#instead i get all the health decline of a beyond stressed student without doing any of the work

[beautifel]

the way i’m truly so beyond help

[billion-heartbeats]

Thoughtless ban on online education for students 1 to 5or 7:

Digitise early Or Perish!

 IRONY - Until now mobile phones were banned from the schools! Now schools have been put into mobile phones!

 Lost opportunity to enable rural and urban kids to learn digital education!

  We all want the best for our children—in both school and life. Kids are losing their childhood to the coronavirus pandemic. There are few things more depressing than constantly reminding a young child that she must stay six feet away from a friend she meets.

 Is online learning the future of education?

online education has made great strides in recent years. The maturity of education technology has also enabled online education to become more manageable and accessible than ever before. All a prospective student needs are a computer, an internet connection and some basic skills. The deep penetration of mobile phones has enabled those skills in the kids of today! Over the last 10 years, digital media has evolved rapidly. In 2011, 10% of children aged younger than 4 years used mobile devices, a number that grew to 38% in 2013. By 2015, 97% of low-income children used these devices, with 75% owning their own device.

 Undoubtedly, with the wider spread of technology and deepening of the global mandate of education for all, online education’s potential to become complementary – or in some cases alternative – to traditional education cannot be overlooked.

Instead of worrying whether or not online education can ever be as good as more traditional formats, perhaps we should instead focus on how we can use it to deliver quality education for people all over the world, particularly the poor and the havenots.

 India has been under lockdown since 24 March. The impact on children, in particular, will need to be carefully monitored. Some 1.3 - 1.5 billion students and youth across the planet are affected by school and university closures. The resulting disruptions exacerbate already existing disparities within the education system but also in other aspects of their lives. 

The media is 24/7- Corona first, corona second and corona last! unfortunately Electronic media made a full-throated campaign for the ban on online education. In fact, children were getting a hang of it after few days of online exercise. They were excited.

Ban online education!

The govt appointed a committee to ban the online education. The experts promptly gave the report. The committee lost a golden opportunity of converting a crisis into an opportunity of initiating online education and give the children a head-start in digital education which is the future mode of education globally.

In its wisdom, Karnataka government on June 10 decided to ban online live classes for students from LKG till class 5 in all the primary schools in the state. Confusion and chaos have prevailed over the issue of extending a ban on online lessons for students up to class 7.

 Parents seem to be unhappy as Karnataka bans online classes.

 An online petition called, 'We support ONLINE CLASSES,' has collected around 15,000 signatures as of now!

The petition claims, "We, the parents are really happy with the online classes being held by almost all the schools across urban and rural Karnataka. The schools are putting great effort to continue giving education to our kids even during this heavy pandemic rise. And the screen time for kids, that is bothering the government should be looked upon in a positive way. At least the screen time the kids are going through are the productive ones, instead of them getting glued to televisions, i-Pads and video games.” They urged that schools be allowed to continue with their online classes.

 Plan and not Ban!

Teach students where they are

Focus on creativity over curriculum

Select tools that support your objectives- is the way to go forward

There will always be initial hiccoughs. We don’t know when schools will reopen.  We have to plan for an uncertain future. Digital technology that is going to change learning beyond physical schooling is inevitable. All You need is a regular access to a computer, a tablet or a smart phone to take online classes. If you do not have a computer at home, you can use the computer lab at your school or local library. You also need internet access. 

Online classes can work well for lock down students. You can log into class when it is convenient and attend class without ever leaving your home. They require the same dedication as regular classes and a good deal of self-motivation. Some online classes require daily participation. Instead of spending time on gaming and TV viewing online classes can be highly productive!

 The digital Natives and the digital immigrants or digital illiterates!

 The digital Native has the digital wisdom! The terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" were popularized by education consultant Marc Prensky in his 2001 article entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in which he relates the contemporary decline in American education to educators' failure to understand the needs of modern students.

 The arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology has changed the way students think and process information, making it easy for them to excel academically using the digital language of the day. Prensky called these children "digital natives". Those who have no access to the digital language become Digital immigrants who are left behind pay a heavy price in the long run!

