Tag Archives: Education

Mar 10 2013

The Fight against Bullying

Raise your hand if you have been bullied at some point in your life.  If you can read this, I expect you are raising your hand.  It doesn’t matter what age, gender, skin color, native language, etc.  It’s a natural reaction when we are not taught to behave otherwise.  Typically bullying is a reaction to stress (www.bullying.org).  And who is not stressed at some point in their life?

The number of groups and news reports about bullying gives me hope that we will soon have the tools to stop the bullying behavior.   Dateline even did an episode secretly watching kids to see if they will participate in bullying.  Ways people are stopping Bullying behavior:

What if your child is the bully?

Thanks to RaisingAwareness for your post and reminding me to complete this post.

ted-talks
Feb 11 2012

TED Talks – Revolutionary Ideas

For anyone who likes creative, transforming, and inspiring ideas, check out the TED talks:  Technology, Entertainment, and Design but so much more.  Such as…

investigation 012 (2)
Dec 13 2011

Finding our Destiny…

I never would have known that Architectural Engineers can inspect copper roofing 250 ft in the air from a truck mounted aerial lift.

From a young age, we are asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  On one hand this is a very reasonable question that emphasizes to young people the importance of choosing a career and the need to prepare for that career from an early age.  Even if we change our minds several times before finally starting our careers, the process of planning and preparing for this important life event and remain dedicated to its outcome.

On the other hand it’s quite ridiculous for kids, even teenagers, and even high school kids, to know what career will be best for them.  First we have to know our strengths and weaknesses, and I find that a small percentage of people are really in tune with these attributes about themselves.  Second we need to know the various professions available, which most young people only know what they see on TV and what their parents do.  Third we need to know what skills and characteristics are needed for each profession, when is that discussed with teenagers or young adults?  Fourth, how the heck can anyone know what a job will really be like and if we will enjoy that profession over the long haul?

Life never works out as we plan, and planning our careers is a very tricky thing to do.  People tend to think of a career as if we are destined to do a certain profession.  There must be something perfect for me, something I don’t have to put much effort into…  No wonder people these days have little work ethic.

Anyone who is REALLY good at their job did not achieve that expertise solely based on their characteristics.  Read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and you will follow his research to discover what makes someone truly successful.  Although skill and talent may play a role, the only common ingredient is dedication.  People have to spend 10,000 hours practicing something to become a master.  OK, yes, even if I spend 10,000 hours practicing I probably won’t become a master pianist, but I would probably get pretty good.  And even people the The Beatles and Mozart practiced over 10,000 hours before they made it big.

So my point is actually that we go around looking for what we are destined to become in life.  I think we should choose a profession and dedicate ourselves to that career to become successful in life.  I think we need to take more personal responsibility for our success in that profession, or our failure at it.  We can’t know all the possibilities out there, and we may change our mind along the way.  But whatever we are deciding to do, we should dedicate ourselves to the career and recognize the outcome is within our control.  Some people are great at making a plan, but it seems few of us are willing to dedicate ourselves to that plan.  We are too easily dismayed and abandon the path to success.

Yesterday I read a good summary approach for people trying to determine the best career for themselves on The Career Closet blog.

Dec 4 2011

How to Talk to Young Girls

I read a blog post this morning that I found very insightful and worth advertising to all of you.  On her post More Than A Mum the author references an article in the Huffington Post called How to Talk to Little Girls by Lisa Bloom.  both the article and the blog post point out what we fail to realize in our interactions with young and maturing girls.

When the first and sometimes only comments we have for young girls refers to their looks and style of clothing, this increases their self awareness and insecurities.  The discussion goes on to report statistics of young girls with eating disorders and body image issues. As a female engineer, I also would comment that it’s disrespectful when people comment that my accomplishments “Are pretty good for a girl.”  We females may not do things in the same manner as males, but they can be just as accomplished and efficient (or more so) than males.  Everyone has their individual talents and skills to contribute.

We need to rethink the message we are sending to young girls regarding their present and future contributions to society.  We need to be inquisitive about their ideas and talents beyond looking cute.

Nov 25 2011

The Pain of Disrespect – Why does it seem like people overreact to small events?

Unless we live as a hermit, completely removed from society and interaction with other people, we all will disrespect someone sometimes a family member, sometimes our close friends, and sometimes complete strangers.  Either by words or actions, and often completely by accident.  Whether the disrespect was intentional or accidental, we often regret the words or action and wish it could be undone.

