As most of us born, raised and living in Western New York know we are a luck group of people despite the 50 years it has taken for the area to redefine itself from a rust-belt city into a new dynamic metropolis and region of the USA where young highly educated people want to go to live and thrive. Katie Couric at Yahoo News has done a great job of capturing some of the cities rebirth in her series “Cities Rising: Rebuilding America.” Ms Couric has certainly done the city proud…Thank you
Filed under My Experiences
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We all know the days we’re just not right and just not “completely there”. Perhaps we woke up late and did not have time to eat breakfast before we rushed out the door. Maybe we had an argument with our spouse that morning or the night before. Or perhaps we had car problems and could not get to work on time or at all because of it. These factors would frustrate and upset the most patient and calm of individuals. We certainly are not at our best functioning when these things occur.
Stay with me here. Think of these circumstances and the recent census statistics that found that the poverty rate for children in Buffalo increased from 45 percent in 2012 to 50.6. In a recent article that ran in Buffalo’s new alternative paper “The Daily Public”, entitled “Staggering Poverty Facing Buffalo Students“, by Florina Altshiler, Altshiler further elaborates on the census findings. I can tell you that it doesn’t sound like a comprehensive economic recovery to me! The Census Bureau recently released its annual American Community Survey. They found that Buffalo’s overall poverty rate is twice the national rate of 14.5, coming in at 31.4%. An astounding 29,726 children of the city’s 58,722 children live in poverty. As a comparison point, Albany’s was 25.7 percent and New York City’s was 20.9 percent.
What does this mean in terms of education on a daily basis? Think back to the beginning of the blog and when you are not at your best because of mitigating circumstances. Now, think of how this would be if these were your constant circumstances. As a Facebook friend astutely commented, the real concern in public education isn’t Common Core right now. It’s poverty!
Image Source: http://www.wfol.com/td-rink-at-the-brink/
The call came in at 5:56 am…school is closed! The cold and slippery road conditions seem to have finally convinced the local public school to close which means my daughters school closes. Why they waited till now is beyond me since the forecast was real clear about the cold and most other schools in the area decided they were not going to open by 11pm last night.
Oh well…but now the question becomes what do we do? We talked a bit last night and my daughter wants to go ice skating. That sounds pretty good and I think we need to take my son back to Canada today so we’ll bring the skates along and skate in the Great White North. One idea is the TD RINK at the Brink that is an open-air, outdoor ice skating rink located a snowball’s throw from the “brink” of the Horseshoe Falls, offering breathtaking views and a magical outdoor Niagara Falls ice skating experience. Open from December 1 to February 28, 2014. There is a parking and skating fee on most days. They also have skate rentals if needed. Going in the evening is great because they also have a large festival of lights you can walk (it is a very long walk!) or drive and they do fireworks over the Falls at 9pm on Fridays.
A Free option here in downtown Buffalo that is totally free unless you need to rent skates is the Buffalo Place – Rotary Rink. Outdoors but sheltered a bit from the elements and with a warming facility steps away the rink makes for a pretty enjoyable outdoor experience.
Another option in Western New York is the Healthy Zone Rink. Their web site tells the story of the regulation size NHL rink as:
On January 1, 2008, history was made in Buffalo, NY, as Ralph Wilson Stadium hosted the first-ever outdoor NHL game in the United States. The Winter Classic put the Buffalo Sabres up against the Pittsburgh Penguins before record-setting crowd of 71,217.
The Aurora Ice Association purchased the ice-making equipment from the NHL, and with the support of hundreds of passionate volunteers, private donations and corporate support, a tribute to this historic event is nestled in the Village of East Aurora.
The Healthy Zone Rink has become a true asset to not only East Aurora, but also the entire Western New York community. Since opening in the fall of 2008, the venue has added a pavilion-style roof, locker rooms and a warming hut for guests. The rink runs at full capacity from October through March and also added summer programming to its schedule for 2013.
Open skating time is limited and there is a fee. Information about this and renting the rink can be found at http://www.thinkrink.org/
One of my friends who recently moved to Buffalo is a huge opera fan. When he asked whether or not there was opera in Buffalo, my first response was to laugh. “Maybe at Kleinhans,” I said, finally, but a quick glance at the schedule for the year revealed a lot of great classical music, but no opera. “Sorry, man,” I replied, and we let the matter drop.
