For me, it took recognizing it was about the journey, not the destination. If I could continue to set an ultimate goal, and then go back to old ways once I achieved it. Or I could commit to working hard at it each and every day, recognizing it was about improvement, not absolute accomplishment.
– dear ol’ Eduflack getting very personal on Medium, reflecting on lessons learned from life as a “fat man”
By this point in their presidencies, George W. Bush had already signed No Child Left Behind into law and Barack Obama has already sounded the starting gun in his Race to the Top. Now that we are 15 months into the Trump Administration, we have yet to see any real education movement, let alone a landmark bill.
That could change. President Trump and EdSec Betsy DeVos COULD lend their collective powers behind a key education issue. And if they were truly smart, they WOULD get behind major career and technical education policy. But could and would are from from will and did.
We explore this topic on the latest issue of TrumpED on the BAM! Radio Network. Give it a listen. It’s not like we are watching major education law get signed into policy.
It reminds the MAGA crowd of everything they despise about the elites on the two coasts. For them, they need no one to defend Chick-fil-A or to understand the joy of a chicken biscuit in the morning. It reinforces that their opponents, and the publications at the heart of the Resistance, are godless, anti-community, even anti-meat advocates who represent why the nation went off the rails in the first place.
From dear ol’ Eduflack’s latest piece on LinkedIn Pulse, taking the New Yorker to task for its condescending piece on the presence of Chick-fil-a in NYC and how such a piece is indicative of the socio-political divide in the United States
Now that the dust has finally settled on the most-recent dump of NAEP scores, we must admit that the results just aren’t good. For a decade now, student performance on our national reading and math tests have remained stagnant. And that stagnation is only because a few select demographics managed gains that kept everyone afloat.
At a time when we all seem to agree that today’s students need stronger and greater skills to succeed in tomorrow’s world, how can we be satisfied with stagnation? And how we can respond simply with words, with the rhetoric of how our students can and should do better?
Over on the BAM! Radio Network, we explore the topic, reflecting on both how we cannot be satisfied with our students treading water and how we need to take real action to improve teaching and learning in the classroom. Give it a listen. Then show your work.
Earlier this month, the US Department of Education announced a new effort to pilot flexibility when it comes to student assessment. After years of gripes from the education community about the problems with tests and the concerns of wonks in DC telling educators in the localities what to do and how to measure, the Feds are finally offering a little flexibility and local control when it comes to testing.
What was the response? Largely crickets. Almost no one tipped the cap or offered kudos to EdSec Betsy DeVos for following through on this effort to pilot assessment flexibility. And that’s a cryin’ shame.
On the most recent episode of #TrumpEd on the BAM! Radio Network, we explore the most-recent testing actions from ED and how this should be seen as a good thing in the evolution of federal/locality education policy. Give it a listen!
Earlier this month, my grandmother passed away. She was 100 years, four months, and 20 days old when she left us, meaning she possessed more life knowledge than most of us can ever imagine. A week or so before her last day, I was fortunate enough to spend a little time with her. That afternoon, I had made an unscheduled stop to just see how she was doing. As I usually did, I updated her on the lives of her great grandchildren. I assured her everything was fine with me and that my wife was doing well. Just a typical visit, like those I’ve had with her for more than a decade.
As I was leaving, my grandmother looked at me and said, “you work too hard.” It’s a statement I hear often from many people all the time, so I didn’t give it much thought at that moment. But I’ve reflected quite a lot on it over the last week, as I realized that was the last thing that she ever said to me.
I brought this up in a conversation with a mentor of mine this week, noting that I hadn’t taken a vacation day in a year now, and that I hadn’t actually gone away on a vacation in almost two years. In fact, because of work demands I had missed the last three “family” vacations, leaving my wife and kids to enjoy themselves without a distracted dad.
His advice to me? Don’t look back and regret that you weren’t there to be a part of your kids growing up.
So when Paul Ryan announced he was retiring from Congress and from his position as Speaker of the House because he wants to be there for his family, I want to believe him. I, too, know what he may be feeling when he said it seems like his wife was doing 90 percent of the parenting for their children.
It’s easy to attack Speaker Ryan, and to question why he is really stepping away. Back in 2015, when Ryan’s arm was twisted to assume the speakership in the first place, he voiced concern for his ability to find the appropriate work/family balance. On cue, critics attacked him for his statements. Some saw it as a sign he wasn’t sufficiently hungry enough for one of the most powerful positions in government. And others used it to critique Ryan’s past stances on issues such as family and medical leave, the same critiques used this week when he announced his retirement for family reasons.
Maybe, just maybe, the past three years have taught Paul Ryan about the incredible strains being a national politician can have on being a husband and a father. Or maybe he’s realized that those election results he waits for every other November aren’t quite as significant in light of the development of his children and their futures.
