I'm trying something new: I'm going to consolidate all of my blogs into one. Rather than finding a blog on this topic or that topic, you're going to find one blog about whatever is on my mind.
If you read a few entries and decide that this is a bad idea, please let me know.
The new url is: http://tedcoine.blogspot.com/.
Hope to see you there!
Ted
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
I'll regret this in the morning.
Okay, it is the morning. Anyway, here goes:
I just read an old post from May 30 on another of my blogs, www.naplesresource.blogspot.com, and discovered to my horror that I give a big thumbs-up to the city of Naples. I've got to amend that.
While it's true that most of my experiences with the city government has been terrific, that is not my experience across the board.
We had to cancel the Animal Lovers' Parade & Fair because of the city of Naples. First, they took away our venue, Gulf View Middle School, because the field was slated for re-sodding - this after they had urged us to use that location because of the beaten-up grass on that field, which would be perfect for animals, including horses, and high human traffic.
Then, they suggested we use Cambier Park - for over $1,000, not the original $270 we had agreed upon for Gulf View. And we would not be able to have all of our events there, such as a horse show or 4-H petting zoo - for some reason, these folks were particularly horrified by the prospect of rabbits, chickens, and one goat being in a pen at their park. Oh, and we could not use a large swath of the lawn there, either.
Throughout this catastrophe - which occurred just 19 days prior to our event - I got the distinct impression that two city bureaucrats in particular were taking some perverse form of delight in denying us our event.
I called and emailed Mayor Barnett, to ask if he would intercede for us. I'm still waiting for a reply. I did hear from someone down the chain of command who emailed to explain that he could not help me - which is why I asked the Mayor for help in the first place.
That is my take. I'm sure those involved - or, in the Mayor's case, conspicuously uninvolved - have a different version of how this went down. Best visit their blogs for that.
By the way: as of this writing, I still have 100 t-shirts commemorating this event that never was. Not only am I out hundreds of hours of my own time spent preparing, plus a few thousand dollars; we were hoping to raise thousands of dollars for the Humane Society, 4-H, Naples Equestrian Challenge, DAS, and quite a number of smaller organizations. Vendors were looking forward to this event to help promote their businesses. Canceling this event wasn't just a matter of canceling a good time.
I've been silent on this matter for about two months now, so as not to step on the toes of those I feel ruined this event for us. Guess I couldn't hold it in any longer. I hope nobody reads this. :)
I just read an old post from May 30 on another of my blogs, www.naplesresource.blogspot.com, and discovered to my horror that I give a big thumbs-up to the city of Naples. I've got to amend that.
While it's true that most of my experiences with the city government has been terrific, that is not my experience across the board.
We had to cancel the Animal Lovers' Parade & Fair because of the city of Naples. First, they took away our venue, Gulf View Middle School, because the field was slated for re-sodding - this after they had urged us to use that location because of the beaten-up grass on that field, which would be perfect for animals, including horses, and high human traffic.
Then, they suggested we use Cambier Park - for over $1,000, not the original $270 we had agreed upon for Gulf View. And we would not be able to have all of our events there, such as a horse show or 4-H petting zoo - for some reason, these folks were particularly horrified by the prospect of rabbits, chickens, and one goat being in a pen at their park. Oh, and we could not use a large swath of the lawn there, either.
Throughout this catastrophe - which occurred just 19 days prior to our event - I got the distinct impression that two city bureaucrats in particular were taking some perverse form of delight in denying us our event.
I called and emailed Mayor Barnett, to ask if he would intercede for us. I'm still waiting for a reply. I did hear from someone down the chain of command who emailed to explain that he could not help me - which is why I asked the Mayor for help in the first place.
That is my take. I'm sure those involved - or, in the Mayor's case, conspicuously uninvolved - have a different version of how this went down. Best visit their blogs for that.
By the way: as of this writing, I still have 100 t-shirts commemorating this event that never was. Not only am I out hundreds of hours of my own time spent preparing, plus a few thousand dollars; we were hoping to raise thousands of dollars for the Humane Society, 4-H, Naples Equestrian Challenge, DAS, and quite a number of smaller organizations. Vendors were looking forward to this event to help promote their businesses. Canceling this event wasn't just a matter of canceling a good time.
I've been silent on this matter for about two months now, so as not to step on the toes of those I feel ruined this event for us. Guess I couldn't hold it in any longer. I hope nobody reads this. :)
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Neapolitan of Note: Threasa Miller
Following is the unabridged version of the interview I did for our e-newsletter - which you can read here before we publish the newsletter! How's that for exclusive!?
If you are clicking over from said newsletter, you will notice that I left the questions in that you may have already read. Sorry. That's blog quality control for you.
If you aren't on the Naples Social Action e-newsletter mailing list and want to be, please let me know and I'll add you: ted.coine@coineinc.com
There are over 500 good causes in Collier County. What makes the top 1% stand out above the rest? Its people. People like Threasa Miller of the PACE Center for Girls in Immokalee.
Neapolitan of Note: Threasa Miller
Name: Threasa (“The- reesa”) Miller
Title: Founder & Executive Director
Organization: The Pace Center for Girls, Collier at Immokalee
www.pacecenter.org
Neapolitan since: 1980
Born in Tennesee
From the PACE website: “PACE provides a non-residential delinquency prevention program in 21 locations statewide, targeting the unique needs of females 12 to 18 who are identified as dependent, truant, runaway, ungovernable, delinquent, or in need of academic skills. PACE (Practical Academic Cultural Education) accepts referrals from the juvenile justice system, the Department of Children and Families, school personnel, community services agencies, parents, family members, friends and self-referrals. Its purpose is to intervene and prevent school withdrawal, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and welfare dependency.”
NSA: How did you get involved in PACE?
Miller: I worked in social services after college – investigating child abuse in foster care, then with the Department of Juvenile Justice. PACE was going to open a center in Southwest Florida, and I helped write the winning grant to bring it to Immokalee rather than Sarasota or Lee. The president of the organization asked me if I wanted to head it up, and I said “No!” – I loved what I was doing – but she isn’t one to take no for an answer, so she asked me to interview people for the job. I didn’t approve of the applicants, after all the hard work I’d put into the project, so she asked me if maybe I shouldn’t do it myself. Like I said, she didn’t take no for an answer. She wore me down, and I’m glad she did.
NSA: Could you explain what the “C” stands for in PACE?
Miller: The word “Cultural” means exposure and appreciation of things that are different for us. It includes all aspects of who we are, including our arts, our belief in humanity; we teach the girls that being different is good. One of our big goals is to stop bullying, and to do that we have to teach the girls to appreciate differences.
In Immokalee, race isn’t usually the problem, but it could be just different size, for instance: maybe the girls are picking on another girl for being big. We have to teach her that to hit is not a solution, and we have to teach them to appreciate her for who she is. That is all included in our cultural education.
Our teachers introduce the girls to the idea of cultural diversity. Well, one time I overheard girls calling it cultural conspiracy. I got a big kick out of the teacher’s explanation of the difference.
NSA: Your SPIRITED GIRLS!® program “teaches positive lifestyle choices.” How?
Miller: One of the things girls tell us is, they’re stressed; even kids these days are suffering from ulcers or high blood pressure. We tell them how to breathe, relax; we help them build a positive body image. We say, “Look at a TV ad. Is this real, is this true life?” Wellness, healthy eating, the need to drink more water are all things we cover. Right now, we’re working on teaching them how to express themselves, how to talk things out rather than fight.
NSA: It seems that PACE steps in to fill a need that the public school system can’t. Is that right?
Miller: This isn’t an either/or – it isn’t true that either they’re at PACE or they’re in public school. Without PACE, most of our girls would have dropped out or been kicked out of public school. There would be 100 more girls on the welfare role; and this is not just for them but for their family members, for all the children they would have.
Sometimes people can get narrow-minded and mean, and say things like ‘Why have a school like PACE? Kids should be able to tough it out with everybody else.’ That’s so wrong. Sometimes, especially when you have victims of trauma, one more hard knock pushes them over the edge. A gang doesn’t always seem so bad when you have that kind of background. We’re here as an alternative.
NSA: PACE has a 10:1 student-teacher ratio, yet it is only a little more costly for you to run than regular public schools, where classes are crammed at least 25 kids to a teacher. How do you do it?
Miller: We have very little administration. I double as a teacher; we’re all cross-and triple-trained because we have to fill in where we’re needed. We also operate less expensively because we use support services from public school administration, so we don’t have to duplicate them. We partner efficiently.
NSA: How important is that 10:1 ratio?
Miller: Class size is the number one factor to our success. Our girls need extra attention, and they get that. Nothing is more important in education than small class size.
NSA: You’ve bragged to me about the quality of your teachers. How do you attract and keep talent?
Miller: It’s always a challenge. Right now we have an awesome pool of teachers. We have alternative teachers; our science teacher is a retired scientist, a Ph.D. from Proctor & Gamble. He retired early, wants to make a difference, drives every day from Marco Island. He says, ‘I have a small class, I can get creative, I like the support from our administration, we have support via behavior management (public school teachers don’t have that to help them), I like to be able to give suggestions and the administration actually listens.’ Our math teacher has patents from his work with U.S. Surgical Steel. Our teachers are quality. We have to support them with the teaching part, because they didn’t study teaching in college; they have the knowledge part. They see that they’re making a difference. That’s what they want; that’s their challenge.
NSA: Is the PACE model something all school kids could benefit from?
Miller: Oh sure. It’s so embedded in respect, and who couldn’t benefit from that?
NSA: Your girls, who themselves are receiving help, also help others through volunteering. You say that makes a difference in their own lives. How?
Miller: They feel so much pride by being able to help someone else. 93% of our girls are on free or reduced breakfast and lunch. That’s a blow to their self-esteem. But once a month they have to serve lunch at the Guadalupe Center soup kitchen. The girls come back and say, “Those people are so poor, they have nothing. I feel so good about myself because I could help them.” I want them know that they’re part of the solution.
The United Arts Council sent a teacher out here a few years ago who taught them how to make pottery. The girls sold it and made $1,500, which they had to give away. The first year, they donated the money to buy snacks for the diabetic kids at Highlands Elementary School, because they were visiting and noticed that some kids weren’t getting anything at snack time, and they asked why. The girls made Highland’s nurse come and give a report on how their money was spent – it was terrific! The second year, they raised money and gave it to the Make a Wish Foundation. Giving deeply affects our girls. It’s so good for them.
NSA: The PACE website says you “deliver just and fair consequences and (the girls must) be accountable for our actions.” This isn’t the usual touchy-feely approach, is it?
Miller: Kids need rules and they need structure. There are some good consequences, and that is praise and reward. There are also bad consequences. If a girl comes in wearing flip-flops, that violates our dress code. We have shoes for her to wear – she may not like the shoes, so maybe she won’t do it again. If she swears, she’ll have to pick up trash. Our girls don’t swear that much.
NSA: Brilliant! Your advice to parents…?
Miller: Don’t make threats; don’t even say a word if you aren’t going to do it. “If you do that again, you’ll be grounded for a year!” You’re not going to ground anyone for a year. Try a night. And don’t say, “If you do it again.” They’ll do it again. Consequences have to be reliable.
NSA: What do you do if a student gets pregnant? Does PACE council its girls on birth control options? Do you provide birth control for them? What about if one of your students gets caught drunk or high – even off campus and after school hours?
Miller: We have partnered with Planned Parenthood, who taught them about abstinence. We teach them to have goals and a future; they can have kids any time. We train the girls to wait, but not all girls will wait. They can go to Collier County Health Services. If they get pregnant, we transfer them to the Teen As Parents Program (TAPP), where they get parenting classes and healthcare – that’s a critical need, and they can have their classes scheduled around their healthcare needs.
We lose about one girl a year this way. It’s always depressing, and we examine what we did wrong, where we can improve.
One way we handle this is through our Baby Can Wait program – we have an actual computerized baby, named Erin Pace. A girl will carry this heavy computerized baby around with her everywhere she goes, all day and night. We can check when it was changed, how long it was ignored - everything. It even has computer. In the car, it goes in a baby seat. At first, they think they want a baby, but we can barely make them keep it for 3 days. The girls say, “Would you do something with this baby?! It’s driving me nuts!” and we say, “No. it’s a baby. What can we do?” Any trick you can pull….
As for drugs: if you ignore that someone’s using, you’re condoning it. You can’t ignore the possibility that they’re high. Confront it. We have substance abuse prevention for high-risk girls. We refer them to David Lawrence for more intensive counciling if it’s needed.
One way we keep the girls from possessing drugs on campus is that they don’t carry anything – no purse, no book bag. There’s no place for them to hide drugs.
NSA: What about when a girl’s family is uncooperative or hostile to her involvement in PACE?
Miller: We sit down and talk with them. Usually when they’re upset, they’re angry because they feel they’re being ignored. When we listen to them, they usually calm down. It’s how respectful you are and how you treat the other person. You can give them the worst news in the world, and if you tell it to them in the right way, respectfully, you won’t have a problem.
NSA: Is there ever a time when you turn an applicant away as hopeless?
Miller: No. We don’t turn girls away.
But last year, for the first time, we sent two kids back to the public school, which I consider a loss on our part. We just had to tell them, you aren’t ready to change, to try counciling, to work on yourself, and our tax money is being wasted.
NSA: What happens to your girls? What percentage graduate? Do they work in the fields? Do any of them go on to college? Once they’re gone, do you give them any kind of follow-up support?
Miller: We stay with the girls after graduation, giving them at least three years of follow-up – we do everything, whatever they need. Tutoring, college applications, helping them find a job, crisis counciling…. One of our first graduates came here after a fight with her dad, a few years after graduation. She said she came here because she knew we’d listen. And we did. I spent an hour with her, talking it over in my office.
Last year eight girls graduated, and six went to college. We hired one of our former graduates to be our chef – she went to culinary arts school, and now she’s back to help us. Now she teaches the girls how to cook, and she says, “Look at all their energy! They can’t stay still.” We tell her, “Yes, that was you.” We’re very proud of her – and she’s a great chef!
NSA: The PACE Center, the actual facility, is an oasis in Immokalee – it’s gorgeous inside and out. I understand that its funding and construction was a huge feat: congratulations are in order! Now that is behind you, what is your next big challenge?
Miller: There are a million things I want to do. I want to truly do a culinary arts program where our kids run a business. I want us to have full-time nursing care. Now, we have a girl with lupus; earlier, we had a girl with a halo brace for a neck injury. I want to set up good solid career training, so that employers say, “This is a PACE graduate. They know how to do this – interview, dress for work, MS Office, spread sheets…. Yes, I’ll hire this person, because she’s from PACE.” I want us to have an after-school program for middle schoolers – we have the facility right now, and nowhere else in Immokalee does that. We just need funding to get it started.
If you are clicking over from said newsletter, you will notice that I left the questions in that you may have already read. Sorry. That's blog quality control for you.
If you aren't on the Naples Social Action e-newsletter mailing list and want to be, please let me know and I'll add you: ted.coine@coineinc.com
There are over 500 good causes in Collier County. What makes the top 1% stand out above the rest? Its people. People like Threasa Miller of the PACE Center for Girls in Immokalee.
Neapolitan of Note: Threasa Miller
Name: Threasa (“The- reesa”) Miller
Title: Founder & Executive Director
Organization: The Pace Center for Girls, Collier at Immokalee
www.pacecenter.org
Neapolitan since: 1980
Born in Tennesee
From the PACE website: “PACE provides a non-residential delinquency prevention program in 21 locations statewide, targeting the unique needs of females 12 to 18 who are identified as dependent, truant, runaway, ungovernable, delinquent, or in need of academic skills. PACE (Practical Academic Cultural Education) accepts referrals from the juvenile justice system, the Department of Children and Families, school personnel, community services agencies, parents, family members, friends and self-referrals. Its purpose is to intervene and prevent school withdrawal, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and welfare dependency.”
NSA: How did you get involved in PACE?
