Tag: United States

Children, Your Life Is Pure Adventure

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Jennifer Wolfe

Nicaraguan folk art

Life is pure adventure,
and the sooner we realize that,
the sooner we will be able to treat life as art.

This just seemed perfect for me right now; we’re about to embark on pure adventure in four days when we leave for Nicaragua and our volunteer work with Seeds of Learning. My greatest wish for my children is that they realize their life is ‘pure adventure’, and that they are the artist holding the brush.

This beautiful quote, by my favorite author, is from a beautiful website, First Sip.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Injustice All Around Us: Seeds of Learning in Nicaragua

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Jennifer Wolfe

Victor helps to dig rocks to build his own school in Nicaragua

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

-Elie Weisel

Sadly, in 2013 we continue to see injustice all around us. Injustice happens when decisions are made by leaders, bullies, and those who think they know best. Injustice hides in boardrooms, workplaces, private homes, and government. Injustice isn’t just a product of wars and fighting between countries; injustice happens right outside your front door every day.

Elise Weisel lived through one of the most publicly horrific episodes of injustice in the modern world, but if we travel to many, many countries today we see the same oppression, the same powerlessness of the people, the same pain.

Too many people avert their eyes from injustice. It’s painful to watch, and even more painful to be immersed inside it when it’s all around us. But we don’t need to be cartoon crime fighters to chip away at the injustice all around us-we simply need to take one step forward.

To me, education is the great equalizer for injustice. As Americans learned from our times of slavery, education is power. Education cannot be taken away from us. Education leads to enlightenment. In America, educators and parents work hard to create and sustain an education system with equal access for all. In my career, equal access hasn’t meant an inability to learn in an actual building, with real desks, and basic supplies.

When I learned about Seeds of Learning in 2009, I felt that I had found a place where I could make a difference, a place to help right the injustice of a lack of education. Seeds of Learning is a non-profit group dedicated to improving education in central America, right now specifically in Nicaragua.

I’ve written before about the life-changing experience my children and I had when we traveled to Ciudad Dario, Nicaragua, in 2010. After years of listening to their pleas to return, we are organizing another trip to Ciudad Dario this summer to help build an addition to a high school, and to improve global citizenship between the two countries.

If you’d like to learn more about our trip and support Seeds of Learning, please click here to visit the link to our Indiegogo campaign:

Don’t let the bullies win. Decide where you want to speak out, help out, or work towards righting injustice. It doesn’t mean you need to travel all the way to Nicaragua, or take on something huge. It just takes a little step forward to make a big impact.

Jennifer Wolfe

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“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”:Taking Risks

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Jennifer Wolfe

Risk map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember as a little girl spending countless hours hunkered over the board game, Risk. As the air conditioner cooled our house from the scorching heat of northern California valley summers, my elementary school friends and I would hunker over the globe, carefully strategizing our next move against countries I had never heard of before. We never imagined our world as a constellation of vital phenomena. Marching our players across the flattened, cardboard world, we had no more desire for world domination than any other nine-year-old. I believe we simply wanted an escape, a way to pass the long, summer day without today’s diversions of the internet, satellite TV or iPads.

In our young minds, the world really did have boundary lines. We assumed that moving from country to country, state to state, would involve some sort of hopscotch game in order to transport ourselves out of one place and into another. None of us had ever left the west coast, let alone the United States. we read Scholastic World magazine, looked at our parent’s subscription to National Geographic, and only imagined those places too far away to really touch.

“a constellation of vital phenomena”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We couldn’t transport ourselves with a click of a mouse, fly over the South American jungles via Google Earth, or even comprehend the idea of one day setting our own two feet in the dust of a Nicaraguan road on a quest to discover what was really happening beyond our boundaries.

One roll of the dice, and our players advanced in the game, one more move towards occupying every territory and eliminating the other players. I remember the tickle of my tongue as I tried to pronounce “Kamchatka”, and the giggles when we landed on “Yakutsk“. Ural, Ukraine, Mongolia, Indonesia…our black and red players marched forward capturing one continent after another in our imaginary world where the Earth’s boundaries really were drawn in the sand, and the people there merely tokens in our game.

It wasn’t until nearly forty years later that I stopped to think about Risk and what it taught me. I sorted through the pieces in my mind, doing a quick Google search now and then for the new names of those foreign lands. I remembered the coolness of the linoleum floor as we lay prone for hours and hours, never wanting the game to end. I realized the damage it might have done as we learned from such a young age that the name of the game was to conquer at all costs, and I realized that actually, what it taught me was that what we do effects others. Our strategies impact lives. We may be divided by those imaginary boundaries, but we all share the same space together on Earth, despite where the lines are drawn or the battles fought. We are interdependent, reliant on each other to play the game. To break down the boundaries. To roll the dice, sometimes not knowing where we’ll end up, but knowing where we’d like to go.

To take risks.

This post was inspired by the novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. In a war torn Chechnya, a young fatherless girl, a family friend, and a hardened doctor struggle with love and loss. Join From Left to Write on May 20 as we discuss Anthony Marra’s debut novel. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes. To purchase your own copy, visit http://amzn.to/XWBaxN.

