Tag: teacher

I Had a Dream

I had a dream in which the governor of a particular state declared that the priority of his administration was to be nurturing children. The legislature, both the senate and the representatives, proposed, considered and passed laws that had at their core nurturing children.

One of the first departments to move toward nurturing children was Education. After all, the customers for education are children. Soon children were allowed to attend schools that were the best place for that individual student. Teachers were unleashed to teach children in the highest and best teaching methods in an effort to nurture each child’s intellect and help them grow into self-reliant, productive adults. School buildings were both modernized and adequately maintained. Children learned that they had options. If they worked hard and well, they could be anything they wanted to be when they grew up.

The Health Department was close behind. Every child had proper health care regardless of where the child lived or at what socio-economic level. Vaccinations were available. Well-child check-ups were encouraged. Soon nutrition improved in schools and also in the home. Children didn’t miss school because of illness. Schools and families were full of healthy and happy children.

The Housing Department implemented programs to create safe and attractive places for children and their families to live. Not extravagant housing, but adequate in all respects of cleanliness and appearance. There was less vandalism and graffiti. Because children had safe housing, they played outside. Communities were strengthened and neighbors helped one another.

Because children were nurtured in schools, in health care, and in homes, they made better decisions. They went to college or apprenticed for a trade. They put off childbearing because there were so many other things they wanted to accomplish. Schools and colleges graduated good, dedicated workers. Towns, cities and countryside were filled with responsible adults who worked to make a better life for their children. It took a long time, but gradually these good changes became normal for the state that put nurturing children first.

As happens in dreams, there wasn’t any explanation of how all of this happened. But I somehow knew that the government did not tax the citizenry exorbitantly in order to pay for all of the nurturing children programs. It seemed there was less crime so less jails and less law enforcement was needed. As education increased, citizens took responsibility for their own situations and relied on the government less. Non-governmental agencies as well as faith-based organizations flourished as they stepped to the forefront ministering to and nurturing children.

As wakefulness began to intrude on my dream state, my dream played over again in my head. I basked in the remembrance of scenes of children being nurtured. During the day, images and impressions from this dream bubbled up triggered by a word, a sight or smell. The things I saw in my dream seemed extreme. They seemed impossible. They seemed pie-in-the-sky. But, hey, it was a dream. Isn’t that how dreams are?

Nevertheless, I yearned for the dream to be true. I yearned to live in a place where people didn’t just work against something, they worked for something. I yearned to live in a place in which hope was. And I wondered if it could really happen here in the land of wakefulness.

A long time ago I learned that dreams happen because of day residue: things that happen during wakefulness are stored in the sub-conscious and are then acted out in dreams. So what was the day residue that was acted out in this dream? It was the abortion bill. I live in Texas and for months the state legislature has been considering and debating a bill that would effectively end abortion in Texas. This is a volatile issue. Here is what I believe:

A fact of life about the facts of life is that women get pregnant. Sometimes those pregnancies are unwanted. Abortion is one option open to women. Other options are parenting and adoption. Abortion is the law of the land. However, whether it is legally available to women or not, women will seek abortions. It’s better to have a safe procedure than an unsafe procedure. In lieu of making abortion effectively not an alternative, it seems to me that there are things that can be done to empower women before pregnancy occurs: education, health, safe housing and much more.

Abortion is a complicated issue. There is so much more to it than simply being Pro-Life or Pro-Choice. Why can’t we be for something instead of against something? Why can’t we focus on all of life and not just the beginning of life? Focusing on nurturing children could be a good place to start.

We Need More Women Like This

Have you ever had a time when something you’ve puzzled about just clicked into place?

I had this happen on New Year’s Eve at a memorial service for my favorite Sunday School teacher. Now, I had a lot of Sunday School teachers. My family went to church every Sunday: Sunday School and church (that’s what we called the worship service) so there was a lot of competition for the favorite. This teacher was my favorite not because she was the wittiest, although she was witty, or the prettiest, although she was pretty, or the coolest (no, Mrs. Kallina could not be described as cool). Mrs. Kallina had a characteristic that was far above all of those traits. Mrs. Kallina cared.

I was a freshman in high school when I was in her class. I came from a very dysfunctional family. One of our symptoms was that we kept secrets. I can still hear my mom say things like “Don’t let the neighbors see you do that” or “If the neighbors knew you did that, what would they think”. Now I suppose that we did have some neighbors who were interested in what we did, but mostly I think it was my mom’s own fear of not being good enough or not being accepted that caused her to say things like that. So as a 14 or 15-year-old kid, I had a lot of fears and kept a lot of secrets, because I thought that if people knew fill-in-the-blank then they wouldn’t like me or approve of me or whatever the imagined consequences might be of their finding out.

This was the girl who sat in Mrs. Kalina’s classroom and admired her and hung on her every word and wanted to be like her in every way. Now that I’m all grown up and have a lot of experience under my belt, I am sure she knew what was going on with me. Mrs. Kallina knew my mom and dad.  She was a wise woman and was particularly plugged in with God. But she never said anything to me about any of this until the next year when I was a sophomore.

Even though I was no longer in her class she sensed something was wrong. And something was wrong. I was having trouble figuring out about boys and dating and how to go about all of that in a healthy way. One day she called me and asked me to come over to her house. I did and we sat in her living room. I didn’t understand it at the time, but she was reaching out to me. However, all that echoed in my head was “What would the neighbors think?” or, in this case, “What would Mrs. Kallina think?”. So I didn’t open up: “Everything was fine, no problems at all”. She gave me a little book called God’s Will and Your Life. I admired her so. I was embarrassed that I wasn’t doing life right. I didn’t want her to know. And I didn’t want God to know either. Of course the reasonable thing to do was ignore the book.

