Great MOMs

Walking out of the public library, a rather thin magazine caught my eye in the advertising bin, free to take. Without a second thought I took one. It didn't take me long to browse through it before finding an interesting topic. From the article I gathered that this magazine is published locally from the two joined counties, Franklin and Benton. The article portraited a Tri-Cities Mom who won a make over, that is an outfit, haircut, make up and photos. She was categorized as a super mom. What makes this person a super mom? I asked myself. From the limited information I understand that she has a small business grooming animals, home schools and I don't remember any other memorable thing. The second person that won a make over was also a super mom, that likes to spend time with her family, works full time and attends college. I guess those are excellent qualities to be considered a super person, but I couldn't help wondering about the moms I deal with at school. The family live is all to them. Families is the main factor for them, thus they end up procrastinating with over 4 kids. They enjoy tending to them even if they don't sing to them or read a book. They spoil their children with whatever they can purchase because usually they don't have money for much.
These ladies that I know, rarely attend meeting at school, they can hardly read or perform higher levels of thinking as is expected in the American society (although these ladies manage to organize their family), they never ever or minimally help their children with school work, they preferred to leave the education to the professionals. They don't attend college because they are too afraid to fail but are terrified to neglect the family, so they stay away from responsibilities that will compete with the family time.
Will these ladies qualify for super moms? In my opinion they do. One day I will make a list of all the qualities of a super mom according to me.

Accomplishments

Not long ago, my husband's siblings held a meeting to discuss their parents' 50 year anniversary. The planning included all the knick knacks of a wedding: the ceremony, dresses, suits, hall, food and so on. They also wanted to include a power point presentation, featuring many pictures of all the grandchildren and children, and a picture of their first adobe home. I got the feeling that they wanted to portrait the point of their beginning to their present state, which is pretty good, considering that they moved to a new country without knowing the language. This made me realized that most people like to compare their humble beginnings to an accomplish present state.

I didn't have to go too far to connect this event to another similar episode. When we attended Marcos' graduation anniversary, many people boasted about their home, even though the inquiry prompt asked for a simple what they were up to.

If a keep digging in my thoughs I can make a plethora of connections in regards to people boasting about their accomplishments.

I know that purchasing a home, or having a great family are big accomplishments, but why do we always need to be reminded of our great accomplishments? and why do we need to share this information with others?
Can it be that we are too conceited or arrogant that we must let others know of what we have accomplished? Or could it be that we are part of a human race that we must demonstrate that we are capable of compliting tasks for the purpose of acqiring goods, thus fullfilling the sense of completeness and usefulness? I am not a phychologist or a social expect on human behavior, all I know is that I also like to share my accomplishments with others to feel useful, complete and skillful. I want others to know that I am not just here to breath pure air and leave behind carbon dioxide. I am capable of taking on a task an finish it to improve my living conditions. Thus, I will gladly celebrate my in-laws anniversary and I will praise anyone else that shares their accomplishements. Hurray for accomplishments!!

Our fears

I don't know if it been said by someone wise that, at times our actions are driven by fears, but I don't think it needs to be said, because that is just logic and common sense. We all are afraid or fear a thing, an event, a person, a place, losing control of a situation, or just the unknown. The mode of our predestined ending is on top of my list of fears. Fears can give us nightmares which remind me what I used to fear in my early twenties. I was always afraid of not been part of social groups. I always wanted to be part of an event with the extended family. By any means I was not a socialite but I was afraid of not getting invited to a picnic to celebrate a birthday, a baby shower and so. I dreaded the time that my kids wouldn't enjoy my company, and that I would have to spend time alone. However as I get older I enjoy moments of solitude. I have the space to think, rest and to enjoy a t.v show or a hobby. I guess sooner of later we confront our fears, I sure hope I don't have to confront my fears that pertain to aquatic creature. Confronting solitude for shorts periods of time is sufficient and acceptable. Fears can indeed destroy us and make us think irrationally.

