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(c) 2012 Christiana Lambert
I’m late . . . but not too late. Thankfully, unlike last year, my body’s not the problem. It’s just that we’ve had some pressing business to handle (back to that “other people’s stuff” on our back porch—stuff which gets in the way of good watering habits) before spring planting could happen. On the other hand, this Memorial Weekend is the first one in at least six years when we have not had any graduation parties to attend. Zero, zilch, nada. For once, we get to stay home and get ready for summer.
Oh, I’ve been so good—didn’t even go near a garden center earlier this month since I needed to focus on other priorities. Just been pruning my existing plants and weeding—OK maybe not even as much as I should have, but I did do that before I “let” myself go to the garden centers.
But let myself go I did this week. My flower fast has ended! Not only that, but I’ve planted all my containers already. And I’ll plant our built-in planters once my Mr. Wonderful turns the beds and improves the soil as he always does for me. (Thanks in advance, Sherman!)
I have a little routine I follow. First I go to Bonsai, my favorite small nursery (the one that tended my orange rosebush) in the middle of the week in the late morning or early afternoon and experience the opposite of the plant-buying rush. I pick up plants, change my mind, put them down, and then grab others. I love this calm space which gives me the room to visualize what could be—maybe—in own yard. Luckily, one of the owners is usually in the greenhouse to provide me with advice and/or bad jokes. I spend a lot of time there thinking and not too much time buying—which is a good thing given how much I could spend if I followed my impulses.
(c) 2012 Christiana Lambert
Well, maybe I should say I had a little routine, which has now been altered. My next step for over a decade has been to check out the local Sato’s outlet set-up in temporary tents—but all I found this year was a For Lease sign. So I went home to strategize just the right time to take the final stop on my spring planting tour.
Take the word “final” with a grain of salt—I know I will! Anyway, O’Toole’s is a large local nursery and choosing when to visit is a crucial decision. Chaos reigns there due to the sheer quantity of plants available as well as due to the large carts pushed by many people who must have flower budgets hundreds of dollars over mine. Timing really only determines whether a visitor experiences minor chaos or major chaos. But the selection . . . leads me into the far corners looking to see if the newest shipments have delivered even better options than I’ve spied so far. The thrill of discovery takes this claustrophobe in between tight racks stacked high with multiple colors. This shopping experience is so much the opposite of my Bonsai visit that I start discussing out loud—with myself—about which plants to choose—and I’m far from the only one.
(c) 2012 Christiana Lambert
Some years I leave so exhausted by the process that I have to wait a couple days to regain enough energy to plant my final choices.
Not this year, though. It may be late, but I’m going back to the garden. Not only is my back “up to” playing in the dirt, but also it’s up to shopping for something to put in that dirt. Yes, after long months when just stepping into a store caused my right side to go numb, on my recent oh-so-long garden shopping trips, I didn’t even have to think about any other pain than the pain in my wallet or the pain of not getting to take home a certain plant.
And that, my friends, is like coming home to my own little paradise.
Blocks (from the ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Group, circa mid-1970s)
However, all these Sesame Street references have led me to return to my personal past—no, not when I was young enough to be watching Sesame Street regularly nor when I was old enough for my kids to be watching it either. For some reason, my brother’s junior high class performed Sesame Street classics one spring and after that the songs filled our house. I can spout songs such as “Rubber Ducky,” “I Love Trash,” and “One of These Things is Not like the Other One” with the best of them.
But the song that ruled in our home was “ABCDEFGHJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY” or the “ABC” song. How can you watch and listen to Big Bird and not feel a little happier?
Without the alphabet, where would we be? And, speaking of “B”—tune in tomorrow to see what will “B” or not “B”.
(c) 2012 "Peep-i Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock's Peeps"
So she spent some time away with friends and her brother Jackson before we picked them up at a Starbucks in the mountains—late, but can’t say they didn’t have that one coming over the years—to go skiing for a couple days. Skiing’s a lot of fun, but it’s also exhausting, especially if you’re trying to ski around injuries in the first place, which three out of four Lamberts (Sherman, Christiana, and I) were doing.
That’s why Christiana’s last ditch effort at home-based family relaxation on Saturday night was a good idea. Of course, it would have been a better idea if we hadn’t waited to do it until last minute on the same night Jackson really wanted us to watch a movie, but, hey, don’t expect us to change too much, right?