Miller: I worked in social services after college – investigating child abuse in foster care, then with the Department of Juvenile Justice. PACE was going to open a center in Southwest Florida, and I helped write the winning grant to bring it to Immokalee rather than Sarasota or Lee. The president of the organization asked me if I wanted to head it up, and I said “No!” – I loved what I was doing – but she isn’t one to take no for an answer, so she asked me to interview people for the job. I didn’t approve of the applicants, after all the hard work I’d put into the project, so she asked me if maybe I shouldn’t do it myself. Like I said, she didn’t take no for an answer. She wore me down, and I’m glad she did.
NSA: Could you explain what the “C” stands for in PACE?
Miller: The word “Cultural” means exposure and appreciation of things that are different for us. It includes all aspects of who we are, including our arts, our belief in humanity; we teach the girls that being different is good. One of our big goals is to stop bullying, and to do that we have to teach the girls to appreciate differences.
In Immokalee, race isn’t usually the problem, but it could be just different size, for instance: maybe the girls are picking on another girl for being big. We have to teach her that to hit is not a solution, and we have to teach them to appreciate her for who she is. That is all included in our cultural education.
Our teachers introduce the girls to the idea of cultural diversity. Well, one time I overheard girls calling it cultural conspiracy. I got a big kick out of the teacher’s explanation of the difference.
NSA: Your SPIRITED GIRLS!® program “teaches positive lifestyle choices.” How?
Miller: One of the things girls tell us is, they’re stressed; even kids these days are suffering from ulcers or high blood pressure. We tell them how to breathe, relax; we help them build a positive body image. We say, “Look at a TV ad. Is this real, is this true life?” Wellness, healthy eating, the need to drink more water are all things we cover. Right now, we’re working on teaching them how to express themselves, how to talk things out rather than fight.
NSA: It seems that PACE steps in to fill a need that the public school system can’t. Is that right?
Miller: This isn’t an either/or – it isn’t true that either they’re at PACE or they’re in public school. Without PACE, most of our girls would have dropped out or been kicked out of public school. There would be 100 more girls on the welfare role; and this is not just for them but for their family members, for all the children they would have.
Sometimes people can get narrow-minded and mean, and say things like ‘Why have a school like PACE? Kids should be able to tough it out with everybody else.’ That’s so wrong. Sometimes, especially when you have victims of trauma, one more hard knock pushes them over the edge. A gang doesn’t always seem so bad when you have that kind of background. We’re here as an alternative.
NSA: PACE has a 10:1 student-teacher ratio, yet it is only a little more costly for you to run than regular public schools, where classes are crammed at least 25 kids to a teacher. How do you do it?
Miller: We have very little administration. I double as a teacher; we’re all cross-and triple-trained because we have to fill in where we’re needed. We also operate less expensively because we use support services from public school administration, so we don’t have to duplicate them. We partner efficiently.
NSA: How important is that 10:1 ratio?
Miller: Class size is the number one factor to our success. Our girls need extra attention, and they get that. Nothing is more important in education than small class size.
NSA: You’ve bragged to me about the quality of your teachers. How do you attract and keep talent?
Miller: It’s always a challenge. Right now we have an awesome pool of teachers. We have alternative teachers; our science teacher is a retired scientist, a Ph.D. from Proctor & Gamble. He retired early, wants to make a difference, drives every day from Marco Island. He says, ‘I have a small class, I can get creative, I like the support from our administration, we have support via behavior management (public school teachers don’t have that to help them), I like to be able to give suggestions and the administration actually listens.’ Our math teacher has patents from his work with U.S. Surgical Steel. Our teachers are quality. We have to support them with the teaching part, because they didn’t study teaching in college; they have the knowledge part. They see that they’re making a difference. That’s what they want; that’s their challenge.
NSA: Is the PACE model something all school kids could benefit from?
Miller: Oh sure. It’s so embedded in respect, and who couldn’t benefit from that?
NSA: Your girls, who themselves are receiving help, also help others through volunteering. You say that makes a difference in their own lives. How?
Miller: They feel so much pride by being able to help someone else. 93% of our girls are on free or reduced breakfast and lunch. That’s a blow to their self-esteem. But once a month they have to serve lunch at the Guadalupe Center soup kitchen. The girls come back and say, “Those people are so poor, they have nothing. I feel so good about myself because I could help them.” I want them know that they’re part of the solution.
The United Arts Council sent a teacher out here a few years ago who taught them how to make pottery. The girls sold it and made $1,500, which they had to give away. The first year, they donated the money to buy snacks for the diabetic kids at Highlands Elementary School, because they were visiting and noticed that some kids weren’t getting anything at snack time, and they asked why. The girls made Highland’s nurse come and give a report on how their money was spent – it was terrific! The second year, they raised money and gave it to the Make a Wish Foundation. Giving deeply affects our girls. It’s so good for them.
NSA: The PACE website says you “deliver just and fair consequences and (the girls must) be accountable for our actions.” This isn’t the usual touchy-feely approach, is it?
Miller: Kids need rules and they need structure. There are some good consequences, and that is praise and reward. There are also bad consequences. If a girl comes in wearing flip-flops, that violates our dress code. We have shoes for her to wear – she may not like the shoes, so maybe she won’t do it again. If she swears, she’ll have to pick up trash. Our girls don’t swear that much.
NSA: Brilliant! Your advice to parents…?
Miller: Don’t make threats; don’t even say a word if you aren’t going to do it. “If you do that again, you’ll be grounded for a year!” You’re not going to ground anyone for a year. Try a night. And don’t say, “If you do it again.” They’ll do it again. Consequences have to be reliable.
NSA: What do you do if a student gets pregnant? Does PACE council its girls on birth control options? Do you provide birth control for them? What about if one of your students gets caught drunk or high – even off campus and after school hours?
Miller: We have partnered with Planned Parenthood, who taught them about abstinence. We teach them to have goals and a future; they can have kids any time. We train the girls to wait, but not all girls will wait. They can go to Collier County Health Services. If they get pregnant, we transfer them to the Teen As Parents Program (TAPP), where they get parenting classes and healthcare – that’s a critical need, and they can have their classes scheduled around their healthcare needs.
We lose about one girl a year this way. It’s always depressing, and we examine what we did wrong, where we can improve.
One way we handle this is through our Baby Can Wait program – we have an actual computerized baby, named Erin Pace. A girl will carry this heavy computerized baby around with her everywhere she goes, all day and night. We can check when it was changed, how long it was ignored - everything. It even has computer. In the car, it goes in a baby seat. At first, they think they want a baby, but we can barely make them keep it for 3 days. The girls say, “Would you do something with this baby?! It’s driving me nuts!” and we say, “No. it’s a baby. What can we do?” Any trick you can pull….
As for drugs: if you ignore that someone’s using, you’re condoning it. You can’t ignore the possibility that they’re high. Confront it. We have substance abuse prevention for high-risk girls. We refer them to David Lawrence for more intensive counciling if it’s needed.
One way we keep the girls from possessing drugs on campus is that they don’t carry anything – no purse, no book bag. There’s no place for them to hide drugs.
NSA: What about when a girl’s family is uncooperative or hostile to her involvement in PACE?
Miller: We sit down and talk with them. Usually when they’re upset, they’re angry because they feel they’re being ignored. When we listen to them, they usually calm down. It’s how respectful you are and how you treat the other person. You can give them the worst news in the world, and if you tell it to them in the right way, respectfully, you won’t have a problem.
NSA: Is there ever a time when you turn an applicant away as hopeless?
Miller: No. We don’t turn girls away.
But last year, for the first time, we sent two kids back to the public school, which I consider a loss on our part. We just had to tell them, you aren’t ready to change, to try counciling, to work on yourself, and our tax money is being wasted.
NSA: What happens to your girls? What percentage graduate? Do they work in the fields? Do any of them go on to college? Once they’re gone, do you give them any kind of follow-up support?
Miller: We stay with the girls after graduation, giving them at least three years of follow-up – we do everything, whatever they need. Tutoring, college applications, helping them find a job, crisis counciling…. One of our first graduates came here after a fight with her dad, a few years after graduation. She said she came here because she knew we’d listen. And we did. I spent an hour with her, talking it over in my office.
Last year eight girls graduated, and six went to college. We hired one of our former graduates to be our chef – she went to culinary arts school, and now she’s back to help us. Now she teaches the girls how to cook, and she says, “Look at all their energy! They can’t stay still.” We tell her, “Yes, that was you.” We’re very proud of her – and she’s a great chef!
NSA: The PACE Center, the actual facility, is an oasis in Immokalee – it’s gorgeous inside and out. I understand that its funding and construction was a huge feat: congratulations are in order! Now that is behind you, what is your next big challenge?
Miller: There are a million things I want to do. I want to truly do a culinary arts program where our kids run a business. I want us to have full-time nursing care. Now, we have a girl with lupus; earlier, we had a girl with a halo brace for a neck injury. I want to set up good solid career training, so that employers say, “This is a PACE graduate. They know how to do this – interview, dress for work, MS Office, spread sheets…. Yes, I’ll hire this person, because she’s from PACE.” I want us to have an after-school program for middle schoolers – we have the facility right now, and nowhere else in Immokalee does that. We just need funding to get it started.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
OLPC story - New York Times
September 24, 2007
Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free
By STEVE LOHR
One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children, has considerable momentum. Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production is set to start next month.
Orders, however, are slow. “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. “And yes, it has been a disappointment.”
But Mr. Negroponte, the founding director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, views the problem as a temporary one in the long-term pursuit of using technology as a new channel of learning and self-expression for children worldwide.
And he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.
One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.
Just what Americans will do with the slender green-and-white laptops is uncertain. Some people may donate them to local schools or youth organizations, said Walter Bender, president of the laptop project, while others will keep them for their own family or their own use.
The machines have high-resolution screens, cameras and peer-to-peer technology so the laptops can communicate wirelessly with one another. The machine runs on free, open source software. “Everything in the machine is open to the hacker, so people can poke at it, change it and make it their own,” said Mr. Bender, a computer researcher. “Part of what we’re doing here is broadening the community of users, broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be tremendously valuable.”
The machine, called the XO Laptop, was not engineered with affluent children in mind. It was intended to be inexpensive, with costs eventually approaching $100 a machine, and sturdy enough to withstand harsh conditions in rural villages. It is also extremely energy efficient, with power consumption that is 10 percent or less of a conventional laptop computer.
Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops. Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried.
So the laptop project sponsored focus-group research with American children, ages 7 to 11, at the end of August. The results were reassuringly positive. The focus-group subjects liked the fact that the machine was intended specifically for children, and appreciated features like the machine-to-machine wireless communication. “Completely beastly” was the verdict of one boy. Another environmentally conscious youngster noted that the laptop “prevents global warming.”
Still, the “Give 1 Get 1” initiative is mainly about the giving. “The real reason is to get this thing started,” Mr. Negroponte said.
He said that if, for example, donations reached $40 million, that would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20 countries to try out and get started.
“It could trigger a lot of things,” Mr. Negroponte said.
Late last year, Mr. Negroponte said he had hoped for orders for three million laptops, but those pledges have fallen short. Orders of a million each from populous Nigeria and Brazil did not materialize.
Still, the project has had successes. Peru, for example, will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year — many of them allocated for remote rural areas. Mexico and Uruguay, Mr. Negroponte noted, have made firm commitments. In a sponsorship program, the government of Italy has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia.
Each country will have different ideas about how to use the machines. Alan Kay, a computer researcher and adviser to the laptop project, said he expects one popular use will be to load textbooks at 25 cents or so each on the laptops, which has a high-resolution screen for easy reading.
“It’s probably going to be mundane in the early stages,” said Mr. Kay, who heads a nonprofit education group, whose learning software will be on the XO Laptop. “I’m an optimist that this will eventually work out,” Mr. Kay said.
Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free
By STEVE LOHR
One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children, has considerable momentum. Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production is set to start next month.
Orders, however, are slow. “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. “And yes, it has been a disappointment.”
But Mr. Negroponte, the founding director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, views the problem as a temporary one in the long-term pursuit of using technology as a new channel of learning and self-expression for children worldwide.
And he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.
One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.
Just what Americans will do with the slender green-and-white laptops is uncertain. Some people may donate them to local schools or youth organizations, said Walter Bender, president of the laptop project, while others will keep them for their own family or their own use.
The machines have high-resolution screens, cameras and peer-to-peer technology so the laptops can communicate wirelessly with one another. The machine runs on free, open source software. “Everything in the machine is open to the hacker, so people can poke at it, change it and make it their own,” said Mr. Bender, a computer researcher. “Part of what we’re doing here is broadening the community of users, broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be tremendously valuable.”
The machine, called the XO Laptop, was not engineered with affluent children in mind. It was intended to be inexpensive, with costs eventually approaching $100 a machine, and sturdy enough to withstand harsh conditions in rural villages. It is also extremely energy efficient, with power consumption that is 10 percent or less of a conventional laptop computer.
Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops. Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried.
So the laptop project sponsored focus-group research with American children, ages 7 to 11, at the end of August. The results were reassuringly positive. The focus-group subjects liked the fact that the machine was intended specifically for children, and appreciated features like the machine-to-machine wireless communication. “Completely beastly” was the verdict of one boy. Another environmentally conscious youngster noted that the laptop “prevents global warming.”
Still, the “Give 1 Get 1” initiative is mainly about the giving. “The real reason is to get this thing started,” Mr. Negroponte said.
He said that if, for example, donations reached $40 million, that would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20 countries to try out and get started.
“It could trigger a lot of things,” Mr. Negroponte said.
Late last year, Mr. Negroponte said he had hoped for orders for three million laptops, but those pledges have fallen short. Orders of a million each from populous Nigeria and Brazil did not materialize.
Still, the project has had successes. Peru, for example, will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year — many of them allocated for remote rural areas. Mexico and Uruguay, Mr. Negroponte noted, have made firm commitments. In a sponsorship program, the government of Italy has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia.
Each country will have different ideas about how to use the machines. Alan Kay, a computer researcher and adviser to the laptop project, said he expects one popular use will be to load textbooks at 25 cents or so each on the laptops, which has a high-resolution screen for easy reading.
“It’s probably going to be mundane in the early stages,” said Mr. Kay, who heads a nonprofit education group, whose learning software will be on the XO Laptop. “I’m an optimist that this will eventually work out,” Mr. Kay said.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
My friend Michael isn't as sold on the XO $100 laptop as I am. His gripe is that kids in the Third World need food to eat, water pumps that work, can openers, pencils and paper.... What follows is my reply to his email to that effect, which was also copied to a couple of other interested parties who are part of this conversation.
My friend Steve Popper travels the globe purchasing lumber. He says that traveling from the airport to his meetings in the third world is horrendous - the poverty is so incredible, he doesn't even like to look out the car window. So a few years ago he and his family established a school in a village in Haiti. He figured, "Hey, there's no school; that's why these kids will spend their whole lives in penury. Let's fix that." Steve's upper-middle-class; I think a school in Haiti is pretty affordable.
The problem is that the kids didn't learn much in their new school. The reason? They were hungry. I can't pay attention if I'm late for snack time. I can't even imagine what it's like for kids who are actually starving. So Steve did some research and found Kids Against Hunger. He brought it to our Rotary club, and in less than a month, in two events he - and a few hundred of his closest friends - packaged over 600,000 meals. About half went to the poor here in SWFL, the remainder to Haiti and Jamaica - the poorest parts in the South of Jamaica, hit worst by Dean. To avoid pilfering (99% of foreign aid to Haiti is stolen, mostly by the gov.), we sent the meals to Rotary clubs in the villages where the food is needed. We have 8 more packaging events lined up this season.
Poor people need food. And fresh water, and shoes, and $.01 drops of medicine to fight ringworm, and affordable (but not free) condoms, and mosquito netting.... People need education and micro credit, too, so that they can take care of themselves, rather than hope that the largess from America continues unabated. My vote is, if this guy or that group is passionate about one of those things, then why tell them to wait until other needs have been met first? Steve wants to feed kids, I want to give them laptops, and Michael wants them to have can openers. They need all 3, so good for all of us! By pursuing what inspires us most, we'll each be more effective and we'll stay engaged longer.
