A wonderful wonderful person came to fix up the computers in my classroom last week. Nathan, someone Kathy knows, who had never met me or the kids before, came to spend a few hours updating the computers. Apparently there were 44 updates that were needed on one of the computers alone. I have no idea what he did to them, but there was some talk about spyware and viruses and updates... Now the computers don't freeze up or randomly close windows. It's awesome.
There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how
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Related to the compassion of Kathy, the "philosophy slam" competition this year has the topic "Compassion or Violence: which has the greater impact on society?" and has a 3rd-5th grade entry category, involving drawing pics. Thought you might be interested.
http://www.philosophyslam.org/rules_fin.html#3rd
Postmark Deadline for all entries: February 16th, 2007.
Students may create artwork, paint, or draw a picture to express their feelings or ideas about the topic "Compassion or violence? Which has a greater impact on society?" If compassion has a greater impact, define compassion and describe its impact. If violence has a greater impact, define violence and describe its impact. Students may use any creative combination of words and artwork or write an essay, short story or poetry about the topic. Judging: Entries in this age category will be judged on creativity, originality and overall strength of the message the student is conveying. A national winner will be chosen from each grade level will be chosen.