What’s Next? Life after kids

There’s life after kids.
“You’ve got 30 more years,” said one friend recently, “That’s a lifetime of things you could do.”
Once parents get over the shock of sending their last nestling out the door, guess what? An empty nest turns out to be fabulous, especially having time to focus on grown-up stuff.
If you are facing May with trepidation as your youngest graduates from high school, now is a great time to make a list entitled “What’s Next” and post it on the fridge.
To get you started, here are some categories of things you have probably been wishing you had time for the last, oh say, eighteen plus years.
Serve the Community. Nonprofits, like for instance Habitat for Humanity’s Rehabitat program, can always use willing hands. I also like the idea of animal therapy programs, like using horses to help special needs kiddoes or dogs to visit the elderly.
Seek Justice. Groups like CASA and the East Crisis Center serve those who have been the victims of violence.
Pursue a New skill. Think of all the high-tech photography or video editing that is available now. Or what about something you always wanted time for, like a painting class at TJC?
Start a Second Careers. With a recession, this could be a terrific time to try something new on the side.
Ministry. Give a single mom a break with a little house or yard work. Or get involved with a prison ministry.
Travel. Colleges offer trips at student-inspired low prices. Take a trip with your almost grown kids. Better yet, line up a weekend with your siblings sans offspring. Or travel to a third world country and build a water well.
Politics. Run for school board or city counsel. Attend a party convention or walk your block for candidates.
Write your memoirs. Or tape a video of family history for the grandkids and beyond.
Volunteer in a public school. Adopt a school.
In fact, with so many fun things waiting to do, your kids may have to call ahead to get on your calendar.
Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.

Power of the Spoken Word

As a parent, if you learn anything in life, you learn that teenagers are full of truth.
‘Course it can come at the most unexpected times and in the most unusual ways.
“People can use their words for good, of course, but they can also use them for destruction,” said my current favorite teenager on the way to middle school one morning.
Really? Did he really just open up that conversation, I thought, as I grappled with the idea that we were fixing to have a serious discussion before I finished my first cup of caffeine.
His point was simple.
He had been observing at school that while kids were frequently just awful with the stuff they said to each other – no news there – that, well, a kind word could give vision to a kid who didn’t have many positive thoughts directed his way.
It reminded me that God’s word is a two-edged sword, but in a different kind of way.
Both “sword edges” of God’s word are for good because He is Himself good.
Whether His word convicts our hearts or confirms our wholesome convictions, His message serves us in good ways. Always, His thoughts and His ideas are for the benefit of those who love Him.
At the same time, His message is also always for the benefit of those who reject Him. Even as people run from God and reject Him, He still seeks them out in love.
In other words, because God is wholly good, His message is good at every level and in every way for anyone, even those who hate Him. He is just that good.
On the other hand, people are not 100% good. Basically, our words are a two- edged sword that reflects the duality of our nature – the desire to be selfish and the desire to be unselfish.
Is there any place where that is more obvious than middle school?
“I just told him he is intelligent, Mom,” said my son, “I don’t think many people tell him that.”
Using truth to create hope.
What a truth-full teenager!
Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.

Bond woes and other questions

With the state budget shortfall promising to ravage ISD budgets as soon as next fall, now is a great time to take a hard look at how bond proposals can fail, especially during a recession.

A case in point is the TISD bond proposal that failed most recently.

As early as 1976, the TISD lost what proved to be a string of bond proposals that the taxpayers refused to endorse. Until the passage of the elementary school packages in recent years, it could be argued that Smith County had some pretty tight-fisted citizens.

So, why didn’t Smith County taxpayers continue supporting desperately needed middle schools?

Is it just the recession, as some have suggested?

I don’t think so.

There are at least two race-related questions that were never addressed in the Vote Yes campaign.

First, by building the initial middle school on the south side are we in denial about the lingering affects of racism that haunt the north side of town?

It could be argued that building where there is already an over-population of students simply makes sense. Granted, Tyler’s long-range plans are a step in the right direction for seeing economic growth on the north side of town.

However, I think the public wants to be assured that civic leaders, including TISD officials, are committed to an undivided city. Officials owe it to the taxpayers to explain how building the first middle school in south Tyler will benefit the city in the long run, not just immediately.

Second, is bussing really a cost effective way to manage our student demographics in a culture that is – thankfully - more racially integrated than it once was?

Did you know that bussing is an expense left over from the days when African American parents consolidated their church-based schools in order to offer opportunities similar to those afforded in white schools? Bussing was not actually a solution to the problem of segregation; it was one of the symptoms. Just ask any African American old enough to remember being bussed past white schools in the 40s and 50s. School districts of the 50s would provide a bus to black high schools in order to avoid letting black and white children attend together.

The budget issues facing the TISD are complex. With the state budget shortfall, now is a great time to rethink our traditional ways of paying for education.

I remember 1976 because I was a junior at Robert E. Lee High School and part of a group that campaigned in favor of the bond issue.

If Tyler desperately needed new school buildings 30 years ago, there can be no doubt that we need them more than ever now.

I hope the right issues get addressed next time around.

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.

Public Education and Hypocrisy

The public schools are educating kids for about the same price tag as the private schools in East Texas, based on the Texas Comptroller’s Financial Allocation Study for Texas or FAST report.

I think that’s pretty big news, especially when you consider the public schools can’t just bounce out the kids who misbehave and cause chaos in the classroom.

The classroom is not the place for social services, along with naughty to violent behavior.

And yet, most public school teachers spend a good chunk of their teaching time dealing with issues that are related to bad behavior and disrespectfulness.

There also is a laundry list of social services available, mandated by legislative and judicial bodies and administered through the public school system, mostly by overworked teachers.

Most of it has nothing to do with education. Some of the bureaucracy is simply related to keeping control in the classroom.

In the meantime, teachers are burdened with all kinds of accountability disguised as testing. Unfortunately, we are holding the wrong people accountable.

Modern language has twisted the meaning of the word hypocrisy.

Jesus made his most scathing remarks to people He labeled as hypocrites, so it is kinda crucial to know who is a hypocrite.

Basically, if I tell my kids to do as I say, not as I do – which, by the way, is something I tell them regularly - I am not being a hypocrite in the biblical sense of the word.

On the other hand, if I act super-spiritual, burdening people with foolishness, especially if I take on a leadership role, then, bingo, I am a hypocrite of biblical proportions.

So, what has the biblical definition of hypocrisy got to do with public education and the bureaucracy of taxpayer funded schools?

Basically, as a culture, we are guilty of a major kind of hypocrisy.

As taxpayers, we are claiming to fund education when what we are actually funding is juvenile detention for a large percentage of “students.”

Unfortunately, because we are putting a gentle “education face” on a serious cultural “juvenile delinquency problem”, the kids who go to school to learn are getting short-changed.

Pretending to educate when we are really committed to using public schools to keep delinquents off the streets is a serious kind of hypocrisy.

It should go without saying that the classroom is for educating those who want an education. For everyone else, we need juvenile detention.

And we need leaders who will tell the truth about it.

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives and writes with a Texas twang. Comments are invited at checklistcharlie.blogspot.com.