Category: Commentary

The Early Bird Catches the Worm

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

beautiful-sunrise-images-hd-photosI used to wonder about my early rising friends. You know the kind of people that I am thinking of, the ones who arrive at work at six thirty in the morning and boast that they have already been to the gym and vacuumed their living room. They come bearing hot muffins that they popped into the oven while they were getting dressed. They are overly perky given the time of day and more than ready to go. I always had a hard time fathoming how anyone might push themselves out of bed before six on a weekday and nine on the weekend. I have always needed my beauty rest and I have taken it with gusto whenever possible. Then something happened that changed my entire outlook on life.

For the past several months I find myself sleeping peacefully until about four in the morning. I awake and begin to toss and turn for an hour. By five I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to be able to fall back into a peaceful slumber so I lie uncomfortably in the dark closing my eyes in the hope that maybe my body will surrender. It doesn’t happen. I’ve finally decided that the only thing to do is to begin my day before sunrise. Since I don’t want to disturb my husband I use the time for quiet endeavors. It has been a remarkably freeing experience.

I check the news on my laptop to see what happened around the world while I was dreaming. I send birthday greetings to friends on Facebook and look for important emails. Then I write my blog. The words flow readily with nobody around. It is a perfect time for reflection and for going quietly within myself. As the minutes tick by the world outside slowly begins to awaken. I hear the cars backing out of driveways as my neighbors head for work or school. Children wait for the bus on the corner right in front of my house. Those on the early route are still sleepy and make little noise while the ones who leave when the sun has lit up the sky are frisky and mischievous. I keep my blinds open so that I might see the activities taking place all around me. They somehow make me happy.

I eat my breakfast and sip on my Diet Coke while I compose my essays. Sometimes I get quite excited because I sense that I have written something important that might influence the way people think. At other times I laugh at my own platitudes and Pollyanna imitations. I enjoy my little corner of the day and love that it is uninterrupted by robocalls or knocks at the door.

I have a dear friend who routinely meditates. She has often told me of the power of silence. I have always had difficulty stilling the voices in my head. They seem to be constantly scolding me and reminding me of all that I must do. My early morning alone time has brought me a newfound peace and I find myself able to become completely relaxed. I hear the beating of my heart and feel the breaths that I take. Somehow I feel in sync with the universe without the clatter of everyday life that begins with regularity as soon as the sun is on the horizon. I am beginning to experience the beauty of silence and meditation.

For the first time I understand why the early morning risers are so happy and even a bit self righteous. I don’t plan to look down on the sleepers like some do because I have been one of them for all of my life. I will instead rejoice in learning the wonders of greeting the day in the dark. I will enjoy this new phase of my life for as long as it lasts for I fear that one morning my body will revert to its old ways and I will awake to find the sun streaming through the spaces between my curtains and the clock registering a warning that I must hurry or fall behind.

I hate to admit that my newfound ability to wake up before the chickens is a measure of my age. My mother used to tell me that she was sometimes awake at three in the morning once she entered her senior years. She and one of my aunts would talk on the phone in the dark of the early morning hours because neither of them were able to stay in bed. Research tells me that I am supposed to get eight hours of uninterrupted slumber but I can’t seem to push it past six no matter how hard I try.

I sometimes wonder if we are creating a nation of insomniacs with the constant barrage of sights and sounds that overstimulate our brains. There is rarely a time when I do not hear a car driving past my house or a siren in the distance. Planes fly overhead and my phone makes little noises indicating that someone has sent me an email or a text. People are always checking their computers, reading from screens, playing fast moving games. It will be interesting to one day discover what the effects of all of this have been besides an epidemic of pinched nerves, frozen shoulders and numb fingers. We are caught up in a brave new world in which we eliminate the sounds of nature by shoving earphones into our heads so that we might escape to loud music instead. Air conditioners are humming, clocks are ticking, appliances are buzzing and we think that we have managed to ignore them but somehow our brains are taking note and perhaps even changing in ways that make it more and more difficult to simply relax.

