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Nauset Regional Middle School

    GUIDANCE

    Mr. Simms, Creator of Adventure Ed, Plans to Retire

    Nauset Middle School will seek a new ‘guide’ for a class where students find themselves

    By

    ORLEANS — The most popular class at Nauset Regional Middle School is called Adventure Ed. It’s one in which students seek out their spirit animals and themselves.

    Why 12- and 13-year-olds line up to get into a classroom with bare walls, save a few drawings, and a smattering of books with titles like Way of the Peaceful Warrior is deeply mysterious. Middle-school students don’t typically do self-help. But in this case, they say the attraction has everything to do with the teacher, the athletic and arcadian John Simms, 60, who created the curriculum after a two-day walk with a Wampanoag elder as well as several years leading an outdoor adventure program for young people on Nantucket.

    “Mr. Simms is everyone’s favorite teacher,” said Jack Bienvenue, a Lasell College freshman from Wellfleet. “He stays in the here and now and he does not let things bother him. He is very centered and always puts others first. You can tell he really cares about his students.”

    John Simms in his classroom. (Photos by Marcia Geier)

    Bella Hay of Wellfleet, a freshman at the University of Vermont, described Adventure Ed as “a really important class. As a middle schooler you don’t know who you are. And that is what this class is all about. You figure it out in a way you would never expect. It is hard to put your finger on it, but a great part of the class is it surprises you.”

    After 12 years of rave reviews from middle schoolers, however, Simms has announced he plans to retire and take a new path beginning in 2024.

    Chris Easley, chair of the Nauset Regional School Committee, said his committee wants to keep this wildly popular course going. The next Adventure Ed teacher, or “guide,” will have to be one of Simms’s former students, Easley said, because they are the only ones who truly get it.

    Simms has sent emails to more than 100 former students in hopes of keeping the adventure going. Hay told the Independent she would be honored to take on a job like Simms’s when she graduates. But that is at least four years away.

    The teacher does not look the part. He wears his hair short. There’s not a crystal in sight. His clothes are more Bill Belichick than Dalai Lama. An Eastham resident and native of North Attleboro, Simms aspired to play professional football in the 1980s.

    After failing to make it in the pros, Simms sought personal guidance, and in 1985, on the recommendation of a friend, he consulted Princess Evening Star, also known as Gertrude Haynes Aikens, a Wampanaog woman who had a shop featuring Native handcrafts in Mashpee. Aikens, who died in 1996, is described on the Wampanoag tribal website of past leaders as “spunky and aggressive.” Paula Peters, also a tribe member, told the Independent that Aikens was a well-loved and respected elder, though not known as a medicine woman.

    Simms found in Aikens an inspirational personal guide. After two days with her, he made Native American spirituality the core of his belief system.

    Adventure Ed’s guide and creator John Simms’s original spirit animal is the owl, the silent observer.

    In 1986, Simms landed a job helping troubled youth with Family and Children’s Services of Nantucket. He developed his own approach to supporting youth in 1991 after realizing that “everyone is at risk,” he said. Today, the nonprofit he created, Strong Wings Adventure School, is an outdoor summer camp with 200 to 300 campers and an after-school component that helps young people build confidence through outdoor experiences.

    Simms, his wife, and children resettled on Cape Cod in 2007. He said he was “banging nails” when Tom Conrad, then principal of Nauset Regional High School, encouraged him to get a teaching certificate.

    “Tom said, ‘Just get your license and we will figure something out,’ ” Simms said.

    Simms passed the history teacher’s exam for grades 8 through 12 and was immediately hired at the middle school in 2010 — but not to teach history. Conrad told Simms that the students needed a guide, not a classroom teacher.

    At first, the elective Simms created was a hard sell. But word spread fast.

    “That class was the talk of the school,” Bienvenue said. “Everyone wanted to get into it.”

    Simms’s outdoor adventure class includes micro field trips carefully planned to be done in the 55-minute class period. He takes students to a particular tree in Eastham that is easy to climb. They go to Nickerson State Park “to see the baby trees,” he said. They visit a “secret swan pond” and travel to Old Kings Highway in Wellfleet to walk.

    One pivotal class features a trip to the school’s reading room, which has amphitheater-style seating. There, the students lie down, the lights go out, and they engage in creative visualization. They write about the experience in their journals. They also “breathe into” the class textbook, Medicine Cards, which includes 52 spirit animals, Simms said.

    By the end of the course, students rename themselves in ways that elucidate what they have learned about their own characters.

    Student Sage Lach created 52 medicine cards for the Adventure Ed classroom.

    Simms said this kind of work interests young people because “it is different from everything else that is going on in their lives.”

    Simms said his course is about simplifying. And when it comes to that, “No one is any good at it,” he said.

    This matters for young people, he said, because “the world wants them to be good at hard, complicated things. But it won’t help you be happy. A happy person knows who they are.”

    Sophia Easley, a Nauset High School senior from Wellfleet, agreed the class is “not like all the other classes we take. It is about being respectful and ethical,” she said. “It is all about nature and how we need to respect each other and the environment. For most of the class we are up and moving and doing something fun, and then there is a moral at the end of it,” Easley said.

    At the end of the course, students create their own medicine wheels composed of the four animals that each has chosen to identify with through the journey.

    Sophia Easley said students use the animals “to guide you through life.” Hers are the hummingbird, which signifies joy; the raven, representing magic; the racoon, the caregiver; and her last (and most important) is the deer, representing kindness, she said. She renamed herself Magic Healer.

    Simms said he tries hard to listen to the students. But he never tells them which animals are theirs. That is for them alone to discover.

    “He will show you the way to go,” said Easley, “and you will find the end.”

    FAILING THE TEST

    Principal’s Departure Will Cost Schools $135,000

    Kenyon’s ‘personal issues’ are called a distraction for Nauset Middle School

    By

    ORLEANS — According to a separation agreement signed on May 25, Keith Kenyon will get $135,000 for leaving his position as the Nauset Regional Middle School principal.

    Kenyon, 62, was asked to leave his job at Nauset after being named in a lawsuit along with several former and current staff of the North Kingstown school district in Rhode Island. The suit accuses administrators there of failing to protect students from Aaron Thomas, a former basketball coach and teacher for three decades at North Kingstown High School. Kenyon hired Thomas and was the athletic director at North Kingstown for 24 years before arriving at Nauset in 2010.

