Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

>     Who could not be moved, and inspired, by the news report of Ben Mathenia, age 7, who noticed his friend and classmate choking and successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver thereby saving his friend’s life? Following my amazement and glee, I got to wondering what factors came together to create that “happy ending?” I’ve come up with three.
    Knowledge. Ben was able to perform the Heimlich maneuver because someone taught it to him. Which goes to prove that we are never too young, or likely too old, to learn. Knowledge prepares us for the unexpected and, by so doing, gives us increased options when faced with unanticipated events and decisions. Even the first grade teacher who was teaching the class at the time said he would have expected Ben to call out “Mr. Miller, someone’s choking.” But Ben was equipped with the knowledge he needed to deal with what Life presented to him. And so he was able to step up.
    Presence. It turns out that Ben learned the maneuver from his father, who had used it on a co-worker. So there are two important lessons in all of this about being present. Although I do not know if Ben saw his father save a co-worker or simply listened while his father reenacted the event, but either way Ben was fully present whichever way it happened, and because he was he took in information that would later serve him and others. Secondly, because Ben is obviously fully present in his life, he was quick to notice his friend’s need and moved to do something about it. Without that presence, the story could have had a much more tragic ending.
    Compassion.  There is likely not one of us who has not walked or driven past someone who was suffering and, while perhaps expressing feelings of compassion, chose not to act on those feelings. When we pause between what we feel and what we think…thinking often turns into rationalization and justification that, in the end, inhibits us from following our innate knowing.
    Ben saw suffering, felt the struggle, had the knowledge, and cared about his friend. There was no time to lose and there was nothing to think about. Coming from a heart-centered place of caring, Ben reached out and his compassion saved a life.
    Knowledge. Presence. Compassion. These are the core ingredients of what happened in that Illinois classroom. There is much to be said about Ben Mathenia and much to be learned from him as well.
    Lee Ann Womack wrote a beautiful song that never fails to inspire me when I hear it…as has Ben’s story. I think the refrain from that song says it all…about Ben…and about what I would wish for all of us.
    “When you get the chance to sit it out or dance…I hope you dance.”
    
  

>     Yesterday I was the guest speaker at a local high school, speaking for 6 straight hours to over 500 students in the 10th grade. My daughter happens to be a Freshman at the same school so it made the occasion a little tricky. I was a guest speaker in the Health Department teaching a unit about suicide. I had tried to kill myself at age 24 and have first-hand knowledge and experience on the topic. It was an opportunity the Health teachers didn’t want to pass up…and quite frankly, neither did I.
    While I have spoken privately on the topic over the past few decades, I had never before spoken about it publicly. Having discussed it several years before with our daughter, she was remarkably accepting of my presence at her school and even supportive of it. I take more than a little pride in this fact.
    One of the things I shared with the students, and I shared only what I know to be true from having lived it, is that we all have what I refer to as “appointments in Life” at which we are expected to “show up.” Those appointments are uniquely ours, as are our talents and challenges as well. While it is not always for us to know, in advance or even ever, why we need to be in certain places at certain times, the purpose of our presence in those moments is in support of the overall and ever-expanding consciousness and growth of humanity.
    Heady stuff, I know. But it’s how I see things none-the-less.
    I have spent all the years since the attempted suicide exploring many different roads in search of Who I Really Am. Each road was a choice I made to have the experience I had. Some of those choices were productive and some not so much…but all were my choices made in pursuit of what is true for me. And while I try to find the positive meaning and highest good in all that happens, even I have had my share of wondering if all the adversity and struggle that is a necessary part of Life can be worth it.
    At yesterday’s appointment I finally got my answer.
    As I looked into the faces of those children who were looking back at me with rapt attention, I knew with certainty that everything that had happened in my life happened so that I could be there at that moment and share with them the magnificence of transcending Life’s challenges.
    I have always wanted to “serve” in some capacity and oftentimes have prayed for a way to help me do that. Typically I have expected to find a particular cause or organization to which I might dedicate my time. But standing there yesterday I realized how many ways there are to serve and just what mine looks like.
    My service is one of Hope.
    By opening up to those children and honestly sharing with them both the triumphs and tragedies of my life’s path, and mirroring for them the Beauty and Love inherent in their own, I was able to “pay forward” the gift of hope I was given when I most needed it. For in the end, we are each “way-show-ers” for one another, not only by how we live our lives but also how we choose to reflect the lives of others. Having been both affirmed and denied at various times in my own life, I know well the power, and responsibility, of both thoughts and words.
    There was no financial compensation for my appearance yesterday. But if you could have looked into that sea of faces, as I did, you would feel today as I do.
    Yesterday, I hit the Lottery of Life.
    
