What's the difference in your mind between 'talking the talk' and 'walking the walk'? Why does the former seem so easy for so many people, and the latter so hard?
AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Vocab quiz
3. It's go time. Today we will begin to plan our calendars and set up action plans.
HW:
1. Post definitions & usage for vocab list #4 by COB Friday, Jan 31
2. Read "My High School Hoax" (try the link first; the comments are priceless--if the link doesn't work, you can read the text of "My High School Hoax" after the jump)
3. Then read "Committing to Play for a College, Then Starting 9th Grade" (if link doesn't work, see "Committing..." after the jump)
4. In a blog post entitled HAFTA/WANNA explain similarities/differences you see between life during high school and life after high school. Is there a significant difference? Will people somehow magically transform the day after graduation, or will they take their current habits of mind/word/deed into their next set of daily activities? How do you balance the things you want to do and the things you have to do, and what are your expectations of yourself and the world around you as you move on?
MY HIGH SCHOOL HOAX by Teddy Wayne
I
had cut ninth-grade percussion class three weeks straight. But the
top-floor music room overlooked the court where I was foolishly playing
basketball, and my teacher summoned me from the window.
He
was an easygoing guy in his 20s who had the students call him by his
first name, Scott, so the incident registered as comic blunder rather
than punishable transgression. Yet he reminded me that it was my turn
for the in-class project — others had given oral reports on famous jazz
drummers, for instance. I’d completely forgotten about the assignment.
I
was having a little trouble in school. Not only was I unhappy for all
the standard freshman reasons — I was insecure, nervous around girls,
unsure who my friends were — but I was also devolving into an
indifferent student. Whereas academics came so easily to me before,
certain high-school classes required real work, and I couldn’t coast
anymore.
“Turn over a new leaf, kid,” my Latin teacher advised me kindly in class one day when I joked that my canis ate my homework.
Even
in percussion, which I previously excelled at, I plateaued at an
intermediate rock beat as others mastered samba rhythms. I responded to
my middling performance with apathy. If I wasn’t going to be the
effortless best, I wasn’t going to try. I wasn’t the common slacker, I
believed; I was an ambitious slacker, someone who aggressively
squandered his potential. And now I stood empty-handed and perspiring
before five drum students. My mind swerved to biology, in which we
recently completed creative research projects and which I was in danger
of flunking.
“My project’s in my locker,” I told Scott.
He
excused me. In the adjacent open music room, the jazz band was taking a
break from practicing. I approached my friend Doug from my bio class.
“Can I borrow your bio project?” I whispered.
He
consented, and I ran to our empty science lab. The wall displayed the
work my classmates spent weeks fashioning, including a top student’s
tile-mosaic rendering of a multicellular organism and my crudely
penciled cartoon — don’t ask why — about the mythical basilisk. It had
taken me 15 minutes. I got a D.
Doug
had written about the Alaskan ecosystem; his project was a circular
piece of leather ringed by thin wood, with a beaded depiction of an ice
fisherman on the front. I grabbed it and scurried back to class, my
heart drumrolling in my chest.
“It’s an Alaskan Inuit drum,” I announced.
Scott
examined the object like a skeptical appraiser. The leather was not
even taut. It produced as much sound as lightly pressing your forearm.
“Unfortunately,
the leather didn’t dry out properly,” I explained with apologetic
disappointment. I kept a straight face as I dispensed ethnographic
details about how the Inuit played the drums to commemorate milestones,
celebrate hunts and entertain themselves. This was a progressive school
in New York City. No one dared question my information about an ethnic
group. And none of the other students were in my bio class.
“Nice work,” Scott finally said with an approving nod. He stowed the ersatz instrument against the wall with the other projects.
A
few days later, a student in the other drums unit asked why Doug’s
science project was there. Scott never said anything about it to me. In
my final report card, though, he leveled similar charges as my other
teachers about my attitude, along with an atypical note: “Finally, maybe
Teddy could clear up this rumor of his midterm project being the same
one he used in science.”
It
was my last year taking drums, and no one cared much about my
show-and-tell plagiarism. I received a C+ in bio. I could, it appeared,
keep coasting.
Seven
years later, just out of college, I found myself living back at home
and substitute-teaching English at my old high school. I could spot my
fellow ambitious slackers a mile away. An impish eighth grader
obnoxiously slapped his drumsticks against his desk in class one day.
Turn over a new leaf, kid, I wanted to warn him. Except he wasn’t the
one subbing at his alma mater for $95 a day.
