Body sculpting, surgical/chemical alterations, therapy . . . our culture is obsessed with hiding, cutting out or otherwise purging its flaws. We want to be persons with no weaknesses. Even our college entrance exams, job interviews, courtships and business dealings all seem to hinge on [...]
*I’ve made no secret about the fact that we have a large family. I have a kid in every conceivable phase. No matter what you've heard to the contrary, this can get complicated. I’m as guilty as anybody for romanticizing it, as my cheerful approach [...]
I love poetry! It is so amazing to me the way that art so seemingly effortlessly communicates on so many levels, with precision, economy and beauty! When my family and I learn poetry together, several things take place...
I am a sort of “seat-of-the-pants” educator, who relies very heavily on subtle, sometimes unconsciously detected, cues to inform my approach in the classroom I just feel when they’re “getting it”, who’s not, and why not. I sometimes learn more from evaluating what I did—and why I must have felt it should be that way—then I ever do from trying to anticipate the need and plan for it. So, over time, I have collected a mass of data of “what I did”, and am starting to see some truly amazing patterns.
Language is not only the vehicle of our thought, but the substance of it. I believe that language is so intrinsic a process in our development of self, ideas, purposes, perceptions, etc., that whenever we undertake to truly embrace a new language (as opposed to just learning it in a rote fashion) we must do so by passing through the Phases in that language.
