Teach42

Yesterday’s post generated a bit of discussion, so I thought that I might clarify my own position about blogging and the frequency of posts.

When I read something interesting, I like to share it with people. When I learn something new, I want to pass on that knowledge. When I’m struggling with an idea, I like to flesh it out and get some feedback. Blogging in the past has given me an outlet for all these situations. Generally, when I discover something new or am struggling with a specific issue, I find that blogging is a worthwhile method of getting input from people.

For the most part, my own lack of blogging in recent months quite simply represents the fact that for a little while at least I stopped learning. I didn’t read new material (besides some Stephen King and Harry Potter) and I wasn’t really thinking too much about education. I’m not making any sort of judgement about whether I feel guilty over taking a break or that I didn’t deserve one, I’m simply saying that for about a month I stopped learning. Nothing wrong with that, its just the way it was.

However, I like to learn. I like to consider new ideas and explore what’s on the horizon. I like to blaze a trail westerward and see where the path takes me. I enjoy learning and want to make sure that as I build my new habits at my new school, that time for learning plays a prominent role.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to blog every day. Although I may have something to say every day, I like to think that I’m at least somewhat selective. However, I do hope that I continue to learn everyday and when appropriate, that I will share my thoughts with the blogosphere.

So don’t worry about me. I don’t blog for the sake of blogging. Nor do I feel guilty in any way about taking time off from blogging. Personally though, I want to continue to grow, to learn, to explore. And I want to share the experience with anybody who wants to come along for the ride.

Today we’re getting started in our economic literacy program. This is the part that has generated the most curiosity, enthusiasm and fear when I describe my school to people. Economic literacy to kindergarteners? Sounds strange, sounds a little overly capitalistic, but I really think that it makes sense.

He says that the average net worth of an African American family is eight thousand dollars. A Caucasian family is worth about eighty thousand. Thanks incredible. Kinda scary. 80% of African American and Latino families have 0 net worth. They owe more than they own. Not only that, but they’re backsliding. If that’s true, it’s an incredible statistic.

Here we go with the examples, the “If you invested a dollar a day” stories. If you invested one dollar per day @ 11%, which is the stock market average (is that right?), for fifty years, you’d have $674,000. Wow. Think about that when you’re in line for your daily Starbucks. That’s only one dollar per day. If the interest rate was 7%, it would be 158,000. Now that may be a huge amount of money, but it really shows you how much that 4% is worth in the long run.

What if they invested one quarter per day for 55 years at 8%? Just a single quarter. He’s even saying that some places will match that sort of micro investments. Invest a quarter, they give you a quarter. Don’t know if we’ll get an answer to this one, we’re off on a major sidetrack.

There’s a book along these lines called “Assets and the Poor” by Michael Sharraden. http://gwbweb.wustl.edu/people/fac/sherrade.html . The point is that we need to get people to switch from income to assets. His idea is to create an IDA, Individual Development Account. For every dollar someone saves, there will be federal funds to match that at least 1:1 provided we can find a third party to provide an initial match. He’s saying that if we started in kindergarten with those accounts. Kindergarteners invest one penny per day, with two more cents being matched. By the time they leave high school, they would have 20,000 dollars. Wow. Picture that. Every high schooler leaving with a net worth of 20 grand. Now, that can only be used for higher education, first home purchase or towards starting a business. Well, hopefully every one of those students will do two out those three things at some point in their life. If nothing else, it’s a down payment right there. 20% of a 100,000 dollar house.

It also changes how people view themselves, how they see the world. The stock market doesn’t care about the color of your scheme. They start thinking a little more long term. They normally might not because it’s a good survival strategy to always worry about today, but it won’t help you get ahead in the long run.

Interesting activity. Take a map of the state and put a pin on the map in the location of every pay day loan is. You can guess what happens. They’re all in low income areas. Why? The average APR of a credit card is around 15%. Many payday loans have an APR of 400%. That’s right, you pay back four times what you borrowed if you take a year to pay it off. Would make a good social studies discussion.

Income is your paycheck. You might make $100,000 and have no assets. Assets are things that will hopefully gain in value, like real estate or stocks.

