In high school I was taught that good speakers should just conclude naturally and not need a pronouncement. Stating that you are about to conclude is superfluous. However that is not always the case. In some formal situations such as presentations and speeches I’ve noticed that there are a number of catch phrases and words that creep in to talks as a signal to the listener that the end is near. Some of these are very straight forward, as in: “In conclusion…” or “Let me finish by saying…” These ending clues though informative to the listener are unnecessary. I must admit that they are sometimes welcome and needed. If I’m totally bored with what you are saying and you’ve been droning on for a while, announcing that the end is coming gives me something to look forward to – immediate relief.

But how about informal conversations. Listen to yourself and others when talking and see if there are key words that pop up when you are interacting either in person, on the phone, or through another audio/video device (Skype comes to mind).

In my family the word is “anyway.” If you are in a conversation and there is a lull in the talk and the word “anyway” comes up, you know there is nothing left to say and “Goodbye” is coming soon. I don’t think we intentionally do it, but at this point it is a habit and will always comes up before we end our conversations.

I’m sure we say other things, but “anyway” stands out like a tune you can’t get out of your head. Once you’ve noticed it, it’s hard to miss. Sort of like the arrow in the Fed Ex sign.

Anyway, that’s about all I can think of to write about today. If you have any different words/phrases that you use, I’d be interested in hearing them.

My desire was to leave out some food for the birds that would be appreciated and consumed at a reasonable rate. I looked forward to watching this occur. This was not the case as our community allowed animals to exist whose sole purpose in life was to thwart whatever means I had to restrict and provide that feeding.

The set up that we had in our backyard had been a hanging feeder with seeds and a feeder on a pole. We had a tree stump in the back where I attached a squirrel feeder to hold squirrel logs of compressed corn. For the most part that seemed to work fine. Over time the stump continued to decay and be a nuisance in the middle of our backyard, the pole feeder got in the way of our access to the backyard and also left a bare spot on the ground below it. The hanging feeder began to show its age so we took all the feeders down. All was quiet for a while, but we had liked the sight of all those birds in our backyard.

I made a more sturdy squirrel feeder and moved it further back in the yard on a tree that was at the edge of our property, allowing me to eventually take down the stump. We got a more decorative hanging feeder, supposedly squirrel proof and bought some suet blocks of bird food to be put in a hanging suet feed holder we had. We had thwarted animals getting at our food in the past, so we foolishly believed that we could do it again.

It was time for our well educated and tooled beasts to come into our yard. The results – I can no longer fill the hanging feeder with food. Some strong animal, usually at night, comes to the feeder, lifts it up and shakes all of food out of it onto the ground. The feeder remains hung and stands empty and the birds, squirrels and deer can now come into the yard pigging out on all the food on the ground. This does not do much for the esthetic beauty of our backyard as now it is covered in seeds all over the place and a plentitude of deer poop.

The suet feeder took real ingenuity on the part of these creatures. First they clipped the chain link that held it onto the branch it was hanging from and then took the whole feeder, food and all. It took about a week or more before I found the feeder again, somewhere back in the woods.  Since we had more blocks of suet I tried again. This time securing the chain and adding a stronger wire to hang the feeder. I needed pliers to close the links that would prevent them from unhooking it. I’m not sure what tool they used to again clip the chain and drop the feeder to the ground. This time they ate all the food, but left the feeder. My last block of suet was set into the feeder and this time I used a coat hanger with no chain and attached it to the tree. There was no way they were going to remove the feeder; and in fact they didn’t. This time they just opened the feeder and took the food out. I should note that I have trouble opening the feeder either to fill it or empty it. It had two snaps that were quite secure. My best guess is that they used a winch and a torch to open it.

It appears these well educated animals of the wild have won; or lost depending on whether you consider that they are not being fed anymore. The suet feeder is down and put away. The hanging feeder gets filled periodically as long as we still have food, but only a quarter of the way, since they tend to empty it anyway. The squirrel feeder will have corn logs put on them, but only periodically, since the squirrels tend to eat them within 2 days and we can’t afford to purchase that much food.

