I never told them it was my first year of teaching, but they sensed it. They, like dogs, could smell fear–at the time, mine was mixed with patcholi oil and post-graduate-school optimism–but they identified it just the same. They: a rowdy group of middle-level junior English students, post-lunch, hyped up on high fructose corn syrup and sex hormones. Me: a soft-voiced, smiling-through-almost-tears pseudo-English teacher, feigning excitement about early American literature and diagramming sentences.
Entries categorized as ‘Education’
Attention-Seeking Behavior
September 3, 2011 by Erin McCusker · Leave a Comment
Categories: Education
What is Right and Good
September 1, 2011 by Jamye Shelleby · 2 Comments
When it comes to measurable shock value, no parenting moment carries the same weight as when you realize your complete responsibility for a helpless newborn’s well being. But for me, a close second has been the realization that the decisions I make around my children’s education are hugely impactful as well.
And like the decisions I encountered as a new mom, I find that decisions around schooling are fraught with peer pressure. Apparently, motherhood is a chance for women to revert to adolescence and experience peer pressure all over again.
Only this time, it’s self-induced. No mother has ever pushed a preschool application into my hesitant hand.
Categories: Education · Jamye Shelleby
Tagged: Choosing a school, Schooling
Questioning, by Liesl Jurock
August 30, 2011 by Admin · Leave a Comment
“Mommy, where do we go when we die?” my four-year-old son, Lucas, asks me as I’m putting him to bed. He has been obsessed lately with the idea of dying, not afraid of it, just curious. This is a normal developmental phase for preschoolers – at least that’s what I tell myself.
“We go to a happy place,” I tell him again. I made this up when my grandmother passed away when he was only two and heaven seemed too loaded a concept to explain. Unfortunately, he wants details.
“Do we need a ladder to get to the happy place?” he asks.
Categories: Education · Guest Writers
Tagged: Liesl Jurock, what our children teach us
Letter Games
August 28, 2011 by Jen Wilson Lloyd · 2 Comments
Having boy/girl twins taught me a lot about nature vs. nurture. Innate personality traits are easier to identify when you have two children raised in the exact same way in the same environment. My twins have always been in the same classroom, and last year as Kindergarten drew near I was confident that they would both succeed and thrive. That is until we got the Junior Scrabble game.
Categories: Education
