Surfside Leadership Academy (((((((((((((((( Contact Us for Educational Assistance

A dedicated, veteran teacher said this to me as we were working in the staff lounge.  With more federalized programs like Common Core and No Child Left Behind, there is little room for creativity as teachers are to teach to the text and be pretty much on the same page at the same time as their coworkers.  Test scores are the focus.  Many teachers teach to the test that is given at the end of the year.  In addition to year-end testing, there are constant assessments.  I often felt sad for my students with the over testing.  This was a waste of time for everyone.  An initial assessment is a necessary tool to evaluate student progress, however, assessment tests are given throughout the year for grade level mastery.  These assessments are given in addition to weekly spelling/grammar tests, math tests, and chapter tests.  The state has forgotten that the students are being assessed every day by their teachers through observations and grades.  Parents who care monitor their child’s progress as well.  Nightmares about students hating school used to creep into my dreams at times.  Teachers have tremendous pressure to produce high-test scores.  The many assessments given takes away from instructional minutes.  Schools today are filled with stressed out teachers who don’t believe that teaching is much fun anymore.

A bright pink button displayed next to my calendar in the kitchen states, “G.M.O. Free”.  Staying true to this motto, however, is another challenge.  We are surrounded by chemically infused foods.  Most people in my circle believe that if the food is in the store, then it is O.K. to eat.  To accomplish my goal of being G.M.O. free, I must always be ready wherever I go to seek out food purity.  Reading labels for anything processed is a must, and when I don’t I am sorely surprised.  As I continue to read labels, I am discovering that more and more foods are off my list and must be made at home.  For instance, I recently read a label for hummus and discovered that soybean oil/canola oil are one of the main ingredients.  Athenos, however, uses olive oil in their hummus and not a genetically engineered oil.   The gluten-free waffles had G.M.O. ingredients as well.  Using our Rome cast iron waffle maker, we grill delicious waffle varieties at home.  I have even started making my own soy free mayonnaise with great results using my Braun hand-held stick blender.  My mayonnaise thickens up within seconds!  While paging through my Good Housekeeping Cookbook, I found a ravioli recipe.  I made my own raviolis in about an hour.  Growing up, the commercials persuaded me to think that I couldn’t make food on my own.  Over the years, I have realized that food preparation can be quite simple and delicious with a little effort.  It is also fun to create delicious recipes that suits individual palates.  Even though being G.M.O. free is a challenge in today’s society, it is possible and worth the effort.

Americans like cheap, good tasting, attractive food.  Advertisers and food producers know this.  Fancy packaging fills the stores with enticing pictures and it works!  Personally, I believe Americans have a food addiction.  I am surrounded by overweight sick people.  It makes me sad as many laugh and scoff at my organic whole food diet.  Some of these people have gotten cancer, dementia, and other uncomfortable chronic conditions.  They trust the food system.  The more I learn about food, the more I am horrified about how non nutritive it really is!  The food we grow in our urban garden always tastes better than even the best organic store/local farm purchased food.  Growing your own food is relatively easy and rewarding.  Lettuce will grow in a large pot.  Green vegetables are loaded with nutrition.  At the next commercial, sprout some food.  We enjoy using chicken manure, our compost (which is really just a pile of our vegetable/garden waste in a remote corner of our yard), and minerals (kelp provides good minerals).   Once you get started, I believe you will spend more time outside in your urban garden.  During WWII, about 40 percent of Americans grew food in their yards.  We sprouted an organic white peach tree from a seed in a purchased fruit, and now have about 30 pounds of peaches a year!  Try avoiding processed food and eat 2 organic fruits and 3 servings of organic vegetables per day.   Throw some spinach or Swiss chard in with your eggs in the morning.  Swiss chard grows very rapidly this time of year.  Keep a fresh prepared salad in your refrigerator in a sealed container.  I prepare mine on Monday and it usually lasts all week.  We try to eat salads at lunch.  A simple dressing made with organic olive oil sprinkled on the salad with some balsamic vinegar adds zesty flavor.  We throw some sunflower seeds on top.  There are many varieties for salads and they don’t need to be complicated.  It isn’t difficult to eat real food from the garden.  Your body will get more of the nutrition it needs and help reduce cravings that lead to food addiction.

