Radical Education Reform: Opening Remarks

| davidsabey

The graduating class of 2016 will be underprepared to write at the college level. They will also tend to shy away from STEM careers because of a quasi-collective mathematical incompetence. Something is going wrong. What do we need to change to better prepare these kids for college and careers?

I would be willing to bet that in answering this question, practically every reader automatically began to focus on some problem at the school or classroom level. This seems intuitive: Students aren’t being educated well enough? Fix the schools! To most of us, the entire education system—from the department of education to legislation like No Child Left Behind to the debate about charter schools—is nothing more than the undergirding of the neighborhood school. Schools are where the rubber meets the road. We think education and we think schools.

That just might be our problem. We have conflated education and schooling. Continue reading →

How to get married:

| joshsabey

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I recently talked with a friend who is wanting to get married but is struggling to know how to do it. He wants it, but he doesn’t know how to find someone or how to know when he’s found the right person. This short essay grew as an attempt to respond to his concerns. And if you’re hoping for three steps to a happily ever after, you’re reading the wrong blog. There are more than enough of those articles being published. Continue reading →

Umbilical Cords, Belly Buttons, and Breastmilk: The Drama of the Generations

| briansabey
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The Milan Cathedral (the Duomo), constructed 1386 thru 1577, depending on how you count. Photo credit: http://adventurejay.com/blog/

“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents . . . .” Malachi 4:6

We are parents to a 15 month old girl named Zina, with another’s anticipated arrival in less than two months. Before Zina joined us, we had a miscarriage. (Perhaps Dia will someday post some of her thoughts about that difficult experience.) Over the three years of our marriage, we have had our hearts turned to our children—and to our parents. We have more fully joined the drama of the generations: more than before, we recognize that we are participants in a circling narrative of birth, parenting, marriage, and death that stretches vastly beyond our lives’ short timelines in either direction.

I wish I knew more about my ancestors. Their hopes, their dreams, their hobbies, their passions and preferences and personalities. I’m sure that I figured in some of those hopes and dreams, in some shadowy way. Dia recently wrote about how people in earlier ages, to a much greater extent than we, pinned their hopes and the very meanings of their lives on the prospect of posterity to continue their legacy, to carry on their memory and their way of life, to continue to build the cathedrals when their hammers and their bodies were spent. Continue reading →

Making Sense of Shooters: a Self Reflection

| joshsabey

High profile shootings have surrounded my hometown. I grew up in Colorado ten minutes from Columbine, fifteen minutes from the Aurora theatre shooting, and then two years ago my little brother was at Arapahoe high school when Karl Pierson attempted another Columbine.

The first article I ever published on this blog dealt with the Arapahoe shooting. In that article I discussed these shootings as a metaphor for a more common problem our society suffers from at large: certitude. But now I believe these shootings may be more than a metaphor but an actual exhibition of this unhealthy mentality prevalent in our society. This certitude is a mental illness but not the kind of issue that can be dismissed by the words “crazy” or “insane.” Rather, it is very familiar and most of us suffer from the same or similar ailments. Continue reading →

Learning Not to be My Sister’s Keeper

| sp

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One of the hardest parts of moving (and lacking the funds to justify an $800 round trip ticket) is missing major family events.

This week, my sister had a baby girl. She has ten fingers, and ten tiny toes, a mouth, ears, elbows, kneecaps, lungs, liver, and two eyes too large for their still half sealed lids. It is all a miracle, because the baby came six weeks early. Failure to thrive. She weighs 3 pounds and has no baby fat on her tiny, wizened body. I love her already.

It is not so different from when her brother was born. Jasper had wrapped the umbilical cord around his face, so his eye was swollen and his face was bruised and his nose was smashed. Our little Quasimodo, my sister said. Continue reading →

Early Pregnancy: What I Wasn’t Expecting

| alizabethworley

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I feel that I have frequently been advised that parenting, while certainly a blessing, can be difficult and painful. However, I was not aware how much this could apply to simply being pregnant. Certainly, the opportunity and ability for Michael and I to be expecting a baby is a blessing, something we have hoped for and haven’t been sure would be ours, since Michael has Cerebral Palsy. At the same time, my first trimester of pregnancy has been incredibly difficult. I’ve been very sick and have found unrelenting, day and night nausea (a condition that before now, I would hardly think could be serious or debilitating) to be more difficult than the most pain I have ever experienced, even while on medication. Continue reading →