Go Green: How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community - Article

The following is an article by Nancy H. Taylor, author of Go Green: How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community

Ten Ways to Green Your Home and Family
By Nancy H. Taylor, author of Go Green: How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community

We use a lot of energy in our daily lives, for heating, cooling, lighting, appliances and transportation. There are many ways to save energy and money by making a few simple changes.

1. Change your non-dimmable light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescents (CFLs). CFLs come in all shapes and sizes and even many shades of the color spectrum. So you do not have to have a white glare or even use the curly bulbs. Incandescent bulbs are going to be obsolete soon, so educate your kids about how much energy CFLs save. Because CFLs have a trace of mercury in the bulb, they must be disposed of at a recycling center.

2. Turn down the temperature of your water heater to 120 degrees F. or 50 degrees C. If your water heater is not insulated, wrap an insulating blanket around it. If your water heater is gas, and not insulated, be sure to leave room for the air vent. Do not cover any venting pipes with a blanket.

3. Arrange to have an energy audit for your home or apartment, which can be done through most utility companies or through an independent contractor. This audit will tell you where and how you are wasting energy, or areas that are lacking insulation. If you follow some of the suggestions, it is possible you can get a rebate from the utility and possibly a federal or state tax credit.

4. Get a programmable thermostat for your furnace or home heating system.
If your home or apartment is vacant all day, setting the heat to turn down while you are gone will save you money and energy. Also, turn the heat down at night. Adjust your air conditioner, so that it cools to a warmer temperature in the summer. Use shades to keep heat in during the winter and out during the summer. In the summer, open windows at night to let the cool night air in, then close windows and curtains to keep the house cool all day.

5. Teach your kids about turning off lights and the TV when they leave a room.
We are used to leaving appliances running even when we don’t need them. We forget that they are drawing energy, costing us money and creating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through their energy use. When you buy an appliance, be sure it is Energy Star rated; there are ratings for everything from air conditioners to Xerox machines!

6. Involve everyone in the family in using power strips. Any gadget that has a digital readout or transformer box on its power cord needs to be plugged into a power strip and then turned off when not in use. Computers, printers, DVD players, TVs, I-pods, phone chargers, adding machines, coffee makers, microwaves and just about any modern device all draw power even when they are turned off. If you plug the devices into a power strip and turn it off when not in use, you can save up to 10% on your energy bill.

7. Try to minimize the carbon-producing transportation patterns of your family. Do you take public Transportation? Do you carpool? Do you ride bikes other than for recreation? Do you combine with neighbors for shopping trips, meetings or events? How about airplane travel? Do you plan your trips ahead so you do not have to fly constantly for business? When you do have to fly, offset the carbon footprint of your trip by buying green tags. Try http://www.terrapass.com/ or http://www.nativeenergy.com/.

8. Food buying patterns use energy too. Most food travels 1500 miles from farm to fork. See if you can find food that was not transported from far away. Many stores carry local produce from neighboring farms. Read the labels on fruits and vegetables to see where they were grown. Buy in bulk. Avoid foods that use large amounts of packaging. Buy from the farmers market or Community Supported Agriculture when you can. Always take your own bag to the market, plastic is a petroleum product.

9. Water is another source of energy use; it needs to be heated for showers and washing dishes. Take shorter showers or put a shut-off valve on the shower to turn it off while soaping, shampooing or shaving. Put a water-saver nozzle on your showerhead and all faucets. Use cold water to wash your clothes and dry your clothes on a rack or a clothesline. Turn the water off when brushing your teeth, (a great way to teach kids about not wasting water) or while shaving.

10. Using potable water from the hose to water lawns and plants can deplete your water supply, especially if you are in a drought region of the country. If you live in a place where you could collect rainwater, catch it in a barrel and use it for watering plants and landscaping. If you are landscaping, plant drought resistant plants using a method called xeriscaping.

Now that you have begun to think about the amount of energy you use in your home or apartment, you can calculate your carbon footprint. This is a way to figure out how much carbon dioxide you or your household put in to the atmosphere on a yearly basis. It can be calculated just for your home, or it can include driving and flying as well.

