Summer Reading

Two books that I read over the summer, and highly recommend:

Last Child in the Woods:  Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv

Changing Planet, Changing Health:  How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It, by Paul Epstein and Dan Ferber

I have run out of free reading time outside course assignments at this point, but I will try to share interesting course readings this year as well.  There have been some great ones already in the first four weeks - in Environmental Economics, Ethics, and Corporate Environmental Strategy. 

Lots to think about, and maybe even to build a career around....

Fits and Starts

It's called Holmes Place.  It's a bit too mainstream for my tastes, but it is conveniently located 2 blocks from home.  I had tried to find something like my Jazzercise studio in Royal Oak, MI here, but they don't have fitness center's dedicated to aerobic dance.  They have dance studios (I found one that had a lot of class options, but it's a 40 minute walk from home, most of the classes were after 8pm, and they wanted about $15 per 1 hour class, which at 3x/week gets expensive).  The alternative I found in Tel Aviv is aerobic dance classes offered at some of the gyms, like Holmes Place.  So zumba and energy dance at the gym it is for me.  Since I have the membership now, I'm planning to try out other classes too, just for balance and curiosity, like yoga, pilates, and maybe belly dancing.  When in the middle east, right? 

Getting my membership began with the usual thinly veiled hard sell from a gym rep.  They called relentlessly to follow up.  And I hmm'd and haa'd over it until I got them to eliminate the registration fee (about $100), lower the early cancellation fee (from $100 to about $50), and take my payments in two installments (whereby I gave them a temporary limited credit card # on the first payment, so I'm really not locked into the one year contract if I don't want to be).  Now they call me regularly but don't leave messages.  And they text me in Hebrew (which I can read about 1/10th of - I thought that was pretty impressive).  However, I discovered the hard way, when I showed up for my "free" nutritionist appointment earlier this week (that unbenounced to me, was cancelled), that the rep who sold me the membership forgot to write "English" on my file, which explains some of the miscommunication. 

As with everything around here, I don't fit the mold, so anything new comes in fits and starts. 

What's wrong with education as we know it?

An engaging perspective on the situation of education.... 

Can't you pop into an Israeli Starbucks, if you really have to go NOW?

I haven't quite been able to figure out what's going on here in Israel, on the subject of peeing.  Yes, peeing.  Dan's first week here he had to chase off a man he caught peeing on the entrance to our driveway.  Since then, I have caught parents on more than three occasions directing their young children to drop trou in the planting strips along the sidewalks to both pee and poop!  (This post didn't seem appropriate to include a photo).  Walking down the sidewalk requires a keen eye for land mines of excrement, and I'm no longer certain that they are from the neighborhood dogs and cats. 

Yet, it is a common complaint by Israeli's all summer that they can't wait for the first rains to come and wash away the smell.  So WHY do they do it?  I suppose the answer is, the ones who don't like it are different from the ones who do it. 

Well, I'm not the only one who has noticed this behavior.  Check out this article on Greenprophet.com -
How Green Is A Quick Wee In Public? 

Thai cooking class

Before it becomes a distant memory, I should wrap up a few additional thoughts about Thailand.

In Chaing Mai, we spent our last full day taking a traditional Thai cooking class.  The day began with pad thai, followed by tom yum soup and cashew chicken. 

Then we took a break to visit the local market with Yui, where we purchased some of the ingredients that are hard to find in western grocery stores - palm sugar and sticky rice (we bought kaffir lime leaves later in our trip).  Something I had never noticed before in a market (but have since) is that they bundle soup mix ingredients for sale, just like can be found in U.S. grocery stores.  However, these soup mixes are small rubber-banded bunches of lemongrass, galangal, and kafir lime leaves.

Upon our return to the classroom, we made our own spring rolls and finished off the day with mango and sticky rice.

Probably the most valuable part of the class was learning more about how to use fish sauce, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce.  Fish sauce goes with meat, soy with vegetables, and hoisin with both.  The amount used should be proportional to the quantity of the meat, but always less than you think.  As they say in Hebrew, le'at le'at, or "little by little."  Taste, add, taste, add, until it's right.   

It was a delicious learning experience!

