Teach for America vs. DonorsChoose

A couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to choose one particular cause to focus on in terms of my charity donations and efforts. I figured that by focusing I could greatly increase my impact. So I've been focusing on education. I've been going to presentations, talking to teachers, reading about some of the issues,...

I just attended an incredible panel discussion at HBS which included the founder of Teach for America, the superintendent of the DC school district (the one that's trying to install incentive pay and get rid of teacher tenure!), and two founders of charter school systems (one of which takes an incredible community-wide holistic approach).

Well, anyway, what prompted this post, first, is my extremely strong desire to rant against Teach for America. The founder of Teach for America was part of this panel, and even she couldn't convince me to believe in the organization. Teach for America recruits graduating college seniors to teach in under-achieving schools for two years. The organization recruits the teachers, matches them with schools, and trains them over the summer.

Now if TFA gets smart, young, motivated teachers into the classroom, that's good, right? Well, the founder reported to us that it costs them $20,000 per teacher. Keep in mind that the school district is still paying the teachers salary and benefits as usual. The $20,000 is for recruiting and training essentially. I just checked the Teach for America financial statements, and she clearly was not including overhead type expenses in the $20,000 number. Including that, it's over $30,000 per teacher. Now granted, some of these teachers are probably quite good, but are we really willing to put $30,000 into some college kid who wants to teach for only two years and then go do something else?

In the past two years, with my focus on education, I have talked in depth to half a dozen young dedicated motivated teachers all of whom were devoted to teaching. They either had or were getting masters in education. They were all working in low income areas and who were struggling for resources. I've spoken with a teacher who literally had to share one dictionary with the other three second grade classes in her school. There was one dictionary for the entire second grade. And she was in a school where many of the students didn't speak English as a first language. Imagine what she and those three other teachers could do with a fraction of that $30,000 - with even $300 to buy some dictionaries. The saddest thing about the young teachers I've spoken with is that I can already see some of them becoming so frustrated, exhausted and disillusioned that they are losing their drive.

My second motivation for writing this post was to praise my current favorite non-profit: DonorsChoose.org. It has what I thought was high overhead before I looked at Teach for America - about 25% - but they provide a valuable service for that 25%. DonorsChoose allows teachers to place specific requests for supplies they need or projects they want to do with their students. Donors can then go on the website and choose specific projects to fund. You think that students need more math and science - fund those projects. You think students need more physical activity - fund those projects. You care about early education - fund resources for K-3rd grade classes. DonorsChoose buys the actual supplies and delivers them to the teacher, and then follows up by requiring the teacher to submit a report of how the project went, along with pictures of the students using the supplies, and "thank yous" to the donor. It's incredible getting those pictures and thank-yous. The students are not only enjoying their materials, but seem so amazed that someone cared enough about them to donate. The overhead expenses are basically for DonorsChoose to screen the requests, fulfill them by buying the supplies, and follow up. The rest of your money goes straight to the project you chose.

I think Charter schools are doing some amazing work and increasing our knowledge of what can work. I'm optimistic about the changes that are happening in DC and what those could mean for the long-run of teachers contracts across America. But I think the political reality in America is that change will come slowly and unevenly. I'm not going to get involved politically - that's not my strength. So while I wait for others to take care of that part - I'm going to do my part to help teachers who are devoted to their lifelong teaching, and desperate for resources. I will help a few classrooms at a time, but at least I will know that I am making a very concrete difference - providing dictionaries, an overhead projector, math games, or books.

I'm also involved right now with an organization called Maitri which has a very different mission - providing support and help to victims of domestic violence among South Asians in the bay area. What I've realized with Maitri is the value of spreading the word about an organization that we care about. Maitri is trying to raise money for a shelter, and has a tight December deadline to raise 1M$ to get 1M$ of matching money from the city of Santa Clara. I can only donate so much, but by spreading the word I can do a lot more.