I still consider myself a night owl rather than a morning person. I find it difficult to go to bed before eleven. I enjoy staying up late to finish a good book. I sometimes have my most eloquent ideas after everyone else has retired. I plan to enjoy my newfound morning hours for now. Who knew that I would one day be joining the early birds that I used to think were obnoxious? Life is certainly full of surprises and maybe even a few extra worms.

Get Out of Town!

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

votebuttonsLiterature is filled with words from wise men admonishing adults, especially parents, to always remember that children will often do what they see, not what they are told. In other words our kids are always watching us to determine if we practice what we preach. They may not yet know the word for hypocrisy or be able to explain its meaning but they are quite bright at detecting when we are disingenuous. Our youngsters are way more observant than we sometimes think which makes me rather concerned about our presidential candidates. I wonder what our young ones, especially our teenagers are thinking about now when two such terribly flawed individuals are vying for the highest office in the land.

On the one hand there is a bombastic blow hard who doesn’t seem to mind being continually rude at the very least and possibly racist in the way that he stereotypes entire groups of people. On the other hand there is a woman who has been caught in so many lies that it is now difficult to believe the sincerity of anything that she utters. How can we keep a straight face when we correct our children for their little white lies or punish them for behaving like a bully? Of course we ourselves may not be guilty of such behaviors but the kids may think that if such lack of character doesn’t matter in gaining the highest office in the land then why shouldn’t they be able to engage in a bit of inappropriate behavior here and there.

We used to live in a country guided by manners and respect. When we caught our leaders stretching the truth we turned our backs on them and sometimes even ran them out of town. Someone who was hurtful to certain groups might have had a limited audience and following for a time but ultimately we would opt for someone more amenable to the diversity of our nation. Now we seem to be saying to our youth that we are okay with bombast and lies. We make excuses for our terribly flawed candidates noting that nobody is perfect and that it would be ludicrous to expect them to be so. We have nobody to blame but ourselves for the low quality of our choices because we had the power to select men or women of higher moral character and we instead chose to overlook the obvious flaws of the two who will finally be on the ballot in November. Our children are scratching their heads in wonderment.

We may have had disagreements with the political thinking of presidential candidates from the past but few would argue that they were not mostly decent men. When it became apparent that Richard Nixon had covered up the sins of Watergate he was urged to leave office not by the opposing party but by Republicans who argued that he needed to do so for the good of the country. They did not attempt to justify his lies and obstruction of justice. Today we have so many unscrupulous individuals who engage in intellectual gymnastics to explain away Trump’s absurd comments and Clinton’s parsing of words. In many ways both candidates are displaying adolescent behavior and we the people are allowing it.

Our country has weathered many things in the past. We endured a civil war. We engaged in questionable battles. We watched in horror as it became more and more apparent that one of our presidents was indeed a crook. We made the grand error of starting our democratic endeavor with slavery intact and allowed Jim Crow policies to stand for far too long. Sadly our children noted these things and they influenced their thinking. Today those very same mistakes cause some of our youth to question the very existence of our great democracy. Had we been more careful all along a great number of the problems that we now face would not even exist. We fall victim to what we allow to happen. Our children see what we do and how we react. It affects them far more deeply that we might ever imagine.

As individuals we have the power to talk with our young and let them in turn make their honest commentaries. We need not approve of either Trump or Clinton but rather note that we are in the unfortunate position of having to choose one or the other. We must decide who is more fit for the job and that is not an easy thing to do. Some among us will choose a third party candidate instead, post a write in vote for some worthy person or abstain altogether. Regardless of what each of us ultimately does I think that parents owe it to their children to discuss why we think we have reached such a dilemma. We need to turn off the noise from the pundits and talk about our country’s history with honesty and explain what we want from our leaders. Our youngsters will appreciate that we trust them enough to bare our political souls.

I doubt that any of our presidents have been perfect. We all learn soon enough that George Washington probably did tell lies and that he had slaves as well. We read that even honest Abe had a trick or two up his sleeves. We feel great disappointment when we hear of the racist comments that Woodrow Wilson made. We know that our beloved Franklin Roosevelt died in the arms of a mistress even after he had promised his wife that he would not see the other woman again. It hurts us to realize just how much clay makes up the feet of those that we entrust with our fates but still we prefer knowing that for the most part we can believe what they tell us and that they will not be constantly bullying and offensive.

