On Looks and the Personal Code

Well, as I said in a previous post, I had the opportunity to be in two different campuses. The “Business” and the “Design” ones.
Back in the time when I was studying at college, we were more or less conventional and conservative in our attire. Freshmen, or to be more exact, Freshwomen wore too much make up (especially for the 6:00 am class) and jewelry. As the semesters went on, that appearance changed to the white-t-shirts; jeans; sneakers style and there was no need to wake up at two in the morning to blow dry your hair.
One day, in one of the cafeterias where there were around two hundred students, a new one came who had dyed his hair green. People whistled, said rude comments, and even suggested that the nativity characters could go up on top of his head.
He was one in a hundred or probably in a thousand.
Later on, in the Faculty of Design, I was amazed at how different students' looks were from each other. Piercings, and tattoos and student fashion so unique that it called for creativity. These students were more comfortable with diversity than the other ones and in the rare case someone said something, it would probably have been in regards to the one wearing jeans and white-t-shirts and sneakers.
At that time, I took a course on “New Pedagogical Ideas for the Development of Creativity” and “Design Teaching”. One of the professors had a very cool appearance, and being younger than thirty he had dyed his hair with polar white. His appearance was so different that it was hard to like or dislike it in a short period of time. One should have to take a second look.
Then he explained about the importance of creating “your personal code” in the way you talked, dressed, or even walked. Not uniforming yourself would make a call to others not to get any assumptions about who you were but instead, they had to understand that code first if they wanted to know you; and at the same time, he invited people not to judge people based on their looks but rather try to understand the other person's personal code.

Summa Ius Summa Iniuria

Taking notes has been one of my favorite hobbies as a writer. My grandmother and I used to sit down in the living room in her house and while she was telling me about her family experiences, I was jotting down the stories, the names, and the places; interrupting to ask for clarification and, sometimes, to ask for the proper spelling of a word.

Still today, I call her by phone to precise the details of those stories she has been telling us throughout the years (and for which, regretfully, I don't have any written notes now). She has never been an avid reader except for reading nearly the whole newspaper and she prefers listening to the radio, watching TV, and conversing with people. She has always been a wonderful storyteller and I have analyzed how it is she does it to be so captivating.

My maternal great grandparents had eight children and my grandma was the oldest one. One of them, a little girl, died at the age of four in a small swimming pool where she drowned and it was a tragedy in the family difficult to overcome. My grandma always says that time heals most pains and when I think about my grandma's father, two words come to my mind: Peace and wisdom, and it is interesting that I don't recall my grandma mentioning those precise two words.

My great grandfather used to tell a lot of aphorisms and adages whenever the occasion required it and those were shared among our family through my grandmother. My grandma’s youngest brother did not do well at school, he disliked it very much, he constantly slacked work, stayed at home, missed class, and it seemed to be a lost cause. However, tired of trying different approaches, my great grandmother decided to find a job for him a job for which she contacted one of her friends who was the owner of a pharmacy. Shortly after my grand uncle was running errands and delivering prescriptions in a bike around the neighborhood.
Less than six months in the job when he had a fatal accident: A drunk taxi driver hit him and his head bumped against the pavement. The police arrived immediately asking my great grandfather to press charges but my grandfather said he was not going to press any.

Days later, when my grand uncle was in the hospital in a very delicate condition, the police called again to inquire about my grand uncle's health. When the police were notified my grand uncle had died, they called my grandfather again to see if he had changed his mind and wanted to press charges. And this is what he said: “We are deeply sorry for the loss of our son. Nothing will bring him back. Sending this man to jail will also take away the son of another mother. We won’t press any charges”.

ON TEACHING: Final Question

Some years ago, when Consuelo Goodfellow was a Middle School Foreign Language teacher, she decided to just prompt a single open-ended question in the final test:

“What did you learn throughout the year?”

As a teacher, she didn’t want to focus on what students hadn’t learned but instead on what they had. Naively, she expected her students to give their answers in the subject taught. She thought students would write at least something about the verb “to be”, “to do” or “to have”; or any new words or grammar rules.

What a surprise she got when she was reading her students’ tests. She realized that besides the subject matter answers, the foreign language classes had gone beyond expectations in her students’ learning. Some students had learned to make friends and respect each other's points of views and styles of learning. Others discovered they were good at the subject despite years of failures, what previous teachers had said about their language abilities, and that foreign language was not as scariest as they thought at the beginning of the year. There were other students who also learned how to draw and make cartoons, how to study and develop their own strategies and learning. And most of them had fell in love with the subject.

She also observed that during the two-hour time allotted for the test, all students were absorbed in writing on their test and some of them were smiling as they recalled their experiences throughout the year.

Some years ago, when Consuelo Goodfellow was a Middle School Foreign Language teacher, she decided to just prompt a single open-ended question in the final test:

“What did you learn throughout the year?”

As a teacher, she didn’t want to focus on what students hadn’t learned but instead on what they had. Naively, she expected her students to give their answers in the subject that was being taught. She thought students would write at least something about the verb “to be”, “to do” or “to have”; or any new words or grammar rules.

