D&D revival

As a kid I got into D&D.  I started with the basic (red) box and got the expert (blue) box next.  Those were nice but I quickly decided I wanted to play AD&D.  I worked my butt off shoveling snow to earn the money to get the books.  One of my good friends and I would get together and try to figure out how we wanted to play.  I spent the better part of a year taking my D&D books everywhere I might have time to read. Yes, I was that nerd.

Back in the day, only nerds played D&D.  Often you were ridiculed for playing or talking about it.  Add it to the long list of nerd activities we participated in.  mostly we didn’t care and liked being nerds.  But you knew you were an outsider.

As I got older and had more friends, we moved into other role-playing systems because of what the group wanted to do.  Once we all got jobs and started actually hanging out with girls we were dating, we played less and less frequently. We stopped all together in our late 20s.  I missed revs 2 through 4.  From what I’ve heard it wasn’t a big loss.

When the new 5th edition came out I conveniently started to have more time.  The new rules are much simpler than AD&D and clarify a lot of things.  The modules are soooo much better than the old classics.  Those still hold a bit of nostalgic fondness but the new ones introduce a whole world and fleshed out scenarios to save time.  The old ones really were just dungeon crawls for the most part.

Today it seems that its cool to play.  Big Bang Theory, Stranger Things and the number of celebrities coming out that say they play has helped.  The marketing has been great.  The game stores hosting games makes it easier than ever to find a group to play with.  More people playing means that WoTC has more money and incentive to build great content.  You can get all kinds of new material on the Internet.  You can even find troves of videos on YouTube that teach you to play and you can even watch people play to get a feel for the game.

Every year we go to GenCon and maybe Origins; the big game fairs.  We get to see the new stuff coming out and hang out in a community of people that all love gaming.  Its still a big nerd-fest but the attendance by “non-nerds" is off the charts.  More and more people know about it and some are actually jealous when I tell them we are going.  The kids love it and I love sharing that with them.

Its easier to let your geek flag fly now than it ever was for me growing up.  Even in a school of smart, often nerdy, kids it was hard to really let it fly.  I spent a lot of time as a kid hanging by myself because it was easier than being the socially awkward kid that got picked on.  Its different now.  I’m glad that my kids don’t need to work to hide who they are.

D&D with the kids

When I was a kid I loved AD&D.  I’m glad that the kids are now old enough to play and they asked to be able to play.

I started a group with my 3 oldest, a couple of their friends and a couple of parents.  We get together every other week to play.  It’s awesome. Everyone is having a good time and we just hang out, eat pizza and have a blast for a couple of hours.  They are really starting to get it and gradually working into actually role playing their characters.

As a kid someone else was always the DM.  Now its my turn.  Its way more fun than I had thought as a kid.  Having a bit of maturity and experience definitely helps.

We are running into a point in our campaign where we are going to get to choose a couple of different ways to go.  I can’t wait to see what they do next.

my 40s

When I turned 40 I wrote about all of the things that happened during my 30s.  It was a great way to look back on the decade.  So much happened; not the least of which was getting married and becoming a father.
As I turn 49 and look back over my 40s, there is arguably more that happened:

• became a father for the 4th time
• became an uncle 5 times
• ran a 1/2 marathon
• cycling
• rode 1000s of miles
• rode on the Indy 500 track
• started racing bikes
• wrecked my bike at 40mph and spent 18 months dealing with a single tiny broken bone
• stoped racing bikes
• had surgery 4 times for various sports related injuries
• started wearing bi-focals
• changed jobs a couple of times
• went to India
• was best man for my friend
• presented at a conference
• had multiple op-eds published
• became much more involved with the kids school
• became a scout leader
• became disillusioned  about the state of politics, then
• ran for office and learned a ton
• became an activist
• was offered a position on the board of a non-profit
• spoke at a protest
• knocked 1000s of doors for various causes
• became a precinct executive
• ran a voter registration drive
• marched in a bunch of parades
• started going to GenCon again
• started playing D&D with my kids
• sold a house and bought a new one
• went to Disney World twice
• got to give Chewbacca a bro-hug
• attended my 30 year high school reunion
• kids started moving from elementary school into their high school
• reconnected with a lot of old classmates and friends
• accepted that I need to deal with my depression and sought professional help

I think that’s a pretty impressive list and it doesn’t even represent everything.  There is still one year left in my 40s and I need to figure out what isn’t on my list...

Once more blogging

I’ve decided to start up my blog again, this time on another platform.  We will see how long it lasts this time.

State report cards

It’s that season again.  State report cards for our schools were released.  If you look at them, you would think that our children are learning nothing, all of our schools are failing and the end is nigh.  Anyone that has walked into one of our schools knows this is not the case.  So, how do we reconcile this difference?  The fact is, these report cards aren’t an accurate measure of our schools since they don’t measure all schools the same way.  Districts with low poverty, stable populations and low minority populations look better due to skewed benchmarks.  Private schools that are not required to take all students look better.  We don’t have a level playing field.

For many parents, this is all they have to go on.  When newspapers pick the story up and tell us the schools are failing us, it’s no wonder that people are looking to private schools, charters, or moving to a suburban district.  No parent wants to make a decision thinking the education for their child is going to be worse. But, if you have bad information, you can make misinformed choices for your child.

Just one example of many is “K-3 reading improvement”.  It is intended to measure how many children are “on track” for reading goals and how children that are “not on track” improve.  The problem with the metric is it doesn’t measure improvement accurately.  At the beginning of the year the number of children “not on track” are identified. At the end of the year, a percentage is calculated based on the difference between the count at the beginning and end of the year.  If you find more children that need help mid-year, you are still measured against the initial count.  The score doesn’t reflect children helped, only a simple number of students that are “not on track”. Even if the teachers are doing everything right by identifying students having trouble and helping them improve, they can still be scored as failing.  This is not the way to help parents make informed choices about which schools actually help their K-3 students.