    There were three years remaining on Kenyon’s contract at Nauset. His annual salary had been $154,000.

    Thomas was fired in February 2021 when several former students told the school that the boys varsity basketball coach had been conducting bogus “fat tests” during which he called students into his office alone, asked them to strip, and then touched them high on their inner thighs and groin, according to attorney Timothy Conlon in a lawsuit filed April 19 on behalf of a former student. The “fat tests” are alleged to have gone on for more than 20 years.

    On May 25, Conlon added another former student’s name to the complaint against past and current administrators, according to the Boston Globe. The complaint alleges that “former school administrators and athletic directors created a culture that allowed coaches to behave inappropriately with students, and brushed off complaints,” the Globe reported.

    Kenyon hired Thomas as an assistant basketball coach in 1989 and was his supervisor for the next 20 years, until Kenyon left the district in 2009. An independent investigation by attorney Matt Oliverio for the North Kingstown School Committee concluded that administrators did not know of the inappropriate nature of the fat tests — for example, that Thomas would ask his students “are you shy or not shy,” and then direct those who said “not shy” to take off their underwear — until 2017 at the earliest.

    In 2017, Athletic Director Howie Hague noticed a lone shirtless student in Thomas’s office in a remote part of the campus and alerted the principal. Nothing substantial was done until 2021, however, when former students began coming forward, according to Oliverio’s report.

    Oliverio also said he tried and failed to contact Kenyon as part of his investigation. Kenyon said he no longer used the phone numbers Oliverio dialed to reach him. He also said an email from Oliverio went into Nauset Middle School’s spam folder. Nauset Supt. Brooke Clenchy confirmed that such an email was found unopened in a junk folder.

    Therefore, Oliverio’s accusation that Kenyon refused to cooperate with his investigation is false, Kenyon said. Kenyon has denied any wrongdoing, and specifically denied any knowledge of Thomas’s inappropriate behavior with students. But his attorney, Andrea Kramer, also said he clearly did not have support from Nauset administrators.

    “At some point,” Kramer wrote in a statement, “after local reporters began asking about the situation involving the disturbing allegations against a former coach whom Mr. Kenyon supervised long ago and in another district, the superintendent initiated a discussion with Mr. Kenyon about an ‘off-ramp.’

    “At that time, Mr. Kenyon, who had a contract, fully intended to honor his contractual commitment. It became painfully clear to Mr. Kenyon, however, that he did not have the support of the superintendent necessary to continue effectively in his position. Between that lack of support and the distraction caused by the lawsuit and the media coverage, Mr. Kenyon decided to pursue the possibility of voluntarily resigning in exchange for a buy-out of his contract,” Kramer wrote.

    “The settlement reflects the fact that Mr. Kenyon had done nothing that would warrant his termination. He was sorry to go but staying did not seem tenable or a good thing for him, his family, or the students he cares so much about,” Kramer wrote.

    Supt. Clenchy called the case a distraction that Nauset did not want to deal with.

    “Mr. Keith Kenyon’s personal issues have become a distraction for the Nauset Public Schools, as he has publicly acknowledged,” Clenchy wrote in a statement to the Independent. “The school district recently determined that it was in its best interest to negotiate a severance agreement that ended Mr. Kenyon’s employment contract, which had three years remaining, and work towards establishing stable leadership at the Nauset Regional Middle School. This was successfully accomplished with the best interest of our students and staff at the core of our decision.”

    Kenyon will receive $135,000 in biweekly payments through May 30, 2023. The separation agreement stipulated that Kenyon must leave his job on May 25 and use vacation time to cover his paychecks through June 30, when the school year ends.

    Kenyon joins a list of school officials who have resigned since Oliverio’s March report and the filing of the lawsuits. North Kingstown Supt. Philip Auger and Assistant Supt. Denise Mancieri both resigned in March. They did not receive buyouts, according to Lisa Hildebrand, vice chair of the North Kingstown School Committee.

    “No deals have been made with any of the school employees who left the district as a result of these reports — none,” Hildebrand said during the March 22 school committee meeting.

    Mancieri was principal in 2017 when Hague, the athletic director, told her a young man wearing only athletic shorts was in Thomas’s office in a remote part of the school. Mancieri failed to follow up on this complaint, according to Oliverio’s report, and Auger did not provide proper oversight when the next complaint came in 2018.

    According to extensive reporting in the Boston Globe, the North Kingstown School Committee has maintained that in 2018 a student told the school that Thomas was conducting “unusual” tests that made the student “uncomfortable” — but the student did not specifically alert the school that the tests involved nudity. At that time, the superintendent, principal, and athletic director told Thomas that any testing of students was to be done in the locker room with other adults present.

    Conlon’s lawsuits allege that school administrators were also told by another student in 2018 that victims were in fact naked during the tests.

    According to a statement in one of the lawsuits by a victim identified as John Doe 22, the warning from administrators in 2018 did not stop the “fat tests.” John Doe 22 was tested alone and naked during his freshman, sophomore, and junior years, from 2017 to 2019. The tests included getting into various stretching positions while naked, with Thomas putting pressure on the victim’s inner thighs and groin area with his hands.

    “The abject failure and neglect of monitoring and oversight over Mr. Thomas’s conduct after September 2018 by the superintendent can logically be considered neglect of duty,” Oliverio wrote in his report.

    INVESTIGATION

    Nauset Middle School Principal Named in R.I. Lawsuit

    Keith Kenyon denies knowledge of naked ‘fat tests’ done on students by a coach

    By

    ORLEANS — Nauset Regional Middle School Principal Keith Kenyon is among seven administrators being sued by a former North Kingstown (R.I.) High School student for failing to prevent inappropriate touching by a coach at the school. Aaron Thomas, a teacher and basketball coach, is accused of routinely getting teenage male athletes to strip naked in his office under the pretext of conducting “fat tests.” Thomas reportedly did the so-called tests for more than 20 years.

    Nauset Middle School Principal Keith Kenyon. (Photo via Instagram)

    Thomas was fired by the North Kingstown School Committee in February 2021. He is now the subject of a civil suit filed by former students and a criminal investigation by the Rhode Island attorney general’s office.