 Bridge the gap

 It is the duty of educators and the institutions to bridge the gap between the digital natives and digital immigrants who are at a disadvantage - they can sometimes be at variance and feel left out in their education. 

 It is a concern that all children do not have reliable access to digital devices. Some have raised health concerns of the children.

In the short term, we do not know when the corona will allow schools to reopen. In the long term, we do not know when the next disruption to the school system occurs. The data from around the world suggests that such events are more probable now than even 10 years ago. We cannot level down in the name of equality. We must level up. Perfection will not happen overnight. But the goal must be a progressive realisation of universal access. Let’s spread abundance, not scarcity.

The classroom with all its limitations, remains a location of great possibility. In the past few weeks, we have gone from Classroom to Zoom. From pedagogy to ‘panic driven tools’ to cope with hastily made transition. In the process, however, much has also changed. Perhaps never to return to whatever we knew of teaching and learning for generations.

Most students outside the metro-based middle class have limited computer access, Wi-Fi is kind of spotty and erratic, there is a lot of electricity outage and synchronous virtual classes are very stressful for students and teachers not used to working with technology. 

 Learning language is natural and kids are born with the ability to learn it. All children, no matter which language their parents speak, can learn more languages without any additional burden.  As they grow, children continue to expand their knowledge and develop more complex languages including digital language!  By age 6, a child's language begins to sound like adult speech. Digital language is no different!

 It improves their self-esteem: Learning digital language allows children to master the language almost like digital natives!  In addition, learning more than one language at early age improves lifelong ability to communicate with others and contributes to cognitive development and cultural awareness.

 The sudden lockdown certainly caught the schools and colleges unawares, and what has compounded the problem is the fact that nobody is sure when life will get back to normal and students can once again return to their institutions. 

This crisis can be a genuine opportunity. It is inevitable that we will need digital technologies to re-imaging learning beyond physical schooling. Instead of clamping down completely on online classes for young children, we should allow the flourishing... of experimentation and innovation!

Education across all levels will be imparted online and home-schooling will be the new norm. Children will go to schools only once a while, for group activities or for building social skills. Knowledge gets transferred via Zoom. There is stress on teachers as Transitions to distance learning platforms tend to be messy and frustrating, even in the best circumstances. Still move on!

  Dr N Prabhudev

Former Director Sri Jayadeva institute of Cardiology

Former VC of Bangalore university

Former Chairman Karnataka state Health Commission

nprabhudev@gmail.com

[thefabulousfulcrum]

This is really important, and it's not being said enough. Please pass it around.

Thoughts on The Vegas Shooting (or Why Men Keep Doing This)

article via Medium

Charlie Hoehn

I’ll never forget April 20th, 1999.

I was 12 years old, sitting in art class in middle school. We were playing with clay and making sculptures.

Suddenly, our principal came on over the PA. Her voice trembled.

“I have an important announcement to make. All teachers and students need to hear this. I will wait 60 seconds for everyone to be completely silent.”

The next minute was eerie. My friends and I exchanged confused looks, and nervously laughed. Our teacher held her finger to her lips. Silence.

The principal’s voice came back onto the PA:

“There is a shooting at Columbine high school. All students are to go home immediately.”

Columbine was 15 minutes away from us.

I remember taking the bus home, and walking into my house. My mom turned on the news. I recognized that fence. We’ve driven by that fence.

My mom knew the teacher. Dave Sanders. She’d substituted with him at Columbine.

In the last 18 years, we Americans have experienced too many of these shootings. And I want to share a few of my thoughts on why I think they keep happening.

By the way, this isn’t a political post about guns, or the media. It’s a post about mental health.

Over the past few years, I’ve found myself in the mental health space. And I’ve learned a lot about mental illness. Particularly that men in the United States REALLY struggle in this realm, and have very little support.

I believe mental illness is the single greatest health crisis we will face in our lifetimes. Mental illness affects every single person on the planet, whether we are personally ill or not.

If we have a better understanding of what causes mental illness, we don’t have to be so afraid. We can take better care of each other, and prevent these tragedies from happening.

Sadly, most Americans still fail to address mental illness as a massive problem. It’s still taboo, still stigmatized.

