Geoffrey Canada

Geoffrey Canada is the president of the Harlem Children Zone and has been working for decades to reform the American educational system. He is a personal hero of mine having helped over 10,000 students make their way- successfully- through highschool. His program is built on the concept that the students are followed from "cradle to career". The kids are chosen at infancy in a random lottery to be a part of the charter school to "break the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of students and families it serves." I highly recommend watching his brief interview on the Colbert Report posted below and check out the plethora of articles I have attached; they speak to his accomplishments much more prolifically than I could hope to in this post.

Colbert Report

Time Top 100

Harlem Children's Zone

NY Times

Ode to the student,
Each of whom is different
Some may hear the rhyme
Others will count the time

The open halls and closed classrooms
Push some students away to hide in the bathrooms

The teenage mind is quite malleable
For some nature makes them able
For others a plane room is what is needed
Or a smiling face by which to be greeted.

For this I praise student who wants to learn
And now it is your turn
To break the rules so you can reach your full potential.

Another issue with the SAT

My Soapbox

While I was at swim practice tonight it occurred to me that I have important things to say and it is not fair of me to deprive the public of my brilliance  so then i thought to my self, "self, where can you post these profound views that you have of the world?" To which I replied, "Well strange voice in my head, I have a blog, and if I'm not mistaken part of having a blog is indiscriminately posting every thought that pops into your head with no regard to possible consequences." with that in mind I would like to use this as a platform to discuss two topics about which I am providing pure emotional speculation with complete disregard for facts/reality. You could call it a modernist view of our society: I am presenting you with what i perceive to be the truth and keep in mind that it may be different from your truth (but I think my truth is the most true).

The first thing I want to talk about is a new experience i had tonight: detention (Spoiler alert I LOVED it!). When I first saw the email saying I had detention i thought this must be a mistake; but apparently coming late to davening every day for a week is grounds for having a half hour of the little precious time you have on this earth stolen from you. But i accepted my punishment with valor, dutifully reporting to the beit midrash after school to be detained. Unrelatedly I'm surprised that parents even allow it to be called detention and not "reflection time", "independent growth", or something fluffy and sensitive that woud be better perceived in this Barney raised feel-goodery we call America where every child,  no matter how mediocre, is special.

Going into the room I had no idea what to expect, the only reference point of detention I had was from Harry Potter and for some reason I didn't think that we would go into the "forbidden parking-lot", searching for the unicorn blood that is the spilled Starbucks of students who ignore the no driving off campus rule. My fear was abated when i realized that a majority of the senior class also would be serving time.Then the mifakedet walked in:

"No talking!"
The room immediately erupted in conversation
"Here are the rules: you talk I add time, no computers,no cell phones, do not ask how much time you have left, you will leave when I tell you, you can do school work or read"
"Ken Hamifakedet"

And so we began our detainment. I took out my math book and began to do my homework, I don't think I've ever had a more productive study session in my life! After a few minutes I looked around the room to see what my fellow delinquents were up to. About half of the room was talking to their neighbors, a quarter were texting their neighbors, a few kids were playing x-box in the corner, and another group of kids broke out a guitar and started having a kumzitz around the campfire they started (don't worry we had a fire drill so we are no longer in danger of a real fire- shoutout White Noise!). All in all the room was more subdue than the average Frisch classroom so we have something to be proud of.

After completing my tahara process, cleansing myself from the impurity contracted from coming late to davening, it dawned on me that I had a FANTASTIC time in detention! I got more work done than I would have at home and I had wonderful entertainment. I don't think I'll ever come to davening on time again! I can't wait for my next detention, in fact even when I get to davening on time I think I'll wait a few minutes so that i can go back to my favorite new extra-curricular.

On a more serious note I am disturbed by the number of people -myself included- who are missing enough tiffila to warrant detention. There is something very wrong with the way we structure prayer in school if it doesn't even phase thirty or forty people to miss it on a regular basis (keep in mind there is another group who will be serving tomorrow night so that number is really doubled). Maybe its just that we start school to early and kids simply cannot get out of bed on time, but I think we as a community need to come together to try and formulate some way of making davening sexyer so we do not need to hold detentions over kids to get them to go, especially considering that a detention is not a very effective punishment. I think one of the underlying factors behind the general apathy towards prayer is a lack of understanding of the importance and meaning of the davening. As a school I think we need to invest more time in both the Halachic and emotional nature of tiffila to hopefully inspire student to WANT to be in shul on time. And pushing the start time ten minutes later wouldn't hurt.

Seeing as though I've rambled on about this for quite some time i will save my next opinion ("Can I call myself a Zionist?) for another time. Happy Thanksgiving!

Blog on Blogging

Dear Osh-Cat, I love your topic! I am a big fan of Israeli food (the little of it I can actually eat given my plethora of food allergies). My favorite food is shwarma- but its not an Israeli food as much as a middle eastern food. When I was in Israel I went with my friend Orel to a bunch of shwarma places, i think the best one was on Ben Yehuda Street. There was also a lovely woman who worked in a shwarma who my friend wanted to marry, he claimed it was because of her beautiful Neshama but i think it was her beautiful face. Maybe it would be fun for you to write a cook book or make Israeli foods as part of your project; we can eat them as we watch an Israeli movie!!

I know nothing about Israeli movies; are they any good? How can you understand them? I went to an Israeli movie with an Israeli girl named Orel but I couldn't understand it (I had a great time anyway). Dr. Weiss and Mrs. Besser are contemplating showing footnote to our Tikva class (Tikva the fund not the Mrs.) It looks really interesting!!

Good luck with the blog!

-Eddie

Just another example of the short comings of US schools

Documentary

I found this interesting documentary about the perpetuation of poverty in America and the corruption of the ultra wealthy. There are many interesting facts about the nature of poverty in America that can be taken from this film regardless of your political views. Park Avenue. Money Power & the American Dream