Now, to introduce Tim Falconer: he is well ahead of me in his efforts to get the XO to the kids who need it. He and some friends (www.waveplace.com) are about to start a project with some XOs in St. John (the US Virgin Island). It's a small population - only about twice as many kids as Immokalee. And, like Immokalee, if you want to make a living wage, you have to leave to do it.
Waveplace isn't just going to buy laptops from MIT and hand them over to a bunch of kids, then split town. Their project includes teaching the children how to use the laptops, and really it's about teaching them effectively through the conduit of a laptop. Tim's idea is to train the children of the Caribbean, starting with St. John, to apply their creative talents to IT work, sourced all over the globe via the Internet.
Kids in poverty world-wide are physically removed from the teachers and resources they need to have an education that is every bit as good as, say, our two girls here in Naples. But with an XO and a Internet connection, these children can enjoy access to the best the world has to offer. My good friend and colleague, Tim King, who is running Coine Language School for us up in Boston, has done a lot of real-time tutoring over the years through an online course out of Taiwan. Because of the XO, kids in St. John will be able to have world-class teachers like Tim King at their disposal.
What a brave new world is this!
My friend Steve Popper travels the globe purchasing lumber. He says that traveling from the airport to his meetings in the third world is horrendous - the poverty is so incredible, he doesn't even like to look out the car window. So a few years ago he and his family established a school in a village in Haiti. He figured, "Hey, there's no school; that's why these kids will spend their whole lives in penury. Let's fix that." Steve's upper-middle-class; I think a school in Haiti is pretty affordable.
The problem is that the kids didn't learn much in their new school. The reason? They were hungry. I can't pay attention if I'm late for snack time. I can't even imagine what it's like for kids who are actually starving. So Steve did some research and found Kids Against Hunger. He brought it to our Rotary club, and in less than a month, in two events he - and a few hundred of his closest friends - packaged over 600,000 meals. About half went to the poor here in SWFL, the remainder to Haiti and Jamaica - the poorest parts in the South of Jamaica, hit worst by Dean. To avoid pilfering (99% of foreign aid to Haiti is stolen, mostly by the gov.), we sent the meals to Rotary clubs in the villages where the food is needed. We have 8 more packaging events lined up this season.
Poor people need food. And fresh water, and shoes, and $.01 drops of medicine to fight ringworm, and affordable (but not free) condoms, and mosquito netting.... People need education and micro credit, too, so that they can take care of themselves, rather than hope that the largess from America continues unabated. My vote is, if this guy or that group is passionate about one of those things, then why tell them to wait until other needs have been met first? Steve wants to feed kids, I want to give them laptops, and Michael wants them to have can openers. They need all 3, so good for all of us! By pursuing what inspires us most, we'll each be more effective and we'll stay engaged longer.
Now, to introduce Tim Falconer: he is well ahead of me in his efforts to get the XO to the kids who need it. He and some friends (www.waveplace.com) are about to start a project with some XOs in St. John (the US Virgin Island). It's a small population - only about twice as many kids as Immokalee. And, like Immokalee, if you want to make a living wage, you have to leave to do it.
Waveplace isn't just going to buy laptops from MIT and hand them over to a bunch of kids, then split town. Their project includes teaching the children how to use the laptops, and really it's about teaching them effectively through the conduit of a laptop. Tim's idea is to train the children of the Caribbean, starting with St. John, to apply their creative talents to IT work, sourced all over the globe via the Internet.
Kids in poverty world-wide are physically removed from the teachers and resources they need to have an education that is every bit as good as, say, our two girls here in Naples. But with an XO and a Internet connection, these children can enjoy access to the best the world has to offer. My good friend and colleague, Tim King, who is running Coine Language School for us up in Boston, has done a lot of real-time tutoring over the years through an online course out of Taiwan. Because of the XO, kids in St. John will be able to have world-class teachers like Tim King at their disposal.
What a brave new world is this!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Guest spot on OLPC
Wayan Vota was kind enough to post this for me: http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/donors/americans_help_olpc.html. Thanks Wayan!
Sunday, September 23, 2007
One Laptop Links
As I promised my audience at the Unitarian Universalist Forum this morning, here are some links to different sites with more information on my favorite project, the One Laptop Per Child Innitiative (OLPC).
Please note the second link. I found it just this minute - apparently, starting Nov. 12, you will be able to buy one XO for your child when you buy one for a child in the Third World. I know what Ayla and Maryn are getting for early & late birthday presents, respectively.
60 Minutes story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/20/60minutes/main2830058.shtml?source=search_story
Donate or "Buy two, get one": http://www.xogiving.org/
MIT Media Lab's site: http://laptop.org/
MIT Media Lab's wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home
An unofficial site dedicated to OLPC: http://www.olpcnews.com/
Please note the second link. I found it just this minute - apparently, starting Nov. 12, you will be able to buy one XO for your child when you buy one for a child in the Third World. I know what Ayla and Maryn are getting for early & late birthday presents, respectively.
60 Minutes story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/20/60minutes/main2830058.shtml?source=search_story
Donate or "Buy two, get one": http://www.xogiving.org/
MIT Media Lab's site: http://laptop.org/
MIT Media Lab's wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home
An unofficial site dedicated to OLPC: http://www.olpcnews.com/
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Laptops for Immokalee
Okay, so a pal of mine spoke with a billionaire (a real one, with a B), who is ready to write a check for 10,000 "XO" $179 laptops. I confirmed this, and it's legit.
So I called MIT again, and here's the skinny:
1. These are Linux-based systems. They accept Mmicrosoft (MS) software, but don't come with it installed. (Linux users prefer it vastly over DOS (MS's language), but.... well, if you want MS, you want MS).
2. We could try to contact the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about this. They've got money...
3. The computers aren't available for sale yet, and a release date of late October is only a goal, nothing more.
4. For now, they're only looking for purchases of 250,000 computers and up (so governments are the only ones buying, at this stage).
5. I was told that "By this time next year, sure, you'll be able to buy just one if you want. But not right now."
I'm going to check with Intel. The gal at MIT says their version is still up around $300, but I'd like to find out for myself.
I'll keep you posted, Dear Readers.
So I called MIT again, and here's the skinny:
1. These are Linux-based systems. They accept Mmicrosoft (MS) software, but don't come with it installed. (Linux users prefer it vastly over DOS (MS's language), but.... well, if you want MS, you want MS).
2. We could try to contact the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about this. They've got money...
3. The computers aren't available for sale yet, and a release date of late October is only a goal, nothing more.
4. For now, they're only looking for purchases of 250,000 computers and up (so governments are the only ones buying, at this stage).
5. I was told that "By this time next year, sure, you'll be able to buy just one if you want. But not right now."
I'm going to check with Intel. The gal at MIT says their version is still up around $300, but I'd like to find out for myself.
I'll keep you posted, Dear Readers.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Latest on the One Laptop Initiative
If you've been following my story of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative, then you may find this link interesting: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles#child_ownership
If you find it a bunch of "happy crap," that's your perogative. But just keep one thing in mind: While you're criticizing, others are doing. And we're going to keep on doing with or without your help.
People were born to dream. When you give up dreaming, you give up living.
If you find it a bunch of "happy crap," that's your perogative. But just keep one thing in mind: While you're criticizing, others are doing. And we're going to keep on doing with or without your help.
People were born to dream. When you give up dreaming, you give up living.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Naples Social Action
You know what I like about our work creating NSA? It's completely organic, even more than Coine Language School was in the early days.
Take our newsletter as an example. For issue #4, out 8 days ago, we used a really cool and inexpensive online service to create a hot new look - if you haven't seen it, email me and ask to get on our emailing list. I liked the look of it, as did Jane, the newsletter's editor-in-chief. So we were delighted with the results, and I must say proud.
...But quite unexpectedly, we started getting all these people contacting us asking to be on our mailing list. I mean, each of the first three issues won us a fair share of praise from well-wishers who liked the content. But with this new look, all of a sudden Naples Social Action is a media player here in Naples. I even have the executive editor of a respected magazine taking me to lunch (while Jane's away on business) to see how we can help each other.
I never intended for NSA to become a media company. But here we are. We threw some spaghetti against the wall, and it stuck. That's how I do things, and... see? Sometimes it works out.
The Bicycle Series page is another clump of spaghetti that I just figured I'd throw up there. I like to ride my bike. Naturally, that led me to make friends with other cyclists, some of whom are involved in philanthropy like me. I learned that the cycling events in town are no better coordinated than the nonprofit fundraisers, so what the heck, we knitted together a bike series.
And three days later, we started our runner's series, which we'll have posted shortly on the biking page, right underneath. More spaghetti sticking to the wall.
I think my Tigger-like enthusiasm make some people nervous. Engineers, finance types, librarians, many computer programmers - many of these folks don't get how I can pull things off. But you know what? I'm not half the flake they might think I am, for one thing - I'm actually very efficient; I just don't brag about it: I'd rather have those outside the board room just think I'm fun, if a tad eccentric. For another thing, I'm relentless. I don't sit and plan, and I don't worry if something falls flat. I just grab another strand of spaghetti and fling it against the wall. If it sticks, we know it's time to dig in!
I don't think NSA could be half as wonderful as it is if we didn't let it grow as it will. We have to try a multitude of services to the community, and see which ones the community likes, which it finds unimpressive. This experimenting is fun. I guarantee you, some day Local Social Action will be huge, and - if Jane and I are not really careful - kinda... set in its ways. But now is the fun part. Now, to me, is the part worth doing. We'll let someone else cross the i's and dot the t's.
Take our newsletter as an example. For issue #4, out 8 days ago, we used a really cool and inexpensive online service to create a hot new look - if you haven't seen it, email me and ask to get on our emailing list. I liked the look of it, as did Jane, the newsletter's editor-in-chief. So we were delighted with the results, and I must say proud.
...But quite unexpectedly, we started getting all these people contacting us asking to be on our mailing list. I mean, each of the first three issues won us a fair share of praise from well-wishers who liked the content. But with this new look, all of a sudden Naples Social Action is a media player here in Naples. I even have the executive editor of a respected magazine taking me to lunch (while Jane's away on business) to see how we can help each other.
I never intended for NSA to become a media company. But here we are. We threw some spaghetti against the wall, and it stuck. That's how I do things, and... see? Sometimes it works out.
The Bicycle Series page is another clump of spaghetti that I just figured I'd throw up there. I like to ride my bike. Naturally, that led me to make friends with other cyclists, some of whom are involved in philanthropy like me. I learned that the cycling events in town are no better coordinated than the nonprofit fundraisers, so what the heck, we knitted together a bike series.
And three days later, we started our runner's series, which we'll have posted shortly on the biking page, right underneath. More spaghetti sticking to the wall.
I think my Tigger-like enthusiasm make some people nervous. Engineers, finance types, librarians, many computer programmers - many of these folks don't get how I can pull things off. But you know what? I'm not half the flake they might think I am, for one thing - I'm actually very efficient; I just don't brag about it: I'd rather have those outside the board room just think I'm fun, if a tad eccentric. For another thing, I'm relentless. I don't sit and plan, and I don't worry if something falls flat. I just grab another strand of spaghetti and fling it against the wall. If it sticks, we know it's time to dig in!
I don't think NSA could be half as wonderful as it is if we didn't let it grow as it will. We have to try a multitude of services to the community, and see which ones the community likes, which it finds unimpressive. This experimenting is fun. I guarantee you, some day Local Social Action will be huge, and - if Jane and I are not really careful - kinda... set in its ways. But now is the fun part. Now, to me, is the part worth doing. We'll let someone else cross the i's and dot the t's.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
More fun than...
I can honestly say that nothing has ever delighted me so much as the work I'm doing creating Naples Social Action. Six months ago it didn't exist, not even as a vague idea. Somewhere in February, the idea struck me to put together a calendar for the entire nonprofit community; I spoke with Michael Junkowski at VSM.net shortly thereafter to pitch him on it - after all, somebody had to to the heavy lifting, the actual tech work. Without Michael... well, I shudder to think.
March 27th we went live. That was almost exactly 5 months ago. Since then, Michael has single-handedly created a masterpiece. The website is much more robust than I'd ever thought possible.
Jane and I have been more than a little busy populating his work with content. We're still reaching out to nonprofits to tell them we're here and give them passwords; now we have an additional teammate, Lois Barrowcliff, who is our liaison to the art community.
It took me over two months of round-the-clock work to make the CAN Ride happen. Probably only about 5 hours total, start-to-finish, was stressful. The rest was just plain fun, as I got to meet all sorts of nice people all over Naples. I've taught, I've sold, I've written, and I've managed, but I've never done anything like organize an event of any kind. Kathy Nicklaus and her board, volunteers, and the entire CAN operation were just great to work with.
When you look at the money we raised - about $9,000 for our two groups to split - you could easily argue that it wasn't cost effective. After all, my one-day speaking fee is more than that; I was even asked by a few skeptics why I didn't just give some talks and donate the fees to CAN.
Well, yeah, the money is important to any nonprofit, and CAN is no exception - neither, for that matter, is Naples Social Action. But I chose to take the long view, and I stand behind that choice. You see, Naples Social Action is growing in scope, and I need to get my hands dirty now so I can guide it when it's huge. I couldn't run a language school if I weren't a very experienced teacher. Jane and I could never write about and teach customer service if we weren't steeped in that field ourselves. I come to the nonprofit realm with no background what-so-ever. I'm educating myself, that's all. And class is a pleasure.
It's fun for Jane and me to sit back and watch our newest endeavor unfold - as with Coine Language School when we started, we really don't know what the final form of Naples Social Action (and later Local Social Action, when we export it to the rest of the nation) will be. First we were an online calendar.
Now we're that, plus we throw fundraisers, hopefully about one every month once we get up some steam.
Then there's the newsletter. It took me the entire day today, starting at 4:45 a.m., but I sent the newsletter out to about 400 individuals plus a few group email lists, which together bring the number of recipients up over 1,000. And we're only on issue 4.
Is NSA going to turn into a media empire, as we sell advertising to fund the causes we support? Stay tuned - right now, your guess is as good as ours. All we know is, we're enjoying our work immensely.
"Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life," as a wise man once said.
March 27th we went live. That was almost exactly 5 months ago. Since then, Michael has single-handedly created a masterpiece. The website is much more robust than I'd ever thought possible.
Jane and I have been more than a little busy populating his work with content. We're still reaching out to nonprofits to tell them we're here and give them passwords; now we have an additional teammate, Lois Barrowcliff, who is our liaison to the art community.
It took me over two months of round-the-clock work to make the CAN Ride happen. Probably only about 5 hours total, start-to-finish, was stressful. The rest was just plain fun, as I got to meet all sorts of nice people all over Naples. I've taught, I've sold, I've written, and I've managed, but I've never done anything like organize an event of any kind. Kathy Nicklaus and her board, volunteers, and the entire CAN operation were just great to work with.
When you look at the money we raised - about $9,000 for our two groups to split - you could easily argue that it wasn't cost effective. After all, my one-day speaking fee is more than that; I was even asked by a few skeptics why I didn't just give some talks and donate the fees to CAN.
Well, yeah, the money is important to any nonprofit, and CAN is no exception - neither, for that matter, is Naples Social Action. But I chose to take the long view, and I stand behind that choice. You see, Naples Social Action is growing in scope, and I need to get my hands dirty now so I can guide it when it's huge. I couldn't run a language school if I weren't a very experienced teacher. Jane and I could never write about and teach customer service if we weren't steeped in that field ourselves. I come to the nonprofit realm with no background what-so-ever. I'm educating myself, that's all. And class is a pleasure.
It's fun for Jane and me to sit back and watch our newest endeavor unfold - as with Coine Language School when we started, we really don't know what the final form of Naples Social Action (and later Local Social Action, when we export it to the rest of the nation) will be. First we were an online calendar.
