Archive for the ‘Education Sport Notes’ Category
Boys soccer blog: Providence looks for boost from McQuaig
March 14th, 2012
Providence Christian, which finished as the Class A runner-up in 2011, got middling results in the early portion of its schedule this year, splitting its first six games, with the losses coming to Class A power Wesleyan, AA mainstay Greater Atlanta Christian and Class AAAAA Berkmar.
Part of the reason was the Stars were missing leading scorer Caleb McQuaig, who scored 28 goals in 2011. Josh Platillero has assumed the biggest share of the socring load, with six goals and four assists through the first six games. McQuaig returned to the pitch this week and Providence got perhaps its most impressive win to date, a 2-0 win over AAAAA Grayson …
With eight returning starters, Wesleyan figured to improve over last years club that went 10-9, but looking for more offensive punch, coach Billy Coxhead pulled three-year starter Eric Sunderman out of the goal and moved him to the other end of the field. The Wolves got off to a 4-2-1 start behind Sunderman, who notched five goals and two assists in Wesleyans first seven games Senior forward Matt Moses, who has committed to Mercer, has 10 goals and two assists for Aquinas. The Fighting Irish have five shutouts in eight games
In Class AA, defending state champion Westminster has allowed no goals. Keeper Andrew Freschi, who plans to walk on at Princeton, has been credited with 35 saves while posting six shutouts
Thomasville is averaging seven goals per game led by Joseph Fennelly, who has scored 18 goals and recorded six assists …
Coosa junior midfielder Francisco “Paco” Miranda has eight goals and five assists for the Eagles, who started 5-2-1
Calhoun freshman Sergio Alverez opened his career with a hat trick in a 4-0 win over Ringgold ..
Southeast Whitfield, which fell in the AAA semifinals last year to eventual state champion St. Pius, is off to a strong start again, led by Tennessee Wesleyan signee Christian Lopez (six goals) …
Defending AAA champion St. Pius had five different players score in a 6-0 win over North Atlanta last week, including two from J.D. Mango
With 10 players back from last year, Starrs Mill is off to a 5-1 start behind David Murtaugh (7 goals, two assists) and Justin Ross (5 goals 4 assists) …
Greenbrier has scored 36 goals and allowed just four in its first seven games …
Centennial, with Wofford signee Connor Davis having scored eight goals, is 7-1, with the lone setback a 1-0 loss to unbeaten Lassiter
Tags: Providence, Providence Looks
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Former Ed. Secretary Margaret Spellings is Romney Adviser
March 3rd, 2012
There’s a familiar face among the roster of those advising Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign: Former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, the chief architect of the No Child Left Behind Act. Phil Handy, one of three co-chairs for Romney’s education team confirmed Spellings’ involvement today.
Spellings is serving as a volunteer for the Republican hopeful’s campaign, which means she’s working with Handy, the former chairman of the Florida state board under then-Gov. Jeb Bush; Nina Rees, who led the U.S. Department of Education’s office of innovation and improvement under President George W. Bush; and Marty West, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Spellings’ day job is still working as a senior adviser to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on education issues. And she’s also the president and CEO of Margaret Spellings and Company, a public policy consulting firm in Washington.
Another Romney adviser? Russ Whitehurst, the former head of the Institute of Education Sciences and the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, and a member of the Koret Task Force on Education at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. The task force recently put out a paper on the right role for the federal government when it comes to education policy, which calls for making federal accountability optional for districts and states that adopt dramatically expanded school choice.
Handy didn’t hint at any discord within the Romney campaign. Still, I’d love to be a fly on the wall for some policy discussions: Koret’s ideas seem to be a big departure from Spellings’ brainchild, the NCLB law, which she once said was “like Ivory soap, it’s 99 percent pure.”
And those following the fight over reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act on Capitol Hill probably know that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has joined civil rights groups to come down hard on both renewal bills passed by both the House and Senate education committees because the legislation doesn’t require states to set student achievement goals.
In fact, the Chamber actually endorsed a Democratic substitute version of the legislation, put forth last week by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the ranking member of the panel, which would have included goals for student progress.
We’ll see how all this plays out when Romney fleshes out his education ideas. (Best preview yet is this chapter of his recent book No Apology.). As governor of Massachusetts, Romney was known as a big proponent of standards and merit pay, two issues President Barack Obama’s administration have made prominent parts of its agenda, both through Race to the Top and now the plan to offer waivers from parts of the NCLB law.
That might not leave moderate Republicans like Romney much room to draw contrasts with the current administration, said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice-president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “The challenge is that the president’s rhetoric on education has been very good,” Petrilli said. “He has co-opted the language.”