I’ve tried my best to lead a life of which my children might be proud. I’ve wanted them to see how to treat people and to understand that lying may temporarily get us out of a fix but ultimately it destroys the foundations of relationships. I have stumbled here and there but always owned up to my mistakes, even in the classroom. I remember being rather militant with my students about getting their homework to me on time. I was generally unwilling to accept excuses especially when they claimed to have done it but accidentally left it at home. There came a day when I was supposed to meet an important deadline with my principal and in rushing out of my house I forgot the paperwork that he needed. Lucky for me he was far more understanding than I had ever been with my pupils. Feeling both fortunate and a bit guilty I revealed my error to each of my classes and announced that because I had messed up I was going to give each of them one chance to mess up without repercussions. The interesting thing is that few of my students took me up on the offer. Instead they began turning in their homework in record rates and often mentioned how much they had appreciated my honesty.

Our children are only moderately impressed by what we preach but dramatically taken by what we actually do. They are constantly watching us. We need to be certain that we do our best to model the behaviors that we wish them to have and that includes in choosing the people who will represent us. Hopefully we will do a better job in the future. For now I suppose that we just have to consider how we will hold whoever wins the race to higher standards than he/she has thus far demonstrated otherwise in four years we need to consider telling them to get out of town.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bath Water!

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

153679054-620x4131Last school year one of my grandson’s called me using Skype so that I might help him with his seventh grade math homework. It was an unusual request from him because he is generally quite mathematically inclined and is even taking Algebra I this year in the eighth grade. I learned that he had a long term substitute teacher who wasn’t especially equipped to teach math and so he was not grasping concepts during class the way he normally does. In addition the homework assignment didn’t appear to match the information that he had been given during regular school hours. Even worse was the fact that it was over four pages long with a total of about eighty problems. He caught on quickly and managed to complete the assignment with little help from me but it took well over two hours and he was almost falling asleep as we worked to beat the clock. I suspected that perhaps he had been given the worksheets earlier in the week and simply chose to get them completed just before they were due but he insisted that it was a one night deal. Since he is generally quite honest I had to believe that the situation was one of those travesties that students must sometimes endure.

There is a great deal of discussion regarding homework these days. There are pros and cons regarding its impact on learning but virtually everyone agrees that in some cases there is way too much of it, particularly for younger children. I have a feeling that much of the homework trend is being driven by the tightly packed curriculum that literally does not allow for any breathing room in the teaching cycle. Educators today are pressured to introduce an impossible number of concepts during the school year, sometimes more than one new idea during a single hour. It is a race to get everything done and often assigning homework is the only way to provide the practice that students need. The problem of homework is brutally complex and needs to be addressed but not in isolation. Unless the entire issue of scope and sequence, skills and knowledge and testing is addressed the fixes may be quick but inadequate.

I taught math. I knew for certain that the vast majority of my students needed infinite amounts of practice before they mastered concepts. I tried to direct teach and then provide lots of in-class time to try out the new ideas while I walked around guiding those who were struggling. I managed to cleverly work in short periods of practice when students had to demonstrate understanding without assistance from anyone. I gave homework Monday through Thursday with regularity. I learned that ten problems worked as well as fifty for reinforcing learning so I tried to keep my intrusion on my students’ home life as short as possible. I generally found that I needed to work the problems myself before giving them to my kids because I had to see how much time they actually took to solve. I also checked regularly with those of varying skill levels to find out how long it took them to do my homework. I adjusted whenever I learned that they were having to work for more than forty five minutes. I tried my best not to give assignments on the weekend or before holidays. I wanted my students to have family time and to come back rested.