That was a wake-up call. I moved out, took writing more seriously, did away with the canis
jokes. And now, every once in a while, I find myself near a drum set.
Sticks in hand, my muscle memory kicks in, and I bang out the
intermediate rock beat I learned two decades ago. It’s fun, but I’m
always a little sad that that’s all I know how to do.
Committing to Play for a College, Then Starting 9th Grade
by Nathaniel Popper, NY Times
SANFORD,
Fla. — Before Haley Berg was done with middle school, she had the
numbers for 16 college soccer coaches programmed into the iPhone she
protected with a Justin Bieber case.
She
was all of 14, but Hales, as her friends call her, was already weighing
offers to attend the University of Colorado, Texas A&M and the
University of Texas, free of charge.
Haley
is not a once-in-a-generation talent like LeBron James. She just
happens to be a very good soccer player, and that is now valuable enough
to set off a frenzy among college coaches, even when — or especially
when — the athlete in question has not attended a day of high school.
For Haley, the process ended last summer, a few weeks before ninth grade
began, when she called the coach at Texas to accept her offer of a
scholarship four years later.
“When
I started in seventh grade, I didn’t think they would talk to me that
early,” Haley, now 15, said after a tournament late last month in
Central Florida, where Texas coaches showed up to watch her juke past
defenders, blond ponytail bouncing behind.
“Even the coaches told me, ‘Wow, we’re recruiting an eighth grader,’ ” she said.
In
today’s sports world, students are offered full scholarships before
they have taken their first College Boards, or even the Preliminary SAT
exams. Coaches at colleges large and small flock to watch 13- and
14-year-old girls who they hope will fill out their future rosters. This
is happening despite N.C.A.A. rules that appear to explicitly prohibit it.
The
heated race to recruit ever younger players has drastically accelerated
over the last five years, according to the coaches involved. It is
generally traced back to the professionalization of college and youth
sports, a shift that has transformed soccer and other recreational
sports from after-school activities into regimens requiring strength
coaches and managers.
The
practice has attracted little public notice, except when it has
occasionally happened in football and in basketball. But a review of
recruiting data and interviews with coaches indicate that it is actually
occurring much more frequently in sports that never make a dime for
their colleges.
Early
scouting has also become more prevalent in women’s sports than men’s,
in part because girls mature sooner than boys. But coaches say it is
also an unintended consequence of Title IX, the federal law that
requires equal spending on men’s and women’s sports. Colleges have
sharply increased the number of women’s sports scholarships they offer,
leading to a growing number of coaches chasing talent pools that have
not expanded as quickly. In soccer, for instance, there are 322 women’s
soccer teams in the highest division, up from 82 in 1990. There are now
204 men’s soccer teams.
“In
women’s soccer, there are more scholarships than there are good
players,” said Peter Albright, the coach at Richmond and a regular
critic of early recruiting. “In men’s sports, it’s the opposite.”
While
women’s soccer is generally viewed as having led the way in early
recruiting, lacrosse, volleyball and field hockey have been following
and occasionally surpassing it, and other women’s and men’s sports are
becoming involved each year when coaches realize a possibility of
getting an edge.
Precise
numbers are difficult to come by, but an analysis done for The New York
Times by the National Collegiate Scouting Association, a company that
consults with families on the recruiting process, shows that while only 5
percent of men’s basketball players and 4 percent of football players
who use the company commit to colleges early — before the official
recruiting process begins — the numbers are 36 percent in women’s
lacrosse and 24 percent in women’s soccer.
At
universities with elite teams like North Carolina and Texas, the
rosters are almost entirely filled by the time official recruiting
begins.
While
the fierce competition for good female players encourages the pursuit
of younger recruits, men’s soccer has retained a comparably relaxed
rhythm — only 8 percent of N.C.S.A.’s male soccer athletes commit early.
For
girls and boys, the trend is gaining steam despite the unhappiness of
many of the coaches and parents who are most heavily involved, many of
whom worry about the psychological and physical toll it is taking on
youngsters.
“It’s
detrimental to the whole development of the sport, and to the girls,”
Haley’s future coach at Texas, Angela Kelly, said at the Florida
tournament.
The
difficulty, according to Ms. Kelly and many other coaches, is that if
they do not do it, other coaches will, and will snap up all of the best
players. Many parents and girls say that committing early ensures they
do not miss out on scholarship money.
After
the weekend in Florida, the coach at Virginia, Steve Swanson, said, “To
me, it’s the singular biggest problem in college athletics.”
The
N.C.A.A. rules designed to prevent all of this indicate that coaches
cannot call players until July after their junior year of high school.
