I am all about school. Seriously.

Investigate my lifestyle and you’ll see that education has got its fingerprints all over my life. My house smells of graduate programs and GPA’s that burned up many a report card. My three kids have collected a stack of honors certificates with gold seals dating back to the nineties, and they do their homework before they eat cookies. My husband, a somewhat unorthodox scholar, has joyfully contributed to the madness by earning degrees in postmodern literature, accounting, education, and theology. In short, every day our family trots off to five different classrooms and makes nice with Education. It’s not bragging; it’s part of our privileged American upbringing. 

What has education given me? A world that’s bigger and more textured than it was before--a sprawling globe of beautiful foreigners, mind-expanding matter like black hole theories and computer gadgets and microscopic things, philosophical ideas that I might not have ever considered before, and sometimes the utterly gorgeous uselessness of information that drives my curiosity and throws opens my curtains. Education takes tiny, insular people and lights a fuse under them, exploding to bits the depressingly narrow alley that keeps us poor, closes our minds, and makes us dull. Education improves everything. 

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Several months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Davis Guggenheim’s documentary about teaching called “Waiting For Superman” in theaters (Click here read the full review.) To summarize, I liked the film, but felt it had one or two shortcomings in its final message and was frustrated that Guggenheim stayed clearly on one side as opposed to being more objective.  Tomorrow, it hits DVD and BluRay for general release.  I had the chance to sit down with the film again and see what the total package offers.

There is a commentary on the film with Guggenheim and producer Lesley Chilcott.  Guggenheim is quite talkative and enjoyable to listen to while Chilcott chimes in as necessary.  He actually addresses some of my concerns right out of the gate – he says that he intentionally chose a side because his first documentary essentially follows teachers silently and lets the events play themselves out.  From that experience, Guggenheim said he wanted to make a strong statement.  The difficulty of course is actually calling the film a documentary when it is so strongly biased.  When does it become propaganda?

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I have taken a long hiatus from this. But I see the benefit to blogging. To process the day. To remember what God is doing around me, through HtW and I. No promises...but I want to make this a regular event. Hope some benefit comes from it...if even just for me. 

 We started the Teacher's College this week. An unceremonious start to a new era in our work - bringing what we have learned to scale. It could seem scary, taking on more - committing to more families, kids, smiles and disseminated thoughts. I once said to Patrick (VP comm.) - let's go big or go home. He was a bit taken back, but my perspective was and is that this work isn't worth sleepless nights unless it really reaches the masses. I hear Mother Theresa when she says she looks at the individual, not the masses - but that doesn't work for me. If I wanted to help the individual I would sponsor a kid, donate my clothes, etc. Which are all good things to do, and in fact if we all did that, I wouldn't have to look at the masses. But were not, so I do. 

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I am surrounded by people in the helping vocations.  My Father and brother are pastor’s, my Mother is a nurse, my wife and my brothers wife are teachers (one in inner city LA at a school featured in the film, both a part of Los Angeles Unified School District), and I worked as a School Based Therapist in inner city Los Angeles (essentially functioning as a Clinical Social Worker).  My experience and family environment have informed me and colored my biases about the problems of education - especially in areas where poverty and immigration create challenges for teachers.  I have been and am presently surrounded by people in the trenches of the education war.

I was cautious going into “Waiting For Superman” due to its director – Davis Guggenheim.  He is responsible for “An Inconvenient Truth,” a film that has polarized while igniting a political fire.  On the other hand, his most recent film “It Might Get Loud” inspired me to play music again, and as a result I started a band for the first time in 9 years.  To say that Guggenheim’s films leave an impact is an understatement.  He gets people to talk and act.

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In the next 30 seconds, a little boy or girl in Africa will die of malaria.[1] Other research tells us that nearly 1 billion people in the world are illiterate[2] and another 1.4 billion can’t get to clean water[3].  So, what would those stuck in poverty have to add to a discussion about education and what could they possibly teach those of us who not only have drinking water flowing from a faucet, but who also sleep free from mosquito nets, with the ability to read ourselves to sleep? Let me pose the question a different way: are there universal methods of education that transcend cultural and socioeconomic lines to the point that we can articulate a core set of principles that may guide educators around the world, thus forming an international set of ideals that blurs the lines of the literate and illiterate and transcends the borders of East and West, North and South?

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I bought a sweater once that was "one-size-fits-all," but I quickly discovered that "one-size-fits-all" is a bold-faced lie. When it comes to clothing, one size most definitely does not fit all. I am a size four, and the sweater practically swallowed me whole. It was supposed to be one of those items that stretched and retracted to accommodate its wearer, but instead it was bunchy and bulky and unflattering. It quickly moved to the back of my closet, only to be donated to Goodwill for some other gullible shopper to get suckered into buying.

One-size-fits-all is a lie when it comes to clothing. And, I am coming to learn, it is a lie in pretty much everything else. When the IAM staff first got our iPhones, mine felt clunky and large in my smallish hands, while my coworkers who are men with much larger hands did not find it awkward at all. When I go somewhere, I slide easily into my Nissan Sentra, but when I recently gave my friend Allen a ride, his height and girth made my small car a bit of a challenge. For him, a truck or larger sedan would fit much better. The more I think about it, one size does not really "fit" all. Rather, "all" adjust or accommodate or simply get used to using something that doesn't fit all that well. The more I think about it, life depends on "all" adjusting to the "one-size." I suppose, in some backward way, that is how manufacturers can get away with saying that "one size fits all."

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