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The Safe Play Game Plan

April 21, 2015

On Feb. 10, bills were introduced into both the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, together called the “Safe Play Act,” which addresses three of the four health and safety “H’s” described in my last posting: Heat, Hearts and Heads.

For each of these topics, the federal legislation would mandate that the director of the Centers for Disease Control develop educational material and that each state disseminate that material.

For the heat and humidity management topic, the legislation states that schools will be required to adopt policies very much like the “MHSAA Model Policy to Manage Heat and Humidity” which the MHSAA adopted in March of 2013.

For both the heart and heat topics, schools will be required to have and to practice emergency action plans like we have been promoting in the past and will be distributing to schools this summer.

For the head section, the legislation would amend Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and would eliminate federal funding to states and to schools which fail to educate their constituents or fail to support students who are recovering from concussions. This support would require multi-disciplinary concussion management teams that would include medical personnel, parents and others to provide academic accommodations for students recovering from concussions that are similar to the accommodations that are already required of schools for students with disabilities or handicaps.

This legislation would require return-to-play protocols similar to what we have in Michigan, and the legislation would also require reporting and record-keeping that is beyond what occurs in most places.

This proposed federal legislation demonstrates two things. First, that we have been on target in Michigan with our four Hs – it’s like they read our playbook of priorities before drafting this federal legislation.

This proposed federal legislation also demonstrates that we still have some work to do.

Global Education

September 10, 2013

More than a dozen years after our second and last son moved permanently from our home, a 19-year-old has moved in. She’s lived in South Korea, the Philippines and China; she graduated from the international school where our son and his wife are educators in China; and she’s attending our local community college.

Aside from having to change some of my ways to accommodate the presence of an unrelated female in my home, this has been an easier adjustment than I had anticipated. And one of the pleasant surprises is how interesting it has been to learn along with our guest about the English language and to see our local customs through her eyes.

When a word is used that she is unfamiliar with, we think up synonyms; when an idiom is used that she hasn’t heard before, we go to various apps on our mobile devices to learn about the origin of the phrase.

The county fair was a whole new experience with her in our company this year. Lake Michigan – a “fresh-water ocean” – was a wonder. The food portions served at restaurants are two or three times what she is accustomed to; but butter and blueberries are delights that disappear quickly from our refrigerator.

What my wife and I are doing is not unique. Literally thousands of families in this state alone open their homes to students from around the world to study in our schools and colleges. These interactions may be our best hope to save our planet from political and/or religious fanaticism around the world.

Michigan’s schools enroll more one-year foreign exchange students than any other state in the US, more than 2,400 during each of 2010, 2011 and 2012. If they are placed through a program listed by the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel (CSIET), these students are immediately eligible for interscholastic athletics, for one academic year, after which they have no eligibility for one academic year.

Of concern to many athletic administrators today is the increase in enrollment of international students outside a one-year foreign exchange program listed by CSIET. These students outnumber foreign exchange students by more than two-to-one in the US.

Our immediate challenge related to this topic is to assure these students are arriving in Michigan without undue influence related to athletics and that no Michigan school uses this pool of students to gain an unfair competitive advantage in interscholastic athletics.