A stud college basketball player for a Division I program was kicked off the team a few days ago for having pre-marital sex.

It was consensual. It was admitted. It was also a violation of the BYU school honor code and so, the nation’s top rebounder (and if you don’t know anything about basketball, rebounds and the boards are where games are won and lost) has been sent packing.

And I wish more schools would follow BYU’s example. Not by banning pre-marital sex. That’s between the people engaged in the act. (And these are college kids.) I am talking about actually enforcing the rules – and the school honor codes – that are so clearly set forth before the year even begins.

I mean how many times have I felt like a school where I worked has allowed a kid to get away with murder (metaphorically speaking, of course? And I see it all over. It’s like we have rules and yet, we allow the lines to be soft and fuzzy and loosely adhered to and the old saying of “give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile” comes into play time after time after time.

Sure, BYU probably just cost themselves a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney and perhaps a boatload of sheckels should they not advance deep into March Madness as many would have predicted last week. But chalk one up for integrity, justice being blind and all that other goody-two-shoes stuff.

Young people will always test the edge of limits. And when they cross the line and then the line accommodates their infractions by shape-shifting so that the rule which was broken wasn’t really ever a rule but rather more of a hopeful guideline, it sets kids up for worse things later down the road when the reed no longer bends with the wind but instead snaps.

Schools who tolerate the smaller infractions see way more incidents of larger infractions… because kids are always seeking that aforementioned edge. Go soft on tardies and soon you have truancy. Go soft on the dress code and soon you have indecency. Go soft on high expectations for academic rigor and soon you have middling effort characterizing the top end of the spectrum.

BYU might take a short term hit (most probably, they will) but the principles by which they run their school were just tremendously reinforced.

And if you want to play by different rules, BYU is not the school for you. But if you want to attend BYU, you better keep your chin up and your nose clean.

Sure, I can be as big a softie when it comes to second chances and breaks and so on that there is. But when the integrity of the entire institution is on the line, you either have principles or you do not. It’s why revenge killings don’t fly in the U.S. even if someone deserved to die for their actions; we let the courts mete out justice. Otherwise, if we go case by case, it’s a society ruled by principle-less chaos.

And you can’t tell me when you look out on the educational horizon in America, we couldn’t use a few more folks like the powers-that-be at BYU to take a hardline against discipline violations on our nation’s campuses.

Brandon Davies (the ball player) will land on his feet. And so will BYU. I only hope people are paying attention.

Sex Ed as taught by Brigham Young University, a lesson for many of us.

People hit me up with stuff all the time, from all kinds of different angles via email, in person, through snail mail (I’ve gotten bunches of letters from inmates in jail). Really, I never know what I am going to find inside of my life’s inbox.

Adds spice to the day, that’s for sure.

Here’s a question I just got from a student. (Kind of sent to me in a Dear Alan type of fashion.)

I just want to know how to deal with teachers who don’t push you towards greatness in the classroom.

Here’s my answer.

Great question.

Clearly, if you have the inclination to take the time to write me this note then when I tell you that if your teachers do not take the time to push you towards greatness, then you are going to have to push yourself.

Life is weird that way. But, as the old Zen saying goes, when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. Perhaps this teacher’s best lesson to you is that you do not need to wait for others to realize your own potential.

Then again, the lesson might be that we, in this country, need to do a better job of getting rid of the lame-o educators who have given way to lethargy, cynicism and general lemon-hood as a way of professional life.

Either way, here’s a little something that might help you out. I came across it years ago. Perhaps it will speak to you in the way it did to me.

THE TEN RULES OF BEING HUMAN

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.

Should teachers pay for their own lesson plans? Would teachers pay for their own lesson plans?

Even if they were only two bucks a pop?

Okay, on one hand, as teachers, we already pay for so many of our school supplies that adding another $2 to the fire here and there doesn’t seem to bother me much. (As long as the materials were of high quality.) On the other hand though, if the school site isn’t to be expected to pay for the educational resources I use in the classroom, what the heck are they paying for, the rent on the building?

Is my district just a landlord with a whole lotta goofy, bean-counting, bubble test rules? (Don’t answer that.)

Maybe I’m just employed under the barbershop model whereby I work at a station but I am required to bring my own scissors, hair gel and blow dryer in order to do my job and they’ll provide the toilet paper in the restroom, but it will be the cheap, rough kind. Free, but grainy, a devil’s compromise if ever there was one.

Sure would be nice if I knew the terms of our fiscal agreement on these matters though, wouldn’t it?

I mean really, what is my school supposed to pay for? And what should I be expected to pay for? And where is it written what is what so that there is some transparency to the process of all of this?

And how come after all these years as a teacher I still really do not know the answer to this stuff?

Is this like one of those “need to know” matters where I don’t have security clearance that’s high enough to be welcomed into the loop?

What should they buy, what should I buy and why-oh-why does the thought of all this always make me want to sigh, cry and kiss this job “goodbye”?

So people are now being sued for libel based on the content of their tweets. And while the courts are struggling to keep up with technology — and how free speech plays out in evolving social networking mediums — there is a lesson for all to be learned, I believe, in the idea that “slander is slander”.

This article raises some interesting ideas. Worth a read.

A quality line I like in the article comes from Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN Legal analyst:

“You have a robust debate on a million different subjects every day on the Internet,” he said. “But on the other hand, is that a license to damage people’s reputation with knowing falsehood?”

