Monthly Archives: August 2009

Michael Vick is Back… As An Eagle??!!!???!!!

Michael Vick is Back… As An Eagle??!!!???!!!

Michael Vick will take the football field for the first time since Dec. 2006 on Thursday (8-27-09) as a Philadelphia Eagle. The entire football world will be anxious to see how he performs. I wouldn’t expect much though; it has been over 2 ½ years since he has played in a game so I’m sure that he will be rusty.

When Michael Vick was freed from prison there were many scenarios discussed about what team would take a chance on signing him. As an Eagles fan I didn’t think there was anyway that they would be the team to sign Vick. I had hoped that some team would give him a second chance at a career. I felt like he did his time and deserved a chance. However, when the news broke that he signed with the Eagles I was just as shocked as everyone else.

And I wasn’t excited.

I questioned why the Eagles would take such a risk and position themselves to take so much scrutiny from animal rights activist and the media. I wondered how Donovan McNabb would react to the move and how it might affect team chemistry. It just didn’t make football or public relations since to me at all.

It has also been interesting to listen to the public response to the move. Many people are excited that he is back however many more aren’t. Philly fans seem 50/50 on the move according to a poll that was taken on Philly.com the day after the signing. Some people have the opinion that it was “only dogs” and that they are making too much of a big deal out of dog fighting. They feel that the punishment was too stiff for the crime.

Someone close to me recently shared with me that they just do not understand why so much of a fuss is being made over dogs. This person felt that the life of dogs were valued more than human lives. Then you also have the dog lovers and animal rights activist who feel that Vick should never touch a football field again and cannot forgive the things that he did to those animals.

I personally think that both sides need to expand their perspective on the situation. Vick was not only put in jail for dog fighting. He was put into jail for running an illegal gambling ring as well. I understand that he grew up around dog fighting and did not think it was wrong. I also saw dog fighting as a child and I didn’t know that it was illegal. But when I hear Vick apologist on the radio none of them mention how he brutally tortured and killed those dogs. It’s ok to support him however I don’t think that it is right to act like he did nothing wrong.

I am not a dog lover but I can see how the details of those executions of innocent dogs can deeply hurt those who are. However, I think that Vick paid for his crimes and that they should let him resume his career without so much scrutiny. He lost all of his money and damaged his career. Losing 100 million dollars and sitting in prison for 2 years away from your children will humble anyone. He didn’t just get a slap on the wrist, he paid a heavy price. Vick should not be held hostage by animal rights groups for the remainder of his life.

I’m excited now.

After all the details were revealed I began to get a little excited about the idea of having Vick as a weapon on my team. I also gained a greater respect for the coach and owner of the Eagles for being willing to step up and give Vick a chance. From a football standpoint it is great to have such a talent player added to the roster. From a real life standpoint the reality is that Vick is getting an opportunity to piece his life back together because he is an extremely talented athlete. If he plays well this will all be forgotten in about 2 years. So, for now Vick gets to go back to work and make a good living after spending 2 years in prison. I just wish all ex-cons were so fortunate.

Go Eagles!

Chillin at the Park,

Scott Speed

www.TheNeighborhoodSpeaks.com

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“So…I Hear 30′s The New 20″

“So…I Hear 30’s The New 20”

 

30’s the new 20, I’m so hot still

(Jay Z “30 Something” 2006)

It went down this past weekend. I actually turned 30 years old! I knew that it would happen someday but it kind of just snuck up on me. I’ve been on mental cruise control I guess since 25 just enjoying the balance of my young adult status. It’s funny because I’ve recently been reflecting on the last 10 years of my life and man have they flown by. I’m not feeling any type of 30’s blues or anything but it’s very interesting to take inventory of how I have changed in ten years.

I think it is funny how the older I get, the younger older people get. For example 50 year olds used to seem ancient when I was a child but now it seems like they are a fairly lively bunch. 

My friends and I are also starting to sound like those adults who used to always complain about the quality of today’s music. “They don’t make music like they used too”, is what they used to say. I now see that everyone is partial to the music of their teens. Who would have thought that someone who came up on rap music would ever be so critical…of rap music? Now my friends and I are the ones saying, “they don’t make music like they used too.”

They say 50’s the new 30, 60’s the new 40, and 30’s the new 20. Honestly, I’d be afraid to be 20 again. I did some really dumb things in my teens and early twenties. I can remember being a know-it-all teen who thought that I could do no wrong. A lot of people say that they have no regrets about the things they’ve done in the past. I personally think that many of them are just blowing smoke. I personally would like to do a lot of things differently. I’ll spare you the details.

I have to say that I feel blessed to be in the position that I am in life. In spite of my mistakes I’ve also done many things right. The most important of which was marrying my wife and starting a family. I’ve grown exponentially since meeting her.

