Education
The Community Building Power of Music
I was asked by Grant Station to write about the community building power of music for their website newsletter. Grant Station connects non-profits to potential grant opportunities.
Life Lessons From Painting: Your Self Portrait is Never Finished
Six months ago, I began talking painting lessons. It has been fascinating, exhilarating, challenging and more than anything, educational.
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How Elite Athletics Can Undermine Academic Values and Institutions
You’ve read the stories. Maybe even in your local paper. There are no shortages of accounts of the never-ending “arms race” in college athletics for programs to build palatial offices, stadiums or practice facilities. And, true to form, many of the priorities displayed by our colleges and universities filter down to influence attitudes and policies
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The Future of Tackle Football: The Bricks Just Keep Coming
Sometimes you can repeat a phrase or articulate a theory or belief so often that it begins to become simply background noise or, if repeated enough, irrelevant. I am referring to my ongoing use of the metaphor, “another brick in the wall” as it relates to the future of tackle football in America. It seems
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Envisioning a Better Model for Interscholastic Sports
Athletes often use a technique called “visualization” to improve their chances of success. For example, the athlete imagines an act such as hitting a baseball or envisions reacting during a competitive situation. It is believed that if the athlete sees herself performing a particular skill, it will improve her chances of actually performing that skill
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Guns for Teachers? How About More Violins for Students?
Originally published in Lancaster Online on May 25th, 2018 As I walked home from the March for our Lives rally for gun control and school safety in Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s Binns Park, being one of millions of participants in the estimated 800 events worldwide, I couldn’t help but think, “Maybe…possibly…this time will be different.”The typical
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School Daze: Athletics and School Schedules
As has been well documented, athletic programs in our high schools have various impacts on the academic values and priorities and school culture and environment. For example, students involved in sports are more “engaged” in school and as a result less likely to cut classes or skip it entirely. On the other hand, a case
High School Tackle Football: Its Origins Foretell its Future
USA Football, the NFL funded national governing body for the sport recently held its annual meeting in Orlando. According to a January 30, 2018 account in the New York Times, they would have been better off holding it at a beach resort as it would have made it much easier for participants to dig holes
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Music as the Glue of the Core Curriculum
An ongoing debate within the educational community relates to how to classify physical education classes, athletic programs (in particular, football) and music programs within the academic curriculum. Specifically, the question relates to whether these programs should be considered “extracurricular” or “core” activities. The purpose of this essay is not only to examine that question, but