Online Learning in the Future

Doing as educators do in the summer months, part of my idea of relaxation involves improving my instructional skills in some way. This year, that improvement takes the form of learning how to create online college classes - a trend I expect to continue into the future.

As part of the course, I was given the following prompt to answer - What do you think Sierra College will look like ten years from now and what will be the role of the online program?  

To start, I believe that Sierra and most other colleges will be be able to serve a much larger population in 10 years. If students can take courses from anywhere they can access the internet, there will be increased inter-college competition but also a much bigger population looking to access online learning. 

In addition, I would anticipate the tools available would be much more sophisticated - making it easier to incorporate a wide variety of multi media content and create more personalized learning opportunities that cater to student learning styles. 

To be involved in higher ed online learning at this point in it's growth reminds me or being involved with in the early days of the internet. Yes, there will be challenges like the increasing competition for against schools throughout the world, but there will be so many opportunities as well as technologies evolve to meet student and professor needs. 

The most successful schools will take risks, experiment with new technologies, support educators as they move into online learning and devote appropriate resources for campus expertise, training, and tools. 

My Favorite Healthy Recipes

One of the best things about being back in Sacramento is reconnecting with my Kaia tribe. Started up again in January with what we call a "BRIK" session, basically six weeks of fairly intense workouts and healthy eating. I decided to try to eat mostly vegan, whole foods, less processed, and minimize simple carbs. It went so well, I'm still doing it! Loving how I feel, how I look and that I am causing less harm to animals and our planet. Whether you want to try going full vegan or just cutting down on meat and dairy by substituting a few meals a week, here are some I tried and loved. I'm happy to share with you (as well as document so I can look them up for future meals! I always forget things I've loved in the past.) Sorry some are not very specific, I usually cook to the texture and flavor I like without paying attention to the details.

Breakfast

Steel Cut Oats are a fav. I usually make enough for the week each time. I usually add:

• Raw, unsweetened coconut
• Dried fruit
• Chopped nuts or seeds
• Cinnamon if it works with the other flavors

Leftover quinoa also makes a great bfast. I add similar stuff, in this case I had some fresh apples to throw in.


This recipe could be steel cut oats or quinoa. I add in the same stuff plus PB Fit with a little extra water to make it a pb sauce.


Sweet potato toast with avocado and white beans are delicious! I microwaved the sweet potatoes first until tender cause I don't have a toaster oven. Then I put in the toaster a few times through to crisp it up. You can sub any beans you like. I think I also added hot sauce, but took the pic before I did that.


I finally tried a tofu scramble recipe and can't believe I waited so long. I am not a huge fan of scrambled eggs, so I actually like this sooo much more than the non-vegan version.  Here's the recipe I used for inspiration. I subbed broccoli for kale and smoked paprika for tumeric and added black beans.


Smoothies are my go-to, especially right after a workout. My standard:

• Protein powder (2 scoops)
• Greens - usually arugula or spinach
• Fluid - almond, coconut, or hemp milk
• Frozen banana
• Frozen berries or cocoa and PB fit
• 1/2 avocado if one needs to be used in a hurry
• Optional tbsp of chia, flax, hemp seeds

Lunch/Dinner

I put these in the same category because one of the things I did during BRIK is try to eat my larger meal earlier in the day and no meals after 7 p.m. to give my digestive system some time off.



Lentil spring rolls got my BRIK off to a great start - never had lentils before that I was aware and was amazed at how yummy they were! Here's the recipe I used for inspiration, but I subbed romaine leaves for the rice wrappers and didn't use tomatoes.




If you like tuna or egg salad sandwiches, this one's for you. Here is the inspiration recipe. I of course adjusted - used pocket bread, subbed cilantro for basil, added chopped onion and red pepper.



Salads don't have to include lettuce. This one is cucumbers, kidney beans, tomatoes, carrots, cilantro, sunflower seeds and nutritional yeast, topped with a little lemon juice. Yum!


Marinara over zoodles or spaghetti squash- at least once a week! Sauce: saute onion and garlic with olive oil until translucent, add in broth and tomato sauce (less broth) or paste (more broth), oregano, salt and pepper. Zoodles - make sure you just saute a couple mins with olive oil and garlic, don't overcook, please don't boil like pasta.


