My cousin’s husband, Charlie Seymour, is a first grade teacher at James Monroe Elementary School in Santa Rosa, CA. Charlie is a rarity these days—he is the only male teacher at his school, and one of the few men teaching in his county. That makes Charlie part of the scant 9 percent of males who are elementary school teachers according to the most recent research available by the National Education Association. Only 24.9 percent of the nation's 3 million teachers are men.

When I saw Charlie last week, I could tell by the way he spoke about his job that he was a dedicated teacher. In the beginning of the summer, he taught remedial kindergarten for those students who didn’t have basic skills learned in kindergarten. Like many teachers, he was worried about the effects of NCLB on his students and the way he teaches; he mentioned that his students were being taught from a typical third-grade curriculum to meet adequate yearly progress. Charlie didn’t seem to mind that he was part of a profession dominated by women; he had more important things to think about.

Men aren’t the only minority in the teaching profession. African-Americans, particularly men, are also a scarcity. In Florida, for example, black men made up 3.2 percent of Florida teachers last fall according to a recent article in the Tallahassee Democrat. According to the article, low starting salaries was the most frequently cited reason that black men do not go into teaching.

So the stats are a little dismal. There is some hope, however: “Call Me Mister”, a program based at Clemson University in South Carolina, recruits, trains, certifies and finds jobs for black male teachers in the state’s public elementary schools where black men make up less than 1% of the elementary teaching community. The young men who become ‘Misters’ do not only represent a dedication to making a difference, but they also represent an accessible role model for kids who idealize athletes and entertainers.

I’m calling these young men ‘hope.’

I’m a product of the public schools—the public schools of New Orleans, no less. No, I’m not trying to be a poster child to lambast the Republicans for their proposal to spend $100 million on vouchers for low-income students in failing public schools around the country to attend private and religious schools.

Nah, I’m just here to say it’s possible. It’s possible to produce smart and curious students who attend public schools. It’s possible to hire and retain dedicated, passionate, and supportive teachers. Especially, when you analyze the results of a report released by the Department of Education (quietly on July 14), which showed that students attending public schools generally did as well as or better than comparable students in private schools.

Now how ‘bout funneling that $100 million into public schools throughout the country so that thousands more students benefit instead of the mere 28,000 this proposal would serve?

Jason Kamras is making the future look brighter for many Washington, DC students. Last April he was awarded with the title National Teacher of the Year, which was DC’s first. Kamras is profiled in today’s Washington Post ,and the article discusses his travels as the titular winner, his love of teaching math, and his positive remarks about No Child Left Behind (yes, *positive*, not a typo).

It’s worth mentioning that Kamras is a Princeton alum (Go, Tigers!), and began his teaching career with the Teach for America program in 1996. At Sousa Middle School in Southeast DC, the high school where he has taught for almost a decade, Kamras successfully pushed for more time spent on math, and as a result test scores dramatically rose.

I don’t need to say that we need more people—no, more teachers like Kamras. Schools are struggling to hire teachers, let alone good, certified, and passionate teachers. Teach for America tries to fill the void by recruiting and training graduating seniors from top-notch colleges for two-year teaching stints in disadvantaged urban and rural public schools. An article last month profiling the surge in TFA’s popularity mentioned that critics said that fewer than one-third of TFA’s teachers stay in the classroom following their two-year stints. But TFA, in the same article, said about two-thirds of these teachers have remained committed to education through research and policy work, if not through teaching. Kamras, in fact, says in the Post article that he would like to become more involved in policy work. But not before he returns to his classroom in Room 219 this fall to teach algebra.

When it came to our health, my mother always crossed her fingers and kneeled at her bed at night, praying that my sister and I would not get sick. My mother, a single parent, didn’t have insurance—she couldn’t afford it, and like many folks, she lingered in limbo: she earned too much to qualify for Medicaid, but couldn’t afford private insurance.

For years, however, my mother did have insurance, but with a super tight budget that comes with raising two kids on your own and paying a house mortgage on your own, she made the untimely decision to drop our health care coverage. I say untimely because a few months after she dropped our coverage, my sister was misdiagnosed by a doctor for a nagging stomachache, and weeks later, my sister had to have her appendix taken out.

According to an article in the Waco Tribune-Herald, Texas leads the nation with the highest percentage of uninsured children, and the state is on the cusp of a strange trend—100,000 fewer kids enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program this year than in late 2005. Texas officials cannot attribute this staggering decline to anything—yet. If that’s not a head-scratcher, I don’t know what is.

