KMZ Digest

MS, mood swings and waterproof mascara

kim zolotar — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:41:43 +0000

stock.adobe.com

Waterproof mascara has become my valuable ally against MS mood swings. When my eyes begin to water out of anger or frustration, waterproof mascara keeps me from looking like a raccoon. Wearing it allows for a quicker recovery when life with MS becomes overwhelming.

The littlest things can irritate me now. Last week, just the sight of our cluttered kitchen table drove me over the edge. My husband and son ran for cover as I hurled random papers and half-filled water bottles into the trash. Although our kitchen table really looked like it belonged on an episode of Hoarders, I still hate that I got so upset over the mess.

Mood swings may be an invisible symptom of MS, but coping with them is often as challenging as living with the visible symptoms. It is helpful to know what triggers feelings of anger, frustration or sadness. Being prepared can help when it comes to handling emotions.

_{Betelgejze |Dreamstime.com}

Irritating situations trigger my mood swings. Like finding no accessible entrance to my son’s soccer game. (Soccer moms apparently do not need ramps.) Taking a few deep breaths or counting slowly to 10 sometimes helps me calm down.

It’s not just me. Dr. Barbara Giesser, clinical professor of Neurology at the David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine, assured me that mood swings are common in MS. They are caused by neurological changes, the stress of living with an unpredictable illness, or a combination of these factors. She said the disease itself may damage emotional pathways of the brain, resulting in increased irritability, sadness or anger.

Charlotte *, 17, said she struggles with feelings of irritability and anger and is often upset over the smallest thing. “No one really understands what I feel like every day,” she said. “Sometimes my family says I am just being dramatic when I go to my room and close the door. Even though MS sometimes makes me feel alone, when I’m upset I just want to be by myself,” she explained. It’s a challenge getting others to understand her changing moods. She often writes in a journal and listens to relaxing music to cope with her mood swings.

Sheri * has lived with MS for 10 years. Balancing the challenges of MS with the demands of raising a family often depletes her energy. She is well aware that her mood quickly changes when she becomes fatigued. “My fuse is much shorter than it used to be and I get really moody when I’m tired,” she told me. Sheri takes a prescription medication for her fatigue, and also uses relaxation techniques to help her cope with changing moods.

Sometimes it’s a medication. Soon after starting one medication, I felt like I was being followed by a dark cloud. My whole world became gloomy. I told my doctor about my mood change and we decided to switch treatments. I was grateful when the dark cloud disappeared. But as a sleep-deprived new mom, I would have been even more grateful if the doctor had figured out how to make my son sleep through the night!

Sheri also had trouble finding a treatment that didn’t worsen her mood. She described being in a constant state of rage while taking one medication. Her anger lessened considerably after starting on something different. People with MS can react differently to different medications, so if changes in mood or behavior occur, speak up! Several MS medications list anxiety, depression and mood swings as potential side effects.

Dr. Giesser pointed out that it is important to learn whether the mood swings are related to depression, anxiety, fatigue or something else. Some people benefit from individual or family counseling, while others benefit from prescription medications. Today there are effective treatments for mood swings, depression and many other MS symptoms.

Moving can make a mood move

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freepik

Yoga, tai chi and other forms of exercise are known to help persons with MS manage mood swings. Meditation and relaxation techniques can reduce stress. Christine * heads for the pool whenever she is sad or angry. “Focusing on the movements of my body when I swim quiets my mind,” she said. Christine notices her mood has often improved after a swim. “Swimming distracts me. I usually forget about MS for a little while,” she said.

I try not to blame MS every time I get upset. My MS is not responsible for every bad mood, but it is oddly comforting to know that sometimes it’s MS that makes me freak out over a cluttered kitchen table. Taking a few deep breaths is sometimes enough to keep my tears from coming, but I still wear waterproof mascara just in case.

* People shared their stories with me, but asked for privacy. All the names have been changed.

Kim Zolotar was diagnosed in 1995. She lives in California with husband Greg and son Alex, and works as an educator and legal assistant. She is also becoming a waterproof mascara expert.

MS: It’s a box of chocolates you don’t want to share

itsme — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:14:37 +0000

Kim Zolotar

August 18, 2008

Adobe stock image

Special to the Los Angeles Times

A friend recently asked me what it felt like to have multiple sclerosis. We were sitting at the park watching our kids play, and we would have looked like any other suburban moms except for my silver walker covered with Spider-man stickers stationed nearby.

I did not immediately answer her question. How could I possibly explain how it feels to have a potentially disabling, progressive and incurable neurological disease? It has been 13 years since my doctor told me I have MS, but the answer to my friend’s question changes every day, sometimes every hour.