A few days later, I was reading The Buffalo News online when I saw a review of Faust produced by Buffalo Opera Unlimited at Buffalo State College. My jaw dropped. Apparently, finding Buffalo Opera Unlimited online is more difficult than you would think, and I haven’t been able to find a schedule for any more performances. The lesson I learned, though, is that you can find almost anything to do if you stay engaged in the community you live in.
I’ve always thought that living in Western New York offers a lot of opportunities that people may initially overlook. We’re in close proximity to two fairly large cities (Buffalo and Rochester) and within driving distance of an international city (Toronto). Syracuse, New York City, Boston, Albany, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and a plethora of other places have weekend trip potential. Our access to an international airport also makes other places within easy reach.
So find out what’s going on around you and take advantage of these things. Even if you’re trying to be budget conscious, there are plenty of free events around town. Some of the sites I use to find events include artvoice.com and thebuffalonews.com.
What are other places you find out about local events?
Filed under Academic Advice, My Experiences, Parenting
Sometimes, when your schedule is crazy, the only thing to do is add more things into it to keep your mind off how stressful everything is! A great local event (that ends the 17th) is Buffalo Navy Week. Last night we took a trip down to the beautiful Buffalo waterfront and got to see a few of the ships that have docked, including the very majestic 1812-era tall ship. While school makes it difficult to get to many of the events, which occur throughout the day, there are a lot of events planned for Saturday that families with school-age children can take advantage of.
Have you taken a trip down to the Buffalo waterfront to enjoy Navy Week yet?
A little history lesson never hurt anybody, and the War of 1812 is often under-discussed in schools though it was incredibly relevant for WNY. (Image Credit:http://navaltoday.com/2012/09/11/sailors-assigned-to-uss-constitution-kick-off-participation-in-buffalo-navy-week/)
Filed under Academic Advice, Learning Events, My Experiences, Parenting
This coming Saturday, the Buffalo Zoo will be hosting the Wild About Wellness Health Fair from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Admission to the Wellness Health Fair is free with regular admission (which means that for zoo members, it’s all free). While the event focuses primarily on physical health, Tutor Doctor WNY firmly believes that it’s just as important to keep your mind strong as it is to keep your body strong! With that philosophy in mind, we’ll be offering activities for the kids as well as information for parents, guardians, and older family members on what Tutor Doctor can offer your child for the upcoming school year.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Come see us and the animals on Saturday at the Buffalo Zoo! (Image Credit:http://www.iloveny.com/Plan-Your-Trip/TravelIdea/Tankful-GN.aspx)
Filed under Academic Advice, Learning Events, Nutrition Education, Parenting
It isn’t quite summer in Western New York until you’ve taken a trip to the Erie County Fair. While I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve attended the fair every year since my birth, it has definitely become a staple in my life. Aside from all the food and the rides, there are plenty of opportunities for education. Here are a few educational things that stood out to me on my trip today. Feel free to add more in the comments!
Not that you need an excuse to go to the fair, but incorporating education into everyday events is a great way to enhance learning! (Image Credit:http://byzantiumshores.blogspot.com/2010/08/day-at-fair-report.html)
Where Does Food Come From?
A huge part of nutrition, I believe, is education on where food comes from. Whether it’s seeing the dairy cows in the animal barn or viewing prize-winning vegetables, the fair is a crash course in food education. 4-H does a great job putting up factual signs in their exhibits, so make sure to have your family stop and read them. A particular highlight is the full-sized cow replica in the Ag-sperience building, where you can learn how to “milk” a cow!
Mad Skills
Seeing all the ribbons on everything from azaleas to quilts makes me want to become more skilled in certain fields, and it may have the same effect on your child. Whether its the 8-foot tall crocheted giraffe in the former casino building or the amazing carved fish in the woodworking building, your child might be inspired to try something new. Encourage your child to talk to the volunteers who are around the buildings. Many of them seem to have first-hand knowledge of the exhibits they work at and if not, are able to point you in the right direction.
