NANCY BAILEY: Biden, Harris, and Dr. Biden Will Send DeVos Yachting!

Biden, Harris, and Dr. Biden Will Send DeVos Yachting!

Biden, Harris, and Dr. Biden Will Send DeVos Yachting!

You gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true? ~from the Broadway Play South Pacific

If you’re Democrat or Republican, and you care about public education, vote for V.P. Joe Biden to remove Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from the U.S. Department of Education! Four more years of Betsy DeVos means the end of public education.

With a President Biden, public schools have a chance of surviving. With a President Trump, they don’t. It’s as simple as that.

You may be thinking, Democratic leadership has failed public education in the past. Many were disappointed in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top.

Once there’s a President Biden, the country can remind him of this. But the odds of CONTINUE READING: Biden, Harris, and Dr. Biden Will Send DeVos Yachting!

"Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Promo & Supplementals) | Blue Cereal Education

"Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Promo & Supplementals) | Blue Cereal Education

"Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Promo & Supplementals)

I’ve considered blogging about the process itself in hopes it might help others considering something similar, but I’m pretty sure the way I approach most things is roundabout and unnecessarily convoluted and would probably make any reasonable person want run from the room screaming. I will say this, though – it’s an amazing feeling to finally have it done. It’s also overwhelming the number of things that go wrong in the process itself and the volume of errors and problems you discover the first time your baby finally goes live – all of which can be traced back to me one way or the other.

Don’t worry, though – everything in it is fixed and practically perfect now. You should absolutely buy a few dozen copies. They make great gifts, look good on any bookshelf (at home, school, or other workplace), and they’re just the right thickness to go under unbalanced tables or chairs or give a little boost to your computer when live conferencing so your chin doesn’t look chubby. 

"Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases: Stuff You Don't Really Want To Know (But For Some Reason Have To) About The Most Important Cases In Supreme Court History(I know - catchy, isn't it?) was a project which began largely for my own reference and classroom use. Some of the material I posted here on Blue Cereal as early drafts. I wasn’t always focused on “landmark” cases – much like with anything in history, for every thread you pull, every question you pose, every rabbit you chase, there are something like a four-hundred and eleven new threads, questions, and rabbits begging to be pulled, posed, and chased – and not always in that order. It doesn’t require you to be particularly knowledgeable or profound; it’s a simple function of focusing on, well… anything, for any real length of time.

As I tell my students, when history is “boring,” the problem isn’t the history. It’s them.

At some point I began wondering if my efforts might prove useful to other educators in their various circumstances. I’m under no illusions about my own abilities, but there’s so much out there and so little time to really dig through it; you never really CONTINUE READING: "Have To" History: Landmark Supreme Court Cases (Promo & Supplementals) | Blue Cereal Education

Teachers Know Schools Aren’t Safe to Reopen - The Atlantic

Teachers Know Schools Aren’t Safe to Reopen - The Atlantic

Teachers Know Schools Aren’t Safe to Reopen
No wonder our union is considering a strike.

We are high-school teachers in Brooklyn, and we love what we do. We want nothing more than to go back into the classroom and teach our students. However, we have little confidence in New York City’s strategy for reopening during the pandemic. Officials have given families and teachers vague assurances and clichéd promises, but few concrete plans and steps. Schools are not yet safe enough for us—or the students—to return.

The department of education says that schools will have adequate ventilation, more nurses, and sufficient custodial staff to maintain elaborate hygiene theatrics. Officials claim that they have purchased enough “electrostatic disinfectors” and personal protective equipment for every school. And yet the budget is in such crisis, due to shortfalls in tax revenue and potential cuts, that 22,000 city workers and 9,000 teachers may face layoffs as soon as October 1. The department promises accountability and transparency, but will not even disclose how many educators became ill in the spring. It’s Schrödinger’s reopening: The city both can afford to do it all and can’t afford what we had before.

Teachers are in an exceedingly difficult position if unsafe buildings reopen. No wonder the union is considering a strike, an extraordinary action that would have detrimental consequences for teachers in the city. The Taylor Law, passed in 1967 after a Transit Workers Union strike that shut down New York City, imposes penalties on public-sector workers and unions who strike. For each day a worker is out, two days of pay are deducted. The city would issue large financial penalties to the union, which members would eventually pay, and the union’s leadership would face possible imprisonment.

