Live and Learn New Mexico!

It's becoming clear to me that if anything calls itself a reform movement, we should be suspicious. I don't think I need to explain that further as far as education reform goes but after watching the first half of Hot Coffee , a documentary that looks at the case of the elderly woman who sued McDonald's for serving too hot coffee, I feel the need to talk about a few things. WARNING: there will be a lot of bolding, italisizing, and all capping as I need as many ways as possible to emphasize some points. The frivolous lawsuit The coffee case became the epitome of the "frivolous lawsuit", and the poor woman in the case became the target of jokes across the nation. Now that I know more, I feel really bad because I, too, fell for it to a certain extent. I remember thinking, though, that there had to be more to it, that if a jury found the restaurant guilty, there was a reason. Turns out there were many reasons, starting with the fact that there had been at leas...

I've written before about capitalism and how it cannot possibly work in conjunction with democracy, and which is more important blah blah. Well, I've got more. I'm "flipping" it and approaching it from a different perspective, that of a reasonable American who wants to save the planet. I started to watch FrackNation but had to turn it off when I got sick to my stomach over all the capitalism being crammed down farmers' throats. The movie is a retort to the fracking issue brought up in Gasland . Basically, it interviews farmers who say that they need those fracking wells on their property; otherwise, they couldn't make ends meet. They can't survive just by farming alone; they are forced to house these wells, and the worst thing of all is that they think the wells are a good thing! I'm thinking, why can't we support them as farmers and make sure they can make a living that way instead of forcing them to do business with frackers? Obama's a...

Over the last two years, as I've researched and blogged, I've come to believe that L&LNM can help New Mexicans live happier lives by showing them ways to pull themselves out of debt. This doesn't mean giving them money to pay off their credit card bills but teaching them ways to cut costs in other areas so they can put extra money to paying off their debt. As a bonus, the ideas I hope will become reality also contribute to the effort to make our planet healthier. Although our focus has changed from specifics like offering high school equivalency classes to bigger concepts like learning how to counteract dysfunctional economic systems and global warming, our vision and mission statements hold true. I've been talking to a friend about projects that we could start looking into with this new focus. She is a member of the Rotary Club in Los Alamos, and they are always looking for worthy causes to contribute to. My friend said that the club is looking for ways to he...

The deadline to enter the XQ Super School Challenge was yesterday. I submitted our application on Tuesday and then I did absolutely NOTHING for three days. I was exhausted! After I submitted our proposal, I received an email from the XQ people requesting us to email in a photo or something that shows how the team felt when they hit the Submit button. I thought, "what team?" I've worked in the field of education for a long time in this state, and people are slow to pick up on the great ideas and RUN with them. This challenge didn't allow enough time to get the buy-in we need to run and not just talk about it. I feel like we are just starting to build a great team, and we are trying for a statewide program, not a local one, so team building requires a longer timeline. Education is one of the areas that is slowest to change. I think it's because people think laws must be enacted and political processes endured to effect change. People don't see that they ha...

After I published my last blog post, New Mexico Dreaming , I got to thinking...there is so much more to picking out which NM towns the L&LNM super school would start with than simply looking at how many Likes we have on our Facebook page. That would be a very NCLB way to look at it. OMG! I can't believe I was thinking that way! Before the XQ Challenge even happened, I was discovering NM communities that seemed to have the desire to revitalize their towns and were also using Facebook to get their message across. I follow the Facebook pages of different community Main Street Projects, and I discovered somewhere along the line that Silver City is a music city. They have a lot of great local bands playing down there. In Tucumcari, I discovered Tucumcari and Quay County Then and Now, which made me more aware of their rich heritage. I also follow pages like City of Dust, New Mexico Museum of Art, Que Viva Espanola,  and Memories and Photos in NM . Some of these pages represent ...

I woke up feeling a little defeated about the XQ Super School Challenge. It is starting to feel like a battle and it's difficult to keep myself in the right frame of mind -- this isn't a battle; it's the beginning of a discussion across the state that needs to happen. We all win because we are talking about it. Yeah, right. Still, I'd really like to win this thing. So today I'm daydreaming -- a truly wonderful habit for learners who look to the future. I'm imagining what my first steps would be if we won the XQ Challenge. As I've mentioned many times before, I love to look at the Blogger and Facebook data to see who is reading my blog posts, who likes the L&LNM Facebook page, where those who read the blog live... I looked at Facebook data to see which communities in NM were liking the L&LNM page. I'm thinking that the NM communities that are liking our page the most are the ones we should start our school with, if they are interested. Thos...

I have decided to live a responsible life, which means going solar, going organic, and going local, among other things. I was searching for sustainable properties for sale, just  out of curiosity. I found an earthship out in the Mountainair area. Turns out it isn't for sale after all but yesterday we took a nice drive out there and it gave me ideas for the L&LNM super school. The property has a main house and two casitas plus a third casita under construction. The casitas could be used as small training centers for those who want to learn to live sustainably. The fourth could be completed as an L&LNM project. All of it is on 80+ acres, acres that could be used for organic farming, tiny house/office/classroom construction and other kinds of projects requiring space, and as a training/conference center where everyone across the state can come for professional development opportunities. Okay, so this particular earthship is not for sale but that doesn't matter. I c...