(c) 2012 Peep Harmony (Trina)
What did we do? We had our own Peeps diorama contest with the Peeps we had bought for the Denver Post’s Peeps contest. Sherman only, with Christiana’s help, had managed to meet that deadline on Friday night, but what were we going to do with the leftovers? Eat them? Right . . .
Now me, I was casual. I figured just go with a simple idea that could be done quickly. I got this idea of Peeps bunnies holding hands (well, if they had hands!) like paper doll chains. Then all I had to do was trace blue paper and draw some really rough versions of a couple continents and choose which obnoxious song I wanted to use to promote unity and world peace. (Yes, I’m just that way!) Although I tormented my family, both by singing and pulling up “It’s a Small World” on YouTube, I just didn’t want to deal with making all those hats and costumes! But hey, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” was also stuck in my brain. That song could also qualify for a family torture exercise. (You’re probably thinking, “You torture and torment your family for a bonding exercise?” So it seems . . .)
(c) 2012 Last Peep Standing (Jackson)
(c) 2012 We're the Lumber-Peeps and We're Okay (Christiana)
(c) 2012 Iditarod Peep Race (Sherman)
By the time everyone finished, we really needed to relax with a movie. However, some might debate whether or not starting a movie at 11:30 at night is relaxing, especially for Jackson who had to be at work at 6:30 the next morning, but also for me, who had to sing in church choir, even if I didn’t have to be there for another three hours!
Like I said, Christiana is back in school where her projects need to be a little more elaborate than those made from Peeps. But I hope her work driving our little Peep Show was just the kind of Artist’s Date an artist needs to help her remember why art is fun—especially if that artist has to be tested on art first thing Monday morning after break.
(c) 2010 Trina Lambert
On the other hand that type of thirst could also condemn me except that it would also be pretty darn lame if I struck some Faustian deal just to get organized. Please tell to stop lusting after this seemingly elusive goal that isn’t even fun!
What I really want is to have more fun and reduce my stress levels by being more organized. That means all I care about—deep down anyway—is being organized enough to live better.
Back to this week. Despite posting my intentions on February 13 regarding getting our tax paperwork ready, especially in time to estimate our information for filing the preliminary FAFSA (filling out this college-related financial aid document is so not fun!) by school deadlines, I did not finish until February 28. I have been turning down invitations and putting off creative projects ever since then but could never quite finish until I got my husband to sit by me as the impending deadline arrived. (OK—on the positive side, the deadline was really March 1 so I beat it by two days!)
What seems to be true about me is that when I do not rely on a system or plan, then I work in a circular manner. Now, this is not a bad way to get going when I am trying to access my creative side—in fact, I like to use mind-mapping or clustering techniques to get all the thoughts out of my head and then focus on prioritizing order once I see all the pieces. However, I think we can all agree that creative approaches to tax work are at the bare minimum ineffective, but more likely criminal!
Still, yesterday, when my daughter asked me to help her with an outline for an essay she was writing, I kind of flipped out. Outlines are so linear and fixed—they’re lists!
The good news is that this week I am also reading Atul Awande’s The Checklist Manifesto and remembering the power of lists in many situations. Awande demonstrates how in a complex world, sometimes a simple checklist can bring focus to what needs to be done, even in complicated situations.
Such a checklist might have simplified my tax task so that I really could have finished it two weeks earlier. Even though I gathered all the official documents as they arrived in January and had most of the other papers necessary to help me fill out my accountant’s tax planner form, whenever I was missing something, I went off on a tangent. I’d work on one spreadsheet but not complete it because I was missing data. Instead of looking for the missing papers, then I would start with another spreadsheet. Before I finished, piles of papers—that had mostly been clipped and separated neatly—mixed together and covered my table. Yes, the tax planner was essentially a checklist, but a long, detailed checklist designed for multiple tax situations, not just my own. My own checklist could have been a handwritten slip for checking off all the papers I needed to gather as well as for checking off that I had filled in the corresponding slots on his form.
Funny how I forgot that checklists used to serve me well in another long ago complex time in my life. Once upon a time we had twin infants whom we brought with us to work. Caring for two infants is one long operations project at a time when you are not getting enough sleep to think clearly so it’s good to have plans and systems. It was hard enough to get out of the house just with the babies, let alone with all their equipment, supplies, and food. So finally we created a daily checklist that helped us get out the door with what we needed in a minimal amount of time.