    Kenyon was the athletic director at the Rhode Island school for 24 years, and he hired Thomas as an assistant basketball coach in 1989, Kenyon told the Independent. He and six others are the subjects of another civil suit filed in Providence County Superior Court on April 19 by lawyer Timothy Conlon of Burns & Levinson on behalf of a student identified as “John Doe 42.” The suit alleges that supervisors and staff working alongside Thomas were negligent in oversight and in creating a culture where Thomas could be alone with students and ask them to take off their clothes so he could perform these “tests.”

    Kenyon, 62, left the Rhode Island school in 2009 and was hired as Nauset Regional High School’s athletic director in 2010.

    Over three decades, Thomas held various positions in North Kingstown, the last as varsity basketball coach and audio-visual and communications teacher. Thomas set up meetings with male students alone in his office. Athletic Business reported, “Those who met with him got the same question, ‘Are you shy or not shy?’ Those who said they weren’t shy would remove their underwear or drop their towels, to allow Thomas to examine and measure their bodies, including their groins. Thomas used skin-fold calipers and touched them with his bare hands.” He touched the boys high in their inner thighs while sitting with his face inches from their genitals, according to news reports.

    Attorney Matthew Oliverio was hired by school authorities to conduct independent investigations of the allegations and what administrators knew about them. In a June 2021 report, he stated that standard BMI tests use pinch tests at the waistline, scapula, and back of the bicep, and that there is no legitimate reason to have athletes remove all their clothes.

    The Boston Globe quoted attorney Conlon saying Kenyon had given Thomas authority to conduct the “sham program.” But Kenyon, who was Thomas’s supervisor for 20 years, said the charges came as a complete shock.

    “While I am very sorry about and horrified by what the plaintiffs experienced when they were high school athletes, I was not aware of, and had never heard a single whisper about, Aaron Thomas conducting ‘fat tests’ on students in any inappropriate way,” Kenyon said. “And to date, no one has offered any facts to the contrary. Had I any such idea, I would have immediately stopped the practice, kept Mr. Thomas away from student athletes, and recommended the termination of his employment.”

    Nauset Schools Supt. Brooke Clenchy said in a statement that she was monitoring the investigations. “We have also interviewed Mr. Kenyon relating to his former employer,” she said. “Since this is a personnel matter, we are not able to share any further information as it relates to Mr. Kenyon’s employment.”

    Who Knew What and When

    Attorney Oliverio issued a second report in March 2022, which concluded that some administrators knew Thomas conducted BMI testing but assumed it was appropriately done. Suspicion was aroused in 2017 when Athletic Director Howie Hague saw a boy in athletic shorts but no shirt in Thomas’s office in a remote part of the school building. But Oliverio found there was little follow-up until 2021.

    “My investigation leads me to conclude that details of the concealed way Aaron Thomas conducted his fat testing protocol was not known to any current administrator until June 2017, at the earliest,” Oliverio wrote. “I also make this determination because those former students whom I did interview uniformly told me they did not disclose the testing protocol to their teachers, counselors, staff, coaches, administrators, or parents…. Any disclosure was later made only after Mr. Thomas’ suspension in February 2021.”

    Because Kenyon left in 2009, Oliverio’s report appears to clear Kenyon of failing to take action after the first alleged disclosure in 2017.

    But there is a glaring hole in the report: Oliverio did not interview Kenyon.

    “There were certain individuals I feel may have a wealth of knowledge on the issue, and they refused to speak to me, one such individual being Keith Kenyon, the architect of the Athletic IQ testing,” Oliverio wrote.

    Kenyon told the Independent that he never received Oliverio’s phone or email inquiries. Supt. Clenchy said Nauset administrators found an email to Kenyon from Oliverio dated Dec. 3, 2021 in the school’s spam folder labeled “Deleted, Spam, Unread.”

    As for the phone calls, Kenyon said, “I have not used the phone numbers listed in the report for some years now, and I never received a call on my current phone.”

    Since then, Kenyon said, he has contacted Oliverio, agreed to answer questions, and is fully cooperating with “every investigator and law enforcement official who has contacted me.”

    Oliverio confirmed that he “spoke with Mr. Kenyon’s counsel, Peter DiBiase and Craig Montecalvo, following release of my report and they were cooperative.”

    DiBiase and Montecalvo did not return a call from the Independent. Oliverio also refused to answer any other questions.

    Athletic IQ

    In his report, Oliverio described Kenyon as the “architect” of another type of testing done on athletes at NKHS.

    “It is evident,” Oliverio stated, “that the fat testing program conducted by Mr. Thomas was an extension of the Athletic IQ testing program spearheaded by Mr. Kenyon.”

    Athletic IQ, or AIQ, was a now-defunct business venture founded and financed by former National Football League player Randy Tyson. It purported to measure “core athletic ability”: body composition, flexibility, foot speed, and eye-hand coordination. The evaluations were touted as an unbiased, standardized tool that could be used by college scouts, according to Oliverio.

    According to Kenyon’s resume, he had been working with AIQ since 1993 to do testing of NKHS athletes annually. In the 2006-2007 school year, Kenyon took a leave of absence from the school to work full-time for AIQ. He returned in September 2007. AIQ soon went out of business.

    “I was not the architect,” Kenyon said. “Mr. Tyson came to me with the idea and asked for my assistance, which I provided as a friend.”

    Steve Froberg, who was a student at NKHS and then worked for three years for AIQ, said the premise was to take subjectivity out of athletic testing. The measurement for body composition involved no calipers or touching but rather “bio-electrical impedance” conducted by machine.

    Froberg said he has known Kenyon for 35 years as a student and a colleague at AIQ and defended Kenyon’s honor and character.

    Two major differences between AIQ and Thomas’s methods: AIQ subjects were fully clothed and barely touched by operators, and the testing was done in large public settings such as gymnasiums, Froberg said. The tests were conducted in many states, not just at NKHS, he added.

    Why Kenyon Left R.I.

    Kenyon left NKHS after a 2009 audit done by the accounting firm Cayer Caccia. A copy of the audit obtained by the Independent describes several instances when Kenyon covered personal spending with school athletic funds, including his billing the school $1,364 to attend a conference in Orlando in 2005. AIQ reimbursed him for the same expenses. The audit did not lead to criminal charges, but Kenyon was suspended by then-Supt. Phil Thornton and resigned in August 2009, according to local newspaper reports.

