The Lost Art of Connecting

Heart to heart connecting is such a joy. And there is so much pain when it is not there. I became a teacher so I could challenge kids to higher things. I never dreamed they would be so resistant to those higher things.

I have ten beautiful children in my charge for 40 hours a week, but there are days I feel like that school teacher in Prince Caspian when Aslan comes and all her students turn into little pigs and run off.

I think tomorrow I will find a way to let them know that I love them and that they are precious to me.

By the by, it is really good to have you back here.

Lost In Translation

Yesterday we talked one of the girls I work with to answer a math question in class. It was a breakthrough for everybody. I am now convinced she will survive the Jefferson Middle School.

I was thinking, as I was sitting with them in class, translating the words they don't know, about how much I don't actually translate. This was provoked by a class discussion of the reasons why air planes don't work in space.(No air in space, led to a discussion of nothing.) It is difficult to explain what "nothing" means in English, let alone in a foreign language. This made me think, do I even know what nothing is? It's funny, because while I am thinking all this, I wonder what the girls are thinking, that they aren't saying. Or what *Korean girl whose name I can't spell* is ever thinking at all, since no one in the whole building understands her.

Non-verbal communication is so critical with her. Working with kids that don't know English, really gets you to think about creative methods of getting your point across. Lots of pointing. (and smiling is always nice).Drawing pictures.

Blue Crowned Mot-Mot

This guy is cool. He lives at the Vilas Zoo. I live at the Spring St Zoo. (lol.)

Cataloging Thoughts-higher education.

Well, since I haven't really posted on here in almost a year, I thought it might be cool to reclaim this blog to catalog a few thoughts. I see you were here a couple times, and maybe you will be again sometime. I'm changing the rules though.

Mere Potentiality Rules
1) Post whatever you want.
2) Post whenever you feel like it.

Today I had a break through. After having failed two weekly quizes in a row in organic chemistry with a whopping 3.5 and 4 out of ten, I finally pulled off a decent score of 8.5 out of ten (which also happened to be 3 points above average, and consequently my first A of the semester). It is strange the way professors try to kill your confidence. In my ornithology class the teacher blatantly announced to the class that since the class was curved, we were all competing for good grades and therefore should not help our classmates. What kind of bs is that? Intimidation just makes your students hate your teaching. (and think you're a crazy old bat.)

One of my teachers however has restored my faith in academic professions. First off, she is inspiring. She is hard of hearing, but she encourages participation and made it worth like half our grade. The class is soil science, so for people not considering this field, it is probably really boring. She makes it fun though, and has a great personality about it. We had one test, and the rest of our work is projects. Project are really nice, for learning things. (for me anyways.) I am one of those people that is very anxious about testing. I really don't learn that much from it. (Maybe I just say that because I am not particularly good at it. I don't really know.)Anyway, she makes me happy. She's unique. She can't hear that well, but she sure is good at listening.

I understand that UW-Madison is a research oriented college, but as an institution of higher education, I think there oughta be some emphasis on teaching the students that are paying for that research to occur. It's funny how in science, the quality of a school is determined by their research, the better the research, the better education you will supposedly get. I disagree. Research oriented schools are money grubbing, where classes are taught by researchers, not teachers.

There are people who are going to benefit from this education style though. Logan is one of them. He managed to get a job in a lab in the pediatrics department of the UW hospital where he studies the causes of leukemia. He'll probably get some grade A recommendations out of it and maybe even a prosperous career. It's all about getting in with the right people.