These report cards also rely heavily on extensive testing.  The argument is we need to measure the performance of our students, and by extension, our teachers.  The schools spend valuable instruction time on testing.  It also encourages treating the test as the goal instead of the minimum necessary.  We want our students to learn the subject, not how to take a test.

The report card is not reflective of what makes a school effective.  We can’t reduce our students and schools to over-simplified numbers.  I want us to make decisions based on evidence, but how you measure things influences behavior.  If you have bad measures you incentivize the wrong behaviors.  This is true in business and it is true in education, but our schools aren’t a business.  We shouldn’t use practices from manufacturing such as defect rates and quality scores; children aren’t interchangeable widgets.  If a company gets a bad batch of raw materials, they can send it back or not use it.  Private and charter schools shouldn’t be rewarded for doing essentially the same with our children.

We have the power to influence these measures.  Contact your state legislators (http://ohiohouse.gov and http://ohiosenate.gov) and our State Board of Education (http://education.ohio.gov/State-Board/State-Board-Members). Defining good measures will require identifying information that is useful to parents and educators and only then developing metrics that accurately reflect what is going on in our schools.  Let’s remember that we need to do what is best for our children.  We need to look at the whole student, the learning environment and if we are guiding the student to a lifelong love of learning.

Sure, there are areas for improvement in our schools.  However, these report cards do not point to the real opportunities.  CPS has great schools, dedicated teachers and amazing children who are working hard every day. We can help them be better. Let's focus on that instead of a broken report card.

Neighborhoods vs. Magnets

As a parent of four students in CPS and the chairman of the LSDMC at Sands Montessori, I’ve had a lot of questions about how our district allocates resources. After seeing and approving our school’s budget, I was surprised at how little discretion the school has in how to spend money, and I’m sure that every school has some of the same issues. Our teachers, administration and staff all do a wonderful job with what they are given.

When I was considering becoming a candidate for school board, I did a lot of digging into the information available about our district. Our magnet programs provide amazing resources for our students. Our Montessori programs are extremely popular, as is the German language program, as well as all of the other programs we have available. Families fight to get into these programs and leave neighborhood schools largely under capacity, but the question is why?

The popularity of the magnet programs and the low enrollment at our neighborhood schools are two symptoms of the same problem: a perception of weak neighborhood schools. Because of the scarcity of magnet seat, this increases their perceived value, which drives demand, and so on. Some families absolutely believe in the teaching philosophies offered at magnets, but we also have parents choosing these programs because they see them as a better choice than neighborhood schools. An anecdote I’ve heard from parents and teachers at Fairview is some families entering the school want to opt out of German language, defeating the whole purpose of that program. The next question, then, is what we should do?

With the current setup, we end up having a stratification of our children. The recent analysis of WHHS highlights this.  Students come mainly from the magnet programs. Our neighborhood schools are barely represented, with the exception of Kilgore. Are the children in our magnet programs that much smarter than the other children? I think not. It comes down to expectations and resources. If you view your school as “not as good” what does that do to your motivation?

This problem was recognized by parents surveyed in the fall of 2015, and they overwhelmingly said the number one priority was strengthening our neighborhood schools. A distant second was more magnet programs. The current district plan twists this result and tries to make each of our neighborhood schools into mini-magnets. Each school will have a focus of study: STEM, Arts, Entrepreneurship, etc. These aren’t focused on ways of learning but on what is learned.  As parents, we would want to pick a school for each of our children so they would thrive because of their interests. As a family with two working parents,  this would present a challenge getting them to multiple schools. If that wasn’t enough, the estimates from the district are it will add $7mm in busing costs for the new “choice” programs. Is this where we want to spend money? If you send that money to the schools, what could each of them do with another 5% in their budget? 

I love our magnet programs but they don’t serve the needs of everyone.  The people have spoken and we need to focus on strengthening our neighborhood schools by investing in them like magnets without turning them all into magnets.

We need to keep walking to school in our own neighborhoods a viable option. There are many benefits to this, for parents, students and educators. Kids spend less time on a bus or in the car. They have the pleasure of walking to school and connecting with their neighborhoods. For the district, it's good because it reduces transportation costs, freeing up funds that can go back into our classrooms. All great things.

We also need to retain the gains we have made with our magnet programs and expand them where it makes sense. We need to be smart about where we utilize our schools limited resources, so that we can make sure we are providing the best education possible for all of our children.

thoughts on 40

It is customary to evaluate things periodically, and birthdays seem as good an arbitrary date as any. This is especially true on a decade boundary, because even though it is completely arbitrary and it is "round" only as a side effect of having 10 fingers, it seems like as a good enough time as any to assess.

The last 10 years have been eventful. In my thirties, I:

• met my wife
• became a father (three times)
• produced and directed a movie
• changed jobs twice (both times for the better)
• lost many friends
• kept some fantastic ones
• gained a few new ones
• read a lot of books
• admitted to myself and everyone else that I am an atheist and a secular humanist
• rode thousands of miles on my bike
• bought a house
• wrote and delivered my first eulogy
• left North America for the first time
• switched to Apple
• voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in my life

It's been a busy decade. Overall, I think it was my best so far. I had a lot of plans, but I also accomplished a bunch of things that were never on my list when I started the decade. Funny how life can change what is important to you and guide you to decisions that you wouldn't normally think you'd arrive at if you didn't take the journey.

I have a lot of ideas of what I want to accomplish in the next 10 years. I now need to coordinate those plans with four other people, but I don't think that will be a problem. Together I think we can make my 40s even better than my 30s!!!