Parenting Plus - Maria

It's time to talk a little about Astrology

2011-05-04T14:51:00.004-04:00

I wrote this months ago, during record cold and snowy winter, but couldn't post. Sorry, some of this will be hard to read without imaginning a blizard-like conditions outside your window.

I am a snake according to Chinese astrology - we are wise and lazy. Usually it means that we do our chores fast and efficient so we could get home and relax. Driving to work through the ice and snow is not an efficient use of my time, it always makes me think of how wrong it is. In the snow people should stay home and allow those few who really have to be there to do their work without us being in their way. All these plow machines, fire and police emergency vehicles need all this space we take on the road standing or sliding slowly. Why are we forced to go to work on days like today? Is it because some rich people don't want to lose a little of their profits? They are losing anyway. Is it because our mayor does not want to pay us when we don't work? He wastes the money anyway.

These days are not productive!!!! We could stay at home and remove the snow off the driveways - that would be productive. People who are cold, tired after 3 hours ride, and thinking how it will take them another 3 hours to get back home can't be productive. I am sitting at work, listening to the sirens of emergency vehicles, and thinking how we all pretend to be working.

On the other hand all those impatient tigers, rats, monkeys and pigs, they would get on the road anyway, even if they do not have to go to work, because they just can't sit at home and wait for a better weather. They would prevent the emergency vehicles to do their work anyway. It would not be enough for them to just dig the snow off their driveway and go back inside to watch TV.

When I think of all of that I realize, my dream of having all snow days work free will stay just a dream for a long time.

A letter to my metamorphosis class

2010-11-11T09:56:00.004-05:00

I know you will be wonderful adults. I know many of you will become professionals in the fields of your choices. I know many of you will be still dancing and screaming and clapping even later in life. I also know that all you successes will come to you harder than to some other people; you will have to do more in order to get the same. Why? Because it seems that those people who can show self-discipline and self-control get it with minimal effort and when they work hard they become unstoppable.
Nature or gods give you your talent, but then you have to apply self-discipline and self-control to develop your talent and achieve your real heights. You already heard a lot about how hard you have to sit at the table and study and read, and solve problems. Today I want to talk about what if you have a talent that requires strong muscles and cool head?
This video is about modern dancers. How much do you think they had to practice and how much sweat was poured before they became this good?

What about this guy? How much self-sacrifice and self-discipline did he have to apply? Now guy like him teach you a step-by-step process, was there somebody for him? I really think he developed all these tricks by falling getting up and moving on.

This one is called mountain biker: Did he ever fall?

How much self-discipline and self-control these guys had to apply to achieve these heights? Was it easy?
Maybe yes maybe no. They found their passion and their purpose. And then through pain and sweat they defined gravity. There are physics teachers who use these examples to study Newton’s Laws. There are scientists who work with this people to study human physiology. Can you imagine how strong their muscles must be?
What about this?

To achieve a success it’s absolutely necessary to stop singing and dancing and start working from time to time. I love the fact that you are so happy and jolly, now I want to see you concentrated on your goals and achieve them. By the way, setting your goals is a hard work too, especially at your age. What do you want? What do you want for yourself? I am not talking about what your parents want or what your teachers want for you. What do you want? Let’s go and get that.

Do you see how much they enjoy the strength of their bodies. They also enjoy unbelievable view from up there.
Am I becoming an inspirational speaker? Ha

Who are the Judges? And Where are the Rubrics?

2010-09-28T12:57:00.014-04:00

For those who do not know what Rubrics are - it's a new term in teaching, parameters for grading your creative work. It is a list or a chart that shows the students what they will be graded on as they hand in their work.

Recently I read an article about teachers. In that article american teachers were compared to the teachers from other countries and were given a very disappointing low grade. The teachers from other countries were so much better, they even had better grades when they themseves were students. I was reading and thinking: who are those superbeings? How do they know who is a good teacher and who is not a good teacher? Where did they place the Rubricks to compare us with each other?

Later another thought came to me. Again I was reading an article, but this time somebody tried to tell me which chocolate chip cookie was the best. And again I marveled about this superbeing who knows what I like in my cookies. But then I thought that my Rubrics for my favorite cookie is very different from somebody else Rubrics for the same cookie. I love them chowy and soft, others love them cranchy and hard. How can we put those things in the same Rubrics. No we need different cookies. I love the fact that I can be in a different mood and get a different cookie. Nobody can tell which cookie is the best.

This is why competitions do not work any longer. They do not work at a work place, they do not work at schools. Competitions still work in sports and only for entertaining the fans. They still help the organizers to collect a lot of money. But then those fans go home and go to work and they do not compete there they cooperate. They help each other. They brainstorm together to achieve even higher heights, some that were not achievable by one competing individual alone.

Back to poor bad teachers of America. I know these people, I work with them for many years, I know how many really bad teachers I met in my 23 years of teaching. The numer is 3. Out of these 3, 2 left the job, and the third one already retired.

If we are so bad, why is that every country is sending us their teachers and researchers to learn our methods? If we are so bad, why do they want to learn how we do it? If we are so bad, why do we have Classroom 2.0 and Future of Education, and Ning, and Wiki, and Google - all are here, the headquaters are located in the United States.

But the main thought I want to deliver here is that nobody is good for everybody. I might be a great teacher, but there are always some students with who my methods do not work. I am bad with those who need my instructions at all times and has no initiative. I try to teach my students how to be independent learners and once in a while I meet a kid who watches me and wants me to tell him or her what to do all the time. I give them less and less instructions as they grow into their independent routine. So here I am a bad teacher, because I didn't tell the kid what to do and was surprised when he asked. I am hard and cranchy with a kid like that, but chwoy and soft with those who jumped in and started to create.

So again, who is the judge? and who writes the Rubrics?

What is your goal as a parent?

2010-08-07T09:11:00.001-04:00

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog for a while. I consider myself an experienced parent. I even think sometimes that I am a successful one. Of course, I had felt differently about my skills as a parent before, but the longer I was a mother the better I did the job. Today I am just enjoying and ripping the fruits of my success. Why do I think that I am a successful parent? My children are very young, they are not completely settled in their lives, they will have to go through many difficult changes, and they will have to acquire many life skills. They do not always agree with me. They do things their own way. They make their own decisions and live the consequences. What is my role?
When we are young parents we imagine our perfect kids. What is a perfect kid? Is it the kid who is always obeying what you tell them? Is it a kid who does all the chores? Makes the bed? Completes the homework? Is polite with adults? What happens with those obedient kids when they become adults?
One of the stories my husband used to tell me about his teenage years stuck in my head. I always tell this story to illustrate how little some parents know about their children if they are trying to bring up their perfect kids. He was in ninth grade. He had been smoking for a couple years by then and, when going out with his classmates, he used to drink some cheap wine. Here, I have to add that my husband died before he reached his 42nd year from alcoholic hepatitis and bleeding pancreas. He did quit smoking though a few years before that. So the story went that his mother regularly and publicly was saying to everybody she knew that Her Son would never smoke and Her Son would never drink. She did have a pretty good idea of how her perfect kid would be. He used to sit next to her, listening to her image of him and nod.
Now my children tell me that same thing is happening in almost every family they know: the kids live their lives without telling their parents anything.
First, I have to tell you I am not judging anybody, we all work, we all have to feed the kids, we have to cook, clean, wash, pick up and drop dead every day and day after day. Even on vacation we are not really resting we have to ran around watch them and check if they are safe all the time.
You may not agree with me, but I consider my first success as a parent happened when my daughters discussed with me if they should start smoking at 11. The peer pressure was unbelievable, all the kids in these suburbs, where we had just moved, had been smoking since second grade. I used my persuasion talent and we managed to resist the peer pressure and postpone that by almost a year. I knew when they finally did start to smoke. They asked me questions after they saw their first porn film. They told me when they had sex for the first time. They had very few secrets from me and whatever they didn’t tell me they always told to each other. I think I am very lucky parent. I could share my values with my kids because we discussed everything that happened to them and had no secrets.
It was not easy. My heart was dropping somewhere into my knees after every new secret they told me. I had to watch not to start screaming and breaking furniture. But I promised them to be their safe heaven and I made sure that I helped them with every problem they brought to me. I still really value their trust.
One important rule I followed always: it was not me who went on to solve the problem, we discussed different possibilities, I would tell them what I would do in their place, and then they were on their own to face their conflict and their life lessons. That was the time when I realized for the first time that the goal of a parent is to help the kids grow up into happy independent adults. To become happy, a person has to learn how to be true to him or herself. To be independent, a person has to acquire many life skills that help him or her to solve conflict situations. If it was me running around and solving their problems they would learn only one thing – to sit at home and wait for the mommy to take care of their business.
Imagine a situation: my daughter didn’t do her homework, but she does not want to get a bad mark. That happened many times when she was in the elementary school. She is asking me what to do. I tell her that she has to come to the teacher before the lesson starts and tell him that the homework was not done because of this and this reason and she promises to complete the work. To do that was not easy for a 6-7-year-old, but she did that, and did that again, and again. It became so easy to her, that later in college it was her second nature to negotiate her work with her professors almost in all classes. Now she is saying she does not remember the first time, it just seems natural to keep them informed about her situation.
This is just one example, but that’s what I call an independent person and that is why I am a proud parent.

Find your passion

2010-07-04T15:56:00.001-04:00

Here is another TED idea worth spreading:

Sir Ken is right, of course, but how? How can we help the children to find their passions?
When I think of my own life, what was the hardest thing to do? Finding my passion and recognizing it was the hardest and took the longest. And I am one of the lucky ones who did find it. So, now as a teacher, I believe that the earlier we start bringing the topic of the passion the better chances the kids have.
On the other hand, we do bring the topic early, we always ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up. Some lucky kids just know, like this firefighter, but absolute majority has no idea of what can be their passion. That is why we still have to show them what's there to choose from. This is why the school has to have some basic curricula to help kids in finding their passions. We just have to allow them to choose and quit subjects that obviously are not their passion.
And, again, to some people some struggle is a necessity in becoming.
This is the beauty of the problem. There are as many solutions as there are people.

