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Coffee or Tea? Neither Please!

  • Posted on March 13, 2010 at 4:14 pm

Coffee or Tea, what do you prefer today?  Today is the coming out party of the “Coffee Party”.  You know the anti “Tea Party” party.  I’m already tired of both of these parties.  Neither one has a clue what’s really going on across this country.  People are anxious but they aren’t looking for cutesy named parties like “Coffee or Tea”.  People are tired of being taken for granted and worrying about their jobs and health care.  Neither of the two major parties, Democratic and Republican, are meeting the needs of their constituents.  Both are working hard to garnish money from lobbyists and those lobbyists are not our neighbors.  This newly formed “Coffee” party has Obama’s fingers all over it from the association to Jim Webb to people that worked to elect Obama.  I, for one, am tired of being manipulated by any political party.  My best guess is these are the “Starbuck” lovers that are willing to pay $4.00 for a cup of coffee.  They are definitely out of my league and are probably what the right refers to as “latte” lovers.  Oh, well, these are just labels we bandy around.  I refuse to put a label on my frustration and distrust of this new movement or the Tea Party one as well.  The Republican Party was quick to get on board the funding of the Tea Party movement so that makes that party completely distrustful to me.  I can probably say the same for this new Coffee Party.  From my point of view I want to hear more politicians sounding like Rep. Patrick Kennedy from Rhode Island:

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/220793&start=18530&end=18784

He isn’t running any more so maybe he decided he was free to say what he’s really thinking.  I don’t know but this is the fire for the people that I want to see in my representatives.

Here is a post by “Wonk the Vote” much worth reading about coffee, tea and FDR.  http://letthemlisten.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/coffee-summits-not-coffee-parties/

I really enjoyed reading about FDR and his discussion of a second bill of rights.

I want a party that represents the “workers” of America.  These are the people that keep this country moving from factory jobs, police, teachers, transportation, and healthcare to the guy that picks up your garbage.  These are the people we all know that are our neighbors.  They aren’t a CEO and they don’t work on Wall Street.  They aren’t a Washington politician and while they may own a “mom and pop” store.  They don’t own “Wal-Mart” and they certainly aren’t a movie star!  We are the forgotten in this country.  While we make up the largest share of voters we are woefully under represented in our government.  While the wealthy including the politicians, CEO’s, Wall Street and Hollywood try to manipulate us at every turn by showing us what a war should be on screen, or by telling us to buy those ridiculous light bulbs that don’t last six months let alone five years, to always telling us we are the “greatest” and hoping we still believe that lie or to manipulating us to grasp our little “nest egg.”  We are the greatest to them if we keep buying the same old garbage they keep selling.  It’s time all of us woke up and figured out that these people are only looking at their own best interests.  The politician wants to get reelected so he will tell us anything.  The movie star wants to make more money so they call us to action on everything from the environment to our values of patriotism.  They do this because they are part of the corporate owned media.  Wall Street just wants our money and they will play games with the market to get it.  Once you’re in that market they will shake a few out ever so often and it could be your retirement that’s lost!

We, the true Americans, need to wise up and see these people that garner so much respect in the media for what they truly are.  We have the Internet.  We don’t need to be told by some Joe Scarborough on MSNBC or Wolf Blitzer on CNN or any other media pundit what’s going on in this country.  We can see by getting online and also by talking to our neighbors.  Here in Sturgis we know our property values have gone down.  We know there are vacant homes in town.  We can see that funding in our state is getting pretty down right scary.  We know that everything from the police to schools to state services have been cut and yet we still see plenty of money for war and politics.  We see politicians whooping it up at the Whitehouse with parties and dignitaries and don’t forget about those constant calls from the two parties for money for their next campaigns.  We see money going to two wars and a potential third and no one says, “Whoa, wait a minute!  What about the American people?”  I hear this phrase in my head.  I heard it as a teacher from GW Bush and now I’m playing it over in my mind.  That is over and over, “Expect more and pay less!”  This is in reference to teachers and I am a teacher but it really is in reference to all American workers.  We can all expect to do more and get paid less if we continue to buy what the politicians and the wealth in this country are selling.  Hollywood, politicians, CEO’s will all live large while the rest of us tighten our belts, pray we don’t lose our jobs or health insurance and scrape by.

