The Conversation

  What if a public-school teacher ran for President of the United States? Just to be clear, I am talking about me. What if an average American ran for president?   Twenty years ago, this would have been unthinkable, as there was no inexpensive and effective method to disseminate information to enough voters. The PAC’s will certainly ignore anyone who has no interest in increasing their wealth, so where would the money come from? Now we have social media, the internet, and GoFundMe. I can share information with the largest voting block without spending a dime; merely becoming viral will get me the support and start the discussions to bring voters around to a new (and old) way of campaigning. GoFundMe will allow a person with student loan debt and making less than living wage to go around the country and talk to fellow Americans about what they need. This is the first thing that will separate me from the pack: I want to listen. I want to know what you need. What we are a...

 But What If We... Had Community Policing     This is an introduction for the public of the work I intend to finish this year. It is also a working title for the book, since my original idea has been taken. What if we didn't argue about the problems or judge the victims, but looked for a real solution to those problems that continued to work long after its implementation. This work takes solutions that have been presented from many different perspectives and political leanings. Throughout these writings, there are ideas you may be interested in advocating for, while there are others you will think are crazy (and you may be right). I want to throw out ideas and show how, with some intentional work on the part of the public, make these ideas become reality to have true democracy and representative government.     The first idea I want to run by everyone is the RUOK Squad. This is a new way to look at community "policing." Communities need to be cared for and held ...

The What If… Series               What if we focused on how to truly solve problems, instead of putting band-aids on bullet wounds? What if we restarted discourse so that we focused on how to help each other, instead of complaining about how we are not as happy as we could be? What if we spent more time talking about the good we can do, instead of the evils done by others? These and other fundamental questions will drive my new What If… series of blog posts.               The inspiration for the series comes from my experience as a classroom teacher. I am a fan of discourse and questions in the classroom, and encourage them from my students. Often, I will hear a “What if” question from my students, usually presented as a source of distraction. My answer to this is often, “Your guess is as good as mine. Think about it and let me know what you come up...

Originally, this blog was going to be limited exclusively to those topics that will be featured in my upcoming novel, The Study. The bulk of the conversations in this blog, and those I want to have with real people, are still going to be the main focus. Since I began working on the entries, however, I have decided to broaden the scope of the conversation to anything interesting (to me), as long as it is not the more polarizing issues of today. As someone who wants to fix public education, and gave up on the current system this year, I will focus on many issues surrounding this fundamental institution of modern democracy. As a person who has lived with clinical depression for over 30 years, I feel this is a conversation that needs to be had. I have experienced the fact that a lack of awareness in those who do not regularly experience this condition can produce negative effects in those who survive with this extra weight in their minds. As someone who has struggled to have a healthy rel...

I want to talk to people about issues that matter, without starting an argument. Members of the generations who have been here longer than I have say that society has lost the ability to have discourse where there is disagreement. I agree with this assessment. Through this conversation I want to work through the issues, or around them if they are too emotionally charged. The purpose of this blog is to open to discussion the issues that I am going to tackle through optimistic satire in my upcoming book The Study . I have chosen to ignore most of the topics that seem to polarize American society the most. However, there are some issues I feel are so important that they need to be addressed, and I will brave the storm with the hope of starting the conversation. Through this conversation, I hope to find agreement among different groups with the purpose of implementing solutions to the ills that need not plague an industrialized, modern society.