We were visiting a prospective preparatory school for our three-year-old. The director gave us a tour around the campus and the various classrooms. We liked what we saw. The students looked like they were enjoying themselves and the general atmosphere was relaxed and comforting to a parent. All classrooms were installed with a smart board; all lessons were projected through a beamer , the screen doubles as an interactive whiteboard where the teacher can write explanations with a digital pen.
When the tour was over, we headed to the director’s office and she explained to us their classical teaching method. All students are treated equally. Students are not grouped according to their learning abilities. So all students stay together in one class. If a quick learner completes an activity ahead of others, then that student is given extra work to further his or her capabilities while others complete the given task. I liked what I heard.
CC Image Courtesy of Maura Cluthe | Fragmented on Flickr
What a stark contrast this was from the school I attended in my elementary years. I went to an exclusive Catholic school where all the “smart” students were grouped in one class and we were called the cream pod. The “average” learners were also put together in another section and the “slowest” learners in a different group.
If you were in the cream pod, there was extra pressure to perform your best. That pressure doubles if you were vying for the honor roll. Competition was fierce and emphasis was on an individually guided education. I was consistently in the top ten except for one tiny little problem. I was weak at math, according to my teachers. The highest mark was 95, passing mark was 75, if you were on the honor roll, you cannot have a grade lower than 85.
I was always hanging on at 85 in Mathematics, year after year. My other grades were above average, but it wasn’t good enough with a Math grade which pulled my general weighted average down. This was a constant dark cloud hovering over me. I almost peed at the very thought of another math exercise, every single time!
It didn’t help that my aunt smacked my palms with a ruler whenever I started counting with my fingers as I froze over flashcard exercises on multiplication and division tables while she was tutoring me.
It didn’t help that my grade 5 teacher pitted me against another student who was also labeled “weak in math” and declared us king and queen of the bottom ranks after every math contest in class. I wanted to bury my face in my palms and hide from the embarrassment over and over again.
CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen reported yesterday from Haiti about a baby dug up from the rubble, surviving under the debris for more than 24 hours without food and water. She had a broken rib and respiratory issues. The only way for her to stay alive and make it through is to be flown to Miami so she can receive proper medical care. If she remains in Haiti, she’s good as dead due to the lack of medical facilities. As they get her ready for the flight to Miami, the reporter puts forward two questions:
a) Given her critical condition, will she survive the two-hour trip to Miami?
b) If she does, will the U.S. immigration authorities let her in because she has no identity papers and no visa?
If you were the Belgian doctor responsible for your medical team’s safety and well being and your group’s security is threatened while doing humanitarian efforts in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake, would you pull out your team amidst the “writhing in pain and grasping at life” victims who will die if they cannot be administered the most basic medical aid in the next 24 hours? Which do you put first, your team’s safety or the victims’ survival?
If you have a poor relative showing up on your doorstep to borrow money because she is out of a job, has four kids to feed at home and her husband has deserted her, do you lecture her on the poor choices she’s made in her life or are you going to offer her some help?
If you have a 20 year old student who habitually shows up at school late because he has to work late nights in a restaurant to provide for himself, do you let him in your class or reprimand him for not following school rules about punctuality and attendance? Would your decision be influenced if you know that he was a refugee who fled a war-torn country at age 14? He has been separated from his family since. He heard news two years ago that his entire family was killed in a cross fire between the army and the Taliban. He’s doing poorly in class, but he tries and shows up as much as he can. Would you still fail him knowing this might be all he’s got?
Rules and regulations are designed to provide order and efficiency in conducting our everyday business. But in the midst of a disaster or the absence of order itself and in desperate situations, the rules of the game change. So the question that begs is should we continue following the laws that instruct us to behave, act and decide in a certain manner, or do we obey our own judgment when a situation calls for it?
Every human being has a built-in moral compass. We do things not because they are politically correct. Not because they are socially acceptable. Not because they are economically viable. Not because they are consistent with our cultural tendencies. We give help, disobey regulations, and go against everything we were taught if it means it’s going to save a life or give somebody hope.
We do it because we are human.
And that reason alone trumps any other concern above everything else.
CNN news update: they let the baby in. She’s in intensive care and she’s recovering very well.
How do you know when to fold? If you continually do something and realize after awhile that its taking too much of your time, what would you do?
I’ve been so caught up in trying to set up a website on my own lately that I have learned a huge amount of information in such a short span of time. Which is good for me because I’m not a computer expert or software geek so any chance I get to figure out something from that world just makes me feel so triumphant.
It is like cracking a code to some complicated riddle because my knowledge and experience in those matters are practically zero! I’ve had some successes along the way and I am mighty proud of what I have done so far, but the learning process is costing me too much time. And then that light bulb moment came one snowy Sunday afternoon.
I could see my daughter was having so much fun playing and building a snowman outside on the yard. Occasionally, a snowball was thrown my way, hitting the glass wall as I sat inside with my MacBook, absorbed on following a video tutorial on how to create an FTP client account and trying to understand the jargon on the cPanel on my site host … yeah, am lost too. Easy stuff for the web developer or designer but these are big words to me. And I’ve been hung up on these the entire week.
