Sunday's Plate

One of my friends was saying she loves to bake, but she really hates the clean up. Let's travel together making one of my favorite cookies step by step and learn that your kitchen does not have to suffer the mess of baking to get a fine result.

First step: wash your hands and put on an apron. Grease stains!

Second step: clean up anything in your kitchen before making a new mess including wiping your counters and cutting boards. Your kitchen should be sparkling before you cook. That way, the orbit of clean is perpetual.

Third step: fill your sink half full with hot soapy water.

Fourth step: pull out two sticks of butter from the fridge, open the butter sticks and throw away the paper wrapper NOW. Put the butter into your food processor.

Fifth step: measure out 1/3 cup sugar and put the sugar into the food processor. Wipe up any spills and put your measuring cup into the sink.

Sixth step: take two eggs and separate them. That means crack the shell in half and pour the egg into your hand while your hand is over a small bowl. Let the white ooze through your fingers into the bowl while you catch the yolk. Do this twice putting the yolk into the food processor.

Seventh step: wash your hands and dry them on paper towel. Never use a dish towel to dry your hands because it will spread all kinds of germs. Throw out your paper towel NOW!

Eighth step: put your egg whites into a jar and place them in the fridge. Put the bowl you used into the sink and wipe up any spills.

Ninth step: turn on the food processor until the butter, sugar and yolks are a nice light paste.

Tenth step: Measure out two cups of flour one cup at a time - process - and add the second cup. You will find a nice soft dough results.

Eleventh step: In a square baking pan, press half your dough into the bottom of the pan with the back of a greased spoon. Use oil, it works best and goes faster than using fingers. To get the oil on the spoon, use a can of pan spray. Put the rest of the dough into a bowl.

Twelfth step: wash your hands and dry them on a paper towel.

Thirteenth step: Put your food processor bowl and blade and your measuring cup into the sink.

Fourteenth step: using half a jar of your favorite jam or jelly, spread the jam or jelly onto the dough with a spoon. (I use homemade cranberry jam I make by boiling two cups frozen cranberries and 1/2 cup sugar for five minutes on the stove.)

Fifteenth step: put your spoon into the sink and your jam jar away or the empty into the trash can NOW.

Sixteenth step: using the remaining dough dot the jam with clumps of the dough. This is the time to add nuts or any other garnish that seems like fun. Put your bowl into the sink.

Seventeenth step: Put square baking pan into the oven at 350 degrees for about twenty-five minutes or until the edges are brown.

Eighteenth step: Wash your two measuring cups, your two spoons, your two bowls and your food processor and blade. Rinse and let dry on a towel. Wipe down your counter.

Nineteenth step: lay out your cooling rack.

It's a start to bake without a mess. Baking is one of the most enjoyable jobs there is in the kitchen. Baking without a mess makes the treat so much sweeter!

Something for Saturday

Phenix & Phenix literary publicists sent the Garden School three new books to review. We enjoyed them very much. You can find Phenix & Phenix here

Feeding Penny Pig

Is a story about a very special gift for a very special granddaughter's birthday. It's a story about love and affection and about teaching children to deal with money. It is very well written and has the right lilt for kids. The children loved it at the Garden School, and they all wanted to talk about their own piggy banks.


I'm up in a Tree

Is a story about working out problems. It's a cute story and filled with cute little characters. It's about parents and children's love for one another. The language is easy to read and has a real music to it that keeps the children listening and learning.


How Lil Eddie Learns to Read

One of my teachers read this and said the children really enjoyed it.


We enjoyed reading these wonderful books. The children like the gentle lilt of the language, and through all three of them listened for the story. These are new books and very much worth buying for the home library. Look for them at your book store.

Friday's Tattler

Friday was a special day. The Lion's Club came to do eye exams on the kids. They have the newest equipment. They have a hand held device that looks a lot like a radar gun. It has a smiley face on it, and the children look into the device, and the doctor snaps a picture and that's it! The results will be mailed soon. The kids all seemed to like the whole project.

We got to go out for the first time in weeks, and the children seemed to love to run between the still snowy places and the wet ones. The sun was shining, and Kylie got to pass out her valentines with suckers and the kids were thrilled.

Later in the afternoon, we had our spelling be. Haidyn won! Yeah Haidyn. Jake came in second and that was a big surprise because Jake has just made the leap of 4-5 and from Middles to Kindergarten. We are sooooooooooooo proud of him. Kylie came in second - way to go Kylie.

Looking forward to the weather changing. One day cold, the next day warm, the next day sunny then rainy, then spring. So very exciting.

We have been working on telling ourselves about that which is good and that which is not. We've talked a lot about the rules and knowing them and just not minding. Good behavior is always a choice and we are encouraging every child to make a good choice every time.

This week we sent home our Bona Operas. This a good work the children promise to do during Lent. It's a promise they make. Please remind your child of his promise during these forty days.

Thursday's Teacher

From Teacher Magazine

Published: February 17, 2010

Comment: an excellent article. I agree; students learn differently from one another because students are different from one another. One child learns through hearing, one from doing, one from the visual of a movie, and some need two or more means of materials to learn. Good Job Heather!

The Bunk of Debunking Learning Styles

By Heather Wolpert-Gawron

What if research debunks your own findings as a classroom teacher? Do you cease to use the strategies that you’ve come to know and trust?

According to an article on Psychcentral.com, learning Styles are being re-evaluated and even negated. This research summary, reported in a recently published journal article, claims that there is really no proof that one kid learns differently from another.

The article declares that:

"The wide appeal of the idea that some students will learn better when material is presented visually and that others will learn better when the material is presented verbally, or even in some other way, is evident in the vast number of learning-style tests and teaching guides available for purchase and used in schools.

“But does scientific research really support the existence of different learning styles, or the hypothesis that people learn better when taught in a way that matches their own unique style?

“Unfortunately, the answer is no."

Shrug. Cue eye roll. I don’t know what students they studied, but I politely dispute the dispute.

The article reads that, “For decades, educators have harped on the necessity of a variety of teaching methods to accommodate the particular learning styles of students.” (Notice the word “harped.” How’s that for loaded reporting?) There’s no mention of the nearly 40 years of research at Harvard and elsewhere that pushed these ideas into the teaching mainstream. There’s also no mention of research on the alternative —that of teaching all students the same way.

If you read the article closely, it basically says “Nobody’s proved this scientifically.” But I have—hrough observation.

I’ve conducted my own field studies of students in their natural habita—my own classroom. And despite what this study claims, I have found that these individuals do learn differently from one another.

It’s true that I’m not set up in some scientific lab here at school (although I would welcome a large grant to get that going). But I am available to share my knowledge. I am, after all, a classroom teacher, and pretty savvy about how kids learn. I’ve taught over 2500 of them in my 11-year career, and I’m not so sure these scientists can boast the same depth of knowledge about their test subjects.

In case the research folks don’t have time to drop by, I’ll share some observations from my own classroom here. Maybe they can form a few hypotheses to test out. For example, I know that: that:

• Neil learns better if I'm teaching with the interactive board and totally phases out when we're reading.

• Desiree phases out when we're reading, but as long as someone's talking about the material, she's in.

• Tien thrives in the computer lab.

• The entire class wakes up if they stand up.

• Seth has to be doing three things at once or he can't pay attention at all.

