Week Three: Cuckoo Clocks and Playing With Babies

Alright, this blog post is about the well-being of our babies: the next generation. You may immediately ask yourself, "But Kennedy, Why have you included cuckoo clocks into your title for this week's blog post?" Don't worry, I'll get to that later.

You know what's awesome though? Educated children; What's even more awesome is that there are organizations out there in the good old U S of A that work to promote better education in children. This is where our guest speaker comes in.

Emily Baker is the Director of the Florence branch of Success by 6. Florence's SB6 was founded last October, and is a United Way program; In case you don't know United Way is a non-profit organization that works to advance the common good through better education, income, and health. Your first impression of Mrs. Baker should be that she's a pretty great lady for doing what she does. Yeah I thought that too. I'm not good with children so that kind of community service doesn't appeal to me on a high level, but I still hold respect for those who want to better our youth. More on SB6:

I was upset that Mrs. Baker's last name wasn't Barker. I was going to call her EmBark in this blog. Anyways she showed us this clip. Tonight I learned that early childhood education is a very crucial thing. If more children become well educated that would in turn lead to a break in the cycle of poverty in families as well as a solid establishment of physical and cognitive development; A physically and cognitively developed child would also promote good health. Do you see how many birds we're killing with this stone? The sad thing is that we are a long way from achieving those three goals on a wide scale. Nearly half of our Kindergarten students are behind in their education. We were also told that by the time a student is in 4th grade, their education level can determine if they will graduate high school. About 70% of 4th grade students cannot read at a basic level. Sad right? So why Success by 6? Why not 7? Apparently, 90% of a child's critical brain development occurs before 5 years old (and I say apparently because I haven't checked these statistics myself. I'm not one to just throw statistics out there that I haven't verified are true, but this was in her presentation, so don't go spouting that tidbit of information around everywhere). Success by 6 looks to solve all of these problems. But how?

Are you thinking about cuckoo clocks? Stop it I'm still talking about serious stuff here.

The answer to how seems simple enough. For one thing they encourage playtime with children. Being in friendly environments growing up benefit education! SB6 in Northwest Alabama focuses primarily on early literacy, prevention, and community education. SB6 was involved with the National Education of Young Children, (NAEYC) and the Give a Kid a Chance organizations, where they gave away books to children to promote reading.

Good stuff right? I know, I'm looking forward to a future where small children can participate in logical conversation with me. Bill Cosby and I differ in opinions when it comes to what children say. He gets a kick out of them saying the darndest things, I'd get a kick out of a 4 year old speaking profundity and philosophy. If I were to have a child I would basically want him to be the child equivalent of an Oracle; I might be setting my expectations a bit high on that one.

I'm almost done. I'll tell you about the cuckoo clocks once I've wrapped all of this up.

Mrs. Baker appealed to me about this subject through resume talk. Experience in non-profit organizations matters. I need to keep in mind that I will want to show future employers my passion through my community service experiences. Being involved in non-profits is also away to make connections in the community. She also told me to invest in a suit; that is definitely sound advice. I like suits; I feel empowered whenever I wear one.

The speakers this year seem a lot less boring than the speakers last year. I think just the general topic of service makes the guest speakers more interesting.

Alright, now I shall explain why I included the cuckoo clocks in my title. I doodle during class to help me get creative ideas. Tonight I doodled a man with elongated hands coming out of his eyes. I also drew a hole in the top of his head; in the hole, a little bird attached to a spring is popped out of the head. That got me thinking about a short film involving a man who has a cuckoo clock within his head (to symbolize insanity). The short film wouldn't be about the man though; the film would be about the bird that lives within the cuckoo clock within the insane man's head. Maybe the bird would act as a representation of the man's conscience, and the whole film would be narrated by inner monologues and he would have conversations with himself about who knows what. The working title for this story is called "Cuckoo" © This idea is original content from Thomas Kennedy Pope, created on September 17th, 2012. Posted online on September 18th, 2012 at 2:21 a.m.

I do that so I can sue Tim Burton if he stumbles upon my blog and steals my creative ideas

Bedtime. Goodnight.