A good education begins in the home

The expression “blue-collar” worker doesn’t resonate like it used to, but I understand the term because I grew up in a blue-collar town.

Our parents didn’t drive new cars nor did we. We were expected to use our manners and to respect the older people in our community.

The worst offense we could commit was having a teacher call home to report we’d misbehaved in class. Not only did you get in trouble from your mom, but your grandparents, aunts and cousins joined in because you brought shame to the family. Let’s not even talk about when dad got home.

It didn’t matter your race, creed, color or religion – parents expected their children to behave and the kids who didn’t listen were the minority. They did, however, keep us entertained while we finished our work.

Kids today are still entertained by the class clown, but instead of getting in trouble with the school and then at home, troublemakers get a slap on the wrist and society makes excuses for their poor behavior.

And that’s when the trouble really starts.

When out-of-control students are allowed to have their way, good educators fear for their safety and decide to leave before they lose their desire to teach.

Eventually mediocre ones take their place, and students who want to learn are forced to do so on their own amidst disrespect, chaos and boorish behavior. Worse than that, they are left behind because no one’s there to encourage them in the classroom.

            There are hundreds of theories about how to change behavior, but one theory is absolutely true -- the reality of dollars and cents.  

If you run off good educators, you’re stuck with ones who are in the classroom for the paycheck. Students only learn the basics, if that, and graduate from high school at the bottom of the educational ladder.

            They try and get a good job but they can’t because they don’t have the basics. Remember, the bullies ran the good teachers off. These students are left to scrape by all their lives at jobs they hate because they didn’t get an education during their formative years.

            On the flip side, at schools where parents teach their children to respect teachers, respect each other and respect themselves, learning takes place. The household paycheck has nothing to do with the ability to learn respect.

Good manners are the responsibility of the parent to teach the child and then hold that child accountable. It should not be the school’s job to teach your child to sit in their seat, stop talking and learn something.

Mom and dad, that’s your job.

            Parents, put down the remote and the cell phone. Teach your children at every opportunity. Have conversations at the dinner table, even if that’s over take-out burgers. Teach them to wait their turn, to use words instead of fists and to have a thirst for knowledge.  

            Teach them to respect their elders and, if they don’t like the rules, learn effective ways to change them. Until then, respect the law, respect society and respect themselves enough to know they need a good education to get ahead in life. The class clowns and thugs are robbing them of the most important intangible they’ll ever have access to – an education.

            No matter the color of your skin, your home address or your ethnicity, having high expectations and constantly reaching for them is what separates the educated from the ignorant.

If you want the best chance for your child to be successful, tell them that the only sure-fire way out of a situation they don’t like is an education.

And that education begins at home.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Stand up - it's an honorable way to live

           I’ve had a variety of jobs, starting with babysitting when I was 12 years old. The eldest of seven children, I had a lot of on-the-job experience and landed an after-school job watching two boys when I was in high school.  

            On the weekends, I worked at a movie theater. I’ve filled more bags of popcorn than I can count and sold hundreds of boxes of Jujubees. I was just a face behind the counter, not worth much respect, but the job helped me put gas in my car and pay my insurance.

            I worked as a temporary office worker for Kelly Girl to pay my college tuition. Because we were temps, nobody in the office bothered to learn our names or invite us to lunch. Up to that point, jobs were a way to earn money, nothing more.

            Then started the most satisfying and lowest-paying job of my life – mom. I went through all the stereotypical situations stay-at-home moms experience and learn to surface laugh about. That included having nothing to talk about at parties except the plot lines on “Sesame Street.”

            When the boys were in school all day, I started working part-time at this newspaper. The arrangement was a great fit because I could be home with my sons but contribute to society as a feature writer. I was fortunate to interview and write about the best people in our county.

Somewhere along the way, though, reporters got blamed for biased reporting and the profession I came to love was vilified because of a few bad apples.

            I went back to college to earn my bachelor’s degree and a teaching position opened up. For eight years now, I’ve been teaching high school journalism, passing on my love and passion for not only writing but for showing young journalists they can change the world in a positive way with their words.

            And once again, the profession I’ve chosen has come under attack. People want to blame all of society’s woes on teachers.

There’s a nasty and misleading bill before the Texas House of Representatives, SB893, that not only slashes teacher salaries but will quickly drive out dedicated teachers who believe in education but realistically have to feed their families.

            I’ve called and written my representatives opposing this bill, and I urge others to do the same. And not just in support of educators but for any bill that’s written for special interest groups and not society as a whole.

I’m tired of being the scapegoat in my chosen profession. Instead of giving up, I’m fighting for respect, and it’s time to give credit where credit is due. Moms, your job is the basic building block of society, whether you’re working outside the home or in the home. Don’t let anyone belittle what you do. 

Teachers, your job is to educate and enlighten. Fight for what’s right and show your students that when good people sit back and do nothing, the bad guys win.

And reporters – your job is to keep watch and report. We’re counting on you to make sure justice prevails and to keep digging until you find the truth.

            No matter what career path you follow, make your voice heard when you see legislation going up for a vote that’s on the side of special interest groups, not the common guy.

Standing up publicly for what you believe is an honorable way to live. And, if I pay attention to what my parents, my teachers and my editors told me, it’s the only way.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.              

