Cautionary note on our New Years’ resolutions

It’s beautiful January in our fair land and that means a few things – resolutions are in full gear, and folks (educators included) are in search of the “latest” and “newest” to implement in the spirit of new beginnings. That’s all well and great, seriously – I love change & progress more than most, but take it from someone who maybe loves it a little too much: Sometimes, it’s better to just stick with what you’ve got.

Here’s what I mean: If you’ve given something (say, a new small group reading intervention) a try for a while now and it’s not working, let your New Years resolution mentality kick-in and change it up. However, education is hard, and sometimes the long-road is the right road. And, sometimes, that road is boring. When the road gets boring, we can convince ourselves that things like resolutions and overhauls are the way to go.

In fact, education is fraught with examples of jumping on the latest and greatest, only to discontinue what we were doing last year. Last year, maybe we dumped a ton of money and PD time into direct instruction. That didn’t fix everything, so now we aren’t really doing that much, and have jumped on single-gender education. After a year, that probably won’t fix everything, so maybe we’ll become enamored with year-round education, or charters, or maybe we’ll put balanced literacy back in the rotation.

All tongue-and-cheek commentary aside, let’s realize that what we do is hard. We aren’t going to teach everything, fix everything, or inspire everyone. And when we do, we might not even know it, or know it for a long time. So, let’s embrace progress and always be on the lookout for what else we can do better, but not at the expense of building on what we already have.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1RZStON
from Bobby Caples

Red Beans & Rice

With life in general, it seems I’ve been traveling a curvilinear path starting with simplicity, then toward complexity, now back to simplicity. My mid-20s were all about how many ingredients I could put in a dish – I fancy I could make it. I had something to prove, apparently. Now, I’ve come to re-appreciate the value of simplicity, in large part because I think simplicity allows food to speak more clearly and be less cluttered. More ingredients are okay, but they each need to mean something to the dish. Conceptually, it’s the same thing – it’s okay to get fancy, as long as fancy means something.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from fancy is red beans & rice. A New Orleans tradition since way back when, red beans & rice fall into utilitarian and comfort food categories we’ve created to nostalgically reminisce about more simple times of the past. It’s doubtful that nearly as many people need to spend all day Monday tending house, a task chain that originally necessitated the simple meal that would become rice & beans, but what we do need to is to remember the time when we did need to spend Mondays in that way. Somehow it connects us with our past, our history.

Red Beans & Rice has also become more than just a way to remember the past, but an excuse to get together as a group. A huge pot of Red Beans & Rice is tough to eat by oneself, even spread out over the course of a week. By fixing a pot, we create the need for community – for people to come over and share a dish. So, on this Monday, I raise my glass to you, Red Beans & Rice.

http://ift.tt/oe0kNZ
if( typeof stLight!==”undefined” ){ stLight.options({publisher: “e6b1ba09-bf07-47cb-951a-cf58d1c03f3a”, doNotHash: true, doNotCopy: false, hashAddressBar: false}); }

from Food & Beverage by Bobby Caples http://ift.tt/1SZtg6a

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1S0GQ8l
from Bobby Caples