It amazes me every year how many children attend public schools and how many parents are willing to enroll them in these institutions.  Public education costs Americans about 600 billion dollars every year.  I became a teacher because I enjoy children and wanted to make a difference in the next generation.  Learning has always been enjoyable for me.  Naturally, I wanted it to be enjoyable for the students that I had the privilege to teach.  Teaching is a privilege.  My first year of teaching, I taught 7th grade Life Science.  It was a lot of work, but the labs were great.  Many of my students expressed to me how much they enjoyed my class.  I was honored at the end of the year when one of my top students told me that I was his favorite Science teacher ever.  He gave me a thoughtful gift.  Another student asked me to be her chaperone when she won a prize for a school fund-raiser.  I was stunningly humbled by her request.  Middle School didn’t have the bureaucracy in Science that I would face in elementary school.  At the end of that first year, some mean kids in my class threatened me.  I asked for help from my principal and assistant principal, but neither gave me much support.  I was offered an elementary school position near home.  I would be teaching 5th grade.  Fifth grade is a big year.  There were lots of concepts to teach.  The teachers at my grade level were hard-working and we made a great team.  Similar to middle school, I had large classes.  During English I had 38 students in my class.  I tried to meet the needs of all my students, but sadly could not.  Students slipped through the cracks who should have had help with reading.  That really bothered me.  At the end of the year, I learned that my students would be taking a state standards test.  The other teachers didn’t tell me, so I taught the curriculum and didn’t teach to the test.  My Title I school and students performed low, but at about the same level as the other 5th graders.  Time went on and more programs were added to my already busy day filled with teaching, planning, grading, parent conferences, and duties.  The veteran teacher on my grade level assured me that the new program would come and go in a few years and not to be upset by it.  He was right–millions of dollars later, after lots of training to use the new programs, they came and went.  I was taught that the goal of education is to educate each child individually.  I actually tried to do this and realized that it was impossible in the public school.  Students are put into a large class and expected to learn and master the same material at the same rate.  Each child is different.  One year, I taught a 4/5 combination class.  I had students reading from Pre-K to 9th grade.  That was quite a challenge.  I made it through, but was exhausted.  Slowly, I began to burn out.  I began to realize that I could meet with parent after parent and plead with them about the importance of education, but the choice would be theirs.  On state testing day, I had a student show up with green hair.  Getting children to enjoy the learning process presented many challenges.  Every year I had a handful that were with me.  They had parents who cared for the most part, but sometimes there were exceptions.  My administration put more and more pressure on the test results.  Teaching was not fun anymore when I would sit through staff meetings and be beat up by the test results.  It wasn’t just me, most teachers felt that pressure.  I took it personally, but I shouldn’t have.  I did my part as a teacher.  Parents need to do their part and students have their share of the responsibility to learn.  Some of the teachers I worked with were fabulous educators.  Near the end of my career in the classroom, teaching became more ridiculous.  I had to do what I was told and was held accountable by my administrator.  The methods that I was told to use didn’t work.  It didn’t matter.  I had to keep a journal on my desk for administrative comments to be made while observing my lesson.  All teachers on the grade level had to be on the same page of the text.  My superintendent  was informed about my frustrations and kindly invited me to his office for a chat.  He told me that he was more of a figure-head and that his hands were tied by the school board and the state.  It was during this meeting that I realized that my problems with public education were too big to fix.  In my opinion, the problems have gotten worse with federalized programs.  Students lament to me about their woes in large classrooms, waiting to be taught because the teacher has so much bureaucracy to deal with.  Teaching outside of the public school has given me the freedom to educate effectively.

School originates from the Greek word “leisure”.  When translated it means the freedom to do something.  Learning was enjoyable for me.  It continues to be.  Education should be this way for all students.  But why is it not?  ACT (The American College Testing) organization has estimated that 1/4 of high school graduates meet college ready standards.  As a seasoned educator, I would say that this is probably true.  My first year teaching 7th grade science, I asked random students to read the text-book during our lesson.  I was shocked and appalled at the lack of reading fluency of my 7th graders.  Today, American students rank 17th in Science and 25th in Math when compared to other industrialized countries.  After WWI, American students ranked number 1.  As American education has shifted away from local control and has become more federalized, student performance has decreased.  Not long after the founding of America, schools were local.  Towns would personally fund their school.  The Bible was taught in school under the Constitution.  Children learned truth and values.  I so enjoy the older generation because they learned biblical truth while being educated.  As a whole, they know how to behave far better than the younger generations.  My school celebrated Christmas with a school wide Christmas program.  Today, one of my favorite songs is, “What Child Is This”, which was sung by my class.  We made Christmas angels for art.  The older students did a Jewish dance for Hanukkah.  Text books were more colorful and informative.  Today, I wonder where the depth of information has gone.  Elementary math books are missing logic, social studies books hardly have any real history, and science is missing key facts.  Where’s the meat in education?  It is missing.  Children get to sit in their classrooms reading mostly fiction while the world passes by.  Their world is repetitive and numbing.  No wonder student performance has dropped significantly in the last 100 years.  It is time to make education local again with parents taking responsibility and being involved in their own town schools.  “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,”  Ecclesiastes 2:24 ESV

