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From Stories from School, a wonderful post My Neighbor's Bike Skills
Teachers can teach anyone, anything. Last week I taught my neighbor's son how to ride a bike. Being a highly trained teacher, I used widely accepted educational practices, current trends in education, and data based analysis. Read about our week through my daily notes . . . .
It's pretty funny.
Last night I was sitting on my porch, enjoying the balmy November evening, when a weary young man trudged up my driveway. I'd had encounters with these young people before -- the spiel is they are "turning their lives around" and "learning skills" by selling magazines. I know a little about the business, and I refuse to buy from them. Something about the young man's weariness moved me, though.
I invited the young man to sit a spell on the porch, and went inside to get a few dollars and a glass of water. We talked for a while. The young man was from Illinois and had seen a poster advertising the magazine crew opportunity, promising income of up to $300.00/week and an opportunity to travel the country. It sounded pretty good to a poor kid. But he said the life was hard and if he didn't make his sales quota, "bad things" happened. I was working up to asking him if he wanted out of the business when the police stopped by. By the end of the discussion, there were six officers and three patrol cars. I have to say, the lead officer had a highly aggressive interview technique with both the young man and me.
The police deal with the problem by addressing the individuals going door-to-door, because usually they do not have the proper licenses. The young man mentioned they were based in a hotel the next county over, so there was a limit on what the officers could do. But I wish there was some way to put the magazine crews out of business for good. The magazine industry can and should do more, as Craig Malisow points out in the Houston Press investigative report.
On any given day, an estimated 50,000 young people are traversing the country, many of them working under substandard and dangerous conditions. Their lack of life experience makes it difficult for many of them to look after their own best interests.
In 2001, Sen. Herb Kohl (Wisc) introduced federal legislation to regulate the traveling sales crew industry. National Field Selling Association (NFSA), the industry association, successfully lobbied to have the bill quashed.
Resources for Magazine Crew workers who want to get out
Travelling Magazine Crews--This site is dedicated to helping individuals who have or are currently selling magazines/soap for traveling crews. It is meant to share stories and hopefully help those who feel they were abused by the companies who hired them. It is also intended to help those who are currently selling to get home if they want to.
Travelling Sales Crews: Dedicated to presenting the violent, destructive, greedy and criminal acts that have turned the Traveling Sales Industry into a National Tragedy.
Parent Watch: A clearinghouse for information on child and youth labor abuse in the traveling door-to-door sales crew industry.
Investigative Reports on the Travelling Sales Crew Industry
Other Online Sources about Youth Traveling Sales Crews
Radical Russ blogs at Pam's House Blend and The Radical Writ. Among other things, he was raised Mormon in Idaho, but now is a progressive and an atheist. He's invented two fine words:
My cousins, however, are none too pleased about this situation (I've gotten the Idaho family news report tonight from my wife). My cousins are Christian types of the Born-Again™ Evangelical variety - not the rabid type, maybe a 45 guanolocons* on the 1-100 American Taliban Wingnut Scale, where Jimmy Carter is about a 2 and Fred Phelps is about a 98. Apparently they are distressed that my brother is not taking seriously the Sanctity of Marriage™.
These are the same cousins with whom I've had many heated email discussions regarding same-sex marriage rights and Prop 8. And it occurs to me that they've been fighting the wrong battle all this time. They've been opposing people who want to get married for the first time. Wouldn't the sanctity of marriage be better preserved by fighting for stricter divorce and remarriage laws? How about a "three strikes and you're out law"? How about every time five heterosexual couples get divorced, we let three gay couple get married? (There is a history in this country of 3/5ths compromises...)
* Guanolocons are the official international measuring unit of bat-shttery. Detection of guanolocons is often accompanied by elevated kiloguckert readings on RoyCohndar.
Ms. Bluebird teaches middle school science in an area where parents aren't particularly invested in their children's academic success.
In January 2008, Ms. Bluebird wrote about using competition to get homework buy-in. In March, she introduced her team's homework approach
As Ms. Bluebird pointed out:
there's three types of students. First you have the kids who are going to do their homework anyway and who won't even bother to look at a Homework Helper. Second, you have the kids who will do most of their homework but struggle with a few questions and will use the Homework Helper to check his or her work. And lastly, you have the kid who has never turned in any homework - ever - and who will simply copy it and turn it in. The way we look at it, at least they're copying the right information, they're writing it down, they're looking at it, they're being exposed to it. And they'll get the points for turning in their homework.
For some reason, this year there are a lot of kids failing to hand in homework--not just in the science classroom, but across the board. So Ms. Bluebird and her colleagues got tough, with Accountability
On Tuesday morning I hand out to the kids a slip of paper with all their missing assignments listed. They have until Thursday afternoon to get this work made up and turned in, otherwise, they miss their first period elective class on Friday. Instead of doing art, or PE, or band, or computers, they are assigned to one of our rooms where they have to sit and work. We try to assign the kids to the teacher they need the most help with (for example if most of the work they owe is Math, Mr. Math gets them). This way they can get more individual attention. (I also make sure all my teammates have a copy of my Homework Helpers so that is available to help the kids as well).
In this low-income, low parental academic achievement, that much structure is necessary. How does your school handle missing homework?