A night in the Thai jungle

From our base in Chaing Mai, we booked a two day visit to the Doi Pui Suthep National Park.  We started with a mountain biking trip which lasted several hours, and offered varying degrees of difficulty.  Knowing one's limits was important, to avoid the fate of a few of the riders who went over their handle bars.  Riding through tropical forest, rice paddies in valleys, and meeting the farmers who gave us a taste of sugar cane cut right on their property reminded me how important a connection with one's environment is.  Thai's definitely have this.  Even the young guy who was guiding our biking tour could tell us about plants growing along the trail that are commonly found in Thai cooking.  Although Israel is agriculturally more advanced, I am not sure that Israelis connect with the land in this way, but then again, the people in most developed countries do not.  In the U.S., our national parks are visited by foreigners more than Americans. 

After a late lunch, we were shuttled back to the office where the two of us, plus a traveler from Scotland, were driven up to the base of the Flight of the Gibbon for a homestay. 

We arrived around 6:30pm, after dark, and our host family, a very welcoming Thai couple speaking nearly no English, showed us our rooms, the bath/shower, and began cooking up a delicious meal for us.  Dinner included a minced pork dish, something we've been eating daily upon arrival, and enjoying thoroughly.  There are so many ways to prepare meats here - basil and chili, garlic and pepper, fried, minced, crispy, etc. - and so many sauces, the options are endless.  I admit, I have been taking advantage of the pork options on most menus, as it is a real treat coming from a non-pork-eating country.

As you can see in the picture to the right, the kitchen in their home was very simple.  They were using gas and electric to cook on, and they did have a small refrigerator.  But they didn't appear to store much - they eat fresh - ironic as our standard of living in the West is so much higher, yet our food consumption is arguably lower quality.  

After dinner, we were invited to a traditional thai massage.  They set up mats there in our little wooden house, and worked on our soar muscles for over an hour!

The next morning, we said goodbye to our host family, and waited patiently for our ride to begin our zip lining adventure for the day.  This is when we discovered that the three of us had been lost between the cracks of their planning for the day.  At first, I wondered whether this was classic non-western culture behavior, under which you have to be prepared for the reality that all times are approximate.  However, after some discussion, we realized that they were truly overbooked.  We watched as others were shuttled in and out of the experience with efficiency and expediency. 

Despite this bump in the day, it turned out to be a worthwhile experience, as the network of zip lines, cable bridges and rappelling ropes created a 3 hour circuit of fun with incredible views.  I felt like I was in Fangorn Forest in the Lord of the Rings. 

This visit peaked my curiousity about what environmental education Thai's receive in school, and what outcomes they have seen from it.  There are clearly businesses in Thailand promoting eco-friendly tourism, but these are targeted toward tourists.  A quick google search shows that academic interests have looked at efforts here, but I didn't see an overall strategy or state-led effort.  However, when I googled "environmental education" generally, the third listing that came up was ironically the "Israel Ministry of the Environment." 

Moving to a desert, attending the Deserts Conference, conversations with my dad, and a couple recent articles, have really got me thinking about the issue of our human connection to nature.  To read the articles:

Losing Our Connection to Nature: Is Sustainability at Risk?
Humans Losing Touch with Nature

Interaction with nature was an integral part of my childhood, and I can't imagine childhood without it.  Do you think this is important?  Why?  What should we do about it?

Environmental Education Field Trip

On my last day at the Drylands, Deserts, and Desertification Conference, last Wednesday Nov 10th, I had the incredible opportunity to visit four sites just south of Be'er Sheva, where the Bedouin communities are exploring various types of environmental education and social empowerment. 

Our first stop was at the Segev Shalom Bedoiun School (see right).  Although you probably can't read it, the painting in blue expresses that this is an experimental school with experiential environmental education incorporated into everything that they do. It turns out we arrived on "Olive Picking Day," so the students were involved in activities tied to this (such as the olive tree collages in the second photo.)  At different points there were groups using the outdoor courtyards, as well as a full seating area for a class under the trees.  Another small group was making traditional coffee over a small open fire. 