"Meat" sauce over zoodles or spaghetti squash.
Sauce: saute onion and garlic with olive oil until translucent, add in cooked lentils, broth, and tomato sauce (less broth) or paste (more broth), oregano, salt and pepper. Squash recipe


Lentil chili - here is the inspiration recipe and I subbed carrots for corn and black for kidney beans. I also didn't have fresh jalapeno.


Quinoa spring rolls - here's the inspiration recipe and I added tofu and avocado and subbed carrots for peppers and peanut sauce for cashew sauce.


Basic veggie soup - this one saved my eating habits many a day. Start with sauteing the hardest veggies in olive oil (potatoes, carrots) and add in garlic and onions. When the veggies are tender, add in the softer ones (canned green beans, canned corn), broth and beans of any kind. Add in oregano, basil and salt and pepper to taste. Soup is better in the days after you make it.


Simplest recipe on here - canned tomato soup with avocado instead of sour cream. Who can't manage that?



Chickpea and potato curry over quinoa - here is the inspiration recipe (waaay different than what I ended up with!) Chana masala was way too expensive, so I substituted regular ol curry spice. I used ginger powder instead of fresh (don't recommend). I didn't have cilantro, green chilis, or tumeric. I also left out the tomatoes. Was really yummy though. I put it over quinoa instead of rice and added a softened, cut up potato in the blender process to thicken up the sauce.


BBQ jackfruit tacos - so I bought the jackfruit at Bel Air already seasoned. Super easy to heat up and use gluten-free taco shells. I actually didn't like this much....funny enough, the texture was too much like pork. Sharing in case you like pulled pork - it was very convincing and waaay less fat and calories.

Snacks

If you like black licorice, fresh fennel chopped up is a great substitute. Learned this one in Guate.


Acorn squash slices - carefully slice your squash and save the seeds. Toss the slices in coconut oil and oil up a baking sheet. Bake the slices and seeds until they are as crispy as you like. Salt to taste.


Almond Joy bites - these are a ton of work and soooooo good. Can't believe how delicious they are for how healthy they are. Here's the recipe I followed to the 't".

Not picture, somehow, is the air-popped popcorn I eat ALMOST EVERY DAY. I add coconut oil, nutritional yeast and salt. So good!

Looking for more ideas? I can't recommend The Minimalist Baker enough. I just got their hardcover cookbook and it is beautiful. Thanks for reading through these, hope they've inspired you to try your hand at a few of them. Let me know how it goes!
t

Connection & Mental Health

Driving to campus today I was so lost in my thoughts that I have no idea how I arrived here. The shooting at a Florida high school yesterday left me numb. I didn't even try to engage in the usual online debates or post on Facebook about how something needs to be done. I needed to grieve, again, and just retreat for a little while.

This morning though, a new perspective emerged as if my mind was working on it all along in the background. There are a lot of people now arguing about shoulds - should be harder to get a gun, should do something about mental health, should say something if someone seems dangerous. I hate shoulds. I think the word SHOULD disappear. :-)

My thoughts have turned instead to something every single one of us has the power to do. Today. This moment.

My very favorite thing about living in Guatemala was the part of the culture that puts people first. There is a love and care for others, even strangers, that I don't often see in everyday US life. I got used to making eye contact and nodding, smiling, or talking to just about every person I came across. I was the beneficiary of so much love and kindness - the rural folks who came out of their homes at 5 a.m. to help us turn our vehicle around in a mud pit, the indigenous woman at the lake who snuggled with me on the boat and shared a giggle about our picture and an umbrella for the walk up the hillside in the rain, the many people who just happened to be walking down the busy street at the end of our hill that stepped in that street and stopped traffic so that I could pull out and around a blind corner.

There was a warmth and affection everywhere we traveled in Mexico and Guatemala. Yes, getting to tasks is important and eventually happens, but people come first. I remember feeling shocked that McDonald's doesn't open until 9, and I also remember the person on the street telling me that "of course it's that way, people need time in the morning with family."