What a surprise she got when she was reading her students’ tests. She realized that besides the subject matter answers, the foreign language classes had gone beyond the expectations in her students’ learning. Some students had learned to make friends and respect each others’ points of view and styles of learning. Others discovered they were good at the subject despite years of failures, what previous teachers had said about their language abilities, and that foreign language was not as scariest as they thought at the beginning of the year. There were other students who also learned how to draw and make cartoons, how to study and develop their own learning strategies. But the most important thing is that most of them had fell in love with the subject.

Isn’t that our main duty as teachers? To develop the passion, interest and love for a certain subject or discipline?

She also observed that during the two-hour time allotted for the test, all students were absorbed in writing on their tests and some of them were smiling as they recalled their experiences throughout the year.

One answer made the teacher jump to the top of the roof when one of her students had written, “I learned to be organized”.

What? She thought. How was this possible? Guilt came over her as she remembered the jungle-doodle-state contents on the blackboard: That wild territory full of chalk traces and varying sizes of handwriting where she wrote as she walked around the classroom. Oops! She felt sorry for her pupils and the little care she had placed in keeping the board neat and organized.

How did this student learn to be organized?

Not because we teach something, students are going to learn it. Not because we don’t teach something, students are not going to learn it. Students have minds of their own since a very young age. If we think for example of parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or who get in nasty fights and violence; it would be wrong to assume that their children will end up doing the very same thing. They might also have the capacity to learn by opposition, good opposition, and not behave in the ways they were modeled to learn.

Let’s trust in the ability our students have to think critically and make sense of the world they live in and learn on their own accord. Who knows? Maybe the new generation can be much better than ours and our ancestors’.

ON WRITING: Reading "Bad" and "Badly" Written Books

I’ve frequently heard or read as a writing advice to read the “good” books, the “good” writers. I’ve read great books from comics to philosophy and all of them have had something to offer me as reader, as a writer, as a learner, as a teacher, as a woman and as a human being. Books have changed my life.
With time, I’ve come more appreciative of the “bad” stuff. It teaches me about what not to do, that in spite of the level of development of some writers, they do write. They take risks independently from how “good” or “bad” their writing is, from how “good” or “bad” their writing is perceived, understood or misunderstood. They have guts!
The good books set standards and examples of what good writing is. However, once you read a piece that has been perfectly written (after many rewritings); it shows little evidence on how that was achieved. And if we want to learn, improve and keep writing and writing, the help it provides is limited.
We need to learn about the process, snapshots of precise moments during it.

And as for the bad books, well, they have taught me also what not to do; they have displayed snapshots of the ever changing process of other writers’ works.
We have a lot to learn from good and bad books, from the good and bad experiences of our lives. What I think is most important is to be a good reader despite the material we read.

ON TEACHING: The Nature of Treasures

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite games was “little school”. My aunt, three years my older, and I had such a wonderful time.
Her mother, my grandma, provided us with plenty of opportunities to enjoy life, learn, and to enhance the principles of hard work and passion for whatever we do in life.
Despite the fact that her house was located in one of the low-middle class neighborhoods in our city, it was a place where richness and abundance existed.
The house of my parents was located in some of the best neighborhoods in the city (we moved more than 20 times) but this house was more like a non-interactive museum where most of the things couldn’t be touched.

So, I grew up among these two neighborhoods, between the “rich” and the “poor”.
It was very difficult for my mother to understand why I enjoyed so much being at my grandma’s house where I didn’t have the latest toys and luxuries we had at home.
She usually asked me, “What is it that you find over there?”, when I wanted to stay the two month summer vacation at my grandmother’s house.

Many things!

My grandmother has been a very loving and non-conventional woman who has never taken herself very seriously. She is the first one to laugh at her flaws, mistakes, and physical disabilities. She has undergone more than ten surgeries throughout her life. She is sort of a “Bionic Woman”. So, physically she doesn’t have many justifications for vanity or to rely on external beauty.
Because her priorities in life were always very clear, she allowed us to write on her house’s walls (of course, when my grandfather wasn’t around).

“Can we write on the walls with the colored chalks?” we asked her.
“Yes, the only condition is that when you both finish, you have to clean everything up”.

And we did. She trusted us.
The teacher I am now was born there, in my grandmother’s house where we were allowed to build our own toys out of soda bottled caps, a wire and a hammer and turn them into a musical instrument.
My grandmother convinced me that through Freedom, learning and passion occurs.

FICTIONAL LETTER: Letter to a Friend

Dear Barbara,


I just finished Reading “The True Story of Pablo” by Astrid Legarda * in the confession of A.K.A. “POPEYE,” John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, who was Pablo Escobar´s right hand and biggest lieutenant.

It took me around a month –a hard reading month—to finish the book. Although written in my native language, it was a tough reading, it went painfully slow. The evocation of so many images in my mind opened wounds I once thought were healed and even forgotten. How naïve I was and at the same time how unconsciously aware.

The book is a compilation of the words of a criminal, a serial-killer, a hunt-man, a bandit; who once more confirm the theories, ideas, and conceptions about human beings that I have held for quite some time.

