Tag: excellence

SoCS 11-12-22- Pursuit of Excellence

On By Susan St.PierreIn In my humble opinion..., Writing PromptsLeave a comment

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “starts with or contains ‘cel.’” Find a word that begins with or contains “cel” and use it in your post any way you’d like. Have fun!

“Excellent!”
Have you ever watched a child’s face light up when you say that? That reaction is also an excellent outcome. It’s heartwarming!

That word is not synonymous with perfect, though. Perfect doesn’t actually exist in our everyday lives. It’s a unicorn; great to imagine but impossible to own. But “excellent” does absolutely exist.

Excellent is a worthy goal and looks different in every situation. Doing your best is excellent. Making even a tiny improvement is excellent. It seems that excellent can be a direction to move toward as often as an outcome. But excellent things rarely “pop” out of nowhere. They’re pursued. And in order to appreciate any “excellent” event we need to also know being disheartened and disappointed. Everything is relative.

I personally dislike complaining. And it just occurred to me that people who complain a lot may have unrealistic expectations of achieving excellence. Do we feed that attitude in kids? Are we so eager to see their glowing faces that we dish out the “that’s excellent!” praise too often? I can’t help thinking that we’re giving a terrible burden to kids when we do that. People who complain about everything are visibly miserable and while they are complaining, “hope” is nowhere to be found. Besides Love, Hope is an essential part of life. It gives you courage to “try again” and to persevere. Without it, ‘giving up’ is almost a sure thing.

That brings me to something I have pondered for a while. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced The Great Depression and two World Wars. I was fortunate to know my grandparents and listened to their tales about ‘difficult times’. Why weren’t drug abuse, suicide, frantic outrage, and ‘safe spaces’ big deals then? Do modern day kids think struggling is something new? I think so. In fact, I don’t think modern day kids even recognize what ‘struggling’-real human despair- is.

Here’s a recommended topic of discussion with your kids and grandkids. As all things are relative, ask them to put down their $200.00 devices and chew on this:

“While rates of extreme poverty have declined substantially, falling from 36 percent in 1990, the report’s expanded examination of the nature of poverty demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge in eradicating it. Over 1.9 billion people, or 26.2 percent of the world’s population, were living on less than $3.20 per day in 2015. Close to 46 percent of the world’s population was living on less than $5.50 a day. “


And once you get their attention, watching this video together might give them an idea how to help out their fellow man. Wouldn’t that be excellent?!



Happy Saturday! I hope we all can inspire our kids to seek excellence!


https://lindaghill.com/2022/11/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-12-2022/

Three Lines Tales- Ruined

On By Susan St.PierreIn Writing Prompts3 Comments

Welcome to Week 282 of Three Line Tales.

Photo by Mehrab Zahedbeigi via Unsplash

She was a woman who had graduated at the top of her class and had a flawless training experience, as well as, thousands of hours as a pilot.

NASA, in recent months, had become ‘woke’.

Except for her gender, she had too few intersectional qualifications therefore her dreams, and the level of excellence at NASA, were ruined.

Three Line Tales | Only 100 Words

Three Line Tales 282 | Only 100 Words

Schools-what do we learn?

On By Susan St.PierreIn In my humble opinion..., Sideshows4 Comments

homeschooling afternoon
homeschooling afternoon (Photo credit: hbakkh)

There is an urban myth that public schooling is the best method by which we can teach children social skills. In fact, that is the primary argument against home-schooling. I beg to differ.

There’s a growing concern that public schools are failing our kids in a BIG way. There are many dedicated teachers, who do an excellent job, but the teachers’ unions protect not only the good teachers but the bad ones too.

When we are faced with the expensive and ,I believe, better alternative of home-schooling, there is the concern about the proper “socialization” of these kids.

We don’t do “sex education” before we feel a child is mature enough but we send kids off to school, at a tender age, for their first exposure to bullies, ridicule and peer pressure. They will be measured by grades and learning styles and will be kept in the classroom for the great majority of their learning experience. Hopefully, this classroom will have an orderly atmosphere and a small group but that is not guaranteed. Actually, it’s a “crap shoot” that your child’s classmates will be a “good” group. Sometimes, there is a larger number of “mis-behavers” and that is simply up to chance and timing. Teachers are not to blame,at all, but ask them and they will volunteer, readily, their memories of “good groups”.

A home-schooled child can visit real-life situations (grocery stores, parks, libraries etc.), as often as, Mom or Dad deems necessary. A “busy” child can be offered hands-on experiences and more breaks, as often as, he/she needs and the parent can correct bad manners as they present themselves in those real life situations.

There are youth sports and music organizations, available to the public, for the lessons needed in cooperation, and the taking of instruction from authority figures other than parents. The education is ongoing, year round, when the “teachers” are always present and fully aware of the curriculum.

It is so very sad that most parents haven’t the option of home-schooling. I do expect a growing trend of home-schooling, though. Families may re-evaluate the need and budget in a way to make it happen. Actually, the current stress on incomes causing grandparents to become household members, may offer them as home-school teachers or helpers with the family budget, affording parents the chance to teach.

The whole idea of home-schooling being a poor option is simply, not true, and cannot be supported by urban legends.

Those who have the ability and means to do it, have my thumbs up.

Related articles

Fill in Those Blanks America!

On By Susan St.PierreIn Sideshows3 Comments

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria d...
Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell’ Accademia, Venice (1485-90) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Math Anxiety by Deb Russell at About.com.

Where Does Math Anxiety Come From?

“Usually math anxiety stems from unpleasant experiences in mathematics. Typically math phobics have had math presented in such a fashion that it led to limited understanding. Unfortunately, math anxiety is often due to poor teaching and poor experiences in math which typically leads to math anxiety. Many of the students I’ve encountered with math anxiety have demonstrated an over reliance on procedures in math as opposed to actually understanding the math.”

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The above statement seems to have been written just for me. I don’t do math.

 How is it there are a multitude of ways to get kids to read but there seems no one has explored diverse methods to bring kids into the understanding of math?

I have always accepted an “either /or” philosophy. Either one is creative or they can do math. Those who explore the “word world” draw on a different part of the brain from “number” people.

That thinking cannot be correct. People are capable of overcoming strokes, they must be capable of understanding math and the Arts. Leonardo Da Vinci serves as the perfect example of the human ability for excellence in both areas.

Our nation’s children are failing to keep up with students all over the world. The lack of math “understanding” seems to be the most prominent reason.

I wanted very badly to become a scientist, in my early days, and gave up on that dream due to an egregious lack of math ability. Now in adulthood, I can call it a phobia. My mind draws a blank when numbers come into play. Funny thing, I excelled in geometry. It was a visually based subject with more “memorized procedures” involved. Seems to make the case about math anxiety even stronger, doesn’t it?

I’d love to offer more math related activities to my granddaughter but not knowing the “stepping stones” toward understanding math myself, makes me a poor teacher. I believe I will research new methods. Any suggestions from others will be gratefully accepted. Now I understand how frustrated parents/grandparents, who speak a language other than English, must feel when asked about English composition by their kids.

You know? With good material, I may just start over and learn along with Katherine. Life’s too short to accept any “blanks”. 🙂