Coming back to the US (two years ago now!) has been a transition. I have struggled at times to maintain the peace and connection I cultivated while living down south. And yet, I feel that has to be part of the answer to our burning question - what can we do to stop this?

The disconnection and despair in this country is easier to see after living somewhere else. Guatemalans may be incredibly poor on paper compared to the US, but with few exceptions the people I met there were healthy and connected and dare I say, happy.

So I invite you to join me in upping our connection quota. As a professor now, each day on campus I make a point of making eye contact and smiling or nodding at each person I see. Most don't make eye contact but I try anyway. I talk to store clerks and people next to me at the gas station. I make small talk with the people in line with me at the grocery store or movie theater. Do some people think I'm strange? Undoubtedly. I'll take strange and connecting over sophisticated and isolated every day of the week.

With my family, friends, colleagues, and students I make an effort to ensure they know they are enough and valuable just the way they are. Do I challenge them to make better choices? Yup, but I love them even when they fail, and make sure they know it - especially when they fail.

Will that solve mass shootings in this country? Of course not. It is but one small part of the equation, but it's a part each of us can do.

Re-Starts and Re-Runs

As it has the past 9 years that I have attended, my family at the National School Public Relations Association put on an incredible networking-PR learning-healing-refreshtastic annual seminar this summer in Nashville and I almost didn't go.

As you may know if you've read some past posts, I was trying out a few things here in Guate and while I was continuing my school PR work for several US clients, I just wasn't sure it made financial sense for me to go. And then the universe, as it often does if you let it, stepped in. My session for my first 2 hour workshop on communication planning got accepted (kind of a big deal), and a couple friends stepped in with offers of shared hotel rooms and team discount registrations.

My session was first thing Monday 8 a.m. and it got off to a little bit of shaky start...I had tested my mic and everything else (something I've done every year since a fiasco presentation at CAPIO.) Then the techies stopped by to check my work and offered to replace my mic batteries to make sure they lasted the full two hours. My bestie Kate had offered to be my right hand during the session and the two of us started joking that now that everything was set up, no one would probably show up in my room set up for 200. We even started making practical plans for how much more interactive things could be if we had as few as five people come.

Then 20 minutes before the presentation, they started filing in...and in...and in. Be careful for what you wish for, right? After an introduction that sounded like it was about some other lady living some other life, I got up and hoped I could deliver on what was being promised the now close to 200 folks. As I started to speak, I saw lots of confusion, head shaking and a couple people at my nearest table signaling for me to come over. A few quick seconds later, the mic actually turned on and so did I.

As I prepared for the session, I wasn't sure about taking up a full 2 hours, but it went so fast! When you are doing what you love, what you know in your heart you were meant to do, when you feel like you are having real IMPACT and are in the flow, time stops. I could have stayed there with folks all day talking about research, analysis, strategies and evaluation....my inner data geek planner goddess was in heaven.

Afterwards I realized something....I hadn't felt that way very often lately.

As the song goes, I need to be needed. And I set about the rest of the seminar asking my super smart PR peeps about different business models that would meet my needs - to stay based in Guatemala with my hubby but give me the flexibility to jump in and help folks that need me. My remote consulting work, the envy of people who wish they could travel like us, would continue but I needed more. I needed an occasional jolt of impact, where I would travel to a client and work intensely with them either because they had a gap in their PR office due to family leave or a transition or for a short-term project.

The response from my colleagues has been tremendous and I can't believe I never thought of it before.

Lucky for me, my man is always my biggest supporter and so here we are, launching SchoolPRPro. (Can you believe I got that domain? Me neither!!)

And, contrary to the way I fell into business three years ago, this time I am following my own PR planning advice. I am writing a comprehensive plan, adding several new marketing tools and even starting with a quick survey to create a baseline that I can track each year.