The combination of that lesson from Maitri, and everything that I'm learning about education has inspired me to post about both Teach for America and DonorsChoose.org. Consider looking at these organizations more closely, and if you also, like me, value what DonorsChoose is doing, consider helping to spread the word.

Family looking for help

One of my colleagues has a 14-year old daughter who was stricken with a debilitating neural disease 9 months ago. Our dean sent out the following email from her family, requesting help:

Doctors don’t know the cause. Some suspect it’s a rare form of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Phil and Barb, Jenny's parents, are desperately looking for two things:

1. Comparables: If you know or have known people suffering from neural disease, please read the sidebar labeled “Am I a Comparable?” at the site Phil and Barb have set up: http://jenjensfamily.blogspot.com/


2. Doctors: Any doctors you know who might have come across cases like Jenny’s in their practice.

Finding comparables fast could save Jenny’s life. Phil shared with me just yesterday that after months of search, they recently found four comparables. More could make the difference.

If you are able to help, you can contact Jenny's parents directly through the website above.

Switching Sides

I never thought I would get a Mac. But my 4-year-old laptop has gotten so slow that it's barely useable. And I can't stand it anymore. Why does Windows have to slowly break over time? It's like as soon as you drive it off the lot, Windows has already started to slowly eat your computer from the inside out. The straw that broke the camel's back was when Ed's brand new laptop (running Vista) started to choke after only a few months. (He fixed it for now by removing spyware that had accumulated, but why should you have to do that????)

So I just got a MacBook Pro. And it's awesome. When I start it up, it turns on and starts working right away. Not in 10 seconds. Not in 10 minutes. Now.

Another awesome feature: you can run a virtual Windows machine on it. I installed some simulation software that lets me run Windows and install any windows software that I have alongside the Mac operating system. You can switch between the two seamlessly. You can even make your Windows programs look and behave like Mac programs if you want to pretend that they are just installed on your Mac and Windows is out of the picture.

But the best part is that it works and it will probably still work six months from now and even six years from now. Yea!

Running

Okay, so I have a lot to report.

First of all, I got a Kindle. It's awesome. But that's not the main point. The main point is that I ran across a book called "Spark" in the Kindle store and I downloaded it for our trip to Europe. It's all about research on how exercise affects brain chemistry. By the time I got home, I was totally convinced that I must start doing aerobic exercise often and that it will totally change my life.

Problem: the ball of my left foot hurts when I do impact exercises, such as running and aerobics. I've had this problem for 15 years. If I can't run or do aerobics, there is no realistic way that I'm going to exercise aerobically every day.

Solution: I emailed my doctor and asked her to refer me to some specialist. She told me to go get Superfeet shoe inserts and she made me an appointment with the podiatrist. Ed told me about a specialty shoe store two blocks from our house that sells a bunch of shoe inserts. I went there and asked for the shoe inserts and the owner was some kind of crazy foot genius. He made me walk around barefoot while he watched and then he grabbed some inserts, trimmed them, pasted some extra padding towards the front of the insert, heated them up in a toaster oven, handed them to me, and proclaimed that I would no longer have pain. I put them in and he was right. I haven't had any foot pain since.

So for the last five weeks I've been running five times a week and I feel way happier - and much less irritable and annoyed. Seriously. (Maybe this is just how normal people feel all the time and I was just massively depressed for the last 15 years - it's hard to say.)

Anyway, I'm not so fast. But's that's okay - I'm getting faster. My goal is to work up to the point where I can run for 30 minutes at a non-embarrassing speed (where non-embarrassing=faster than Ed can walk).

Sea Kayaking

We've been trying to make ourselves get out of the house more and explore some of the fun things to do in our area. Today we went to the Berkeley Marina and walked down the very long pier (it's over half a mile long) where lots of people were fishing. One guy caught a pretty big flounder, but we didn't see any evidence that anyone else was catching things.

