Ordinary Time

I have a lot of various thoughts running through my head that I think are related, let's see if I can combine them all into something coherent. I actually have no idea if I can.  To begin, a brief outline of my differences trains of thought. First, J. and I often discuss learning and education. That's not surprising since he works in a college and I homeschool and read educational theory for fun. He mentioned that some college students, those who were in high school during Covid in particular, seem to be struggling more than previous students.  Then there was the conversation where I kvetched that with the prevalence of only online textbooks these days, there would be no way I would ever have been successful. I know myself well enough to know I cannot learn from text on a screen. I find it difficult to focus, sustain concentration, and to remember things. This is a telling because with a print book, I can succeed at a very high level. I did extremely well in school.  Next...

I just got back from a committee meeting at church where we are starting an inclusion ministry.  Committee meetings are a lot of peopling so I'm done in.  But it's good this will be short because I have an assignment for you. I want you to listen to this keynote address on inclusion. It's about an hour, so put it on in your car as you're doing all your driving. It is well worth the effort and time and one of the best things I've heard about inclusion and disability. Even if you don't have someone in your life with a disability.... particularly if you don't have someone in your life with a disability listen to this. We can all do better. We can all do small things lots of the time. It adds up and before you know it, we've changed the world.  Inclusion Institute Keynote Address 

[Spoiler alert if you've never read Jane Eyre and don't want the plot spoiled. Stop reading now.] Today in Jane Eyre, we learned that Mr. Rochester was already married and his mad wife lived on the third floor of his estate. I paused and asked if anyone was surprised. No, no one was surprised. The foreshadowing is extremely heavy. Plus, as everyone pointed out, there was still too much of the book left for a facile happy ending of Jane and Mr. Rochester getting married.  I was telling this to J. tonight while dinner was cooking. He asked if Jane Eyre was published in installments like Dickens' work. I didn't know, so I looked it up. The short answer is no, it was all published together, but in three volumes meaning you didn't have to buy the entire expensive book at one time. As I was searching up the answer, I typed in, "Was Jane Eyre..." and continued with my question. But, I was also interested in the predictive questions that popped up. The very first ...

I promised yesterday that I would continue sharing my disturbing memories from my gifted education experience. Fun times, huh? My elementary school began a pull-out gifted program when I was in fifth grade. More specifically I should say the school district began a gifted program because it wasn't housed at my grade school. Instead, a couple of times a week, I was bused in the middle of the day to another grade school where the gifted program was housed. As much as I can remember, it was essentially free time in a classroom filled with interesting things we could use and look at. I don't remember having extremely strong feelings about it one way or the other, but did wonder why these cool things weren't shared with everyone. You want to know what I remember most about that year? The school the program was housed in was an open classroom model. (I know that I have just significantly dated myself as open classrooms were definitely a 70's thing.) It was the open classrooms...

Last night, I announced to J. that I needed to revise my self-image a bit because I had a revelation that I wasn't actually a perfectionist. I've been calling myself a 'recovering perfectionist' for years, so this felt like a huge shift. Since I'm writing about it here, I'm evidently still doing some processing. It is processing that I think might be useful for other people, though, so there is more going on than just my own navel gazing. It was all because of reading Brené Brown's recent book, Atlas of the Heart. Here is what I read: "Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working toward excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think? It may seem counterintuitive, but one of the biggest barriers to working toward mastery is perfectionism. In our leadership research, we've learned that a...

I know I say this somewhat frequently, but if you want to really think about education and learning, you need to be in the process of learning new things yourself. If you are not learning anything new (and frankly, that's just bad for your brain), then the rosy hue of amnesia will settle in, not unlike how parents eventually forget how exhausting and difficult having a newborn can be and really only remember the good parts. We tend to remember the good things about school, blocking out the more difficult things, lending our school memories a somewhat idealistic hue. (This, of course, is not the case if there was nothing good about school for you. In that case, there is nothing to idealize.) We also forget exactly how difficult and vulnerable learning something new can be.  Along with reminding us of the challenges of learning, when we attempt new things, we might discover that we don't learn in ways we thought we did or ways that are common in a traditional school setting. By e...

I'm resorting to one of the questions people gave me for when I was feeling fresh out of ideas about what to write about. Actually it's going to be answering two questions, but they are related. But first we have to go back in time for a bit. It's all related, I promise. A couple of days ago I was scrolling through old posts because one of the best parts about keeping a blog about our life long term is that I can easily go back and see what we were doing at any given time. I remember this about March last year as well, but I am finding myself having to do quite a bit of mindfulness work (along the lines of what I do with R. to help keep her regulated) because I am finding vague anxiety randomly creeping up on me. When this happens, it can be helpful to see if it correlates to something stressful that happened in the past. Knowing you are in a traumaversary can help you ride it out without worrying about it too much. It's just a thing to get through and nothing more. Cer...

I am not stranger to private lessons. I have taught via private lessons for many years... piano, horseback riding, even knitting. My children have taken a wide variety of private lessons over the years as have I. I still take weekly riding lessons. My personal opinion is that if you are teaching anyone anything, you should also be in the process of learning something new yourself. Learning can be a humbling experience and a teacher needs to constantly have that feeling in the forefront of their mind by experiencing it first hand. This aspect of teaching and learning is not what I want to focus on tonight, though. My riding lesson was yesterday. On the face of it, it wasn't a fantastic lesson. I couldn't find my balance on the horse I was riding and was displeased with my performance. I ask a lot of questions during my lesson, especially if I feel as though I am not riding as well as I would like. Because of this, by the end of the lesson I had sorted out what my problem was and...