Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

I am shedding some light on something we all see daily living in San Diego. “Homeless Families Crowd San Diego Shelters” “Families make up nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population. The National Center on Family Homelessnes s estimates 1.6 million children will experience homelessness this year”. “A record number of San Diego homeless families are waiting to get into a long-term shelter. Waiting lists average two to four months. During the wait, many families stay at emergency shelters, like the San Diego Rescue Mission's Emergency Shelter for Women and Children , which has been over-capacity just about every night for the past two years”. http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/may/31/homeless-families-crowd-san-diego-shelters/ Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_fTgI8_WRQ&feature=player_embedded This is America; I know we can do better. Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

“Dartmouth Students In Clery Act Complaint Charged With Violating Code Of Conduct” “Dartmouth College students pressing a federal complaint claiming the school underreported sexual assaults said Dartmouth is retaliating by charging them with violating the student code of conduct for an April protest”. “At least 10 students involved in the April 19 demonstration were notified this week that they face adjudications for a possible violation of the Dartmouth standards of conduct for failing to follow college officials' instructions, according to letters from Nathan Miller, director of the Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Office. Seven students who received letters were either public complainants or were involved in preparing and processing a federal Clery Act complaint filed against Dartmouth last week , alleging the school failed to prosecute and report sexual violence on campus, said Dartmouth senior Lea Roth”. "We were protesting sexual assault on this campus, and...

With today’s rapid methods of communication, we often forget to slow down sometimes and actually communicate. Worse, we think nothing of communicating really badly: “i missed ta class yesterday, well honestly because i was out to late and feelin’ crappy the next day did i miss anything cn i make up the quiz?” “dear XXXX. Hows it going? I am writing 2 U to let U know that we are mssing you transcripts and U will not be admitted. I know you are probably on vakay, but I thought I’d drop you a line. Later!” I kid you not; these are real supposedly professional emails in an education setting! Slow down people and remember we are in the business of education, and the first step is to communicate effectively. Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

It is that time of the year when many K12 students are taking standardized tests, and schools are revving the students up for them. You also get many parents who are against testing trying to lobby you to boycott them, etc. We are lucky to be living a country with so many freedoms and with a free working education system, even if the system is far from perfect. These freedoms allow everyone to question without retaliation (in theory). I am not arguing for the test or against the test, what I am talking about is how different administrators, teachers, and parents behave at this time. I always receive more correspondence from administrators at this time, all about the test of course. I wish I would hear from them when I call about matters that are of equal importance to me. Teachers are telling student “do your best”, “get plenty of sleep”, and “have a good breakfast”. However, isn’t that what they are supposed to do every day? What is different now? I remember gum b...

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday which occurs every year on the final Monday of May. [1] Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces . [2] Formerly known as Decoration Day , it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By the 20th century, Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service. [3] It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end. Many people visit cemeteries and memorials, particularly to honor those who have died in military service. Many volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries . Annual Decoration Days for particular cemeteries are held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountains. In cases involving a family grave...

In this day and age of # zerotolerance in schools, it is often too easy for a smart vibrant student to all of a sudden be labeled as a criminal and have their life ruined. It can be worse for African-American children since often they do not get the ‘press’ needed to clear their names. Putting felonies on children who do not even have the legal right to vote means you are #disenfranchising a future generation of humans and voters (cannot vote with a felony). “Teen Who Was Expelled From School For Science Explosion Receives Full Scholarship U.S. Space Academy” “Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old honor student expelled from her high school after she allegedly ignited a chemical explosion on school property, received a full scholarship to the U.S. Space Academy, courtesy of a NASA veteran who, as a teenager, was accused of starting a forest fire during a science experiment”. “Kiera Wilmot made an honest mistake, but the police were trying to throw away her life with a felo...

For those of you who work in #highered, I would like you take a moment, and look around at your leaders and think about a few things. How did they get into that #leadership position, do they have the leadership qualifications, are they good friends with folks high up the food chain, how long do they last? This piece is not a blame game, I am just pointing out facts: 1.       Leaders often are promoted because of longevity not skill set 2.       It is often who you know that matters 3.       Having a doctorate does not automatically make you a leader 4.       Leadership skills must constantly be renewed 5.       A lot of people promoted to leadership positions are not ready and go through a “trial by fire” 6.       How many institutions have a written succession plan or a leadership #training progr...

Today I am sharing inmformation that someone else has written, and the purpose of this is to try and shed light on the continuing issues in the DRC. Please read it and join the conversation. Excerp: "At 4 am in a dismal and dirty pit, seven thousand miles away from the golden lights, the glitz, the glitter, and the black tarred highways of the developed world a ten year old boy is digging dark red earth out of an open pit mine, a massive sore on the once green landscape of this beautiful country.   He is hungry, thirsty, tired and terrified yet he keeps on digging out the valuable red earth and shovels it into the waiting wheelbarrows of the other adolescent miners waiting nearby. He knows that if he were to stop working, despite his bone deep exhaustion, the consequences for not only himself but his entire family would be dire.   The hard eyes of the foreign soldiers guarding them, full of the promise of pain and degradation, these men who look like him and speak the sam...