Regardless, it is unfortunate that we see nothing wrong with questioning the motives of a man who wants to ensure he doesn’t lose focus on his family obligations, particularly after realizing he had strayed from such in recent years. When PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi or Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg preached a few years ago about the need for women to sacrifice on the personal and family front in order to be the business and career success, we applauded them for doing what it takes. Yet when a man says there is more to his personal success than his professional status, he faces scrutiny and potential ridicule.
Make no mistake, Lean In was an important lesson for those of us with daughters, particularly as we want them to see they can do anything with their lives if they set their minds to it and work hard. But it also offered a message that bought into a cultural stereotype that continues to dog men in our modern society. And it begs us to issue a national call for men to “Dive In” when it comes to our own families. It calls for more fathers to ask the types of questions and wrestle with the same issues that Paul Ryan and many men like him struggle with day in and day out.
Historically, families were positioned with fathers as the primary “professional” and mothers caring for the family. The end of the traditional nuclear family half a century ago began to change the dynamic. Single parent households and those where both parents work are now the new normal.
But the gender stereotypes from the 1950s remain. We expect the male head of household to put career and the job first. He’s still expected to be the one to work long hours. He is the one to miss family events. He is the one on his smartphone the entire time he is at a little league game or a dance recital, if he can get to them in the first place.
Lean In and the calls that have followed it are based on the notion that women can and should be just as focused on their career as men are perceived to be. That women need to recognize that they need to make sacrifices, particularly on the personal front, in order to be professional successes. Or perhaps it simply means their priorities can be just as out of whack as their male counterparts.
Instead, we should be sending the opposite message. As a society, we still marvel at that “stay-at-home” dad, viewing him largely as an oddity worth questioning. We question the motives of those fathers who volunteer in their children’s schools, holding them up as heroes for simply making the time. We doubt the motives of those men who would prefer to spend their Saturdays at the local park with their kids rather than at the golf course with their buddies. And we ridicule those like Paul Ryan who just may prefer time at home in Wisconsin with the kids, rather than on the road raising tens of millions of dollars, while trying to manage a dysfunctional Congress that grows more dysfunctional by the day.
The time is long past for us to begin to refocus America’s men on what is truly important. We regularly speak of fatherhood, without fully appreciating what it really means. Even today, we equate being a good father with the ability to financially provide for a family. Pay the rent, feed the family, and watch a movie together every Friday seems to be nomination for Father of the Year. It shouldn’t be.
It is well past time for fathers to look closely at what is truly important and focus his time and energies on what really matters. Is it easy? No. Does it require tradeoffs? Absolutely. Is it for every man? No, but it should be.
America’s fathers must stop making excuses for why we can’t be a larger part of our children’s lives and we must stop punting responsibility for our families to the women in our lives. We must spotlight those men, like Paul Ryan, who ask the right questions and make the right choices, seeking the right balance, and trying to do what is right for them and for those that truly love them.
In years past, politics used to be full of jokes about what “scandal” lurks behind a public resignation that results in a man declaring he wants to spend more time with his family. Instead, we need to start asking why more men aren’t making the same decisions. We need more men asking how much family commitment is worth sacrificing for professional success.
No, most men don’t need to lean in when it comes to work. They need to dive in when it comes to family. We need to ensure that we aren’t absentee fathers and that we don’t miss being there, really there, as our kids grow up. We need to publicly acknowledge there should be more to working fathers than a family picture on a desk. And we need to be willing to talk more, as fathers and as men, about how we struggle to find that life balance each and every day.
(The above post also appeared on LinkedIn Pulse.)
Will it work? Only time will tell. But it is safe to say that perceptions of the slow pace of baseball will be mitigated by reading FB comments, in real time, as the action is unfolding. The disconnect for those who have never played the game – not even on the playgrounds of their childhood – can be offset by seeing your name and photo on a live broadcast, as you interact with a Hall of Famer or a complete unknown. The focus of truly following a game of baseball can be balanced with a need to multitask, as a live game takes up just part of your computer screen or goes mobile with you on your smartphone.
– From Eduflack’s latest on LinkedIn Pulse, Despite the Hype, MLB on Facebook Isn’t the Strikeout People Expected
Across the nation, folks are rightfully applauding young people for stepping forward and ensuring their voice is heard on the issue of guns. But haven’t we seen this dance before? Haven’t we seen younger generations speak loudly in the community, but then fail to turn out when it comes to voting?
The numbers of the percentage of young people voting — particularly in 2012 and 2016 — is disturbing. As valuable as marches and turnout in the streets may be, nothing is more powerful that that vote at the polling place.
Over on the BAM! Radio Network, we explore the topic, hoping that activism moves beyond the number of Twitter followers. Give it a listen.
Ravitch and the disciples of Ravitch are quick to condemn Teach For America (TFA). TFA is portrayed as a band of dilettantes, individuals of privilege who are seeking to inject themselves in to the schools for a few years without proper preparation or without having paid their dues. To them, the TFA badge is thrown around as a brand of unpreparedness.
Can’t the same be said of Nixon?