At her service, those chosen to eulogize her spoke of her prayers and what an integral part of her life praying was. I realized then that she had been praying for me when I was a young teenager. I knew deep in my heart that was how she knew something was going on with me, something I needed help with. And I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, open up. How different my life might have been if I had talked to her! And then God reminded me that without her prayers how much worse my life would have been. How many more mistakes might I have made if she had not been praying for me? Her prayers protected me.

One of the eulogizers said “We need more women like Mrs. Kallina”. Yes, we do. More women who pray, who care, who reach out. More women who change and protect lives by quietly praying and reaching out to those they pray for, acting on the promptings they experience in prayer.

With the help of Mrs. Kallina’s prayers, I managed to struggle through my problems and grow up. I married the man I have been married to for 43 years. I began teaching teenagers in Sunday School just like Mrs. Kallina. When I was a young adult, I had an opportunity to tell Mrs. Kallina that she was my favorite Sunday School teacher and that I was trying to be just like her. She smiled her lovely smile and shook her head. I had embarrassed her. I didn’t know then what she had done for me simply by praying for me at my most confused time. What I owe her will not be known this side of heaven. I have a feeling that when I tell her when I see her in heaven, she’ll just smile her lovely smile and point to God who, of course, is the one who worked in her and in me to bring about his purposes.

Yes, we need more women like Mrs. Kallina. Women who will pray for children who are the least, or lost, or lonely. Thank you, Mrs. Kallina, for all you did for me.

Ask Your Own Questions

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much. Francis Bacon

An interview on NPR put my thoughts into high gear. They rushed by like cars on the autobahn as I remembered times in my life when I made decisions that I didn’t question hard enough. I got into a lot of trouble in those situations. The interview was with two people who were talking about teaching students to ask questions. The idea intrigued me. Could I teach myself to ask questions? So I ordered the interviewees’ book: Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions. The authors (and interviewees) are Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana. They are the codirectors of the Right Question Institute.

The Question Formula Technique first came about when the authors were working with parents in a low-income community. The parents explained that they didn’t get involved in their children’s education or in their children’s school because they didn’t know what to ask. Therefore, Rothstein and Santana gave them some questions to ask. Soon the parents came back for more questions. This situation sent the authors on a long journey to develop a system that would teach students to figure out for themselves questions to ask in any situation.

Students asking questions didn’t seem unusual until I thought about my own classroom experience. Normally the teacher asks the questions and the students answer the questions. With the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), students learn how to come up with their own questions. Their questions can then be applied to an endless variety of uses: write a research paper, the basis for a project or the substance of a unit of study.

Not being a teacher, it sounded like a difficult thing to get students to ask questions that would be useful for further study. However, the case studies of students in actual classrooms that Rothstein and Santana presented to illustrate each step of the process revealed that asking their own questions helped students learn better. Those who questioned much learned much.

The QFT has four steps:

  1. Ask as many questions as you can.
  2. Categorize the questions as closed or open-ended questions.
  3. Prioritize the questions.
  4. What are you going to do with the questions? What are the next steps?

The most difficult part of the process is deciding on the Question Focus, or QFocus, which is  what the students ask the questions about. The QFocus has its own set of parameters:

  1. It has a clear focus. It is an issue, topic or area of concern that is brief and simply stated.
  2. It is not a question. The purpose of the QFocus is to get the students started asking their own questions.

According to the book, it takes about 45 minutes to teach the QFT to a class of students. Just for illustration purposes, let’s take a QFocus and work the technique right now.

Question Focus: Santa Claus

Step 1: Ask as many questions as you can.

Who is Santa Claus?

Where did he come from?

Does he really climb down a chimney?

What does Santa Claus do the rest of the year?

Why does Santa Claus only give toys to good little boys and girls?

What behavior is so bad that Santa Claus won’t give a child a toy?

Step 2: Categorize the questions as closed or open-ended questions. This step includes a discussion of the types of information open and closed questions will draw out and an exercise to change questions from one type to the other. For the purposes of this exercise, the questions will be marked with “c” for closed and “o” for open, but not re-worded.

c/o    Who is Santa Claus?

c        Where did he come from?

c        Does he really climb down a chimney?

o/c     What does Santa Claus do the rest of the year?

o        Why does Santa Claus only give toys to good little boys and

           girls?

c/o    What behavior is so bad that Santa Claus won’t give a child a

           toy?

Step 3: Prioritize the questions.

1. Who is Santa Claus?

2. Where did he come from?

3. Why does Santa Claus only give toys to good little boys and girls?

4. What behavior is so bad that Santa Claus won’t give a child a toy?

5. What does Santa Claus do the rest of the year?

6. Does he really climb down a chimney?

Step 4: What are you going to do with the questions? What are the next steps?

Write a research paper about Santa Claus.

Before I read this book I thought that questions usually denote confusion. However, I realize now that working the steps of the QFT transforms confused thinking into focused thinking. I hope you can see how useful this technique would be not only for students, but for adults as well. For instance, suppose you were concerned about an issue like immigration, the national debt, the mortgage foreclosure crisis, or the state of education. These are complicated issues, overwhelming issues. Develop your own QFocus and work through the QFT. Use the resulting questions to focus your research and clarify your opinion.

The last chapter of the book is titled “Questions and Education, Questions and Democracy” in which Rothstein and Santana make a strong case that the ability to ask good questions leads to better informed citizens who are more likely to participate in the democratic process. How much more vibrant and effective would our government be if the voters asked questions and informed themselves instead of relying on the media and candidates’ sound bytes for information? Our constitution gives us the right to ask questions; the Question Formulation Technique developes our ability to ask questions.

So what do you want to know about? Santa Claus, climate change, vegetarianism, a facet of economic theory? Determine your Question Focus. Work the Question Formulation Technique and write some questions. Have fun finding the answers.