conuly: Quote from Veronica Mars - "Sometimes I'm even persnickety-ER" (persnickety)
One on the effects of wi-fi on school buses in Arizona

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On a non-standard gender marriage in Malawi. It's not clear from the article if this is a same-sex marriage or if one of the partners is transgendered.

Interesting quote: Aninsia Kachepa, Mr. Chimbalanga’s older sister, wept into her blouse at the simple mention of her jailed brother. “I have never heard of this homosexuality, and I am still not understanding,” she said.

“Tell me, how is it physically possible, one man having sex with another?”


It's not as strange as some people think, I'm sure.

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One I thought I posted before, but can't find about medicine in Cuba.

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I have one more coming, but it's long.

Ugh.

Jan. 23rd, 2010 12:32 am
conuly: Quote from Heroes by Claire - "Maybe being different isn't the end of the world, it's just who I am" (being different)
So, this person doesn't like the Everyday Math curriculum, nor... some other math series.

And she might have a very good point about that - the nieces' school went off Everyday Math because the teachers said they jumped around too much and it was confusing the kids. This is an opinion I can trust - it makes sense to me, and the people saying it presumably know what they're talking about.

Unfortunately, I can't trust this presenter's opinion. Her argument against these two curricula aren't "Kids find them confusing" or "I don't think they're teaching math" but "They aren't teaching math the way I learned it, and I don't understand how they're teaching it, so it's wrong wrong wrong!" So, of course, she demonstrates these methods... and it's obvious to me that she's clearly taking the slowest, most round-about method of doing this in order to prove her point. But she *doesn't* prove it.

The lattice method? That one that everybody derides as "who invented this"? I'd guess that if you know what you're doing and aren't unfamiliar with it (and no, "parents aren't familiar with other methods" is not a good reason to only do what you've always done) it's just about as fast as the more common method. (And it's not exactly new. A method that's been around since the 13th century CE and that appears in the very first printed arithmetic book? I'd say it has some staying power.) She says that her preferred method of division is "the most efficient" method, but it's only, in my view, more efficient when writing with pencil on paper. If you have to work something out in your head? Reasoning - which she thinks is just wrong wrong wrong - is the way to go, and, indeed, is how I do most of my math... and which is why, unlike most people I know, I never *do* reach for a calculator or a pad of paper if I come across a necessary math problem in the course of my day. (And nobody ever yet has explained to me how you can use long division to divide, say, 31 into 2000. Not without memorizing the 31 times table, that is....)

It may be that these two programs aren't teaching kids well. In fact, I've heard a lot of bad stuff about Everyday Math specifically, so I'm inclined to believe that. But unfortunately, she let the facts lie to the side while she spoke about her opinion that one form of problem solving is superior - so much that the others shouldn't be taught.

I was so annoyed by that detail that when she said what really should have been her shocker - a quote from the Everyday Math teacher's guide stating that of course, calculators are readily accessible (and so not all algorithms for basic arithmetic need to be mastered) - I started wondering why she didn't answer that important question - why IS it necessary to know how to do basic calculation? (Judging from the comments, most people don't know. I read a lot of "People who do this method would fail all their tests!!!" or "How can you show math on a test using that method? You wouldn't get any credit!!!!" or "If you don't learn the right method, how can you compete in college?" or "This is why students in other countries do better than our students" but not once did I see a comment explaining when math comes up in day to day life and it's better to use THIS method over THAT method. I find this much more disturbing than the original comment about calculators!)

And, really, thinking it through, I can think of a few ways to justify the calculator comment anyway. One person in the comments went "Well, math is easy when you strip it of the clutter, all those word problems". But who is better at math? The child who can tell you that 12 x 12 is 144 and that 6 x 12 is 72, but has no idea why he's memorized that or that the numbers exist outside of the book? Or the one who needs to use a calculator but who can work out all the right steps to find out how much paint you need to paint the walls (but not the doors or windows) of a given room? (All while the first child absentmindedly fills the room up with paint!)

