Archives for category: Love
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Sadness and Tears on Memorial Day

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2019 //
49

Let us pause and remember the men and women who lost their lives while serving in the military.

The older I get, the more I hate war.

I despise those who see war as a political tactic, those who stir up war talk to get votes.

Those who drop bombs and fire missiles to raise their poll numbers are contemptible.

There is evil in the world, for sure.

I saw it when I visited the “killing fields” in Cambodia last year.

There is a high school in Pnomh Penh that was turned into a torture camp by the Pol Pot forces.

The walls of the school are lined with photographs of hundreds and hundreds of men, women, and children, taken just before they were killed. Horrifying.

It is our challenge to be on the side of kindness, justice, charity, love, and forgiveness.

That may be hard. But in a time when so many nations have weapons of mass destruction, we have no choice.

“We must love one another or die.” (W.H. Auden).

He also wrote, in another version of the same poem, “We must love one another and die.”

Both statements are true.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Evil, Love, Personal

Jackie Goldberg: Why I Love This Woman!

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2019 //
11

 

Capital & Main interviewed Jackie Goldberg about her views, her vision, her hopes for the future. My heart sang and my brain hummed as I read her inspiring words.  

Reading Jackie’s words was like eating comfort food. I kept saying to myself, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Read the interview and you will see what I mean.

Jackie knows we are in the middle of a war to save public education. She knows that there is big money determined to kill it. She knows that the hope for the future of our democracy depends in having a well-funded public school system that provides genuine opportunity to all children.

And she is prepared to go to the mat, in Los Angeles and in Sacramento, to get the funding that public schools need and to get the financial accountability that charter schools need.

I am reminded of the first time I met Jackie. It was December 6, 2018. I had heard about her for years as an iconic figure but our paths had never crossed.

Over the past several years, the billionaires were buying seats on the LAUSD and things were looking bleak. I kept hearing about this dynamo Jackie Goldberg, the only one who could turn things around. She was the Cy Young pitcher in the bullpen, the one held in reserve until the ninth inning.

Last December, I went to Los Angeles to receive an award from a progressive group called LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy), which fights for fair wages for low-income workers, environmental protection, and a stronger public sector.

Jackie was there. We agreed to talk after the dinner. We sat in a crowded bar and talked for over an hour. I felt like I was talking to my mirror image yet our life experiences were very different. It was a joyous conversation.

When I returned to LA in February, I spoke at a fundraiser for her. Once again I was impressed by her knowledge, her experience, her passion for education and for children and for justice.

You could count me as her biggest fan but given the 72% win she just racked up, I’m guessing that there are many others in Los Angeles who have known her much longer and who love Jackie as much as I do.

It should go without saying that she is a hero of public education.

Cy Young just came in from the bullpen. Things are definitely looking up.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Honor Roll, Los Angeles, Love

Karen Francisco: Portait of a Lifelong Teacher

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2019 //
4

 

Karen Francisco, editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, wrote a moving tribute to our dear friend Phyllis Bush. She called Phyllis “a lifelong teacher.” She taught for 32 years. When she retired, however, she never stopped teaching.

Francisco quotes some of Phyllis’s former students, who describe how Phyllis Bush changed their lives.

The editorial includes a photograph that catches the only moment when Phyllis was ever speechless. That moment occurred at the last annual conference of the Network for Public Education, held in Indianapolis, when the winner of the first annual Phyllis Bush Award for Grassroots Activism was announced. As one, the audience jumped to its feet and gave Phyllis a standing ovation.

That was a precious moment, filled with love, respect, and admiration for a woman who never stopped teaching and never lost her sparkling sense of humor.

Categories Courage, Education Reform, Humor, Indianapolis, Love

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Explains Who Can Serve the Community Best

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
11

This wonderful quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was sent to me this morning by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

As the nation honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we should all ask ourselves what we are doing to help achieve King’s vision of a “Beloved Community.”

Community is what Congress had in mind in 1994 when it designated MLK Day as a national day of service.

Dr. King knew that all of us have something to contribute. He understood the power of community action – of many small acts pushing a society closer to its ideals.

“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve,” he said. “You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. … You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”

Categories Citizenship, Civil Rights, Courage, Love

May 2019 Be Happy and Healthy for All Who Read These Words

By dianeravitch
January 1, 2019 //
20

If I had magical powers, I would bless you all with happiness and good health.

May you find answers to your problems, may all your days have time for laughter, may you set aside time to read and reflect.

May art and humor conquer the darkness that we inevitably encounter.

May you find hope, joy, and love in your life.

May the good guys win and the bad guys lose, just like in all the wonderful movies of olden times.

May all of us, working together, repair this world we live in so it will be better for those live in it now and for those who follow us.

Diane

Categories Hope, Humor, Joy, Love

Phyllis Bush: Light, Love, and Laughter on the Best Christmas Ever

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2018 //
4

Phyllis Bush claims to be a retired teacher. But as she proves in this post, she never stopped teaching.

