IRD: Are You a Real Teacher? Or Do You Just Homeschool?

Last year, teaching for the Institute for Reading Development was all-encompassing.
This year, it is part of what I'm doing. There are other parts as well.

The work itself has become more interesting because I understand the curriculum enough now to modify it (slightly) as needed to fit the real people seated in front of me. And this means that I have begun to think about individual students more, and try to figure out what makes them tick--at least as far as their reading goes. For example, is that middle school kid who is trying to outcool everyone a problem-child? Or is he sorely lacking in confidence in his abilities?

Whereas last year, I was struggling mightily to just master the curriculum, so that I only had time for a few fleeting thoughts about students, this year as I sat down to write my Book Level Assessments (pre-Reading through Grade 5), and my Book Level Recommendations (Grade 6 - Adult), I enjoyed being able to summon the face of each student (with help from my seating chart) and with it a sense of the reader and the person.

There are still some things that I am still surprised and nonplussed by when I encounter them. For example, people parading into class late week after week, even though they have paid tuition for the course, and even more puzzling, people who pay and then don't show up. Period. Strange.

Adults these days!

And then there are the parents who walk in with a chip on their shoulder. Despite my string of degrees, I will never be good enough to teach their Johnny or Suzy, the one going into honors English, you know. They demand: "Are you a real teacher?!"

I am always tempted to say, "Why, no! I'm a holographic teacher. You know, like the doctor on Star Trek Voyager." But then, I would hope that most people who love Star Trek would not be that dismissive and disrespectful. There are quite a few parents I have encountered who don't have their manners very solidly pinned on.

This year, I had a parent overhear my conversation with two homeschooled students about how I homeschooled my own son. She didn't talk to me. She didn't clarify her notions. She called the company and complained that I obviously "couldn't handle the class" because I was a "homeschooled teacher." Of course I couldn't, but it would have been great to walk up to her and talk about Abigail Adams, one of the most intellectually astute women in American history, who was also a "homeschool teacher."

By the way, the two homeschooled kids in that class, the ones deprived of "real" teaching? They are among the best readers in the class. Figures.

I have no idea what the IRD teacher support staff think about complaints like this one. My teacher supervisor asked me directly: "Are you a homeschool teacher?" Well, yes, but like most homeschool moms, or like moms in general, that's not all I have done my whole life.

It is at these kinds of moments that I have to repress that part of my that wants to list all of my degrees, honors, publications, and my annual income. But it would be dishonorable of me to play that kind of "one-up the Joneses" game. So I just smile and say, "Yes, I'm a real teacher. Yes, I did homeschool my son. And I still miss it."

And that is true.
I still miss it very much.

Oh, My Aching Feet! IRD Reprise

I wasn't going to teach reading this summer.



Last year gave me much "rich experience" and it also meant that I had no summer weekends, and aching feet. My arthritis--part of a larger medical condition--means that standing for hours on the concrete-based floors of classrooms is murder on my feet. After two full days of teaching last summer, I'd come home limping and almost lame. I'd lose whole days off sitting with my feet up. Teaching requires lots of standing, bending, twisting, and walking. Only in the Jewish context is it done sitting at a table with students.

I loved the teaching, but I hated the pain. And the weekends away from my family. And the lost Sabbaths.



So, when the company, the Institute of Reading Development, sent out the re-application paperwork, I studiously ignored it. I filed it in the recycle bin and promptly emptied it.

Not this summer. I was planning a summer of working on my dissertation proposal and getting the guest room/library (formerly the Chem Geek Princess's room) organized. THAT would be enough.



Sigh. I am an accomodating midwesterner transplanted to manana land. It's very difficult to say "no" and stick to it when they e-mail me saying how much they want me. Especially when I believe in the program and know it works for students. And extra-especially when I get such a charge out spending time with kids of all ages and books. It's addictive.



I tried. I e-mailed back to my last summer's teaching supervisor, saying that I liked the work, but that I was unwilling to teach on Saturdays. She e-mailed back saying that, unfortunately, they had already split classes for the first five weeks on Saturday afternoon, BUT that they would work very hard to accomodate my need during the second five weeks.



The next gambit: I would like to teach, but it would need to be part time. By return e-mail, IRD said they needed a half-time teacher in New Mexico, as they had already hired a full-time person.



I caved, glutton for feet-punishment that I am.

It is almost three quarter's time this first term, and I have almost every level of course IRD offers. That's exciting.

I got out the wool socks to cushion my feet. (I know it's summer, but they help). I went through re-training--which was a much more pleasant experience than the marathon first training.



I started Saturday afternoon. I have had full classes with great kids, ranging from the sweet eagerness of pre-K to mid-school age, ones who are shy or social, resistant and/or thoughtful. And now that I understand the IRD scope and sequence, I find that I can focus on them and their issues in ways I could not last year. I feel the flow of the class sequence, and I can enjoy the process with the students, quickly able to ascertain which ones need to move (two so far), which ones need a firm hand, and which ones need to be encouraged to talk.



I am beginning to feel like an experienced IRD teacher.



But, Oh! My aching feet. And this year, Oh! My aching knees.
(RA has the nasty habit of progressing).

The lifting of heavy boxes, the crouching by a table to encourage a little one to speak up, the twisting between desks to listen to a second-grader lisp through an Easy Reader passage: these all take their toll.

Teaching is for young people.

And those who wear Z-Coils.

I am about to be among the latter. The volunteer choir coordinator at our synagogue (and her husband) both swear by them. They say that they can go through a whole day standing and still go dancing that night.



I have been thinking about Z-Coils for a while anyway.

But I have resisted. I don't want to wear "old lady shoes" when I am not yet (quite) fifty.

Never mind that I have already outlived the lifespan of a pioneer woman, and have yet to develop wrinkles! (I keep my fair Eastern European complexion out of the high-elevation New Mexico sun. I have always envied the brown beauty of the easy-tanning complexions. But, alas, I did not choose my ancestors).



But Z-Coils have gone from one or two utilitarian styles, to a range of colors and styles--from sandals, to hiking boots, to walking shoes! I went on line this morning, and saw several possibilities.



So, I'm soon off to Z-Coil. I've got to get me some of these . . .



My grandma never wore shoes like this.
But then, sensible at fifty, she never hiked Sedillo Canyon with two dogs in tow, either!

IRD Term II Week V: Endings...