Each carbon calculator is a bit different. Calculating our carbon dioxide emissions is still a rough science in the process of being refined. Try several sites to see which one you like the best. Some of my favorites are: http://www.nativeenergy.com/, http://www.terrapass.com/, http://www.b-e-f.org/, http://www.myfootprint.com/, or www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ind_calculator.html.

After calculating your carbon footprint, you can choose to offset the amount of energy your home uses by purchasing green tags. Depending on the organization you choose, you could be funding a wind farm, solar panels for schools or methane generated from dairy cow waste. Your dollars contribute to developing and purchasing renewable energy. Using your money in this way makes us all less dependent on a fossil fuel economy.

Written by Nancy H. Taylor, author of Go Green: How to Build an Earth-Friendly Community, Gibbs Smith Publishers, Layton, Utah 2008. For more information, please visit http://www.nancyhtaylor.com/.

In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing - Article

The following is an article by Lee Woodruff, author of In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing by Lee and Bob Woodruff.
Published by Random House February 2008;
$16.00US/$19.00CAN; 978-0-8129-7825-4

Handling a Crisis With Kids
By Lee Woodruff, author of In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing

“Tell the truth,” we always say to our kids when faced with their little transgressions, white lies or downright omissions of the facts.

Yet when a bomb in Iraq critically injured my husband, and my children needed some answers, I found myself in the difficult position of deciding just what they needed to know, what to withhold, and how to tell them.

Naturally, every parent is the best judge of their own child and knows intrinsically how to speak to them. But rocking a child’s world with bad news or fearful information was new to me. I have learned a great deal on my journey during the past two years about dealing with difficulty and I wanted to share some of my wisdom.

1) When speaking to your children about difficult or uncertain situations, hold hope and realism in equal measure. My husband was in a coma that lasted 36 days and during that time there were many question marks. I vowed I would never lie to the kids or fill them with false hope. But when they would ask me what Daddy would be like, or how he would recover, I said, “We don’t know exactly what Daddy will be like but I believe in my heart he will be OK.”

I found a phrase that held out some hope while sparing them the intricate details and some of the possible outcomes for their Dad. Most importantly, I wanted to protect my kids from all of the bumps and sharp turns I myself was going through with the roller coaster medical situation.

2) I frequently asked my children how they were doing and sometimes they asked questions. It was important for them to know that I was always ready to listen and patiently answer their questions, even if I was feeling like I didn’t have one ounce of energy left in my body to do so.

3) I offered my kids the chance to talk to a psychiatrist, minister, someone other than me. They never took me up on the offer but I wanted them to know there were other outlets if they felt they couldn’t express their pain or fear in front of me. There were well aware of how much I had on my plate. I never forced the issue and always followed their lead.

4) Hide your fears. My kids took every cue from me and I knew it would be harder for them if they saw me breaking down or railing at the world or worse yet, terrified. I knew my children needed to see me as strong and in control, especially with parent out of the picture indefinitely. It’s ok to cry in front of them—you are human, but histrionics are not going to have any positive
effect.

5) Keep as much to the daily routine as possible. I was separated from my children for 5 weeks, seeing them on weekends. It was extremely hard to be away from them, but what I realized was that bringing them down to Washington to be with me would be the worst thing I could do. They needed to stick to their routine, see their friends, keep their after school activities in place—all of that was “normal” to them.

6) When the going is rough—help your kids live hour by hour. That was some of the best advice I got from someone else. At certain critical points in a crisis, even day-to-day is too long. Keep their focus off their fear of the future. I tried to stay in the present and help my children focus on their day, their homework and their busy schedules.

7) Sometimes it does help to visualize the future. At bedtime, when they might be especially sad or tense, I would have my kids picture us all together as a family that coming summer, or imagine how great it would feel when we got Dad back at the dinner table. I tired to help them find small moments that didn’t over promise too much.

And lastly – love, love, love—shower them with love. You can err by smothering, hovering and over-indulging, but I don’t believe there is any such thing as too much unconditional love.

