Do you ever look around the place you live and get totally bummed out by all the pollution?
Well, that’s what was happening to Elif. So she said: “Oh I know, I’ll just invent a more eco-friendly way to make plastic! It’s not like I’m just a teenager who’s still in high school or anything.”
Just click here to see this very cool 2:29 video.
How can we support more of this kind of inventiveness and inquiry in our local high-schools?
In talking about the education challenges in Albuquerque, Bernalillo County and New Mexico, you and I like to say, “We are all in this together.”
But, just who is the “we” we talking about?
Answer: It often depends on who you are. Yes … YOU.
Now … imagine what it feels like, just for a moment or two, to let all those definitions and conditions… just … drop … away …
My guess is you would begin to notice that it’s just you. Yourself. Standing there. Pondering.
And then – maybe – you could imagine some of the “others” you can both see and can’t see, but know are there.
And notice that, son-of-a-gun, they are very much just like you – and you are very much just like them:
And now notice … has your definition, understanding, experience of “we” just expanded a little bit?
Good.
Now let’s go out and do this thing called community … together.
Are these some of the things we should be asking Albuquerque Public Schools to be paying more attention to?
7 Hot Majors That Didn’t Exist When You Were in College
ABC Community School Partnership presentation on progress and results from program start in 2006 to 2012.
You may want to cycle through it twice – it’s very information rich!
Click here to view it, then click the gear-wheel in lower left to set the timer for changing views.
Thanks to Michelle Bloodworth and Catherine Bornhorst for all the work that went into creating this.
2010 TEDSalon London:
“It may seem that big problems require big solutions, but ad man Rory Sutherland says many flashy, expensive fixes are just obscuring better, simpler answers. To illustrate, he uses behavioral economics and hilarious examples.”
To me this sounds a lot like what Buckminster Fuller called “Trimtab.” Here’s a video:
Ideas useful in many domains, it seems to me.
This from Franklin Schargel, one of my favorite authors, motivational speakers, trainers and lifelong educators.
It is time to end the charade of the concern of politicians and conservatives about the future of America. The United States supports the building of schools in and around the world because we know that education is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a country. Go into a room of highly successful people anywhere in the room and you will find one commonality. Most people sitting in that room were able to achieve their success by succeeding in their educational systems. Education should be the one budget item that is protected at all costs. In the 21st century, great countries will have great schools. So it is strange that we engage in nation building in foreign countries and scrimp at home. How is it that we can afford to increase our military budget, and cannot afford to invest in America’s children’s future? It would appear to me that this is a great way for our country to compete with other countries in the future. If we look at China and India, they were able to leapfrog much of the rest of the world by laser-like focusing on education.
We keep on hearing that education is expensive. It isn’t! Ignorance is. We either will pay for education up-stream or the lack of education downstream. Over 70% of our nation’s prisoners are school dropouts. We were told that the reason we couldn’t limit executive pay on Wall Street was because we needed the best and brightest to run these companies, yet the same people who told us that are now saying we need to limit teacher pay to save money.
Good schools benefit everyone. Poor children who get a good education become successful adults who contribute rather than drain the system. Tax dollars are going to them one way or the other. We need to find a more equitable way to pay for schools other than property tax, especially as our population grows older. It creates a huge burden on property owners and massive inequities. America was built by having free, public education for all. Yet, we are abandoning our goal of a good education for all. Budget cuts are undermining our long-term prospects for a prosperous society, by shortchanging our youth of the skills that they need to contribute. We’re eating America’s seed corn!
Thank you Franklin!
A cool example of how to turn a problem into a solution – there is so much good stuff here to explore and appreciate
– 18-year old Boyan Slat spends a half a year studying plastic pollution and how to use the power of nature to clean itself up
– the young simply aren’t smart enough nor have sufficient experience to appreciate why certain things cannot be done or certain problems are beyond solving
– click through the website and enjoy the crisp, clarity of its design/functionality
– also notice how clear, crisp and understandable the problem and concept (solution) statements are
Then, consider how some of these concepts might be turned to advantage in viewing and languaging other “problems” in New Mexico that might benefit from this kind of thinking — water, education achievement gaps, fracking, homelessness, family poverty, family violence, fill-in-the-blank.
Just let this website wash over you and allow your mind to ponder.
Enjoy,
Tom