How Problem Solving Sometimes Feels

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There was some interesting news in Idaho's State of the State address recently. It included telling teachers there would be no more tenure and that there would be an imposed merit pay. My mind raced to the poor job government does in putting the proper value on teaching activities presently. After thinking all sorts of rebellious thoughts I changed my approach and wondered what merit pay might look like if I were given the opportunity to create it. Although I have the ear of no influential policy maker, it made me feel good anyway. Perhaps you have some thoughts on the subject. How would you reward teachers if your state went strictly to a merit pay program?


1. Never judge them by what their students do. Students have agency and can choose to engage or not. Rather, evaluate teacher preparation, planning and actions directly. Take the steps necessary to ensure parent and student accountability.

2. Have administrators teach and model cheerfulness in every interaction. The book The Happiness Advantage makes it clear that happy people are smarter and more motivated. Though illusive, happiness in a classroom can be monitored. (page 37)

3. Have teachers teach and model the idea that effort leads to success more than IQ or popularity. Look for evidence of this teaching. (See Mindset by Carol Dweck)

4. Make sure that problem solving is a key skill taught in all classes. (Future Problem Solving is a great model.)

5. Watch to see how inventiveness is promoted in each subject.

6. Watch to see how other models of successful living are built into lessons. For example, do they show students how to use Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

7. To what extent and to what end do teachers use technology?

8. How do teachers promote collaboration? Train the teachers and then measure how well those ideas are presented to students.

9. How skillful are teachers at integrating their subject with other subjects to make them more relevant to their students?

10. Is differentiated vocabulary taught and tested frequently?

11. Allow teachers to choose the teaching techniques that would best benefit their teaching style and then ask them to highlight its use in their actions for you (for example Marzano's 9.)

12. Find ways to free up a teacher's time to research, publish, and present findings to their colleagues. (more on this later)

13. How creative are teachers at engaging students in their own ZPDs?

14. Make it clear that classroom visits are the administrator's way of catching and publishing a teachers' excellent teaching.
15. How good are teachers at connecting students with their own futures? (Ask me about Robin Sly's epiphany.)

The Best Way to React to Bad News

I am one that has the Tea Party mindset, concerned with the debt we are accruing and the impact that will have on future taxes. When the legislators last week signed into law their Health Care bill things looked bleak indeed. My first reaction was to look for a proper way to mourn, but that isn't very productive. I then remembered this incredible article about a town in Paraguay called Mistolar and how they endured even worse setbacks. So my question for this post is,
"What is the best way to react to the bad news of the new Health Care law?"

1. Wait to see if the other branches of government "check and balance" it away.

2. Resist the fear TV seems to promote by seeking Him in prayer instead.

3. Do everything we can to promote our own health now...exercising, dieting, concientious use of prescribed medicines, setting health goals and working towards them.

4. The Mistolar example relied on the power of the Priesthood to heal sickness.  I believe in this power having experienced it many times.

5. To ward off fight or flight instincts, teach all Creative Problem Solving (CPS) (esp. the doctors and accountants) and the positive attitudes necessary for successful CPS.

6. Remember my motto that there are almost always at least 5 ways of getting a thing done.

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Asking the Right Questions

Are you better off than you were four years ago? That is the question Ronald Reagan asked to get elected. It was the wrong question to ask. It implied that it was the government's responsibility to create well being. Reagan was against big government and yet he was asking the public to look to Big Brother to take care of them.

The polls asking about how many of us approve of what the President is doing seem to be along the same lines. The President is not up for re-election. Aren't there better questions to be asked? What are they? What would better focus national attention on issues that we can more directly effect? What questions would help the majority of America's citizens "be the change they would like to see."

1. Am I taking full responsibility to insure my own family's economic, emotional and spiritual well being for today and tomorrow? (Seth)

2. Am I then realizing and acting upon the obligation I have to aggressively encourage others in my community to do the same through example and active civic participation? (Seth)

3. Am I easily persuaded by one strong opinion, eloquently advocated, only to be swayed the other direction when I hear another equally persuasive "expert" voice the counterargument. (Seth)

4. Do I take enough individual responsibility in my examination of an event to see the big picture clearly by gathering the relevant facts available, recognizing historical patterns and applying truths which I hold as absolute before making a judgment? (Seth)

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How to Love the Refugees

I live in a town with a Refugee Center. I have often heard the complaint that we shouldn't take in the world's poor until we have cared for our own. With the latest influx coming at the same time as wide spread unemployment, the cry has been, "They are steeling our jobs!"

Let's review a few facts. First, the only jobs refugees can get pay minimum wage. Second, the US citizens were out of work before the refugees came. Third, and most important, is a recognition of the stark to horrifying conditions these people have lived in for the past twenty years. Our government has just now offered to relieve some of the over-crowding in the camps. Finally, immigrants have a track record of lifting themselves up by the boot straps and making fine contributions to their new countries.

I am not insensitive to the recent rash of layoffs suffered by my neighbors. I'm also not unaware that I may easily be one of them soon. But blaming the wrong source is not helpful.

So what can be done to employ both refugees and the fearful natives? The world didn't all of a sudden run out of work that needed to be done...