It’s so simple, it’s scary. Holy Grail material or not, I’m giving it another chance.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
Hey, how hard could it be? I can just do as many other newbie fiction writers do and compose a story based around a thinly-veiled version of me and my life. What, you’re not into “little domestic” tales? No drug addictions, no affairs, no edgy lifestyle? Well, I do want my stories to stand out, you know.
Don’t laugh, but Everywoman is mad as hell about companies that don’t think about the customer and she has lots of company. Don’t believe me? Just monitor what some of your Facebook friends are saying.
However, I’ll admit that my conversations with the front line people at these companies are not that exciting. But they could be . . .
Over a month ago I was just trying to have a new dryer that worked. It’s good to have goals, even if they’re only little domestic goals. (Sorry, just gotta’ keep throwing in the snide words from a comment I received from a judge about my “nice little domestic” poem—as if there is no angst in the domestic life.) Only I felt the company didn’t have the same commitment to that goal as I did. First of all, why would a brand new dryer not work? Yes, I bought it at the outlet store, but I presumed it was there because of the scratches and dents and how long it had been on the floor, not because it DID NOT WORK. You see, spending several hundred dollars for a hunk of metal is only valuable if said hunk of metal improves my life in some way.
Anyway, not only did I have to wait for repairs, but also for any parts that the tech discovered needed to be replaced upon completion of the first visit. I’m sorry, but the business concept of Just in Time (only keeping the bare minimum of inventory and ordering in the rest) only works if you can get the necessary merchandise quickly. So then I got to wait longer since their Just in Their Time system seemed more like Just Waste My Time to me. See how much angst a person can feel over having spent money for a product that only complicates domestic life until the customer has spent time sitting around at home waiting, not once, but twice, to get resolution.
So is it wrong that my nice little domestic problem led me to harbor thoughts of creating a character who went straight to the top of those corporations that dismissed the importance of the customer’s time and money—and maybe taught a few CEOs a lesson or two? I’m backing off from the word “murder” for now, but would it be OK if she made the CEO take my, I mean, her laundry to a Laundromat while she waited for her dryer to be repaired?
Just like any other newbie fiction writer, I might include the teensiest bits of my own stories in these tales, but seriously, if a certain company’s CEO turns up missing, it wasn’t me! Really—but check the Laundromat, just in case.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
I received one of those Internet forwards that showed me trained dogs doing a bunch of twirling and leaping on command. While I watched that, I thought, “My dogs could do that.” So I brought out the treats and started working them on an upright twirl—after all, frequent Puppy Smackdowns build a pretty strong core section. Furgus got the concept within a few minutes. Sam is still a little confused about the whole thing, but he can get it from time to time.
I can’t really train two dogs to dance at the same time, yet I’m not sure I’m going to get either of the guys in my family to step up to teach Sam to two-step or anything else like that. More’s the pity because these are the most graceful English Springer Spaniels we’ve ever had. However, Sherman is looking into doing a more traditional training class for Sam, which could lead to them training together for agility, something Sam should be really good at doing.
Of course, Furgus could stand to be in an environment where he gets some focused training on following me—which is why I was in the process of signing him up for training. But then I discovered he would be able to take dance class first and be learning to follow me better there—after all Sherman can tell you I always want to lead in dancing!
Besides, Furgus loves attention, both from people and other dogs. My previous “wild child” dog, Chelsea, really liked the applause in training, becoming a much better-behaved dog when it was “show time” than any of us expected.
With Furgus’ handsome good looks and apparent expectations that life will be both exciting and go well for him, why wouldn’t he be the guy who likes to celebrate on the dance floor? Especially if there are treats involved . . .
(c) 2010 Christiana Lambert
Which is why it’s a blessing to have our kids away at college right now during this high-pressure week. Except . . . our daughter had to come home smack dab in the middle of (well, really at the beginning of) finals week to have a medical exam, too. Yes, timing is everything, but nothing we could say could convince the doctors’ practice that their scheduling was about as bad as it could get for a college student.
So instead of waiting another month to get on the road to healing, Christiana agreed to ramp up her stress during finals week. The university worked to coordinate a new exam schedule for her—not like the original plan for finals at 11:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. the first day followed by exams the next day at 7:30 a.m., 9:40 a.m., and 2:00 p.m. made any sense in the first place. Yikes.