Old business model does not work for business either

2010-07-04T13:36:00.001-04:00

I love TED: the ideas worth spreading and in a few future blogs I am going to spread some of their ideas with a little of my own comments. Here is the first one:

I have to tell you as an experienced teacher the same rules apply to education. The education of the future will be organized around the kids questions and their needs, not on what adults know and believe worth learning. We must make education relevant to the kids lives to save the falling system.

Teaching is ART

2010-03-30T11:04:00.004-04:00

I have a Diploma; it’s hanged on the most Southern wall of my house as required by Feng Shui. The Diploma says that I am a Master of Art in Teaching Science. At first I was laughing at it; how can a person be an artist and a scientist at the same time. It took me almost twenty years to understand and really feel it. The job that I am doing IS ART. It requires inspiration and can inspire. I think about how I can make it better all the time. Some ideas can come in my sleep. I deal with people and their emotions all the time. I can affect many lives. Yes, my job is ART.
Many of these conditions are true for science too, but science itself has no emotions, it deals with the world around more than with the people. People are affected only when the scientist discovered and explained something that would trigger the technology to move to the next level. In most cases the science affects all people in the same way. “Good” science brings more useful technology; “bad” science brings more harmful and destructive technologies. This is a traditional view, in reality there is no “good” or “bad” science they both at different stages of their development can bring us useful or destructive technologies, sometimes at the same time. For examples, batteries that are so good for the environment when new and working are extremely poisonous to the landfills when dead.
Art is like people it also is affected by technology not the other way around. Each artist has different effect on different people. One piece of art can turn your life around, the other you’ll pass without even noticing. And, of course, Art causes turmoil of emotions on both sides: the artist who creates it and the viewer who is affected by it. In reality it can be a viewer, a listener, an observer, a reader, a pupil.
I think I do understand it now. I am an artist who works with live human beings, not paint or ink. The result of my inspiration will affect many of my students. Without an inspiration I will not touch them at all. If I allow my sadness, or anger, or hate control my teaching I can affect those young lives in a negative way like nobody else. No parents or friends can affect those lives as I can.
I must be kind and forgiving to teach these qualities by example. I must be understanding and caring to be able to help them grow. I also must treat each of them as an individual, recognize and respect their differences even when the state requires them to pass the same test. Each of them has different needs in order to pass the same test. My art is to find this little something that will help this one student learn what he or she needs to learn and pass this next exam, sometimes without them even noticing what I did for them. And then I have to repeat the process of the search with each next student in each next class.
Of course, there are tricks and strategies that work with more than one student. This is why it is possible to teach how to be an artist. There are rules of perspective and the color wheel. But like any other art teaching can give you this moment of inspiration when you know that you created a masterpiece, when all little parts fell in place, and you affected this person life forever, and he or she will be a happier human being from this moment on. Like I remember I became a happier person when I first saw how the fishes in the Matisse’s aquarium started to move;or when the pink sand on Gauguin’s Hawaiian beach turned alive and vibrant.

Open Cover Letter

2010-03-30T11:02:00.001-04:00

To whom it may concern:

I am an ATR (Absent Teacher Reserve) in New York city 2009-2010 school year.

I am looking for a position of a Science or Math teacher at a New York City public middle or high school. I have two NYS and two NYC licenses to teach Chemistry and General Science and Mathematics. My licenses allow me to teach students from 7 to 12 grades.
I am a veteran NYC teacher with 22 years experience working at two South Bronx public schools: one was Martha Neilson School (Bronx site of the Program for Pregnant and Parenting Teens) and the other New Schools for Arts and Sciences. I am out of job for no other reason than closing of my schools by current city administration. I am one of those bad teachers who worked at those bad schools and who deserve to be out on the street without pay according to the city proposed new contract.
Let me tell you how bad I am and how bad were the closed schools.
I was the only science teacher at my school, so I taught all science courses required by the state. I can teach and I was teaching all of the following: Living Environment, Earth Science, Regents Biology, Environmental Science, Chemistry, Physics – all Regents high school courses, in addition Foundation of Science and Physical Science for 8th Graders, Foundations of Math, Math A, Math B. I also taught science and math for special ed. students. After being in my classes the students were passing State Tests, but more importantly they had more positive attitude towards learning and education in general. Many of them were first generation in their families with a high school diploma. I am very proud of each and every one of them.
I am also very proud to be a colleague of so many other bad teachers who worked at my bad schools. They all were and are devoted to the job and the kids. They are my heroes. I love them and I am one of them. We really made a difference in so many lives. We were not just people who delivered some info for the test; we delivered a better life, sometimes in a form of food or clothes, sometimes in a form of shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen. We helped to file job and college applications. We took them to museums and theatres, to parks and to Washington D.C. Yes, our students talked to the congress people and to the senators, to superintendents and judges.
All our students were computer literate. They could, of course, type a paper, but they also could create great Power Point Presentations, Publisher Brochures, Blog online, make glogs, take tests and quizzes online, search Internet, and get around the city blocking (the latter they did on their own). Our students kept their work in virtual portfolios in digital format. The same applies to the teachers: all bad teachers were computer literate, all teachers used either Dell or Apple computers or both for the instructions, and all of us used Smart White Board.
Yes, I am one of these bad teachers from the bad schools that deserved to be closed.
I am looking for a job. I want to continue teaching for another 3 or 4 years. I know I can do a good job teaching for the test because I have nothing against the tests. I know that new schools will be open to replace the closed ones and new young teachers will be as bad as we were. I also know that the city students didn’t suffer too much when I lost my job. I am nobody special, just a bad teacher from a bad school.
I am looking for a job for me. I don’t want to lose my house – I love it. I want the security of a twice a month paycheck so I could do something I love – teach the kids science and math. I want to keep doing the bad job.

Respectfully,

Business Model

2010-03-20T12:57:00.003-04:00

I have been very lucky. I have been working in 2 very good schools in the last 22 years. First school, The Program for Pregnant and Parenting Teens, was closed because of the tightening budget in 2007. The other school was closed in June 2009 by Bloomberg-Klein administration.

Why am I saying that the schools were good? It’s because we really served the kids well. The teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, community services, nurseries for the babies, clinic – all of us helped the kids find the way out of difficult situations and become independent and self-reliant human being. In both schools we had great stories to tell. In both schools we had kids who needed help in breaking the cycle and being the first generation in their families to graduate from a High school, move on to a college and achieve a new level of success.

In both cases the schools were closed because the city was trying to save some money. They say they use a “business model” of accountability. They say our numbers were not good: either attendance was low or Regents Tests scores didn’t measure up.

My question is: why would you use the failing “business model” that brought the entire country into an economic recession to schools and replace some more humane model that worked for those kids?

I really don’t understand, why somebody would proudly say that they use this “business model” when everybody knows that the model makes rich richer and poor poorer. Would you use this model if you were poor? Bloomberg became richer when he closed our schools, the city became poorer.

Because of this “business model” the greedy executives, who would make profits even if their clients lose money, got so much that banks do not have any money to lend any longer. Would you use this model if you were not this executive? Bloomberg and Klein are those executives who make those decisions.

I have been lucky, in the last 22 years I made a difference in so many lives for the better future. I hope the kids in the new schools get as much help and understanding from young and new teachers and principals as we were giving to our students in our “bad” schools.

Piaget and Standards

2010-03-19T20:19:00.002-04:00

My daughter wrote this paper, when she was in college. I think she makes a good point: Is there any sense in our NYS “standards”?

It has been found that the American school system is not as strong as the rest of the worlds in math and science. There have been articles written on this subject across the country for the last few years. In June of 2005, in Ohio at a national PTA meeting, Margaret Spellings, the education secretary said that “poor attitudes and low test scores nationwide continue to plague the system and limit progress.”(p.08.A) Shortly before this meeting Spellings had made a trip to Japan, where “the Japanese are investing in math and science courses while Americans are worrying about the ink color teachers use to grade papers—preferring purple rather than the ‘angry red.’(p.08.A) American children score lower on average on performance assessment exams. An article from a newspaper in Colorado reported in December of 2004 that a comparison held by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study found that of 29 countries, America came in 24th. “The usual pattern with international comparisons is that American students do worse the longer they’ve been in school.”(p.7.E)

Everyone is pointing fingers, and trying to figure out why are American students failing in math and science? Some argue that teachers are not proficient enough in their fields. Some say that courses are too hard. Some even say that children just aren’t able to learn.

How has this happened? How have we come so far and now see that children are just not able to learn? Isn’t it in their nature to be curious, to explore, and isn’t it this characteristic that drives children to learn, to walk, and to talk?
I remember when I was young (4-7yrs.) and my parents would take me to camp on the weekends and through summers. My sister and I would make friends with other children our age while we chased small animals through the woods, or caught frogs by the water. We brought back any specimen we could find and interview our parents to get every bit of information we could about these animals. We would compare them to other animals we caught, big frogs versus little frogs, fish, which we couldn’t catch by hand but could catch using bait, and lizards that ran away while we still held their tails. These things are all parts of science, and at that age when I was still learning through physical contact, these are easy concepts to understand. I could categorize big, small, green, furry, fast, etc. These are elements we use in studying science, and they’re fun and easy for kids to understand. It is impossible that children are unable to learn.

It may be that teachers and supervisors aren’t proficient in math and science. It may be that standards and teaching methods are not corresponding, complementary or unified. It may be that courses are hard, but are they too hard or are they mismatched according to the stages of cognitive development?