I was watching Jimmy Kimmel’s impassioned, raw speech last night about the Vegas shootings. Like Jimmy, I felt sick and heartbroken by the tragedy. But something he said stood out to me:

“There’s probably no way to ever know why a human being could do something like this to other human beings.”

Sadly, researchers know exactly why human beings do things like this.

There are clear reasons. And they are preventable.

Why mass shootings keep happening.

It’s tempting to call these shooters “psychopaths” and “pure evil,” or to blame the media or guns, but that absolves us of looking deeply at what each of us — as individuals, family members, friends, and community members — could all be getting wrong.

Now, I’m not a psychiatrist. And I don’t know very much about the Vegas shooter. I’m just a guy who studies mental health.

Again, this is not a political post about guns, for the same reason it’s not a political post about weaponized cars. I’m not as interested in the tool as I am in what causes a person to use it so destructively.

Nor is this a post in defense of the shooter. What he did was beyond horrific. He is not excused from this by any stretch (though I truly feel sympathy for the shooter’s brother, who seemed to be totally caught off guard by this behavior, and now he has to deal with the aftermath for the rest of his life).

The goal of this post is simply to shine a light on the root causes of men committing mass shootings.

1- Men in the United States are chronically lonely.

Boys in the United States — just like all human beings — need touch, caring, warmth, empathy, and close relationships. But as we grow up, most of us lose those essential components of our humanity.

What’s worse: we have no idea how to ask for those things, or admit we need them, because we’re afraid it will make us look weak.

As a man, you might be thinking, “Not me, I’ve got drinking buddies. I play poker with the guys. I’ve got friends.”

But do you have confidants? Do you have male friends who you can actually be vulnerable with? Do you have friends whom you can confide in, be 100% yourself around, that you can hug without saying “No homo,” without feeling tense or uncomfortable while you’re doing it?

For most men, the answer is “no.” So, we spend our time posturing instead.

From an early age, we have an unhealthy ideal of masculinity that we try to live up to. Part of that ideal tells us that Real men do everything on their own. Real men don’t cry. Real men express anger through violence.

The byproduct is isolation. Most men spend the majority of their adult lives without deeper friendships, or any real sense of community. Not to mention a complete inability to release anger or sadness in a healthy way.

There is a fantastic documentary called The Mask You Live In, which explains how boys in our society are ultimately shaped into mentally unstable adults. My friend Ryan recommended this film to me, after confiding that he cried throughout the entire thing. I cried, as well. 

Simon Sinek echoed similar insights on Glenn Beck’s show:

“We’re seeing a rise of loneliness and isolation. No one kills themselves when they’re hungry; we kill ourselves when we’re lonely. And we act out, as well.

In the 1960’s, there was one school shooting.

In the 1980’s, there were 27.

In the 1990’s, there were 58.

In the past decade, there have been over 120.

It has nothing to do with guns, it has to do with people feeling lonely.

How do we combat the loneliness that kids are feeling? All of them attacked people in their own community, and all of them attack people they blamed for their own loneliness.”

This loneliness compounds as men grow older.

Without deeper friendships or a strong sense of community, the isolation is soul-deadening and maddening. You are alone.

Any slight from someone you care about can feel emotionally traumatizing. After enough rejections and feeling like an outcast, you begin to believe that people are just cruel and not worth the effort. You perceive people as threats.

Before we ask, “How could he do such a thing?” we have to understand how he felt on a daily basis, and how those feelings grew over the years.

2- Men in the United States are deprived of play opportunities.

You might be offended by this suggestion.

How could this guy talk about play after a shooting?! Play is for kids!

Wrong.

Homo sapiens play more than any other species. It’s impossible to prevent a human from playing. We play shortly after we are born, and the healthiest (and least stressed) humans tend to play for their entire lives.

Play may be God’s greatest gift to mankind. It’s how we form friendships, and learn skills, and master difficult things that help us survive. Play is a release valve for stress, and an outlet for creativity. Play brings us music, comedy, dance, and everything we value.

The irony is that loneliness would not be a problem if we all got ample time to play. Not only would we have deeper friendships, we’d also have better relationships with ourselves. Play allows us to enjoy our own company. If you truly know how to play, you are rarely alone.