We met with the Principal and learned the story of this place.  Twelve years ago, one of his teachers came to him and said, "I'd like to teach about the four seasons, but I do not have a lab."  His reply to her was, "You do not need one.  Take the students outside."  And so she did.  Upon her completion of her lesson, the Principal asked her how it went.  She told him about the success engaging the students directly in their environment, and said that she wanted to continue to incorporate this kind of learning into her curriculum.  So the students began spending part of their classroom time outside, and obvservations began to surface.  They noticed the large amounts of trash in their neighborhoods.  And they started asking questions of the traditional bedoins, such as, "why do you build your homes with goat hair instead of sheep? why do you build always with the door facing east?  why do you follow traditional says when you don't know what they mean?  And so the students began a discovery process, and what they learned they took back to those in their culture that had forgotten the reasons for tradition.  For instance, the bedoiun have a saying, "If you see a snake but don't catch it, don't worry, you can go to bed.  If you see a scorpion but don't catch it, do NOT go to bed that night."  Wondering why?  These kids discovered through their research that while snakes cover vast areas of land, scorpions are territorial, which means that if you didn't catch it, it's probably waiting under your pillow!

Because of their success developing new teaching methods, this school applied for experimental status 7 years ago.  However, a school can only maintain this status for 5 years, at which time they either need to revert to being a non-experimental school, or become a teaching/learning resource for other schools.  Two years ago they chose this path, and are spreading their experiential methods all around Be'er Sheva now.  Their intent is for the students to take home what they learn, teach their families, and develop a community consciousness of their connection to their environment. 

Our second stop was at a women's cooperative.  We met with the founder who started this project in 1996.  Before I explain what they do here, it is important to understand her story.  She was born to a family of nearly 10 children, as was her husband.  Bedoiun family tradition expects this, so much so that the Bedoiun population in Israel continues to double every 12 years!  Although we didn't learn what led to her unusual circumstance, she managed to meet and marry a man who wanted only 3 children.  She also wanted this.  She had two children, and when she got pregnant with her third, it turned out to be twins.  
She shared with us some of the traditional roles for women in Bedoiun society.  Women were responsible for building their homes, through careful construction via goat's hair fabrics.  Their embroidery work was their signature, used on their family and community's clothing, showing where they belonged and what their status was.  A large part of their day involved going to the community well, where women acted as the primary source of community communication, while men were out tending herds.  So as modernization came and the tribes became more stationary, most of the woman's crafting role disappeared.  They weren't building their new cement homes, clothes are machine made, and with running water, they lost their opportunity to connect with the community outside the home.

So this woman set out to create an enterprise that would fill some of these needs.  They produce the traditional embroidery of their culture, which can be done while home looking after their children, gives them a sense of community when they come in to exchange work, and an opportunity for educational meetings (like personal finance, health, etc) on these delivery days

Our third stop was at the solar powered village of Durigh'at.  Again, we met with the Principal of the school there.  His family leads this town of 80 families.  This town was a pet project of current President Shimon Peres, while he was Minister for the Development of the Negev, Galilee and Regional Economy.  It is one of many bedoiun villages that were not initially recognized by the Israeli government (usually due to disagreement over choice of location, from what I understand). 

So here's what happened in this village that ran on generators.  The government, who wouldn't hook them up to the utility lines, spent 1 million shekels (about $280,000) to outfit 20 homes with solar power.  Initially, the village was thrilled.  The idea was that then other families will see the benefit and purchase their own systems, for 48,000 shekels.  Five families have since done this.  But the rest are still using dirty old generators.  In the meantime, this project dropped on the governmental priority list.  The village is now in negotiations to get hooked up to the electric grid.  At this point, the Principal said if they don't do it, the village will ask for the supplies and do the work themselves.  Anyone who has spent time in the Peace Corps or knows someone who has, has heard stories like this. 

What was starkly absent to our visiting group of environmental education specialists, was the environmental education.  The Principal did not talk about any curriculum modifications surrounding this process, and there was a noticable increase in trash alongside the roads here, compared to the first school.  As we were hurried along for our next stop, I wondered if anyone had thought to get the Segev Shalom School together with this one here in Durigh'at.  The motivations and vision for the future here was at a much lower level of consciousness.  This Principal was proud of the handful of doctors and lawyers they had produced.  His focus is on bringing western prosperity to his community, with very little apparent thought about the ramifications of doing it without a systems approach. 

Our last stop was at a "green elementary school" in Arad.  Here we again met the Principal.  But his background was quite different.  He is an ecologist by training.  He came into his position about a year ago.  The current school was a combination of two previous schools, each with a focus.  One was the arts, the other was the environment, so now they work to incorporate both.  They work a lot with recycling concepts, using recycled materials from school or at home.  They built composters and plant gardens on campus.  The students were busy building outside classrooms with old tires and mud while we were there (see right). 