Actually, what's even worse than the fact that the commenters didn't seem to know what we use math for is the fact that few of them realized she was selling something. They took her deliberately confused approach to these "alternative techniques" and assumed that meant that nobody can do any form of calculation using them. (I'm doubtful many of them understand why the standard algorithms work, to be honest, but I suspect none of them understands why it matters if they understand or not.)

Here's somebody's reply to it.
And here's part two!

Apparently he's since found a copy of (some of) the books to review, so I'm going to look that up to see what he says. It really irked me watching the first video (the firstest one, the one at the top) she talks about how at the end of the 4th grade curriculum there's a "world tour" project and "Where's the math?" Well, I don't know where the math is, honey, you're the one holding the book, you tell us! Off the top of my head I can think of any number of ways applied mathematics could go into planning a world tour, but without a copy of the book I can't tell you if they did that well or flopped miserably. Her implication, of course, was that connecting math to any other subject (such as geography or social studies) was wrong wrong wrong! because, after all, it's not how SHE was taught. (And maybe there IS no math there, I wouldn't know, but I'm interested in seeing another opinion because that first video was so obnoxious.)
conuly: Quote from Veronica Mars - "Sometimes I'm even persnickety-ER" (persnickety)
Who owns lesson plans? Is it the teacher who wrote them?

Well, most of us would say that if you spend hours of unpaid labor doing work to make you better at your underpaid job, you get to own what you make then. And apparently some teachers would say so too, which is why you can buy teacher-made lesson plans online. (Of course, you could always buy lesson plans somewhere, but some teachers are cutting out the middle man and selling their own plans.)

And then - shock and horror! - they're spending the money they earn. Oh, sure, mostly that money appears to be going towards classroom supplies, which I would think the state should pay for, but sometimes - terrible! - they're paying for things like mortgages and home repair and the occasional dinner out. Yes, they're living the high life and it's WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Lemme tell you something. If teachers have to resort to selling the fruits of their hard (and otherwise unpaid!) labor online in order to pay off their mortgages (or, worse, purchase the supplies that should have been provided for them and their students already), there's room for outrage, sure, but not at the teachers. (For that matter, even if they're spending that money on fast cars and trips overseas in first class, who gives a fuck? This is a capitalist nation, isn't it? Can't they spend the money they earned from their time however they like? If we're gonna get all "socialist" about our public school teachers, well, I may just move! To Canada!)

Of course, the comments are a pain. Some people are under the impression that buying and selling lesson plans is EXACTLY THE SAME as buying and selling tests. Stupid. We don't expect surgeons to re-invent the art every time they pick up a scalpel, do we? No, we tell them how the procedure goes when they're in school (and still being tested on these things) and then we let them do it. Why should teachers spend hours of their own (unpaid!) time writing up a lesson plan on something they have to cover when 50 other people have already done it? They've already passed their tests, we assume they know how to teach (if they don't, well, then they need all the help they can get, don't they?), so let's help them do it already!

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conuly: image of a rubber ducky - "Somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you" (ducky predicate)
(And I still want to see more examples - charts, I guess - of how script is taught in other countries. Just because.)

One thing I keep seeing is the statement that up until the 30s or so, cursive was what was taught in the first grade - not print. (And of course some schools changed over sooner than that, and some later - or not at all!) Many of them also say that that's how writing is taught in other countries as well, with the possible exception of Great Britain. Any insight here from people who know what they're talking about would be useful :)

If this is true, all of a sudden that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird makes sense!

See, it was weird enough that Scout's father was criticized for "teaching" her to read when he'd done no such thing (she picked it up on her own), but I never understood the bit about how she was taught to write. It seemed strange to me that they taught her to write in script but not print (and that this was referred to as writing but print wasn't), but stranger that this should be a problem.

But now it makes sense, if teaching print first was somewhat novel - the teacher, new to teaching, felt she'd just had her pedagogy insulted. She's got this idea of how you're nowadays supposed to teach reading and writing, and they did this old-fashioned thing that was ditched to make things easier for kids, this being the newish era of look-say reading as well, I suppose, though technically Scout learned that way anyway. (And it had worked, too!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~


Today, as we walked to the library, I noticed some rosemary in another person's yard, and challenged the kids to find "a plant we can eat" in there. (They did!) I also pointed out that person's impatiens.

