As we await the turn of the season it is a time of pondering and planning.   Here is a collection called “Farmer’s Advice” offered to help with the pondering and planning.  The is especially fitting, as the farmer says, because “Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.”  Here’s hoping you’ve been able to avoid stumps and if they are unavoidable, you’ve sought help.  If you are stumped by efforts to do your best in learning, call me so you can increase your Learning Options.

An Old Farmer’s Advice:

* Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.

* Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.

* Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

* A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

* Words that soak into your ears are whispered…not yelled.

* Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.

* Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.

* Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.

* It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

* You cannot unsay a cruel word.

* Every path has a few puddles.

* When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

* The best sermons are lived, not preached.

* Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.

* Don’t judge folks by their relatives.

* Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

*  Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back,
you’ll enjoy it a second time.

* Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.

* Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

* If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.

* Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

* The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches
you from the mirror every mornin’.

* Always drink upstream from the herd.

* Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad
judgment.

* Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back
in.

* If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’
somebody else’s dog around.

* Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest
to God.

Author Unknown

Last month’s post  “Love Story” spoke of the wonder of our children and the fact that we entrust them to the institutions that make up our society from a very early age.  With that comes our responsibility to look outside ourselves to do the best we can for our loved ones.  This month’s heartfelt poem “Love Story ? ” moves from parents’ perspective to that of a child.  These words are a collage from students who have tried their best, whose parents have tried their best, and yet their learning continues to be a very ‘trying’ experience.  These are the students I work with so I can help them learn how to use their great brain and it ‘s natural way of thinking to their advantage.   They come to me already smart; and leave with the pride that they now know how to use their natural way of thinking to succeed.

Love Story?

How can you love me when I am bad.

Oh, I’m not bad?

OK, then why do I get into trouble because I didn’t bring home a good report card.  I am trying.

No, I am not lazy.

Yes, I did forget to get that done.

Yes I did know how to do that, but when I got to the test, I just blanked out.

I know it, I just can’t say it.   I know it, I just can’t write it.

Yes, I did speak up when the teacher said that rotten thing to a kid in our class.

I do like it better in the Silent Room.

Yes, I had to stand up for myself on the playground.

But they don’t like me.  I can’t do stuff as quick as them.  I just hate having to go to school.

Can’t I stay home today?

I have to go to school. I’ll find a way to get the kids to pay attention to me.

My mom/dad believes me, but my dad/mom doesn’t and they fight about it.

I can’t go there anymore.

I asked to be checked for a reason that I can’t do it the way they want me to do it, but they said I was smart and if I did better I’d lose my ranking with the kids who know me.  I tried taking that drug, but it didn’t work for me.  It worked for a kid I know but I must be different than him/her.

I stayed after school; I helped the teacher; he tried to get me to understand it, but he never explained it different than he did in class.  I still don’t get it.

I don’t want to try anymore.  Please let me do this on my own.  I want to be able to talk about the stories my friends read, but I just can’t read them as fast and understand them.  How can you love me when I’m bad?

Sometimes it’s the fonts, sometimes it’s the background, and sometimes it the colors. Whatever it is that works, use it!

This is an interesting video about a ‘dyslexic font’. A good way to spend a few minutes understanding how another perspective can always help.

This month’s article speaks of entrusting our children to the institutions that are part of our society.  It begins innocently talking about the beauty of the little being we bring into the world and moves to the idea that our love story consists of zeniths and nadirs, and love necessitates “looking outward in the same direction”.   May your new year find you open to the universe and what it has to offer for your love story.

Love Story

You bring a new life into the world.  You know how perfect the child is.  You see bits and pieces of other loved ones.  As the months pass, you figure out how to tread down paths read about, heard about, talked about, but not real until you set foot on the path as parents have done throughout time.  Some of what you do comes from deep within you – that happens without thought; it comes from how you feel.  Other things you do are a reflection of how you’ve seen things done – maybe from your own family, maybe from peers, or in this day and age, images from farther away in books, online, television, radio, workshops.

