First posted June 2014
1. Fit in seven minutes a day..."for the time-crunched masses," promises the online article. You exercise intensely for half a minute, rest for ten seconds, and so on. And that, if you're "time-crunched," promises health and fitness. Fast fast fast.
2. "Do you work out?" the doctor asks my husband. My husband mentions lawn cutting (we have a lot of grass), gardening, cleaning, fixing, and the hundred other active things he does. But they don't seem to have a category for those.
3. An Ontario school board is trying an iPad pilot project to encourage "essential literacy skills." They have provided electronic devices for whole classes. "I can't imagine going back now," says a teacher.
4. I found Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" online, something I wanted for today's school--but we also have it in an old book of poems, with a student's name and "1915" inscribed in the front in pen and ink. I decided to read it from the book. We also used five minutes of a video on castles to follow up the book we were using, and a super page on chemical reactions to clarify a new and difficult concept. I have nothing against using the wonders of technology in the classroom. But not as the only or even the main teaching tool. And I somehow doubt that the seventh graders I saw on the news are Googling Goldsmith.
5. Bus drivers who text AND write while driving. We were uncomfortably close to one such today...any closer and we would have lost some paint.
6. "I just realized," says a longtime CMer, "that I've been reading Charlotte Mason's books too fast. I need to slow down."
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