A Day In The Life

10/23/2014
DailyMusings

Old School

I began working last year as an assistant teacher in a first grade classroom. I enjoy being in the classroom, helping the children learn knew things, watching them learn to read and grasp the new concepts they are being taught. The teacher I work with is 40 years old and has been teaching for close to 20 years. She is full of energy, very positive, and is wonderful with the students. She brings spontaneity to the classroom, able to switch gears at a moment’s notice. This was something I had to learn to adjust to as I usually function in a more “regimented” fashion, let’s say. I like to know ahead of time what to expect, have a plan, and stick to it. I have learned to “roll with things” more, and not sweat it if things don’t go exactly as planned.

I went to elementary school in the 1960’s. Students were held to certain standards. We did not talk back to teachers, we did not challenge or argue with what a teacher told us to do, we had to remain seated during class and were not allowed to just decide to get up and take a walk over to the cubby to get something while the teacher was teaching. I have found that it is a new world in the land of first grade, and it can be challenging at times. I personally will not tolerate a child talking back to me or addressing me in a disrespectful way.

Many strides have been made in education for the better since I was in elementary school. We have become aware that not all students learn the same way or take in information the same way. The use of positive reinforcement has entered the classroom, rather than tearing down the student to then try to build them up. HOWEVER…. all that being said, I can’t help but feel that there were benefits to the “old school” way of teaching.

This week the teacher I work with is away and a substitute has been in all week. The sub was a first grade teacher for 18 years in this school and retired last year. She is in her early 60’s. I have to say I am loving her method of teaching. She is caring and warm, yet sets limits. It was music to my ears when I heard her say to the class before beginning a writing exercise, “Sit your bottoms on the chair, put your back up against the back of it, and put your feet on the floor under the desk.” Many of the kids will either sit sideways on the chair, or put their knees on the seat with their feet over the back of the chair to work. It drives me crazy. I will usually tell them quietly to sit properly, but after a point I can’t stand being the “monitor.” Yesterday we spent some time learning how to write numbers and letters correctly. Top to bottom. She used the board to write math problems out as she explained, but also used blocks. She let one of the kids use the pointer at the board, which I hadn’t even realized we had in the classroom. Oh I was back in 1965 and loving it.

Progress is important, moving forward and trying new things and embracing a new way of doing things is important. Education has evolved and hopefully will continue to. The answer is not always to abandon the ways of old to make room for the new though. Some old methods may still be relevant along with new methods. They may help to lay the foundation for how children will develop into successful adults.

10/23/2014
DailyMusings

2 comments

Weekly Post Photo Challenge-Refraction

The Daily Post-Weekly Photo Challenge

10/22/2014
DailyMusings

6 comments

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: The Color Green

10/21/2014
DailyMusings

4 comments

Tuesday’s A to Z challenge: “P”

PAWS

Tuesday’s A to Z Challenge

10/20/2014
DailyMusings

10 comments

Dust In The Wind

Daily Prompt: Finite Creatures – At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?

My first memory of someone dying was that of my Uncle when I was 13. It was the first time I saw my father cry, the first time I was exposed to open grief- my Uncle had died suddenly at age 56 from a heart attack. So old to my 13 years, so young now I realize. I can’t say that it had any impact on thinking about my own mortality though.That came much later, and really entered my consciousness after I started volunteering in a hospital visiting patients, when I was in my 40’s.

Many of the patients I visited were my age, and suffering through some unspeakable illnesses. Many remained hospitalized for months, never leaving before dying there. One woman became a grandmother for the first time and the caring and kind nurses allowed her daughter to bring the baby in to lay with her dying grandmother, a woman in her late 40’s, only hours before taking her last breath. Three patients I had been visiting for many months all died within the same week, one in his 30’s, the other two ages 45 and 55. I became very aware of the fact that disease can pay a visit at any age, that there are surely no guarantees of living to “old age” and just as these people had been struck down in the middle of their lives, so too could I.

I used to walk the halls with a patient who had come out of his remission from cancer, and was once again undergoing treatments. We talked about how he felt, his fears, and I remember his wide eyed look and saying to me, “this could kill me.” It hadn’t really entered my mind until he said it. He was tall and strong looking, had a wife and 2 teenage kids. It did kill him. Quicker than anyone had thought it would. I saw him one week and the next week when I came in he was lost in his own world, talking but making no sense, the cancer having unexpectedly spread to his brain. I talked with him, playing along with his fantasy, knowing I would not see him again after that day.