Author
Lee Woodruff is a public relations executive and freelance writer.
For more information, please visit http://www.bobwoodrufffamilyfund.org/ or join the nonfiction e-newsletter by visiting http://www.rh-newsletters.com/.

Forgive Me - Article

The following is an article written by Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Forgive Me.Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pub Date: January 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-49447-4 (0-345-49447-4)
Lessons from Mom
By Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Forgive Me
No matter what I write about, my novels always seem to have a strong mother character. Inevitably, this character is inspired by my own astonishing mother, Mary-Anne Westley. From a dorm pay phone, a hostel in Nairobi, a restaurant in Athens, or the bench at my neighborhood playground, I’ve talked with her every day of my life.
Once a writer and model for Vogue and Mademoiselle, my mother settled happily into the role of full-time mom for sixteen years. When she left my abusive father, she worked for the phone company and then a chemical gas company, trying to make vibrant copy out of dull facts and figures. She put me and my two sisters through college, commuting over an hour to work until her retirement last year. Money was tight, but Mom never faltered, always inspiring us with her graceful acceptance of the way things had turned out. Now that I am a mother myself, I’ve been able to put some of her rules into practice.
Rule Number One: When in doubt, throw a party.
When my mother left my father, she left behind a giant house and many fair-weather friends as well. In our new, smaller house (next door to Mom’s former golf caddy), we all felt a little lost. When Christmas rolled around, Mom refused to get gloomy. She planned her annual Christmas party, inviting not only the country-club set, but our new neighbors as well: Lou, who had a few cars on his front lawn; Jim, who we suspected was a drug dealer. The same bartender drove across town to our new address, and Mom placed the Harrington’s ham, meatballs, and cheese ball on the dining room table in the middle of our crummy new house. When we dimmed the lights and lit candles, it felt like home.
Rule Number Two: When times get tough, the tough go shopping.
My mother is always beautifully dressed; my sisters and I regularly steal her clothes. When she had to work on telephone lines due to a strike at her company, she came home with a DKNY denim pantsuit, which she paired with pearls each morning.
At one point, while I was in college, my mother lost her job. I knew she was nervous about paying the mortgage, so when she left a message saying she had fantastic news, I called back immediately.
“You got a job?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said cheerily, “but Manda, that sweater you loved went on sale at Bloomingdale’s! I bought it!”
Rule Number Three: Believe—and believe in—your children.
I didn’t always tell the truth to my mother. I lied about boyfriends, I lied about beer, and once I lied about cashing in my meal plan in college and spending the money on a trip to Florida. But my mother always believed me. I think now that the guilt I felt when I lied was worse than any punishment could have been. My mother always expected the best from me, and in the end, I never lied about anything that mattered. I hope I will remember that overlooking a dumb decision (I had to eat Ramen for the rest of the semester, and learned my lesson in spades) might be better than policing my child. My mother’s faith in me, and her absolute belief that I would become an honest person, has been the guiding force in my life.
Last but not least: Mothers deserve to be happy, too.
My mother did give up a great deal to raise me and my sisters. But she never stopped wanting happiness for herself. If she came to visit us at college, she wanted to go out dancing, too. When visiting me in graduate school in Montana, she wanted to go river-rafting and skinny dip in the hot springs. If I ask her to stay in the car with my sleeping baby while I run into Target, she says, “Absolutely! If you go buy me the New York Times to read while I’m stuck here.”
Most importantly, Mom wanted to fall in love, and the best part of the story is that she did. On my mother’s wedding day, she was just as difficult as any bride, complaining about the humidity and the hairdo, and just as radiant. She danced, threw her bouquet, and boarded a friend’s boat with her new husband. And then she sailed off into Long Island Sound, leaving her three daughters to watch her go.
Author Bio
Amanda Eyre Ward is the award-winning author of How to Be Lost and Sleep Toward Heaven. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.
For more information, please visit http://www.amandaward.com/.