Then we walked over to check out a couple of places that rent sail boats, windsurfing equipment and sea kayaks. We rented a two-seater sea kayak, hauled it down to the water (it was really heavy) and plopped it in the water. We paddled around for half an hour before our arms started to get too tired from paddling.

We didn't realize that water would get in the boat - when we were done our bottoms and Ed's wallet were soaking wet. Luckily, the woman at the rental place didn't mind when we paid with soaking wet money.

Next on our list of Bay Area attractions:

• Ride our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge


• See the glass exhibit at the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park


• Borrow some kids and go to the Oakland Zoo

Your Order Was Shipped!

To me, those words mean that the package in question has been put in physically custody of the postal service. To Amazon, it means "we sent the postal service an email and told them to come get this package and they will probably stop by in the next 3-5 days to pick it up."

I ordered a new mp3 player and they said it shipped on Tuesday and gave me a tracking number, but this is what I see on the usps website every day:

"Status: Electronic Shipping Info Received : The U.S. Postal Service was electronically notified by the shipper on April 15, 2008 to expect your package for mailing. This does not indicate receipt by the USPS or the actual mailing date. Delivery status information will be provided if / when available."

STOP TEASING ME!

GPS 101

When we went snow-shoeing two weeks ago at Lake Tahoe, we decided to climb up to the top of a ridge that overlooks the lake. Our friend loaned us a GPS unit, so we decided to take it with us. We wrote down our coordinates at the car so that we could find our way back. I read the coordinates to Ed and he put them in his pocket.

We hiked up the to the peak, taking a pretty direct route. One the way down we had to meander a lot more because it's hard to go down hill in showshoes (face-planting in snow still hurts).

Part way down, Ed asked "what units are the GPS coordinates in?"

I responded: "The normal units - latitude and longitude."

"But the numbers you read only have 2 decimals - that's only going to put us within 2 miles of the car."

"Oh. Well, there were more digits after the decimal, but I thought you would be annoyed at having to write them all down."

"You're right. I might have been annoyed."

Baby Instructions

We recently went on a week-long vacation to Mexico with friends who have a 3-month-old baby. They made it seem pretty easy - she just ate and slept the whole time.

We babysat her one day while her parents went scuba diving. According to this website, we made a couple of mistakes:

Baby Instructions

But she seemed to really enjoy being hosed down for her bath and she almost beat Ed at chess.

Candy, Candy and More Candy

Our friends invited us over for some gingerbread house making last night. These are our creations.

Ed's Swiss Chateau

My Octagon House

Compared to a friend of mine, who spent two days making the Lincoln Memorial out of real gingerbread, we are total amateurs with our little graham cracker creations. But Ed did win 'best house' at the party. He beat out a Lithuanian bungalow with outhouse, a stable in Bethlehem (complete with a diapered hot tamale standing in as baby Jesus), a bling-bling house, a hobbit house, and a replica of a local elementary school.

Red Planets and Solar Nurseries

I've been learning to use a star map to find stuff in the sky. The other day I found the Andromeda Galaxy with my binoculars. It was only a little fuzzy patch, but it was cool to find it by myself.

Tonight, I tried to take some digital pictures of Mars and the orion nebula using my new camera that Ed got me for my birthday. I set it on 2-second exposure. Here's Mars with a lot of magnification:



I'm pretty sure I can detect a red planet in there somewhere...

Here's the Orion Nebula:



I like this one because you can faintly see one star shining right in the middle and illuminating the nebula (it's almost easier to see out of the corner of your eye than looking straight on). It's a young star that has formed from the gas in the nebula. When enough stars have formed from the nebula's gas, the solar wind they put off will clear out the remaining gas and the nebula will disappear.

Here's a really cool picture of it: Orion Nebula

Video Game Halftime Show

The band practices in a field across the street in the business school and they've been practicing video game music every afterrnoon all semester. My office faces in the opposite direction, so I can turn off the music by closing my window, but I hear it every night while I walk to my car.

