Citizen philanthropy funds classrooms

from the site:
“DonorsChoose.org is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.”

A DonorsChoose.org gift certificate would make a wonderful holiday “gift that gives back” for someone special. Your recipient will be able to use the gift certificate to fund their choice of project(s). Alternately, you can fund a project in someone’s honor. Donations are tax-deductible, of course.

In 2007, donors from all walks of life have funded $4,215,709 worth of resources for students in need.

Verbatim

“Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn’t have said.”

-Unknown

Monday Melee 6/11

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Phony or two-faced behavior. I think it’s wrong to pretend to respect or admire someone while you’re in their presence when, in fact, you don’t feel that way at all. I think it’s appropriate to show courtesy and behave in a civil manner, even toward people you don’t like. But to pretend something more amiable, then proceed to express your true, less favorable feelings behind a person’s back is ridiculous.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
I don’t think money should buy a shorter jail term. On the other hand, I don’t think notoriety should be punished with a harsher sentence. The sentence and time served should be commensurate with the violation in question, and enforced equally regardless of social or economic status.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I found my tripod, but the mounting bracket is missing, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to replace it.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
Youngest son’s report card reflects improvement in almost every class as compared to last term.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I’m willing to tell my kids ‘no’ and have expectations and guidelines, even if it makes me unpopular. Which it does. But I believe it’s in their best interest, and maybe one day (hopefully) they’ll thank me.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like to be able to levitate heavy objects. It would make moving furniture much more fun.

Child care funding

More than 60% of U.S. families have both parents in the labor force and need child care in order to make a living. Studies show that early learning and good child care are critical to children’s short- and long-term success. Yet about 150,000 low-income children have lost federal child care assistance since 2001. And if current funding trends continue, 300,000 more children will lose their assistance by the end of the decade. Visit Moms Rising via this link to urge Congress to make child care funding for low-income families a priority. America must invest in early care, not just because it’s necessary for families, but because each child is precious to society as a whole; they represent the future productive engine of our economy and communities.

Monday Melee 6/4

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
The ‘us against them’ tendency. Put a large enough group of people together and they’ll fragment into opposing groups. Clans, nations, religions, political parties, genders, ages: people always seem to find characteristics and criteria to use in order to unite and hold themselves apart from others. I wish we could be more harmonious.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
New research reveals that sodium benzoate, a preservative commonly found in soft drinks (and other food products) can lead to cirrhosis and Parkinson’s. It has also been found that sodium benzoate, when combined with Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) under certain conditions, creates a carcinogenic called benzene. Let’s get safe ingredients in these products or get them off the market. source: Organic Consumers Association

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
Aging. I’m trying to do it gracefully, but it really bums me out sometimes. I’d like to be 25 again, in body if not in mind.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
My oldest is learning to drive a stick shift, and he’s handling the challenge with uncharacteristic patience and good humor.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I frequently carry out random acts of kindness.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like to have a Farmers’ Market that’s open every day within walking distance of my home.

Monday Melee 5/21

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Waste. Millions of people around the world are going without basic necessities while the privileged few voraciously churn through a constant stream of luxury items, loading landfills and junkyards with products they’ve simply grown tired of.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
Giving a teenage girl a $65,000 SUV and letting her host a party for a handful of friends at a beach mansion that rents for $10,000 a day. The occasion? Back-to-school. Hubby was channel surfing and landed on this frightening show called ‘Daddy’s Spoiled Little Girl’. It was strange and disturbing: it made me sick and yet I could not look away.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I have been really busy lately and haven’t had much time to visit the sites on my blogroll to read posts and leave comments.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
Journalists and media personnel often work in dangerous places and put themselves at risk in order to investigate and report on world events. In the course of their work, many have the integrity and courage to challenge authority and speak out against injustice.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I appreciate and find happiness in life’s simple pleasures: hanging out with loved ones, a beautiful sunset, the aroma of baking bread, escaping into a good book, checking a task of my to-do list, waking up to birdsong, and so on.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like to be able to visit and talk with a person or family from another country, in their home, once a week. I guess I will need to put teleportation and a sci-fi language interface on my wish list in order to carry this one off.

Monday Melee 5/07

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Laziness and apathy. Why vote? It won’t matter. Why recycle or conserve energy? I’m only one person. Why donate? I can only spare $5. Well, I say: It matters. One person is a start. Every little bit helps. If we all get it in gear and do something, it’ll make a big difference.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
“…since September of last year – when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – the president has the power to call any US citizen an ‘enemy combatant’. He has the power to define what ‘enemy combatant’ means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define ‘enemy combatant’ any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.”
source: Guardian Unlimited

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I’m not as efficient as I’d like to be. There’s so much I want to accomplish, and I often get to the end of the day with too many items left undone.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
My bold and adventurous sister is embarking on a summer internship in a foreign country. I admire the way she goes after her dreams with spirit and determination.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I have a quick mind and a good sense of humor. I think a hearty laugh is downright good for you, and I look for opportunities to brighten someone’s day.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I fervently wish that, one day, my kids will love reading as much as I do. It’s on my make-believe list because I’m beginning to fear it isn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t be the person I am without the insights and knowledge gained from books. I hate to see them miss out.