Now we're that, plus we throw fundraisers, hopefully about one every month once we get up some steam.
Then there's the newsletter. It took me the entire day today, starting at 4:45 a.m., but I sent the newsletter out to about 400 individuals plus a few group email lists, which together bring the number of recipients up over 1,000. And we're only on issue 4.
Is NSA going to turn into a media empire, as we sell advertising to fund the causes we support? Stay tuned - right now, your guess is as good as ours. All we know is, we're enjoying our work immensely.
"Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life," as a wise man once said.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
12 Years - Too Little Time?
I've committed to ending poverty in Immokalee by the year 2020, which is a little more than 12 years from now. Can we do it, or have we set ourselves up for failure, even ridicule? You decide.
In 12 years, companies have gone from one person's idea to mulit-billion-dollar operations.
You could get 3 Ph.D.s in that time.
I don't think it's that daunting a project, but the thing is, we'll never get there if we don't try.
As management guru Jim Collins says, we need a BHAG - a Big Hairy Audacious Goal - or people won't take us seriously.
How will we do it?
We're going to get one laptop for every school kid in Immokalee.
We're going to help create more and more microlending funds.
We're going to come up with solutions that will bring the graduation rate from 50% to 99%+.
We'll attract industry to the enterprise zone out at the airport, so that there are great-paying jobs right there in Immokalee, and plenty of room for start-ups, too.
We'll make sure that everyone living there has access to English, literacy, and parenting classes, run the right way (we've already started with Immokalee Non-Profit Housing, and Habitat for Humanity is joining us after Aug. 20th.)
I've known hundreds of very affluent people in my life, and this year I'll be creating a high school course and textbook that will show poor and middle-class kids how to make the move from the slums to Port Royal and its like, using the experience and advice of others just like them, others who have gone before them and made that move.
12 years? Once this thing gains some steam, we'll look back and say, "We thought it would take how long? We should have had more confidence!"
In 12 years, companies have gone from one person's idea to mulit-billion-dollar operations.
You could get 3 Ph.D.s in that time.
I don't think it's that daunting a project, but the thing is, we'll never get there if we don't try.
As management guru Jim Collins says, we need a BHAG - a Big Hairy Audacious Goal - or people won't take us seriously.
How will we do it?
We're going to get one laptop for every school kid in Immokalee.
We're going to help create more and more microlending funds.
We're going to come up with solutions that will bring the graduation rate from 50% to 99%+.
We'll attract industry to the enterprise zone out at the airport, so that there are great-paying jobs right there in Immokalee, and plenty of room for start-ups, too.
We'll make sure that everyone living there has access to English, literacy, and parenting classes, run the right way (we've already started with Immokalee Non-Profit Housing, and Habitat for Humanity is joining us after Aug. 20th.)
I've known hundreds of very affluent people in my life, and this year I'll be creating a high school course and textbook that will show poor and middle-class kids how to make the move from the slums to Port Royal and its like, using the experience and advice of others just like them, others who have gone before them and made that move.
12 years? Once this thing gains some steam, we'll look back and say, "We thought it would take how long? We should have had more confidence!"
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Inspiration
Any fan of the Incredible Hulk knows that adversity only makes him stronger. That's me.
Now, in the Hulk's case, adversity comes in the form of nefarious super villains out to get him: to kill him, or steal his super powers and leave him un-super. As with any super hero, they always make the same mistake: they underestimate his will to win. Worse, they fail to realize that their efforts actually spur him on and make him more powerful - more motivated to succeed, if you will.
I don't have enemies, and nobody's trying to kill me or steal my super powers (at least not as far as I know). Indeed, most of the people I've met in the nonprofit realm are rooting for us here at Naples Social Action, and many of those moral-supporters are actually helping us. Why wouldn't they? After all, our entire mission is to help them!
But I've bumped into a few organizations who don't get what we're about, or who maybe take my enthusiasm as too eccentric for their taste - or who, perhaps, see our desire to bring the community together as a threat to their hegemony.
To be just a tad more specific, three groups have actively decided not to work with us on joint fundraising projects, and one other organization - I've eluded to this one before - has pointedly ignored us. This one is one of several 800-pound gorillas in town, and I think they're afraid of us because we don't need them. They "help" nonprofits, we help nonprofits.... you can see their concern.
Thank you for your lack of support.
I'm the Hulk. With no resistance, I run the risk of mellowing out: when that happens to the Hulk, he relaxes. He goes from giant green monster to mild-mannered Dr. Bruce Banner.
Ah, but when someone tells me I can't do something... that's when I really shine!
I was a terrible student through eighth grade; the fact that my principal and most of my teachers thought that I was a failure inspired me to go to prep school (it was my idea) and I threw myself into my studies; two years later I transferred back to public school, crushed at my A-level and AP classes, graduated near the top of my class, and was off to a top-tier college. Thanks, guys, for underestimating me.
My junior year in high school, I finally qualified for the YMCA Nationals, but I was on the perennial national-champion team, and the coach had to select which qualifiers would travel. I learned I was not on his nationals list, and... let's just say, I made his team. By a lot. His failure to bet on me spurred me on to accomplish great things.
Fast-forward to my thirties. My employer, owner of a private English-language school in Boston, passed on my offer to partner up with her on a new venture I'd created. Spurned, I bided my time, laid my plans, and founded my own school. While not direct competitors with her - Coine Language School serves a different niche - we eat her lunch. If we saw any advantage to it, we'd buy her school. Oops.
Don't bet against me.
So now we're throwing the Animal Lovers' Parade, and two organizations have bowed out of participation: one told me they don't think we can possibly pull it off in two months. Thank God they did! I've got to show them - not that they were wrong in not participating, but that they were wrong, dead wrong, in underestimating my ability to pull it off.
Of course we can make our next venture a success. Of course! But how much better it will be now that I know someone is betting we'll fail.
The Hulk may not be all that smart, but he always wins. Always.
*N.B. - Okay, unlike the Hulk, I suppose I'm pretty bright. And just for the record, we have very good friends leading the United Way and the Wine Festival. These are not the afore-mentioned gorilla.
Now, in the Hulk's case, adversity comes in the form of nefarious super villains out to get him: to kill him, or steal his super powers and leave him un-super. As with any super hero, they always make the same mistake: they underestimate his will to win. Worse, they fail to realize that their efforts actually spur him on and make him more powerful - more motivated to succeed, if you will.
I don't have enemies, and nobody's trying to kill me or steal my super powers (at least not as far as I know). Indeed, most of the people I've met in the nonprofit realm are rooting for us here at Naples Social Action, and many of those moral-supporters are actually helping us. Why wouldn't they? After all, our entire mission is to help them!
But I've bumped into a few organizations who don't get what we're about, or who maybe take my enthusiasm as too eccentric for their taste - or who, perhaps, see our desire to bring the community together as a threat to their hegemony.
To be just a tad more specific, three groups have actively decided not to work with us on joint fundraising projects, and one other organization - I've eluded to this one before - has pointedly ignored us. This one is one of several 800-pound gorillas in town, and I think they're afraid of us because we don't need them. They "help" nonprofits, we help nonprofits.... you can see their concern.
Thank you for your lack of support.
I'm the Hulk. With no resistance, I run the risk of mellowing out: when that happens to the Hulk, he relaxes. He goes from giant green monster to mild-mannered Dr. Bruce Banner.
Ah, but when someone tells me I can't do something... that's when I really shine!
I was a terrible student through eighth grade; the fact that my principal and most of my teachers thought that I was a failure inspired me to go to prep school (it was my idea) and I threw myself into my studies; two years later I transferred back to public school, crushed at my A-level and AP classes, graduated near the top of my class, and was off to a top-tier college. Thanks, guys, for underestimating me.
My junior year in high school, I finally qualified for the YMCA Nationals, but I was on the perennial national-champion team, and the coach had to select which qualifiers would travel. I learned I was not on his nationals list, and... let's just say, I made his team. By a lot. His failure to bet on me spurred me on to accomplish great things.
Fast-forward to my thirties. My employer, owner of a private English-language school in Boston, passed on my offer to partner up with her on a new venture I'd created. Spurned, I bided my time, laid my plans, and founded my own school. While not direct competitors with her - Coine Language School serves a different niche - we eat her lunch. If we saw any advantage to it, we'd buy her school. Oops.
Don't bet against me.
So now we're throwing the Animal Lovers' Parade, and two organizations have bowed out of participation: one told me they don't think we can possibly pull it off in two months. Thank God they did! I've got to show them - not that they were wrong in not participating, but that they were wrong, dead wrong, in underestimating my ability to pull it off.
Of course we can make our next venture a success. Of course! But how much better it will be now that I know someone is betting we'll fail.
The Hulk may not be all that smart, but he always wins. Always.
*N.B. - Okay, unlike the Hulk, I suppose I'm pretty bright. And just for the record, we have very good friends leading the United Way and the Wine Festival. These are not the afore-mentioned gorilla.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
In 40 Years Or So
I don't think a lot of people understand where I'm coming from when it comes to my obsession with our nonprofit endeavors, but Jane sure does, and that's the most important thing for me.
Without your spouse's support... good luck. But Jane isn't just supporting me; she's egging me on. Several times now, she's told me, "This is the best thing you've done yet. I have a good feeling about it."
Now, before I go on, let me point out that this is actually the best thing that we've done yet. Jane and I are running Naples Social Action together - the Coine Foundation, too. Maybe she gives me credit for these endeavors being mine because she doesn't spend quite 100 hours a week at it, or maybe because a lot of our ideas start in my head: I have an idea, I run it by her, and she fine-tunes it or laughs at me. So maybe to her, these are "my" ideas.
In any event, here is my story: anyone can get rich - I'm convinced of it; I know too many successful people to still think amassing a fortune is anything all that tough. When I focus on it, I'm pretty good at making money myself. So sure, it's great and all to build a business from scratch (Coine Language School), and then to do it again even faster (Coine Training). I doubt I'll ever abandon those endeavors.
But... well, forty years from now, when I imagine I'll have to start slowing down and limiting my work week some, what will I have? A pile of money? A lot of people I know would say, "Yeah, great!" A couple of businesses with my name on them? Again, this is a fine life's work in many people's eyes. I agree, those are two cool things to accomplish in life.
I want to accomplish something altogether more spectacular, though. And not alone, either. I want to inspire, guide, maybe even lead others to change the world - not just a little, but fundamentally.
Imagine a world without poverty. Or, if you're one of those "realistic" people who keeps getting in the way, let's try this on for size: imagine a world where poverty occurs in only two cases:
1. Temporarily, as when there is a major economic upheaval, or when a person first immigrates to a new country, and has to start at the bottom of the labor-ladder for a year or two before moving up, or...
2. By choice. Let's face it, some people will always make bad decisions. We would be denying our fellow humans a basic right by protecting them from themselves - that's called paternalism, and it's a scourge on society when not taken in small doses. If people choose to gamble their money away, abuse drugs, go into massive debt, or just be lazy and work very little, we can't stop them. So these people may very well be poor even after our best efforts have been expended.
However, very few people will make self-defeating choices throughout their lives. If we can eradicate poverty for most of us, and create a world where we assist those who choose to find a better way and stop being poor, then I'll feel our work is done.
How do we do it? Poverty eradication is all about providing poor people with the tools they need to lift themselves from their current state.
The poor need basic, living wages, so that they can at least keep their heads above water before they decide to swim with a business of their own.
The poor need credit - not all that much, just a tiny bit to get started in business for themselves.
The poor need freedom - capitalistic freedom to create wealth, without the impediment of government or corporate corruption. Many people flee the third world because those countries don't give their citizens a chance, no matter how hard or how smart those citizens are. If your tribe is out of power and so you can't get a business license, there's no way you can win.
People need peace. War can be necessary, but most conflicts are only destructive. When war hits a nation, people are often unable to care for themselves beyond merely surviving.
People need freedom from disease. How could we ever expect sub-Saharan Africa to lift itself from its current circle of despair and failure when half of some countries' adult populations are dying of AIDS? And what of Malaria, Typhus, Cholera...? Disease hasn't been a first-world problem for two generations. We've forgotten how it can shatter lives, and economies.
People need education. If you can't read, you can't get ahead. If you have never learned to add, it will be hard for you to balance your business's books. If you do not speak the language of your country, you can forget ever escaping poverty. In the 21st century, people will need to master technology on an ever-increasing scale. Without education, you just can't get ahead.
So why am I so obsessed with our nonprofit work? I hope this doesn't sound trite or corny, because for me it isn't at all: when I look back at my life's work, I want to be proud of myself. I want to say to my wife and children and close friends, "We've done something spectacular here. We've made a difference. We can rest now."
That's why I get up in the morning. And no pot of gold ever motivated me so well.
Without your spouse's support... good luck. But Jane isn't just supporting me; she's egging me on. Several times now, she's told me, "This is the best thing you've done yet. I have a good feeling about it."
Now, before I go on, let me point out that this is actually the best thing that we've done yet. Jane and I are running Naples Social Action together - the Coine Foundation, too. Maybe she gives me credit for these endeavors being mine because she doesn't spend quite 100 hours a week at it, or maybe because a lot of our ideas start in my head: I have an idea, I run it by her, and she fine-tunes it or laughs at me. So maybe to her, these are "my" ideas.
In any event, here is my story: anyone can get rich - I'm convinced of it; I know too many successful people to still think amassing a fortune is anything all that tough. When I focus on it, I'm pretty good at making money myself. So sure, it's great and all to build a business from scratch (Coine Language School), and then to do it again even faster (Coine Training). I doubt I'll ever abandon those endeavors.
But... well, forty years from now, when I imagine I'll have to start slowing down and limiting my work week some, what will I have? A pile of money? A lot of people I know would say, "Yeah, great!" A couple of businesses with my name on them? Again, this is a fine life's work in many people's eyes. I agree, those are two cool things to accomplish in life.
I want to accomplish something altogether more spectacular, though. And not alone, either. I want to inspire, guide, maybe even lead others to change the world - not just a little, but fundamentally.
Imagine a world without poverty. Or, if you're one of those "realistic" people who keeps getting in the way, let's try this on for size: imagine a world where poverty occurs in only two cases:
1. Temporarily, as when there is a major economic upheaval, or when a person first immigrates to a new country, and has to start at the bottom of the labor-ladder for a year or two before moving up, or...
2. By choice. Let's face it, some people will always make bad decisions. We would be denying our fellow humans a basic right by protecting them from themselves - that's called paternalism, and it's a scourge on society when not taken in small doses. If people choose to gamble their money away, abuse drugs, go into massive debt, or just be lazy and work very little, we can't stop them. So these people may very well be poor even after our best efforts have been expended.
However, very few people will make self-defeating choices throughout their lives. If we can eradicate poverty for most of us, and create a world where we assist those who choose to find a better way and stop being poor, then I'll feel our work is done.
How do we do it? Poverty eradication is all about providing poor people with the tools they need to lift themselves from their current state.
The poor need basic, living wages, so that they can at least keep their heads above water before they decide to swim with a business of their own.
The poor need credit - not all that much, just a tiny bit to get started in business for themselves.
The poor need freedom - capitalistic freedom to create wealth, without the impediment of government or corporate corruption. Many people flee the third world because those countries don't give their citizens a chance, no matter how hard or how smart those citizens are. If your tribe is out of power and so you can't get a business license, there's no way you can win.
People need peace. War can be necessary, but most conflicts are only destructive. When war hits a nation, people are often unable to care for themselves beyond merely surviving.
People need freedom from disease. How could we ever expect sub-Saharan Africa to lift itself from its current circle of despair and failure when half of some countries' adult populations are dying of AIDS? And what of Malaria, Typhus, Cholera...? Disease hasn't been a first-world problem for two generations. We've forgotten how it can shatter lives, and economies.