The Global Achievement Gap - Article #2

The following is an article written by Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap. You can read my review of this book here.
Education Accountability Version 2.0: A Letter to the Next President
By Tony Wagner,
Author of The Global Achievement Gap
Dear Mr. President:
Your education platform was filled with noble generalities. I suppose you thought you couldn't get more specific because the No Child Left Behind Law is increasingly unpopular and unworkable, and there is no agreement about how to fix it. It is an issue that doesn't lend itself to sound bites. To fix NCLB, you must first understand the skills that matter most in the 21st century and the ways in which the NCLB law is actually getting in the way of more meaningful accountability. And then you must invest in accountability "version 2.0."
Problem: Too few students are graduating from high school. The ones who do lack the essential skills they need for college, careers, and citizenship.
Nearly one third of our students do not graduate from high school. This problem is not more widely known because states are not held accountable for improving their graduation rates. Additionally, states use different formulas for calculating their districts' high school graduation rates, and almost all of them significantly overstate the numbers of students who graduate. Florida, for example, claims a seventy percent graduation rate, but the reality is closer to fifty-five percent.
The majority of the students who do graduate from our nation's public high schools are unprepared for college and the workplace. In the 21st century, the skills needed for careers, college, and citizenship have converged: Critical thinking, creative problem-solving, collaboration, and effective communication have become far more important than mere memorization and factual recall. However, at the high school level, states continue to test low level content knowledge and factual recall through multiple choice tests, and a passing score in even the most "rigorous" of these tests, such as the Massachusetts MCAS test, does not mean students are career and college-ready. Forty percent of the students who pass MCAS need remediation in college. Nationally, one out of every two students who starts college never completes a degree, and the main reason for this poor completion rate is students' lack of college-level skills, not lack of subject content knowledge. Similarity, employers complain that most new employees lack proficiency in the "new basic" skills outlined above.
Solution: The Department of Education should hold schools and districts accountable for their graduation rates and assess the skills that matter most.
The Department of Education should require all school districts and states in the U.S. to report their high school graduation rates according to a common formula. To ensure that schools teach the skills that matter most, the Department of Education should "audit" school districts' performance by testing representative sample populations of students with assessments that measure the most important skills. For example, the College and Work Readiness Assessment measures high school students' analytic reasoning, critical thinking, problem-solving, and writing skills and compares them to the scores of freshmen in 250 colleges. (http://www.cae.org/). Scores from tests like these will tell us whether our country is making progress in increasing the percentages of students who leave high school "college and work ready." Scores of subgroups of students would be reported, as they are under the current law, to ensure that districts teach all students new skills.
To create greater accountability, the Department of Education should issue and widely publicize an annual "report card" for every school district in the country. This short document would simply report the percent of students who graduate and the percent who graduate college-ready by subgroup. Transparency is a far more powerful way to create greater accountability than are the largely meaningless threats in the current law. States would then have the responsibility to develop strategies for helping their under-performing districts to improve.
Problem: The accountability measurements for Adequate Yearly Progress incents states and districts to create a boring, dumbed-down, test prep curriculum, and there is no common standard for "proficient."
