Live and Learn New Mexico!

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

(this is a repost/updated) I'm feeling a little slow today. It's the kind of day that lends itself to daydreaming, wishful thinking perhaps. Everything is so fast these days. No one wants to take the time to reflect or wonder. Correction, we do want to take time but feel we don't have that luxury. This is a world that says if you aren't stressed out of your mind and putting in 45+ hours a week, then you are lazy. There are a lot of us, though, who know better. Reflection and wonder aren't luxuries; they are necessary to true learning. You can't do them quickly, and you can't measure them with standardized tests. The Bosque Farms WPA project that I've been researching has led me to reflect and wonder. It started with a question -- how can I use this horse property for my nonprofit? which led to -- what if we could bring this WPA property back to its original glory to serve its original purpose? I then began to look at the whole state of New Mexico a

When I started this nonprofit , I decided to start researching jobs online. My goal was and is to find work online that our students can do. We will point them to job sites that we think they might be able to actually get, make money at, and enjoy. I found those kinds of jobs and so much more. I discovered that, with the wide range of job experience I have myself, there are many opportunities for me to take advantage of while I build my program. Being a lifelong job hopper is paying off. First, I was offered a job at one place that sold educational equipment to use in the classroom. I would have been training teachers. I could have made good money but it was time consuming so I turned it down. My own nonprofit would have ended before it began. At some point, I signed up with Wyzant and began tutoring one student. I love it but make only about $21/session. I have a 35-minute drive to get there and the same back. I have had a couple of nibbles by prospective new students but summe