Washington, DC
Saturday, June 23rd

Today was a day to relax and get caught up on sleep. We gave the students, who have been working extremely hard, the option to sleep in, they took it. I woke up grabbed a cup of coffee and sat on a bench at “senior circle” outside of where we live and read the paper, answered e-mails, and generally enjoyed the unseasonably mild DC summer weather. (It was about 68 degrees) The students started to climb out of bed around 10ish. After and early lunch the students went to the pool and/or got ahead on their case study readings.

My morning coffee spot

I took a walk down Wisconsin Ave and met up with Bill for lunch. I gave him a break from the bit of home improvement he was engaged in. We walked over to Rocklands for some sandwiches. I had a great Cuban sandwich. The sandwich had pork loin, ham, some pickled relish, and lightly dusted with some spicy “Cuban” mustard. Fat man tested, fat man approved. We took the lunch to go and watched some little baseball at the ball across the street. We hung out at Bill’s place for a while and watched a movie.

After I headed back to Albans the whole SPS gang got cleaned up and went out for meals. We broke the crew into more manageable groups and went to different restaurants. We went to a place down Wisconsin Ave called Bourbon. Yes, I know sounds like a shady place to take high school kids. It is just a little upscale burger place. It has some fantastic entrees but the students got the variations of the burger. We sat upstairs away from the bar and the crowd and had nice conversation and a great meal.

We walked back to Albans and all jumped on the Metro and went to see the Washington Nationals take on the Cleveland Indians in inter-league play. It was perfect weather to catch a ballgame. We sat in the cheap seats and just basically relaxed and soaked of evening. The Nats play at RFK which is a bit dilapidated, see earlier blog. They are building an awesome new park in South East DC which is going to have all the bells and whistles. The best part is that the Nationals Park will have stadium views of the Capital Building and the Washington Monument.

The students hame it up for the camera

The new National Park

There were a little over 30,000 at the game so it was a nice crowd which for a nice atmosphere to watch a game. He Nats lost a heart breaker when their closer surrended a two run lead in the top of the ninth to a three run homer. Washington loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth only to run them selves into a double play as a result of poor base running. Although the home team lost a good time was has by all.

Washington outfielder Nook Logan is tagged out to end the game

Updates Coming!

This Sunday Pete will be attending Meet the Press and hanging with Tim Russert. Here is the description of the guests and topics.

The immigration debate takes center stage with the House's lead proponent of reform, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), squaring off against one of its most ardent critics, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. Plus, a roundtable with David Broder, John Harwood, Gwen Ifill & Roger Simon

Pete with lasts year's group at Meet the Press

Washington, DC
Friday, June 22nd

The first week of the program is wrapping up. This past week was a busy one and as a result the it went by rather quickly. I taught another case study today. This one is called “The Great American Pork Barrel” by Ken Silverstein. It discusses the various threats and abuses of earmarks in appropriations bills. Mr. Silverstein is the Washington editor of Harper Magazine. The kids asked brilliant questions and kept me on my toes. They discussed the pros and cons of getting rid of earmarks as well as possible reform ideas for the earmarks. This was done in anticipation of Silverstein coming to speak to the students right after class. We also passed out His most recent article from Harpers titled, “Their men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.'s lobbyists for hire”. It is a fascinating piece of undercover journalism where he seeks lobbying firms in DC to help improve the image of Turkmenistan. He also appeared today on Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS to discuss his article. If you go to the link you can watch the portion of Moyer’s interview with Mr. Silvertstein. He truly believes in his role as a government watchdog. I think he and his discussion with the students really help link the role of the print media as public servants in a way many of them did not consider. He also has a very informative blog titled Washington Babylon.

Later in the day we prepped the students for a new feature of the program, the Thursday night debate. We introduced the format today and the first one of three will happen next Thursday. The format is modeled after the St. Albans Government Club. A have a link to a wonderful article by a fellow colleague in the SPS about the history and role of the government club at St. Albans that dates back to the 1930’s and added the girls of the National Cathedral School in the mid 1960’s. I highly recommend that you give it a read. (Gov. Club Story) The topic for the first debate will be immigration. We actually chose that topic well before we realized that it would be the topic of debate on Meet the Press when we are watching the filming.

Later on the evening we gave the students their first unsupervised free time of campus, for a couple hours only. When they returned we watched Black Hawk Down. The testosterone was flowing. The staff hung out for a while after lights out for the students.

It was great Week 1.

Washington, DC
Thursday, June 21

Lots of stuff happening today. I taught a class today called the anatomy of a newspaper. We discussed the setup of a newspaper, the financing, struggles in readership, and the role of the press in public service. What is interesting in the fact that again this year the students overwhelming read newspapers regularly. I think that this is one the keys to these students being as sharp as they are.

After class we went to the Supreme Court to meet with Cynthia Rapp, Clerk of the Supreme Court and Justice Samuel Alito. The students reacted well to both. Justice Alito spent most of the time talking about procedure. The students asked good questions, particularly about how cases were selected to be heard by the Court.