His point is that even with very very basic savings skills, every person in this room could eventually be a millionaire. Of course, it might not mean the same thing at that point, but you get the idea. A little investment can go a very long way.

If you invest 2,000 and then put in 3,000 yearly for 37 years at 9% interest, you’d have around 900,000 dollars. Three thousand a year would be 125 per paycheck. We could do that. It’s realistic I think. It might be hard sometimes, but I think we could do it. And just imagine, by the time I’m 70 I could possibly be a millionaire. Pretty crazy.

The idea is to get these kids saving. Right from the beginning. Even if it’s just a tiny little amount, it gets kids into the habit.

Another recommended book, Your Money or Your Life (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140286780/102-1124382-2168168?v=glance)

We’re talking briefly about why finances are such a taboo subject, whey it makes people so uncomfortable to talk about. People would rather talk about their personal sex lives than their financial situation.

I’m not really sure whether this whole conversation is depressing or enlightening. I actually do feel depressed. I’ve made some pretty serious mistakes in my life, some of them rather obvious and some of them rather subtle.

When asked to consider financial mistakes that I’ve made, the first thing I usually think of is the Trans Am that I bought from a total scammer. The car was a piece of junk and not only did I buy it from him, I paid in cash. I was totally hoodwinked. However, despite its problems I drove it for a year and had my cousin fix it up until it was just about reliable. Then I sold it on eBay for only 1,000 less than I paid for it. Don’t worry, I was totally up front about the condition of the car and recommended that it only be bought by a mechanic who would be able to work on it themselves. All in all, it was a miserable situation and a total crisis at the time, but in reality I didn’t lose very much money on the deal.

Want to hear a major mistake though that has probably cost me tens of thousands though? I never participated in my school’s pension plan at my last place of employment. They had a pretty darn good matching plan that I didn’t participate in my first few years. At the time, I didn’t think I was making enough money to invest into it. Then it just kind of got backburnered and I never got started in it. Later, when I was making a pretty decent salary as a Director of Technology, I just never made the phone call to get myself signed up. Why not? I really have no idea. I just didn’t get around to it. I didn’t get hoodwinked, I didn’t get scammed. But that mistake probably cost me ten or twenty times the amount I lost in the car deal.

However, what I should be considering is how much I still stand to gain by starting now. It’s not too late to turn things around. I’ll probably be working in education for another 30-35 years. If I start right now and be diligent about it, it’s not too late for me to amass a million dollars by retirement.

I am very good at making money. I manage to come up with all kinds of interesting ways to make money, from buying and selling on eBay to playing poker online to doing computer work for people on the side. If I really want to earn enough money to buy something, I always find a way. If I apply that same attitude to savings, I could always find ways to put aside enough to really have a good chunk of change at retirement.

So I’m going to choose to put my focus on what I still stand to gain rather than what I’ve lost. Hear that family members who are reading this blog? Go easy on me, I feel bad enough about it already!

I know I’m way off topic, but if you’ve read this blog for any decent amount of time you know I’m prone to that. You get my thoughts and ideas along with the facts. Heck, sometimes you even get a surprise confession. Consider it a freebie. Learn from my mistakes boys and girls.

We’re post lunch now and just starting to talk turkey about how we put this in the school setting. A lot of this revolves around teaching delayed gratification, if you just hold off needing gratification right now you’ll be able to have a lot more later. It’s tough enough for adults, but really tough for many kids. Earlier in the day he provided an interesting example of a study somebody did. In a nutshell, they put a marshmallow in front of a class of kindergarten kids. Then the teachers said that he had more marshmallows in the car, and if the kid could wait 15 minutes for him to run to the car before eating it, they could have a second one. About half the kids just crammed the marshmallow in their mouth and couldn’t wait. They revisited those kids in 20 years, and apparently the kids who were able to wait the 15 minutes (delayed gratification) were much more better off financially. I don’t have the exact details, but you get the picture.

We’re talking about how to introduce this to kids. He suggests that we start off talking about different kinds of banks and why people would put their money into a bank. Also the difference between regular banks and community banks. Anyway, from there you can introduce the concept of interest. It’s a tough concept, but the best way might be to do a concrete example, like putting fifty dollars in a jar and adding interest to it every morning and charting the growth.