So, if you have a moment, I have a few things to ask that will really help me:

• Take my 6 question survey
• Check out my fancy new site (schoolprpro.com) that I created in a few days with Wix
• Share the site with anyone you think might be interested in my new services
• If youŕe interested in Wix, do it through this link so I can get credit
• Sign up for my new email updates through the front page of my site- only once or twice a month, a link and summary of the latest, greatest education and PR related stuff
• Check out this super cute pic of the new kitty, Charlie, we got to hang out with Osa
  

• Continue sending me your good wishes, it's obviously working ;-)

Oh, and if youŕe still not tired about hearing about my crazy life or missed it the first time, our move to Guatemala is already re-run material on House Hunters International. It airs again August 13th and 14th.

Peace and love!
t

PS - Sac peeps, I'll be back in town soon and will share the dates when I have them.

To my Uncle with Love

My crazy, artistic, ultra liberal cynical Uncle Roger is dying.

My earliest memory of him is in Palm Springs. He visited us driving his old VW bus and parked it on the side of our apartment building and slept there instead of our couch. He also ate his own food, which I thought was really strange. In fact, when I went out to the bus while he was standing there in his long hair and suede shirt making his breakfast of chicken livers and eggs, I thought the whole place smelled funny. But I was intrigued by this strange man that was my dad's brother and have been ever since.

I remember him again during my early high school years in Sacramento. Growing up with dad and his strong conservative views (back then), I was walking the American Dream straight and narrow. Studying hard, getting straight As, and super excited about my new job at McDonald's that I hoped would earn me a new stereo within my first couple paychecks. Rather than the typical grown up response I was getting from the folks in my blue collar neighborhood, my visiting uncle sarcastically congratulated me on becoming a ¨good little capitalist¨ which started political argument #4,587 between he and dad.

The summer after high school my best friend and I decided to take a road trip out to Santa Cruz and decided to stay with Uncle Roger in the mountains outside of town. For a couple of girls who grew up in North Highlands, nothing could have prepared us for what to expect. The house appeared to be mounds of cement interspersed with colorful glass bottles, broken ceramic pieces and curious little knick knacks just pushed into the walls. According to my memory of more than 20 years ago, Uncle Roger told me it was built by circus gypsies. Inside, there were far more books than furniture and a strong pachouli smell. I remember they offered us some pizza, which was not like anything I ever saw at Dominoes. I remember feeling some combination of pride/embarrassment that my family was soooo weird.

When it was time to go away to college, I went to University of the Pacific because frankly, they were offering me the best financial deal and although only an hour down the road, hardly anyone from my neighborhood had ever gone there and at that point in my life I desperately wanted to be different. That's probably what made me choose to bring the strange candle Uncle Roger gave me as a graduation gift. It had an Asian drawing on it and the translation read, ¨It's Okay to Wake up Laughing.¨ It's one of the few things that I've taken with me throughout the years and it has helped me through more crisis than I can remember. It's an excellent reminder not to take myself too seriously.

One of of my favorite times with Uncle Roger was him in his playwright glory. He was always very interested in dad's experience in Vietnam and at one point wrote a play about it. If I'm honest, I'll have to admit that when I saw it I was too young to fully appreciate the deeper meaning that I'm sure it was written to convey. What I remember is the awe I felt at seeing these people moving around the stage, saying the words my uncle put to paper. What I remember is my uncle's stage presence as actor-director and the way he was larger than life and demanded all the attention in the room. What I remember is that after the play while the cast was backstage, word spread that I was in fact the niece of the writer and the daughter of the soldier the play was based on and all these young people crowded around me asking questions about what I thought was my pretty mundane family.  It was really cool to see the admiration everyone had for Roger and see the love and light in his personality shine as he came out to hold court.

That's what I'll be thinking about, my dear uncle as I send you my love and wish I could be there to kiss your cheek and look into those beautiful eyes one last time. Thank you for the magic you brought to our lives, to forcing us to see the uncomfortable and question the unfair. Thank you for knowing your truth was more important than playing nice and getting along. I adore you and knowing you has changed me for the better.

And although I know you don't believe in it, I hope you are wrong about heaven, and you end up in a crazy wonderful place with your wife, loads of plays to write and act in and all the chocolate you can eat.

Fear and Love

Maybe because it's been a consequential week in the US, maybe it's because I have the distance to appreciate it from a different perspective, but it seems to me that on a number of fronts and particularly with regards to race and sexual orientation, our nation is going through the painful growth it takes to move from a place of fear to a place of love.