• Armando needs everything to relate to him or he goes over to the Dark Side.

• Jenny will do anything academic I ask of her as long as I allow her to use a pink pen.

• Brandon will never be given the time of day, and nobody will love his writing like I do, unless he learns to type.

• Every student loves coming in to find the room looking different.

• Sarah will only work with Angy, but Fabiola can't work with Sarah.

• Tin will function in a small group, but only one consisting of young ladies.

I live with these kids in a day-to-day setting, studying and reflecting how to best reach out to them. So what if I can’t fit them into neat little categories assigned by the scientific community? These are the practices that work in my current classroom. I’ve analyzed the different learning styles in my class, and that's all I really care about.

Engaging All Students

That said, I’m not sure why standardization and individualization need to be completely at odds. I mean, each student is different, yet each must learn to function in the same world; so maybe there’s a place for it all. Why can't we teach in such a way that all students are engaged, are learning the same skills, and can be appreciated for who they are as individuals?

Why can't they be asked to bubble and paint?

Why can't they be asked to listen and observe?

Why can’t they be asked to move and stay still?

The important thing here is not whether science can back up different learning styles with research, but really whether or not teachers (regardless of research) do what they find is necessary to engage all students.

And if that means having your kids stand on tables to represent a main topic sentence; or instructing a student to run around with the sign "Rome" on his or her chest slaying other countries until they've conquered the classroom; or delivering material via online survey, essay, scene study, or quick draw...well, then, so be it. Who needs the research to tell you how to reach your students, if indeed, you can prove that you are striving to engage them all and mostly succeeding?

Maybe the real dilemma here is not in the research, but in the teaching strategies. Maybe the heart of the matter is that not all teachers are teaching all students, or that they know how to. If so, that’s probably less an issue of science than of using common sense in teaching—observing and reflecting on what works and what doesn’t.

When I think back on the lessons that I loved as a student, the ones that stayed with me, they were the ones that asked me to solve authentic problems. They were the lessons that asked me to challenge myself outside of my comfort zone. They were the ones that allowed me to strut myself in my comfort zone. In all, they were the lessons that shook up the norm. But not all teachers naturally know how to mix it up.

Whether the current talk is about learning styles or multiple-intelligences or syn-naps or project learning or critical thinking or whatever, teaching is always about scaffolding—about how to teach in an engaging way in order to reach a wide variety of students.

But let’s face it. Some teachers must learn how not to be boring. They might be brilliant in their knowledge of content, but that doesn't mean they understand how to deliver or communicate that content to every kind of kid. So why diss any theory that helps liven up learning?

I do think that teachers get bogged down with the unrealistic goal of trying to deliver the same lesson in different ways. I don't think that benefits any learner. Students need to know how to compete in many different settings, after all, and they need to learn to listen and respond in many different formats. So we mix up our menu from day to day, but we don’t have to prepare every meal seven different ways.

Some nay-sayers who dismiss the legitimacy of learning styles don’t seem to realize that it’s more difficult to teach this way. Others may realize it but fight it because it IS more difficult. But it's undeniably (at least in my classroom) the more effective way to reach the most students.

Common sense and long experience proves to me that there are different learning styles.

Just how many styles are present in your classroom will change from year to year. I would be as foolish to say that there are only so many learning styles as I would be to say that there are none at all.

This year I have 252 students. Does that mean that I have 252 different learning styles? Well, that’s what I spend the year working to find out.

Heather Wolpert-Gawron teaches middle school language arts, speech and debate in California’s San Gabriel Unified School District. She blogs at TweenTeacher and Edutopia and is currently writing a book on engaging teaching practices to be published by Eye on Education.

Wonderful Wednesday

From Food Navigator

Beers rich in hops and barley malts linked to better bone health

By Guy Montague-Jones, 08-Feb-2010

A new study suggests that beers containing plenty of hops or pale barley malts could promote better bone health thanks to their dietary silicon content.

Previous studies have established that beer is an important source of bioavailable silicon but little research has been done to find out which beers to contain the most silicon.

Bone health

Researchers from the Department of Food Science & Technology at the University of California sought to plug this scientific gap because dietary silicon appears to support bone development and fight off osteoporosis – a common disease that increases the risk of fractures.

The Californian researchers said beer contains silicon in the soluble form of orthosilicic acid (OSA), which yields 50 per cent bioavailability, making it a major contributor to silicon intake in the Western diet.

But which beers contain the most dietary silicon? Writing in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, the scientists examined a wide range of beer styles to answer this question.

Hops and malt

Beers full of hops were found to be particularly good sources of silicon. Some were found to contain as much as four times more silicon than is found in malt.

But malt may be ultimately more important overall because hops are used in much smaller quantities than grain in the brewing process.

Looking more closely at malt, the researchers said barley is a better source than wheat. As for the malting process itself, pale colored barley malts were found to contain higher levels of silicon than darker varieties because they face less heat stress.

But generally, the malt process did not cause any major changes in silicon content of barley as most of the silicon in barley is in the husk, which is not affected greatly during malting.

So making an overall comment on the best silicon option, lead author Charles Bamforth said: “Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon.”

Bamforth and his colleagues also tested 100 commercial beers for silicon content and categorized the data according to beer style and source. The average silicon content of the beers sampled was 6.4 to 56.5 mg/L.

Source: Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
Published Online: February 8, 2010 (DOI: 10.1002/JSFA.3884); Print Issue Date: February 2010
"Silicon in Beer and Brewing."
Authors: T.R. Casey and C.W. Bamforth.

Tuesday's Thought

Just a quick note today to thank all our parents for all you do for us. It is always a blessing to have so many cooperative parents especially on days like today.

We realize how hard it is to have snow days, and quite frankly, I think it's a shame we were called out today. We have always called school when every other school in Evansville and Newburgh were closed, but it appears that we need to do something else now. What to do...what to do. Well, not being a sitter but rather a doer, I called WFIE and got on the closing list page, and from now on we will post our own closings with the other schools. Please look for this in the future as Garden School. Today should have been a school day.

There will be more information going out to parents tomorrow about this.

Tomorrow was supposed to be a field trip, but it's a long ride to St. Meinrad along country roads, and then there is the long steep hill the bus must climb. I've talked to Br. Maurus and he has told me that the hill has yet to be plowed. In addition, the temperature is going to be 24 degrees with a seventeen mile an hour wind. We have to walk what amounts to three city blocks between buildings. Plus the fact the "Hill" is now on slow or our time as opposed to other years when by decree of the Abbot it was on fast or Louisville time, so there would be no time to eat lunch and still take in Noon Prayer with the monks. We need to be back in Evansville at 1:30. Usually we go up to Monte Casino, a lovely shrine a couple of miles east of St. Meinrad, and this time we can't, so we think it's best to cancel this trip. I am so sorry.

We will make up this trip later this season, and there will be no charge to parents. We will give some advanced notice. St. Meinrad is a very wonderful place to tour. Parents may want to see this very Medieval style Archabbey. It's one of only seven in the world.

We will start our race to the presidency this week. Children will be taught how to campaign and how to be a candidate. We encourage every child to participate.

