Thursday, August 13, 2009

My Last Cover Letter

Someone recently asked me the question, “Karen, what would you like to do next?” My answer was simple. “I’d like to blow the walls off public education, turn it on its ear, and recreate it.” I want to create powerful learning and experiences from K through LIFE, encourage people to step outside their comfort zones to discover the possibilities.

I
believe that education is the key to everything, which I realize may sound a bit over the top. Yet I am hard-pressed to find examples of struggles, accidents, injustices, or just plain misses that don’t somehow come back to how people were educated, or not educated. As the parent of a 9-year old, I feel fully the weight of my responsibility to raise this child to be smart, open-minded, fair, compassionate, loving, strong, and to think for herself. This is only one part of the partnership, of the community in place to create such a human being.

Education starts at home. It is either embraced or it is not. Children are taught, or they are not. Once we join hands with education outside the small circle of family, the community has truly begun, and the possibilities are limitless. We as humans can live to be 100, so how can we dare to fit learning into a 13 year block, with a start and a finish. Our abilities to provide for our families, contribute to our communities, fight for change in our countries, and preserve life on our planet are directly tied to our ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn.


And yet education continues to be singled out for reduction and liquidation. It is slaughtered in the name of budget cuts without thought as to the impacts. At the mercy of a tax-based system, it will continue to fail, and we will fail in our responsibility to our communities and our country.

So, yes, I am MOST interested in your organization. I think that your mission is dead on, and I have seen no one else take such an interest in education. It would be an honor to be part of the charge forward.

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