Archive for: September 2008

Americans look to their doctors to be healthy.   A doctor’s advice is considered gospel, you’ll often hear “my doctor said.”   The irony of this is that the greatest advances in public health did not come from individual doctoring but rather in increasing awareness about health practices and sanitation.   That awareness is responsible for increasing life expectancy in the United States because information is more powerful than any single doctors visit. 

Tragically right now in American’s public schools health awareness is at risk.  Currently there is no dedicated funding for comprehensive sex education in our schools.  Schools have become hostage to political and religious ideology about what’s best for all children. The abstinence only curriculum guarantees that our youth will not learn reproductive information that could potentially not just save their lives but also determine the direction of their lives. 

Today one in four American teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. Nearly half of black teenage girls have at least one sexually transmitted infection.  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention also reported in the study that for the first time in fifteen years the rate of teenage pregnancy has significantly increased.    The United States has high rates of unintended pregnancy, abortion, and STD’s.   And what is our answer to reverse this situation?

Federal funding to schools limits and denies information in our sex education programs.  Abstinence only programs ignore the fundamental precept that sex is powerful in our lives and that it does have consequences.   Education is not taking this problem seriously enough.  Much of what is learned in school is not just learned for the present moment it’s learned to take students through a lifetime of choices.  It’s learned to give children information on how to base decisions.  Decisions about sexual activity happen at all stages of life not just during the teen years. 

What can educators do to improve this situation? 

Become a powerful and compassionate voice for change in your school.  First recognize that all parents fear the possibility of their children having a sexual life, and their greatest desire is that their children delay sexual activity until later into young adulthood.  Often these fears and desires keep parents acting in the most proactive way by demanding a comprehensive program.  The principles of abstinence programs do give a voice to the importance of relationships and communication but they totally lack the substance of information to help children make informed decisions and avoid the consequences.  

Teachers have the ability to engage with parents on the most personal and intimate level.  They both have a child’s best interest at heart.   Teachers can begin a dialogue with parents especially those at the middle school level when students are first given reproductive information.  

So what’s a good way to start?

Approach this taboo subject by bringing awareness to parents about the minefield of influence their children will navigate.  Teens have this perception of being immune of being invulnerable.  Many don’t know what risks they face; they can’t make decisions in the dark because they aren’t properly prepared to make them.   Myths about pregnancy continue like urban legends.  Some girls believe that drinking or douching with coke with prevent a pregnancy.   This type of thinking is a disaster waiting to happen. 

If parents see their child’s teacher and their child’s school as a partner in the future of their children perhaps they will trust educators to make decisions on what’s best for all children instead of politicians.   

How many school principals can say that they have said to their disruptive students, “I’ll see you at your house tonight,” and mean it?

Geoffrey Canada is an education and social-services reformer who leads the path breaking Harlem Children’s Zone Project.  One of the chief tenets of his program is the belief that children respond to the consistent leadership of the adults in charge.  That when the adults in charge are unafraid to deal with the serious issues in a school that children will respond with respect to this leadership.  Canada says, “word gets out and once students realize that you will be at their house, behaviors begin to change.”  He admits it’s hard work but work that pays off. 

Early on in his education career Canada learned that no child could thrive in a school in which there is violence or fear.  He believes all school principals should take on the role of being the new sheriff in town. A sheriff that is both loving and firm.

In the Harlem project violence is not tolerated and that means all violence.  If a child gets into a fight outside of school it is still regarded as an offense to the school’s code of conduct.   All the adults who work in these schools are also highly involved in the community.  The schools offer an integrated approach to education.  Students receive both academic and social services.  Families are offered counseling, after school programs and health plans. 

In what he describes as a conveyor belt approach to education children begin school with an intensive all day pre K program.  Parents are also involved with workshops on learning skills to improve their roles in their child’s life.

In these schools underprivileged children are thriving.  But it’s only because it’s founders have embraced the “whatever it takes” mantra.  They have created a holistic system and sealed up all the cracks in which a child can fall into. 

In order for this project to have prospered they had to experience horrible outcomes year after year.  Students whose futures were no employment and often jail.  No school in American wants to face failure of that extreme.  Yet without the type of consistent extraordinary interventions that outcome can become a possibility.  

Any school facing a crisis in dealing with student behaviors needs to first unite their entire staff in solving the problem.  All staff has to agree to sign on to extra-ordinary measures.  All staff must regard their own role as an adult leader in the school.  Students will see the consistent and logical consequences to bad behavior.  It’s important to embrace this type of measure with a loving heart, so children feel safe and supported.   The school becomes an extension of a loving parent and the students who go there will prosper.