Until we can come up with a better plan, I guess the wildlife in our neighborhood will have to seek out other pastures. That is except the deer, since no matter what we’ve done since we’ve moved here, the deer feel that we have created a garden salad for them. When there is no bird food for them to nibble on, they manage to eat everything else we have planted, even if the reference books say that deer don’t eat those types of plants. But that is a whole other story.

All went well for a while. Bob was feeling really good about himself and was participating more in our class. I was seeing great strides in his performance. Then came the day that our Child Study Team (CST), composed of our principal, special education teachers, school psychologist, the district special education administrator, and me met with the parents to make recommendations for the following year. The recommendation was to classify Bob as a severe stutterer. What this would do, would be to guarantee that Bob would get the services he needed to help him with his handicap in the following year. The parent’s went ballistic. They did not want him labeled. They had research that showed that 80% of all stutterers grow out of their stuttering by adolescence. They were convinced that Bob was in that 80%. They also used as examples things that they had grown out of as children. They were convinced that we had lied to them and that focusing on his stuttering was detrimental to his “cure.” They insisted that all services he was receiving, which included his visits to the Primary School, and talking about his stuttering with him, were to be stopped. They closed the barn door. We had very little recourse. Pretty much all gains that I had made stopped at that point.

He was a 4th grader, so I only got to see him in our school for one more year after he left my class. I didn’t see much change before he went to the Middle School. Whether or not he did outgrow his stuttering, I have no idea, as we lost touch pretty much from the day he left my class. I hope he did well and that we were wrong, though at the time I was convinced we were headed in the right direction.

Paula was a good student. She had no handicaps or difficulties in school. I taught a 4th and 5th grade inter-age class, meaning half my class were 4th graders, the other half 5th graders. The 5th graders would graduate to the middle school, while most of the 4th graders would become 5th graders in my class as a new crop of 4th graders entered. Paula was one of my 4th graders this particular year. She was very popular. One of the projects that I did with my class starting around April was called trip planning. It was the task of the class to plan out an end of the year trip. They had to research and decide on the venue, how we would get there, how to raise funds to offset some of the costs, and the itinerary for the trip. My job other than facilitating all this was to make the final reservations and logistics for the actual trip. During this process the class learned a lot about making phone calls, writing letters, making decisions (by collaboration and consensus) and becoming independent planners. The first part of the process was electing three leaders to organize the whole project. One overall leader (either a boy or girl) and two assistant leaders (one boy and one girl). These leaders would meet regularly with me as their facilitator in getting tasks accomplished. Paula was one of those leaders.

She worked exceptionally hard to organize the class and get the work done that was needed to make this end of the year trip a reality. In the end, it was decided to go to the Bronx Zoo as a full day trip. There is great growth that occurs during the process of planning and implementing a trip. Remember that these students were 9-11 year-olds. The leaders gain the most, especially when it is a success. Paula was looking forward to this trip. It was her reward for a job well done. It was the weekend before the trip was to take place that I got a call from Paula’s mother, saying that Paula was in tears. She apparently broke her toe and didn’t think that she would be able to go on the trip, which would require a lot of walking, even with her mother as chaperone. I felt terrible and decided that there must be a workaround to this problem. I’m sure if this were the case nowadays, I would have called the Bronx Zoo and checked to see if they had wheelchairs available for use with Paula, however back then it never even crossed my mind. Paula was one of the taller girls in my class, even as a 4th grader, but was rather lanky and I was sure didn’t weigh that much. I spoke with her mother and convinced her that both she and her daughter should go on the trip. I said that if we couldn’t find another way, I would piggyback Paula throughout the zoo and that is exactly what we did. For most of the walking, I carried Paula on my shoulders. Her mom carried my knapsack and spelled me at times; we had a great day. I was a little sore at the end of the day, but felt really good that I had come up with a way for someone who had put her heart into planning and executing an event to be a full participant in the final product.

