Live and Learn New Mexico!

It's been over a week since my high school reunion but I've still got it on my mind. One thing that happened on the tour of Los Alamos High School (LAHS) has been churning and eating away at me... We were standing in the A wing hallway, and the new superintendent of Los Alamos Public Schools, Kurt Steinhaus, talked about successes of the high school. He boasted that they had more National Merit semi-finalists than APS and Las Cruces schools combined. And I thought, Big woo. I wanted to ask what the schools were doing to ensure that the needs of struggling students are met but didn't. It wasn't the time or place. LAHS, actually Los Alamos in general, is the perfect example of how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) works when it works "well". It's all about the data. How can they raise test scores? How can they get their graduation rate up? I hear nothing about how they can serve the kids in their community. The only people I ever heard from in that town we...

(repost/edited 5.23.16) I'm really starting to like the fact that, as a nonprofit, I do not have to follow the idiotic rules of running an adult education program funded by State and Federal dollars like I did in Los Alamos. So far, I'm the only one funding Live and Learn New Mexico! , with help from Mom and Dad (love you, miss you). Since I don't have to report to anyone on how my program is meeting their standards, I can concentrate on learning and not have to deal with stupid political processes. (I report to my board of directors but that's not the same thing. They don't fund Live and Learn New Mexico! Transparency is key there. Just be open about what I do, and the board usually is okay with it.) Having said that, however, there are many things I learned running the adult ed program at UNM-Los Alamos that I actually very much agree with. One is that we should look at data to inform our instruction. I like looking at the data that comes automatically wi...

Today's post is an experiment. I'm hoping that someone out there who did not graduate high school for whatever reason will try out the ideas in the post and let me know how they work for you.  I NEED FEEDBACK! YES, I'M YELLING!   I had my HSE (high school equivalency) prep class yesterday, and two new students joined us. However, one student from last week couldn't attend. But that's okay because my main goal with this class is to help my students learn to learn on their own, on their own time, in places they are comfortable, with meaningful resources at their fingertips, etc. I am just a facilitator and guide. Not being able to attend class does not mean that all learning stops. But I also want to make sure I give my students feedback in a timely manner so they can fix their mistakes before doing the next assignment. I was pleased to see that one student had done her homework so I collected her essay and today I reviewed it and emailed her with feedback. After ...

Now that I have started up one class in Rio Rancho, I'm eager to start working on setting up classes in the East Mountain area. Luckily, I discovered a newsletter yesterday in my mailbox that can help me get the word out. It's called the East Mountain Shopper , and their mission/vision is to "promote community, build relationships, strengthen the local economic market." I like that very much. So I took a look inside. In the introductory passage on the first page, I liked what they had to say about supporting local economies -- "we encourage you to be purposeful about taking advantage of local resources -- the farmer's market, the craft shows, and the services, skills, and businesses represented in our East Mountain neighborhoods." Also on the first page is a section called, "Spread the Word!", which introduces new businesses in the area for free. This is where I shall promote L&LNM. That will be my next task -- get something about L...

I'm preparing for my class at A New Awakening this evening, where we will be looking first at the HiSET (an alternative to the GED, which is owned by Pearson) and finding out together what we need to know to start preparing for the test. We will look at cost, test centers, rules, practice questions, etc. We will NOT be talking about the GED at all except to say that we choose the alternative HiSET, as allowed by the State.  Then, for math, we will go to Khan Academy  and I will have each sign up as students in my class. I will show them the pretest that will pinpoint areas in math that they need to work on. It will also set up lessons to help them with this. At the same time, as students in my class, I can see what they are working on during the week and get a better idea of what their needs are. Finally, I will send them home with a writing assignment so that I can get an idea of their writing skills. I will also give them a workbook to start looking at as a review of c...

The orientation at A New Awakening in Rio Rancho went well. Let's just hope the three students return next week for the first class. I gave them a math workbook to go over this week and told them to try to do the pretest. If they can't figure out a problem, I told them to ask someone else who may know. If they just don't remember how to do a problem and need a reminder, they can look at the answer key in the back of the book. These are things I've done in the past. We are all adults here, which means a lot of things but for this post, it means that we have the ability to (re-)learn on our own, with prompts that mean something to us, and with the help of our friends and family. My class is not about telling the students what they need to know to pass a high school equivalency test; it's about guiding them in their learning, first to pass the test, and then, more importantly, to get on with their lives and do what they want to do. For the first class, I will ...

One thing I’ve always wanted to do through L&LNM is create jobs in the communities we will be serving, if only in a small way. As I’ve taught classes in adult education, I’ve noticed the natural ability many of my students have for teaching and explaining things to their classmates. We will always need good tutors and teachers, and it didn’t take me long to see the potential for hiring some of our students on in that capacity, perhaps as interns, when they complete our program and get their high school diploma. This can happen in each community we serve, and in some communities, the creation of even three jobs can make a difference, especially if they are rewarding, worthwhile, and look good on a resume. Here’s a good example of what I want to do – my daughter’s boyfriend, we’ll call him Jesse because that’s his name, passed the GED a couple of years ago. He is 25. He is a crazy hard worker, a college student, and he has been applying for jobs (restaurant, grocery store, e...

