Health & Fitness
How positively exhilarating!
Optimistic and inspiring news does exist, although sometimes we have to dig for it.
From My Side of the Desk
How positively exhilarating!
Last week in my Where’s the love? blog, I railed against all of the Negativity Bombs that assail our visual and auditory senses in the news, TV shows, movies and even the lyrics we listen to. Okay, I forgot to mention the music, but the same dehumanizing, derogatory and depressing messages that agitate instead of soothe humankind’s inner beast can slither into our psyches from the tunes, too. The very next day, various on-line and print media outlets offered stories that exuded optimism, inspiration and enthusiasm. All I had to do was scrub the pessimism pollution from my glasses in order to see them. And, oh, how positively exhilarating they have been!
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On Thursday August 16th The Washington Post ran an article on a new charter school, Basis D.C., that parents and students laud for its tough academic standards {Latin? Check. ‘Beowulf’? Check. Charter school brings its brand of rigor to D.C. students (Olga Khazan 8/16/2012)}. Talk about a mega-shot of morale for educators, parents and students who dream about a school where students are inspired by a curriculum that requires them to punch through the “This is too hard” walls of their brains and to fill those holes with “Yes, I can” attitudes. I mean Beowulf in fifth grade and Latin and Physics the following year? How bold is that!
In many schools Beowulf, one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon literary classics, as well as other British Literature aren’t studied until twelfth grade. Even then they often are replaced in regular English 12 sections with more contemporary novels and world literature selections because so many students balk at their difficult vocabulary and syntax. And although a specific number of years of foreign languages and science classes are required, depending on if students are going for a Standard or Advanced diploma, Latin and Physics are usually electives.
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Personally, since about 80% of our vocabulary prefixes, suffixes and roots are derived from Latin, I feel that a minimum of two years should be required. Just think how SAT scores would shoot up! As for Physics, I chose to ease my senior year with an art class in lieu of this demanding science because my first-choice college had accepted me the second week of September. Now, with the genius of hindsight, I wish I had encountered a Basis instructor who had pushed me into a regimen of brain crunches and mental sit-ups instead of allowing my seventeen-year-old self to cave to my senioritis. I’d still have squeezed in the art class, though, to feed my creative side.
One of the Basis parents, a driving force in the effort to bring this school to D.C. said in The Washington Post article, “We believe that everything that is worth achieving requires hard work.” Bravo to her and her compatriots who call for rigorous courses where kids’ whining about strenuous classes or the piles of homework they must complete are ignored instead of pacified with watered down expectations and requirements. As one Basis fifth-grader said, “The math is hard, but I think it will get easier.” One of her activities had been to solve a lengthy list of multiplication problems in fifteen seconds.
The article reiterated three of the Basis mottos: “Nothing halfway,” “It’s cool to be smart,” and “Walk with a purpose.” What if every school plastered the hall walls and classrooms with these maxims instead of School Don’ts? How positively exhilarating!
On Friday the 17th, a columnist for The Washington Post’s The Root D.C page, Michael A. Fletcher, wrote a piece titled For students, support at home can be a driving factor in success. In the 1980’s when his children were starting on their educational journeys, he and his wife faced the same dilemma as many of their black friends: Do we move to the suburbs so our children can attend schools where the test scores are higher, even though a large gap still exists there between African-American and white and Asian students? He and wife chose to stay in the Baltimore City public schools because of the diversity they wanted their children to encounter. To help their kids experience academic success they constantly encouraged their efforts. They helped their children choose courses, closely monitored their homework, and made a point of attending school functions, from parent nights to sports events to plays and musical performances, to science fair exhibitions. To supplement their children’s learning, they made library and museum visits, attendance at low-cost cultural and athletic events and participation in league athletics top priorities.
Since he was a journalist and his wife was an educator, they met many parents of all ethnicities who realized that if their children were to be academically successful, they had to be surrounded and supported by adults from all parts of their lives-family, education, athletics and community. Adults who turned blind eyes and deaf ears to attitudes of apathy, excuses and entitlement. Adults who encouraged and inspired children to knock down economic, gender and racial barriers by achieving academically. Adults who supported responsibility, reliability and respect instead of negating these attributes by hovering. How positively exhilarating!
The Thursday August 23rd Local Living supplement to The Washington Post is chock full of newsworthy articles for parents as they face another school year. Readers can find out which chairs offer the best back support during homework time, how to morph from summer vacation bedtimes to school night lights out, some teachers' tips to support academic success, how to ease their children’s transition from a lower to a higher school level, and so much more. How positively exhilarating!
Daily subscribers need to check out these stories, in hardcopy or online, at http://thewashingtonpost.newspaperdirect.com/epaper. The e-Replica versions are free to subscribers (you’ll have to know your account number when you sign up). Non-subscribers follow different registering procedures.
Besides education-related articles, I’ve nourished my recovery from the Pessimism Plague by reading reviews of movies that offer uplifting plots (Hope Springs and The Odd life of Timothy Green), Letters to the Editor in The Washington Post that suggest logical, pro-active and workable plans for many of the economic and societal issues that loom before us and op-ed pieces that call for an end to all of the political nastiness instead of reading those infused with subtle and overt smarminess (right, left and middle) that egg-on the mud-slingers. I’ve watched videos of otters that hold hands while they sleep so they don’t drift apart and dogs that can do chores, and wondered if I can train Tommy, my 180 pound Newfie, to vacuum the floors. I’ve read enjoyable articles in the Herndon Patch such as Taxes, Tramps, and Houses of Ill-Repute and NatureQuest Will Replace This Year's NatureFest, and on-line blogs written by teaching colleagues around the country who are eager and motivated to start another school year. And I’ve proofed and revised drafts and more drafts of my soon-to- be released book, a tedious yet thrilling process.
A terrific commercial from years back has become my mantra. In it, an elderly woman sits on a park bench. She smiles at the camera and says, “Every day I have a choice: I can choose to be happy or choose to be unhappy. I choose to be happy.” Does she ignore the Negativity Bombs? I’m sure she doesn’t. She just knows not to let them infect her happiness with life, because she understands that joy does exists…even if she has to dig for it. How positively exhilarating!
