How do you like working in a pre-school?

The Question: So, how do you like working in a preschool?
  Recently, I left my 11-year career as a high school Social Studies teacher to help my wife start up her new preschool. The above question has been frequently asked. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it feels like this question is loaded, like "Isn't this a big step backwards?"
  Answer #1: I'm more of a part-time pre-school teacher.
  I'm the school Manager (for lack of a better title). I love the change of "job" largely because it lets me do a variety of tasks on a daily basis: fix things up, sit on my couch with my laptop or participate in the classroom. I'm simultaneously HR department, accountant, building supervisor and, the subject of the question, the #1 substitute teacher.
Answer #2: I wouldn't have done this had I not already realized that, at its core, teaching is the same at all ages. 

  Rule 1 in any classroom environment is that the kids must feel safe, physically and mentally. During all of the fun parts of teaching, we have to remember that the biggest part, the base of Maslow's famous pyramid refers to physical well-being. For high-schoolers and preschoolers alike, they have to get enough sleep, eat well and feel appreciated before other lessons begin having an impact.

  So many kids are so on the edge about this, and this is not just a poverty-related issue. Even well-to-do kids who seemingly have it all may be neglected by their parents: both parents work late, with an endless stream of cousins, baby-sitters and nannies spending more time with kids than mom and/or dad. Or, maybe mom and dad are home every night, but the kids are plopped in front of a TV or constantly play video games. (I recently saw a picture of a 2-year-old playing a war-simulation video game in the lap of a parent… ergh.) It's no surprise that school is often the warmest, safest, lovingest place for a child to be.
  Answer #3: Montessori practices are completely in line with what I wanted to do in my high school classroom.

  Very quickly after I met Lulu, I realized that what she was doing with preschoolers aligned perfectly what I was doing with high schoolers. Creating an open, safe classroom, teaching communication skills and letting students choose the way they work were all components of both of our classrooms. (I won't get into not being allowed to go further down that road. Not for today, at least.)
   A couple of weeks ago, a UT professor came to visit the school, interesting in enrolling his son a year from now. I asked him what he already knew about Montessori. After a pause, he replied "Project-based learning." The answer took me by surprise, but it is spot-on.
  In the larger picture, in which I truly believe that project-based learning is the future of education, a Montessori school ideally prepares young children for the choices, personal responsibility and interpersonal relations that will enable them to succeed working with others later in their educational and professional lives.
  So, the final answer: I love being a part of this Montessori classroom, and I want to make it as good as it possibly can be.

Oh So Comfortable

One of my favorite childhood memories was playing Risk with my Dad and Uncles--often on New Years Eve or other holidays. This is a game where there are long stalemates, until a player reaches a threshhold where the odds are in their favor, or maybe they're just bored, and they make a risky decision. Perhaps they go on the attack or fail to defend a position and they gain or lose a lot very quickly. Ultimately everyone is defeated except for one vanquisher.
 
This is life: you can sit back and watch momentum build up around you, or you can go out the door and get a piece of that pie yourself.
 
Risk-taking has so many contexts, and it has everything to do with the extent to which you trust in the world. If you don't trust your neighbors, you have no problem pissing them off. In NYC I watched youths take risks because they thought they had nothing better to live for: jaywalking in really dangerous places or buying guns and pulling stupid pranks  (here is Austin's version). In a country where you're likely to die of AIDS anyways, why not have unsafe sex? In a war-torn country where a 12-year-old might get recruited into an army if he stays in the village, it makes sense to sign up for Al-Quaeda, with promises of the glory of battle and eternal life with virgins. All of these are youths who feel that there's not much worth living for and therefore make decisions that do not benefit the larger community.
 
On the other hand, if you trust that things will work out, you sit back and let things take care of themselves. A politician in a safely-gerrymandered district or early in a six-year Senate term also has little to lose from outlandish political views or poor life choices.

Stick your neck out! ©Rick Weller 2011

Economists have always sought to quantify risk in the risk-vs-reward context. Investors frequently risk millions of dollars on a product that people will want--knowing that the odds of losing all of the money are significant. The hope of a large reward is worth the risk. In the end, if people demand the product, then inherently the world will be better off. These decisions are made in the same metric used by kids of the Bronx or Somalia.