I do not believe in the existence of bad or good people. No, bad people do not exist in the common usage of the word, not as excluding categories. Instead, I think we see deeply hurt people who did not have a good education, who ignored the possibilities of taking a good path or the right one—a difficult one—and, who mostly never learned about the Arts, any Art; the training and development of a human being’s sensibility. The paradox of the well educated criminal does not seduce me at all. A man able to kill another man was never educated. Education did not reach his/her heart or the core of his/her true being. What is Education if it does not motivate the harmonious coexistence among men?

A Professor in the Contemporary Pedagogy program I attended in my native country, used to insist on the importance of Education in the Sciences. He spent many classes talking about Science and Research. According to his point of view, our country lacked development because of scientific ignorance, and his point was shared by many others. The sole thought of a more “scientific” country just scrambled my guts. Scientific violence.

When you have a violent nation, you cannot give it more Science than the one it currently has, especially when Science goes to the wrong hands.
It surprised me while reading the book that I shared some of the views of the man giving testimony. The thoughts of a criminal matched, to some extent, mine. But I do not have the mind or the heart (or lack of it) of a criminal. This man expressed at the beginning how much he wanted to be someone, someone important, someone able to make a difference; and how after seeing his dreams frustrated, he partnered his destiny as to be one of the worst criminals our country has ever had.

When I see what he has done, I see the reduced opportunities he was given while growing up and his limited education.
The biggest difference between the best man on Earth and the worst of criminal is in how much hurt their hearts are, how much pain has been accumulated inside without giving it a proper channel such as Arts to release it. Both, the best and the worst, should be given the same opportunities in their childhoods, and make of Arts, a mandatory subject from the first grade to the last.

We know that the worst criminals or violent people do not lack talent, intelligence, intuition, strategic thinking, leadership, courage, or even scientific methods’ but that they grow, out of resentment, in a society of extreme injustice and oppression.
I agree with the man. Legalizing the business will not lead it to an end. Alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and legal drugs can be as lethal as the illegal ones. And for sure, secondary effects are much beyond the scope of immediate effects. Once they are legalized, the door will be open to promotion, advertisement, and more consumption.

Education should be as balanced as a healthy diet: Humanities, Arts, Science, Business, Physical Education, Civics, Ethics, and Religion.

The world spread practice of removing Religion from the curriculum has made students as ignorant of their own Religion as other students were from other Religions in the past. Students today seem not to have a G’d, a Country, nor a Government. This practice created bigger problems than the ones it intended to solve.

At the same time, I do not think that Religion Teachers should be tyrants, kings, experts, or gods. Bringing teachers from different religious backgrounds and itinerating them into the classes might give the kids tools to come up with their own beliefs and conclusions.
I do not think that atheism and agnosticism are born from the deepest of the soul, but instead as a negative reaction to what has produced so much nausea, misunderstanding, and despair. If some agnostics are truly agnostics, why do some of them seem to give too much importance to the title?

Those criminals from our country were religious too. They used to go praying before each “job”. They made the worst of caricatures of what a religion is or does.
Human beings who educate themselves in the Path of Truth never stop searching, and that might include where we come from, why we are here and where we are going.

Gifted and talented people should be spotted as soon as possible. Standard tests do not do the job for them, because they are, precisely, not standard people. Not standard criminals as the ones our country had. And please do not allow the unprepared, naïve, ignorant and unwise lead their paths in the wrong way. Sometimes these can earn as many credentials as the talented ones if they learn how to play the game. Seduced by power and the promise of dominating others make their visions blurred. Credentials are not necessarily equated to good educators.
The bad teacher “Popeye” mentioned in the book, made a great and negative impact in his life. Bad, too bad!
There are many gifted people who earn the same credentials making justice to their talents while the ones that do not get them, such as achieving a bachelor’s degree, are at risk of going the wrong way and producing a lot of destruction instead of creating better things and contributing to the development of a better world.

The confessant says that the worst damage his boss, Pablo Escobar, did was the killing of one of the leaders of our country. That was certainly terrible but it was not the worst thing he ever did. Killing so many people –even the ones who were not leaders, the life of a leader is not worthier than the lives of their followers, they are equal—. The worst damage was to grow the seed of fear, the seed that being a citizen in our country was an abominable thing, worthless, and making other people believe that other options were not simply available.
So far, I keep the spark of life that keeps me writing of the daily obstacles. We are all in the same boat. We cannot sink.
Pedro, a friend of mine, who also grew up in a Spanish speaking country told me he thinks the book is exaggerated. The book is not exaggerated and it becomes short in narrating the atrocities and the reality we lived.

The worst thing that can happen to the Truth is to be in the hands of criminals.

Well, you asked me. This is my answer. Let me know if you read the book.

M.

* “El Verdadero Pablo: Sangre, Traición y Muerte”. Astrid Legarda. Ediciones Gato Azul. August 2005. (The True Story of Pablo: Blood, Betrayal, and Death).