...AND MORE REFLECTIONS ON READING

Yesterday, I finished my summer job with a spirited discussion of a William Sayoran short story, My Cousin Dikran, the Orator from the book My Name is Aram. The discussion was the last of my adult classes. Yesterday, I also did a final discussion of Banner in the Sky for young adults (mostly middle schoolers) and read The Cat in the Hat with 4-5 year-olds. The lessons were similar to ones that I have been teaching all summer, but I had those flashes of "teacher" moments; those times when a teacher realizes that the students have progressed about as far as each one can at that level and that they really don't need the instruction from me anymore. In other words, those moments that a teacher knows that the time has come to move on.

The season is subtly changing here in Sedillo, and in the cool morning mists, one can read fall in the offing. It is time to move on. New adventures and challenges await for me, for Los Pecos Homeschool, and for the family. But more on that later. Now is the time to wrap-up the summer's work, take stock and do the necessary chores of closing down the summer's employment.

Today, as I am puttering about--filling out the exit evaluation for IRD, getting ready to ship books and materials back, thinking about the upcoming year of study--I have also been thinking about what I have learned and accomplished this summer. Although there are many areas where I might have done better at reaching the children and adults that I taught, I do think I have helped almost every student make progress in learning to read and in developing the skills at the right level to read with absorption for pleasure, and to use active reading skills to accomplish reading goals. I do think my summer has been fulfilling in the work I had chosen to do.

I also think I have learned a tremendous amount about teaching reading skills at every level, and I have seen that reading skills need to be taught at every level from beginner to adult, and I have learned how curriculum to teach these skills ought to be developed. I have also learned that many skills can be meaningfully acquired and enhanced in only five weeks (or approximately 10 hours) of direct instruction, with four to five hours of guided practice and independent practice to supplement. I believe that the skills acquired can be sustained and enhanced by continuing practice on the part of the student over the next year. That, of course, is up to the student.

All of what I learned only makes me wonder further at the resistance of government schools to providing such skills instruction at every level. As I have said before, American public education does bring almost every child through the skills instruction up to about the third grade level, which means successful decoding skills. After that, reading instruction as a skill shifts to the use of reading for acquiring content in the various subjects, as if the higher-order skills cannot be taught through direct instruction. But they can be taught, and in the talks I have had with my adult students, the students expressed quite clearly the need for such instruction so that reading becomes a critical skill for thinking, as well as a vehicle of absorption and pleasure.

When I taught high school science, I noticed when I attempted to discuss assigned textbook readings with my students, that although they can successfully decode the words, many of them did not appear to comprehend what they read. I used to say that what they read appeared to "go in one eye and out the other." My experience this summer has not only helped me to learn why this is so, but what to do about it.

I also have learned why certain popular remedies, such as summer reading lists, are not by themselves helpful to the problem. Certainly, a summer reading list seems to address the issue that students are not doing enough reading in school. Well, then, the logic goes, we must make them read in the summer. However, in the schools I have taught at, the summer reading assignment was followed up by a very short discussion and a quiz. There were no extensive book discussions, and no guidance was provided to enhance the reading skills of the students in order to make the summer reading productive. In the eyes of the students, it was simply another hoop to jump through in order to get points towards their grades. It had no other value. How could it be anything else to students who are not fundamentally "readers" in the rich sense?
And to be fair, none of the teachers involved had every really learned how to teach reading in our content fields--despite having paid for courses by that name in order to be certified. So we had no idea how to make the experience more than a hoop to jump through.

If I ever teach high school science again, I would not assign summer reading unless I was willing to gather students over the course of a summer month for skills instruction and book discussions. There I could model for them, and they could model for each other, the type of thinking needed to truly delve into the assigned book. Instead, I think I would assign a book to be read over the course of a semester, and devote one class period each week to reading instruction and discussion so that the assignment would have some meaning for the students.

Most likely, though, I will not be teaching high school science again. Instead I will be likely go on to do research and perhaps teach at the university level. Still, what I have learned this summer will enrich my thinking about the research I am planning. It will also alter how I would teach both undergraduate and graduate classes using the primary literature of the field.

This summer's work has indeed been fruitful on multiple levels for me. And it has provided me with more questions to consider, and more ways to think about my future as a teacher.

Oh! And I am so not from California! I forgot this goal! I did have a lot of fun teaching--especially during the second term, when the specifics of curriculum delivery became more natural to me, and I could focus on more of the meta-aspects of teaching.

IRD Term II Week IV: Book Dreams

Yesterday I finished teaching week four of the IRD late summer term. Tomorrow I begin the last week of my summer job teaching reading skills to children and adults. The week went well--it was one of those flow weeks in teaching, where no problems seemed large, and I had fun with my students in different ways in all my classes. Nothing stood out, the week just smoothly went by. The lessons structure seems automatic to me now, as I approach the end, and so I have much more time to enjoy my students and enjoy, too, instructing them.

Although I am going to be really glad to have weekends back to spend with the Engineering Geek, the Chem Geek Princess, and Boychick (aka N.), I had a dream last night that shows that I am still going to be sad to see this summer teaching gig end. In my dream, I was at the IRD Offices on Ontario Street in the North River Neighborhood of Chicago. And I dreamed that we were having a celebration--a book celebration. The whole town had turned out, the kids and adults all wearing costumes and carrying their favorite book. John Boyd (the director of teaching) took us all on a tour of the crowded streets. We were collecting books and passing out books. As we walked along, I saw Frodo and his Fellowship. Boychick was dressed as Legolas, with long hair and bow. We turned the corner, and I saw Dicken's Pip, and Oliver Twist, and the Pickwicks. Across the street by the Lebanese restaurant, I saw Harry Potter, with Ron and Hermione in tow, all waving wands. We crossed Erie Street, and there was the Chem Geek Princess, carrying a box labeled Schroedinger's Cat. (It's Heinlein!) There was music, and, of course food! And we IRD teachers were working hard, passing out new books and collecting old ones and stacking them on the El Station Steps over Franklin Avenue.

I wonder if part of this dream came from my discussion yesterday with my Albuquerque adult class. We spent the last part of class reading and discussing Dana Gioia's speech On the Importance of Reading, which was published in the June 2006 issue of The Commonwealth. Many of the students were shocked and surprised about the decline of reading in the US and the importance of reading to civic values and American culture. Some were not impressed with Gioia's program, The Big Read. They said it was "lame." I think those who thought so were thinking it was too little, too late, and that education must be changed. (IRD president Paul Copperman did try to reform reading instruction in Americans schools, alas, to no avail). However, even the students who were critical of The Big Read, thought that Albuquerque ought to participate. So they took themselves off through a cloudburst to Starbucks to discuss it further.

