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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Lemon Meringue Pie Lie - Day 3

The Lemon Meringue Pie Lie
By Julie Fowler


March 2011
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


This book is dedicated to:
children of all ages, who believe in the power and the purpose of emotion.

A mentira tem pernas curtas. "The lie has short legs." —Brazilian proverb

The Text
Throughout The Lemon Meringue Pie Lie are many boldface font Brazilian Portuguese words. If you would like to know the meanings of these words, they can be found defined alphabetically in the back of this book.

Foreword
This story is a cathartic, bicultural, sometimes linguistically-driven work of fiction. It is my hope that people around the world will come to understand the often misunderstood power of belief signaled by emotion and action.

It is my prayer that we all will teach our children early to manifest positive self-esteem not through food, but through careful guidance in the ways of the universe.

Namaste, Aloha, Blessings to you


    
Though Phoebe Welsh smiles, she is as sad as a mosquito struggling to prick through steel mesh. At eight years old, she has just moved to Salvador, Bahía, Brazil where her new home dances on a cobblestone street above the bluest ocean and the whitest sand beach. She has a view of the
Bay of all Saints, La Escola Panamericana, and the kids on the street in front of her house. Phoebe feels a bone-crunching loneliness despite being surrounded by lovely people. Worst of all, she truly believes she is all alone.
      She wears a uniform to the Pan American School on Campo Grande. The uniform: a stiff, shiny, white button-up blouse, denim skorts, and black soccer cleats, make her look like a reluctant pineapple plant in a field of banana trees . She looks at the photos of Pelé in school history magazines, pretending to understand Portuguese. She plays soccer like him on the school’s lower field, but not very well. Phoebe believes she is an outsider. She believes that no one will listen to the sadness she feels. The Brazilian kids stare curiously at her and her younger brother, Kyle. Portuguese is filled with unfamiliar sounds flowing fast from the kids’ mouths. Months have passed since they left California for Bahía.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Day Two

       Dear Reader Just in case you weren't sure what this blog was for (I wasn't, until just now), I am keeping this blog to generate some interest in my current project: The Lemon Meringue Pie Lie.  I spent, "whoa!", six hours today trying to connect with people who might be interested in The Lemon Meringue Pie Lie or who might know someone else who is.
      According to my two most knowledgeable friends, the audience is pretty small: possibly 30 percent of the population are interested in the psychology of emotion in children.  So I turned to the school who was interested in my real education...

March 30, 2011


Dear Fellow Educators,

     This letter is a belated follow-up to some correspondence that I wrote about three years ago regarding a book called The Lemon Meringue Pie Lie (once called Zabumbinha). The Escola Panamericana is a part of this book. I included the school because it was a nurturing part of my life just ten or so years after it opened. I was there in Bahía during 1969, thru 1972. During that time Pelé was the national rage, we danced in the streets during Festa de São João, contemplated Yemanjá, and the school was tiny compared to what I see today on the Pan American School, Bahia website.
      I am finally just beginning to talk about the ideas in the book and I have this blog  attached to my Facebook page.  I believe that the blog is probably only suitable to secondary students and adults.
     I intend to self-publish The Lemon Meringue Pie Lie within the year.  I am reaching out to you, to see if there is a teacher or teachers who you think may be interested in looking at the project. I can see the book’s vocabulary fitting nicely with your world culture classes or foreign language classes and perhaps with a Psychology class. I offer the book as an accolade and a tool. Look where my Pan American education took me!
      In exchange, I would be deeply grateful, if the students and teachers who come into contact with the book make constructive reviews of both the writing and the artwork. I am truly interested in their thoughts and suggestions. It is my hope that they won’t be shy! Once I publish it, perhaps anyone who likes the book will think of purchasing a hardcopy or an e-copy. 

      If you are interested in reading the book so that you may offer a review, I will give you more information on how to get a .pdf excerpt.  All you need to do is let me know you are interested.

--Wake 



Sunday, March 13, 2011

When pulled in two directions...

Having been a person with marginal boundaries and a lowered sense of self-esteem, I have found myself on a re-current, re-manifesting, false K2 life.  Clinging to the ice, my mind bleated, "Hang on." while another voice murmured, "You gotta turn back.". 
I have divorced yet another emotional mini me.  Today and yesterday and the day before that, I began again the process of building the life that I truly want, while releasing that which does not serve me.  I no longer bend to the promises (too often lined with fleece) of another's needy, lonely heart.  Today I stand protected, confident, calm.  Today I move when I say move.  I am the important one, no longer the invisible one, no longer self-deprecating, no longer saying what I don't mean at all.  I decide which people will be in my life.  If you are not chosen, I am not sorry.  I am elated as the shadow mountain of judgement disintegrates while I stand trumphant among the ashes.  I  finally have a boundary that no one can cross. I firmly stand re-committed to the creation of my life rather than destruction of it. 

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Improve Public Relations for Public Educators

Educational Process: Sell it

 Friday, March 4, 2011 at 4:29pm
 


¿Qué tal,  My Fellow Educators?

Glee is changing the image of what goes on in our schools creatively, and yet public education in our backyard limps along in the public eye.  Though perhaps not completely off-base is blaming NCLB,  implying lack of progress (lies)and concluding that the system (teachers) don’t work.  I think it is our perceptions that don’t work.  I think it is our expectations that don’t work.  Though Einstein flunked out of school, he was actually a genius.  Perceptions and expectations of him were mistaken.  The bar being raised year after year for schools to meet AYP is also an impossibility.  Perceptions and expectations are still mucking up the scenery, nixing the educational process with it.   This is a battle cry.  How can our educational system work when no one trusts the process?