We can lose a couple weeks’ pay without falling into bankruptcy. But that isn’t true for many of our fellow teachers, three-quarters of whom are women. In 2019, the median rent takes up 65 percent of a first-year teacher’s salary and 42.5 percent of the average teacher’s salary.

But the alternative to striking might be worse. Teachers in the city are already familiar with the health costs of the coronavirus. Several of our colleagues got sick in the spring. Some of our students did too. One reported having a temperature of 104 degrees. The family of another student got so sick that she was forced to be a full-time caretaker, for both of her parents and her younger sibling. Several had parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles die from the virus.

New York City teachers have heard the horror stories from states with schools that have CONTINUE READING: Teachers Know Schools Aren’t Safe to Reopen - The Atlantic

Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail - LA Progressive

Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail - LA Progressive

Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail

The “Great” Reopening

Seventeen years ago, against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher. Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay strong and push through when budgets were cut, my intellect questioned, or my dedication to my students exploited. Nobody, however, warned me that someday I might have to defend myself against those who asked me to step back into my classroom and risk my own life, the lives of my students and their families, of my friends, my husband, and my child in the middle of a global pandemic. And nobody told me that I’d be worrying about whether or not our nation’s public schools, already under siege, would survive the chaos of Covid-19.

Pushing students back into school buildings right now simply telegraphs an even larger desire in this society to return to business as usual. We want our schools to open because we want a sense of normalcy in a time of the deepest uncertainty. We want to pretend that schools (like bars) will deliver us from the stresses created by a massive public health crisis. We want to believe that if we simply put our children back in their classrooms, the economy will recover and life as we used to know it will resume.

In reality, the coronavirus is—or at least should be—teaching us that there can be no going back to that past.

In reality, the coronavirus is—or at least should be—teaching us that there can be no going back to that past. As the first students and teachers start to return to school buildings, images of crowded hallways, unmasked kids, and reports of school-induced Covid-19 outbreaks have already revealed the depths to which we seem willing to plunge when it comes to the safety and well-being of our children.

So let’s just call the situation what it is: a misguided attempt to prop up an economy failing at near Great Depression levels because federal, state, and local governments have been remarkably unwilling to make public policy grounded in evidence-based science. In other words, we’re living in a nation struggling to come to terms with the deadly repercussions of a social safety net gutted even before the virus reached our shores and decisions guided by the most self-interested kind of politics rather than the public good.

A Return to School?

For teachers like me, with the privilege of not having to work a second or third job, summer can be a time to reflect on the previous school year and prepare for the next. I take classes, read, develop new curriculum, and spend time with family and friends. Summer has been a time to catch up with all the pieces of my life I’ve neglected during the school year and recharge my physical and emotional batteries. Like many other public school teachers I know, I step away in order to step back in.

Not this summer, though. In these months, there’s been no reprieve. In Portland, Oregon, where I live, the confluence of the historic Black Lives Matter uprising, a subsequent invasion by the CONTINUE READING: Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail - LA Progressive

Pod Save Us: How Learning Pods are Going to Destroy Public Education. Or Not. | Teacher in a strange land

Pod Save Us: How Learning Pods are Going to Destroy Public Education. Or Not. | Teacher in a strange land

Pod Save Us: How Learning Pods are Going to Destroy Public Education. Or Not.

The first thing I thought of when people started murmuring about getting groups of kids whose families were connected together for a little home-based mini-school, was the much-heralded advent of charter schools in my state, back in 1995.

Just about everybody who was around and in the thick of education reform back then thought charters held promise. Throwing off the regulatory shackles! Schools with a unique vision and purpose! No more factory-model instruction!

A group of parents, led by one of those perennial PTA-president moms, approached a group of maybe a dozen teachers in the district where I taught, hoping to start a K-8 charter. Several of the teachers had already been discussing a new, arts-infused ‘dream school.’ The parents had a centrally located vacant building in mind, and had run some numbers that showed, somehow, teachers would be paid commensurately with the district’s salary scale, including benefits—and would be freed to run their classes the way they saw fit.

