Wednesday, April 22, 2015

An Open Letter to ALL Iowa Legislators


Dear Senator

I teach multiple science classes at Boone High School. I live in Ames and my children attend Ames Schools. No school funding increase means my science classes are larger, I have to make materials stretch even further, and I have to spend less time allowing my students to explore. Science is NOT a subject one simply learns. It is a subject one DOES. Less funding means we do less. Doing less loses students. Their interest wanes. If we want our students to become world leaders through a STEM education, it must be funded on every level. Our students cannot compete globally if schools are wrecked financially. The World Class Education we are reaching for and trying to compete for to allow our students to have will never come to fruition if our schools are not funded and supported by our state. 

It seems to me that you spent more time on school start dates than you have on school funding. Is a fair really that important? I understand it brings revenue. Changing the start date of schools really isn’t going to bring in more revenue. The people who choose not to attend will still choose not to attend. Most families prefer to go on a weekend day, as it helps keep their children on a more routine schedule. Is potential revenue from a fair really more important than students having current textbooks and access to materials for their classes? Are you going to put that extra revenue towards schools as you used this as your excuse to change the start dates?

I have a question for you. Why is it necessary to have an $718,000,000 surplus/emergency fund? I agree we need an emergency fund. Natural disasters happen. However, nearly a billion dollars sitting in your pockets while students have to SHARE textbooks is asinine. A mere five percent of this “surplus” would cover what schools need.

So many of my coworkers and the educators of my children take summer jobs to help make ends meet. I, myself, have done it many summers while my children were home. Why do we do that? It’s not because the pay isn’t enough. It’s because the school funding isn’t enough. We buy many of our own supplies as it is. We feed children from our own pockets. If you take away all of our funding, we will have to purchase more supplies in addition to the food many of us keep in our classrooms.

As a teacher in Boone Schools and a citizen of Ames, I implore you to take a serious look at the school funding issue presently in front of you. Currently, because of your partisan, contentious arguments (also known as a pissing contest) with each other, students, schools, and school personnel are bowing under the pressure of a zero percent increase. Did you take a raise this year? Was it your education that helped you to get into the position you currently hold? Or did you just have the “charisma” and “luck” to get elected?

You have two options at this point. You can fund schools, allow our children to continue to grow, give them the opportunities they need in order to become globally competitive, and allow us to encourage their further interest in education. OR, you can continue to ignore the fact that our schools need more funding and push Iowa further down on the list of states with well-funded and well educated students who will make an impact in their communities, their state and the world. The choice is yours.

Respectfully,

Shannon Lumley

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Fat, Flawed, Forties, and Fabulous

I often never know where I'm going to go once I get started on a blog post. I usually just let my fingers express what my brain is trying to say. I've had something rolling around in my head for a while trying to get out, so, I'm going to put it here. I have been seeing a lot of things lately about weight loss and weight gain. But, what I'm seeing is, deep-down, about so much more than weight. For me, bottom line, the issue is about acceptance. It's about accepting ourselves, accepting others, and accepting life for what it is and what we make of it.

I never struggled with my weight. I gained the "Freshman Fifteen". No big deal. I was pretty skinny. I got married and got pregnant right away. Twins! What a blessing! I didn't know that twins would take all 5'3" of me and twist and turn and pull and stretch until certain parts never resembled the girl/woman who first got married and pregnant. Though the boys were born at 37 weeks, I measured 48 weeks. Put in other terms, HUGE! It wasn't pregnancy weight that changed me. It was pregnancy skin. That skin even hung on the insides of my thighs where skin had been pulled UP to accommodate two rather large babies. But, that skin was the start of a downward spiral for me.

One of the first things my doctor told me was it would NEVER go away. It didn't matter if I did a million sit-ups a day, it was there to stay. No big deal. I wanted more kids and was too busy with two little ones to worry about it. Fast forward five years and there are two more. Four kids aged five and under. Drinking Dr. Pepper all day helped me have the energy I thought I needed. Eating became stress relief. It was a treat to have ice cream or sugary cereal once all four kids were down for the night. It was my down time. It was my de-stress time. It was my "fill in the skin that's stuck there because it's never going away, anyway" time.