I’m optimistic about my 30’s. I see many good things happening because I now have 9 years of experience being an adult to rely on. The good thing about making mistakes is that they provide lessons and experiences to grow from.

Know this, I’ve certainly grown a whole lot and remember…

30’s the new 20, I’m so blessed still!

Kickin it on The Stoop,

Scott Speed

www.TheNeighborhoodSpeaks.com

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“A Hustlers Ambition… A Gift And A Curse”

“A Hustlers Ambition… A Gift And A Curse”

 

I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell

I am a hustler baby, I’ll sell water to a well…

(Jay-Z “U Don’t Know” 2001)

Hustler

A hustler as I define it is someone who works hard for what they want, is always looking for more, and is always looking to take advantage of the next opportunity. Legally.

I started hustling at age 10 when I convinced my mom to take me to that wholesale warehouse on the edge of my West Philly neighborhood to buy candy in bulk so that I could sale it to my friends and turn a profit. I learned the significance of the word profit at an early age. I continued to hustle through elementary, middle, high school and college. In high school I sold candy, bus tokens, watches. In college I sold all of the above along with scented oils and clothes. I even sold copied CD’s for $10 a piece because my homeboy Ev from Philly was one of the first people to have a CD burner on his computer long before it became common.

Ambition

Since an early age I’ve had a strong desire to be successful and earn a lot of money. You see, when I saw people on T.V or met people who were making lots of money I would always think to myself, “If they can do it I can do it. They are no smarter than I am and I’m willing to do whatever it takes.” When I was 19 you could not have told me that I wasn’t going to be a millionaire by 30 (side note…I still have a few more days to make it happen. Lol!) Though my ambitions were strong for money I was equally as ambitious with my desire to be in a position to impact change in the lives of underserved people, primarily children. I’ve had visions of opening youth centers or even my own school someday. It’s been an ongoing battle in my life between my desires to go after money and my desire to impact major change in the lives of underserved youth.

The Gift

When I graduated from college with a degree in elementary education after starting out as a business major…I started a business. Yeah you read that right. I told you it was a battle. I was out to start building my riches. My ambition has taken me a lot of places over the last 9 years. At the age of 22 I wrote a business plan and secured financing to open a clothing store. A few years later I was making 5-8 thousand dollars a month and traveling the country as a top producer and leader for a major Network Marketing/MLM company.  I remember sitting by a pool in Florida on a weekday and thinking to myself how most people my age were working a 9-5 somewhere while I had freedom. A few years later we were in the middle of a real estate market boom and people were making money like crazy so I jumped into the mortgage business and made 8 grand in my 2nd month. I eventually decided to start buying and flipping properties for you know what. Yep…Profit. I’ve sat across the table and made over 20 grand off of one transaction. I continued to invest in other ways as well. Way’s that earned me 3 grand in one week at times. I had friends and business associates who exposed me to lavish homes, country clubs, and luxury cars. I even proposed to my wife at the party of a millionaire friend and business associate. My life was exciting and I was learning all the ways out there to make money, and lots of it.

The Curse

Well, for several reasons, with all of my previous endeavors something eventually went wrong. With risk sometimes there’s loss. The BMW, lost. Money, lost. I know that in business there are losses but a little while back I lost so much money, in an investment gone bad, that I was forced to sit back and re-evaluate things. I started to realize that the things that I was doing to make money were just…things I was doing. I was not satisfying the calling that I’ve always felt was on my life to impact people in a positive way. I kept putting it off until I reached my financial goals. I felt like my setbacks were Gods way of sending me a message. I decided that I was going to do the things that I truly had a passion for. I decided that I was going to be patient in my quest for riches and let things happen, as God would have them to. I started teaching, I finally wrote a motivational book that I’ve had in my mind for years (I’m patiently exploring publishing options), and I’ve furthered my education. I’ve even been brain storming with a co-worker about creative ways to educate our youth more effectively through after school programs or starting our own school.

The Struggle

Recently, I’ve been introduced to a couple of big money making opportunities from successful people I respect. I had the same thoughts from the past, “If they can do it… But after some thought I had to pass. It was so hard to say to them that the timing is not right for me. The shark in me wanted to step up to the challenge. But my experience tells me to be patient. So I will. But it’s a struggle.

I always think back to my past experiences with fond memories. I also think about some of my missteps. I’ve gained so much knowledge from my experiences from the past. I know so much about money, investing, personal finance, sales, and success principles as a result of my experiences. I feel confident that I am equipped to make sound decisions moving forward becasue I’ve already made and learned from the mistakes that most people make throughout the course of their lives. But at the same time I think about the money I’ve spent, wasted, and lost as the cost for those expereinces and I wonder…has my ambition been A Gift or A Curse?

