so... the president's gonna reduce class size... (in grade's 1-3) what in the heck is he gonna do about self contained rooms: finding competent paras, protecting student rights, promoting adequate conseling (or any at all!) within the ED rooms, encouraging paid trainings for support staff... AND class size?!?! venting... frustrated with a system that really doesn't put the kids first.

with you all the way on this one!

The current state of education in my county is very poor. I overheard a junior at our local high school who asked someone where they were from and got the reply, "Pennsylvania",and stated, "Where's that?" I found that to be a rather frightening reply!Instead of cutting down on education funding, that is just one example that we need funding increases, instead!

Amen

the current state of education... school is OUT! (of course I start teaching summer school on June 22 but that's DAYS away!!!!) WooWOO!

Lamar Middle School's suggested Parent and Teacher Reading List 1. Grounded for Life?! (Stop Blowing Your Fuse and Start Communicating with Your Teenager) by Louise Felton Tracy, M.S. 2. The Roller Coaster Years (Raising Your Child Through the Maddening Yet Magical Middle School Years) by Charlene C. Giannetti and Margaret Sagarese 3. Living with a Work in Progress (A Parent's Guide to Surviving Adolescence) by Carol Goldberg Freeman 4. Reviving Ophelia (Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls) by Mary Pipher, Ph.D. 5. H.E.L.P. (How to Enjoy Living with a Preadolescent) by Judith Daenen

Makes parenting sound like a LOVELY experience, no?

something along those lines... as you well know...

Dwindling Anatomy of Spaceless Mindshadow gimme a little somethin' to say and I'll say it just like you the jugglers are throwin' up snakes cuz you told them that's what they oughta do the snapshot was taken and you were the only one lookin' good they looked broken and shaken just like you said they would the rose rose in all its morning glory by afternoon it made its financial statement other flowers grew and filled out the story but it ended when they paid you their late rent not as much as before and then a little more the animal within grows claws, a hide of tough skin moments of rising mist, seclusion, indecisiveness, and you're in

Bryan Venable's heading at the start of this topic: "what's the current state of education in your neighborhood, city, state and/or country? is it as good as it can be? is it as good as it should be? what could make it better?" a Salli Raspberry school I've got her book on how to start your own school and Terry's probably got an earful from her on stuff about the school even if it was something in the past by the time he met her

I think this will go better right about in here than in Functional Foods, (but what triggered it was Response 41 in that topic): I think friendship is so hard because of how many things in the other person we don't like, and how that makes us react in ways we don't like to. So we don't like that about ourselves, and we don't like stuff about them. And it implies that we have something in mind about how we would like friendship to be. But we try to have that by making it into a should. That 'should' gets in the way of what we are. The person who we like but mostly don't like (therefore they're not a friend), is really a mirror for us. And we don't look in that mirror. What we don't like reflects our pain. It hurts to see pain. But the pain is what we are. We're constantly pushing out of sight what we are. Because it's too painful to get to know. And because we then pursue what we think we should, something more like what we'd like. We don't know ourselves, and that's why. Our friendships are not deep and strong, and that's why. Dislike stops us in our tracks. And we're not going to waste our time wondering why. We're not going to waste our time seeing the connection. And this is why we're so out of touch with our communities and our world. It's painful to be with those who are too different from us. It's painful to feel, so we don't. We numb ourselves against it, so we can get by on being pleasant. If we're pleasant and we hang with those who are different from us then we can say we're diverse or we mix well. The dislike, and its pain, leads us to who we are, if we feel our way into the dislike. There are so many different dislikes that go on. And we overcome them with diplomatic pleasantness until we can get out of there and away from the dislike---which is then where we can say that we don't belong with the dislike because it's not us. Wrong. We're wrong there. It is us. It's a projection. They are acting out something inside us that we dislike. It's painful to feel it again as it arises in others. So we don't feel. We numb ourselves to it. And accordingly, our lives are, to that degree, small, petty, self-centered, shallow, superficial. Intelligence is actually being able to discern the essential. To do that we must venture into the pain. Far enough to go all the way. And truly understand the pain of dislike. We will find out 2 truths. One is that we are not separate from other people: there is no separation between us and another. The other truth is that compulsions, grooves, habitual patterns of behavior die hard and painfully. This is what education needs to go into, along with reading, writing, reasoning, arithmetic, and various other subjects. We can't learn to learn without love. True friendship is not possible if we don't know how to love. Love will never happen if we prevent ourselves from feeling. Life is feeling and change. If we give power to pain and dislike, we go astray in our lives. We must come to understand the deeper meanings of dislike if we are going to learn who we are and how to be friends. When we see what we dislike as a hindrance, by saying to ourselves that we dislike something because it's a hindrance and therefore a must to avoid, we are disconnecting ourselves from our selves, our life, our feeling, and our intelligence. Fear comes out of that. And freedom will never be, as long as fear is breeding fear.

I like this! It's good.