bedtime

2022-05-21T02:47:12Z

Rosie has a swim meet first thing in the morning, so she took a shower and her father braided her hair, knoxed it, and set it in a bun. While the knox (gelatin) set her hair into a hard shell, she sat practicing her Russian on Duolingo and I trimmed and buffed her toenails and fingernails.

She has started cutting her own nails but just like anyone has a hard time staying on top of her smallest toes, and she has recently tended to want to wear her fingernails longer than is practical for a violin player.

When I was 11 my sister sometimes cut my nails, and in my memory she was nearly always irritated at me when she did so, because of the clicking of my fingernails on the piano keys, she said, when I practiced. I did not get very far on the piano, but I did master cutting my nails short and smooth and round.

I am not irritated when I cut Rosie's nails. I like to do it when she lets me. After I finished, she put the phone down, started her sleep cd of assorted classical music, and asked me to read to her.

I am presently reading to her from Anne of Green Gables. At the beginning of the series Anne is also 11, so this feels pretty appropriate. We are on Chapter VII. As I read the voices I can almost hear the voices from the Canadian miniseries of the same name. I have a copy of it but Rosie has not seen it yet. I hope in another year or two to watch it together.

She drifted off quickly and i must to bed myself/ We have to get up tomorrow and drive an hour and a half before we are due at the meet at 8 AM.

Goodnight.

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Africa

2018-05-19T11:55:57Z

Substitute teaching the other day, I had a moment with a couple 7th graders looking at a political globe of the earth. I went over to share with them how I'd recently learned there's a stripe of desert from Africa all the way to the mongolian Steppes in Asia.

We turned the globe to Africa to find the left side of the stripe. Student 1, on my left, said he didn't know how to find things on a globe. He pointed to Niger and asked how you pronounce that. "Nigh-jer," I told him. "Oh," he said. "But where's Africa?" He asked.
I gestured at the continent with my hand while the other student chimed in, "It's right there! That's Africa."

Pause. Student 1 studied what was before him.
"But where's Africa?" He asked again.
"Africa is a continent, not a country," I explained further. "It has many countries, and over 300 languages are spoken there."

"Oooooh." Was his response.

"What's the largest desert in the world?" I asked. Student 2 had it. "The Sahara!"
"Where is it?" He pointed to Niger.

World geography is clearly lacking. It's throughout. Rosie recently came home from a second grade segment of learning to make and paint clay beads, "Like they do in Africa, because they are very poor there and all they have is mud."
(I made sure to share her takeaway with her teacher later. She was clearly embarrassed.)

I reminded her Africa is a continent, not a country, and that they have a wide range of rich and poor people there, like we do here.

Stereotypes are so easily formed.

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Zer Netmouse

bedtime

Africa