“Mama! Come!” she squealed gleefully.
Thud! A snowball hit the glass. I gave up!
We have been taught since we were small to “try and try until you succeed”. They should have added: only when it’s a matter of life and death! For everything else, there’s always a go-to person. Its time to quit pounding ourselves for the things we cannot do.
If the cake you bake for your child’s birthday party doesn’t turn out perfectly, there’s the baker.
If you know you can never be proficient in HTML and the widget you’ve been trying to install in your sidebar for the umpteenth time just doesn’t show up and you feel like screaming your head off already, call a web developer.
If you want to hang a chandelier but you know that working with hammers, nails and screws is not one of your core competencies, call a carpenter. You might just prevent the whole house from falling down on you.
Sometimes you have to make peace with the fact that you cannot be good at everything you would have wanted to be – but at least you can try to be the best at the one or two things that you are already good at.
Trying to learn something new is a very noble undertaking, however, you have to weigh the value of the exercise. Is it really worth it? Or can it be better delegated to someone who has mastery about the subject matter so you can spend your time on more worthwhile pursuits?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and play with my daughter in the snow.
This arrived in the mail today.
Microsoft Office for Mac2008
Given the fierce competition between Apple and Microsoft, who would have thought that the latter would be producing software for the Macintosh platform?
The music industry realized that they couldn’t sue everyone who shares or downloads free music for online piracy. Following dwindling music sales, they agreed to work with online retailers; an acknowledgment that the web is one medium they can no longer ignore.
“Movie execs thought they had the power to fight TV. Record execs thought they had the power to fight iTunes. Magazine execs thought they had the power to fight the web. Newspaper execs thought they had the power to fight Craigslist.”
Which leads me to hope for more collaboration in other industries in the future, particularly: modern medicine with naturopathy.
My eldest daughter has been suffering from mild eczema for over a year. Our family doctors have advised that it is a genetic condition, there is no cure and it will go away on its own as she grows older. I have inquired countless times over a period of repeated consultations if the condition was triggered by certain foods and they have constantly reassured me it has nothing to do with her diet. They prescribed continuous application of Vaselinette cream which moisturizes the skin and hydrocortisone creams for flare ups specially in the winter months.
I refused to believe them when they told me there is no solution and I was bent on finding out the cause in order to arrive at the cure. I turned to a friend, an alternative medicine therapist who informed me about the triggers of eczema. After a consultation she explained that my daughter had immune reactions to certain foods and given her genetic predisposition, this led to her having eczema.
She recommended following the blood type diet and by slowly eliminating foods like dairy and wheat, my daughter is now itching less, has not had any flare ups this winter and her skin looks clearer by the day.
So the next time I run into a parent whose child has the same condition, who do you think will I recommend?
Smart organizations know that working against the competition is a thing of the past. When it comes to healing, there shouldn’t be any rigid nor drawn lines between prescription drugs or alternative medicine. Collaboration is vital.
Businesses and institutions need to work together and build on each other’s best practices to serve their end consumers well. This is a win-win for everyone.
And this is one marriage guaranteed to last.
New Year always brings about resolutions. But before we resolve to do the things that we haven’t been doing, why not take stock of the present and decide to leave behind things and practices not worth continuing?
1) The job you hate.
If you have been dreading your waking hour for the most part of this year because you have to go to work, then its time to fold. Make an exit plan. Starting now. You determine whether you want to be an entrepreneur or be an employee in a company you love to work for. Either way, write down a step by step action plan to make sure that six months from now you will be doing something that you love instead of something that brings in a monthly paycheck only.
This is the year you decide that you will have both. Because you can.
2) The relationship that stifles.
Are you with somebody who limits your growth instead of enhancing it? If you feel like you have exhausted all communication channels and stated clearly what you both need and can offer to each other and still nothing works, its time to move on.
Life is too short to spend it with people who do not share your dreams.
3) The friend who smothers.
There are people who suck your energy after spending one hour with them. They are the ones who gripe about what an ugly day it is, or how disgusting the food is in a restaurant and how the world is never enough. If you hang out with such people and walk away every single time as if the life has been drained out of you and you feel like screaming your head off, its time to stay away from them. For good. For your own sake.
4) The credit card charges.
Are you cash strapped as you enter the New Year? Would you have been more liquid had you decided to skip the latest Blackberry on the market; or bought a Renault instead of the BMW which you are struggling now to maintain?
Realize that the things you own do not define you as a person. And the next time you want to buy an expensive item, save for it. An empty bank account is un-cool.
Keeping up with the Joneses has never been good for everyone’s pockets, and you’re still left with the credit card debts to pay.
Let go of things which consume space but do not add value: the shoes you haven’t worn in a year or the clothes (with price tags still attached) in your closet for the last 3 months. Somebody else will benefit from those. And you will brighten someone’s day.
What can you add to this list as 2009 draws to a close? Would love to read your thoughts below.