Piaget is a star in the childhood developmental field because of his discoveries in how children understand and explain their worlds as they learn. Jean Piaget is a Swiss theoretician who discovered that children make similar mistakes on IQ tests according to their age. Using this information Piaget designed four distinct stages of cognitive development starting at birth going on through adulthood.
The first stage, birth until two years of age, is the Sensorimotor stage during which an infant and toddler learns to “organize activities in relation to the environment through sensory and motor activity.”(p. 30) It is during this stage that children learn that just because they can’t see something or someone doesn’t mean it has ceased to exist. Children learn that their actions have reactions and practice and repeat actions to test results.

At age two children move on to the Preoperational stage. This stage lasts until about seven years old. At this stage children are fascinated by everything around them and use play and language to correspond to the things they see and experience, but do not think logically yet. This is the age when language acquisition is extremely rapid. During this period children imitate everything they see and here. They start to ask questions about what is happening around them, although these questions are usually absurd or unscientific, but they are still reaching to understand. Children ask questions like “how do dogs get married,” and “why is the moon following me.”

The third stage starts at age seven and is called the Concrete Operations stage. It is during this stage that children start to think logically. They can apply all the things they learned earlier in more areas because now they can recognize a logical pattern. During the Preoperational stage a child will say a pound of bricks is heavier than a pound of feathers, because bricks are heavier than feathers. It is during the Concrete Operations stage that a child given the same example will realize that a pound of anything is equal to a pound of anything else.
Another example was my mother’s experience in first grade; she grew up in Russia and the system is different, she was seven years old and practicing cursive lettering. My mother remembers that they had been in first grade for a while now and she knew how to write the entire alphabet, and when her teacher asked to right a row of ten little “u’s” my mother was ready for the challenge. She looked down at her paper and started to imagine how she could write the smallest “u” in the class. She wondered for a minute and realized that this request is not possible only one of the students can write The smallest “u” and this is the second that it dawns on her the teacher wants a lower case “u” not a little “u.” She realized her misunderstanding and was about to start her lettering when the student next to her excited by his achievements nudged her to look and see he had managed to write a row of ten of the smallest “u’s.” This story illustrates that transition, how normal it is for children to think this way up until around 7 years of age, and how their thought processes evolve into logical assessments. Although children are able to think rationally they cannot yet think abstractly, which is the ability they gain after the age of eleven when they move from the Concrete Operations stage to the Formal Operations stage.

The Formal Operations stage is the last stage in Piaget’s model of cognitive development. During this stage, children, adolescents and adults learn to think abstractly and philosophically. They no longer need to experience learning “hands on.” Students can now discuss possibilities, create and plan hypothesis and experiments. Earlier children were experiencing and testing their surroundings based on what they could see touch and hear, now based on that information they can understand things they have not yet seen, touched or heard.

Many have argued that Piaget’s model is defective because he underestimates children’s abilities. Some theorists say that cognitive development is continuous opposed to Piaget’s rigid stage theory. These criticisms may be true but do not affect the validity of what he says. In Piaget’s theory of cognitive development children start without any knowledge except that which they can experience, they repeat actions to see if they get the same reactions, they observe their surroundings and ask questions based on these findings, eventually they learn logic and can delve into solving more complex problems eventually solving problems using abstract theories. This model needs to be introduced into the American learning system to make standards that match Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. If children are practicing and learning material appropriate to their age group they would not have problems acquiring and demonstrating their achievements, and especially will not lose their eagerness to learn.

The nation does not have set standards that must be met for children at various stages. Each state develops their requirements for each grade or school level. Very often it is only the teacher that plans what the students will learn. There are, although, nationwide tests given to assess children’s overall academic development. I have the standards from New York State printed and given to teachers in 1999. These books are now seven years old but the system standards have not changed; these are the current standards.

These Performance Standards list what is required of students at Elementary, Middle and High school levels. There are many sets of standards in different areas of the subjects, so I have chosen two sets that have the most general approach to Math and Science teaching and learning. Mathematical Skills and Tools, and Scientific Connections and Applications are the categories I have chosen you can find in the appendix below.

I have labeled each standard with a p, c, or f; these labels are according to the Piagetian Cognitive Development model and so p stands for Preoperational stage, c stands for Concrete Operations stage, and f stands for Formal Operations stage. I categorized the standards as Physical contact/tactile learning (p), Physical contact/ tactile with logical/critical thinking (c), and abstract/theoretical thinking (f). Now my goal is to create an academic system that learns the same material that is required above but in an order that matches Piagetian theory, hoping to maximize the students ability as they learn meanwhile encouraging cognitive development.

Since in the first, Preoperational, stage children do not think but are able and even enjoy collecting data I would start their mathematical and scientific educations using these inclinations. We would not discuss topics too complex to understand without being able to see and touch the matter being studied. Anything labeled p would be studied and mastered before finishing second grade (at which time most students turn seven).

Math could be practiced counting sides and naming shapes, (i.e. Octagon has eight sides) since language acquisition is very rapid at this stage of development this is the perfect age to practice math vocabulary of observable materials. Measuring can be used to learn to add, and multiply as students learn about length, area, volume, weight, etc. Measurements do not require logical or critical thinking, and would be easy for preoperational children to stay on task with. Children can practice reading clocks (i.e. what time is it now? What time will it be in 20 minutes? In one hour?)
In science children can learn the physical aspects of science. They can practice reading thermometers, and show what is cold and warm. The can watch the weather. Leaves turn colors in the fall; snow always falls in the winter, and during the spring flowers bloom, and leaves grow back on to branches. They can go to zoos and botanical gardens with identifying books to label animal and plant varieties. Students can find their way to a prize using a compass. Science that children can physically experience is best during this stage because their appetites are already whetted and their thirst will grow through their discoveries.

After second grade, more complex problems can be introduced. The teacher can go on to the next step in all subjects introduced earlier. Our weather corresponds to our seasons which define our climate, but in Arizona, in the desert, their climate is different and so is their weather. The animals that live in New York are also different from those that live in Arizona, or Africa, Russia, etc. Students can study Biomes, Food Chains for each Biome, Life Cycles for many plants and animals. Human Anatomy can also be studied, this is when we can introduce the organs, and eventually nutrition and drug effects on the body.

Math can also become more complicated. Before students were measuring to find length, width, height and weight, now the teacher can explain how to learn volume, area, and circumference, through measurement meanwhile also explaining the formulas that find these answers faster. The point is to learn that the formulas are logical and easier than measuring the entire block over and over again. At this age children understand logical and spatial realities and these new abilities should be put to use right away so students can further the development of these skills. Higher levels of previous problems can continuously be introduced. If a student has problems understanding a problem, go over an earlier version of the problem to show how similar the work is and that only the numbers vary in each of the problems.
By the time students are in high school, when they are entering the Formal Operations Stage, they will understand that the numbers are a small part of the subject of math, and will be able to discuss it in abstract ways in which there could be days that no numbers are mentioned. Students wouldn’t have to discuss shapes or areas anymore since they will be committed to memory as well as formulas with which to describe them with.

Science in High school can also go further to explain the theoretical. Students can study cells, atoms, DNA, complex abstract problems and speculations in fields from Biology to Chemistry to Physics and Astronomy.

According to Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory students need to learn in order or observations, logic, and then lastly theory. In the New York System now children are expected to learn “big ideas and unifying concepts” from an elementary school level, before they even know of the possibilities in their own classrooms. In math children are given problems that are easy at first, but math does not evolve from the calculations they had to go through in first and second grade. They are ready to learn the reasoning of math but are denied and forced to study shapes and computations over and over again.

In America people blame teachers, supervisors, parents, and even children for not learning math and science as well as the rest of the world. The explanation to why in America students don’t learn these subjects as well is buried beneath layers or politics, funding and red tape. Anyone can explain how teachers aren’t able to teach their subjects; supervisors can set rules against any creativity; parents might not be available to answer all their children’s questions. There are many issues at hand here. I am only posing a question: Why do we study Piaget in Childhood Development if we don’t apply his theory to our children?

Appendix: NYS Standards:

2010-03-19T20:13:00.003-04:00

The state requires that at the Elementary school level a student should be able to “demonstrate fluency” in basic math concepts and use appropriate methods of solving problems as follows:
* Adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides whole numbers correctly; that is; (c)
i. knows single digit addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts;
ii. adds and subtracts numbers with several digits;
iii. multiplies and divides numbers with one or two digits;
iv. multiplies and divides three digit numbers by one digit number

* Estimates numerically and spatially (f)
* Measures length, area, perimeter, circumference, diameter, height, weight, and volume accurately in both the customary and metric systems (c & p)
* Computes time (in hours and minutes) and money (in dollars and cents) (c)
* Refers to geometric shapes and terms correctly with concrete objects or drawings, including triangle, square, rectangle, side, edge, face, cube, point, line, perimeter, area, and circle; and refers with assistance to rhombus, parallelogram, quadrilateral, polygon, polyhedron, angle, vertex, volume, diameter, circumference, sphere, prism, and pyramid (p & c)
* Uses +, -, x, /,$,%, and decimal point, correctly in number sentences and expressions (c)
* Reads, creates, and represents data on a line plots, charts, tables, diagrams, bar graphs, simple circle graphs, and coordinate graphs (c)
* Uses recall, mental computations, pencil and paper, measuring devices, mathematic texts, manipulatives, calculators, computers, and advice from peers as appropriate, to achieve solutions; that is, uses measuring devices, graded appropriately for given situations, such as rulers (customary to the inch; metric to the centimeter), measuring cups (customary to the ounce; metric to the milliliter), and scales (customary to the pound; metric to the gram) (c & p) (p.168)

The state requires that at the Middle school level a student should be able to “demonstrate fluency” in basic math concepts and use appropriate methods of solving problems as follows:

