The Start of the School Year

I have changed from Early Childhood to Intermediate Elementary students and the learning curve is steep. To all those who think teaching is easy and anyone can do it, I challenge you to teach the first month of the year. Assessments begin immediately so you know what to teach. Schedules must be created and established. Students must begin to trust that you are trying to help them. Curriculum changes require new training. Grades must be entered, data collected and inspiration to learn instilled throughout. No wonder I'm exhausted. My thoughts go out to the people dealing with a hurricane on top of everything else. My work in New Orleans taught me to be grateful for all that I have, even in difficult times. I have discovered another age group that I love - 8, 9 and 10-year olds. They get so excited about technology, it seems a shame to use anything else. Yet their keyboard skills are a serious impediment to their pace.

I have committed to a presentation at the ICE Conference on Assistive Technology, a class at National-Louis University this fall, and a birthday party for my mom. Wish me luck!

Dog Days of Summer

I said to my daughter, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." She hadn't heard that before. So I told her next, "Hot enough for ya?" These are phrases everyone should know before their tenth birthday. Our air-conditioned existence is pushing us further and further away from Mother Nature. I am as guilty as anyone, sitting in my a/c house working on the computer instead of swimming at the pool. Tsk, tsk. Just a generation ago, my family of five would load up into our Buick, roll down and windows and proceed to sweat through Illinois and Iowa to get to Grandma Wallin's house in Omaha. As a parent, I could always tell when the temperature hit ninety degrees by the nature of the arguments. (How do you get the degree sign in HTML?) As we become a more urban population worldwide, will we forget why we need nature?

Teaching Gifted Children

What an amazing summer I am having. For the first time in my life, I am teaching gifted students. I have felt for a decade that this is an area of mission for me, but I had no idea it would bring me such joy. I have taught two weeks of computer animation and will teach four weeks of Lego/Logo. My students have shown such a capacity for learning that they have exceeded all of my expectations. I know that NCLB has done some good things, like highlighting the difference between achievement in different racial and socio-economic groups, but gifted children have been almost ignored by the federal government. Joan Franklin Smutny has dedicated her life to the gifted, and her incredible staff works intensely to meet the needs of the students. The Center for Gifted link is in my easy reading list.

The End of School

I am always a bit flummoxed at the end of the school year. The pace for the last month of school builds to a crescendo of paperwork, packing, and seeing old friends one last time. This year is especially poignant because I really won't see the staff at Hawthorn again, except maybe when I'm shopping. It's hard to say good-bye to people who are amazing in their capacity to care. It's also hard to face an uncertain future with a new age group far from most of what I have done in my career. Summer school poses a new challenge as well, as I will leave delayed preschoolers and move to gifted kids, grades 2-6. I hope to inspire and challenge all of them in classes about animation and Lego-Logo. Stay tuned for further adventures.