Coach Bill / Dad, Entrepreneur Special Educator, American Political Scientist, Writer, Musician.

It used to be called  “shell shock.” The reality of war can put a soldier in situations not normal for the average human being. Prolonged exposure to the drama and aftermath of violence can surely have an effect on a person’s mind and heart (soul). ‘Shell shock’ has been well-documented on film, such as Tom Cruises character in, ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and late-director Stanley Kubrick’s, ‘Full-Metal Jacket.’ A person’s ‘bearings’ are shifted and a new normal takes hold. This new normal juxtaposes itself against the normalcy of everyday society. Inevitably, the soldier who has experienced sustained levels of stress has what amounts to separate operating systems which do not always agree with each other.  The ravages of war are not taking in with a soft light. I had a friend who served in Iraq as a Marine. I knew him before and after his service. Many active and veteran armed forces personnel never see the front lines or have to literally fight their way out of ...

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The goal with the dance videos is to bring awareness to action by parents and Special Educators on the value and benefit of dancing as an efficient and effective strategy to rapidly develop gross motor skills, executive function skills, cross-hemispheric cranial connectivity and all in all increasing cognitive processing speed. This is of great importance to families with children who have special needs, such as autism. Infants, children and adults like to listen to appealing music and swaying our bodies to it comes naturally. This is not always so with children on the autism spectrum. The antidote is to get them moving and playing, roughhousing (safely), dancing and being adventurous. Do schools support these values? How so? The ease a parent or Educator has in playing a song and dancing with their child or students in a classroom to strengthen their cognitive-physical syncronicity makes the activity practical and easily to replicate. In addition, dancing  has a tend...

The idea of creating your own home storytelling theater can serve as a way for young children, especially those with special needs to appreciate different points of view and to even act out those differing outlooks in a safe setting. This metacognitive activity helps one rethink how they approach their thought and the world. Each character acted out has the potential to have a storyline that the puppeteer assumes during the story time. Repetition of an activity like this stays within certain established parameters, yet retains a novelty each time a story is performed in the theater.   My first storytelling theater was fashioned out of plywood. I had painted it over to look like a castle and added a knight to stand guard by the castle draw bridge. Ivy crawled up the castle walls. In my second theater, I may end up doing it out of tempered hardboard and using cloth string as ‘latches,’ to tie the different hardboard sections of the mini theater together. This makes it ...

Coach Galileo Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a Dad, a scientist, an engineer, an entrepreneur, coach of the community and the founder of modern astronomy. In Galileo's time, captains of ships had begun to adventure forth in exploration of the entire Earth and the first settlement in America was established (May 1607) by the Virginia Company of London as 'Jamestown.' As a Dad, he was especially loved by his children who were very close to him throughout his life. His son Vicenzo acted as a scribe in his blind fathers old age and his two daughters were devoted to him. It was Galileo who  established the application of the refracting telescope as a means to confirm that, indeed, Earth and the local planets revolved around the sun. His study of comets, the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus and the establishment of 'longitude' as a concrete understanding made verifiable by the invention of his new product, a military compass. Virginia, one of Dad's p...

Five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus, from Italy, set out on the Santa Maria with two Spanish captains who are maternal ancestors of mine, the Alonso Brothers. They commanded La Nina and La Pinta across the Atlantic Ocean. The three captains and their valiant crew went southwest on adventure for many months to what was hoped to be a new land to them and not the end of earth as many at that time forecasted.  Nothing was sure. This was the first time anything like this had been attempted before across the widest expanse of the Atlantic.  They made it though. They set out on an adventure into the unknown with only the wind pushing their sails being certain. Skateboarding is like that. When you are able to skate the bowls at a skate park, a sense of adventure is attained. It is an epic moment between hesitancy and commitment as the body and mind commit to dropping-in effortlessly and doing all the needed functional balance adjustments to skate down the wall s...

updated 2/10/16 Muhammad Ali is known as the greatest boxer of all time. He was a firebrand in his day and stood up for what he thought was right. Some of his decisions were incredibly unpopular with certain folks, such as his refusal to conscript in the armed forces and fight in Vietnam. A war that for the U.S. proved a tremendous expenditure in loss of sons and fathers for a victory that never materialized. Muhammad Ali, a poet, fighter and civil rights leader refused to partake and was ostracized and imprisoned. None of this took away from him becoming the champion of the nation, in fact, it bolstered his platform as an independent-thinking American who was not afraid to stand up for what he believed in. The 'People's Champ' was stripped of his heavy-weight boxing title and lambasted for his un-Americanism. Nonetheless, he stood his ground.   Do you stand your ground for someone else? Do you stand your ground for what is right? This man was at the to...