* Computes accurately with arithmetic operations on rational numbers (c)
* Knows and uses the correct order of operations for arithmetic computations (c)
* Estimates numerically and spatially (f)
* Measures length, area, volume, weight, time, and temperature accurately (c)
* Refers to geometric shapes and terms correctly (p)
* Uses equations, formulas, and simple algebraic notation appropriately (f)
* Reads and organizes data on charts and graphs, including scatter plots, bar line, and circle graphs, and Venn diagrams; calculates mean and median (f)
* Uses recall, mental computations, pencil and paper, measuring devices, mathematic texts, manipulatives, calculators, computers, and advice from peers, as appropriate, to achieve solutions (c) (p.168)

The state also has requirements for High school level students to be able to “demonstrate fluency” in math as follows:

* Carries out numerical calculations and symbol manipulations effectively, using mental computations, pencil and paper, or other technological aids, as appropriate (c)
* Uses a variety of methods to estimate the values, in appropriate units, of quantities met in applications, and rounds numbers used in applications to an appropriate degree of accuracy (c)
* Evaluates and analyzes formulas and functions of many kinds, using both pencil and paper and more advanced technology (f)
* Uses basic geometric terminology accurately, and deduces information about basic geometric figures in solving problems (p)
* Makes and uses rough sketches, schematic diagrams, or precise scale diagrams to enhance a solution (p)
* Uses the number line and Cartesian coordinates in the pane and in space (c & p)
* Creates and interprets graphs of many kinds, such as function graphs, circle graphs, scatter plots, regression lines, and histograms (c)
* Sets up and solves equations symbolically (when possible) and graphically (c)
* Knows how to use algorithms in mathematics, such as the Euclidean Algorithm (f)
* Uses technology to create graphs or spreadsheets that contribute to the understanding of a problem (c)
* Writes a simple computer program to carry out a computation or simulation to be repeated many times (f)
* Uses tools such as rulers, tapes, compasses, and protractors in solving problems (p)
* Knows standard methods to solve basic problems and uses these methods in approaching more complex problems (c) (p.168)

A New York state has separate standards for “Scientific Connections and Applications.” These standards require a student to produce demonstrations in understanding as follows in Elementary school:

* Big ideas and unifying concepts, such as order and organization; models, form and function; change and constancy; and cause and effect (f)
* The designed world, such as development of agricultural techniques; and the variability of technological designs (f)
* Personal health, such as nutrition, substance abuse, and exercise; germs and toxic substances; personal and environmental safety (f)
* Science as a human endeavor, such as communication, cooperation, and diverse input in scientific research; and the importance of reason, intellectual honesty, and skepticism (f) (p.202)

In Middle school the standards for the same category are:

* Big ideas and unifying concepts, such as order and organization; models, form, and function; change and constancy; and cause and effect (f)
* The designed world, such as the reciprocal nature of science and technology; the development of agricultural techniques; and the viability of technological designs (f)
* Health, such as nutrition, exercise, and disease; effects of drugs and toxic substances; personal and environmental safety; and resources and environmental stress (f)
* Impact of technology, such as constraints and trade offs; feedback; benefits and risks; and problems and solutions (f)
* Impact of science, such as historical and contemporary contributions; and interactions between science and society (f) (p.202)

Finally, the High school standards of scientific connections and applications are as follows:

* Big ideas and unifying concepts, such as order and organization; models, form and function; change and constancy; and cause and effect (f)
* The designed world, such as the reciprocal relationship between science and technology; the development of agricultural techniques; and the reasonableness of technological designs (f)
* Health, such as nutrition and exercise; disease and epidemiology; personal and environmental safety; and resources, environmental stress, and population growth (f)
* Impact of technology, such as constraints and trade-offs; feedback; benefits and risks; and problems and solutions (f)
* Impact of science, such as historical and contemporary contributions; and interactions between science and society (f) (p.202)

Old Things: trash or treasure?

2010-03-19T16:55:00.004-04:00

Every spring and fall I go through my closets and decide what I keep and what I donate. Every time I find something to keep and every time there is something to pass on to others. There is a saying: one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. That saying made the new rules of Green Living possible: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. I can give away some of my old things so somebody else could reuse them and we together will reduce the content of landfills.

In spite of the saying the idea is new for America. More traditional view is that everything new and young is good, strong, energetic, enthusiastic, and brings money; and everything old is really a trash and a waste. Old things must be replaced by new ones; old surfaces must be resurfaced, old houses rebuilt, old furniture thrown out. Same is true about people: the old should just disappear, so they do not bother the gentle eye of an observer. I know, I know, written by an old person ;) But I am not as old as you think.

On the contrary, some old things never become trash, they become classic and antique. Unfortunately, this thought is not a happy one, because so many things do become garbage with age and overuse, and only a few become classic and chic if taken care properly. How many old people are thrown out of our lives? And how many of them become respected authority on a subject? Alas, even the most brilliant of us often become classic only after death. Often we take better care of the things than of the people.

Remember last year, when this old and experienced pilot landed on the Hudson River? I was thinking that he showed to the world that we are not dead yet. We are at the peak of our ability. At this age the experience is already there and the energy is still there. We are supposed to be the most valuable people at our jobs. 50 years old is not old even for Hollywood any longer. Some of us are living classics.

You, Mr. Bloomberg, just don’t know who. You are afraid to waste your money on what you think is old trash, so you are throwing out all experienced teachers when you close our schools. But remember this: you are one of us and in a couple of years you’ll become the same society trash, like you just made of me and others.

No, I am not depressed; I am at a fork on the road of my life. Which way to go?

What is science?

2010-03-08T13:43:00.009-05:00

Recently I received an email with the following questions. I decided to post my reply here and send this student a link:

1. How has science change throughout history??
To start we first must agree on the definition.
Science is an observation of the world around and an attempt to find explanations to the phenomena observed.
If we all agree on the definition then we can say that science changed through history thanks to the new tools for observation.
It was science that explained to the ancient people that the sun went around the earth. That was the only possible explanation to the observation of the sun going up and down every day. Technology allowed people to build high ceiling cathedrals that allowed Galileo to observe the daily change in the swinging of the pendulum which in turn allowed him to come up with an explanation that its the earth turning on its axis made the sun seemed to go around the earth. Our days we have planes and satellites flying up there and observe and record how the round earth going around the sun.
You can say the science changed through out the history, I would say that technology changed, but the science stayed true to its definition.

2. Is science based on facts or opinion??
Science is based on objective observations, measurements, and records available at the time.

3. Why are there so many different meanings of science??
I am not aware of any different definitions of science. If you do, recite them and put your references.

4. Is it possible to really prove anything with science??
If it is not proven it is not science.

5. How would you answer the question “What is Science” to a high school student??
I respect high school students enough to tell them the same thing I tell you here. Why should the definition be different for the high school kids?

6. What could be done to minimize the misunderstanding of science??
Nothing. If you don't want to understand you will never understand. The latter apples to everything in life not just to science or math. People "understand" whatever they want or choose to "understand".

7. Can you formulate a theory of how will science change in ten years??
Even more computers and robots will be in use for observations and recording.

8. What is the difference between Chemistry, Biology, and Physics??
You really can use a glossary of a textbook or a wikipedia? Chemistry is a study of matter, Biology is a study of life, and Physics is a study of forces in the world around us.

9. In order to understand science, how important is it to understand the past.?
Some people really need to see how the invention happened, but not all of us. Many people can learn science without memorizing the name of the person, who first explained the phenomenon and the circumstances around it.

10.Is science strictly based on theory?
Not at all. It never is based on any theory. Science is based on observations and measurements. Theory is an explanation for the observation, many theories changed as our observation abilities changed. I mostly admire those geniuses who could predict some of the explanations before the obvious observation was available for the general public. One example I already showed you above how Galileo explained the earth's rotation before any plane flue around.

Another example from biology: the word germ appeared in our vocabulary in 1644 almost 10 years before the word microscope was added. That means some genius while observing some phenomenon around predicted the existence of microorganisms before we could actually see them.

I'll post this now, but I will edit it later.

Just a few more words about Diabetes

2010-02-25T08:40:00.005-05:00

I read this book last summer, my daughter sent it to me and it was the right time for me.

Now it's been almost a year since I stopped eating sugar completely. I didn't miss it and I am not going back to adding sugar into my coffee. Now I believe it's taster without sugar :)

I lost about 30 pounds during this year, by just taking sugar out. Not all sugar, I eat unlimited amount of fruits. Sometimes I think I'll go bankrupt because of apples, $10 of apples per day seems excessive. My apples are so expensive because they are either organic or from local farms. These apples cleans my liver from fructose and other toxins stored in a form of fat that had been deposited on my stomach for all the previous years. 30 pounds of fat is a lot of volume. I probably lost 2 dress sizes, all my cloths are hanging on me.

I reached a plateau in my weigh lose so I added some Pilates exercises recently, they build long slim muscles, so I hope to lose more fat, but I am not sure if I'll lose any weight. We'll see.

During this year I had 2 slices of cake, 8 portions of potatoes, and 4 portions of rice. I didn't suffer, I chose my protein diet and I liked it. For breakfast I eat ricotta cheese and coffee with half&half. Lunch always contains some meat and veggies. I drink combucha once or twice every day. My "desert" is made mostly of nuts. I love all kinds of nuts, so I practically do not limit myself in this area. Dinner is different every day, if I ate too many nuts, I just drink green tea and eat my apples. But if I am hungry I would eat soup, or eggs, or anything I have at home even some more meat or ricotta cheese. For those who would like to follow I also drink some water or lemon water (water with squeezed lemon juice) first thing in the morning. This is a good advice for regular bowl movements.

I understand that this kind of diet would be much harder to follow if I was a person who loved pasta, rice or bread, but I am not.

I am still a menopausal woman, I am still sweating every day, my hormones are still playing games with me. My vision is less blur and this summer I am going to train my eyes to work harder and I will wear glasses less and less.

