Monday Morning Musings

I read an interesting column by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times about the worth of good teachers. His column was actually about great teachers and reported on a study that showed that "the difference between a strong teacher and a weak teacher lasts a lifetime."

He quoted some statistics that indicate a student is 1.25 percent more likely to go to college and 1.25 percent more likely not to get pregnant in high school if they have a great fourth grade teacher. While those are not huge numbers, they do represent individual students who did better because of the influence of one particular teacher. Those are students who have most likely grown up to be productive citizens and are not perpetuating an endless cycle of dropping out and either scrabbling for living or relying on government handouts for survival.

I remember that fourth grade was a pivotal year for most of my kids as they made their way through elementary school, and they did have a great teacher. She also happened to be a good friend and neighbor and to this day I thank her for being such a great influence on my kids, especially our oldest son.

David did not have a stellar academic career, in elementary school or high school, but it would have been much worse had he not had Ginger Liening as a teacher. He had a horrible time in third grade and was ready to run away from home and school both at the thought of another school year starting. Ginger, to her credit, didn't judge him on his past school experience or behavior. She encouraged him to start with a clean slate, so to speak, and I'm sure it was her mentoring that kept him from dropping out of school entirely.

So I agree with Kristof that school districts should find a way to keep those stellar teachers and weed out the weaker ones. Maybe then there would be a huge jump in the numbers of kids encouraged on to much better things.

On another note, I hope you will come back on Wednesday when Morgan Mandel is my guest. She is sharing some interesting facts about the Fountain of Youth, as well as a short excerpt from her latest book, Forever Young: Blessing or Curse

Fresh beginnings turn tragic when Dorrie Donato’s husband, Larry, is killed in a hit and run accident a few months after starting a new job at the Life is for Living Institute. Discouraged and desperate after  suffering countless setbacks, Dorie accepts an offer by  Larry’s boss, the famous Angel Man, to  be the first to test an experimental pill designed to spin its user back to a desired age and hold there, yet still retain all previous memories.  The pill seems too good to be true. Maybe it is.

Morgan Mandel is a former freelancer for the Daily Herald newspaper, prior president of Chicago-North RWA, prior Library Liaison for Midwest MWA, and belongs to Sisters in Crime and EPIC. She enjoys writing thrillers, mysteries, romances and also enjoys combining them. Her latest paranormal romantic thriller is Forever Young: Blessing or Curse, Book One of the Always Young Series, available on Kindle and Smashwords. Other novels by Morgan Mandel include the romantic suspense, Killer Career, the mystery, Two Wrongs, and the romantic comedy, Girl of My Dreams. Morgan is now working on Book Two of the Always Young Series, called Blessing or Curse: A Forever Young Anthology, where readers will learn what happens to others who have taken the Forever Young pill.  One more book will follow bringing back the original heroine to close out the series.

Friday's Odds and Ends

My fellow Americans... no, wait that is the beginning of a presidential address, and this is not a presidential address, although it is about some of the presidential candidates.  We are still over a year away from the election, and already the news and sound-bites are getting tiresome. Rick Perry has called President Obama a traitor. Perry has also said that global warming  is not a problem, and even joked that the leading source of "supposedly deadly carbon dioxide" is the mouth of Al Gore.

Other than the fact that she is associated with the Tea Party, which has become just another self-serving entitiy, Michelle Bachmann seems to be holding in the name-calling and focusing on issues. It is not her fault that the media decided to publish that awful picture of her eating a corn dog at the Iowa State Fair and then lead the public down that suggestive path. Shame on the media for that one.

Instead of relying on the nightly news on television or the latest from CNN or Fox News online, the savvy voter would do well to research for themselves what the candidates stand for. To get in-depth information on all the candidates without media bias, here is a Website that has all 2012 candidates listed along with their policies, plans, and qualifications.

Okay, enough about politics. When I wrote Monday's post about young people making a difference, I missed the opportunity to mention a very special 9 year-old girl who lived near Seattle. New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about her recently, and I saved that column. Rachel  Beckwith learned about Locks of Love when she was 5 and grew her hair out so she could then cut it and donate it to be made into a wig for a child going through chemotherapy.  Then when she was 8 she learned about an organization called Charity:water. Instead of having a 9th birthday party, she asked her friends to donate $9 each to Charity:water for water projects in Africa. This was on June 12, 201,1 and she set up a birthday page on the Charity:water website with a goal of raising $300.

On July 20, Rachel was critically injured in a car accident while traveling with her family. Family and friends started donating to her birthday fund and the amount raised passed the goal, and kept on going. Sadly, Rachel did not recover from her injuries, but she continued to give. Her parents donated her hair one last time to Locks of Love and her organs were donated to other children in need.

Donations continued to pour into the Charity:water site, and when Kristof wrote about this on August 12, the total had topped $800,000. Kristof ended his column by writing, "Youth activism has a long history, but this ethos of publis service is on the ascendant today - and today's kids don't just protest against injustices, as my contemporaries did, but many are remarkable problem-solvers.

"Rachel Beckwith, RIP, and may our generation learn from yours."

I chose these two topics today because the contrast is so telling. I used to tell those in the public sector to stop acting like children, but perhaps they ought to consider it.