A frog, a blog and a jog...

I went running today, pushing the baby jogger with Laurel twit-twit-twoo-ing to every bird and squealing when we went down a hill. The jogging stroller is heavy now. I don't know how those ladies push the double ones, except maybe they avoid steep inclines out of ravines. It was sunny in the afternoon. Sunny for long enough to visit the playground at the Children's Institute (highly recommend it, handicap accessible and quite a different setup than our usual haunts). Laurel wore herself out chasing after the big kids. And still sunny when we returned home so I could get some exercise as well. Danna - you should have stayed longer! The sun is here!

School is almost over and I wish I could write more about my experiences as a teacher on this blog. I can say that there are many parallels between my interactions with Laurel and my interactions with ninth graders. Or maybe people all behave the same when you are trying to get them to do something they don't want to do, regardless of age. I want to tell you about my constructivist unit on fraction exploration and how I would do math journals in the future, and how very long it takes to rebuild the confidence and curiosity of students broken down by a broken system. (Years, probably.) But anything I could say about teaching is irrelevant without the learners. It makes it hard to tell the real story of M & K (& L) because we are so influenced by this group of people that I spend all day with and can't forget at night. Thirteen days left. Or something like that. It's flying by and I am so ridiculously swamped with end of year IEP paperwork that I fear I will not actually be done in 13 days and will have to spend some of my precious summer vacation in the office finishing it up and hearing the tsk, tsk of my department head.

And finally, the frog. M found a frog, a toad really, hopping around our Airstream when we were getting ready to leave on Sunday. Laurel was already strapped in her car seat, but he wanted to show her, so he brought it over to her and it leapt right out of his hands and onto her, causing quite a fright for all parties involved. That child is not afraid of much, but she does get freaked out by toads, worms and harmonicas.

How do fears come about? And what is it about certain things that bothers her? Will she have them forever? Or will she replace toads with strangers and harmonicas with financial hardship?

Would it be good to be afraid of nothing or does a little fear serve us well?