I have some thoughts about some TV adds for people with Type 2 diabetes, vegans, and other people who want to change their diets. Just think about it: why do I need a chocolate cake? or why would a vegan want a burger? Why? The adds on TV make us believe that there are some kind of substitutes for what we suppose to be missing. Instead we have to tell ourselves that we are better off without all those products that made us sick in the first place. I do NOT want a chocolate cake. NEVER again I want to poison my body with any man-made product that will overload my poor liver with work it does not want to do. I am not a vegan, meat does not make me sick, but if it did, the first thing I would cut meat out of my diet for ever and wouldn't ask for a fake burger. Good luck to all of you people in creating your own diet that works for you :) and keeps you healthy.

About Discipline

2010-02-07T08:54:00.005-05:00

I do agree that kids need rules and discipline, they respect you more if you know the rules, follow them yourself, and enforce them, but they will be the first to curse you out and break all the rules if you apply negative reinforcement or if you do not apply the same rule to yourself. Even if they obey you and pretend that they follow the rules you are enforcing, they will break them the moment you turn away.

So before using positive reinforcement you must use your own example for every rule you want to set.

Too many people still think that to enforce the rules you have to be mean. The reality often is right opposite. The nicer you are the more kids will try to abide. Research shows again and again that positive reinforcement works much better than negative reinforcement, which only provokes and encourages resistance.

I want to share my personal experience on this topic :)

It happened in June 1982. We just started our Group for Establishing Trust between USA and USSR (peaceniks). The KGB and the soviet authority could not decide what to do with us. All we were saying was that we wanted peace, like everybody else in the country, but we wanted it independently. We never criticized the powers, but we made suggestions for building step by step atmosphere of trust between the people of these 2 countries. To decide what to do with us the KGB needed to talk to us, get the info of what it was all about. So they picked a few of us and brought to different militia precincts “for conversations”. I was one of those few people.

I found myself sitting in front of a nice intelligent man who tried to make a conversation. I, in turn, did not want the conversation, I wanted to stop talking. But he was so polite and nice; my tong could not turn and say something rude. I was sitting making short abrupt answers and thinking how can I tell him that I didn’t want to talk to him. Suddenly, he decided to change his tactics: he raised his voice and started to scream at me. We looked at each other, and we both knew, that whether he wanted or not I got what I wanted. I got the reason to stop talking to him. My entire posture changed: I set back, relaxed in my chair. I started to breathe deeply and freely. I think my eyes smiled. I did not need to talk to him any longer; he was not polite nice man any longer, so I didn’t have to do as he said either.
The rest of that hour was not important. He was saying some stupid things like: calling for peace during cold war could be punished by capital punishment and other stupid things like that. I didn’t listen. I was fine.

This story, just shows how hard it is to be rude to nice and positive powers.

Same happens with my students every day. Very often they do not want to follow my instructions, but I never give my instructions in a command-like manner. I just ask them politely to do something and they just follow. Very often they find the assignment interesting. Sometimes they try to rebel anyway. The best thing is that their rebellion is also quite polite and we usually can find some compromise when I do not make them complete the whole assignment, or I make a variation that best suits their taste and interests.

You see, with positive reinforcement everybody wins: you have your rules in place and the kids learn.

Are we all the same?

2010-01-31T09:07:00.017-05:00

Two days ago I switched from Cable company to Fios. I have to learn all about my new channels and services. So two days in a raw I am waking up to watch Pilates and Yoga. I love my new possibilities :) Today I am watching "What's the Alternative?" about treating different people with the same conditions using different methods. They discuss the natural ways to treat skin condition using household products. The doctor explained that different people develop similar health problem, but cannot be treated the same. They cannot even have the same diet or exercise routine.

This broadcast made me thinking about the other areas of our lives.

The same idea I heard from the financial consultant yesterday. She said: Trust your gut, do not listen to what other people tell you to do, only follow the advices if your gut tells you it's good advice or it is good for You.

There is an entire field of research. Their advisers, after testing, tell you what kind of a job will make you happy and complete person. Some really good guidance counselors in high schools test the students before helping them to apply for a college.

Most woman's magazines give you advices on how to listen to yourself and be different.

Now I am thinking of our education system :( and realize again and again that as always we are behind the rest of the areas of our life. Even worse. If the rest of the world is rushing forward with new individualized technology, new individualized testing and treatments, and exercises, and financial portfolios, and cars and houses. Everything in our lives is individualized except what you are doing at school.

The funniest thing is that they tell you that they prepare you for a job place and then make you do everything opposite to what you will be required at any job place. Ha-ha-ha-ha.

You will chose a job you want to do - at school you have to learn what the State requires you to learn.
You will be able to quit if you are not happy at work or ask for a raise at least - if you decide to quit school before a specific age the court will make you go there and police will escort you to your classes or threaten you parents with neglect charges.
You have rights at any work place: if you are sick you can take sick-day, you have meetings where you voice you concerns, there is a procedure to make complaints and grievances - school has such powers over the children that even parents are not able to fight for their kids rights. I do not want to go into details here, but those who experienced that know what I am talking about.
And at the end the students are required to take all the same tests at the same time and excel in all areas of their study. This one is the worst because it takes the individuality out of the question completely.

The politicians are preparing new regulations to strip any individuality off of our kids in the future. They call it higher standards. They don't even try to pretend that they will take individual needs of a student into consideration. Everybody has to fit the "Standard".

I want to ask you, where are standards in the chaos of life? How do we prepare the kids to their adult lives by making them to fit the "standard"? How can we bring up happy individuals by suppressing individuality from such a young age? How can they become independent individuals if they are only taught to be like the rest of the class?

You see, this new channels I have on my Fios really made me thinking :) and they say that TV is not good for you :) I'll never agree to that hahahahahaaaaaa

Some thoughts about abortions

2009-12-19T09:00:00.003-05:00

I decided that before I start talking about the school of my dreams I have to touch a couple of topics of child upbringing.

The first one, of course, is abortion. I know it's extremely controversial political issue which makes or brakes political careers. For 25 years I have lived in this country and the issue is as hot as it was then.

I couldn't believe my ears first time I learned that the politicians waste their time and our money discussing year after year what to do with the unborn children avoiding the topics of how would the society take care of the born ones.

Hey, woman, raise your hand if you wish to have an abortion!

Nobody?

Look at that! there is no woman who would like to get an abortion. None. Nada. Zero. So what are we really discussing???? Nothing? not an issue?

The woman knows if she is carrying an unwanted baby, this is why she chooses to get an abortion. If the society wants the unwanted baby, the society has to raise the child, take care of the child's needs, love him or her, and bring up a happy and fulfilled human being. Can we afford that? If, yes, let's prohibit the abortions and create nurseries for those babies; where the professionals will take care of the kids.

Here it is, a simple solution, open and real. If we care so much about those babies, let's take care of them. Let's give them education. Let's have them feel loved and important. The crime will go down, I promise you that.

Why are we arguing? Because of the hippocracy on both sides of the argument.

One side pretends that they love "Life" so much that they can't kill, but sends those children back to the families that didn't want them in the first place and then to wars where they get killed any way. Usually this opinion is supported by men and some women who can't concentrate on the real issue. Stalin, great humanitarian, sends his "Hi" to those men and women. He prohibited abortions in the Soviet Union. Did he care about lives? While he was in power some 40 millions of russians were killed in wars and concentration camps.

The other side doesn't care about the baby at all they only concentrate on the mother's need, wishes and capriciousness. It's her body, so let's cut the baby into pieces and take it out of there, even if it's already too late to make this kind of decision. We have to teach women the responsibility of being a mother and carrying the next generation of human beings. We do have to be given a limited time to make those decisions. We must show how we care about the baby because we do.

In my opinion extremes are never right. The truth is always in the middle. And unless we can afford taking care of those kids as a society we can't prohibit abortions. We can though prepare for the time when abortions will not be needed because we can take care of all the newborns as a society. Until then the issue should be left alone.

Let's talk about how we can bring up happy and fulfilled human beings.

Let's get Real

2009-11-26T09:40:00.007-05:00

I’ve been teaching for 22 years. I remember when I just started the job was “easy”: all I had to do, on my opinion of that time, was to transfer everything I knew onto the students. The roles of all participants were clear: teacher gives the students his/her knowledge and the students come to class to collect the knowledge. The image of a classroom was clear too: the students are sitting at their desks listening to the teacher. If the teacher asked a question the students had to raise their hands and the teacher would pick one person to answer the question. I don’t think there are many people who can see a different image of a school, but the number is growing and the time came for you to realize the defects of this fairytale image of a hypocritical pretense you still call a school. Kids are dropping out in record numbers and instead of thinking how to change and adjust to the kids' needs we are planning how to bring more police to schools.

Many books are written and read about the fairytale of love and marriage. The “happily ever after” is the rest of your life and the wedding is just one day from your past or your future. Your task is to make it happy life with or without this one day. School is like that too. School is a part of everybody’s life. Some people chose to stay and live this life as adults by becoming teachers, but the majority will not stay and didn’t choose to be at school. Circumstances, like laws, parents, society made them to be here. So the role-playing that all kids come to school to learn and teachers come to school to transfer their knowledge onto the kids is falling apart just like the fairytale of “happily ever after” is falling apart for their parents. We are adjusting to the adults problem by getting used to divorce as a part of life and take each case as individual couple problem, but we still treat the kids as a group not as individuals; and we still are trying to make them stay in school instead of making school relevant to their real life.

I am sorry that I started from something that seems negative. It is not negative, it’s an old fairytale. Fairytale is never negative it’s just not real. It’s a beautiful image of our great-grandparents of how they saw happiness. They had to work from early morning to late night. The labor was very hard: cut trees, break rocks, wash cloths by hand in cold water, dig soil, wax floors, plow, harvest, sew, weld, build, lay railroads and highways, etc. etc. etc… They wanted their kids to have a childhood, to play and learn. They fought for their kids’ right not to work until they become adults. For too many of them happiness associated with the time they did not have to work.

Times changed. More and more people find happiness at their workplace. More and more people go to work because they love what they are doing. More and more people are proud of their achievements and want their kids to achieve even more. This is why educated parents push their children to go after higher and higher education. This is why uneducated parents want their children to be the first generation in the family with high school or college degrees.