On the last day of the semester she put to bed one final and has already received the good news that all went well—no given considering how badly the professor’s teaching and testing styles mismatched with Christiana’s learning and testing styles. This afternoon she takes one test and tomorrow morning she finishes with two others.
But first she had to turn in and be critiqued on her final art project today. Yes, she’s an incredibly talented artist, but not only does she set very high standards for herself, but also she has a teensy bit of a problem with jumping into a project before she’s absorbed all of the instructions.
Combine those approaches with her having a cold while coming home for 42 hours for a very ill-timed trip to do an uncomfortable test and you have a very stressed-out cranky art student—who is likely not going to find my observations very funny right now, but maybe she will change her mind after she recovers from this week. Maybe . . .
To complete studies in any areas of academic concentration often requires most of us to take a few courses that do not reflect our passions. Christiana can draw realistically, but she prefers a freer rein for her imagination. Usually, you can’t ride that particular horse in figure drawing class. She was just excited that this final project, for once, allowed a little fantasy: drawing an animal’s head on top of a human’s body.
The problem? The human body needed to be unclothed, just as in all the other assignments. She had a couple choices: she could either go to an optional class session where a model would be provided or she could find her own model. Snicker, right? But would our artist take the easy out? No, because then her work would be too similar to the other classmates’ work. Yes, sometimes her pursuit for artistic uniqueness puts her in challenging situations.
Let’s just say she got a certain nameless person to pose partially clad—and figured she’d just imagine the rest since she’d been drawing nudes all semester—except a lot depends on the angle you’re observing.
After staring at her reference textbook and only coming up with one realistic-looking side for the animal/woman, she was about to give up. No, she wasn’t ready to allow any more real-life models to help out, especially a certain (cringe-worthy) close relative. So I ran back and forth to the mirror several times, observed what I could, and then came back to describe and/or critique her version. Good thing I am a wordsmith!
Yes, I think she may have pulled it off, or at least as well as she could at that point. Oh, this kind of stress did not add to her pre-procedure mood, but thank goodness the procedure meds improved her attitude considerably, at least for an hour or so post-op.
Several hours after her medical procedure, she finished the other details for the project, applied the fixative, and put away the animal/woman.
That’s all the finals-related stress I needed. Thank goodness the doctors got the medical pictures they needed and she finished her drawing in time to rest overnight—before heading back to the insanity that is finals week.
When it comes down to semester’s end preparations, sometimes you just have to throw out a few educated guesses and hope that the details you fill in yourself are close enough to picture-perfect.
"Fantasy"Sewing Organization from 4-H Days
Sewing is not a very ADD-friendly activity—if nothing else, there’s all that preparation and then afterwards all the putting away. No matter how well I think I have my sewing area set up to help me, I find it difficult to start the projects. And ever since I upgraded from the trusty Kenmore of my youth, I’ve been avoiding my beautiful “new” machine—too many bells and whistles.
Sad to say, but every—and I do mean every—time I return to sewing, I have to relearn how my machine works. Makes me feel stupid—the operations person in me tries to tell me that maybe it’s just not designed well, but I don’t really buy that. All I know is the learning curve seems to be incredibly steep for me. Would go back to my old machine if it hadn’t been a casualty of twin hijinks many years ago.
That means I pretty much only sit down to sew when I have a deadline. (Hm, sounds like another ADD theme.)
What I like about sewing isn’t really the process and it never was—that’s part of why I’ve never figured out a good way to fit it into my adult life. No, what I love is being able to create something that didn’t exist before. Even better, so often I rummage through the fabric drawers or go to the store planning to make something that looks like “X” and end up with something that looks like the “Y” I hadn’t yet imagined. Amazing how the right trim or buttons can change the picture in my mind from exciting to “Wow!”
So, despite all the activities much higher on my “to do” list—including finishing the jacket I’d started for Christiana last winter—when she asked if I could make her a flapper costume this past weekend, I said I could.
Such a short, uncomplicated, yet creative, project with a very specific deadline spurred me to search for the machine’s product booklet—again.
After the two of us ransacked our fabric as well as my mom’s orphaned pieces, we settled on material that wouldn’t require extra finishing. Our first trip to the craft store led only to a tight black cap and its embellishment. The outrageous styles in the 20s meant we could take advantage of the almost-obscene practice of selling Christmas ornaments in October. Yup, a turquoise-feathered bird with a clip can go on her head—and her tree later this year.
