Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough – We Must Take Action!

While it may bring us some comfort to say we are thinking or praying for those in Paris and Beirut, it is not enough. Although statements of solidarity may be comforting to the victims and their families (and to us), we must also take action.

What can we do? What more do we have to offer than our condolences and outrage? Quite a lot! We can work to change our communities, countries, the world, and ourselves. We can add our voices to our prayers and thoughts, our contributions to worthy causes, and then roll up our sleeves and do something!

Through the products we purchase, the politicians we support, and charities we fund, and the actions we take, we make a difference. People all over the world are living in conditions that breed terrorism. Poverty, disease, unemployment, and brutal circumstances are far too common throughout much of the developing world. How do we benefit from their suffering? We must work to find ways to rectify the conditions that create extremism. In addition to giving to causes that work to end these deplorable conditions, we must also examine how our behaviors, both individually and as a community and country, contribute to and perhaps even profit from this sad state.

Because of natural resources like oil, strategic locations, or political expediency our government has supported regimes that value neither human rights nor human dignity. We have valued our prosperity and comfort over the well-being of very poor people. Whether we approve or disapprove – or even if we know about these issues – our country acts on our behalf and in our names. Our well-being is intertwined with the well-being of people all over the world. If we prosper at the expense of those far away, we (or those we love) will pay for that abuse later. In this global age, we must work to make sure that all people live in safe, secure, and sustainable conditions.

Learning about the causes and issues surrounding terrorism feels selfish if it's only for our own edification. Using that knowledge to demand that our legislators and government officials change the role our country is playing internationally is a step toward addressing the larger pieces of this very complicated puzzle.

Terrorism is about fear. It is about fomenting hate and division. Another way we can take action is to actively fight the fear, and build bridges between people with different ideas, beliefs, backgrounds, and values. It is by creating the kind of world the terrorists are trying to destroy!

Starting with thoughts and prayers is fine. Ending there is copping out. Go further. Make some contributions. Learn about the larger issues. Engage in policy discussions. Change your consumer choices. Actively work for peace.

Yes, we all have important tasks. Yes, we all have jobs, families, and communities, which require great amounts of time and energy. Is all you can spare a few thoughts? Is that all that this is worth? We must go further. It is our responsibility and obligation. The fate of our world rests with our choices. Get out there and do something!

Things We Can Do to Stop The Shootings!

The time for debate on whether or not we should put controls on guns is over. The debate is moot. The question is rather, how do we stop the shootings? What do we do to end the blood bath of gun violence that is raging out of control? The problem seems large and overwhelming, especially when we are painfully aware that wealthy and powerful forces are enjoying, benefiting, and supporting the carnage.

We must take action. Talk is not enough. Debating your neighbors will change nothing. We (you and me) must DO something! The purpose of this blog entry to provide two simple and clear things we can do: write legislators and give money to organizations working to end gun violence.

Write or call your legislators. 

Common Cause has a page that will list all of your elected officials. Click here and enter your address and you will get a list of your federal and state legislators and their contact information.

Here is the email I sent. Feel free to use it or make it your own:

Subject: What are you doing to stop the shootings?

Dear Lawmaker,

What are you doing to stop the shootings and end gun violence? It is painfully clear that whatever measures are in place, they are inadequate. Both mass shootings like the recent events in Roseburg, Charleston, Washington DC, Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood, and shootings in urban areas are all the more tragic because of our failure to prevent them. The debate is over. No sensible person can argue that more guns can solve this problem.

I am asking you to do two things:

1. Pass legislation this year to regulate the sale, distribution, and use of guns and end these shootings. Like so many other products that have caused safety issues, guns users should be required to have a license, training, and be liable if weapons that they purchased are used for murder.
2. Begin a process to address the problems with the second amendment that have put us in this terrible place. Whether it is another amendment or another solution, there must be a longer and more far-reaching solution that will end both this debate and the killings.

The way we will know these laws are effective will be when there are no more shootings. Other countries have solved this problem; we must do so as well.

I implore you to bring legislation to a vote this year,

Yours truly,

David A. Hirsch

Next, support organizations that are working to end gun violence. Those who oppose common sense gun regulation are very wealthy. We must chip in to create a voice that can be heard over the moneyed loonies who fund the opposition to sensible gun laws.

In researching organizations, I found that the Brady Campaign was an excellent organization. Click here and make a donation!

Other organizations you could explore are:

The Coalition Against Gun Violence

The Illinois Council on Handgun Violence

Parents Against Gun Violence

Gabby Gifford’s organization: Americans for Responsible Solutions

If you want more information, here are three articles, one from the New Yorker, a second from the New York Times and a third from the Boston University of Public Health which may help to put the issue in context.

While guns are unregulated, no one is safe. If children in an elementary school, audiences in movie theaters, and military personnel at an army base can be victims, we are all at risk. Let’s act to prevent anyone else from being senselessly killed.

One more thing: please keep this issue on your mind as you vote in November.

A Family Refrigerator Album

Our fridge has been making clear signs that the end is near. We figured out that, if we didn’t move quickly, we would have to repent. So today, we purchased a new one. This evening, we began the process of getting ready. The first thing: take everything off the fridge.

