"Our goal above all else is to make sure that Obama is a one-term President"

 

My goal in 2010 was to survive intestinal cancers, a syrnix, back surgery, other issues, to see my children to adulthood. And I was close because to my surprise I found them at near adulthood. Boy, it was so far out of my mind to think about what was going on in the wider world, which is a shame because a great deal has been in play for many years.
It was my goal for a long time-grow my kids.
Grow others as well. As I might want for my own.
Since the year Sophia was born, when I was first treated for the cancer, weighed 98 pounds and about died in all the repeated gastro bleeds and peritonitis bouts-all energy for survival to do that was my goal. I've worked through this time teaching, in my sincere effort to teach as well as I possibly could.
When Sylvia graduated as a neuroscience major from Caltech it affirmed my hopes that we'd given our kids a great arts/science/math home education or perhaps a social education- at least partially through keeping them in underperforming schools where I saw everyone fleeing. I don't meet too many folks that understand what she did. But she did it through a very difficult route. My vision of education. (arts, involvement with commitment to community, having my child where I taught and the role poverty plays in development of tiered systems in our country which I believe my children need to fully understand in its complexities, plus my belief that being outside of identifications of race, gender, and culture are expanding)
Yep.
Same for Sophia, choosing to go close to home at UCSB. Graduating momentarily-early.
And my son is now 18. All now adults. Hoping that it's a better world for their having been in it.
A parent's mission statement.
My goal now is to try to focus on their getting on firm feet in an utterly backstabbing world.
That demonizes some.

Just look at how this election time felt, look at that quote above.
Who could set a goal like that in one of the greatest times of economic crisis we've known?
Mystifies me. Even if contextualized that it was just a party working for itself-as normal stuff. These were congressional leaders with MUCH more they needed to do-in a time I worked with so many desperate people.
Let that fade away.
As a friend says there are incredible problems to be tackled.




Perhaps the lesson of the 2012 election, for me, is that people whose goals are framed in negatives, sabotage, subterfuge, advantaging themselves, ego, who deal behind backs, those that are forever unhappy, jealous, hoarding, haters- with distortion all they do really well, always in a seething anger, maybe they ought to set some "different" goals.
All the way around.


Start small.


Enjoy giving.
Share.
Do.
Look at it another way.
Challenge your sets of perceptions.
Admit your own hypocracies.
Set goals like ....help people solve problems.
How can healthcare work better?
How can education be affordable?
How can we respect diversity?
Can we drop "bad teacher" labeling and insults?
How can resources be used to grow us, forward us?
How can people be assisted to vote?
Where do we keep the rainbows?
What is wrong with a crayon?


California passed a Proposition to tax themselves to better serve their children. CA is numbering something like a 6th of our nation's kids in that mix, and looked out rather baffled I think at the election night.
And then- though closing the polls so late nationally- and projected in 25 seconds, leading from behind.
LEADING FROM BEHIND.
We could call that a goal we held out nationally.
Perhaps setting another new day education goal- Governor Brown stated so clearly back a bit:

Current federal and state policies encourage much more school time for basic math and language arts at the expense of other vital subjects.  California’s public schools need a broader vision of what constitutes an educated person.  I will create local and state initiatives to increase school focus on science, history and the humanities--without reducing needed attention to math and English.  We also need to experiment with on-line and other instructional approaches that will use the available school time in more efficient ways.

Yeah. We ought to do that sooner over later.

Well, it'll require a bit of that adage, it takes one to know one.
Where have the educated gone? Can those who don't understand or don't have or understand remotely those abilities due to the narrowing in 12 years actually then turn and lead towards them?
Or will they sabotage. And drag us down.
But at least for this week, things seemed to move in a direction.
Forward.