It took a long time before I finally got sick of myself and what I looked like. I got tired of going to plus sizes. So, I decided, FOR ME to do something about it. That's where the problem lies for so many. My husband never ONCE criticized me for how much weight I had gained. He loved me for me and never pointed out I wasn't the same size I was when we married. He even said it was partially his fault because he wanted kids as much as I did. Once I started losing weight, it got easier as the time went by to keep doing it. I lost 50 pounds and thought it was great! Until, I started looking around me. DARN IT! There were STILL plenty of women smaller than me! I slowly gave up. I slowly got "too busy" to work out any more. I convinced myself "I'll never be small enough" and "without surgery to get rid of the skin, I'll always be a size or two larger."

This is where we, as women, totally screw up. We constantly compare ourselves to others. We are inundated with perfection. It's on TV.  I'll never forget a commercial for ham where these women are watching another woman eat. They are gasping and shocked that she's just eating the ham and one of them comments, "A perfect size SIX!" That suddenly became my goal. I truly believed a size six was THE perfect size.

Back to the perfection inundation. It's in magazines. It's in books."She's smaller, she's smarter, she's more successful, her house is more clean, her kids behave better", the list can go on and on. Then, we have the opposite. We have the, "at least I don't look like that, MY kids would never do that, my job makes more money, I get more recognition, I may be fat, but at least I'm a lot nicer than she is". Anyone identifying with me, yet?

Where did we go wrong? I honestly believe we went wrong when we let others dictate what can make us happy. It shouldn't matter if I'm overweight if I'm happy. It shouldn't matter if you sit in a cubicle all day or if you are center stage as long as you are happy. It shouldn't matter if someone makes more money if you're happy. It shouldn't matter if your kids are a little rambunctious and curious if you're happy.

My kids have ALWAYS been curious to the point of tearing things up just to put them back together. I cannot tell you the number of random screws and missing tools we've dealt with over the years. But, I currently have two considering careers in engineering. That makes me happy. I've been criticized for encouraging their curiosity and spontaneity.  It made me question myself. It made me question my ability to parent. But, it made my kids happy.

I'm now 41 years old. A size six isn't possible without surgery. I DON'T CARE. I've finally reached a point my my life where fit is better than fat. I can run up stairs. I rarely get really sick. I have skin and I have stretch marks from my boobs to my knees and I have four gorgeous, intelligent, caring children. I'd take every bit of the stretch marks and skin again. I struggled over the past couple of years with jealous over friends who got bypass surgery to lose weight. I was jealous because they lost a TON of weight in a hurry. Now, I'm thankful I never needed a surgery to lose weight.

Flawed is better than fake. I'm only me and as long as I'm the best me I can be, I'm happy. Do I screw up? Yep. But, when I ground my child from electronics, take the phone and laptop, leave the house forgetting about the kindle, only to come home and find that my child had placed it on top of the phone and laptop, my flaws seem to lessen. I've done my best to teach my children to be genuine and honest. Things like this tell me I've done my job, even when I feel like I'm failing miserably.

Forties and Fabulous are here. I've decided my gray hair is a badge. I've decided I still love my heels and my sparkle. I've decided the best thing I can do is not compare myself to anyone either in a good way or a bad way. The whole reason women are mean to each other is to feel better about themselves. I see it EVERY SINGLE DAY and I try to discourage it where I can. I want our next generation of ladies to embrace each other, to support each other, to help each other, and, most of all, to ACCEPT each other. The time of "me" needs to become the time of "us". Until we do this, it will always be a stunner when an "average" sized, "average" income, "average" WOMAN does something the media labels "special". Guess what, Ladies? We do it, every day. Now is the time to accept yourself. YOU are amazing.