Next week, we will be studying Asia. We are still trying to take the children to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. This will be a very fun experiment. I've wanted to do this for years, and finally, I have the faculty support I need to step up to the plate, so to speak ;-}

Again with many thanks for your understanding, and many blessings,

Judy and Edith

Monday's Tattler

Snow today. 164 and Green River area was closed earlier this morning for an accident. It's about three inches over here and it's still coming down. It is beautiful. I'm hoping all the kids will keep enjoying the snow. Adults are often bored easily by repeats of natural phenomena, and that's not the best example for kids. Enchantment at what is NOW is a much better example.

We will be studying the map of Africa this week when we get back to school.

We will be starting to work on the idea of a President of the Garden School this week. Campaigns may begin as quickly as the children understand what that means.

I am still trying to get a field trip to St. Meinrad on Wednesday for a tour and ashes and Noon Prayer. Not sure it will happen. St. Meinrad is about fifty miles East of Evansville. It's one of seven Benedictine Archabbeys in the world. It's quite beautiful and there is lots to see. We will be there only in the morning and will return to school at 1:00 -1:15 if we go. I will try to either get a room to eat a picnic or try to get the kitchen up there to provide a lunch. Depends on the cost.

The race to read continues, and so does the spelling that goes with that. It is wonderful to know that this years children are so advanced. Many of them are able to spell consonant blends! Yeah!

A hearty cheer to all of you reading this.

Sunday's Plate

These long winter days and all this snow has lots of people cooking. I've heard of just about everything being whipped up. My darling husband made chili this afternoon, and I made taco bread to go with it. Cook, cook, cook... the food product is always worth the effort...until later when we have to tackle the mess, sigh, big sigh.

Cooking should be a neat process. There should NEVER be a mess in a kitchen. First of all, it's dangerous-this is how fires start and people get hurt and poisoning begins. Second it's disappointing - all that work so that there is twice more - almost doesn't seem worth while. Third, it's completely unnecessary; messy in the kitchen is the tell-tale that one's life is a mess as well. I learned a long time ago from my mother who liked to use every single dish in the kitchen, that a kitchen should always be neat.

Both my kitchens are very small. You couldn't get a table in either of my kitchens. At home, my one hundred and eighty year old kitchen has a brick floor and antique furniture - a large hutch with a porcelain pull out counter, and a large oak breakfront with drawers and a cabinet on top for dishes. The sink barely has enough counter space to drain dishes on either side, and the only other surface in the room is a flour barrel with a fruit bowl on top. Yet, unless someone else cooks, I always try to keep the kitchen clean and functional.

I keep all my appliances out because I use them nearly every day. I keep out various spice jars, flour jars, bowls, paddles and whisks, so it's a tight squeeze - I can't spread out, so every thing is used and either put away promptly, or cleaned and put away promptly. Every dirty dish goes directly into the sink - I have a dishwasher but I never use it.

At school, I cringe when someone stirs a pot and leaves the dirty spoon on the counter. "OUCH," I want to scream! When as many as five dirty spoons are left on the counter, two things happen: the first is the drying crusted mess on the counter that needs to be scraped off and is a serious crime against health, and the second is there is no place to put a hot pot or a finished product because the dirty spoons are taking up the space- dangerous! When you taste or stir a pot, take the spoon and either wash it or leave it in the sink to be washed during a pause in the cooking. This way, the counter stays clean and what space you have is usable.

I need: flour, sugar, butter, cinnamon, eggs, and baking powder. When the right amounts are in the bowl, there should be one thing on the counter - the bowl. When an egg carton and egg shells linger on the counter, the cinnamon is opened and the jar is separated from the lid, when the flour and sugar containers are opened and the lids are who knows where, and the butter paper is stuck to the front of the baking powder with the spoon still stuck into the tin...you have a mess.

Cleanliness dictates that it is far easier to open a can of tomato sauce for spaghetti and toss the can away than to leave it on the counter while the sauce dribble makes its way down the can and makes a ring on the counter. When the can opener has done its business, rinse it off and put it away!

When making pancakes at school, the first thing to do is to gather six eggs in their carrier and crack them open into the mixing bowl of the electric mixer making sure every egg shell is deposited into the garbage can a.s.a.p. Wash the carrier and put it away. Measure or pour the oil into the mixing bowl, and put the oil away. Pour half as much milk into the mixing bowl as you need and put the milk away and put the bowl aside. Next, get out a second bowl. Measure the flour and put it away. I use a dog food storage unit with a strong hinged lid that rolls for flour. Measure your baking powder and put the spoon into the sink and put the baking powder away. Use the salt dispenser and put it away. If we are making a spiced pancake batter, measure your spice into the flour mix and put your spice away. Whisk all dry ingredients and put the whisk into the sink. Using an electric mixer, heap great spoons full of dry mix into the egg- milk mix one spoon at a time until it is all mixed well, adding more milk as needed. Put the dry bowl into the sink with the spoon. Wipe your counter. Wash your bowl, your measures if used, your spoons, and your whisk.

Now look at your kitchen. It doesn't even look like you've cooked. And if you were suddenly called away, you can pour your batter into a pitcher for later without coming home to a disgusting mess rife with bacteria spread across your kitchen.

Now plug in your griddle. As you ladle the batter onto the hot griddle, wipe up any spills and drips. Wet spill is always easier than dry ones. Wipe the excess on your griddle, your batter bowl and any surface that is caught by unsuspecting batter. When the cooking is done, put your batter or mixing bowl into the sink with your spatula and swish swipe and let these pieces dry while you eat.

Cooking sans mess is the only way to fly. After a delicious dinner, it's so hard to face dishes and mess. And it always amounts to the same amount of work, so it makes sense. It's really a matter of thinking things through - I think they call it prudence.

Something Wonderful for Saturday

The Power of Acknowledgment Reveals the Astonishing Impact of Acknowledging Your Partner!

(New York, NY, February 12, 2010) - Picture this: you are sitting at your desk, disgruntled, frustrated, tired, perhaps you were yelled at during the staff meeting. Let’s face it, today is just not your day. Suddenly, an email pops up, brightening and uplifting your mood. It is a love letter from your partner – the person you thought was the least likely to write such a note. How would you react?

Judith W. Umlas experienced the mood altering power of acknowledgment first hand when she was having a down day at work. After hearing about her day, Judith’s husband, Bob Umlas, a Microsoft Excel “geek” and guru emailed his wife a heartfelt love letter, detailing and acknowledging every positive aspect of her personality, actions, and looks. When asked where these acknowledgments had come from, as she had never heard most of them before, he confessed rather sheepishly that he has always thought these kinds of things but just did not bother to “get them from his brain to his mouth.” Once convinced of the authenticity of these acknowledgments, Judith was so thrilled with them that almost as a joke, she suggested that he write these kinds of communications about twice a week, since he obviously needed the practice! The result? For the past four years, Judith has been receiving love letters from Bob every Monday and Thursday via email. Both husband and wife are clear that these acknowledgments have positively transformed their relationship.

Bob’s loving acknowledgments encouraged Judith W. Umlas to write The Power of Acknowledgment (IIL Publishing, New York), a compact book that illustrates the tremendous power everyone has to dramatically improve relationships - the simple act of acknowledgment.

When asked why she wrote this powerful little book, Judith said “To repair the world by improving relationships in every aspect of living. I have seen ‘the power of acknowledgment’ at work and throughout all parts of my life, because it is something that comes easily to me. I have also witnessed how many people can’t, don’t, or won’t do it – or don’t do it enough. Once they grasp the positive results it can produce, they can’t help but try it out and then immediately see the benefits: enhanced work productivity, better relationships and even improved health.”