They also started a used clothing drive/store run by the kids.  One of the guides told of the response she got when she asked on a previous visit why the kids working in the store were sewing designs on the used clothes.  The boy's response, "sometimes it is uncomfortable for someone to see their classmate who donated the item they are wearing, so we change the clothes by sewing new details on them, making them new!"  Our final stop was in a classroom where a group was involved in a drama performance about recycling.  Before it started, the Principal opened the class discussion by introducing us, and letting our group ask questions.  One member asked, "what are you all doing?"  Half the little hands shot up in the air, butts nearly falling off seats, hoping to be called upon.  For the first time, I could understand the hebrew around me.  And the funniest part - one boy, who had been listening to all the English, and looked like one of the Ethiopian immigrants, answered back in English (the Israeli children don't learn English this young.) 

I left the group at this point, got a short ride to the bus stop, where I caught the bus to Be'er Sheva, about an hour.  Then I waited a half hour and caught a second bus from there to Tel Aviv, which took about another hour and a half.  It was an absolutely fabulous day! 

First impression of sustainability in Israel

For those of you who know something about my career aspirations, you know that when I graduated 10 years ago from Wellesley, I wanted to find a way to apply business skills to a social or environmental purpose.  That course in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Sociology really got me interested.  But first I needed to develop some basic real life business skills, hence the strategy consulting and CPG marketing jobs from 2000-2005.  I continued to look for opportunities to make an impact, and found that the Brandeis MBA in the Heller School of Social Policy and Management lets students learn about both sides of the tax fence - for-profit and non-profit.  At Brandeis, in a social entrepreneurship course, I learned about the blurring lines of for-profit and non-profit, growing interest in social enterprise, and a new term for these ideas about the interconnectedness of how we work and live - the word was "sustainability."  From there, I got involved with Net Impact.   Not long after I had the opportunity to get my feet wet in it, by joining the American Heart Association and working on the New York City launch of their newest cause marketing campaign - called Start!, the purpose of which was to engage Americans in becoming more physically active through corporate wellness programs.  This gave me first hand experience working with major corporations in New York City and Detroit from 2005-2009, helping them develop CSR strategies. 

In the U.S., interest in sustainability continues to grow.  Forward-thinking companies over the past 5 years have started implementing new functions in their organizations and producing sustainability reports to supplement their annual financial reports.  This growing interest has naturally created criticism and skepticism as well. But sustainability is being talked about and acted on more, and that at least seems directionally correct.  The organization that appears to be shaping the global approach to sustainability is The Global Reporting Initiative, based in the Netherlands.  Europe tends to be on the cutting edge of transforming it's businesses to sustainable enterprises.  If you're really interested in trying to understand sustainability (the word gets thrown around a lot, and the meaning as well as terms like CSR are always in debate), get ahold of the book, "The Triple Bottom Line," by Andrew Savitz. 

When we decided to move to Israel, I was excited by the prospect of living closer to the epicenter of this movement, and working more directly in it.  Israel has the most start-ups per capita of any country in the world.  They're in the middle of a desert, so natural resources, especially fresh water, are severely limited.  And they are surrounded by unfriendly neighbors.  These factors would suggest a strong impetus for sustainable development, i.e. figuring out how to be self-sustaining for the long-term.

I have been reading a blog this past year, CSR-Reporting, the author of which is based here in Tel Aviv.  The visibility of content coming out of Israel got me excited.  I connected with Elaine Cohen over LinkedIn, and she kindly invited me to an event in early September, just before we left for the holidays.  Her consulting agency, BeyondBusiness, organized a speaking engagement with Maala, the Israeli CSR Association.  They brought in Jo Confino, journalist for the Guardian in the UK.  He is a really interesting guy, having decided to work toward implementing principles of sustainability within his own organization.  This is particularly complex due to the purpose of his work in news reporting, as it has forced the organization to face more directly the reality that a news organization is never really unbiased.  The interesting thing to me is that they are aknowledging that they are not just there to "report" the news, but in some way to shape it (i.e. by encouraging greater organizational transparency, raising awareness about what sustainability is, etc).  I think this is promising.  Afterall, there is no such thing as unbiased news.  A person wrote it, which means that person had to decide what to include, and what not to.  They decided what the story was.  By becoming more transparent about the assumptions included, readers have the opportunity to possibly get closer to some kind of "truth."  Although, as my high school physics teacher always told us, "everything is relative."

