WE MUST COME OUT AND VOTE.

Dear fellow Westchester Democrats and moderate Republicans seeking to oust Rob Astorino. (With help from today’s NY Times) and vote for George Latimer, presently a State Senator from Rye.

Turnout on November 7^th will be critical to our success. In off election years like this one, without a presidential or gubernatorial race to draw people to the ballot, We Democrats tend to stay home. On primary night Democratic turnout was less than 8%.

Astorino is relying on this.

“Donald Trump is not running in November,” said Mr. Astorino, 50, whom some political observers predict will again challenge Mr. Cuomo next year.

WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?

WE MUST COME OUT AND VOTE.

“Certainly there are people who are motivated by the national scene and the Trump effect could lure them to the polls,” said George Latimer, the Democrat who will oppose Mr. Astorino.

“But many of the Democrats — they really don’t focus on the small towns,” he added. “They commute to the city and come back at night.”

WE MUST COME OUT AND VOTE.

Westchester have the dubious honor of competing for the No. 1 and 2 spots on national lists of counties with the highest property taxes in the nation.

HOWEVER…

The county portion of a homeowner’s tax bill is relatively small — around 15 to 20 percent — while school taxes make up the lion’s share.

IN ADDITION…

 

About 80 percent of the county property tax pays for expenses that are mandated by the state, giving the county discretion over a small fraction of the tax bill.

“So when you say you are not raising taxes, you are saving a taxpayer who pays 10,000 a year in property taxes $20 a month.” “And what are you doing to save that? You are cutting social services and co-opting the ability of the county to function financially.” (Ron Edelman, friend of Astorino and former Republican Consultant)

Mr. Latimer, a former county legislator, faulted Mr. Astorino for his fiscal stewardship of Westchester, saying he relied too heavily on borrowing and dipping into reserves.

He also criticized Mr. Astorino’s stance on social issues, citing immigration policies and his decision to allow the county’s exhibition center in White Plains to be used for a gun show.

“If you are a in an upstate county, where 85 percent of the people have guns, that’s different,” Mr. Latimer, 63, said. “In Westchester, far more people have no guns than own guns. So my attitude is don’t have a show like that; it’s not our lifestyle.”

SO IF YOU BELIEVE THAT OUR PRESENT COUNTY EXECUTIVE… THE TRUMP SUPPORTING, MONETARY MANIPULATING, GOVERNORSHIP SEEKING, AND ANTI DEMOCRATIC VALUES ROB ASTORINO NEEDS TO BE OUSTED…

…MAKE IT YOUR BUSINESS AND COME OUT AND VOTE FOR GEORGE LATIMER FOR COUNTY EXECUTIVE THIS NOVEMBER 7^TH.

 

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The Bottom Line: A Keller-Greene Joint

Good teachers are both process and bottom line people. They think about how to get students to walk away with what the lesson was about that day. What will they know, what will they understand, what will they be able to do that they didn’t know, understand, or could not do before that class? When they create lesson plans they think about the process they will use get to the bottom line – student  critical thought.

As education policy makers far removed from classrooms rethink everything in education we can’t forget that bottom line. In rethinking high school specifically, the bottom line is not to prepare students to fill job openings or to navigate technology. Those are ancillary goals of education. Employment needs and technology are too fluid. They change overnight.

However, what never goes out of style or becomes obsolete is simple… thinking critically. Every human invention, discovery or advance has been the product of thinking critically. Thinking critically lends itself to curiosity, to analysis, synthesis, and ultimately, to solutions.

How is critical thought achieved? The best teachers teach students to ask  significant, probing questions. They also teach students to ask those questions.

“Why?” Students ask why in order to better understand the topic or issue better and find a better solution to a problem. In doing so students are able to explain why their answer was the right answer because, “ If you don’t know why, you still don’t know.”

“So what?” is another question students must learn to answer. So what if we tried it this way? So what makes that an important decision? So what makes that action important? By asking that question, students learn to critique as well as reason. It is essential to the arts of questioning and thinking critically.

Thinking critically must be at the center of any change. Teaching students to think critically will in turn encourage them to be curious, to ask why, to ask, as Robert Kennedy did, why not? It will allow them to challenge the limits of what they find in books or the visions of the future they are being handed or told to accept.

Teachers also need to be free to “think out of the box” to be able to create their own materials or methods that can become “best practices” and shared with others who find them both useful and helpful to students. Currently, more often than not, they are not allowed to do either.