We have to thank technology for making that possible. Thanks to technology we do not have to dig soil or plow the fields with our bare hands. Thanks to technology we wash and dry our cloths with just a push of 2 buttons. Thanks to technology we can transport ourselves from one place to another without walking. Thanks to technology we build, sew, weld, plow, harvest, and even calculate by dialing, switching, and clicking. We don’t even have to cook every day any longer.

We have new problems though. We got fatter, we poison out bodies with pollution, we react to a little pollen with an allergy like it is a bio-attack, we consume antibiotics and hormones with our foods, our air is filled with harmful invisible rays, we cover the constant noise of our environment with loud music or TV broadcasting. I am not complaining, I love every moment of my life and I would not exchange it to anything else. I am just trying to be real.

For every need and every problem we, humans, got we have people who would take care of it. There are farmers to grow our food, there are cooks who will prepare it, there are vendors who will deliver it, there are drivers who will transport goods, there are sewing and knitting machine operators who will make out cloths, there are doctors and nurses who will take care of us when we are sick; there are entertainers and sportsmen and authors who will keep out minds occupied ;) There are lawyers and judges who will help us to solve a conflict. Unfortunately, there are also politicians who will deepen a conflict and journalists who will play on a controversy. But for them we have activists who will fight for our rights and create even more controversy :) There are scientists who are trying to answer our current questions and solve some of our problems. Of course, while they do that they create new questions and new problems for the future generations to search for more answers. For each of these occupations people have to learn, study, get education. For each of these occupations people will have to practice how to operate a specific piece of technology. The school is still very much needed, maybe, even more than ever before.

What is the role of school in this circus of life? And what is my role as a teacher?
Am I still required to transport my knowledge onto my students? What part of my knowledge is so valuable that worth to be transported? How do I know that the knowledge I give them is useful not just litter for their young brains? How do I know that they learned? Do tests measure learning?

Too many questions, too few answers.

Life is real, life is messy, life is unruly, life does not have all the answers to all of the questions and if school is a part of everybody’s life it should be as messy and as diverse as life itself. Your teacher should not give you the answers to all of her questions; she should help you to search for your answers to your own questions. Then and only then we’ll bring up generations of happy and content people. People who know themselves, can answer to their questions, and stand for their believes.

A teacher is not a boss; neither is he/she a friend. I am a servant of the future. When I give my students a mark on the report card this mark reflects how well I served and how happy the future will be. Believe me, the students do not want an “A” for nothing. They will lose any respect for a teacher who gave them a good mark for nothing. They always know when they deserved a real “A”.

Today I think that the role of school should be helping the students find their "calling". I know how hard, sometimes impossible this task can be for some people. I know that for majority of the students we will not find that "calling". But we’ll make the first step, we’ll help the young person to start learning about him or herself. The more they understand themselves and each other, the more excepting they are of themselves and each other, the happier beings they will be.

Here, I will try to start a new fairytale for the school of the future. After a while it’ll become as hypocritical as the current fairytale is, so what. Its life and life never stays the same. I am surprised the current school survived for so long.

Back to Education Topics: PBL

2009-08-09T13:16:00.002-04:00

PBL stands for Problem-Based or Project-Based Learning which has a potential to become the way people of the future learn and the schools of the future function.

I do have some “half-thought-through phrases”; I would even say “a-quarter-thought-through” or maybe “not-thought-through” images. We often hear that the students can’t do this or can’t answer that, can’t find something on the map, or can’t explain something we can. We concentrate on what they can’t do instead of admiring what they can do. They can hear you and keep up with the conversation while typing their text messages and listening to their music. They can achieve a level on the computer game that we don’t understand at all; or if we do understand the game then their speed is unbelievable. Any kid when given any electronic device begins to push the buttons and gets results even if this is a new device s/he didn’t see before. Too often I am thinking that we are trying to hold the kids back to our standards from the last century instead of creating new standards that might hold some value in the nearest future.

Imagine a fish in an ocean, the water runs through the gills, the fish gets the oxygen, but doesn’t slow down the flow of the water, and if needed moves to another spot and on and on. The ocean is the amount of information entering our consciousness all the time both kids and adults. We have to learn how to swim in it, catch what we need and leave what’s not. My generation was born into a lake, maybe even just a puddle of water, and it takes us time and effort to learn how to swim in the limitless ocean. The kids were born into the ocean; they have some kind of innate ability to filter the info and ignore whatever their sub-consciousness tells them is out of the area of their current interests. They naturally find the answers to their current questions fast and efficient. When I have a class in a computer lab the answers to my questions they find within first 2 minutes, the rest of the time is spent on creating the presentation. Of course, I am talking about the kind of questions that do not require “thinking”, like math problems often do. Creating the presentation does require “thinking”, but it is creative thinking, not math problem solving thinking. This is why the students love the creative part of the presentation, not the research part of gathering information which often is out of the area of their current interests. I, the teacher, brought the questions; they are my questions, not theirs.

The last thought is about current projects. There are quite a few very good projects created for the elementary school level. There are even more topics which are even more appropriate and interesting for the kids of that age which are completely missed and forgotten. There are just a couple of good projects for middle school and there are no good projects for high school kids at all. I think I know why it is happening. We, adults, make those projects. They are artificial, do not come from children natural curiosity. The younger the kids are the higher level of curiosity is. It goes down because we do not help them to find answers to their questions, instead we bring our questions to them and make their questions less important. Do you see what kind of message we send to the kids? Their questions are not important. Important questions are not interesting. Learning is work, unpleasant thing, when you are forced to answer somebody else's questions.

Of course, the teacher should help the kids with the questions as well as with the answers, but we have to learn how to trust the kids' instincts. Introduce the new topic and allow each kid study it only to the depth of his or her choice. For most of the topics you will see that the kids will learn and have fun getting familiar with new terminology, after that they will lose the interest and the teacher has to prepare next new topic. However, there will be a smaller group of kids who will develop their own questions about the topic, those should be allowed to go deeper and deeper in their search, while the rest of the class gets familiar with new and different topics. Only after work like that we can group the kids by their interests.

Type 2 Diabetes: my research

2009-06-21T16:01:00.002-04:00

I started this research out of necessity. First, I tried to copy and paste info on a word document, but got lost in the sameness of monotonous text. So to organize my thoughts and learning I decided to apply the technique I use with my students: Power Point Presentation. It turned out to be so easy and efficient to group the info in the logical slides and make it beautiful at the same time. I want to show you what I came up with:

Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes

2009-05-22T12:34:00.000-04:00

Very interesting thing this Type 2 Diabetes, also called Insulin Resistance. They say that your cells refuse to take glucose in because of the insulin resistance. So what’s the cure? Turns out they choose to add more insulin: very logical solution. It kills 2 birds with one stone: first it kills the pancreas, which stops producing its own insulin (used to work well before the treatment); and it kills any hope to ever go medicine free, which is a good news for the pharmaceutical companies.

I have a history: both, my mother and my mother-in-law, were turned into diabetics 40 years ago when the experiment with Type 2 Diabetes just started. They both believed the doctors and took the medicine offered to treat their conditions. My mother-in-law now completely depends on insulin and gives herself a shot after every meal. My mother refused to use insulin treatment (she could do that even in horrible Soviet Union) so she was treated with other hormonal medications, she is also dependent on the medication she takes. Her chronic condition is good for the business. Both of them are paying, and paying, and paying all these long 40 years.

Both of them were menopausal women in their forties or fifties at the time they were “forced” to start the medication treatment of their high blood sugar. I am a menopausal woman now and my hormones are out of wack too. My sugar numbers are not stable, but my pancreas is making insulin, it’s alive and well. Thank you, my insurance company, for not paying for the deadly medication which would make me drug dependant for the rest of my life just like my mother.

I Googled Diabetes and Wikipedia has all this info about Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. They talk about insulin-production by the pancreas, and about liver part in glucose making out of fructose, and other hormones that take part in the process of converting excess of fructose into fat. Turns out the whole process was well researched and conclusions were drawn. 40 years of study did help to solve the mystery:

Type 2 Diabetes is not caused by malfunction of the pancreas; it is a different metabolic disorder which can not and should not be treated with insulin. They know that today, the doctors will give you a medicine which does not work on your pancreas, it works with your liver. This is their new experiment: what will happen to Type 2 diabetic if we slow down the liver. Interesting. I almost became a subject in this new experiment, like my mother became a subject of their experiments 40 years ago, which will take another 40 years and many thousands of people to find out that it’s a bad idea. They should not slow down my liver; right opposite, they have to stimulate it to work faster and cleanse my body of all impurities faster too.

My own hypothesis is that my liver was already too slow and covered with fat. This is why I get fat so easily. It’s easer for my liver to store the toxins in fat instead of removing them out of my body. There are holistic researchers who tell me that to help my liver I should change my diet. Eat more food that stimulates the work of my liver like radishes, leeks, pepper, cabbages, onions, and garlic. I do have to cut on sugar, which I love in my coffee and tea, but I only cut it in half, I still put 2 teaspoons in my cup. This is important because half of the sugar molecule is fructose ring which will be converted into fat by my poor lazy liver. I have to continue with my exercise routine, I just have to add some aerobics to make my heart to pump the blood faster from time to time.

Introduction of a PROFESSIONAL: meet Gary Carlin

2009-05-20T14:50:00.009-04:00

Here is Gary Carlin, my favorite person when we are talking about Professional Development. Gary has the best staff development workshops. He respects you as a teacher, always asks for your input and ideas, and collects most interesting information about such a boring topic like Regents Exams.

Here I want to show you a couple of Power Point Presentations he created (I just broke them into smaller Case Study blocks, so they could be converted into .mov files or google docs) I will try to convert all of his PPP and present them here or in other places; so many teachers could benefit from Gary's work. It was a work of titanic proportion. He went to all previous Regents Exams and classified the questions by topics. He collected interesting information and images about those questions, he made Regents Exams alive and relevant. I admire his work.
What I show below came from just one workshop and he has more, much more to share.

