Lew Welge is a candidate for Alachua County School Board District 4 and will face incumbent Leanetta McNealy in the Aug. 20 primary election.
Q&A
Q: What, in your opinion, is (are) the most prominent challenge(s) facing Alachua County schools? How do you think you can help change this?
A: Your first question... brings up the generally unexamined definitional difference in meaning between the words “prominent”/noteworthy and important/significant. The Israeli dissident author Amos Oz says “The purpose of the Thinker is to make distinctions.” A too infrequently mentioned distinction in our “Western” Culture is well-expressed in the epigrammatic phrase “What’s popular is not always right, and what’s right (correct/appropriate/efficacious) is not always popular.” “Prominent challenges” are often superficial symptoms of deep-seated paradoxical intrapersonal psychological AND interpersonal socio-familial conflicts.
Limited to 250 words as I am, I’ll just say Teachers, and Parents who are our first teachers, are behooved to view any & all challenges/problems as opportunities; because it’s not so important “What” happens to us, as it is most critically important “How” we deal or handle Life’s vicissitudes, the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as the Earl of Oxford wrote five & a quarter centuries ago.
Q: How is your experience as a guidance counselor relevant to becoming a school board member?
A: My #NEARLY score year’s experience as a Florida Public School Guidance Counselor is highly relevant to the fundamental relationship “People skills” required for the leadership role of a School Board member.
As my UF Counselor Education Professor Doctors of Philosophy Larry Loesche & Bob Myrick taught, we Counselors are “Change Agents” whose purpose is to “help people feel better about themselves, and to get along better with others.” Those two broad “Mission Statements” encouraged we their students to fully embrace the concept of “Lifelong Learning,” a concept I will model unto my final breath.
Q: What's your plan to incentivize children to read?
A: My “plan to incentivize children to read” aligns with and runs parallel to our insuring all schools have “comprehensive developmental counseling and guidance plans” in effect. A critically necessary component of such a plan is initial accurate assessment of preschoolers’ predispositions and strengths. A Brief Individual Counseling Interview and Interest Inventory will provide we parents and teachers with baseline data in four categories associated with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological, Psychological, Sociological/Belongingness and Potentiality/Self-Actualization. This data in hand, children's families and teachers will be able to chart students’ “growth & development” with emphasize on Improvement, especially in the area of “Self-Control.” The charting, or graphic representation, of their strengths will foster students’ willingness to work to progress and improve their Reading & Writing Skills.
Q: Is there anything the incumbent school board member did that you would have done differently?
A: I’m unfamiliar with what the incumbent Ms. [Leanetta McNealy] successful initiatives were and are during her past two terms, eight years in office, but I fully intend to ask her to find out.
Know where to vote
Voters can find their precinct ahead of the August election by visiting the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections’ website.
Most Popular
Comments / 0