Category: education

children, education, environment, school, science

Step 273: Environment Science Gets Its Due in Maryland Classrooms

Christa Avampato

My friend, Michael, author of Like a Fish In Water, sent me a link about environmental education in the Maryland Public School System. Previously, the system only required a single lesson on environmental education some time between kindergarten and 12th grade. Now, environmental science must be woven into the curriculum, covering specific topics. Originally, the mandate was to establish a separate environmental science as a graduation requirement. That original mandate didn’t pass but getting more environmental science into the curriculum within existing subjects is a start.

It still shocks me that many people don’t see the connection between caring for the environment and public health, that they don’t understand that there is no such thing as an unlimited natural resource. There are limits to the stresses that our environment can withstand, and we are running up against those limits at a frightening pace. Kids have to know how their actions impact the environment, and it’s our responsibility to teach them how to care for our shared world.

Additionally, the environment is a practical, truly tangible platform that can be used to enhance learning opportunities across a variety of subjects, physical and chemical sciences, math, history, and design to name a few. It opens the door to discussing higher education and career planning. It makes the facts we learn in school relevant and applicable in the world that surrounds us.

Nature is an infinite, wise, and patient teacher if only we will sit with her a while to hear what she has to say and see what she has to reveal to us. It’s a living, breathing lab for us to explore and wonder at It’s the closest thing we have on Earth to divinity, and I’m glad Maryland students will finally get the chance to learn more. Hopefully, other states will hop on board, too.

For a link to the full article, click here.

children, education, school

Step 272: Class Size Isn’t the Be All End All of Education

Christa Avampato

An article appeared in the New York Times yesterday showcasing a Massachusetts school that didn’t let large class sizes stop them from improving test scores. By bringing writing and reading assignments into every school subject (gym included!) The school is now outperforming 90% of other schools in Massachusetts. Reading and writing bring to bear creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and enhanced language capabilities. They foster independence, making class size less of a factor in academic success.

The debate about size has raged on in a number of areas: raising kids in the country versus the city, large university lecture halls versus small seminars, big corporations versus family run small businesses. Each has its pros and cons. For the past several years, small classroom size in public schools has been a hot-button issue. The example of the Massachusetts school doesn’t give us a definitive answer one way or the other, and maybe that’s the point. Any circumstances can breed success – it’s the individuals that comprise the group that can truly make the difference.

To read the full article about the school in Massachusetts, click here. What do you think? Is class size as big an issue as we make it out to be?

children, education, family

Step 271: Parents May be the Most Important Piece of the Education Puzzle

Christa Avampato

The airwaves are bustling and bristling this week about education. Our U.S. school system is making front page news like never before. Sadly, sometimes it takes a crisis to raise awareness.

Yesterday, one of my readers of this blog who has decades of experience in education voiced his opinion about one way to repair the system: parents. Get them interested and engaged, and the system has a far greater chance of turning around. Yes, teachers are important, critically important. Though consider how many hours a child spends with a teacher versus a parent. Consider that parents are responsible for a child’s living conditions, what they eat, where they sleep. Parents are largely responsible for their children’s emotional and mental well-being. Combined, all of these “non-education” factors come to bear in a big way in the classroom. If a child is hungry, sick, or lacks confidence, how can they focus on math, science, and reading? Social programs can only do so much.

My reader’s comment about parents being involved in public education made me consider how involved my own mother was in my education. Sometimes, we didn’t have enough to eat. We were part of the free lunch program for as long as I can remember. We almost lost our house a few times. We had trouble paying bills. For a good portion of my childhood, we didn’t have health insurance. Our childhood had a lot of instability and sadness and fear. But the one constant was my mom. She served on the school board. She went to every parent teacher conference, every sports event, every band concert. More than anything she cared about our education. She didn’t have time to help us with our homework – she always worked 2 – 3 jobs so we could get by. I came to value education and where it could take me in large part because my mother valued it. I wanted to make her proud of me, and I knew my high grades made her proud.

I went to Penn because of my mom. She wouldn’t let me lower my standards of the college I could get into. She wouldn’t let me stay home and go to school. She wanted to me to go away to the very best school I could go to. It was hard. I struggled for my first two years at Penn. I had a hard time adjusting to a place that seemed so out of reach to me. Everyone else around me seemed to have means beyond anything I could ever dream of. I worked several jobs and put myself through school with the help of lots of financial aid. I studied all the time just to catch up. Eventually, I found my bearings, largely because I got involved in theatre, but even more importantly because I’m stubborn and proud. I couldn’t give up and go home. I had to keep trying to live a better life. That’s what my mom wanted, and so that’s what I wanted.