SHORT STORY: A Cup of Coffee

While he was giving the back to the world, she was giving him her back. Drinking coffee alone had held back its taste. It was not much a matter of appliances. The coffee beans imported from a nation –that regardless the profits of cocaine, heroine, and pot—still believed in the flavor produced with humble pride. The flavor of a good Colombian coffee.
If one wanted to drink the best Colombian coffee, it should be drank in America or Europe. Importers were in charge of bringing the best beans reserved to export and which were scarcely found in Colombian stores. But how about the other stuff? The good stuff? No, no. Not the cocaine, heroine, and pot. The tradition.

Did they forget about it or did they not know that there was one? The tradition of drinking coffee among the best: The best beans and the best friends. A luxurious pleasure.

The nation did not produce the vast majority of the consumed coffee around the world. Brazil was the top producer in quantity but the coffee from Colombia was top number one in taste. A matter of quality.

The woman recently diagnosed with cancer was hooked by the health benefits conferred to her by working part time at a local bank. Working part time was just a way of saying. She was the mother of two little daughters, yeah, the 24-7 unpaid, unrecognized job while her husband worked in a casino making night shifts. They kept their jobs to maintain their family, that’s what they always said. That’s what they wanted.
Even though there was not much time to see each other or build a strong relationship, they both knew about sacrifice. It was not an isolated word in an Oxford dictionary and she knew that word better than him; and because she knew it so well, she was the perfect fit for a customer service position.
During the weekly meetings, she and her coworkers were constantly reminded of how they were winners, the importance of achieving results and the sales goals of the month. A constant pat on the back.

On a Saturday morning, she sneaked out of the building to smoke a cigarette and that’s when she observed the disappointment of a customer outside who was unaware of the bank employee standing next to him. The man sipped the hot coffee, frowned, and immediately spat it out. It was his first and last sip. He yelled and cried out loud, “This coffee sucks!” dumping the Styrofoam cup in the trash can.

She realized that the coffee was prepared like in the kitchen by the staff: They poured too much water on it. Just a half pouch of coffee per eight cups of water.

With the boss out of sight but convinced of the right thing to do, she, a heavy coffee drinker, rushed into the kitchen to add an extra coffee pouch. It was not her intention to displease the boss or go against what was customary. The angered face of the customer was an urgent call to action.

That expression on a customer's face could not be repeated again. It was mandatory to bring back the flavor of a good coffee knowing that the perfect ground beans had already been selected.

Then, once in the kitchen, she carefully added the extra pouch. What an extra pouch can do!

Customers smelled the aroma and with each sip, showed their satisfaction with a wide smile. “What kind of coffee is this? It tastes so good!” another customer asked, “Do you mind if I take another cup?”.

 

Now the coffee tasted as it should. It tasted like care, love, and friendship.

Ingredients you can always taste, even, in a cup of coffee.

POEM: Clean Prose

A surviving prose has taken a shower

From all the mud, the rejection, the insult

A refreshing shower that leaves everything at its core

POEM: Ecuadorian Blanket

How beautiful, how tender, how soft!

The Ecuadorian blanket Grandma gave me to keep me strong

To keep me warm


Painted animals with dyes, needles, and threads

Woven by the Indians, a full story can be read

Fantastic stories cuddle my rest


Grandma loves to knit

However, an Ecuadorian blanket she could not string

With all her love, for my birthday, it was her gift


When I opened the wrapping paper, nothing I could see

Taking it out, WOW! There was a whole jungle on it!


This blanket tells the most beautiful stories I could ever hear

This is the Ecuadorian blanket, always a need

Every night when going to sleep

This is far better than counting a hundred sheep!

POEM: ABC

A father taken away

Bulleted in his entrails

Crashed the window that put the young man in an Armor

POEM: FALLEN

Fit to fulfill others’ dreams

Away from the essence of its true being

Layers everywhere

Lying on the sky

Emancipation from the guard

Never to let it tear apart

POEM: Changing Words

Speaking words of the unknown

Ignoring what we tell others, to ourselves

Just in case we did not see the bridges our words crossed

Meanings that need to be read once more, reshape our work

Mysterious words, read by others are no longer our own

What do we say anyway?

When we speak, when we write?

When we re-read a word that has taken a life of its own?

ON TEACHING: The Power of Active Words

Mother Dolores which literally translates “pains”, was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. She was a Spanish nun that taught us Calculus and Physics. She was a pure physicist, a scientist and philosopher.
Despite being a nun, the education she gave us wasn’t particularly religious but the impact she made in my life is not something to be forgotten. Her mind was made of an exquisite clarity; her commitment to G’d and Physics was non-negotiable; and her life was dedicated to the Church, the classroom and the physics lab. How she approached Physics was a religious endeavor full of rituals and commitment.
More than twenty years ago during a Calculus class she quoted, “Don’t give the sacred to the dogs,” after one of my classmates had dumped a Hail Mary stamp in the recycling paper bin, as if it had been a failed test. Mother Dolores picked up the stamp and delicately ripped it off in little pieces. She put the pieces in one of her habit’s pockets letting us know that she will burn them later.