As I said when I began this, students are not going to tell you that any particular day is the one when you can reach them. As a teacher you have find those days; you have to find creative ways to foster those days; and you have to take the small victories as they come even if you don’t get exactly to where you want to be. That is where you get to be the one piggybacked and feeling of success. It’s why we chose to be teachers.

A few times in my teaching career, I’ve had students enter my class from foreign countries. In the case of Debby and Tommy they were both from China. Neither at the time they entered my class had any grasp of English. Luckily our school had an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher that worked with them once a day on learning the language. That meant that the rest of the time I had to communicate with them without knowing their language. With Tommy I did have the advantage of having another student in the class that did speak his language, so that helped in translating things I did. That wasn’t the case with Debby. One of the things that I had been studying at the time was American Sign Language. I wasn’t proficient enough to speak with it to people that knew it fluently, but did know it enough so that I could share those fundamentals with my class. Doing that made a major difference in the adjustment of those Chinese students to our class. The biggest obstacle in being in a class where no one speaks your language is understanding. Getting others to know what you want, and knowing what others want. Both Debby and Tommy were very reticent to try and communicate, because (in my humble opinion) they were not confident in their abilities and did not want to look out of place. ASL changed all of that. It leveled the field. No one in my class knew ASL and I taught it by infusion meaning I rarely spoke English words to correspond to ASL ones. The students learned to understand what I was saying by the context of what I was doing and what I referred to with gestures. This is where my Chinese students excelled, since they didn’t have the English the rest of my class would try and rely on to make sense of my signs. They allowed their observations to connect to words in their own language that had meaning. The more I taught ASL, the more both Debby and Tommy’s confidence grew, for they learned faster than my English speaking students. Over time, it balanced out, the Chinese students learned more English and the rest of the class had a better handle on how to communicate with the Chinese students and make them a part of the class.  By the end of the year, when I had some Silent Days (in which no one could speak for a whole day) everyone as a unit was communicating and demonstrating things that they had learned. I don’t think I could have planned it any better. Part of it was timing, part of it was luck, and part of it was making it up as I went along, because it seemed right.  I know for a fact, it wasn’t in the manual.

I’ve found that it’s the small victories that you learn the most from, are more memorable and keep you going.

As a collector of quotes, two more come to mind when I think of those years. “Challenges can be stepping stones or stumbling blocks. It’s just a matter of how you view them.” – author unknown and “What really matters is what you do with what you have.” – H. G. Wells.

I was successful for the most part as a teacher in guiding my students to be independent thinkers. But through all of those years I recall a handful of students that presented me with personalities, handicaps, and backgrounds that put me to the test of being an educator.

Here are some of those small victories. Note that the names of the students will be changed to maintain privacy.

When Anna entered my 4th grade class, I was warned that she had Downs syndrome, she didn’t speak well, in fact when she did it was usually to curse someone out, she worked at a pre-reading level, and had few life skills. She spent most of her time in the Learning Center, but was to be integrated as part of my class, for an hour or so a day, I was to have her do the activities that the rest of the class was doing. She did have her own personal teacher assistant that helped when she was in the room and all of the activities had to be adapted for her so she could participate. One of the activities I did was called “Magic Circle”. It was an activity where I would pose a topic to the class, such as “A day that I felt happy,” described what the topic meant and allowed students to share personal stories on the topic. Students sat in a circle and could share if they chose to but didn’t have to. Following the sharing we reviewed what people shared. Reviews took the form of repeating what someone else said and directing it back to the person who shared. For example, “Sally you shared that you felt happy the day your parents bought you a puppy.” The ultimate goal of this exercise, other than improving listening skills and fostering a closer bond in my class, was that each student would at some time get a chance to lead a Magic Circle. That meant that I would give them the topic, they would announce it, explain it, call on people, share if they chose to, and lead the review. It was a great program. Anna decided that she wanted to become a leader of Magic Circle. I told her that in order for her to be a leader, she had to first know the names of everyone in the class. It took until almost Christmas for her to learn the students’ names. When she led Circle it went perfectly. More kids shared than usual, she followed all the rules; the smile on her face and the positive feedback she received at its completion made my day and hers. I got through to her and she succeeded.

