Lyrics That Mean Nothing ~ We Were Gifted with Thought ~ I'll Be Holding On To You

Lyrics That Mean Nothing ~ We Were Gifted with Thought ~ 
I'll Be Holding On To You

Many of our target learning goals in school are declarative: I know that.......

But to me, that's like asking a baby how to walk without ever asking them to take that knowledge and use it to practice walking.

Knowledge is important but it is still the lowest level of thinking. We were gifted with thought. Creating what only we can with our thoughts and evaluating the results is the highest.

It's time to move our feet to a more introspective beat. 

Test scores will go way up.

Seas of self-doubt will be parted.

And our children will be left standing on a mountaintop with their arms raised and smiles on their faces as the Sun rises to greet them with each new day as they grow into adulthood.

And then lower-level thinking that produces lower-loving living like terrorism and child abuse and maybe even the divorce rate will begin to diminish instead of what we're seeing now as they are increasing.

(@ 3 minutes into this song): 

Lean with it

Rock with it

When we going to stop with it?

Lyrics that mean nothing 

We were gifted with thought

Is it time to move our feet

To an introspective beat?

Lyrics That Mean Nothing ~ We Were Gifted with Thought ~ I'll Be Holding On To You

Lyrics That Mean Nothing ~ We Were Gifted with Thought ~ 
I'll Be Holding On To You

Many of our target learning goals in school are declarative: I know that.......

But to me, that's like asking a baby how to walk without ever asking them to take that knowledge and use it to practice walking.

Knowledge is important but it is still the lowest level of thinking. We were gifted with thought. Creating what only we can with our thoughts and evaluating the results is the highest.

It's time to move our feet to a more introspective beat. 

Test scores will go way up.

Seas of self-doubt will be parted.

And our children will be left standing on a mountaintop with their arms raised and smiles on their faces as the Sun rises to greet them with each new day as they grow into adulthood.

And then lower-level thinking that produces lower-loving living like terrorism and child abuse and maybe even the divorce rate will begin to diminish instead of what we're seeing now as they are increasing.

(@ 3 minutes into this song): 

Lean with it

Rock with it

When we going to stop with it?

Lyrics that mean nothing 

We were gifted with thought

Is it time to move our feet

To an introspective beat?

Spy Game - The Roof Scene

FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY

We don't trade job security for treating students like test scores. 

Thought #79 on Ending Terrorism ~ Be the Thing that Stops Bad Things From Happening to Them ~ Like a Poor Education

KICKSTARTING OUR HEARTS ~ Thought #79 on Ending Terrorism ~ Be the Thing that Stops Bad Things From Happening to Them ~ Like a Poor Education

*After he told me I reminded him of Hancock and I realized the impact I had on him, I wrote his full name on a piece of paper and practiced saying it every day so I could say it correctly when I called his name during the 5th-grade graduation ceremony. 

Parts of our FaceBook messaging since 2009

“Hey Mr. Stuart, it’s me, Abder (Abderrahmane Echchalhi) lol. How r u doin? I miss u because u always pushed me to higher limits. Plz write back as soon as u can. Ty, bye.

I’m really hating the 6th grade right now because all our teachers are getting crazy about the FCAT and their giving us so much homework each nite. I really miss the way that YOU teach!!!!!!!!!!! How’s ur life going on with ur students? I’m sure their growth is powerful!”

Ur a good man Abder. It's not as much fun 4 me this year becuz I don't have just one group of students to work with. It's more like middle school where I only have @hour with each group. 

I know u'll pull thru and do well. I miss having u in class.

“Hey Mr. Stuart, don’t think I forgot you! Dream big, be big, do big ~ livin by that motto. Happy bday!

I hope you know you've had a great impact on my life. 

I still remember when you lifted me up and put me against the white board joking around. lol good times good times.

And how we had to finish our homework so we can play 4 square (WHICH I LOVED)

Dream big, do big , be big will forever be engraved in my heart thanks to you and breaking away from the school’s curriculum.

Also, you told me once , "If someone says you have a lot of potential don't take it as a compliment (because it means you aren’t using your potential)! Haha! 5th grade with you was the memory I get even in high school, and how much you loved Bella which if I do recall correctly is your daughter!

Just to let you know I'm majoring in sports science now, still have that super long name (Abderrahmane Echchalhi), also going to minor in psychology and my brother Mohamed is doing great, got a manager job at Holiday Inn !

Even though I was so young your class and your name are all I remember when thinking about elementary school.”

Thought #69 on Ending Terrorism ~ Revolutionary Change Comes From Revolutionary Thinking

KICKSTARTING OUR HEARTS ~ Thought #69 on Ending Terrorism ~ Revolutionary Change Comes From Revolutionary Thinking

The problems we have today, including the rise of terrorism, have been created by the way we have educated our children in the past.

A completely different way of education that gives teachers time to allow their students to think for themselves versus getting them ready for the test may be what we need for an educational revolution.