Anyway, I like his ideas, I like that he is trying to raise awareness about the simple idea that culturally we've lost sight of planning for our future (that's what sustainability really is, afterall).  And I like that he is in a position of power that allows his voice to reach a broad audience. 

Regarding the event, I was surprised by the size of the group in attendance.  There were only about 30 people there.  I expected more, again, due to my assumptions about Israeli engagement with sustainability-related issues (which I am now questioning).

As I get settled here, I hope to learn more about what the impetus is locally for engagement in sustainable thinking and planning, and what the roadblocks are.  And I hope to find a place where I can contribute to overcoming those roadblocks. 

Learning for next time

There are a lot of "firsts" for things you take for granted when you move to a new country.  The first time I drove here.  The first time I got blocked into a parking spot.  The first time I got towed.  The first time I got allergy shots (and the second).  The first time Dan tried to cash a check at the bank. 

Yes, last Thursday I got towed.  I was parked in a zone that should have been ok.  But there was a sign in hebrew behind me (and the other cars around me) that apparently indicated an exception to the general rule during certain hours. 

Last Thursday I went to get my allergy shots.  At the clinic they told me to go get my payment voucher.  At the payment voucher office they told me to go pay, then bring back the receipt.  Then they gave me the voucher, sent me back to the clinic, where I finally got in the queue 45 minutes later.  Then I was going to have to wait an additional hour until I could leave, so I left and came back after Ulpan, rounding out a 2 1/2 hour process.  In the U.S. I would have been in and out in under 10 minutes.

Today we walked into the best known bank brand in Israel, Bank Leumi, where Dan has his business account.  However, because we were in the Tel Aviv branch, they weren't willing to cash his check for 400 shekels (that's about $100).  It took a call to the branch where the account was opened, a fax, a copy of his ID, and then they figured out he was listed by his US passport instead of his Israeli ID as the account owner.  Still, they had to deposit the check, then take out the cash.  They wouldn't just cash it.  Oye ve!

the purpose of a test

I'm learning as much about teaching methods in Ulpan as I am hebrew (and that's saying A LOT, considering I read a whole paragraph on day 5!)

We had our first quiz on Thursday.  Because most of the students are in that early college mindset driven by getting through to get the grade, there were groans throughout the room.  Talya, our fabulous teacher, reminded us of a very important principle of teaching/learning.  Quizes are for teachers to discover whether what THEY are doing is working, and to adjust their curriculum based on the results of the quizes.  Quizes are NOT to chastize us for getting things wrong.  Doesn't sound right?  Probably because we're too used to the morphed American education system.  We all know that education is falling apart in the US.  But the reasons may be a surprise (for more on that, check out the new book by Diane Ravitch, Assistant Secretary of Education in the 1990's and Wellesley alum - the book is titled "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."

Ulpan is an entirely different experience for me than any other formal class I have taken.  I am not afraid.  Sure, I am a little bogged down with the focus and time required, as there are so many things I want to do here.  But I'm not afraid.  Not like I was when grades were on the line.  I am not afraid to show my ignorance.  To let her know that I'm not getting it.  I don't have to stay up all night studying and lose sleep worrying, because I know that if I don't get it, SHE needs to know that I need more help - i.e. more homework on that topic, more practice, or whatever it takes.  As long as I do everything she asks, if I'm still not getting it, that's ok. 

Imagine if we could remove the fear of failure in the US school system for kids, so they could fully participate without fear of repercussions (like bad grades that limit your ability to get into good schools, which can limit your ability to get a chance to prove yourself at a good job, earna good income, pursue a passion, etc)? 

And imagine if instead of opening a text book and insisting on memorization, the teacher approached the topic in a way that forced students to "think" about the issue, thereby retaining it for the long-term. Every experience I remember from K-12 involved an experience that did NOT include a text book.  Of course, there are great teachers out there (I had more than a few), but with "No Child Left Behind" increasing testing for the wrong reasons (to punish and rank students, instead of inform teachers how to best "teach" in their unique classroom), there are less and less.  And unfortunately, the Obama administration may be continuing rather than changing some of the policies put in place by the previous two Bush administrations.

A recent article came out about the drop in creativity of Americans.  It points to our educational system as a big part of the problem.  http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

Not that the Israeli's have it all figured out.  But they do have more entrepreneurs per capita than anywhere else in the world.  And given their success breathing life into a dead language, and based on my personal experience, their teaching methods, at least with language, might be a good place for the US to look.