I had good teachers, in public school, at Penn, and later at UVA, where I got my MBA. Those teachers inspired me, pushed me, challenged me to be better than I thought I could be. And with just those teachers, I would have built a decent life. But my mom’s involvement and concern for my education helped me strive for more than decent – it keeps me working for something extraordinary. And as I think of it now, my blog reader was absolutely right – parents have the ability to turn around the whole system just by showing their care and concern for what their kids learn. I’m living proof of their power.

children, education

Step 270: Sounding the Alarm on Public Education

Christa Avampato

This week NBC is running a special in-depth look at education in America, Education Nation. It is a loud, profound alarm – our schools are in trouble, and by association our nation is in trouble. Not because of the financial system or the housing crisis or the erratic Dow. Our nation is in trouble because we are failing our children, an entire generation of them, before we’ve even given them a chance to succeed. We are letting them down and counting them out before they even get in the game.

I care deeply about public education. I am a product of it and I’m hoping to turn my career towards it in the not-too-distant future. As a way of shining a spotlight on it and raising some more awareness of the many and varied challenges, I will feature a story every day this week about public education, a reason for hope, a cause in need of support, an inspiring person or organization. I hope this week of stories will inspire you to get involved.

Education doesn’t need some of us, it needs all of us. Without a system that functions effectively and efficiently, nothing else we’re doing matters. And if we can successfully find a way to educate every child this country in a way that helps them grow up to be productive members of society, we have more benefits to reap that we can even imagine. Every social issue – health care, the environment, public safety, foreign affairs, the economy – has a greater chance of success if we can improve our education system. It’s the root challenge, and therefore the root remedy, that heals every one of our other ills.

We are past the point of voluntary involvement. Our children need us. All of us.

community service, education, New York City, student

Step 253: Get Involved with Student Sponsor Partners and Change the Life of a New York City High School Student

Christa Avampato

I respect and admire nonprofits that create a huge impact in the world by making it easy for volunteers to make a difference. On Thursday, I went to a presentation by Margaret Minson and Faith Botica of Student Sponsor Partners (SSP), a nonprofit that helps at-risk, high-potential public middle school students get a private high school education in New York City. SSP pays the great majority of the tuition for the students while also providing them with a personal mentor to help them through their 4 years of high school at a private school. The results are impressive – 90% of SSP students go on to college. SSP currently has 1,400 students enrolled and over 4,500 graduates.

Mentors meet with their students about once per month, many times through SSP organized events where all of the SSP mentors and students get together. The content of the mentoring runs the gamut from help with school work, career, and college admissions to personal issues with friends, family, and relationships. Mentors play a critical role in the student’s life as 75% of them come from single parent homes in which those parents are working round-the-clock to provide for their families. The students often go without an adult who can guide them and mentor them through their high school years. That’s where SSP Mentors step in. Without SSP, most of these students would surely fall between the cracks and never even realize, much less achieve their potential.

Being a Mentor is an incredible opportunity to truly make a difference in the life of New York City high school students. Because of the incredible corporate sponsorships that SSP has fostered through the years, it is also a tremendous networking opportunity for professionals of all ages in New York City who want to meet other people who care about community service, education, and helping young people succeed.

A Mentor usually mentors the same student all the way through their high school years, though occasionally mentors have to drop from the program because of personal time commitments, geographic moves, etc. SSP is currently looking for Mentors for sophomore – senior high school students who have lost their SSP Mentors and want to build a relationship with a new SSP Mentor. I just signed up to hop onboard. If you’re interested, please visit the organization’s website. Attached to this post, you will also find the brief Mentor application forms. I hope you’ll join me in making a difference for high school students in New York City.

SSP Sponsor Application FINAL.

SSP LexisNexis Screening Solutions Consent Form

children, education, philanthropy, school

Step 252: Donorschoose.org Finds a Hidden Angel

Christa Avampato

I received the article below in an email from Charles Best today about a hidden angel who showed up on the doorstep of Donorschoose.org. Best is the Founder of Donorschoose.org, an organization that link indvidual donors to specific classroom needs via a well-organized, elegant web interface. The email is a reprint of an article that appeared in the September 1, 2010 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle

The story is a testament to the incredible gift that one person can give the world, and an inspiring act of generosity for a very deserving organization. It’s also a much needed message for nonprofit leaders – if you provide an incredible service, funding is out there.

