No TV for a Week!

"So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
go throw your TV set away,
in it's place you can install
a lovely bookshelf on the wall."
~Charlie & the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

April 21 to 27 is 'TV Turnoff Week'. As a teacher, I both participated & encouraged my students to do the same. Keep in mind the average American watches 1,672 hours of TV a year. Maybe it'll lead to new habits, maybe it won't, but taking a break can't be anything but good, right?

The inevitable question that 'no TV' brings up is boredom. I have a book I've been pretty excited about that might actually make it off my shelf this week! And if I get through earlier, I'm headed to the library! :o) I know that kids aren't like me (i.e. they can't read in every second of their free time & be happy) so there's some great low/no cost ideas here, here, here & here and some good scavenger hunts here. And if all else fails... let 'em get their technology-fix on Starfall :o)

Donor's Choose

This is up there on my list of worthy causes. I know the struggles of being responsible for preparing meaningful lessons on a daily basis while in the post-NCLB classroom. Unless you're in a "F" school (& sometimes even when you are) materials are often out of reach due to finances. This has been my personal experience, anyhow...

Teachers are then left with options:
#1. Pay for the supplies out of their pocket.
#2. Master the skill of writing grants in their "free time" & hope for funding... often times waiting for months.
#3. Forgo the materials & do without... possibly hindering students' learning.

Well, there's a new option out there that not as many people know about. (I must confess that if I were still in the classroom, I would be tempted to hoard this nugget of information without sharing).

DonorsChoose.org allows teachers to sign up & request their most needed supplies. Then donors browse through projects & decide which ones they'd like to donate to. You can search for local schools or you can search for particular categories (narrowing it down by things like... grade level, academic subject, poverty level, special education, technology, etc).

I was *highly disappointed* when I could not find ANY schools near Jacksonville on the website, & I immediately set out contacting my old teaching buddies! IF YOU'RE A TEACHER, GET UP THERE!! If you know a teacher, tell them about it!

You may also consider donating... it's quite a seamless system. Following a donation, you receive a thank you packet from both the organization & the teacher/students! It details exactly how your donation was spent & it's impact on the class... all information is verified from the bottom-up.... by the teacher, the school, Donor's Choose, & the government (where necessary). They send the teacher the requested supplies (i.e. not the check) so you know the money is being used as intended.

Since I didn't find anyone local, I decided to try to find a classroom similar to my own. I found a Kindergarten class that sounded somewhat similar to my methodologies. I got a lovely letter in response from the teacher & check out the response from a couple of the kids below... the entire class wrote us (& it wasn't photocopies of the kids' writing... those were real pencil smudges!)

Shame on Sally

I honestly wish this ignorance had no place in our government.
I'd rather Anne represent my voice, thank you very much.

Dear Pedigree,

I'm writing to tell you that I highly respect your work with the Pedigree Adoptation Drive Foundation. You're tackling an important issue & I commend you for bringing public awareness to it. That being said, if I have to sit through Echo's commercial one more time, I'm going to have a total & complete breakdown. I remember the first time I saw it... I was blissfully sitting on the couch enjoying one of my favorite shows. Then it came on.

Shot 1: Cute dog lays in the pound/humane society.

Internal Dialogue: "He's adorable - I've fallen in love with him already!"

Voice-Over: Yadda, yadda, yadda - Pedigree helps dogs find homes when you buy our food.

Shot 2: Family walks up & the dog, named Echo, perks up.

Internal Dialogue: "Look at how cute his ears are... he's going to get adopted!! Oh boy - Echo's going to have a family & a home! I'm so happy for him!!"

Shot 3: Family walks away without a second glance. Echo's sad, confused, & all alone in his concrete cage... no family, no friends, no one to play with or love.

Internal Dialogue: "WHAT?!!? WHERE ARE THEY GOING? Echo doesn't even have a towel to sit on or a ball to play with... Heartless, just heartless!!!"

Voice-Over Ends: Yadda, yadda. Help us help dogs, buy our stuff.