Inspirational
The fair provides plenty of opportunities to exercise your creative side. This year, they even had a section of the fine arts exhibit dedicated to photos that were taken at last year’s fair! Whether it’s the inspiration to try a new craft (like crocheting) or to take a picture of a baby cow or to draw a Ferris wheel, the fair offers a unique opportunity to get the creative juices flowing.
Math Whiz
Whether it’s figuring out prices at food stands or counting out how many tickets needed for a ride, there are lots of ways that math can be easily incorporated into a day at the fair. The rabbit barn provides a great opportunity for young learners to practice their counting in a fun way. Asking a child to count how many white rabbits or black rabbits they see is great, but why not take it a step further and have him or her create a graph when they return home?
Filed under Academic Advice, My Experiences, Nutrition Education, Parenting
I’m about to reveal a very large secret here on the Tutor Doctor of WNY blog. This isn’t something that any English major would be proud of, much less an English major who is one measly requirement away from getting a Master’s degree in the subject. It isn’t really that I should be ashamed, but perhaps all the English professors and the deans who drafted graduation requirements will be.
Just because it’s free doesn’t mean that you don’t get a quality performance! (Image Credit:http://www.giveforgreatness.org/organization/shakespeare-park-0)
And here’s the secret: I haven’t read any of Shakespeare’s plays since high school.
There, I said it. I avoided the Bard in my undergraduate career and failed to take the class on Shakespeare and some old Greek philosopher in my graduate career. It isn’t that I don’t like Shakespeare–it’s just that I prefer to do like the Elizabethans did and actually see the plays in action. Reading a play that is meant to be performed is always a let down, and with Shakespeare it just feels tragic.
This is where Shakespeare in Delaware Park has always worked out exceedingly well. You see, it’s free Shakespeare. One of the largest free outdoor Shakespearean festivals in the United States, in fact. People bring blankets and picnics and lawn chairs and range themselves on the gentle slope of Shakespeare Hill in Delaware Park and sit, under an increasingly darkening sky, to watch the magic of Shakespeare come alive for a few magical weeks over the summer. It is through this summer event that I have encountered most of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time, including The Tempest and As You Like It. Last night, I had the privilege to see another one of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time–Richard the Third.
Now, Shakespeare isn’t necessarily one to crowd the stage with peripheral figures, but it can be a little difficult to follow exactly who’s who. In last night’s performance, it took me a while to figure out why the man everyone was calling “Clarence” was being imprisoned because his name was “George”. A quick glance in the program informed me that the Duke of Clarence’s name was George, and thankfully something in my brain remembered that sometimes people were simply called by their titles rather than their names. It also took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out who the heck Richard the Third was, and how he was related to the King and the other guy in the Tower of London, who may or may not have been the Duke of Clarence. Next time, I think I’ll read the Spark Notes version of the play before heading to the hill, just so that I can orient myself with less embarrassment.
The performance was sharp, marked by stand-out performances by the actors in the roles of Richmond (his troop-rousing voice is particularly thrilling in the pitch-black of night, and even the moths flitting about in the stage lighting doesn’t prove a distraction) and the very-mad Queen Margaret. Much of Queen Margaret’s appeal comes from her costuming, as her old-style widow’s garb clashes wonderfully with the Mad Men inspired costumes the rest of the cast sports.
Oh, perhaps I forgot to mention that in the spirit of many Shakespeare performances, this play is not set during the War of the Roses, but has been transplanted to the 20th century. While I’m not typically a fan of such shameless manipulation of temporality, the execution scene that sees nearly the entire male cast gathered on stage in their suits, looking rather mafia-like, is quite visually appealing.
While there were a plethora of people gathered to watch the performance on a Wednesday night, some of whom had elected to bring their dogs, what I didn’t see were any children. Now, the play does run long (we didn’t manage to get on the road until 11), it is summer and bedtimes don’t need to be quite as strictly enforced. The play is suitable for children, (although there is a ghostly scene at the end represented by the actors wearing white masks and there are a few blood-spattered body parts wrapped discreetly in white cloth) and with a little preparation children can definitely enjoy Shakespeare.