My MS experience reminds me of that famous line from the movie “Forrest Gump”: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” To me, having MS is like being forced to eat chocolates from a box that had all the good chocolates removed. Every chocolate I eat from the MS box is something I do not like, just like every MS symptom has the power to annoy me and sometimes even scare me.

Merck Manuals

Having MS means that I never know how I am going to feel when I wake up each morning. I have to plan around the whims of a body that no longer cooperates. The covering around the nerves of my brain and spinal cord is being slowly eaten away by my own cells, resulting in legs that no longer guide me effortlessly throughout the day. My legs are too weak for the long walks on the beach that I once enjoyed.

Having MS means I might wake up to a numb hand, an aching back or legs saddled by weakness, stiffness or fatigue. Mornings can start out with a big yawn because I was up four times the night before to use the bathroom; my stomach and ribs might ache because it feels as if a boa constrictor has been squeezing them. Most of these problems go away without treatment, but sometimes I will need a few days of intravenous steroids to help speed my recovery.

Credit: Caters News Agency

Having MS has taught me a lot about myself. I now know that I can be tough when the need arises, and that I should not worry about the future. Each day is a chance to feel stronger. Through my daily struggles with this disease, I am trying to show my son that the obstacles I face are not stopping me from living life.

Being diagnosed with MS when my adult life was just starting was a sad thing, but I am not a sad person. I am genuinely happy when I watch my little boy hit a baseball, when I have a “date night” with my husband or when a child I am working with begins reading. MS is powerful, but it cannot take these moments away from me.

Kim Zolotar is a wife, mother and educator living in Rancho Cucamonga.

latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-18-he-myturn18-story.html

Shoe Envy

itsme — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:18:30 +0000

5 ways schools have shifted in 5 years since COVID-19

itsme — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 20:48:10 +0000

Students sit in pop-up tents during wind ensemble class at Wenatchee High School on Feb. 26, 2021 in Wenatchee, Wash.. David Ryder/Getty Images

The U.S. educational landscape has been drastically transformed since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered school campuses five years ago.

Access to high-quality teachers and curriculum developed by teachers is shrinking, for example. Likewise, there has been a loss of emotional support for students and a decline in the school use of technology and social media.

As education scholars focused on literacy practices in schools, we’ve identified five ways we believe the COVID-19 pandemic – and the rapid shift to remote learning and back – has transformed education:The U.S. educational landscape has been drastically transformed since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered school campuses five years ago.

1. Teachers are leaving, and those staying are stressed

At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, 82% of U.S. public schools had teaching vacancies.

Schools have tried to adapt by expanding class sizes and hiring substitute teachers. They have also increased use of video conferencing to Zoom teachers into classrooms.

A teacher works from her home due to the COVID-19 outbreak on April 1, 2020, in Arlington, Va.
Olivier Doulier/AFP via Getty Images

Teacher retention has been a problem for at least a decade. But after the pandemic, there was an increase in the number of teachers who considered leaving the profession earlier than expected.

When teachers leave, often in the middle of the school year, it can require their colleagues to step in and cover extra classes. This means teachers who stay are overworked and possibly not teaching in their area of certification.

This, in turn, leads to burnout. It also increases the likelihood that students will not have highly qualified teachers in some hard-to-fill positions like physical science and English.

2. Increase in scripted curriculum

As of fall 2024, 40 states and Washington had passed science of reading laws, which mandate evidence-based reading instruction rooted in phonics and other foundational skills.

While the laws don’t necessarily lead to scripted curriculum, most states have chosen to mandate reading programs that require teachers to adhere to strict pacing. They also instruct teachers not to deviate from the teachers’ manual.

Many of these reading programs came under scrutiny by curricular evaluators from New York University in 2022. They found the most common elementary reading programs were culturally destructive or culturally insufficient – meaning they reinforce stereotypes and portray people of color in inferior and destructive ways that reinforce stereotypes.

This leaves teachers to try to navigate the mandated curriculum alongside the needs of their students, many of whom are culturally and linguistically diverse. They either have to ignore the mandated script or ignore their students. Neither method allows teachers to be effective.

When teachers are positioned as implementers of curriculum instead of professionals who can be trusted to make decisions, it can lead to student disengagement and a lack of student responsiveness.

This form of de-professionalization is a leading cause of teacher shortages. Teachers are most effective, research shows, when they feel a sense of agency, something that is undermined by scripted teaching.

3. Improvements in teen mental health, but there’s more to do

Many of the narratives surrounding adolescent mental health, particularly since the pandemic, paint a doomscape of mindless social media use and isolation.