It was a wonderful and odd trip into the past. The fridge is the center of the kitchen, and as such, holds such critical items as school directories, the grocery list, invitations and event flyers, of most importance to my son and wife, sports schedules.

However, there was a great deal more!

No pictures of our children have been added to the fridge in a long time. Although he hasn’t picked up a violin in years, there is a snapshot of our son at a music competition playing in a science room next to a safety hood and a big red box that reads, “FIRE BLANKET”. Above it, in a Sunday School made Hanukkah frame, he is a smiling next to an electric menorah. A magnet version of his head is there, too. It was on his locker in elementary school! A wallet size picture of our daughter from first grade was in a dusty and furry Elmo frame. The same pigtailed photo was also in a frame made of popsicle sticks. Her baby picture was in a school themed frame holding an old newsletter clipping titled “July Checklist”.

There are a dozen different colored magnets from the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Rectangular magnets from pizza places, restaurants, schools, camps, businesses, and of course, the library and the fire department dotted the fridge. A teddy bear magnet had names of doctors we haven’t seen in years. There are five wedding “save the date” magnets, including one for a wedding that never happened. A paw printed magnet says, “Got poop?” There are magnets for the Friends of the Arts and the Deerfield Parent Network. Two small red magnets say “CAUTION” and “risk”. Two magnets say, “PREPAREDNESS STARTS WITH YOU”!

A large magnet has a picture of two beavers and reads “Hugs and Kisses from Arizona!” There is a red phone booth, a black cab, a turtle, a baguette in a bag, a bottle of white wine, a pig in a tutu and a drawing of a weight lifter. There is a pineapple and three magnets from a hotel in Hawaii. A photo of a friend in a fur coat has a talk bubble above her head that reads, “What do you mean I’m dramatic?”

A big magnet proclaims, “New Trier Alumni” (my alma matter) and another has the eagle symbol of the University of Iowa (although none of us attended that college nor does it seem any of us will). There are nine square magnets all of which say, “TAPE SIDE” There is a magnet the shape of a van, another the shape of a stop sign, a magnet version of the movie poster from What Dreams May Come, and a tiny box of Minute Rice.

Next to a mirror, and inside a red plastic container from a locker is an Obama 2012 button. A white plastic note holder with the Deerfield Warrior head was a homecoming giveaway. A frame with our daughter’s name on it was the place card for a family bat mitzvah.

Some words to remember were on the fridge, too. The lyrics from “This is the Day” from one of the children’s mitzvah service, a clipped section from a High Holiday long ago, and at least a dozen fortunes from fortune cookies sticking out from a red star. The National Holocaust museum sent us a magnet with the famous quotation from Martin Niemoller.

It took nineteen years to accumulate all this stuff on the fridge. It took about fifteen minutes to take it all off. Some of it will find its way back on the new fridge, but it will not be the same. It will begin a new era. We will have new schools, universities and grad schools. We will have pictures of children in their late teens and early twenties. There will be new words and mementos of more recent travels.

Some things can keep, some keep for a long time, but everything has a shelf life. Time to start again.

Twenty Five Ways To Improve Your College Essay

I have been working with high school students on their college applications essays for more than twenty years. I have worked with many admissions counselors, college counselors, and other experts to get their points of view. I am now in the middle of college essay writing season, and working with students every day!

Here are twenty-five things to consider when writing your college essay: 

1. Be true to your voice! Don’t let adults edit you out of the essay. Make sure the writing is yours. Don’t assume a persona or try to fool the reader into believing you are someone you are not.

2. Read the question and answer it completely – especially the “and its impact on you” part.

3. Have a clear thesis: what is the point of this essay? You should be able to state it in a sentence or two.

4. Back up the thesis with clear and compelling evidence. Much of this evidence could be scenes that show you living/using/applying the thesis! If you say you are going to make the world a better place, how are you doing that now?

5. When writing, don’t worry about word limits. When editing, get rid of adverbs, preamble statements, and prepositional phrases to trim an essay to the right size. Keep these processes separate.

6. Your essay must be grammatically and mechanically beyond reproach. This goes beyond proofing: you may not end a sentence with a preposition or split an infinitive even if it would otherwise be acceptable to do so.

7. For “why us” essays, do research far beyond the website. Call students at the school. Visit if you can. Discuss courses, professors, programs, buildings, events, clubs, and other things that make that school unique. If you can replace the name of the school with another and all that is wrong with it are names, you have failed the quiz.

8. Don’t do too much. No lists. No string of accomplishments. No quick descriptions of the items on your resume. Focus on a few moments or ideas. Leave the reader wanting to talk to you further, not wondering why you went on so long.

9. Don’t repeat information that is contained in other parts of the application. Use the essay to provide further reasons that the school should admit you.

10. Make sure the name of the school is correctly spelled!

11. Think cinematically. Write your essay as if it were a stage play or screenplay. Write as if you are describing scenes from your life to a blind person.

12. Write about how the parts of your life overlap or connect. Write about patterns you have noticed or created in your life. Think about how the different areas of your life are woven together.