Both APS and Rio Rancho school districts are facing a shortage of teachers this fall. Their plan, I believe, is to hire retired teachers as substitutes until vacancies can be filled. I think we all know why this is happening. Teachers are tired of being attacked and held accountable for their students’ performance on standardized tests. They are also tired of trying to build up student self esteem when standardized testing is so good at tearing it down. It just isn’t worth the heartache. I’m hoping that those teachers who have decided not to return to teaching in the public schools (or those who have decided not to even enter the profession in the first place) have found other rewarding ways to make a living, and I hope that those who truly love and are good at teaching will be able to continue to do what they love, just in another venue. Teachers Doing Capitalism I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again for those who haven’t read earlier posts – teachers can do capitalis...

I have not had Internet service at my new home for more than a month now, and I realized that maybe I could be reflecting on what I’ve learned from the experience rather than just bitch about it. For I have indeed learned much from this unfortunate ordeal. What really got me thinking, though, was what someone said on a show I was watching, that if our computers and internet went down worldwide, we wouldn’t know what to do or how to do it. We use technology that we really don’t know much about. I am of that transitional generation that did not have computers in every classroom. There were no personal computers in our homes. We took notes on paper, writing with pens and pencils. Calculators, not computers, were a fairly new classroom tool when I was in high school. There were computer classes but they were more computer programming than what we think of as computers in the classroom. When I was working on my BA, I typed on a typewriter, switching at some point to a memory type...

  Yesterday, I headed up the Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe to meet a friend for lunch. How green everything was -- green for New Mexico. We’ve had a good monsoon season, I’d say. I hadn’t been on that road in a long time and was surprised to see so many people in Madrid. That little town has really capitalized on its uniqueness. I have mixed feelings about that but my daughter and I plan to visit soon and just spend the day checking out all the shops and restaurants. I’ve noticed, too, that there are many upcoming events in the town of Cerrillos, slightly off to the side the Turquoise Trail, and we will probably check some of those out, too. The drive to Santa Fe via the Turquoise Trail is a short trip but just being out on the road and enjoying the amazing scenery for that long was refreshing. I was invigorated. On the way home, I took I-25 to the Tramway exit and then had the Sandias to look at for many miles. Tramway goes all the way down to Central, and then I took...

I am getting mentally prepared to teach a GED prep class after not teaching for a while. During the time I wasn’t teaching, the standardized testing issue was hot and I have had to think about the GED, which has always been a standardized test. (Pearson bought the GED out, and I am supposed to put a trademark sign after GED but it’s a pain so I’m not going to. Just know that Pearson owns it.) Of all of the standardized tests under fire these days, the GED makes the most sense to continue using. I can’t really think of any other way to assess the learning, on a large scale, of those individuals who didn’t graduate from high school, for whatever reason, that is, if there truly is a need to assess that learning . Maybe we need to quit assessing at the end of K-12 and instead let employers assess prospective employees when they apply for jobs. That way, they can make up their own tests that reflect the skills needed to work at those businesses. I don’t see the GED going awa...

I am still thinking about my credit score woes and how capitalism/materialism just isn’t working for me, and the American dream.  After all, isn’t it a dream that is supposed to be held by all Americans? We know that not all Americans, myself included, want to compete and win. We don’t want to start from scratch, with little money in our pockets, and claw our way to the top, building a small family business into an empire. I've talked about this before but it isn't out of my system.  That is what I understand the American dream to be – you achieve it if you are good at capitalism. Correct me if I’m wrong. (The American dream also seems to apply more to people coming into our country from other countries. For them, many aspects of the dream do still apply. I would argue, however, that it isn’t an American dream but a dream of someone from whatever country they are from – Mary from Ireland’s dream of her be...

I’ve been moving from Bosque Farms to Cedar Crest for over a month now and I’m tired of it. I haven’t been able to settle into my daily work routine, mainly because I still don’t have internet service at the new place, for some ridiculous reason. However, I love the new place and believe I may have finally found my home. Cedar Crest, too, seems to be a great place to try out my new job as local coordinator for Academic Year in America (AYA). As I drove back and forth, back and forth through Albuquerque from one house to the other, I usually chose to drive along Coal Avenue, which turns into Zuni, which empties out on Central a little past Wyoming. It’s an interesting drive. I like to see the unusual businesses, like Diamond Publishing, a business that seems to take up a whole building that could be a small strip mall yet only ever has one car parked in front. I googled it and only found a phone number. I wonder what I would discover if I just called one day. Maybe th...