Trays of unidentifiable food would fill my classroom on rainy days.  The chicken nuggets and fries were morphed into one blob of mush.  The pizza actually looked plastic.  The breakfasts consisted of colored cereals and pasteurized low-fat milk in plastic.  The school lunches were microwaved in plastic prior to serving.  Many children were on the free and reduced lunch program at our school.  This was unfortunately the main diet of about 6oo children.  They weren’t getting much nutrition, but a lot of wheat, GMO corn, soy, and canola in addition to weird food additives.  The food we eat is meant to nourish the body so that we have the energy to function.  How nutritious are school lunches?  French fries are considered vegetables.  No wonder we have so many behavioral problems today!  Have you ever eaten lunch with your child/children at school?  You will be grossed out.  I never touched or ate any school lunch.  It shocked me when other teachers did because they knew better.  I would pack my own lunch with fresh fruits and vegetables.  While on an assigned lunch duty, it would sadden me to watch the horrible food being consumed and the apples, pears, carrots, and celery ending up in the trash.  Trash cans were full of wasted food.  It was truly sickening and nothing like the days when I attended school.  At my school, we had lunch boxes packed with balanced nutrition prepared by our parents.  Lunch was like a picnic and we would calmly eat outside with our friends perhaps trading goodies.  I do know a few parents who care enough to pack healthy lunches for their kids or even deliver a hot, fresh meal to their children every day at school.  Preparing a meal takes time, but it is worth it in the long run.  “You can pay the farmer now, or pay the doctor later”.  Unfortunately, unless changes are made, a lot of children in this generation will be paying the doctor later.

Parents have the prerogative to choose the educational path for their children.  It is their God-given right and responsibility.  Home schooling offers individualized instruction designed personally for kids.  Home schooled children get to move at their own pace and use curriculum designed specifically for them.  Their schedules are structured, yet flexible.  They may enjoy a piano or art lesson, a group science experiment, an interesting field trip when it appropriately fits into their schedule.  Children educated at home are unrestrained in their learning.  They enjoy learning and the learning process because they can focus more on their interests and other enjoyable activities throughout their day.  They are not restricted by a bell schedule or curriculum in text books. Their day has few distractions like assemblies, loud sounds of lawn mowers and air blowers, announcements, phone calls, crowded classrooms, and disruptive kids.  Generally, the learning time is finished within 3-4 hours of study.  The home environment is generally cleaner.  Healthy food may be served at home instead of mostly processed school lunches.  Children at home get to interact in diverse social situations, not just their age group.  They receive directed socialization; learning how to interact in diverse situations and problem solving in conflicts.  Home education provides an appreciation for the freedom to learn physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.

Zoombinis Logical Journey and Oregon Trail II by The Learning Company and Math Blaster by Knowledge Adventure were computer games that most of my students enjoyed.  Zoombinis teaches problem solving and logic math skills.  Math Blaster has an assortment of math programs depending on what skill level is desired to teach math facts.  Oregon Trail II teaches students the importance of good planning, hardships encountered on the trail, history, geography, and more.  All three programs offer learning in a fun setting for kids.  Please check to make sure that these games are compatible to your computer or check for updated versions.

• 

  Fresh picked herbs from our garden for the sausage:  rosemary, sage, thyme, and parsley

• 1 pound organic ground pork
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. parsley *1 tsp. fresh
• 1/4 tsp. coriander
• 1 tsp. fresh, finely chopped rosemary *use 1/2 tsp. if dried
• 1/2  tsp. sage *use 1 tsp. if fresh and finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp. thyme *use 1 tsp. if fresh and finely chopped
• 1/8 tsp. red pepper
• 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

Mix evenly throughout pork.  Form into small patties and fry in a greased skillet.  We enjoy cooking ours to a golden brown on both sides.

Awesome Science has 6 DVDs narrated by a 14 year old.  He is intelligent, articulate, and a great role model for kids.  His science information is well researched and will educate and inform the entire family!  The 6 episodes for sale are:  Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Petrified Forest & Meteor Crater, Yosemite and Zion, Mount St. Helens, and John Day Fossil beds.  There are future episodes in the works.

http://www.awesomescience.tv/