Anything your Heart Desires.

Stepping into Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok is like walking into the future – even if you arrive from America. The chocolate I was seeking was at my fingertips imported from anywhere in the world – I could buy most food, clothing or entertainment item within a five minute walk from my gate. The decadence didn’t end after I left the airport – Thais are famous for their hospitality and the sentiment “anything your heart desires…” was met in most places I went. This seemed to hold true for all Westerners, in particular the Western men. Unfortunately.

You don’t even have to look to find older western men with young Thai women. And some aren’t “patrons,” they are here to stay – farangs are everywhere you look. We were diving with a 24 year-old British girl who was spending a month with her 65 year-old “fat, walrus face father” (her words) who had married a 32 year old Thai woman and finally, after 3 marriages and 3 daughters now has a son. There seemed to be a strong motivation by both parties in this arrangement – old, fat, white men got to purchase land in paradise (you can’t buy land in Thailand as a Westerner), a beautiful, young, obedient bride and another chance at love (well, maybe love). Thai women could stop working 3 jobs to make ends meet, live in a beautiful home and receive nice gifts. Whatever works I guess? With one major caveat – both parties are choosing, and that’s not always the case here.

I Can't Breathe.

This is my typical garb cruising around in the rickshaws. I broke up my India travels to head to Thailand for a long Thanksgiving week to meet my boyfriend, learn how to dive and get a “western” fix of some good chocolate – more on this in the next entry. My route was car to Bangalore, flew to Mumbai and then on to Bangkok - I couldn’t help but feel the speed of my travel was literally leaving the Indians in my smog.

I am terrified for our future. I can’t breath in these places, and it was the same in Delhi and Hong Kong – and apparently much worse in China and Vietnam. And its not like people aren’t trying to make change – Bangalore mandated that all new rickshaws must use only natural gas (I discovered last night that most rickshaw drivers mix petrol (56 rupees) with kerosene (18 rupees) to fuel their engines – no wonder I can’t breathe) which is priced at 22 rupees so there is economic incentive and much less pollution. The Indian teachers I taught last year in Delhi chose to do projects on energy conservation and natural disasters when I asked them to apply their new technology skills to a presentation – and these are to students in the slums. It is top of mind for everyone. But how do we accelerate change as individuals?

Environmentalism needs a better marketer – or at least educator. The 5 minute blurb at the end of an Inconvenient Truth gave me some insight on what I can do, but I need some clear action. What refrigerator should I buy? If I buy another car should it be electric or run on hydrofuel – should I get an electric moped instead? How do I use alternative energy to heat my home built in 1890? How do I shop in America and not buy packaged foods? How do I make noise to mandate China, India, America, etc. start to enforce stricter environmental policies? How can we get the rickshaw manufacturers to build solar-powered rickshaws ? Can someone please make a cell-phone powered oxygen mask until we can breath – as everyone has a cell phone?

It’s no doomsday joke. This is scary stuff. And its real and its now – apparently there were 358,000 early deaths in China caused by pollution. I can see my next trip to India – I pay $100 for an oxygen tank at the airport to use when I walk outside in “unfiltered” air. All of my business meetings will be held in “filtered” air offices and I will pay a premium for my “filtered” air hotel. And the 3 billion people in the world who do not have access to clean water are now dying earlier because they will not have access to clean air. And I live in the country that creates 30% of the pollution with only 5% of the population.

I Dig The Red Book

Last night Rishal was telling me about a good friend of his back in Delhi. The mate had met a Texan woman during university, fell madly in love, married her and brought her back to Delhi. Simple enough.

“Except the woman is a … I always forget this word, episco- no...you know – when you are really focused on Jesus, lots of god bless stuff, savior comments..”

“Evangelical?”

“Yes! You should hear her, she has gotten him to convert, now she is working on the family and his dad is going to lose it! I mean, why must it be just one way…Hinduism is about collecting many gods, many ways, why couldn’t she just be evangelical and he just is Hindi?”

I was speechless to the image of an evangelical Texan living in Delhi trying to convert her Hindi in-laws. There’s gotta be a Bollywood movie made, perfect recipe for a kitschy romance, comedy, drama.