Some teachers and parents are suggesting that there should be no homework at all. I find that such ideas are akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Instead of attempting to adjust the situations that worry us we tend to use one size fits all strategies and as an educator I am certain that it is never a good idea to do so. When I was a student I needed homework because I was always too distracted inside a classroom full of other people to adequately absorb the information that my teachers were presenting. I needed the quiet of my home to go over my notes and study examples. I tend to die in group settings. Even in college I had to avoid the library because I was constantly losing my attention because of the distractions of the sounds of people walking, turning pages, shifting in their seats and so forth. Teamwork projects were just an extra burden for me because I always had to later go into my quiet little lair and study in my own way to master concepts.

Educators need to bear in mind the many different learning styles that make their students tick. One of the best ideas I have ever seen is giving students choices regarding how to reinforce their learning. Allowing them to select activities that correspond more closely with their innate learning styles just might be a great way to reduce the stress that universal homework assignments create in so many kids. They might for example have the opportunity to stay a bit longer once school is out so that they can participate in group study settings, especially if that is a better way for them to learn. For those like me who lose all focus in a crowd a private room might work or even the chance to just go home to do the work in solitude and familiar surroundings. Until we begin to assist each student in building on the strengths that they already have we will almost always find problems.

Another way of dealing with the homework problem is to have teachers from the different curriculum areas communicate with one another. I wanted to know when science fair projects or research papers were due so that I might shorten my own assignments or even eliminate them entirely. When every teacher is piling on huge amounts of work students become overly stressed and little learning is actually occurring. By working together to consider their needs it is far more likely that they will actually take care in meeting the demands from each class.

I think that high school students have to have homework or they will be totally unprepared for the rigors of college. They must learn how to manage their time but teachers should also bear in mind that few university students are held captive in classrooms for seven or eight hours. They instead have many extra moments during the day to complete their reading, papers, labs and studying. When high school students don’t even arrive home until five or six at night they have a very narrow window of time in which to get everything done. Sometimes they struggle to complete their work before midnight and then have to arise with only five or six hours of sleep to begin again. Little wonder that so many of them become unduly anxious and burnt out.

I advocate for continuing to assign homework beginning about third grade and slowly increasing its intensity as the student progresses through up the line. Perhaps first year homework assignments should be as little as  five or ten minutes in the main subject areas total while a senior in high school might handle as much as three hours total in a single night. All grades from the fifth grade on should have a summer reading assignment as well to encourage a lifelong habit of learning. Students can prove that they actually read the text in different ways such as writing a critique, analyzing characters, giving a speech or presentation, and so forth but not with a “gotcha” test over small details. Let’s face it nobody recalls such things and the literary experience should be as enjoyable as possible.

I’m glad that people are thinking about homework. We’ve gone way overboard of late and it’s well past time to begin a more creative way of insuring that everybody learns.

Terror

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

ground-zeroIt only took a split second on that September day for everything to change. The sky was blue. It was one of those seemingly perfect mornings when we all went about our business with a little more spring in our steps. Who could be unhappy with the sun shining so magnificently and the weather showing the promise of cooler days ahead? When we saw that plane heading toward a building in the middle of New York City it didn’t make sense. We wondered if the pilot was lost, sick, having a heart attack. Once the plane hit without any attempt to adjust course a sickening feeling of horror began to slowly overtake us. By the time a second plane flew straight through the other tower, a third slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania our national innocence had been shattered. While we have been attempting to deal with the aftermath of what happened fifteen years ago an entire generation of children has grown up under the specter of terror. September 11, 2001, was a purposeful attack on our psyches and the years have not yet healed us.

I used to live near Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas. I grew to love the sound of the airplanes moving over my home as they traveled to and fro. I liked to imagine where the people were going and what fun lay ahead for them. My girls and I often walked over to watch the planes taking off and landing. There were no barriers to our movements. We were free to stroll unencumbered into the departure areas and press our noses against the glass walls to watch the activities playing out on the tarmac. We often met our out of town guests as they exited the aircraft or sat talking with them until they departed. We didn’t pass through metal detectors or take off our shoes. We didn’t have tickets and we still moved in and out of the airport as though we owned it. After September 11, we would never again enjoy the luxury of using the airport as an adventurous destination on our leisurely walks. I would never be able to show my grandchildren the fun that their mothers and I had so often enjoyed.