guilt

When are we supposed to feel guilt when we tried to do things that are right but they don't come out as planned?
My son is graduating from high school this year. I pushed for him to apply for different scholarships, specially for one that awards Hispanic students. Because he has above average qualities of an good student, we hoped that he would be awarded something. It was disheartening when we joyfully received the envelop with the results. Just prior to opening the letter his father joked hinting than not all letters are for awards that some are regretful and apologetic. As if he was a psychic, the letter informed us that he was not awarded a scholarship but he was still welcome to come to the ceremony to received his academic award.
So far he had not received a single scholarship award. Besides feeling disillusion, I also feel very guilty because I constantly pestered him about applying. My only hope is that he would receive something from my association. Only a tiny sliver of hope that is all I have. I wish for him to open a letter and feel joyful about his efforts. I hate for him to open letters of regretful news. Every time he reads the words "We regret to inform you that you have not been awarded", I get a heavy, dark feeling of guilt, almost as if I was the one making the official notification.

Little Miracles

All of us want to be witnesses or part of a big miracle. We look forward to experience the rush, the wow moment that is going to blow our minds away. Sometimes when I am sitting in church during service I question my faith because I have not experience that spiritual exhilaration. From such anticipation I blind myself from the small miracles that occur at every moment around me.
Just last Saturday in celebration of past over and Easter, we attended a three hour long service. We knew it was going to be a longer service than usual but we didn't anticipated this long period. Instead of getting mad I choose to be glad to be there. As it was a bilingual mass the crowd was brimming to the entrance, but I was setting there in a good spot with my family. As customary, many families with young children were present, I foresaw many babies crying, to my amazement the young ones were quiet, some were asleep in their parents' arms as the service was late at night. The music was lively enough to keep us singing, but the best miracle was when I got to hear the homily in one language, then the other. I think God really wanted me to listen to it, because usually I hear it but I instantly forget what they say. I can't say that I save every word I heard that night but the message was strong to me when I heard it for a second time. It was a great event, and this time I experience or was part of all the small miracles that were taking place.

New looking versus old and tattered

Today I had the privilege of donating a few items to our local Goodwill store. After placing the items on the donation counter I decided to take a stroll around the store. I had no intention of any purchase I just wanted to look around and catch an idea or concept to ponder on. I really didn't care to look at clothes as my weight is in the least desirable state, so I headed straight for the house items. There was a collection of flat plates in better shape than my own dishes at home, but the disarrayed arrangement made them least appealing than my dishes. I also look over the wine glasses and other items. My eyes couldn't concentrate on a single item, but I managed to put together a set of six goblets for a mere tree dollar price. I then kept on my search of nothingness just to satisfy my own curiosity. To my surprise I noticed a whole isle of books. This book area was made up of two long, maybe 10 feet long metal bookcases, about 5 feet tall. I have never noticed so many books in a thrift or second hand store. All kinds of book. Some were nicely preserved and seem newer, others show sings of age but not wear. There were so many books of the same title about new mothers. Even some textbooks took the place on these shelves. I must have spend about 40 minutes in this area, because I opened and read random pages of many books. The information withing the pages was intriguing, useful and in some cases accurate. Why were such books discarded? After all they were priced next to nothing for a dollar of less.
I must say that they state of some of the books look rather old, as if they belong to yesterdays gone by decades ago. This made me realized that we have becoming accustomed to discard old looking things even if they are in good, useful state. We like new things even if the quality is inferior to that of an old item.
What consequences should we expect on the future from altering our aesthetic taste? How much extra and unnecessary rubbish are we going to accumulate in the Earth's crust from this new thinking? There is too much to ponder on this subject but in a later time.

Critical Thinking

While performing some of the chores around the house I was contemplating the fact that some people think that critical thinking cannot be taught. Not having a degree on psychology or other related field that would give me credentials to voice my opinion, I can only disagree with or in frustration.

Before going on any further I should define critical thinking for the sake of remaining focus on my discussion. To me critical thinking is the ability to perceive a matter, whether be a math, science, story or any problem and to be able to look at it from different perspective, with different levels of analysis in order to learn and expand knowledge or to find a solution.