After a few weeks in India, even the most staunch atheist will question if there might be a little more out there. Every corner you turn you see/hear/smell statues, paintings, chalk drawings (see above for the chalk they buy to draw on the sidewalk), temples, whispered prayers, puja bells ringing, incense burning…you get the idea…all in the name of “religion.” And similar to most western women I know, the whole religion thing leaves me a bit unsettled. The religion I was raised in doesn’t allow women to lead, the country I live in abuses religion as a political tactic, the city I live in treats religion as a thing you do in the privacy of your own home – and please don’t bring it up at a dinner party.

And so I practice Karma by not cutting people off in traffic, do some yoga, read some Rumi and Pema Chodron and David Whyte now and again, keep a Buddha and a Virgin Mary statue on my window, say a Hail Mary every time a plane takes off, attend Christmas mass with my family, listen to my atheist Jewish boyfriend lead the table in Hebrew prayer during Roshashana – and practice tonglen to give some compassion. A little confusing, but it kinda works.

And then a friend gave me The Red Book right before I left. It’s not a self-help book. It’s not a book on spirituality. It’s not about religious rules and regulations. It is about being true to your intuition. It’s about questioning your beliefs. Unpeeling layers. And it’s a ton of fun to read. The author, Sera Beak, practices what she preaches and has some great lessons – both academic, as a Harvard-trained scholar of mysticism and comparative religion, and practical, like a cool older sister who shows you a few tools she has learned here and there…

Anyway, I dig it. And when the conversation with Rishal last night turned to the eclectic nature of Americans and our love for just taking what we like from all religions, instead of reminding him that Hinduism adapts in a similar fashion - I agreed and exclaimed how great “choice” is! As Sera mentioned in her book, I don’t get up everyday and “just” choose to eat candy. I choose to have some broccoli and chocolate and green beans and red wine too. Except in India, I would pay a lot for a bar of Lindt chocolate right now…
,

Rena is Ratna

India and I are not friends today.

I cracked my big toenail in half during yoga this morning. With bandaged toe, I walked to the Internet café to take a conference call back in the states and discovered no electricity (usual) because a man at a hotel down the street died trying to unplug something (unusual). India telling me to get over the toenail.

I arrived home to find out, for the second day in a row, that Rena is not her name. Yesterday Meena told me it was Retna (with a T), I think she found some of our lessons in the trash. Today Ashish told me it was Ratna. And so we begin our ritual again. At 10, Meena leaves for slimming class (I don’t even want to know what that is) and puja and I spend time with Ratna working on writing her name or numbers or simple words. Then we put together a worksheet that she hides during the day and works on when no one is around ("Clean, clean, clean..." she says when I ask why its not ok to show it to others).

Today we wrote her name “Ratna.” Yesterday, after five minutes of sign language and analogies we got to what a “last name” is and she says hers is Sumalata. Who knows if I am spelling it right?

A friend took me out to some neighboring villages in the afternoon, visiting temples and looking for schools and teachers; despite a stat I read that India’s rural population had primary schools within one kilometer, there were none. Hundreds of Ratnas spent the day running after me – these not so “lucky” to have a job in a middleclass home – asking for rupees and pens and country coins. Exhausted, I decided it was time to go home.

And home brought some hope. Meena says Ratna needs to speak English better. I asked Meena how does Ratna know the alphabet and how to hold a pen and write letters and numbers? She grins widely and tells me that Ashish teaches Ratna, “I am so proud my boy has such a big heart.” Fortunately Ashish has yet to inherit his parents belief in maintaining caste, the cycle is breaking.

Just pinch, pinch, pinch...

I love Indian food. And learning to cook South Indian is almost as enjoyable – colorful spices, tasty ghee, no documented recipes, no real measuring, Indians just “feel the food” and did what their mother’s mothers did.

My two teachers have been Meena and Tina. Tina is an institution with Ashtanga Yoga students…she is a brilliant cook with a huge heart and a sassy attitude (originally from Calcutta, I have learned “moxy” is not a South Indian female trait). Apparently the brothers from Dosa (hip Indian on Valencia Street in San Francisco) learned to cook some of their their dosas from “Tina in Mysore…” This is what Tina hears anyway, I’ll have to confirm when I get back...

For those of us who don’t know much about Indian cooking, the only basic understanding we need is “masala.”