13. If it is boring to you, how do you think anyone else will feel? Your parents don’t count.

14. Write your story. The person who influenced you, your parent, grandparent, coach, or pastor may be wonderful, but they are not applying to college. If the essay is about another person, make it clear how this person affects your choices through your interaction with them, real or imagined.

15. Be honest.

16. Are you a naturally funny person? Have people told you that you should be a comedian? If the answer is an unequivocal yes, you may use humor in your essay. Otherwise, it is very risky.

17. Write about now or nearly now. Things that happened a while ago are only useful if they affect now.

18. Vary your sentence structure. All sentences should not start with “I”.  Watch out for successive sentences with lists.

19. Read your essay aloud to a teacher or adult who you can trust to be brutally honest with you. Chances are this is not a relative. Watch out for unintended innuendo, offensive material, and phrasing that could be misinterpreted.

20. Think like an admissions officer or English teacher: what is this question doing on the application? What is the expected or trite response?

21. Have a strong opening. Create introduction seduction.  

22. Essays dealing with politics, serious issues, or other dangerous topics need special attention. Consult with your college counselor or whoever is guiding your college process before submitting an essay that paints you in a less than favorable light or deals with a hot topic.

23. No whining, complaining, or blaming.

24. Be careful of formulaic or cliché structures: Someone I know was sick, therefore I want to be a doctor; I went on a mission trip, now I am more appreciative of my life; I got cut from the team, and I learned to bounce back. If you are writing about camp, dead people or pets, humanitarian trips, the big game, or any similar trope, you must have a unique and creative angle.

25. Draft, draft, draft! Revise, revise, revise! This takes time. You must give yourself a minimum of a month to fully develop an essay. You must put it away for a day or three and come back and give it another revision.

I have recently become more skeptical about how much time admissions staff is spending reading these essays and how much weight they have in the process. This doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t give the essay time and thought. However, they shouldn’t obsess over it either. I want my students’ essays to be the ones that are so well written, thoughtful, or creative that they get a little extra attention, and the reader says, “I’d like to meet this kid!”

College Readiness Beyond ACT’s Standards

When my children were younger, I read a great deal about kindergarten readiness. My friends were concerned that their children had to know their letters and numbers before starting school. They also wanted to make sure that their kids would be able to separate from them and work well in a classroom.

As a Senior English teacher, I work with students on college essays and preparing for college academic work. And while there is no perfect predictor of college success, there are clear ways that students demonstrate that they are ready for college life.

When I did some research on college readiness, the vast majority of information was on academic preparation; ACT has published its College and Career Readiness Standards that outline the knowledge and skills students should have to succeed in college level classes. While this is certainly an important, maybe the most important, factor of college readiness, academic preparation is only one part of the college experience. I have met many students who are academically ready for college work, but not ready for the college experience. What are some key ways that students show us that they are ready for college?

The most basic way that students demonstrate college readiness is through basic school organization skills. Students ready for college can manage their own academics. They turn work in and turn it in on time (for the most part). They are aware of course standards, and understand what they need to do to meet them.

Similarly, students who are ready for college have begun to be independent self-advocating learners. They choose what is important to learn, and reach out to their teachers and other school staff when they have questions or issues. They are no longer passive recipients of curriculum but have become critical co-creators of their classes. Perhaps as important, they have developed multiple strategies to figure out what to do when they don’t know what to do; in other words, they know how to teach themselves!

One of the key warning signs that students are not ready for college is when they cannot function without consulting their parents. Parents who have put their children in the backseat for the college process create a dependency that often continues into college. Perhaps that is the point. Parents who are not ready to accept their children’s nascent adulthood may be more likely to enable them to remain children in order to keep the relationship from changing. Using excuses like, “my child is too busy,” “this process is too important,” and “he doesn’t really know much about college” are all rationalizations that are really saying that students are not able to function on their own. This may also say that the parent cannot or will not let the child become an independent and self-sufficient person. Perhaps getting away and going to college is just what the child needs, but without being able to function independently, college may be very challenging.

Lack of interest in college is certainly an issue as well. Many students are afraid to tell their parents or teachers that they aren’t interested in going to college. College talk is pervasive and ubiquitous. A student who does not see him or herself on the college path may feel isolated and uncomfortable when it feels like that is all anyone wants to discuss.

Some of the students who have taken time off from college or been unable to remain on a four-year traditional campus have done so because they found the social aspects of college far more enticing than academics. A student must, to some degree, have the ability to emotionally self-regulate. This is clearly a developmental issue. While social skills are critical for college success, the student who is unable to manage his or her own emotions, differ gratification, calm him or herself, or balance needs and desires is going to have significant challenges as a college student.

Related to this, students who are regularly using drugs, alcohol, or other substances are also going to find that college makes it easier to engage in many self-destructive behaviors. This makes college very attractive to them – and sometimes to their parents who may be eager to get them out of the house. However, these students’ substance use is likely going to sabotage their college careers.

What if a student is not ready for college? Why not do what we did twelve years earlier? Why not teach these skills and traits? Gap year programs focus on many of these issues. Of course, not all students are ready in all of these areas, but if students don’t have most of them, college is going to be far more than academically challenging.