What propels someone to use physical force, with maximum strength and unleash it on someone else?  Knockout of Elderly Man in Paterson, New York What happened in the family upbringing of the boy who 'knocked out' the bystander in Paterson, New Jersey just days ago? Apparently, an adolescent boy was caught on video walking up to an elderly person waiting to cross the street and with as much force as possible... punched and totally knocked out the senior of small frame. The victim blew backwards immobile and unconscious crashing on to the ground head first.  What was this boys home life with his parents? What has to change so that we no longer are breeding a culture of apathy, anarchy and cruelty? How does this 'knockout' culture reflect macro events and current global situations in the world today?  A chess player gains know-how through experience and consistency, regardless of winning or losing games. Their mind rewires and is able to better app...

updated 2/9/16 When I was thirteen, my uncle signed me up for SCUBA diving certification. The SCUBA Center headquarters was deep inside a heavily guarded, top secret U.S. military base in the suburbs of Puerto Rico.  There was a man by the name of Harry Hauk, known by all as ‘Hauk’  who operated and owned the best SCUBA school on the island since 1968. He became my SCUBA teacher for two or so months. He and his team trained me in basic  open water  certification. Hauk  was a Special Forces  ‘Frog Man’ for the U.S. Navy, a philanthropist and a man of the community.   Hauk was a welcoming, down to earth man that never stopped giving his all for the local community, his country and humanity.  He even swam the English Channel with his family  in a  relay race and committed himself to constant feats including swimming the the circumference of Puerto Rico  to raise awareness for the environment. A central pa...

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By replicating a similar model to the servant leadership, holocratic engine that is in operation with the Scalzi Originals Skateboarding Co., members of local skateboarding communities can easily create a teacher group that is grounded around the activity of skateboarding coaches kids, including those with special needs. There are many children who would love to know how to skateboard. Parents who have children with special needs, like being on the autism spectrum can help develop gross motor skills, executive function (prefrontal lobe) and increase the speed and amplitude of their children's brain development overall by consistently having them go train at a skatepark. Having a teacher helps big. No Teacher System A central problem holding back the growth  of community skateboarding at a skatepark like Scalzi Park in Stamford, Connecticut is that there is no organized teacher system. I took an example from a surfing organization of surf teachers and volunteers that come...

Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe. -Lao Tzu My central aim with integrating dancing as a therapeutic modality when coaching individuals on the autism spectrum is that it is versatile, practical, as long as a song only, stays novel, is engaging and fun. Introducing dancing as a accelerator of the brain's development greatly aids a child on the autism spectrum who's brain is in healing and recovery mode from damages received from the preservatives found in vaccines, like heavy metals, (which common sense tells us it have no place in developing brains).  At any rate, in order to help speed up the rewiring process, parents and educators are asked to consider making dance more a part of every day life. Dancing is a practical activity that a parent can use to develop cognitive and physical  growth in their child quite effortlessly and also as a way to ground themselves befo...

What does freedom mean to us? What does family mean to you? Is the word community compartmentalized in a bland category in your mind? How can we 'fire up' each other and put all our oars in the water to do what is right and to keep at it? Can dancing be a facilitator in keeping our hearts alive? If change starts in the heart (soul), then the home is the lab where it flexes its muscles. Freedom carves itself into our daily life, our very lifestyle, by bold actions that start in each of our hearts. The family unit that has a mover and a shaker is shifted towards spontaneity, leadership, boldness, gentleness and flexibility in thinking, feeling and action. In this way, mom and dad become the primary teachers in showing their offspring what it means to be free and what family can mean beyond our every day lives. Each person has incredibleness in them. The parent that metamorphosizes and becomes that incredible change they want to see in their kid is not just a parent anymo...

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My grandmother, who lived for 100 years, had Parkinson's. Throughout my childhood she would send handwritten letters to my sisters and I from California telling us about what she was up to, what Blue the black cat was into or how we were going to meet soon. Her letters were long and she had solid handwriting. Though we visited California yearly,  letters from 'the Golden State' were like magic to me, especially letters from my grandmother. She took the time to write these since I was a little boy. As I entered adulthood the shake in her hands had increased considerably so much that the letters were hard to read and had become illegible after that. Phone calls became more popular. She was cognitively intact for the most part. Though we were far apart from each other, I would visit her on my own every year. Besides my Dad, she was my only other live connection to my Dad's side of the family. This created a great connection between us. The letters from the pas...