People need education. If you can't read, you can't get ahead. If you have never learned to add, it will be hard for you to balance your business's books. If you do not speak the language of your country, you can forget ever escaping poverty. In the 21st century, people will need to master technology on an ever-increasing scale. Without education, you just can't get ahead.
So why am I so obsessed with our nonprofit work? I hope this doesn't sound trite or corny, because for me it isn't at all: when I look back at my life's work, I want to be proud of myself. I want to say to my wife and children and close friends, "We've done something spectacular here. We've made a difference. We can rest now."
That's why I get up in the morning. And no pot of gold ever motivated me so well.
Monday, June 25, 2007
One Laptop Per Child Link
Here's the 60 Minutes story I referred to earlier today:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/20/60minutes/main2830058.shtml?source=search_story
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/20/60minutes/main2830058.shtml?source=search_story
Quote
"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."
-- Hellen Keller
Immokalee 2020 - more thoughts
Jane and I are still making contacts and collecting information about Immokalee. Jane is leading one mother's & children's family literacy class at Immokalee Non-Profit Housing (INPH) with the help of the talented Miss Sylvia; today I'll be following up with Habitat for Humanity about some of their residents joining us at INPH.
Meanwhile, as I said, we're trying to meet every player out there, and join the discussion on plans to rid Immokalee of poverty in the next 12 years. Here are some of the ideas we've been working on:
Attract more businesses to the trade zone at the airport. Help the airport become all that it can be in terms of flights and trade.
Attract higher-paying skilled-labor types of industries to the area. Immokalee has a sizable and trainable workforce. The problem with the Florida economy in general, though, is that the types of industry we have here are (a) limited in number and (b) much lower-paying than in the northeast and west coast. People in Immokalee don't just need jobs, they need jobs that pay well.
Back to the trade zone: there's a great incubator set up there with $1 per-foot rent, for instance, but it's underutilized. People don't just need jobs; we also have to encourage entrepreneurialism. Owning a business or being a partner in an enterprise means that we benefit more fully from our own labor. I'd rather see two hundred companies of five people each than ten companies with 100 employees each. Few people achieve wealth as employees.
Redefine expectations. Jane and I are passionate about not just making people less poor, but helping them strive for wealth. Why not? There is no reason that the children of Immokalee can't amass fortunes, if they choose, just as we'd expect the kids of Naples to. We have to change the entire conversation.
English and literacy are huge components of that effort. You can't get ahead in this country until you speak the language. We are going to make sure that every person in Immokalee has the same access to ESL and literacy education as the rest of us.
Toward that end, we are working to secure $900,000 to purchase 9,000 laptop computers, one for each child in the Immokalee school system. Yes, you read right: those computers will only cost $100 each. Right now Intel and MIT are test-driving competing versions of these remarkable laptops. I've blogged on this before; 60 Minutes ran a terrific profile on the One Laptop Per Child Innitiative less than a month ago.
Right now there's a 50% dropout rate at Immokalee High. We're going to work closely with the schools and social organizations to bring that to 0%. I've blogged on this before. There is no reason to accept failure.
I have made a number of extremely wealthy friends in my life - decamillionaires, centamillionaires; even a few billionaires. Some of those have agreed to speak to groups of high school kids around town, and to be featured in a high school textbook I am writing, in order to show at-risk kids the way to wealth. The people featured will be completely self-made, from poor or middle class backgrounds, and they will be active donors and volunteers.
Right now, poor workers are wasting their money on substandard housing. We will work with other groups to bring that to an end. We want affordable and humane housing for every resident of Immokalee, both year-round and migrant.
There is still slavery in Immokalee. No joke. In 2007. Just recently, the UN sent a human rights task force down here for three weeks. This slavery will end, well before 2020.
Gangs will be driven from the community.
Poor people deserve microcredit. If you haven't read Muhammad Yunnis' "Banker to the Poor," you need to. Right away. You're not an anti-poverty activist until you are familiar with his work - it's that important.
As I said, these are only a few of the ideas that we are promoting. Immokalee 2020 is going to be a massive effort, with people and groups contributing their time, effort, and treasure in many ways. We hope you join us.
Friday, June 22, 2007
My favorite 2 hours
Every Wednesday night I volunteer my time to teach an ESL (English as a Second Language) class at the East Naples headquarters of Literacy Volunteers of Collier County, on whose board I serve.
It is by far the best two hours of my always-fun week.
Alright, to be fair to Jane and the girls, it is the best two hours of my 100-hour work week. ...And at least 90 of those hours are fun, so this is saying something.
Why do I enjoy teaching ESL so much? Well, for one, I'm a ham, and this is my chance to have a captive audience for 120 minutes. That isn't so bad.
For another, I really enjoy helping people who need it. My students are motivated to learn (they're also there voluntarily), they need to learn to make a life here, and by learning English, their life is improving in every way - careerwise, socially, politically. Helping others is an addictive behavior, and I've been hooked for almost 12 years now.
There's one totally selfish pleasure I take from my ESL classes, though. I get to learn all about the rest of the world, from the people who are natives of the countries I study. I haven't traveled all that much - a lot in the US, but outside of that I've only been to Canada, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, and France (for a day).
But I've taught people from 78 different countries on 5 continents. Seeing their countries through their eyes gives you a perspective you can never get from a book, or even from a visit as a tourist. And, while one native may give you a limited perspective, when you teach 4 or a dozen or two hundred people from the same land, you can form a pretty good view of what life must be like there.
Take this past class as an example. I have students from Argentina, Colombia, and Cuba. I don't think I'd ever taught a Cuban before, so I'm learning about a new country. And while we all hear media reports about how so-called communism isn't very pleasant under the Castro Regime, I think the details can seem a little remote; I had missed them altogether, somehow.
Life in Cuba stinks. Physically, it's the jewel of the Caribbean, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But if you're a citizen... no thank you. I don't blame anyone for leaving.
For instance, people only make $20 a month there. Their medical needs are 100% free, which is nice. Housing is provided for them, such as it is; schooling, too. But food is rationed such that, playing by the rules, you'd starve. Adults are not allowed access to milk; only kids. You only get a couple of eggs a month - six, if I remember correctly. Even rice and bread are rationed. Playing by the rules, you can't possibly fill your stomach.
If you want to make it - at all - you have to participate in the black market. To get by, you have to be a thief. Employees at a grocery store steal food and sell the excess for a profit. Workers in a clothing factory do the same. Police take bribes to keep you out of jail if they catch you, say, driving drunk. Heaven help you if you can't pay your bribe. Heaven help your family if they're hit by a drunk driver who can afford to pay his bribes.
It is a felony to possess five pounds of coffee. Imagine that. If your cow is hit by a truck and dies, you'll go to jail for using its meat. You have to call the police, who will take it away "for" you.
Here's one that I especially love: a native Cuban on her honeymoon at a hotel will be kicked out of her room if a foreign tourist shows up in need of lodging. There's no recourse, because this is government policy. After all, Cuba's shipwrecked economy would be even worse off without those foreign dollars (or Euros or Pesos or Yen). Oh, and speaking of foreign currency: the government charges 22% to convert it. I got to teach the word racket at this point in our lesson, as in "What a racket!"
Cubans also suffer indignity in line at the store, government offices... anywhere there's a line, which is most places. Tourists are allowed straight to the front of the line, even if it's twenty-Cubans deep. Not bad if you're a tourist, though. At least, if you're a tourist without a conscience.
See why I teach English? You don't get this in a magazine, not even National Geographic. I may be helping my students master an essential life-skill. But the experience I get in return... this is a purely selfish endeavor for me.
If you don't teach ESL now, I hope you consider joining a volunteer program like the one at Literacy Volunteers of Collier County (www.Collierliteracy.org) or the Literacy Council of Bonita Springs (www.bonitaliteracy.org). Do it to help others in need, sure. But even more, do it for yourself.
It is by far the best two hours of my always-fun week.
Alright, to be fair to Jane and the girls, it is the best two hours of my 100-hour work week. ...And at least 90 of those hours are fun, so this is saying something.
Why do I enjoy teaching ESL so much? Well, for one, I'm a ham, and this is my chance to have a captive audience for 120 minutes. That isn't so bad.
For another, I really enjoy helping people who need it. My students are motivated to learn (they're also there voluntarily), they need to learn to make a life here, and by learning English, their life is improving in every way - careerwise, socially, politically. Helping others is an addictive behavior, and I've been hooked for almost 12 years now.
There's one totally selfish pleasure I take from my ESL classes, though. I get to learn all about the rest of the world, from the people who are natives of the countries I study. I haven't traveled all that much - a lot in the US, but outside of that I've only been to Canada, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, and France (for a day).
But I've taught people from 78 different countries on 5 continents. Seeing their countries through their eyes gives you a perspective you can never get from a book, or even from a visit as a tourist. And, while one native may give you a limited perspective, when you teach 4 or a dozen or two hundred people from the same land, you can form a pretty good view of what life must be like there.
Take this past class as an example. I have students from Argentina, Colombia, and Cuba. I don't think I'd ever taught a Cuban before, so I'm learning about a new country. And while we all hear media reports about how so-called communism isn't very pleasant under the Castro Regime, I think the details can seem a little remote; I had missed them altogether, somehow.
Life in Cuba stinks. Physically, it's the jewel of the Caribbean, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But if you're a citizen... no thank you. I don't blame anyone for leaving.
For instance, people only make $20 a month there. Their medical needs are 100% free, which is nice. Housing is provided for them, such as it is; schooling, too. But food is rationed such that, playing by the rules, you'd starve. Adults are not allowed access to milk; only kids. You only get a couple of eggs a month - six, if I remember correctly. Even rice and bread are rationed. Playing by the rules, you can't possibly fill your stomach.
If you want to make it - at all - you have to participate in the black market. To get by, you have to be a thief. Employees at a grocery store steal food and sell the excess for a profit. Workers in a clothing factory do the same. Police take bribes to keep you out of jail if they catch you, say, driving drunk. Heaven help you if you can't pay your bribe. Heaven help your family if they're hit by a drunk driver who can afford to pay his bribes.
It is a felony to possess five pounds of coffee. Imagine that. If your cow is hit by a truck and dies, you'll go to jail for using its meat. You have to call the police, who will take it away "for" you.
Here's one that I especially love: a native Cuban on her honeymoon at a hotel will be kicked out of her room if a foreign tourist shows up in need of lodging. There's no recourse, because this is government policy. After all, Cuba's shipwrecked economy would be even worse off without those foreign dollars (or Euros or Pesos or Yen). Oh, and speaking of foreign currency: the government charges 22% to convert it. I got to teach the word racket at this point in our lesson, as in "What a racket!"
Cubans also suffer indignity in line at the store, government offices... anywhere there's a line, which is most places. Tourists are allowed straight to the front of the line, even if it's twenty-Cubans deep. Not bad if you're a tourist, though. At least, if you're a tourist without a conscience.
See why I teach English? You don't get this in a magazine, not even National Geographic. I may be helping my students master an essential life-skill. But the experience I get in return... this is a purely selfish endeavor for me.
If you don't teach ESL now, I hope you consider joining a volunteer program like the one at Literacy Volunteers of Collier County (www.Collierliteracy.org) or the Literacy Council of Bonita Springs (www.bonitaliteracy.org). Do it to help others in need, sure. But even more, do it for yourself.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Nonprofit Websites
Alright, guys, here's the deal: if you run a nonprofit and your website's latest news is from 2004, or even January 2007, you're dropping the ball. There are plenty of potential donors and volunteers out there who are Internet savvy, and who will pass on helping you because your website lets them down.
A website is a really cool brochure. It is an arm of your sales force. It's pretty cheap compared to other types of marketing (paying sales pros, buying ads; mass mailings). As a business consultant - and don't kid yourself, a nonprofit is very much a business - I am here to tell you, invest your energy in your online presence.
It doesn't have to be fancy. Sharp looking, yes, but frilly graphics can actually distract from your message, and they can also frustrate people who still use DSL or, Heaven forbid, dial up.
If you run the local branch of a national organization, CREATE YOUR OWN WEBSITE! I'll use the following two links as examples.
This one I find incredibly frustrating: www.americanheart.org. How do I find out about my local chapter? I can call, write them a letter, or drop by, sure. But if I want to find out about goings on of my local chapter of the American Heart Association on, say, Sunday evening, I'll have to wait. As far as I can tell, they have no local website.
Note: this is a cause Coine has given to in the past, and we will again in the future. The Heart Association does great work.
Now here's another pair of links that are dead-on: www.bgca.org - on the Boys & Girls' Club's national site, you can look up your chapter and follow the link to your local club's site.
www.bgccc.com - and here is said local site. The local guys clearly said, "Hey, we've got important work to do, and we're going to get it done. Let's make a site of our own."
A website is a really cool brochure. It is an arm of your sales force. It's pretty cheap compared to other types of marketing (paying sales pros, buying ads; mass mailings). As a business consultant - and don't kid yourself, a nonprofit is very much a business - I am here to tell you, invest your energy in your online presence.
It doesn't have to be fancy. Sharp looking, yes, but frilly graphics can actually distract from your message, and they can also frustrate people who still use DSL or, Heaven forbid, dial up.
If you run the local branch of a national organization, CREATE YOUR OWN WEBSITE! I'll use the following two links as examples.
This one I find incredibly frustrating: www.americanheart.org. How do I find out about my local chapter? I can call, write them a letter, or drop by, sure. But if I want to find out about goings on of my local chapter of the American Heart Association on, say, Sunday evening, I'll have to wait. As far as I can tell, they have no local website.
Note: this is a cause Coine has given to in the past, and we will again in the future. The Heart Association does great work.
Now here's another pair of links that are dead-on: www.bgca.org - on the Boys & Girls' Club's national site, you can look up your chapter and follow the link to your local club's site.
www.bgccc.com - and here is said local site. The local guys clearly said, "Hey, we've got important work to do, and we're going to get it done. Let's make a site of our own."
2007-8 Season
We've gotten a lot of inquiries lately, so here's the story: very few organizations have chosen dates for their fundraisers for the coming season.
Unfortunately, quite a number of groups are waiting for their peers to commit, so that they can schedule their fundraisers accordingly. This is a chicken-and-egg scenario, and the chickens aren't laying.
What can I say? Stay tuned.
Unfortunately, quite a number of groups are waiting for their peers to commit, so that they can schedule their fundraisers accordingly. This is a chicken-and-egg scenario, and the chickens aren't laying.
What can I say? Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Some of our projects
As you read over the things we've been up to, I hope you keep in mind that this isn't all one guy or one couple running around town trying to do everything at once. There are a lot of people involved in these endeavors. After all, collaboration is what we're all about.
3rd Annual CAN Ride. I've been putting this fun fundraiser together for about 3 weeks now. We now have a list of about a dozen volunteers pitching in, and we'll be adding to that list from now through the day of.
This is vitally important to the success of NSA. I'm getting an education in how to run an event, starting almost from scratch. This is how I have to do things: I master a particular area of endeavor, and then I can coach those who take over for me. Call it Six Sigma if you like.
I'm also getting to know folks around town. I'll know which sponsors to tap first for future events.
For more information on the CAN Ride, held July 14, visit http://www.naplessocialaction.org/. You can print up the registration form from the home page, or register via http://www.active.com/.
1st Annual Animal Lovers' Parade. We've already started putting this together. I'm focused on the CAN Ride, but there's even some overlap here (riders for CAN and participants in the Animal Lovers' Parade will in many cases be the same people.)
To get all the goods on the Parade, go to Sept. 15th on our calendar: http://www.naplessocialaction.org/.
Naples Social Action is about to be spun off of the Coine Foundation - stay tuned for that. As an independent entity, NSA will have two main functions: its calendar, and raising money for other nonprofits. We will host a fundraiser every month toward that end, starting in September with the Animal Lovers' Parade.
NSA will raise funds for the Coine Foundation, and will provide the administrative support it needs. In this way, 100% of the funding our public foundation receives will go directly to those who need our help, through the employment of teachers.
You can't compete with a nonprofit that has a terrific mission and is 100% cost-effective.