One major problem with the NCLB law is the unrealistic expectation that every school will improve the number of students who score "proficient" by a certain percent every year until 100 percent of the students in the nation are proficient by 2014. This expectation leads to two widespread practices: 1) Many states, like Mississippi and Wisconsin, create easy tests where the standard of "proficiency" is such a low bar that most students can pass; 2) To ensure that more students pass state tests, districts require teachers to teach the test content and give frequent practice tests, leaving no time for more interesting or enriching learning opportunities. Increasingly in this country, what gets tested is all that gets taught.
The second major problem with the law is that it allows the standard of "proficiency" to be set by each state. So there are, in fact, fifty different standards of proficiency in this country. For example, students in Mississippi, who have traditionally been among the least literate in this country, are more "proficient" in reading than students in Minnesota, according to the two states' test scores. Because the states' standards vary so widely, their test scores tell us absolutely nothing about what students really know and can do.
Solution: Create a national high school writing test, benchmark districts' and states' yearly progress to a common international standard, and make the unit of accountability the district, rather than individual students.
Lack of writing skills is the number one complaint of both employers and college teachers. However, many states are no longer testing writing because they are not required to, and writing tests are expensive and time-consuming to score. To the extent that some states, like Massachusetts, test students' writing, it is by requiring high school students merely to write a five paragraph essay. The solution is for the federal government to administer a two hour writing exam to demographic sample populations of eleventh graders in all states, as is done in many European countries. The essay question for the writing exam would be based on a major event or document in American History. For example: "Discuss the causes of the civil war and the ways in which these causes continue to influence current events in this country;" Or, "Which
of the first ten amendments (which would be reproduced on the test) do you think is most important for a strong democracy and why."
The second solution to the lack of common standards is to use the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test results as the benchmark for progress in states' education improvement efforts. American students are significantly outperformed by students in most other industrial nations, in part because the PISA tests require very little recall of information and much more application of knowledge to new problems. These are the skills that matter most in the real world, but they are not ones our students learn in their multiple choice world. The incentive for states to improve their education outcomes is economic. States and school communities that have very low PISA scores, which would be widely publicized by the Department of Education, will not attract or keep businesses that demand all employees have 21st century skills.
Finally, in order for states to be able to afford much higher quality tests, like the CWRA and PISA, they should no longer be required to test every student every year. State and district accountability can achieved by testing sample populations of students every year -- a kind of educational audit. To do well on such tests, districts and schools would need to create local assessments for every student that were aligned with the new state and national tests. Each
teacher would be regularly assessing all of his or her students to ensure that students who might be among those randomly chosen for the state and national tests would be well-prepared.
Accountability 2.0 would focus schools and districts on preparing students for meaningful assessments which measure the skills that matter most in the 21st century. To prepare for these new tests, all students would be taught how to write, reason, analyze, pose thoughtful questions and solve problems. In short, they would learn the skills they need for college, careers, and citizenship, and they would be engaged in challenging and interesting work in their classes. Doing anything less that a version 2.0 of our accountability system puts our students' and our country's future at stake.
©2008 Tony Wagner
Author BioTony Wagner is the co director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His most recent book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach The New Survival Skills Our Kids Need -- And What We Can Do About It, has just been published by Basic Books. Tony can be reached through his website: www.schoolchange.org