Lessons learned from my mom

           One of the downsides of living in the country and working in the city is the commute time. I’m grateful I don’t have to drive through rush-hour traffic or battle the “spaghetti bowls” of Houston. But an hour commute each day does have its perks.

            The main advantage is I talk with my mom every day on my way home. She always wants to know how I’m doing and then there’s my standard questions about her blood sugar and what she did that day.

            Her days are filled with more activities than someone a third her age. She volunteers at the local hospital’s gift shop, she helps count the money at church and she makes refreshments for the people in my brother’s religious education class.

            There’s lots of laughter in our conversations and most of the time, our talks center around the present.

            Today’s conversation started with talking about our getting a bigger vehicle so we can transport our grandchildren from their new house back to ours for weekend visits. That led into when our family moved from New York to Louisiana.

            I was going into the seventh grade, and the story I was told was that my dad wanted us in his home state, Louisiana, because he couldn’t stand shoveling snow any more.

            We had to sell our toys, our furniture and most of our belongings and move into a house a third the size of what we had up north. Worse, we were moving away from my mom’s entire family.       

Eventually we made friends, but those first few years weren’t easy. My mom made sure we all attended Mass and ate Sunday dinner together and she established holiday traditions we’ve carried over in our own extended families.

            What I didn’t realize until our conversation today was that my Dad left because he’d failed at every business opportunity he had up there and was desperate. That left my Mom with six children to take care of, so she went back to school and got a job.

            She wasn’t sure he would come back, but when my Dad returned with a U-Haul, Mom made the decision to leave her parents and move to Louisiana with a broken husband and six young children.

I asked how she came to that decision and she said the answer was simple – they’d promised each other in church to raise a family together, and they weren’t going to break that promise until they’d given their life another chance. And just as important, she wanted her family together.

            So she put what she thought her children needed in place of what was easy for her. She doesn’t judge single mothers – she stood by me 35 years ago when I found myself in that situation – and she’s supportive of all the decisions her children have made because she wants us to be happy.

Not a conversation goes by where my Mom isn’t telling me how much she loves all of us and how wonderful and special she believes all of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be.

            “Your children are everything,” she said. “They are your precious gift from God and they come first.”

            “Even when they’re all grown up?” I said.

            “Forever,” she replied.

            I held the phone away so she wouldn’t hear the catch in my voice.

            “Mom, if I haven’t told you lately, you’re my hero,” I finally said.

            “No,” she replied. “I’m just your mom.”

            In my book, that’s a hero.

This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Seeing the world through a different lens

            Whenever I’m online, I always grow impatient for those “skip this ad in 4 seconds” prompt to activate. I know those commercials are the reason I’m seeing videos for free, but I still tap my finger on the mouse until they disappear.

            Last week, I was looking for a dropped paper clip and didn’t get a chance to escape the mandatory ad, and I’m glad I watched. The four-minute video was from Valspar and is entitled “Color for the Colorblind.”

            Together with EnChroma, Valspar developed glasses for color-blind people. They’ve never seen the subtle hues of a rainbow, the differences in Crayola colors nor have they seen the vibrant yellows and oranges of a sunset.

            The video is amazing. People describe how the world looks gray without the glasses and then how they’re almost speechless when seeing colors for the first time.

            They knew they weren’t seeing all the colors, but they grew accustomed to the world as they were seeing it.

All of us compensate in some way – we squint to bring the newspaper into focus, order glasses to correct the issue or give up trying to read the small print. If we can’t see it, then the problem must not be there.

            Whether or not these glasses, or others like them, worked wasn’t what I was thinking about after the video. What stayed with me, besides watching people see color for the first time, was one line from a physicist – “We don’t all see the world the same way.”

            He’s absolutely right. We can look at a crowded room and either see a place where we’d love to hang out or a room they’d have to drag us in kicking and screaming.

            We can see the world as a vicious, terrifying place, filled with shadows and violence, or see a world of possibilities and beauty, even when that beauty isn’t textbook castles and fluffy clouds. Our point of view depends on the lens with which we choose to see the world.

            After watching the video, I read quite a few articles about glasses for the color blind. For some, the glasses didn’t work, including one disappointed reporter who was bitter and angry.

There’s a scientific reason Valspar posted as to why the glasses don’t work for all colorblind people, but for that writer, new glasses didn’t change his outlook. In fact, not seeing what the glasses delivered to others made him bitterly angry.

            I can’t say I blame him, but I don’t think he stopped to think that whenever we decide to look at the world in a different light, we’ve already changed our perspective no matter what our eyes tell us.

Someone with worn clothes usually gets judged as untrustworthy. But most of us have seen someone we pre-judged as beneath us carry the groceries for an elderly person or pick up litter from the street.

            We’ve all thought well of the person in the expensive suit and thought that person had it made. And we’ve all experienced seeing that same guy walk right past a needy person, cut us off in traffic and snag our place in the grocery line because he thinks he’s entitled.

            But when we decide to put on different lenses, we see people and the world in a different light, not through a pre-conceived filter of how we think life is supposed to be.

            I wish a manufacturer could make glasses to allow us to see different points of view without judgment. Maybe then we’d really see the colors in the world.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.