September 29, 2006
Ramsey IFAC issues with space
Recently I was talking with my sister about her job at Ramsey International Fine Arts Center, a K-8 public school on 49th and Nicollet in Minneapolis that both my sister and attended. The school in more recent years has been steadily failing. There are simply too many kids for the amount of staff in the building and not nearly enough space. My sister, 22 became the sole Spanish translator this year for the third of the student population whose first language (or families primary language) is Spanish. There are relatively few Spanish speaking adults in the building and entirely too many Spanish speakers for this to be acceptable. The relation of Spanish speaking students to adults is not the problem that caught my attention while having the conversation with my sister. What caught my attention was what she said about sixth graders. She said there are classrooms of about 40 sixth graders per teacher. Since I was in middle school there has been talk of lowering classroom sizes and thus optimizing teacher-student relations and enhancing the education of individuals. In my largest class in sixth grade there were 31 or 32 people and everyone was talking about voting for smaller class sizes. That was half a decade ago and the number of student per class has only gone up. Ramsey is an excellent example of a superb school loosing funding and being forced to degrade its programs. There are over 775 families at Ramsey IFAC. It's time tax-payers money start being utilized to help our future. We need to vote for leaders who support kids and are opposed to no-child left behind and other standards testing programs which destroy ultimately hinder teachers from fully teaching their students. I’m voting for kids and for myself. Public schools in Minnesota are failing. It’s a shame that funding for public schools is placed so much lower in priority than a war on terror. We choose to use our money to send our children, our future to get killed by guerilla fighters/terrorists in the middle east instead of choosing to use our money to help our schools.
September 18, 2006
The Energy of the Midtown
The energy of the Midtown Market on Chicago and Lake was not at all spoiled by the rain. Although there were less people than usual in the global market the energy was still high. The energy of the market is always apparent in its diversity. You enter this huge cold concrete building that was once a Sears, Roebucks and Co retail center, and are met by this wonderful, colorful community of mixed cultures. You find a diversity of smells, foods, merchandise, colors, and people. The colors and artwork really help energize the people of the once open retail main floor. A large portion of the energy in the Midtown is created by the exchange of goods. However, the real energy of the Midtown is the conversation and companionship that the surrounding community brings to the market. The emersion of different cultures, ethnicities, and ideas in the space that is the market creates an atmosphere that is extremely open and accepting. The magnetic like force of the ideas and community in the global exchange draws people from across Minneapolis and is crucial the markets success. The people are what give the store its energy. When the Sears building was empty the building had an ominous feeling abut it, this huge concrete structure that was fenced in and dominated by this tower which held who knows what. Although at night the building now reminds me of Gotham city, lit up by white lights along its main tower, the building has progressively become more inviting. It’s energy was lifted when the fences were taken down and the lights where added outside and inside. Now the building holds an awe-inspiring energy not just because of its enormity, but also because of its blend of the community’s ideas, artwork and its culture in general.