Picturepocket's Blog

Category: education

  • My First Day of School

    Yesterday was my first day of working in an elementary school. For the last two decades, I have taught college-aged students or tutored, so working with littles is a massive shift. I have school-aged children of my own, but groups are still a challenge. The veteran kindergarten teacher said it was like herding cats and…

  • Faux Pas

    I thoroughly enjoyed the Olympics this year. One of my favorite parts about the games was the diversity of people participating and the variety of activities.  What I want to talk about is one of the controversies of this year’s Olympics. Not that controversy, I did not watch the opening ceremonies. Instead, I want…

  • Don’t Mind the Cursive

    I keep seeing posts from folks bemoaning the loss of cursive and  complaining about what books the kids these days are or aren’t reading. I guess that Facebook has become a place to vent frustrations about the educations Gen Z and Alpha. So here’s mine: please stop. Seriously, as a parent of two school children,…

  • The Other Other

    If I told you, “There is somebody at the front door,” Could you tell me what they looked like if my description did not include anything other than what I said already? Probably. You could go by my lack of description and rattle off all the “normal” things. First, we assume that it’s a man,…

  • High School History

    Last weekend, while my oldest was at camp, Tim and I left our youngest with grandma and took off back to my hometown to go to my 30-year high school reunion. It was my first time back to the building since the nineteen-nineties. Our first activity, was to tour the old high school building. From…

  • Idioms

    Good morning class! Today we’re going over some useful idioms. These are colorful phrases that people use, sometimes describing their life or even to comment on yours. We will talk about each phrases’ literal and figurative meaning and whether or not it’s a backhanded compliment. Let’s get started. Ducks in a row. “It looks like…

  • Spring Broken

    There is some expectation built up around spring break. Maybe from television and movies, but it’s been hard week as a Stay at Home Mom. I had the kids home from elementary school and preschool with only one car that Tim required for his daily commute. Our trusty Accord has been spending its break camping…

  • Get Smart

    I am blown away by how effective the after school tutoring program has been so far. After just a couple of months, the middle schoolers are getting right to work and many completing their weekly homework. Some of them even seem to look forward to the time now and call it “club.” Most of the…

  • Don’t Build a Bunker

    Tim and I spent yesterday just chilling between work and the holiday onslaught. We ate microwaved leftovers and binge watched the Netflix movie adaptation of Leave the World Behind. I had listened to the audio book during the Covid lockdown. It’s a fictional “what if” about a family trapped in an Airbnb when the US…

  • Infinite Potential

    Last week, I helped an eighth grader do his math homework. Algebra is not my strength, but we figured it out together. It was about slopes on a graph. There were ten problems and when we finished the seventh, he said he could submit the assignment for a passing grade. I asked him if he…