Every recipe demands your masala dabba which contains the fundamental Indian spices only in the form that does not exude smell:
Powder Form:
Salt
Chili (you choose the spice level)
Turmeric – gives color (mix with salt to keep away the ants, drink with milk as an antibiotic, put it in oil and heal a burn, notice it on Thursdays on women’s faces to remove unwanted hair, also on the third eye as yellow is good for intellect)
Seeds:
Fenugreek (seed form – not leaves)
Black Mustard Seeds (not white or yellow as those are for chutney and pickling)
Coriander (Cilantro – Tina says don’t buy coriander powder in America as it is usually just “rusk” and won’t give you the flavor)
Cumin
Then you have the garam masala which are kept whole and separate from masala daba.
Cloves
Cardamom (Black, green – must crack it open to get the seed)
Peppercorns
Cinnamon

And a few more tips…

Buy your curry leaves fresh if you can. If not, dried/crushed use at the end of the cooking process to retain flavor.

To retain your optimism, don’t try to learn it all in one day. Get a knack for sambhar, move on to chutney, then a masala and finish with dosas and idlis over a few weeks.

Oil should ideally be ghee (but if not – use white butter, saffron, sesame, or coconut oil but NO olive oil).

And a random tip - drink water stored in copper pitchers to lower cholesterol and improve the health of heart-attack patients…

And for those who want more, drop me an e-mail or comment below and I’ll send you the ten or so recipes I have tried to document after cooking with Meena and Tina. Yum.

An Education on Indian Education

A few nights ago I was eating dinner and chatting with Rajesh, the restaurant owner, about what is “right and wrong” with Indian government education. I was peppering him with questions about his sister’s life (who could not go to school as she took care of the children), his level of engagement in school, the quality of his teachers, etc. The man next to us asked where I was from and held up the book he was reading “Indian Education Philosophy.” This country works in amazing ways.

Rishal joined in our conversation and I quickly learned his family had opened two schools in Delhi. He is a recently graduated intellectual property lawyer from Delhi who received an excellent boarding school education at the Doon School as well as a squash scholarship to Brown University. He wants to affect change in the Indian education system by developing a curriculum that mirrors his experience at Brown – “teaching to think, not teaching to follow like the Indian education system does.” We quickly exchanged numbers and planned a breakfast meeting.

My visits to the two local schools and conversations with other Indians left me very confused on the challenges with government funded education – teacher training and support, literacy levels, the impact of the 8th five year plan, the average ratio of 46 students to one teacher, the mystery of this “ghost children” – all of this seemed strangely fine with the teachers and the Indians I spoke with… I spent an hour prior to my visit with Rishal doing some research.

Rishal quickly informed me that my research was crap. Perhaps in Kerala – a communist state (“Communism is clean in India, democracy is dirty,” Rishal said) - but none of the other numbers were true; in a country with 33 official languages and 1,652 “mother tongues” how can anyone do a proper census on the reality of education? Here in Karnataka, most of the village children will speak a local dialect, they will then learn Kannada to do trade or interact with other city people, they will learn Hindi if they are being educated (or come from a Hindi family) and finally they will learn some English at school and only fluently if their parents speak it at home with them as well. This helped me understand why Rena couldn’t write her name, and also why Ashish was first in his class and intends to be a doctor at age 12 – parental involvement.

According to Rishal, teacher training and professional development doesn’t exist – Indians think any young girl knows how to take care of kids and therefore will be fine as a teacher. Curriculum used in schools is based on memorization and not creative thinking. Creativity and developing your own approach is also not supported in the home, most Indian parents think there are three jobs – accountant, doctor and lawyer.

“Indians feel most comfortable following a road that another man built and taking less money as a result. If India is to succeed it must start learning to build its own roads (literally, you realize if you’ve ever been to India) and the only place that’s happening today is in the private sector. Change in India happens in the private sector, the government sector is too corrupt with baksheesh and NGO’s are not well respected at the top level to make change – unless they are funded by rich men,” Rishal informed me.

