The Quintanas, Week 28: Breakfast for Brainpower

There is no good reason for children eating a free breakfast at school, year round. These breakfasts aren't FREE when you add up the cost of the food, the salaries of the people who prepare it and the cafeteria monitors. They are paid for with tax dollars allotted for education. By parents dropping off their kids early for breakfast, schools essentially become baby-sitting services for kids before school. When you start talking about a host of "free" breakfasts, year round, you are talking about a sum of money which could support an extra classroom or two which would ease class crowding, or buying computers or funding art/music classes.

We deprive children of a better education by offering them "free" breakfast and babysitting before school every day, year round.

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I have a Master's Degree in Special Education for Varying Exceptionalities certified to teach children woth an array disabilities) and you probably would not think it, but student who can do mothing more than scrath a pencil mark are still tested on the FCAT, and the teachers are graded on these FCATS, and our new Governor wants to cut off teachers who do not show improvement in test scores. Who the heck cares about compassion, security, the bonding with both Parent (I mention that because having been a teacher of emotionally disturbed and behaviorally disordered students, they are under such incredible stress, often they have not even the support of their families, and I shan't tell others what to do, but I know these parents, the mums who take them to Sunday School twice a week and these mum's just pray and pray, where even there the teachers, thanks to modern (last century's) psyschology, children were most often whipped, never spoiled, and largely as a measure, as step children who are so many of them, and perhaps more rejected than accepted step children, and I praise these children and their efforts and sacrifices just to try to make family out of the 3 of them, then one day he tells you he married you, not your son, not the sweet as a fudge, lovely as a lamb, innocent as a kitten, concerned if what food she has made for me to take back to my husband even if he called her a whore and shucked them out of "our" gun, a 31 year old women but when she calls you mum and kisses your neck with strong and commitful love, her arm around your neck, and always says thank you, I can see it, that abjegation And just as a measure of fact, the FCAT is given 4 times a year and it takes several days to complete, so in a school year of 40 week, you are look at really 32 weeks of learning and 12 weeks of testing, and if that doesn't bother you, ok, that's fine. And since Florida has soooo much poverty behind the scenes of Mickey Mouse and his competitor, Universal, and hiding behind the first several blocks next to the beach, most people do not know the incredible poverty, the ghettos, the slums, that unless Congress passes Universal Pre-K our Kindergarten teachers will continue their valient fight with classrooms that have children who have gone to Kinder Care or La Petite Academy and children who don't know which end of book to open and think you read the pictures. Such is the terrible results of the lack of Cultural Relativism in the breach of income strata, where some kindergateners could have told Sarah that Africa is a continent because they had been there, and other children could not recognize the common animals that one finds on a farm or a safari, which could be experienced even at Busch Gardens in west Florida. But the very studies that enhanced OUR school experinces or our children's experinces, plays, historical programs, musicals, field trips to historical parks or parks of natural interests for flora and fauna, and recess, everyday recess (I recently read an article that stated that oxygen improved thinking and enhanced IQ, now wouldn't that say something about teaching under pressure the content that will be on the FCAT, or teaching for the love of learning and let the FCAT go where it may, these are children, and their attitude torward school begins in kindergarten, and if we beat them over the head with FCAT, all day every day for 36 long weeks, how will they feel about school and learning?) I say "Give them recess, or give them a job"...in which we are treating them like adults, and in Florida it is a huge part of the curriculum to teach them personal responsibility for their achivement in their duty to their school, district, and country. This is every principals DREAM to be able to systematically blame everything on their teachers.

Many years ago, the state decided that "Mental Retardation" began at IQ's below 80. That meant that students with and IQ of a range of 80+ would be in regular classrooms, but the teachers cried fowl, that intellectual range was too broad for them to teach effectively. The state's response...lower the IQ for regular students now to 70, fully 2 standard deviations below the norm, how crazy is that, and in Florida, that is how the establishment "works" with the professionals, complain and we screw the screw in deeper, a very ignorant management style, but another example of Florida's "don't even squeek or you will be soooo sorry," professional educational control, which, of course, causes great resentment, when a teacher has a better way, or breaks away from the "teach to the FCAT" model, or has a better behavior management style than the state's punitive style, try motivation and praise?