But that is not the state of affairs in the United States. We are lonely because we don’t play, and we don’t play because we are alone.

There is a very strong correlation with play deprivation and mental illness.

When you deprive mammals of play, it leads to chronic depression. When you deprive a human child of play, their mental and emotional health deteriorate. Play suppression has enormous health consequences.

“But the Vegas shooter loved to gamble! He went on cruises!”

That’s not the type of play I’m talking about.

To better understand this dynamic, we need to look at the background of another mass shooter.

In 1966, Charles Whitman shot his wife and mother. Then, he climbed up the tower at the University of Texas in Austin, and shot 46 people. In total, he murdered 16 people. At the time, this was the biggest mass shooting in United States history.

Dr. Stuart Brown and his team of researchers were commissioned to find out what “The Texas Sniper” had in common with other mass murderers.

They found the key when they looked at their childhoods.

Brown recalls:

“None of them engaged in healthy rough-and-tumble play. The linkages that lead to Charles Whitman producing this crime was an unbelievable suppression of play behavior throughout his life by a very overbearing, very disturbed father.”

In other words: Healthy and joyful play must be had in order to thrive. Play is how we bond, and form our deepest connections with other human beings.

“It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your kids are?”

Ever since that famous ad aired, parents have shamed each other into watching their kids like a hawk.

If you let your kid walk up the street alone, you’ll either get a call from another parent, or the cops will pick them up. Our kids are stripped of their right to experience life on their own terms.

In an effort to improve our kids’ test scores and beef up their future resumes, we’ve stripped away nearly all of their free play opportunities. Recess has been sacrificed in the name of Scantrons, and pills are prescribed to the kids whose bodies and minds cry out for play.

The result: A generation of the most anxious, depressed, and suicidal American children on record.

This is all in alignment with Dr. Peter Gray’s research, who studied the rise of mental illness and the decline in play:

“Over the past half century, in the United States and other developed nations, children’s free play with other children has declined sharply. Over the same period, anxiety, depression, suicide, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased sharply in children, adolescents, and young adults… The decline in play has contributed to the rise in the psychopathology of young people.

This is why I believe mental illness is the biggest health crisis of our lifetimes. Because those kids will grow up into isolated adults who don’t know how to play, or seek out their friends when they are lonely.

They are alone.

In the most memorable chapter of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, the author describes the research of James Gilligan, a young psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School in the 1970s.

Gilligan was invited to make sense of the Massachusetts’s prisons and mental hospitals, where he interviewed murderous inmates. He included in his notebook this heartbreaking observation:

“They would all say that they themselves had died before they started killing other people… They felt dead inside. They had no capacity for feelings. No emotional feelings. Or even physical feelings.

Universal among the violent criminals was the fact that they were keeping a secret. A central secret. And that secret was that they felt ashamed— deeply ashamed, chronically ashamed, acutely ashamed.

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed.”

ALL OF US will face difficult times in our lives where we will experience shame, humiliation, disrespect, and ridicule.

Do you know what gets us through those hard times?

Do you know what the difference is between you and a killer?

Friendship: Love and support from the people you played with.

I often think of the final line of Stand by Me:

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12… Jesus, does anyone?”

I don’t know much about the Vegas shooter. Maybe he was a psychopath.

But I’m guessing he wasn’t.

Instead, I am betting that these factors about him were likely true:

He felt deeply lonely. He had no significant friendships to rely on, and very few quality people he could confide in.

He experienced play deprivation. He didn’t have joyful fun with himself, or with others.

He carried with him a deep sense of shame. About what, I have no idea.

Even though we’re in the safest period in the history of civilization, these shootings will keep happening in America. They happen every single day. Guns are a part of the problem, and so is the media. But there is a bigger problem.

We are a culture that continually neglects the mental health of our boys, and our men.

The good news is that you, as an individual, can make a difference. Reach out to someone who you think could be lonely, and go do something fun together. Confide in each other. Be a safe and supportive person to be around.

If you’ve noticed their personality has drastically changed, invite them out for several hours. Be there for them. You could save their life.