Following the commercial, I found myself in total distress with tears pouring... I'm not even a dog person & I wanted to go adopt a dog. Pedigree, I know this commercial does exactly what you intended (i.e. play on the heartstrings of viewers to build your brand name & sell your product), but why do you insist on this torture?? I mean, this is really, really depressing (second only to 'Old Yeller')! I support your cause both in theory & through my local animal shelters, but this blatant emotional abuse is nothing but an unfair guilt trip!

Sincerely yours,
Emily

Gaining Prespective

I consider myself an idealist. Slightly naive, maybe.
This month, however, I was abruptly torn from that state of living.

I received an email from my parents titled, "Missing Person." At first I thought it was a forward... a joke or something. Shortly after clicking it, I realized it was no joke. Someone my mom hired & worked with on a daily basis was missing. I prefer happy endings and wish I could tell you this has one, but sadly it does not. Things like this are on the TV all the time, but rarely did I stop to think about the emotions involved for loved ones. This puts things into perspective.

Be Safe!!! <3

Dream On

My mom told me about a dream she had recently that incorporated some things we had talked about the week before. This got me interested... what happens in your head while you sleep?

What is a dream?
A dream is "a subconscious sequence of images, sounds, ideas, emotions, or other sensations usually during sleep, especially REM sleep."

Does everyone dream?
All humans do (and most mammals and birds too). When someone tells you that they don't dream, they probably mean they don't remember their dreams.

What happens when you fall asleep?
When you drift off to sleep...your heart rate slows, your temperature drops, & your brain begins processing events from the day. 'Dreams' in this early state are usually made up of flashes of thoughts and images from your day (like what you ate for lunch, a phone call you made, a movie you watched, etc). You don't usually remember these dreams unless you wake up during or right after them.

What happens next?
After about 90 minutes, you fall into REM sleep. You're more likely to remember REM dreams. REM dreams are often vivid, loopy and surreal. There's a biological reason for this...your amygdala (the part of your brain that processes emotions) & your hippocampus (the seat of your memory) are very active during REM sleep. Meanwhile the prefrontal cortex of the brain (responsible for logic and reasoning) is shut down during sleep. "Dreams use so many bits and pieces of our memory, but not in a logical, linear way. It's more of an associative conglomeration of things." says David Linden, Ph. D., professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Brain scans done during REM sleep show the visual center of the brain is not active (this is the primary place of input during your waking hours), while the visual memory center goes into overdrive (the part that stores images from the past). Your brain is literally flipping through it's photo album and comparing where events fit into your schema. We 'see' our dreams by subconsciously pulling them from our memory.

Why do we need sleep?
"It's almost like the old card-catalog system in libraries," says David Linden. "Dreams consolidate our recent memories and cross-reference them with older ones so that we can better understand what's going on." This explains why dreams often incorporate elements from our past. In a recent study conducted at Harvard, participants were asked to play a video game then sleep. The research team concluded in the journal Science, people who were most involved in playing the game were the most apt to dream about it, suggesting that, while they slept, their brains were processing the information that seemed important. Once the information is in your memory, it influences your decisions and how you behave during the day.

Rosalind Cartwright, Ph. D., a psychologist and the founder of the Sleep Disorder Service and Research Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, studied people going through divorce & found that those who were most depressed in the day also had the least emotional dreams. While those who were managing well during then day were more likely to have highly emotional and expressive dreams. Those who were 'doing better' during the day seemed to be working out their feelings in their dreams. "It's almost like their dreams helped them realize, "I've handled feelings like this before so I can deal with them again!" says Cartwright. The dream state is your brain's rehearsal to mentally prepare for current and future events.

What are nightmares and recurring dreams?
"Uncomfortable recurring dreams are usually linked to an unaddressed anxiety," says Veronica Tonay, Ph. D. a psychology instructor at the University of California, and the author of The Creative Dreamer. Nightmares are often brought on by a real life event (moving to a new place or a trauma). Children tend to have more nightmares than adults do. "They haven't developed the psychological tools to deal with emotions, so they're more likely to feel overpowered by them. They have a lot of nightmares about animals and monsters. This could be symbolic of big things they don't understand yet."

Don't worry though, intense and frightening dreams are normal as long as you don't have them every night.

My Spirit Animal

If you asked me as a child what animal I would be if I could be any animal... my usual response would be something like a tiger or a monkey. I never really felt a connection with these animals, I just thought they were furry and cute.