Evangeline: Why are they called that?
Me: I don't know.
Evangeline: Maybe they don't have patience?

Now, you all saw that coming, but listen. I don't think we've ever expressed patience as having or not having it. We tell them to BE patient, sure, but not to have patience. I would have expected her to say "Maybe because they're not patient" or even "Maybe because they're impatient" instead.

So now I want to gather up im- words and see what she makes of them. This is probably a bad idea.
conuly: (Default)
She's taking a break from learning new letters to review the ones she already knows, because we're (just over) halfway through the alphabet. She has a - l and q, t, u, and w.

We're using worksheets from here, although I modified the b so that she curlicues it back instead of just dipping down at the end. It's easier for her. Tomorrow we'll do another bit of review, just the letters she's having trouble with (b, f, k and the ha combination) and move onto the next set of letters - n, m, v, x. And then another week and a half for the last of them and she'll have her lowercase letters down. Then I'm thinking a few more weeks of review before we start on capitals?

As a side effect of all this, my *own* handwriting has improved.

Ana showed one of her worksheets to her teacher (f - and let me tell you that her fs are beautiful, she just has to think too much to make them) and we got a little note going "Well, we're still working on print letters". For crying out loud! If you were an early elementary teacher, or have been an early elementary teacher, and your kid showed you something extra they did on the side, would you be "Well, we're not doing that" or would you stick a sticker on it anyway?

And I'll tell you... I tell Ana that I want her to learn cursive now because it's easier to learn it at 6 than at 8, and that I know it'll be more frustrating for her in two years. And this is true. But the reason I don't tell her is that we only started with cursive learning because after doing print all through kindergarten and September of this year she still had no idea how to hold a pencil properly, nor that it mattered *how* you formed the letters so long as it looked more or less okay. Because you *can* print with your pencil in your fist, and you *can* print if you write your a backwards or if you do a lowercase h and then add the rest of it to make an H. (It took the better part of two weeks to convince her that the tails on letters aren't just decorative, that you can't just do most of the letter and add the tails after the fact!) But you can't print very well or efficiently that way, and it's sure to tire you eventually. Of course, there was no convincing her until she had enough letters in cursive that she could write real words and see and feel the difference doing it right makes.

Ana's teacher has 24 students. I don't know how she teaches penmanship, or if she has time to do so in her day, or if she's able (or willing) to correct things like grip when the kids are writing in class, or... any of this. But if I really felt Ana were being taught to write properly, in a comfortable and efficient way (printing is writing), I would never have ended up doing cursive with her.

(Ana's cursive letters are lovely, btw. Her bs are a bit sloppy, and sometimes her ws or us are a bit looser than I'd like, but she's just learning. If only I could get her to write on the line...! Do you think raised line paper would help?)

Articles!

Oct. 20th, 2009 10:38 am
conuly: image of Elisa Mazda (Gargoyles) - "Watcher of the City" (watcher of the city)
Here's one on the intelligence of fishies

Now, we all hear a lot about goldfish. People get goldfish for their kids because "they're easy to take care of, and die soon anyway". They put them in bare bowls because "well, they don't need more, and they die soon anyway, and they're not that bright". They don't do anything about stimulation because "well, they're not that bright, and they die soon anyway". These statements would be troubling, except that the premises are totally flawed to begin with! When properly cared for, goldfish live decades - so all those fish that "died soon anyway" did so because they were killed by incompetent owners. And given that you can teach a goldfish to do a variety of tricks, I'm not so sure they're as unintelligent as all that. It's cruelty to have an animal and not give it any form of stimulation at all, it's like locking them in solitary for their whole life!

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Two articles on two different kindergartens.

One on a charter school that "justifies" its trip to the farm by calling it "test prep".

Some of the comments are disgusting, blaming parents for kids not going "to the zoo". When are they supposed to go to the zoo? On a weekday, when it closes at 5? On the weekend, when it costs $12 per person and is crowded besides and you have to do your shopping and your cleaning and visit family and go to church? Uncool, guys.

