This post will also be for parents of young children who are struggling. Yesterday’s post attracted a surprising number of viewers. I don’t know why. But I thought I’d add to that post in view of the interest.

Children who lag behind in speech hit the radar quickly, especially when parents can see differences between these kids and older siblings. If Joshua spoke in full sentences at two, and little sister Maya still mostly points and uses short phrases or single words, parents can be expected to worry about Maya. Maya may be fine. Einstein was a late talker. But those contrasts can be scary.

I remember talking to my pediatrician about child number two. I was worried she might be ill because she slept so much, a full six hours when she was two months old. My first child had never slept more than two hours for the first five months. I was so tired back then, I was walking into walls. I set off the smoke detector twice, nodding off while warming bottles. I’m sure I should not have been allowed to drive.

My pediatrician thought my worries about my second daughter were pretty funny.

“It’s called getting lucky,” he said.

By all means, have late talkers evaluated. Early intervention helps enormously in the right situations. When children don’t seem to be acquiring language as you expect, a screening and discussion with a professional is indicated. But keep in mind, Maya is not Joshua and she may simply see less need to communicate at two than he did.

That said, I’d like to expand on my last post. Preschool interventions are not just for delayed speakers. Behaviors also should trigger evaluations when those behaviors create learning challenges — or when they can be expected to interfere with socializing with other children. Behaviors that cause a child a great deal of stress, even if those behaviors don’t isolate a child, may also be cause for intervention.

If Wendy always cries when her drawers are not in perfect order, if Nathaniel cries when other kids try to play with him, if Jemma throws frequent, titanic tantrums, then maybe professional help will make everyone’s lives easier. Yes, some kids are clingier and more exacting than others. Kids throw tantrums. But young children can suffer — and I truly mean suffer — from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Young children can find themselves battling extreme anxiety. And those tantrums may amount to more than a toddler’s frustration.

Almost all toddlers will outgrow belly-flop, shrieking tantrums. Almost all kids will learn to manage separating from mommy, and will find friends to play with. Many obsessive-compulsive children will manage well, with a great deal of praise from adults who appreciate their unexpected neatness and precision. But if you are efforting all the time as you try to manage behaviors that complicate the flow of daily life, I’d suggest seeking outside help. School district counselors and social workers can provide guidance. Preschools teach many useful life skills, such as cleaning up after yourself, communicating and sharing.

I think too often we parents try to go it alone, trying to solve our own problems when help may be available. Sometimes we are just too tired to communicate. If I had ever once gotten a full night’s sleep during my first child’s first five months, I might have been able to think straight enough to realize I needed more help than I was getting. We also get so busy that we postpone thinking about the big issues in favor of somehow getting the grass mowed and the laundry done.

Eduhonesty: Step back for a moment. Do you sometimes wonder if your child might have a problem outside the boundaries of the usual toddler tussles? If so, please do yourself a favor and put the mower or the laundry down. Find an outsider to help you sort out your thoughts. Go to your local school district. Ask if your girl or boy would benefit from early intervention. Considering talking to an outside therapist. At best, you will be reassured, and when early intervention is indicated, the sooner you find help, the better.

Again, go with your gut.

P.S. And if your gut tells you that the district has made a mistake, believe that you may be right. Talk to outside counselors. Ultimately, you may lack objectivity, but nobody knows your kid like you do.

This post is being written for parents, especially parents of young children, another post that has nothing to do with the impending war with Australia and everything to do with education!

How do children get into the public school preschool programs? Their parents push. They ask for their child to be screened for learning challenges. Screening may not result in placement. If not, those parents keep pushing.

I should start with an observation: There are no “average” children. Average children do not exist. Children learn differently. Not all gifted children speak early. Speech deficits may not correlate to cognitive deficits. Introverts may manifest a dislike of loud noise and social demands even before they can walk. Many children have specks of ADHD in their behavior at odd times. Variability and being the odd child out sometimes come with the territory. So I want to stress that the odd child out may be perfectly fine.

But I suggest parents go with their feelings. What does your gut say? If the language seems to be coming too slowly, if the lack of eye contact or sharing seems extreme, or if the waves of tantrums come too often, I strongly recommend seeking help early. Talk to counselors. Talk to your school district. When available, early intervention helps. Going to school to get ready to go to school ups the odds that kindergarten and first grade will go well.

Eduhonesty: If you hit a wall, keep hammering. You may need to find the right person to get help. Document concerns. Keep documenting. Go back. And go back. People have been known to fight the special services fight for years. Those services cost money and districts drop the ball for a variety reasons, money and staffing among them, especially when deficits don’t scream out at them. The kid with a tracheotomy who needs assistive technology to communicate will get help. That girl who covers her ears through most of her playgroup may struggle to get special services, especially if she does well with adults in quiet spaces, disguising her challenges.

Go with your gut and — I hate to write this — keep in mind that administrators may have an agenda that does not match your own. I remember when the state of Illinois told my district that our special education rate was “too high.” We had placed too many children in special education, according to some secret rule. Maybe so, maybe not, but teachers were quietly given to understand that no placements would be made except in emergencies.

