Michael Meaney's blog

I vividly remember the days of AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM. My screen-name, PurpleWalrus7801, was an attempt at middle-school cool. How clever, I thought, to combine words and numbers into some very non-obvious reference to Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles. The “away message” foreshadowed the status update as a means to self-promote how cool and interesting your offline life was, all in order to receive validation from your friends online. Then, of course, there was the flirting dimension.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the 2014 Annual Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), hosted by the National Council on Citizenship. The conference brought together leaders from the public and private sector, as well as members of the Armed Services, in order to discuss civic engagement in America and determine ways to promote and expand national service opportunities. This year, the conference was convened at American University in Washington D.C., focused on the theme of “Connect. Empower.

I am constantly glued to my hand-held screen. And it seems I am not alone. Walking around campus yields a somewhat unsettling observation – almost nobody walks with their heads up, held high, encountering the natural world as it comes to them. Instead, we are often busy making our way to wherever it is we are going in an aggressively hurried fashion, with our heads planted firmly looking down, encountering our own preferences of the digital world.

Many unfortunate features of the Arizona education system are regularly discussed and documented. As Arizona is set to become a majority-minority state within the next two decades, the Latino education gapthreatens the long-term economic viability of our state. We also face an impending established teacher shortfall, with annual teacher retention rates of only 65%.