Thank you, Gary

Animals on the Regents

Food Web

Zebra Mussels

Silk Moth

Arctics on the Regents

The Case of the Brown Snake

Bird Flue

Hudson River

NYS mountains

Sorry, today it's not about teaching.

2009-05-20T14:46:00.000-04:00

Today in the news (ABC 6 a.m.) they told us about a family that had to hide from doctors and authorities. The family has a son with some kind of cancer; the doctors want to treat the boy with chemotherapy; the family chooses to use alternative medicine. When I hear cases like this I can’t stop thinking about the state of our medicine. This kind of news put me in a constant state of horror, one day they will come after me in an attempt to save me from myself.

Only people with special interest or brainwashed idiots may think that the suffering this family is going through can be fixed in court. Prosecutor can’t care about the health of this boy more than the parents. The doctors can’t tell us that we have to pay for their treatment over the treatment of our choice. Pharmaceutical companies can’t be always right.

These doctors can’t cure anything with an exception for some surgeries (which make us incomplete anyway); they can only convert us into chronically ill people so they could collect our money for the rest of our lives. It pays if we live longer and seeker. It is not in the interest of any doctor to really cure us. I have to admit that it’s not in their interest if we die either because then only the funeral services will collect.

The doctors can’t cure us because they do not know how. Every medicine they try to use to cure one part of the body turns out to be poisonous to some other part. There are so many new disorders and malfunctions of different organs that it, by itself, is an epidemic right now. Man-made epidemics: epidemics created by doctors and pharmaceutical companies while experimenting on us their new medications.

Have you heard this commercial that tell that 57% of an experimental group showed that the medication worked? What???? 57% is a half. What kind of a conclusion can you base on 57%? Shame on both the company and the FDA that allowed this medicine; now 43% of people who try this medicine are at risk. Thank goodness the insurance companies are on our side: they just refuse to pay for these experiments.

This permanent state of experimentation made me think of modern medicine as a large Lab where all of us are a large experimental group. One question has still been unanswered: why do we have to pay for the experiment? Even if I agree to allow the doctors to experiment on my body I would expect them to pay me for putting my life at risk. The opposite is happening in real life: I am required to pay for becoming the subject of their experimentations.

The logical conclusion to this absurd situation is there already in today’s news: we can’t even say no to that treatment any longer, the doctors, authorities, and pharmaceutical companies will send police after me to enforce the medication.

I am taking this event so personally because I recently had similar experience. Luckily the authority were not after me to force unwanted medication and the insurance didn’t pay, so I didn’t have to buy the pills that supposed to cure me from so called Type 2 Diabetes.

What's wrong with K-12 approach?

2009-05-05T12:43:00.003-04:00

I am a high school teacher. I love my job, I love the high school kids, I love the fact that my students are an everyday challenge, they are full of surprises, thinkers and doers. I love to trick them into learning something new. I love that they teach me a few things now and then.

I can't imagine teaching kindergartners or elementary school kids. I don't want to describe why, I just can't. I know many great teachers who can't teach neither elementary nor middle school level. The job requires completely different set of traits in a person. I always get frustrated when hear all of us, teachers, put in the same pot of K-12 which ignores the specifics of both: the kids level of comprehension and the teachers' skills and talents.

In our days you often hear complains about schools. Some even say that the education system is in crisis. Maybe. If we want to fix it, let's first agree that the elementary school teacher has to teach the kids just to read, write and count. They have enough responsibilities teaching everyone how to use a bathroom and how to clean their noses. They have to teach the kids the rules and how to be a student. They have to teach the kids about day and night, about seasons and weather. They have to teach the kids how to read time and find the length using a ruler.

Are we sure that we want the elementary school teachers to teach "science" to their students? or any other subject that was not their major? I don't. I prefer to teach not reteach. Many good high school teachers will tell you how hard it is for us to reteach the mistakes made by an elementary school teachers. The subconscious always overpowers the new information we try to put their. Elementary school teachers fill in subconscious before we train the brain to think.

I have to think about this. Continue later :)

Teaching Moment

2009-02-14T15:47:00.002-05:00

I get up in the morning; make myself a cup of coffee. I don’t make my bed, never did. It’s nobody business if my bed is made or not. You don’t like it, don’t look into my bedroom.Nobody will suffer if my bed is not made. I have completely different attitude towards my garbage. My garbage is everybody’s business. The more garbage I produce the less space is there in the landfill for you.

How did it happen that I started to care about garbage? I started to teach Environmental Science class and the more I learned about the problems of today the more changes I made in my every-day life. I started as any teacher who has to teach this course with the balance in an ecosystem, and biomes, and food chain etc. But I got bored too soon because it was the same material I usually teach in Regents Living Environment class. Why should I do the same stuff with a different course? So I changed.

This time I did mention the information my students had learned in other science classes too, but this time I was building on top of what they already knew. Turns out other people concerned with the problems in the environment also made the same changes. You can find textbooks that rearranged the material around human needs for air, water, land, food and energy. This is the way to go. How do we use our land, or air, or water? How do we damage environment to get our needs met? What problems do we face that must be solved in order for the future generations to continue their normal life? This time I didn’t get bored. I learned a lot about today’s problems, more, than I would ever know if I didn’t teach this course.

Most of my learning was happening when I was reading my students projects. They learned and I learned with them. We learned about organic food and organic farming. We learned about the solar panels and the wind mills. We learned about cars that run on water, and the cars that run on compressed air. We learned the three principles of Green Living: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. That still didn’t feel enough. I had to change more.

My students are high school kids. They are almost adults. Many of them work. Many of them are taking some college courses. All of them without exception tell me that they want to recycle. OK. We placed recycling bins all over the school. Now I observe how my environmental science students who want to recycle drop their unfinished food into recycling container instead of garbage, but the empty bottles still go into regular garbage can. What is going on? I don’t understand.

I spoke to our school custodian, wise man, he told me not to worry, it takes time to change the people’s set of mind. We all know how to keep it clean by putting everything into garbage. The fact that it’s not clean at all is not common knowledge. One of my students had an “Aha” moment last week, he said: “So, when we clean we make it [Earth] dirtier!?!?!!!” Our landfills are full and New York exporting its garbage to other states. Just think about it: we pay our taxes to transport our garbage to other states.

What we have to start doing is: SEPARATE OUR OWN GARBAGE. Nobody can separate your garbage. The custodians will recycle what we separate. It is not in their job description: separate recyclable and reusable from the rest of the garbage to save space in the landfill. No, it is the responsibility of the person who throws the garbage. Stop for a second and think: where should MY garbage go? It turned out this step is the hardest to take. Like the addict’s first step to recovery is to admit that s/he is an addict, our first step to cleaner future is the realization that if we don’t separate our garbage our kids will live on top of a huge landfill.

So here I am every Friday morning with my cup of coffee, a large blue bad of recyclables, and mess in the bedroom :)

I have this blog posted in 2 different places. This problem really bothers me at the moment.

Good Old Times

2009-02-08T12:48:00.003-05:00

I hear it from all over how good it used to be. Old good times, everybody wants to go back there. I don't. I don't believe anybody needs to go back there; it was not better at all. Don't believe those fairy tales.
Let's think about it rationally.
Work was much harder without all this vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, cranes, and bulldozers. This one is obvious, nobody will argue.
When they talk about their "good school years", it's always a white city person talking. Schools were segregated and limited. Many kids had to start the hard work at very early age. I should say majority of kids. I think farmers kids could not go to school at other times but winter, because the rest of the year was work.
Contagious diseases were killing people of all ages, but especially children. No vaccinations, no modern medicines. Health problems didn't stop there. Because of the hard work, back pain, muscle and ligaments pulled, pain in joints, and more suffering without any hope for help. This is why old people from the past are always bent and crooked. I can't hear when people say that people used to be healthier than now.

I'll continue this topic later, enough for now.

What are references for?

2009-02-03T02:52:00.003-05:00

Many years ago, when I was a 7^th grader my math teacher said something that affected my views on learning. He said that the amount of information people collect is growing so fast that he believed his generation was the last generation that had individuals of encyclopedic knowledge. He predicted that people would need to become more narrow specialists in the areas of their choices. He was the teacher who told us that we should not try to remember some general data which is recorded in the reference books and is easily available in the libraries.

Do not memorize, understand and move on - that was my mantra for years. This is why I can watch people playing Jeopardy, but I will never encourage anybody to play it. I will never understand why you would need to remember so much information that can be easily found if needed.

There is another aspect to this thought. More and more discoveries are made on the borders of different fields of knowledge. For example, new methods of treating diseases are found on the border between Biology and Physics. To create a simulation on the computer the programmer must understand the science behind the simulation. So we can’t really become narrow specialists. There is a contradiction :) We do need to be a little educated in more than one area.

I was happy to see old RCTs (tests required for High School Diploma in NYS) gone and exchanged by Regents Exams (New tests) because the new tests require less memorization and more thinking on the spot. In Math instead of calculations students have to solve problems. In Science instead of checking the tricky vocabulary words the students are asked how they would think in different situations, same in History, and even in English they have to write what they think about what they've read.

So I have positive view on the changes in education. I am also happy to see how many talented and devoted people work in this field, how many new ideas are there. Plus we have computers, the tool of the future, in the hands of our students.

Another view on civilizations

2009-01-28T20:30:00.003-05:00

Recently I had an argument about culture and civility, and what a civilized person would or would not do. I don’t remember exactly what I was saying and what the opposite opinion was, but during this argument one young man said that to improve schools we have to start beating children with sticks to take care of the discipline problems. I know that there are too many people who would agree with him and this is why I am writing here: to answer to all those people.