Once the harm has occurred, it may impossible to undo.  Even the best apology encompassing the 5 elements of a complete apology may not restore the world to the way things were before the disrespect occurred.  Although we may be able to restore our relationship with the inflicted person, the damage does not completely disappear.  The relationship is now more susceptible to future disrespect.  If we disrespect the same person, the emotion and damage from previous events comes flooding back, and it’s as if all the past events are layered on top of each other and added to this new conflict.  And the guilty person may not be aware of the compounding hurt flooding into the new conflict, making it seem like the afflicted person is overreacting to a small event.  With each event, it becomes more difficult to repair the damage.

I wish I could teach every person and every kid the compounding effect of disrespectful events and actions, so we can take more care in avoiding them.

The 5 Languages of Apology

Nov 25 2011

Judging the Boston Debate League

I never participated in debate growing up, but recently I volunteered to judge at a debate event for the Boston Debate League.  Middle school and high school kids participated and since I’m new to this experience so I was assigned to the middle school group.

All the groups had the same topic under a broad theme chosen for the year.  This particular day, the kids were debating the proposition of allocating money and research time toward colonizing on Mars, which falls under a broader topic discussing whether the US should continue NASA efforts for space exploration.  Can you imagine 10 and 11 year old kids debating this topic?  Of course the debate coach for each team prepares a script for them to read during the speech portion of the debate.  But the kids have to listen to the opposing speech to gather questions for a cross-examination period.  They also have to know their material and evidence well enough to answer critical questions from the other side. Each middle school team competed twice, changing sides of the topic to argue against what they presented in the first round.

Technically our role as a judge is to choose a winning team based on  the quality of their arguments.  For the middle school groups, we are also there to support them if they get stuck during the debate, acknowledge their strengths and qualities in the debate process, and to give constructive feedback that creates a positive experience for the kids, encouraging them to continue with debate.

I think the debate experience is helpful to kids of all ages.  They learn how to research and analyze the information relating to the topic.  They learn that there are two sides to every story.  The public speaking skills and handling criticizing questions will prove very valuable.  But the most significant benefit for the kids is having the opportunity to speak in front of adults and have someone listen to their point of view.

compus
Oct 26 2011

Geographic Languages – Does the Language we speak affect the way we think?

I heard a bit on Radiolab (about 32 minutes into the show) recently featured a story about a language that uses cardinal-directions in nearly every comment and discussion with each other.  They even use it in greetings, instead of hello they ask “Where are you going?”  and the person is expected to respond by saying that they are heading northwest, or whichever direction they are traveling.  They even track the direction when indoors.

A similar story from a different source than Radiolab (it’s not as detailed).

Oct 25 2011

buildOn helps kids in the US and provides education abroad

I am moved by this speech from a High School student participating with buildOn, a non-profit group focused on building schools in developing countries that also ties in service programs for students in the US.   If you are interested in more information then follow the link to learn more about the program.

In reading the speech by Kasiemobi Udo-okoye, it reminds me of how easy my life has been and how many blessings experienced.

Aug 30 2011

Congratulations to You

Thanks to all of you, our politicians have reached a consensus.  It appears that both sides of the isle agree that the needed fix to our economy is JOBS.  Yes everyone needs a job and that will make all our problems go away (except the real problem of corruption, deceit, foreign invasion, and other problems we don’t really care about).

Years of outsourcing, and insourcing (Wikipedia definition), allowing corporations to reap higher profits, resulting in a decrease of the quality of living for the working and middle classes and widened the income gap.  Well who let them do that?

We all did, anyone with the voting rights in the US allowed this to happen.  We allow government and corporations to keep wages and benefits low while the cost of living increases.  We sit on the sidelines complaining about life’s difficulties instead of participating in change and contributing what we can for our communities.  What kind of example is set of the upcoming generations?  How will they know how to get exercise their democratic rights?  The baby boomers fought the government during the Vietnam War, why are subsequent generations standing by and allowing their power to disappear?  You can bet there will be fierce opposition if social security benefits are threatened (again the baby boomers will not allow that to happen).   Why is my generation allowing our benefits to effectively be cut?   My generation can barely pay for health care, buy a home, rely on social security or other retirement programs.  What we are asking for is to be able to maintain the same standard of living for the same effort as previous generations.

We need meaningful jobs that will help our economy grow and develop a sustainable lifestyle in our country.  We need to increase the minimum wage and level of benefits to allow hardworking people to earn a decent standard of living.  We need to reward hard work with an adequate means.  And we need to stop rewarding substandard work without consequence.

Let’s help define the political discussion on jobs and the economic recovery.