Life's stories connect lives
Living in the country, I’m no stranger to poor cell phone reception. We’re simply too far away from the signal.
We moved so far out in the country, that when we first moved here, we had to walk the quarter of a mile back to the tree line in the field behind our house and climb a tree stand–hunting stand for those non-hunters out there–to get a signal. We could have been in one of those Verizon commercials like the guy who recently switched to Sprint. [Read more…]
“Just in case anyone was under the impression that I have it all together:
Loading up my children in the van to go anywhere makes me a lunatic with a personality disorder. I can go from a calm, loving mother to a scary monster in .2 seconds. There has got to be an easier way to get somewhere…”
My friend and colleague posted this yesterday, and I immediately jumped in my Tardis and headed back to the early ’90s [Read more…]
The online school where I teach has a cool tool that analyzes grade book data and recognizes students whose grades have started a downward trend. Most of the time, these grades have fallen because students had a tech issue and submitted the assignment in the wrong format or on the wrong assignment link. Putting a zero in the grade book makes it difficult for students–and parents–to ignore and forget to fix.
For years, I could not bring myself to write that zero in the grade book. It broke my heart. After all, I had no intention of leaving it a zero. Why should I traumatize a straight-A student with a zero? [Read more…]
My mother’s birth happened as The Roaring Twenties roared to a halt and ushered in The Great Depression. Her formative years characterized by want, she learned by her parents’ example to make good use of what she had. She didn’t throw much away, and she also didn’t have resources to become a huge consumer. Being raised with very little made me want the things I never had growing up [Read more…]
Most people have a love-hate relationship with the end of summer. Usually I feel the same way, but this year is a little different, and I’m missing the old familiar boxes of curriculum arriving for my four kiddos who have grown up and gone on their ways. Those boxes and all the planning that went along with them marked the return of a natural rhythm of rising, learning, playing, eating, cleaning, and retiring early to begin again the following day. [Read more…]