Reading Gioia's essay always makes me think about Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451,"the temperature at which paper burns." It is a novel about an American in which the TV screens take up all four walls and are interactive, and in which billboards on the highways get bigger and bigger as the traffic goes by faster and faster. It is an America in which firemen do not put out fires, but rather burn books because the consumers (they are no longer citizens) demanded to be protected against the kind of thinking that reading engenders. In the novel, some people leave the cities and become living books--they can recite an entire book or volume.

Our discussion last night, thoughts of Gioia's article, thoughts of the end of this summer teaching gig; all of these seem to have caused me to have book dreams last night.
I was told that I would not only learn to teach differently, which was a true statement; I was also told that I would be doing important work: The kind of work that would enable me to fulfill my reading passion by sharing it with others. Sometimes, when we are confronted with the brass tacks of our work, we forget the underlying reason for doing it. And then it comes back to us in dreams.

Thinking About Reading and the Brain

I've been thinking a lot about reading this summer, and in talking to others about it, I was given the title of this book:

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolfe, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2007.


Disclaimer: Reading one book does not an expert make! Although I am studying neuropsychology, and I do have a biological sciences background and recent coursework in neurobiology, most of my technical reading thus far has been in general neurobiology, general neurophysiology, and child psychopathology; my interest in these areas has been mainly about differences in visual processing found in children with autism, and also in certain other populations, including a sub-set of gifted children. I have gotten interested in the neuropsychology of reading because I am teaching reading this summer using a unique methodology developed by the Institute of Reading Development. My background helps me understand this book a little differently than the lay reader might, but I claim no expertise in this area. I have downloaded some of the source research studies described in this book, but I have not yet read them. Wolf and her colleagues are the true experts and I urge you to read this book and go beyond it to get the full implications of this work.

Whew! I just had to say that because what I am about to say is personal and speculative and is no way to be construed as having come down from Sinai!

This book is really three discourses in one. The first is about the development of writing and reading as a human cultural technology, and the implications thereof for changes in the connections between relatively fixed structures in the human brain that have not been modified for reading. The second is about the development of reading skills for individuals in literate cultures, how it differs across languages, and the implications of reading for the individual's brain and self. The third is about what may be going on in the brains of those for whom reading does not develop in the expected ways, those who have dyslexia.

All three discourses are interesting and well-explained, and they are all related to the others in complex ways. It is not easy to tease them apart. For example, the development of writing and reading as a cultural technology at the beginning of history (literally!) six thousand years ago, has made changes in neural connections in literate brains that have fascinating implications for the development of each individual reader and has also created within literate individuals a different mode of thinking and self-understanding from those who are not literate. In turn, intriguing new neurobiological discoveries about dyslexia, built on the hypotheses of pioneers such as Orton, demonstrate that reading is not natural to the human brain; rather it relies on older structures and abilities that are useful for other, more innate tasks. Wolf is very good at teasing these stories apart while maintaining the connections among them, and treats the reader to passages about meaning that are quite beautifully written.

I was most interested in Wolf's discussion of the development of the expert reader. When a child first begins to read, certain neural connections begin to form in the temporal-parietal regions of the brain that create associations among nearby primary and auditory centers, primary visual centers in the occipital lobe, and the language centers in the parietal lobe and frontal lobes. Normally, these connections are primarily developed in the left hemisphere, which also provides the exquisite timing necessary for fluency, although some right hemispheric involvement also occurs, the extent of which depends on the language and writing system being read. As the child works on decoding, his brain recruits a great number of neural connections, because the child is a novice. A great deal of gray matter, white matter and energy are required in this laborious process. Feed your children often and well, and give them lots of encouragement through this stage!

When fluent reading develops, more and more of the associations necessary to decoding and parsing written words to extract meaning become automatized, and fewer neurons and neural systems are needed for the task. As reading becomes automatic, the number of neurons needed for the mechanics of it become fewer, and more brain "space" is freed up for the meta-cognitive work that makes reading so valuable and pleasurable. What is really interesting is that these meta-cognitive tasks are done in the right hemisphere, where concepts, patterns, and meaning are associated with the reader's previous experience. Connections are therefore made across the hemispheres and reading becomes an internal dialogue between the reader and his experiences and the words written on the page. This is what makes reading a transcendent experience that creates for the reader the ability to bring herself whole--mind, heart, and soul--into the mind of another, or into wholly imaginary worlds that become real through the act of reading.

Like everything learned, reading does change our brains. The brain is composed of structures that are relatively stable; that is they are much the same in a modern literate person as they were in our Cro Magnon ancestors forty thousand years ago. However, the connections between these structures do change with the development of expert reading, and the weaving together of dedicated neural systems means that the literate person gains a new way of thinking that is not available to the non-reader.

There is a great deal of concern, especially among those of us who could not live without the meta-cognitions that reading has given us, about the decline of reading in American society, in favor of the more completely visual information technologies now developing. And although we know we cannot turn back the clock, we are concerned because we know that the assimilation of vast amounts of information is not equivalent to the ability to think meta-cognitively, reflectively, in the way of an expert reader.

One valid reason for this concern relates back to the issue of timing in the firing of neurons, which primarily developed in the language centers of the left hemisphere for the purpose of sequences. There are "delay neurons" whose job is to slow down neural firing, allowing time for sequencing and decision. Reading, which requires exquisite timing for fluency, supports in turn, time for contemplation and association with experience by the reader. It is not at all clear that the more graphic, iconic nature of the internet will do the same.