This is the end result:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8QNI3W8UB-s&feature=related

The dean claims that he complained to campus about the fact that the band's practicing (which starts around 4pm) makes it really hard to work if you have an east-facing office. The chancellor told him to tell the professors to come to work earlier.

Bad Turkey

We're at Grandma's house in Washington. We were supposed to eat an hour ago, but when they cut open the turkey, we found this. So we're not eating the turkey and we can't make gravy. Luckily, my aunt had an already-cooked ham and a bunch of jars of gravy at her house, so they went and got it and we will be eating our ham Thanksgiving dinner soon.

Chutney Chicken Salad Salad, please

Yesterday I was at Stanford for a seminar and I went out to lunch with the seminar speaker and 2 PhD students. We went to the museum cafe, which has three sections on its menu: Salads, Soups and Sandwiches. I ordered a Chutney Chicken Salad at the counter, took my number and went to find a table.

A few minutes later, the waiter brings me a sandwich. I take it back in and say that I ordered a salad and go back outside. A minute later, the manager comes out and very snootily informs me that I ordered the sandwich. I said "I ordered the Chutney Chicken Salad". He says (again in his snooty voice) "If you wanted the salad, you have to ask for the Chutney Chicken Salad Salad. "

So the default is to assume that when a customer asks for a salad, they want a sandwhich unless they specifically state that they want a salad salad? My lunchmates teased me that in Berkeley, the default must be salad. That's right. Where I come from, if you want a sandwich, you have to specify "I would like the chutney chicken salad sandwich sandwich, please." Otherwise you'll find yourself looking at a chutney chicken salad sandwich salad.

Mt. Timpanogos

When we were in Utah a week and a half ago, we tried to climb Mt. Timpanogos. We started at the American Fork canyon trailhead and climbed for 4 hours. The last 2.5 to 3 hours of hiking was in the snow. The trail was packed down reasonably well at first, but eventually we were following in deep footsteps in the snow, which is really exhausting. Our feet were wet and cold and our legs ached. I just keep telling myself that I had to keep taking steps.

We finally got to a point where it didn't seem safe to keep going without hiking poles. We could see the summit 1000 feet above us, but we needed to walk across a hillside in deep snow and there was a huge drop off with sharp rocks at the bottom to one side of us. There were a couple other people near where we were, but no one was trying to go much past that point. By then we knew we wouldn't make it to the summit anyway because we were approaching our 'turn around no matter what time' - the latest that we could turn around and still make it back for the rehearsal dinner. We were secretly relieved that we got to turn around 20 minutes early because we were so tired.

The hike back to the car always seems to take forever. The scenery in the canyon was spectacular. We stopped and took a lot of pictures.

View of the summit from where we turned around:

The trail through the Aspens:

The view on the way back down the mountain:

Ed hiking with the summit in the background:

Glacier Lake

We just got back from our overnight trip to the Tahoe National Forest. It was my first backpacking trip in the Sierras. We parked the car at Carr Lake. On the first day, we hiked to Penner Lake and then continued on to Glacier Lake, where we spent the night. On the second day, we hiked back to our car via a more direct route. Total hiking: about 15 miles. We’re so sore we can hardly walk.

Glacier Lake was beautiful. It was crystal clear and there was a ridge with patches of snow behind it (but the air was very warm, even during the night). We climbed the ridge this morning and were able to see panoramic views of the surrounding lakes and forest. It was quite spectacular.

Here are the highlights of the trip:

We decided to do some wilderness freestyling (i.e. “If we head through the woods in that direction, we’ll get to the other trail we want to be on. It’s a shortcut!”) We were lost in the woods for an hour and a half. But not scary lost – we knew we would eventually find the trail.

“I think that lake we passed half a mile ago was the lake we are looking for. Turn around.”