Umlas has been a senior executive at International Institute for Learning (IIL) for the past 19 years, and was a producer/writer for CBS before that. As Senior Vice President, Learning Innovations at IIL, former Publisher of a newsletter for 50,000 project managers around the globe, and trainer of more than 10,000 people worldwide on the power of acknowledgment, she is seen as a master communicator. Her skills and poignant powers of observation led her to develop the seven clear, concise principles for acknowledging others in all walks of life. These skills, when exercised are guaranteed to make immediate and profound changes in the way readers interact with others. Reports of the instant effects on readers and those around them have poured in professionally and personally. To see such stories, visit Judith’s blog,

Log onto reader praise for positive results.

Friday's Tattler

On Friday we celebrated our Valentine's Day event. It was very cute. CJ and Jill and Sophie and Abbie and Ella and Alexis and Scotty came all dressed up. The other children looked their usual school-beautiful The children seemed to enjoyed the dancing.

During the week, we practiced a dance we created similar to what we see in the movies coming from the early eighteenth century. It was difficult for the kids to learn this probably because they had never seen anything like it. But all in all they did a good job. This kind of dancing actually gives the kids something to do on a dance floor besides wiggle and snake. Dancing is something we learn to do. It's a social achievement.

We want to thank all the parents who were kind enough to bring a treat to share. It is always nice to put on a big spread and enjoy each others company for a short time. The treats that are left over are used the next week as prizes and special treats - nothing goes to waste.

Joseph and Rachel Go received our prize for the first dancing adult couple. They got a box of homemade candy compliments of the Garden School. We hope they enjoy their treat.

One of the fun things I saw was Mr. Austin approach Miss Emily and present her with a red rose and ask her to dance. She was beaming, and they danced for a little while to some of the old pop music.

The afternoon ended gracefully, and we are obliged to all our parents for attending.

Ethical Architecture by Judy Lyden

When Mr. Knightly steps up to Emma and says, "That was poorly done; shame on you," Mr. Knightly is stepping out of the door of his ethical architecture and offering Emma a big bowl of correction and admonition. It's a gift to Emma that he hopes will allow her to see more clearly good and evil. It is the charity of "keeping one another on the road towards good." Can you imagine a line like that written today?

Not only does a great portion of the world seem to have lost the ideals of correction and admonition, we seem also to have dispensed with ethical architecture altogether. We build a little pyre of sticks when someone does something horrendous to us or to someone we know, or even to society, and then we burn those sticks pretending the ashes are not ours.

Charles Krauthhammer is one of the exceptions to the modern world. Every time the President moves, Charles builds an ethical structure not unlike a Gothic Cathedral. He has the wisdom and knowledge that allow him to fully understand flaws and errors and the character to name it. In response, his critics busily build a series of little pyres and burn them down in secret, but they don't dare step up to Charles's door for a big bowl of correction and admonition.

But this wonderful development of character does not start from whim. I had an editor once who said, "Never admit you're wrong." Whoa. I thought at the time, "If I'm never wrong, then I'm never right." If it's about never being able to admit to wrong, then I can't be a fully developed adult, because a fully developed adult admits to their wrongs.

The problem with being able to admit to wrong, and publicly, when the world all around is failing to ever admit to wrong, puts the admitting adult into a perpetual position of being the bad guy. Admit once, and you are always suspect to those who have never made a mistake. It's almost laughable, but at the same time, it's not funny, because this is the example we are giving to our children. Those who are willing and able to admit errors are deemed weak and hateful.

Children watch parents for examples of behavior. If parents never admit to their mistakes, children will learn they can't make a mistake either. How often have we cried because we did something awful and then blamed it on everything and anything but ourselves. We love to make excuses, smooth over the incident with silence, and lash out at anyone offering correction and admonition.

And worse, try to be a Mr. Knightly in today's world, and not only will you be ostracized, you will be spit on by anyone listening. If you said to someone, "That was poorly done; shame on you," most retorts would attack you. "Weeeellll, you did this or that or you're not perfect; I've seen you..." This kind of retort burns the pyre of the architecture of ethics.

Building an ethical architecture means exploring wisdom, gathering wisdom's tools and being able to understand the lessons wisdom teaches. But one can't explore wisdom without knowledge because you would have no path to wisdom. You can't hope to approach wisdom without trying to understand what is good and what is not as two clearly defined paths. Also, understanding that gray areas pertain to that which is not important like material goods is a part of wisdom. Black and white areas apply to what is important like the intangibles of character, attributes of good habits like reliability, strength of purpose, determination, and the hatred of those things that pull man down.

In teaching children, building an ethical architecture begins with being able to winnow good from lesser behaviors. It is hard for someone unfamiliar with the two paths of good and not so good to direct the innocent. When there is no ethical architecture, or the idea of ethical architecture is thrown out the window, the situation reverts back to primitive man - out in a field without protection and without the shelter of thousands of years of ethical structures and lessons. There is no platform for instruction. There is no shelter of answers, no reason, no personal cost.

On the other hand, it is easy for the fully developed builder to stop lesser behaviors and teach because the adult knows that lesser behaviors will lead down the path away from knowledge and therefore wisdom. Simply not allowing impulsive, selfish, lazy and naughty behaviors EVER in the classroom will create a respect that by a well formed adult's very presence will stop. When the goal is to show the child that good is good and lesser is lesser, the lesson is taught and the hope is that the child will begin to gather tools and supplies for his own ethical architecture so that he can escape the primitive field and live in a well ordered house.

The next step in teaching ethical architecture is in choosing. One chooses all day long. We choose our behavior with ourselves, our friends, with our employers and employees, with our families and with the strangers we meet. The goal here is in the habit of good choices so that we can store up more tools and more supplies. When the choice amounts to "what do I get from this behavior," the architecture becomes flat line. The answer is nothing. The ethics of building stop. A diversion from self to others is the goal of instructing children. Think outside yourself, is the lesson to be taught by a wise and knowledgeable teacher.

"Judge, and you shall be judged." With the ethical architect, that statement is not frightening. The ability to judge for oneself, because of the work of gaining knowledge and wisdom, what is good and what is not is simply not a frightening ideal. For the enlightened, the very idea of not being able to judge that which is good and that which is not is more frightening. For the developed not being allowed, by non builders and field dwellers, to call out in a loud and clear voice, what is good and what is not is even more frightening. To be trapped by a family or group of any kind from being able to offer correction and admonition is the modern prison of serfdom.

Judging behaviors is more difficult because there is something called intent. We are not always sure of someone's intent, and even with children, the behavior can be poor, but the intent was not, and ferreting out just exactly what the child meant is not always easy. Again knowledge plays a great part here. Knowing a child well and being able to climb inside his youthful and delightful ethical architecture is part of the teaching job, but along with this one needs to be able to communicate well and have a desire to let go of self and become the nameless faceless advocate of the child. This too is part of wisdom.

Ethical architecture is the crown of the adult. The acquisition of tools and supplies - namely wisdom and knowledge, understanding, prudence, patience, humility, courage, and charity are the attributes of the developed man. Without these things, we might as well just go live in the open.