    The auditors found Kenyon used $940 in student activity funds to enter two golf tournaments with other NKHS coaches in 2007 and 2008. They found he charged the school activity fund a total of $1,101 for cell phone bills in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

    Kenyon declined to comment on the audit. Several articles were written about it in the Rhode Island-based Independent in 2009, and the North Kingstown School Committee held public meetings. Presumably, Richard Hoffmann, then the Nauset superintendent, knew about the controversy when he hired Kenyon as athletic director in 2010.

    A 2010 Cape Cod Times article stated that “a five-month inquiry found no evidence of fraud, theft or criminal behavior on Kenyon’s part, but said he made a lot of bad decisions. When asked about his resignation in a phone interview yesterday, Kenyon said. ‘It became a toxic environment and very political. I saw it coming for two years. I don’t think I had bad judgment.’ ”

    LEARNING

    What Back to School Looks Like This Year

    Two school districts, two plans , and two unhappy families

    By

    After months of missed classes, child care, sports, and summer camps, the question of when children can return to school is a pressing concern for many Outer Cape families. High stress is one thing all these families have in common, and those headed by single working mothers face especially difficult choices.

    The Independent spoke with two such families this week; they told strikingly different stories.

    Staying Home From School

    Jeondre Higgins and Christine Winter
    Jeondre Higgins and his mother, Christine Wynter, of Eastham, want their needs as immigrants to be considered in back-to-school plans. (Photo courtesy Christine Wynter)

    Christine Wynter knows she should not leave her son, Jeondre Higgins, age 12, alone all day to navigate six hours of school on his iPad, but that’s what she is planning to do.

    “I play it out over and over in my mind,” said Wynter. “I’m a parent earning minimum wage. He needs supervision, and I work and I cannot afford child care. But it’s too dangerous to send him back. It’s a no-win situation.”

    Jeondre is a student at Nauset Regional Middle School. Wynter could send him to school five days a week starting Sept. 16, because he qualifies as an English language learner. All students with special needs have been invited to school for full-time in-classroom learning. Generally, other middle schoolers are invited to school for only two days a week and must learn remotely for three days.

    But Wynter, who is a home health aide in South Dennis, does not feel having Jeondre back in the classroom is safe for him or for the people she works with. Jeondre has asthma, and she works with the elderly. So, while she knows school can provide a supportive environment for her children while she’s at work, right now, she says, she cannot take advantage of that.

    Wynter says others in the Jamaican community face similar complications when it comes to the reopening of school. Many earn minimum wage and have inadequate health insurance.

    “The solution is that schools need to devise a strategy to focus on us, who are scared to go back and cannot stay at home with our children,” Wynter said.

    Wynter said the Nauset district does not seem to have any representation of the immigrant community on its planning committees.

    No Nauset administrators responded to the Independent’s inquiry about diversity on school planning committees. Cindy Horgan, executive director of the nonprofit Cape Cod Children’s Place in Eastham, who represents early education and child-care groups on the Cape Cod Reopening Task Force, said, “I’m going to be honest with you. I know a lot of providers, and there is nobody from the Jamaican community on any of the calls I am on.”

    Living With More Fear

    Wynter and her son live at the Village at Nauset Green, the recently opened affordable housing development in Eastham, where there also happen to be three other children entering seventh grade at Nauset with Jeondre. Wynter’s nephew, Dontae Mcinnis, 11, also just moved in with her. Why, asks Wynter, could the school not help them form a pod or small learning group, with a teacher or support staff coming to them?

    “You need to look at the most vulnerable and say how can we help them?” she said.

    According to a nationally representative survey of over 2,000 U.S. adults conducted by Consumer Reports in July, 57 percent of black and 52 percent of Latino parents think that schools should remain closed and that children should begin the school year taking classes online, compared with 25 percent of white Americans.

    In separate interview research, Consumer Reports found that the reasons for the disparity include the knowledge that Covid-19 has disproportionately affected black and brown people and a lack of faith that safety protocols can be enforced in school.

    Wynter came to the U.S. years ago and got a master’s degree in education from Central Connecticut State University. She then returned to Jamaica and taught there for a few years, before coming with Jeondre to Cape Cod as he was starting fourth grade.

    She said at first, Jeondre struggled, and not just with a new culture and a new education system. At Eastham Elementary School, Jeondre said, the boys would gang up on him and play jokes on him, such as making up the names of places and then laughing when he thought they were real.

    He excels in soccer, and maybe the boys felt threatened by a Jamaican who could play better than they could, Jeondre said.

    His mother said Jeondre reads constantly, far above his grade level, but he had a hard time in elementary school. In middle school, however, a counselor in English language learning, Reva Blau, really helped, Wynter said.

    But, she said, the pandemic threw everything off. Left at home all day starting in March, Jeondre did about 20 percent of his work. He’s bright, his mom said, but disorganized, and the remote learning was just poor. It could take hours to work out the technological glitches and get the students focused on Zoom.

    Meanwhile, Jeondre watched a lot of television news about coronavirus; it terrified him to the point where he had to be coaxed even to go outdoors, she said.

    Complicating the family’s decision, Jeondre himself would like to be back in class.

    “Going back is risky,” he said, “but I think we should go back because I’ll get too far behind.” 

    Third Grade Online

    Janine Robichaud and her daughter, Riley.
    Janine Robichaud and her daughter, Riley, live in Eastham, but Riley goes to Provincetown Schools. The family is wary of online schooling. (Photo K.C. Myers)

    Riley Robichaud, 8, has always loved school. That is, until she had to do it remotely.

    She described online learning this way: “Whenever it’s three hours, it feels like 10,000 hours.”

    This spring, remote learning was instituted five days a week for three hours a day at the Provincetown Schools, said her mother, Janine Robichaud of Eastham.

    The online learning was a “horror show” right from the beginning, said Robichaud, “and never really got any better.”

    There would be kids crying, hiding from the camera, and turning their screens upside down, she said. Parents could be heard yelling in the background, leading to more tears and more disruptions.

    This lasted through the entire spring, Robichaud said, but like most parents, she and her daughter held on.

    As the summer progressed and the case numbers stayed low, she felt certain the students would be able to return to classes at least at the elementary level, like the schools in the Nauset district.

    Then came the email from Supt. Suzanne Scallion saying that computer-based home learning will continue even for the youngest children for at least the first two weeks of school, and possibly longer, based on data and research.