Finding multi-color striped fringe changed our mental pictures again from a rather plain blue and black dress to one with color—she, the artist of many colors, and I, her mother who has painted our walls many colors, were ecstatic.
While I am always terrific at reimagining how a pattern might look with different colors and trims, I have never been able to do anything other than follow a pattern’s layout as prescribed. But any longtime seamstress will tell you that the cost of a pattern, especially without a coupon sale, will raise a project’s price quite a bit when it would be more exciting to spend that money on embellishments. This time I found an old costume pattern of mine (Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble) from my late 20s that didn’t appear as if it would be too hard to re-design and re-size. It wasn’t because I did it!
Trina & Krista (d. 1985) in 1973 wearing 4-H projects.
OK, first I had to grumble about the general disorganization of my sewing area, search and search for the darn instructions for my machine, and set up the machine with the proper thread and adjustments. All the while I needed to remind myself that this was no 4-H project—I didn’t have to worry about some judge declaring my inside seams a disaster and handing me a dreaded white ribbon (to all you non-4Hers: that’s like telling a person she should have just stayed home from the county fair because her work was no good!)
Several times I dropped the shift over Christiana’s shoulders—yes, she got poked by pins often—and assessed the fit. I just eyeballed the changes and kept going until the dress fit as perfectly as a costume needs to fit. The finished costume barely resembled the one we’d imagined when we first found the material. No, it was so much better.
(c) 2011 Cheyenne Kelton
I have always wanted to make my kids’ costumes no matter how much I complained about not having time—at least before I started and once I finished. Christiana’s mostly grown up now, but I can still do this for her—and for me.
And, yes, I did put away the pattern pieces, even if I still have more to do to get ready to finish that coat and even though it needs to be better sewn than a costume. Yes, you heard it here—I’m going back to what I began. I just can’t wait to see what those two-toned buttons and the topstitching do to make that coat even better.
Take that, domestic goddesses!
Animas River, Durango, CO
I started seeing her because part of her expertise is in helping adults who have ADD and I wanted to figure out how to live better with my ADD. Mind you, I didn’t go in to deal with my emotions about ADD, but to learn how to handle my everyday life in ways that my emotions wouldn’t be so much of an issue.
Maybe I should have told her that upfront!
The bigger part of our work together has been helping me figure out how to handle everyone else in my life who has ADD tendencies and who needs my help without all those needs driving me crazy. Sure, this may just be denial on my part, but that’s what I think we’ve been working on.
Anyway, as I am facing Mom’s final illness, my therapist worries she’s not doing enough for me psychologically. The practical person in me is thinking how much can she do? I’m going to have to let go of my mother and deal with how hard it is to do so. She can’t change that.
See the funny thing about me is that I don’t go to a therapist to mourn my losses or grieve through my problems. I go to figure out what I can do about what I can control. And maybe, just a little bit, to understand how my emotions might get in the way of doing those things that I know would help me—if I could only get myself to do them.
In fact, I finally realized my therapist is worried that I am not facing my emotions because I am mostly level-headed in her office. And, without realizing just how crazy this sounds, I thought, “Well, if she’s not sure I’m facing my emotions, why doesn’t she just read my blogs?”
How’s that for not quite getting the therapist/patient dialogue? I want her to “read” how I feel?
Ah, but writing has been my therapist for much longer than she has. I only went to her after I realized that talking to myself, through writing, wasn’t going to be quite enough. Even if personal writing had gotten me through many dark nights of the soul, maybe it wasn’t going to be enough to move me forward.
But in combination with therapy, I’d say writing’s healing power is why I don’t need even more help. Really. It’s been twelve years since I finally committed to personal journaling after I began working through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way program. That writing habit, combined with prayer, regular exercise, good company, and a commitment to doing other creative activities, got me through for many years.
Still, I came to realize that ADD was managing me. And that’s when I started treatment for the ADD. Good thing that I did since the lives of many I love blew off course soon after.
I promise I do cry and I do lose control of these emotions that can seem so measured to others. I do get down on my knees and wail over my losses—just not in a therapist’s office. Ask my dogs if you don’t believe me.
This post marks a milestone: my 200th post since I began this public blog of my personal writings. Blogging has been one of the best things—psychologically and otherwise—I’ve done for myself throughout the difficult odyssey that has been the last two years of my life.
Now, would it be considered denial just to print out these words and hand them to my therapist?