Marion suffered from selective mutism. For those of you that don’t know what selective mutism is, it means that the person has the ability to talk, but in certain circumstances cannot utter a sound. If you’ve ever watched the TV show, “The Big Bang Theory” one of it’s characters, Raj, suffers from selective mutism; he can’t speak to women. In Marion’s case she would not speak at all in school, with a class full of students or a teacher present. Now Marion was in my 5th grade class, meaning that she hadn’t spoken a word in 5 years. I should point out that I knew that there were students in the class that she would speak to and I tried to have them paired up as much as possible, much to the consternation of some of their parents. Marion had no problem speaking to me or other teachers on the phone.  She would call us up at home and have some lengthy chats. She was selective about school. My goal was have her talk in class. This was a lofty goal considering the length time she had not spoken out loud. She was willing to talk to her friends, when I was out of the room. So for a couple of units, one on storytelling and another a social studies project based unit, I came up with a plan that worked for her. All of the other students in the class had to do public performances of their stories or projects in front of the whole class, I set it up so that Marion could do hers privately in front of one or more select people of her own choosing during lunch, while everyone, including myself, was out of the room. I was allowed to have the friend that she was telling to videotape her performance. With this done, I could share the video of her telling the story and doing the presentation to the whole class. She could choose to stay in the class during the video presentation if she wanted to. For the first performance she opted not to be there, but for the second one she stayed. The class was amazed at the fact that she could talk! She seemed quite pleased albeit a little uncomfortable at the response.  I never got her to speak publically in front of me or the class that year or since, but what we accomplished helped both me and Marion feel successful.

There were other students that had trouble speaking in front of the class. Videotaping and the praise they received helped them overcome those handicaps. You can read more about Tracy’s achievements in my blog “Storytelling Success”: http://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=63

Each of these small victories helped me become a better teacher. It allowed me to use the creativity that I had in me to help foster learning in others. It felt good and it was fun trying to come up with ways to solve each problem.

Hopefully next time I write you’ll hear more tactics and victories: about the student who was school phobic, 2 different Chinese students who couldn’t speak any english and another student who stuttered, how I became the confidant of an overweight sixth grader, and how piggy backing a 4th grader through the Bronx Zoo helped her become part of a trip she planned. Till next time…

Then I retired. Though I’m still an educator, it is interesting that the two career paths that I am following now has changed my persona from a farmer to more of a hunter.

One of my jobs is as a part time consultant, an “educational technology integration specialist.”  That means when I’m needed, I’m sent into school districts to train other educators on how to use technology tools, such as smartboards, electronic response systems, document cameras, etc. in their teaching. I also teach some Web 2.0 tools, like podcasting, digital storytelling, and useful sites on the Internet. Sometimes I have advanced notice of who the teachers are that I’m training, but many of the times it’s an unknown school and I find out more about who I’m training when they sign in. As hunter I need to be armed with choices of weapons that can deal with the differing prey I might run into. Sort of like my first week of teaching every time I do a workshop.

My other profession is that of storyteller/singer at various venues such as schools, libraries and festivals. Other than telling at the school that I taught in for most of my career, most venues are new. Sizes of listeners and control of listeners behavior is usually determined by those that hire me, since I’m the performer, not the disciplinarian, and sometimes those people don’t even show up to the performance. Other than in school performances when I’m told how many people will attend, the predicted size of the audience is not always accurate. If I get to my venue early enough I usually can have some say as to how I want the audience to be seated. There are times when I have no control over that, so parents will chat in the back while I’m trying to perform to kids in the front, or the kids will sit by class with teachers sitting around the outside of the group, I’ll be on stage in a giant auditorium with a handful of people scattered about the entire room. At one venue I was in a banquet hall and some kids sat up front with me, but the rest all sat at giant round dinner tables around the hall with adults (talking and listening to each other at their tables was a higher priority than being quiet, participating and listening to me). Again I go into the forest with a multitude of weapons, hopeful that I have the right ones to make my hunt successful.