    “I have not been stressed out this whole time until I got that email,” said Robichaud. “I’m a single mom who has to work full-time. I was not meant to be a teacher. That’s not my specialty. The only time we ever fight is when it’s time to go on Zoom.”

    Life Without a Favorite Teacher

    Robichaud thought immediately of the teacher who all Provincetown students look forward to in third grade: Mr. Shannon.

    Eric Shannon is “everything you want a teacher to be,” she said. “He cares about the kids. He is just so great. I’ve heard nothing but fabulous things.” The idea of her daughter not getting Mr. Shannon in person is almost too much to bear, she said.

    Robichaud grew up in Provincetown, graduated from Provincetown High School, and then raised her own family in town. Riley attended the town’s Wee Care infant and toddler program. Even when Robichaud found a better place to live in Eastham, she gladly made the effort to keep Riley in the Provincetown Schools.

    “They are so in tune with every kid, and with eight to nine kids in each class, the kids really get one-on-one attention,” she said.

    But now, she is considering sending Riley to Eastham Elementary, where students will attend in person starting Sept. 16.

    “Maybe that’s just an empty threat,” she added. “But I have to go to work. This could kill the school.”

    Provincetown Schools must keep its enrollment up. There are only 131 students; many come from other districts via school choice. Scallion said the school gained 11 news students over the summer and that the new families want the strict remote learning model. But those gains could be lost with parents like Robichaud, who want the opposite.

    LEARNING

    Nauset PreK-8th Grade Plan: Back in Buildings Sept. 16

    Nauset High will try a hybrid of remote and in-person classes

    By

    EASTHAM — Nauset Regional High School students will attend school twice a week and stay home for remote learning on the other three days, while the plan for preschool through eighth grade in the district — Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, and Brewster — is to return to classrooms five days a week beginning Wednesday, Sept. 16.

    Unlike in the spring, when online learning was limited and there were no grades, courses will be graded and attendance enforced, Supt. Tom Conrad told members of the five school committees during a Zoom meeting on Aug. 6.

    The four-hour meeting had about 100 participants and was broken up when a bat entered Eastham Town Hall and dive-bombed Conrad and Nauset Regional School Committee Chair Judy Lindahl.

    The reopening of the district schools includes a requirement that all students — even those in preschool — wear masks, though there will be mask breaks: designated times when students can be outdoors with a plan for safe distancing from each other. Children will have assigned seats on buses and in classrooms.

    The eight-day-late start will give teachers time to prepare for a challenging year, said Conrad.

    High school educators must be prepared to teach both remotely and in person at the same time. All staff will add policing social distancing and mask-wearing to their job descriptions.

    Meanwhile, the Cape and Islands teachers’ unions are opposing a full return to classrooms, and pushback came from some school committee members from all four towns. Martha Gordon, of the Wellfleet committee, asked why schools will return to business as usual when everyone else in town government still works from home.

    Conrad responded, “We have depended on information from a variety of medical directors and they are going to be giving us additional information, but they are of the opinion that, if we can follow the guidelines as discussed, our staff and students will be safe.”

    Of all the schools in the district, only the aging high school is too small to allow all the students to return with the minimum three feet between desks required by the state, said Principal Chris Ellsasser.

    How small is it? Only four sets of bathrooms are currently monitored and usable in the entire campus serving 900 students, Greg Levasseur, chair of the Nauset School Building Committee, told the Independent. The school district will be asking voters to pay for the renovation of the buildings at upcoming town meetings.

    Parallel Processing

    High school students will be separated into two groups based on grade level, Ellsasser said.

    One group will attend school in person on Mondays and Tuesdays, everyone will work at home on Wednesdays, and the other cohort will come to school Thursdays and Fridays. Wednesday will serve as a cleaning and disinfecting day, with few students in the school. The exception will be “high needs students,” who are learning English, on individual education plans, or have certain socioeconomic needs. They will be allowed to attend school on campus four or even five days a week, with each case to be decided individually, Ellsasser said.

    Ellsasser said remote learners will follow the same schedule as students participating in the hybrid model. Everyone will attend four 80-minute classes each day, whether in person or online.

    The classes will be live, so remote learners will watch their teachers as they teach students in person.

    Ellsasser said the school is trying to have the online experience and the hybrid experience be synchronous.

    “When friends who are at home are going to lunch, you’re going to lunch,” he said. “When you’re on a mask break, the other students are on a screen break. So the experiences mirror each other.”

    Either/Or for Young Students

    Hybrid models were not recommended at the middle school or elementary schools. Children will have the option to attend school five days a week or learn remotely five days a week.

    The middle school will switch from hour-long blocks to five 100-minute classes each day, with breaks in-between, according to Principal Julie Kobold. She said the school is doing away with the use of lockers.

    Google Classroom and Google Meet will be the platforms for online learning at the high school and middle school.

    At the elementary level, kindergarten through grade 2 students will use a platform called Seesaw, while students in grades 3 to 5 will use Google Classroom, according to Wellfleet Elementary Principal Mary Beth Rodman.

    “Students working remotely will still be submitting assignments and receiving feedback,” Rodman said.

    An initial survey of families received 1,269 responses districtwide, with a large majority — more than four out of five — wanting to return to in-person learning. Just 182 families (14 percent) preferred a remote learning plan, Conrad said. Five percent were unsure.

    Eleven families said they still need internet access while 82 families said they need increased bandwidth to be able to participate. Twenty percent said they would need child care should a remote or hybrid plan move forward, Conrad said.

    Many What Ifs

    Cape Cod has not seen a major increase in Covid-19-positive tests despite an influx of visitors, said state Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro, who is on the Cape Cod Reopening Task Force. Following a small bump after July 4, new positive cases have numbered between 3 and 10 per day throughout Barnstable County, Cyr said Aug. 6.

    But the Cape and Islands Educator Action Network, which includes Cape teachers’ unions, wrote a letter arguing that reopening should be phased in slowly.

    “I’m extremely sympathetic to families needing child care, but we also want all kids and staff brought back in the safest way possible,” network president Cheri Armstrong, a Monomoy middle school teacher, told the Independent. “For us, we have to be sure that it is safe. And that’s the MTA’s slogan, ‘Only when it’s safe.’ ”

    Students’ reactions reflect fear of reopening combined with extreme dislike of remote education.