After the Supreme Court I changed into my softball gear and met Bill at his law firm on 10th and Pennsylvania. Today was my season debut with the Ugly Mugs. We play in the House Softball League. If you check the link in the last sentence you will notice that the “Mugs” are undefeated and ranked 8th out 123 teams in league. The team continued its winning ways by defeating Two Drink Minimum 17 – 12. We spotted them four runs in the top of the first with some sloppy play in the field. I pitched two innings of scoreless relief and grounded out in my only at bat.

After the games the traditional procedure is to head to the bar near the Hill that sponsors us for some mini-burgers, quesadillas, pizza rolls, and a few pitchers.

Washington, DC
Tuesday and Wednesday, June 19th and 20th

The students spent the day at Georgetown University with Robert Gallucci. The former Deputy Secretary of State and current dean of the School of Foreign Service was an engaging speaker the students really seemed to respond to him. He was witty as he was informative.

In the evening I slipped out and went out to eat with Bill and his cousin John from Greece. It was his last night in DC and of course in the Greek tradition he wanted…., Outback. We enjoyed our Kookaburra Wings and bacon cheese fries. We had a great time.

On Wednesday the students studied, prepped, made oral arguments, and adjudicated the Supreme Court Case of Morse v. Fredrick. If you don’t want to read the 71 page oral argument transcript here is a link to the Wikipedia citation of the case. (Link) It is more popularly known as “Bong hits for Jesus”. Who would guess that a principal’s suspension of smart ass stoner kid would turn into a Supreme Court case of freedom of speech? What I think is hilarious is that when the principal hauled the kid into her office and informed him he would be suspended for five days he responded by paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson's warning that "speech limited is speech lost". She promptly doubled the suspension. The Washington Post has a great article about the case after it chosen by the Court. The students did a great job with the responsibilities. The two lawyers who led this endeavor and have taught at law school said the students did better than about 50% of their law school students.

The banner that caused the uproar.

Stuart Gerson speaks to SPS about Supreme Court procedure

Washington, DC
Monday, June 18th

At this point I’m not really sure what direction to go with the blog. Tusky, I’m sure you have suggestions but none of them are printable. I do not want the posts to get redundant for those who kept up with Pete last year. What I mean by that is that since this is annual program the curriculum minus a few changes remains relatively consistent. So I’m going to try not to be too repetitive.

This morning we headed out to the Madeira School in McLean, VA for a ropes course team building activity. I thought it went very this year. The staff at the school did a much better job of facilitation this year and I think as result the students got more out it. From the activities some leaders emerged from the group. I was pleasantly surprised at foreign students’ language skills. They were some of the most active participants. The activity went well and because we were in the woods most of the morning the heat did not get to oppressive.

We returned to Albans for a quick lunch and to the first class of the program. The School of Public Service uses the cases studies and methods from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Here is a link to an excellent journal article about the history, use, and methods of case studies as an instructional tool in the classroom. Here is a link to the University of California, Santa Barbara web site about the use of the case study method in the classroom. (UCSB Website)

Last year all of my classroom teaching was going through preview or background material in advance of another class. This year I am adding the case studies. So the first class of the program was the first case study that I teaching. Here is an abstract of the case “Ethical Problems in Public Careers: Lying”. The case is actually 10 smaller vignettes of cases to discuss when, if ever it is okay for various public officials to lie. After walking them through the first couple scenarios I pretty much sat back and simply facilitated conversation among the group, we had broken the group of 22 in two separate groups. The students are all very bright and had a great deal to say. It is still early but judging from the discussion this should be a fun group to work with.

After the case study the students took a behind the scene tour of the National Cathedral. The students went up into the Bell tower and even got onto the roof of the Cathedral. After the tour the students had free time until the SPS board reception in the Commons room outside the Headmasters office. The students seem to enjoy themselves and make good small talk with the Board Members of SPS. There were also a number of alumni from previous years who also were in attendance. I good time was had by all.


Here is a link to some more photos of the reception. Link

Washington, DC
Sunday, June 17th

Today was a relatively slow day. The students from the program started to trickle in to SPS (School of Public Service) around noon. When I got up I slid over to the National Cathedral for Church services. I had never attended service their and was feeling a bit ecumenical. What stood out from the service was the music and singing. I later found out that St. Albans originally started as choir school for the National Cathedral and over time morphed into its current state. The service was enjoyable.

The kids themselves come from all over the place. Just off the top of my head the students from Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, Texas, Massachusetts, Tennessee, a few from the DC area. We also have three international students who hail from Bosnia and Herzegovina (2) and Moldova. There are a balanced number of boys and girls. They seem like a bright bunch. I look forward to having them in class.

There was a reception at the Headmasters home for the students. They host this every year and serve Rockland’s BBQ, a nice gesture but for the “BBQ” was not up to Memphis standards. The students and faculty introduced themselves and there was mingling and small talk.

When we returned to the dorms it was all about handling business and laying out rules and expectations. There is no need to get into this because any reasonable person can make an assumption as to what those rules are. After that we all pretty much hung as the students mingled and got to know each other.