Players are not supposed to commit to a college until signing a letter
of intent in the spring of their senior year.
But
these rules have enormous and widely understood loopholes. The easiest
way for coaches to circumvent the rules is by contacting the students
through their high school or club coaches. Once the students are
alerted, they can reach out to the college coaches themselves with few
limits on what they can talk about or how often they can call.
Haley said she was having phone conversations with college coaches nearly every night during the eighth grade.
‘It’s Killing All of Us’
The
early recruiting machine was on display during the Florida tournament,
where Haley played alongside hundreds of other teenage girls at a
sprawling complex of perfectly mowed fields.
A
Sunday afternoon game between 14-year-olds from Texas and Ohio drew
coaches from Miami, Arizona, Texas and U.C.L.A. — the most recent
Division I national champion. Milling among them was the most storied
coach in women’s soccer, Anson Dorrance of North Carolina, who wore a
dark hat and sunglasses that made him look like a poker player as he
scanned the field.
Mr.
Dorrance, who has won 22 national championships as a coach, said he was
spending his entire weekend focusing on the youngest girls at the
tournament, those in the eighth and ninth grades. Mr. Dorrance is
credited with being one of the first coaches to look at younger players,
but he says he is not happy about the way the practice has evolved.
“It’s killing all of us,” he said.
Mr. Dorrance’s biggest complaint is that he is increasingly making early offers to players who do not pan out years later.
“If
you can’t make a decision on one or two looks, they go to your
competitor, and they make an offer,” he said. “You are under this huge
pressure to make a scholarship offer on their first visit.”
The result has been a growing number of girls who come to play for him at North Carolina and end up sitting on the bench.
“It’s
killing the kids that go places and don’t play,” he said. “It’s killing
the schools that have all the scholarships tied up in kids who can’t
play at their level. It’s just, well, it’s actually rather destructive.”
The
organizer of the Florida event, the Elite Clubs National League, was
set up a few years ago to help bring together the best girls’ soccer
teams from around the country, largely for the sake of recruiters. At
the recent event, in an Orlando suburb, an estimated 600 college coaches
attended as 158 teams played on 17 fields over the course of three
days.
Scouts
were given a hospitality tent as well as a special area next to the
team benches, not accessible to parents, to set up their folding chairs.
Nearly every youth club had a pamphlet — handed out by a parent during
the games — with a head shot, academic records, soccer achievements and
personal contact information for each player.
While
the older teams, for girls in their final two years of high school,
drew crowds of recruiters, they were generally from smaller and less
competitive universities. Coaches from colleges vying for national
championships, like Mr. Dorrance, spent most of their weekend watching
the youngest age group.
Despite
the rush, there is a growing desire among many coaching groups to push
back. At a meeting of women’s lacrosse coaches in December, nearly every
group session was dedicated to complaints about how quickly the trend
was moving and discussions about how it might be reversed. In 2012, the
Intercollegiate Men’s Lacrosse Coaches Association proposed rule changes
to the N.C.A.A. to curtail early recruiting. But the N.C.A.A. declined
to take them up, pointing to a moratorium on new recruiting rules. (At
the same time, though, the N.C.A.A. passed new rules allowing unlimited
texting and calls to basketball recruits at an earlier age.)
“The
most frustrating piece is that we haven’t been able to get any traction
with the N.C.A.A.,” said Dom Starsia, the men’s lacrosse coach at
Virginia. “There’s a sense that the N.C.A.A. doesn’t want to address
this topic at all.”
In
an interview, Steve Mallonee, the managing director of academic and
membership affairs for the N.C.A.A., reiterated his organization’s
moratorium on new recruiting rules. He said the new rules on texting and
calling were allowed because they were a “presidential initiative.”
Mr.
Mallonee said the N.C.A.A. did not track early recruiting because it
happened outside of official channels. He added that new rules trying to
restrict the practice would be hard to enforce because of the
unofficial nature of the commitments.
“We
are trying to be practical and realistic and not adopt a bunch of rules
that are unenforceable and too difficult to monitor,” he said.
Club Coaches in Key Role
The early recruiting system has given significant power to club coaches, who serve as gatekeepers and agents for their players.
One
of the most outspoken critics of this process is Rory Dames, the coach
of one of the most successful youth club teams, the Chicago Eclipse. In
Florida, Mr. Dames kept a watchful eye on his players between games, at
the pool at the Marriott where they were staying. As the 14- and
15-year-old girls went down the water slide, he listed the colleges that
had called him to express interest in each one.