Just some pondering for a winter's day.

Monday's Tattler

This week is Valentine's Week and this is what you should know:

Monday is a regular school day.

Tuesday is a perchance snow day. If Warrick or Vanderburgh Counties close school, we will be closed that day too. Pleas watch your weather channels.

Wednesday is not Miss Dayna's Birthday. It is Friday, February 12.

Thursday is a regular school Day.

Friday is our Valentine Day Card Exchange. Children will need to bring at least 45 Valentines to school that are signed but not addressed. Children will spend the morning passing these out. It is a very fun time.

Friday is the party. The party begins at 3:00. All children need an attending adult. It is the children's first dance. Children are welcome to dress up that day. Please bring a treat to share. School will dismiss about 4:00.

Please help your child identify countries on the big world map sent home three weeks ago. This is a contest. The child who can identify the most countries will win a prize.

This month is reading for real. Please help your child with letter sounds and word recognition. When working with children and handwriting please use one upper case letter for the child's first letter of his name, and every letter after should be a lower case letter. Example: Judy, not JUDY.

Have a marvelous week.

Sunday's Plate

So many parents have asked me over the years about feeding children in the evening. "I just don't know what to feed him. Last night I gave him a Lean Cuisine and he vomited it up an hour later." This is not a child friendly food. It's a weight loss food, and not for kids.

But what do kids need after a long day? Well, like farmers, kids should have their biggest meals early because they will use a lot of calories playing. By noon, a child should have eaten most of what he is going to eat during the day. That's why we insist on a big breakfast and a big lunch. Dinner is a social time, but many very young children simply can't keep up with another big meal. So for the lighter eater, and that's many many children, a dinner of fruit and veggies, good whole grain crackers of bread and a protein like a hard boiled egg or peanut butter or good cheese is all a child needs. Most children will eat more calories in a dinner like this than a big heavy adult dinner.

The one thing NOT to do is to give a child a mono meal. A mono meal is an egg on a dish; a hot dog on a dish; a slice of pizza on a dish; a sandwich on a dish in front of TV. This is a snack and not a meal. Snacking for dinner will encourage children to eat all evening. This kind of grazing will put on the pounds. A meal consists of at least three food components. Even if you serve a child in a six cup cupcake tin with every cup half filled with different things, the child is getting a little dinner - a variety of food.

Children are often tired at the end of a long napless day. They need to rest, and that includes their bodies digestion.

By serving children a cracker and cheese and fruit dinner, the bank won't break. They don't need a lot. Half a banana, half an apple, a half dozen crackers and two ounces of cheese is a meal. The alternates can be carrots, celery, raisins, melon, grapes and any canned fruit or vegetables a child likes. Toast a good piece of whole grain bread and make four little open face sandwiches with the cheese or peanut butter or cream cheese. Boston Brown Bread in a can is a wonder to some children. Slather it with cream cheese and add some fresh pineapple and grapes, and you have a nutritious little meal children can handle and will eat. The cost is nominal.

Enjoy dinner with something lighter. You'll be glad you did.

Friday's Tattler

Friday was a great and busy day. Normally, Friday is a very slow day, but Friday's are picking up because kids know that Friday is Fun Day. In the morning, we had our theatre class. We told the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and then after the teachers had acted out the story, the children got their turns. It was very funny and very cute. We had a couple of props which made it lots of fun.

We had eggs and cheesy potatoes and fruit and vegetables for lunch. It was well received. Then in the afternoon, Mrs. St. Louis told a Bible Story - Daniel and the Lion's Den, and then we drew lions. They were very cute.

At last we had our first weekly spelling bee. I was stunned by how well the children did. Miss Leigh only had to coach a little and the spelling came out like little songs. The winners were Jill Hawkes and Emily Juhl. They got big prizes and a big clapping ovation. When kindergartners can
spell three to five letter words and do it quickly and with consonant blends, you know you have a bulls-eye teacher. We are so proud of our little guys and so proud of Miss Leigh.

The day ended with a new treat the children liked very much - pizzelles. They are a thin, homemade cookie. The flavor was ground orange with orange icing. Next week: Chocolate for the party!

Thursday's Teacher by Judy Lyden

There are a lot of articles these days on the undoing, reforming, turning around, rethinking of schools across the nation. We are not satisfied with what we have done or are doing. But at the same time, we don't seem able to learn from our mistakes. There is an overwhelming desire to control, control, control that classroom and have uniformity, uniformity, uniformity as we teach children we encourage to be different, different, different.

I remember when the best schools in the nation were the one room school houses in the far outback of the western Midwest. These schools produced the highest test scores and their students found their way into more good colleges than any other schools in the nation.

The big moneyed "to do" schools of the east produced conflict. The big fancy schools in the west produced a love for nihilism while the Midwestern kids to the center stage of learning and produced our thinkers, our movers and our shakers.

So as we look into the future, what are we looking forward to? One political position is to increase government and therefore the size of unmanageable schools. Another political position is to reduce the size of government without plan.

As a grass roots person, I believe if you want to do it right, do it yourself. If you wait for government, you are waiting for a pipe dream. Government is good for one thing - arbitration. In the rest of the world, it's like a giant oaf. If government was a person, he or she would be locked up either in jail or a home for the deranged.

So, not wanting to wait for government, we started with six students and $160.00 and went off to build our own school. Our primary question was "What CAN children do?" Second question was "What WILL they do?"

What we discovered, and why we are so successful, is simple. We built a small school for the children. We did not build with any other thing in mind. We did not draw from other schools. Other schools drew from us. We did not copy curriculum from books; we used our own skills to teach. We did not plan our days according to "developmentally appropriate" practices because this theory retards growth.

Here's what we discovered:

Three year old children simply want to experience learning without actually making a commitment. They want to be around learning. They want to dabble, try for a time, and take home something wonderful that they made or half made. Their skills are developing slowly, and they want to do a lot of play. But they don't really know how to play, so being around older children during play reaps a positive reward. No three year old likes to nap. And we found that threes will memorize a lot.

Four year old children are usually ready for a lot of the usual kindergarten work. They love the paper work and think they are big when they can do it. They think fast, do things quickly, and absorb with an alacrity most college kids would envy. They are spunky, and energetic and take great pride in being included in the play. This is the time when handwriting, letter learning and pre-reading skills dominate a child's life, because they simply WANT to know. Reading is a little like that rock climb. They are ready and willing.

At five, children are ready for ideas. They tire easily of paperwork, sitting and the same old same old day after day. So sprinkling their lives with stories, play acting, science, foreign language, geography, fine arts fits better than anything else. With the reading and writing under their belts, they can begin to explore in independent study. This is the real foundation builder for their adult lives. At five, the child's answer to nearly everything is "more, more, more, please!"

Now how do you translate this into big government schools?

If I were to rebuild what needs to be rebuilt, it would be this: I would design schools to have a pool of fours, fives and sixes who I would call "poly wogs" in every public grammar school. I would divide these into small groups of about twelve children. Some children excel quickly, and some do not, so as a child learns and develops reading and writing skills to a point he or she is proficient, I would launch him or her into the mainstream school any time of the year that it happens - to first grade. This allows for the individual approach to caring for our children. It also allows for the brighter child to advance. It allows for the struggling child to get some time to understand. During the school year, some children would advance out of one class and into another across the school. Age is not a determinant for ability. Some children reach out and learn and some don't. By having fluid learning, the curriculum could fly. Every child in every room would be up to the learning bar by his own choice and work. This way, there is no disgrace in remaining in one class for a second year because the fluidity of movement is at the discretion of the teacher.

