#navigating OP in three different languages is an interesting experience to say the least

[kbstories]

What are some of your favorite one piece moments and why?

WHOO BOY thanks for asking and buckle up ‘cause this is gonna be a long one

(A note before I start: I read OP up to volume 63 in German and the rest in English, so I apologize if I get some pre-ts names wrong! Also these are in somewhat of a chronological order and based solely on the manga.)

Luffy giving the dog (Shushu?) the last box of food: This is the moment that made me love Luffy, it’s such a simple but effective way of showing his core philosophy that people’s treasures and dreams have inherent value and that everyone deserves to have someone by their side who will fight for them when they can’t do it themselves.

Bellmere: Just. Everything about her and that flashback. “They are my kids”, just... It made me emo back then, still makes me emo today. Love it, love her, love her design and what she’s all about. Yes.

Luffy going “I’m nothing without my crew!” in Arlong Park: Bear with me here ‘cause I was like 12 when I read this arc the first time, and back then I didn’t get why Nami wouldn’t just ask for help (so the “Help me!” moment only became a tear-jerker during my many, many re-reads). Something that did make immediate sense to me was Luffy straight-up admitting his skillset is limited to punching things very good, and I was like hell yeah go Luffy because I was 12. (I also love that this sentiment was echoed by Luffy going “I can’t be Pirate King without you” in Whole Cake Island two years later, so that’s another favorite right there.)

Skipping ahead otherwise we’ll be here all day but Luffy carrying Sanji and Nami in Drumm. Seeing him climb up that mountain with his bare hands and feet fucked me up even as a kid, the way Oda paced it really made you feel what an absolutely harrowing experience that must’ve been and I still think about it a lot.

Zoro fighting Mr. 1 in Alabasta: That fight was just mindblowingly cool and I love Zoro. That panel of him kneeling in his own blood after winning the fight hrgghhgh and oh hey THE STRAWHATS SHOWING THE X ON THEIR ARMS FOR VIVI 🥺🥺🥺  how are those not permanent tattoos Oda FIGHT ME

The entirety of Noland & Kargara, how they died without seeing each other and fully mending the argument they had and how Luffy ringing the bell hundreds of years later redeemed it all. Oda went incredibly hard on Skypia’s backstory and I’m not entirely sure what possessed him to tell a story that tragic but I, for one, am grateful. (Fun fact I was extremely late to this whole shipping thing and thus One Piece is very much about the platonic nakamaship of it all for me but even as a clueless baby fan I shipped THE FUCK out of Noland & Kargara oh my)

“I want to live!” + Sogeking shooting the WG flag + Usopp’s speech to Luffy + Luffy almost fighting to the death to keep his crew safe + MERRY’S GOODBYE: I bawl my eyes out every time I read Water 7, it’s my favorite arc to this very day because it’s just so complex and nuanced and the crew’s limits being tested in every way is just a very rewarding (if incredibly emotional) thing to witness. It put both Robin and Usopp on the map as two of my absolute favs and I’m so grateful for that.

The Strawhats teaming up against Oz (?) was something I didn’t know I needed until I saw it and I’ve been gunning for another Strawhat group fight ever since. The team work, the absolute trust, just everything about it was a delight and made all the stuff that followed (Zoro & Sanji laying down their lives for their captain, the entirety of Sabaody) so much more painful. Also Bink’s Sake because Brook deserves to have friends to sing it with him every single day of his life!!!

Luffy refusing to ask if the One Piece is real or not on Sabaody: I just adore that moment. Rayleigh was so soft and indulgent with these baby pirates carrying along the legacy of Roger’s old hat... My heart...

Mr. 2/Bon Curry (?) in Impel Down. ‘Nuff said.

Ace saying “Thank you” after you-know-what but let’s not linger on that because I was reading One Piece weekly back then and it traumatized me to the point I didn’t keep up with it for 10 years haha!

The post-timeskip era is a bit of a blur to me because I binged it all just a few months ago and my memory is McFreaking Terrible but I’ll start with Law being warned on two separate occasions that he might not like an alliance with Luffy, making the alliance anyways and proceeding to burn in “Strawhat-ya is a fucking moron” purgatory ever since. I don’t care if it’s overdone, every year Law loses to Luffy’s idiocy is one added to my lifespan. Godspeed, king of emo pirates. You dug your grave now lie in it.

Sabo coming back: I know there’s discourse about that doing bad things to the plot and the stakes of character deaths in One Piece, bla bla bla, I truly do not care. Luffy getting one (1) big brother back and Sabo stepping up to Ace’s legacy was so monumental when it happened that it briefly brought me back from my One Piece hiatus and I immediately bought volume 75 when it came out in German. (Now if Oda will only let him live and let Luffy actually hang out with his brother I would very much appreciate that, huff huff.)

USOPP UNLOCKING OBSERVATION HAKI AND SAVING LUFFY AAAAAAAAAA

Corazon holding onto life until Law was safe + Corazon’s smile: Corazon in general, actually. Law harboring that little bit of kindness he was shown as a kid and plastering it all over his ship and his crew and his own fucking skin. Mmmm love me a big sip from that good ol’ heartbreak.

Still in Dressrosa, Zoro going “I wonder what he’s dreaming about” when Luffy smiles in his sleep. It’s this little line and kinda insignificant because they’re talking to Sabo in that moment (and that’s clearly like woah), but it’s so fucking soft and it made my heart grow three sizes so there.

Jack getting one-shotted by Zunesha: Get rekt you insufferable asshole oh my god

Whole Cake Island is practically 78 chapters of favorite moments but Nami saying goodbye to Sanji + Luffy almost ripping his arms out to warn Sanji about Pudding + Sanji making a Strawhat lunchbox by accident + “That’s just how you are” + Luffy muffling his pain in front of the mirror so his crew doesn’t worry (Oda turn on your location I just want to talk) + Sanji carrying Luffy back to the ship + “I’m your captain now! Don’t die even if it kills you!” so yeah, the entire thing. Also Katakuri??? What a loser I love him

[Spoilers for Wano]

And if I went into all the things I like about Wano we’d truly be here all day. Gun to my head I’d probably pick Zoro & Luffy reuniting, Kidd & Killer in Udon (of course) and “At sea you fight pirates!” as my favorite moments so far. Also Jinbei joining the crew after a million years holy shit FINALLY and Luffy getting angry over spilled bean soup and KIDD BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF APOO FUCK YES and don’t get me started on the new characters especially Kiku and Yamato and---

[End of Wano spoilers]

Anyhow. My answer to “What’s your favorite One Piece moment?” is basically “YES” to all of it, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[velmaemyers88]

Pokémon Masters hands-on — Trainer battles get real-time co-op play on iOS and Android

Japanese mobile game company DeNA has been working on its Pokémon Masters mobile game for a long time, and it is finally lifting the lid on the gameplay today. I got to play it hands-on, and I found it to be in an interesting place in the universe of Pokémon games.

The title will be coming out this summer on iOS and Android. 20-year-old DeNA has to navigate through a lot of competition from other Pokémon games, as The Pokémon Company has been busy licensing everyone including Niantic with Pokémon Go and Nintendo with its Pokémon titles (most recently Pokémon Sword and Shield) for the Nintendo Switch.