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And one about an absurdly expensive private school for gifted kids

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An article on zero waste facilities and communities

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And finally, one on problems faced by African immigrants in the Bronx

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conuly: (Default)
This is the coolest method of multiplication I've ever seen. I knew, of course, that you could grid multiply, but I figured any big number would mean doing 123 lines up and 321 lines across or whatnot!

Also here. Taken from here.
conuly: image of Elisa Mazda (Gargoyles) - "Watcher of the City" (watcher of the city)
Clicky

In the comments, the very first comment is of the sort that really gets me - somebody implying that the only learning that counts as "learning" is the sort you do sitting in a chair that you can be tested on. Tying your shoes isn't learning, I suppose. Dealing with complex social situations isn't learning. Only math and reading are learning - and probably only if taught the way she thinks of as appropriate. Bah.

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Incidentally, on the subject of homework - Ten minutes, per grade, per night. The National PTA and the National Education Association can be assumed to know something on this subject.
conuly: (ducky)
I'll link and c+p it in a second, and I'll also quote (and snark) some of the more interesting comments, but before I even get to that part I want to say something.

I've often found that, online, the people I disagree with have much worse writing skills than the people I *do* agree with - and to quote one of my new favorite characters, Clementine, I am not even exaggerating!

This is doubly (and hilariously, and ironically, and sadly) true when I disagree with the self-proclaimed Defenders of Language. It's bad enough that one can't correct another person's spelling without making a huge error in their own comment, but these people who go on and ON about how much learning the "cannon" did for them cannot even tell the difference between "would have" and "would of", or between a full sentence and a barely comprehensible fragment. I'm not cherrypicking. I refuse to quote *all* of them just because they're hypocritically less literate than they claim to be, but keep this in mind when reading the comments: The critical ones are almost all like that. I don't claim to have perfect writing either (I never was clearly taught about commas and semi-colons, I freely admit that), but at least I don't claim my education is better because it involved some classics. (At least this group, unlike the ones who threw a hissy fit over the teaching of the specific jingle "I before E", seem to have enough reading comprehension skills to understand the article. That's a change.)

Any comments in bold are left by me.

Click for article!

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And of course, the comments.

Before you click the link, note that a lot of the comments disparage comic books (and graphic novels don't exist). I still don't understand whence this scorn. Now, my uncle, back before he did all those drugs, used to be (my mother says) quite bright. And the whole class was shocked when he did superwell on his reading assessment in elementary school because "all he reads are comic books!" Of course, he read them voraciously and probably read some that were "above his level", and there's the difference.

Ray Bradbury, in Fahrenheit 451, makes the point that it's the content, not the delivery that matters - if we tell great stories by television, they're still great stories. People forget he made that point in the book, but he did.

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conuly: Quote from Veronica Mars - "Sometimes I'm even persnickety-ER" (persnickety)
Here's one on Texas schools being required to teach the Bible. I'm sure it'll collapse soon enough.

You know, my father was from Texas. It was a big part of his identity. He's actually buried over there. Must be spinning in his grave. I wouldn't be surprised if he got up and started walking to march on the capital either!

And here's one about a bunch of whiners complaining that people wonder WHY, exactly, they felt the need to bring guns to a presidential event.

"I still have some freeeeeeeedoms!" they declare. I think the following comment sums it up:

Let's make sense of this. Wear a John Kerry shirt to a Bush rally and get arrested. Carry an assault rifle to an Obama rally and you are a Freedom Fighting Revolutionary.
conuly: image of Elisa Mazda (Gargoyles) - "Watcher of the City" (watcher of the city)
One on adding two Muslim holidays to the school calendar.

I understand the reasoning that you can't reasonably add EVERY possible holiday to the calendar, but it occurs to me that they get off all of July and August, plus part of June and September. They don't *actually* have to be off until the Tuesday after Labor Day, they really can start school the Thursday before if necessary to fit these extra holidays in.