When Obama ran for president, I remember deciding to support him despite my many liberal friends telling me I was throwing my money and vote away, that our country wasn't ready to elect a black man. On election night, I don't remember ever feeling so proud to be an American - that we as a nation had moved far away from our cruel past and choose this smart, kind, unlikely professor type to lead us during a very scary time. (I remember seriously thinking that year that we should take our money out of even the largest US banks because of the fragility of our economy.)

The next seven years have shown Obama to be just a man, with flaws like the rest of us, but one that loves his country enough to sacrifice the enormous amount of time and energy it has taken to lead us into a better place across every economic indicator. And yet, the very fact that he is president, perhaps even more so that he has been successful, seems to have inflamed so many people.

These are not bad people, and most in my opinion do not even know why it is that the very mention of the man drives them crazy.  I suspect it is because they do not even know that their worldview, cultivated by every experience they've had and the stories handed down through their families, is threatened by the triumph of Obama. If you are reading this and shaking your head right now with how wrong I am - take a moment, pause, and just feel your body. Are you calm, rational? Is it the same as  if we were debating the best college in the US or what color of car to buy? Or in your heart of hearts, just to yourself, can you admit that there is something more, something irrational, fearful about your response? This does not make you an awful person - it makes you a human being encountering new information that threatens very deep, often unspoken beliefs about the world.

The same is true with regards to same sex marriage. Fear and love are a continuum and there are a lot of people at every point along that path. I have had the great pleasure of knowing and loving many gay friends, of seeing their very human, mundane relationships up close and understanding long ago that their commitments to each other are no different than those of heterosexuals. For other people, the only experience they may have with gay people is what they see on tv, or a story about a friend of a friend. 

For others, people in their religious lives have long told them that marriage between gay people is a sin. There are a lot of passages of the bible that can be used to separate us - those that work on Sundays, eat crab or even wear different threads of clothing together and many more are condemned if you are looking for ways to judge others. 

However, the ultimate truth of the bible and most religions is bigger than that, and those that truly love Christ and others like him know that. Christ doesn't ask us to tolerate others or to accept them - we are called to something greater, to love one another. Anything less than that is not enough. 

To say you are going to pray for the children of gay families, to say that you are going to accept gays along with the other sinners in your life is quite honestly...arrogant. None of us is the creator, none can argue with certainty that everyone today isn't perfect exactly as they are.  That said, even when I see that stuff in my fb news feed, that's when I get the opportunity to grow. That's right, everyone along the continuum, even those still stuck in the darkest, most hateful of places is deserving of love, and perhaps need it even more.

So while there are moments along the way that will bring us to our knees in agony, have us shaking our heads in frustration or tempted to throw our computer out the window in anger...we are all in this together whether we like it or not. The choices ahead of you...how fearful or loving you face the world will determine your level of suffering or peace. It's in your hands.

House Hunters International!

Hola blog followers, you faithful bunch that stay with me even though I haven't posted since....MARCH!

Just in case you didn't read the initial post on the topic, for some crazy reason House Hunters International decided to follow Ken and I to Guatemala to tell the world about our decision to move abroad and how we selected our first home in Guatemala. They came out and filmed our episode in October and November and it will be airing in the US on Monday, May 25^th at 10:30pm EST and 1:30am EST. You can find more details by following this link.

So, now that you've read the exciting part, stay tuned for another post about the project that I'd like to blame for the lack of posts, but that wouldn't exactly be the truth. We started a BnB! Okay it's really just a B because we don't provide breakfast, but you get the point. Here's the link in case you know someone heading south soon. We will have 3 rooms up and going within the month, so if this one is booked, look for the other two.

We also hosted Ken parents for a couple weeks during the exciting Semana Santa celebrations here in Antigua in April! So amazing to experience...once. Then after the sixth week of processions, I have to admit my enthusiasm was a little less than optimal. If you haven't seen one though, I highly recommend it.  Here's a great post about the event. It was wonderful to be able to share  our new country with Ken and Jan and spend some time with them. 

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful spring!