    “Whatever measures they can take, there will be a lot of issues,” Will Mulholland of Chatham, president of the Nauset class of 2022, told the Independent. “My friends are concerned for their family members, so people are scared. On the other hand, a lot of people want to get back to being in contact with their friends. For me, remote learning was a struggle. It was not the same thing. But you have to weigh knowing that the community is safe and moving on with our lives.”

    School committee members asked how the schools would react to a positive case, and at what point the schools would be shut again. Conrad said he was awaiting further guidance on that, but reiterated that there are many unknowns.

    “The one thing we would all agreed on,” he said, “what we thought we knew today, will change tomorrow.” That’s something he says he’s getting used to. “We were taken aback by the number of families who wanted to go back to school,” Conrad said. “We have to be nimble and shift.”

    TRANSITIONS

    A Decision Well Beyond Their Years

    How Outer Cape eighth graders choose a high school

    By

    For Jen Rhodes of Wellfleet, it was obvious where her eighth-grade son, Jack, should attend high school in the fall. She’d sent two daughters to technical schools, and knew that it made financial sense — so Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich seemed the logical choice.

    Truro School Bus by Marnie Crawford Samuelson
    Truro school bus. (Photo Marnie Crawford Samuelson)

    But it wasn’t as apparent to Jack, who was aware of the stigma around vocational training and felt peer pressure to choose the more traditional education at Nauset Regional High School in North Eastham.

    For Outer Cape eighth graders like Jack Rhodes, the decision of where to go to high school looms large. Familial and community connections, finances, higher education plans, and navigating stigma and stereotype are all possible considerations for different families.

    Covid-19 has elevated the importance of one factor in particular: money. The pandemic has left many families in a tricky financial situation, making the high cost of college more daunting. A high school that offers a direct pipeline into the workforce has newfound appeal, and Cape Tech fits that description.

    “The cost of college education and the lack of jobs afterward has opened some parents’ eyes,”  said Billy Terranova, the principal of Cape Tech. “They’re saying, ‘Maybe college isn’t the best path for my child, and maybe we should look at some other options.’ That’s what Cape Tech offers.”

    The school is required to track its graduates’ success, and has reported that Cape Tech alumni have an unemployment rate of under one percent — more than 99 percent either have a job, have joined the military, or are enrolled in higher education.

    Cape Tech was not the first choice of Deaunte McLean, who lives in Provincetown. His mother decided to send him there, knowing that the combination of academics and learning a trade would benefit him later. “And,” he said, “you can’t really argue with Mom.”

    McLean, who studied health technology at Cape Tech, is now reaping the benefits of his mother’s decision, explaining that “most of my friends [who went to Nauset] don’t have jobs, and I’m making more than the ones who do.”

    Even before Covid-19 led to 20 consecutive weeks of a million-plus Americans filing for unemployment, Rhodes, weighing her son’s options, admired what Cape Tech offered for students and the greater Cape community.

    “What Cape Tech is providing is huge,” she said. “There’s a shortage of skilled people in the trades, and jobs are going unfilled. It’s vitally important to keep young people here. The Cape doesn’t survive unless young people stay.”

    A dramatically different set of considerations draws students to Nauset High. It is a part of the larger Nauset Regional School District, which includes the elementary schools in Brewster, Orleans, Eastham, and Wellfleet, and the Nauset Regional Middle School in Orleans. To many students at Nauset Middle — who’ve been wearing black and gold already for three years — going to Nauset High seems a natural transition.

    “I always knew I wanted to go to Nauset High,” said Casey Powers of Wellfleet, a rising eighth grader at Nauset Middle. He is an enthusiastic math student and a saxophone player, and these strengths line up with his future high school’s strong academic reputation and its acclaimed music program. “People have said Tech isn’t smart, but I don’t think that’s true,” said Powers.

    After a few months of online school this spring, Powers told the Independent, “I realized I’m really lucky to be going to Nauset.”

    Another contributing factor? Many future Nauset high schoolers have older siblings, parents, and family friends that are connected to the school.

    “It was never really a thought not to go to Nauset,” said Ella Mae Dixon, a rising senior there. “My dad went to Nauset, my family friends went to Nauset, my uncles went to Nauset, I had older friends who were at Nauset when I was in eighth grade.”

    This logic can be frustrating for students who are considering options outside the Nauset pipeline. Some kids see choosing a school other than Nauset as a social sacrifice. Kayla Burrell, who finished her first year of Cape Tech in June, said that choosing to attend the Tech “was definitely a difficult decision, because all my friends were at Nauset.”

    This was also a source of Jack Rhodes’s hesitation about going to Cape Tech. His mother described technical school students as “having to leave their friends” and said that comments like “Come to Nauset, that’s where we are all going to be” were prevalent.

    One last hurdle complicates the high school decision: stereotypes about the population of each school. The assumptions about Nauset often have to do with wealth or social status.

    “If you go there, a lot of people assume you’re well off,” Burrell said. “It’s looked at as a school where the popular kids go, or where you go if you’re wealthy.”

    Stereotyping of Cape Tech students is more often about academic ability and behavior. Students there take a more hands-on approach to learning — mixing shop programs with academic classes — and some write them off as less intelligent or capable than their Nauset High peers.

    So, each year, eighth graders up and down the Outer Cape weigh these factors in choosing where they’ll spend their next four years, in what might be the first big decision of their semi-adult lives. Now, of course, Outer Cape ninth graders might be attending their first day of high school from their bedrooms. The fall sports season will start Sept. 14, if at all. They might wear masks in math class. Their weekly schedule may be constant, but the national reality almost certainly won’t.

    The class of 2024 poured time, effort, and perhaps agony into asking themselves two questions: “Where do I want to go to high school? Why do I want to go to this high school?”

    Now, they must ask themselves something entirely different: What does high school even look like?

     

    MUSICAL THEATER

    The Sound of Music Was Silenced

    But canceled Middle School Drama Club production still sent a message

    By

    All through the month leading up to their final realization that The Sound of Music, this year’s musical at Nauset Regional Middle School, would not be performed, the members of the school’s drama club kept rehearsing over FaceTime.

    The cast of last year’s middle school production of The Wizard of Oz. (Photo Liz Myers)

    The spring musical at the middle school, which has been directed by Peter Earle for 30 years, is always a highlight of the end of the year. But this year, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, The Sound of Music was silenced.

    In previous years, the shows have always been booked solid, the audiences full of family and friends from all over the Outer Cape who came to see the two performances at the school in Orleans. This year, they were scheduled for May 8 and 9.