Fortunately, DeNA has a lot of experience making Nintendo mobile games like the upcoming Mario Kart Tour (and it made Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp), and once again DeNA has been able to create something unique with its single-play game and co-op gameplay.

Pokémon Masters brings together trainers from throughout the Pokémon universe together in a game, and it “sync pairs” them up with their special Pokémon creatures. Those combinations make for a lot of special moves. And in a three-player co-op game, you’ll see the variety of gameplay possible with three trainers in “sync pairs” with three creatures, facing off in real time against three computer-controlled opponent trainers with their sync pair creatures.

In other words, it’s hard to say what kind of match you’re going to end up with as you team up with other players and try to overcome various challenges. This variety is one of the main selling points of the game, and it’s more sophisticated than what you can get in Pokémon Go battles.

After playing the game, I also joined a group interview with Yu Sasaki, executive producer at DeNA.

Single-player gameplay

Above: Pokemon Masters has 13 initial chapters.

Image Credit: DeNA

The game is illustrated in the same beautiful way that the Pokémon TV series is, with anime-style 2D art. The characters laugh or make other noises, but you have to read what they’re telling you on the screen by tapping speech bubbles.

In the lobby of the Pokémon Center, you can look left or right to see an area that is a lot bigger than the screen of the smartphone itself. If you tap to the left, the view will scroll to the left and you’ll see various upgrades you can purchase. You can interact with trainers.

The trainers come from every region and generation of Pokémon games. The game pairs them up with their partner Pokémon. The single-player campaign takes you on an adventure through 13 chapters (at least at this time). It takes place on the island of Pasio, which you explore in the game.

If you tap explore and then tap on a chapter, the story unfolds. When you arrive at the island, a cut scene plays. Some of the bad trainers are bullying another trainer, who doesn’t want to battle. You tell them to stop, and they challenge you instead. Now you as the player control six entities in the arena: three trainers and three Pokémon.

In real time, you tell them what kind of attack to perform by tapping on an icon on the screen. You can see each enemy Pokémon creature, with an indicator above them that shows you what their weakness is. Your job is to recognize the weakness and the right counter to exploit it.

You fight one at a time, trying to knock out the other Pokémon. But once your meter fills up, you can execute a “sync move,” which is a move that all of your Pokémon and your trainers do at the same time. It’s a lot more powerful than a single attack.

A tutorial will get you off the ground, but I didn’t play that. I had no trouble beating the challenge in chapter one, and so we jumped to chapter three. That’s where I got beat.

Monetization and editing your team

Above: Pokemon Masters lets you enhance your character with gems.

Image Credit: DeNA

Back in Pokémon Center, if you scroll to the left and click on the lady behind the counter, you can use gems. You can either earn the gems in the game by playing or you can purchase them. The gems are the primary currency in the game.

You can use the gems to upgrade your character up to five stars. And so the gems are key to crafting your team.

You can also edit the team as you wish by going to Pokémon Center and scrolling to the right. You can click on a character and then switch in or switch out pairs of trainers and their Pokémon. It’s easy to see all the different trainer pairs you’ve already unlocked. Before each battle, you can optimize your team. Over time, you can learn a total of four moves.

A lot of daily or seasonal events add new content to the game.

Co-op play

Above: Pokemon Masters debuts this summer.

Image Credit: DeNA

Once you hit Chapter 10 in the adventure mode, you can unlock cooperative play.

I had a chance to do battle for a couple of rounds with three human players in a co-op game. Finding the other players was easy enough on the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus smartphone.

In co-op play, you aren’t just fighting with one trainer and one Pokémon. As with single player, in co-op you control three trainers and three Pokémon. That means that on your side of the battle, your team will have nine sync pairs, or nine trainers and nine Pokémon.

If you fight well together and fill up your Unity gauge, your team will earn a Unity attack. That is when all three sync pairs combine forces to unleash a single attack together. You can fill up that Unity gauge by chaining together consecutive attacks. That requires some thinking on the fly.

Interview with Yu Sasaki, executive producer

Above: Pokemon Masters’ Professor Bellis

Image Credit: DeNA

After the gameplay session, I had a chance to interview Yu Sasaki, the executive producer of the game.

Speaking through a translator, he said he hoped people would be excited about the game.

“They came to us with this idea,” he said, speaking of The Pokémon Company, via a video phone connection. “We have all of these various different trainers that we’ve met throughout the world of Pokémon, and these various different games, and all of them are going to be coming together. And we’re going to have a new story that involves these different trainers from around the world. And we hope that players will really enjoy that experience. We decided there would be a new world, the island of Pasio, where all of these trainers were coming together.”

He noted that the game would be simpler than other Pokémon battle games on other platforms. The goal was to make the game appeal to a broad audience of people who like Pokémon but haven’t memorized all of the creatures. He also said the novelty of sync pairs and the strategies that this creates will be interesting to veteran players.

Sasaki said the team didn’t worry so much about making a game different from Pokémon Go. They simply talked with The Pokémon Company about how to create a game that was really exciting and interesting. He said they switched to real time, as opposed to turn-based, because it was a better fit with co-op play. When you are fighting, you don’t want to wait for one human player to think for a while.

“With smartphones, I really think it is a better experience to play a little bit more freely and easily, without having to have thinking [about making a move] as a central experience,” he said.

The game is going to debut in eight languages: Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, traditional Chinese, and Korean.

“We want to be able to make the best use of the characteristics of smartphone devices themselves,” Sasaki said. “It allows us to do something that’s pretty new and exciting with the cooperative play between characters.”

Credit: Source link

The post Pokémon Masters hands-on — Trainer battles get real-time co-op play on iOS and Android appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/pokemon-masters-hands-on-trainer-battles-get-real-time-co-op-play-on-ios-and-android/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pokemon-masters-hands-on-trainer-battles-get-real-time-co-op-play-on-ios-and-android from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186507675452

[reneeacaseyfl]

Pokémon Masters hands-on — Trainer battles get real-time co-op play on iOS and Android

Japanese mobile game company DeNA has been working on its Pokémon Masters mobile game for a long time, and it is finally lifting the lid on the gameplay today. I got to play it hands-on, and I found it to be in an interesting place in the universe of Pokémon games.

The title will be coming out this summer on iOS and Android. 20-year-old DeNA has to navigate through a lot of competition from other Pokémon games, as The Pokémon Company has been busy licensing everyone including Niantic with Pokémon Go and Nintendo with its Pokémon titles (most recently Pokémon Sword and Shield) for the Nintendo Switch.

Fortunately, DeNA has a lot of experience making Nintendo mobile games like the upcoming Mario Kart Tour (and it made Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp), and once again DeNA has been able to create something unique with its single-play game and co-op gameplay.

Pokémon Masters brings together trainers from throughout the Pokémon universe together in a game, and it “sync pairs” them up with their special Pokémon creatures. Those combinations make for a lot of special moves. And in a three-player co-op game, you’ll see the variety of gameplay possible with three trainers in “sync pairs” with three creatures, facing off in real time against three computer-controlled opponent trainers with their sync pair creatures.

In other words, it’s hard to say what kind of match you’re going to end up with as you team up with other players and try to overcome various challenges. This variety is one of the main selling points of the game, and it’s more sophisticated than what you can get in Pokémon Go battles.

