Episode 5: It's personal, okay?

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Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators that I had while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to know how these teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education and that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I'll be getting personal by providing some background about who I am and how I came to be. Guess what? I'm changing the format of the podcast to a weekly podcast. I'll still be covering the current education topics twice a month and I'll also be adding a personal podcast on once a month. I was intrigued by some of the books that were mentioned in episode four that were on the band book list, so I'll also delve into some book reviews once a month that cover various topics including financial books, books by black authors, and I'll explore books that make the job of parenting easier, like project management for parents. We all start somewhere. Our experiences growing up shape and develop who we are for the rest of our lives in some way or another. I am married and adventure unto itself with two adult children who now have their own children. I'm also a lifelong learner. I have loved books books for as long as I've been reading. I also enjoy cooking. I'm a great cook who loves trying new recipes that call for organic, gluten free, wholesome foods. I delve into spiritual practices like meditation and mindfulness and continue furthering myself by personal development courses. I am an avid reader and enjoy a variety of topics. I'm a fashionista and have my own classic style of clothes and I'm on a health journey, one in which I've been in a wheelchair for several years and even though I am in the wheelchair, I still look good when I'm in it. Now I'm not a hair person, never have been and probably never will be. I like my hair neat. It looks good, but I'm not going to spend a whole lot of hours getting my hair right. That's just me. I have an older sister and a younger brother and sister, so there's four of us. We had a lot of activity going on growing up in our household. But my parents really stressed the importance of education growing up. They both felt that in order to succeed and be successful in life, you needed to capitalize on the education that was available for us to take advantage of. My parents went so far as to have extracurricular activities that involved journaling and outside book reading so that we would keep our skills sharp. We had reading assignments to do even in the summer before we did chores or went outside to play. We were required to read a couple of chapters in a book every day. This background led me to excel in academics and pretty much instilled in me a strong educational attainment mentality. So if I was pursuing a course of classes or other works, I had to attain the highest that was available for that. I have four degrees because of that mentality. A Bachelor's in Biology, a Master's in business, a Master's in Information Systems, and a Doctorate in education. You see, if there is the highest attainment to get, I usually pursue that. It's just in me to do that. I also have two professional designations. After spending 25 years in corporate America running IT projects, I am a certified project manager or a PMP, as well as a Certified Business Analyst Professional or a cbap. Again, just based on who I am, I figure if I'm going to be in the field, I want to be certified as knowing the best practices of that field. What led me into the educational research arena was the different experiences that I had with my daughter in public school system versus my son in public school system. And it was my experiences with my son that led me into the education research arena. There was quite a bit of difference with my daughter in the classroom versus a young black boy in the classroom. My son's kindergarten and first grade teacher was great. She was an African American woman, very experienced, who was a mother of two sons herself. It was his second grade teacher that piqued my curiosity about what teachers were actually being taught and trained to do. I remember one experience with her in which I had come up to the school when school was out to pick my son up from her classroom and his desk was outside of her classroom. I asked her why she thought that was a good thing to do. She told me that his desk was so messy that she almost tripped walking around it. I asked her whether she had asked him to clean up his desk. She said she did, but it wasn't sufficient for her, so she thought the best approach was to place his desk outside the classroom. I was livid and I told her that when I come back up to the school tomorrow and his desk is still sitting outside that classroom, she the principal and I were going to have a conversation. I was flabbergasted. I mean, why did she think that was a good idea? What message was that sending to my child? In any case, the next day when I came up to the school, his desk was back inside the classroom. Task accomplished. This was my first experience of the differences in attitude toward black boys, especially in the classroom. It was unacceptable, and it was not the last experience that I had with him. I'll be sharing more of those experiences, I'm sure, as I go into more personal podcasts in the future. I think that the availability of the education materials and resources that we have available to us is very important. And that's my mindset. That's how I want to serve you as my audience who has children in the public school system to give you the resources, the background, the information that you need that should you need to interact with educators and administrators. You're armed with information to provide so that you can work cooperatively and collaboratively with them. I also provided supporting materials for my children's educational attainment when I noticed that their homework seemed to be less than sufficient for them to build necessary skills. So I put them in programs like Kumon and library enrichment programs so that they could keep their skills up during the school year as well as in the summer. I would even buy materials from the teacher supply store so that they would have additional practice on vital skills necessary to do their best in school. The importance of providing the best background for educational support continued with my grandchildren as I taught the older boys how to read before they entered kindergarten. Since that time, they have done extremely well in school because the support system, the foundation, had already been set. The challenges, the struggles, as well as the triumphs are some things that I had personal experience with and I use that as my platform for serving you on this podcast. I'll usually end these personal type podcasts with either a mantra or a joke because I love surrounding myself with positive thoughts and words and I also like a good, clean, funny joke. I'll be ending this podcast episode with a mantra. I connected with these words from Idil Ahmed in September 2020 I speak it first. I imagine it, I feel it. I know it will happen for me. It starts in my mind first and the action follows. I'm going to keep speaking great things into existence for my life. I know how powerful my mind is. I know how powerful my words and what I believe in are. I'm going to start attracting and everything I want by becoming what I ask for. Change starts with me. If I am not happy, I have to do something about it. I know that I am not my past. I am not my mistakes. Starting today, I'll stop telling that old story and recreate myself. I I will remain focused on my goals. Even if I have a moment of difficulty. I will not give up. I know success comes with consistency. I know that I will make it. I will get better. No problem or challenge will stop me. I just have to believe in the power of the mind that what I think, feels and focus on will manifest for me. What I'm looking for is inside of me. I'm going to align with my spirit and trust the wisdom I receive. I'm ready to be blessed. I know happiness, love and peacefulness is an inside job. I'm going to start taking responsibility for my life. I'll start switching my thoughts and words to focus on what I want. I believe that I will manifest my greatest dreams. Nothing or nobody can get in the way of what's meant for me. I just have to be patient and trust the process. I just have to allow instead of stressing out. It will all work out for me. Everything I deserve is flowing towards me easily and effortlessly. Everything is energy aligning with itself. I'm being aligned to greater purpose. I'm going to be kind and patient with myself during the process of manifesting my visions. I believe in myself. Words to think about from ideal Ahmed if this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast or whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a comment or a review and share this episode with anyone that you think would find it valuable. Be sure to check. Tell your friends, family and community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have a burning question about current issues or a specific topic that you'd like for me to cover and explore, shoot me a quick email email at kimliberation through education.com to let me know what your question is. I mentioned earlier that I plan on reviewing a book a month, so if you have a particular book that you've been curious about that you'd like for me to review. Drop me a comment or an email and share that book title. Until next time. Aim to learn something new. New every day.

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