What if we created a media campaign that showed how it works?  It is important to see the educational process as creative, ever-changing and distinctly personal.   Because I know that you are also concerned about the future of the teaching profession and public education, this summer I want to make a plan out of an idea that we could carry out all over the district, no matter where we are.

Together, I want us to form an advertising/media template that schools could use to get kids connected with educational synchronicity.  This template could be used in any class.  Call it the Publish section of the class.  I imagine a sort of super arterial between the jobs in the Las Vegas area and the skills taught in school.  These ads would clearly be presented in a fast-paced, fun, entertaining way.  By definition, the ads might be super highways from our schools to global economy jobs, community jobs, technical jobs…  With nurturing, these creative, mind-grabbing snippets retain Super-Bowl-Commercial impact.

Investors and television media executives could produce media ads that generate this positive view of Vegas public school teachers.  They could count it as a charitable donation and an investment in their company’s future.   I dream that this starts in Vegas and works its way OUT to a national level... like PS 22.  Are you willing to bring your brains to the table on a visual media template that could be used easily by any of us?

I visualize the reverse of a smear campaign...  Our goal:  Show what public education could look like in an achievable, reality-based scenario.  The digital advertisements will delineate what WE, the teachers and students, WANT learning to look like.  It is possible that learning ALREADY looks just like the process that it is.  The effect:  improved attitudes about education in general.

How to begin?  I might have already answered my own question... Start in our schools with connections to Vegas franchises, networks, casinos...   The public relations office of each might be helpful.

We CAN do something about the mistaken perception of education if we get out of the BOX.  With concrete community connection, positive, mind-grabbing media influence, ANYTHING is possible.  When something good is going on in a class... wherever that class is being held, it could be valued through our most influential digital medias: Internet and TV, but produced appropriately so that it doesn’t run like the Blood-Borne Pathogens video.  Consistently uploading to You Tube might be just the ticket.  What might that look like?  It cannot be dull.  It must capture the excitement of new learning, showing the tough times and the triumphant moments as well.

This is only the beginning.  We are going to SHOW what teachers and students do in a meaningful way.  In application, we will access movie makers, believers, and roll-up-your sleeves do-gooders.   You probably already have connections.  Who are they?  How can they be reached?  How can they get us on the air?   In order to get our hope for public education out there, we will need investors who back Nevada Education.   The bottom line: How do we use media to shift the attitude of a nation regarding public education?  Or even:  How do we shift the attitude of the nation, regarding education in general?

Would you like to help put the intentional, focused media template together for a few days this summer?   Do you have another idea?  I would love to hear it.  Have a wonderful Spring Break.  It is coming!
Yours Truly




Educational Process

Politicians WAKE UP... don't make me come up there!

Friday, March 4, 2011 at 12:06pm

In a brick corner of the school quad, the small boy's nose narrowly misses the Kindle he reads.  He is unaware of an impending attack. Approaching him from the rear, with malice, a twelve year old  sixth grader shouts, "God hates Fags.".

 Freedom of Speech -
(is it really okay to bash someone's very personal, adult-on-adult lifestyle?) Ridiculous!
Perhaps we need to strive even harder to teach our children to feel more secure in themselves so that as adults they don't have to go out and try to control others with hurtful, hateful verbage.  Anybody REMEMBER the Holocaust?  Damn!!

AND let us hang our heads in shame...

Behold, the crown jewel of Public Education negativism - NCLB.  It has becomethe poster child representing some commonly held views regarding Public Education...(Does everyone believe that all children deserve demoralized teachers and administrators?) Shame on the misinformed for focusing on what is wrong, instead of what is right!

Solutions?    Can a good education really be free?  Why NOT test at the beginning of every year before school even starts, to see where students are honing their own skills?  If we want students to be more interested in their own learning, how about running high media entertainment, full color, ad campaigns that sell math, techno writing, and scientific careers, right along with shoes and music?  Value comes from INFLUENCE.  Teachers can influence.  Parents can influence.  THE MEDIA can influence.  Forced legislation is false influence.  False legislation looks an awful lot like false engagement in the classroom.

 With the influence of test scores, what  can be determined about a student's future?  Why is everyone afraid to say: With these scores, you could go to a technical school, a fine arts school, an IT school...  Let parents inform the decision within the community.  What type of career are the scores pointing to?  There are plenty of jobs out there for a basic education. Why are we waiting for high school to help kids find their way to a career module?  We don't need to teach to a test... We need to teach to a child's strengths.  The test only shows the strengths.  SO WHY DO WE KEEP FOCUSING ON THE WEAKNESSES?  Good teachers know, we build on student strengths.  Those strengths determine a child's future.  Screw the weaknesses.

Students cannot work in a vacuum. Where are they headed?  They need the big picture even at eight years old.    The test should not determine solely the teachers' effectiveness, but the potential of the child and the effectiveness of the parent.  It is a sphere of influence, not a flat circle.  The implementation of NCLB is a flat, flat circle.    There are infinite possibilities being missed by uninformed, narrow-minded policies...

Come on Politicians! Be global thinkers, stop activism that involves punitive, directionless, micromanaged failure and worthlessness!  Help schools focus on what is really important:  What kids CAN do.