Letter to BoE regarding SHS Adminstration guilty plead to misconduct

Dear Stamford Board of Education

 

I am writing today to express my concerns about the administration at Stamford High School.   As a voter and a taxpayer, I am bothered by the fact that these individuals could possibly be returned to their roles in our schools, after they have plead guilty to not reporting an incident related to our children’s welfare.  I feel strongly that these individuals should not be returned as it will undermine their credibility within the building, within our community and cast a longer shadow over our district.  I do not see how they can be effective leaders moving forward

 

I would like to see them both terminated as soon as contractually possible

 

Thank you

THINGS THAT SOUND DIRTY AT THANKSGIVING, BUT AREN'T...

THINGS THAT SOUND DIRTY AT THANKSGIVING, BUT AREN'T...

"Whew, that's one terrific spread!"
"I'm in the mood for a little dark meat."
"Tying the legs together keeps the inside moist."
"Talk about a huge breast!"
"It's Cool Whip time!"

"If I don't undo my pants, I'll burst!"
"Are you ready for seconds yet?"
"Are you going to come again next time?"
"It's a little dry, do you still want to eat it?"
"Just wait your turn, you'll get some!"

"Don't play with your meat."
"Just spread the legs open & stuff it in."
"Do you think you'll be able to handle all these people at once?"
"I didn't expect everyone to come at once!"
"You still have a little bit on your chin."

"Use a nice smooth stroke when you whip it."
"How long will it take after you stick it in?"
"You'll know it's ready when it pops up."
"Wow, I didn't think I could handle all of that!"
"How many are coming?"

"That's the biggest one I've ever seen!"
"Just lay back & take it easy...I'll do the rest."
"How long do I beat it before it's ready?"

Courtesy of Maurice Millard

Please support my Movember efforts

I'm participating in Movember and for 30 days I've committed to changing the face of men's health. I'm asking you to support my efforts by making a donation at http://mobro.co/herzstache.   We need to take action, as the current state of men's health is unacceptable:   ·      In the US, men die on average almost 5 years earlier than women  ·      1 in 7 men will develop prostate cancer ·      Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men ages 15-35 years ·      More than four times as many men as women die by suicide in the US   The Movember Foundation is working around the clock and around the world to improve the lives of men and their families affected by prostate cancer, testicular cancer and mental health problems. They can't do this without our donations, so please contribute to my efforts to make a difference.   If you're interested in learning more about the programs Movember funds, please click here.    Thank you for your support. Together, we can change the face of men's health.

Stamford Board of Election Endorsements

So for those of you asking about STAMFORD Board of Education, I am voting for Betsy Allyn, Jackie Heftman and Julia Wade tomorrow.  Betsy is a hard working parent who will bring a much needed voice of reason to the board.  She has worked her way through the PTO's and I believe can accurately articulate the frustration we have all encountered at time.  

I am supporting Jackie and Julia as well, because they deserve to be re-elected,  They understand the process, and how the system works. The current board has achieved a level of efficiency and has cut back on the political showboating and public disagreement.  I realize that this is not a huge ringing endorsement, but as someone else said, it is better much than the alternatives.

Speaking of the alternatives, everything I have heard about Mike Altamura and heard directly from Andy George does not make any sense to me.  They seem like nice guys, but don't have any real clue as to what it takes to govern our school systems,  They have been critical of the decisions that the current board has made (perhaps rightfully at times), but without any significant proposals of what they are going to do differently or how they would address the issues currently impacting our system.  They have used questionable tactics.  I honestly believe they would be run over and completely ineffective, or worse would bring us back to the days of bomb throwing and ineffective political showboating.

Feel free to forward and tag others (or disregard)

Adapting Our Process from Large to Small

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When we launched Mother May I in May, we here at Adjacent To One (ATO) took on the challenge of deploying our proven process for designing state of the art digital products for medium and large enterprises and applying it to much smaller, non-commercial, socially innovative products.  Our process has been used within Fortune 1000 companies to extract a deep product understanding from business people, technical architects, engineers and product owners. The goal of bringing the experts from these functions together in one room is to establish transparency, between the different stakeholders along with consensus on how their product will evolve over the foreseeable future.

In partnership with our MMI Moms, we have spent the past few months applying our model in much smaller environments. While there have certainly been some challenges, the good news is we’ve proven that the system can work across large and small enterprises alike.

