Fishing in Alaska

A teacher's institute day and a cold weather day with no classes and three weeks have passed. It's probably a bit too much to expect kids to remember anything. So we started again. Boys are still squirrels and girls are quiet rule followers. This is an after school activity; kids are a little wound up. They still have to take turns, mind their business and be good classroom citizens. Clearly, that's difficult. Our class is 2nd graders to 6th graders. We split into two groups. I've got the little ones - 2nd and 3rd graders. They have trouble clicking in small spaces and finding letters on the keyboard. Today, the curriculum tried to introduce a looping construct (repeat a set of instructions over and over) and more debugging (here's a program; there's something wrong with it - fix it). Tall order. I can see some deficiencies with the program for little hands. If they move some of the blocks too far out of the way, it behaves in an unexpected fashio

Mary Stories

- November 30, 2023

From: Mary You got me thinking. My mother said that I remind her of her mother. She was small - on the petite size and could be feisty. She loved to cook and bake apple pies. The neighbors next store had a Green Granny Apple tree and the branches on Grandma side of the fence provided her with plenty of apples for pie and applesauce. Back in those days Grandma had a wringer washer machine. First the hot water had to be heated by coal furnice. The laundry was soaked hot soapy water and put the wringer by hand. Then the laundry had to be hung out clothes lines in the back yard and propped up with wooden sticks. Grandpa like to help hang the laundry after he retired. It was a all day job. Grandma had a old Singer sewing machine in the kitchen. One Thanksgiving the pumpkin pies were placed on sewing machine and covered with dish clothes. I did not know the pies were there and put my hands down on the pies and started mushing them up! When I lifted up the dish towels I felt s

Surprises on my final day

- April 11, 2008

It's surprising to me that in only a couple hours, I've been able to learn so much about people that I've been interacting over the phone for the last three months. The view I had been able to build was so incomplete. A meal here, a short conversation there - suddenly these relationships go from being superficial and one-dimensional to much richer. People that I've been speaking with have families and lives outside of work (not really an earth shattering revelation, but I surprised at how much it matters). It is also surprising (to me) that my capacity and willingness to try new things has limits. At home, I am always pushing for, "Let's go out and eat Chinese, or Korean or Indian." I thought I was game for anything new any time (or all the time). I've found that after only a week, I'm actually hungering for something more familiar more what I'm used to. Aside - I'm actually thinking back to my lunch. I had a dish (Indian obviousl

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