One difference between what I did for 33 years and what I do now, is in the amount of time that I spend with the groups that I work with. As a farmer, I was with the same product within any given year. I could cultivate, nurture and watch it grow over time. Though the first few days may have been unknown as the seeds began to germinate, I could take longer to adapt to changes that I needed to make to grow my crop.

As a hunter, I don’t know what animal I’m going to be dealing with when I enter the forest, therefore though I have the same experience of knowledge that I want to impart to my audience as I did as a farmer, I have to have quicker reactions and the support system is not always present. If I’m invited back to the same group to train or tell to it’s a little easier, because a I have knowledge of the group. Then I can reach back to my farmer days and try to build upon my relationship with that group. Even so, the group changes too rapidly; rarely have I worked with the same children or teachers more than twice in any given year. They must be released into the wild and a new group appears.

Maybe this analogy only works now because I’ve only been a hunter for a short while compared to my farmer days. As I continue to grow and gain experience in my new professions, maybe the planning, adapting and fruition of my work will become more predictable. Maybe I can move on from being a hunter and become more of a ranger on a natural wildlife preserve, where I will know the animals in my domain and be able to guide and protect them with the same kind of comfort as I had in my farmer days.

Time will tell.

In 2011, with cell phones and the Internet, we communicate with my son almost everyday, either by phone, texting or video chats. He doesn’t have to be in his room to receive a call from us, or call us himself. He can be anywhere as long has he has his cell phone. Most of the time he calls me while walking on campus to and from places. All of us have Skype on our computers that automatically opens up when the machines are turned on. With Skype open, we can usually tell when someone is near their computer to text chat if we want to. From my side of the fence, it makes the transition from being a full time parent to an empty nester much easier. Not that we need to converse every day, but it is nice to be able to.

Most of my income while I was at college came from my allowance check that came in the mail. I needed a way to save those checks I received, so I set up a bank account with Amalgamated Bank of New York. I had never seen this bank before. It was somewhere in the city, but discovered through some brochure that I could set up a checking account by mail. This I did and until the day that I had left Stony Brook, moved to Long Island, and found a local bank to deal with my checking and savings needs I never once set foot in or saw the Amalgamated Bank of New York. Everything was done through the mail

My son has always received a two part allowance. Part of his allowance was spending money and a smaller portion was set as saving for a special occasion money. When he was younger cash was initially given to him. It was difficult to remember to supply him with his allowance, since buying things wasn’t a priority for him. I’m sure we forgot a lot. Whenever we went shopping, on trips, looking for presents for others, he rarely had his money on him, so we paid and he had to pay us back from his stash.  As he got older, it became easier to set up a virtual bank account. Using the program Quicken, I set up his allowance. Each month it automatically added money to his spending and savings accounts. Any time he wanted to buy something we would front the money and he had to deduct it on Quicken. He always knew how much money he had to spend and kept within his limit when buying things. When he graduated high school he was ready for the real thing. We set up a joint checking and savings account, he got a debit card, and now could spend all his money on his own. My bank account auto deposits his allowance into his checking and savings account and he still keeps Quicken records to keep track of what he spends. If he needs money from us or has to pay us money for something, it is all done electronically through our bank accounts. He has discovered that even though he’s been doing this since he was younger that he is a lot more thoughtful in his spending now that it is his own real money being transacted.

In some respects he is doing with his bank what I did in my college days. The difference is that I used snail mail to accomplish my tasks and he uses electronic mail. The other difference is that he’s actually seen the bank that his bank transactions go through.

As I talk to him more, I also discovered that experiences that I remember as a first year college student have similarities to what he is experiencing. But that is for another time to write about.

It’s been said by many that laughter is a form of healing. It takes less muscles to smile than to frown, so you shouldn’t waste your energy on frowning. At least that’s how the saying goes. In reality I’m not sure if that is true, based on some Internet research. Growing up I found that I smile a lot more than I frown. Maybe that is why people say I look younger than I really am – Positive energy.