I never took for granted being able to walk out of that hospital, being able to feel the sun on my face, see the blue sky, watch the trees change color in the fall or the flowers bloom in the spring. I still do not take it for granted. We are fragile human beings, blessed if we are healthy, something not to be taken lightly. So much can go so wrong and invite the angel of death to pay a visit.

One of the very special patients I visited with for many months-who succumbed to her cancer at age 20.

10/19/2014
DailyMusings

10 comments

Travel Theme: Broken

The Colossus of Constantine was a colossal acrolithic statue of the late Roman emperor Constantine the Great (c. 280–337) At one time it occupied the west apse of the Basilica of Maxentius near the Forum Romanum in Rome. Portions of the Colossus now reside in the Courtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Musei Capitolini, on the Capitoline Hill, above the west end of the Forum. It sat about 40 feet high. I took this photo in 1983 when I was there. My sister is looking up and gives you an idea of the scale.

Ailsa’s Travel Theme

10/15/2014
DailyMusings

16 comments

It’s All In The Genes

Across the Bored-The Big 5 Challenge – Who do you resemble?

The Big 5 Challenge has asked “Who do you resemble?” – mom or pop, lion or lemur, celebrity or saint…

I have always most resembled my mother’s side of the family. My eyes are brown, my nose most like my mother’s with a little of my father’s thrown in. As I have aged there are mornings when I look in the mirror and see my mother looking back at me. When I am tired it seems even more pronounced, perhaps because by the time I started realizing what my mother looked like she was the age I am now. The older I got the more aware of her facial expressions or imperfections I became.

My Grandfather & Mother

One of my sisters has always looked exactly like my mother except for her beautiful green eyes which she inherited from my father. It has always made her stand out from the rest of us. I inherited having no gray hair but for one or two into my 50’s, from my father who also never really went gray. My mother was gray by her late 20’s, and my sister followed suit.

My youngest sister was mistaken for me once by a neighbor who stopped to ask her something and couldn’t understand why she had no idea what she was talking about. It was then that I realized just how strong family resemblance can be.

My grandfather lived into his 90’s with barely a wrinkle on his face, and my mother’s skin has also held up quite well for a woman in her 80’s. I hope to have inherited those genes too. Familial resemblances are always a fun thing to see, who looks like who across the generations, how even cousins can look alike. What often amazes me more is when mannerisms and gestures are the same, somehow you wouldn’t think that to be an inherited trait, but my mother’s gestures were so like my grandfather’s it was uncanny. I find it hard to believe it is something one picks up as a form of imitation, I really believe it is something inherited. Like it or not, we are who we are because of where we came from, and sure it is possible to change things, improve things, tweak things these days, I am happy to continue to bear a resemblance to those who came before me.

My Grandfather & Mother

10/14/2014
DailyMusings

1 comment

Tuesday’s A to Z challenge: “O”

ORB

Tuesday’s A to Z challenge: “O”

10/13/2014
DailyMusings

8 comments

Nothing Tastes As Good As Thin Feels

My brother in law has had a lifetime of struggling with his weight. His mother was a large woman always on a diet. She liked to eat. She liked food. She never wasted food, having fled Nazi Germany and struggling when she came to America in 1938, there was no wasting the food her husband worked hard to put on the table. My husband was also chubby as a child- when he would shop for clothes they referred to him as “husky.” I guess that was less insulting than being called chubby or fat. His weight reached an all time high when he was in college and he realized he needed to get control and really slimmed down. I do think he, like his brother, is overly obsessed with how thin people are, who is overweight and who is not. I am always amazed when watching a movie or meeting someone new the first thing he will comment on to me is how thin or heavy they are. It doesn’t even enter my mind. I can only imagine growing up in a house where there was such import surrounding eating and food it distorted both my husband’s and his brothers ability to have a healthy outlook about it.

My brother in law at one point in his life lost over 100 pounds. I was working for him at the time and the big joke when people would comment on his weight loss was that he lost all of me. He accrued a massive collection of ties because they never change size like most of the clothes in his closet over the years. He became a lifetime member of Weight Watchers and received an award for maintaining his weight loss for over a year. Not an easy feat, and as the years went by he maintained but gained and lost here and there. My brother in law is over 6 feet tall so gaining 15 pounds barely shows up on him. Stresses in life are any easy lead in to snacking, filling up the space where the stress resides. There is always that hunger for a taste of that fabulous dessert someone is serving, and slowly the pounds creep on. He began having health issues (unrelated to his weight) but his doctor insisted he drop a few pounds. So his attention to everything he put in his mouth began anew.

