This morning I am procrastinating while in my own classroom - a rare occurrence, I assure you - as I read from some of my preferred periodicals, before students roam and rouse the halls.
THe task I am putting off is glueing bits of text to larger pieces of paper that students can annotate on. My reading brought me to two articles about the virtues of doing things by hand, or making work original. Both articles subtly point me towards my work...
The first is about quick replies to emails that gmail now supplies. "Sounds great!" "I'm in!" "Tuesday works for me." I detest these suggestions and even if I would have said what was written, I adjust my wording on principle. It takes us another step away from writing letters, which I cling to as a source of personal fulfillment.
The other is about making things with your hands, or craftsmanship. Yesterday an English teaching colleague and I test-drove a reading skills test that we have to administer to all our students next week. It's terrible, in part because it's on the computer, which seems like such an unnatural way to read if any pleasure will be gained. (It feels infinitely different from a kindle. Somehow, I don't want to be able to click on and interact with the reading page - I just want to read it.)
So here's to a day of creating hands-on tasks for students, and a weekend of writing, by hand, Christmas greetings on cards that Tess and I stamped and painted ourselves!
THe task I am putting off is glueing bits of text to larger pieces of paper that students can annotate on. My reading brought me to two articles about the virtues of doing things by hand, or making work original. Both articles subtly point me towards my work...
The first is about quick replies to emails that gmail now supplies. "Sounds great!" "I'm in!" "Tuesday works for me." I detest these suggestions and even if I would have said what was written, I adjust my wording on principle. It takes us another step away from writing letters, which I cling to as a source of personal fulfillment.
The other is about making things with your hands, or craftsmanship. Yesterday an English teaching colleague and I test-drove a reading skills test that we have to administer to all our students next week. It's terrible, in part because it's on the computer, which seems like such an unnatural way to read if any pleasure will be gained. (It feels infinitely different from a kindle. Somehow, I don't want to be able to click on and interact with the reading page - I just want to read it.)
So here's to a day of creating hands-on tasks for students, and a weekend of writing, by hand, Christmas greetings on cards that Tess and I stamped and painted ourselves!
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