However, data published in 2024 shows improvements in teen reports of persistent sadness and hopelessness. Though the trend is promising in terms of mental health, in-school incidences of violence and bullying rose in 2021-22, and many teens report feeling unsafe at school.

Other reports have shown an increase in feelings of loneliness and isolation among teens since the pandemic.

4. Crackdown on students’ technology use in schools

COVID-19 prompted schools to make an abrupt switch to educational technology, and many schools have kept many of these policies in place.

For example, Google Classroom and other learning management systems are commonly used in many schools, particularly in middle school and high school.

These platforms can help parents engage with their children’s coursework. That facilitates conversations and parental awareness.

But this reliance on screens has also come under fire for privacy issues – the sharing of personal information and sensitive photos – and increasing screen time.

And with academia’s use of technology on the rise, cellphone usage has also increased among U.S. teens, garnering support for school cellphone bans.

A student attends an online class at the Crenshaw Family YMCA on Feb. 17, 2021, in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

But banning these devices in schools may not help teens, as smartphone use is nearly universal in the U.S. Teens need support from educators to support them as they learn to navigate the complex digital world safely, efficiently and with balance.

In light of data surrounding adolescent mental health and online isolation – and the potential for connection through digital spaces – it’s also important that teens are aware of positive support networks that are available online.

Though these spaces can provide social supports, it is important for teens to understand the strengths and limitations of technology and receive authentic guidance from adults that a technology ban may prohibit.

5. Students and adults need social emotional support

Students returned to in-person schooling with a mix of skill levels and with a variety of social and emotional needs.

Social and emotional learning includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relational skills and decision-making.

These skills are vital for academic success and social relationships.

Teachers reported higher student needs for social and emotional learning after they returned to in-person instruction.

While some of this social and emotional teaching came under fire from lawmakers and parents, this was due to confusion about what it actually entailed. These skills do not constitute a set of values or beliefs that parents may not agree with. Rather, they allow students to self-regulate and navigate social situations by explicitly teaching students about feelings and behaviors.

A teacher provides instruction to a student at Freedom Preparatory Academy on Feb. 10, 2021, in Provo, Utah. George Frey/Getty Images

One area where students may need support is with cognitive flexibility, or the ability to adapt to current situations and keep an open mind. Classroom instruction that engages students in varied tasks and authentic teaching strategies rooted in real-life scenarios can strengthen this ability in students.

Besides allowing students to be engaged members of a school community, cognitive flexibility is important because it supports the skill development that is part of many state English language arts and social studies standards.

Social and emotional learning and cognitive flexibility are key components that allow students to learn.

Due to vague or confusing state policies, many schools have stopped teaching social and emotional learning skills, or minimized their use.

This, coupled with teacher stress and burnout, means that both adults and children in schools are often not getting their social and emotional needs met.

Message of mistrust

While we described five shifts since the start of the pandemic, the overall trend in K-12 schools is one of mistrust.

We feel that the message – from districts, state legislators and parents – is that teachers cannot be trusted to make choices.

This represents a massive shift. During the initial phase of the COVID-19 lockdown, teachers were revered and thanked for their service.

We believe in teacher autonomy and professionalism, and we hope this list can help Americans reflect on the direction of the past five years. If society wants a different outcome in the next five years, it starts with trust.

Rachel Besharat Mann Assistant Professor in Education Studies, Wesleyan University

Gravity Goldberg Visiting Assistant Professor in Education Studies, Wesleyan Universityy

theconversation.com/5-ways-schools-have-shifted-in-5-years-since-covid-19-246449

The social benefits of psychological generosity

wordpress — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 19:43:36 +0000

Linda R. Tropp

May 21, 2025

How much do you engage with others when you’re out in public? Lots of people don’t actually engage with others much at all. Think of commuters on public transportation staring down at their phones with earbuds firmly in place.

As a professor of social psychology, I see similar trends on my university campus, where students often put on their headphones and start checking their phones before leaving the lecture hall on the way to their next class.

Curating daily experiences in these ways may appeal to your personal interests, but it also limits opportunities for social connection. Humans are social beings: We desire to feel connected to others, and even connecting with strangers can potentially boost our mood.

www.boundless.org

Though recent technological advances afford greater means for connection than at any other moment in human history, many people still feel isolated and disconnected. Indeed, loneliness in the American population has reached epidemic levels, and Americans’ trust in each other has reached a historic low.

At the same time, our attention is increasingly being pulled in varied directions within a highly saturated information environment, now commonly known as the “attention economy.”

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that so many Americans are experiencing a crisis of social connection. Research in social psychology helps to explain how the small behaviors and choices we make as individuals affect our experiences with others in public settings.