Could the Romney camp say if you like what Obama did on education, you’ll like what Romney would do and make the election about something else? he wondered.
That’s not going to happen, Handy said. When we see Romney’s K-12 proposals “there will be a clear distinctions both on policy, and, as importantly process, and the way policy is promulgated,” he told me.
Tags: Margaret Spellings, Romney
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School system take-over angers parents
February 27th, 2012
Local residents say voter turnout is already low in Bridgeport, and when the state took over the city’s school system it sent the message to them that their votes don’t count.
So when the state Supreme Court issued the ruling that the takeover was illegal, they felt their rights were restored.
“I have seen the day where people did not have the right to vote,” said Laurayne Farrar-James, “and I worked in the civil rights movement and we’re not going back there.”
James and others in Bridgeport who fought hard to re-claim the city’s Board of Education say the state Supreme Court’s ruling returns the power to the people. They say when the state took over, voter’s vote didn’t count anymore.
“This is primarily a black and Latino town and here we are losing our right to vote? Why,” asked Sauda Baraka, Bridgeport Board of Education member. “Why are our rights to vote being taken from us? Not Easton, Redding, Westport, Fairfield. Why Bridgeport?”
“Mayor Finch was taking our constitutional right,” said Maria Pirez, “we voted for the Board of Education, we chose who we wanted to represent us and he took that away from us.”
Mayor Finch calls the ruling “a setback to the school children of Bridgeport.”
Shavonne Davis, who has five children in the Bridgeport school system, disagrees. In fact, she calls it a step forward.
“We let them know ‘listen you’re not going to take our votes, you’re not going to steal our votes.’ These are the people that we voted for, this is who we want and this is what it’s going to be,” Davis said.
They say the fight is far from over: the Malloy administration is reportedly looking into ways it can undo the court’s decision.
One of the plaintiff’s attorneys tells News 8, “we urge the legislature to reject any further attempts to use back room deals to deny parents and citizens the right to be involved in our representative system of government.”
The attorneys from both sides will meet with the trial judge Thursday morning to discuss the results of the Supreme Court decision.
Tags: School System, System
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Every Englishman – even the CEO of Barclays – has the right to cross-dress
February 20th, 2012
Is Exeter not in England? I ask because students at Exeter University have been asked not to dress in drag – an ancient and honourable tradition that is almost as English as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
The university’s Students’ Guild, which has issued the edict, argues that cross-dressing is as offensive to transgendered people as blacking up is to black people. It is worth thinking about, but it still seems an awfully puritanical attitude, outlawing much innocent fun and flying in the face of centuries of history.
Without cross-dressing, we would have had no Juliet, no Cleopatra, no Lady Macbeth. Female actors were banned in Elizabethan times, so Shakespeare had to improvise, using boys whose voices had not yet broken to create his heroines.
After the ban was lifted, cross-dressing remained an integral part of theatrical tradition, from Charley’s Aunt to Les Dawson and Dame Edna Everage. Hollywood didn’t hold back: would we have been able to enjoy classics such as Some Like It Hot or Mrs Doubtfire if the producers had been terrified of being seen as non-PC?
A fascination with cross-dressing is not unique to this country. Italian opera abounds with women singing male roles. But nowhere else has the cross-dressing male become so embedded in the cultural mainstream.
Scratch an Old Etonian called Henry and it is a racing certainty that he will harbour secret fantasies about dressing up as Henrietta, with winsome curls and bright red lipstick. Half the PoWs in Colditz leapt at the chance to prance about in floral frocks at camp entertainments.
At single-sex boys’ schools of the sort I attended in the Seventies, nothing caused more mirth, controversy and embarrassment than the casting of the school play. If you were tall and your voice had broken, you were guaranteed a male part. Otherwise, you were at the mercy of a headmaster with a sense of mischief.
I still have an old photograph of myself in a school play in 1971, squiring a younger boy, one J S Varley, who was dressed in a headscarf, shawl and long skirt. Was the boy scarred for life? Did his self-esteem suffer? Not a bit of it. As John Varley, chief executive of Barclays, he became one of the leading bankers of his generation, with a suitably manly pay packet. Probably half the men in the City have similar stories to tell.
I missed out on cross-dressing at school, but made up for lost time at Oxford, appearing as a pantomime dame figure in a Greek play. One of my nylons laddered, my mascara ran and I never got the hang of high heels; but my false breasts caused a sensation and the thrill of singing three octaves above my normal register will live with me for life.
Why do we do it? A psychologist would probably conclude that Englishmen are so emotionally repressed, from the nursery onwards, that they need to let down their hair occasionally – preferably in flowing blonde ringlets à la Goldilocks. But whatever the genesis of the kink, it is our kink and we are proud of it.
