Word Study

Sunday morning. I do not like it when I still wake up at the same time that I do on school days. Well, not quite. I did wake up an hour later, at 6 am. For a mother (is that all I am?), it is a bonus. With school work to do and courses to attend on Monday and Tuesday, I am already tired at the thought of the week ahead. This cannot go on. I must persevere, after all this was my bright idea, going back to school.

I am reading an article titled Addressing School-Community Relations in a Cross-Cultural Context. What am I going to learn here?

Addressing: talking about, discussing, acknowledging

School-Community: Between (the hyphen/dash tells me that) the school and the community. Now I smile as it is personification is as SOLID as any I have seen. Going by the grade 7 science vocabulary a school is ABIOTIC and community is made of BIOTIC organisms. No, I am sure they mean something more here.

School then stands for the people who make up the school (but not the students, they are part of the community)

Relations: relationships

Cross-Cultural: between cultures. so perhaps the communities are multi-cultural OR the people who make up the school and the communities come from different cultures.

There, AHA, I gettit: This article is going to talk about ......... Help  me here, what do you think it means?

I need a coffee. brb.

Why this, why now?

This is my online journal of my years in learning... again. Having stopped my formal education at the age of 21, due to the circumstances of my life and the responsibiities that came with the changes, I resumed my studies in 2003 when I came to Canada. I obtained my teaching degree, then got a job and took some more courses to specialise in literacy and special education. Yet, I wanted to do more. Not to become a principal or a superintendent, as many have assumed, but just for myself. As Maslow says, once your basic needs are met, you think of self actualisation. For the first time in my life, I can go to school without worrying about how to pay my fees. Yet, I struggle to achieve the success I desire, I do not get to finish my assignments to the best of my ability. I find that while I fight for access and equitable outcomes for others: my students, my families, my sisters, brothers and their children who face domestic violence and discrimination, I have not stopped to fight for myself. So here goes. My voice is here, as is the voice of others who will walk with me on this journey.

Mamma goes to school again

As I sit at the dinner table this crisp Saturday morning,
I am faced with the following:
a drab garden
with dried and dying foliage
scattered all over
a messy dinner table
with pencil shavings, old receipts,

a glass with tell-tale remnants of curdling milk
towels hanging off chairs,
an overflowing sink
and my overflowing mind.

Yet I sit here, and prepare to get through my course work. Why?

• This September I started my Masters courses in a subject area of my choice, I did it for me.
• I chose two courses with a full time work load, I did it for me.
• I am working towards a thesis, the highest form of academic expression at this level of study. I did it for me. 

I have silenced the voices. Well at least some days I am able to do it, today is one of them.

Shhh, I say to the whispers that remind me

• you are the mother, you should clean
• you are the mother, you should make breakfast
• you are the mother you should empty the dishwasher, pick up the dirty socks, start the laundry, fill the dishwasher, start cooking lunch
• you are the mother, you should, you should, you should
• WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU??????? 

And I just sat at the messy dinner table with my cup of tea and started checking work emails (I cannot let my colleagues waiting, if they need some action items looked at). Then I tweeted the thought that was upper-most in my mind.
then I started a new blog.

I hope to write everyday.
The dishes can wait a little longer.