Time to start teaching the concepts of resilience and sustainability...First, truth be told, this intro has nothing to do with mullets. Those Friends who have been observant have likely noticed that I have been starting to use to the subject line to tease shared articles I think you will like. So if you came to the intro hoping to hear my thoughts on funny haircuts, this may be disappointing. I will not be offended if you skip down to the Last Word to get your "business in the front, party in the back" fix. And now for the rest of you with more refined tastes....some more serious thoughts.School is finally starting up again all over -- and this year it is taking on many different forms. From drastically altered in person classes, to adapting to new online learning platforms, to hybrid solutions, to home schooling and new concepts like neighborhood learning pods and micro schools, we are experiencing a rapidly changing (and largely unsatisfying) landscape for learning and teaching perhaps like at no other time in our country's history. I have been observing how these changes and disruptions in learning have been affecting my own children. While I remain "pro-teacher/educator," I believe we are long overdue for a re-prioritization in what true "education" means to our nation's young people. So in the true spirit of "don't vegetate, instead innovate and differentiate" I have been thinking that we should take this opportunity to reimagine education across the board.To start, I'd like to see a coordinated, strategic focus on two simple, but important, life long learning concepts: resilience and self-sustainability.We adults have been spending a lot of time and energy worrying about our children's achievement, their test scores and performance on traditional school topics. We obsess on getting our kids prepared to go to the absolute best college that will admit them (and that we can afford).But, if you think about it, there is little time collectively devoted, particularly in the early years, to teaching them how to handle when something doesn't go as planned or how to make decisions and be truly self reliant when they are on their own. As a result, today we are seeing that kids have been conditioned to believe there is probably a pill for whatever ails them, or they can simply ignore or cancel something that makes them uncomfortable. And while we may be able to get them into the college of their dreams, they often exit with a head full of book smarts, but no more street smarts than when they entered.Perhaps we should take this disruption in learning as an opportunity to recalibrate. Instead of using college prep as our barometer for achievement, we get more basic: Do kids know handle rejection and failure? Can they self regulate and persevere? Are they industrious? Do they know how to properly nourish themselves, clean after themselves and the environment, and understand the value of a dollar saved and earned? Do they understand that the value of a dollar in some communities maybe different than the value in others?We give young adults the right to vote when they are 18 years old -- but do they know how that vote will impact them as tax payers, wage earners and world citizens? I would venture a guess that in this day and age, regardless of socio-economic status, most do not. So while the principles of teaching kids math and reading have been relatively uniform for the last 50 years or so, we now live in a technology enabled world that does not require the same level of emphasis on these skills like they once did. At the same time, we also find ourselves living in a world with increasing periods of self isolation, diminishing natural resources, and rapidly changing requirements for sustained employment. In the future, when we bestow upon our young adults the book "Oh the Places You'll Go" on their graduation, will it be a story being told to them for the first time to give them hope, or will it be a reinforcement of everything they have learned in life to that point?I'll end there. I have many more thoughts on this than can fit into the space of this week's intro, but I thought I would throw the idea out there for you to consider for now....Enjoy this week's selections and have a great weekend.XOXODave
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Friends of Dave #195: living in a mullet…
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Time to start teaching the concepts of resilience and sustainability...First, truth be told, this intro has nothing to do with mullets. Those Friends who have been observant have likely noticed that I have been starting to use to the subject line to tease shared articles I think you will like. So if you came to the intro hoping to hear my thoughts on funny haircuts, this may be disappointing. I will not be offended if you skip down to the Last Word to get your "business in the front, party in the back" fix. And now for the rest of you with more refined tastes....some more serious thoughts.School is finally starting up again all over -- and this year it is taking on many different forms. From drastically altered in person classes, to adapting to new online learning platforms, to hybrid solutions, to home schooling and new concepts like neighborhood learning pods and micro schools, we are experiencing a rapidly changing (and largely unsatisfying) landscape for learning and teaching perhaps like at no other time in our country's history. I have been observing how these changes and disruptions in learning have been affecting my own children. While I remain "pro-teacher/educator," I believe we are long overdue for a re-prioritization in what true "education" means to our nation's young people. So in the true spirit of "don't vegetate, instead innovate and differentiate" I have been thinking that we should take this opportunity to reimagine education across the board.To start, I'd like to see a coordinated, strategic focus on two simple, but important, life long learning concepts: resilience and self-sustainability.We adults have been spending a lot of time and energy worrying about our children's achievement, their test scores and performance on traditional school topics. We obsess on getting our kids prepared to go to the absolute best college that will admit them (and that we can afford).But, if you think about it, there is little time collectively devoted, particularly in the early years, to teaching them how to handle when something doesn't go as planned or how to make decisions and be truly self reliant when they are on their own. As a result, today we are seeing that kids have been conditioned to believe there is probably a pill for whatever ails them, or they can simply ignore or cancel something that makes them uncomfortable. And while we may be able to get them into the college of their dreams, they often exit with a head full of book smarts, but no more street smarts than when they entered.Perhaps we should take this disruption in learning as an opportunity to recalibrate. Instead of using college prep as our barometer for achievement, we get more basic: Do kids know handle rejection and failure? Can they self regulate and persevere? Are they industrious? Do they know how to properly nourish themselves, clean after themselves and the environment, and understand the value of a dollar saved and earned? Do they understand that the value of a dollar in some communities maybe different than the value in others?We give young adults the right to vote when they are 18 years old -- but do they know how that vote will impact them as tax payers, wage earners and world citizens? I would venture a guess that in this day and age, regardless of socio-economic status, most do not. So while the principles of teaching kids math and reading have been relatively uniform for the last 50 years or so, we now live in a technology enabled world that does not require the same level of emphasis on these skills like they once did. At the same time, we also find ourselves living in a world with increasing periods of self isolation, diminishing natural resources, and rapidly changing requirements for sustained employment. In the future, when we bestow upon our young adults the book "Oh the Places You'll Go" on their graduation, will it be a story being told to them for the first time to give them hope, or will it be a reinforcement of everything they have learned in life to that point?I'll end there. I have many more thoughts on this than can fit into the space of this week's intro, but I thought I would throw the idea out there for you to consider for now....Enjoy this week's selections and have a great weekend.XOXODave