I wonder if anyone can relate?

Kickin it on The Stoop reflecting,

Scott Speed

www.TheNeighborhoodSpeaks.com

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“My Philosophy…Education Is Dead In Our Inner Cities”

“My Philosophy… Education Is Dead In Our Inner Cities”

Boogie Down Productions

Is made up of teachers

The lecture is conducted

From the mic into the speaker

Who gets weaker?

The king or the teacher

It’s not about a salary

It’s all about reality

Teachers teach and do the world good

Kings just rule

And most are never understood

(KRS 1/Boogie Down Productions “My Philosophy”)

The statistics.

  • A 2008 foxnews.com report stated that 17 of the nations 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis, and Cleveland.
  • The report states that in Detroit’s public schools, 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis Public Schools and 34.1 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.
  • The report also states that over 1.2 million students drop out of high school annually in our country.

“When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem, it’s a catastrophe,” said former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

My Pain

I hear it all the time. Most recently on that CNN special “Black In America.” The average high school graduation rate in inner cities is less than 50 percent in our country. In some places like Detroit it is obviously much worse. Do you understand the severity of having only 24.9 percent of students graduate from high school?  That means that out of every 100 students, only 25 graduate. That means that 75 percent of the students did not succeed and are now most likely struggling to make it in our society. It’s no mystery why Detroit has fallen apart. I’ve been there several times and it is a ghost town with no real signs of vitality.

I’m a product of inner city public school education. When I read or hear these stories I think back to my hometown of Philadelphia. I think back to the faces of the people I came up with that are apart of those statistics. I think of all the crime and senseless murders that have taken place there as a result of these statistics. In my last year there, 2006, there were over 400 murders. I’m willing to bet that many of the murderers were high school dropouts. It’s been said that more prisons are being built than schools and also that they determine how many to build based on 3rd grade test scores.

It pains me to see so many young people, that the system has labeled failures, go on to live lives of poverty, crime, or survival. We all know that in most cases your opportunities in life are very limited without a high school diploma.

My Philosophy

I say that education is dead because when you have these alarming graduation rates it means that progress and growth has stopped. Think about it, when you stop growing you start dying.

I’m someone who has made it out of the system that is failing so many of our youth. Also, I’m now a teacher in that system so I see what goes on up close and personal on a daily basis. So I have come up with my own philosophy as to how we can keep our youth engaged in the educational process.

While in college I was introduced to Howard Gardeners theory of multiple intelligences. According to Wikipedia, Gardner’s theory argues that intelligence, particularly as it is traditionally defined, does not sufficiently encompass the wide variety of abilities humans display. So, for example, a child who excels in math is not necessarily more intelligent than a child who struggles with it. The child who struggles with math may have what Gardener calls musical- rhythmic intelligence and be able to play songs on a piano just by hearing them. A child who struggles with reading may have what Gardener calls visual-spatial intelligence and be an excellent artist. With Gardeners theory every “intelligence” has merit, and no one intelligence is deemed more important than the other. You should check it out if you’ve never read about it, it’s a really interesting theory. To read about it click here.

The way that our schools are currently configured we truly only give merit to two types of intelligences, logical (Math) and linguistic (Reading & Writing). We try to squeeze every child into that box and for some it is not natural. Think of the stories of people who could not focus in school because all they could think about was their music, their art, their sport, their invention, their experiment, their business plan, or their next performance. People are driven by their passions.  However, we tell kids to suppress those passions and wait. I say why? Why wait? It’s my opinion that once a child hits middle school they should be in a position to start exploring their strengths and passions through the theory of multiple intelligences and be placed on a learning track which builds on their strengths and passions while teaching them all that they need to know logically (Math) and linguistically (Reading & Writing) through those experiences. As they progress through high school they should have more field based learning experiences where they can go out into the work world and experience the different fields and professions that fall within the areas of their intelligence. Those likely career paths are also listed for each “intelligence” here.

The benefits

The benefits would be huge. I guarantee you that a student who is mechanically inclined would be more likely to stay in school if instead of being forced to pass algebra he learned math as it applies to taking measurements to build something. The students would value there education more because they would see it as being relevant to what they have a passion to do in life.  Every student should not be forced onto the college prep track like the majority of our students are. They also should not be taught that college is the only path to success. College is great for many of us but I know people without college degrees who love what they do and make great money doing it.  I also know people who have spent thousands on a degree in a field in which they do not work in.

My point is this. The system is broke and we need creative ways to fix it.

That’s my Philosophy.

Kickin it on The Stoop,

Scott Speed

www.TheNeighborhoodSpeaks.com

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