I remember the silence that ensued for days after the attack. The sounds of the plane engines that had become so much a part of my routine were gone. It was eerie not to hear them and when they finally returned they were suddenly frightening. Air travel became a source of anxiety for me rather than a joyful experience. I became wary and watchful and admittedly nervous. Just getting through the long lines, the guards, the scanners became a distasteful chore. Understanding why such measures had to be taken added a hint of danger to what had before been so delightful. Post 9/11 children would take the inconveniences for granted, not knowing how free and easy travel had once been.

Our country would react to that horrific morning by engaging in a war that now seems never ending. We believed back then that we would slap a couple of terrorist hands and then resume our happy lives. Instead we are still fighting an elusive and shadowy enemy. We take down one group of terrorists and another is spawned. We are unsure of how to defeat those who would harm us so that we might return our world to a sense of normalcy. In fact we secretly wonder what normal is. For the young it is the reality of living under a constant threat and still managing to carry on as though nothing has happened. For those of us who witnessed those terrible events that will never fade in our memories it is a longing for a sense of peace and security that may never have actually been as concrete as we believed that it was.

The years have taken their toll on the world. Governments have toppled. Societies are warring. Here in our own country the wreckage of 9/11 revealed scars and disagreements that have been festering for decades. We want someone to care for us and maybe even make it all go away but we cannot seem to find solutions that are satisfactory to all of us. We argue over the effectiveness of policies and attempt to place blame. Where once we were rather naive and happy go lucky, now we are cynical and argumentative. The psychology of terror has slowly but surely done the work that it set out to do. We no longer feel as safe and strong and noble as we once did. Instead of concentrating on the root of our problems we now verbally attack one another.

A generation of children has grown up in this atmosphere. They are now in the early years of their adult lives, attending college, studying in high school or middle school. Social networking is as natural to them as making a phone call was to us. They get their news on the Internet. Cell phones are their libraries and means of communicating with their friends at one and the same time. They are subjected to a barrage of information and temptations all day long. The forces of terror and extremism attempt to radicalize them by playing on the confusion that young people so often experience. They can visit websites and watch videos that extol the virtues of jihadists and political fringe groups. They have easy access to dark ideas that continued to grow even after our best efforts to stop the terror that we witnessed on September 11.

Today we mostly go about our business trying not to think too much about what happened fifteen years ago. We remind ourselves that more people are killed in car accidents than by terrorists but each time we have to pass through metal detectors and open our purses for inspection just to watch a baseball game we are reminded of the dangers that might strike at any time. We tell ourselves that we won’t be bowed down by evil but we know that we have changed. We are less trusting and more cynical than we once were. We felt so innocent on that beautiful September morning only seconds before that plane did the unthinkable. Just like that our comfortable cocoons came crashing down and none of us would be quite the same.

I believe that the malaise that so many of us feel in this election season can be traced all the way back to that terrible day. We continue to search both for someone to blame and someone to be our hero. Thus far we can’t seem to agree on who is who. That is the crux of our terror. Osama bin Laden would smile to see us warring with one another. It is what he hoped to accomplish. He often said as much in his hateful videos.

We took away the debris from the September 11 disaster. We honored and buried the dead. We built memorials lest we forget. Now it is time to heal our souls and show our children and the world that the terrorists have always been wrong. They can never take away our freedom and our strength. 

Hope Chests

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

art_61133_0-1a1a1achesthopettleadWhen I graduated from high school fifty years ago I received a coupon entitling me to a miniature Lane cedar chest. The idea behind the promotion was to get young ladies and their parents into the store where they would see the full sized models and consider purchasing one as a special gift. Back then coming of age for many girls meant owning a “hope chest” that they would begin to fill with special items that they might later use in a future home once they were married. In a sense it was a way of creating a kind of dowry.