Then one day last summer it hit me.

Tim has tagged it for years...
if I get *super* excited over something (I mean squeaky-voice, fast-talking, scampering-around excited!), Tim has been known to "chiku!" at me. For a while I paid no attention. Then one day...I asked. It was his impersonation of my spirit animal.

A raccoon? A chipmunk? A hamster?
I knew it wasn't a meerkat, because my spirit animal *would not* spend all day digging in the dirt!

No... it was a squirrel. A rodent. I was slightly offended.

Around the same I was reading Teach with Your Strengths by Rosanne Liesveld and Jo Ann Miller (a *great* book...obviously geared for teachers...but it could be enjoyed by anyone who wants to utilize their personal strengths and natural talents in life/work!)

They encourage you to analyze your top 5 innate strengths and learn how to further integrate those into your daily life. My personality evaluation came back with the top 5 strengths being (in this order): Input, Harmony, Learner, Intellection, Relator.

Self-Analysis...

• Input - I like input! I like to collect it, gather it, organize it, keep it, and have access to it. I thrive on input! My philosophy for years and years has been ~ if I know where to get the information then I don't need to *know* the information. I live by this.

• Harmony/Relator - If you know me, this is no surprise. I am, after all, a middle-child. I try to live in harmony...with myself, others, the world, and the universe. I like passion, but I am uncomfortable by hostility and conflict.

• Learner/Intellection - I like to think I'm continually learning and bettering myself. I try anyway. I'm very interested in learning about learning...the brain!!
  

Ok...so I agree that I'm all of those things. But a squirrel?!? Was I ready to admit I was a squirrel?

Well, I'm long and lean. So is a squirrel.
I like to hoard. So does a squirrel.
I make "nests." As do squirrels.
Squirrels are clever. Do I even need to say it?
Squirrels are planners. I live by my calendar.
Squirrels are feisty foragers. I can be pretty *feisty.*
Squirrels do not usually eat much meat. I'm a vegetarian.
I'm *a little* chirpy when I get excited, I admit.

Hmm....maybe squirrels aren't so nutty.

"Emily," I said, "you are absolutely, without a doubt, a squirrel!"

A self-portrait.

Tim is an owl. Other owls know. They single Tim out in crowds of people and stare directly at him...doing the whole head-bob and all. It's as if they're saying, "Hello, friend. Why do you look so funny? Where are your feathers and wings?"

I think Tim's spirit animal would eat my spirit animal. Is that bad?

Hey... we may not be the top of the food chain, but we're survivors! What's your spirit animal?

What does this say about our world?

Oliver Brown v. Board of Education

Some of you may remember it, live and in the flesh...

More than 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court carefully weighed the effects of segregation. In their decision, the Supreme Court specifically cited a 1950's paper discussing "The Doll Test."

Psychologists Kenneth Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark designed a test to study the psychological effects of segregation on children. In the "doll test" they used four plastic, diaper-clad dolls, completely identical in every respect except color. They showed the dolls to black children between the ages of 3 and 7, and asked them to answer questions to determine racial perception and preference. Almost all of the children readily identified the race of the dolls. However, when asked which they preferred, the majority selected the white doll and attributed positive characteristics to it.

They summarized their findings in a final document in 1950. The Clarks concluded that "prejudice, discrimination, and segregation" caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred.

Fast-forward to 2005...
A documentary, A Girl Like Me, by Kiri Davis recreates the doll test at a modern day daycare center. You can see video of it here. This video is stomach-churning sickening. The kids respond with a smile and quickness that will surprise you.

What does it mean?? How "integrated" are we as a society?

I only know this area and I can only speak from my own experience. My class....16 of my 18 students are black. Of the other 2, 1 is hispanic and 1 is white. In past years the numbers have been comparable. There are definitely schools in my county with diverse populations, but the majority remained "polarized." Like my own.

Our schools are integrated by law, but segregated by our communities and neighborhoods... our socio-economic groups

As hard as I work to make our "first grade community" a loving, accepting, caring color-blind place. Does it really matter?!? These kids, at their young age, already know how the world works.

Click here if you're interested in taking a Implicit Association Test for Race or Gender. Very interesting...