E-Newsletter. The first issue of the Naples Social Action e-newsletter was very well received by the 150 people on our emailing list. Issue #2 is due out later this week. You can access our archive on the NSA website.
The newsletter consists of a calendar of events for the next two weeks, general announcements, and our favorite section, "Neapolitans of Note," an interview with one special member of our community.
To get on our email list, contact me directly: ted.coine@coineinc.com.
Immokalee 2020. This is a huge and very compelling project. At the moment, we're developing the concept and involving many of the key players. Once NSA is humming along smoothly, this is where Jane and I will be putting most of our effort.
The Coine Foundation. Currently, Jane is teaching at Immokalee Non-Profit Housing (INPH). She leads the English as a Second Language (ESL) class for mothers while an INPH staffer teaches their pre-preschool children.
This is our pilot class; we've never held a free ESL class, so we're tweeking the model. Our biggest issue seems to be student commitment: we humans don't value what we don't have to struggle for. When you offer a free class, students don't seem to value it as much as when you charge them. Once we get this figured out, we'll expand the program. We have several other nonprofits that are on the wait list for these classes.
I'll write more about the mission and function of the Coine Foundation in a future entry. http://www.coinefoundation.org/.
The Naples English-Language Council (NELC). The theme of everything we at Coine do in our nonprofit endeavors is collaboration. Toward that end, we have formed NELC in order to bring together all of the groups and teachers of ESL in our community. We will share lessons, coordinate efforts among different ESL providers, and serve as an advocate for the needs of the immigrant community. This week or next, we will set the date and location for the first monthly NELC meeting.
NELC has ten member-groups and counting.
Professional Development Seminars. Jane and I travel the country teaching businesses how to become more successful through leadership, culture-building, and customer service. So why not share our expertise here at home, and serve good causes while we do it? Toward that end, we will soon unveil our monthly training schedule. All proceeds will benefit charity.
To learn more about what we do, visit http://www.coinetraining.com/.
Social Enterprise League. This one is currently nothing more than a conversation we're having with some other friends who also own businesses. The gist is that a Social Enterprise is a for-profit business that dedicates all or a significant portion of its profits (minimum 10%) to charity. Coine, Inc. is a social enterprise. Currently, 100% of our profits are dedicated to Naples Social Action and the Coine Foundation. Yes, we pay ourselves a decent salary first. We're not saints, just philanthropists.
The Coine Foundation is working on an annual certification process. Social Entrepreneurs will sign a contract for the coming year, in which they pledge a certain portion of their profits to charity. For that they will be awarded a Social Enterprise certificate, which they can use in all of their literature and on their websites. We will audit those companies at the end of each year to make sure that they have complied. Those that do will be given Social Enterprise status for the following year.
Think this is nuts? Are you saying to yourself, "Who on earth would agree to participate?" Plenty of business owners will not. But some already give over 10%, and some give close to it. There is a lot of random giving - maybe this year, 9%, last year 23%, next year 4%. If we guide that giving through a conscious commitment, then everybody wins.
...And this is how the business owner wins, even if he isn't motivated by altruism: he will attract and keep the best workers. Once their basic needs are met, people immediately seek meaning in their work. Employment with a social enterprise will be more desirable to the vast majority of workers, and so those companies that show their commitment to the community (local and global) will attract the best people.
Companies will be pressured by their employees and customers to do business with peer organizations, rather than non-philanthropic for-profits. Buyers will say, "I can shop at this store or this store. I can buy this product or that product. All other things being equal" - and in the case of mature businesses that sell commodities, all other things are usually equal - "I'm going to patronize the social enterprise."
I wish I'd made this up myself - what a genius I'd be! But I'm just building on the ideas of two visionaries. The first is Paul Newman; Newman's own is a for-profit, because of tax laws: you can't sell salad dressing as a nonprofit, because it competes with the private sector. But they give all of their profits to charity. They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars for just that purpose over the years.
The second visionary is Muhammad Yunnis, author of "Banker to the Poor" and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with microlending. Toward the end of that book, Dr. Yunnis describes his Socially-Conscious Entrepreneur, which I've shortened to Social Enterprise for reasons of catchiness. I can't do his work justice in a few lines. I highly recommend you buy - and read - his book. Click on the Amazon link at www.naplessocialaction.org and a portion of your sale will go to a great cause.
3rd Annual CAN Ride. I've been putting this fun fundraiser together for about 3 weeks now. We now have a list of about a dozen volunteers pitching in, and we'll be adding to that list from now through the day of.
This is vitally important to the success of NSA. I'm getting an education in how to run an event, starting almost from scratch. This is how I have to do things: I master a particular area of endeavor, and then I can coach those who take over for me. Call it Six Sigma if you like.
I'm also getting to know folks around town. I'll know which sponsors to tap first for future events.
For more information on the CAN Ride, held July 14, visit http://www.naplessocialaction.org/. You can print up the registration form from the home page, or register via http://www.active.com/.
1st Annual Animal Lovers' Parade. We've already started putting this together. I'm focused on the CAN Ride, but there's even some overlap here (riders for CAN and participants in the Animal Lovers' Parade will in many cases be the same people.)
To get all the goods on the Parade, go to Sept. 15th on our calendar: http://www.naplessocialaction.org/.
Naples Social Action is about to be spun off of the Coine Foundation - stay tuned for that. As an independent entity, NSA will have two main functions: its calendar, and raising money for other nonprofits. We will host a fundraiser every month toward that end, starting in September with the Animal Lovers' Parade.
NSA will raise funds for the Coine Foundation, and will provide the administrative support it needs. In this way, 100% of the funding our public foundation receives will go directly to those who need our help, through the employment of teachers.
You can't compete with a nonprofit that has a terrific mission and is 100% cost-effective.
E-Newsletter. The first issue of the Naples Social Action e-newsletter was very well received by the 150 people on our emailing list. Issue #2 is due out later this week. You can access our archive on the NSA website.
The newsletter consists of a calendar of events for the next two weeks, general announcements, and our favorite section, "Neapolitans of Note," an interview with one special member of our community.
To get on our email list, contact me directly: ted.coine@coineinc.com.
Immokalee 2020. This is a huge and very compelling project. At the moment, we're developing the concept and involving many of the key players. Once NSA is humming along smoothly, this is where Jane and I will be putting most of our effort.
The Coine Foundation. Currently, Jane is teaching at Immokalee Non-Profit Housing (INPH). She leads the English as a Second Language (ESL) class for mothers while an INPH staffer teaches their pre-preschool children.
This is our pilot class; we've never held a free ESL class, so we're tweeking the model. Our biggest issue seems to be student commitment: we humans don't value what we don't have to struggle for. When you offer a free class, students don't seem to value it as much as when you charge them. Once we get this figured out, we'll expand the program. We have several other nonprofits that are on the wait list for these classes.
I'll write more about the mission and function of the Coine Foundation in a future entry. http://www.coinefoundation.org/.
The Naples English-Language Council (NELC). The theme of everything we at Coine do in our nonprofit endeavors is collaboration. Toward that end, we have formed NELC in order to bring together all of the groups and teachers of ESL in our community. We will share lessons, coordinate efforts among different ESL providers, and serve as an advocate for the needs of the immigrant community. This week or next, we will set the date and location for the first monthly NELC meeting.
NELC has ten member-groups and counting.
Professional Development Seminars. Jane and I travel the country teaching businesses how to become more successful through leadership, culture-building, and customer service. So why not share our expertise here at home, and serve good causes while we do it? Toward that end, we will soon unveil our monthly training schedule. All proceeds will benefit charity.
To learn more about what we do, visit http://www.coinetraining.com/.
Social Enterprise League. This one is currently nothing more than a conversation we're having with some other friends who also own businesses. The gist is that a Social Enterprise is a for-profit business that dedicates all or a significant portion of its profits (minimum 10%) to charity. Coine, Inc. is a social enterprise. Currently, 100% of our profits are dedicated to Naples Social Action and the Coine Foundation. Yes, we pay ourselves a decent salary first. We're not saints, just philanthropists.
The Coine Foundation is working on an annual certification process. Social Entrepreneurs will sign a contract for the coming year, in which they pledge a certain portion of their profits to charity. For that they will be awarded a Social Enterprise certificate, which they can use in all of their literature and on their websites. We will audit those companies at the end of each year to make sure that they have complied. Those that do will be given Social Enterprise status for the following year.
Think this is nuts? Are you saying to yourself, "Who on earth would agree to participate?" Plenty of business owners will not. But some already give over 10%, and some give close to it. There is a lot of random giving - maybe this year, 9%, last year 23%, next year 4%. If we guide that giving through a conscious commitment, then everybody wins.
...And this is how the business owner wins, even if he isn't motivated by altruism: he will attract and keep the best workers. Once their basic needs are met, people immediately seek meaning in their work. Employment with a social enterprise will be more desirable to the vast majority of workers, and so those companies that show their commitment to the community (local and global) will attract the best people.
Companies will be pressured by their employees and customers to do business with peer organizations, rather than non-philanthropic for-profits. Buyers will say, "I can shop at this store or this store. I can buy this product or that product. All other things being equal" - and in the case of mature businesses that sell commodities, all other things are usually equal - "I'm going to patronize the social enterprise."
I wish I'd made this up myself - what a genius I'd be! But I'm just building on the ideas of two visionaries. The first is Paul Newman; Newman's own is a for-profit, because of tax laws: you can't sell salad dressing as a nonprofit, because it competes with the private sector. But they give all of their profits to charity. They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars for just that purpose over the years.
The second visionary is Muhammad Yunnis, author of "Banker to the Poor" and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with microlending. Toward the end of that book, Dr. Yunnis describes his Socially-Conscious Entrepreneur, which I've shortened to Social Enterprise for reasons of catchiness. I can't do his work justice in a few lines. I highly recommend you buy - and read - his book. Click on the Amazon link at www.naplessocialaction.org and a portion of your sale will go to a great cause.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Compassion, purely for our own sake
The following is my reply to a piece in today's Naples Daily News by Jeff Lytle, editor of the editorial page. This refers to a cover story that ran in the Daily News a week ago, and about which I have blogged previously this week.
Hi Jeff,
I disagree with your stand on the Cynthia Lopez article. While I could try to convince you that we should be compassionate, I’m going to try a different tack instead: we legals need to protect our own interests in cases like Cynthia’s.
The dropout rate of Hispanics (legal and otherwise) in this country, and this area, is huge. Immokalee has a 50% dropout rate, for instance.
Hispanics are disproportionately poor. They are below average in college matriculation as well.
Dropouts, Hispanics, and poor people commit more crimes than the average population. Poor people, legal and illegal alike, are also a drag on our economy.*
For all of these reasons, it is in our very selfish interest to help good, ambitious students such as Cynthia attend college and enter the middle- and upper- economic classes. We need her example. Paying for a few Cynthias to go to school as in-state students is going to return the investment many times over through the inspiration and hope it gives those who follow her.
To fight crime and poverty, we need to treat Cynthia just like she is a legal resident of this state. That’s it. That’s my pitch. Call it Enlightened Self-Interest.
It is often the case that our gut reaction to a problem is less effective than a carefully thought-through solution. Acting in moral indignation may make us feel good, but it only rarely gets the results we really want.
Thanks for making me think, Ted
[Note: I think that Hispanics are over-represented in jail and under-represented in college because many children fail to see opportunity for themselves; they lack hope. I do not think that they are culturally, mentally, or genetically inferior in any way. They're people, neither better nor worse than the rest of us.]
Hi Jeff,
I disagree with your stand on the Cynthia Lopez article. While I could try to convince you that we should be compassionate, I’m going to try a different tack instead: we legals need to protect our own interests in cases like Cynthia’s.
The dropout rate of Hispanics (legal and otherwise) in this country, and this area, is huge. Immokalee has a 50% dropout rate, for instance.
Hispanics are disproportionately poor. They are below average in college matriculation as well.
Dropouts, Hispanics, and poor people commit more crimes than the average population. Poor people, legal and illegal alike, are also a drag on our economy.*
For all of these reasons, it is in our very selfish interest to help good, ambitious students such as Cynthia attend college and enter the middle- and upper- economic classes. We need her example. Paying for a few Cynthias to go to school as in-state students is going to return the investment many times over through the inspiration and hope it gives those who follow her.
To fight crime and poverty, we need to treat Cynthia just like she is a legal resident of this state. That’s it. That’s my pitch. Call it Enlightened Self-Interest.
It is often the case that our gut reaction to a problem is less effective than a carefully thought-through solution. Acting in moral indignation may make us feel good, but it only rarely gets the results we really want.
Thanks for making me think, Ted
[Note: I think that Hispanics are over-represented in jail and under-represented in college because many children fail to see opportunity for themselves; they lack hope. I do not think that they are culturally, mentally, or genetically inferior in any way. They're people, neither better nor worse than the rest of us.]
Friday, June 8, 2007
Immokalee 20/20
Introducing Immokalee 2020.
The mission of Immokalee 2020 is to completely end poverty in Immokalee by the year 2020, creating a model for the elimination of poverty throughout the United States and the world.
We've got twelve and a half years. People have built billion-dollar companies in less time. Here's my question to doubting Thomases out there: "Why the hell not?"
We will begin exporting our model and effort immediately. I see no need to wait even a week before we bring Golden Gate and East Naples into the fold. But Jane and I have settled on the name Immokalee to focus attention on the single greatest need in our area - perhaps in the entire country. We've traveled extensively within the US, and we've never seen a place like Immokalee.
Fortunately, the organizations and the will are both already in place to fix whatever needs fixing there. All we lack is a clear vision, seamless coordination, and the money to fund it.
A number of groups are already coming to the table to create solutions for this community. I joined one such junta-in-the-making three weeks ago; it was inspiring! I'm happy to say that the Coine Foundation is coming late to this party. We're glad to be invited.
We're going to join the group of players to help create a clear vision for Immokalee by 2020 (get the play on words? Too bad the TV news journal already coined it decades ago. We'd love to take credit.) And we're going to fight tooth & nail to make that vision a reality.
I hope you join us. It's going to be fun.
The mission of Immokalee 2020 is to completely end poverty in Immokalee by the year 2020, creating a model for the elimination of poverty throughout the United States and the world.
We've got twelve and a half years. People have built billion-dollar companies in less time. Here's my question to doubting Thomases out there: "Why the hell not?"
We will begin exporting our model and effort immediately. I see no need to wait even a week before we bring Golden Gate and East Naples into the fold. But Jane and I have settled on the name Immokalee to focus attention on the single greatest need in our area - perhaps in the entire country. We've traveled extensively within the US, and we've never seen a place like Immokalee.
Fortunately, the organizations and the will are both already in place to fix whatever needs fixing there. All we lack is a clear vision, seamless coordination, and the money to fund it.
A number of groups are already coming to the table to create solutions for this community. I joined one such junta-in-the-making three weeks ago; it was inspiring! I'm happy to say that the Coine Foundation is coming late to this party. We're glad to be invited.
We're going to join the group of players to help create a clear vision for Immokalee by 2020 (get the play on words? Too bad the TV news journal already coined it decades ago. We'd love to take credit.) And we're going to fight tooth & nail to make that vision a reality.
I hope you join us. It's going to be fun.
College-Bound?
Our daughters will go to college, almost certainly top-tier schools.
I say this with certainty because that is who we are, as a family. Coines are smart, we're hard-working, and we go to college. All of us, for generations. We have Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, MIT, and other elite schools in our pedigree. Success and failure in our family is measured not by college versus no college, but by the reputation of the college. Even the less-motivated students among our clan go to pretty good schools.
Note I wrote "less-motivated," rather than stupid or lazy. We're all smart, even those of us who don't achieve as actively as the rest. That's who we are.
