Clarity Defined

Pray for Tuesday’s family. She passed away today.

Leave them a comment here and let them know you are thinking of them.

October 11, 2006 – January 30, 2009

To the Whitt family, my deepest condolences go out to your family. My prayers will continue.

My cousin, an elementary school teacher in my home county, forwarded along an email to me today. The issues presented in the email were issues that I am all too familiar with as I also have a roommate with a Masters in Education, friends that are teachers, and a sister currently studying to become a teacher. In my quest to use this blog to bring awareness to causes close to my heart, I told my cousin I’d put the email here. As I don’t know the author of the email personally, I’m going to highlight portions of it in italics. My own commentary will continue in normal type. It is necessary that we prevent California’s politicians from:

Undermining Class Size Reduction by offering full flexibility on categorical programs.
—The governor’s proposal for complete and permanent “flexible” use of all state categorical funds would allow local districts to eliminate the state’s successful Class Size Reduction program and won’t save the state one dime. Eliminating CSR is a giant step backward for our kids and will hurt ethnic minority and low-income students the most. Giving students individual attention is not possible when there are 40 students to every teacher. Teachers, parents and students get it. Why can’t our lawmakers? “Flexibility” means no accountability and no guarantee that education money will be spent in the classroom

Honestly, I’m not too familiar with Prop. 98. So, feel free to Google it. Let me know what you find. 

Cutting $10.8 billion from schools and colleges over the next 18 months.

This is disasterous. I know so many people that are praying to keep their jobs and so many more that are trying to find jobs. People with credentials, Masters, and certificates to teach bilingual education that CANNOT FIND JOBS teaching in California. We NEED them. The STUDENTS need them. And as my sister works towards her own degree at a public college in California, these cuts mean higher tuition, fees, and other possible setbacks. I know that at one point her school was seriously considering closing because of costs.

They could be voting on these destructive measures any day now, since the governor and Legislature are required to reach a budget solution by February 2, 2009. This deadline was set when the governor called a special session under the Proposition 58 rule.

Step One
CALL YOUR ASSEMBLY MEMBER AND YOUR STATE SENATOR
USING CTA’S “CUTS HURT” HOTLINE: 1-888-268-4334

Tell your legislator to fund our schools, uphold Prop. 98, and protect the Class Size Reduction program.
If you’d rather e-mail your state leaders, click here.

Step Two
CALL YOUR U.S. SENATORS
1-800-294-9811

Tell them to make sure they include funding for our public schools and community colleges in any Economic Stimulus package.
If you’d rather e-mail your congressional leaders, click here. 

Thank you for lending your voice to the fight for our students and public schools. To find out more about the state budget crisis and what CTA is doing to advocate for more funding visit www.cta.org. 

David A. Sanchez
CTA President

Please pass this information along. Please call, email, whatever it takes. The State of California is supposed to be working in our best interest. This is clearly not in our best interest.

I read a lot of blogs. No, really, I read a lot of blogs. I love reading about how other people are living their lives and learning about lifestyles so different from my own. I believe we are all connected as people and reading these stories gives me perspective and strengthens those connections. 

Tonight, as I opened my Google Reader, I saw the above photo link. I clicked it and have read a number of entries and plan to read more. Please click it and read Tuesday’s story as well. Pray for Tuesday and her family. I’ll be adding a link to the right in the Blogroll as well.

“All I have to go on is something I glimpse out of the corner of my eye.” -John Updike

I had a teacher in middle school that required we memorize twenty-five quotations. This was one of them. Since I was a thirteen-year-old girl, navigating the roads of poetry and prose, I have remembered these words. Writing at observation essay of the sunrise, the glimpses led me through the many paragraphs. Wind blew through the trees. Hair rose on my arms in the predawn light.

Even still, the glimpses make their way into my vocabulary and my writing. They emerge on the two inch LCD screen of my digital camera. They work their way into my paint brush and the creation of picture frames, boxes, and other little mementos.

John Updike helped me to understand the importance in those glimpses and understand that they could be created into something bigger. I am so thankful.

Rest in peace Mr. Updike… you will not be forgotten. You are much more than a glimpse.

“In these times in which we live
Where the worst of what we live
Is laid out for all the world on the front page
And the sound of someone’s heartbreak
Is a soundbite at the news break
With a close shot of the tears rollin’ down their face
Blessed be the child who turns a loving eye
And stops to pray
For these times in which we live”
 

Tonight, I heard a heart-breaking tale. It isn’t a unique story (unfortunately), but it’s still heart-breaking. It was one of headlines tonight, but it was close to home. Literally. I felt sick to my stomach when I heard what happened.

It has been my desire to be a more hopeful person. I believe that we are each connected. I want to see the potential in people and the good that can come from a situation. I’m not an optimistic person by nature though. Hearing stories like the one I heard tonight remind me of why. I think that’s why these lyrics from Martina McBride’s “For These Times In Which We Live” are so crucial.

Turn a loving eye. Pray.

It doesn’t make the headlines disappear. It won’t make the story any less horrifying. But, there is power to change your heart. 

I’m learning.

President Obama was sworn in this morning. Videos of the coverage can be seen here, his speech can be read here, and all over the internet you could and can continue participate in the story and the history of this day. 

More information on the pledge can be found at the Myspace page.

I pledge to be aware of those around me, to treat each person with dignity, to maintain hope, to uphold virtue, and to listen. I pledge to be active.

MLK and Obama

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent. -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Change. The number of times the word “change” has been spoken in the United States during the last year or two seems impossible to count. As Barack Obama campaigned for presidency, change was sought. And when he won? “Change [had] come to America.” Today, as we anticipate tomorrow’s Inauguration (whether it be with dread or excitement), we also anticipate the changes that will begin to transpire.

As media flurried to and fro with Inauguration celebration happenings, they also recalled that today is Martin Luther King Day. If anyone has missed or not heard about the connection there then s/he must be living under a rock where cell phone and internet are unavailable. Not wanting to miss out on the fun, I had to choose the above quote from MLK that seemed perfectly fitting as such a crossroads.

“Change has come,” but it did not come over night. As a history major, I know that this change has been hundreds of years in the making. Continuous struggle. Abolitionists fought to end slavery, but they did not all fight for equal rights. Many would have scoffed at the idea of a black man as president. President Lincoln worked to preserve this nation, but even the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free slaves and it only applied to those states that had seceded. As many of us know, the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments did not change the way black men, women, and children were treated. Dr. King, while certainly a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, was one of many that continued the struggle for change throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Tomorrow, President-Elect Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and history will (officially) be made. It won’t be the end of the struggle though. Civil rights still need protecting for many. Citizenship must be recognized. We each need to straighten up, continue the struggle, work together to build peace, and help our country to be great. This morning, Mr. Obama shared a similar sentiment while remarking,

“Tomorrow, we will come together as one people on the same mall where Dr. King’s dream echoes still. As we do, we recognize that here in America, our destinies are inextricably linked. We resolve that as we walk, we must walk together. And as we go forward in the work of renewing the promise of this nation, let’s remember King’s lesson – that our separate dreams are really one.”

We must walk together and see the human dignity that our founding fathers proclaimed we each hold innately. Lincoln reminded those at Gettyburg that we were (and are) a country “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” We must recognize our own dignity and the dignity of our neighbors. See the equality. See how we are one as a human race. Live in a way that demonstrates your recognition of our connectedness to one another.

And tomorrow as we watch and participate in the Inauguration of our newly elected president, let us remember our past as we look to our future.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. –Albert Camus