legal fees, police, hospital and doctor bills.
But, we also have to pay for the victims and survivors of gun violence, such as the nine left behind in a recent St. Landry murder-suicide.
Taxpayers will foot the bill for raising these children for decades. Costs to taxpayers will include a lifetime of trauma counseling, medical care, housing, and special education services for the emotional disturbance that stays with child survivors.
Fourth, we must do a better job of training and regulating the people who own guns. People who own guns MUST demonstrate their competence and fitness to carry and own guns, the same way that automobile drivers must demonstrate their fitness to drive a car, and licensed doctors demonstrate their ability to properly use a scalpel.
There are plenty of laws already on the books that support these goals, but, we don’t bother to enforce the laws we have. Weak enforcement is why the United States of America has insanely high murder and suicide rates.
When I served at Fort Polk as the first woman chaplain in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment way back in the 1990’s, I saw first hand the impact that strict enforcement of gun and domestic violence laws can have the levels of gun violence in the community.
When the commander made it clear that gun violence would not be tolerated, soldiers learned that their “I just snapped” excuses were as phony as three-dollar bills. They changed their behaviors, and learned how to handle their conflicts like adults.
I remember one soldier who was sentenced to prison for two years for firing a shot in the air to scare his girlfriend. No one was hurt, but the whole base got the message: You will pay a steep price if you take your guns out and use them at the wrong time, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.
Soldiers learn how to handle their relationships like adults – using words, not fists or guns to solve their problems.
It is never acceptable to take guns out and use them when we are mad at the world. What will it take for our country to embrace this fact and do what we have to do to stop the gun violence in our communities?
Copyrighted July 13, 2014 by Marie deYoung

Skimming MFP - My commentary published in Eunice News on July 6, 2014 Copyright Jul 2, 2014

Louisiana was in the fast lane of the national super highway called “Education Reform” long before other states discovered their public education systems needed to be modernized. Granted, we were further behind when we started, but, Louisiana was modernizing long before President George W. Bush passed the “No Child Left Behind Act” with strong bi-partisan support in Congress.

But, in the past few years, our progress has been stalled. One major reason for this stall: the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Governor Bobby Jindal refuse to give the fair share of school tax dollars to local school districts.

By refusing to send the legally required fair share of Minimum Foundation Program school funds to each district, Bobby and BESE are in direct violation of our state constitution.

Our state constitution requires the Louisiana Board of Education to provide resources and funding to every district in the state, using what is called the Minimum Foundation Program to make sure that every classroom teacher can do their job right.

Specifically, Article VIII, Section 13 explains the Minimum Foundation Program funding requirements. You can look it up online and read for yourself.

The most conservative estimates suggest that in 2012-13 alone, Bobby and BESE cheated our schools of $323 PER STUDENT! In that one school year, $200 million was skimmed from funds owed to public schools.

Since 2009, we've had major teacher lay-offs every year when Bobby and BESE starved us of our funds.

I can assure you, every teacher lay-off in our schools is directly correlated with a decline in our school performance scores. But, these days, Bobby and BESE would have you believe that certified teachers don't matter. According to their theories, our kids can learn just as easily by surfing on the internet, supervised by high school graduates without college degrees.

That idea is working so badly that the NCAA listed several of Louisiana's online schools as ineligible for placement in college athletics. Bobby Jindal's highly touted K-12, Inc. is high on the list of ineligible online schools, but that's a story for another day.

Research has shown time and again that staffing our classrooms with certified teachers is a very strong predictor of student success.

But, just when school performance scoring rules got tougher, Bobby and BESE skimmed our Minimum Foundation Program funds. Our class sizes ballooned making it difficult to give our poorly performing students the support they need. Our school scores went down.

At $323 per kid, Bobby and BESE owe ¾ of a million dollars to Eunice schools for just ONE YEAR.

We could have 15 more licensed teachers in Eunice public school classrooms to coach our kids in math, reading, science, and social studies if Bobby and BESE did their constitutional jobs.

They took our children's classroom money and spent it elsewhere.

Where did the money go? To fund profit-making Charter School Management Companies, vouchers to private schools that have been rated as below standard, to set up “on-line” schools that take exorbitant fees from the state with failure rates that would put our neighborhood schools out of business.

Why are we not fussing to high heavens about this?

Probably, because most of us did not know that the Louisiana Board of Education and Governor Bobby Jindal were siphoning off our school district Minimum Foundation Program funds to pay for programs that are NOT constitutionally valid.

Bobby and BESE's spending choices ARE NOT constitutionally valid. Our state courts are saying so every time another lawsuit challenging the legality of Bobby and BESE's financial shenanigans hit their court dockets.

Our school boards did not know how to fight these constitutional violations at first. But finally, school districts across the state filed a lawsuit to get our fair share of our tax dollars returned to our schools.

Local school boards are finally leaning on Louisiana's Constitution to force Bobby and BESE to get their act together to properly fund our schools.

We will win this fight. We need your help, though. We need you to contact your BESE board member and Governor Bobby Jindal. We need you to tell these politicians that they owe us at least $323 more per student per year if they want to claim they are true Louisiana patriots.

Whenever you hear Bobby claim his adherence to constitutional principles, it is very important for all of us to respond with one voice: Where's our Minimum Foundation Program funds, Bobby?

You believe in upholding our Louisiana Constitution? Show us the money!