From my IRD reading teacher training, I learned that the real bottleneck for developing readers occurs between the stage where the child learns decoding and basic fluency skills, and the stage where the child reads enough to develop the fluency and comprehension required to achieve identification and absorption in works of literary fiction. Almost all American children achieve the first, and thus are not technically illiterate. Fewer and fewer achieve the second. My training manual says the following"

"The reason is straightforward enough: many children don't do enough reading in chapter books...for identification and absorption to become automatic...The reasons can probably be grouped into three main categories. First there is not general, widespread acceptance or understanding on the central importance of Stage 3 goals (i.e. fluency and comprehension enough to support identification and absorption. EHL) and consequently, most schools require an inadequate amount of reading in chapter books... (I)nstead, school reading often focuses on short pieces or excerpts....Second, reading has a hard time competing with electronic media...And third, children who achieve fluency in chapter books late in elemetary school have little opportunity to catch the reading bug before being caught up in all the competing demands of the middle school years."
--Version SU 08 1.5--4/14/08, Institute of Reading Development

In answer to Lisa's question, posed in the comments here, I think that given what we know about reading and the brain at this time, it would be a good idea to limit use of the internet as an educational tool, and to limit also the use of electronic media for entertainment, at least until a child has achieved the Stage 3 goals and can read with identification and absorption in chapter books. In this way we can ensure that the vast majority of kids achieve the neural connections necessary for the kind of associational thinking and reflection that are the gift of the expert reader. Then the internet can become a tool for the creation of ever more diverse associations and the development of new ways of thinking that do not displace those acquired through reading development.

However, we must also continue to remind ourselves that for students with dyslexia, who are using different neural pathways to develop reading, all bets are off. They may need and benefit from technology in ways that do not benefit the majority of our students. But that would be another blog!

I'm closing with Maryanne Wolf's version of Hemmingway's "one true sentence," from her conclusion to Chapter 6: The Unending Story of Reading Development in Proust and the Squid:

"The end of reading development doesn't exist; the unending story of reading moves ever forward, leaving the eye, the tongue, the word, the author for a new place from which the "truth breaks forth, fresh and green," changing the brain and the reader every time."

May her words whet your reading appetite. Go forth and read great books!

IRD: Recommendations for the Adult Booklist

One of the benefits for students and/or their parents who take the IRD summer reading classes is a booklist for each level to provide some of the best books for reading for absorption and pleasure. The one level that does not get such a list is the adult speedreading course. This year, the company has asked teachers to make a list of books in several categories for a forthcoming adult level book list. This list will be unique because it contains not only works of classical and contemporary fiction, but will also have non-fiction categories.

I have been working on my list as requested, and here are some books that I have read that I believe belong on such a list. I don't know if it was wanted, but I included a short annotation about each book.

I thought readers of my blog would be interested in some of these books, too!
I am still working on the list and have not gotten to other genres, so expect updates in the coming weeks.

GENERAL INTEREST NON-FICTION

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollen

This book is a fascinating read that brings us from the farm, field or garden to the table for four different kinds of meals. In the process, readers learn about modern agribusiness and monocultures, nutritional science, what "organic" does not mean in the common parlance, and the ethics of eating meat and hunting. The book is well written and enjoyable reading.


Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
by Brian Doherty

This book is an excursion through the history and people of a modern, radical political movement by a senior editor for Reason. Though a "fringe" group in the eyes of the dominant political parties, the Libertarian movement has had a surprising effect on recent politics in the United States. Like many such movements, this one is filled with fascinating and eccentric people who have uncommon interests. For example the founders of the L-5 Society for Space Colonization and the founder of the X-Prize for private spaceship design are all libertarian. This book is well written, and is in turn both serious and humorous in style. It's absorbing and enjoyable.

Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom by Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath

As per the title, this is an account of the demise of classical learning at the university level. It is also a discussion of important changes in university education brought about by the wholesale acceptance of post-modernism as critical thought in the arts, humanities and education departments. It is also a passionate argument for the eternal verity of beauty, ethics and wisdom brought about by the Greeks that are central to Western culture and tradition, and the need to teach them to each generation of scholars in the universities of the West. This book is both erudite and entertaining. Anyone who has had experience or exposure to the modern university will be nodding their heads in agreement at much of what is written here. The authors have included a booklist for the interested layman entitled: 'When All We Can Do is Read,' as well as notes for those who wish to pursue the topic on a more scholarly level.

SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY

Three Hainish Novels (also published as Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions) by Ursula K. LeGuin

These are some of LeGuin's best works. The story woven through the three novellas is that of the developing ability to communicate instantaneously across time and space using a new technology, and from mind to mind using a unique human sense first discovered on the world of the first novella, Rocannon's world. In her evocative prose, LeGuin explores the themes of exile and return, friendship and the rejection of otherness, and the spirituality of human freedom and choice. This book was so absorbing and so beautiful that I felt a sudden sense of loss when I finished and had to rejoin the everyday world on earth.

Other recommended sci-fi by LeGuin: The Telling, Four Ways of Forgiveness, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Dispossed.

He, She, and It
by Marge Piercy

This novel is two stories interwoven together. One is a re-telling of the creation of the Golem of Prague by the Maharal, a European Jewish story that inspired such works as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. The second story is of a near-future dystopia in which plague and environmental crisis have rendered earth as a world ruled by corporations, and free cities survive by selling proprietary knowledge and skills to them. The story is about the creation of an android who has human capacities as a weapon. The book explores the theme of what it means to be human through such motifs as gender, technology, marriage, parenthood, slavery, freedom, and spirituality. The writing is rich and the story is absorbing.

Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper

This is the story of a choice for the fate of the earth told through the images of classic fairy tales. Time travel, space travel and magic are all devices through which the story is told and a mystery is solved. Themes include life and death, beauty and terror, spirituality and evil. The location of the repository of earth's life forms, knowledge and wisdom is found in a very surprising place; this absorbing story has implications for all of us in all times and places.

GENERAL INTEREST SCIENCE WRITING

The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Normal Doige, MD

This is a well written account of recent discoveries about neuroplasticity told through accounts of people with brain injuries and diseases, and the detective work of neuroscientists over the past 100 years who overturned the paradigm of the unchangeable brain. It is well written with clear scientific explanations rendered into layman's terms.


Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolfe

This popularization of the neuroscience and cultural history of reading expounds on three subjects: the cultural and neurobiological aspects of the development of writing and reading in human history; the neurobiology, methodologies, and culture of reading development in contemorary literate societies; and what happens when the brain cannot learn to read in the usual ways, the neurobiology of dyslexia. This is written for lay readers and explanations are well rendered for this purpose. Wolf is passionate about the problems in the culture of reading brought about by popular educational trends, and she draws parallels between the concerns of the Greeks (especially Plato) during the transition to alphabetic writing and reading and comtemporary concerns about the transition to digitally codified information. Very interesting and well done, and Wolf includes notes for the scientists among the general readers.