I saw him last week and he looks very trim, almost too thin. The older one gets and the thinner they are, the skin loses some of its elasticity. My girlfriends and I always say, “It’s your figure or your face.” Too thin can make a person of a “certain age” look gaunt and wrinkled, a little fat in the cheeks plumps up all those wrinkles hiding them. Naturally our conversation turned to eating, and he said to me, “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” He said he keeps that in mind before putting some forbidden treat in his mouth. He likes feeling trim and fit. That piece of cake (or in his case pieces as once he gets started he doesn’t stop at one) is just not worth it.

Each of us has our own achilles heel, something we struggle with, a challenge that may cause us to fail. Recognizing it and meeting it head on can often be the solution. My brother in law’s mantra of “nothing tastes as good as thin feels” is his reminder to think about what he eats before he eats it, and that he likes the closet full of clothes he has now-even better than the tie collection.

1973

2013

10/12/2014
DailyMusings

7 comments

Festival Of Leaves

Sweet Gum Leaves Against A Sky So Blue

Join Here!

10/12/2014
DailyMusings

6 comments

Cee’s Which Way Challenge

Heading South…..

Coming around North to head East into the Tunnel….

10/12/2014
DailyMusings

6 comments

A Photo a Week Challenge: Dead Plants

The contrast of a dead tree and the growth of a new tree in front of it.

Nancy Merrill A Photo A Week Challenge

10/11/2014
DailyMusings

6 comments

Voices Carry

Dreams. Waking from them feeling as though they were real. Being in them with the places all different from real life, but somehow you know where you are. Most disconcerting are the dreams with people no longer with us in life. I have read these dreams are called “visitation dreams.”

Last night I heard the voice of the friend I helped care for before before he died 2 years ago. Clear, and loud, as if I wasn’t dreaming-as if he was sitting next to me. It was the voice he used when he was a disc jockey on a college radio station,over 30 years ago. Deep and quiet and measured. We were in the car with another friend listening to a cassette tape. He addressed me by name, him being the only one who used a nickname for me.

I awoke with a start- how could the voice have been so loud? His voice has haunted me all through the day…. I can still hear it in my head. Keeping him alive for another day.

10/08/2014
DailyMusings

8 comments

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Pastels

Pastels

Pastel Painted Houses in Cape May New Jersey and Ocean Grove, NJ

10/08/2014
DailyMusings

9 comments

One Word Photo Challenge: Navy

Navy Silos

Jennifer Nicole Wells One Word Photo Challenge

10/07/2014
DailyMusings

12 comments

Worry, Worry, Worry

Is being a worrier something we are born with, or is it a learned behavior? Perhaps a combination of both? Scientific research suggests that worriers are not born that way, but their need to worry develops during their lifetime as an attempt to cope with both anxiety and with life challenges.

One of the boys in the first grade class where I am an assistant is a worrier. It is natural for a child his age to worry about some things, be anxious about new things going on, what is expected of them, will they be able to do and keep up with class work. The head teacher always “walks them through” a change in the typical routine by explaining clearly what is going to happen, and reinforces that she and I will be there for them if they have any questions. A few children will ask a question, but for the most part they just go with it, and move right along. Not this child. He agonizes over every change. School has been in session for almost 8 weeks and he is still afraid about getting lost going to the carpool room at dismissal and that he will miss his carpool. For the first 2 weeks I walked down with him and when his number was called made sure he got on line and went out with him to the car. Yet he is still worrying about it. The school psychologist is working with him and told me yesterday it is not just carpool, he is afraid of elevators, afraid of going to a new class for reading groups, the list goes on and on. Where did all this anxiety come from? He is only 6 years old.

Yesterday one of the worst possible scenarios presented itself in class. He had an accident. Fortunately none of the other students noticed and I was able to get him out of the classroom and get a change of clothes for him. On the way back to class he said to me, “My mother is going to kill me! She is going to go crazy!” Hiding my shock at this comment I asked him why, and he said “because she is going to want to know why I am not wearing my own pants and where are they!”

I wondered if his worrying was borne out of his mother’s attitude, her own nervousness imposed on a young child. I was raised by a nervous mother and grew up as a nervous and shy child, afraid of being wrong, of getting lost, of trying new things. I do believe my nature may have been such, just how I am “wired” but grew worse with the help of the nervous voice always in the background. Could this be the case with this child too? My heart broke from what he said to me, and we talked about it a little more.

