Starting a DC Chapter of Parents Across America

As if I did not have enough on my plate, I am very excited to announce I am one of two parents in the District currently involved in starting a DC Chapter of Parents Across America. I recently read A Parents Across America Position Paper on the Reauthorization of the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – No Child Left Behind and I was so inspired by their ideas that I looked them up in DC. I was surprised to see they did not have a chapter in DC and emailed to inquire about starting one. PAA's beliefs can be found at http://parentsacrossamerica.org/what-we-believe/ . Therefore, if you live in DC, have children in public education and believe in these ideals, please join us.

Join PAA-DC Chapter Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Parents-Across-America-DC/150801341651554?sk=wall

or the PAA-DC Yahoo listserve http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ParentsacrossamericaDC/

Where are you on the Trust-Data Continuum?

Imagine a continuum, let's call this continuum the Trust-Data continuum. In one end of this continuum there is complete and utter dependence on data where we cannot make a move without incorporating it into our decision making and on the other end there is complete and utter trust in our inner knowledge where we fully and utterly trust our ideas and instincts alone. I have had to tread this line many times in my life and have learned that both extreme ends holds no solutions.

When I was pregnant with my first child we opted for a midwife, no drugs; the whole natural, trust your body, birthing process. It seemed the most healthy and natural option and we were so excited to go this route. Since we were considered 'low risk' we felt in our element choosing an out-of-hospital birth. Unfortunately, things did not go as expected. In short, we had a c-section. We did not plan on this of course, but that's what usually happens after almost 2 days of labor and no baby. With my second child, we again wanted a natural birth, but now being categorized as 'high risk' pregnancy due to a prior C-section, we needed the structure and security provided by the hospital. Although being at a hospital was protocol for a V-BAC (vaginal birth after c-section) I no longer fully trusted my body to do the right thing, and I too felt I needed to be in a hospital. I had moved from one end of the scale where I fully trusted my body to do the right thing, to the other end where I became dependent on the structure of a hospital to give me that sense of trust I needed. This ended up being a good thing, for I again had a c-section.

And yet another example.

I am a teacher in DC where the latest corporate reform efforts have taken hold of the system as they are in many other urban cities across the country. As an ardent advocate against these corporate reforms, which are all based on reward/punish paradigms, I am often asked, "What do we do then, with ineffective teachers?" I see reward-punish systems as essentially lacking in all forms of trust. Teachers are not trusted, schools are not trusted, hence we need data to see past the murky waters. The corporate reformers who are seeking to dismantle public education have done everything possible to form the negative myths that now intoxicate and choke the life out of our profession. This is very unfortunate news for our kids, for the public response is a need for more and more data, more oversight, more mania, more panic.

The more we surround and encapsulate education with testing, data and more testing, the more we squeeze the magic out of good teachers. Teacher who know how to teach need to be allowed to teach. My question is, with so many demands on teachers and hoops now set up for them to jump through, who would want to do this job in the future? What is the lure? In this situation, TRUST is the dire prescription. It will breathe back respect into a system that now operates like a dysfunctional home, where one sibling is openly favored and lauded over another.

I believe the answer to all life's problems lies somewhere in the middle of my Trust-Data continuum, with either end being way too fundamentalist and unbalanced to bring true, lasting success. Too much data and no trust is just as distorted as blind trust and no data.

Private thoughts on the world of Private vs. Public

I attended my high school reunion this past week in NYC. You can see some pictures I took by clicking here. Marymount is a private girls' catholic school that runs from k-12th grade. Sounds fairly humble huh? Yet the school, program, facilities and location categorize it as nothing even close to humble. Instead of running down all the changes I witnessed (which were too many to list) or listing all the benefits this school gives its students (which is enormous), I will discuss the three resolves I walked away.......They are much more meaningful and personal. Click here to see the site to the school.