It’s worth noting that this was before NCLB, the Common Core and mandated testing in grades 3-8. I’m finding it hard to remember, in fact, just what we found so onerous and constraining about practices in the buildings we were working in, but that group of teachers (male and female, including several movers and shakers) agreed to meet with the parent organizers.

The parents were super-enthusiastic. They, too, had ideas to roll out, and were thrilled CONTINUE READING: Pod Save Us: How Learning Pods are Going to Destroy Public Education. Or Not. | Teacher in a strange land

Emily Harris: Have Faith in Tulsa Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Emily Harris: Have Faith in Tulsa Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Emily Harris: Have Faith in Tulsa Public Schools

Emily Harris teaches A.P. U.S. History at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. She writes here about her faith in the public schools. She is concerned that some students have enrolled in the EPIC virtual charter school, which has a horrible record and operates for profit.

I am a teacher at Will Rogers High School. My husband, John, is a teacher at Nathan Hale High School. We are proud our 1-year-old son, Andrew, will become a fourth-generation Tulsa Public Schools student. As generations of our family have done before us, we will choose Tulsa Public Schools. My grandmother is a Central Brave. My father-in-law is a Will Rogers Roper. My mother is a Hale Ranger. My father, husband, sisters and I are Edison Eagles.

Our public schools are part of the fabric of what makes us Tulsans. Many of you reading this can say the same about your family. These schools have history. They have tradition. They have proud alumni. We cannot give up on them.

Tulsa Public Schools began the 2019-2020 school year planning for a $20 million budget shortfall caused by years of improper state funding and declining enrollment. Despite more than a decade of underfunding, many Tulsa Public Schools teachers have persisted in challenging CONTINUE READING: Emily Harris: Have Faith in Tulsa Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC Educator: Letter to Staff--We are union, and we demand safety for us, our students, and our families.

NYC Educator: Letter to Staff--We are union, and we demand safety for us, our students, and our families.

Letter to Staff--We are union, and we demand safety for us, our students, and our families.

Dear colleagues,

I hope you and your families are doing well and keeping occupied at this extremely trying time. I apologize in advance for being an agent of further complication, but we all have our jobs to do. Our job now is to stand as one and fight for our safety, and the safety of our families and community. 

I often say we are the second most important outside influence for our students. The most important outside influence would be medical professionals. There is nothing more basic or fundamental than health and safety. As much as I want my students to learn and love English, their health and wellness comes first. That goes for us, our families, and our students’ families as well. 

Every time I read someone advocating opening buildings, they have a proviso. They say of course, if it doesn’t work out, we’ll go back to remote learning. In fact there are a lot of places where it didn’t work out, and they did just that. There’s Israel, South Korea, multiple schools in the south and southwest, and universities that saw immediate rises in infection levels, while starting below Mayor de Blasio’s much ballyhooed 3% positive level (so much for that). Chapel Hill closed in one week.

There’s a real cost to these openings, and that cost is the health of those who attend. I know some of you who’ve been very sick. I know some of you who’ve lost CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Letter to Staff--We are union, and we demand safety for us, our students, and our families.

Covid in School? Shhh. Some Schools Are Keeping It Quiet. - The New York Times

Covid in School? Shhh. Some Schools Are Keeping It Quiet. - The New York Times

Covid in the Classroom? Some Schools Are Keeping It Quiet
Some states and school districts provide detailed data on school outbreaks. Others choose to keep such information under wraps.

On the first day of school in Camden County, Ga., local Facebook groups were already buzzing with rumors that a teacher had tested positive for the coronavirus. The next day, a warning went out to school administrators: Keep teachers quiet.

“Staff who test positive are not to notify any other staff members, parents of their students or any other person/entity that they may have exposed them,” Jon Miller, the district’s deputy superintendent, wrote in a confidential email on Aug. 5.

In the weeks since, parents, students and teachers in the coastal community on the Florida border have heard by word of mouth of more positive cases linked to district schools. Some parents said they had been called by local officials and told that their children should quarantine.