I spent half the night lying awake with my heart pounding because I could hear animals outside our tent. I kept telling myself that I haven’t ever heard about anyone getting eaten in their tent. At one point, I saw deer sniffing the bear canister. When I heard something chewing on my pack a couple of times, I got up and made a noise to shoo it away. Ed claims I kept waking him by making “rat noises.” I also had to wake him once to look out the tent window because I was too scared.

We seriously over-packed our food. We brought 3 sandwiches, 3 brownies, a can of Pringles, a bag of Chex party mix, a half pound of beef jerky, 12 granola bars, 8 pop tarts, 2 packs of ramen-like noodles, and a freeze dried dessert for four. We brought home 1 brownie, half a bag of Chex party mix, ¼ pound of beef jerky, 11 granola bars, 6 pop tarts and a freeze-dried dessert for four.

We got to put our new high-tech Steripen water purifiier to serious use on stream and lake water.

We went for about 18 hours without seeing any other people. It was awesome.


Here are some pictures:

Our first food break in front of one of the many little lakes along the trail:



Gathering drinking water:

One of many mountain meadows we encountered. Why doesn't our lawn look like this?

Our little campsite at Glacier Lake:

Ed at our campsite:
Me climbing up the ridge next to Glacier Lake to take in the views:

One of the views from the top of the ridge:

Hiking

So I know I only post about once a year, but I just had to share this one. I'm in Montana for a conference. I'm a little annoyed that the conference is in Montana, but to make the most of it I figured I should really try to climb the mountain outside my window:

I did not in fact make it to the top. But I'm still pretty proud of myself. Here's a picture from the top of where I went. See the little blue lake in the upper-right of the picture? That's where I started. :)
I climbed about 2500 feet, from a starting elevation of 7500 to about 10,000.

Now I'm all excited about hiking and I want to be like Nikki and Ed. :)

They Just Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

Every day I come to my office and eat a Cookies 'n Cream-flavored Promax Bar. No matter what I had for breakfast, I get hungry for the Promax Bar as soon as I sit down.

I'm not that creative with meal planning. I've been eating the same kind of Promax Bar every day for a year and the same breakfast for the last 7 years. At least I stopped eating the same kind of Trader Joe's tortellini's for dinner 4 or 5 times a week when Ed started cooking. My actions are backed up by research, however, which shows that people think they prefer a variety of food, but really don't. When researchers asked people to pick out the yogurt/candy bars they wanted for the next week ahead of time, they picked a variety of flavors/types of bars. But when they got to pick what they wanted every day, they tended to always pick the same kind.

So last week Ed brought home a new box of my bars from Trader Joe's and there was new writing on the front: "All-Natural," along with the warning "Note: our white yogurt coating may exhibit minor color variations because we now use all natural ingredients." What???? You can't change the formula on me. If I wanted "all natural" I wouldn't be eating a protein bar, I'd be eating food. The new bars don't taste the same or have the same texture, so I might have to find a new morning office snack. I guess I shouldn't be eating that junk anyway.

Our Walk

Today, we went to Muir Woods and hiked to Stinson Beach. The hike to the beach was 5 miles long with beautiful views of valleys, Redwoods and the ocean. It took about 2 hours and 15 minutes. We had lunch at a restaurant in town and then walked down to the beach. It was overcast and cold, but there were lots of freaking crazy people in swimsuits and some were in the water. Ed and I watched for a few minutes while we shivered in our windbreakers and then headed back.

We decided to take a different trail home. From the map, it looked like there was a mile of really steep climbing and then a couple miles of relatively flat trail along a ridge, and finally a couple miles of down hill back to the car. It turned out that the steep part was actually 3 or 4 miles of switchbacks. I was really happy that we weren't climbing straight up and the trail and the views were really spectacular as we made our way up a ravine filled with all kinds of vegetation. It was a gorgeous section of trail. By the time we got to the ridge, I was REALLY tired (I was pretty tired when we got to the beach in the first place). My legs and back were killing me and my legs seem to be getting heavier and heavier. The views along the ridge continued to be really pretty, though - the trail alternated between open, dry expanses and dry stream beds with lots of vegetation.

