Real Life is now.

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Debra Vitt

I had an acquaintance who would dedicate an entire room within her home for clothes.  This was remarkable only in that the room was a warehouse of dreams; a modest closet in her small bedroom stored the clothes she actually wore.  The warehouse room boasted display racks,  portable closets and even a wall sized shoe rack.  This was the grace area for the outfits she would wear, the person she would become, once Real Life Began.

The problem with waiting for life to begin is that we fool ourselves into believing this state of mind is aspiration.  It isn’t. It is a refusal to be present for ourselves and ultimately, our children.  When we aspire to a higher moral code or spiritual standard, when we actively labor toward a deeper and more productive life, as we embrace each day as a possibility for learning, it is then that we aspire.   Aspiration is an active state.

Schools dig deep into the soil of aspiration, classrooms filled with teachers and students who toil at the fine art of stretching beyond one’s edges.  Parents and community need to model this for their children, we must embrace the now of life.  Painful can transcend into worthwhile, compassion illustrates humanity and when joy arrives, it’s a sharing occasion.

This new year, let Real Life be that vital, encompassing moment called Now.

Posted in aspirations, children, education, family, hope, New Year, Parent Engagement, Resolutions | Leave a comment

Resolve to Improve Your Educational Community

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Dr. Aronson

As the end of December approaches, tens of millions of people develop New Year’s resolutions. We make resolutions about our physical form (i.e. diet or exercise), our personality (i.e. become more assertive or patient), our job (i.e. ask the boss for a promotion), or our intellectual breadth (i.e. read more books or take a class). I cannot let this New Year pass without putting a plug in for what may be the most important resolution you have made in years: resolve to improve your educational community.

First, you must expand your perspective. Everyone can help with school improvement: teachers, administrators, district staff, students, and parents. Too many of us, however, take a microscopic view of education. We worry about our immediate concerns. District staff worry about their district, principals worry about their schools, teachers worry about their classrooms, and parents worry about their child. The reality, however, is that quality education has no boundaries. Our next generation is educated by everything around them. Parents, your child is indirectly educated by the school climate, technology, other students, and other classrooms. School staff, a school may be successful, but it is more successful if the schools around it are thriving. Everyone, community and technological organizations – museums, libraries, Facebook, Twitter, clubs, businesses, and others – play a vital role in educating the next generation.

As such, I challenge everyone to do something to improve the educational opportunities and experiences of all students in your sphere of influence. Resist the instincts that tell that you only need to worry about “your own” or that you cannot influence those around you. If you resolve to improve your educational community, you will be able to influence outcomes for a greater number of students and other stakeholders in education, and you will change the way you look at teaching and learning. What better resolution can you find?

Posted in administrators, new year's resolutions, Parent Engagement, school improvement, School reform, students, teachers | Leave a comment

A Holiday Gift for Your Child

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Dr. Aronson

It’s the holiday season, a time for giving and a time for receiving. Depending on our personality, we have either prepared all of our gifts and cards for everyone and have been ready to disseminate them for two weeks, or we are scrambling to meet the looming deadline. I would like to take this opportunity to discuss a gift that parents can give to their children that will be both inexpensive and will not require waiting in long lines on the way home from work. This holiday season, parents can resolve to become more actively engaged in their child(ren)’s schooling process.

I purposely did not use the word “education.” Most parents know the value of helping their child with homework, attending parent/teacher conferences, and reading to children, but they are not aware that they should be involved in the whole school governance and improvement process. For many parents, such a realization requires an epistemological shift in understanding what it means to be involved in a child’s education. In order to support a child, we must support all of the children around him. A child is a member of the school community, and when the community thrives it influences the child positively, but when the community erodes, it detracts from the child’s experience in school regardless of how much parents help with homework, communicate with teachers, and engage children in educational activities at home.

