Pass It On

You're welcome Peter! Pass it on ; )

You can bet on it!! Thanks again.

So... "players" shouldn't waste cards on people who aren't likely to have access to the Internet, huh?

Random acts of kindness are never a waste. Do the deed just don't leave a card. Or if you want to leave a card but are concerned about wasting a plastic one you can always print your own at http://www.givinggame.com/?pagename=free_card_print_1

My wife chooses to teach at one of the toughest inner city schools in the Denver Metro Area. Each January, as a way to celebrate Martin Luther King's holiday, she has small (nominal) prizes for each class that does the most acts of kindness in a two week period. On the honor system. As you can imagine, it energizes the entire student body. And they do some of the most amazing things that no one would think of as an act of kindness except to have lived at their level of poverty. I would like to suggest to this vibrant group that the greatest act of kindness that can be done for each inner city kid is to invite and encourage each parent to read to them -- 20 - 30 minutes a night, beginning with their first full week of life at home. You'll be surprised at their positive response. Most don't do it because it never occurred to them it could be so valuable. Often times, inner city parents only need to be invited to be part of the 18 year educational continuum. Becoming literally a 'most valuable player' in that process has never dawned on them, and they respond with the reaction most of us have at the opportunity to be a pivotal person in any enterprise. Any parent, no matter how poor, no matter even how tired, can read to a baby for 20 minutes a night, with books from the library. The early brain imaging research, being pursued by the Telarc Foundation under the guidance of its founder Bruce Mc Caw, shows that the most rapid growth and learning takes place from birth to age 6 -- precisely the one third of the educational continuum we as a society have done the least with. So far. As a developmental and clinical psychologist, I have seen most children, who are read to from the first month of life, be capable of reading on their own by kindergarten, if not sooner. If we do the math, it comes to at least a thousand hours of reading by age 6. Lest this be too long, I'll be glad to lead a discussion on this, and close with the fact that of course we read to our child from day one, who then did what we had never even thought to expect. At age four would toddle up to the newspaper machines and read the front page fluently through the glass! With my wife's fellow teachers, a few steps behind leaving Dennys, looking on in utter disbelief. Conservatively I'd estimate half to three fourths of all children could do the same. Actually think most could. And it would utterly transform public education. Our workforce. And our nation's economic life. Which is why I've written it as part of a book to be published this spring but grateful to place it here in the public forum of a first class operation, and group of thoughtful and reflective writers.