The Global Achievement Gap - Article

The following is an article written by Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap. You can read my review of this book here.
What Do Your Children Need to Know to Succeed in Today’s World?
And What Can You Do to Help Them At School and At Home?By Tony Wagner,
Author of The Global Achievement Gap
The world is changing at an extraordinary pace. Twenty-five years ago, most young people who mastered the "3 r's" of reading, writing, and arithmetic and had a high school diploma were likely to be able to get and keep a decent job. Not so today. In research for my new book, I've come to understand that there are seven "survival skills" all young people need to master for success in today's world. The skills needed for careers, college, and citizenship have converged. Students who leave high school without them are far less likely to get a good job, succeed in college, or be an active and informed in our democratic society.
All Kids, New Skills
Here are the Seven Survival Skills, as described by some of the people whom I interviewed:
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
"The idea that a company's senior leaders have all the answers and can solve problems by themselves has gone completely by the wayside . . . The person who's close to the work has to have strong analytic skills. You have to be rigorous: test your assumptions, don't take things at face value, don't go in with preconceived ideas that you're trying to prove." -- Ellen Kumata, consultant to Fortune 200 companies
Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence
"The biggest problem we have in the company as a whole is finding people capable of exerting leadership across the board . . . Our mantra is that you lead by influence, rather than authority." -- Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Cisco
Agility and Adaptability
"I've been here four years, and we've done fundamental reorganization every year because of changes in the business . . . I can guarantee the job I hire someone to do will change or may not exist in the future, so this is why adaptability and learning skills are more important than technical skills." -- Clay Parker, President of Chemical Management Division of BOC Edwards
Initiative and Entrepreneurship
"For our production and crafts staff, the hourly workers, we need self-directed people . . . who can find creative solutions to some very tough, challenging problems." -- Mark Maddox, Human Resources Manager at Unilever Foods North America
Effective Oral and Written Communication
"The biggest skill people are missing is the ability to communicate: both written and oral presentations. It's a huge problem for us." -- Annmarie Neal, Vice President for Talent Management at Cisco Systems
Accessing and Analyzing Information
"There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren't prepared to process the information effectively, it almost freezes them in their steps." -- Mike Summers, Vice President for Global Talent Management at Dell
Curiosity and Imagination
"Our old idea is that work is defined by employers and that employees have to do whatever the employer wants . . . but actually, you would like him to come up with an interpretation that you like -- he's adding something personal -- a creative element." -- Michael Jung, Senior Consultant at McKinsey and Company
New Learning and Roles for Parents in the Community
The problem we face as parents is that these are not the skills currently being taught and tested -- even in our "good" suburban schools. In America today, I've discovered that there is only one curriculum in most of our schools: "test prep." What gets taught is only what gets tested. And because almost all of the tests students take -- from state tests for No Child Left Behind to Advanced Placement exams -- require a great deal of memorization and factual recall, these are the only skills being taught in most classrooms. As a consequence, one out of every two students who start college never completes a degree, and employers report that young people today are ill-prepared for the 21st century workplace.
The impact you can have on teacher or school or district may be limited as one individual. I believe parents and concerned community members must work together to become effective advocates for teaching and testing the skills that matter most.
In the last chapter of my book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach The New Survival Skills Our Children Need -- And What We Can Do About It, I suggest that parents and community members must first understand some of the ways the world has changed and how schools need to differently prepare our students for success. Book groups, PTA meetings, and discussions in our churches and synagogues all provide opportunities for the kind of adult learning we need in order to be prepared to ask school board members, educators, and policy makers some important questions like:
• What do you think are the most important skills our high school graduates need today to succeed?
• How are you teaching and assessing these skills?
• How are you gauging the success of our schools -- by test scores or by the numbers of students who go to college and succeed there, as well as by how well prepared students are for work? Have you talked to employers and recent graduates of our schools to see if our students graduate with the skills they need?
New Ways to Support Our Children At Home
Many business leaders and educators alike worry about this generation's "lack of work ethic." However, I've come to understand that the "net generation" is not unmotivated, but rather very differently motivated. Growing up tethered to the internet as most are, today's teens crave connection with others and learning through discovery. They are accustomed to multitasking in a multimedia world and so find most work in schools to be pointless and boring. But, as parents, we worry about our children's futures and so push them to succeed in school. We look at their grades and fret about whether they will get into a "good" college. We push them to do more of the "right" things for their college application, and we hope that they will have a lucrative career some day.
All of these concerns are understandable, but the young adults whom I interviewed -- when I asked what advice they'd give parents -- told me that much of this parental worrying and pressure is actually counterproductive.
Andrew Bruck, a Princeton graduate and currently enrolled at Stanford Law School told me that "parents need to respect the extraordinary capacity of students. Our generation wants to do things. It's important to nurture children's creativity. There's so much pressure to succeed and to go to a brand-name school. There's no need for parents to pile on the stress."
A young woman in a focus group I conducted at a New England college agreed, saying "Parents need to support children in their dreams -- even if it's wanting to be an artist." Another in the group chimed in: "Parents shouldn't worry so much about how their children are doing in school. They should find out more about what their extracurricular interests are." Bruck's high school experience certainly confirmed the importance of extracurricular activities in students' lives. He told me that he learned more about writing and managing deadlines and leadership from his experience as editor of his high school's newspaper than he did from any of his classes.
Matt Kulick, a Cornell grad who now works a Google, had perhaps the best advice for parents when he said "A lot of my friends never had a good idea of what they liked or wanted to do because their parents said 'you're going to be a doctor' or . . . And it doesn't help to tell your kids to do more homework or to always ask them what grade they got. Parents need to find out what their kids like . . . My parents motivated me to do well -- not to get A's but to give my best effort. They trusted me."
Being an advocate in your community for 21st century teaching and learning, and trusting your children as they explore their interests. Easy to say, but hard to do. As parents we, too, need to continue to develop our mastery of the Seven Survival Skills -- and to be models for our children -- as we grow and learn together.

©2008 Tony Wagner
Author Bio
Tony Wagner is the co director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His most recent book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach The New Survival Skills Our Kids Need -- And What We Can Do About It, has just been published by Basic Books. Tony can be reached through his website: www.schoolchange.org