And then there is Illinois Governor Ron Blagojevich’s highly lauded (prematurely) universal health insurance for kids that launched a little over a week ago. Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times article cast a hovering doubt about the health plan’s ability to deliver the goods while draining state resources and the plan’s level of ambiguity. One state representative questioned Blagojevich’s motives in designing the plan. Is this universal health care for kids part of a grander populist utopia or just a platform issue on the road to reelection?

I was a chubby kid. (I’m also a chubby mother because of a plus-40 pound weight gain during my pregnancy, but that’s a subject for another rant-worthy blog). My cousins called me chubby, my track coach called me chubby, and even my mom and grandfather called me chubby. Was I offended by this occasional term of endearment? Sure. I mean, would I call my daughter chubby if she was?

Would you tell your child he or she was chubby? What about “overweight” or “obese”? These are the underlying questions the Center for Disease Control and Prevention wants answered. Under a proposal being studied by a committee of the American Medical Association, the CDC and others, overweight children would get the same labels as adults. Right now, the CDC avoids calling overweight children “obese” no matter now fat they are. According to a recent AP article, the CDC calls kids who are overweight “at risk of overweight” and obese children are called “overweight."

Calling a child obese would stigmatize an already chubby kid with low self-esteem, some parents and doctors say. Those favoring a label change argue that the current terms encourage a serious denial of a problem affecting many youth. I agree. Our kids are getting fatter, folks—are we doing a disservice to them by not properly labeling them?

As we all know, weight is an especially touchy subjects to kids. In the same AP article, an Illinois teen who lost 60 pounds said calling a kid “obese” was mean. I understand the sentiment, but I don’t think doctors and/or parents who use euphemisms are doing the child any good. If the child is medically obese then that comes with a whole slew of health problems—the child should know how grave those problems are. A doctor telling a child he or she is obese would be a wake-up call. Of course, telling a child this should be accompanied by a heartfelt discussion on ways to lose weight and positive and encouraging comments that the child can accomplish this. To help with this discussion, Connect For Kids provides a comprehensive resource to help parents understand and take action on this issue.

We have a crisis on our hands. And it involves our lovely 5 month-old daughter. Her health and happiness could be affected by a nasty habit of yours: smoking.

You know the facts. You’ve always known. You know that smoking can cause certain cancers, lead to death, and cost thousands of dollars a year. And a recent report issued by the U.S. Surgeon General revealed that nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their risk of developing heart disease by 25 to 30 percent and lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent.

You see, even though you cautiously step outside to smoke, or sneak into your office at home, shut the door, open a window and light up, the particles from the cigarette stay with you. They cling to your shirt, your hair, and beard. You bring them with you while you carry or hug our daughter and nestle her to your chest or sit her on your lap. Maybe you don’t know that studies have found that children whose parents smoke outdoors take twice the amount of nicotine into their bodies as children whose parents don’t smoke. When you go inside, the cigarette particles that have attached to you are absorbed by anything or anyone you come into contact with.

You tell me you’re not addicted. But I wonder when you tell me you’re going to take the dog out, and grab the keys and the shiny pack of cigarettes and lighter from the dresser.

You tell me you’re going to quit. “The is the last one,” you say as a cigarette dangles from your lips.

I will not be like my mother, who let her sister, my aunt, smoke in our house when I was a kid. I will not admonish anyone—friends, relatives, or strangers—who tell you to quit.

What does this mean for our daughter? Nicotine has grave effects on the body. The U.S. Surgeon General’s report said that even brief exposure to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system. And, because the bodies of infants and children are still developing, they are particularly vulnerable to the toxic chemicals in secondhand smoke. Children, whose parents smoke, outdoors or not, have a good chance of becoming smokers themselves.

It is with great love and courage that I give you this letter. And with great love and courage, you can, and hopefully will, quit.

Here comes another guilt trip. According to a New York Times article published yesterday, public officials have determined that not breast-feeding may be hazardous to a baby’s health. I already knew that breastfeeding was best (It even says that on the cans of the formula I use!) but I didn’t know that feeding my daughter the powdery stuff could be harmful to her.

Like many mothers, I thought I was going to breastfeed. I planned on it. I wanted to be like the women I saw in magazine ads who had their babies nestled to their breast, looking lovingly at their child. But my plans were dashed when my daughter decided to fall asleep minutes after I gave her my breast. Repeatedly. Nothing was clinically wrong with her. Her doctor’s advice for me? To pinch her nose and/or feet. I did once. And she woke up suddenly, crying. Then I began to cry. And that was the end of the breast. Well, almost. I supplemented her feedings with formula, and then exclusively used formula a month later. Four months later, I continue to feel guilty. But I realize for me to continue breast feeding, I would’ve had to have my daughter permanently latched to my chest, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Is she a healthy four-month old? By her bright smiles, happy gurgling, and grabbing for my glasses, I’d say yes. But, the experts referenced in the NYT article say that my daughter has a higher risk of serious chronic diseases later in life, including asthma, diabetes, leukemia and some forms of lymphoma. And I shouldn’t forget that my daughter has a higher chance of becoming obese than a baby who has been breast-fed the first six months of his or her life. So what’s a formula-feeding mother to do?

