school and ro and life in general

Dear Family,
Yesterday Ramona informed me of the following:

"An imaginary panda bear tickled me and I tackled him and we played basketball." Though I queried after the hows and wheres, I couldn't shake her from her story.

School began last week and is going well. I took everything Sara said about online/electronic teaching to heart and have endeavored to bring more "me" to the online format. It's working. The students are really engaged--to be fair, I lucked into a great crop. One student's "getting to know you" forum post detailed his youthful immersion in a fundamentalist culture that taught him that children's television (PBS) had a homosexual agenda, but he's feeling much better now. Both my face to face class and my online class have far fewer advanced placement high schoolers and more returnees looking for better jobs. It's deeply awesome to be with them. Again, they're reading Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan, focusing on food topics, and will be viewing King Corn soon. I find that it helps the students to engage if we deal with one general topic throughout.

I scored a last-minute free ticket to see Michael Pollan speak last night. He was wonderful. It gave me great pleasure that his whole talk centered on the themes he introduced in the New York Times Sunday Magazine article that I have my students read--"Unhappy Meals", which you MUST read if you haven't (it became a chapter in In Defense of Food). Find it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html

Basic focus: nutrition science has led to our separating food from Nutrients, prioritizing the latter, much to our detriment, advising us to concentrate on parts that may or may not function without the wholes they come from. We've also framed food as fuel, ignoring the other functions it serves--forging community, anchoring social experience, etc. I love that guy.

Marsh and I are both working hard and liking the work. There's a new Ramona article out about documenting our experience of her growing up (and failing to). It's here--just click on current issue, then scroll down to "Going Places With Ramona."

http://www.metro-parent.com/issues/jan09/index.html

There's a sweet pic of her at her 2nd birthday at my mom's place.

We love and miss you!
Mel