Resolve #1: As a parent of two growing children the biggest question that rises in me is how do my husband and I provide all these benefits to our children without paying an obviously unaffordable $35,000 a year, per child, for private education. Click here to see cost of tuition. During the reunion, students in 12th grade were invited to speak about programs they were involved in at Marymount. What most impressed me was the ease in which they spoke about current global issues. As part of a club, some girls were actively involved in learning and sharing their knowledge of some very daring social issues with the community. The issues ranged from sex trafficking in the city, some students were in cultural awareness groups, some had traveled to countries far away to do service studies in their areas of interest. The answer to my question above then lies in making global perspective and global education not the school's responsibility, but ours, as parents. By allowing our children to see the world, and not just simplyread it from a book, or see it on TV, children get a fuller picture of issues affecting our world today. This would involve some serious money saving efforts on our part to later fund trips that would put this ideal to work. I don't think there is anything more essential to meeting this goal than traveling.

Resolve #2: My second resolve will address me as an educator. When I was in High School I did not feel very bright. It's not that my teachers were not good. The fact is, my mind was elsewhere. I had also come to learn English at age 9 and did not yet feel very confident in expressing myself in the language even at 14. In addition, my home life at that time was less than ideal and I could literally care less about school altogether. The drive was not there for all these reasons. Yet, one thing I know I was very good at, and still am today, is knowing when people did not believe in me, or when people did not think I could do something. I have always been super-tuned to people around me. Then again, it's not rocket science knowing this about someone; all children know when grown ups do not believe in them. It's embedded in the way they talk to you, sometimes it's in the way they don't talk to you, the people they choose to talk to instead of you, their eyes, how they look at you or avoid you with them. We humans communicate in so many other ways than verbal ways; volumes could be written about them. While most of my teachers were amazing in high school, there were a few who I could feel quite clearly did not think I was bright enough for the task. These experiences are so calcified in children and in me, that even years later, in the presence of the same environment alone, I was reliving that feeling of not being bright. I did not fight it this time though. This time I know who I am, I did not need approval from anyone anymore.

Therefore, my second resolve comes as a promise to myself as an educator. I promise to always believe in my students and to make sure my students know it. If I care about them as human beings, and them becoming emotionally stable adults, the best thing I could do for my kids is show them my unwavering belief in their abilities, regardless of their output at the time. My open and expressive belief in them might be just the very thing to unlock their disinterest.

Resolve #3: My last resolves stems from a conversation I had with a woman from a graduation year much earlier than mine. I don't know how we began on the topic of education, but I found out fast that we stood on very different ends of the spectrum of education reform issues and neither of us was about to back down. Before I knew it I was hearing all the mainstream rhetoric I hear daily as a public school teacher, yet know enough not to believe in them. She unwaveringly informed me about rubber rooms, rampant ineffective teachers just aching to retire, unions protecting only teachers not children, and on and on.

How do you convince a person who has their mind made up? I made a decision after this conversation to always demand from people arguing their points so ardently on public education to list their personal experiences with the 'facts' they speak so surely about. In the 13 years I have been teaching I have never seen a rubber room, or met a teacher who did not absolutely love what she did for a living. Just as I think all United States presidents should see the Earth from outer space to bring them a holistic perspective. For the same reason, I also think all education reformers should spend a few years (3-4) teaching high school kids in the rough neighborhoods of S.E. Washington, DC. I'm sure all the rhetoric about ineffective, lazy, cold-hearted teachers will melt away into a much more realistic and more respectful views of them once they see what they're really up against; poverty.

ART Highlights from my high school reunion----Marymount School of NY

Aside from having a great time, the school was filled with art everywhere....it was a dream come true to an art teacher like myself.

Below, are sample book covers......my mind is already trying to figure out ways to do this with elementary children.

These are amazing portraits!!
Now these are to drool for......they are......clay shoes!!!! aren't they just the cutest things ever....I am absolutely trying these with my kids.
You can tell this artist is growing up in NYC!!!
Paintings.....
These are portraits done on Ipads....



Marymount was the only girl school out of three that got an award from apple for being innovative in education using technology.
This is my favorite painting!!!! love it!
Check out this computer area!!
Dragons....
These are Marymount students here for their 50th reunion.....I hope I look this good at 67ish....

Tree Goddess, a self portrait

If I were to tell you this painting is a self portrait, where would your thoughts take you? I brought this painting into class and told my students this tree/woman painting I just finished was a self-portrait and asked them to interpret what that could mean to them. I was absolutely blown away by their responses. George Lucas, creator and mastermind of Star Wars recently expressed the importance of teaching children the different 'languages''; art and music being these languages. With this conversation with my kids I finally experienced what he meant.