How do you define civilization? Do cars make us more civil? Or maybe television sets, telephones and computers make us civilized society? Maybe our tanks and bombs make us more civil? What do you think? Does technology make a society civilized?

I think that there are no gizmos in the world that can make a barbarian into a civilized man. Every person who believes in “an eye for an eye” is still a barbarian in my opinion. Every bully on a school yard is a barbarian. Every father and mother who hit their children to discipline them are barbarians. Every leader who is trying to solve a conflict using force is a barbarian. What really makes our society civilized is how we treat small and weak members or smaller and weaker countries. So I have to research this topic some more, but so far on Earth we do not have a civilized society IMHO. Sorry :(

All people, who think that since their parents used to beat them up and they came out well often think it’s OK to beat up their own children to get the same results, continue the cycle of violence and live their barbaric lives.

School Years

2008-11-28T20:00:00.002-05:00

I was thinking recently about the baggage we carry out of our school experiences. It’s usually a mixed experience. There are some good things and there are always some bad things to remember.
For me the good things started to happen when I entered the 5th grade. In the Soviet Union it was moving from one teacher for all subjects to a whole bunch of teachers different for each subject even though we physically stayed in the same building. In the United States the movement from “elementary school” to a “middle school” is also accompanied with the physical movement to another building. So using the American terminology my “good” school years started in my middle school and continued through the rest of the school years up until the senior year when everything fell apart and left me extremely disappointed and unsatisfied. So I never went back, never visited the building, never met my teachers. I still don’t have any will for that.
I did free myself of this baggage by the age of 35 or 40 :) but until then my school years experience affected the way I dealt with people a lot.
I do know people who believe that the school years were the best time in their lives, I also know people who forgot those years like they never happened. I want us to compare our experiences, discuss what happened then and how it shaped our personalities. Maybe, if we open this jar of worms our kids will have it easier.

Introduction of a PROFESSIONAL

2008-11-27T13:25:00.003-05:00

I want to introduce to all the teachers out there Lisa Nielsen.
Here is the site where Lisa shares her thoughts and ideas about using technology for education.
Here is the network The Innovative Educator Lisa created for us to talk and ask questions on “how can we use technology in our classes today.”
Thank you, Lisa for all the work you do. So many kids will have more interesting and involving classes, so many students will become active learners, so many teachers will start using technology for their everyday indtructions, all thanks to you :)

We need change too

2008-11-26T13:27:00.002-05:00

Have you noticed lately everyone is talking about “need for change”? They need change in the economic regulations. They need change in the incarceration system. They need change in the automobile building and energy production. They need change in building the houses and heating them. I shouldn’t really say “THEY” I have to say WE! We need all these changes. We also need one more change and it is the change in the education. I am not talking about some kind of breaking the old and building something new. I am talking about evolution not revolution

There are many new ideas growing within the “old” systems. You can see these processes everywhere. Green approaches in building, constructions, garbage, energy sources etc. are obvious. There are new ideas for the stock market, international relationships, collecting information, learning, bringing up the children, and, of course, the school.

New ideas in school are completely revolutionary. In the old school the teacher knew everything. The process of learning was a process of passing the teacher’s knowledge to the students’ memory. That worked for centuries. That worked even 20 years ago. Suddenly it changed. My students do not want my knowledge any longer, they want their own. I think that because of the change in the needs of the students we started to search for new ways to teach.

In today’s school I don’t always know all the information and very often I learn new things while reading my students’ projects. That creates fun for both sides. This is why being a teacher now is so interesting. Everybody creates new methods and strategies. Everybody brings success stories to the meetings. Everybody tries new things every day. We make new assignments to keep students interested. We use new tools to keep them on task. We pay attention to their moods, their family relationships, their talents and abilities. We are trained to recognize their differences and adjust the assignments to their individual levels and tastes. I don’t just pass my knowledge onto them any longer, I help them find what knowledge will fit their needs.

What do we expect from each other?

2008-11-24T10:33:00.000-05:00

I am a teacher. I have amazing wonderful students, each is talented and each is trying to do something good. Something good is not always obvious to others. When you know the motivation behind some misbehavior you can give some good constructive advice for the parents to try. Unfortunately, teacher’s advice is not always taken in a positive way. I remember the first time I was sitting and talking to a parent of one of my first students. The girl was very nice and shy. She was afraid to make mistakes so instead of trying to solve math problems she used to say “I am stupid, I can’t do that”. She didn’t do complex multiple-step problems because of that attitude, but I saw that she could solve simple one-step problems just fine. I told the mother all of that. I suspected that the idea that the girl could not solve those problems was planted into her sub-consciousness at earlier age, maybe in an elementary school. I told the mother that she had to start telling her daughter how smart and creative she was to encourage and support her in her growth. This woman got scared. She didn’t get used to talk to a teacher about her daughter. All she expected from me was that the girl was good or bad. Either of those comments she could take. She was not ready to hear an advice on how to help her daughter. Can we change our expectations?

can we learn how to be good parents from books?

2008-11-23T08:39:00.003-05:00

I am a mother, I don’t want anybody to tell me how to raise my children. However, I did read everything there about pregnancy and labor. I did want to educate myself to be a better mother to my newborn. Just reading was not enough; my mother helped me a lot with hands on and many other advices.
My mother learned how to take care of newborns from books, she didn’t have her mother to help her, Dr. Spoke was her advisor :) and she was so sorry later that she obeyed him religiously. I learned that even when you read a book or an article and agree with the content life will always correct and improve your knowledge.
Can you learn to be a parent from books?
The problem is that the older my children got the fewer books I read. I was lucky compare to others, my job required learning about child development and I have dealt with kids every day of my adult life. I applied what I learned in my classes and at home. When I think back I feel awe, what would happen to my kids if I didn’t learn from books and from talking to my students.

Can we talk?

2008-11-22T18:41:00.001-05:00

The most powerful emotion that we ever experience is, probably, love to our children. I think majority will agree with me. Because this is such a strong emotion it is so hard to talk about anything related to it. Every time somebody talks about our children we feel “attacked”. Even from teachers who spend so much time with the kids and know them pretty well we want to hear only the good things and we dread any kind of other than praise input because we take it as criticism and nobody likes to be criticized for the way they bring up their children. We all are like this. I want my children be “the best” I will criticize them as much as I like, but nobody can criticize them with me. You know what? I agree with that. So I for years I have not criticized other people children. They all are wonderful. Sometimes much better than their own parent know ;) How can we learn to talk about our children constructively?

New Definition for Success

2008-10-20T21:19:00.002-04:00

Why is that so many people associate success with money? If money is a measure for success how much does a successful parent make? Or how would you compare a successful teacher and not so successful one? What kind of success do you wish for your child? Do you want your child to make a lot of money doing something he hates to do or find an occupation that makes him happy and satisfied?
I really think that it's time to redefine success.

"Good" student and "Good" teacher

2008-09-14T10:42:00.010-04:00

I often think of the society's view on who we consider a "good student". One, who sits straight, follows instructions, obeys the rules, raises hand to talk, does the homework, etc. Right? And then who is a "good teacher"? One, who makes the instructions, can enforce the rules, will assign the homework, and knows all the answers ahead. Pretty accurate description of the society's view on school and how it should be. This view on school and schooling stayed unchanged for over 2000 years and everybody was happy. So, why is that today neither students nor teachers feel happy about that ideal picture?

Maybe because we don't want to live in an ideal picture; we want to live our real life. Reality is not perfect, it's not clean or quiet. Reality is messy and complicated. In reality nobody knows the right answers and very often what you thik is right for you turns out to be very bad for someone else.

How can we teach that?

Readers and Writes

2008-05-18T16:10:00.004-04:00

I used to love to read; couldn't live a day without reading something. I was addicted to the process and very seldom I ran into something I didn't want to finish reading. Same with movies I could watch anything: 2, 3 even 4 movies a day: in the Soviet Union tickets were very cheap and here I could always rent. So I was an absorber of information :)
Things started to change. First, I realized that I could not read newspapers. Then I found that there were books I just could not finish. I remember one day I stopped the movie in the middle, I think it was "Something about Mary" I just couldn't watch it any longer. Now I am a new me. I know by the first paragraph if I am going to read the book or not or just by the first scene I know if I am going to watch the movie or not.
The process continues in the internet. I am reading blogs and by the first sentence I know if I am going to finish it or I just will move on. If I didn't develop this ability to move on I would be still reading Walter Scott and Balsac. There is another change in me I want to share my thoughts with others. I was always a very private person. What is going on with me?
I think I am becoming a writer ;) We have a joke in Russian: an interviewer is asking a new author if he liked a book by another author and he answers:"I am not a reader I am a writer!"
So, here I am a new writer.

Am I becoming my Mother?

2008-05-13T19:22:00.004-04:00

Every woman thought. Some of us are thinking of that in awe, some of us are thinking of that with pride, some of us mean the character, some of us think of the appearance, or voice, or gestures, or moods or ..... Each of us had her personal experience with her mother and each of us will repeat this experience with her own kids sometimes without even noticing because she acts on subconscious level. Your mother started to teach you before you can remember yourself or even before you were born.
I love my mother very much. She is a very good person, dissent and kind. She had the best intentions when bringing up my brother and me. We had a very good and traditional family. What happened to us when I turned 18? Now, when I am 55 and have my own adult children, I think she had a hard time to let me go. She suddenly tried to control, allow, or prohibit whatever I did or wherever I went. And I, in turn, suddenly wanted my privacy which I had never needed before :) The problem, normal for many families turned into political conflict and involved authority figures, political hunger strike, courts, and ended soon after I found myself in jail for 10 day for civil disobedience, not violent crime :) I am a pacifist ;)
This was a process of me becoming an adult.
Do you remember the time when you became adult? Do you remember the role of your mother in the process?
I really need to collect different experiences. I believe that if we share our experiences and our mistakes and our successes the next generation will have it a little easier. It was almost impossible before the computers. Let's use them to improve the lives of our children.