I should be studying, so naturally...

For one of my classes, almost all of the coursework is online. The professor assigns us a topic, a website, and some resources, and we have to compile a response and submit it to an online portfolio. It's really a very interesting class, and I love being able to go to class Saturday morning in my pajamas with eggs and coffee. Love it.

Our first assignment was to explore all the uses for SMART boards in the classroom. I think our graduating class was privileged to see these first implemented in "smart" classrooms. They are now becoming more widespread and their uses are just as multitudinous.

Our second assignment was to explore how email can be used in the classroom; specifically, I'm to explore its uses for the English classroom. I read the professor's resources, and Googled the topic to find more. I came across a blog that a teacher created as a forum for her students as well as a resource and assignment tool: http://www.flatheadreservation.org

The current assignment for the classroom regards a poetry unit. So, to make a long story short, I'm describing the process by which I seemed to get distracted from my real assignment in hopes of justifying my time-wasting and poetry-loving.

This poem was listed on the website, and I think reflection on it brings up all sorts of thoughts about our role as life-long learners:


A Ritual To Be Read To Each Other by William Stafford,
from "The Darkness Around Us Is Deep"

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider — lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.


Here's to studying...