Thus, his sister decided to build a private school. About 15 years ago, Gurgaon, an area just outside of Delhi, was a “no-where-land.” No city person would even consider moving there. KP Singh, soon to be the richest man in India after he takes DLF public, started buying up land in Gurgaon as he realized the exponential population growth in Delhi would motivate middle class and up Indians to find a cleaner, roomier place to live. He built 30 shopping malls, high-tech centers, sound roads and infrastructure and today land in Gurgaon is some of the most expensive in Delhi. Ten years ago Rishal’s family bought some of this land and his sister, frustrated as well with the Indian approach to education, decided to build two primary schools with highly-educated, well paid teachers and constructivist approach to teaching. Rishal hopes to learn from his sisters approach and after a few years of law focus full time on private education and institute a “robin hood” approach – the rich pay more, the poor go for free or with government tax rebates.

I pushed again – so there is no way in your opinion to affect change in the public sector? He laughed, “There is no partnership like there is in America. The government is controlled by very smart, highly corrupt and usually uneducated men – like Bal Thackeray…” I told him he didn’t need to go any further. During my last visit to Delhi I read Maximum City and had to finish it at home as it was coloring my Indian experience too much, I was terrified to even set foot in Mumbai.

Rishal went on to tell me about Lalu Prasad Yadav, apparently he makes George Bush look like Einstein. Because of coalition politics Lalu runs the richest natural resource state, Bihar, and is now, get this, the Indian railway minister in his strive to become a minister. I quickly decided to eliminate train transportation this trip.

“No,” Rishal concluded, “change will not happen in the public sector. The way change is now happening is in the private sector and many NRIs (Non-resident Indians) are returning to India to make they change they have seen in their time abroad. They understand that we must educate the masses, that a rising middle class should be a right and a dream for all Indians and private education is the only way to make this happen.”

“What is the Indian opinion on over-population and the magnitude of a rising middle class, who dreams of an “American-style” life with cars and refrigerators and consumption and the affect on not just the air you breathe here but the world environment?” I asked.

Rishal laughed, “No Indian politician has mentioned the word “over-population” since Indira Gandhi convinced her son on the castration rampage over 30 years ago. And similar to your leaders, no politician is going to talk about oil and the environment until its cool too. India will advance and rise anyway it can, that’s the Indian way.”

Feed the cow, not the Monkey. And other Indian Culture traditions.

This morning I heard a racket in our driveway and went out to find Rena screaming at a monkey. “The monkey ate the cow’s breakfast,” she exclaimed to me, rolling her eyes. Of course.

Sure enough, five minutes later the cow walked into the driveway with the “cow owner” and we had to make a new plate of food. The “cow owner” walks her cow around every morning to various homes for a free breakfast. In addition to the religious benefits that accompany this act, the obviously poor cow owner gets money for the milk the cow produces. Not a bad social welfare system.

On my way back from yoga in the morning, I often see my neighbors down on their hands and knees drawing kolam. I try to picture folks back home giving up their Starbucks for drawing chalk figures before work?

I usually am offered a fresh banana from Meena’s puja in the morning as ingesting bananas that were prayed over as offerings to the gods means you are ingesting some holiness. It seems to be working, miraculously, I have yet to be run over on one of Mysore’s rickshaws.

Ashish let me know to put a kumkum on your 3rd eye and throat right before any highly-competitive table tennis match (his father was college champion) as it is supposed to improve your ability.

Placing fool (the beautiful string of flowers) on the god’s photo brings good luck, or wearing it in your hair protects against evil (and more important foul smells I later learned).

Feeding first God, then husband, then guests seems to be a good way to lose weight for Indian women.

No fried food one year after a death is keeping other heart-attack victims in the Gupta household healthy.

No “al dente” food – only fully cooked or raw, stops stomach confusion (and the former keeps my stomach at ease).

I’m sure I’ll be adding a few more to this…

I earn.

Meena is a generous, effusive, open-hearted Indian woman. If she lived in Amercia, she would be strutting around in too-expensive jeans, yelling “girrrrlfriend” as she checked out my boyfriend, and kicking some major booty in her sales job.

But Meena is an Indian wife. When she was 19 she married Mahesh in an arranged marriage. She admits she couldn’t tell if she liked Mahesh in their first meeting, but her father was happy and that was enough (apparently her father was concerned she would not find a proper husband because she is short).