(c) 2010 Scott Lange
What types of educational reform will help public schools in the United States? I asked myself that question throughout my own children’s thirteen years of public education, as a parent, as a member of accountability boards, as a participant on a strategic planning team, and as a community member. Future reforms won’t directly affect my own kids’ schooling, but I’m still a citizen of this country—and I think so many of the discussions on educational reforms are missing the point.
For example, take the 20 September 2010 issue of TIME. The title on the school-bus-emblazoned front cover reads: “What Makes a School Great.” Below you’ll find teasers for articles on teachers and the difficulty finding them. Inside, an article by Amanda Ripley, “A Call to Action for Public Schools,” talks about the movie Waiting for “Superman” and the current state of education.
The results from the August 2010 TIME poll in the associated sidebar demonstrate what I think is missing in the debate. “What will improve student performance the most?” More-involved parents. More-effective teachers. Student rewards. More time on test prep. Longer school day.
I know many involved parents and effective teachers, but it’s not enough to work harder. Reform is needed system-wide—it’s not just about the who, but the how. The category answers didn’t include anything about providing a relevant education. And that’s what I believe matters the most—and why I wrote the following piece a couple years ago.
Public School Graduate Thinking Outside the Boxes 2010
RIGOROUS STANDARDS
As jobs are outsourced to China and India—and who knows what other soon-to-be emerging markets—we worry how to create an educational system that prepares our own kids well enough so they can maintain at least the same standard of living we enjoy now. Rigorous academic standards. More math, science, languages. Increased homework. Renewed work ethic. “Clean your plate—there are starving children in India,” grandmothers and parents across the United States admonished children in the 50s and 60s. Times have changed. In his book, The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman states he advises his own daughters to finish their homework because people in China and India are starving for their jobs.
It’s easy to think students should do their work because teachers have assigned it. Students, however, are not so different from those long past their school days. One of the most important things I learned while studying at the University of Colorado/Denver Business School didn’t come from a textbook or a planned lecture on the topic for the evening: motivating employees.
As the professor explained techniques, a young man raised his hand. “Why do we have to work so hard to motivate employees? They get paid to do their jobs—that should be motivation enough.”
The professor paused before diving into a heated exchange with my fellow student that began with something like “Just because they should do something, doesn’t mean they will.” She launched into other factors such as company culture, management styles, and job design. In other words, provide the workers with meaningful work and reward them for what you ask them to do and you’ll be surprised at how engaged they become.
Today’s students, raised in a fast-paced, digital, global world, have access to seemingly infinite information which most can locate within split seconds. In order to compete with the world outside the classroom, schools must be relevant to what happens beyond their walls while providing opportunities for passionate learning and face-to-face relationships. The attitude of what happens in school, stays in school is a thing of the past because students know they are connected, in some way, to everything on this planet—and beyond.
We can no longer follow a 20th Century factory model if we want our students to excel not only as 21st Century learners, but also as 21st Century workers. Producing a quality buggy whip could not save the jobs of even the most dutiful and hardworking buggy whip makers in the early 1900s as automobiles stormed the marketplace. If we equate rigorous standards with requiring students to take detailed lecture notes, fill out worksheets, and ace standardized tests, we are no better than those buggy whip factory owners who refused to see their market was disappearing.
The 21st Century Literacy Summit (2002) strove to define the skills necessary to grow our young people into competitive working adults. Skills identified as necessary for success in our ever-changing world economy are digital-age literacy, effective communication, high productivity, and inventive thinking. Unless schools provide all students with relevant learning experiences, few will develop those inventive thinking skills further detailed as adaptability/managing complexity, self-direction, curiosity, creativity, risk taking and higher-order thinking, and sound reasoning.
Partial Mural From Littleton High School (CO) Painted by Lan Cantrell & Christiana Lambert
The United States has been known as a powerful global leader because of its resources—and its workers’ creative approaches to resolving needs and providing products around the world. Someone in another country might figure out a better way to make a product, but often the core innovative idea started here first. Not only do we provide education to all our children, but also many schools offer learning through music, arts, sports, and club activities, reaching students who might otherwise disengage from education. If the phrase rigorous standards assumes we can focus only on reading, writing, math, and science, then our students lose multiple opportunities to make connections between the various disciplines and the real world—and to develop passion.
Sure, we want to maintain high standards so we don’t starve as a nation, but passion matters for achieving quality, productivity, and innovation. People who care about what they learn or the work they do often forget they are working.
Imagine a world made-up of countries like that.
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