Los Ayudantes is a tutoring/mentoring program for newly arrived immigrant middle-school students who are learning English as a second language.
The program started as a partnership between St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park, community volunteers, and the McKinley Institute of Technology (MIT) a Redwood City middle school. Our mission is to provide these recent immigrant adolescents—one of the at-risk groups in our community—with the academic tools and support for long-term academic success and with the life skills for productive, satisfying futures. It is a well recognized fact that a solid command of the English language is essential to a rewarding life in this country.
We offer in-school tutoring and mentoring services and programs provided by a diverse network of community leaders, concerned citizens, and professionals some of whom are immigrants themselves as well as bilingual and bicultural.
I've been volunteering for two class periods on Tuesdays. The first period we're in a social-studies classroom, and help kids with writing under the direction of the teacher. Second period we each meet with a small, stable group of kids and work on reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. There's another program on Mondays at a different school, working on reading fluency.
I'm enjoying it tremendously. Won't you join us?
Back in March 2006, Daniel Dage wrote a heartfelt essay, The Fleecing of the Autism Community, on how unscrupulous cure vendors take advantage of families with autistic members.
There's a new essay up at Autism Watch by Stephen Barrett, M.D., Be Wary of CARE Clinics and the Center for Autistic Spectrum Disorders (CASD). CARE Clinics and CASD are two enterprises founded by Kazuko Irie Curtin.
Barret writes:
CARE Clinics and CASD offer services that are unsubstantiated and lack a plausible rationale. I am very skeptical of their activities.
Both CARE and CASD bill patients' insurance companies for tests and for "treatments". According to Barrett, the paid bills have been as high as $40,000.
Kazuko Irie Curtin's son was diagnosed with autism about 14 years ago. She founded the Center for Autistic Spectrum Disorders as a 501(c)3 charity in 2001, and the for-profit CARE Clinics sometime later. Here is her biography from the November 2008 United States Autism and Asperger's Association conference
Kazuko A I Curtin is the founder and CEO of CARE Clinics. Over a decade ago, Kazuko set out to find the very best treatments for her son, James, who was diagnosed with autism at two years-of-age, and given no chance of recovery. Since that time, Kazuko has traveled the world in search of answers for her son. First, Kazuko developed expertise in behavior therapy. She received training in ABA therapy, and invented “Autism Visual Learning Method”, which is patented in the U.S.,
According to Barrett, the method, a type of Picture Communication System, is not patented.
and is pending in 150 countries. Then she learned about biomedical treatments for James, and began building what later became CARE Clinics. Kazuko was a successful entrepreneur since she was a college student in Tokyo. Among many achievements, Kazuko was a leader at DASCOM, which was an extremely successful computer software company that was later sold to IBM.
In addition to treating her son, Kazuko has recovered from chronic illness herself, by using the therapies at CARE Clinics. The success of treating both herself and her son has bolstered her resolve to create a world-class treatment center that helps both parents and children recover from difficult, chronic illnesses such as autism and cancer. Kazuko is a frequent speaker at many autism conferences, including UCLA, ASA, ATF, GPL, CASD, which help parents make informed decisions for their children. Kazuko is the author of New Autism Treatment Paradigm, printed in Japanese, and leads a team at CARE Clinics that is authoring a New Autism Treatment Paradigm 2008, printed in English, and to be released April 1st, 2008.
I couldn't find publication records for New Autism Treatment Paradigm 2008. However, I did find CASD's IRS form 990. You can read it for yourself: Download CASD_990.pdf
Kazuko Irie Curtin's 2006 compensation from CASD was $203,833. That's pretty good entrepreneurial change. CASD has a board of three. Curtin, Mary Y. Irie, and Jane N. Irie. There appears to be a lack of independence on the board.
Dr. Barrett would like to speak with families who have used the services at CASD or CARE. Please read his article--his phone number is at the bottom of the page.
Continue reading "The Fleecing of the Autism Community, Now With Insurance" »
Update Apophenia
It doesn't bring Megan Meier back to her family. But maybe the verdict will give others pause.
"Lori Drew decided to humiliate a child," U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien, chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, told the jury during closing arguments. "The only way she could harm this pretty little girl was with a computer. She chose to use a computer to hurt a little girl, and for four weeks she enjoyed it."
O'Brien, who pronounced the case the nation's first cyberbullying trial, said the jury's decision sent a worthy message: "If you have children who are on the Internet and you are not watching what they are doing, you better be."
Update:
The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2008
Backstory:
I wish you and yours all abundance and health.
Middle-School Teacher is a blog friend who teaches, well, middle school in California (in an underfunded district). She reported this the other day:
One of the teachers in my school district was told by our superintendent yesterday that it shouldn't matter who is in the classroom--that it all came down to good curriculum.
I think the research (even the lousy state of education research) argues strongly for the opposite case.
The parrot pictured to the left is the special friend of Mitchell Chareunsouk, a Sacramento-area boy with autism. The bird's name is Rainbow.
Rainbow was stolen sometime last week (November 17-22, 2008).
Given how portable parrots are, Rainbow may be anywhere. If you are considering purchasing a parrot, check to see if the bird you are considering matches Rainbow --would you want to buy somebody else's beloved pet?
Bev at Asperger's Square 8 writes:
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