Once we get past the savings conversation, then you can move along to “is there any way we can make our money grow more?” Key point, it’s not about making it grow faster, but getting more growth. It’s not a race to a certain dollar amount. It’s a marathon.

He envisions three parts to the program. 1) Daily savings, every child bringing in SOMETHING every day, even if it’s just a penny. Also some visual representation of it as well to provide reinforcement for how much is there even when the money is locked away out of sight. 2) A class account, where the class invests $50 as a group and tracks it’s growth. 3) Meetings about money, discussing it. To discuss the details, about 45 minutes to an hour per week. This is where the actual lessons come in, including stories worksheets and vocabulary. Most of the program in general will take place during circle time in the morning.

Well, much time has passed. Fortunately for me we’ve been actively working on what the economic literacy program is going to look like here at our school. Unfortunately, since it’s been a lot of group work, I don’t have any notes from it. Suffice to say, we’re coming up with practical ideas to use. It’s definitely critical for our students to understand this stuff and could have a profound influence on their lives. Since it will be a new program, many of the activities will look pretty similar between grade levels. Everyone needs to learn the basics of savings and earnings. In a few years though, the fourth grade curriculum will look vastly different than this year. I have no doubt that this will be challenging to create, but I think it’s definitely worth the effort.

If any of you know of any programs similar to this out there or any good suggestions of economic programs for elementary students, let me know! The more ideas, the better.

I’m doing my homework online again. One thing we talked about on Friday was the broken windows theory. If someone throws a brick through a few windows in a ‘bad’ neighborhood, it might be easy for someone to just say that they aren’t worth fixing. However, if someone sees a building with broken windows, they might figure that nobody cares about it so they might as well put up some graffiti on that building and the building next door. If someone sees a block with broken windows and graffiti, they might figure it would be a good place to try to sell drugs on the corner. If someone is selling drugs on the corner, a gang may want to try to take control of the territory and so on.

The point is that the broken window is just the first step in a downward spiral. It wouldn’t have taken much to just fix that broken window and prevented everything else from happening, but it starts with recognizing that you do need to sweat the small stuff.

Our directors asked us to come up with three broken windows for ourselves and what we were going to do about them. Sometimes it’s tough coming up with your own shortcomings, particularly those little shortcomings that we could actually be doing something about but don’t for some reason. It’s even tougher sharing them with other people. But admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

Window number #1: I’m a procrastinator. I always get things done, and do a solid job on them, but I’m typing up this ‘homework’ assignment 45 minutes before I need to leave the house to go to work on Monday morning. I’ve thought about all my answers throughout the weekend, but I just didn’t take the time to type them up. Consequently, I’m typing now, will run upstairs to print this out, take a shower, go grab the printout and race out the door. It creates problems for myself on a regular basis. If I’m out of paper or ink in the printer, I will just be screwed. This year, I won’t have a co-teacher in my classroom. Nor will I have an abundance of free time during the school day. So if I procrastinate, I will be putting myself in some very tight situations. So this year, I am going to stay late on Monday afternoons. I do like to leave right away after school normally, but once a week I am going to stay late to make sure that I have prepared everything I need for the week. I think that will help tremendously. Normally I am the type of person that gets to school early, but in the morning I will most likely be worried about the upcoming day only. So Monday morning will be my time to get things ready for the rest of the day, but Monday afternoon will be my time to get things ready for the rest of the week.

Broken window #2: I’m trying to figure out how to put this delicately but can’t seem to find the right words. I’m sort of sloppy when it comes to my appearance. I’m not really big on haircuts or shaving. I don’t own an iron. I’m not too fond of shopping for new clothes. I’m very comfortable with myself and so long as I’m comfortable that’s all that counts, right? Well, not really. I quit smoking before I began student teaching because I knew I was a role model for kids. I’m intensely aware of my language and behavior because I know children are going to be heavily influenced by me. However, I don’t normally apply that idea to my appearance and I need to. These kids are going to be severely disadvantaged in the job market because of their income level and the color of their skin. They need to look meticulous, well groomed and educated to give themselves a fighting chance. I need to set a positive example for them. I may not cut my hair short, but I am going to get regular haircuts this year. I am also going to find my electric razor and keep it in the car so I can shave every single day. I am going to go shopping for new clothes and make sure that I look professional every day. On the weekends, I may still look like a slob, but when I’m working with kids I will look dress like I would expect them to dress.