At the other end of the spectrum, the early birds who may only be fifteen or sixteen at the end of their high school years and are emotionally too young to go off to college would have a year or two of independent study. These children could either work half a day or begin to learn what it means to pull knowledge together into a real project. Internships of one kind or another would be an option. Attending bussed classes in near by colleges would be an interesting idea.

From an administrative point of view, there is no increase in anything including building space or teaching staff. There are no test scores that would not be good because the children learn at their own pace, and the curriculum is more interesting because every child is on target.

Just a thought for a Thursday...

Wonderful Wednesday

If people of faith really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless. Did you know that during WWII there was an adviser to Churchill who organized a group of people who dropped what they were doing every day at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and peace?

There is now a group of people organizing the same thing here in America If you would like to participate: Every evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (8:00 PM Central) (7:00 PM Mountain) (6:00 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and spend one minute praying for the safety of the United States, our troops, our citizens, and for a return to a Godly nation. If you know anyone else who would like to participate, please pass this along. Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have. Please forward this to your praying friends.

Talking to the Lazy Child by Judy Lyden

Engaging in a conversation with a lazy or selfish child is about as interesting as slogging through wet concrete and about as easy. Younger, lesser conversant children will often ignore the adult who is trying to make conversation. Letting go of his or her "own time" is a real pain. Older children will silently or inaudibly respond or answer in a single word answer simply to be free of the invader of his or her space. Drawing this child out is many times simply not possible.

When the lazy child finally allows conversation, it is nearly always about them, their needs, their wants, and their minutia. They report a full gamut of information to be sucked in by the listener, and then when they are done, they promptly end the conversation. The listener, who is looking for a time to respond is defrauded of his personhood in the dupe of the selfish lazy child who can't, for the life of him or her, return a question or be interested in the listener to any extent.

Lazy, selfish children often have few friends because the conversational exchange is nil. What pleasure is it to be used as a sounding board if the response is a no interest dead pan look?

Re-training a selfish child is not easy. What is easy is to become irritated early in the conversation. When the adult becomes angry and punishes the lazy child, this only tightens the grip on self. The point is to demonstrate that the child will gain something by engaging the listener in a whole other perspective. He will gain information he can use. He will get to laugh. He will know someone better.

When listening to the selfish child, the adult needs to ask questions that bring second and third people into what the selfish child is talking about. "What did Roberta think when you...?" "What do you think Roberta thought when you...?" "Don't you wonder what Roberta thought when you...?" "Is there something wrong with what Roberta might have thought when you...?

By bringing to the selfish lazy child's attention that there are other points of view, and that those points of view are indeed interesting, and do this over and over and over again, the hope is that this conversational training will produce a more outgoing less selfish child.

Bringing to the selfish lazy child's attention that he or she is responsible in the "care" of the conversation, and not just the "use" of the conversation for his or her own needs is tantamount in training someone who can communicate well.

When you hear an adult who is a "babbler" speak, it's a mile a minute about self, and there is little if any need for a listener. You get the impression that if you suddenly turned into a life sized poster it would be OK. This is what we want to avoid with our children. This motor mouth is really quite dull and grasping, and we could all name a few adults who were allowed to be lazy about others and selfish about self.

The child who rattles on and on without a break needs to be told quite abruptly that this is not allowed. "Stop," says the loving parent. "Rachel, who are you speaking to?" This question is often met with confusion. "Are you speaking WITH me or are you using me to rattle off your stream of consciousness? I am a person and it is now MY turn!"

Teaching conversational skills means turning off all the audios in the room and sitting down with a child and really engaging him in conversation. It doesn't have to be long. Parents need to expect a decent response that should grow in time. Expect him to exchange ideas with you. He can go first, but he is expected to ask about the listeners. It's called taking turns. It's called conversation. The rattle is called monologue.

Selfishness is all about me. And in a world as small and filled as we find ours, we need to lesson the selfishness and the laziness in our children for their sakes.

Monday's Tattler

Good Evening, on this Monday. This morning I left the house at 5:30 to pick up Edith in Chandler because she was leaving her car for an oil change. So, consequently, I didn't get this on the hopper this morning.

This week we are focusing on reading. Some children will read letters, some words, some sentences, and some will read books. We are hoping that the children will step up one level each, and those who are reading letters will go to words and those who are reading words will go to sentences, etc.

We are trying a few new lunches this week. Today we had a taco bread. It was homemade whole wheat bread that we rolled out thin, stuffed with taco meat and cheese and baked. We sliced it and served it with black bean chili which the children really liked. Two new favorites.

Motivation is also a theme word for this week. Too many of the children are "floating" through the school without a project at hand. Every child needs to be employed at all times. That can be as simple as looking out the window. It cannot be annoying another child or being destructive.

As the weather begins to improve this week, we will start to go outside again.

Please read your calendar. It was sent home today. It tells you all you need to know about this months activities.

Please keep ill children home. We will send a reminder of what it means to be ill. Please read this Indiana State Health Code for early childhood. It will mean so much that your child is not exposed and does not expose other children to what is going around.

Judy

Something Sunny for Saturday

A group of 40 year old war buddies meets and discuss where they should meet for dinner. Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at Gasthaus Gutenberger restaurant because the waitress's there have low cut blouses and nice breasts.

10 years later, at 50 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at the Gasthaus Gutenberger because the food there is very good and the wine selection is good also.

10 years later at 60 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at the Gasthaus Gutenberger because they can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant is smoke free.

10 years later, at 70 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at the Gasthaus Gutenberger because the restaurant is wheel chair accessible and they even have an elevator.

10 years later, at 80 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at the Gasthaus Gutenberger because that would be a great idea because they have never been there before.

Friday's Tattler

It was a slow day on Friday - just a few children came to play. We had a nice pancake breakfast and then a morning of listening to the story of Rumpelstiltskin, and then acting it out. We talked about the children learning quickly what their character would say or do. With some kids it's an easy lesson, and with others it's a no-go.

We waited for the snow all day. I think some of the kids were thinking that it was NEVER going to happen. Surprise!

It was too cold to go out, so we stayed indoors. We had our very popular pizza for lunch, and then had a nice long play period. In the afternoon, we had one of Mrs. St. Louis's very wonderful drawing lessons. We drew giraffes.

For snack, we had a new cookie: apple, oat, coconut softies.

Still working on the cookbook when time permits.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the snow.

Thursday's Teacher

Published Online: January 27, 2010 by Teacher Magazine

Comment: as an employer of teachers, I can attest that some teachers will take advantage and blame it on their children. One teacher, who apparently was not cutting it in the classroom, did exactly what this articles says they will do - repeatedly missed school. In the ordinary workforce, repeated absences are not tolerated, but somewhere along the way, we have come to take it for granted that a teacher will miss and miss and miss days and days- that's ridiculous.

Teacher-Dismissal Powers Found to Affect Absences

By Dakarai I. Aarons

Chicago teachers who didn’t have tenure took fewer days off after principals were given more flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers, a new study has found.