    Auditions for the show were held in early January, with the cast list going up and rehearsals starting one week later. The cast and crew had about 40 members in all, from sixth to eighth grade, and everyone played a vital role in the production. From the party guests to the protagonist, Maria, each club member worked hard to perfect the performance. The club met on Wednesdays and Thursdays for a total of three hours in the school auditorium. After rehearsals, the cast spent as much time as they could spare memorizing their lines and the complicated blocking.

    The students themselves never received any official notice that the play would not be performed. (It was in a newsletter to parents.) But as the news spread that various events planned for late spring and summer were canceled and school was closed for the rest of the term, they gradually accepted the inevitable.

    “I miss drama so much because it was so fun,” said seventh-grader Maggie Brookshire of Eastham. “It’s like a second family.” She was cast as Admiral von Schreiber in this year’s show.

    Eighth-grader Jake Edwards of Yarmouth took the role of Captain von Trapp. “I am always so excited to see you guys after school,” he told me. “I think that drama club is a good way to forget about all the bad stuff in your mind, so that you can spend time with your friends and let out your energy.”

    Peter Earle, the director, worked even harder than the students to make sure the cast and crew would be at their best on opening night.

    “I thought we had a wonderful cast, and I was so looking forward to putting it on so the audience could enjoy it as much as we enjoyed rehearsing it,” Earle said. He made sure everyone kept studying their scripts and doing their best to keep the play fresh in their minds. He said he kept active the performance rights as well as the backing sets, in hopes that the show could still go on.

    That night never came. But when school was first closed, on March 14, no one knew how long the shutdown would last.

    Haley Labdon, right, as Dorothy, with Adriana Morgan. (Photo Jane Labdon)

    Thanks largely to Haley Labdon, the Eastham eighth-grader cast as Maria, the club continued its twice-weekly meetings on FaceTime, rehearsing the show in bits and pieces with whichever cast members could make it that day. Everything from costumes to choreography was discussed. In spite of the difficulties, they worked this way for over a month, hoping that the show could still go on.

    Singing was the biggest problem, as it is a large part of the show but hard to work on remotely. The delays and glitches caused by the technology made for a choppy and rough sound. So the cast stuck to rehearsing lines for most of their meetings.

    Haley has been a leader of the drama club ever since she played the lead in the musical Annie in sixth grade. The next year she starred as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. When the schools closed she took it on herself to create a detailed FaceTime rehearsal plan, complete with times and who needed to be there on which days. When the meetings began, she helped everyone get organized and practice scenes that needed work.

    “Well, honestly,” she said, “having it be my last middle school show and playing a role so dear to my heart made the cancellation hit very hard. The silver lining is that we were fortunate to tell this wonderful story, even if it was just to each other.”

    The FaceTime rehearsals helped everyone through the loneliness of isolation.

    “While everything was still up in the air,” said seventh-grader Perry Gill of Eastham, who was cast as Mother Abbess, “the ability to communicate with my favorite group of people gave me hope. I believe it was something we all really needed when we received the dreaded news. Once we moved onto virtual contact, it became much harder to rehearse — especially considering we couldn’t run any choreography — but our fabulously talented lead, Haley, helped pull the show together, and if we had returned to school the main reason we would have been able to perform the show would’ve been her determination.”

    Even now, Earle hopes that The Sound of Music might be produced next year, so that at least some of this year’s cast could still perform it.

    Almost every member of the drama club had something positive and loving to say about the experience. The group bonded like a family, and continues to do so, even if their original goal is no longer there.

     

    Niev Witnauer, a seventh-grader at Nauset Middle School, was cast as Gretl in The Sound of Music.

     

     

    LEARNING

    Nauset Schools Roll Out Online Education

    Extension likely for high school building project

    By

    EASTHAM — Students in the Nauset Regional Schools began working from home last week as the district rolled out its alternative learning online program. All schools remain closed until at least May 4. Everyone is learning in this new setup — students, teachers, administrators, and parents.

    Nauset Regional High School
    On a normal Monday the courtyard at Nauset Regional High School would be crowded with students heading to class. But on March 30 it was desolate as schools remain closed. (Photo Ryan Fitzgerald)

    Middle and high school students work on lessons using Google Classroom. Teachers post to the online platform, with classes focused, for now, on math, science, English, and social studies.

    “We’re taking it week by week,” said Middle School Principal Julie Kobold. That way, she said, teachers and parents can regroup “to find out what’s working and what’s not.”

    Elementary students are also getting assignments and feedback online, according to Eastham Elementary Principal William Crosby, using a variety of platforms depending on the skills of both students and staff.

    “Parents have been amazing,” Crosby said by email. “They have been thrust into home schooling their children.”

    Administrators know this is not easy. “It takes a lot of intrinsic motivation to work from home,” Kobold said.

    Lessons Learned

    A few best practices are already emerging, according to Kobold. For example, Nauset heard from other systems that closed down earlier that trying to hold classes in real time does not work well because families are keeping very different schedules at this point.

    For example, “Some older kids are babysitting younger kids during the day if their parents have to go to work,” said Kobold. “We tried to take into account the different spaces everyone is in.”

    That means students are able to complete work on assignments on their own time. But that fact does not mean students are on their own, the administrators emphasize. “The teachers are in daily communication with their students in a variety of ways,” Crosby wrote, including videoconferencing, email, and phone.

    Teachers and administrators can track the work being done. If students aren’t doing their work, teachers will reach out to make sure everything is all right. “We don’t want people to fall through the cracks,” Kobold said.

    School administrators aren’t expecting students to sit in front of an iPad for the same amount of time as they would spend in school. “A number of our teachers are also working on creating enrichment opportunities that do not rely on electronics,” Kobold said, like a gardening option or a workout.

    Access to iPads has not been a major issue. Students in grades 8 through 12 have iPads assigned to them at the beginning of the year to use at school and home. Seventh graders use theirs at school only, and sixth graders don’t have assigned devices. But when school closed, the district assigned iPads to sixth graders, which were picked up by parents.

    Crosby said 80 iPads were distributed to elementary students in need of a device.

    Internet access is a bigger challenge, Kobold said. On the Outer Cape, coverage can be spotty. Truro Select Board Member Stephanie Rein said her children have had issues completing their work because their internet connection, which is via satellite, is not robust enough for streaming service.