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An article on laws requiring electronics companies to safely dispose of electronics

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An article on how some societies have children who don't crawl. They're calling this research *new*, but as I've been referring people to these *very same studies* for years I wonder how new it can be.
conuly: (Default)
On a woman's effort to speak Hindi in NYC

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Daughter Against Use of Father’s Name to Subvert Neo-Nazis

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When an Ear Witness Decides the Case

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An article on beekeeping in the city

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An article on how feeding cows a different diet not only reduces their methane output but - surprise! - makes them healthier

One on the proposal in the UK to stop teaching the specific mnemonic "I before E except after C". I personally have seen people claim this is due to "political correctness gone amok" (there's a term that no longer means anything if I ever saw one!), that it's due to "Obama's election" (these people seem to think that the UK is synonymous with the US), that it's due to not wanting to teach children how to spell, that there's NO way to learn how to spell without reciting inane jingles at every turn, and that all the rules are flying out the window. Not to mention the people who don't understand the rule in the first place. Why is language always ostensibly defended by people who lack the reading comprehension skills to understand that it was never under attack in the first place? WHY?

An article on why ethnic jokes aren't that funny

An article on octopi that "walk" to get past predators. COOL.
conuly: (Default)
A walking school bus is basically like a carpool without the cars. Except that sometimes you can get help from school staff as well.

Jenn and I have periodically mentioned to each other a desire for a WSB at Ana's school. (And Evangeline's!)

Only thing... the school doesn't have many students yet (as it only goes up to the second grade, and only has one class there as well) and, worse yet, many of the students live much too far away to reasonably expect them to walk. (Or even unreasonably, given how young they all still are!)

But it occurs to me that due to a quirk of history, our school is less than five minutes (walking!) from the next-nearest public school! (And it's only 5 minutes from the nearest non-public elementary school as well, smack dab in the middle of the two schools in what's basically a straight line.)

THIS school might not have enough students to really make a walking school bus work (although it'll ultimately have 440 students), but this school plus PS 16 plus (if we could work with a non-public school) Trinity Lutheran certainly does.

How does one go about suggesting this sort of multiple-school arrangement to the PTA? The logical thing to do, just working in the one school, would be to send letters home asking people who are interested to sign up and then use their addresses to plot "bus stops", just like we do for the real school bus. And to do this in more than one school and insist that there be a parent volunteer per route per school. But how do I say that in a polite and convincing way? I don't always exactly have the gift of the gab, you know.
conuly: (ducky)
I feel this is massively unfair, especially to such young children. Why? Because one kid in her class, N, brought in 700 boxtops in the past few months. He has a big family, clearly, but the point is that nobody else could possibly compete with that. If they're going to have a competition with a reward for this, they ought to discount his contribution, or put an individual cap. It's like running a race where your opponent is on steroids.

Of course, 700 boxtops is also shocking because, dude, the only way we were able to bring in our... *thinks a bit* five is because we happened to have some ziploc and hefty bags in the house. We don't eat any of that stuff, and we don't even use disposable menstrual stuff anymore! Oh, wait, for Ana's class birthday party I brought in some disposable plates. So, uh, six boxtops. A whole 60 cents. Yay!

But anyway, not to dis other people's diets, but 700 of these foods in a year? Wow. That's a bit shocking. (Maybe they make a lot of garbage. Maybe he has a lot of sisters - that'd use up Kotex AND Hefty bags every month.)

Well, at any rate, I ask again what I asked way back in the beginning of the year. If you happen to buy this stuff already, and don't have any use for the little clip-off boxtops, I'd be glad to get them for Ana's school. Just save them up and send them to me in one big bunch. Or if you're, like, buying from one of these places online already, that sort of thing.
conuly: Quote from Heroes by Claire - "Maybe being different isn't the end of the world, it's just who I am" (being different)
Ana was doing her TH worksheet. Due to somebody's bad choice, the hardest word (thermometer) was the one without a picture. Seriously? They couldn't've put "thumb" there instead? (I suppose thermometer follows the rules better than thumb with that silent b, but it's long and intimidating.)

Ana diligently divided it up into syllables and sounded it out. THER MO MEEE TER.

Me: Thermometer, honey.
Ana: But why is there a METER in it?
Me: Uh... because it's an unstressed syllable and in English unstressed syllables reduce to a schwa*.
Ana: Oh.

I hope I didn't go too far over her head, but like my mother always says, 10% sticks. (Eventually.)