But even as fears of an outbreak have grown, the district has refused to publicly confirm a single case, either to the local community or The New York Times.

“This is a danger to our community,” said Cheryl Honeycutt, the mother of an 8-year-old Camden student. “We’re safer if we know what’s going on, but their pan answer is, ‘We can neither confirm or deny.’”

As schools in parts of the country have reopened classrooms amid a still-raging pandemic, some districts have been open about coronavirus cases in their buildings. They send weekly — and in some cases, daily — reports to families and updating online dashboards with the latest positive test results and quarantine counts.

But other districts have been silent, sometimes citing privacy concerns to withhold information, to the dismay of some anxious parents, concerned educators and public health experts trying to combat the pandemic. CONTINUE READING: Covid in School? Shhh. Some Schools Are Keeping It Quiet. - The New York Times

glen brown: Comparing the 1918 Flu Pandemic to Covid-19

glen brown: Comparing the 1918 Flu Pandemic to Covid-19

Comparing the 1918 Flu Pandemic to Covid-19

“This isn't the first-time leaders have struggled with deciding whether to keep schools open in a pandemic. During the influenza pandemic in 1918, even though the world was a very different place, the discussion was just as heated. That pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans, before it was all over.

“While the vast majority of cities closed their schools, three opted to keep them open -- New York, Chicago and New Haven, according to historians. The decisions of health officials in those cities was based largely on the hypothesis of public health officials that students were safer and better off at school. It was, after all, the height of the Progressive Era, with its emphasis on hygiene in schools and more nurses for each student than is thinkable now.

“New York had almost 1 million school children in 1918 and about 75% of them lived in tenements, in crowded, often unsanitary conditions, according to a 2010 article in Public Health Reports, the official journal of the US Surgeon General and the US Public Health Service. ‘For students from the tenement districts, school offered a clean, well-ventilated environment where teachers, nurses, and doctors already practiced — and documented — thorough, routine medical inspections,’ according to the Public Health Reports article.

“The city was one of the hardest and earliest hit by the flu, said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian and director of the Center for the History of CONTINUE READING: glen brown: Comparing the 1918 Flu Pandemic to Covid-19

CURMUDGUCATION: "Essential" My Aunt Fanny

CURMUDGUCATION: "Essential" My Aunt Fanny

"Essential" My Aunt Fanny

At this point, the adjective "Orwellian" has been absolutely beaten to death (with "Kafkaesque" right behind it). But this latest Orwellian bullshit just pokes my last nerve with a sharp stick.

You would think that an "essential" worker would be the one that you want to take the greatest steps to protect and preserve. That person guarding the door while a fire-laced sharknado rages outside? They're absolutely essential, and we'd better make sure they gets whatever they need.

But under pandemic pretzel logic, that "essential" person is the first one who gets thrown out the door.

During the pandemess, "essential" has two important meanings. First, it means that those workers can't refuse to work just because they are, you know, worried about their lives or health. Second, it means that nobody in charge can be held accountable for anything bad that happens to them while they're on the front lines.

When Trump declared meat packers "essential," that wasn't a recognition and reward for their important contribution to society. It was a declaration that Grampa wants his steak and he doesn't want to hear damned excuses, whether you're a worker (I'd rather not get sick and/or die) or a boss (I'd rather not get sued for forcing people into unsafe conditions). There was no "We're going to invest in the resources necessary to protect you while you're out there." Just "get back to work."

In fact, a quick scan of "essential" workers reveals a list of the same folks who are regularly told CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: "Essential" My Aunt Fanny

School Year 2020-21: We Are Asking the Wrong Questions | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

School Year 2020-21: We Are Asking the Wrong Questions | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

School Year 2020-21: We Are Asking the Wrong Questions

It is perfectly understandable that many in our country want public school buildings to be open for in person instruction this year. Among the many hardships of COVID-19 lock downs school closures were especially hard on children and families. Essential workers with very young children suddenly found it impossible to provide childcare and supervision. Parents who could work from home had to juggle the incompatible tasks of doing their own work while keeping an eye on children learning from remote. Remote schooling further demonstrated how unequal a society we are with millions of newly distant learners suffering from lack of reliable technology and sudden separation from the critical social and health services that rely upon school buildings to be delivered.  And, of course, a hastily cobbled together remote learning plan in response to a swiftly growing and deadly disease was a poor substitute for in person learning and the social and emotional growth it looks after.