The policy reduced teacher absences on an annual basis by about 10 percent and cut the number of teachers with 15 or more annual absences by 20 percent, according to the report by Brian A. Jacob, a professor of education policy and economics at the University of Michigan. It has been published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, for which he serves as a research associate.

“We think teacher absence is somewhat correlated with student achievement,” said Mr. Jacob, who is the director of the university’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy. “Some of it is hard to measure.”

In Chicago, principals were given the ability to dismiss the probationary teachers—those with five years of experience or less—without completing elaborate documentation or attending a dismissal hearing, under a 2004 collective bargaining agreement between the 409,000-student school district and the Chicago Teachers Union.

In return for the flexibility, the district expanded the pool of teachers who were placed on a tenure track. The policy change went into effect for the 2004-05 school year.

The study examines the effects of the policy from that year through the 2006-07 school year, and compares teacher-absence rates from before and after the policy was implemented for probationary vs. tenured teachers. Mr. Jacob used payroll records to review the teacher-absence data, and the academic years 2001-02 through 2003-04 were used as the pre-policy period for comparison purposes.

In the two years before the policy change, the study found, the average teacher was absent about eight times a year, a figure that declined starting in 2005, especially among nontenured teachers. By 2007, that number for probationary teachers was just above six times a year.

Tim Daly, the president of the New York City-based New Teacher Project, said Mr. Jacob’s study is noteworthy.

“Teacher attendance is an overlooked aspect of performance that we know has a direct impact on students,” he said. “We know that it matters if kids have a teacher that shows up. I think he’s bringing that into focus.”

‘Social Norms’

Even with the flexibility, 30 percent to 40 percent of principals in any given year examined in the study did not dismiss a single teacher. That was the case even among schools in the lowest quartile of student achievement.

“I think this is a caution. It isn’t simply the nature of the contract,” Mr. Jacob said. “There’s a lot about the social norms of the schools and the availability of high-quality replacement teachers that limits how much principals would use the flexibility even when given it.”

More than half the dismissed teachers, in fact, were later hired by another school in the district. In 2005, for example, 50.6 percent of first-year teachers dismissed in the spring were rehired by a Chicago school for the fall, the study found. In some instances, that was because principals used the nonrenewal process to dismiss teachers who would otherwise have lost jobs because of budget cuts, allowing the teachers to begin looking for another position earlier.

Since the study was conducted, the district’s policy on absences has changed. Now, principals are required to do more-formal evaluations of the probationary teachers, Mr. Jacob noted.

“It’s not clear if that is a good or bad thing,” he said. “It is re-erecting some of the procedural requirements to dismiss a teacher that were eliminated initially.”

Rosemaria Genova, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Teachers Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, said the shift reflects the feedback novice teachers say they need.

“For teachers who are new and are making decisions on whether to stay in the teaching profession, it is the most critical time when they need evaluation, feedback, and mentoring,” she said. “If principals can eliminate staff without due process, who is to say cronyism won’t take over the whole system?”

In a related paper, Mr. Jacob takes a look at the characteristics of the teachers who were dismissed by principals. It finds that absences and previous negative evaluations were key factors.

In addition, principals were more likely to get rid of teachers whose students had shown less value-added achievement compared with those of other teachers, and who had fewer academic credentials and accomplishments before becoming a teacher. Teachers who were dismissed and rehired were also much more likely to be dismissed again compared with first-year teachers.

“These results provide suggestive evidence that reforms along the lines of the Chicago policy might improve student achievement,” Mr. Jacob wrote.

In a November report, the New Teacher Project found that a majority of the more than 7,000 Chicago teachers it surveyed believed that factors other than seniority should be taken into account when making layoffs. Teacher absence was among the top four factors listed by teachers.

Mr. Daly said other districts would be wise to take a harder look at attendance policies.

“If you make clear attendance matters, teachers will put forth more effort,” he said. “We probably should be considering having attendance woven into more policies. If absences have no consequences, they will continue.”

Wednesday's Wonder

Not many people get a picture of this proud bird snuggled up next to them!

Freedom and Jeff

Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer.

She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way
even after surgery, it was broken in 4 places. She's my baby.

When Freedom came in she could not stand and both wings were broken. She was emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the vets office. From then on, I was always around her. We had her in a huge dog carrier with the top off, and it
was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in. I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes.
We also had to tube feed her for weeks.

This went on for 4-6 weeks, and by then she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the
decision was made to euthanize her if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning.
She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday
afternoon. I didn't want to go to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't bear the thought of
her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear
to ear. I went immediately back to her cage; and there she was, standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle. She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good
day.

We knew she could never fly, so the vet asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove, and then to jesses, and we started doing education programs for schools in western Washington. We wound up in the newspapers, radio (believe it or not) and some TV. Miracle
Pets even did a show about us.

In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of chemo. Lost the hair - the whole bit. I missed a lot of work. When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight
the cancer. This happened time and time again.

Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving. I went in for my last checkup. I was told cancer was not all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant. Anyway, they did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for the results. I went in Monday, and I was told that all the cancer was gone.

So the first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty
and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I
hadn't said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her
wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back (I was engulfed in eagle wings), and she touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I don't know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever
since she came in. This is a very special bird.

On a side note: I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. I once had a guy who was terminal come up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power coarse through his
body. I have so many stories like that.

I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom. Hope
you enjoy this.

Jeff

The Selfish Child by Judy Lyden

Some children are selfish; it's a personality trait. It begins with a little thing called "lazy." It's the same question as which came first the chicken or the egg. Truth is - the chicken. But with the selfish- lazy debate, these side by side unruly disorders are very fluid. Sometimes you get the lazy first, and then sometimes you get the selfish first. Either way, the teeter totter is an unlovely balance!

I know about lazy because as a kid I was always accused of being lazy. It was a title I carried throughout my life growing up, so I had plenty of time to think about lazy. Quite frankly, I have always wondered what "they" meant as I analyze walking two miles every morning down island roads, and then dodging waves breaking over the sea wall to keep as dry as I could in the uniform I had ironed myself. I walked the length of the peninsula, crossed the railroad tracks and the highway, and then stood waiting for my ride to school with no breakfast. Is this actual laziness? When you are seven, eight, nine and ten, and you do this every day once uphill and once down, and at the end of the day, four or five days out of seven, nobody is home to receive you but a note to say make your own dinner; I think someone is lazy, and it isn't the child.

My beautifully dressed mother was always so concerned about my school work. I wonder if it was because she was off playing while I was struggling to keep up all by myself. Past hurts? Not at all. All these things in my life helped to make me a hater of lazy, a hard worker, a problem solver, and develop a good eye for parents who put on a show.

What I've come to know is that lazy means "I won't do it." Lazy is the ego centric thumbing the nose at the world and saying, "You can't make me do it no matter what you do."

Lazy is extremely self-centered. Lazy allows the world to work around you, to do it for you while you play. Lazy is always short sighted, short willed, short brained, and short on everything simply because lazy begins and ends with self - an underdeveloped, dull and grasping self.

So when confronted with a lazy child, what do we do? Lazy is something we recognize after the fact - when it has been allowed for a long enough period the child becomes comfortable with it. But lazy still carries the stigma of guilt. Every thinking human knows what he or she should do and will feel the pangs of guilt when caught not doing it. But playing on guilt creates a battle in a domain where lazy is residing. No lazy person is going to allow someone to guilt them into work without a huge struggle.

