Lefty Parent

Starting in third grade with learning the multiplication tables, our son Eric started having a problem with school. By seventh grade he would not do any homework, had been diagnosed with ADD, was taking Aderall, had been through an IEP, and had had a number of sessions with an educational therapist. When he got to the point in eighth grade of writing “F**k Math” on his standardized math test, we pulled him out of school. continue reading »

Teacher magazine published the results of a survey of 40,090 K-12 teachers, possibly the largest national survey of teachers ever completed and including the opinions of teachers in every grade and every state. The survey, “Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s School,” was conducted by Harris Interactive and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic Inc. You can download the full report at: www.scholastic.com/primarysources/pdfs/100646_ScholasticGates.pdf.

Here are some of the results I found most interesting… continue reading »

I saw in the most recent Public Education Network “NewsBlast” that Part 1 of the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2009: Collaborating for Student Success” has been published, this part focused on “Effective Teaching and Leadership”. It reminds me once again of the issues faced by our democratic system of governance and whether our public school systems promote or run counter to the ideals of democratic governance.

To set the context (and as I have said repeatedly in other posts) we are in a historic transition in the world and its institutions from patriarchy to partnership, from hierarchical pecking orders to circles of equals. In a patriarchy, the governance model exists within a hierarchy of “superiors” and “inferiors”. At the top of that hierarchy are the people considered to be “leaders”, below them are the rest as “followers”. The “leaders” are charged with making the important decisions and exercising control over (and have responsibility for) all the “followers” below them. continue reading »

I ran across a summary of a report from a Los Angeles based non-profit group called the Advancement Project (www.advancementproject.org/) on the Public Education Network (PEN) “NewsBlast” (for February 26, 2010) that comes out every several days. Their white paper is titled “Intertwined policies cause widespread alienation & worse” and can be viewed and or downloaded at www.advancementproject.org/digital-library/publications/test-punish-and-push-out-how-zero-tolerance-and-high-stakes-testing-fu. continue reading »

For her graduate school thesis, our friend Brenda opened an alternative charter school in the fall of 2000 which our daughter Emma attended for her three middle school years.   Emma’s mom worked as the school counselor for four years, the first two as an unpaid intern, the last two as a paid staff member, and also served for a time on the school’s Board of Directors.  The school was launched with about 120 students, offering kindergarten through sixth grade, which grew to include seventh and eighth by the third year.

As a person who believes that our education system is way too “One size fits all”, from the beginning I applauded this experiment to create a school on a different model than the conventional instructional school.  In fact, many people can’t even conceive that there could be any other sort of school than ones that focus on… continue reading »

Just a quick note that I have had a really good couple weeks of recovery and am back to writing and typing reasonably well. I am right now working on completing my “Confessions of a Lefty Parent” book proposal that I plan to send to a literary agent that my brother Peter has a connection with. I hope to be posting pieces on my blog again by the end of this week.

I appreciate all of you checking in presumably to see if I am posting again.

Cooper Zale… aka Leftyparent

FYI… I am recuperating well this week from my surgery Feb 1 to remove a 3 centimeter hematoma (blood clot) from my brain caused presumably by my bicycle accident last November. I am off work and my other normal volunteer activities until my neurosurgeon sees a CAT scan that shows my brain has returned to its proper position inside my skull from where it was displaced by the blood clot. But one of my yearly efforts is too critical to let even this stop me…

It’s nearly March again, and the one time in the year I pitch my circle of family and friends for a donation to a worthy cause… continue reading »

An update for everyone… As a late emerging issue from my bicycle crash in November, I apparently developed a blood vessel bleed in my brain after CAT scan and MRI which had been clear. It developed into a hematoma which was finally detected by another CAT scan on Feb 1.

Immediately after the scan I had successful surgery on Monday, February 1, to remove an inch and a half hematoma (blood clot) from the right side of my skull which was putting increasing pressure on my brain and could have soon led to brain damage and death. I spent the next five days in the ICU at Kaiser Woodland Hills while they drained excess fluid out of my brain and monitored my initial recovery. I was very relieved to be sent home on Saturday to begin a two to three month convalescence while my brain slowly returns to its proper position where it had been displaced by the blood clot. The recovery process is particularly challenging for me because my (hopefully temporary) disability is focused on my fine motor coordination in my left hand (I’m left-handed), making it difficult for me to write or type. (I am writing this with somedifficulty!) continue reading »

FYI… a number of circumstances have kept me from posting these last few weeks, but hopefully I am back to regular posts…

Starting in early July of 1996 just prior to her seventh birthday, our daughter Emma had her world disrupted by a series of calamities over the next two years that profoundly shook her world and led eventually to a severe separation anxiety that she, her mom and I would come to refer to as “The Phase”. Somehow I think giving this issue a name and referring to it almost as an entity unto itself, helped Emma finally put it behind her and move forward with her life. continue reading »

Nearly two months into my European odyssey, on a train from northern Italy to Switzerland, a weary traveler and somewhat of a lost soul, I entered what I recall as the Saint Gotthard Tunnel, under the Alps, and emerged into a completely transformed world and a new chapter in my existential journey with fresh insight into the human condition. (Note that I may have actually gone through a different tunnel of comparable length, as noted by someone who read this piece with a good knowledge of Western European railway geography, though at the time that was my recollection.) continue reading »