Broken window #3: I will never have to worry about being too skinny. The summer that I trained for and ran the Chicago marathon, I lost about 6 pounds. However, I’ve always taken pride in the fact that despite my appearance I was at least living healthy. I’ve let that slide tremendously in the last few years. I’ve only run twice this summer and both times it was appalling how quickly I tired out. I know that I have more energy throughout the day when I am exercising regularly and that I have a better outlook on life. This week I am going to start running again. I am going to start small and work my way back up. Lack of exercise can lead to loss of energy, something you really don’t want to be running short on in the classroom. It’s a broken window that can certainly spiral out of control quickly. So I am going to try to address that one now, before the school year begins. I’d go out for a run right now but I have to print this out and race to work! But tonight, I’ll break out an mp3 player and get my feet moving.

Any broken windows of your own? Feel free to share them. It’s actually quite cathartic!

One of the things that our directors asked us to do was to draw up a personal contract for ourselves to sign and turn in. Since my blog has always been a place to flesh out ideas and brainstorm things, I figured I’d do it here.

This year, I am rededicating myself to classroom education. I will not be satisfied with satisfactory, and will constantly be striving to improve the educational opportunities that I offer to my students.

I will arrive at school early to ensure that I am overly prepared for the day’s lessons. In the past I have had co-teachers and free periods, providing more than adequate time for preparation during the school day. That will not be the case this year, but the need for preparation is greater than ever.

Most days, I will be leaving school soon after the students have left. As dedicated as I am to education, it is still a job that I have in order to pay bills and support my personal life. I work hard so that my wife and I can enjoy our time together.

I will continue to reflect upon my own experiences, both privately and publicly. The blog and podcast are public manifestations of my own reflective process and through them I will continue to explore ways to improve the educational system of my own school as well as schools in general.

I will make deliberate efforts to collaborate with my grade level team and to share responsibilities with them. I often have the attitude that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. However, that generally means that you take on an extraordinary amount of extra work, sometimes unnecessarily. The other grade level teachers are incredibly motivated and have some fantastic ideas. By working as a team, we will be able to lessen everybody’s load.

I will conduct my classroom this year with a sense of urgency. These students need to do more than average, grade level work. In order to overcome the hurdles life has put in their way, they need to excel. Their own educational journeys will begin in my classroom, and I will make sure they have the tools they will need to be successful. I will not just be teaching kindergarten, I will be preparing them for 1st grade, middle school, high school and ultimately college.

I will continue my own educational journey this year as well. Through online research, workshops, conferences, and other professional development opportunities, I will continue to seek out new experiences in education. I do not believe that I already know enough to do the best possible job that I can. There is always something more that I can learn to improve my own teaching abilities.

Living to learn, learning to live.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything and I’ve gotten a few emails asking whether everything was alright. Well, no worries, everything is great. After the flurry of posts from all the conference blogging, I’m just recharging the batteries again a little bit. I had a week off between my old job and my new job and I actually took some time off for myself for the first time in a few years. As Director of Technology, I had to work through the summers so having some real time off was quite a treat. I got a bunch of stuff done around the house, played some online poker and did some serious relaxing.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working at my new school. The full faculty is working 9-5 through the beginning of the school year to get everything taken ready for ‘opening day’. From curriculum to assessment to discipline to character development and everything in between, it’s incredible just how much needs to be done to set up a new school.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any internet access available in the area that we’re working yet, so I can’t do any blogging during the day. By the time I come home in the evening, I’ve just been relaxing, swimming and hanging out with my wife and dog. But I’ve been noting some future blog topics and in the near future you can probably expect another flurry. But for now, I’m just taking it easy. It’s summer vacation after all!

One last thing, today is my four year anniversary today! So I just want to throw out a serious “Love you, thank you” to my wife Jessica for supporting me through all the evenings that I spent podcasting, blogging, and semi-ignoring her. She is the most wonderful and supportive wife a man could ever want. Thanks baby, you’re the greatest!