I wonder who came up with the now infamous legislative misnomer "No Child Left Behind." I'd like to think it was someone who was well-meaning, someone who meant it. The political cynic in me is afraid they knew all along that it would be a shield from criticism of a crummy piece of legislation. Really, who can argue with not leaving children behind? I'd also like to think it was truly a bi-partisan debaucle, just so I don't have to blame the Republicans for one more thing, but it smacks of an example of that kind of "conservative compassionate" attempt to hold a visable hand out to help while using the other hand to block the funding of programs like Head Start, affordable housing and health care. Because make no mistake about this--children are being left behind from conception and no amount of blaming schools is going to catch them up to where they deserve to be.
I'm not completely uninformed about this subject. I am the mother of four children who have all attended public schools, and I have been a public school teacher for nearly a decade. In fact, I have worked professionally with children of one age or another since I received my degree in Child Development 30 years ago. I've worked with developmentally delayed preschoolers, hearing impaired students in grades K-12, autistic students, gifted teenagers and plain old run-of-the-mill middle schoolers, whatever that means. I've taught students who came from affluent, two-parent families and students whose parents were in prison. I've taught children who were abused and students who were abusive. It's not our public schools which are leaving children behind; there are many ways a child can be advantaged or disadvantaged; there are many avenues for a society that wants to help.
Because of the condition the ecomony is in, some changes are going to be made to many tax supported programs on both a federal level and a state level. Rumors of cutting programs are running rampant. Schools are not immune and teachers know that there will be less money to go around. Cuts do have to be made, but when politicians stand in front of cameras and talk about not leaving children behind and then refuse to fund the sort of programs that would keep them from being left behind in the first place, maybe it's time to acknowledge that it may be the lawmakers are the ones who are behind.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
STMMTO
I'd like to write my own obituary. With my tendency to procrastinate, I probably won't get around to it. I'd also like to design my own headstone, but the darn things are so expensive that I think I'll just let my children pick out something simple and cheap. If I did get to choose, I'd like one of several favorite sayings engraved on it. "Everyone Needs a Proofreader" is one I've thought of, but irony would step in and someone would misspell my name. I wouldn't mind something noble or even schmaltzy like a quote from Don Quixote or a line from Desiderata but I refuse to have someone be cynical at my graveside, and you've got to know someone would be a smart-aleck about anything sentimental.
My actual choice if given one would likely be the title of this blog--Some Things Matter More Than Others. STMMTO. In my classroom, I have four things listed that matter: People, Effort, Respect and Attitude. Those are important for a classroom, but if I had to choose what things matter over the course of my life, I would choose these four: Family, Friends, Faith and um . . . no, I can't have a cute alliterative saying on my headstone forever. Maybe I'll lump family and friends into People; Faith is important but so is Hope, but if I added that, I'd have to include Charity and then I . . . . . . no, I can't do that either. The truth is that some things do matter more than others, but it's hard to put that into four words.
For example, I've been a volunteer at our library for a couple of years. I love it. I get to sort books and price them for the store that the Friends of the Public Library have. I usually worked 4-8 hours a week, but I had to stop for awhile. It's a busy year and I was a little over-extended. One of the things keeping me busy are the two cutest grandsons in the world. My daughter is finishing her degree--two semesters to go--four nights a week. My son-in-law works a 6 pm to 6 am shift right now so I'm the designated nanny at least two nights a week. I have my own nanny's quarters (fine, it's a guest room that other people use, too) so I can spend the night. Since they live in the town I teach in, 25 miles from my house, I stay over even though she gets home about 9:30 pm. Volunteering at the library is a good thing to do. It matters. Helping my daughter any way I can to finish her degree matters more. I can't help her financially and while it's a stretch to say I'm helping at all since I'd be at her house seeing the boys at least that often anyway, it is something she needs.
Time is usually inherent in my choice of what matters to me, as is money. I guess anything you have a finite supply of becomes important when you decide how to spend it. And so here's some of what matters to me: paying tithes and offerings, books, visiting friends in other states (and countries when I'm lucky), reading to Clyde and Will, playing board games with my family, attending the Temple, and tending to the plants inside and outside of my house. I spend money on silly things that don't matter, but not too much and not too often. I watch a little more TV than I should, but again, not too much and not too often. There are a few things that should matter more to me like exercise, but I'm far from perfect in levels of self-discipline.
Meanwhile, back to my headstone. My parents actually have four words each on their headstones. My dad's reads, "Husband, Father, Teacher, Friend" and my mom's words are "Calm, Loyal, Loving, Strong." Maybe four words can be meaningful. Maybe I'll borrow from them--Pamela Hunter-Braden, Loving Mother, Teacher, Friend. I like it. No rush though--I need 30 or so more years to practice doing what matters most.
My actual choice if given one would likely be the title of this blog--Some Things Matter More Than Others. STMMTO. In my classroom, I have four things listed that matter: People, Effort, Respect and Attitude. Those are important for a classroom, but if I had to choose what things matter over the course of my life, I would choose these four: Family, Friends, Faith and um . . . no, I can't have a cute alliterative saying on my headstone forever. Maybe I'll lump family and friends into People; Faith is important but so is Hope, but if I added that, I'd have to include Charity and then I . . . . . . no, I can't do that either. The truth is that some things do matter more than others, but it's hard to put that into four words.