Meena moved from her home in Chennai to Mahesh’s (and Mahesh’s mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, sister and 3 nephews) home in Mysore. She quickly learned to make the favorite foods, maintain the house and keep her persnickety mother-in-law happy. She said she was like Rena but with no income. Two children and seven years later, Meena was going through some tough times. Her last son was a difficult birth and didn’t listen or obey (he still doesn’t - a few times I wanted to let Meena know that in America people call it “Attention Deficit Disorder”). Her co-sister (sister-in-law) was focused on learning computers so all of the care for the household fell on Meena’s shoulders. And her own mother was going through some sad times – not eating, not getting out of bed. Unfortunately, Meena let me know that Indian tradition no longer lets her spend time with her mother. Once she got married, all of her attention must go to her mother-in-law and if she spent too much time talking or visiting her sick mother in Chennai, people would chat. After an hour of hearing about her mother’s illness, I wanted to let her know that in America, people call this “depression.” And people would call the ‘ole Indian mother-in-law rule “outrageous.”

But “after much praying” things started to change. Mahesh moved the family into a new home, Meena persuaded him to let a room to a yoga student. A few yoga students later, a Nigerian woman convinced Meena to start selling silver jewelry. And one year later, Meena has a thriving business selling silver to the 100 or so yoga students who are in Mysore at any given time. This lady can sell. “No, no, no,” she denies, blushing, “the gods are just very, very good to me.”

“I never thought I could be so lucky. Here I am, just a normal Indian housewife, and now look at me. I earn. I know people from all over the world,” she tells me proudly as we page through her guest book.

Meena let me know that the entire “competition” complex she had with her co-sister is now gone. Her mother-in-law’s nagging is just a mumble in the background. And even Mahesh is proud (and a little jealous she whispers) of her earning. She says she is so happy because it is no more just cooking and housework and children and mother-in-laws and silence around Mahesh’s friends. It is also now earning and that, says Meena, is “all mine.”

Making Quality Education Universally Available

Ok, back to the “But what happens to all of the knowledge these teachers have when they decide to retire? And what about teachers still in the profession – how do we open up the binders on their desks and start sharing their magic? And what would happen if those heroes were able to start sharing their best practices with each other and start brainstorming on the perfect way to teach the Pythagorean theorem? And what if any great group of teachers could put together a textbook And what if any teacher with access to a computer anywhere in the world could get access to this?”

Could this make a dent in some of the staggering problems we see in education? 100 million children without access to primary school, in India 40% of children will not complete 4 years of school, in the US 40% of students in the lowest economic quartile drop out by high school

Curriki is all about solving this “Education Divide” by delivering quality learning resources developed, published and continuously improved by those that have the biggest stake in education – the education community themselves.

The Curriki mission is simple. Empower people worldwide through OSC (Open Source Curriculum) to eliminate the Education Divide by moving learning into the Participation Age. This curricula will range from K-12 to higher education and lifelong and life skill learning. The initial focus will be on K-12 curricula in the areas of literacy, languages, mathematics, science and technology; and universities and organizations that develop curricula for K-12.

It was founded by Sun Microsystems in 2004 and became an independent 501(c)(3) organization in 2006 – renaming itself from GELC to Curriki. Scott McNealy, Sun’s founder, has some great ideas on education and put together an extremely talented team with depth in publishing, education technology and teaching to make this vision a reality.

And how do we make the movement happen?

Create a portal with publishing and collaboration tools
Build a community of educators at the grass-roots level and with ministries/departments of education
Build a repository of open source curricula
Engage a global community

Sounds simple.

But complex with so many user types – public, private and not-for-profit administrators, teachers, students, parents, university professors and students, independent publishers, for-profit publishers – from anywhere in the world. How to generate awareness to all of these constituents? How to create a system that meets all of their needs? How to motivate other partners to publish their own IP and help close the Education Divide?

How do we increase computer access worldwide to reach those most in need? How do we develop new business models to motivate the Big 4 publishers (who own 90% of the revenue) to participate? How do we develop new intellectual property licenses to support the vision?

Any ideas? Please comment...

Wait, Make that San Francisco, India

I mentally braced myself for weeks prior to my visit to India. Get ready. Indian toilets, only cooked food, hundreds of outstretched hands daily, walking around with your very own paparazzi as Indian men follow you around with their cameras, no personal space, indescribable smells, “no change” claims for every rickshaw you take, buying a bag of chips is one of 20 negotiations that day...