Most teachers don’t have a PhD in education, but we know what works. We know that no matter how much things change, the one quality that separates man from animals is and has always been the ability to think critically. Thus only we have the ability to create and adapt to the world around us. No matter what changes are made to education, the bottom line is, and will always be, if you are not teaching students to think critically and challenging them to do it, you’re not educating them.

Why can’t our teachers do this right things? Policies created by non teachers and corporate/government run agencies.

So what will  happen as a result? We already see  the loss of our best teachers. We see the loss of critical thinking as a result of standardized tests and the huge amount of time dedicated to that effort. We see the loss of best practices and sharing. We see the demise of the best American education had to offer as nations like Finland succeed by taking those very processes we developed decades ago.

THE LAST GRADUATION SPEECH

In 2009 the NYCDOE officially closed Adlai  Stevenson High School in the  Bronx, New York as part of its “revamping policy regarding large “failing” high schools they deemed unsuccessful. I taught and coached there from its opening in 1970 through 1986. I still have relationships with many of my former students. To me it was not failure. Policies were failures. The author of the speech, my friend Bernie Keller, taught English there for 35 years. He gave the last graduation speech.

 

One of the best and most important lessons my parents taught me, (and the rest of my siblings), was never to allow others to define me, or to write my story. A more urbane epithet for this statement would be, “Let no man write my epitaph.” People will say Stevenson failed, that the teachers and the supervisors and the students who learned there failed. That is their perception, that is their definition, that is their story. An African proverb states, “The lion never gets to tell the story of the hunt.” This is because the lion always dies, so only the hunter, the survivor, is left to tell the story, or at least, his version of it. Each of you sitting in the audience today as graduates, along with your brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins who graduated form Stevenson High School must tell the story. The story must be told through the colleges you attend, the professions you enter, the lives you lead and the contributions you make to your communities, this city, this state and this country.

Those who see Stevenson High School as a failure, see something I do not see, because that is not what I lived or experienced throughout my three decades of teaching here. While Stevenson wasn’t perfect, (and no place on earth is), Stevenson was a living, breathing community. The people I was privileged to work with and the students I had the opportunity to teach throughout my tenure there were special people. The teachers I admired and respected were hardworking, with a sense of loyalty and commitment. They understood that a teacher “touches eternity,” and they took that responsibility seriously. They helped their students to stretch for their dreams and gave them the means to reach those dreams.

Every year, a new group of ninth graders walked into Stevenson, wide-eyed and overwhelmed, and four years later, more often than not, they left with their heads in the clouds, but their feet on the ground, with a vision for their lives hewn from the dreams, doubts, uncertainties, questions and wishes they possessed when they began as a result of the classes they took and the people who taught them. They learned you do not measure greatness or success with some number on a test paper or graduating in four years. They learned that you measure success, not by where you end up, but that the true measure of success and greatness is what you have to overcome in order to have that success. The diamond, the hardest substance known to man, is nothing more than common coal, until the weight of the earth crushes the coal and transforms a worthless lump of coal into a valuable gem. Like that diamond, it is the adversity and the challenges one must face in order to get where one wants to go to create the person one wants to be that produces the diamonds of our lives.

There were no shortcuts, no easy ways out. There was no magic, no miracles. While every student was given the opportunity to meet their challenges and adversities, not every one was willing to fight for what they wanted. For them, the battle was too hard, or it took too much work. They did not succeed, but those who were willing to do the work, to face down the struggles and the problems, those who were willing to persevere, those people are sitting here today, and they have sat in these chairs for the past thirty-five years.

Thirty five times, purple and white robed graduates have walked down these aisles and across this stage to begin a new chapter in their lives. Thirty five times, they have stood and walked forward in the faces of the doubters, the empty promises and the failed fads. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound anything like failure to me.

Remember that contrary to the experts who believe that one size does fit all and that what makes one person a success can be duplicated in exactly the same way in others to make others succeed, success cannot be measured or doled out in a certain number of years or by achieving a certain grade. No matter how long it takes or how much work is required to do it, I charge you all this day to continue your battle to succeed

On that note, allow me to leave you with two thoughts. The first thought is a definition of success. It states that, “Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is in the doing, not the getting, in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard – reaching for the highest that is in us – becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we have had success.”

The second thought is a poem I write in every yearbook I sign. It says,

Reach for a star-

if you miss

there’ll be a cloud

for you to hang onto.

Thank you again for inviting me to speak with you today, congratulations Stevenson High School graduates of 2009, and always remember to keep a good thought.

What’s your good thought?