Best and Worst of the Weekend 3/19/10-3/21/10

Hands down the best part of my weekend was being in Ft. Lauderdale with my parents and Aunt Sue. It was a quick trip but just what I needed to refresh my tank for the upcoming spring months. The majority of time in Florida consisted of relaxing in the sun, eating at my favorite restaurants, and watching the NCAA tournament.

I was also able to visit the school that my mom is tutoring at and spent time with 5 young Haitian students and 1 boy from Brazil. The kids were between the ages of 11-13. The students from Haiti had recently moved to Florida following the earthquake so they were still adjusting to the new school and environment. We spent about 90 minutes with the kids reviewing some basic English vocabulary including foods, activity times, and numbers. All of these students struggled to speak, read, and understand English so it was a challenge to get them to open up and participate. It was frustrating for me to not be able to convey the language to them more easily. Despite the language barrier the students seemed so happy and eager to learn. I am a sucker for kids and quickly became attached to these kids and wished that I could do more to help them.

While it was difficult to see these kids struggle and for me to walk away with out making that much of an impact, I am glad that my mom took to me to the school because without seeing it for myself it would be hard to fully imagine the situation at these schools. I don’t want to go into a huge debate about our school systems as I do not know enough about K-12 schools, but after just 90 minutes it was evident that there are a lot of things that need to be adjusted to better educate the youth of America. It is easy to point to sources of blame like overloaded teachers, limited resources, and unprepared students; however, it is unlikely that these things will change in the near future. Coming up with a sure-fire solution is no easy task, but it would seem that all parties involved including the parents, teachers, students, administrators, politicians and whoever else I am missing need to take more responsibility for their roles in education. Maybe these roles need to be redefined and restructured to better serve the student and the overall goals of the schools…Or maybe there needs to be a new system of incentives and penalties put into place…Or perhaps we should restructure the system to better match the needs of society and match what other countries’ have done with there educational system. As I mentioned, I do not have an answer but I know that I am even more concerned than I was prior to going to this school. Sorry that I have gone on a bit of a tangent but I would be interested in hearing other people’s opinions on this subject and/or your experiences with different schools. Also, I’d like to give a huge shout out to my mom, (and other people who volunteer their time), for all the tutoring in Madison and Florida that you have done over the past few years. It is easy to see that you have made a huge difference in these kids’ lives. Hopefully, there are lots of people like you that are able to donate some of their time to the schools in their communities.

Other bests of the weekend include:

Best meal: Trulucks in Ft Lauderdale. I had an amazing au pouvre steak with crab fried rice and sweet potato fries. It was fantastic.

Best game: Kansas vs. Northern Iowa. Despite what it did to my bracket, this was an amazing game to watch. What a ballsy shot by that guy named Ali F? I cannot imagine what Chris would have done to me if I took that shot with 35 seconds left up by 1 point. Ha, it is fun to imagine.

I could probably give a few more bests since I had a fantastic weekend but that is probably good for now. As for worst of the weekend I would have to say the turbulence on my flight from Memphis to Madison. It was by far the most bumpy flight I have ever been on in my life. I was clutching the arm rest for dear life and had some very negative thoughts going through my mind. Not so fun. Other than that it was a great trip and I was sad to leave the Lago Mar to return to reality. Hey, at least it has been beautiful in Madison since I have been home! Hope everyone had a good weekend. I look forward to hearing from you all.

Shout out to all my fellow Ivy Leaguers. Let’s go Cornell, you have already made the rest of the Ancient Eight proud but an upset of Kentucky and all their one and dones would be fabulous.

Shoot ‘em straight,

The Bean Spiller