MORE READING

      The comments from my last post about reading has made me think about a few other things. I often think about how people learn to read. 

     When I attended school in the late 40's and early  50's we  had  a system that was very limited.  We had one room rural schools. We had people teaching with little or no training. Correspondence courses were developed but how do you expect a six year old to learn to read taking correspondence. These rural schools met their end in the late 40's  and  early 50's , The school I went to called Hiawatha, closed in 1955. There were 6 student enrolled in the last year. They were all boys consisting of three sets of brothers. My two brothers attended the last year.

    My first year of teaching in 1958 ,was in a rural school that had nine students. It was closed the next year. I had three grade ones. One little guy knew how to read but jumped through all the hoops. The other little boy was never going to read. I think the little girl learned from my efforts.

     I don't ever remember learning to read. I remember going through the work books and doing assignments but it was nothing I learned. I liked the work books.

    So after all this rambling , I'm wondering about how the learning to read makes life long readers..

    I think there are good programs to teach reading but do they fit all students? Do life long readers come from people who know how to read well? Or are the readers just curious people? Do life long readers find reading stimulating for a number of reasons such as entertainment?

    What do you think?

READING

      At one time I did a lot of reading. I wasn't someone who read 50 books a year or  anything like that. I would read about 25 books a year.

     When I first retired a read many of the books I had been missing. I read Clan of the Cave Bears. I read most of Rutherfurd's books. I liked historical fiction but not mysteries.

    Then I found I was reading less and the last few years ...reading close to nothing.

     I had an idea what was causing the decline in reading.

     Blogging was taking my reading time.

    In the couple of months around my surgery I had time to think of  a few things. I was off blogging for about three weeks. I thought about closing the blog. I decided to keep blogging but at a lesser amount. I cut out the replies I made to comments. That gave me much more time, However, responding to comments was a very positive part of blogging. I miss it.

    But guess what? I found myself reading much more right away! Well, I wouldn't give up blogging because it's very interesting. I might even start back with replies to comments. I might find I have time.

    One thing I have to do is change a few things on the blog. I tried to add a reader and found out that I had forgotten how. 

MY BEST VALENTINES GIFT

       I think I've told this story before but I like it so I'll tell it again.

      My youngest brother was born on Feb. 14! I Remember when Mom brought him home and showed him to us. As 11, 14 and 15 year old farm boys we were surprisingly excited about this new brother. In no time we held him, fed him, changed diapers and rocked him to sleep. There was a competition as to who would look after him

     He was born in a small local hospital about 20 miles from home. Dave grew up with big brothers and cousins as there was no one his age in our community.

    Later on in life Dave became a nurse. You guessed it. He went back to nurse in the hospital he was born in. He looked up the records of his birth. There was nothing surprising. Everything was normal. Dave happened to be the head nurse in that little hospital. Dave spent the remainder of his career in health administration.

    I am sorry that I never got to spend much of my life with him. I left home at age 17 when Dave was only 2 and a half years old.

   So Happy birthday Dave.

   No pictures here as I'm still working on getting my photos on to a memory stick,

IT RAINED TODAY

        Rain for us in the winter is extremely rare. But today we had a very refreshing shower around noon. When I came outside it smelled fresh.

       Our winter temperatures are usually well below zero for highs and lows so rain isn't possible. We have had 10 days of well above normal winter temperatures so I guess it thought that it might as well rain.

     So for Feb.8 our average high is minus 3.9 C. Our average low is minus 16.2 C. Today our high was  plus 10  C and the low was minus 4 C.

    What  we usually say about pleasant weather is that we might as well enjoy it when it comes..

     Pleasant weather will be over tomorrow as it turns colder.

SAD LOSS

          Yesterday a former colleague was instantly killed in a car accident. What a shock!  

       Ted influenced students, fellow teachers, parents and the community at large.

          Ted  started his career at the school I was teaching in. Throughout my career I made it a habit to keenly watch new teachers who came out with the latest teaching techniques. I learned much from Ted.

         Ted was super organized so the kids had excellent material that was well presented. Parents were always well informed as Ted was an excellent communicator.

      Ted came from a very promising professional hockey career.  Ted decided to leave hockey and enter education. We were lucky for that choice. Through  out his career he found time to coach competitive hockey teams in the community.

     Ted was the best family man I ever met. He thought his wife and kids were the greatest and treated that way.

     Ted became a school administrator and put his incredible effort and ideas to that leadership.

     What a shock! Ted was just a few months away from retirement.

     I will miss him greatly along with all the other people he came in contact with.

DELETIONS HIT A SNAG

     I worked hard for a few days deleting photos. I got  into the swing of things. I saw a pattern forming and I knew which photos should be deleted  without having to think too much.

   I found that I took many snow photos. Well ,why wouldn't you take snow shots  when we have snow for a good part of the year? So close your eyes and delete the snow photos. Some of the snow photos were good.

    I also discovered that I had many scenic photos. Many of them were of the same place with little difference. I tried to take photos of flowers. Although I took many flower photos very few were worth a look. 

   So I  ended up keeping photos with family in them. 

   I also  have to admit that I got sidelined. I started looking at photos. Photos of my kids when they were cute little guys. They are still cute with some gray hair.  Well looking at photos sidelined my project for one day. today I was terribly busy and didn't get at my project.

    So I hope that I get some deletions done tomorrow.

 

DIGITAL PHOTO BLUES

       Be it resolved that they keep digital cameras away from the idiots. May I make my case.

       My daughter gave me a small digital camera a long time ago. Then I bought a much nicer digital camera. 

      So I was really  ready to take pictures. I took many digital photos of things I really liked . I took several photos of the same thing. I went to the same places may times and got more photos. I have many  photos of seasons. 

      Now one thing I didn't know about was a file system. A filing system is still beyond me. So my phots are scattered all over the place, I edited photos but did not delete the originals. Sometimes I edited three or four times. I labeled very few photos. I have learned how to label photos but don't do it because it's not in my routine. 

   What brings about all this self criticism? Since  I bought a laptop I now have to import my photos from the old PC.  Okay, that should be simple and it is. However, I had about 7000 photos. These photos are largely unorganized. Some of these photos I do not recognize. What was the location? Why was a photo taken?

    So now this old boy is going through and deleting photos he doesn't want before importing them to the laptop. So far  I've  deleted about 1500 photos.

    Poor me!