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.