After playing the game, I also joined a group interview with Yu Sasaki, executive producer at DeNA.

Single-player gameplay

Above: Pokemon Masters has 13 initial chapters.

Image Credit: DeNA

The game is illustrated in the same beautiful way that the Pokémon TV series is, with anime-style 2D art. The characters laugh or make other noises, but you have to read what they’re telling you on the screen by tapping speech bubbles.

In the lobby of the Pokémon Center, you can look left or right to see an area that is a lot bigger than the screen of the smartphone itself. If you tap to the left, the view will scroll to the left and you’ll see various upgrades you can purchase. You can interact with trainers.

The trainers come from every region and generation of Pokémon games. The game pairs them up with their partner Pokémon. The single-player campaign takes you on an adventure through 13 chapters (at least at this time). It takes place on the island of Pasio, which you explore in the game.

If you tap explore and then tap on a chapter, the story unfolds. When you arrive at the island, a cut scene plays. Some of the bad trainers are bullying another trainer, who doesn’t want to battle. You tell them to stop, and they challenge you instead. Now you as the player control six entities in the arena: three trainers and three Pokémon.

In real time, you tell them what kind of attack to perform by tapping on an icon on the screen. You can see each enemy Pokémon creature, with an indicator above them that shows you what their weakness is. Your job is to recognize the weakness and the right counter to exploit it.

You fight one at a time, trying to knock out the other Pokémon. But once your meter fills up, you can execute a “sync move,” which is a move that all of your Pokémon and your trainers do at the same time. It’s a lot more powerful than a single attack.

A tutorial will get you off the ground, but I didn’t play that. I had no trouble beating the challenge in chapter one, and so we jumped to chapter three. That’s where I got beat.

Monetization and editing your team

Above: Pokemon Masters lets you enhance your character with gems.

Image Credit: DeNA

Back in Pokémon Center, if you scroll to the left and click on the lady behind the counter, you can use gems. You can either earn the gems in the game by playing or you can purchase them. The gems are the primary currency in the game.

You can use the gems to upgrade your character up to five stars. And so the gems are key to crafting your team.

You can also edit the team as you wish by going to Pokémon Center and scrolling to the right. You can click on a character and then switch in or switch out pairs of trainers and their Pokémon. It’s easy to see all the different trainer pairs you’ve already unlocked. Before each battle, you can optimize your team. Over time, you can learn a total of four moves.

A lot of daily or seasonal events add new content to the game.

Co-op play

Above: Pokemon Masters debuts this summer.

Image Credit: DeNA

Once you hit Chapter 10 in the adventure mode, you can unlock cooperative play.

I had a chance to do battle for a couple of rounds with three human players in a co-op game. Finding the other players was easy enough on the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus smartphone.

In co-op play, you aren’t just fighting with one trainer and one Pokémon. As with single player, in co-op you control three trainers and three Pokémon. That means that on your side of the battle, your team will have nine sync pairs, or nine trainers and nine Pokémon.

If you fight well together and fill up your Unity gauge, your team will earn a Unity attack. That is when all three sync pairs combine forces to unleash a single attack together. You can fill up that Unity gauge by chaining together consecutive attacks. That requires some thinking on the fly.

Interview with Yu Sasaki, executive producer

Above: Pokemon Masters’ Professor Bellis

Image Credit: DeNA

After the gameplay session, I had a chance to interview Yu Sasaki, the executive producer of the game.

Speaking through a translator, he said he hoped people would be excited about the game.

“They came to us with this idea,” he said, speaking of The Pokémon Company, via a video phone connection. “We have all of these various different trainers that we’ve met throughout the world of Pokémon, and these various different games, and all of them are going to be coming together. And we’re going to have a new story that involves these different trainers from around the world. And we hope that players will really enjoy that experience. We decided there would be a new world, the island of Pasio, where all of these trainers were coming together.”

He noted that the game would be simpler than other Pokémon battle games on other platforms. The goal was to make the game appeal to a broad audience of people who like Pokémon but haven’t memorized all of the creatures. He also said the novelty of sync pairs and the strategies that this creates will be interesting to veteran players.

Sasaki said the team didn’t worry so much about making a game different from Pokémon Go. They simply talked with The Pokémon Company about how to create a game that was really exciting and interesting. He said they switched to real time, as opposed to turn-based, because it was a better fit with co-op play. When you are fighting, you don’t want to wait for one human player to think for a while.

“With smartphones, I really think it is a better experience to play a little bit more freely and easily, without having to have thinking [about making a move] as a central experience,” he said.

The game is going to debut in eight languages: Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, traditional Chinese, and Korean.

“We want to be able to make the best use of the characteristics of smartphone devices themselves,” Sasaki said. “It allows us to do something that’s pretty new and exciting with the cooperative play between characters.”

Credit: Source link

The post Pokémon Masters hands-on — Trainer battles get real-time co-op play on iOS and Android appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/pokemon-masters-hands-on-trainer-battles-get-real-time-co-op-play-on-ios-and-android/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pokemon-masters-hands-on-trainer-battles-get-real-time-co-op-play-on-ios-and-android from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186507675452

[weeklyreviewer]

Pokémon Masters hands-on — Trainer battles get real-time co-op play on iOS and Android

Japanese mobile game company DeNA has been working on its Pokémon Masters mobile game for a long time, and it is finally lifting the lid on the gameplay today. I got to play it hands-on, and I found it to be in an interesting place in the universe of Pokémon games.

The title will be coming out this summer on iOS and Android. 20-year-old DeNA has to navigate through a lot of competition from other Pokémon games, as The Pokémon Company has been busy licensing everyone including Niantic with Pokémon Go and Nintendo with its Pokémon titles (most recently Pokémon Sword and Shield) for the Nintendo Switch.

Fortunately, DeNA has a lot of experience making Nintendo mobile games like the upcoming Mario Kart Tour (and it made Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp), and once again DeNA has been able to create something unique with its single-play game and co-op gameplay.

Pokémon Masters brings together trainers from throughout the Pokémon universe together in a game, and it “sync pairs” them up with their special Pokémon creatures. Those combinations make for a lot of special moves. And in a three-player co-op game, you’ll see the variety of gameplay possible with three trainers in “sync pairs” with three creatures, facing off in real time against three computer-controlled opponent trainers with their sync pair creatures.

In other words, it’s hard to say what kind of match you’re going to end up with as you team up with other players and try to overcome various challenges. This variety is one of the main selling points of the game, and it’s more sophisticated than what you can get in Pokémon Go battles.

After playing the game, I also joined a group interview with Yu Sasaki, executive producer at DeNA.

Single-player gameplay

Above: Pokemon Masters has 13 initial chapters.

Image Credit: DeNA

The game is illustrated in the same beautiful way that the Pokémon TV series is, with anime-style 2D art. The characters laugh or make other noises, but you have to read what they’re telling you on the screen by tapping speech bubbles.

In the lobby of the Pokémon Center, you can look left or right to see an area that is a lot bigger than the screen of the smartphone itself. If you tap to the left, the view will scroll to the left and you’ll see various upgrades you can purchase. You can interact with trainers.

