One of the best things about tutoring an inquisitive ninth grader in the humanities – literature and history, writing and global studies – is that I have the opportunity to revisit stories I have read in the distant past, when I was a different person. Doesn’t the passage of time change us at least a little (or maybe even immensely)? Reading stories a second time makes me notice and appreciate the way I have changed. Thus, I found myself re-reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (Hilda Rosner’s translation). The first time I read it I was 19. I was on a plane. When I reached the last page, I remember looking…
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An Unexpected Journey: Breast Cancer
I received a diagnosis of invasive breast cancer six years ago, two weeks before I was due to go on a much anticipated 2 1/2 week trip with William and Natalie. I am so glad my surgeon realized that I not only wanted to still go on the trip, but that I needed to go. She realized I needed to feel emotionally prepared and at peace about having surgery. It also didn’t hurt that I had found a medical reason in my research (revealed below) that made sense to her. I thought back to those emotional weeks in my life while reading an article in the New York Times this…
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Older = Wiser?
People of a certain age group 🙂 get frustrated when we sometimes can’t remember a word or name or place when we know we know… So frustrating! It can feel like we are sitting in the Blackstone Chair and can’t remember the answer to the question we know we know! Indeed, research shows that cognitive function slows as people age. But, guess what? Speed isn’t everything. A recent study pointed out that older people have much more information in their brains than younger ones. Retrieving it takes longer. But while younger people are faster in tests of cognitive performance, older people show “greater sensitivity to fine grained differences” (Topics in…
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Skipping Middle School Taught Us…
It’s been six years since our family made the bold decision to “skip middle school” and home school Natalie during her 7th and 8th grade years. At the time, some people questioned our judgement. One mother asked, “What about high school? If you do this, won’t Natalie have a hard time getting into a good school?” Yet others expressed their envy and support. One man confided, “I’m still recovering from middle school. If only I could have skipped it.” Natalie and I took notes during our two years and then we wrote our story about the fears we faced and overcame, the trust (and schoolhouse) we built together, the “Professor-Daddy”…
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Stressful Schools = Toxic Apples
Madeline Levine’s book Teach Your Children Well (see Judith Warner’s review, NY Times 7/29/12) includes a startlingly true statement that serves as a call to action. She says, “When apples were sprayed with a chemical at my local supermarket, middle-aged moms turned out, picket signs and all, to protest the possible risks to their children’s health, yet I’ve seen no similar demonstrations about an educational system that has far more research documenting its own toxicity.” A few years ago while I waited for our 12-year-old daughter’s swimming lesson to end, I heard a mother bemoaning her children’s lack of enthusiasm for school. “Each year I hope they’ll realize the…