Support education for all

Worldwide, 77 million children lack access to even basic education. Many children, particularly girls, are kept from school due to uniform or text book expenses or the loss of their contribution to family income. Poor countries also lack the funds to train and retain qualified teachers, provide teaching materials, and build an adequate number of schools.

Representatives Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have stepped up and introduced the Education for All Act to give tens of millions of children the education that will lift them out of poverty.

Education is a tool to transform the world, one student at a time. Education raises incomes, reduces infant mortality, slows the spread of HIV-AIDS, and saves lives. This is an investment that pays rich dividends.

Will you write a letter to your member of Congress asking them to support the Education for All Act?

Monday Melee 3/26

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
“Everyone else is doing it” justification. It is routinely employed to excuse all sorts of questionable behavior: lying, cheating, negative campaigning, racism, greed, bribes, double standards, driving gas guzzlers, taking unfair advantage, doing anything it takes to win, etc. If you have to make an excuse like this for doing something, you probably shouldn’t do it. Sadly, you don’t often encounter this phrase as a reason to do something good. I’d like to hear people say: I’m behaving ethically…standing up for what I believe in…donating to charity…spending quality time with my kids…doing volunteer work…honoring my commitments…because everyone else is doing it.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
It seems to me that refusing to testify under oath is admitting that you don’t intend to tell the truth.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
My memory isn’t nearly as sharp as it used to be. Back in the day (as my son would say) I was able to effortlessly remember just about everything: phone numbers, credit card and account numbers, names, birthdays, facts and trivia, song lyrics, and so on. Now, I rely heavily on note-taking and my trusty PDA.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
“Putting his money where his environmentalist mouth is, Prince Charles is swapping gas-guzzling private planes and helicopters for commercial flights, train journeys and biodiesel cars. A longtime champion of green causes, the heir to the throne says action is needed now to avoid leaving a ruined planet to the next generation.” source: CBS News

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I don’t let the fact that I don’t know how to do something stop me; instead I view it as a good reason to learn. New technology, new ways of doing things, new theories? Bring it on.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I wish I could enable my kids to clearly see the future consequences of their actions and decisions and act accordingly. Of course, if they could do this, they wouldn’t be kids, would they?

Monday Melee 3/5 – teen theme

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
The social stratification, peer pressure, and cruelty of high school. Granted, some people claim it was the best time of their lives, but not me. I wouldn’t relive it for anything. I think it may be worse now than when I was young. Hundreds of kids are trapped together all day, five days a week. They’re afflicted by raging hormones, they’re trying to forge their identities and gain greater independence, and they’re facing a mixture of academic challenges and pure tedium: it’s a sure-fire recipe for trauma of one kind or another.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
No Child Left Behind. The program has failed to elevate the achievement of poor children and minorities, and has, in fact, proven disadvantageous for these very children. Schools are narrowing curriculum to basic skills and content most likely to improve test scores. This skews education toward lower-order thinking skills, and short-changes the arts and humanities. Additionally, the tests are culturally and linguistically biased. The program operates through sanctions, often taking money away from ‘failing’ schools that most desperately need it. High school dropout rates have actually increased, particularly in communities with a large percentage of minority students.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
Teenagers (specifically, my own) can be so damn uncooperative and unpleasant.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
The flip side: teenagers can be adorably affectionate and protective toward their now-smaller-than-them mom.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I am doing my best to remember how hard adolescence is and cut my kids some slack.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
A safe and simple cure for acne. Don’t teens have enough to be self-conscious about without it?

Moms Rising

Moms Rising is working to build a massive grassroots movement big enough to impact the outcome of the 2008 elections and beyond. Moms Rising gives mothers, and all who have mothers, a voice in shaping the laws and policies that affect our lives. You can sign online petitions on timely issues like health care, flexible work options, paid family leave, child care, living wages, and more, or you can just sign up to receive email alerts, all for free.

Monday Melee 2/19

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Partisanship and political wrangling too often get in the way of finding feasible solutions to pressing problems.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
Proposed funding cuts for public television threaten the availability of age-appropriate educational programs for young children. Free alternatives to commercial programming are rare, and cutting nearly a quarter of the budget for public television puts these programs at risk.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I wish the grocery store in my neighborhood carried more organic products.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
The coach of my son’s basketball team is incredibly generous with his time.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I stand up for what I believe in.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like a magical, self-cleaning house.

Contradictory

At recent parent/teacher conferences for our older son, we heard things like this:
“a really nice kid”
“a pleasure to have in class”
“never disruptive”
“has natural aptitude”
“so much potential”
“participates in discussions”
“catches on quickly”
“scores well on tests”
“bright, bright boy”

But every one of the teachers also said things like this:

“doesn’t do his homework”
“highly disorganized”
“turns in assignments late, if at all”
“skips over preliminary work”
“often unprepared”

I’ve got to tell you, it’s frustrating. My boy has a real aversion to homework, and an overwhelming capacity for denial about its importance. Once he gets to college, there won’t be as much of a “homework” issue. He’ll be able to go to class, read the texts, absorb the material, and take the tests. Of course there will still be papers to write and so forth, but, on the whole, there will be less of what he considers “busy work.” However, if he doesn’t start doing a better job on his homework now, he’s not going to have the grades to get into the college of his choice.

Naturally, he isn’t receptive to hearing any of this. Kids!