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Showing posts from 2013

Designing an Education System

Back in January of this year I read about a challenge of designing a system  of education that babies would grow up with an understanding of their peoples cultural achievement and positively add to them. For many African/Afrikan Americans this can be a challenge. Our children are often brought into a school with Eurocentric education and little if any positive looks at the vast multitudes of minorities that also attend their schools. My question how can you have a positive out look on education if your thoughts, beliefs and history are all but ignored? The education gaps will continue because education in this country, although calling itself diverse, has often continued to ignore and change the wrong things. No this is not a down on teachers as I work with a lot of very dedicated teachers. This is more of a problem of a system that was first created to be separate, but forced in many places some 50 years ago to integrate with little other changes for success for many children. In es

Pages from History

Paging through the pages of the past can't help but see. Our elders fought with strength a dignity. One step forward 100 steps back they kept doing the dance. Depended, independent and codependent they tried to break the chains, yokes and pains that held us in one place. The torch was passed on to us and what do we do. Simulate, reevaluate or decimate our selves and others. We are failing the fight as the tired warriors pass into the happy land. Smoke screens and mirrors in the form of guilty pleasures over taking us with the same money hungry desires that brought us here often in chains. It time once and for all to break the chaos still attached to our minds, forget the struggles of self identity and understand the history of our past from the lips of our own. God has a plan if we can just stop the tide going from schoolroom to behind bars, and once again learn how to be community build up what is ours from the ashes of a system created to allow us to rot. Designed to make us fai

Not Fitting the Mold

If I had one wish it would be that people would stop stereotyping kids that don't fit or get along with the standard education models. Today I was at court with one of my children. I recently pulled her from the school system that was not a great match for her and began to home educate. Imagine my shock when the judge said she dropped out of school. She most certainly has not. Nor is she being homeschooled to avoid truancy laws. She is being homeschooled to rediscover herself with out the pressures of peers, administrators or others that want her to hang on to the bad girl title and place in the society. She is being home school to again gain the love of learning that she had as a child, before being put into the institution of school. She is being homeschooled to pursue her own interests instead of the cookie cutter mold that seems to be the norm until college. She is being home educated so she can create a closer bond to her family. She is being home educated so that she can be

Homeschool Journey Begins

After an 8 year break I brought one of my children back home to home school. The biggest lessons I learned after a eight year struggle with public schooling this child. 1. Just like not all kids can be home school not all kids can be public schooled. 2. We come in all different shapes, learning styles and ability levels. To often even today the school setting often resembles a pre cut mold casing trying to duplicate the same student over and over again. This may be great for creating workers but does it create thinkers? 3. There are some really great teachers out there that spend lots of their out of school time and money to making sure your child's in school time is spent learning. 4. There are many reasons why traditional high school does not work with every student. 5. Parents need to do what is best for their child. It's not a debate or a bulling situation that some one from the outside should make.  Just because you survived traditional school does not always me