Best thing to do with a lazy child is quietly present what you need, want, or expect in as few words as possible and then have a ginormous crushing repercussion happen when they don't do what is expected. Here are some examples:

A little boy was lazy every morning about dressing. One morning his mother told him what she expected and he relaxed back watching his cartoons. She scooped him up as is and brought him kicking and screaming to school with one foot of his pajamas dangling off his skivvied body. Needless to say, he never did it again. He was dressed before leaving his bedroom for the rest of the school year.

A mother was always yelling about picking up the mess before dinner because her lazy children were always reluctant to get started. It was too big a job, to hard, to much to handle. They didn't know where to start...so the mother told them what she expected quietly, and then when the mess was still a mess, the mother sat down with the father to eat dinner. "My place isn't set," said one selfish lazy child standing at his chair, and the mother replied, "You didn't clean up your mess. When you do, you can eat."

I can't tell you how many times I said, "I'm going to the store. If you want to come, be ready in five minutes. When they weren't ready, they didn't go. It was that simple.

One of the biggest lazy makers is TV and that includes video games, movies and anything that is watched. Not turning TV on in the morning makes for a much more productive morning. Not allowing TV to be turned on in the evening with the exception of the news makes for a much more productive evening. No child HAS to watch TV or play video games. It's not like breathing, eating or taking a bath. It's an extra.

But lazy never needs to be the cause for yelling or punishment. Lazy should always punish the self very nicely. If laundry is not put where it belongs, then the child has no clean laundry. If the toys are not put away properly, then there is no "next." If a child is not ready for bed at his prescribed time, then he goes as is. The lights are turned off at 8:00 p.m. no matter what. If a child does not comply with morning routine, then he goes to school as is. If he refuses to do his homework, he suffers in the classroom until he does. These are child tasks, not parent tasks. Lazy cannot be cured by the parents picking up the slack. Lazy can only be cured with consequences.

Letting a child feel the consequences of his behavior is the quickest route to learning that hard work and relying on self is the name of the growing up game.

Next week - talking to the lazy child.

Monday's Tattler

It's a cool morning. Looks like snow on Thursday. It's kind of a nothing week, but it is January, and because of the possibility of snow, we don't plan a lot. But February is next month, and we already have four or five things in the hopper. Full report later this week with a calendar!

We noticed that seventeen families out of forty-one read the calendar note. That's not a good. There was a little bribe at the bottom of the note that said if you say...and only seventeen families "said." We'll try it again this time. The project is not to single out anyone, but to try to grasp who is reading and who isn't. Reading your child's material that comes home from school is a habit every single parent should get into right now because it's not going to stop for all the years he is in school. Being the last to know that the Football Banquet is tonight and you are expected to... is a nightmare at 4:30. So it's best to start reading right now.

This week we are still working on the Geography "I know where ______ is on the map."

We will look at rocks today in science.

In art class, we will be building monsters from colored paper.

Today we will celebrate the Americas and have chocolate cake for snack and for lunch we will be having enchiladas, fruit and salad.

Have a great week!

Sunday's Plate

This week I am suggesting that a cookbook for parents that is personalized as a keepsake is in order. We are going to publish all our recipes at the Garden School for all the parents. Each page will have a list of ingredients, directions, a picture with a "how to" by a child along with a nutrition corner, a shopping tips place and serving suggestions. We hope you like this. The estimated arrival date is Mother's Day. Not sure of the cost - somewhere around $10.00. The book will be spirally bound.

Today the topic is cake. All that glistens is not cake. Although one of the best treats in the world is Donut Bank cake, cake does not have to be mostly sugar. Cake is a very old treat, and only when sugar became available in Europe in the Fourteenth Century did cake really become what it is today. Cake takes its shape because of the balance of sugar and flour. A cake without sugar is bread.

Today we are lucky because we can actually buy a small mill to mill just about any kind of grain into flour. Yesteryear allowed us the flour we could buy at the store, and that was nearly always limited to wheat - whole or white flours - containing only the limited vitamins and nutrients found in wheat. Today, you can also buy many different flours at both ethnic markets and upscale markets in most areas.

Today, our cake product can contain a healthy list of foods far better than many other foods. This weekend I baked a cake that began with whole wheat and bean flour. This upped the vitamin ante with a nice helping of nutritious beans - fifteen kinds. I used both brown and white sugar, carrots, pineapple, peaches, cherries, coconut, and orange peal. The fruit I ground into pulp with my food processor.

I used butter and canola oil. Both are better for you than either margarine or the kinds of oil and fats that are in cake mixes.

The recipe called for molasses as well which is full of iron, and four eggs. There were nutritious spices in the cake as well like cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. All these fresh spices are really good for hearts, brains and body functions.

The cake is light, delicate and filled with flavors and tastes that are actually good for you. In the frosting, I used powered sugar, butter and ground oranges.

The whole idea behind making a light and delicate cake is not so much the ingredients as the way you add your ingredients. It is necessary, if using butter, to let it become room temperature or put it in the microwave for about 25 seconds. When beating butter and sugar together, the idea is to turn the mixer on high and really beat it. Dropping one egg at a time into the butter and sugar and then add your vanilla.

In a whole other bowl, it's best to whisk all your dry ingredients together and spoon into the beating sugar butter and eggs. Last, it's nice to add your additions one at a time with a spoon.

Bake at 350 degrees in a preheated oven. When your cake is done, it's best to cool it on a rack. If you don't have a rack, jack up one side of the cake pan on a book. Frost when cool.

Here is a no-fail chocolate cake that you can't destroy and kids love:

2 and 1/2 cups flour any kind
1 and 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 and 1/4 cup warm water
1 and 1/2 stick butter
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat butter, sugar eggs and vanilla

Whisk all other dry ingredients together

Add water and then the dry ingredients

Beat, beat, beat

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes

Frost with:

1 stick butter, 1 box powdered sugar, and 1/2 cup cocoa mixed together in a food processor.

Friday's Tattler

Friday was pajama day, and almost all of the children wore their pajamas to school. It was fun to see what everyone does at home at bed time. Apparently, Jasmin and Miss Judy have the same taste in pjs! Because of the rain, we couldn't go out - which was just as well. We played many many things at school and finished our Shirley Temple movie which Miss Amy said the children liked very much.

We listened to a Bible Story - the Finding of Jesus in the Temple, and had a directed drawing lesson that taught us how to draw a donkey. And these donkeys were adorable. I brought them home to download ;-} Children will take them home on Monday.

It was a fun day even though we had two teachers out with illness. There is a crummy flu going around that really attacks the stomach - must be careful - it's very contagious. Please ask your child every morning for the next week how his stomach is feeling. If you think he's snowing you to stay home from school, offer him a candy bar... ;-}

We are house cleaning at the Garden School, and there is a car toy at the front of the school. If anyone wants this toy, please take it home. I will take it to Mother Theresa's on Wednesday.

We are looking for big handle-less baskets. If you have one you do not want, please bring it in.

Last week we studied North America with its 23 countries. This week we will review South America. Please help your child learn where one country is on the map at least. There is a contest and it is going very slowly. Please remember that it's never too late for parents to learn this stuff right along with their child.

Have a great "rest of the weekend!"