With Ameeta of Science Matters, we spent our discovery sessions talking about her business and goals, and working to extract requirements that could be formulated into a solid digital product plan that would allow her to grow her brand and bring STEM education to more K-5 students. We then went through a definition period where we took the requirements we had learned during discovery and ideated to develop a few product ideas to achieve her goals. Although we were not able to achieve alignment with Ameeta about the direction of the product, ATO gained valuable insights into what it takes to tackle the early education field and Ameeta honed in on and crystalized her business priorities.

Through our discovery work with Kathleen of Villages Innovate, we identified and defined a digital platform that will amplify her efforts to build relationships between individuals disconnected by social, political, and economic factors in developing and developed nations. Together, we defined the hopes and dreams for the organization, pinpointed challenges and frustrations, and created digital strategies and the infrastructure needed to support the platform. We can’t wait to get started building Villages Innovate’s exciting new digital product. Stay tuned for exciting updates on our progress over the coming months.

Are you a Mom with a big idea for a game-changing digital product that will improve the lives of people in your community and beyond? The team at Adjacent To One wants to hear from you! Email us at mothermayi@adjacenttoone.com.

What I Do!

Venn Diagram showing how I bring Design, Tech and Delivery together

3 Key Metrics to Measure the Impact of Your Social Innovation

We recently talked about how to overcome resistance to innovation, and proposed a few strategies to help remove those hurdles. Now the question becomes, how do you know if the solution you are building is achieving its goals?  The key is to track and monitor the progress of your initiative using clearly defined metrics.  The difficult task is choosing the right metrics for your project to ensure success with winning over all of your stakeholders. 

The Stanford Social Innovation Review offers up three levels of metrics to help measure the social impact of projects:

1. Accountability
This is basically reporting the Return on Investment (ROI) to your stakeholders, donors or customers.  These metrics are very similar to those that most commercial organizations would use to track their health and sustainability.

2. Common Standards
In order to distinguish yourself or your product from others, social innovators need to establish standards that can be translated and understood by all constituents so we're all speaking the same language.

3. Integration
Coalesce impact metrics with financial and operational ones. As the Review points out, "Integrated metrics can help organizations develop better products and services, improve resource allocation, and build more efficient and impactful businesses."

How are you measuring the impact of your social innovation? Do you have tips to share?

Overcoming Resistance to Innovation

Written for Mother May I - Overcoming Resistance to Innovation

So you have innovated your product or service, improving it in a way you know will move the needle in a positive way.  The question now becomes: How do you get your customer to buy into your innovation? 

There are plenty of examples of out there of companies that have innovated their product, brought it to market, and then have it fail miserably — New Coke and the Ford Edsel are two examples. These products did not take into consideration that successful adoption requires their customers to change their beliefs or behaviors. Far too often people resist change, even when it is for the better.

An MIT Sloan Management Review discusses 5 consumer barriers for resisting innovation:

1)     The innovation may not be compatible with existing workflows and practices; customers may prefer the status quo if the innovation requires learning new skills or altering long-ingrained routines.

2)     Customers do not understand the value of the innovation.

3)     Customers view the innovation as being too risky and postpone adoption until the risk is mitigated — either by new knowledge or through the experiences of others who have shown that the innovation is safe.

4)     The innovation requires a customer to deviate from established social norms and traditions.

5)     A negative product image, whether deserved or undeserved, can produce a barrier to adoption.

So, how do you keep your customers behaviors in mind as you are innovating to avoid these barriers? Adjacent To One, the team behind Mother May I, recommends consistently testing your product or service to see how customers react and where they find issues or concerns with the changes you are rolling out.  This testing allows you to react earlier in the product lifecycle and adapt faster to customers needs to increase your chance of success. 

How have you overcome resistance to innovation with your products or services?  

To Jacob - ON your bar mitzvah

Before I start, I would like to thank Alan and Lynn, my mom, Carol for their love and support.  I would also like to thank Nancy, because without her planning for the past 6 months, this entire day would not have taken place.  We even joked a few times, that if anything happened to her, I might not be able to pull today off since I was “still in Singapore”

I would like to thank all of you for travelling near and far to be able to join us for this special day.  Every single one of you has touched our lives in some way.  We would like to send our thoughts to Aunt Janet, who is unable to be here today and hoping she gets well soon.

Jacob -

They say that the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. To them, I would like to add a third and a fourth.

It is CERTAIN that right now, your mother, is sitting quietly, thinking to herself, “Please don’t say anything EMBARRASSING.”