I have less than a week left on this Bosque Farms property and there is a little sadness but I'm looking forward to finally settling down somewhere that's my own little piece of New Mexico. In the short time I've been here, I've learned a lot, I've been inspired, and I've healed. This amazing, peaceful place allowed me to say goodbye to my parents. I've had time to celebrate their lives and imagine how much they would've loved it here. Dad would've been out working on cars in the garage, and Mom would've spent her days outdoors, the dogs by her side, tending to her yard. Every flower I took a photo of, I saw through her eyes. Our dogs, Buster and Chuck, 13 and 14 years old respectively, get younger each day. It's crazy how good they feel!! I'm a follower of a  senior dog home  in TN, and I love to look at the pix they post on their Facebook page. This place would make a great senior dog home, too, as Chuck and Buster can attest. A...

I'm thinking of Dad as Father's Day approaches, and I am dedicating this post to him. I've discovered in my journey to build Live and Learn New Mexico! that much of how I view learning comes from my dad, who was, I now know, a slow learner himself. My love for this state comes from him, from all those day trips in the car, just meandering around the state, seeing what was there (he was scoping out back yards for old cars to buy and work on). Dad also took us to arts and crafts fairs, estate sales, auctions, garage sales, and thrift stores anywhere and everywhere he could find them. He collected everything. He was an OCD hoarder, I discovered after he died. But now, as I'm moving his and Mom's stuff for the third time, I'm going through all the treasures he hoarded, and there's some good stuff there. There's also a lot of junk. The good stuff includes first edition books about and original artwork by Beatien Yazz, who has become a favorite of mine b...

I read Sir Ken Robinson's book, Creative Schools , and it made me think. I had started with a pretty clear picture and goal for L&LNM -- build a nonprofit program to help adults get their GED, learn to speak English better, and/or gain workplace skills. I was going to run my program as I ran the Adult Learning Center at UNM-Los Alamos. Simple as that. Creative Schools gave me new ideas. I figured I had enough money to allow myself a year to get my nonprofit going. I didn't want to rush into anything. I started blogging, which forces me to look a little deeper, and which in turn forces me to slow down and think before I write. During the 2014-15 school year, the standardized testing debate raged, and I became interested in advocating for teachers, having been one myself. I blogged about it and made the plea to give teachers their power back. That is when my ideas about how I wanted to run L&LNM and the philosophy behind what we do began to expand. I started to focus...

I was facing a slow Monday morning, thinking I need to do something different and not too stressful to ease into my week, when I remembered that I have Sir Ken Robinson's new book, Creative Schools: the Grassroots Revolution that's Transforming Education, on my Kindle.   I haven't even read ten pages and I want to quote just about everything the author says, but there are several ideas in particular that he speaks of that are important to me: we can't change education through political processes -- this revolution will take the efforts of parents, teachers, and kids (thus "grassroots") we have to use a systems approach to help us  understand where the problems lie in the existing school (and political) system redefine and transform schools and education systems can change but sometimes you have to look outside those systems and be innovative in order to create change (or replace them with better systems). I believe this could also be called thinki...

When I was a kid and we ate at restaurants, my dad would always pick up one of those freebie publications in the lobby areas. His favorite was the Thrifty Nickel , which listed items for sale, pets, services for hire, etc. He was always looking for a deal on a used car he could work on. I just liked looking at what people were selling. I got in the habit of picking up the Thrifty Nickel myself and then others when they appeared on the scene. There are some good free newspapers, even these days, and last week I picked up one called New Mexico Kids! (they have the ! after their name, just like Live and Learn New Mexico! Anything with NM in it should be followed by !, don't you think?) Anyway, I took a look at what is happening this summer for kids in New Mexico, and there is a lot. I thought I'd list a few of the ones I would like to do: Shidoni Foundry : Check out this bronze foundry and sculpture gardens at Shidoni in Tesuque. The photo for today's post, at Shidoni...

I haven't attended a high school reunion yet and never regretted missing them but my graduating class had such a good 30th they decided to have a 35th (yes, I'm that old), and that got me thinking. The internet is amazing for reunions. They have a Facebook page  for the awesome class of '80 and set the date for the 35th reunion in September to coincide with Homecoming. You can look up old classmates and friends on their site . (Yet, in this day and age, they still can't find everyone. But that's not the point of this blog so I will leave that for another day. However, just a quick note...where are you, Robin Fisher?) I have been satisfied catching up with old classmates through the internet and had not planned to attend the reunion. After all, I'm not big on looking back so much as forward, and really, what do I hope to gain from attending? Do I want to go back and show everyone what a success I am? Not really. By Los Alamos standards, I'm not a su...

I sometimes go back and read old Facebook blog posts. Most of the time, I start out looking at the pictures to make sure I don't use the same one twice. Then I look at a title or two and read the posts to see what they were about. I found one about the people who read my blog and where they come from. This is what I saw back then (4/10/15): United States 230 Russia 16 China 2 France 1 Kenya 1 Portugal 1 Romania 1 I look at these numbers a lot. I just like to imagine someone in France or wherever reading what I wrote. What do they think? Today, I looked again to see where we're at and this is what I found:  United States 737 Russia 16 France 3 China 2 Mexico 2 Ukraine 2 Germany 1 Iraq 1 Kenya 1 Netherlands 1 I also had a list of questions from the last post on this topic. I have another list with some of the sam...