To which they offer these two paragraphs:

As with any significant current events topic, some teachers may choose to include the President’s speech as a part of a supplemental learning activity focused upon the importance of education, goal-setting, and college attendance. We will not be encouraging teachers to do so, nor requiring they use any of the suggested learning options from the Department of Education.

Some families may not wish to have their child watch the President’s speech at school. If a teacher plans to include the speech as part of a lesson, parents will be informed by the end of school this Friday to allow parents an opportunity to opt out by notifying the teacher prior to the broadcast on Tuesday morning. Students who have opted out will be assigned supervised alternate learning activities out of the classroom during the 20-minute speech and any immediate follow-up discussion

Ok. So… this bugs me on several levels of which I will simply state in the form of 3 questions:

1. Who thinks it is a good parenting decision to shelter their kids in a public education environment from a public address of the president’s opinion on education?
2. Even if I disagree with everything the president says, isn’t this the perfect opportunity for me to talk to my children about what they are learning in school anyway? I mean how many times to actually get to hear the full subject matter of a teacher’s lesson in the first place?
3. When are we going to embrace the value of teaching our children how to interact with the world around it instead of hiding from it and especially with and from the opinions of those who are in leadership over them? Especially those of the President! No wonder we can’t get young people to go to the poles and vote.

I believe it is our responsibility as educators and parents to teach our children not what to think, but how to think. The capacity to truly interact with the opinions of others is the difference between a mere follower of the crowd and an intelligent thinker, learner, and leader in our society.

I guess I’d understand the concern if this was a speech about sexuality, the mexican border, abortion, a war, our response to a 911 type event, or some other controversial issue that may not be age appropriate for my 6 to 12 year old kids… but this my friends is ridiculous. I think it’s parenting and politics gone stupid.

He is by far the craziest kid in the berrytribe…. he informed me on Wednesday that he would not be 7 until 7:41pm when mom said he was born.

I gave him 7 spankins and like 70 kisses in bed anyway. Crazy kid.

We are taking him to dinner and to Dave and Busters next weekend with the grandparents after 5 soccer games. Tyler’s getting baptized on Sunday too. Crazy weekend ahead.

Anyway… here’s Jake’s crazy breakfast birthday donut breakfast. No he didn’t get to eat them all 🙂

So, I’m not a big traveler to eating spots.  But I have come to appreciate the local eats over the chain food places.  When traveling, I don’t want to eat anywhere that I have already been or could go to in CA.  Maybe the hard rock cafe would be an exception…. but beyond that, once you’ve eaten at one Chili’s, you’ve eaten at all of them.

So the other day we had breakfast as a student ministries staff and Sarah introduced me to a new local one and oh my was it good.  Crazy good.  And crazy HUGE.  Like when this place de

Konos:

Pipes Cafe:

Hash House:

Cosmos Cafe:

Hodads in OB:

Point Loma Seafoods:

Then this stuff might help you.  We had our student ministries small group leader training last night and because I love you, I’m giving you pretty much everything we pass out in a single booklet PDF for free. We had it color printed and then we spiral bound it and our leaders loved it.  Most of it is original material from my team and I.  

It was a great night of bonding and I’m praying a great start to a year of ministry together.

Here’s our agenda:

• 6-9pm.
• Dinner.
• Update people’s technical data and take pictures during dinner. 
• Get to know you activity.
• Interactive teaching and response to the data in this PDF.  (it’s 22 MB, so be patient.  Might take a while if you’re on a slow connection but it’ll be worth the wait 🙂