That isn't just our family, either. It is our class. Though few in my family line have ever been even financially comfortable, not to mention well-off, we view ourselves as upper middle class. Upper middle class people go to college. They live in towns like Westport, Connecticut and Naples, Florida. They are teachers and professors, doctors, lawyers, business executives, entrepreneurs, and artists. Their kids go to college.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Ayla and Maryn are college-bound because they are growing up in the right family for such things. They live in the right neighborhood. Their friends and role models are all of the class that assumes college.
There's nothing wrong with this - au contraire! There's everything right about it. We Coines, we upper-middle-class types, assume success. It isn't even a question. So guess what follows, by default?
When I was a kid, no one ever asked me if I would go to college. Not once, not ever. I was asked where I would go, all the time; what I would be when I grew up. My first answer was architect, until I realized it involved more math than art. I moved on to "Psychologist (Ph.D., of course) if I fail; novelist if I succeed." I was eight when I made this career change. I didn't change my mind again until my fifth year of college, when I substituted entrepreneur for psychologist as my fall-back position.
When I was in high school, every last kid in my graduating class went on to college. 443 out of 443. And I never knew of one pregnancy among my peers. I'm sure they happened - what are the chances they wouldn't? But not one girl in my high school had a baby. Not one, out of almost 2,000 kids. I didn't meet anyone who knew of a teen mother until I left for college: not every one of my college friends came from an affluent town.
See what I'm getting at?
Our daughters are destined for college, and for an upper-middle-class (UMC) life. No matter what happens to them along the way, UMC will be their expectation, and it will be their default position. If they fail for a while, they will surely rise, because UMC is their level of comfort. It is where they experience equilibrium. It is in their DNA.
...Except that it isn't in their DNA, not at all. Imagine if they were born in Immokalee, or Golden Gate, or East Naples - still white, still beautiful, with quick brains full of potential, but poor, surrounded by poverty, their life-models, peers, and every expectation poor. UMC? They wouldn't even identify with the lower-middle-class.
In that case, what would we say about them? That they will go to college? That they may go to college? That they can go to college?
I'll tell you exactly what we'd say, because this is what my peers and I discuss when we talk about transforming lives in the poor areas of our community.
We'd say that they will probably get pregnant and go on welfare while still a teen. That they'll most likely drop out of high school. That if we can just keep them out of gangs and off the streets, that will be a great success. That we'd like to provide them with a trade, so that they can do better than just picking tomatoes or cleaning toilets at the Holiday Inn.
We would expect them to fail. Mitigating failure is seen as a great success.
My colleagues and I rarely talk about bridging the gap between Immokalee and Port Royal. Mostly, we talk about helping poor kids bridge the gap between their current expectation and a living wage.
How can we even talk about kids now living in Mexico, or Nigeria, or Bangladesh? It's too overwhelming. For half of the people on earth, eating every day is more of a goal than college may ever be. Just getting to Immokalee so they can live twenty to a dilapidated trailer is what they live their lives for. How can we even talk about helping these people go to a top-tier college, or move to Port Royal?
I hate this. I hate it so badly, it wakes me up at 4 am. I hate it so badly that I've all but stopped working on my businesses. I can't stand the thought that we'd all be happy just to help people waste their lives less than they are now; that no one's even discussing making the socio-economic scale equally accessible to all.
I'm eternally grateful that Jane and I were raised with the expectation of success, and that our girls are being raised the same way. I love Port Royal. I love it so much, I want everyone to live in a neighborhood just like it.
...Or to fail so miserably that they're forced to settle for Pelican Bay.
Why aren't we having that discussion for the poor kids in Immokalee, and Golden Gate, and East Naples, and Nepal?
I say this with certainty because that is who we are, as a family. Coines are smart, we're hard-working, and we go to college. All of us, for generations. We have Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, MIT, and other elite schools in our pedigree. Success and failure in our family is measured not by college versus no college, but by the reputation of the college. Even the less-motivated students among our clan go to pretty good schools.
Note I wrote "less-motivated," rather than stupid or lazy. We're all smart, even those of us who don't achieve as actively as the rest. That's who we are.
That isn't just our family, either. It is our class. Though few in my family line have ever been even financially comfortable, not to mention well-off, we view ourselves as upper middle class. Upper middle class people go to college. They live in towns like Westport, Connecticut and Naples, Florida. They are teachers and professors, doctors, lawyers, business executives, entrepreneurs, and artists. Their kids go to college.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Ayla and Maryn are college-bound because they are growing up in the right family for such things. They live in the right neighborhood. Their friends and role models are all of the class that assumes college.
There's nothing wrong with this - au contraire! There's everything right about it. We Coines, we upper-middle-class types, assume success. It isn't even a question. So guess what follows, by default?
When I was a kid, no one ever asked me if I would go to college. Not once, not ever. I was asked where I would go, all the time; what I would be when I grew up. My first answer was architect, until I realized it involved more math than art. I moved on to "Psychologist (Ph.D., of course) if I fail; novelist if I succeed." I was eight when I made this career change. I didn't change my mind again until my fifth year of college, when I substituted entrepreneur for psychologist as my fall-back position.
When I was in high school, every last kid in my graduating class went on to college. 443 out of 443. And I never knew of one pregnancy among my peers. I'm sure they happened - what are the chances they wouldn't? But not one girl in my high school had a baby. Not one, out of almost 2,000 kids. I didn't meet anyone who knew of a teen mother until I left for college: not every one of my college friends came from an affluent town.
See what I'm getting at?
Our daughters are destined for college, and for an upper-middle-class (UMC) life. No matter what happens to them along the way, UMC will be their expectation, and it will be their default position. If they fail for a while, they will surely rise, because UMC is their level of comfort. It is where they experience equilibrium. It is in their DNA.
...Except that it isn't in their DNA, not at all. Imagine if they were born in Immokalee, or Golden Gate, or East Naples - still white, still beautiful, with quick brains full of potential, but poor, surrounded by poverty, their life-models, peers, and every expectation poor. UMC? They wouldn't even identify with the lower-middle-class.
In that case, what would we say about them? That they will go to college? That they may go to college? That they can go to college?
I'll tell you exactly what we'd say, because this is what my peers and I discuss when we talk about transforming lives in the poor areas of our community.
We'd say that they will probably get pregnant and go on welfare while still a teen. That they'll most likely drop out of high school. That if we can just keep them out of gangs and off the streets, that will be a great success. That we'd like to provide them with a trade, so that they can do better than just picking tomatoes or cleaning toilets at the Holiday Inn.
We would expect them to fail. Mitigating failure is seen as a great success.
My colleagues and I rarely talk about bridging the gap between Immokalee and Port Royal. Mostly, we talk about helping poor kids bridge the gap between their current expectation and a living wage.
How can we even talk about kids now living in Mexico, or Nigeria, or Bangladesh? It's too overwhelming. For half of the people on earth, eating every day is more of a goal than college may ever be. Just getting to Immokalee so they can live twenty to a dilapidated trailer is what they live their lives for. How can we even talk about helping these people go to a top-tier college, or move to Port Royal?
I hate this. I hate it so badly, it wakes me up at 4 am. I hate it so badly that I've all but stopped working on my businesses. I can't stand the thought that we'd all be happy just to help people waste their lives less than they are now; that no one's even discussing making the socio-economic scale equally accessible to all.
I'm eternally grateful that Jane and I were raised with the expectation of success, and that our girls are being raised the same way. I love Port Royal. I love it so much, I want everyone to live in a neighborhood just like it.
...Or to fail so miserably that they're forced to settle for Pelican Bay.
Why aren't we having that discussion for the poor kids in Immokalee, and Golden Gate, and East Naples, and Nepal?
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
The need for our calendar hits close to home
How frustrating.
We created our online calendar to help nonprofits schedule their fundraising events so as not to conflict with each other. So it's ironic to find that the very first fundraiser hosted by Naples Social Action is now competing with the Naples Zoo's event.
As Homer Simpson would say, "Dou!"
July 14th, our bicyclists will leave Cambier Park at 7 am.
At 8 am, members of the zoo will be given a pre-opening look at the new Jaguar exhibit.
At 9 am, our Tykes Bike around Cambier Park takes off.
Around that same time, the general public is welcome to enter the zoo for this huge media sensation.
The Cancer Alliance of Naples and the Coine Foundation/Naples Social Action are competing for the very same demographic - families - as the Naples Zoo. Both events, and all three groups, lose.
Well, if it makes us feel any better, we set our date first. If we want to feel morally superior, the zoo already had their password to our calendar, so they certainly knew to check the calendar.
But what are you going to do? What would you do?
Our answer? Suck it up. We're listing their event on our calendar anyway, because that is in keeping with the mission of Naples Social Action. We've also invited them to participate in our next fundraiser, the "Animal Lovers' Parade," to be held on Sept 15th. One-time competitors or not, we love animals and we love the Naples Zoo. If they win, how can we lose?
At least we learned empathy from this experience. Now we know first-hand what all of the other nonprofits around town have been living with for generations: the frustration of overlapping fundraisers.
Once we've cleaned up Cambier Park after our event, Jane and I are going to take the girls to the zoo to see the jaguars. We hope you'll ride with us, and then join us at the zoo. That way, everyone wins!
We created our online calendar to help nonprofits schedule their fundraising events so as not to conflict with each other. So it's ironic to find that the very first fundraiser hosted by Naples Social Action is now competing with the Naples Zoo's event.
As Homer Simpson would say, "Dou!"
July 14th, our bicyclists will leave Cambier Park at 7 am.
At 8 am, members of the zoo will be given a pre-opening look at the new Jaguar exhibit.
At 9 am, our Tykes Bike around Cambier Park takes off.
Around that same time, the general public is welcome to enter the zoo for this huge media sensation.
The Cancer Alliance of Naples and the Coine Foundation/Naples Social Action are competing for the very same demographic - families - as the Naples Zoo. Both events, and all three groups, lose.
Well, if it makes us feel any better, we set our date first. If we want to feel morally superior, the zoo already had their password to our calendar, so they certainly knew to check the calendar.
But what are you going to do? What would you do?
Our answer? Suck it up. We're listing their event on our calendar anyway, because that is in keeping with the mission of Naples Social Action. We've also invited them to participate in our next fundraiser, the "Animal Lovers' Parade," to be held on Sept 15th. One-time competitors or not, we love animals and we love the Naples Zoo. If they win, how can we lose?
At least we learned empathy from this experience. Now we know first-hand what all of the other nonprofits around town have been living with for generations: the frustration of overlapping fundraisers.
Once we've cleaned up Cambier Park after our event, Jane and I are going to take the girls to the zoo to see the jaguars. We hope you'll ride with us, and then join us at the zoo. That way, everyone wins!
Monday, June 4, 2007
Poverty Sucks
My sister Ahndi had a poster that said that when we were kids. On it was a picture of a guy all decked out in a three-piece suit and top hat, one foot propped up on the fender of his Rolls Royce, raising a glass of champagne.
Brilliant!
...And true. Poverty sucks. A lot.
Let me begin this by explaining that we have a company up in Boston, Coine Language School, that has been valued at $10 million. We assessed its value about eighteen months ago, when we were considering selling stock in order to grow more quickly. We backed away, at least for the time being, but that's another story. The bottom line is, between the income we receive from our school in Boston and our speaking fees when we travel (my fee is five figures per day), Jane and I are not in actual danger of being poor in the foreseeable future.
I say that because, in the real-life experiment I'm about to share, I don't want to mislead you into thinking that we're "walking the talk" all the way. No matter our temporary situation, in the backs of our minds we are both well aware that we can bail ourselves out at any moment.
Psychologically, the fact that one has no resources to fall back on, no safety net, can be crippling. We are subjecting ourselves to a tight budget, as you're about to read, but we have not taken away our financial parachute.
Having said all that.... Jane and I decided a few months ago that we were spoiled by our lifestyle, and that we ran the risk of losing empathy with the people we are most dedicated to helping.
Yes, we were struggling just five years ago, and true, our companies have had their ups and downs all along - that's business, after all. But in the last two or three years we haven't really denied ourselves anything. I wanted a red European convertible, so I bought one. When we felt like going to dinner, we would, and never worried about the bill. 40 hours of daytime babysitting per week plus occasional nights, maid service once or twice a week, a full-time personal assistant, a book keeper for our personal income, a "you want it, you buy it" policy toward shopping, expensive clothes... we were living the affluent lifestyle of the upper middle class.
So we stopped. We've put ourselves on a budget that is, well, stifling. We don't go out to eat anymore. The last time we did was for Jane's birthday a month ago. We ate at Bice on Fifth Avenue. All we had was one appetizer, two salads, and two glasses of wine. It was still about $1 million, and it pained us to pay that bill - even though my Mom was paying half as her present to Jane. Our cousins were babysitting, or else it never would have happened.
We've gone from two babysitters to one babysitter to haven't had a sitter in weeks now. Master's swim team or Rotary? - which is basically a choice between health or business. I haven't made that kind of choice in years. Jane's bargain shopping for all of our groceries, and so each week she visits four or more stores in order to piece together the cheapest options, and we're going without a lot of our favorite food.
We have basic basic cable, and only have it at all because it's cheaper to bundle phone, Internet (a business necessity), and cable than to just have two. We've changed our cell phone calling plan, another luxury we never thought twice about. Jane and I are sharing her car, the Honda CRV, because (a) my Saab needs a repair which we haven't budgeted right now, and (b) its "turbo sport" mechanics sure use an awful lot of gas. At $3.10 or more per gallon, we had to draw the line. My sister lives across the county; because of the gas, we're visiting her less.
No more Starbucks. Library, not book store - and if you knew how much I read...! We canceled Netflicks, and have stopped our visits to Blockbuster, too. Neither of us has bought one article of clothing since we started this project; not even a pair of socks at Marshall's. Random gifts for the girls when we're out and about? Not anymore. Ice cream? Publix brand, not Ben & Jerry's at the shop.
There are dozens of activities we wanted to sign Ayla and Maryn up for this summer. Instead, their big outing is the beach, which is free. Once we're there, no more hot dogs at the concession stand; Jane packs a snack now. No more Coppertone sport; No-Ad all the way - and if we go later in the day, we won't have to reapply. If we shower there, our water bill will be lower. If we take the carriage instead of drive, we'll save even more gas money.
As much as we tighten our belts, we find it needs more tightening if we're to stick to the original income we committed ourselves to.
Being poor is hard. But like I said, for us it's an exercise - a really unpleasant exercise, but we know it will end. What if you've never known anything else? What if no one in your family has, either? What if none of your friends, or neighbors, or teachers have ever been more than lower-middle class, and even that is something special in your circle?
We don't suggest that you give all your money to charity and live like a pauper. That's a little hard-core, even for us. But when was the last time you really had to scrimp and save? When did you last deny yourself something you consider basic, like your gym membership, or coffee out, or HBO?
Just food for thought.
Brilliant!
...And true. Poverty sucks. A lot.
Let me begin this by explaining that we have a company up in Boston, Coine Language School, that has been valued at $10 million. We assessed its value about eighteen months ago, when we were considering selling stock in order to grow more quickly. We backed away, at least for the time being, but that's another story. The bottom line is, between the income we receive from our school in Boston and our speaking fees when we travel (my fee is five figures per day), Jane and I are not in actual danger of being poor in the foreseeable future.
I say that because, in the real-life experiment I'm about to share, I don't want to mislead you into thinking that we're "walking the talk" all the way. No matter our temporary situation, in the backs of our minds we are both well aware that we can bail ourselves out at any moment.
Psychologically, the fact that one has no resources to fall back on, no safety net, can be crippling. We are subjecting ourselves to a tight budget, as you're about to read, but we have not taken away our financial parachute.
Having said all that.... Jane and I decided a few months ago that we were spoiled by our lifestyle, and that we ran the risk of losing empathy with the people we are most dedicated to helping.
Yes, we were struggling just five years ago, and true, our companies have had their ups and downs all along - that's business, after all. But in the last two or three years we haven't really denied ourselves anything. I wanted a red European convertible, so I bought one. When we felt like going to dinner, we would, and never worried about the bill. 40 hours of daytime babysitting per week plus occasional nights, maid service once or twice a week, a full-time personal assistant, a book keeper for our personal income, a "you want it, you buy it" policy toward shopping, expensive clothes... we were living the affluent lifestyle of the upper middle class.