The Search for Longitude by Dava Sobel

This is an account of how the problem of calculating longitude for navigation was solved and why it took unil the late 18th century to solve it. As part of the problem the reader is brought on a journey through such subjects as the measurement of time, astronomy, and the art of navigation at sea. This is a fascinating and encouraging look at human ingenuity in the face of a great scientific problem. Sobel tells the story well!

Go forth and read great books!

IRD Term II Week II: The Engineering Geek Has an Epiphany!

Yesterday, I arrived home at 8 PM after completing the second week of the second term.
Things are going well and I am into a teaching routine now, though I was quite tired from the long week just past, in which I had taught an extra day as a substitute. I also think I need new shoes--the really comfortable sandals I bought in May are now worn out; I am on my feet most of the hours that I teach. I may get five minutes to inhale half-a sandwich and sit down between classes. I think this is the one aspect of IRD that I would change: A dedicated lunch period of 1/2 hour would make the days less physically and mentally stressful. Anyway, this afternoon I will hie myself off the Shoes On a Shoestring to see what they've got!

Last term I had no adult classes assigned to me, but this term I have two.
I am really enjoying helping adults improve their reading and comprehension. In the adult classes, we focus mainly on non-fiction and only do some fiction in the last week of the course. These past two weeks we have been reading Dibs: In Search of Self by Dr. Virginia Axeline. This is an excellent book in it's own right. Virginia Axeline is credited with inventing Play Therapy for the purpose of helping psychologically troubled kids. In this book she tells the story of her interactions with a highly gifted young boy who does not interact with the world. In our discussions of the book in both classes, we have touched on the ideas of respect for children as people, how a child's therapy can heal the family, and also the need not to make snap judgements about a person's abilities and development.
This has been very interesting to me, and the insights from our discussions have given me new insights into my third career--that of a neurospychologist.

Within the IRD curriculum, however, we are using Dibs not only to discuss but to develop improved reading skills and comprehension strategies for adults so that they may take active control of their reading. Active control here means that adults consider their purpose for the reading that they are doing and adjust their strategies accordingly in order to achieve the greatest reading efficiency and also take pleasure from all their reading. What is interesting about teaching adults is that, although they generally do not resist the strategies we teach to the point of refusal, they do complain--vociferously--about them because the strategies feel awkward after a lifetime of poor reading strategies and habits. This is particularly true of the older students. And the engineers.

The Engineering Geek is taking my Wednesday evening class in Santa Fe. He has been complaining off and on over the six years of our marriage about how difficult reading is for him and how unpleasurable it is as a consequence. A few years ago, when I first matriculated for my Special Education MA, I received a flyer from UNM Continuing Ed for a speed reading class. (It was the IRD program, though I did not know anything about it at the time). Being a very fast reader with many academic successes under my belt, I felt no need to take such a class, so I put the flyer in the recycle. The Engineering Geek rescued it (he throws nothing away) and carried it around for the entire summer, but did nothing about it. (This is, I have learned, typical for him. Every project not involved with his work starts out this way. Eventually, I make things happen and he grumbles and then is grateful. Sigh. A woman's work...). So this summer when he learned about my schedule and was fretting about my driving home from Santa Fe on the back roads late at night, I suggested that he take the adult class there and make the drive with me. He grumbled about the cost a little bit, but when I got him a discount, he agreed.

At the first class I discovered one reason that reading was so difficult for him. He reads very slowly. Reading a book slowly is like watching Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies in slow motion: it allows the mind to wander. A slow reader ends up losing the thread of the story or explanation, and must re-read and re-read in order to remember what was read. But the adult class is a Speed Reading class. So the Engineering Geek was taught the techniques to improve reading speed. I noticed that he was having trouble with them; his technique was jerky, and it appeared that he was still re-reading. I was not sure if he was not comprehending or if he did comprehend but didn't realize it. (This can happen as one learns speed reading). So I listened to him and his partner as they retold what they had just read. The Engineering Geek was having great difficulty finding the words he wanted, which slowed him down and interfered with memory. I was planning of having a conversation with him about it after we did a group discussion

Here is what I thought was going on. Engineers are visual thinkers, and many of them have what Cheri Florance calls Maverick Minds. That is, the visual organization of their thinking is strong that they do not learn to switch to verbal strategies when they are needed. Mavericks rely so heavily on visual memory and cognition that they do not develop the verbal memory needed for certain tasks very effectively. But reading is a primarily verbal skill, even though the visual system is used for information intake. So, I was planning to discuss this with the Engineering Geek in order to determine if this interference was a problem. (This can be a big problem for males, because their verbal centers tend to be far more lateralized in the brain than those of females. Also, the male corpus collosum--the fibers that carry information across hemispheres--is smaller than that of females. It appear that females are far better "wired" for verbal thinking than males).

So, as I said, I was going to bring this up with the Geek. But when I approached him during the next independent reading session, I noticed that his speed reading technique was much smoother, and at the next timing I noticed that his time had doubled. So I recorded the time, expressed my satisfaction to him, and moved on. Why mess with success?

Later, as we were driving south on NM 14, the Engineering Geek said: "Tonight, I've had an epiphany!" He went on to explain that he had spent years trying not to sub-vocalize while he was reading. Apparently, a teacher had told him that this was the wrong way to read! (I am endlessly amazed at the strange ideas that teachers cotton onto and refuse to let go).
Evidently, he took this to heart and began to try to read without engaging the verbal centers of his brain. From that time forward, he became a slow reader, endlessly re-reading to try to comprehend.

I explained to the Geek that readers generally either hear the words in their heads or sub-vocalize as they read. There are a few people, dyslexics among them, that do not, but that this is somewhat rare. I also explained that when people who hear the words in their heads only are practicing speed reading, often they begin to sub-vocalize again for a while, until their faster speeds become comfortable and normal. Then they go back to hearing the words in their heads. What I suspect happened to create the Engineering Geek's epiphany was that when I was explaining why we did structured discussions (adults complain about this quite a bit) I said that we want to verbalize what was just read in order to organize it in memory, and that the structure provides a framework of synaptic associations so that the information read was more easily recalled. The Engineering Geek heard that and associated it with what he'd been told about not sub-vocalizing while reading. He stopped trying to interfere with this, and he found he was comprehending what he read better.