Graham Green said that "it is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself." Is risk-taking a matter of not involving others? A go-it-alone attitude? If you Trust in God do you just sit back and not take risks?

I, for one, want to get out and make the world a better place, but this hammock is so damn comfy....

How free is a flag tied to a pole?

World Cup fans will hear a lot of Wavin' Flag in the next month. And rightly so: it's a great song with catchy lyrics, good rhythm and beautiful melody and harmonies. I fell in love with it as soon as I heard Knaan sing the first soaring lines at the ACL festival last fall.

Please, however, take to heart the song's original message when you hear it. The stanzas have been rewritten for the World Cup, but the song's meaning comes straight from Knaan's childhood on the streets of Mogadishu. It is not the beautiful, soaring notes that it seems at first glance. The sarcasm of the title-line "They'll call me freedom, just like a wavin' flag" struck me the second time I heard the refrain back in October. This is an anthem not of freedom, but of the dream of freedom. It is of pride of one's people, not love of country. When you do see the waving flags in South Africa, while we're watching Knaan, Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto'o, please remember the millions of children who dream to leave villages and ghettos but will never get the chance. They are "struggling, fighting to eat" and are victims of "so many wars, settling scores.... leaving us poor." Those who can only dream of flying away from their abject poverty.

Like billions of others, I will get caught up in the beauty of the game, but let's not forget the billions who will walk miles and miles just to get to a TV to watch it. When you see the waving flags, think of what they really represent.

Thank you, Facebook

It's become a ritual that whenever Facebook changes anything, people throw up their arms and quickly update their status that they'll stop using the site. I laugh at the inherent irony of such posts.

Lately, it's been a lot of anti-privacy stuff, and quite predictable impulsive responses result. This makes me laugh, too, because facebook wouldn't be able to share one, single thing about you if you didn't type it in. Now, if FB were a fee-based site, we could complain and ask for changes, but with FB, we are all getting waaaay more than we pay for. (On this topic, watch Danah Boyd talk about it back in March at SXSW, or better still, read her full text. It's a great speech.)

I'm on the record for being a big facebook lover. I love seeing what friends are up to--especially those of you I don't see regularly. I like that FB has effectively disposed of the FW: FW: FW: chain emails. It has largely become the "home page" for my blog reading. I turn to FB when I want a reference or when seeking travel advice. Odds are, you're reading this after linking through my facebook post. 

So, recently, facebook announced something called the Open Graph. I'm no computer programmer, but it seems that FB is opening up our posts for commercial purposes. I'm cool with this. I'm much more comfortable with FB doing this than Google. Mashable lists 5 ways that this will affect e-commerce. I'm cool with all five of those ways. Seems like FB wants to compete with Google and Amazon, and competition is always good for us normal people. And, if all this results in is more advertising aimed at me for the stuff that I want, so be it. I hate shopping. If FB can make shopping easier for me, then I'm all in.

Why we should pay more for gas

Check out the video at the end of this page from Yahoo's Green Blog. In it, several things strike me. 

First, is the bit on hair soaking up oil. I'd heard about the use of hair-in-nylons to clean up oil spills, but the video here includes a very impressive classroom demo. If only for that demo at the end, please watch the video. But that's not why I'm writing about it. The data cited astonish me.

To start with, much of the waste from our cars and other machines find its way to our ground and ground water to the tune of about 1 million gallons of motor oil every day. The contamination of our drinking water will be a growing problem as freshwater resources dwindle as our populations grow. But that's not all: 726 million gallons of oil are spilled in over 1,200 spills annually! That's about 2 million gallons/day. The Exxon Valdez "disaster" released "only" 11 million gallons, but even more than that spills every week?!? It is outrageous that these numbers exist in our normal world.

The timeliness of this post is, of course, due to the Deepwater Horizon explosion. I have always been wary of the honesty and truthfulness of the corporate world and its environmental consciousness. While BP has met and exceeded all safety regulations, clearly this disaster is testament that further regulation is needed. But regulation cannot be the final solution. 

