Today there was only one 1st grade crier and one bloody nose. I think statistically things are improving but it is too early to say. I spend most of the day helping people write letters and numbers and point along to words as someone else reads outloud....describing reading strategies and helping to sound out, also telling little ones they can go to the bathroom, get a tissue, get a drink etc. I also spend a lot of time saying things like "no, not that way turn it around" which unless you do this all the time you might not remember that p's and b's and d's look a lot the same to a 1st grader, or that 2's and 5's can also flip around and look awfully confusing. Hmm, school is definitely difficult, especially when I need to remember things like, which way does the < point to mean less than, and which way for greater? Did I learn this and, more importantly can I keep it straight when looking at someone's worksheet upside down from across the table? I swear I am sped too, and I hope that makes me good at this.
I don't like to use this as a space to really discuss anything other than the bleh stuff that fills my brain and might be vaguely amusing to my friends. However, most of what fills my brain these days (past the daily learning of letters and numbers, IEP's, autism and dyslexia) is New Orleans. I couldn't really even watch an entire news broadcast last week and in the car I would switch back from NPR news, to a song on my CD player, to the news again, because the news would make me cry with anger (whenever bush talks) and then sadness (all the snapshots of survival amidst devastation) For more reading of blogs that say things better than I can, try here or here. There are many more but these two are the ones I glanced at before I started writing this, so I thought I would share.
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6 comments:
I've recently begun to be able to listen to NPR and the hurricane aftermath reports. I still can't watch it on TV. I do the same thing; listen for a few minutes, play a song, listen again, and play a song. Otherwise I'd be enveloped in anger.
I don't have that much restraint. I just watch and watch or read and read and by the time Keith gets home from work I am a wreck. It is times like these that I kick myself for not being a nurse (not that I ever had much interest in being a nurse) so I could go there or Mississippi and help. I am heartened by the fact that we (Greensboro) will be getting some of the displaced families and I will be able to volunteer to serve them meals at the coliseum. And I have Cecilia going through her toys to donate some to those children.
By the way, whatever method you teach to remember those symbols (< or >) and other stuff will stick with kids. I still rememeber the "trick" I learned in third grade to spell surprise and separate. Weird.
Congrats on your new sister-in-law!
I am kind of off NPR for a while... during their coverage of Katrina they segued to a song... yes that old jazz standard "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good". Are they fucking kidding?!?!?
I will close with my most favorite recent quote "Go Fuck Yourself, Mr Cheney."
I agree, all the stuff about New Orleans is awful. I listened to German news to hear what they have to say, it was pretty interesting.
In all seriousness, I was totally going to call you and Mike to hang out this weekend. But I had an emergency and had to come home for a couple days. I hope to be back as late as tuesday afternoon.
I'll be bugging you guys to hang out soon ^.^
The biggest insult I can give Zach right now is to call him republican. When he's telling me what he thinks I should do or questioning why I'm not doing something "right", I call him a republican. It works every time. Although if he were truly republican, he would talk at me speaking in terse, incoherant sentences and he would have the IQ of a flea.
So someone finally told Cheney to fuck off. What's going on? Can't he and Bush find anymore people to sit in their audience who agree with every word they say? Or has their screening system become faulty?
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