And then I moved into my room in Gokulam. After I paid Shiva for his house-finding help, my friend Ross from San Francisco offered to “give me the lay of the land” and buy me a smoothie afterwards. Ross informed me there are a few institutions that I needed to know, we passed the Yoga Shala and he pointed out the coconut stand – the epicenter for all social rendezvous in Mysore. We moved on to Anu’s Internet café where we ordered banana shakes and sat under the stars with 20 other westerners on their laptops and cell phones chatting with friends back home. He informed me about breakfast at Tina’s or the Shakti house (delicious fresh fruit, western or Indian breakfast at both), coffee at Coffee Time (India’s very own Starbucks), cooking classes, chanting classes, Sanskrit classes, ayurvedic consultations, astrology consultations, pool time at the Southern Star, and not to be too overwhelmed by the shala sub-culture, it can feel a little bit like college sometimes.

The Guruji-devotee sub-culture is the ultimate in viral marketing – and the Indians who support it are making a killing (and rightly so - they are wonderful people to put up with us!). Ross’s introduction was only the beginning. Linda, from Finland, gave me a hand-written map from her yoga teacher (I showed it to a yoga student later that day and she said she would have paid $50 for it when she got here). Tina’s and Shakti’s don’t have signs let alone numbers on their homes, you only know of Tina’s by “the green house on the corner after you take a left at the end of the field.” Linda’s map pointed out the un-signed 6 or so restaurants around my hood where the local yoga students go – I have yet to see an Indian eating there. Other unadorned landmarks include the house that makes home made chocolate around the corner from me, the tailor who can replicate my favorite “QuickSilver” pants, the best place to get pre-paid cell phones, the DVD hire, “Doctor’s Corner” where the good Ayurvedic doctors practice, the Green Hotel with the Sunday 10 am organic market, a great astrologer, the only thing I couldn’t find is my mani-pedi place?

Life is rough. I quickly realized that one meal with my fellow yoga students each day is enough. And although I do have a new pair of pants coming, a scheduled massage on Saturday afternoon and a plan to visit the organic market, I am filling up most of my other free time with exploration. Meals with the Indians, meandering around town, visits to the local schools to interview teachers, Indian cooking classes from Tina and Meena, a climb up Chamundi Hill, a day trip to Srirangapatnam…

Palo Alto, India

“Yes, yes many, many changes in Mysore in the last 8 years,” Mahesh tells me over a delicious home-cooked meal which he and Meena refuse to touch until we (myself and 4 other westerners) have finished. “When I was young here, very few people, still smart, educated people because of university but not so many – now there are 20 times as many! Driving is most difficult. And now everyone wants luxury items – Pizza Hut my boys ask me for every day. They do not know what it is like to struggle. I know. My brothers and I know. Our pappa moved here from Northern India with no rupees, nothing. We were bookish in school, received top-top grades and scholarships to university. And now, now we are all very successful – one a doctor, me a factory owner (Mahesh owns two factories which make the straps on laptop bags), and the other brother…he… My sons do not know struggle and I wonder if they will be as successful?” Mahesh looks down.

Meena has let me know this is a very, very sad time for the family as Mahesh’s brother, best-friend and business partner died unexpectedly one year ago. The family mourning begins on November 8th and will last for one week, Meena must move to her sister-in-law’s house with her 3 nephews and Mahesh’s parents down the street to help out as there will be hundreds of visitors. I decided to share a beer with Mahesh over dinner that night (I think I’m the only yoga student in Mysore who drinks alcohol) as he confided the only time Meena lets him drink is if a guest wants a drink and it looked like he could use it after his 14 hour day.

I contemplated the comments in Plan B on the impact of a rising middle class in India and China, a newly paved road from Bangaluru (that’s right, Bangalore declared it had a new name in this morning’s paper, we’ll see) to Mysuru (Mysore too!), and the three (as opposed to 300) beggars who approached me in the last week. Meena interrupted my thoughts in whispers.