As a third grade bilingual teacher I believe that critical thinking can be instilled into our daily thinking. It is a matter of organizing our thinking and giving ourselves opportunities to contemplate, ask questions and to make connections that can spark further and deeper thinking.
I served students that come from low social economic status and with a different culture. I don't say they belong to one culture that is recognized by the census or the government. It is the street culture, the survival culture, the culture spawned from the rapid development of technology merged with old, incredulously and ineffective ideas. The new culture is a thinking that lacks morals, patients and the sense of consequences. I don't have a lot of experience, but it seems that each generation differs from each other on the way of thinking. I attribute this mutating-thinking changes to many factors but the most influential being technology. So if new generations think differently than their ancestors, then it is a possibility that we can instill critical thinking.
Growing in a similar environment as my students, I can say that I lack critical thinking skills. Just recently after completing the challenging science course for my master degree I started practicing critical thinking, so much that I annoy my kids and my husband. They think I am nuts, delirious, dumb and plain crazy. But to me the more I practice critical thinking the better I have become to see a situation, problem or concept from different perspectives, however I am still rusty on the area of consequences. What has got me to this level? I cannot give credit to a single factor but to a clump of practices, first of all the motivation, I do not want to be an invalid thinker. I know I would never be wise but I don't want to end up in the other extreme as to be a dull thinker. Next to motivation, there has to be excessive reading and truly dwelling on different view points, which brings me to questioning. After a new idea, any idea, gets into your mind ask questions. This part may seen easy but in reality is very hard to ask the right question. I myself need much practice on this area.

Please disregard anything I just wrote, I really don't have anything to blog about. I just wanted to explore my writing skills while contemplating on the subject of critical thinking and cultures.

Ordering from Informecial

As I waited the last 20 minutes for a show worth watching, I decided to give it a try to an infomercial. I was impressed with the product and the price was reasonable. I did a little research on the internet, the result came with a legit product. So I made the dreadful phone call, I hate to give personal information to strangers over the phone. To my surprise it was a answering machine system the process went smooth, up until the end. I placed my order, provided billing and delivering information and I thought I was done, was I mistaken? The machine kept on offering product after product, with no ending. These offers were either half off or free as long as you agree to receive them on a monthly basis until cancellation. I keep saying no, no and no to every offer, I just wanted the end of my order to confirm it was right. Finally after the sixth item I hung up.

Capitalism has really covered every possible avenue of making profit. They want to get you for everything and anything you got. I think we need to provide classes so citizens can learn to recognized when there is a scam or when there is just too much. We need to learn how to stand up for ourselves and let those money hunters that they shouldn't push their useless and worthless products. I never going to order anything else from informecials.

Math the greatest concept

I just finished reading a trade book (for adolescents). The plot had a good twist and the language, not particularly challenging for an adult, it was adequate for the age group. The only thing that made me go berserk was the author's comment at the end, when she referred to math as being boring. She should be sue for such allegations after all, she wrote a book to a developing audience. is that the message she want to spread to the learning attitudes? If she is one of those people that are math injured she should not be spreading such ignorance.
The way that math is taught can be very mysterious and mystified, many can easily loose tract of the real concept, and most fail to see the connections between the real world and math. In reality math is everywhere. We take it for granted and we rarely stop to contemplate that we use it in our daily lives and to solve so many problems. I only know very little about math, but I know that scientist use it to express their discoveries and to collect data. I am implying that we can't have a new generation thinking that math is boring. In the contrary we want them to approach such concept with a positive attitude so they can make even greater discoveries, than Fibonacci, Einstein, Socrates and others.

Who's fault it is?