For example, I've been a volunteer at our library for a couple of years. I love it. I get to sort books and price them for the store that the Friends of the Public Library have. I usually worked 4-8 hours a week, but I had to stop for awhile. It's a busy year and I was a little over-extended. One of the things keeping me busy are the two cutest grandsons in the world. My daughter is finishing her degree--two semesters to go--four nights a week. My son-in-law works a 6 pm to 6 am shift right now so I'm the designated nanny at least two nights a week. I have my own nanny's quarters (fine, it's a guest room that other people use, too) so I can spend the night. Since they live in the town I teach in, 25 miles from my house, I stay over even though she gets home about 9:30 pm. Volunteering at the library is a good thing to do. It matters. Helping my daughter any way I can to finish her degree matters more. I can't help her financially and while it's a stretch to say I'm helping at all since I'd be at her house seeing the boys at least that often anyway, it is something she needs.
Time is usually inherent in my choice of what matters to me, as is money. I guess anything you have a finite supply of becomes important when you decide how to spend it. And so here's some of what matters to me: paying tithes and offerings, books, visiting friends in other states (and countries when I'm lucky), reading to Clyde and Will, playing board games with my family, attending the Temple, and tending to the plants inside and outside of my house. I spend money on silly things that don't matter, but not too much and not too often. I watch a little more TV than I should, but again, not too much and not too often. There are a few things that should matter more to me like exercise, but I'm far from perfect in levels of self-discipline.
Meanwhile, back to my headstone. My parents actually have four words each on their headstones. My dad's reads, "Husband, Father, Teacher, Friend" and my mom's words are "Calm, Loyal, Loving, Strong." Maybe four words can be meaningful. Maybe I'll borrow from them--Pamela Hunter-Braden, Loving Mother, Teacher, Friend. I like it. No rush though--I need 30 or so more years to practice doing what matters most.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Learning a Second Language--Blogging
I'm fairly old according to my grown children. I tell people that I may not be older than dirt, but that I am older than a major South American capital. I was born in 1954; Brasilia, Brazil was built from the ground up in 1958.
My age does not bother me. In fact, I have yet to feel that I am on the downhill side of life--every year is better than the year past. I've always felt that my days here on the earth will be plentiful and that death will open a door to someplace better.
I have always expressed myself in writing. From grade school stories to junior high poems replete with teen-age angst to essays and papers in high school and college stating my (obviously correct) opinions about everything, I have put my thoughts in print.
First I used paper and pen, then a nifty little portable Smith Corona electric typewriter. I think I adjusted fairly well to using a computer, if for no other reason than the almost magical cut and paste technology. I write in journals, in notebooks, and on a blueberry Mac that I have to say goodbye to because I am reluctantly entering the PC world so that I can transfer my writing to my school computer or to my daughter's with more ease.
Learning necessary technology, however, is one thing. Blogging is another thing all together. "Blog" isn't even a word. (Neither is email for that matter.) I have made unkind statements about bloggers--referring to their need for real lives and assuming that they were a bunch of incompetent writers who couldn't get published anywhere else. Label me whatever you will--I can think of several cutting remarks without anyone's help. Then I read my daughter's blog. She has been a gifted writer for as long as she could write, and her blogs are one more evidence of that.
The truth is that I'm not writing enough. I teach creative writing, but I'm not writing. I start and stop, make and break resolutions, but ultimately I keep moving toward the unacceptable destination of Regret.
I've made numerous mistakes, endured a few life trials and chosen quite badly once or twice, but right now there are no significant regrets in my 54 years. Except the one. Not writing enough--often enough or well enough.
And so I've entered this foreign land of blogging. Not to change the world, not to entertain anyone, not to assuage my guilt for wasting time in the past, but simply to write. I don't require an actual audience; thinking that someone might possibly read this is enough to inspire me to edit, improve and rewrite. And if that means I have to embrace the language of technology a bit more completely than I planned, so be it.
Here's to blogging and whatever future technology has to offer to the world of words.
My age does not bother me. In fact, I have yet to feel that I am on the downhill side of life--every year is better than the year past. I've always felt that my days here on the earth will be plentiful and that death will open a door to someplace better.
I have always expressed myself in writing. From grade school stories to junior high poems replete with teen-age angst to essays and papers in high school and college stating my (obviously correct) opinions about everything, I have put my thoughts in print.
First I used paper and pen, then a nifty little portable Smith Corona electric typewriter. I think I adjusted fairly well to using a computer, if for no other reason than the almost magical cut and paste technology. I write in journals, in notebooks, and on a blueberry Mac that I have to say goodbye to because I am reluctantly entering the PC world so that I can transfer my writing to my school computer or to my daughter's with more ease.
Learning necessary technology, however, is one thing. Blogging is another thing all together. "Blog" isn't even a word. (Neither is email for that matter.) I have made unkind statements about bloggers--referring to their need for real lives and assuming that they were a bunch of incompetent writers who couldn't get published anywhere else. Label me whatever you will--I can think of several cutting remarks without anyone's help. Then I read my daughter's blog. She has been a gifted writer for as long as she could write, and her blogs are one more evidence of that.
The truth is that I'm not writing enough. I teach creative writing, but I'm not writing. I start and stop, make and break resolutions, but ultimately I keep moving toward the unacceptable destination of Regret.
I've made numerous mistakes, endured a few life trials and chosen quite badly once or twice, but right now there are no significant regrets in my 54 years. Except the one. Not writing enough--often enough or well enough.
And so I've entered this foreign land of blogging. Not to change the world, not to entertain anyone, not to assuage my guilt for wasting time in the past, but simply to write. I don't require an actual audience; thinking that someone might possibly read this is enough to inspire me to edit, improve and rewrite. And if that means I have to embrace the language of technology a bit more completely than I planned, so be it.
Here's to blogging and whatever future technology has to offer to the world of words.
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