Whomever or whatever you love, your dearest and non material possessions cannot be given to those who not only won’t value them but who would consider it scum or even make fun of them. “Honey is not for the donkey’s mouth,” another saying goes.
Mother Dolores was a pain to some of our classmates who could not understand her style and who were frequently challenged by the genius component of her classes. She taught us Physics and Calculus without having any textbooks except for those notes she prepared with drawings, explanations and exercises out of her own invention.
Colombia’s education system doesn’t have AP Honor classes (and not today as far as I know). Every student rows in the same boat. However, there are certain classes that can be labeled as Honors according to the teachers’ skills, knowledge, and experience. In a technical sense of the word, Mother Dolores’ Physics and Calculus classes were all AP Honors.
What happened to those students who inadvertently step up in an “Honor” class? They failed and had to take the subject once or twice more until they got a passing grade or repeated the whole academic year which wasn't fair considering that all of us have different learning styles and intelligence types.

Mother Dolores was a woman, a nun, a physicist, a teacher, a scientist and probably one of the most ethical persons I’ve ever known. I am truly grateful for all her teachings, lessons and mostly the example she gave us which transcended the subject matters.
Except for the nun part, she was a role model for me, someone I would like to become when I grew older, when I would turn into a woman; I would imitate her behavior in a professional sense –except for the nun part—.

I didn’t know the word epistemology at that time; however it was she who provided it with full meaning in advance. She also taught us about the scientific method, the importance of research and the mandatory character of scientific rigor. The most compelling of her attitudes was that whatever she said, she did it. She lived by her principles and always fulfilled her promises.

It was in the small details that I learned from her, so unique, so true to herself, so authentic.
She had a scarce and broad laughter when a really funny situation arose. Silly jokes didn’t impress her. Her sense of humor was witty and she preferred the intellectual elaborate type. It was hard to make her laugh but when she did, we enjoyed that laughter immensely.

During a Physics class she gave us a second remarkable quote which was almost riddle-like,

“The people who don’t know and know they don’t know are ignorant. Teach them.

“The people who know and don’t know they know are blind. Open their eyes.
“The people who know and know they know are wise. Learn from them.
“The people who don’t know and don’t know they don’t know are fools. Run away from them as far as you can.”

Of course, the biggest issue at the end is how to tell apart the one who knows from the one that doesn’t.

ON TEACHING: Some Conclusions

We all learn in a different way. Yes, I know. This is a redundant sentence which most of us know and which might have been said by the Captain of Obviousness. However, there are very few who apply this concept or at least try to apply it in our education systems in a coherent way. Is it lack of knowledge? Where is it that we fail as teachers? Is it lack of accountability? Why is it that at the end we tend to uniform our classes and expecting each student to produce the same results?
Howard Gardner has been really helpful in explaining the multiple intelligences and the varying styles of learning. Much more than that, we can find plenty of resources that provide lessons plans, curriculum designs and activities to implement in our educational institutions.
On the other hand, some of us are afraid of trying different things at school; scare of being ‘memoed’, ‘pink slipped’, or even ‘fired’. We are terrified by the standards and the standardized tests, the lawsuits, the security in our classrooms, and all sort of details we, teachers, must accomplish. And the saddest part is that these details take away much of the responsible freedom that both, students and teachers, can have in our endeavors. There is probably too much fear and little passion.

Being a teacher and being a writer are not easy career paths. They demand a lot of effort and commitment. Usually results don’t show in the short term and sometimes not even in the long term.
Along this path I’ve face all types of doubts and difficulties. Am I a teacher? Am I a writer? What can I teach to others? Do I have something to write about for others to read? Am I a good teacher? Am I a good writer? How can I become a better teacher and writer every day?
I have no special predilection for a single subject, type of learner, or age. I’ve taught students from third grade to last semester in College and also as a tutor; and also have had the opportunity of teaching different subjects to students with learning differences to the very gifted.

Besides the Golden Rules and the Core Values, here there are some conclusions I have been coming up which I would like to share with you:

 All individuals like learning and discovering independently from their ages or levels of education.

 Many individuals are capable of learning all sorts of things by themselves; so being a teacher, some who “shows” a subject also means being a facilitator. We give hints, provide opportunities to discover, or explain with clear detail. We are teachers to make things “easier” for the individual learner.

 Among the many responsibilities of being a teacher there are:
 Helping students know themselves better
 Instilling a passion for learning in general and about a specific subject as well

 Just because we are teachers, it doesn’t mean we are not also learners and willing to learn.

 Although we teach in the present, our efforts should be focused mostly in the future. That requires vision and Imagination. This is student, how is she going to be in the future? What are his/her strengths or aspects to work on and improve?

 Learning occurs individually and also as a result of paired and team work. We need consistency between the activities we promote and the type of learning required: Some activities require silence and individual thought while others are better by pairs or teams.

 Every day our kids are more technologically oriented. They have cell phones, blackberries, i-phones, i-pods, laptops; they have Facebook accounts and play online games; they are software savvy and up-to-date with the new developments. Should we fight that? Should we be against it because it seems to distract our students from our educational endeavors? Is technology a problem in Education? I don’t think so. It just could be the opposite. We need to connect with our students and their interests. How can we incorporate technology in our learning-teaching processes? It doesn’t have to occur in the classroom necessarily.

 Responsible freedom is a key ingredient in Education. Kids and teenagers today have more freedom than many of us and our ancestors had in the past. That has, of course, advantages and disadvantages.