Worth a lesson to teach to our students, no? I mean we have so many kids that flame one another on MySpace and FB that might not see the repercussions of just sliding over to falsely torching professional businesses, business people and so forth… that’s gonna bring out the sharks, er, lawyers.

All of us need to be aware. Seems to me the safest rule in the 21rst century belongs to what mamma used to say back in the 1100′s…

“If you don’t have anything nice to tweet about someone, don’t tweet anything at all.”

Even if they are an no brain, cankerous, lying, slutty, sum bee-yatch!

BTW, you can follow me on twitter @alansitomer… to keep track of how many times I don’t take my own advice, of course.

LOL!!

So what is to be done when a student farts in class?

Hey, don’t laugh, this is a serious academic issue.

The way I see it, there are a coupla options.

1) Try to pretend it didn’t happen. Of course, if it’s stinky one, the boys sitting in and around the — let’s pretend I teach in a church — the boys sitting in and around the “pew” are gonna keep disrupting whatever progress you want to make in your lesson with commentary and insights about the aroma.

Of course, when you try to actually teach an ELA lesson on the need to use precise, descriptive, vibrant vocabulary in English class, you get papers back that lay flat and are filled with bland vanilla. But let a kid break wind and all of a sudden, the vocabulary being bandied about the room would make a lovelorn poet from the Romantic era proud of its richness and poignancy.

2) Scold the perpetrator. Now for me, this one would never work. First of all, I am still immature enough to find farts kinda funny so to actually try and castigate a kid would probably result in me cracking a smile in the middle of trying to keep a stern face. (Note: I think there is a fart joke in almost every book of young adult fiction I’ve yet written. And the new books that’ll be out next year, well… let’s just say it doesn’t look like the streak is in any danger of being broken right now.)

3) Pretend nothing actually happened and keep pressing on with the lesson. Probably the best route, when all is said and done, but meta-cognitively, an educator must know that for up to 180 seconds after student cheese-cutting, a teacher shouldn’t relay any truly valuable academic information — or else you will need to make a plan to re-teach it. After all, one good blasting of some backdoor breeze from a kid in class is enough to render even the most diligent of AP kids out of sorts for a while.

I guess the question I, as the teacher, have to really ask myself before I go down the road of condemnation for public flatulence is, to what end am I going to reprimand a student for this stuff? Am I going to send a kid to the Dean? Am I going to give the kid detention? Come on, let’s be honest, the more I keep the main subject of the classroom on student gas, the more tickled the kids are that we are 1) talking about this and 2) not talking about things like appositive phrases. I mean I have boys that would gladly engage in a 20 minute analysis on the type of wind currents able to be generated through the human digestive tract — the tone, the pitch, the pungency, the types of foods best suited to achieve optimum results — and if I were to give fart homework, I have a feeling my some of my most reluctant students would suddenly turn into verifiable scholars.

You want student engagement in the classroom? Try a Socratic Seminar on bottom blasts from the big brown horn. Guaranteed participation from all kinds of kids.

You want to teach vocabulary? Use farts. They’ll never forget the definition of turgidity again.

And not to be sexist, but how come I’ve never once had a freshman interrupt class with the declaration, “Ew, Kimberly farted!”

I get, “Ew, Michael farted!”
I get, “Ew, Joesph farted!”
I get, “Ew, both Michael and Joseph farted!”

But never the girls. Hmmm… worth more investigation.

The Conundrum of Student Farts… in my opinion, it’s an issue that needs more high level discussion.

Hmmm, will digital textbooks simply replace traditional textbooks so that the wheels of these entrenched, corporate behemoth money making machines just keep chugging right along?

Let’s look at 9th grade…

Why would I pay for Romeo and Juliet when the full text of the play is already online free of charge in more places than I can even count?

I wouldn’t.

So then schools like mine will just pay for the accompanying lesson plans, right?

Not so fast.

I mean why pay for lesson plans when there are literally a host of INCREDIBLE lesson plans already online free of charge? I mean the Royal Shakespeare Company is pretty reputable, wouldn’t ya say? And they provide SO MUCH material smoking material it feels like it would be an honor to have them help me in my class.

Then add in the resouces being provided at NCTE or the stuff I can find on websites like WebEnglishTeacher.com and I can do some pretty sweet stuff.

Okay, R&J is covered. So what about The Odyssey?

Check.

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud?

Check.

The Scarlett Ibis? The Gift of the Magi? The Lady or the Tiger?

Check. Check. Check.

And are there resources for teaching these on the web? And good ones?

CHECK!!!

And do I then get to go back to doing what the state wants me to do, teach to the standards in a way that doesn’t come from one myopic source that attempts to be one-size-fits-all but rather empowers me to PICK and choose materials as I best see them working, as most appropriate to the needs of my individual students as I professionally diagnose their academic needs?

Check.

Indeed, my school used to shop for our entire grocery budget at the textbook supermarket — but now, it’s just looks like we’ll just be taking a banana please… and it better be a darn good one in order to justify the expense otherwise… I’ll just get the rest of our groceries elsewhere.

And look at all the money I’ll have left over in my wallet for other household needs. Wow!

And so, will digital textbooks simply replace traditional textbooks so that the wheels of these entrenched, corporate behemoth money making machines just keep chugging right along?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

P.S. For a really interesting view on textbooks which Jim Burke passed along to me, check out this blog post by Seth Godin.