I hope this year he will be able to shed some of his worries, will mature and with that become more confident and less afraid of the unknown. I know I will do everything in my power to help him along that road.

10/07/2014
DailyMusings

8 comments

Tuesday’s A to Z challenge: “N”

N is for Needlepoint

It is also for Not finished yet after 4 years….

A to Z Challenge

10/06/2014
DailyMusings

8 comments

In Transit-Daily Prompt

The Daily Prompt: Train stations, airport terminals, subway stops: soulless spaces full of distracted, stressed zombies, or magical sets for fleeting, interlocking human stories?

I commuted for 30 years into New York City. I stood on line every morning at the bus stop usually with the same people. We would nod a hello to one another, some would not look up from their phones, others engrossed in their paper. There was the occasional person who would strike up a conversation, looking to be friendly, but they were a rare exception. I often wondered where people were headed, what they did for a living, what was on their minds.

Then the evening rush came, some familiar faces, but most not, together on the crosstown bus which chugged along slowly, people tired out from the day, expressionless. Sometimes stuck in traffic the passengers would bond over their predicament of wanting to get home but being stuck on a city bus, for many just the first leg of that journey. We complained to one another, agreeing about the necessary evil this bus was, but how the service was unreliable, the bus not clean. Finding validation in our mutual agreement. In real life none of us would most likely have anything to do with one another, but here we had this ride in common.

A mad dash through the Port Authority Bus Terminal, taking the stairs because the escalator moved at a snails pace, none of the commuters making eye contact now, all focused on making that 5:20 bus, and then as we reached the top of that escalator, the dreaded sight: the line to the bus platform, snaking down the up escalator, onto the concourse and winding around out of sight. We all would groan in unison, once again united in our plight. What else to do but stand in line and grouse to one another, share what we were going to be missing by arriving home late, complaining that this was happening way too often.

Upon finally reaching the bus, boarding and embarking, all were silent, many sleeping, some reading, but all silent. Once again each unto himself, until the next time we would be united by our commute.

10/06/2014
DailyMusings

13 comments

Talking Turkey

I live in a pretty typical suburban town, not far from New York City. It is by no means the “country.” Most homes stand on modest plots of land. So you can imagine my surprise when I spotted a wild turkey sauntering down the middle of a main thoroughfare in town. I got out of my car to take some photos, and though he kept walking as I approached, he let me get fairly close to him. Quite an unusual sight!

OK lady, leave me alone with your camera….I’m outta here…

10/05/2014
DailyMusings

4 comments

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: On the Water

In the car on the Ferry

Enjoying the air on the Ferry

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: On the Water

10/05/2014
DailyMusings

17 comments

Cee’s Oddball Challenge

This week Cee posted some great goat photos for her Oddball Challenge

I happened to have met a nice goat last week at a fair, so I decided to share my photos for the challenge this week.

Titled: Selfie with Goat

10/05/2014
DailyMusings

15 comments

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign….

WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Signs

10/03/2014
DailyMusings

16 comments

Tree Hugger

My backyard holds a beautiful, very old Oak Tree. The trunk is very wide around and its branches stretch out over our backyard. In the summer I love to lay on a lounge and look up at the the beauty of the leaves forming a canopy that provide shade.

The houses where we live are situated very close to one another. One neighbor has become a dog breeder and at present has 9 dogs in her home. The house is not a large one, and our backyards run deep, but are not that wide. She never walks her dogs, only lets them out into her backyard when they need to go out. I believe this type of business would be better suited to a property with an acre or more of land, somewhere in a more rural area. My oak tree has dropped its acorns every year for most likely over 100 years as my house was built in 1930 and I believe the tree was here many years before. My neighbor is afraid of her dogs eating the acorns and brought someone in to cut back the branches that hang high above her yard. It has pained me to see my beautiful tree decimated on one side, healthy branches being cut off due to her inappropriate choice of having 9 dogs and not being able to walk them properly. I am certain the wind will still blow acorns to her side of the fence from the branches on my side.

I spoke with the man who did the cutting, and he assured me the tree will remain strong, but also agreed with me that in truth this is no solution. We rolled our eyes in agreement at how people have little regard for the beauty of nature, for the trees that have been standing for so long. I hope he is correct that my tree will have many more years of growth and someday will bring shade to someone when we are long gone.