So it is perfectly understandable that people wish to regain in person learning inside of school buildings in whatever way is possible given the reality of America’s situation. Children’s well being and our worsening economic situation would both benefit from a return to something resembling normality. Many of our largest school districts have had to back away from plans to reopen school buildings, and many other districts are seeing the consequences of opening buildings when conditions are not optimal. Despite these warnings, the nation’s largest school district, New York City with 1.1 million students, still plans a hybrid reopening of its 1700 schools by September 10th.

In all of this, it appears that our leaders – local, state, and national – mostly have been asking the wrong questions.

It has been said by others, but it bears repeating here: Schools never closed. School buildings closed, and teachers, administrators, and families scrambled to CONTINUE READING: School Year 2020-21: We Are Asking the Wrong Questions | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

NYC Educator: Important Update from the Chancellor

NYC Educator: Important Update from the Chancellor

Important Update from the Chancellor

Dear Colleagues,
 
For many of us, the five months since COVID-19 hit New York City in March 2020 have been the most painful, challenging, and heartbreaking of our lives. At DOE, it’s been meeting after meeting. They run into one another as we ignore our current problems and desperately pretend we dealt well with them back in March, when we sent people to their deaths. But hey, these things happen. 



Despite the evidence in front of you, we need you to believe that the 1.1 million students and their families who rely on New York City’s  public schools have the high-quality education they deserve. Of course, that's only as long as we don’t have to bother with providing sufficient PPE, reasonable COVID protocols, or perish forbid, actually doing testing and tracing to make sure no one gets sick. 


And we do it to keep trying to mask our hopeless ineptitude. Right now fewer than 1% of all COVID-19 tests are coming back positive. Of course who knows about all the people who aren’t being tested, who haven’t got medical insurance, or who are asymptomatic? Who cares if it didn't work in South Korea or Israel, and who cares about universities that open just to close within days? You are part of our great experiment, and once you start dropping dead, we'll be on to another. (Of course we will say extremely solemn words about you before doing that.)

And we won’t change our minds because we are pigheaded beyond belief.  We don't care if the Daily News editorial board, who usually hates teachers and everything they stand for, now supports the UFT. We don't care if the city council is against us. We don't care if Cuomo thinks it's too risky. And by we, I mean my boss, as I do have my career to think about. Look, if I stab him in the back, who’s gonna give me another sweet gig like this one? We have seen the worst—neighbors, colleagues, friends have been taken far too soon, including 79 DOE employees. So what’s the big deal if we have 79 more? Look, we’ll close the schools as soon as people start dropping dead so please don’t strike. Think of my reputation, please!
 

And I’ll remind all of you—who work in service to our students every day to keep building our school communities, give our students an excellent education, keep our students nourished and healthy, and our buildings safe—that while we’re wiling to risk your lives, those of your students, and all of your families, the fact is we in Tweed have private offices with multiple air conditioners and fabulous ventilation.  


That is going to look like classroom discussions from desks spaced six feet apart, even though everyone is faced in the same direction including the teacher, and no one can approach anyone else. We think that students being tied down to seats, wearing masks, and being unable to socialize will CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Important Update from the Chancellor

DISAPPOINTED BUT STILL SUPPORTIVE. – Dad Gone Wild

DISAPPOINTED BUT STILL SUPPORTIVE. – Dad Gone Wild

DISAPPOINTED BUT STILL SUPPORTIVE.

“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.”
― William T. Sherman

As I have previously mentioned, in a past life I worked in and ran a call center that took thousands of phone calls a day during the fourth quarter of the year in order to enroll participants in their workplace benefits. A major part of my job was troubleshooting tech problems. It seemed like they were never-ending, as was my frustration. Every day was one long battle with the IT department.