From A Debut Writer, A Polished, Passionate, Must-Read Book

Jennifer Wolfe

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My Best Life, April 2013

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Jennifer Wolfe

I don’t read a lot of magazines, but I do have some favorites- “O” being one of them. I’m an original subscriber. Some years have been better than others, I’ll admit, and right now one of my favorite parts of her issues is the “My Best Life” series.

A firm believer in searching for the simple gratitudes in life, especially when times get tough, I thought that until Oprah interviews me for her magazine, I’d start my own “Best Life” series on mamawolfe. Who knows-maybe I’ll discover something new about myself that will help me create a better life for me and my family.

Best Place To Live:

Big Sur, California (Photo credit: the_tahoe_guy)

Northern California-no question! For those of you who don’t know, California could be virtually split in two! Southern California is what many non-Californians think of when they imagine the Golden State-Hollywood, movie stars, beaches, palm trees, and people driving around in convertibles. But for me, northern California has it all-the ocean ( a bit colder than LA, for sure, but equally beautiful), the mountains (Sierra snow!), great food (San Francisco, anyone?), the arts, diverse population, and even a change in seasons!

Best Spontaneous Decision:

my best life – in Nicaragua

In 2010, I learned about a non-profit that helped build schools in rural Nicaragua. Something inside me clicked, and I signed up myself and my two kids to help. I’m a planner by nature, but this time I simply went with my gut and did what felt right. Turns out it was a life=changing experience for me and my two kids-so much so, that we’re going back for more this summer!

Best Thrill:

Cameron Zip lining in the Nicaraguan jungle. It was one of those moments when I either had to conquer my fear of heights, or let my children zip off into the canopy without me. They had absolutely no fear; me-tons. The first moment I pushed off from the platform I experienced sheer terror and gratefully landed in the strong arms of the guide a short thirty seconds later. After a few more zips, I announced I was done and ready to get down. Then I noticed my ten-year-old son flying by in an ‘upside-down Superman’, and the guide gently told me there was no turning back, and I had fourteen more zips to go!

Best Way To Express Yourself:

Writing, most definitely. I’ve always been a writer, but for my young life it was all private. I filled journal after journal with poetry, thoughts, and reflections, but it wasn’t until I found my voice as an adult that I began to share my writing with the world. For me, writing pushes me out of my comfort zone. It helps me to clarify my thoughts while simultaneously voicing my deepest fears and strongest opinions. Being a writer has created a role model for my children and my middle school students, and forces me to walk my talk.

Best Pinch Myself Moment:

I never was one of those women who knew for certain I wanted to be a mom, but the moment my daughter and son were born I knew it was the best decision I’d ever made. Both babies didn’t come ‘by the book’, and my labor certainly showed me an inner strength I never knew I had. The instant I held my first baby I changed from girl to woman to mom in an instant; when my second was born I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have two perfect little humans to love for the rest of my life.

What about you? How would you respond to these ‘best life’ questions?

Jennifer Wolfe

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Book Review: A Good American by Alex George

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Jennifer Wolfe

Reading Alex George’s novel A Great American was like climbing back into the pages of a family tree, uncovering historical secrets as I navigated through the story. George begins his narrative in the early 1900s with main characters Jette Furst and Frederick Meisenheimer, two young misfits living in Germany. As George says at the end of the first chapter, “It was Frederick’s capacity to dream that dazzled Jette the most. When she was with him, anything was possible,” establishing one of the themes of the novel: the capacity to dream the American dream was possible.

The novel continues in an operatic rhythm, as the reader discovers the dreams of not only Frederick and Jette, but subsequent children and grandchildren. Alex George’s characterizations are so realistic and endearing that I often found myself wondering if these were real characters from his family tree, so fleshed out and vibrant were they. Characters fall in and out of the course of the novel, their stories deftly woven together under the question of what a good American really is.

One of my favorite themes in the novel surrounds the power of food to nourish and transform a community. Beginning with the lack of food on the ship as Frederick and Jette come to America, food not only represents the ability to nourish and care for a family and community, but also the desire to hold onto our cultures while assimilating into a new country. As the novel progresses, the images of food change with the family’s deepening roots in the community, moving from traditional German fare to eventually a Mexican menu.

Music also plays a central role in the definition of what a good American means in the novel. From opera, to jazz, soul music, and even rock and roll, the author weaves the development of American music throughout the generations. Like food, music serves as another thread for the Meisenheimer family as they struggle to retain links to their old heritage while moving forward into the rapidly changing American landscape.

I enjoyed every page of A Good American. George’s writing was real, humorous, yet his research and knowledge of the evolution of our country through its immigrants was woven throughout. Questioning our understanding of what it means to be a good American, in the umbrella of race relations, religious views, gender expectations, food, music and the family structure allows Alex George to give the reader a deep look at the multifaceted history of our country.

If you’d like to read more about A Good American, join our BlogHer Book Club discussion by clicking here.

“This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.”