What did our teachers do when we were young that made us so much better than the children today? My guess as a K-3 teacher of Emotionally Disturbed/Behaviorally Disordered is the increasing spread between the haves and have nots, No Mr. Superintendent, we cannot beat the cultural experiences they lack, thus the visual and listening vocabulary into the poor and getting poorer in our throw the kids away society, as you could have at least signed the petitions going around telling our Senators and Congressmen that "NO, we cannot cut the funding of our failing schools, but rather support them with more money to even try to give those children some of the cultural experiences that make the difference between the kids from the ghetto and the kids from the gated communities. Let them know, we need universal Pre-K to solve this issue, and give the impoverished a fighting chance. I know...I grew up in abject poverty, broken home, mental illness in the family, and even with an IQ of 161 without glasses I couldn't read until 4th grade, I didn't even know that there were stores with new clothes in them, only rarely went to a park to see a deer or raccoons. Sir, you are doing nothing but cruelly subjecting the kids who cannot do as well and know they are failing 4 times a year, to reinforce the self image as loosers, and you know, Sir, when that starts in elementary school, you know that you are responsible for the seedling of sociopatholgy...if I can't be a winner in school, if all I ever hear from the teacher is criticism, if everyone tells me I am nothing but a looser here, then I'll go over to the hood and maybe I can be somebody over there. Sir, you know this, intrinsicly, you know the psychological damage that the FCAT does, when we were children, our teacher didn't berate us, they gave us recess daily, shoved out into the snow, for fresh air and under the huge "tent" between our two buildings in case it rained, they knew that much, every mom knew that. We only had the standardized tests in 6th grade and 8th grade and since it wasn't any big deal, like nobody's job was on the line, our curriculums were not built around any test. So we had butterfly gardens, planted trees on Arbor Day, invited our parents to the Memorial Day Program, where every year we all studied the Gettysburg Address and one child would be chosen to give the speech in front of the rest of us, who stood at attention, hands to our temples, and parents, and, of course every year, the female teachers (almost all) would tear up, you imagine today elementary students learning about the Civil War, and having a service for those men who died. But we also celebrated the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and during the study, we all were memorizing Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride, and on the 18th of April, or the Friday before if it fell on the Weekend, we would have a little program on the stage after lunch for parents to come and enjoy if they could, and take their child home after which most kids did, and can you have imagined what a shock it would be to them to have to teach to some test, no botany with our gardens, no history, no biology with the dentist and the vet come to make presentations every year and we got to touch a full set of teeth and pet the tamed possums and raccoons, animals we might see around our yards, No Christmas Musical Presentations, no Thanksgiving reproduction that last Tuesday before Thanksgiving Break and everybody had a part, either pilgrim or Native American, and a few named folk who had speaking parts, "Speak for yourself, John Alden" (Actually, before I went to college, up in Boston, I worked for the President of the John Alden Society, of course, named John, how amazing, but then I also worked for the CEO of Cabot Corp, of the explorer Cabot, cousin to the famed ambassaador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, on the Board of Directors of the corporation, if you're good and create a great reputation for yourself, there are some pretty neat people to work for in Boston.

Well, when I was laid off from the Daytona Beach Marriott, a francise operation, because the comptroller kept pressing me for sex and my original boss laid off for not turning over the staff every 18 months, so the president laid off my boss, so I went to the president and he listened, that was a Friday, and on Monday I was terminated, single mom with a Kindergartener son, so I went right to unemployment and when I told them what had happened and asked if I qualified for unemployement, she asked me if I wanted to sue them for sexual descrimination, but that would take a long while and did I have a way to last until then and I did not, so she called the President of the hotel and told him that I was fired for not giving out sexual favor to the comptroller, and he said that non of the other secretaries or assistants would testify, and she said that with a prison term waiting ahead for committing purgury, she thought they would, so she said unemployment would cover me for two years, and I might still go ahead with the suit, or he could pay me two years of unemployment at 80% of my last salary , which appears to be $375, both their part and Unemployment's part for two full years, no kidding, no joking, no messing around and not taking anything out for any benes, or the next thing she will do is have me in to sign the papers for being fired for non-compliance to a sexual demand, and since he is such a big man around here, it might be embarassing for him, I had nothing to loose, far as that went, and about blackballing me around all the medium to big hotels, motels, resorts, and medium to major employers, that would be kept in a new to be opened File under his name, not the hotel, because who knows where else you might strike next, and to send the check here at her office in the name of Florida Unemployment Security.

Now, why is this important?

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Some people need the nanny state to do their parenting for them. They are too stupid or too lazy to do it themselves.

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What does any of this have to do with Emotional Eating? I clicked on "How to stop Emotional Eating" and got this ParentDish crap, what gives AOL?

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