One year towards the end of my tenure, I found myself sharing a row on an airplane with an IT specialist from Portland. We talked about numerous things – music, children, and restaurants – until eventually, we got around to the challenges of technology.

“You know,” he said to me, “Most people approach the whole subject from the wrong angle.”

“How so?”, I responded with a hint of skepticism.

“In order for any of this technology to function as advertised, there are so many little things that must go right. If just one of those minuscule things is out of line, it all crashes. Yet we get so upset and so frustrated when technology fails us that we fail to see the miracle that any of this even CONTINUE READING: DISAPPOINTED BUT STILL SUPPORTIVE. – Dad Gone Wild

Marie Corfield: An Open Letter to Gov. Murphy on School Reopening

Marie Corfield: An Open Letter to Gov. Murphy on School Reopening

An Open Letter to Gov. Murphy on School Reopening

Dear Gov. Murphy,

Within the next two weeks, school districts across New Jersey will be reopening in some way, shape or form. And while every district's plans will, no doubt, look different, one thing is the same from High Point to Cape May: this is a hot mess. 

In March, you gave us a clear directive to prepare for 100% virtual teaching until the end of that month. Educators across the state rose to the challenge as you very sensibly guided us through the rest of the school year one month at a time, checking the spread of the Coronavirus and its impact on our state's population. During that time, we were able to hone our skills and fine-tune our plans to deliver the very best virtual curriculum we could. We were proud of what we were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time, and I personally was so proud to count my governor, whom I supported from the get-go, right up there with Gov. Andrew Cuomo as one who took this pandemic seriously and took decisive steps to contain it despite the heavy criticism you faced. You did it right and your efforts paid off. 

But as spring rolled into summer, the numbers started to rise—especially in children. Just last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that "children and teenagers account for a growing share of coronavirus cases in Camden and Gloucester Counties, mirroring a national — and ominous — trend as young people rebel against social distancing rules, health experts say." 

Over the past few months, administrators, boards of education, community members and staff in every district have been working diligently on reopening plans (I was proud to serve on my district's reopening committee), the logistics of which often resembling a Rube Goldberg concoction. But now, with mere days until students arrive, many districts are ditching those plans and going 100% virtual—mine included—leaving parents and staff in the lurch as we all scramble to figure out how we are going to make it work in our homes and in our classrooms. Many districts have cited any or all of the following as their main stumbling blocks to reopening:

• Back ordered PPEs
• Inadequate HVAC systems and lack of air conditioning in many schools
• Many classrooms without windows or operable windows 
• Mold
• Inadequate classroom space to properly social distance
• Students having to eat in their classrooms
• Inability to social distance students on busses
• Staff members who are at high risk requesting medical leaves
• Shortage of substitutes to fill those positions
• Proper accommodations for students with special needs
• Available staff to properly clean buildings at the end of the day
• Inability of staff to clean equipment and certain classrooms in between classes

All of that costs money—which is in chronically short supply in many districts. Add to CONTINUE READING: Marie Corfield: An Open Letter to Gov. Murphy on School Reopening

Teacher Tom: "Rivalry Play"

Teacher Tom: "Rivalry Play"

"Rivalry Play"

A five-year-old girl complained that some boys were being "mean" to her and her friend.


I answered, "Oh no, what did you do?"


"I told them to stop it, but they didn't stop."


I looked across the playground at the "mean" boys in question. "It doesn't look like they're being mean right now."


"No, they're not being mean now, but they were."

"And you told them to stop."


"I did."


"And they stopped."


We stood looking at the boys for a moment, then she said, cheering up, "They did." Then the clouds returned, "But they might be mean again."



"They might. Then you'll have to tell them to stop again."



This occurred during one of our summer sessions at Woodland Park, so it was a collection of kids that had just come together for the first time. Some of them know each other from the regular school year, some from previous summers, but others are with us for the first time. I'd known the so-called "mean" boys for the past couple years, neither of whom have a mean bone in their bodies, but I could well imagine that whatever game they were playing might have come into conflict with the game of someone else. I'd just CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: "Rivalry Play"