Click here to read the article I am referring to.

To see this item in my online art store go to http:www//miriamsart.etsy.com.

The body, branches and roots are modeled tissue paper, painted over when dry.
The swirls you see are melted wax used to 'write' the lines.

Thought patterns that hurt and thought patterns that HEAL

I think the book that has had the MOST dramatic and positive affect on my life has been I Need Your Love is That True? by Byron Katie. Before reading this book I would do two very detrimental thought patterns that made me and the people around me very unhappy.

One, I would make bad assumptions about people and situations and string them together into a very neat and logical (yet not true) narrative that would place me as the front and center 'victim' of any given situation; allowing me the power to then to justify carrying on as a victim. This process of stringing together negative ideas has become so calcified in my mind, so part of my being that I did not even know it was happening anymore. I could literally come up with these narratives within seconds; I was great at this. And oh! how miserable these narratives made me and the people around me. Sounds like a whacky and crazy condition huh? but in fact, humans do it all the time. I see the 'narratives' being constructed all the time. We combine the words that one person said yesterday to this other person's actions and connect it to a compliment from someone else and voila we have a narrative that must be true!

The second thought pattern, and it's somewhat connected to the above pattern, is the pure and utter belief in these assumption; no matter how painful and self detrimental they might be. A few years back, a person could literally tell me all the loving and wonderful things I could ever want to hear, yet, my mind would immediately twist it and morph it enough so that in the end my perception of it would be something else completely, something quite negative in fact. This second thought pattern, seems like quite an exotic condition as well, yet, unfortunately, it happens all around us, all the time. How many times have we heard simple kind words come out of someone else 's mouth and automatically labeled these comments as something else than what it was? Let me give an example. Having always had issues with my body image, I grew up being incredibly sensitive to comments made to me about either my weight or my look. Even an innocent and genuine compliment relating to my body would be immediately met with doubt and suspicion.

Since reading this book, I have since cured myself of this hurtful translation pattern and since then, I take people at their words and actions and don't read into them with all my garbage in the way. It feels absolutely amazing to really see and experience people and their actions without all my personal stuff getting in the way to translate them into something other than what it is.

Difficult Conversations - Setting boundaries we can live with

I have always hated difficult conversations. You know, like the one where you tell a friend he hurt your feelings, or the one where you might tell a coworker about an issue that needs to be mutually resolved. But the more I 'grow up' the more I find these difficult conversations an integral part of setting social guidelines as well as an essential key in establishing one's self respect.

I grew up being taught not to 'shake the boat'. As a child, I learned by watching my family that the right thing to do was excuse yourself when offered food or drink by a host. "Oh, no, I don't need a drink " or 'no thanks, I JUST ate" were the standard responses, regardless of whether it were true or not. In the process of becoming an adult I aimed to be more deliberate and logical about my choices and not have them simply be an opposite reaction to the way I was brought up. Part of this process has been addressing difficult issues that come up head on; regardless of its awkwardness level, regardless of how that might affect the relationship. A good friend once told me that 'you teach others how to treat you'. Taking that first step and directly addressing miscommunications and social issues as they come up is an integral part of teaching others how to treat you. The two are inextricably connected.

Having had many of these difficult conversations in my short life, I am painfully aware of the relationship between the purity of the intentions behind the words and its effectiveness level. There is no doubt in my mind that the effectiveness of the conversation is only equal to the purity of the intention behind the words exchanged within that conversation. For example, have you ever had an argument with someone and you just wanted to sting them with your words? I have. It felt great at the moment, but the argument only led to more anger and pain and ultimately after doing this several times you learn that nothing comes from breeding negative intentions and spewing hurtful words. Yet, if your intention derives from a good and honorable place, the results are bound to be more pleasing. You still may have hurt feelings, but at least on your end you know you operated from a place where hurting the other side was not the primary goal.

The world is not a perfect place. And as the Buddhists say, the only thing that is predictable is that everything is unpredictable. Expecting life to go smoothly, and for people around us to always just know what to do and how to behave is a bit of a tall order in a world where not one person is like another. We may not be able to control the outside world, but we should absolutely know ourselves enough to respect our own personal boundaries and speaking up for ourselves by having those difficult conversations.