Learning to Think

Where did the past week go?

I taught, I knit, I graded, I ran around a lot, I went to a lot of meetings. I went to the doctor twice, trying to kick an upper respiratory tract infection. I did laundry and made soup and roasted beets. I took my children to the movies (High School Musical 3). I went to a swim meet.

I thought about papers I've written and papers I'd like to write, and a book review I have to do soon. I thought about my booklist for the spring. I thought a lot about teaching strategies.

"When we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings." My daughter's sixth grade homeroom teacher began a letter to parents with this passage from Wendell Berry, and went on to talk about the work the class has been doing on habits of mind. The kids have been introduced to three categories of habits of mind (self-monitoring, self-managing and self-modifying), all with the goal of becoming a "self-directed, self-reflective learner". My child assessed herself pretty honestly in the early stages of this process, and we have already seen her modify her behavior in response to this work. As I shuffle my own piles of paper, trying to deny my wish to work on the Sunday crossword and pick up my knitting project, it occurs to me that I could possibly benefit from some of this assessment as well.

It's true that some part of my mind is baffled a good deal of the time (how wrong am I getting my parenting? how can I find a way to spend some time with my spouse NOT devoted to the logistics of our daily lives? am I really meant to be pursuing the career path I've chosen? why can't I find more time to knit/sleep/read/cook/swim ?). Somehow I don't think that's the kind of baffled Berry had in mind.

There's a lot more to it, but I am impressed by this strategy and by one sixth grader's response.

I've knit 2 neckwarmers/cowls, heavily improvising the design based on a stitch count of 99, on 7s, and using a couple of different eleven stitch repeats. One is in The Unique Sheep's Singularity in Silk, in the Amani colorway, and one in Malabrigo worsted, in the indigo colorway. Photos to come.

Also, I have some slightly fuzzy photos of one of the coolest things ever, and I'll post these in the next day or so, when I'm at home (the cable for downloading such things from the camera is there, you see). One of our snails laid eggs!!