I enjoy laughing. Not in a vicious teasing way, but in fun and enjoyable one. My laugh would build from within. It would start in my belly and gain steam as it burbled its way up to my mouth. The sound that emitted in its conclusion was an infectious production of both giggle and guffaw. My laughter was very recognizable. If I am in a crowded room of people who know me and begin to laugh there is no doubt as to who the laugher is. Now if I laugh in a room where my family is located, they duck and cover and move away from me as far as possible for they want no connection to the outburst, “We don’t know him,” that is unless they are laughing also.

I’ve seen research on laughter and watched videos of laughter clubs, where people come together just to laugh. If you’ve never tried it, you should. Force a laugh and let it build in intensity until you lose control of it. The best way I’ve found is to start by saying “Ha”, then “Ha Ha”, then “Ha Ha Ha”, continue until your laughter becomes a runaway train. It sounds silly to do, and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you were by yourself or with a group of people that are doing it with you.

What amazes me when one gets into an uncontrollable laughing fit, is how hard it is for the people around you not to smile and start to laugh themselves.

Laughter can also become a defense mechanism when it comes to sad events. I try to make light of serious things because having to deal with them in reality can also become depressing. That works for me; it allows me to deal with tragedy and negativity through positive energy. The difficulty comes when other people around me don’t deal with issues that way and look at what I’m doing as mocking or being insensitive rather than coping. I’ve learned to control that behavior outwardly and maintain a serious façade, while internally I’m making light or coming up with humorous retorts to whatever is happening. It sometimes helps me, but keeping it internal is not as effective as bringing the humor out loud. It also brings on some guilt in that I know I shouldn’t be reacting the way I do.

But that is what laughter is. It’s positive energy, a release of tension and stress, a way to overcome obstacles that might otherwise lead you into an unhealthy state.  At least that is what works for me.

Occasionally after discussions, surveys are taken, sometimes decisions and policies are made and then we wait another 5 to 10 years until the topic comes up again with a new set of parents.

As a teacher I always had a different take on homework. I must note that I’ve always taught elementary students through 6^th grade; I was the sole provider of academic work and homework, which is different from the concerns of Middle and High School parents, where teachers from different classes all assign homework with little knowledge of what other teachers have assigned. For me the expectation was that I had to give homework. Homework was supposed to be an extension of the class work that we were doing. Early in my teaching it was difficult to come up with homework since I felt that most of the things I taught worked better when I was there to mediate. There were other subjects that I didn’t feel was as prioritized to focus on which I was mandated to teach and give as homework. One principal said to me if I give homework in certain areas, even though I didn’t want to, it would appease the parents and thus allow me to do other things that I wanted to do that might have more resistance.  This actually worked out to be a good philosophy; only I didn’t use it as a way to appease parents as much as I did to appease my administrator. I had the range of parent complaints of there is too much to there is too little homework (on the same assignments).

One thing that was consistent in my homework for almost all of the 33 years that I taught were two weekly assignments. Each child had to read and log 2 hours of reading a week, outside of school that was verified by their parents. This reading could include any assigned reading or reading of their own choosing. The other assignment was each student had to write at least 1 page a week in a journal that I had provided to them. The writing was of their choice. It had to make sense and could be anything from fiction to non-fiction to poetry to letters to me. They could include illustrations if they wished, but the total amount of writing had to be the equivalent of one page’s worth (normal print handwriting). In my final years, students were allowed to type their journal entries. The journals were a great way for me to communicate one on one with my students as I always wrote back to the students in their journals before returning them.  On long vacations, I generally had one journal and the normal reading diary due (meaning if it was a two week vacation, students only had to hand in 1 page of writing but 4 hours of reading).