    
   

>     As we get past the “personality and message” phase of the Presidential race for 2008, we will inevitably come upon the need to decide not by stage presence and sound-bites but rather by depth of commitment to policies and vision. In this regard, the remaining contenders have some common ground over the issues…Social Security, the “War on Terror”, securing our borders, and health care…if not how to resolve them.
    I think the real loss coming out of Iowa was the withdrawal from the race by Senators Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, not because they each have decades of governmental experience at the Federal level, but because they each understand the importance of eduction and the role that teachers play in the future of our nation. We are no better than the possibilities for tomorrow, and our children are tomorrow. But allow me take this one step further.
    We are all teachers. Each of us, by how we live our lives, is an example, not only for the children but for everyone and anyone watching. Each of us arrives into this world equipped with a unique set of tools to create a world in which we want to live. It’s a great tragedy that most of us relinquish those tools early in life then try to create something brand new with the worn-out tools of others.
    The good news is that our tools are never lost…just “pawned” until the moment we realize they can be reclaimed for a price. The price is to forgo the desire to fit, to belong, to be one of the group, to conform to the way in which others have done things. Conformity breeds complacency and a complacent person is not a creative person. A creative person is one who sees possibilities and, with passion, sets out to manifest them.
    We are all teachers by how we live our lives, not by how we talk about them. I have been trying to get my teenage daughter to stop yelling. But I have been yelling for years. In the past few days, I realized the why of why I yell and have stopped it. In those same past few days, my daughter has not yelled either. Coincidence? Maybe. But I think not. I think that the greatest and most powerful teachings are present each moment we choose between what is good for us and what is not…and consciously choose the good.
    So, my regret over the loss of Biden and Dodd is that they were close to the essential issue of not only our time but all time.
    We must value the teachers of this world much more than we do. For each of us is a teacher and it comes down to valuing self. At the heart of the matter, it matters that by and through our choices we mirror the highest good for those who are watching. The goal is not to have them become like us in any sense other than to be who they truly are and thereby teach by example as well.  
    It was psychologist Carl Jung who said,”One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude
to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw
material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul
of the child.”
    Reclaim your tools, choose wisely, be passionate and teach by example. Tomorrow is watching.

>     This morning I received a poem via e-mail written by a soldier serving in Iraq. It is a touching poem about military service (particularly at Christmas time), the price paid by those who serve, asking only that we remember and honor them when they return home, be they alive or dead. At the end of the e-mail, it asked that I pass it on to as many people as possible. Although I was deeply moved by the author’s expression of both sadness and selflessness, the request placed me in a difficult position in light of a conversation I had with our daughter yesterday.
    Yesterday, I told our 14-year-old that I never wanted her to say or write anything in school that she did not believe in just to get the grade. I believe strongly that conformity, for the sake of acceptance or recognition, when it compromises core values and beliefs about who we really are, is a dangerous precedent that we humans have reinforced generation after generation. It’s a “follow the pack” mentality that keeps us unconscious around our choices and perpetuates so much of what is wrong in our world.
    The best example is war. Which is why the poem caused me so much discomfort. Yes, that soldier has stepped-up to the plate and done what his country and his culture have asked of him. But did he search his own soul before he agreed to do what he is now doing? I often hear soldiers say, “My grandfather served, my father served, and I am serving.” This is not a reason, it’s a repetition. It’s unconscious behavior to do what has always been done. Which leads me to the saying, “The definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done and expecting a different result.” War will not birth peace.
    My husband and I appear to disagree on this one. He feels that a 14-year-old is in school to be “taught” and doesn’t need to believe in what she answers on a test in a particular class. However, that slippery slope to conformity at any price that I see beginning in grade school has me wondering if now, at age 59, he would again make the choice he made at age 19 to serve in Vietnam? I suspect not. And it would be because he is more conscious now around his choices and more aware of who he really is.
    War is a mechanism to effect domination and greed. When people with the power to declare war lack the human capital to affect war, there will be no war. Making sure such people lack the human capital they require is your job and mine.
    I pray the soldier who wrote the poem, and all the others, comes home alive tomorrow. I pray my daughter sees it my way and never compromises herself, or her beliefs, to advance her position. I pray that each of us takes a moment to stop before we act without thinking and follow what came before just because that is how it’s always been done or how the surrounding culture see it. I pray that each of us knows our own hearts and minds and lives our lives consistent with who we truly are.
    These are my prayers this holiday season.
    And this is my prose.
    Pass it on to as many people as possible.

