Parent class
Children who want to sign up for community sports programs in two Florida towns must first have one parent take a class that teaches appropriate behavior at games.
Children who want to sign up for community sports programs in two Florida towns must first have one parent take a class that teaches appropriate behavior at games.
Reported nationwide increases in unseemly parental behavior at sporting events, which ranges from shouting matches to “mooning” to fistfights, prompted the nine- member board of the Jupiter-Tequesta Athletic Association to adopt the new requirement, said Jeff Lewis, the association’s president.
Over the course of his 18-year involvement in the association, Mr. Lewis said, he has seen parents’ behavior worsen.
The program the group will use, Parents Alliance for Youth Sports, is sponsored by the West Palm Beach-based National Alliance for Youth Sports and consists of a videotape and group discussion.
Mr. Lewis said the program would reach the parents of 6,000 young people, ages 5 to 18, who participate in baseball, softball, basketball, soccer, and football.
“We wanted to take a proactive stance before we made the national headlines because a parent bashed another parent,” he said.
Tech Award
Familiar with using a long-distance format to reach the rest of the world, a group of Alaskan educators from the Kenai Peninsula school district won national honors in the ThinkQuest competition for their development of an interactive site on the World Wide Web that reaches K-12 teachers nationwide.
ThinkQuest is an Internet-based education initiative that seeks to advance learning through computer and networking technology.
The six-person team of well-wired techies labored for one year to create ArtFul Minds, a site that promotes learning through interconnection of the arts and technology.
The six won $25,000 in ThinkQuest’s “Tomorrow’s Teachers” category for 1999. Pooling their knowledge were teammates Berni and John Wensley, both 4th grade teachers; Kathy Schwartz, a district arts specialist; Dianne Bundy, a local parent; Mary Jo “Mo” Sanders, an education professor at Kenai Peninsula College; and Chris Cowans, a education student from the University of Alaska.
The resulting site is accessible on the Web at http://library.ad vanced.org/50072/index.shtml.
—Michelle Galley & Meghan Mullan