So we stopped. We've put ourselves on a budget that is, well, stifling. We don't go out to eat anymore. The last time we did was for Jane's birthday a month ago. We ate at Bice on Fifth Avenue. All we had was one appetizer, two salads, and two glasses of wine. It was still about $1 million, and it pained us to pay that bill - even though my Mom was paying half as her present to Jane. Our cousins were babysitting, or else it never would have happened.
We've gone from two babysitters to one babysitter to haven't had a sitter in weeks now. Master's swim team or Rotary? - which is basically a choice between health or business. I haven't made that kind of choice in years. Jane's bargain shopping for all of our groceries, and so each week she visits four or more stores in order to piece together the cheapest options, and we're going without a lot of our favorite food.
We have basic basic cable, and only have it at all because it's cheaper to bundle phone, Internet (a business necessity), and cable than to just have two. We've changed our cell phone calling plan, another luxury we never thought twice about. Jane and I are sharing her car, the Honda CRV, because (a) my Saab needs a repair which we haven't budgeted right now, and (b) its "turbo sport" mechanics sure use an awful lot of gas. At $3.10 or more per gallon, we had to draw the line. My sister lives across the county; because of the gas, we're visiting her less.
No more Starbucks. Library, not book store - and if you knew how much I read...! We canceled Netflicks, and have stopped our visits to Blockbuster, too. Neither of us has bought one article of clothing since we started this project; not even a pair of socks at Marshall's. Random gifts for the girls when we're out and about? Not anymore. Ice cream? Publix brand, not Ben & Jerry's at the shop.
There are dozens of activities we wanted to sign Ayla and Maryn up for this summer. Instead, their big outing is the beach, which is free. Once we're there, no more hot dogs at the concession stand; Jane packs a snack now. No more Coppertone sport; No-Ad all the way - and if we go later in the day, we won't have to reapply. If we shower there, our water bill will be lower. If we take the carriage instead of drive, we'll save even more gas money.
As much as we tighten our belts, we find it needs more tightening if we're to stick to the original income we committed ourselves to.
Being poor is hard. But like I said, for us it's an exercise - a really unpleasant exercise, but we know it will end. What if you've never known anything else? What if no one in your family has, either? What if none of your friends, or neighbors, or teachers have ever been more than lower-middle class, and even that is something special in your circle?
We don't suggest that you give all your money to charity and live like a pauper. That's a little hard-core, even for us. But when was the last time you really had to scrimp and save? When did you last deny yourself something you consider basic, like your gym membership, or coffee out, or HBO?
Just food for thought.
Poor is Poor
More on hard-working students who, due to their status as illegal aliens, are having a tough time breaking the cycle of poverty: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/jun/03/their_dreams_filled_uncertainty/
While most of the readers' comments I've read are from hateful rednecks, I found one worthy of comment: a poor white kid (now adult) from Immokalee whose classmates were given scholarships based on ethnicity. He was not given these same opportunities.
Poor is poor. A poor white kid deserves a break just as much as a poor minority. Is this a controversial idea in 2007?
There are projects on 10th Street in the city of Naples, one block from 41, so right across the Tamiami Trail from some of the richest people in the world. Drive down there and check out the chickens running around the street. Jane, the girls, and I have driven down there to see the chickens and talk to the smiley Haitians who seem to own them. Are these chickens there for the eggs? Fresh meat? Cock fighting? In the broken English/French/Creole of our dialogue, it isn't clear.
Grace Place and the Boys & Girls Club are both in Golden Gate, another poor area only a few miles from there. 40,000 people, the "working poor," live within four miles of these two properties. 85% of the students in the local public schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Poverty isn't just "over there," in Immokalee.
I don't care what color you are, or what language you speak at home, or how legal or illegal you and your parents are. If you're a kid, you deserve the same chance as everyone else to join the middle class or, better yet, to get rich. Brown, black, white, red, yellow: who cares? All of our brains are the same color, and none of them should be squandered due to lack of opportunity.
And if you're an adult? You deserve a chance, too. This is America, after all. Nobody is entitled to a free ride, but everyone is entitled to freedom - including the economic freedom we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
While most of the readers' comments I've read are from hateful rednecks, I found one worthy of comment: a poor white kid (now adult) from Immokalee whose classmates were given scholarships based on ethnicity. He was not given these same opportunities.
Poor is poor. A poor white kid deserves a break just as much as a poor minority. Is this a controversial idea in 2007?
There are projects on 10th Street in the city of Naples, one block from 41, so right across the Tamiami Trail from some of the richest people in the world. Drive down there and check out the chickens running around the street. Jane, the girls, and I have driven down there to see the chickens and talk to the smiley Haitians who seem to own them. Are these chickens there for the eggs? Fresh meat? Cock fighting? In the broken English/French/Creole of our dialogue, it isn't clear.
Grace Place and the Boys & Girls Club are both in Golden Gate, another poor area only a few miles from there. 40,000 people, the "working poor," live within four miles of these two properties. 85% of the students in the local public schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Poverty isn't just "over there," in Immokalee.
I don't care what color you are, or what language you speak at home, or how legal or illegal you and your parents are. If you're a kid, you deserve the same chance as everyone else to join the middle class or, better yet, to get rich. Brown, black, white, red, yellow: who cares? All of our brains are the same color, and none of them should be squandered due to lack of opportunity.
And if you're an adult? You deserve a chance, too. This is America, after all. Nobody is entitled to a free ride, but everyone is entitled to freedom - including the economic freedom we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Sins of the fathers
I recommend you read this article: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/jun/02/im_floridian_i_grew_here/
The story is about a girl who graduated from a local high school with a 4.3 GPA, but who does not qualify for in-state tuition of financial aid because of her illegal status.
Here's my take. You don't have to agree.
1. She was 7 or 8 when her parents brought her here illegally. So yes, she's more Floridian than Mexican. I'd wager she's not very Mexican at all. Imagine if your parents had brought you here from another country at that age. How much identity would you have with your native country?
2. This girl is everything anti-immigrants are for: she's totally assimilated, identifying with her new country rather than her own. She speaks English as well as any of us. She's a talented, hardworking student who wants to go to college. She wants desperately to live her life legally. She aspires to a respectable middle class career.
If you're interested in solving the problems of non-assimilation, poor performance in school, crime, and economic unproductivity that plague immigrant Hispanics in this country, wouldn't you want people like her to set a great example for her peers?
Even rednecks should support this girl.
3. As for the sins of her fathers.... There are some pretty hateful comments posted on the Naples Daily News website from its readers. One thread that pervades these comments is, "Why doesn't she ask her parents why they came over here and put her in this position in the first place?" Why do some Americans think the parents came here from another country? Perhaps crushing poverty, no opportunity, political and governmental corruption, and questionable human rights might explain that decision. Would you try to improve your family's lot and seek the Land of the Free if you lived in such conditions? I know we would.
4. As for student aid... As I stated previously, I'm all for Florida granting her in-state status - again, to reward her hard work and to set an example that her peers can emulate, helping to keep crime and other immigration problems at bay. But financial aid is another matter. I'm all for her getting it, and I'm also all for middle-class students getting it, too.
Right now, the odds are stacked solidly against the middle class when it comes to financial aid. I know this first hand: Twenty years ago, I often did not qualify for financial aid, or qualified for much less than I needed, because my parents weren't dirt poor. How about "making ends meet?" How about "Middle class, and not awash in the kind of money that college requires?"
Our financial aid system is atrocious in this country. Yes, this girl needs help paying her way in school. But so do millions of families. Let's fix the system, and make college affordable to all kids who work hard enough to get in. Why is that even a problem in 2007?
The story is about a girl who graduated from a local high school with a 4.3 GPA, but who does not qualify for in-state tuition of financial aid because of her illegal status.
Here's my take. You don't have to agree.
1. She was 7 or 8 when her parents brought her here illegally. So yes, she's more Floridian than Mexican. I'd wager she's not very Mexican at all. Imagine if your parents had brought you here from another country at that age. How much identity would you have with your native country?
2. This girl is everything anti-immigrants are for: she's totally assimilated, identifying with her new country rather than her own. She speaks English as well as any of us. She's a talented, hardworking student who wants to go to college. She wants desperately to live her life legally. She aspires to a respectable middle class career.
If you're interested in solving the problems of non-assimilation, poor performance in school, crime, and economic unproductivity that plague immigrant Hispanics in this country, wouldn't you want people like her to set a great example for her peers?
Even rednecks should support this girl.
3. As for the sins of her fathers.... There are some pretty hateful comments posted on the Naples Daily News website from its readers. One thread that pervades these comments is, "Why doesn't she ask her parents why they came over here and put her in this position in the first place?" Why do some Americans think the parents came here from another country? Perhaps crushing poverty, no opportunity, political and governmental corruption, and questionable human rights might explain that decision. Would you try to improve your family's lot and seek the Land of the Free if you lived in such conditions? I know we would.
4. As for student aid... As I stated previously, I'm all for Florida granting her in-state status - again, to reward her hard work and to set an example that her peers can emulate, helping to keep crime and other immigration problems at bay. But financial aid is another matter. I'm all for her getting it, and I'm also all for middle-class students getting it, too.
Right now, the odds are stacked solidly against the middle class when it comes to financial aid. I know this first hand: Twenty years ago, I often did not qualify for financial aid, or qualified for much less than I needed, because my parents weren't dirt poor. How about "making ends meet?" How about "Middle class, and not awash in the kind of money that college requires?"
Our financial aid system is atrocious in this country. Yes, this girl needs help paying her way in school. But so do millions of families. Let's fix the system, and make college affordable to all kids who work hard enough to get in. Why is that even a problem in 2007?
Friday, June 1, 2007
Fixing American Education
I just read a headline about teacher-pay negotiations starting. It got me to thinking....
Jane and I have taught people from around the world. Ours is the only culture - and I'm not exaggerating when I say this - ours is the only culture that does not hold its teachers in high esteem. Some countries pay their teachers handsomely, like Switzerland. Many do not. But in every country, educators are at the top of the social heap, right up there with political leaders, doctors, and wealthy capitalists.
So why not here? Why is the US so unique in this regard?
I think that first and foremost, we Americans equate social class with economic class. "How much do you make?" is the standard by which we judge each other. It's shallow and lame, but that's how we work - even those of us who eschew this consciously have this perspective below the surface.
Teachers get paid very, very little. If they value themselves so little, and if their employers (the school system) value them so little, then clearly they have little value. That is the cultural undercurrent in our society.
Then there's all that vacation time, and the way they end the work day in the early afternoon. No one else on earth has tenure. What is that, anyway? Teachers have a cushy job, we think.
Finally, look at the discipline problems that teachers have to face every day. Lack of support from the administration and school board means that kids are practically encouraged to mistreat their teachers. How are we supposed to respect these people if their own bosses, and little children, don't respect them?
Despite all that's right with American education - for instance, the fact that we have a practical monopoly on excellent colleges; the fact that it truly is the best system in the world - there's an awful lot wrong with it, too.
Here is my modest proposal to turn that around:
1. Double teacher pay. Seriously. If we want the cream of the employment pool crop, we have to pay for it.
2. Limit class size to 12 students. Better to have 6 & 7 in a class than 13. Nothing else is half as important as this one factor.
3. Limit school size to 150 students. That is the size at which groups fragment, cliques form, and alienation sets in. Sports teams and other extracurriculars can involve groups of schools practicing and competing as one.
4. Eliminate education departments and majors from colleges. Teachers must know content - a math teacher should be a math major, a history teacher a history major, etc. Masters can be in psychology, but not education.
5. Administrations must exist solely to support teachers, rather than vice-verse. That means that classroom discipline is taken seriously.
6. Teachers should be judged on performance and enthusiasm! Burnout in most private-sector jobs is not tolerated. Why would it be in our most important profession of all?
"What will all this cost?!?" many will howl about items 1 & 2, and possibly 3 as well. But this is my reply: if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
I know I lost an entire community of support with items #4 & 6. About four-fifths of the teachers I've ever met - the talented ones - will love these suggestions. But there are vested interests out there who will see this as a threat to their jobs. Sorry, guys.
All sorts of administrators will have trouble with #5 - that's the principle of the inverted pyramid that Coine teaches our corporate clients, and even in the private sector this is a hard sell. A lot of people seek management positions for status, not service. It's just human nature.
You know what's funny in all this (or sad, depending on your outlook)? Private schools already do all of this, with the unfortunate exception of #1. And if you're completely honest with yourself, you'll have to admit that most private, non-parochial schools give an education that is far superior to public schools. I am the product of both, and I'm living proof that this is true. But I'll spare you that for another day.
I am not going to hold my breath for any of this to happen in the public sector - there are too many entrenched interests out there. But I think the dialog is worth having anyway. After all, our nation's future is at stake.
Jane and I have taught people from around the world. Ours is the only culture - and I'm not exaggerating when I say this - ours is the only culture that does not hold its teachers in high esteem. Some countries pay their teachers handsomely, like Switzerland. Many do not. But in every country, educators are at the top of the social heap, right up there with political leaders, doctors, and wealthy capitalists.
So why not here? Why is the US so unique in this regard?
I think that first and foremost, we Americans equate social class with economic class. "How much do you make?" is the standard by which we judge each other. It's shallow and lame, but that's how we work - even those of us who eschew this consciously have this perspective below the surface.
Teachers get paid very, very little. If they value themselves so little, and if their employers (the school system) value them so little, then clearly they have little value. That is the cultural undercurrent in our society.
Then there's all that vacation time, and the way they end the work day in the early afternoon. No one else on earth has tenure. What is that, anyway? Teachers have a cushy job, we think.
Finally, look at the discipline problems that teachers have to face every day. Lack of support from the administration and school board means that kids are practically encouraged to mistreat their teachers. How are we supposed to respect these people if their own bosses, and little children, don't respect them?
Despite all that's right with American education - for instance, the fact that we have a practical monopoly on excellent colleges; the fact that it truly is the best system in the world - there's an awful lot wrong with it, too.
Here is my modest proposal to turn that around:
1. Double teacher pay. Seriously. If we want the cream of the employment pool crop, we have to pay for it.
2. Limit class size to 12 students. Better to have 6 & 7 in a class than 13. Nothing else is half as important as this one factor.
3. Limit school size to 150 students. That is the size at which groups fragment, cliques form, and alienation sets in. Sports teams and other extracurriculars can involve groups of schools practicing and competing as one.
4. Eliminate education departments and majors from colleges. Teachers must know content - a math teacher should be a math major, a history teacher a history major, etc. Masters can be in psychology, but not education.
5. Administrations must exist solely to support teachers, rather than vice-verse. That means that classroom discipline is taken seriously.
6. Teachers should be judged on performance and enthusiasm! Burnout in most private-sector jobs is not tolerated. Why would it be in our most important profession of all?
"What will all this cost?!?" many will howl about items 1 & 2, and possibly 3 as well. But this is my reply: if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
I know I lost an entire community of support with items #4 & 6. About four-fifths of the teachers I've ever met - the talented ones - will love these suggestions. But there are vested interests out there who will see this as a threat to their jobs. Sorry, guys.
All sorts of administrators will have trouble with #5 - that's the principle of the inverted pyramid that Coine teaches our corporate clients, and even in the private sector this is a hard sell. A lot of people seek management positions for status, not service. It's just human nature.
You know what's funny in all this (or sad, depending on your outlook)? Private schools already do all of this, with the unfortunate exception of #1. And if you're completely honest with yourself, you'll have to admit that most private, non-parochial schools give an education that is far superior to public schools. I am the product of both, and I'm living proof that this is true. But I'll spare you that for another day.
I am not going to hold my breath for any of this to happen in the public sector - there are too many entrenched interests out there. But I think the dialog is worth having anyway. After all, our nation's future is at stake.
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