And so I won’t.

Or will I? (rubbing hands together gleefully).

The fourth thing that is certain, is that no father, in history, has ever been more proud of a son than I am of you right now.

A bar mitzvah is an important milestone in a young man’s life. It marks the passage from childhood to young adulthood. But being a “man” is far more than learning and reciting prayers in English and in Hebrew. Being a man, is demonstrating to yourself and others that you have learned and are living by the Jewish laws and values that will serve you well throughout your lifetime.

In your 13 years, you have already demonstrated these values, multiple times in various scenarios.  From the earliest years at Toquam, you were always recognized for your citizenship, your ability to interact with all the other students and help the other kids in your class with what ever they needed.   You were selected to do peer mediation, and helped the scholars in the lower grades mediate conflicts and disagreements. 

You then moved up to Rippowam Middle School.  You were a little nervous, and were not sure what to expect in the beginning, but as we expected you very quickly fell into the routine of the early morning bus and high honor roll, while still participating in baseball, stage crew, wrestling and marching band.  Each semester you found a new extracurricular challenge.  Your continued striving for constant academic improvement is something that makes us very proud though making you practice your haf-torah was torturous

When Mommy started working at JumpStart, you took the individual initiative to jump on a different bus to go to the JCC after school multiple times a week to help out with the program.  You went in, and immediately became an integral part of the program there was even one little boy who was often upset, until you would get there and you helped calm him down.  Your mere presence was enough to put this boy at ease, knowing that you were going to make everything all right, even just for a short time.  The fact that you wanted to do a different mitzvah project than JumpStart demonstrates that helping others is something that comes naturally to you, since you did not recognize that you were already doing this mitzvah for over 2 years now.  It was just what you did, not anything special.  If that is not a Jewish learning, then I don’t know what is. 

It is for these reasons, and knowing what you are capable of doing from this point forward, that makes me the proudest father ever.

If you have not done so, please remember to sign the puzzle pieces with a message for Jacob, enjoy the montage, which was lovingly put together by Nancy, and then feast on the desert.

Link to Jacob's Bar Mitzvah Speech

Here is a link to Jacob's D'var Torah

http://joshuahammerman.blogspot.com/2014/06/tbe-barbat-mitzvah-commentary-jacob.html

Shabbat Shalom!

 

            A duck and a rabbi walk into a bar, whoops – wrong speech.  That’s for the Jewish comedy club try-out next week.

 

This week’s Torah portion of Shelach Lecha talks about the tzitzit and it also tells the story of the twelve spies.  You know, the ones that went up and scouted out the land and ten of them came back with a bad report and the other two came back with a good report.  And what does this all have to do with me?

 

Nothing.

 

And everything.

 

It’s like a puzzle.

 

And that’s what’s like me, because I love puzzles.

 

I’m told by my mom that when I was in pre-school, the puzzles they had we so easy that I’d flip them over and do them on the back without the hints.  So then the teachers went out to get more puzzles especially for me… until I mastered those as well.

 

I love jig saw puzzles – for a 200 piece puzzle, it takes me maybe a half an hour.  I also love thinking games like Stratego, Scrabble and Chess.   I even love to solve math problems – coincidentally, we’re right in the middle of the book of Numbers.  Well, technically, not in the middle, because the middle verse is in next week’s portion. 

 

We can learn a lot about how to solve puzzles from this Torah portion.  Take the spies for example.  The ten were not able to see beyond the moment.  They only saw the bad things about the land instead of looking for the good things, potential, for instance.  Joshua and Caleb not only noticed the good things, but they embraced the possibilities of what they would be able to do in the future.  They could see outside of the box. 

 

Going to Israel is considered to be “going up.” We call it aliyah, just like when we go up to the Torah.  When you go up to a high place, you can look out and see not5 just what the next step will bring, but several other steps into the future.

 

That’s exactly how you play chess and the best way to solve a puzzle.  You can’t get stuck on the here and now.   You have to look ahead and figure out what is coming next and how to figure out what else is going on around you.

 

The ten spies also made the mistake of thinking they were telling the truth simply by reporting what their eyes saw.  Joshua and Caleb understood the deeper meaning of what was going on and the importance of not spreading panic among the people.  The ten spies didn’t think of the consequences of giving a bad report.  When you are playing one of my favorite games, Stratego, and you make a wrong move, you can’t un-do it.  You’ve always got to be looking ahead to anticipate the consequences of what you do.