The trainers come from every region and generation of Pokémon games. The game pairs them up with their partner Pokémon. The single-player campaign takes you on an adventure through 13 chapters (at least at this time). It takes place on the island of Pasio, which you explore in the game.

If you tap explore and then tap on a chapter, the story unfolds. When you arrive at the island, a cut scene plays. Some of the bad trainers are bullying another trainer, who doesn’t want to battle. You tell them to stop, and they challenge you instead. Now you as the player control six entities in the arena: three trainers and three Pokémon.

In real time, you tell them what kind of attack to perform by tapping on an icon on the screen. You can see each enemy Pokémon creature, with an indicator above them that shows you what their weakness is. Your job is to recognize the weakness and the right counter to exploit it.

You fight one at a time, trying to knock out the other Pokémon. But once your meter fills up, you can execute a “sync move,” which is a move that all of your Pokémon and your trainers do at the same time. It’s a lot more powerful than a single attack.

A tutorial will get you off the ground, but I didn’t play that. I had no trouble beating the challenge in chapter one, and so we jumped to chapter three. That’s where I got beat.

Monetization and editing your team

Above: Pokemon Masters lets you enhance your character with gems.

Image Credit: DeNA

Back in Pokémon Center, if you scroll to the left and click on the lady behind the counter, you can use gems. You can either earn the gems in the game by playing or you can purchase them. The gems are the primary currency in the game.

You can use the gems to upgrade your character up to five stars. And so the gems are key to crafting your team.

You can also edit the team as you wish by going to Pokémon Center and scrolling to the right. You can click on a character and then switch in or switch out pairs of trainers and their Pokémon. It’s easy to see all the different trainer pairs you’ve already unlocked. Before each battle, you can optimize your team. Over time, you can learn a total of four moves.

A lot of daily or seasonal events add new content to the game.

Co-op play

Above: Pokemon Masters debuts this summer.

Image Credit: DeNA

Once you hit Chapter 10 in the adventure mode, you can unlock cooperative play.

I had a chance to do battle for a couple of rounds with three human players in a co-op game. Finding the other players was easy enough on the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus smartphone.

In co-op play, you aren’t just fighting with one trainer and one Pokémon. As with single player, in co-op you control three trainers and three Pokémon. That means that on your side of the battle, your team will have nine sync pairs, or nine trainers and nine Pokémon.

If you fight well together and fill up your Unity gauge, your team will earn a Unity attack. That is when all three sync pairs combine forces to unleash a single attack together. You can fill up that Unity gauge by chaining together consecutive attacks. That requires some thinking on the fly.

Interview with Yu Sasaki, executive producer

Above: Pokemon Masters’ Professor Bellis

Image Credit: DeNA

After the gameplay session, I had a chance to interview Yu Sasaki, the executive producer of the game.

Speaking through a translator, he said he hoped people would be excited about the game.

“They came to us with this idea,” he said, speaking of The Pokémon Company, via a video phone connection. “We have all of these various different trainers that we’ve met throughout the world of Pokémon, and these various different games, and all of them are going to be coming together. And we’re going to have a new story that involves these different trainers from around the world. And we hope that players will really enjoy that experience. We decided there would be a new world, the island of Pasio, where all of these trainers were coming together.”

He noted that the game would be simpler than other Pokémon battle games on other platforms. The goal was to make the game appeal to a broad audience of people who like Pokémon but haven’t memorized all of the creatures. He also said the novelty of sync pairs and the strategies that this creates will be interesting to veteran players.

Sasaki said the team didn’t worry so much about making a game different from Pokémon Go. They simply talked with The Pokémon Company about how to create a game that was really exciting and interesting. He said they switched to real time, as opposed to turn-based, because it was a better fit with co-op play. When you are fighting, you don’t want to wait for one human player to think for a while.

“With smartphones, I really think it is a better experience to play a little bit more freely and easily, without having to have thinking [about making a move] as a central experience,” he said.

The game is going to debut in eight languages: Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, traditional Chinese, and Korean.

“We want to be able to make the best use of the characteristics of smartphone devices themselves,” Sasaki said. “It allows us to do something that’s pretty new and exciting with the cooperative play between characters.”

Credit: Source link

The post Pokémon Masters hands-on — Trainer battles get real-time co-op play on iOS and Android appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/pokemon-masters-hands-on-trainer-battles-get-real-time-co-op-play-on-ios-and-android/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pokemon-masters-hands-on-trainer-battles-get-real-time-co-op-play-on-ios-and-android

[ixvyupdates]

Educators Take Center Stage at Betsy DeVos’ Summit on School Discipline

Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, hosted a summit yesterday on school safety and climate so that she could hear from people—including educators—who have been vocal about the issue of school discipline.

Each side—essentially those who want DeVos to preserve what is commonly known in edu-world as the Obama-era guidance and those who want her to rescind it—had 90 minutes to meet with the secretary and make their case.

DeVos has recently come under renewed pressure to rescind the guidance by lawmakers and conservative education folks, some of whom believe that it is—or could be—partly to blame for Nikolas Cruz seemingly falling through the cracks prior to his deadly attack on his former high school in Parkland, Florida.

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, already existing debates over school discipline and the role of law enforcement in schools have gotten louder. And uglier.

While edu-world has been knee deep in this conversation since the Obama administration took a stand on the issue in 2014, the tragedy at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School has been like catnip for TV commentators and even elected leaders looking to shift the narrative away from guns. The problem is that their level of expertise on the issue of school discipline policy is basically zero.

The good news is that there are folks in the education space who actually know a great deal about the issue of school discipline policy and while their opinions may differ, they are well versed in the main issue at hand at the summit: the Obama-era guidance.

This guidance was borne out of concern over the disproportionate suspension rates of Black and Latino students as well as special education students and it included a “Dear Colleague” letter that put school districts on notice that evidence of excessive and disparate discipline could subject them to an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights.

Predictably, as with any action taken by a presidential administration, there are passionate supporters and detractors and the Obama-era guidance—especially the “Dear Colleague” letter—are no exception. Mike Petrilli of the Fordham institute encapsulated it well when he wrote, “For progressives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about fairness and justice. And for conservatives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about order and safety.”

But the voices that are far too often missing from the heated Twitter battles and op-ed pages are those for whom school discipline policies are an everyday reality: teachers.

What Teachers Are Saying

According to one teacher who attended the summit yesterday, DeVos seemed particularly interested in what educators had to say. Unsurprisingly, especially at such a polarized time in America as this, these professionals on the front lines of dealing with student behavior are far from being of one mind when it comes to how schools should address the very complex issue of student discipline. While some are fervent supporters of the Obama-era guidance, others have seen their schools collapse into chaos and believe that the decline is directly related to that 2014 guidance out of Washington. Both views were front and center during the roundtable discussion with DeVos on Wednesday.

Olinka Crusoe is an elementary school teacher in New York City who supports the Obama-era guidance. She readily admits that early in her teaching career she relied on what she knew and and that was removing disruptive students from her classroom. They’d come back. She’d respond by removing them again.

Nothing improved and it was impossible to build relationships with the students because no trust had been established. But after working hard to get to know the students—their strengths and their needs—and receiving training on how to be proactive in supporting their ability to navigate challenging situations, she now believes that removing a student from the classroom has to be a last resort.