In my last 6 years of teaching I changed my philosophy about homework. I taught 5^th grade (10-11 year olds). Journals and reading diaries continued, however my homework assignments became time oriented rather than content oriented. My focus was not homework as an extension of class work, but learning as an extension of life. Every student was given a homework log, which included a calendar for the school year and under each date a space for homework and reading diary. At the beginning of the year each student was required to log in 30-45 minutes of homework a night (weekends Friday, Saturday and Sunday were considered one night). Their assignment was to utilize this time to either do something that I assigned or something of their own choosing to fill up that time frame, for example practicing times tables, their own writing, study for an exam, work on an independent research project, etc. They could choose how to do it (right after school, before supper, at night, split between multiple times). Their parents had to initial the log each night (or before school the next day). As the year progressed the times for this homework increase to 45-60 minutes). Reading diary reading was an acceptable use of time, however once they reached the 2-hour expected requirement; they couldn’t use additional reading as acceptable homework (some kids would have just read and done nothing else). Journals were acceptable as long as they didn’t do it in school during free time.

No child was allowed to do homework any night for more than an hour. If it took longer than an hour to complete any assignment I gave, students were allowed to stop; all they needed was their parents to sign off that they worked an hour.

Not allowing students to work longer than an hour (some of which just did, because they loved what they were doing, which was fine with me) gave me indications about needs of individual students. If the work was too hard, I altered it for those students. If their work strategy to complete assignments was the issue, we worked out a better plan to help complete assignments.

The goal in all this was to establish a pattern of study skills in my students so that when they went to Middle and High School, they would be better prepared to manage time in doing homework and to foster the behavior that helped them become well-rounded learners. “Even though my teacher hasn’t assigned me work I know that there are things that I need to work on.”  “Even though I don’t have that much homework to do, there are these topics that interest me that I would like to explore.”

Over the years, I didn’t have many parent complaints about the homework I gave. Most of the issues arose at Open Houses at the beginning of the year, when parents were unfamiliar with my philosophy. But once known, it was accepted.

Did this solve the homework issue that parents keep bringing up at the district level? It solved it for me. I never had to deal with kids going home and telling their parents that they had no homework. As instructed, all parents had to respond to their child was, “So what are you going to do for your 45 minutes today? “ And for me that was all I asked.

Part one of this assignment was to write a paragraph of narrative, 100-150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. Each sentence must have a subject and a verb.

Sitting at my writer’s desk and looking out my window this is what I saw:

A woodpecker sits on the feeder. It is outside my balcony window. It has a red head. It is searching for bits of food. There is not much food left for it. A squirrel pauses on the ground. It looks up at the woodpecker. It must decide soon. Should I try or not? Though tempting, there is a cage. The cage protects the food. The woodpecker leaves. The squirrel advances. Cage or not it will eat. As it climbs it surveys obstacles. Poking through the cage it tries. It does not get much seed. The woodpecker was not a neat eater. It was very picky. Much of the food was tossed aside. “Aside” means it landed on the ground. Looking down the squirrel notices something. There is more food on the ground. It would be much easier to get. Squirrels appear to have little brains. They also perseverate. It continues to try the cage.

Part two was a lot harder. Write a half-page of narrative, up to 350 words, which is all one sentence.

The reason it is harder is that I’m not familiar with enough grammar rules and punctuation to note where extending the passage becomes a run-on. I would naturally break my paragraph up into much smaller units.

This passage I’m writing about would fit into my story “Dora and the Jade of Knowledge”:

Weary with travel, Bryan, Tyler and Will, glanced over the great plain of Incha as it lie before them, covered with partial clumps of grasses, encompassing a view that completely covered the horizon, with the exception of a winding river, the river Wiser, who’s torrents created a startling contrast to the scene before them; Bryan being concerned about the possible conflicts involving finding the jade and remaining healthy and safe; Tyler, ever impulsive, just looking for places to go and things that he just wanted to do right now; and Will, who just took in vastness and beauty of it all with its mystery and hope of finding the jade and fulfillment; None of them knowing what clues they would find and just what was in store for them as they continued in their quest for the Jade of Knowledge, the hand of the Princess Dora, and the kingdom which each felt they were entitled.

Not close to 350 words, but more than any sentence I’ve written in the past.