“Out of the blue, in the middle of a recession, the phone rang.

What would it cost, the caller asked the founder of DonorsChoose.org, to fund every California teacher’s wish list posted on the Web site?

The founder, Charles Best, thought perhaps the female caller would hang up when he tossed out his best guess: “Something over $1 million,” he told her.

Twelve hours later, the woman, Hilda Yao, executive director of the Claire Giannini Fund, sent Best an e-mail.

It said, in short, OK.

A day later, Yao mailed a check of more than $1.3 million to cover the entire California wish list, 2,233 projects in all, with an extra $100,000 tossed in to help pay for other teacher needs across the country.

The projects funded by the donation range from about $100 to cover pencil sharpeners or paper to thousands of dollars for technology, Best said.

“Use of the word ‘miracle’ is not an overstatement,” Best said Tuesday, a day after 1,000 California teachers were notified that their needs were funded. “I think it’s fair to say it’s the best first day of school they’ve ever had.”

With budget cuts hitting schools hard, teachers and parents are often covering the costs of basic material like pencils or even textbooks as well as things now considered optional in public education such as field trips and art supplies.

Help for teachers
DonorsChoose stepped in to help fill those needs 10 years ago to give K-12 teachers an easily accessible site to post what they need. Contributors can pay for part or all of each “project” requested, focusing on a specific school or subject area or even the type of gift.

The $1.3 million donation is among the largest gifts given by the San Francisco fund and one of the largest received by DonorsChoose.

At San Francisco’s Monroe Elementary School, computer teacher Laura Edeen had several projects posted on DonorsChoose.org. There was a digital camera to replace one that still used floppy disks; a computer with wireless access for a portable classrooms that doesn’t have other Internet access; an art cart; new printers; and the big-ticket, $1,000 licensing rights to a software program the teacher knew worked for kids.

It was a pipe-dream list from a teacher who was trying to keep working technology in her classroom using the equivalent of duct tape and chewing gum.

“I’d been busying myself with wishes, just hoping,” Edeen said.

The $3,000 in wishes came true.

“I actually e-mailed my husband thinking he funded it,” she said laughing, adding she couldn’t imagine how else it was all paid for. “It felt like my birthday yesterday.”

Teacher thinks big
Reaching for the stars, one Bay Area teacher requested $10,000 for 25 netbook laptops to create a traveling computer lab for her school. They’ll be shipped to San Francisco’s Sheridan Elementary soon.

Later Monday, the teacher submitted a new request to DonorsChoose: a computer cart for a traveling computer lab.

“She’s got herself a shower of stars,” Yao said of the teacher. “I’m just so pleased to think this grant has brought so much happiness to such deserving people.”

The fund Yao directs was created in 1998 to honor Claire Giannini Hoffman, the daughter of the founder of Bank of America. Donations have focused on education as well as other issues, including a $3 million gift to the nation’s school libraries from 2002 to 2004, Yao said.

Yao’s mother, Dorothy Yao, the fund’s former trustee, and Claire Giannini both believed education was a penetrating and enduring way to transform lives, she said.

“It makes me feel like I’m doing something to remember two remarkable women in the way they would like to be remembered,” she said. “I’m happier than even some of the teachers.”

Make a difference in a child’s life right now. Take a look at the most urgent project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and give another classroom the best return to school they’ve ever had.

books, children, education, learning, nostalgia, school

Step 245: Back to School and Life Lessons

Christa Avampato

“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” ~ Tom Bodett, American author and humorist

I love school. Weez is always kidding me that if I could find a way to be a student for the rest of my life and get paid for it, I’d do it. In truth, I kind of do that now. I’m an information junkie. Lots of data served up with a heaping side of industry reports please. All industries welcome. My education has followed me into the workplace and then follows me home, to the gym, out to dinner. Every experience become an opportunity to learn – and become writing material.

I went to my local CVS yesterday and nostalgically walked through the school supply aisle. Advertisements abound all over the city, in every retail window, saying “stock up for school here.” School is part of why I love the Fall – back to school might just be my favorite holiday. Everything is shiny, new, and full of promise. Sometimes people ask me how I did so well in school and managed so many extracurriculars. Some people even warned me that I was taking on too much, that I couldn’t possibly get it all done. People are funny and they project.