This sparked a lively discussion where the Geek spent the better part of the drive home "data mining" my brain for what I knew about the neuroscience behind reading. I know a little from my MA in Special Ed, and I can infer more from my current studies in Neurobiology. But I began to realize that there are big gaps in my knowledge since I have not studied the topic directly.

So naturally, I began asking around. My sister Madge's son D. has dyslexia, though the schools refused to acknowledge it as such. She listened to my ideas and said, "You'd love this book I just finished..."

I can see that I am embarking on a new reading and research blitz. Thank goodness for Amazon! The UPS Orange Route driver (who knows me by name) should be winding his way up our mountain to deliver Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain sometime today. In anticipation I read the Epilogue of Radicals for Capitalism this morning!

Stay tuned! There is definitely more to come...

IRD Term II Week I: Mid-School Loss of Confidence and Curiousity

Yesterday I segued in less than 12 hours from my second term, week one classes to substituting for another teacher for week two. (I finished up my week one by arriving home at 8 PM last night, and was out of the house by 7:15 this morning to drop Bruce off at work before continuing to UNM for subbing). I am sure glad that this is a one-time deal. The extra money will be nice, but boy, am I tired! And I actually start my own week two classes with a full day tomorrow and a drive to Santa Fe on Wednesday, before I have a break.


Before you tell me I'm crazy, let me assure you that I know it. Most of the people teaching for IRD are young whippers, just out of college. Ah, to have their energy! I remember working two shifts at my summer job (16 hours), sleeping and reporting the next day to the third shift and then partying that night. That was when I was a young whipper. Now I am the old lady of the bunch.


The first week of my classes has been pretty good, though. Now that I have the curriculum in my gut, time has shown various Einstein effects in that I do everything I am supposed to get done in 10 minutes, but I feel like I have had twice that time to work with. I think I will truly enjoy the next few weeks.


As I started this last week, I vowed to pay close attention to the Level 5 - mid-school classes that I have. So far, in every class, I have had several boys who appear to have lost both their confidence and curiousity about learning. In one of my classes this week, I met a young man who was so lacking confidence that he refused to do a timing for reading and told me to "just put in a zero." He sat with his head down during our discussions of Banner in the Sky. I spent more than a few brain cells trying to figure out how to include him so that he would begin to respond.


I got exactly nowhere.


In order to get some interaction with him, I admit to the subterfuge of assigning myself as his partner for partner discussions (there was an odd number of kids in the class) so that I could talk to him about what I like to do and find out what he likes to do. I did get a few short but informative answers, whispered into the table top, while I leaned over a bent head, struggling to hear.


I came home feeling profoundly sad about the encounter. Here is a young man who clearly has some passions and interests but he does not have the confidence to tell a teacher about them.

Here is a young man, who having been on the planet for twelve or thirteen years, has already decided that he is a failure. His mom later confirmed for me what I already suspected, that he is failing in school and has been since the beginning of his school experience. (I wonder: How can you fail Kindergarten, for heaven's sake!). She is tearing her hair out trying to figure out what to do to help him. She admitted to extreme anger at the schools, the teachers; all of those who have written off her precious boy.


Since I taught that Level 5 class immediately after teaching a Level R (ages 4-5) class, I could not help but notice a difference between the kids. Some of the little ones are shy, some are bold, some are quiet and some are active, but all of them are eager to learn. They have great curiousity about, well, just about everything, and they also display confidence that they can learn just about anything. I think their great curiosity comes from their sense of confidence that they can learn. And that confidence sustains them through the many trials necessary to become effective doers of what they have learned.


In thinking about the difference in demeanor between those little fours and fives and these middle school boys, some of whom have just about given up on life, and others of whom are heavily investing in pretending that nothing really matters, I cannot help but asking myself what has happened in the five or six years in between? These boys were once those cute little bundles of energy, with that glint of curiosity in their eyes, bolding going out into the big, big world with their big, big selves.


I think that sometimes we comfort ourselves by saying that these kids are just going through a stage; that the loss of curiosity and confidence is normal. That kids this age tend to see learning as either impossible or as some kind of terminal dullness to be survived until they can escape school. But I don't think any of this is true.


My first piece of evidence is the occaisonal middle-school kid who, while desperately trying to maintain coolness, will burst out with little bits of irrepressible enthusiasm for something. You see it sometimes from the front of the classroom, when you mention something that sparks someone's interest. I see it as a teacher's reward for managing to let the student know that you think he's good and funny and has something to say.


My second piece of evidence is the many mid-shool age homeschoolers I see around our mountain community. The ones at the library who walk out with piles of books, talking a mile-a-minute about the latest project. The ones at the "Merc," who will discuss their latest 4-H project in stunning and passionate detail with a total stranger (me) who asks an innocent question. The homeschoolers at Boy Scouts, at Home-school science classes, and even at the grocery store. Most of these kids seem to have never lost their curiousity and their confidence that it can lead them to good places. They know with every fiber of their being that they are capable, interesting and that adults are on their side, eager to help them accomplish their 'impossible' dreams.


You do see some kids who start middle-school just like that. But as school wears on, most of them become heavily defended, with terminal coolness masking their loss of confidence in their ability to accomplish, to do, to learn. Someone has taught them that they are not capable and cannot be effective.


And I am afraid that it is indeed, as John Taylor Gatto so eloquently puts it, 'the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling' that is cunningly planned to dumb schoolchildren down. Gatto teaches that this hidden curriculum is designed to teach our children confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and the acceptance of constant surveillance (Dumbing Us Down, 2005). By middle-school, this hidden curriculum is well on the way to being internalized, and the kids understand that being "normal" is a narrow, gray area of not so quiet desperation.


When I think about this, I am so very thankful that I came to my senses when I saw my son being taught as a third grader (the year of the teacher from hell) that he was not capable, that he was not smart, and that his passionate special interests were part of his disabilty rather than part of his strength. I remember looking at him and wondering to myself, where did the little boy go? The one who used practically beam with pride at every new accomplishment. The one who would spend hours working and failing, picking himself up and trying again, in order to perfect a new learning or skill. And from somewhere I was given the grace of taking a different perspective that allowed me to frame the question as "what's wrong with his schooling?" rather than "what's wrong with him?" And once I framed the question that way, it was easy enough to see that the petty officialdom of school was quite capable of blaming the child, calling him names like lazy and stubborn because he had learned their hidden curriculum only too well. I am grateful that I took him out and that my son has never seen the inside of a middle-school as a student.


