Picturepocket's Blog

Tag: education

  • Salutations 

    Last night, I watched a movie adaptation of Charlotte‘s Web with Ivy. There’s a bunch of children’s shows that I never saw because they came after I was a grown-up, but before I had kids. I have recently purchased a paperback copy of Charlotte‘s Web for Ivy who is a new reader, so of course…

  • 1776

    One of the fiercest battle cries leading up to war of independence from Britain in the American colonies was “no taxation without representation.” America won the war and we will celebrate our Nation’s 250th birthday year. Yet, when our forefathers wrote up the new voting guidelines, they initially only included the English-speaking, white, land-owning Protestant…

  • Letters to Friends: Romans Chapter 1

    The book of Romans is an epistle, a letter, that Paul wrote during his early missionary journeys through the Mediterranean. This particular letter is addressed to those of the Jewish faith living in Rome.  Paul starts by describing himself three ways: a servant of God, an apostle, and someone set apart for the gospel. He…

  • A.I.Pocalypse

    I haven’t had a scary dream in years, but I had one recently. It was the kind that had me shook.  I dreamed that a computer virus went through all the files and redid them all in the style of artificial intelligence art and ChatGPT writing. The result was that everything looked and sounded similar,…

  • Persuasion

    In my Argumentative Writing course I once assigned the students to ask for something by writing a persuasive letter. I offered bonus points if they were able to get the thing they request requested by the end of the semester. One student wrote food services and asked for a rice cooker and got it for…

  • Old Year, New Me

    This year has a few leftover days, so I am going to use them to catch up on all the reflecting I’ve been putting off. To be honest this year was a mixed bag. We got hit a couple of financial and social setbacks in the spring. Both relationships and circumstances left us feeling in…

  • Life in the Margins

    One of the things that I am trying to do better with the kids is to build in margins. If we all have to be somewhere at a set time, then I schedule the drive time and parking. Then I add the time that it will take to find the children’s shoes and also go…

  • Class Action

    Yesterday, I assisted in a class with a Master teacher. It was a 5th and 6th mix with 31 students. One was out, so there are potentially 32 total.  In addition to the large number, having a grade-split class is no joke. First, the teacher helped half of them log into the 5th grade math…

  • 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…

  • 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,…