So far it's just been lip-service modifications of the same surface-level system leading to reactionary surface-level decisions that create birth, school, abuse, work, terrorism, death surface-level and increasingly terrified living.

KICKSTARTING OUR HEARTS ~ Thought #67 on Ending Terrorism ~ Developing Our Students' Higher Brain ~ Violence is the First Refuge of the Incompetent

Of the three brains that make up our total brain, the highest is the neocortex which makes up 5/6ths of the total organ. 

Yet we still rarely access it in education, falling back on the lesser limbic and still lower reptilian brains because these brains resist change. 

That's why I think Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." — Eleanor Roosevelt

In a reptile-eat-reptile world where we use the lowest part of our brain we react emotionally to each other who we see as different and dangerous, and must “kill them all”. This is the place in the brain where terrorists are doing their "higher-level" thinking and making their conclusions on what action must be taken to solve their problems.  

We develop the higher competence of the higher neocortex in their kids and our kids and yes, education changes the world as its people come to truly higher-level and less reptilian conclusions on how to resolve conflict. 

KICKSTARTING OUR HEARTS ~ Thought #67 on Ending Terrorism ~ Birth, School, Work, Death ~ Live Your Life With Every Breath!

KICKSTARTING OUR HEARTS ~ Thought #67 on Ending Terrorism ~ Birth, School, Work, Death ~ Live Your Life With Every Breath!

We can’t change the world. We can only change the thoughts we allow in our head.

One of the most important thoughts we could have is that we will live life big before we’re dead.

We live this way and others will too because they’ll remember, “Dream Big, Do Big, Be Big!” was something someone once said.

With enough others thinking and living this way we will eventually have the whole world covered.

And we will have changed the world.

I Have a Dream for Us ~ Take My Hand and Leap into its IN-possibilty

I Have a Dream for Us ~ Take My Hand and Leap into its IN-possibilty

The first thing students hear and see when they walk into their "star nebula", their birthplace as the shining stars they truly are, is this video and their teacher greeting them with "Ohayōgozaimasu Samurai Bushi!" (Good morning, Samurai warriors!)


They face me and respond back with "Ohayōgozaimasu sensei!" (Good Morning, Teacher!)".

And so begins our daily dream that we have become united in fighting for and will be evaluating ourselves on; 

     That one day we will not be judged by the level of our test scores on someone else's tests or our score-ability on someone else's checklists, but by ourselves on our own ability to dream our very biggest dreams and throw our entire selves at making them happen.

Our entire selves.

Not some of ourselves some of the time,

when it's easy and everyone is approving and cheering us on.

But when it is hard

and others are telling us to stop and that we're wrong. 

that we could get hurt 

and talk about how foolish we are being.

The only way to do this is to see the star of Martin Luther King and take it down out of the sky. Place it inside of us and allow his dream to fuel our own and to go after it with as much passion as he did and with as much fire as the Sun does every single day we're alive.

All I ask of my students each day is to have faith in their dreams and place their hands in mine. And then jump off the cliff with me into the creation of their very IN-possible dreams.

Thank you, MLK for living a life that is still very much alive inside of us and showing the way for us to make it happen, with courageous intelligence.

Not for One of these Children not for One Day of their Lives

Einstein said that if we can't explain something simply enough it means we don't understand it well enough.



I had to redo my teacher observation again, for yet another year again, which I've had to do each year again since this teacher observation checklist has been used......and not because I was bad....I was so bad that my lesson wasn't even score-able, again.....



It was so far out of the box that there wasn't any place to score it on the checklist, again.



On my redo I scored so high that in the observer's professional opinion some of these previously below-grade-level 2nd-graders are now ready to succeed in middle school.



I have to accept that if I'm going to teach the way I do I’ll never win any awards and I’ll never fit on anyone’s acceptable checklist. And I must understand it well enough to communicate it simply enough for others to follow.



It sounds like I'm putting them down but I'm not. The students have been with me now for four months...... They can read the Latin, Greek, German, French, and Italian on the board......They don't have to be told what to think because they have been taught how to think and how to figure out what the teacher isn't directly stating by paying attention to what the teacher's questions are indirectly stating and guiding them to focus on.



While these students have become more fluent in the language of learning and how to think at the higher levels, to an outside observer using a connect-the-dots checklist there are just too many gaps and too many thoughts and ideas zooming around the brains in class for one to follow.



Except for the students. And if the way I'm teaching not only helps them succeed at their grade level and beyond, I owe it to them to make my teaching acceptable and understandable to others, at least for a few days a year.



Because I know that all of these students have become more intelligent and more powerful where it really matters, in solving life's problems and frustrations.



I know not one of them will ever think that the solution is a bullet coming out of a gun.



Not one of them will become, as I think this song is talking about, among the 289 Americans who get shot every day by those who "think" that’s what the answer is.



Not for one of these children and not for one day of their lives will they ever think at this low of a level ever again.



And maybe one of these days one of these children will solve this problem once and for all.