Because as I sat there, listening to a boy very like my son in age and size whispering to the table what he is passionate about, I realized that in another reality, one in which I had made another decision, that would likely be my boy.


And I know that no matter what choices N. may make about his education in the future, we have given him a great gift at very little cost. You see, my boy is fourteen and is still possessed by enthusiasm. He knows, somewhere deep down inside of himself that is capable of doing things in the world. He walks with the confidence of a tracker and the curiosity of a scientist.


And when I think about that, and then about some of these lost boys--the ones who have been told otherwise--I feel very sad, because I cannot imagine what magic I can pull out of my hat that will hold up through another 180 days of being judged wanting.

Wrong Question: What's wrong with him?

Right Question: What's wrong with schooling?

IRD Fifth Week: Dayenu!

Last Wednesday evening, I finished the 5th week of my IRD teaching commitment, which mean that I finished the Early Summer Session.

I was supposed to reflect on the last week then, but what with United cancelling N.'s flight to Chicago O'Hare and the need to talk to two different people at the airline, plus my sister and my mother, and my other sister who called just to make sure she wasn't missing anything...well you know what happened.

Then I had a wonderfully restful fourth of July holiday weekend.
I do mean restful. Thursday I did some vacuuming. And I folded some clothes. But mostly I sat on the porch and read.
Friday, I read the whole morning paper, a chapter in Radicals for Capitalism and then I went to a movie and dinner with friends and the Engineering Geek.
Saturday I prayed on the porch and read, watched Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, and read some more. I did some blogging, too.
Sunday, guess what? I read some more. Then watched Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. And then I read some more. And I blogged some, too. I took a short break from reading to go to the grocery store. That's it.

According to the Chem Geek Princess upon hearing our weekend's activities, we are becoming homebodies and fogies. Homebodies and Fogies. Doesn't that sound like a great book title?

It's ironic how much I have missed my summer reading time, all because I am teaching reading.

By the last week of that first session, I was feeling in balance. Teaching the lessons as IRD wants them taught was finally feeling like teaching them as I want to teach them. The lesson structures were feeling automatic and the "why's" of each part were in my gut as well as my brain.

I was also feeling very good about the progress I was seeing.
In the younger kid classes I saw great leaps in most children when it came to skills used to read, assisted reading, and independent reading with support.
For the older kids, I saw reading comprehension improve greatly in every child, reading speeds increase in most students, and more insightful discussions evolve over time.

The one part of the older student lessons that I was really questioning was the non-fiction study skills portion. Although I had been told that these lessons were beta-tested, I thought that maybe we were trying to do too much in too little time. I was nervous about the material and the rate at which we were supposed to deliver it. As I was doing the first few lessons, I felt like I was going at break-neck speed and I was really wondering whether the students were getting it.

I soldiered on as I was supposed to do. But I wondered about it.

In week 5 , I found that those students who came in unable to find the main idea in a non-fiction paragraph now could at least find one and state it in a few words or a phrase. I found that those who could find the main idea at lesson 1 but had a hard time stating why it was the main idea, could now not only state the main idea, but explain it. I found that those who came in finding the main idea and explaining how, but could not identify important details from the unimportant elaborations, could now point out the important details. And those who came in able to find the main idea, explain how they found it, and identify the important details, could now also follow the development of ideas in non-fiction writing over paragraphs and sections.

And I realized that for each type of student, each one came forth from my class with better skills than they had started. And that each one also took with him or her, an outline of skills for continued learning through the years of middle and high school.

This reminds me a bit of the song we sing each year at the Passover Seder.

Ilu hotzi, hotzi anu,
Hotzi anu mi-Mitzrayim, Dayenu!

If you had just brought us out of Egypt but not parted the Sea for us, it would have been enough!
If you had brought us out of Egypt and parted the Sea for us, but not given us manna in the wilderness, it would have been enough!
If you had ...given us manna, but not brought us to Sinai, it would have been enough!
etc. etc.

So in my non-fiction lessons it became:
If you had just identified the main idea, but not told how, dayeu! It would have been enough!
If you had identified the main idea, and told how, but not identified important supporting details, dayenu! It would have been enough!

Only this Dayenu! differed from student to student in the length of the song.
And for each student: Dayenu! It was enough.

I need to think about my perfectionism in my teaching this way.
By the end of the five weeks I had mastered the timing, understood the lessons more deeply, balanced my overcorrections, and Dayenu! It was enough.

Tomorrow as I begin the first week of the Late Summer Session, I can take those Dayenu verses and build on them as I move on towards the IRD promised land--which is really a place in time rather than space. The IRD promised land to me is coming to August 10th--my last teaching day, knowing that I have been successful, my students have made progress, and that I have learned new things about teaching reading.

Oh! And I'm so not from California, so sometimes I forget this one, final goal for August 10th:... And knowing I've had fun.

Dayenu! (It will be enough!)

IRD Third (and a half!) Week: Correcting the Overcorrection

The end of last week was very busy, even though N. was away at camp, and I did not post a reflection at all.

And perhaps that's to the good, because today I was confronted with the balancing act of learning to teach differently than I have in the past.
So this is a good day to write a reflection.

I had a parent complaint about the atmosphere in one of my classes. This is a class with middle school children, one or two of whom I am concerned about in terms of progress and home practice, but all of whom are likeable kids. It is a quiet class, too, although last week with the excitement of an electrical outage, they loosened up quite a bit. As did I, and this last may be the clue to the problem.

I think what the parent observed is based on overcorrections on my part. I have been struggling with two issues, and achieving balance in both of them will make me a better teacher. The first is timing--in my case complicated by my perfectionistic desire to add detail upon detail. I discussed that here. The second is the need to be direct with students. My tendency is to soften commands by saying things like: "You might want to do...." and "Open the book to page such-and-such, please" and "Suzie, please put the pencil down." My trainers made me practice saying: "Put the pencil down" and "I need you to do..." and "Now open your books to..." This directness goes against my early training designed to corral a rather "spirited" child!