From dear ol’ Eduflack’s latest piece for The Education Post, Cynthia Nixon’s Run for Governor is Looking a Lot More Like ‘Hypocrisy in the City’
A decade ago, I felt like everything was rainbows and lollipops for me. My wife and I had just completed the adoption of our son, bringing him from Guatemala to Washington, DC. I had a terrific job, doing the work I loved for an awesome company. For the first time in a long time, everything was making sense and everything seemed to be happening as it should.
Sure, I started spending a little too much time traveling for work, but that was just part of the job. Going in, I knew that providing public affairs counseling to not-for-profit organizations and universities meant I would sometimes have to leave the confines of my office. But it was a small price to pay for the normalcy and stability our new family had.
Then my wife and I received a bombshell phone call. Our son’s birth mother had just given birth to a little girl. As was the policy of the adoption agency, they looked to place siblings together. So the big question to us that September day was whether we wanted to adopt this little girl.
We had spent a lot of time deciding to become an adoptive family. And anyone familiar with international adoptions knows all of the hoops one must jump, red tape one must cut, and commitments one must make to get there. We were fortunate in the adoption of our son, facing minimal bumps in the road. We brought him home seven months after his birth.
It took us all of two minutes to decide we needed to bring this little girl into our family as well. But we also knew that this process would be far from easy. In the 10 months between getting our son home and our daughter’s birth, the Guatemalan Congress decided to outlaw international adoptions. We were now working against an ominous clock, knowing that much had to be done in a very short period of time. Everything done in preparation for our son — every background check, every financial check, every interview, every home visit — would have to be redone. We were starting from scratch, only we didn’t have the half-year head start we had had to do all the paperwork before our son was born.
With the holidays approaching, we almost didn’t get our ICE interview and approval in before the end of the calendar year, an approval essential to officials in Guatemala. We faced local bureaucrats in Guatemala that decided to reject and delay our case again and again.
Knowing all of this was going to be in our future, I faced a very serious reality. There was no way I could keep my fantastic job and still have the flexibility to bring our daughter home. From our son, I knew that we would have to head down to Guatemala on 48 hours notice. And with the clock ticking, we knew that anything could happen, and we could have to be in country for two days, or two weeks, depending on what was happening with our case. Trying to manage those sorts of demands with a full roster of clients with their own needs and own expectations was just untenable. So I quit my job.
It took us 13 months to bring our daughter home. We were one of the fortunate ones. It’ll be 10 years this fall, and there are still children born when my daughter was born whose cases have not yet been finalized. They still remain in foster care or orphanages as issues and red tape continue to bog down.
Why do I tell this story, and why do I tell this story here? Earlier this year, Joanne Boyle announced she was “retiring” as head coach of the University of Virginia’s women’s basketball team. Boyle is a top coach in the NCAA who has achieved significant results with the Cavaliers. She is at the prime of her coaching career, working for a top ACC program. Surely there must have been more to the story that a “retirement.”
Today, The Washington Post wrote an important piece telling the rest of the story. Boyle resigned because she needs to go to Senegal, and she doesn’t know how long she will need to be in country. Four years ago, Boyle brought her daughter home from Senegal, where the now six-year old was orphaned as an infant. But instead of bringing her home after completing the adoption process, it seems Boyle brought her daughter home on a tourist visa, seeking to ensure that the young child had access to the medical care and general caregiving she needed, but wasn’t able to get in her home country.
The Senegal courts completed the adoption process back in 2016. But the United States hasn’t stepped up. Because the tourist visa her daughter arrived in had lapsed, Boyle and her daughter need to go back to Senegal until immigration clears the six-year old. And Boyle must put family over career.
I don’t know a single parent who has been part of an international adoption who wouldn’t do the same thing. And I know far too many adoptive parents who have learned, the hard way, about what happens when all the paperwork isn’t complete.
With both of my children, my wife and I visited Guatemala several times. Yes, we did this to spend time with our son and daughter. But we also did so to ensure that when they first arrived in the United States, they would be U.S. citizens (that was the law). With each child, the moment we landed at the airport in Houston, TX, our first stop was the ICE offices in the basement, where our infants were “sworn in” as citizens.
It is a shame that U.S. immigration law doesn’t see the craziness in sending a six-year old back to Senegal by herself to wait for an adoption to be finalized. It’s a shame that the only choice available to Boyle was to have to choose between career and child. And it is a cryin’ shame that many will just shrug off this story, not seeing how it is relevant to them or their lives.
After all, every day, mothers and fathers are forced to make the choice between family and job. We just do what we need to do. Sometimes, we fail to show up for a game, because putting our job first means we are able to pay the rent or keep the fridge stocked. But sacrificing a job – particularly one you love and excel at – is the ultimate measure.
Hopefully, Boyle will be back court side soon. And hopefully, none of us will be faced with such a choice.
(This piece originally appeared on LinkedIn Pulse.)
Eduflack By Patrick R. Riccards 