    Rein said that means if teachers want to hold a video conference or ask students to watch a TED Talk or some other lecture online, then her children cannot participate.

    Administrators have been accommodating, Rein said. “Often, a crisis highlights problems that were already there,” she added. “Connectivity on the Outer Cape as a whole is a problem.”

    MCAS Status

    Gov. Baker is proposing legislation that would give the state Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) more flexibility on whether and how to hold MCAS testing this year, according to Jacqueline Reis of DESE.

    Reis said DESE did receive a federal waiver on MCAS testing, but the state legislature needs to act as well.

    Nauset Supt. Tom Conrad said at the regional school committee’s most recent meeting on March 13 that he “couldn’t care less about the MCAS tests right now.”

    Renovation Project Update

    The regional school committee did not vote on the bonding method for the high school renovation project and instead is suspending any vote on the project until town meeting dates are firm.

    Wellfleet has postponed its town meeting to June 1 and the other three district towns may follow suit. In that event, said Nauset Building Committee Chair Greg Levasseur, the district can file for a 120-day voting extension with the Mass. School Building Authority (MSBA).

    The MSBA voted on Feb. 13 to approve the $131.8 million project proposal and fund roughly $36 million of it, but the project needs town meeting approval from the four district towns, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans, and Brewster, to go forward.

     

    AT THE LIBRARY

    Books for School Vacation Reading

    School librarians share their favorites

    By

    We asked Outer Cape school librarians for some good reads for next week’s school vacation. Their recommendations span preschool to grade nine — and there are some grown-ups will like, too. All of their picks are available at our town libraries through the CLAMS system.

    From Susan Heinz of the Provincetown Schools, two favorites for older students:

    I recommend The Crossover by Kwame Alexander for basketball enthusiasts who also enjoy rap culture and poetry. The book is organized by sections with basketball terminology that will feel familiar to the reader. (Grades 7-9)

    El Deafo by Cece Bell is a graphic novel that tells the story of a young girl’s struggle with hearing loss. We all know how cruel middle school kids can be — just imagine wearing a noticeable hearing aid and struggling with speech and coordination. The graphic frames tell the story well, and it’s a quick, powerful read. (Grades 6-8)

    From Abby Roderick, media specialist at Truro Central School:

    Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
    (Photo courtesy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

    A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis is about a penguin who yearns for something more in his world. Everything he sees is either black, blue, or white. He travels far from his friends to find something different. (PreK-K).

    Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin is the story of Minli, who embarks on a quest to help her family change their fortune. The story includes fantasy elements such as dragons and is interwoven with legends Minli used to hear from her father. (Grades 3-5)

    From Breigh Ann Menza, library media specialist at Eastham Elementary:

    The Endling series by Katherine Applegate is perfect for readers who like animals and fantasy. It will take you to an enchanted forest world where brave humans and mythical animals unite to save a species from extinction. (Grades 3-6)

    Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall. The star of this 2019 Caldecott Medal winner is a working lighthouse. See how a lighthouse keeper and his family settle in. A sweet story with beautiful illustrations. (Grades K-5)

    Katherine Harvey, the library media specialist at Nauset Regional Middle School, has a pick from her Book Bowl program:

    Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs is the first book in the FunJungle series that stars Teddy Fitzroy, an animal sleuth who lives at a zoo along with his zoologist parents. Henry the hippo dies mysteriously. Only Teddy can solve the case. My students love this book.

    BACKTALK

    A Lesson Plan for Substitute Teachers

    How to avoid chaos in the middle school classroom

    By

    Niev WitnauerORLEANS — Walking into class and seeing a substitute teacher at the front of the room can mean different things to different students. Some see an excuse to relax and mess around. Others see an opportunity to help out a guest. At the Nauset Regional Middle School in Orleans, which most Outer Cape kids in grades 6 to 8 attend, substitute teachers perhaps deserve more credit than many students give them.

    Guest teachers at Nauset Middle differ greatly from each other. Each has a distinct personality and teaching style, and sometimes, because those traits are different from those of the teachers pupils have grown accustomed to, that leads to some disrespectful behavior.

    Most students would never contradict their regular teachers’ statements or switch their assigned seats in class. But when there’s a substitute in charge, many seem to have no problem doing these things. And this can lead to trouble in the classroom.

    “It is usually the kids that make the experience unpleasant,” comments Alyia Vasquez, a Nauset seventh-grader.

    Not everyone does this, of course. Some students are well-behaved and quiet when there’s a substitute. Strangely, no one seems to act exactly the same way they do with their regular teachers. A couple of pupils, for example, who are usually shy and keep to themselves become very outgoing, making loud remarks and jokes, sometimes at the expense of the substitute in charge.

    Substitutes can find themselves in hot water when they don’t follow the lesson plan left by the regular teacher. If the guest teacher doesn’t complete the plan, this can lead to students having an excessive amount of work the day after.

    “Substitutes don’t always understand or accomplish everything on the lesson plan,” says Maya Lima, “so when the teacher does come in we have to redo part of the class or assignment.”

    Of course, it may not always be the substitute’s fault if they don’t finish the lesson. The plan may not have been detailed enough, or perhaps it was just too boring. And when kids do not understand the lesson, that can snowball into chaos.

    Some substitutes get a bad reputation with students because they do not even try to get to know them individually. Dana Franchitto, who lives in Wellfleet and has been substituting at Nauset Middle School regularly for the past four years, doesn’t have that problem.

    “I’ve come to know a lot of the kids at Nauset,” says Franchitto. “When I first started, I expected them to be kind of harassing. But some are tactful or quietly respectful; others are just a little noisy among themselves. They bicker more with each other than they do with me. I rarely get any kind of abuse or disrespect from the kids.”

    Franchitto is one of the most popular of Nauset’s regular subs. “Maybe that’s because I like to joke around a lot,” he says. That’s part of it, but the other part is the respect he pays to his students.

    “I learn a lot from these kids,” Franchitto says. “I feel challenged in the right way by their intelligence. If you have a good attitude, it’s really a rewarding experience to be in the classroom. You generate a climate of respect. They can see that you enjoy being there.”

    Many substitutes are appreciated by the students at Nauset Regional Middle School. Even when they make mistakes or are slow to catch on to the agenda, most truly try their best, and many kids believe they deserve more credit than they get.

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