Be the Match

On Sunday, I stumbled upon a great opportunity to help someone.

After a race in the city, I was walking through the race expo, which consists mostly of sports nutrition promotion, upcoming athletic events, and coupons to outdoor companies. Unexpectedly, a woman approached me, JR, and Tracy and encouraged us to visit the Bone Marrow Transplant tent. Instead of offering us food or coupons, the people at this particular tent offered us a chance to give.

Turns out, there is an organization (Be the Match) that organizes a registry to match bone marrow donors with those who need it most. After filling out the paperwork and taking four quick swabs in my mouth, I was registered! I think this is an important cause, and I encourage my readers to participate in becoming a donor. The website states "Thousands of patients with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases depend on the Be The Match Registry to find a match to save their life. Patients need donors who are a genetic match. Even with a registry of millions, many patients cannot find a match. Donors with diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds are especially needed."

Want more information? Check out their website here:

Be The Match

Bahati Foundation

Most frequently my posts revolve around education, psychology, or the outdoors (usually cycling). I'm excited to publish this post, because it embodies all three.

Bahati Foundation: Trailer

Rahsaan Bahati is the most successful African American cyclist, and this video shows how he is trying to reproduce his success in others. It is powerful testament to overcoming the odds and thriving in a domain where one's group is stereotypically absent from. In the video he addresses
the importance of motivation and high expectations in school and sport. I could not agree more.

Rahsaan's website can be found at: www.bahatiracing.com

"Ride, Dream, Win."

Ways of knowing

We believe facts for all kinds of reasons-- it serves us best, the evidence supports it, our experiences are such, or someone in a lab coat told us. In introductory science courses, one first-taught principles is how do we know something. I want to take a brief moment to outline those sources of knowledge.

Tradition: Based on custom, repitition, and habit. "It's they way we've always done things here."

Intuition: Sudden insight, clarovoyance. "I just had a weird feeling that something bad was going to happen."

Logic/Rational Thought/Common Sense: Practical thoughts that that follow logically to lead to some truth. "She's frequently late, and we're meeting at 3pm, so she'll probably arrive after 3pm."

Authority: Information from a person distinguish as an authoritative source. "Four out of five denists agree..."

Experiential: First hand observations. "The bank robber was about yay high, had a long beard, and was wearing sunglasses."

Science: Systematic observation that leads to truth. "Based on repeated random trials across different settings with a generalizable population, it is concluded that..."

Given this outline of the ways we come to believe/know a piece of information. I encourage you to think about your own beliefs and knowledge. What makes you think the earth revolves around the sun? Is homosexuality genetic or socialized? What about global warming? Your religious beliefs? It is an interesting thought experiment and a healthy one. I find that too much in academia, we rely on authority and experiential knowledge, when we should isolate ourselves to science. I'm not sure, however, if that ideal is even reachable. Regardless of the knowledge you're consuming, it's important to ask why you are intaking that information and not others.

State of Education

I want to share a short CBS video about the current state of education.

Schools Face an Uphill Challenge

Interestingly, the Harvard Ed.D. program that is mentioned is one that I (and many others) have highly coveted. Although I certainly would not change my path, I do wonder what life would have been like had I accepted Teach For America and then applied for a Education Policy program in Fall of 2011.

I digress... The clip is a nice snapshot of the larger picture of education, and Michelle Rhee seems to be the poster-girl of neo-education policy reform.

Barefoot Running!

Last summer, JR, a good friend and author of playthink, approached me with the notion that running barefoot may be better than running with highly structured, highly padded shoes. The Barefoot Revolution, he called it. The idea seemed dangerous but simple and alluring. One of the largest instigators for this debate is a book called Born to Run, which chronicles the current state of the shoe industry and a hidden tribe that has members running extreme distances with no shoes or light rubber sandals.

If you don't have time to read the book, see the links below:

Should You Be Running Barefoot? (Time)

Humans Were Born to Run (NPR)

I am currently training for my first marathon, and I have not completely adopted this minimalist running. I have, however, shortened my stride and started landing on the balls of my feet. Anecdotally, I have seen great improvements in my knee pain and my ability to run day after day. While I do believe there are benefits to barefoot running and the shoe industry does not necessary have runners' best interest in mind, I continue to run in running shoes. For me (for now), the take-home message has been run like you are barefoot.

The debate continues, but I encourage more runners to take a seat at the table.

California Education Woes

In the Summer of 2008, I moved across the country to attend graduate school. At the time, UC Berkeley was the #1 Public University in the world. It was an offer I could not refuse-- a first-class education for one of the cheapest pricetags available. While the first attribute remains, the second is fleeting. Since the economic downturn (and before then according to some) a UC education has grown more expensive, semesters have shortened, and classes have become more restricted. Worse, there are fears that professors will leave the UC system amidst the turmoil, which would impact that first attractive element of UC Berkeley. NPR addresses the current budget woes of the UC system:

California Budget Woes Hurt University System

The segment addresses others' situations, which are far worse than mine. It brings the hardship of finding the money for college to light. At present, there are bonafide concerns about both the quality and affordability of a UC education, and there are ominous signs that UC Berkeley may be headed towards a more privatized model. Interestingly, the highly controversial President Yudof comments on these concerns.

In tonight's State of the Union, President Obama said that the best anti-poverty reform is a world-class education. The president also spoke to the growing insufficiency of a high school diploma is today's society. If we hold these tenets as true, then making college financially and pragmatically accessible should be held on high in any economic climate.

Evaluating Teachers: Part II

A few days ago, I addressed the complexity of quantifying and gauging teachers' performance. Recently, I ran across an article in the Atlantic that pushes this discussion further.

What Makes A Great Teacher?

Succinctly, Amanda Ripley reveals the data and conclusions from Teach for America's (TFA) internal study. "Right away, certain patterns emerged. First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students. Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing." Further, in reviewing the efficacy of its own teachers, TFA concluded that there are four aspects that make a great teacher:

1. They avidly recruited students and their families into the process.
2. They maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning.
3. They planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome.
4. They worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

Albeit somewhat vague--Ripley pushes these conclusions and makes them more operational. Also, she articulates predictors of teacher success and debunks many commonly-held misconceptions. For example, a past history of achievement (like GPA) and leadership strongly predicts teacher efficacy, whereas a master's degree in education is a relatively weak predictor.

Interestingly, Ripley mentioned a new metric that DC public schools is implementing. Much like my educator rating suggestion, which was inspired by the NFL's passer rating, DCPS is using a composite metric of student progress and teacher observations from the principal, assistant principal, and a group of master educators.

I have linked the full article above. It is insightful, thought-provoking, and worth the read.