My school is classified as "under-performing". This classification is based on the high stake standardized test by our state. Since our school opened almost five years ago, the students have taken this exam. After the scores get averaged we come out with a low number, thus the classification.
Indeed there is some true to that label, but who can take the blame?
The principal? the teachers? the students that are lazy and lack motivations? the parents? Maybe different combination for each student? It is possible that all groups involved are performing well but they lack trust and are not able to synchronize meaningful learning? Seriously, how do you measure learning?
I belong to the teacher group and I constantly interact with the other four groups. The best foundation for our interaction is true trust. I believe they can do their jobs and I want the to believe that I can do my job. I turst that they have the best intentions to reach our goals and I want them to believe that I have the best intentions to reach our goal.
There is one group that I don't trust completely, that is the parents. I feel that parent from our demographics are not prepare to support the academic needs of their children.
In our school students receive everything, from pencils, notebooks, colors and even some get free backpacks. Since many of our parents work in agriculture related jobs, they lack the financial means to provide for their kids, therefore we provide. I see no problems with that. But for some parents this act has paralyzed their sense of responsibilities. This has transferred to homework and being aware of what their kids should be learning.
What do you tell parents whose kids has lost their homework folder that was provided to communicate with parents? "you need to buy another folder for your kid". this is what I feel like telling some of my parents, but would I be too imposing?
there is so much to this issue that I don't have enough time to continue. I shall ponder further on this on the future.

Ideas to pen down

I was in a meeting the other day, well lately I have been in too many meetings, so I don't know if it was last week or the other day. It doesn't matter when, what matters my reflection from a conversation. During a short break we converse about penning down ideas as soon as they pop into the mind.
For the sake of keeping with technology we should say we should make our new ideas accessible for future references, weather be in in a paper, a blog or a cell text message. Even though our minds are capable of producing new ideas it is hard for those ideas to linger in our minds for too long. This has happened to me over and over time.
I need to think of a way to have pen and paper available almost instantly after a new thought or an issues to ponder about comes into my mind.

World Population

There is big issues concerning the world population growth, but I don't see any campaigns to educate our citizens against having too many children.
Thinking in religious point of view, what is God's plan for the world population? Do we just continue to grow without retrains? Are we supposed to reach certain level for God to come?
According to some scientist, the Earth resources are only adequate to sustain a population of 2 billion, we tripled that number in this present time.
Then there is the issue of wastefulness. Here in America we are very wasteful indeed, but our society is form in such a way. To me it is very hard to be energy effective, we have too many regulations to abide to, that it is almost impossible to be wasteful. Like when we built our house, we had to adhere to certain standards for re-sale purposes and for code regulations, we ended up buying shower heads that disppears copicious amount of water. To be energy efficient it cost too much money.

Age population

Today I was having a conversation with my husband about the age population of some countries. The age statistics of under developed countries can be expressed in a near perfect pyramid, if the youngest citizens represent the bottom part and the oldest population the tip of the pyramid. This phenomenon could be the result of high child mortality and short life spam, thus the arrangement very logical to me.
But Marcos made a crucial point, having a dwindle aging population cuts the opportunity of passing down wisdom, values and morals. The new generations are left to make the painful discovery of personal advancement. Of course there are other factors that possibly hinder their advancement. On is the short life spam, not been able to grow to an advanced age it doesn't allow people to discover better ways to make decisions, and to develop a worthy philosophy of human respect. Also the lack of education, but that pertains to another issue from the point I am trying to convey.

New generations need attention, time and dedication from older generations to fulfill and develop minds that would allow them to make sound decisions that would positively impact their lives and others around them. Having less older people is impossible to provide the care for numerous youngest generations.

Unbeknown to my husband he gave me a great complement last week. As we struggled to keep our exchange student in our country after she was dismissed from school, I was forced to write a letter of recommendation. Around the same time I also had to write a letter of recommendation for a colleague. Marcos being more fluent in the English language was my editor, he made minor changes to each letter. Again I was sightly discouraged that I was not able to produce the perfect paper. About a week later during a conversation he mentioned that I was a great writer. These words sounded like a beautiful symphony to my ears. I was elated, nonetheless. I have been working very diligent to improve my writing. As a child I was not exposed to do any kind of writing. The only paper that I remember I wrote was a letter to my grandmother, but it had more glitter and drawings than actual words.
During the university years I was forced to write several important papers. I accomplished my assignments but without being proud of the quality of work. Lack of vocabulary was the biggest obstacle to prevent from expressing clear thoughts with elaboration. Also my lack of imagination and creativity put me a the bottom of my class for writing. But I learned that I was teachable and capable of learning how to write. I been practicing whenever I can in my journal or here blogging. Writing is great.