“I want my students in school,” Crusoe said. “I want them to learn the skills they need to manage their emotions and behavior during challenging situations. They need to be in schools to learn that.”

Annette Albright, a former behavior modification technician at Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, does not support the Obama-era guidance.

She was physically assaulted by three students and while the video of the violent attack is hard to watch, her school administration accused her of “provoking” the attack. And then they fired her.

She and others believe that the students were not held to account because the district was already under investigation by the Office For Civil Rights and was at risk of losing federal dollars. Albright, who is Black, does not support lowering behavioral expectations for children of color but she believes that is precisely what has happened in the district where she used to work.

Nicole Stewart of San Diego agrees with Albright.

She resigned as vice principal at Lincoln High School in San Diego, California, precisely because of what she saw as the fallout of the Obama-era guidance. She believes that it had reached the point where teachers at the school were being kept in the dark when it came to discipline. The way she sees it, they were left with no other option but to ignore classroom behaviors and incidents.

Tynisha Jointer, a behavioral health specialist for Chicago Public Schools, welcomes the guidance and wants it to remain in place.

She is convinced that, at least in Chicago, schools that are experiencing chaos have a building-leader problem and that to lay the blame at the feet of a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Obama administration is misguided. She does believe that all educators need to take a look at themselves and reflect on the biases that they may be bringing into their buildings.

But she did say, “If we’re going to scrap it, let’s replace it with something that puts relationships at the forefront of how we respond to undesirable behavior. Whether it’s the teacher, the school resource officer or the principal, the relationships make all the difference and are vital to building trust and improving student behavior.”

And Nina Leuzzi, a pre-K teacher in Boston, says that the Obama-era guidance has helped her take into account the whole child in front of her—their experience, their trauma and their needs—and react more appropriately. As far as she is concerned, “suspensions are not tools for teachers because they do not educate. Training is a tool for teachers.”

There’s a Reason The Guidance Was Written

The Obama administration’s concern over disparate discipline rates was well-founded and based on the the information gleaned from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

In a strange twist of timing, their concerns were confirmed in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that was released yesterday—literally during the roundtable with DeVos—that could ultimately overshadow that event.

In its analysis of the 2013-14 school year, the most recent year for which there is data, the GAO found that Black students, boys and students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than their White peers without disabilities. The disparities were greatest for Black students and persisted regardless of socioeconomic class.

The Department of Education began the CRDC in 1968 and as of February of 2014, every public school and district in America is required to provide data. The data included goes far beyond discipline rates and has cast an important light on glaring inequities in our schools to include access to AP courses and IB programs, access to school counselors, and the availability of high-level math and science courses. Teacher and student absenteeism data is also collected.

But a central tenet of the Obama-era guidance, in addition to disparities around race, was that special education students have the right to equal treatment in school. And a story, also out of Lincoln High School in San Diego, may be evidence that the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

When a non-verbal child with cerebral palsy is raped in the bathroom at school by another student and the confession of the perpetrator as well as eyewitness testimony are kept secret from the mother of the victim, something has gone very wrong.

Add to that a change to how an offense is officially documented in the books to avoid expulsion, and one has to wonder what is driving the actions of the district. According to a story by Mario Koran in Voice of San Diego, “sexual misconduct—defined by the district as ‘attempting to commit or committing a sexual assault or battery’—is one of five offenses for which school principals must recommend students be expelled. Nearly a month later, however, the school’s vice principal documented the incident differently. She labeled the offense an ‘obscene act.’ The school does not expel students for that.”

But it seems like a stretch to directly blame the guidance for the egregious mishandling of serious offenses—and crimes—by administrators and district officials in cases of violence.

While it’s true they may feel pressure to keep their suspension and expulsion numbers down as a result of the “Dear Colleague” letter, the guidance does include specific language about the need to “train personnel to distinguish between disciplinary infractions appropriately handled by school officials versus major threats to school safety or serious school-based criminal conduct…and how to contact law enforcement when warranted.”

The truth is, all of the educators who testified at the school safety and climate summit yesterday likely agree far more than they disagree but their conclusions about the Obama-era guidance are informed by their very different experiences.

Not Speaking the Same Language

While some are focused on disproportionate suspensions for defiance, profanity and dress code violations, others have witnessed and/or experienced assault, rape and students showing up at school with weapons. This wide range of behavioral infractions and in some cases, crimes, is indicative of the likely fact that teachers—and others who feel strongly about the Obama-era guidance—may not even be speaking the same language.

A message from Washington can become pretty garbled as it makes its way down to the school district level and administrators have certainly been known to change course and even cook the books when they feel pressure—real or perceived���to keep those numbers down. On the other hand, the relationships that adults build with students can be the best defense against undesirable student behavior and can be the perfect antidote to the toxic power struggles that ensue far too often between teachers and students and often result in outsized punitive responses.

Regardless of where Betsy DeVos lands on the Obama-era guidance, it’s clear that she’d be wise to keep her communication going with those on the front lines—teachers—if she wants to make smart decisions that will actually have a positive impact and make America’s schools more equitable and just places for all students.

Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC-licensed.

Educators Take Center Stage at Betsy DeVos’ Summit on School Discipline syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

[thebrewstorian]

Pop Culture Conference 2017: Beer Culture: Session 8: Community and Identity

The last session at the Pop Culture Conference was about community and identity, and while its content was similar in many ways, perhaps because it was the last of the track, people were a bit rowdier.  

Like this guy. It’s Sam Adams, in case you wondered. 

Josh Sopiarz started the session with his talk "Brew Free or Die: Craft Brewing and the American Revolutionary Instinct." He argues that in the 1980s-1990s we experienced an explosion in our access to beer, and from its beginning craft beer was set apart from other macro breweries. Because of this, we started to see “battle” language, with craft consumers or marketing folks using words to indicate the act of brewing on a small scale was a revolutionary reaction against the big guys to produce more flavorful, locally produced, artisanal product.

But Sopiarz asked: is this actually a "revolution." He mentions the book The Comic Book Story of Beer: The World's Favorite Beverage from 7000 BC to Today's Craft Brewing Revolution, as an example of something that shows the larger heroic struggle of brewing (with many scantily clad women throughout history I might add) and its importance in nearly every significant historical event. He also references the Jeff Rice book Craft Obsession: The Social Rhetorics of Beer to show further evidence of this. Rice says that craft turns to the ideas of revolution or battle tales, and that those function as a grand narrative of explanation or a grand identity narrative; to support this, Rice includes quotes from brewers where they talk about being a revolutionary, highlighting craft v conglomerate, portraying conglomerates as imperialists. Finally, in revolutions you have winners and losers, and you have to choose a side and there is no in between for the truly committed.

Sopiarz says this is problematic, not just if you think of this in terms of linking revolution and gender/race. These are white guys talking about a revolution. He suggests that maybe what we need to be thinking about is whether this is a revolution or a renaissance, saying that America is probably too politically naive to call this a renaissance. And of course this word does have a link to the effeminate, and lots of people have written lots of words about how masculine brewing is. Maybe use the phrase "craft beer insurgence" instead?