To be sure, I studied a lot. Kid geniuses really fascinate me because I wasn’t someone who just knew everything the moment I read it. I am a really good student, work very hard, and have a dangerously high level of curiosity. Truly, I can ask “why?” until the cows come home and never be satisfied. (Ask my mom.) I had to study and practice all the way through business school. I study and practice now, and love it. I learn the lesson, really learn it, get the test, pass. Simple. Linear. Logical. It’s true of school, and mostly true of work, too, so long as I’m working for someone else.

This whole paradigm changes, as Tom Bodett explains so brilliantly, when we leave behind school and work and just have to live in the world. Or when we start our own business or some kind of personal endeavor. Relationships of every kind fall into this class, too. You can’t study or think your way through them. You really do have to give it a whirl, maybe screw up, maybe succeed, and take note of the outcome so the next time around you can improve. It’s not fair, I know, but that’s life. You take the test, hand it in, and then figure out how it shoulda, coulda, woulda been done if you had known better. But you didn’t, and you can’t, so you just show up and do your best. Welcome to a life of improv.

A lot of my life now is about being tested and then receiving the lesson. Yoga, Innovation Station, my writing. I can study and read about these subjects all I want (and I do!), but eventually I know I’ve got to take off the training wheels, go careening down the road, learn from my mistakes, get up, and try again. I didn’t know anything about social media 3 years ago, so I started this blog. I didn’t know how to write a book, so I wrote Hope in Progress. I didn’t know how to swim so I jumped in the pool (with a lifeguard nearby) and paddled around. That’s life, too – try your luck and see how it goes.

I’ll be thinking about this idea over the next few weeks as I see the school buses become part of our traffic patterns and kids skipping home with backpacks and lunch boxes in tow. We’re all learning – students of school just have the benefit of a better sequence of events than students of life.

career, dreams, education, work

Step 234: Public Education Needs Us to Set Sail

Christa Avampato

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” ~ John A. Shedd

This week I read Paul Tough’s op-ed in the New York Times about innovation in public education. As I begin the journey to transition my career in corporate product development to innovation in public education, I’ve been doing a lot of research on new ideas in the education field. Tough, who wrote the excellent biography Whatever It Takes about Jeffrey Canada and the Harlem Childrens Zone, raises the flag on Congress continually commissioning fact-finding studies rather than putting new ideas into action in schools. This is equivalent to companies testing new product ideas in powerpoint rather than in market.

It’s safe to test in powerpoint, to commission research studies. The trouble is those acts don’t move us forward on our journey. Testing new ideas in the public eye takes guts and conviction. Innovation in any field is not for the faint of heart or the perfectionists. Innovation is for the ones who are willing to let go of today’s safety for the possibility that a brighter, happier tomorrow lies just beyond the shore. It is for the person who is willing to give up the perfectly acceptable for the hopeful promise of the truly extraordinary. Innovation, particularly in an area as critical to our future as public education, is for people who demand the ship pull up its anchor and head straight on toward the horizon. And if that ship refuses to move the innovator will pitch herself overboard and go it alone with the tides. It takes a certain amount of fearlessness mixed with equal amounts of curiosity and humility.

Paul Tough, Geoffrey Canada, and a myriad of others who care deeply about public education today are those innovators who would rather risk it all because the truly risky bet is to just do what we’ve always done; and what we’ve always done in public education is no longer working. We’re seeing the frightening effects in free-falling test scores, soaring drop-out rates, and ever-increasing desperation in the very poorest school districts. Public education needs you, me, and as many others as we can gather. Our government bands together to save the big banks, but not public education. Most government officials don’t understand that simply throwing money at the public education problems doesn’t make them go away. It takes just as much heart as it does money to have an impact in the lives of our children.

Some people ask me why I’d hop off the corporate product development track to pursue a career in public education. I have a plum position with a well-known company working on new technology development, a role that many MBAs would take in a heartbeat. I make good money. Most of the time the hours are perfectly manageable. By all accounts, I have found a safe harbor in the economic storm. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity. I could stay there and do well and move up the ladder. That life would be fine, but for the fact that it is not the least bit reflective of my spirit.

Here’s the rub: I don’t bring my heart to work. I show up to collect a paycheck. Nothing I do is building a better world, directly or indirectly. It’s just making more money for people who already have plenty of money, more money than they could ever possibly need. And I don’t want to wake up at the end of my career and look back at a broken public education system only to say, “I really should have spent my career trying to innovate in schools. That would have really made a difference.” I could sit back and years from now look around at a big pile of money in a bank account, and it would feel completely worthless. I would have wasted my time, and that’s just too tragic for me to bear.

