Brought to You by the Letter M and the Number 20

As I was shamelessly watching Sesame Street today (I woke up earlier this morning) lots of things were suddenly brought to my attention. After learning the letter of the day they proceeded to mention their sponsors when suddenly I was thrown off by the mention of "paid for by a No Child Left Behind Grant"...my heart sunk at the mere mention of this. Being a future educator this highly concerns me. Not because NCLB gave grant money for educational programming but rather it served as a reminder to me the this act is being put into consideration for renewal. This act that promises nothing for out children and wishes to label all our public schools as failures, whereby inevitably privatizing all schools. The mere thought of this is utterly discouraging and depressing especially with me wishing to step foot into the educational career pool. While I will still teach no matter what, NCLB is not making it any easier. I have taken the only measures I can take at this point of my life by signing an electronic petition against the renewal of NCLB. (Feel free to sign the electronic petition as well.)

Another thing that bothered me while watching Sesame Street were some of the changes I noticed. No, not for nostalgic reasons but because people are constantly taking the fun out of things. The cookie monster ate no cookies today, all he ate was the letter M. Why doesn't cookie monster eat cookies all that much? Well some parents and others thought it was setting a bad eating example, and encouraging obesity and things of that nature. Hey here's a wild idea how about just telling your overly obese child, no, you cannot eat that cookie, so what if they cry and throw a hissy fit, left them; they will thank you when people don't refer to them as "the fat kid".

Oscar the Grouch is less grouchy than I remember, because some nut jobs believe is encouraging a negative frame of mind. Instead they should look at the bigger picture Oscar the GROUCH is suppose to be grouchy some people in life are like that and it's important for children to realize that they will encounter some one like that in their lives. Instead of complaining again, try encouraging your child and informing them to keep a positive outlook on things. Maybe if some parents decided to try this crazy newfangled thing called parenting there would be less problems with out children! Despite all of this...i did still enjoy watching Sesame Street again.

-KiraKatja