I have seen firsthand the abandoned cloth factories in Central Africa, I have seen firsthand the truck loads of clothes that has been carted into the public markets by the Salvation Army; this clothing is destined to be sold by the pound. The pre-printed t-shirts from the losing superbowl team, the castoffs that look so out of place but are very commonly seen: People mean well, but let us face the truth, most people do not think beyond getting rid of stuff they do not want, most people have no clue of the negative impact their castoff clothing can have. “About 80 percent of the donations are carted away by textile recyclers, says Jackie King, the executive director of Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles (SMART), a trade association for textile recyclers. She says that means about 3.8 billion pounds of clothing that is donated each year is recycled”. “King says nearly half the donated clothes -- about 45 percent -- is exported”. ( http://www.kpbs.org/news/...

Read this article in the chronicle today, and I think the authors sums up many of the issues of an unhealthy sexual environment on college campuses right now. “let’s talk about sex on campus” By Andrew P. Smiler and Rebecca F. Plante   “N onconsensual sex on campus has been a persistent topic of public conversation over the last few years. The current academic year has included a first-person account of rape published in the Amherst College student paper and a subsequent oversight-committee report, student protests that led the administration at Dartmouth College to cancel classes for a day, and claims that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill retaliated against a student who HAD spoken publicly about the institution's lack of response to her claims of sexual assault. And in what seems like an annual event, a high-profile athletic team was investigated for sexual assault; this year it was the University of Montana football team”. “Administrators may thin...

“The Roots of Sexual Abuse in the Military” “Even before the Army confirmed a third military sexual-assault preventer had been implicated in sexual harassment in the past two weeks late Thursday – the charges ranged from sexual battery , to pandering , to stalking an ex-wife – the Army’s top general, and the commander-in chief, said they’ve had enough”. “Sexual assault in the ranks is going to make — and has made — the military less effective than it can be,” President Obama said at a meeting of the nation’s military leaders to focus on the issue. It is dangerous to our national security”. Read the rest at: http://nation.time.com/2013/05/17/the-roots-of-sexual-abuse-in-the-military/ Keep your eyes open!   Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

“Obama to meet military leaders on sexual assault” “WASHINGTON -- President Obama will meet today with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss the military's sexual assault crisis, the Pentagon announced”. “The meeting is scheduled for 3:45. The military has been rocked by several high-profile sex scandals, the latest of which involves the investigation of a sergeant at Ft. Hood who officials say had been running a prostitution service and sexually assaulted another soldier”. “The other service chiefs and secretaries and senior enlisted officers will also attend the meeting with Obama”. ( http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/16/obama-hagel-military-sexual-assaults/2165763/ ) Make no mistake everyone this is a crisis and it has been so for a long time. I still believe educators can have a major impact on this, I believe we can help with the solution. Do not take your eyes ...

I actually find this quite depressing. There are so many fine people who serve in the U.S military. Why does this continue to happen? “Investigators in Fort Hood, Texas, are looking into allegations that an Army sergeant sexually assaulted three female soldiers and forced one into prostitution”. “Just a week after an Air Force lieutenant colonel working in its sexual-assault prevention office was arrested and accused of sexual battery, a second U.S. service member assigned to a military sexual assault program is being investigated for various forms of sexual misconduct, officials revealed Tuesday”. “A U.S. Army sergeant first class, assigned to III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas, is now under investigation for pandering — a prostitution solicitation charge — abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates, the Pentagon said”. “A Defense Department source told NBC News the publicly unidentified soldier allegedly forced at least one subordinate soldier into prostit...

Latest and greatest on a major player in the education industry: “U. of Phoenix Might Face Lesser Sanction from Accreditor” “A committee of a regional accreditor last week recommended that the University of Phoenix be placed "on notice," which is a lesser sanction than the probation a peer review team suggested earlier this year, the university said in a financial statement . The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools is considering the university's 10-year bid for reaffirmation. The peer review team identified alleged governance problems at the university, including a lack of autonomy from its holding company, the Apollo Group. The university made subsequent changes in response to the report. The commission's Board of Trustees is scheduled to make the final ruling on the university's bid next month. The board gets the final call and is not required to take into account the report released last week by the c...

I found this interesting, but not necessarily for the reasons one might think: “WASHINGTON — Right after the election in November, it seemed that Congressional Republicans and the Obama administration had reached a rare policy consensus : both supported requiring colleges to disclose more information about graduates’ outcomes in general, and a bill from Senators Marco Rubio and Ron Wyden that would require the disclosure of salary data (among other statistics) in particular”. (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/13/political-winds-shift-federal-unit-records-database-how-much) They are talking about tracking student beyond college, something that many colleges try and do, or could do anyway. The good news is that this is step in the right direction to track military/veteran students; this is something that is not currently being done. I focused my dissertation on this subject (much smaller scale), and one of my conclusions are that in order to support our military/vet...