The carotid artery is the largest artery in the human body.  It pumps blood directly from the heart to the brain.  You can feel it’s pulse if you put you hand on the left side of your neck.  It insures that fresh oxygenated blood goes to the brain first before feeding other organs.  All this happens every second without our awareness.  We never have to consciously monitor our critical body functions they run on autopilot.  Maybe because of this perfect physical system it’s easy for us to trust too much our own thinking.  We rarely edit our beliefs or recognize that our perspective is always limited.   No matter what position we can claim it’s unlikely we hold the complete picture.

It’s easy to let our thinking run on autopilot too.  To automatically reach for those familiar and comfortable thought patterns.  To make decisions based on that stored bank of information despite it being incomplete, like a research library except instead of having all the data from A to Z we have it only from B to R. 

Twenty years ago medical students were taught that once critical periods were passed in childhood the architecture of the brain was fixed.   Today doctors know through neuroimaging techniques like PET scans, EEG’s and MRI’s that the brain is constantly rewiring itself through experience.  When you think and do things repeatedly you create neural pathways that become deeper over time. 

This information is critical to self-improvement. It is critical to any organization that seeks it make itself better.  

As you think – so you are.  We are our thoughts.  If we accept a status quo that repeatedly makes the same mistakes we need to look more critically at what we accept.  Change is possible.  Our most vital organ the brain is constantly remodeling itself based on how we use it.  Through action or inaction our brain is changing all the time. 

Knowing we can literally create a new brain should bring excitement to anyone who teaches. New brain cells stick around when the best conditions are nurtured.  To create new cells and maintain them it’s necessary to move the body and engage the mind.  The heart and brain are linked physically to create this perfect system.

Teachers can use this model in the classroom to increase and protect the brainpower of their students.    First by changing their own brain patterns, the habitual ways of doing and thinking.  Second by providing the best environment in which their students can begin to do this also. 

Think of the simple adjustments.  Create time in the day to move, maybe call this your stretch zone.  Not only is this beneficial to students but teachers will see their own energy and focus improve.  Include in this stretch zone a place for mental movement with respect and kindness as the guide.  Allow for students to practice exchanging thoughts and beliefs without needing to defend their position, instead of debate they can learn to listen to each other.

Our two most vital organs the heart and the brain give us all the connection we need to be better.  

America is the world’s leading manufacturer of hope.  America fills  the expectation that good things will come.  It’s the reason immigrants all over the world want to come here.  The wonderful thing about hope is that it’s like a giant umbrella that protects us from the storms of disappointment, failure and hardship.   Recently at the Democratic National Convention Michelle Obama spoke about her childhood.  Her account was a story of a childhood filled with encouragement, appreciation and love.  She demonstrates that when a child is lifted up a desire to make a worthy contribution is a predictable result.

This week children in America return to school.  Many with fear and anxiety about what’s to come but most with the hope that their teacher “will be nice” and “will be fair.”

Despite what children experience at home their expectations for fairness in school is constant.  It’s almost like a primordial need that school show them empathy, respect and kindness.   Sounds like a simple agenda but in reality the layers of challenges that teachers face putting loving kindness first is often difficult.  A typical classroom is a mini diverse society with competing levels of ability and need all vying for the attention of this one absolute authority “the teacher.”  For teachers meeting all these needs can be a super challenge.   But practicing one tactic can help. 

It’s important for each teacher to keep in mind the vision that brought them to teaching, hopefully the vision of making a difference in the life of a child, of opening the door to learning and doing so in way that ignites the curious mind and invites exploration.  One way to do this is to honor the need of all children to be loved and to belong.  The desire to care and be cared for, to give to others and to be part of a family or group is the most basic need below survival that all children share.   Creating a safe environment in the classroom, an environment that promotes kindness and respect first is the foundation for meeting this most basic need.

History teaches us that whatever is done to children they are likely to do to society.  If children find the world a place where social justice is limited and doled out like rewards then they are likely to engage in this system where fairness is not for all. 

My hope for this school year is that teachers will become the nation’s leaders in honoring and respecting this single important value and practicing it everyday so much so that it becomes contagious, that children see one standard, one way to be and pass it on and on.   Let’s inspire this generation of children, lift them up and see where it leads the possibilities are endless!