1. Make a new path to a college education...one that starts with two years of developing and practicing a technicle skill before college entrance.  This way students could make enough money while in college to pay for their own educations because they would be able to make more than minimum wage.
2. Enroll adult refugees in this same two year program.
3. Teach all entruprenurship and require at least one year of running thier own businesses.
4. Teach non-english speakers our language using "Super Learning" techneques proven to insure mastery in one half the time.
5. Teach our students other language in the same way so that when refugees arive they would have automatic interpreters and advocates.
6. Build education into assembly line jobs.
7. Have state govenments employ the LDS Deseret Industries systems and locate refugees in those states.
8. Invite local businesses to use Google workplace practices with all workers.
9. Perfect the Universal Translator...or have the world get serious about an international language.
10. Teach all children and refugees "what it means to be an American" to foster loyalty to this country.

Crime Theory

Heather Mac Donald wrote a wonderful article in Wall Street Journal titled A Crime Theory Demolished. Her position is that law enforcement brings down crime, not social welfare programs. The second, and I believe erroneous idea, comes from a Robin Hood position that poor people need to and should take from the rich, thus the raise in crime. So they think the answer is to make people less poor by the government giving them money so they don't have to steel it. (Another Robin Hood notion only this time Robin is dressed in legislative garb.)

This is a vital argument in light of the problems in Haiti. The rule of law has been almost non-existent there. When the US hit the ground with food and medical help, it was not only the mess made by the earthquake they had to overcome in order to get aid into hungry hands. I heard of a man hitting a woman and steeling the recently received food from her arms. I heard of US forces giving out care packages on a golf course but only allowing women and children in to pick it up knowing they wouldn't receive it otherwise.

How do we help Haiti without first locking up a large portion of it's population? The earthquake exacerbated an already huge problem. But when things are so shaken up, fundamental reform can happen if we are willing to step on the toes of a corrupt and ineffective government. The problem I would like to see solved is "How might we best paralyze a criminal population so Haitians can prosper under the Rule of Law?

1. The LDS church found an interesting solution. They provided safety within the walls and on the grounds of the nine meeting houses in Port-au-Prince.

2. Stick enforcement of NYC's "Brocken Window" policies.

3. Put criminals to work rebuilding the city.

4. Find an carismatic Hatian leader that is honest to the core then protect him/her.

5. Provide safe boarding schools for children until the streets are safer.

6. Encourage a system of US host families for semester abroad elementary students until homes are rebuilt.

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 (See also the #7 solution to the "Haitian Boat Crash" post.)

Admiring Ingenuity

As you can see from some of my last posts, I really admire ingenuity. People that can make the world a better place, esp. for the poor, are some of the best resources this planet has. I like the Dean Kamen attitude that if we aren't making the world a better place for someone else, why are we here? (In this there is an implied answer but I think it goes deeper.)

When the political world seems full of gloom and doom, when no amount of talk-show wisdom can turn around power structures bent on illogic, my mind finds solace in stories like this one:

"Brilliant water-based eyeglasses for the masses: No optician required" Josh Silver invented glasses that a person can pump up until the world looks right then seal. His target is people in countries generally not rich enough to afford glasses whose lives and livelihoods are diminished because they can't see. Three cheers for Josh Silver!!!

There is still plenty of problem solving to do. How does he produce and distribute them at low cost?

1. Some of my nephews have focused their Eagle Scout projects on collecting used frames to give to an optometrist. He takes them to third world countries and fits them to the people there. What if the boy scouts put their hearts and hands to helping Mr. Silver?

2. Get sponsors. The Lyon's Club helps children in the U.S. with eye tests. Is there a global Lyon's Club?

3. Get churches to help.

4. Give the challenge of production to engineering students at universities. Make it a competition.

5. Give the challenge of distribution to business students at universities.

6. A Reversal: Instead of people in wealthy countries making them, teach people without jobs, in the countries where they will be used, to make them. This lessens the distribution problem and solves unemployment for a few.

7. Send them out with humanitarian groups that teach people to read and write.

8. Make it part of the PEF package the LDS church offers.

9. Show some celebrities that it is a good cause to take up.

10. Make them part of a care package we send illegal aliens home with.

11. I heard of a shoe company that said for every pair of shoes they sold in the U.S. they would give a pair of shoes to someone in developing countries. Get frame companies to do the same.

12. I found this story by clicking on the "Stumbled Upon" website. Did it ever make the nightly news? What if networks picked it up as part of a public service campaign?

13. At the Mountain Home Auto Ranch they are running ad campaign called Bucks and Trucks. Buy a truck and get a free gun for the deer hunt. What if books stores offered the chance to sponsor a pair of glasses with every book you bought?

14. I heard last night on the radio of the millions the New York mayor spent on getting re-elected. I wonder if he could get re-elected if he promised to spend that private money on this cause if they would vote him back into office. Let him get his other messages out on free blogs.

15. Make manufacturing these glasses a talking point in the next congressional elections.

16. Brigham Young encouraged his people to use "Beans not Bullets" when dealing with the Native Americans in early Utah. Mao had the troops following him help the farmers with their harvest while the other war lords trampled crops as they crossed the land. Our military could take these glasses to our battlefields to engender good will. You might say we were "walking softly and carrying a big pair of eye glasses." :)

17. The first President Bush saw volunteers as "A Thousand Points of Light." President Obama could encourage Americans to help others "See a Thousand Points of Light."

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