Even in no-nonsense Yorkshire, where men are men, butch blokes called Ted and Barry fall over themselves to connect with their feminine side. Go to Headingley cricket ground on the Saturday of a Test match and you will see a bewildering array of men attired as women – from French maids to Monty Python housewives with headscarves.
They look frightful, but they mean no harm and, when rain has stopped play, they add to the merriment. When all is said and done, they are only exercising their birthright as Englishmen – a birthright we should defend.
As Karl Marx nearly said: “Drag queens of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your stockings and suspenders!”
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The 10 Traits of Outstanding Leadership
February 16th, 2012
This article is for parents, teachers, counselors, small business owners, managers, or anyone else who interacts with others and has some influence over them. If this is you – then you are a leader.
Having influence over people isn’t just about being in a formal position of authority. This is part of it, but influence works both ways: kids have influence over their parents, students over their teachers and spouses over each other.
What is meant by ‘leader’? Ask a hundred people and you’ll probably get a hundred different answers, although many of them will be able coercion or manipulation, since this is the experience many people have had with those in formal leadership roles. A parent may try to force a child to tidy his room; a team leader might try to push a member of his team to make more sales. But to manipulate and coerce is to misunderstand what leadership is about and, in the end, is counterproductive. The reality is that people cannot be coerced. In his book, Choice Theory, William Glasser makes the compelling case that, even in the most extreme situations, people cannot be forced into things, and that, even when coercive tactics appear to work, they do not produce the best or sustainable results. People might comply to some extent, but they will never be putting their heart into the task so long as they feel forced.
The real, and often misunderstood, job of a leader is simply this to put people in a position to thrive. When people thrive when they have a clear sense of purpose and are successful they are using all their energy, achieving more and contributing fully. So how does a leader do this? Here are ten behaviors of outstanding leaders. See how you measure up.
Show people what success looks like One of the most common reasons people don’t thrive is simply that they don’t know where they’re heading they have nothing to aim for, no sense of direction. Whatever it is, a great leader will paint a compelling picture of success and give people a clear sense of something to work towards.
Of course, you can’t force someone to aim for something which doesn’t interest them, so part of great leadership is helping people to find their own sense of purpose (either as an individual or within an organization). Sometimes, someone is doing a job which they simply can’t buy into, in which case a great leader would encourage them to do something else.
Give people tools they need People often think the job of a leader is to solve problems. Wrong. You can never solve other people’s problems and you can never achieve anything on their behalf. People need to do these things themselves. This said, people need the tools to get the job done, and an outstanding leader recognises this and makes sure his people have the necessary resources to get where they need to go.
Acknowledge and reward achievement We all need to feel valued. An excellent leader understands this and acknowledges genuine achievement, however small. The extra confidence that comes from being praised can make a huge difference in a person’s productivity and success. This is true in the workplace and it’s just as true at home.
Let people make mistakes Whenever you learn something new, you get it wrong and you make mistakes. This is how everyone learns and there are no shortcuts. Because of this, a great leader not only tolerates mistakes but celebrates them and rewards the learning of which they are a consequence. A great leader knows that innovation always carries risk and that, often, attempts at new things end in failure. But failure is the springboard to success, and a great leader knows this.
Get out of the way People are capable of great things if they are properly motivated. Many leaders feel the need to meddle and micromanage. But once you’ve showed people what to aim for (or helped them to clarify their own goals) and given them to tools they need to get there, the best thing to do is leave them alone and make sure they know they can come to you for help when they need it.
Ask questions (don’t give advice) People usually know more than they think; the job of a leader is to help draw things together, reframe and put things into the right perspective. People don’t want advice even if they ask for it. They want to come to their own conclusions. A great leader allows people to do this.
Be kind This, perhaps, is the most important trait of all. We all want to be treated kindly and an outstanding leader is often simply a kind person. A leader doesn’t always know the answers (in fact, a leader rarely knows and answers and, often, there isn’t one) but she can always be sensitive and generous. Kindness simply means always having another person’s highest good at the centre of all your interactions with them. When you seek someone’s highest good, you are an outstanding leader.
Get to know people Great leadership is about relationships. When your people trust you and believe that you genuinely care about them, they will thrive. Getting to know people doesn’t mean becoming a best friend it simply means taking an interest, knowing what matters to someone and giving a person some of your time. In the end, the quality of leadership can be measured by the quality of a person’s relationships. A good leader is there to help people thrive. Think about your own social interactions are you an outstanding leader?
Tags: how to lead, leadership, leadership traits, pickthebrain, power, self improvement
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