Texas Childcare: Do We Care about the Safety of Our Nails More than Our Children?

The estimated 1 million Texas children in child care will likely soon be at least a little safer, thanks to a new bill that triples the number of pre-service training hours required for child care workers.

With the increase, workers will be required to take 24 hours of training. The number of hours required is still quite low, especially when you consider that aspiring manicurists in the Lone Star State must have 600 hours of training.

A last-minute addendum to the bill, which now awaits the governor’s signature, also extended the training requirement to in-home daycares.

The fact that this strengthening of the law was not included in the original legislation is quite stunning, since in-home daycares have been in the news since four Houston area children were killed when a fire broke out at an in-home daycare operated by 22-year-old Jessica Tata.

The fire, authorities have said, started after a pot of oil caught fire on the stove in the home. Tata was out shopping at Target at the time and the children were left unattended. Tata fled to her native Nigeria for a period of time after the fire but has since been returned.

Child care advocate Melanie Rubin told the Houston Chronicle that strengthening regulations for in-home daycares in Texas is important because the homes often give parents a false sense of security. Parents see the homelike feel and believe their children are safer than they would be in a center, even though centers face more stringent requirements.

There is something very wrong when more care is given to protest people’s nails than their children. The latest legislation out of Texas certainly does not address all the needs of children in childcare, but it is at least a step in the right direction.

Camping to Connect?

We were wowed by this article from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance web site.

Taking students camping is definitely a good way to get to know them beyond the classroom – to nurture relationships, to encourage students and to guide them to new discoveries about themselves, their abilities and their connection to the world around them.

As we travel the country writing and working with leaders of schools and non-profit organizations, we are privileged to meet so many people who skillfully connect with the young people in their lives.

For some, those connections come in an after-school spoken word poetry club. Others are doing it through video game clubs, or sports organizations.

Some build those connections through taking children and teens from low-income communities to plays and restaurants that they would not otherwise experience.

Some work on service projects with young people, finding that as they work together, new levels of respect and understanding emerge.

Others build connections in very informal ways, by constantly opening their homes to groups of young people, allowing them to just come by and eat, watch movies, play games or simply talk.

And in whatever way those connections are built, we see them making a difference, as young people open up about the challenges they face – their hopes, their dreams, their fears. And in those moments, change begins to happen, first in the lives of the young people and the adults who serve them. And eventually in the broader community.

How are you building connections? What are you learning? Where do you hope it all goes?

How Does School Reform Affect Children of Color?

Author and education expert Alfie Kohn addresses the difficult question of how school reform affects children of color in this opinion article in Education Week.

Kohn makes the case that education reform, including the tenets of No Child Left Behind introduced in part by President George W. Bush and now supported by President Obama, harms low-income and minority children by reducing teaching to rote learning.

Kohn writes:

The “the overly directive, mind-numbing, ... anti-intellectual acts” that pass for teaching in most urban schools “not only remain the coin of the realm but have become the gold standard.” It is how you’re supposed to teach kids of color.

Kohn describes classrooms where worksheets, practice tests and drills have replaced any encouragement of critical thinking or creativity.

As a result, some argue, society replicates itself, with the children of the poor being trained to take their places as rule-following laborers who know how to follow rules set by the elite, but who do not know how to question authority, to think critically or to solve problems for themselves.

This is a complaint that we also have heard from teachers, as we travel the country advancing the causes of educational and social justice.

We frequently hear from teachers in low-income and working class areas who complain that they are expected to focus on test-taking skills and a very basic curriculum. Children are expected to be quiet and still for the bulk of the day, and are rarely given opportunities to interact with each other or to discuss and explore what they are learning.

The picture seems much different in upper-income schools, where administrators have the luxury of not worrying as much about high-stakes testing, because children come to school well prepared and test scores tend to already be high.

What do you think? Is current education reform working, or are we dumbing down education for our poorest students, sentencing them to lives as followers instead of leaders?

Things That Matter are Rarely Easy...

When we choose to devote our attention to one topic, we inevitably leave less time and energy for others.

This reality hit us hard this past week, when so much of America’s attention turned to the Royal Wedding.

Some friends had wedding viewing parties, complete with dainty finger-foods and smiling guests wearing elaborate hats and gloves. Others spent a great deal of time and energy speculating on what the bride’s dress might look like, what the queen would wear, or where the darling couple might go for their honeymoon.

And there is nothing wrong with any of these activities, in and of themselves.

But consider this:

American news outlets devoted dramatically more hours to the royal wedding than the media did in Europe, including England.

And what was going on in the U.S. last week, as so much of America’s attention was devoted to the royal wedding?

One of the biggest – and most heartbreaking – stories of the week was the devastation caused by a series of tornados that pounded the Southeast, causing death and chaos in cities and towns in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and beyond.

Residents in the town of Smithville, Mississippi, expressed frustration over the focus on the royal wedding, when their town had been completely annihilated, and their high school destroyed. There was a sense that their plight could not fully get traction in the national media, because so much attention was being paid to the far lighter, more pleasant story of the royal wedding.

America is at a pivotal point in history. We are grappling as a nation with big questions and serious issues. The middle class is eroding, public school teachers are continuing to see their jobs slashed, gas and food prices are rising, and the national deficit has reached staggering proportions.

These are difficult issues. The answers are not simple, in part because systemic thinking and dramatic reform is needed. But we as a people cannot allow ourselves to simply be the entertained masses, content to focus on the fashion of a wedding that has nothing to do with us, our futures, or our children’s futures.

We need to have real conversations, about real issues – even if those conversations are difficult and force us to think and talk in ways that are challenging. It won’t be as easy and painless as talking about a princess’ wedding dress or a queen’s public image, but things that matter are rarely easy.