About a week ago, I listened to Rush Limbaugh complain about not having a peaceful dinner when one his friends brought up the Avian flu as the next catastrophe to worry about. I suppose Rush deserves a nice meal to contemplate nothing but the peas on his plate (Rush, do you like peas?), but what’s important to note about his comment is that many, many folks feel that way, especially about New Orleans. Their thoughts are this : “New Orleans? I thought things were fine” or “New Orleans! Enough already!” Yeah, well just because my hometown has curiously left the radar of the national news things are still not-so great there.

It’s not over folks. Not by a long shot. And if you’re tired of hearing about it like Rush, then I’d tell you to move to Siberia, but I’m guessing you’d still hear it there.

To this day, there are people buried under debris. There are houses sitting on the street. Piles and piles of uncollected trash sit on gray lawns. Families living on limited FEMA funds not sure what the next step is. The schools, oh, the schools. The New York Times recently reported that many displaced students living in the Renaissance Village in Baker, Louisiana haven’t been to school in months.

How do I know such things exist? Because I was there a month ago. Because I hear from die-hard New Orleanians of what’s not being reported, and because papers like the New York Times exist to unbury these hidden stories.

It’s not over—not until the fat lady sings—but until we, the local and federal government do something about it.

I’ve always loved Barbie. And I pooh-poohed any naysayer who complained Barbie contributed to stereotypes of women and to eating disorders—teens aspiring to attain Barbie’s highly unattainable proportions. Nonetheless, I’m cheering the organization, Dads & Daughters latest victory—successfully campaigning against Hasbro to scrap plans to make dolls based on the Pussycat Dolls, a musical sextet of very sexy and scantily-clad women.

The organization’s letter-writing campaign put pressure on Hasbro to shelve plans to make the dolls and to issue this statement, which is featured on the Dads and Daughter’s web site (www.dadsanddaughters.org):

“Hasbro and Interscope have jointly agreed that Hasbro will not move forward with the line of dolls based on the recording group, The Pussycat Dolls. Interscope’s current creative direction and images for the recording group are focused on a much older target than we had anticipated at the time of our original discussions, thereby making a doll line inappropriate for Hasbro.”

Originally, the dolls were expected to be on sale by Christmas and would’ve been marketed to children aged 6 to 9. 6 to 9!!! That’s insane. For those of you who are not familiar with the Pussycat Dolls, here’s your gateway to familiarity: Their first hit was “Don’t Cha,” which featured the chorus, “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me/Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?” and their dancing is quite risqué, as well as their wardrobe. Don’t get me wrong—the Dolls are highly energetic and entertaining, but their look and dancing is not appropriate for girls aged 6 to 9 to imitate, let alone, have in their hands as plastic dolls. Hasbro got it right by realizing the inappropriateness of this.

Not only is it inspiring to see an organization devoted to strengthening the relationship between fathers and their daughters—an issue that is often not taken seriously, but also it’s inspiring to see an organization take on contemporary issues—issues that affect how young girls see themselves. Cheers to Dads and Daughters!

I’m trying to remember what I watched when I was 5 years old. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I didn’t have a television in my room, but that’s not the case with many 5 year olds today. According to a Kaiser report—Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers and Their Parents—43% of 4 to 6 year olds have a television in their room. The most common reason parents name for having a TV in their child’s bedroom is that it frees up other TVs in the house so other family members can watch their own shows.

I refuse to be holier-than-thou by criticizing these parents for allowing their youngsters to have TV in the rooms, but it’ll probably appear that way since I do not have a 4 to 6 year old child (I have an almost-4-month-old who loves her overheard mobile). My concern is that by having a TV in their rooms, kids are not spending enough quality time with their parents. And at that tender age, I think it’s too important. I sympathize with exhausted and stressed-out parents, but when they step foot in the home, that should automatically be family time--give or take the 20 minutes it takes to unwind from work. While mom or dad unwinds, hopefully, if the TV is turned on, a PBS show or cartoon is what the kids are watching. Is this wishful thinking? Ask me when my daughter reaches that tender age. I'll definitely know what she's watching.