After all, it clearly isn’t necessary to understand exactly who everyone is. Did I mention that I had gotten through half the first act before I realized that the hunchbacked military man who had been on stage for nearly the entire performance was Richard? All in all, a rollicking good time for the whole family. And if the kids get restless or bored, there’s a playground nearby for distraction. And that’s the beauty of introducing kids to Shakespeare at an outdoor free festival–it’s far more casual, and the audience is a great deal more tolerant of potentially fussy children, and kids aren’t restricted to their seats for the whole time.
How did you introduce your kids to theater (or, more specifically, Shakespeare)?
Filed under Learning Events, My Experiences, Parenting
My undergraduate college had a swimming requirement that students had to fulfill in order to graduate. During freshman orientation, you could take a swim test that involved swimming two lengths of the pool and treading water for three minutes that would satisfy the requirement and exempt you from the Introduction to Swimming course, and luckily I passed the test on the first attempt. As a mark of my naivety, I assumed that nobody would have trouble passing the swim test. By 2007, I thought, who the heck didn’t know how to swim?
Who knows? Maybe your water baby will grow up to be an award-winning swimmer! (Image Credit:http://iheartmesa.blogspot.com/2009/10/hubbard-family-swim-school-giveaway.html)
Of course, the answer was quite a few people still didn’t know how to swim. This realization made me think more about my own privilege in knowing how to swim. While I did grow up only a short distance from the Great Lakes (although sometimes the thought of swimming in Lake Erie is less than enticing), my swimming knowledge came from the fact that my local high school had a pool. My parents enrolled me in a water babies swim course as a child, and this knowledge was reinforced as part of my school’s PE curriculum involved swimming from grades 3 to 12. For many students, however, the reality is quite different. Pools are expensive to build and maintain, and also require quite a bit of dedicated space, especially for school districts that may have limits on these resources. Some are lucky enough to live close to a place with a pool, such as a YMCA, but many more are not. Some kids may have pools in their backyards, but many more do not.
So is the ability to swim important? I definitely think so, not matter how far from the ocean you live. So how can you teach your child to swim if you don’t have your own pool?
Seek out a family-friendly gym that has a pool. A great option is often the local YMCA. Invest in a family membership, and ask if there are any swim classes available for children. For a cheaper option, look at local school districts to see if they have a pool. Many districts that have pools also offer swim classes for children of all ages. If you’re close to a college or university, it’s a good bet that they too will have a pool and offer lessons or, at the very least, open swim times. University at Buffalo offers eight 40 minute lessons for only $50.
Filed under Learning Events, My Experiences, Parenting
I’ve never been particularly concerned with creating art. This lack of interest in the creation, however, seems to be overridden by my love of actual art. I’ve always loved looking at art. One of my best memories from a trip to Florida with my dad and brother isn’t the time we spent on the beach or seeing manatees, but wandering through the exceptionally lovely Ringling Museum of Art. Although the name Ringling automatically conjures images of circuses, that only scratches the surface of what the museum offers.
Of course, loving art museums and having beautiful pieces of art in your home aren’t necessarily synonymous. Throughout college my walls were decorated like that of a typical student–a few posters with fraying edges (including a poster of John William Waterhouse’s “The Lady of Shalott“) and a lot of snapshots. But what would not have been apparent was that I was amassing a collection of art behind the scenes.
It started small, with a few antique photographs from a great Buffalo antique store. But then it began to grow. I added a few prints from Etsy, and a few broadsides that my college’s Books Arts center produced. I invested in a few pieces from 20×200, which makes art affordable to people like me who value original art but can’t necessarily afford more expensive pieces.
Of course, my family always supported art. I grew up surrounded by art that my parents liked, and they took me to plenty of art galleries where my appreciation grew. While kids do take art classes in school, they tend to be more focused on art production and less on art history. For kids who may not enjoy the actual process of painting, try engaging them through art history. It might be their way into the awesome world of art. Don’t be discouraged if your kids don’t initially get into it. After all, I find modern art a little bit off-putting while I love older portraits and textually-based works. It’s all about exposing people to as many kinds of art as possible.
What are some of your favorite pieces of art to share with others?
Filed under Academic Advice, My Experiences
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