Now do I want coffee or tea?  Not exactly!  I want real representation and I’m not going to get it over a cup of coffee or tea.  The best I can do as an American worker is to keep putting my voice out there.  I’ll keep calling my congress people and hope they change and I’ll keep saying what I think!

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CEO Pay and the American Dream

  • Posted on February 23, 2010 at 7:21 pm

Gary Markstein from Cagle Blogs

http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/CEOSalaryCaps/1.asp

I came across an interesting website yesterday.  I was searching for information on the cost of congress.  I read some things but happened upon this site.  http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_nat.htm#b00-0000 What is interesting to me about this site is in the area of healthcare support workers.  Since there are so many people in the baby boom generation getting ready to retire I kind of think there will be plenty of jobs in the future in the area of health care workers.  You know the low paying type jobs where people are cleaning bed pans and taking care of the daily lives of our aging population.  Our young people looking for jobs have so much to look forward to if they are in food service or healthcare support.  Maybe one needs to be an air traffic controller instead.  Even though Reagan busted that union in the eighties it sure looks like that’s a job some might want with the high pay.  An ambulance driver makes less than a bus driver.  Wow, when your life is on the line, who are you going to call?  Sadly missing from this list are the CEO’s of the corporations which earn multitudes more than anything on this list.  They get paid the big bucks making sure we get paid the peanuts.

The AFL-CIO has data on their website about CEO pay.   http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

Wouldn’t you like compensation like this?  http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceou/top100.cfm I really don’t feel I need that much money and wonder why these guys need that much?  Is there ever enough?  The CEO for Visa makes almost $18 million dollars.  Little people with credit card debt should be mad as hell while they scrape their money together to pay their bills.  Omnicare, they provide pharmaceuticals for seniors, at least that’s what the web said.  I see lots of insurance and health care companies making the big bucks for the CEO’s.  The talking heads and Republicans are so worried about socialism.  Socially, I find these CEO pays unacceptable!  If you really search through the data on the AFL-CIO site it is quite interesting.  They list everyone from A-Z.  Do you know where your money is going?  My guess would be probably to some of these guys.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IH31Dj02.html

Here is a snippet from this article:

American opinion on CEO pay
In the United States, only 32% of the public currently supports an outright pay cap on executive earnings. But average Americans appear to be every bit as outraged over CEO pay excess as average Europeans. Indeed, 77% of Americans say corporate executives “earn too much”. Only 11% admire “those who run” America’s “largest companies” either “a great deal” or “quite a bit”.

CEO pay isn’t limited to being a problem just here in the United States of America.  It is obviously a problem world wide as the rich appear to be getting richer and the poor poorer.  The bottom forty percent of the people in our country own less than one percent of its wealth.  It may be time for a revolution.  http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

If we can’t get Congress and the President to hear us, we may have to protest for the greater good of all the people.  I hear Republicans screaming about “Socialism” but if Capitalism is producing such a high discrepancy in the wealth distribution maybe we should consider more social type programs to even things out a bit.  It just isn’t right that it is getting harder and harder to earn a living wage in the U.S.A.  We all have heard since we were children about the “American Dream”.  You know the good job, white picket fence, nice house, nice car, healthy kids and the kids able to afford to go on to college.   And health care?  We never even had to hardly think about that.  My mom had fourteen children.  She used to spend about two weeks in the hospital.  Today all of that would be impossible!  All of the “American Dream” is in jeopardy at the current time for most of the American people.  There is a growing divide between those that “Have” and those that “Have not”.  I see it in my art classes.  Some students do a lot of traveling, have every toy you can imagine and some are just scraping by and hoping for some heating assistance for the winter months.  We need to shake up things in Washington D.C. before our communities all look like the war torn looking cities like Chicago and Detroit.  We must hold the Congress accountable for how they’re spending our money and who they are giving it to.  You know if they would have given that bail out money back to the people, I think the economy might have moved a bit.  They wanted to get money out in circulation.  The American people could have circulated that money a lot better than a band of bankers.  I’m sure they would have paid bills, bought vehicles, homes and everything else which would have stimulated this economy.  Congress in their infinite wisdom thinks we are too stupid to know what to do with our money.  Instead they kick it back to their friends and endorsers.  As a final note it will be interesting to see what Evan Bayh will do with his almost $14 million in campaign funds that he has left over.