*Actually, the way I say it, it's more like a schwi. YES THAT'S A REAL WORD.
conuly: Quote from Heroes by Claire - "Maybe being different isn't the end of the world, it's just who I am" (being different)
I made the mistake of reading the comments (some of them, anyway) where I first picked up this link.

Let's just say they were appalling and leave it at that. Two things, though.

1. While the school's actions may not be censorship in the strictest definition, they were acting as an arm of the government to specially restrict where, when, and to whom this one child could share her knowledge. This sends a clear message about Harvey Milk in particular and gay people in general, and let's not talk about what it says about the pursuit of knowledge! (And don't give me that "sex" line. If you think you have to talk about this guy's sex life in order to talk about him, I suggest you get your mind out of the gutter. I know some of our politicians lack any sense of discretion, but seriously, we don't *have* to talk about it.)

2. I am so *sick* of reading about how "OMG, the ACLU only ever attacks Christians and Christian values and hates Christianity and is ebil!!!!!111" Aside from the exceedingly narrow view of who can be Christian, it's just flat-out wrong. Unless of course I'm imagining their defense of....

A Christian prisoner's right to preach (at least twice!)

A Christian church's desire to put their money where their mouth is and uphold their Christian morals by housing the homeless

The right of a Christian man to protest Wal-Mart for "supporting gay lifestyles and marriage". (I don't agree with his statement, but I sure do agree with his right to say it!)

The right of a second-grader to sing a religious song at a school talent show

I'll grant you, most of the ACLU's press releases on their work related to religious freedom is about non-Christians, usually being pressured by Christians. This, however, is not because the ACLU wishes to silence Christians, or because society oppresses Christians so much that very few of them can even make cases. What nerve! It's because Christians are the majority and often casually (and usually unintentionally) do things which harm other's religious rights! Well, of course. It's much easier for the majority to do things which harm the minority than the other way around, how could it be otherwise? Christians certainly aren't being persecuted as a group in the US. What an idea! And attempts to take away the special rights Christians often have really aren't the same as attempts to remove their/your religious freedom. No, really.

So, if any of you were interested in spouting that old ACLU canard about how they hate Christianity and traditional values (what is more traditional in this country than the first Amendment, I ask you!), please - educate yourself.
conuly: (Default)
One about choosing a trade instead of years in college - haven't read the whole thing yet.

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One about interning at an organic farm

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One about the very firstest Jewish American Girl doll ever.


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An article on Stapleton, where I live! Evangeline and Ana have really enjoyed seeing all the sailors for Fleet Week, which kinda changes my ambivalence towards the whole occasion (any occasion that requires the use of multiple flyovers while also crowding the Ferry doesn't exactly get the thumbs up from me). Yesterday the boat was a full 15 minutes late, so we took car service home. The nieces called out the window "Hi sailor! Bye sailor!" at all of them passing, and they spent an amusing several minutes singing an impromptu song about the "three sailors" they saw when walking.

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One on how proposals to legalize gay marriage in NY (yay) are having trouble finding opposition. Good. I cannot believe the nerve of some groups trying to call themselves "pro-family". Fucking twits.

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An article on recent urban planning in NYC. Go look at it, it's got a nifty graphic with a before and after view of a street in Brooklyn

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conuly: (Default)
Go Ana!

She's a hero. Today, as she was doing her homework on the porch, our neighbor came over and asked for her help. Her basement tenant had locked himself out, and his windows are tiny. So Ana climbed through, yes, we said, you can step on the bed! and she fetched his keys - and tried to bring them to us, prompting calls of "Just open the door!", which she did, and she SAVED THE WHOLE CREW! Hooray! What a day, when the babies key ran away.