 We need to reconsider the concept of “cheating” and make real life simulations in our classrooms more frequently where people help each other.
When we are sick, we call our Doctor. If we need legal assistance, we call our Attorney. If we need to file our taxes, unless we are registered CPAs, we submit our files to our Accountant, and so on. Not everyone is good for everything. Students also learn from their peers. There are students who are more academically successful, who understand the subject and abstract matters easier than others while there are students who are more artistic or more sociable or more scientific.

 Evaluation in education should be closer to the evaluation in business environments (Open system, round cycled, marketing research, surveys, data analysis, etc.) than to beheading practices of the Middle Ages. If a student fails a test, doesn’t that “failure” belong to the teachers, administrative personnel, system, and parents too?

What next new thing are you willing to do to improve our Education systems?

Research and Innovation, a lot of Hard Work

I had the opportunity to teach at two different universities. In one of them, I taught Strategic Planning, Creativity (Innovation), and Business Fundamentals; where I got a Bachelors degree in Business Administration. In the second one, I taught Marketing in order to help the students developing their ideas into feasible market products.

There was however a big difference in these two universities.

Years ago, in the first university, some engineering students used to belittle the business students. In other words, and according to some, Business students were “lazy”, “stupid”, and the ones who could not enter other undergraduate programs, and who didn’t have the necessary intelligence to deal with higher level Mathematics.

To some extent, it was true, but there were other business students who wanted to excel and some others who where the children of successful entrepreneurs and business executives who wanted to have the best education possible and contribute to the society.

As controversial as it was, the business and engineering faculties got the same high standards for Mathematics. The idea came from the students.

When I was a freshman in the Faculty of Business, I attended the Students’ Assemblies where we as students got a chance to be heard. What we discussed was usually the same: The long lines on the copying machines and the lack of space in the parking lot. Once in a while, other topics were discussed but they were given little attention. Whining, complaining, and shouting. You can imagine.

Active business students who believed that when “you are not part of the solution, you might be part of the problem”; pushed Mathematics to be raised. As a result, more and more students were involved, finally the long lines and parking topics were solved; and the more we participated in finding the solutions, the more we loved our University. A dynamic University with the capacity to listen, and learn.

In the second University, it amazed me the level of dissatisfaction of the students. I was there to teach Marketing and found in the position to listen to their complaints.

In the Business Formation I was given, I was taught that in business you listen to everyone, you take the customers’ complaints, collect them, analyze them, get ideas, and implement them.

So this is what we did.

In a three-hour class students sat down and wrote all the complaints they had: locations, supplies, teachers, programs, etc, etc… Everything!

I went home, put them all together in writing, and gave a copy to each student. I remember the list having more than 50 different complaints.

Students sat down again by pairs, but this time, they had to go and find out if what they were saying was true. Time for research and make presentations about their findings. The list, of course, went down.

Then, for each problem, they had to find at least five solutions. Hard work!

At the end, we pulled the solutions together and then we thought of a solution that involved them all. The result?

Communication. Clear, direct, honest communication derived from research.

While some people are just whining –not pointing out problems—without thinking of solutions; other people are working hard to find the solutions.

- My Core Beliefs as a Teacher

◦ Every student is unique and deserves to be engaged in activities that promote learning through his/her strengths.

◦ Discipline, Responsibility, Hard work and Fun are not mutually exclusive.

◦ A dynamic class does not guarantee learning but a boring class is ineffective.

◦ The support given by parents and teachers is crucial to the students’ academic success.

◦ Students come to school to learn socially and every action that fosters social skills contributes to a positive learning environment and rewarding results.

ON TEACHING: Ms. Lightson and the Homework Contest

The school where Ms. Eleanor Lightson was working as an ESOL teacher had the policy of reviewing and grading the students’ homework each day from the previous day. The classrooms she served had between 30 and 45 students per class.
As the classes went on, one day she realized that a student had given ‘weird’ answers to the vocabulary she had assigned. It was something like this:

Cat: Perro
Ostrich: Gato
Bird: Avestruz
Raccoon: Pájaro
Etc, etc, etc.

When Ms. Lightson asked the student if she had cheated, the student gave a negative.
“May I see your dictionary please?” she asked the student.
The student replied it was left at home.
“You cheated,” the teacher told her in a more displaying than accusatory tone. The student insisted this was not true.
“Yes, you did,” the teacher insisted in a soft and caring voice, the voice of comprehension.
This teacher didn’t label students as liars. She knew that when students lie or cheat there is a lot of fear behind it, and it is usually of teachers and parents or being ridicule by their peers.
“I know for sure that you cheated. Do you want me to tell you how I discovered you did?” Ms. Lightson said with the eyes of a friend who was revealing a secret.
The student smiled and agreed looking again at the homework. After revealing the secret and telling that there was a very scarce possibility of finding the answers the student had given Ms. Lighton told the student, “Look, Joy, if you are going to cheat, it is better not to do the homework. What for? There is no purpose in doing it unless you learn and face your own difficulties.”

The story doesn’t end here. One of the strategies Ms. Lightson had implemented since the beginning of the year was to grade the homework cumulatively.