“So very difficult for Mahesh, so sad for him. He has two houses now, no best-friend, very very high city fees because our house so much now. Factories not well after the death, so little money. He asks himself, do I sell the brother’s house and we all live together again? So expensive now with Infosys just ten minutes away and very high paid people at Infosys, and more people move all of the time with the 4 lane highway from Bangalore, less pollution here, calmer pace…”

Amazing. I have heard the same story for the last ten years in the Bay Area, I could have concluded for Meena – and if you sell this house because of property taxes, where do you go? This area is your home for two generations, has the best schools, your family, all of your friends…

God Bless America(n Teachers)

After the sixth time that my mother asked me to describe exactly what type of volunteer work I was doing on my careerbreak, I decided I needed to simplify the message. My Mom is a very talented teacher – substantiated by the holiday cards she would receive after years of teaching a first grader, receipt of the Teacher of the Year award for her school district, and perhaps most poignant for me the countless hours she spent crafting the perfect lesson plan, perusing children’s books, grading papers, tutoring students, calling parents - all while miraculously being “mother of the year” to her kids.

I don’t know how she did it. And after 6 years spent researching US teacher psychographics, behaviors, challenges and needs – I don’t know how any of them do it. And some of them, like my mother, do it brilliantly.

Teaching today in the US is fraught with complexity. There are three factors, which, when combined, make teaching the perfect storm – Federal Teaching Mandates, Reality of the US Classroom and Availability of Quality Learning Resources. (Hint, the only thing we can affect is the “Availability of Quality Learning Resources” but I think its important to get a grasp of the bigger picture before we dive into the solution.)

First, there is the bi-partisan supported mandate passed in 2001 – No Child Left Behind (NCLB). I’ll leave my own opinions on NCLB out of the mix for a moment as I could be here all night. Just the facts. The 1100 page document boils down to a few rules:
1. All students must reach a level deemed adequate by the state in 180 days – for short, we call this Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Simply, the teacher needs to make sure all 30ish of her students – despite language level, special needs, or socio-economic background get a sufficient score on their standardized test taken for one day towards the end of the school year. And its not just the three smarty-pants pulling up the average. AYP is measured by subset – so ELL (English Language Learners), Special Needs and Title 1 student test scores are disaggregated and measured as distinct groups. And as we know Genius George and Smarty Susan usually aren’t part of these student populations. I promised no opinions on NCLB in this post, but you can draw your own conclusions as to how this changes the Teachers approach to teaching.
2. All teachers must teach to the standards developed by their state (or in some cases by their district) as this is what is measured on the standardized test. This follows the belief that all states, and in some cases school districts and even schools approach learning and teaching differently. This is all well and good if the tools they used in the classroom aligned perfectly to the state standards….stay tuned on this topic.
3. All schools and districts (if using federal education funds) must purchase scientifically researched instructional tools. This means that publishers must invest heavily in developing a sound research approach to testing a control group and test group to prove their product increases test scores. Good in theory, but in practice. Oops, I slipped up, no opinions.
Simply, according to the Fed, on day one of the school year the teacher and the students are on a single mission - to ensure all the kids score well on the one day test at the end of the year.

Now, let’s apply the Fed’s vision to the realities in the classroom today:
Over twenty percent of all school-age children will come from homes in which the primary language is not English (with few ELL prepared teachers)
In the 2003–04 school year, almost half of all students with disabilities were in regular classrooms 80 percent or more of the day
US Teachers put in more planning hours than their counterparts in Japan and Germany –working most evenings and weekends
Teaching salaries have remained flat for the last few years, with starting salaries hovering at $30,000
No wonder 16% of teachers turned over during the last year of measurement. Here’s why they left: The five most commonly reported sources of dissatisfaction among teachers who transferred out of the profession were lack of planning time (65 percent), too heavy a workload (60 percent), too low a salary (54 percent), problematic student behavior (53 percent), and a lack of influence over school policy (52 percent)

Finally, lets take a look at the “access to quality learning resources” factor. First is access. This is less of a challenge in the US than it is in developing countries (see next blog), but the funding for instructional materials does vary dramatically by district and even school.

Next is quality – is it appropriate, proven, engaging and relevant? Appropriate - so back to that “must be aligned to the standards” rule. Most publishers do a good job covering the standards, but even the best sometimes can’t figure out what chapter aligns to what standard. And even those publishers that do provide a scope and sequence usually don’t provide a clear alignment to the standards. And even those very few that do align their instructional materials to the standard usually are outdated by the next school year when the standards change. I won’t accept the illusion that “proven” is only defined by scientifically-based evidence that it raises test scores. There are hundreds of high quality materials out there that didn’t undergo a rigorous (read expensive) academic study that improve test scores. The problem is they are often times difficult to learn how to use and deploy quickly in a classroom to make a difference in 180 days.