But counting the earliest non/micro brewing, we are nearly 40 years into this "revolution," and yet we are still using this revolution terminology. Beyond marketing rhetoric, you only have to look at book titles to see that this has spread outside of brewery PR: Ambitious Brew, Red White Brew, Audacity of Hops, Inside the spirit of craft beer.

Aren't we past that? Are we at the point where the trope has run its course and has become cliche. AB/InBev is fighting back: we have their attention, they are "not backing down," and they have the resources to rebrand Bud as "America." If you asked craft brewers just what they were running against what would they say? Anything. Everything.

Is the party over as Sam Adams' Jim Koch said in the April 2017 op-ed piece in the NYTimes? If the large brewers can just buy it all up do we actually have the endurance to make this an insurgency? Either way, what does that look like as we go forward if we aren't attached to the revolutionary narrative?

Jasun Carr talked about how his experiences moving to Idaho, not known for its craft scene, drove him to do research with the brewing community for his talk "Navigating the need for authenticity in a craft beer 'desert.'" Carr says he doesn't live in the cool part of Idaho, and that due to liquor laws, availability due to demand and distribution, and a sparse population in some places, Idaho is a craft desert. He explains that this is obviously different from a food desert, those places where healthy food is hard to obtain, but that the access limitations have an impact on people who move there and have a strong connection to the craft community.

Carr did an online survey of 66 online online groups and beer communities. Here are the results 1342 started the survey, 623 finished; 85% male, averaged 33 years old; they had 8 servings a week, the survey asked about average ABV. He found that when he asked about concerns about brand authenticity people preferred brands connected to tradition and who stuck to their original principles (so the opposite of a revolution). When he asked about beer seeking behavior in people who live in areas with less access to craft he found that they echoed his own experiences: if you were used to having a variety, you turned to trade online or with out-of-state visitors.

One facet that I found interesting was that people used social media to stay informed about beer related events, which of course is odd if there aren't events in your area... He also asked about whether people were part of groups as a way to measure community. He found that people who are more concerned about authenticity are bigger users of social media, and they seek more variety in the beers they drink. Turning to apps, he found that people in a desert are more likely to use them as a way of connecting more to a community because they don't have one easily accessible. He found that people in the NE are less concerned with beer authenticity, but excluding them the rest of the country was pretty much the same in their ratings.  

He concluded that people in a craft desert take the best that we have available, but acknowledged that without easy access to events, taps, craft on grocery store shelves, they might not know what they are missing. He wondered if the geography (probably population density?) actually mattered or whether the grater issue are the differing liquor laws.

Molly Taggart gave a talk entitled "Three Cheers to the Intersections of Entrepreneurship, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity: An Exploration of Business and Community in Craft Beer Culture," in which she used ethnography to talk about connecting with consumers. In it she talked about her own personal identity as someone who works at Kent University in Ohio, owns a bottle shop, and is a member of gay community. She says she definitely feels an us v them conflict when thinking about the demographics of the industry, and gave an example of hosting an LBGTQ event and being asked if her bar was "they gay bar." In this she noted that categorization around sexual or gender identity seemed important to attendees, though she also noted that they didn't ask if it was "the dog bar" when they had a dog event.

Most of the rest of her talk asked us to consider brewers, but also the other people employed in the industry (distributors, retailers, sales reps) when we talk about its demographics. Who are the sales reps she interacts with? In total (I think in all her time as a shop owner) she says there has been 1 female and 1 person who identified as gay -- and there are 20 individual reps/week, with pretty regularly turn over. Further, we need to ask about the people who are in charge and making the money -- how are they are connected? Who is on company boards of directors or in the state guilds?

She concluded by saying that we are leaving behind a huge market segment. Your money is your voice, and there  is room for a more candid discussion about where your dollars go and who you are supporting. She also said that we should bring farmers into the discussion, and had high praise for Rogue Ales as a model for local or farming integration (though she thought they owned their land and only used what they could grow in their beers).

The final speaker was Adam Deutsch, who talked about how "Beer is an Equity Issue." He said he'd looked at beer from a sort of ethnographic-esque perspective of observation. He defined equity for the brewing industry in the same way we do in higher ed, as systematic access and accommodations. So he has a real issue when he looks at the price of beer in San Diego county, especially as it pertains to worker wages or benefits.

As a San Diego resident, he's seen the prices of pints increase -- and has also seen pubs selling "cheater glasses," which seem to be glasses with a thick bottom. He asks why this cost is going up? The standard answer has been that it's because minimum wage has gone up (though it isn't in effect yet) or that transportation costs are higher (though they haven't actually increased and it doesn't travel very far if it's brewed on site). He says one interesting contradiction is the growler movement: you have to buy a container, and ultimately the economics don't make sense because you end up paying more for less beer that you have to drink faster because it doesn't keep in that container. And, of course, if craft is about community, when you get a growler to take home, so you don’t have the community tap room experience.

He suggests that "perceived value" is in play here, and that people think that the more expensive the beer is the must better it must be, and then competition makes those prices even higher. How do breweries actually take care of their employees? Maybe free beer or an industry discount, which in effect makes employees free marketers. But they don't get paid very well or have unions, there is huge employee turnover, and a because people want to get into the industry at any cost they end up not valuing the work that they do. They are willing to do so much for so little, because it is a sexy industry AND because there is always someone waiting to take their place.  

Though breweries should be good neighbors (as they sell themselves), what Deutsch sees instead is that his local breweries are taking advantage of their neighbors. To really give back to the communities, breweries need to pay real benefits with retirement and living wages. And he'd love to see at least one employee-owned or unionized brewery in San Diego. There cold be incentives or political advocacy support from the local brewers associations or guilds.

Ultimately though, maybe breweries just need to resist the urge to grow.

Curious about the Sam Adam image? 

Curious about the Bud as America image? 

[ixvyupdates]

Educators Take Center Stage at Betsy DeVos’ Summit on School Discipline

Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, hosted a summit yesterday on school safety and climate so that she could hear from people—including educators—who have been vocal about the issue of school discipline.

Each side—essentially those who want DeVos to preserve what is commonly known in edu-world as the Obama-era guidance and those who want her to rescind it—had 90 minutes to meet with the secretary and make their case.

DeVos has recently come under renewed pressure to rescind the guidance by lawmakers and conservative education folks, some of whom believe that it is—or could be—partly to blame for Nikolas Cruz seemingly falling through the cracks prior to his deadly attack on his former high school in Parkland, Florida.

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, already existing debates over school discipline and the role of law enforcement in schools have gotten louder. And uglier.

While edu-world has been knee deep in this conversation since the Obama administration took a stand on the issue in 2014, the tragedy at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School has been like catnip for TV commentators and even elected leaders looking to shift the narrative away from guns. The problem is that their level of expertise on the issue of school discipline policy is basically zero.

The good news is that there are folks in the education space who actually know a great deal about the issue of school discipline policy and while their opinions may differ, they are well versed in the main issue at hand at the summit: the Obama-era guidance.

This guidance was borne out of concern over the disproportionate suspension rates of Black and Latino students as well as special education students and it included a “Dear Colleague” letter that put school districts on notice that evidence of excessive and disparate discipline could subject them to an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights.

Predictably, as with any action taken by a presidential administration, there are passionate supporters and detractors and the Obama-era guidance—especially the “Dear Colleague” letter—are no exception. Mike Petrilli of the Fordham institute encapsulated it well when he wrote, “For progressives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about fairness and justice. And for conservatives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about order and safety.”