And it wouldn’t hurt to have these books in your library, either:

1- Mental Health Emergencies

2- Play

3- Fearvana

[crimsonblackrose]

This week has been interesting. On the one hand, lots of freedom. My CT ended up taking a sick day so I got a day and a half without someone hovering over my shoulder. And the funny thing is I expected I’d spend a lot of time doing whatever I wanted because I’m ahead in work anyway...but my silly self felt suddenly more motivated to work so I have only 2 more things to do for my main classes until the end of my contract. 

By besides that today I sat down with my CT and my principal and I  was nervous because any meeting with authority or anyone that’s like “blah wants to talk to you” makes me nervous. But it ended up being what I hypothesized which was the will I renew or will I not renew. 

I figured this would be my last year in Korea. Like it stresses me out being so far from home after my mother died so suddenly and I didn’t get to see her last year. My family is literally waiting for me to come home before we have her funeral. (She was cremated) and I keep panicking about how far away I am. So for my own mental health going home is like imperative no matter how comfortable I am here. I’m also burning out. I promised myself when I get annoyed with kids and am no longer happy to see them then it’s time to go. And oh boy has this school tested me. It’s in a rich neighborhood and I have many many privileged smart alek kids who think that they’re too good for school and if I try to do my job it’s like stepping on a mouse trap and they snap at me and then get really really angry. There’s still absolutely precious kids who I love but there’s some angry boi’s that make me nervous. 

So I figured I’d politely decline, but my school kinda beat me too it. I’d heard rumors that our city decided not to renew funding for my position, it’s becoming more and more common in Korea that they don’t see the point in teaching the kids English using a Native teacher. You can kinda follow along politically and watch how the sort of nationalistic wave has caused more nationalistic positions to be hired who then in turn are cutting the budgets for different educational programs. And it extends beyond that into common things too. I mean I told a coworker where I got my coat that she was fawning over and her face instantly soured because it’s a Japanese brand. Even though I bought it in Korea. But one of my friends was warned about the loss of her job months ago and since she plans to stay (she’s been here 11+ years) she’s been running around in a panic trying to figure out where she’s going and what she’ll do. And she told me about it like nearly around summer time but she also said she didn’t know if it was city wide because her school is in a poorer area than mine is. But nope, looks like there’s going to be a mass exodus of English teachers from my city.

But apparently it’s been eating away at my principal because she’s been worrying about where I’ll find a job and doesn’t want to have to let me go but there’s no budget. So I told her it’s time for me to go anway due to family stuff and then we bounced easily onto other topics like winter camp.

I spent yesterday doing mock ups for winter camp. I wrote up everything I could for the lesson plan, laid the bones down for my ppts, found crafts and printables and in one fell swoop the principal destroyed all my hard work. Our winter camp isn’t cancelled per say, but it can’t happen at the school because there will be construction. Again. Which means it’s too dangerous for the kids to come to school (but not for us. I still have to desk warm it sounds like) so instead she wants us to go elsewhere. And not just any elsewhere. She wants us to go to an English Village. So I was like, are we borrowing their facilities? To which my CT said no, we’re just escorting them and watching them as they enjoy the English Village’s programs. It’ll be two days and a night. So I’m taking my kids, my last chance to have fun with my students with plans I make, and throwing that out the window in order to watch my kids do English Village activities and chaperone them. On the one hand, yay field trip and no actual work responsibilities, on the other hand what a weird AF plan. Like why not just cancel camp? I get why she doesn’t want to cancel it. It’s the school’s last time having a native English teacher for the forseeable future. But still weird. I love field trips though so it’s a mixed bag. 

My CT also was like uhhh she wants this to be over the weekend you cool with that? And I was like well as long as you warn me far enough in advance it’s fine. Which is not what my CT wanted to hear at all. LOL she was hoping once again, (she never learns) that I’d be like ABSOLUTELY NOT HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST SUCH A THING!!!! (kinda like she had hoped I’d do for our lunch event but didn’t do) So she’s probably going to lie to the principal later and be like Lauren said she doesn’t feel comfortable giving up her weekend. Like yeah it’s a weekend, but I’m about to be jobless in the states. I can live with a busy weekend during desk warming season. 

Anyway it’s been an interesting week and tomorrow...tomorrow we’re making kimchi.