Parents are integral members of the school community, and they should give their children the gift of helping the school be the best that it can be. Here are just a few suggestions:

1. Give your child’s teacher the gift of time, so he can improve the quality of instruction for all students. Help teachers organize, manage time, utilize technology effectively, or take over responsibilities that take away from teaching.

2. Offer your skills and time to school leadership. Can you help with strategic planning? Implementation? Technology?

3. If you are qualified, help tutor children who need extra support (even if they are not your child). If all students are “caught up”, teachers can develop more complicated and in-depth lesson plans.

One very important piece of advice is tread lightly. Do not step on the schools staff’s toes. You are there to help, not take over.
Identify your strengths, suggest ways that you can be useful, and wait for staff to ask you for help. If you adhere to these principles, school staff will thank you, and you will give your chil(dren) the biggest gift of all, a higher quality education.

Posted in education, Gifts, holidays, Parent Engagement, teachers | Leave a comment

Changing the world, one bite at a time.

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Debra Vitt

It’s the season of lights, celebration and reflection.  Schools will empty into the family hearth, children will snack and feast their way through days and late nights of vacation.  But for children whose significant or main source of food has been the free or reduced school breakfasts and lunches, vacations can mean hunger. Parents are working two or three jobs, or out of work after years of job labor. The United States is transforming the middle class into the ‘new poor.’

There is plenty of food.  And yet 16 million children in America are at risk of hunger and 20 million families of school aged children qualify for free lunches.  15.7% of our country’s population lives in poverty.  Breaking down the barriers of access to healthy and nutritious food has become a central focus for childhood hunger proponents.  These groups seek to end hunger by insisting that we pay attention, and insisting we create innovative relief solutions.

Share Our Strength, a vigorous and influential national nonprofit, is bridging the gap between childhood hunger and nutritious food access with a pledge to end childhood hunger in America by 2015.  Its No Kid Hungry Campaign  ensures children in need are enrolled in federal nutrition programs, invests in community organizations fighting hunger, teaches families how to cook healthy, affordable meals, and builds public-private partnerships to end hunger nationally and at state and community levels.

This holiday season, Share our Strength offers three simple ways we can each make a difference.   Tomorrow, donate the cost of your lunch.  When shopping for loved ones, buy gifts that give back– items that give a donation to hunger-relief organizations.  Pledge to No Kid Hungry by joining the movement to end childhood hunger in America, and discover ways to help in your own community at www.NoKidHungry.org.

For our children to live healthy, active and productive lives, we need to mandate the basis for human sustainment.  Let’s begin this season by paying attention and taking action.

Posted in child poverty, childhood hunger, education, hunger, hunger-relief, poverty | Leave a comment

What’s a Superintendent to do?

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Dr. Aronson

“It sometimes feels like you are being pulled apart,” a friend of mine once said of his Superintendent of Schools position. As we all know, Superintendents are managers and administrators, but they are also politicians. As such, they have real goals to accomplish that affect students and personnel, but they also have a responsibility to satisfy stakeholders. This tension can be difficult to navigate, and Superintendents must possess certain panache for navigating this complex terrain.

A number of challenges present themselves to the current school leadership as they seek to institute new reforms:

a) A shift to the Common Core State Standards as a benchmark of “college and career readiness.”

b) An aggressive approach to turnaround “priority schools.”

c) A focus on more localized control that closes the achievement gap in “focus schools” through customized, public process.

d) A need to prepare teachers for new evaluation processes and standards.

e) Developing intervention strategies, such as extended day, leveraging grants like 21st Century Community Learning Centers,
summer school, after-school tutoring, professional development.

f) Parent engagement.

g) Working with unions and special interests.

h) Engaging all stakeholders.

i) And more…

Superintendents must prioritize needs, evaluate constituents, manage programs and processes, and play politics in order to institute school reform. What are some of the challenges as you try to move education forward in your school and district?

Posted in Accounatbility, accountability, education, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, No Child Left Behind, School reform, Superintendents | Leave a comment