But the voices that are far too often missing from the heated Twitter battles and op-ed pages are those for whom school discipline policies are an everyday reality: teachers.

What Teachers Are Saying

According to one teacher who attended the summit yesterday, DeVos seemed particularly interested in what educators had to say. Unsurprisingly, especially at such a polarized time in America as this, these professionals on the front lines of dealing with student behavior are far from being of one mind when it comes to how schools should address the very complex issue of student discipline. While some are fervent supporters of the Obama-era guidance, others have seen their schools collapse into chaos and believe that the decline is directly related to that 2014 guidance out of Washington. Both views were front and center during the roundtable discussion with DeVos on Wednesday.

Olinka Crusoe is an elementary school teacher in New York City who supports the Obama-era guidance. She readily admits that early in her teaching career she relied on what she knew and and that was removing disruptive students from her classroom. They’d come back. She’d respond by removing them again.

Nothing improved and it was impossible to build relationships with the students because no trust had been established. But after working hard to get to know the students—their strengths and their needs—and receiving training on how to be proactive in supporting their ability to navigate challenging situations, she now believes that removing a student from the classroom has to be a last resort.

“I want my students in school,” Crusoe said. “I want them to learn the skills they need to manage their emotions and behavior during challenging situations. They need to be in schools to learn that.”

Annette Albright, a former behavior modification technician at Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, does not support the Obama-era guidance.

She was physically assaulted by three students and while the video of the violent attack is hard to watch, her school administration accused her of “provoking” the attack. And then they fired her.

She and others believe that the students were not held to account because the district was already under investigation by the Office For Civil Rights and was at risk of losing federal dollars. Albright, who is Black, does not support lowering behavioral expectations for children of color but she believes that is precisely what has happened in the district where she used to work.

Nicole Stewart of San Diego agrees with Albright.

She resigned as vice principal at Lincoln High School in San Diego, California, precisely because of what she saw as the fallout of the Obama-era guidance. She believes that it had reached the point where teachers at the school were being kept in the dark when it came to discipline. The way she sees it, they were left with no other option but to ignore classroom behaviors and incidents.

Tynisha Jointer, a behavioral health specialist for Chicago Public Schools, welcomes the guidance and wants it to remain in place.

She is convinced that, at least in Chicago, schools that are experiencing chaos have a building-leader problem and that to lay the blame at the feet of a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Obama administration is misguided. She does believe that all educators need to take a look at themselves and reflect on the biases that they may be bringing into their buildings.

But she did say, “If we’re going to scrap it, let’s replace it with something that puts relationships at the forefront of how we respond to undesirable behavior. Whether it’s the teacher, the school resource officer or the principal, the relationships make all the difference and are vital to building trust and improving student behavior.”

And Nina Leuzzi, a pre-K teacher in Boston, says that the Obama-era guidance has helped her take into account the whole child in front of her—their experience, their trauma and their needs—and react more appropriately. As far as she is concerned, “suspensions are not tools for teachers because they do not educate. Training is a tool for teachers.”

There’s a Reason The Guidance Was Written

The Obama administration’s concern over disparate discipline rates was well-founded and based on the the information gleaned from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

In a strange twist of timing, their concerns were confirmed in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that was released yesterday—literally during the roundtable with DeVos—that could ultimately overshadow that event.

In its analysis of the 2013-14 school year, the most recent year for which there is data, the GAO found that Black students, boys and students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than their White peers without disabilities. The disparities were greatest for Black students and persisted regardless of socioeconomic class.

The Department of Education began the CRDC in 1968 and as of February of 2014, every public school and district in America is required to provide data. The data included goes far beyond discipline rates and has cast an important light on glaring inequities in our schools to include access to AP courses and IB programs, access to school counselors, and the availability of high-level math and science courses. Teacher and student absenteeism data is also collected.

But a central tenet of the Obama-era guidance, in addition to disparities around race, was that special education students have the right to equal treatment in school. And a story, also out of Lincoln High School in San Diego, may be evidence that the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

When a non-verbal child with cerebral palsy is raped in the bathroom at school by another student and the confession of the perpetrator as well as eyewitness testimony are kept secret from the mother of the victim, something has gone very wrong.

Add to that a change to how an offense is officially documented in the books to avoid expulsion, and one has to wonder what is driving the actions of the district. According to a story by Mario Koran in Voice of San Diego, “sexual misconduct—defined by the district as ‘attempting to commit or committing a sexual assault or battery’—is one of five offenses for which school principals must recommend students be expelled. Nearly a month later, however, the school’s vice principal documented the incident differently. She labeled the offense an ‘obscene act.’ The school does not expel students for that.”

But it seems like a stretch to directly blame the guidance for the egregious mishandling of serious offenses—and crimes—by administrators and district officials in cases of violence.

While it’s true they may feel pressure to keep their suspension and expulsion numbers down as a result of the “Dear Colleague” letter, the guidance does include specific language about the need to “train personnel to distinguish between disciplinary infractions appropriately handled by school officials versus major threats to school safety or serious school-based criminal conduct…and how to contact law enforcement when warranted.”

The truth is, all of the educators who testified at the school safety and climate summit yesterday likely agree far more than they disagree but their conclusions about the Obama-era guidance are informed by their very different experiences.

Not Speaking the Same Language

While some are focused on disproportionate suspensions for defiance, profanity and dress code violations, others have witnessed and/or experienced assault, rape and students showing up at school with weapons. This wide range of behavioral infractions and in some cases, crimes, is indicative of the likely fact that teachers—and others who feel strongly about the Obama-era guidance—may not even be speaking the same language.

A message from Washington can become pretty garbled as it makes its way down to the school district level and administrators have certainly been known to change course and even cook the books when they feel pressure—real or perceived—to keep those numbers down. On the other hand, the relationships that adults build with students can be the best defense against undesirable student behavior and can be the perfect antidote to the toxic power struggles that ensue far too often between teachers and students and often result in outsized punitive responses.

Regardless of where Betsy DeVos lands on the Obama-era guidance, it’s clear that she’d be wise to keep her communication going with those on the front lines—teachers—if she wants to make smart decisions that will actually have a positive impact and make America’s schools more equitable and just places for all students.

Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC-licensed.

Educators Take Center Stage at Betsy DeVos’ Summit on School Discipline syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

[ixvyupdates]

Educators Take Center Stage at Betsy DeVos’ Summit on School Discipline

Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, hosted a summit yesterday on school safety and climate so that she could hear from people—including educators—who have been vocal about the issue of school discipline.

Each side—essentially those who want DeVos to preserve what is commonly known in edu-world as the Obama-era guidance and those who want her to rescind it—had 90 minutes to meet with the secretary and make their case.

DeVos has recently come under renewed pressure to rescind the guidance by lawmakers and conservative education folks, some of whom believe that it is—or could be—partly to blame for Nikolas Cruz seemingly falling through the cracks prior to his deadly attack on his former high school in Parkland, Florida.

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, already existing debates over school discipline and the role of law enforcement in schools have gotten louder. And uglier.