Finally, we started going downhill for the last couple of miles back to the car. I was feeling better and we moved pretty fast. The hike back took 3 hours and 15 minutes and we figure that the whole thing was 12 or 13 miles with about 3000 vertical feet of climbing. Luckily, the weather was pleasant and not too hot, or it would have been pretty miserable.

If you come visit us, we'll take you to see some Redwoods (but we won't make you hike 12 miles).

Camping Stuff

I keep buying camping stuff. Ed thinks I'm crazy and worries that we won't use it, so I had to remind him that when biking was my hobby of the month, I did the same thing. I bought a whole bunch of biking accessories and then having all that stuff (plus the guilt that would have been associated with not using it) made me ride my bike all the time (over 2,500 miles).

Besides, most of my camping stuff serves a dual purpose:

Hiking pants=Work pants (because I live in Berkeley)
Self Inflating Seat Pad that folds up really small = Pad for hard backs on church pews
Small, lightweight camping pots = play cookset for our future child
Back pack = Emergency pack for walking out of the Bay Area after an Earthquake
Sleeping Pad = Office bed

We're planning a trip to the Sierras in a couple of weeks. I hope we don't get eaten by a bear.

Backpacking Trip

We went on our first backpacking trip this week. Our destination was the Sunol Wilderness area, which is south of Dublin and east of Fremont. We forgot our camera like lamo-s, but we basically did the same thing as this guy. But instead of green pastures everywhere, imagine brown pastures. We missed the 2-week window called Springtime in California.

We spent most of Tuesday morning puzzling about how to fit enough stuff for a 2-day trip into the packs that our friends loaned us. After paring down our equipment a bit and figuring out a way to attach Ed's sleeping bag to the outside of the pack, we were ready to go. My pack weighed 20 pounds and Ed's weighed 30.

We drove down to the park and checked in at the ranger station to reserve our spot in the backpacking area. He pulled out a map and told us to pick the site we wanted. "Are any of sites reserved already?" "I don't know. Do you want me to check?" "Um, yes." (He dawdles around in the back room for several minutes...) "Yes, Sky Camp is reserved." "Okay, we'll take Eagle's Eyrie."

Our hike lasted for 3 hours. We went about 4 miles, with 2000 feet of vertical ascent. It's quite a bit hotter there than in Berkeley and I'm not in great shape these days, so it was really hard. Also, there were cows all over the park, so we had to watch out for the steaming piles.

When we got to the backpacking area, someone was already in Eagle's Eyrie, claiming to have reserved it weeks ago. We weren't that surprised, given Mr. Reservation Ranger's lackadaisical attitude about campsite reservations. The sites are spread out far enough that each one is private, so we consulted the map and went off in search of a different one. The one we got was better anyway, because it had a picnic table.

There was a communal water spigot in the area, but the water had to be purified, so we got to use our new UV SteriPen while all of the other campers were pumping their filters like suckers. There was also a communal outhouse 100 yards from our camp area, which means I still haven't been forced to do my business in the wild.

Dinner preparations consisted of pouring boiling water on freeze dried chicken tetrazini, which tasted great after all that hiking. During dinner, a park ranger drove up on an ATV and started telling us about a fire in the park. Visions of packing everything up and heading back to the car were flashing through my head when he told us that we were safe for the night and just wanted to make sure that we weren't planning to head in the direction of the fire the next day. After he left, we cleaned up and got in our tent to play cards. I creamed Ed in the first two rounds of Lost Cities. He made a good comeback in the last round, but it wasn't enough and I was victorious.

The next morning, we slept in until 9am, as we are wont to do. After we broke camp, we took an easier trail back than the one we came on because we were still sore from the previous day. We got home around noon, and took nice long showers.

Overall, the trip was a success. I think we are ready to take it to the next level (no picnic tables or outhouses.)