Demand for energy will continue to drive oil companies to the fartherst, coldest and deepest corners of the earth. We, the billions of consumers in this world are responsible for this. We live in the suburbs. We pay for airlines to take us on vacation. We love our stuff made of plastic. We know the repercussions of our lifestyles, yet we don't change.

What you will never see me do is complain that gasoline and airline tickets are too expensive. The only way that we will fly, drive, and air-condition less is if it costs us more. A lot more. I've supported a comprehensive energy tax ever since the idea was brought to my attention by Al Gore in 1992. If everyone, businesses and government included, had to pay for all of the energy we consume--in any form--then we would all consume so much less, and numbers like those above would start decreasing. The truth of it is that our dollars drive companies to build monsters like Deepwater Horizon, coltan mines in central Africa and more and more roads. As long as we buy more and more stuff, there will be more and more Deepwater Horizons. That's the inconvenient truth we must face.

Update 2014. The first link above is gone to cyber-eternity, but go here for similar videos. 

Coffeetalk

For the past few months, I've gathered every other Friday to get some coffee/tea with some friends and their friends. We're a very worldly bunch, hailing from several countries, and most of the participants having either lived abroad or traveled significantly, especially in Africa and Mexico. The conversations often take a turn outside our American borders.We like democracy, we like foreign aid, we like traveling. And we LOVE ideas that cross cultures.

For example, this Friday, our talk was guided by a couple who are fillmmakers from South Africa who are temporarily working in Austin. We learned of South African politics, investment cooperatives, and the lives and dreams of filmmakers. In the end, we were ready to start a film-making coop and brainstorming ways to get people to chip in, $100 or so, and become the funders of independent films on an ongoing basis. It's a novel idea to us, and we're going to pursue the notion seriously--on Saturday, some internet domains were, in fact, registered.

I don't know, we may be just a bunch of dreamers, but we're not the only ones, right? Anyone have some similar ideas out there? Want to join our discussion as it proceeds?

Support the DREAM Act

    I had a long talk last night with a former student, and her story brought me back to an ethical/political dilemma. To start this discussion, know that I'm largely a rule-follower. However, I have most certainly been know to bend/break them when I feel I've the moral high ground. I certainly realize that said high ground is subject to perspective, but that most certainly does not stop me, and I don't stop those of opposing persuasions who act similarly. I draw the line when someone gets physically or financially hurt.
   The topic here is immigration. I've long felt that those who follow the rules should be allowed in, no exceptions, and the more the merrier, but those who enter illegally shouldn't expect any good graces ('amnesty') later on. Beginning my first year teaching in NYC, however, this argument was seriously challenged, and I think that Thursday night, my mind has changed....
    Here's the student's story, purposely sparing some details.
She arrived in the USA from Central America at the age of 14. Her mom was a legal immigrant beforehand, and today, her mother and two siblings are legal residents, while she and one sibling are illegal even though they applied for residency at the same time as one other sibling who received residency. And that's where the family still stands. Four with green cards and two without--all in basically the same situation. Who the heck thought to say yes to one sibling and no to two others when they had the exact same situation. If the couple of years difference age was the difference-maker, then that is a rule or system that needs to be changed.
    Clearly the student in question (trust me on this one) would make America a better place. Why not bend/break/change rules? The same would be true of all illegal immigrants who, while bearing the burden of an illegal status in which they, as children, did not choose for themselves, graduate high school in the USA and get college acceptance.
    Now cue the proposed legislation called the DREAM Act. I don't know the details, but basically it would grant residency to students, such as my former student who is now an honor-roll college student, paying her own way through because she doesn't have that "nine-digit-number" that would make her eligible for federal financial aid.
   Like the artificial colonial border that I lived along in Senegal, this family is unnecessarily divided by arbitrary imperial law. In this case the law is wrong, and my sense of rule of law is washed away.  The right thing to do is to let these students stay, legally, and give them a path to citizenship. America would be a better place. I wholeheartedly support the Dream Act.