Linda on Life

It will probably not surprise you to hear that my trip to China fell through that March! Our summer trips to Germany and Spain fell through as well. Thank goodness for the great outdoors and friends to spend time with right here at home. We grew milkweed and monitored them for monarch butterflies. We were able to harvest and eat our own cherries. I followed what was going on in other countries, and connected with family and friends electronically. I also spent a lot of time planning and learning to teach during the pandemic. That opened a whole new world for me. My colleagues and I knew that when we were teaching through Zoom, we had to make things as active as possible for the children. Given the tension and fear that abounded we also managed to have some pretty good learning experiences. I am grateful to have a good educational philosophy to ground my thinking with good resources to implement my ideas, and great friends to discuss them with. We were all keeping up with what was going on in the world and trying to keep things upbeat. Take on the catastrophes that you can handle, namely the environment, the one the children know about. I am so grateful for some good workshops, technological access, colleagues who knew a lot and taught me tech skills, and then my own experience teaching. Tools like breakout rooms, cool projects, and great books helped. So did having great students and supportive parents. I started regularly attending webinars on topics related to education but also anything that interested me that was offered because my email was filled with interesting topics. People started offering their conferences as webinars and interactive zoom meetings around the country with participants around the world. We were saying, let us make the best of the situation and incorporate this into our 21st century teaching repertoire. Suddenly a sick child could keep up, the children had more free time, and we actually had the schedule we always felt the children should have. So, it was not all bad.
Who do I envision finding my blog useful? I am hoping other teachers who create their own curriculum will want to read what I have to say about curriculum projects. I will talk about projects that I have done in the past since I am winding down my teaching career, but can be reached at my contact address if you would like to discuss curricular ideas. I have been teaching collaboratively my whole life. I also have thoughts about handling challenges with implementation in different school settings. I have been teaching a lot of different histories to younger students so I have experience with that, as well as environmental and other sciences, math, and diverse literature. I love project driven teaching and simulations. I am coming from teaching in a Deweyan school so that is something I know a lot about: making things relevant to children.

I am also going to be sharing my parenting experiences as well as who I turn to when I need advice. I will be discussing my child’s college search and she might weigh in as well. We are going to be looking abroad so it might interest those who are considering this or have never considered it but are concerned with paying for it here. This might be interesting to other parents who are there and whose children are doing the same thing. I also have a teacher’s perspective on some of this, having had hundreds of former students go to college. I run into them since I live in the community where I teach. It is nice to be updated by them or their parents. We have friends whose children are applying to college. We will start with this, but then discuss things that come up at different stages of child rearing since I have friends who are raising children of various ages. My daughter and perhaps her friends might weigh in as well.

I hope to have an audience that is both children and adults, because I will be talking about childrens and adults books, and arts, and my daughter (who is currently a teen) has said she may write some things in the blog. I will invite children I know to interview or write, as well as other adults. We will see what topics come up that are relevant to them.

There will be discussions from an environmental perspective which might come under its own category or under any of the other categories. I will be sharing what I am learning about reducing dependence on fossil fuels in my life. I will try to be specific because I know that is useful. I might be recommending organizations that I think are doing good work. Food and water are global environmental concerns. There are a lot of political topics that will come up here and what I see as practical ways to address them.

I will talk about my travels and have other people who are willing talk about their travels. I am also talking about plans to live abroad. This is obviously for people who are interested in living abroad. Even people who might like to try living in another country for a short time, or going to school in another country. This is a world in which people are moving around all the time. I think we all need to have empathy for people who are trying to live and make it in another country and culture. There is nothing that brings about that empathy more than trying to live in another culture yourself. My first official teaching job after graduate school was in an international school in the Dominican Republic. It was a wonderful experience where I met a lot of interesting people and learned a lot, and it was also very challenging at times to live there as a foreigner. I gained immense respect for all who have made a life for themselves in the United States after that.

Really, this blog will be for anyone who comes across it that finds anything I have to say useful. I am a lifelong learner. I hope my experiences will be useful to you.