Feed your belly not your head
”A community kitchen set up by celebrity chef José Andrés was among the buildings destroyed by Russian bombing in Kharkiv city on Saturday.
Kharkiv’s mayor said three people were killed and 34 wounded by missile strikes in the city.
Nate Mook, CEO of World Central Kitchen, tweeted a video of himself at the destroyed building, adding that four staff members were injured in the missile attack.
Andrés founded World Central Kitchen in 2010 after the devastating earthquake in Haiti that displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Since then, the organisation has set up community kitchens in several disaster zones around the world.
World Central Kitchen now operates kitchens in 30 Ukrainian cities and says it provides nearly 300,000 meals a day.
The Associated Press news agency reported that Andrés said the Kharkiv attack in Kharkiv showed that giving food “in the middle of a senseless war” was an act of courage, and that his chefs wouldn’t stop their work.”
The war is bad news but the work of Andres and his volunteers is a beacon of volunteerism under fire. And volunteers have been under a lot of fire in recent years, because of the pandemic and because of the people prone to violence for the sake of hero worship.
To the volunteers: thank you for your dedicated service. It’s key to our civilization.
Some public schools are teaching interpersonal skills and ways to increase emotional resiliency in the wake of increases in violence and suicide. Many were begun before covid arrived and in person schooling was sidelined, which stressed everyone out just a tad.
Per Laura Meckler, describing one in a Minnesota school district, it comes under the label of a “social-emotional learning (SEL) program — a curriculum geared at helping students manage emotions, develop positive relationships and make good decisions. Schools have worked to develop these skills for decades, and in recent years, formal programming has proliferated coast to coast. In Anoka-Hennepin, elementary schools focused on themes such as respect, empathy, gratitude, kindness, honesty, courage, cooperation, perseverance and responsibility each month. Students learned how to ask for help and spot someone having a bad day.”
Sounds like a good idea, yet it is something newish and some folks remain resistant to change, even changes that promote healthy ways to interact with peers and cope with stress. Schools have all taught and reinforced manners and civil behavior for centuries but it just wasn’t labeled SEL before. In the wake of the wrong belief that public schools were teaching kids about racism (only a few law schools covered ‘critical race theory’), some parents have become convinced that SEL is another ‘indoctrination’ of their kids.
”Social-emotional learning seeks to treat children as human beings with feelings, life goals and even traumas, not just students learning to write essays and solve math problems. It grew in popularity after the No Child Left Behind law’s push for accountability made schools more reliant on standardized testing, which failed to lift test scores. Many in education concluded something different was needed to improve academic outcomes.
The lessons are embedded into day-to-day teaching and offered on their own, in kindergarten through high school. Sometimes it’s as simple as a daily check-in, circle time or face-to-face greetings for every child. It could mean encouraging children to take a mindful moment or a deep breath when they are frustrated. For older students, classes might work on setting goals and creating road maps to achieve them. Done well, supporters say, SEL raises academic achievement, reduces discipline problems and brings joy into learning.”
Ooga-booga scary stuff for fraidy cats. There seems to be a lot of yellow running up the spines of conservative radicals these days. One group leading the cowards is “Parents Defending Education, a group that collects stories of programming that it deems liberal indoctrination, has called out at least seven incidents of social-emotional learning programs it finds offensive. An Indiana parents Facebook group warned that mindfulness is part of social-emotional learning, and also a tenet of Buddhism. “Christian parents should be aware of what is happening,” one post said.”
If it’s not the historical treatment of Black people in our country that gives them the shivers, it’s the rampant gangs of Buddhist monks that recruit our children to do Buddha stuff. Challenges are being raised in red and blue states because Buddha says ‘be mindful’ instead of ‘be considerate’. I’m so frightened I need someone to hold me.
And the teachers are plotting to take away our Bibles. I read that on the internets where Jesus wrote everything down.
The SEL curriculum was devised with bipartisan support precisely to avoid contentious debates about schooling so it’s tamer than a well fed kitten in a sunny spot.
But now, in Florida, it’s being cited to disqualify math textbooks. Can you imagine what those devil teachers are up to?
1) If you have 49 Christians in a room and add 1 Buddhist, how many years of bliss will you spend?
2) At noon, there’s 28 shirts on a table at JC Penneys. At 5 pm, there’s 26. How many were stolen by white middle class kids probably?
We clearly need more concealed grenade launchers in our school, not more hummus.
”Critics immediately attacked the rejection. State Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D) tweeted “@EducationFL just announced they’re banning dozens of math textbooks they claim ‘indoctrinate’ students with CRT. They won’t tell us what they are or what they say b/c it’s a lie. #DeSantis has turned our classrooms into political battlefields and this is just the beginning.”
“No, this is not 1963,” state Sen. Shevrin D. “Shev” Jones (D) tweeted, “it’s 2022 in the ‘Free State of Florida.’ ”
DeSantis has been leading the charge in Florida to restrict what teachers can say and discuss in class on topics including race, racism, gender and history. He recently signed legislation that bans classroom discussion on LGBTQ issues from kindergarten through third grade and, for all students, says any such discussion must be “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” “
Of course it’s all utter bullshit. Of course Governor DeSanitizes is just an average carny barker playing the rubes. But someone has to stand up to defend cowardly bullies and rude jerks or we’re all going to get infected with socialisms and nobody needs a Social Security increase.
Number three Florida lost more people to covid than all but two states, roughly double the number that number 8 Georgia lost…. so that oughta reduce the Social Security burden considerably. Do the math.
What next? They’re coming for your library. Because the Know Nothing Party prefers everyone to calm down and enjoy being bound and gagged.
Thank you teachers, for your service under fire.
Oh great, now the libs have started a War on Easter!