OT: Success

[Guest guest]

Hey y'all,

 

With all the reports of fires, floods, wars and other bad news we are

exposed to in the media .. this one about a young man who has a firm grip on

his own boot straps might balance it out a bit. Those who are signed up to

NY Times can see it in more detail at the link below. :-) Butch

 

 

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/nicholas/index.html

October 22, 2007, 8:39 am Nicholas

 

By Will Okun <http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/author/wokun/>

 

*Will Okun is a Chicago school teacher who traveled with Nick Kristof in

June to central Africa, on the win-a-trip contest. He blogged and vlogged as

he went, and you can see his reports at www.nytimes.com/twofortheroad. He

teaches English and photography in a Chicago school with many students from

low-income and minority homes.*

 

After the first few weeks of school, I try to call all the students' parents

to introduce myself and to offer a status update on their child's progress

in English class.

 

" Hey, Nick, it's Mr. Okun. Let me speak to a parent. "

 

" You can speak to me, " Nicholas Bounds replied. " I am in charge of myself. "

 

This is a common response from our school's students, who either like to

think of themselves as grown or do not want teachers to share bad news with

their parents.

 

" C'mon, Nick, it's nothing bad. I just want to tell your parent what a great

job you are doing thus far, " I confided.

 

" Well, you are going to have to tell me, " Nick asserted. " There is no one

here but me. I am my own parent. "

 

Nicholas Bounds is one of the top students in my Senior English class. He

attends school every day, and often arrives to our first period class early.

He works dutifully in class and faithfully completes his homework every

night. He writes with honesty, intelligence and intensity. He scored a 23 in

Math on the ACT. Nicholas is a shining star in the otherwise stormy night of

black male education in the West Side of Chicago.

 

Nicholas Bounds also lives in a homeless shelter for teenagers. Every day,

he leaves the shelter at 7 a.m. for school and arrives back at 11 p.m. after

his part-time job at U.P.S. He was telling me the truth; he has been his own

parent since he was 15 and in the eighth grade.

 

Nicholas' mother was a drug-addict and his father was neither stable nor

involved. Despite his family upbringing, Nicholas is proud that he has

always succeeded in school.

 

" Since we started getting grades in elementary school, my report cards were

A's and B's. I have natural intelligence but I always worked hard. I had to

push myself, " Nicholas remembers. " I've been lucky to have good teachers who

believed in me and had a big impact on me. I also benefited from all the

clubs I was in like the Boys and Girls Club, where I would go after school

to play and receive help with my homework. "

 

But at " home, " Nicholas was virtually on his own.

 

" My big sister has always been there for me and tried to help me however she

could, but no one was giving me advice or showing me how to grow up. It was

my decision to do well in school, I had to set my own goals and do the work

to get to those goals, " Nicholas recalls. " I took advantage of school

because I knew education could get me out of here. Even when I was young, I

knew there was nothing out here for me. Just look around; there has to be

something else. "

 

Nicholas finally made the painful decision to break from his mother when her

frequent moves to Mississippi and Minnesota started to negatively impact his

education. He failed the eighth grade because he was unable to attend the

minimum number of school days in one district because of his family's

constant moving.

 

He decided to move in with other family members in Chicago, but he never

felt welcome. " I don't think they wanted me there — it was like I was in the

way. There was a lot of hate in the household, " says Nicholas. " But all of

this only helped to make me stronger. I wanted to show them that I can

succeed despite what I had been through or what they thought of me. "

 

At this point, Nicholas was bouncing from house to house, but still

attending eighth grade every day. Nicholas frequently relied on former

teachers for emotional and academic support. When he needed help enrolling

in a high school, Nicholas reconnected with Teri Marx, a woman he now refers

to as his " mentor " and his " greatest supporter. "

 

Teri first met Nicholas through the Junior/Seniors Scholars Program, in

which North Central College (in Naperville, Ill.) education students work

with children from James Johnson Elementary School until they have

progressed all the way to, hopefully, college acceptance.

 

" When I first met Nick, he was only 6 and he was by far my greatest

challenge. He was hardheaded, disrespectful and stubborn. I was only a

junior in college so I didn't really know what to do. But after a while, he

realized that I was there to help him and we started to develop a repartee, "

recollects Teri. " When his family moved to Mississippi, I think we were both

sad. He had become my favorite kid and I didn't think I would see him

again. "

 

After reuniting, Teri helped Nicholas enroll in high school and establish

secure housing in the teen shelter. More important, Nicholas says that Teri

" is always there for me. It doesn't matter whether things are good or bad, I

know I can count on Teri to support me. "

 

Nicholas believes that many black males in Chicago are failing in high

school because they do not receive the positive support offered by a mentor

like Teri.