So I’ve started to make my way out to sea, a tiny little row-boat paddling as fast as I can toward the sun. Call me an idealist; I’d welcome that. I’d rather live by my own ideals than by someone else’s. The mother ship is fading into the background and I’m looking for a way to do the work I was built for. Sometimes you’ve just got to set sail, no matter how rough the waters may seem.

children, education, film, movie

Step 232: Waiting for Superman

Christa Avampato

On September 24th, a documentary entitled Waiting for Superman hits theatres. It explores our broken public education system in the U.S. and highlights some of the people, like Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone, who have dedicated their lives to making a difference in education. Because education, and specifically public education, is the cause I’m most passionate about, I wanted to use today’s post to encourage people to mark their calendars, see the movie, and get involved.

If we don’t fix public education in the U.S., all of the social programs in the world won’t make a bit of difference in the quality of life here. The generation now coming through public elementary school, for the first time in our country’s history, is poised to be less literate than the previous generation. We’re going backwards at a time that we need to be leaping ahead. The consequences of failing our children are dire, and honestly, I’m not sure that they’re reversible. It’s an enormous problem that’s going to take every bit of brain power, creativity, and sweat equity that we can muster to find solutions.

And I’m not talking about solutions for those who can afford it or are lucky enough to win a school attendance lottery. The ones I most worry about are the ones who can’t afford it, who don’t win the lottery – what’s their way out and up of their current socio-economic level? Is there a way out at all? Do their dream just die on the vine, and our nation’s future right along with it?

A while back, Tom Friedman wrote in an editorial that we need to go to the bad neighborhoods before the bad neighborhoods come to us. The same is true of students and schools – if we don’t get to the ones that desperately need us, they will find us in all sorts of unfortunate ways. And it’s not their fault. It’s ours. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when, unless we all get involved. See the movie, check out its website (with loads of suggestions and resources for anyone of any means to help rebuild the public education system), and let’s see what we can do together.

career, choices, decision-making, education, teaching, yoga

Step 198: Decisions, Iriquois-style

Christa Avampato

I heard Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation, speak at the World Innovation Forum and he explained his company’s decision-making philosophy with respect to the environment: they consider how their decisions will impact the world in seven generations (roughly 70 years.) Seventh Generation took a page from the law of the Iroquois. After Hollender’s inspiring talk, I created a similar decision-making rule for myself: when making important decisions, I think about how I’ll feel about my choice 7 years from now.

This has brought up some interesting effects that may seem small on the surface, though are huge underneath:

1.) I had a hard time figuring out how to fit my yoga teacher training into my schedule. I had to make trade-offs with some other projects like Innovation Station and finishing my first e-book. Ultimately, I decided that the yoga training could lead to a service that I could offer independently, giving me more flexibility to pursue so many of my interests. 7 years from now, I will be very happy I gave entrepreneurship a shot with Compass Yoga.

2.) I went to Greece a few weeks ago and soon after I made those travel plans my sister asked if I would visit for a week only two weeks after I returned from Greece to help her out with her kids while my brother-in-law was out-of-town. I usually wouldn’t ask to take my vacation days from work so close together. I’m in Florida now having a blast with my little nieces. 7 years from now, I will be so grateful for this time – I am already grateful for it now. Work will manage without me just fine.

3.) When the opportunity to teach at LIM College presented itself, working the class into my schedule was difficult. I could have just passed on the chance to make things easier at work. However, I’ve been wanting to teach a college level for the past few years, and that opportunity can be tough for a young professional to come by. So even though it was difficult to re-work my schedule, I knew that if I didn’t accept the teaching assignment 7 years from now I would regret it.

4.) Now 34, I’m considering how I spend my work life. For some time, I have wanted to turn more of my career toward the field of education in some way. It would be easy to just continue down the professional path I’m on, even though I know it’s not my passion. I make a good living at a popular company. 7 years from now, I know that I will wish I had made the move to education much earlier on. So even though making a career change can be challenging, particularly in this economy, I have to go for it.

This decision-making philosophy is helpful, but not easy to implement. It requires trusting my gut much more often than my head. The heart can take the long-view; the head can’t. In recent years, my head has won more often than my heart. The practical side of me has taken a bit too much control. I need a better heart-mind balance in my decisions. Thinking 7 years ahead helps me do that. I’m grateful to the Iroquois and Seventh Generation for the lesson.

The image above can be found here.