“Look, if one day you forget or you didn’t have time to do it, that’s okay with me. But if you, on a regular basis are not doing your homework, that is a real problem, for you mostly. So, I am going to ask for notebooks from one of you each day and you have to have all the homework dated up to the current date. There will not be previous notice, this is the notice.”

However, the question of how meaningful doing homework was for them kept nagging Ms. Lightson. Were they learning through homework? Was it helping them in learning?

Instead of reviewing 45 homework assignments to know who did it or not, Ms. Lightson introduced German words in one day’s vocabulary that were similar to English but that did not appear in the English dictionary and which were not easily deduced.

“Do you have any questions or difficulties about yesterday’s vocabulary?” Ms. Lightson asked them.
Twenty students raised their hands. Okay, those were the ones who did the homework consciously.

Still Ms. Lightson kept very concerned about the ones who were not learning, about the ones who for whatever reason they had were not doing their homework. She needed to find other ways.

“Well, tomorrow we will have a homework contest. The best three works will be the only ones that will be graded. The rest will have no grade” Ms. Lightson said after considering that it might or might not work.
Next day, Ms. Lightson’s students were standing at the classroom door eager to be evaluated. Once they went inside, they kept coming to her desk happily to show what they had done the day before. It looked like they had put on a lot of work. It was October and the vocabulary was related to Halloween.
“Teacher, I did the homework!” several students said enthusiastically, “Look!”
There were even 3D models and plasticine works of Art.

WOW! WOW! WOW!
Only one student didn’t do the homework and the rest of them were graded. All of them were excellent. WOW!

Contrary to common belief, students DO like to do homework. It is not a simple matter of the whats but the HOWs it is proposed. How to Wow!
What would it happen if we just graded our students for how much their eyes shone and how frequently they smiled?

POEMS: Brevettes

*****

Love

Drains

Pains

*****

Truth

Brings

Springs

*****

Passion

Drives

Lives

*****

POEM: A Rainbow Class

Be a star in the life of your students and let them shine too…

Their light won’t cloud you, your light won’t cloud them…

Make a difference! No matter how small!

All children forward…

As you approach for the first class in the morning, you’ll see how the classroom turns lighter and lighter…

And suddenly you’ll see everyone flying and dancing over the cloud when you thought it was going to rain…

But no…

The rain is over…

The rainbow is what lasts!!!

ON WRITING: Self - Editing, a Little Trick

So, are you ready to edit your work after the hundreds or probably thousands of pages with ideas, characters, plots, sentences, and the creation of different worlds?
Do you need a break from the insanity of Creativity?

Okay. That word, that typo. Look at it carefully before you change it.
What does it say? What does it say about you as a Writer? As a Human Being?

I guess keeping journals since my childhood makes me a journalist, doesn't it? Many of them burned with the flames due to storage issues. Fiction, non-fiction, and poetry; doodles and cartoons; clippings; you know, all those things. This is something many of us writers do.

While we face the chaos of Creativity and the wonderings and wanderings of our imaginations, Focus is probably one of our biggest challenges. So, in order to cope with it, I have the Discipline of writing every day in a journal.

And if you are also a journalist, probably you’d may found out drowning in papers, hyperlinks, and the sort.

This is what I do:
- I number each notebook (a composition book) with a multi-label sticker.
- I number each notebooks’ pages.
Some notebooks come with 98, others with 102, 104… and lately I found that the last 3 composition notebooks I have bought have 106 pages. Have you checked yours? How many pages? Yes! Three consecutive notebooks with 106 pages. That company gave me, as a customer, more than it promised, more than I expected. I looked at the brand.
Keep searching! There are plenty of things out there like that in Life. Not only in Business.
This company, I think, is buying my loyalty and who knows, probably the store too. Next time I go to the Office Supply Store, I’ll search for that brand.
Is this company doing this intentionally or unintentionally?
The unconscious of this company is telling me that they want to give customers more than they expect. If they keep going like that, you know what I am going to do?, I’m gonna tell my friends to go over there.
They probably could go in their advertising campaigns with something like this “More pages for the same price”.
…
Sorry, I got a little carried away but if your mind has a similar way of working between the left and right sides of the brain; you probably know what happened up there.

So, back to the topic.
- The last page of each notebook contains equations of my “mistakes”; the hidden and encoded secrets and messages the unconscious tell me about myself, as a human being while I write.

Don’t erase that typo that quickly. Hold on a second.
Understanding the nature of our mistakes help us to become clearer in the messages we try to convey.
It is more than writing on the pages. While we write and edit our work, we edit ourselves as Human Beings and our conditions.

Keep journaling!

SHORT STORY: An Unusual Visit

The Professor had clearly instructed his students to write an essay, a critical essay on Gaston Bachelard’s Notion of Epistemological Obstacle. There was no place for opinion. He defended Science over anything else in his life. Science had been placed in a pedestal that dismissed Art and Psychological studies and female intelligence for which he made his subtle remarks. His discourse was clear and concise. In talking to his students he was a serpents’ charmer. The class was taking place in Spanish, a language that differentiates between male and female nouns. “La Ciencia” was a woman, a terrifying being, so unpredictable, and unexpected.
When reviewing all the collected essays, he didn’t know what to say. He thought about grading it with a zero, assigning a failing grade; and suggesting the Faculty’s Dean about the removal of this student.