And finally – are they engaging and relevant. I want to work in this industry again so I’m not going to give my opinion on the $6.5 b publishing industry controlled by the “big 4 publishers.” We can all go back to Econ 101 to learn that disaggregating a monopoly improves quality (I mean how is it possible that over 95% of the funding goes to print and when we hit the “real world” over 95% of our time is usually spent in a digital world?). I’ll leave it at that. Bottom line, “access to quality learning resources” does happen in pockets across the country – but it is far from the norm.

As you can see, this perfect storm is not for the faint of heart. There are heroes out there every day sailing the stormy seas and landing their students perfectly on that warm sandy beach of AYP. But what happens to all of the knowledge these teachers have when they decide to retire like my Mom did? And what about those heroes still in the profession – how do we open up the binders on their desks and start sharing their magic? And what, if we could dream, would happen if those heroes were able to start sharing their best practices with each other and start brainstorming on the perfect way to teach the Pythagorean theorem? And what if any teacher with access to a computer anywhere in the world could get access to this?

So I now understand why my mother keeps asking what this volunteer stuff is. I haven’t even gotten to the solution yet and I’m ready for bed…Curriki will have to wait until tomorrow’s post.

The Girl

I finalized my housing a few days ago after a hard sell from Meena Gupta – mother of 2 beautiful boys, wife of Mahesh who runs two factories making laptop straps, and silver-jewelry maker extraordinaire. I am paying $91 for the month. And at the end of our negotiating she threw in one last close – for an extra $11 I could have “the girl” clean my room/bathroom each day and wash my clothes for me. I just paid $85 per night at the Southern Star and no one was doing my laundry, we had a deal.

After moving my rolling home into the room I introduced myself to the boys and to “the girl.” Ashish (the booky-brainy boy) and Ashwin (the trouble maker) were quick to chat with me about about my yoga and my job and my boyfriend. I asked the girl her name and she mumbled in response, I then asked her to spell it for me and she gave me a blank stare. I turned to Ashish and asked again. “Rena, R-E-N-A,” Ashish reported in perfect English, he could be the star of Akeelah the Bee 2.

I returned later that evening in the middle of family dinner. The family was seated at the dining room table and pleaded with me to share some of their food, I attempted to decline about 16 times until I caved in and had a small plate. After I finished I passed by the kitchen and saw Rena eating her food in the corner on the floor. I felt some tightness in my chest and walked into my room and closed the door. Every conscience has an off switch somewhere. And sometimes in India I have to use mine more than I like.

I walked out my door at 6 the next morning for yoga to find Rena sleeping on a mat outside my door. This time the switch didn’t turn off. I don’t get it. The “help” I grew up with were Aunts and Uncles and neighbors and me when my brother and sister appeared (which I remind them of constantly). And even if we did have help, I can’t imagine them sitting in our pantry eating their food in a corner or sleeping on a mat in our hallway when there is more than enough chairs, more than enough food and more than enough couches.

I can intellectualize it. We have all heard of the supposedly abolished India caste system. But we also know this is not reality – obviously not in Gokulam, the almost exclusively Brahmin neighborhood I am staying in. Rena is 14 years old, her family is from the village and she earns good money for them in Meena’s house – education is not an option when its opportunity cost is a hungry mouth or sick family member who needs medicine. She is a lucky girl to have this job.

But I can’t stomach it. I could feel my belly dance around my knees when I passed her mat on the way to my yoga class, no, its not going to let me settle this one for a few days.

I learned later that morning that Rena is sick and Meena is taking her to the doctor. Apparently she hasn’t menstruated in 5 months. I wanted to get up on my soapbox and yell, “If you called her by her name and asked her to share the meals she has cooked for you and gave her a soft bed to sleep on maybe she would start feeling more like a woman and menstruate!” But swallowed my yell and said, “Meena, that is so kind of you as I am sure she would not be able to afford the doctor on her own.”