 

My portion ends with the laws of fringes, or tzitzit as they are called in Hebrew.  The Torah says we should look at the tzitzit and be reminded of the commandments, the mitzvot.  But how can looking at a bunch of strings remind us of commandments.  It’s amazing how my portion ends with an actual puzzle.

 

You see, every Hebrew letter has a number connected to it.  It is called gematria. So if you total up the letter of the word tzitzit, it adds up to 600.  Then, if you add in the eight strings and five knots you get 613 – or the exact number of commandments in the Torah and also the day my bar mitzvah weekend began – June 13 – 6/13.  Coincidence?  I think not!

 

I also figured out that if you take my Hebrew name, Yaakov Sha’ul and you add the word PACH, you also get 613.  The word pach means a garbage can.  So what does this mean?

 

Well let me tell you. The moral of the story is that you can find goodness even in garbage.  One man’s trash can be another man’s treasure.  And that’s interesting because legend has it that the Torah was rejected by every country except the Israelites. 

 

For my mitzvah project, I’ve been working with kids at Jump Start at the JCC.  These are kids ages 2-3 with various challenges.  I really enjoy doing it. It’s fun playing with the kids and seeing them look forward to me coming.   I am also helping an organization in Israel called Sulam.  The children in this program also have special needs, but they range in age from 6 months to 17 years old.  I want to thank all of you who made donations to help me with both of these very special programs.  

Happy 13th Birthday Jacob

So I don't know how the past 13 years have flown by.

It seems like just yesterday I was taking Nancy Pearce Herz to the hospital when my life would change forever.

 I would no longer just be a man, or a husband, I would now be a father.

There is not one moment that I have would changed.

One Small Spark Ignites Profound Change

One of the fundamental goals of Mother May I is to spark social collaboration , to identify people with a common cause, organize them to accomplish something of value and then allow those concepts to grow and prosper without limitation. There’s a great TED talk with Clay Shirky from 2005 during which he illustrates this concept.

In order for anyone to collaborate, people need to come together to discuss and plan out how to move forward. Prior to the Internet, this required the creation of some kind of institution¾a company, a committee, an action group¾to achieve their desired common goal. The institution was at the center of the problem-solving paradigm and forced the participants to move toward it.

Conversely, with social collaboration you can essentially put people at the center of the value proposition and remove the inefficiencies of the institution. The process allows loosely coordinated groups to leverage each other to drive significantly more value. 

This is a profound change in the way we do things. And we’re excited to put the process into practice with our three powered-by-mom projects over the course of the coming year. So read, get inspired, and share your thoughts in the comments¾Kathleen, Katie and Ameeta want your input!

Bringing Social Innovation to Life

The Stanford Graduate School of Business defines social innovation as “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than present solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.”  In order to drive this social innovation, Stanford goes on to say, “social innovation requires an exchange of ideas and values, shifts in roles and responsibilities and the integration of private capital with public and philanthropic support.”

Mother May I was created by Adjacent to One to bring this concept to life for mothers who are passionate about an idea, a project, or a strategy to solve a social problem. Our goal is to provide them with the design and technology tools to help drive and amplify that passion to move their ideas forward.

Mother May I was built to allow our participating moms -- Kathleen, Katie and Ameeta -- to identify and engage with others who are equally passionate about what they do, and provide greater exposure for their needs. 

This means for this experiment to be successful, we want your participation. Follow along as the moms work toward their milestones, comment on their posts, share their stories with your family, friends and colleagues on social media, lend your expertise and experiences, or even donate your time and expertise. 

Join in on the conversation now.

• What can you do to help Ameeta and Science Matters bring STEM (Science Technology Engineering + Mathematics) education back into our elementary schools?
• How can you help Kathleen and Villages Innovate set up a computer club with students in Africa?
• What ideas do you have for helping Katie and Digital Commuter Strategy improve our daily commute?

Its been 3 years...

It’s been 3 years

You have missed baseball games and dance recitals

You have missed karate, wrestling and basketball

You have missed Passovers and Thanksgivings

You have missed birthday parties and surprises

You have missed sadness and joy

You have missed good times and bad

You have missed your grandkids growing up

You have missed them laughing and playing

You have missed them arguing and loving

You have missed family trips and a family reunion

You have missed the opportunity to teach and learn

You have missed feeling the wind on your back and the sun in your face

None of these will replace or make up for how much we miss you