And the new directness has been working. With my younger kids, especially, where I am also playing games with them as part of the process, and where directness interacts well with my natural warmth for the little guys. But in this particular class, I am dealing with mid-school kids and I have been very matter-of-fact with them, especially when teaching the study skills part of the class. My supervisor asked me if I was remembering to praise their efforts frequently enough. And I realized that although when I go around to check homework, I do try to find a good thing to say to each one, I have not been praising the group effort as enthusiastically as I do with my younger kiddos. And yet these are not yet the high school kids who would be insulted by that. These are middle schoolers who still have a little kid in them, and not buried too deeply, either. They need to know that their hard work is noticed. And they need to know it with the same level of directness that I am using to give directions.

So there you have it, like a nervous new driver overcorrects by jerking the wheel a little too hard, I was overcorrecting for my tendency to qualify directions and sounded quite strict. It is not bad to be strict, but at the same time, I forgot to praise real effort when they are working on something difficult. And for middle school kids, the art of finding main ideas and supporting details in a textbook or other work of non-fiction is difficult. So this parent was observing the fallout of my overcorrection.

In addition to this, there were some other incidents that had happened that day that left me a little rattled and I was having a real Jonah Day--as Anne of the Island called a bad teaching day. (Although my day did not include fireworks in the heating system as Anne's did).

Factor in that this day (my second with the class) was this parent's child's first week in the class. So this was the parent's first impression of me.
And I had not gotten to the bathroom between classes, to touch up and get a breath of outside air. Imagine this: hair wild, lip gloss not touched up, nerves tingling.Well.

It is never pleasant to recognize that someone's first impression of you is not your best foot forward. And it always hurts a bit when you first hear the truth of the matter via a complaint.
My first reaction is to want to explain myself--in detail, of course!
But...

If the complaint was not made, I would not have the opportunity to correct the overcorrection problem. It might never have been called to my attention.

Just like that test answer that you got wrong and so you remember that information twenty years later even after forgetting most of the rest of the test, (a diatreme is the frozen neck of a volcano exposed by weathering way of the original mountain--I got it wrong in 1981), so having attention called to the issue so forcefully means I am more likely to achieve the balance sooner.

This is the never-ending process of getting the rough edges rubbed off.
Painful, but necessary to the process of arriving at a smooth and balanced state.

IRD First Week: Curbing Loquaciousness

On Wednesday evening, I completed my first week of teaching reading for IRD.

Wednesday is the last day of my teaching week, though I have a break early in the week and then I have a few days off before the new teaching week starts up over the coming weekend. Basically I have two days on, time off, and then Wednesday, when I drive up to Santa Fe to teach there.

Each teaching day is very full, as I have three classes, each of which last anywhere from one hour fifteen minutes to two hours and thirty minutes. There is a 45 minute break between each class, but last week I barely had time to get a bite to eat before I needed to prep for the next class. Part of the reason for that is that there is more to do on "opening day" and also anxious parents show up very early with their children because they have scheduled extra time to find the place and the classroom. In this respect, teaching is no different than teaching in the schools. There I usually ate and prepped at the same time in the first few weeks.

And like the opening week of school, I was also very tired after the first two days of teaching the reading classes. A lot of it stems from getting accustomed to being on my feet for 6 hours at a time again, as well as the incredible energy and focus required to teach a class at any time, but especially when learning new methods and pacing.

One thing that I am learning from the streamlined lesson plans required by IRD is that we teachers, left to our own devices, tend to talk too much. This is partly due to the natural loquacious personalities that teaching attracts, but for me, I suspect it also has to do with a desire to render complete and detailed explanations. This is appropriate to the scientific laboratory, where one is interacting with other Geek Queens and Kings who demand such detail, but it is fatal when one is trying to teach novices in an area. The novice needs to get the basics down and then maybe--maybe--s/he would be interested in the details. And maybe not. A person may just be interested in the skill learned and not the theory behind it!

I do know this about myself, but since my previous teaching evaluations were done by equally talkative teachers (mmmm, nice allititeration), the subject has never come up in a way that was useful to me. I would get comments like "too fast" or "too long" but never "too many words" or "too much detail. "

Well, actually, the above is not quite true. I did get more pointed critiques for PowerPoint presentations in my Neurobiology and Neuroanatomy/Neurophysiology classes. And such critique helped me make a leaner meaner presentation. I have really cut down on the detail put on a PowerPoint slide. However, given the nature of the material, although I needed uncluttered slides, I had to give extremely detailed explanations of those slides.

The point is that I believe this training and using this very scripted curriculum is already making me more conscious of my penchant for supplying too much detail, and that I will come out of this ten-week teaching experience with a classroom style more suited to every kid, not just the gifted ones. (GK's will press for more details and can handle them most of the time, but they can also eat up time better used for practice this way).

By Wednesday in Santa Fe, the scripting seemed more natural and my timing was also more natural. I got everything done that I needed to do without feeling rushed or worried.
Wednesday was really nice.

First, the hour's drive up was beautiful, because it makes more sense for me to cut up the "back way" on NM 14--The Turquoise Trail. A National Scenic Byway, it took me north along the back of the Sandia Mountain Front. It then cuts northwest through the Ortiz Mountains, through Golden, Madrid (pronounced with the short a, accent on the first syllable), and Cerillos. Golden and Madrid are both old mining towns, and Madrid has become quite the arts community. Next week, I will leave early and take my camera!

Santa Fe is also nice, because it has a different cultural feel than Albuquerque.
People tend to be more laid back. It is partially the old Spanish culture. And it is also due to the influx of New-Agers; former hippies, now with money, but who are still under the influence of Crystal Blue Persuasion. (This is the piece of Santa Fe that we, the unenlightened, have taken to calling "Fanta Se." Fanta Se is where you see Shirley McClaine using a crystal plumb bob to choose bread at Wild Oats on Rodeo Road). But if you can accept lateness* with aplomb and grace, the lower intensity of Santa Fe is a welcome change.

*In Albuquerque I had one or two late people out of six classes. Those who were late came in and joined the class quietly, and I sorted out the check-in with very little fuss. In Santa Fe, one-third to one-half of every class was late. Being aware of the Fanta Se element there, though, I expected to state class late and make-up time at the end. That worked very well there--Santa Feans are not in a hurry but neither do they expect you to be.

Personally, I am going to enjoy ending each teaching week experiencing the culture of the Holy "City." (Santa Fe means "Holy Faith." And like Jerusalem, you go up to get there).

All in all, then, it was a successful first week.
And now, I must prepare for Shabbat, and prepare for next week's teaching.

"On to Khartoum!"

Which proves that N. is not the only Aspie in the house with a penchant for quoting movies out of context.