I only took the freebie chest which I turned into a container for trinkets like campaign buttons and old pins but I dreamed of one day having one of the beautiful full sized wooden boxes with its enchanting interior cedar aroma. My dear sweet husband eventually bought me one when I graduated from college and to this day I use it to store blankets and seasonal items. It sits in one of my extra bedrooms looking as shiny and new as the day we brought it home and I hope that it will one day become an heirloom for one of my children or grandchildren. 

Most girls today would scratch their heads in confusion if someone were to ask them if they have a “hope chest.” The idea of storing away linens in anticipation of getting married soon after high school would sound quaint and outdated to them. Instead they dream of careers and putting first things first like getting an education and building a resume. Marriage is a distant goal that is way down on their checklist of things to accomplish. Besides, a registry at Bed Bath and Beyond will be sure to bring in all of the needed items when its time to think of settling down. At least in this country the “hope chest” has mostly gone the way of the buggy whip and arranged marriages. With a woman in contention for president it is doubtful that we will ever again see teenage girls lovingly accumulating linens for a future homey nest.

So much has changed over the decades. Raising girls is far different from the past. My granddaughter is as comfortable on a robotics team as she is getting a pedicure. When she speaks of the future the idea of husbands and babies is rarely mentioned. Instead she dreams of producing films or doing scientific research. She has enough confidence in herself that she would even consider running for political office. She has little idea that such goals were once thought to be beyond the grasp of women. She senses that the only barriers to fulfillment of her dreams might lie within her own heart but she is determined to stay strong and compete with her male counterparts on equal footing. She pushes herself to go well beyond expectations and proves time and again that she is made of steely stuff. Amazingly she is far from being alone. Women everywhere are accomplishing feats that might have been unimaginable back when I was her age.

There are now more women graduating from universities today than men. They are represented in virtually every field of endeavor. Women from the USA dominated the summer Olympics. They head multi-billion dollar corporations and hold the highest political offices in countries across the world. They have evolved quickly into movers and shakers. They are housewives if they choose or stock analysts if they prefer. There seems to be little territory that they are unable or unwilling to conquer and yet there are still vast swaths of the world where they are thought to be the inferior half of the human race. It is an enigma that their domination continues in some corners even as they rise above the forces that have traditionally held them down in others.

I can only hope that the evolution of women will continue in the places where their plight seems the most hopeless. There have always been pioneers among us who dared to go where no women had gone before. They were unwilling to accept the norms that were so irrationally used to define them. Marie Curie engaged in scientific research in a time when female thoughts and opinions were rarely considered. Amelia Earhart strode into a traditionally man’s world and demonstrated the potential of the future. Abigail Adams dared to engage her husband in political dialogue on an equal footing. Such women and the many others whose names we may never know pushed past barriers to create paths that today’s young girls take for granted. Hopefully there are people like them working to overcome prejudices in places where their rights are sorely limited.

As women chart new courses and eschew the old ways of doing things new questions and problems arise. Any woman who works understands how difficult it is to take care of business and a family. Time, resources and energy are stretched thin in a balancing act that is far more difficult than it may appear. With a generous income a woman has the option of employing nannies, maids, landscapers and other helpers to ease the load of responsibilities but most jobs don’t provide enough money to afford such luxuries. It falls on the women and their partners to shoulder the tasks together and studies demonstrate that the ladies are still doing much of the heavy lifting at home, especially when it comes to the children. It is up to us as a society to begin to educate both our girls and our boys in the new ways of doing things. 

I still believe that family is at the heart of society. Ultimately we need children to forge the future. In our enthusiasm for freeing women to develop all of their talents we also need to remember to honor their efforts to raise the next generation. As a society we cannot be guilty of underestimating the value of a happy and loving home. While the modern family may not look exactly like the one that grandma knew the basic needs and foundations are still the same. Today’s parents are quite busy juggling hundreds of objects in the air  and we need to consider innovative ways to make their struggles less difficult while supporting their choices as well.

Traditions come and go. Our daughters are still romantic and dream of finding true love just as in fairytales but they no longer see themselves as extensions of their soulmate’s dreams. They have become equal partners who support one another in reaching personal goals. If they were to have something as old fashioned as a “hope chest” today it would be filled with roadmaps to grand possibilities and adventures.