Day 114 of 365 Days of Being Thankful

        Today I am thankful that Olivia started Beauty School!  She was really excited last night and this morning.  Everyone should go with their passion!

There are many, many years of working so it is good to choose something that you have a desire to do.   I loved being a reading specialist and couldn't have imagined doing anything else! Every student deserves an appropriate education to meet their needs. Think how awful it would be to be illiterate.

Years ago I worked for another school district.  A former student of that district, before I was hired there, was arrested for petty burglary.  When he was at the police station, he confessed and told them what he had done.  He was about 21 years old. The police wrote up his confession, and he signed it. When he got to court, the judge asked him if the signature on the confession was his and if he understood what he signed.  He said the signature on the confession was definitely his but he had no idea what he signed because he couldn't read! The judge asked him if he had graduated high school and where he had gone to school.  He told him that he had graduated high school and told him the name of the district.  The judge was furious and wanted to know how a school district could graduate a student who could not read! The judge ordered that he be given reading tutoring at the expense of the DA's office and then when he could read his own confession t come back to court.  The DA called the head of special ed at the district I was working at and told him the story.  The special ed director asked me to tutor him because he felt somewhat responsible for the situation. I couldn't do it because it had to be done during evening hours because the young man had a daytime job.  I contacted a literacy center and they scheduled him for instruction.  Being illiterate really is difficult, there are not many jobs someone can be hired for except for manual labor if they can't read. Just think how limited someone's life could be if they couldn't read. Simple things like reading a recipe or reading directions or reading ingredients would be close to impossible.  Reading is something we all need to learn because we read everyday all day!   The really sad thing is that some parents don't advocate for their kids or don't know their rights or are illiterate themselves and don't know what steps to take to get their child's needs met.
        I am also thankful for the wildlife I get to see everyday in my back yard.  Yesterday Dan was carrying a few pieces of wood down to his burn pile in the yard.

All of a sudden a gander swoops down next to him and starts flapping his wings and hissing at Dan.  Dan made double time back to the house!  He saw another goose, probably the gander's mate sitting on a nest near the stream. The gander was only trying to protect his mate.  I asked Dan why he trotted up so quickly and he said..........I was scared, did you see how huge his beak was, that would have hurt if he bit me! And I think Dan was right!

        Last night was my book club  meeting.  I just love all of the women in the group. We discussed the book Coming to My Senses.  I think everyone enjoyed this book.  Somehow we got into discussing politics. We all hate Trump and think he is a liar and should be taken out of office.  I don't think it will happen but others do. I hope they are right and I am wrong!  Then we got into religion. Most of us were raised catholic and went to Catholic elementary school or CCD classes for religious instruction. The nuns back then had no problems calling kids names or meting out physical punishment.  I told the group the story of the Wilson brothers who were in my fifth grade class.  Our teacher was Sister Lucian, a nun older than Adam and Eve.  She was an IHM(Immaculate heart of Mary) nun, known as thee strictest nuns in the religion.

She should not have still been teaching.  She would occasionally check homework so most kids didn't do much homework.  The boys were always in the front of the class and the girls had to sit in the back. We were indoctrinated with the importance of men at an early age! The nun sat us how she liked us so the first boy in the first row was her favorite at the time.   You were pretty much out of harm's way if you were in the first three rows. Sister Lucian carried her stamp and  permanent ink pad around the room as she checked homework.  The stamper said Examined.  She would count how many pages the first student had and everyone else better have had close to that number! She never checked for accuracy or even what was on the pages in the homework copybook.  The blond haired Wilson twins always were in the last row.  They never did their homework and would frantically try to write a few pages as she walked up and down each row.  One particular day the first kid had 20 pages of homework.  By the time she got to the Wilson twins, they maybe had 4 pages done.  She marked examined on pages 1, 2, 3, and 4 and then proceeded to stamp their buzz cut blond hair with the rest of the pages they should have had.  She started stamping on their heads examined 5 examined 6,examined 7, all the way up to examined 20.  Those poor boys had to let the "examined" words grow out of their hair!  I can't imagine any teacher doing anything like that today. When we had Geography exams, she would pull the map down so we could "spell" the words correctly.  The exam was multiple choice, mind you! I thought nuns weren't supposed to cheat! She would mock kids and call them names like guinea head.  I shudder when I think how much self esteem she ruined.