I loathe goody bags, so we did a grab bag first (which the kidlets had apparently never done, though they were de riguer for christmas parties when I was a kid - but maybe it's a Brooklyn thing?) and we also gave some presents For The Whole Class: A set of lacing letters, two sets of alphabet stamps and a stamp pad, a dolphin stamp (because the school animal is the dolphin), several sets of letter stickers, a M&D birthday cake, and some construction paper. And two birthday-themed books. And, incidentally, some snacks, bowls, and cups that we didn't use for Ana's party. Some of them came with those special "box tops for education" on them, so win! Best part is that I can just repeat this present for Evangeline's pre-k and kindergarten birthdays. Go me! No idea what I'll do for Ana for the first grade, though - definitely some books (anybody want to suggest picture books of a more advanced level that talk about birthdays or feature birthdays prominently? Or chapter books suitable for a first grade library?), maybe a few games...? First grade is different. More craft supplies, for sure. (Which reminds me, I want to get some lefty scissors for the school, you know my feelings on that. I need to ask what teachers, aside from grade teachers, use scissors. Like, does the science teacher? The literacy teacher? Are they going to have an art teacher next year?)

To round out my stories, Evangeline was in her own personal horror film recently. She was wearing her clicky-clacky shoes (Ana is the language innovator, "clicky-clackies" for "plastic pretend dress-up shoes" is a term she invented. Evangeline picked speech up much faster, but Ana played with it more. This is an area of degree, of course) when I decided to be a tickle monster. I started to run towards her, but she cried in (mock) horror "I can't run in my c'icky-c'ackies!". I swiftly shifted to the lurching kind of tickle monster and she escaped in safety, closing a door in my face. Tickle monsters, like vampires, can't go where they're not invited, you know.
conuly: (Default)
Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud

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Thriving Norway Provides an Economics Lesson Be sure to read the comments, at least the editor's choice.

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Judging Honesty by Words, Not Fidgets

A novel concept, that )

In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars

Some of the comments to this article are absurd. "Oh, it's great so long as you never go a mile from home". Dude? EVANGELINE can walk a mile in under 20 minutes. She can amble it. If you can't manage a mile without a car (and I imagine a bike would be faster than even a quick pace), that's not my problem. "Oh, what about when it's a snowstorm and you have to bike five miles up and down hills to go shopping???" Even with a car, you're telling me you do your shopping (up and down hills!) in snowstorms? Really? When it snows, *I* hunker down in the house and make popcorn and cocoa. I plan my life to do my shopping *before* the snow comes down. I'm just sayin'.


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In Schools, Bringing His Novels to His Fans

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An article about using up the un-usable (to you!) food in your CSA

One about making your own staples like bread
conuly: Quote from Heroes by Claire - "Maybe being different isn't the end of the world, it's just who I am" (being different)
Taken from ABFH

I find the behavior of the "adults" in this article to be unconscionable, reprehensible, and pretty fucking close to evil.

Pretty recently, when talking to somebody else about the Ann M. Martin book "Inside Out", written a good 20 years ago about a family with an autistic child, I said the bar was set really low. If there's no outright malice in the book (and there isn't, in my recollection), I'm not going to condemn it. Hell, I'm just glad nobody there advocates killing the kid, which is about as bad as things are some days. And with that said, I still am managing to be appalled at the total lack of civility described in the article. I always say not to look at the comments, and today I am following my own advice. I am sure no good can come of it.

I am sorry for the lack of substance to this post. I'm just so... I'm not happy. Sometimes, it's almost enough to make me wish I believed in a god, any god, vengeful or just. I'd feel better knowing that people get what's coming sooner or later.

As long as I'm loosely on the subject, here's a post about biased research regarding autistic children.
conuly: image of a rubber ducky - "Somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you" (ducky predicate)
(I finally set up my wireless again, so I'm totally upstairs while typing. This either rocks or sucks depending on how much computer time you figure I'll have...!)

Their mother hadn't sent Ana's vacation homework up with her, which meant I got stuck with it. That's all right, she just kinda plowed through it. (And yes, I *do* think vacation homework for kindergarten is silly, but I'm told that the other kids in her class have parents who want MORE homework. The mind boggles, let me tell you.)

One of Ana's homeworks (she only has three left for the weekend - the daily "what the weather is" picture, her "my favorite thing I did this week" picture and two sentences, and a math set (they're working with coins) that she didn't want to finish) involved rhyming words. There were four words in each row (in four different rows), three of which rhymed. This was pretty badly done as the non-rhyming word always made a minimal pair with a rhyming word - bug, rug, and rag, for example. It would've been more challenging if they hadn't. But I digress.

