"Whatever Sprinkles your Donut" and Tap the break lights on change.

I am the adviser for our Student Government Organization. Recently, our students organized a fundraiser to sell wrist bands to students and members of our cyber community of students. They gathered imprint ideas for the bracelets, and "Whatever Sprinkles your Donut" (Purposely grammatically incorrect) came up the winner. As I began to think about this trite saying it struck me that it reflects our current political environment. I recently watched a video from Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist, and author of, The World is Flat". In this video he discussed globalism and its resulting acceleration of change. It was his premise that the election of Donald Trump was a response to that change. He felt that the consequences of this election could be very serious even leading to nuclear war. I am more of an optimist. Although I agree that there could be serious consequences for choosing a path of stagnation versus change, I feel that the current election is just a tap on the brakes as people feel threatened by too much change.

The choice by my students of "whatever sprinkles your donut" is a subconscious reaction to the stress my students are currently experiencing. They are living and studying in a global world where the jobs that they will be preparing for will be gone by the time that they graduate. My advice to my students is to embrace technology. Our students are currently learning in a cyber blended model of education. We have students who have formed life long relationships from all over the Commonwealth because of cyber learning. When students are considering the next step after high school they should also consider how technology interacts with that field. Technology is moving at a rapid pace, and embracing it in the field of their choice will guarantee their success after high school.

Our students in Student Government have written a legislative bill this year. The have formed a committee called The Student Legislative Initiative (SLIC). Four years ago. our students got the idea for the bill by interviewing former state Senator Lloyd Smucker. He felt that many students were not receiving the skills necessary to be successful after high school. Our students have interacted with a computer program that aligns several inventories with thier interest, skills and job or scholarship availability into an electronic portfolio. Since we originally wrote this bill several other legislators ie Dan Tuitt, Scott Wagner, Ryan Aument and Andy Dinniman,  and their staffs have helped us. In addition many of my students have graduated and are still involved in the process. You can read the bill here. This bill is designed to ease the transition from high school into the world of work by assigning every student in the Commonwealth with an electronic portfolio, that is interactive with their teacher. It is a technological solution to a traditional guidance problem.

I am currently teaching US History. In my opinion, our country had worse presidents than Donald Trump. The Warren Harding and Grant presidencies were filled with corruption and led to The Great Depression and flawed reconstruction. While Donald Trump's presidency may have a scandal similar to Nixon's Watergate, Clinton's Lewinsky or Reagan's Iran Contra he may also accomplish fair trade with China, or paid parental leave. The point here is that Trump with a more parliamentary congress may be able to end the grid lock and bring back governance to Washington. In the meantime, there may be a scandal or two, but if progressive reforms can ease the transition of the pace of change, then our students will benefit. What makes Trump an interesting politician is that he has shown signs of compromising with conservative goals in the interest of establishing pragmatic reform. In the primary season when he campaigned against Hillary Clinton, he would frequently poise Bernie Sanders against her by taking the Bernie's side. For example, Trump would talk about how unfair competition was robbing Americans of jobs, and he used similar rhetoric about Sanders in his campaign. Both Sanders and Trump were populist candidates who veered from traditional party rhetoric for pragmatic progressive reform. The Republican Party was able to realign to these populist reforms because Trump was running unopposed.

In conclusion, the pace of change has been dramatic in recent years. Our students at Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School are in a unique position to embrace technological change because they learn in a cyber and asynchronous setting. Students like Vinh Li, Josh Marzak, Ben Byler, and Hannah Nguyen have worked on our government bill project before and after graduation. They have gathered data from school districts, vendors, legislators, business and executives in education. They have faced the strain of change by embracing technology. "Whatever Sprinkles Your Donut" is a mantra that may relieve the stress that many young people feel. Change is happening too rapidly and is complicating our lives. The temptation is to give in and take the easy path. Students want to learn the skills necessary to acquire a job like our parents have. The jobs that our parents have may still be around whenever students graduate, however technology will have changed them into a description using more technological skills. If students acquire those skills they will be positioned to take change into the next generation and beyond. So go ahead and tap the breaks to slow down, "Whatever Sprinkles your Donut". I have no doubt we will catch up and even pass the rest of pack with good old Yankee ingenuity.