>    One of the troubling reports to come out of the shooting at an inner-city Cleveland Tech School yesterday that killed 2 students and wounded 2 teachers, is the allegation that students tried repeatedly to meet with the Principal over concerns around the assailants behavior and ongoing threats but she apparently could not find the time to actually conduct those meetings.
    It seems unlikely and odd that someone in the position of being responsible for the education and welfare of a group of school students would have their priorities so misaligned… and yet I’ve run into the same lack of common sense in an affluent, suburban white school district.
    We live in Cherry Hill, New Jersey with some of the highest real estate taxes in the state to fund what is seen as an outstanding school district, with Presidential Blue Ribbon recognition to show for it. We also have a history of alcohol, drug and suicide problems among our school age children. So, when we moved here 5 years ago and there were two teenage suicides in the first 3 years, I volunteered my experience to the Drug and Suicide Prevention Task Force.
    My experience was not my law degree nor the fact that we had a school age daughter enrolled in the district. It was that I had tried to commit suicide at age 23. 
    My volunteering efforts were welcomed and I was invited to sit on the Task Force. I attended two meetings and quickly recognized the familiar symptoms of political correctness and bureaucratic dysfunction. After the second meeting, there was yet another student suicide and the Task Force “mobilized” a community-wide grief and counseling event at one of the High Schools. After an assembly event where the Superintendent was to speak (his daughter had attempted suicide a few years prior) we were to break out into smaller groups in separate rooms and talk more personally with the students.
    A politically connected and affluent male member of the community with a personl history of clinical depression, who is active in both the school district and a local synagogue, was going to speak with the children in each room. He had done this every time there had previously been a suicide. I offered to speak to the individual groups as well, explaining that as a female who survived an attempted suicide and gone on to college, law school, a successful career and family, my story might resonate better with the female student population.
    My offer was ignored then outright rejected.
    The priorities of the “powers that be” are, usually, maintaining the powers that be. In so doing, those in positions of power often spend too much time making sure they are fortifying their position rather than adequately performing the duties of their position.
    There’s a great quote from the movie “American President” when Michael Douglas, playing the role of President of the United States, arrives at a press conference unannounced and taking the microphone says, “I’ve been so busy trying to keep my job, I forgot to do my job.”
    If the allegation against the Principal in Cleveland turns out to be true, then she will have to “own” that quote as well as the memory of 3 dead and two injured people which were, perhaps, the result of her misplaced priorities. On my homefront, I left the Task Force shortly thereafter and slipped quietly into the night where our school district is concerned.

    That is, until last night.

    Last night was “Back To School Night” at Cherry Hill East High School where our daughter is a freshman. We walked through her roster, spending 10 minutes with each of her teachers. When we got to Health and PhysEd, her teacher told us that he has 50 students in his class because the Board and others of “the powers that be” decided to underfund the staffing of that department by 3-4 teachers. He also had his classroom size cut in half (at the same time the amount of students was increased) to provide more space for the World Civilizations and English classes
    Here’s the rub. It’s in the Health class that stress, suicide, alcohol, sexual relations and drugs are taught. So, common sense was  cast to the wind as those who make the decisions that matter either willfully, or blindly, failed to focus on what matters.
    As I told the Assistant Principal last night, “I am all for academics. I went to college, have a law degree and am a writer. But if a person does not have the emotional stability to handle the stresses of the world in which they live, the best college and best paying job in the world will not prevent an inevitable disaster.”
    I am hopeful that the Principal in Cleveland, although belatedly, is today reassessing her priorities and will live her life differently as a result of the tragedy.
    I am less optimistic about our School District based upon past performance. However, I am about to slip not so quietly back out of the night I went so quietly into when I left the Task Force.
    Perhaps if they did not find me of value then, I can be of help now by assisting them in re-prioritizing their values.