And this is what he found...

The Appointment

It is not easy to schedule an appointment with Science. This is probably something a good psychoanalyst knows. However, the one who does it obeys to the great destiny required in their moralization process.

The world’s suffering had evaporated, and then, condensed in the clouds; it got released in an impetuous current. Drops of ignorance were pouring and tickling her umbrella while Science walked through the stormy rain wearing a fur coat and camping boots on the streets of an intellectual city.

She walked and walked and her pace was rushed. She was a little late for the appointment settled over the phone. Science knew it was mandatory for her to mutate if she wanted to give the world a different destiny. But mutation was not her problem because she belonged to a mutant species.

How could she ask better to gain more self-knowledge?

Undoubtedly, it would be through a process of rational interpretation in order to locate the facts in its historical plot and exact place; and through that symbiosis produced in the experience-reason axis –maximum source of risk but also of success—.

Trascending was her desire. She would trascend through the works of her mind and the limits of common experience. She could be liberated from the bondages of what has been historically demonstrated as the Truth. She would also perform an intellectual-affective cleansing: Specifying, rectifying, and diversifying.

The anchylosed state of her self-knowledge was something she certainly could not afford. That inner system that tended –as any other system—to close itself and become static. Then, she felt annoyed by the itching in her chest.
Lately, she had been somatizing the effects that cause close mindedness or any other defense mechanism such as avoidance or denial. This was the main reason why she agreed on the appointment. She knocked on the door. And before the door was opened, she suffered a temporal paralysis in her right lobule.
Paralyzed she was. Yes. Could it be some sort of hysteria?

Afterwards, and like every scheduled appointment in the Palace located in the Saint James Plaza, she entered the room at 12:00 sharp. She took her fur coat off, closed the umbrella and cleaned her boots taking away the street mud traces. She lay on the divan staring at the ceiling, at the popcorn details that illustrated diverse shapes.

The free-association method was a good beginning, Ideas were taken from the facts crossing her mind, spinning one concept with each other as if they were silk threads.
Which thinking system would keep the inserts of all those ideas? There was silence for some brief minutes and then she continued.

“How can I think well and properly?”

La Mujer del Divan - Pedro Lira

“How could I get rid off the interfering sensibilities, needs and instincts as lower forms of the psyche? How to get rid off the impure set of basic intuitions?

“How to avoid the conformism produced by clear and useful ideas, the answers given without asking, the familiarity of some ideas fully loaded of analogies, images and metaphors?
“How could I avoid the conservative spirit that impedes inquiring and questioning in order to keep the accepted answers?
“How would I put aside the avidity for unity and certitude?
“How to desincrustate everything that has been encrusted by the passage of time and that ultimately hinders progress and development?
“Which words to use? Which words could be used that were not designative or explicative or limitative in the narration of the historical facts?
“How was it feasible to avoid the temptation of staying in basic observations and the dilapidation of images in a picturesque, concrete, natural, and easy way?
“Is it conceivable to comprehend incomprehension?
“Is it possible to suppose that an experimental culture must be acquired?
“I am Science and I am not empty. I am old, I have experience, and the age of my prejudices. If I access myself, I can rejuvenate spiritually.
“Is it possible to accept an abrupt mutation even though it can contradict a past and what it has told? “I should recover my formative spirit. Yes, I should do that. I want to keep searching.
“Which inner obstacles obstruct Knowledge? That handsome man. Which pieces of knowledge have I acquired wrongly, imprecisely or incorrectly? What does block Spiritualization? How to change my experimental culture?
“Soy Ciencia, ¿Tengo inconsciencia?... I am Science, do I have unconsciousness?
“I have erred many times and because of it, I know that the bipolarity and dialectics of my mistakes, born in the polemic attitude of my thinking, hinder my understanding. How to place mistakes in a hierarchy? And if the nature of my mistakes and epistemological cysts is confuse and polymorph; what would happen if arranging a surgical procedure to remove them once and for all, the removed mistakes would take with them some vital organs from my own vital essence? How can order be established to describe thinking disorders? How to avoid the rupture between observation and experimentation? How to avoid mathematical thinking being in the middle of the way of the moral quality of thinking?
“Again, how is it possible to avoid the rupture between observation and experimentation? How to avoid mathematical thinking being in the middle of the way of the moral quality of thinking?
“Why does mathematical thinking interposes and interferes, if considering its intermittency it does not know periods of mistakes? …”

***

There was a longer silence than the previous ones and the appointment was almost over, but before waking up from the divan, she asked for the first time:

“Who Am I?”

That afternoon, Science went out looking for the nature of the irreflection and error psychology, taking glances at pedestrians and window shopping in museums and libraries and fashion stores. The fur coat was folded on her right arm and the closed umbrella was hanging from her wrist.
Now , she was not walking that fast, there was no need to hurry up because she had finally realized that the sun had been unclouded and that it was brightly shining.