Fortunately, people who complain enough can become emergencies. Keep pushing. You have a perfect right to shove as hard and as often as it takes to get help.

Tweet, tweet. This post has almost nothing to do with Donald Trump. Let’s return to education for a moment. I encountered a data discrepancy in the last few days, a wild one. Social science numbers tend to be fuzzy, but these numbers make me think of Rapunzel’s hair. Fuzz cannot begin to cover what I have been reading.

Greatschools.org rates the local schools in North Chicago (a suburb found a little less than an hour north of the actual city of Chicago)  at abysmally low levels: 1 out of 10 for the local high school and 2 out of 10 for the local middle school. Greatschools does know that North Chicago Community High School has one language (Spanish), two versions of art and music, fifteen sports and no known clubs.

Greatschools gives Deerfield High School 6 out of 10, reason unknown. Greatschools has no idea how many clubs, world languages, sports, and arts and music classes can be found at Deerfield High School, so I thought the reason might be lack of data, but keep reading. I think they invented that number.

U.S. News and World Report has Deerfield High School rated seventh in Illinois for 2016, and 219th in national rankings. They don’t rate North Chicago Community High School at all. 

Schooldigger.com ranks North Chicago Community High School 586th of 635 public high schools in Illinois. It ranks Deerfield High School 260th out of 635 public high schools in Illinois, giving the school a community review of 3 out of 5 stars. NCCHS received zero stars.

I think I’ll throw in Glenbrook North High School, rated 26th in Illinois and 712th in the nation by U.S. News and World report. Glenbrook North’s SchoolDigger rank is 135th of 635 Illinois High Schools. Community review comes in at 3 out of 5 stars at Schooldigger, with an overall rating of 10 out of 10 at Greatschools.org.

What?!? Numbers, numbers, numbers. The question is this: Do these numbers even make sense? No, but they are out there and they are being used and even quoted.

Eduhonesty: Social science numbers bear only the loosest relationship to actual facts. Yet the rage in education right now is data acquisition. I have taken many 1/2 day sub jobs this year while colleagues attended data discussion meetings. This post is a reminder that, even when cloaked in big words and good intentions, sometimes data is just gobbledygook.

I believe that fall-out from the technological changes of the last two decades includes a relaxation in our attempts to protect children from worrisome information. While middle schools may still send home forms before showing “R” or even “PG-13” rated films, and they still try to block websites, those schools don’t try nearly as hard as in the past. Parents may not be trying as hard, either. For one thing, so many students have full internet access on their phones that blocking websites and screening bad language does not seem particularly practical.

Let me pose a few questions: Are you watching the news? Does the news fascinate you? Does the news concern you right now? Does it even scare you? Imagine if you were eight, or ten, or twelve or sixteen and could put almost none of that news into context. Suppose you had no idea which opposing commentator knew the facts. Given that lawyers are battling questions of legality in open forums, it’s safe to say that even adults don’t understand the legalities of the current situation.

Eduhonesty: Pull out the Star Wars Monopoly game. Pull out the old Xbox games and controllers. Go out for pizza or ice cream. The political news right now can be a bit too fascinating. I am recommending we view the news, if we must, after the little kids go to sleep. Parents, you know your older children. If you want to have discussions with them about current events, and you think they can handle those events without becoming too distressed, go for it. But let’s keep the kids in mind as we channel surf.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. Thomas Jefferson

I would like to preface this post by saying that the Japanese internment camps during World War II represented an inexcusable and sickening act of racism. I would not want this post to be interpreted in any other manner. Nevertheless, a ninety-year-old man said something fascinating to me yesterday. In his words:

(I know he does not look that old, but he is.)

“People don’t get it. Roosevelt rescued the Japanese. People hated them right then. Thousands of young, American soldiers had been killed by a sneak attack on a Sunday morning when people were supposed to be in church. People were ready to lynch those Japanese. Roosevelt did the best thing he could for them when he got them out of the way. If he hadn’t, things would have gotten ugly. Their homes would have been burned and neighbors would have hurt or even murdered some of them. I don’t know why nobody ever talks about that.”

The man in question is no fan of Roosevelt. He can’t stand F.D.R.even now, which is curious since he acknowledges the Christmas turkey came from government charity and many people he knew were working government jobs, after the Depression had taken away their livelihoods.

This post has little to do with education and if readers are baffled by my post, I am writing this down because I thought I might be hearing a buried historical truth. Maybe America ducked a bullet. Maybe those internment camps prevented America from coming face to face with the racism that can be stirred up in a susceptible population — prevented us from learning that as a group we might be capable of the kind of racism that can’t be buried in the past under the simple heading, “Japanese Internment Camps, an awful government mistake.” We can sanitize those camps, point our fingers elsewhere. It wasn’t us, we can say, just a relatively small group of bureaucrats.

It comes down to this: Who are we? What are we capable of doing when passions run high enough? Angry Americans have burned two mosques in Texas in the last month. We can’t let this fact disappear in thirty-second news segments.