Months pass into years and you see those same pieces of loved ones (don’t those eyes look just like grampa’s?).  What you do still comes from deep within you, but now the possibilities are choices affected by what you can provide.

Part of raising them is trusting them to our institutions, one of which is education.  It’s heart wrenching and exciting for us; an extension of letting go and testing who we are as much as who they are; filled with all the confidences and self doubts that We bring to it.  The WE is a collective We – the institution of education, our choices of where, how, the educators we entrust – filled with all the confidences and self doubts We bring to it.

It is impossible to underestimate the importance of what happens in school—doorway to their future.  Just as with your very first reactions to being a parent, some of what you do as part of your child’s education and what you feel happens without thought.  Other things you do are a reflection of how you’ve seen things done – maybe from your own family, maybe from peers, or in this day and age, images from farther away in books, online, television, radio, workshops.

No matter where your reaction or action comes from, it is part of an ongoing love story.  Every love story has heights and depths, joys and despair, sometimes ordinary and sometimes spectacular.  Your part in the education of your child is a true love story.  Ovid said “Love is a kind of warfare”.  Antoine De Saint-Exupery said “Life has taught us that love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction”—to tread the paths of our world.  As you both grow, be sure to share your love with those responsible for helping your child be successful in any education setting from playdates to preschool and beyond to create your own love story by being sure you are all “…looking outward together in the same direction”.

How refreshing to have more research showing the limits of ‘doing things the same way over and over again and expecting different results’.  Here is more support for opening our minds to stepping outside of ‘word thinking’ psyche so our ‘picture thinkers’ can flourish.  Two studies of readers ranging from the age of 6 to university age reveal several results. One study of Scottish and New Zealand children resulted in the recommendation that educators and policy makers look beyond any claimed short term advantages of a particular method when considering the merits of different approaches to reading.  The second study showed the same cognitive disadvantage occurs with syllable based reading systems involving subjects ranging from kindergarten to adults learning to read Japanese.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/5229922/Phonics-teaching-method-downplayed

Sir Ken Robinson, world renowned creativity and education expert, constructs the history behind and story of the role of creativity that is a critical element of the wonderful dyslexic way of thinking.  Then you can connect to his website to continue to appreciate his most relevant point of view.

This New York Times article offers many perspectives about habits, our thinking and emotional systems about change,
and the effect that perspectives in our culture and penchant for testing have on intellectual diversity.  In a nutshell
 (hopefully that nut is not our brain) a little change can have a huge influence.

The wonder-full discovery Ron Davis made over thirty years ago that led to The Gift of Dyslexia revealed the idea of accurate perception to him as a way to understand his ability to see things in new ways and how that talent causes problems when working with symbols: letters and numbers for example.   The experiments in this research open the door to explanations of the feeling of disorientation that many learning different persons experience.  These learning different individuals may be identified as ADD, ADHD, Dyslexic.  See what you think when you read this article from Medical News Today section.
Not Just Your Imagination: The Brain Perceives Optical Illusions As Real
Motion
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/137706.php#

This NPR article The Writer who Couldn’t Read tells about an author who suffered a stroke, woke unable to read then regained reading from use of the motor part of brain.  Canadian novelist Howard Engel’s experiences of using the motor part of his brain to ‘see’ found a way to remain a man of letters.   This story supports the idea of plasticity of brain and the use of various brain centers used in the Davis Symbol Mastery Procedure used in Davis Dyslexia Association International work.  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127745750&ps=cprs

Rejecting the scarey and esteem deflating feeling of being ‘different’ and traveling to the land of embracing our differences is something from which we all benefit.  Pure and simple, it is this idea that fuels the fire of my work with learning different individuals of all ages.  Respect yourself.

http://www.simpletruths.com/a.aspx?mo=peac
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