While edu-world has been knee deep in this conversation since the Obama administration took a stand on the issue in 2014, the tragedy at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School has been like catnip for TV commentators and even elected leaders looking to shift the narrative away from guns. The problem is that their level of expertise on the issue of school discipline policy is basically zero.

The good news is that there are folks in the education space who actually know a great deal about the issue of school discipline policy and while their opinions may differ, they are well versed in the main issue at hand at the summit: the Obama-era guidance.

This guidance was borne out of concern over the disproportionate suspension rates of Black and Latino students as well as special education students and it included a “Dear colleague” letter that put school districts on notice that evidence of excessive and disparate discipline could subject them to an investigation by the Office of Civil Rights.

Predictably, as with any action taken by a presidential administration, there are passionate supporters and detractors and the Obama-era guidance—especially the “Dear Colleague” letter—are no exception. Mike Petrilli of the Fordham institute encapsulated it well when he wrote, “For progressives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about fairness and justice. And for conservatives, it taps into deeply held beliefs about order and safety.”

But the voices that are far too often missing from the heated Twitter battles and op-ed pages are those for whom school discipline policies are an everyday reality: teachers.

What Teachers Are Saying

According to one teacher who attended the summit yesterday, DeVos seemed particularly interested in what educators had to say. Unsurprisingly, especially at such a polarized time in America as this, these professionals on the front lines of dealing with student behavior are far from being of one mind when it comes to how schools should address the very complex issue of student discipline. While some are fervent supporters of the Obama-era guidance, others have seen their schools collapse into chaos and believe that the decline is directly related to that 2014 guidance out of Washington. Both views were front and center during the round-table discussion with DeVos on Wednesday.

Olinka Crusoe is an elementary school teacher in New York City who supports the Obama-era guidance. She readily admits that early in her teaching career she relied on what she knew and and that was removing disruptive students from her classroom. They’d come back. She’d respond by removing them again.

Nothing improved and it was impossible to build relationships with the students because no trust had been established. But after working hard to get to know the students—their strengths and their needs—and receiving training on how be proactive in supporting their ability to navigate challenging situations, she now believes that removing a student from the classroom has to be a last resort.

“I want my students in school,” Crusoe said. “I want them to learn the skills they need to manage their emotions and behavior during challenging situations. They need to be in schools to learn that.”

Annette Albright, a former behavior modification technician at Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, does not support the Obama-era guidance.

She was physically assaulted by three students and while the video of the violent attack is hard to watch, her school administration accused her of “provoking” the attack. And then they fired her.

She and others believe that the students were not held to account because the district was already under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights and was at risk of losing federal dollars. Albright, who is Black, does not support lowering behavioral expectations for children of color but she believes that is precisely what has happened in the district where she used to work.

Nicole Stewart of San Diego agrees with Albright.

She resigned as vice principal at Lincoln High School in San Diego, California, precisely because of what she saw as the fallout of the Obama-era guidance. She believes that it had reached the point where teachers at the school were being kept in the dark when it came to discipline. The way she sees it, they were left with no other option but to ignore classroom behaviors and incidents.

Tynisha Jointer, a behavioral Health Specialist for K-4 in Chicago, welcomes the guidance and wants it to remain in place.

She is convinced that, at least in Chicago, schools that are experiencing chaos have a building-leader problem and that to lay the blame at the feet of a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Obama administration is misguided. She does believe that all educators need to take a look at themselves and reflect on the biases that they may be bringing in to their buildings.

But she did say, “If we’re going to scrap it, let’s replace it with something that puts relationships at the forefront of how we respond to undesirable behavior. Whether it’s the teacher, the school resource officer, or the principal, the relationships make all the difference and are vital to building trust and improving student behavior.”

And Nina Leuzzi, a pre-K teacher in Boston, says that the Obama-era guidance has helped her take into account the whole child in front of her—their experience, their trauma and their needs—and react more appropriately. As far as she is concerned, “suspensions are not tools for teachers because they do not educate. Training is a tool for teachers.”

There’s a Reason The Guidance Was Written

The Obama administration’s concern over disparate discipline rates was well-founded and based on the the information gleaned from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC).

In a strange twist of timing, their concerns were confirmed in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that was released yesterday—literally during the roundtable with DeVos—that could ultimately overshadow that event.

In its analysis of the 2013-14 school year, the most recent year for which there is data, the GAO found that Black students, boys and students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than their White peers without disabilities. The disparities were greatest for Black students and persisted regardless of socioeconomic class.

The Department of Education began the CRDC in 1968 and as of February of 2014, every public school and district in America is required to provide data. The data included goes far beyond discipline rates and has cast an important light on glaring inequities in our schools to include access to AP courses and IB programs, access to school counselors, and the availability of high-level math and science courses. Teacher and student absenteeism data is also collected.

But a central tenet of the Obama-era guidance, in addition to disparities around race, was that special education students have the right to equal treatment in school. And a story, also out of Lincoln High School in San Diego, may be evidence that the road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

When a non-verbal child with cerebral palsy is raped in the bathroom at school by another student and the confession of the perpetrator as well as eyewitness testimony are kept secret from the mother of the victim, something has gone very wrong.

Add to that a change to how an offense is officially documented in the books to avoid expulsion, and one has to wonder what is driving the actions of the district. According to a story by Mario Koran in Voice of San Diego, “sexual misconduct—defined by the district as ‘attempting to commit or committing a sexual assault or battery’—is one of five offenses for which school principals must recommend students be expelled. Nearly a month later, however, the school’s vice principal documented the incident differently. She labeled the offense an “obscene act.” The school does not expel students for that.”

But it seems like a stretch to directly blame the guidance for the egregious mishandling of serious offenses—and crimes—by administrators and district officials in cases of violence.

While it’s true they may feel pressure to keep their suspension and expulsion numbers down as a result of the “Dear Colleague” letter, the guidance does include specific language about the need to “train personnel to distinguish between disciplinary infractions appropriately handled by school officials versus major threats to school safety or serious school-based criminal conduct…and how to contact law enforcement when warranted.”

The truth is, all of the educators who testified at the school safety and climate summit yesterday likely agree far more than they disagree but their conclusions about the Obama-era guidance are informed by their very different experiences.

Not Speaking the Same Language

While some are focused on disproportionate suspensions for defiance, profanity and dress code violations, others have witnessed and/or experienced assault, rape and students showing up at school with weapons. This wide range of behavioral infractions and in some cases, crimes, is indicative of the likely fact that teachers—and others who feel strongly about the Obama-era guidance—may not even be speaking the same language.

A message from Washington can become pretty garbled as it makes its way down to the school district level and administrators have certainly been known to change course and even cook the books when they feel pressure—real or perceived—to keep those numbers down. On the other hand, the relationships that adults build with students can be the best defense against undesirable student behavior and can be the perfect antidote to the toxic power struggles that ensue far too often between teachers and students and often result in outsized punitive responses.

Regardless of where Betsy DeVos lands on the Obama-era guidance, it’s clear that she’d be wise to keep her communication going with those on the front lines—teachers—if she wants to make smart decisions that will actually have a positive impact and make America’s schools more equitable and just places for all students.

Photo by Gage Skidmore, CC-licensed.

Educators Take Center Stage at Betsy DeVos’ Summit on School Discipline syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com