“Notre Dame, North Carolina and Florida State have called about her,” he said as one ninth grader barreled down the slide.
Another slid down behind her. “U.N.C., U.C.L.A. and I can’t even remember who else called me about her,” he said.
Mr.
Dames said that he kept a good relationship with those programs but
that he generally refused to connect colleges with girls before their
sophomore year in high school, when he thinks they are too young to be
making decisions about what college to attend.
Some
colleges, though, do not take no for an answer and try to get to his
players through team managers or other parents. After one such email was
forwarded to him, Mr. Dames shot back his own message to the coach:
“How you think this reflects positively on your university I would love
to hear.”
He did not hear back. Mr. Dames said that when his players wait, they find scholarship money is still available.
Most
club coaches, though, are more cooperative than Mr. Dames and view it
as their job to help facilitate the process, even if they think it is
happening too early.
Michael
O’Neill, the director of coaching at one of the top clubs in New
Jersey, Players Development Academy, said that he and his staff helped
set up phone calls so his players did not miss out on opportunities.
They also tutor the players on handling the process.
“You almost have to,” Mr. O’Neill said. “If you don’t, you can get left behind.”
Once
the colleges manage to connect with a player, they have to deal with
the prohibition on making a formal scholarship offer before a player’s
final year of high school. But there is now a well-evolved process that
is informal but considered essentially binding by all sides. Most sports
have popular websites where commitments are tallied, and coaches can
keep up with who is on and off the market.
Either
side can make a different decision after an informal commitment, but
this happens infrequently because players are expected to stop talking
with coaches from other programs and can lose offers if they are spotted
shopping around. For their part, coaches usually stop recruiting other
players.
“You
play this goofy game of musical chairs,” said Alfred Yen, a law
professor at Boston College who has written a scholarly article on the
topic and also saw it up close when his son was being recruited to play
soccer. “Only in this game, if you are sitting in a chair, someone can
pull it out from under you.”
Mr.
Yen said that colleges withdrew their offers to two boys his son played
with, one of whom ended up in junior college and the other at a
significantly less prestigious university. Other players who made early
decisions went to colleges where they were unhappy, leading them to
transfer.
The process can be particularly tricky for universities with high academic standards.
Ivy
League colleges, which generally have the toughest standards for
admission, generally avoid recruiting high school freshmen, but the
programs do not stay out of the process altogether, according to coaches
at the colleges, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to discuss the topic.
Two
Ivy League coaches said they were generally able to look at players
with a grade-point average above 3.7 and a score above 2,000 on the
College Boards — out of 2,400 — much lower than the standard for
nonathlete applicants. Ivy League coaches can put their recruits on a
list of preferred candidates given to admissions officers, who in turn
help the process along by telling coaches in the summer after an
athlete’s junior year whether the player is likely to be admitted —
months before other applicants find out.
Fearing a Toll on Minds
At
the Florida tournament, many players said they had given up all other
recreational sports in middle school to play soccer year round.
A
growing body of academic studies has suggested that this sort of
specialization can take a toll on young bodies, leading to higher rates
of injury.
For
many parents, though, the biggest worry is the psychological pressure
falling on adolescents, who are often ill equipped to determine what
they will want to study in college, and where.
These
issues were evident on the last morning of the Florida event, on the
sidelines of a game involving the Dallas Sting. Scott Lewis, the father
of a high school sophomore, said his daughter switched to play for the
Sting before this season because her old team was not helping steer the
recruiting process enough. He watched scholarship offers snapped up by
girls on other teams, he said.
“Is it a little bit sick? Yeah,” he said. “You are a little young to do this, but if you don’t, the other kids are going to.”
A
parent standing next to Mr. Lewis, Tami McKeon, said, “It’s caused this
downward spiral for everybody.” The spiral is moving much faster, she
said, than when her older daughter went through the recruiting process
three years ago.
Ms.
McKeon’s younger daughter, Kyla, was one of four players on the Sting
who committed to colleges last season as freshmen. Kyla spent almost 30
minutes a day writing emails to coaches and setting up phone calls. The
coaches at two programs wanted to talk every week to track her progress.
Throughout the year, Kyla said, she “would have these little
breakdowns.”
“You
are making this big life decision when you are a freshman in high
school,” she said. “You know what you want in a week, but it’s hard to
predict what you’ll want in four years.”
Kyla
said that when she told Arkansas that she was accepting its offer, she
was happy about her choice, but it was as if a burden had been lifted
from her.
“I love just being done with it,” she said.
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