Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

I have worked in education for more than 20 years now, the last 10 of them in higher education. One is not better than the other because we need strong K12 education in order to have successful higher education candidates. Something I will say K12 does do better than Higher Ed is certifications. While I am not especially fond of the current K12 teacher certification process, I do like that for every type of educational position, whether it is academic, counselling, or leadership, you must acquire training. Higher education has no such training requirement. If you are an instructor you must obviously show subject matter competency, usually through your degree and sometimes through work experience, and for an academic leader, there is no specific training. Why is that? A PhD does not necessarily give you the skills needed to be a competent academic leader; plus, more and more, especially in the non-traditional market, a doctorate is not required for a leadership p...

The definition of “hearing crickets” is: “ It means it is so quiet you can hear the crickets. This phrase is often used after someone tells a joke or story to signify that that either no one got it or they just don't care”. In today’s job market, it is not uncommon it seems, for professionals to hear crickets during the application process or even after an interview: I mean not hearing anything at all until it is obvious they did not get the job. Rude, but it seems more commonplace. What should never happen though, is an employee of a company, asks a question or three, and all they hear are crickets. While those questions might not seem important to the person being asked, they might be very important to the "asker"; and not to mention that not answering shows a lack of caring and empathy, which leads to employee retention issues. As a boss, you might not have the answer right away, especially if it is above your pay grade; but you should always take the ...

  The United States of America loves its labels, it loves its categories, and it loves it so much that everything is determined based upon a category, and people will create a new category for themselves if they feel the existing ones do not fit them. It is often interesting when you meet someone for the first time and you do not fit into the box they had assigned for you; and by the way that is what categories are, boxes. What happens if you are not the shape of the box they want to put you in? Do you have to get chiseled into that shape? Why not just get rid of the box? The danger of categories and labels are that people no longer are communicating with those people outside of their box (or perhaps they never did). We see it in politics with the “Liberal and Conservative” labels, as if that is all you can be. Are we that extreme now? I refuse to be defined by any label, and I am not in a hurry to jump into any box. This does not mean I do not fit into some cate...

The President of the United States There are only a few legal requirements for someone who wants to run for president. Those requirements include: he or she must be a natural born citizen of the U.S., must be at least 35 years old and must have been living in the U.S. for at least 14 years. The reason a candidate must live in the U.S. for 14 years is so that he or she has firsthand knowledge of the issues faced by Americans. The Constitution makes it clear who is eligible to be a presidential candidate, stating that any person wishing to run must be a natural born citizen. Meaning, immigrants cannot run no matter how many years they have lived in the United States. A person is considered a natural born citizen if he or she is born abroad to American citizens. Only one of the candidate's parents has to be an American citizen for the candidate to also be considered an American citizen and be eligible to run. Nowhere in the constitution does it define what religion a preside...

Some interesting links and stories on the current crisis in the DRC (Quelques liens et des histoires intéressantes sur la crise actuelle en DRC) http://eteameducationgroup.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-case-for-female-political.html http://eteameducationgroup.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-holocaust-is-happening-right-now-and.html https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/human-tragedy-drc-kristin-akerele-mph-ryt200?published=t

Coalition Military Fatalities By Year In Afghanistan ( http://icasualties.org/oef/ ) Year US UK Other Total 2001 12 0 0 12 2002 49 3 18 70 2003 48 0 10 58 2004 52 1 7 60 2005 99 1 31 131 2006 98 39 54 191 2007 117 42 73 232 2008 155 51 89 295 2009 317 108 96 521 2010 499 103 109 711 2011 418 46 102 566 2012 310 44 48 402 2013 127 9 25 161 2014 55 6 14 75 2015 22 2 3 27 2016 4 0 2 6 Total 2382 455 681 3518 In the last decade alone the number of  people killed by police has reach...

How to justify killing innocent people: a police playbook 1.       I feared for my life police justification: “The training says that, whenever you use deadly force, you have to be able to justify it. So to justify it, you have to say either I feared for the safety of myself or the safety of the public, and that this person was an extreme danger to either party,” Also known as Obfuscation:   “ to be evasive, unclear, or confusing ” 2.     Character assassination: “ the act of saying false things about a person usually in order to make the public stop liking or trusting that person ” This is what happens to the victims after they are killed. 3.       Due Process: “ The   Fifth Amendment   says to the federal government that no one shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The   Fourteenth Amendment , ratified in 1868, uses the same eleven words, ca...

As an educator, I find this kind of situation puzzling, because it is difficult to teach a positive message from this tragedy. I sit here contemplating the latest police killings of civilian; keep in mind this is just the killings that have been reported, not the extra ones that get swept under the rug. According to “The Counted” ( http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database ), they are up to 566 killed by police this year of 2016. It will be more by the time I finish writing this. I sound cynical don’t I? It is hard not to me with what is going on with this country’s law enforcement. I took out any reference to race and the names of the victims out. Now I want you to imagine if this was your loved one: “A second video showing the shooting death of, a man shot several times while being held on the ground by police outside a Louisiana convenience store was posted online”. “As the man’ s head slumps back...