The final row had these four words: pin, pen, ten, hen.

Can you see the problem with that? Say the list aloud. If you automatically figure out the problem, gold star! If not, go here. As it happens, I have the pin-pen merger. I think I must have gotten it from my dad, as neither my mother nor sister has it and they used to tease me about it. (Because I didn't get enough of that at school, guys?) I remember sitting in speech (therapy) lessons as a kid, the only year I had actual instruction in those, working it out in my head how weird it was that there was no short-e before n, even when it's written in that way! I literally don't hear it when other people say it unless I'm listening for it, and I feel as though I'm twisting my mouth unnaturally to produce it myself.

So when I saw this I listened with great interest to see what Ana would do.

She carefully read the words (didn't have to sound them out!), and as soon as she got to pin and pen she stopped. Read them again, the whole list. Frowned. Sounded each word out carefully. "Connie, they all rhyme!"

So what do I do? Do I tell her to ignore her instincts and fill out the words that look like they rhyme? That's what she used to do when she was three. Do I let her fill out all of them and look like she didn't get it at all? I compromised by telling her that there's a good reason they put four rhyming words there, telling her to fill them all in, and writing a note to her teacher explaining this. Then, she she was done, I explained the pin-pen merger and talked her through the steps of a simple linguistic survey. We're totally stopping family members to see who has it and who doesn't today!

[Poll #1385210]

This isn't the first time I've had a language quibble with Ana's homework. Once she had to do "initial sounds that match" and one of the examples was a P word with a "pan". Except that I generally say skillet, and she generally says skillet, and when we don't say skillet we say frying pan. But she breezed right through that without a thought, proving that she understands very well how to do worksheets.
conuly: (words)
And they say such silly things. If you want your preferred writing style to be taught, try not to defend it with gems like "You need it to sign your name". Not only is that not true, but it's easily avoidable - people could learn cursive just for namesigning and not for anything else! Alternatively, learning to type isn't something that you can't do after a certain age. Unless your kid has serious motor control issues they can probably wait until they're 10 or 15 to do it, they really *don't* need to learn when they're six... although this article is fascinating, I must admit!

When I was in elementary school, the other gifted first grade class learned cursive that year. The rest of us learned in the third grade. I guess they sorta re-learned it? I didn't learn it at all, for various reasons. (A word to the wise? Attempting to bully a child into learning by saying they'll "need to know this next year" and "won't pass if they don't know it" is just not helpful. Especially when it's not true. My seventh grade English teacher should note that by high school (her personal benchmark) all my teachers didn't care and liked stuff typed anyway.)

And then we moved to Staten Island, where I became acquainted with a totally different style of penmanship than the one I'd failed to learn in Brooklyn. I'm not sure if the people using it developed it on their own, or if my school in Brooklyn just taught differently than their schools here, but it was different. No slant, and very round. The general shapes of the letters are the same (I'm having a fun time on Google looking at different examples of cursive script as taught for handwriting in different countries), but they're all round. It's very neat, and it's very careful, and it's a pain in the butt to read because all the letters look alike, like variations on os and as. (Picture that as an Ariel a, thanks.)

I think I could spend all day doing this - but! I just woke up (I had intestinal difficulties and didn't make it to bed until the birds started chirping) and wish to go *do* something today.

If you want, though, I'd appreciate images of your own handwriting (cursive or otherwise) and your handwriting if you were writing for a strict teacher. Just for my own edification. Location, times, etc. are useful.

Oh, also, a random video I found on the subject of overcrowding, from the 50s! It's absolutely fascinating for reasons I can't quite articulate, though surely the fact that "classes in boiler rooms" is a popular (and not altogether non-existent) boogeyman in NYC today helps with that.
conuly: (Default)
In Finland.

Finland, Finland, Finland. Sometimes I think I'd like to move to Finland. The six months of darkness would be more than offset by the fact that they've got a ridiculously high standard of living.

Course, I'd have to learn Finnish, at which point this whole idle notion comes to a screeching halt.

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