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Great Teachers Have a Great Heart

  • Posted on February 10, 2010 at 12:24 pm

I was listening to Dylan Ratigan’s show this morning as we have a snow day and it got me thinking and this is why I felt a need to write today.  He had a man on from New York that was pushing charter schools.  They talked about how to improve education.  This always gets me going because these talking heads from the media and the so called “leaders” of education never talk about the one thing that’s going to make a difference in a child’s educational life.  The child needs a teacher with a heart as well as the educational ability.  You can’t make someone love teaching but there are a lot of people out there that love to teach that are kept out of the education system through the “screening” process of interviews during college.  If we rely solely on the resume of a person for hiring teachers we will never end up transforming schools.  To transform schools we must have people teaching and administrating that care not just about their own children but about everyone’s children.  We must have teachers and administrators that have a heart and understand that the job is not about them but about the children.

I’ve been busy over the past month.  I was working on the middle school art curriculum review.  My school has been very supportive of the arts in education which includes both the visual, and the performing arts.  I needed to make an assessment of what I was currently doing and what I thought would be the best direction for the future.  I was to compile a wish list of items that I feel are necessary to develop the best possible art program.  I want to say, “I love my job.”  I needed time to do the review and do the work on Atlas, (A program on the web that helps teachers develop curriculum.) that was required of me.  I was given two days with a substitute, so I could get the work done.  Of course I had to devote time outside of this as well to adequately complete the review.  The reason I’m writing about this is to share the fact that my time wasn’t wasted.  Often times in school we are asked to fill out papers or some other request that ends up being put in a file and forgotten about.  Many teachers know this and get tired of repeating the same old task only knowing that it will end up being a big waste of their time.  Time is often wasted in school when we are asked to sit through meetings where it appears that we are working together as a team on some big plan.  Often times I believe the decisions are already made about the plan by the administration and the meeting is set up to make the teachers feel like they we’re a part of that the decision.  This time the decisions were made by me, the teacher, with the final financial decision made by the administration.  To me this makes the most sense as I am closer to what is happening in the art classroom than anyone else.  When treated with respect, as I was, a teacher will rise to the occasion.  When treated disrespectfully a teacher can also fall to failure.  I’m happy to say my requests were honored.

I know there are teachers out there that are not like me.  They go through the motions waiting for the day they can retire.  I’ve even heard young teachers discuss retirement, which always puzzles me.  They may think they are doing the best possible job for their students and blame any failures on the system, the parents, and anything else that pushes their buttons but the truth is there are many reasons for failure and one of them is at the heart of why someone becomes a teacher.  If we are to listen to the government the implication is that teachers today are not qualified to do their jobs.  Teachers are tested even though they just went through four or five years of test taking in college.  Teachers are required to have a major in the subject area they are teaching which means many classes taken in a single area whether it is math, science or art.  The government leaders would have us believe that we need to improve the teacher quality through their math, science and other abilities.  I think this is a false premise.  While there may be teachers that slip through the cracks with their educational abilities.  I think we need to have teachers that have the heart of a teacher.  We need teachers that are excited about children.  We need teachers that can look at a troubled child and see possibilities not problems.  We need teachers that can develop relationships with their students to ensure success.

Students today have a lot more going on than when I was in school.  Many of them come from homes with multiple marriages or live in relationships.  They have half brothers and sisters, dads out of the picture and moms and dads out dating.  I don’t remember anything like that when I was going to school in the sixties and seventies.  The lack of stability in many of their home lives can create chaos for any young person.  I think that the school system needs to insure the quality of their teachers by making sure that they hire people with great paper credentials that also have that heart necessary to teach in these troubled times.  You can improve your resume through classes and professional development but your heart is another matter.  If you are considering teaching ask yourself, “Why?”  Is it because you want the summers off, or you think it’s a good job while raising your own children, you like sports and want to coach or do you really love working with children and helping them develop their abilities?  To be a great teacher you have to stop thinking about what you need and start thinking about what your students need because it’s not about you!  You have to not be the star of the show but be able to set yourself aside and help develop the true stars of the show, your students.  Some people are too self-centered to be a great teacher.  Great teachers inspire others.  They don’t suck out the air in the room with their verbosity and pomposity.  We can all think back to the teachers that inspired us.  I bet you will remember teachers that made you feel good, smart or special.  The teachers we remember with hatred and disgust made us feel bad, stupid, small and unimportant.  If we really want students to excel in this world they keep labeling the “global community” than we must hire teachers that inspire and are devoted to their students.  We must hire teachers that have a heart and love teaching children.