I read this today and realized this was in my backyard, and that I actually know folks at this campus. Disappointing, but it needs to come to light… “San Marcos Students Protest University Response to ‘Cholas’ Photos” “SAN MARCOS, CA — Students at Cal State San Marcos , joined by a few staff and faculty, staged a sit-in outside the university president’s off Thursday. The protesters are unhappy about the university’s response to sorority members who posed as ‘cholas’ or Latina gang members in photos, then posted those photos on social media during a sorority retreat”. Read the rest here: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/may/09/san-marcos-students-protest-university-response-ch/ It will get better! Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

As a California educator and a parent, I found this story rather disturbing:   “California's Looming Educational Attainment Crisis” “A low level of educational attainment is the one common characteristic of California's working poor, according to a new report from the Campaign for College Opportunity, a California-based advocacy group. About one in five adult Californians have not earned a high school degree or its equivalent, the report said, and the state is facing a workforce shortage of 2.3 million college graduates by 2025. To help fix the problem the group recommended better coordination between the state's K-12 and higher education systems as well as a statewide data system to track students' progress”. ( http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/05/09/californias-looming-educational-attainment-crisis ) I would be interested in knowing more about who is part of the “ Campaign for College Opportunity” group. Are there teachers i...

Do you remember the “Africanized” killer bees? Do you remember how in the 70s and 80s we were told they were coming to wipe us out?   Do you remember all those really bad movies they made about the bees? Most importantly, do you remember what happened? Absolutely nothing is what happened; the so-called killer bees are now part of the native bee population and we are all still alive. “The hybrid bees are far more defensive than any of the various European subspecies. Small swarms of Africanized bees are capable of taking over European honey bee hives by invading the hive and establishing their own queen after killing the European queen ” (really?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee Meet the latest “African threat”:   “ Deadly giant snail found in Houston” “Residents of a Houston neighborhood are being warned to stay away from giant African land snails after a woman found one in her garden and snapped a photo of it. The snails, researchers w...

Recently, a few states have or are getting close to allowing students to carry guns on campus. Texas I believe is the state closest to getting it done, and in Montana, the governor just vetoed the bill that would have allowed it to happen. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/06/texas-house-campus-carry-guns-colleges_n_3225310.html?utm_hp_ref=politics http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/05/07/montana-governor-vetoes-bill-allow-guns-campus What are they thinking! Before we get into who is conservative or liberal, who believes in the second amendment or not, let us remember this is about student safety not politics. Keep your political views out of the equation and think for a moment! Here are just some of the issues colleges are having ·          Women getting sexually assaulted on campus ·          Drug and alcohol fueled parties ·     ...

The other day during a discussion with friends and family, the topic of racist people came up. It was a well-balanced and constructive discussion, and the conclusion I came up with, was one that had been obvious to my family for a long time; I deal with racists folks very well, it is those that are rude that set me off. Let me clarify. Not to pick on the south (but I will), if I go to Mississippi, I expect a certain amount of ‘old racial’ values to persist, I expect to hear certain racial epithets, I expect to be looked at with suspicion in certain situations. While I wish we lived in a world that did not still have such ignorance, it does not bother me because my experience is those folks will still be polite about it. Funny eh? Polite racists! However, the simple attempt at courtesy makes a difference.   They are not pretending to be something that they are not, there is no ‘back stabbing’. Here is are a couple articles that describes the kind of rudenes...

Sharing a link first: “When Too Few Minorities Are Too Many” http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/05/02/when-too-few-minorities-are-too-many/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en It is very easy to walk on to a college campus, to look around and think you are seeing diversity. Yes, you might see people of different creeds, cultures, and colors (we are all one race, the human race). However, if you actually look at the school stats, you will find that things are still very skewed. Some of it has to do with things that started long before the kids ever got to college, civil rights in America were only just granted within living memory of a lot of people, and the fact that affirmative action is still necessary means that there are still problems to fix. Anyway, the type of racism I am talking about is something that we can control, and that is how we treat people. Have you ever spent time in the south? We often think of the south as the bastion of racism (I ...

The other day I posted my resume in a professional forum looking to pick up some extra education work. As an educational consultant, I personally know the economy is very slow; contracts are hard to find. However, I love what I do, I love working in education, and these slowdowns come with the territory. Anyway, there is always one a$$ clown who feels they have the right to denigrate you because you simply because you are an educator, you many degrees, and because you are not looking for work in sales. Do not get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with sales, but if you have explicitly said you are not interested in sales, what gives someone the right to say “you are an over educated dinosaur” because I do not want to sell products? (Please do not say everything in life is sales because that is not true) It turns out that I am considered over educated, that the years of hard work improving myself to better help my students is not always appreciated. Since when is it bad t...