Eduhonesty: I wrote this post to warn readers against complacency. Sometimes the best of us act as if the world will work out for the best. Kind, gentle people can be betrayed by kindness, by their inability to believe that neighbors across the street might hate an unknown group of people enough to torch a temple of worship. We have trouble believing in monsters on Maple Street.

Readers, please speak up against the racism of this time when the occasion arises. I would so rather watch a Dr. Who marathon and let the world flow on around me, but I feel compelled to follow current events at the moment and make my voice heard. Silence can imply consent.

As I warn former students, even those with papers, not to leave the country, I do not consent.

P.S. I know we’re all crazy busy. But please share this post if you have time.

My last post was written before the President struck, in a dismayingly prescient piece of timing.

Let’s be clear: Our schools are filled with millions of scared and even terrified Mexican children. We just added all of our children from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen to the count. We added many Muslim children from other countries beyond those seven, as well as Muslim children from long-established, U.S. Muslim families.

We will go into Monday with so many lost and frightened children in our classrooms.

I have few words. I pray my former student Michael, who came from Syria a few years ago, is safe. The best recommendation out there right now: If you are here, don’t travel. If you want to come here, make another plan.

Not a single one of the terrorists in the 9/11 attack came from the seven selected countries if my memory serves me right. But facts don’t seem to be winning the day right now. Are tears running down the face of the Statue of Liberty?

I can tell you children are out there crying, as they wait for fathers, mothers, uncles, and friends who ended up on the wrong side of the ocean today. They are watching parents cry. In the background, I listen as a newscaster talks about a mosque that burned last night, two in Texas in the last month.

In “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945,” by Milton Mayer, Chapter 1 begins with the burning of a synagogue. Let’s pray we are not entering the first chapter of our own historical drama. Iran has fired back, and our Iranian citizens will be unable to visit relatives in that country.

In the meantime, let’s hold up the kids while the dominoes fall.

In scary times, we can just march forward, doing the end of January lesson plans that our team agreed upon. This post’s especially for teachers, because teachers get so busy with all the professional paperwork requirements, new administrative programs, professional development, meetings, classroom management and myriad other topics that suck up the days, evenings and week-ends.

I’d like to shine a small spotlight on our Muslim students, as crazy guys attack heroic, female cops who happen to wear traditional Muslim head garb. I don’t want to shine too large a spotlight. Many children honestly hate being the center of attention and I believe we should respect that choice. But taking a few minutes to include Muslim students, to share small connections between their lives and everybody else’s life might help us through the next few years. Perhaps taking a moment to let students show how they hold their hands as they pray and letting them share their favorite holidays. You are likely to be ahead if they answer “my birthday” or if they answer “Ramadan.”

Ducking the gargantuan lesson plans that are sometimes handed down to teachers in favor of taking a few moments to celebrate diversity will only help our students. Kids tend to believe adults. We have to break that Muslim = Terrorist connection that is being created in some circles. Among other considerations, enough of that thinking has the potential to create would-be terrorists. The kids in high school who have thug reputations regrettably often seek to prove their thugness to the world around them. Tell a kid he’s bad and keep saying he’s bad and what happens? The odds that he will decide to live up to that expectation skyrocket in my view.

Eduhonesty: A single act of racism leaves ripples that spread across the water. A single act of contempt can change a life. We have to prevent pebbles from hitting the pond whenever possible. We need to be proactive for our Muslim students.

I realize I’m preaching to the choir. Teachers overall are greater at celebrating diversity than any other group I know. But I wanted to write this because teacher workloads also are bordering on insane in some places, as teachers try to satisfy the government, the administration, and 22-page evaluation rubrics, etc. Social and character issues can get buried under that work, and sometimes only a generalized anti-bullying agenda manages to hold its own. That agenda may not be enough.

My index card was found taped at the front of the room in a third-grade classroom in an academically disadvantaged district. I believe the district may be in defiance of state law. When I left off, daily gym counted as a state requirement in Illinois. But schools with low test scores lock into fights to push their numbers up.

Every day, this school loses time to an opening assembly designed to keep students academically on-track. Students gather in the gym for team-building and pep talks. Awhile back, I wrote about another school in this district that starts the day with an assembly. I still recall my favorite line: “Every student has a right to learn and every teacher has a right to teach.”

I’d say the assemblies work. The kids know expectations and almost all of them deliver. They sit and listen. They chant and cheer when they are supposed to chant and cheer.

But that assembly — I have never observed an equivalent assembly in high-scoring districts where I substitute — has to come from somewhere. Do the assemblies eat gym? Are they counted as the obligatory daily gym?

To be continued tomorrow after I go out into the world to check a few details…

(Or as Jim Carrey said in “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “If I’m not back in five minutes, wait longer.”)

Great moment in second grade mathematics: I am going over assignments with five students and I show “Ellie” a problem she had gotten wrong. I help her to understand that this story problem amounts to twenty take away eight. I write the problem down for her.

I say, “Now, how do you do that?”

She studies it for awhile and then she says firmly:

“It can’t be done.”