She is teaching us lessons about life and death. How to live, how to face death, how to laugh in the seemingly worst of circumstances, how to love, how to live life to the fullest, how to be an example for all of us.

All of us will die. The question is how. Phyllis shows us how: with courage, humor, and spirit.

Categories Courage, Joy, Love

Merry Christmas!

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2018 //
32

Dear Friends,

I hope you enjoy Christmas Day. As a Jew, I have great respect for people of all faiths. I believe in live and let live.

I am aware that for many people, Christmas is a sad time because they think of their childhood and their memories are aglow with presents and family, but also thoughts of loss.

The best antidote to sadness is to reach out and help others. Volunteer to work in a soup kitchen. Former President Obama visited a children’s hospital in D.C. and brought joy. A man in Arizona found a child’s list of wishes for Santa, attached to a balloon that landed on his ranch, and he tracked her down–a little girl in Nogales, Mexico–tried to find everything on her list, and brought Christmas gifts for her and her little sister. He and his wife crossed the border into Mexico to spread joy. They had lost their only child and missed having children in their lives.

There is so much good around us, and so many opportunities to do good for others.

Do whatever you can to ease the pain of those who are less fortunate than yourself.

As for this blog, here are my plans. I should take a break for the next week, but people keep sending things that I want to share. So I am going part-time. I will post whatever interests me. Maybe one post a day, or two, or three.

Stay tuned.

2019 will be a great year for the Resistance!

Diane

Categories Joy, Love, Personal

Phyllis Bush, in the Hospital Fighting Cancer: “The Best Christmas Ever”

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2018 //
6

Given the national news, this is not a happy time. We are veering close to a constitutional crisis, with a totally unqualified and unhinged man in the presidency. It is hard to be cheerful.

Yet Phyllis Bush reminds us about hope and love, even in the direst of circumstances.

Now I know why her email begins with QBG. I have always wondered. The BFD, I assume, is a reference to her best friend (and spice) Donna.

She is surrounded by love, and she shares the Christmas spirit with all who read her words.

Categories Courage, Hope, Love

Fort Wayne: Former Students Surround Their Teachers with Love

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2018 //
11

When word got out on short notice that Phyllis Bush and Donna Roof were getting married, former students of the retired teachers flocked to the courthouse to surround them with love.

That’s the ultimate reward of teaching: the love and respect of your students. It’s no substitute for professional pay. But money can’t buy it.

Politicians don’t get it. Billionaires don’t get it. Hedge fund managers don’t get it.

Teachers get it.

Love. The love of the hundreds and thousands of students whose lives they touched.

http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20181219/affection-for-couple-clear-in-no-time

Categories Education Reform, Love, Teachers

Peter Greene Remembers the Children and Adults Lost at Sandy Hook in 2012

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2018 //
3

Peter Greene asks us to imagine a country that cared about the loss of innocent lives.

Imagine.

Has it been six years? It seems forever, and yet it seems yesterday.

There will be many retro pieces today, looking at the events at Sandy Hook, the children, the families, the killer, the damaged whack jobs who have denied its existence, and of course many reflections about the turning point where we chose as a culture not to turn.

I’ll leave all of that to others. I just want to imagine.

Imagine a country where people rose up and said decades ago, “Guns are nice and important and all, but nothing is more valuable than the lives of innocents. We’re going to have reasonable gun controls in this country before another young life is lost.” Don’t imagine it happening after Sandy Hook. Imagine it years earlier, after the death of just one or two children by gunfire. In this world, Sandy Hook is just one more small school most people never heard of.

Imagine that when people marched against abortion, they simultaneously marched against gun violence. “We are pro-life,” they yelled, “and that means that we want to see every step necessary to preserve the lives of children.” Imagine a world in which pro-life activists chained themselves to the gates of gun factories and shamed gun company executives on their way to work every day.

Imagine that these attitudes were part of a culture wide valuing of children, a culture that loved children so much that it took extraordinary steps to preserve their lives. The government provided free health care for every single child, regardless of family income. People brought their children here from other countries for our free health care and we said, “Great. Bring them. Children are so precious and valuable that we wouldn’t sleep knowing that there was a suffering child in the world that we could have helped, but didn’t.”

Imagine that this love of children extended to education. In fact, imagine that education was one of the biggest budget items for federal and state spending. “Nothing is too good for our children,” said political leaders. “We will make sure that every school has nothing but the newest and best facilities and enough qualified teachers that class sizes can be small. Every child has the personal attention of excellent teachers, and that goes double for children growing up in poor neighborhoods.” Not all the politicians believed this, of course, but in this world, the only way you could get elected was by being a good friend to public schools. And no, there aren’t any charters or vouchers in this world– why would you need them when every public school had the very best in resources, staff and facilities, with the necessary resources to meet the individual needs of each child. “Man,” groused the Pentagon in this world. “I wish we could get the kind of unwavering support public schools get. We have to fight and scrape and argue for every cent.”

Categories Connecticut, Education Reform, Guns, Guns in Schools, Love
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