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Teaching in a Disconnected World

  • Posted on January 9, 2010 at 12:59 am
Global Children

Let's Embrace the Creativity in our Children

The word we always hear about today is “global”.  We are either “going global” or we’re standing still.  However in the American classroom my life as a middle school art teacher has probably helped to make me a bit skeptical of new government educational plans.  We seem to be pressured to make our children “global” beings that will “beat” all the other “global village” people as the government keeps telling us our children are not quite up to par.  The arts are always the first to be cut because greater minds than mine have decided that they must be a “frill”.  I always think those people simply must have absolutely no talent and imagination.  The arts are far more than a “frill” and serve a far greater good than most people can even imagine.  If you are wearing beautiful clothes, driving a highly designed vehicle or live in a fabulous home thank the artist that brought the design to fruition.  I know that many people have absolutely no idea of how most items are created and even brought to market.  If it wasn’t for the very artists that create the cool designs that make us all want to buy the next great thing, we’d all be driving around in box shaped cars and still be computing on the old box shaped computers.

Artists have been treated poorly in this old educational process of teaching for a “test”.  I think picking a, b, c, or d on a test is basically pointless.   The truth is no one will really know the end result of all this testing until these test takers become productive tax paying citizens that the government and business clearly want to be the next little worker bees.   I, on the other hand, believe that a true education will encompass all aspects of our intelligence.  This fight for the “core” subjects is disheartening to those of us that are on the cutting edge of embracing our creativity.  It is through real creativity that we all can find our true purpose in life.  Creativity allows you to learn how to think and make decisions based on realizing that there might be more than one answer to a problem.  Test taking makes us believe there can only be one answer and it is the “right” answer.

In life we all know that sometimes things aren’t easy for us.  Sometimes we actually have to think our way out of problems.  The answer isn’t covered on a test.  I think it’s time that we taught students how to think and make creative decisions.  Many children are lost in this test taking mold.  Many have shut down because their exuberance is not appreciated.  Sometimes teachers are so busy teaching for the test that they can’t see the marvelous gifted mind of the student that may be simply struggling with the test taking process.  I don’t blame the teachers or even the administration.  I blame a society that allows arbitrary politicians that promote programs that are just a boon for the test taking industry and a peril for the poor student confronted with all of the tests they have to take.

I think students need to spend much more time using their hands and brains in the classroom whether it be a core subject or my art class.  Students today are spoon fed information and then given countless hours on the computer where things are really quite pointless in many ways.  It’s just a click here and a click there browsing through things but usually not really reading them all that clearly.  We are in such a hurry today that I think we have forgotten the true wonder of education.  It is a joy in my art classroom when I watch a student that didn’t think he or she could draw figure out the drawing process.

Education used to be a wonderful thing to embrace.  Students need to feel that thrill that comes with the discovery of new intelligence.  If we want students to be excited about learning then we have to embrace the creativity that the arts empower in individuals.  The true joy of learning comes through self expression.  While the arts are a power onto themselves they can also enhance the learning in the core classes as well.  It is the individual we need to embrace and cultivate to be the creative adult they are meant to be.  It is not the test taking process that is going to build the next “greatest” generation.  It is the almost innate creativity we all have within us when we are a child that has been suppressed through years of “drill” type instruction that needs to be embraced and nurtured.  If the government wants us to be a “global village” then we should empower our children through creativity in all of their classrooms.

Below I have included an excerpt from Eliot Eisner that I think needs to be examined further.  The truth is number 10 is what I have really been talking about.

10 Lessons the Arts Teach

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

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