Thank you veterans!

a Facebook friend of mine Rachel Peltzman Savage posted this status about her grandmother who was rescued from the evil Nazi regime and she thanked the veterans who gave her her life!

"My grandmother, a holocaust survivor, always told us about the day when she was finally liberated. She was a teenager, she had no idea which army was coming, and she decided that if it was axis she would kill herself....
...And decades later, when she told us her stories, she never neglected to recount the vision of those supernaturally handsome American men coming to save her
Thank you for my life, veterans!"

Thank you veterans!

a Facebook friend of mine Rachel Peltzman Savage posted this status about her grandmother who was rescued from the evil Nazi regime and she thanked the veterans who gave her her life!

"My grandmother, a holocaust survivor, always told us about the day when she was finally liberated. She was a teenager, she had no idea which army was coming, and she decided that if it was axis she would kill herself....
...And decades later, when she told us her stories, she never neglected to recount the vision of those supernaturally handsome American men coming to save her
Thank you for my life, veterans!"

The thought of death leaves me in perfect peace

The thought of death leaves me in perfect peace, for I have the firm conviction that our spirit is a being of indestructible nature: it works on from eternity to eternity; it is like the sun, which though it seems to set to our mortal eyes, does not really set, but shines on perpetually.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 ~1832)

Happy Veterans Day

For those in the Armed Forces of our Country (BCP, 823)

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and
keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home
and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly
grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give
them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant
them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Finland encourages 15 minutes of free play per HOUR!

How Finland Keeps Kids Focused Through Free Play

An American teacher in Helsinki questioned the national practice of giving 15 minute breaks each hour—until he saw the difference it made in his classroom.

Like a zombie, Sami—one of my fifth graders—lumbered over to me and hissed, “I think I’m going to explode! I’m not used to this schedule.” And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead.

Yikes, I thought. What a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset.

Throughout this first week of school, I had gotten creative with my fifth grade timetable. Normally, students and teachers in Finland take a 15-minute break after every 45 minutes of instruction. During a typical break, students head outside to play and socialize with friends while teachers disappear to the lounge to chat over coffee.

I didn’t see the point of these frequent pit stops. As a teacher in the United States, I’d spent several consecutive hours with my students in the classroom. And I was trying to replicate this model in Finland. The Finnish way seemed soft and I was convinced that kids learned better with longer stretches of instructional time. So I decided to hold my students back from their regularly scheduled break and teach two 45-minute lessons in a row, followed by a double break of 30 minutes. Now I knew why the red dots had appeared on Sami’s forehead.

Read it all at the link below:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/how-finland-keeps-kids-focused/373544/