 

" These kids are followers and there is no one to lead them in the right

direction, " offers Nicholas. " The people who already failed and are not

doing good are jealous and don't want to see other people do good. That's

why they call the kids with book bags 'lames' or 'trying to be white.' "

 

" If these kids could just have someone believe in them, that would make a

big difference. How can anyone succeed when everyone is expecting and

wanting you to fail? " wonders Nicholas. " If students had people supporting

them in school and showing them what a high school education can do for

them, they would do better. "

 

Nicholas also argues that high schools need to do a better job of engaging

the students through " more relevant " classes and a wider availability of

in-school activities and after-school programs.

 

As for now, Nicholas is on track to join the minority of black male students

who graduate from our nation's high schools. He hopes to attend college with

the career goal of becoming a math teacher.

 

" Nick is the most motivated kid I have ever worked with. He knows that he

wants to have a better life than his family and he is willing to do whatever

he has to in order to become a better example for his brothers and sisters, "

beams Teri. " Nick will be successful! "

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

> With all the reports of fires, floods, wars and other bad

> news we are exposed to in the media .. this one about a young

> man who has a firm grip on

> his own boot straps might balance it out a bit.

 

[Dave]: That's heartening, Butch. Thanks for posting it. I wish the major

media spent a little more time ferreting out stories like this. The truth

is, there's strength and heroism everywhere, if we look for it.

 

 

 

Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.10/1091 - Release 10/24/2007

2:31 PM

[Guest guest]

Butch, I loved that story, and here is one to warm

the heart in a similar way from Malawi, Africa:

 

Teenager William Kamkwamba has created a

windmill from old bicycle parts that is providing

his home and village with electricity.

 

http://williamkamkwamba.com

 

Ien in the Kootenays, back after an unplugged summer

http://freegreenliving.com

[Guest guest]

This is great! There sure is a lot wrong with the world today, but there's

a lot that's good, too.

 

Dave

 

Strongest Dad in the World

2005-09-17, Canadian Runner/Sports Illustrated

http://www.canadianrunner.com/content/view/4258/32

 

Eighty-five times [Dick Hoyt has] pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles

in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a

wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and

pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain

climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. And what has Rick

done for his father? Not much -- except save his life. This love story began

in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical

cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his

limbs. " He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life, " Dick says doctors told

him. But the Hoyts weren't buying it. [Eventually,] rigged up with a

computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with

the side of his head, Rick was...able to communicate. First words? " Go

Bruins! " And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and

the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, " Dad, I want to

do that. " Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described " porker " who never ran

more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he

tried. " Then it was me who was handicapped, " Dick says. " I was sore for two

weeks. " That day changed Rick's life. " Dad, " he typed, " when we were

running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore! "

 

 

Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car

2006-02-17, CBS News

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/17/eveningnews/main1329941.shtml

 

The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an

economy car. It was a sports-economy car — one that combines performance and

practicality under one hood. But as CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman

reports in this week's Assignment America, the car that buyers have been

waiting decades [for] comes from an unexpected source and runs on soybean

bio-diesel fuel to boot. A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds

and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any

driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No —

just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto

shop program at West Philadelphia High School. The five kids ... built the

soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year

— rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As

teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren't exactly the cream of the

academic crop. " If you give kids that have been stereotyped as not being

able to do anything an opportunity to do something great, they'll step up, "

he says. Stepping up is something the big automakers have yet to do. They're

still in the early stages of marketing hybrid cars while playing catch-up to

the Bad News Bears of auto shop. " We made this work, " says Hauger. " We're

not geniuses. So why aren't they doing it? "

 

 

Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

2007-02-18, The Telegraph (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccview19.x

ml

 

Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with

carbon-generated electricity. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so

dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear

power by up to half. Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up

company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day - not so far off - when

entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and

air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over

to feed a surplus back into the grid. The secret? A piece of dark polymer

foil, as thin a sheet of paper. It is so light it can be stuck to the sides

of buildings. It can be mass-produced in cheap rolls like packaging - in any

colour. The " tipping point " will arrive when the capital cost of solar power

falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. The best

options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late

1970s. Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt

within five years, and 50 cents in a decade. " We don't need subsidies, we

just need governments to get out of the way and do no harm, " he said. Solar

use [has] increased dramatically in Japan and above all Germany, where

Berlin's green energy law passed in 2004 forces the grid to buy surplus

electricity from households at a fat premium. The tipping point in Germany

and Japan came once households [understood] that they could undercut their

unloved utilities. Credit Lyonnais believes the rest of the world will soon

join the stampede. Needless to say, electricity utilities are watching the

solar revolution with horror.

 

 

 

Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.10/1091 - Release 10/24/2007

2:31 PM