Where you focus your attention

One factor shaping people’s experiences in public settings concerns where they focus their attention. Since there is more information out in the world than anyone could ever realistically take in, people are driven to conserve their limited mental resources for those things that seem most crucial to navigating the world successfully. What this means is that every person’s attention is finite and selective: By attending to certain bits of information, you necessarily tune out others, whether you’re aware of doing so or not.

By Mariusz/peopleimages.com

More often than not, the information you deem worthy of attention also tends to be self-relevant. That is, people are more likely to engage with information that piques their interest or relates to them in some way, whereas they tend to ignore information that seems unrelated or irrelevant to their existence.

These ingrained tendencies might make logical sense from an evolutionary perspective, but when applied to everyday social interaction, they suggest that people will limit their attention to and regard for other people unless they see others as somehow connected to them or relevant to their lives.

One unfortunate consequence is that a person may end up treating interactions with other people as transactions, with a primary focus on getting one’s own needs met, or one’s own questions answered. A very different approach would involve seeing interactions with others as opportunities for social connection; being willing to expend some additional mental energy to listen to others’ experiences and exchange views on topics of shared interest can serve as a foundation for building social relationships.

How others interpret your actions

Also, by focusing so much attention on their own individual interests, people may inadvertently signal disinterest to others in their social environments.

As an example, imagine how it would feel to be on the receiving end of those daily commuting rituals. You find yourself surrounded by people whose ears are closed off, whose eyes are down and whose attention is elsewhere – and you might start to feel like no one really cares whether you exist or not.

As social creatures, it’s natural for human beings to want to be seen and acknowledged by other people. Small gestures such as eye contact or a smile, even from a stranger, can foster feelings of connection by signaling that our existence matters. Instead, when these signals are absent, a person may come to feel like they don’t matter, or that they’re not worthy of others’ attention.

How to foster connection in public spaces

_{Acknowledging another human with a smile, even when using an automated system, can help them feel seen and valued}. _{izusek/E+ via Getty Images}

For all these reasons, it may prove valuable to reflect on how you use your limited mental resources, as a way to be more mindful and purposeful about what and who garner your attention. As I encourage my Flickrstudents to do, people can choose to engage in what I refer to as psychological generosity: You can intentionally redirect some of your attention toward the other people around you and expend mental resources beyond what is absolutely necessary to navigate the social world.

Engaging in psychological generosity doesn’t need to be a heavy lift, nor does it call for any grand gestures. But it will probably take a little more effort beyond the bare minimum it typically takes to get by. In other words, it will likely involve moving from being merely transactional with other people to becoming more relational while navigating interactions with them.

A few simple examples of psychological generosity might include actions such as:

Tuning in by turning off devices. Rather than default to focusing attention on your phone, try turning off its volume or setting it to airplane mode. See if you notice any changes in how you engage with other people in your immediate environment.
Making eye contact and small talk. As historian Timothy Snyder writes, eye contact and small talk are “not just polite” but constitute “part of being a responsible member of society.”
Smiling and greeting someone you don’t know. Take the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” to the realm of social relations, by showing your willingness to welcome other people rather than displaying disinterest and avoidance. Such simple acts may help to foster feelings of belonging and build a sense of community with others.

https://www.wnyc.org/story/pleasant-commute-talk-stranger/

Among the most cynical, examples like these may initially be written off as reflecting pleas to practice the random acts of kindness often trumpeted on bumper stickers. Yet acts like these are far from random – they require intention and redirection of your attention toward action, like any new habit you may wish to cultivate.

Others might wonder whether potential benefits to society are worth the individual cost, given that attention and effort are limited resources. But, ultimately, our well-being as individuals and the health of our communities grow from social connection.

Practicing acts of psychological generosity, then, can provide you with opportunities to benefit from social connection, at the same time as these acts can pay dividends to other people and to the social fabric of your community.

theconversation.com/making-eye-contact-and-small-talk-with-strangers-is-more-than-just-being-polite-the-social-benefits-of-psychological-generosity-252477

Marion Joseph’s literacy crusade for teaching

itsme — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 20:24:44 +0000

phonics in California is paying off

Students at Stege Elementary School in Richmond on Feb. 6, 2023.
Photo by Shelby Knowles for CalMatters

Dan Walters

March 19, 2023

Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – one person can have a life-changing impact on the wellbeing of millions of people.

Marion Joseph, who died nearly a year ago at age 95, was one of those people. She impacted millions of California schoolchildren present and future who struggle with reading comprehension, the vital skill that underlies all of education.

Marion Joseph
https://www.corelearn.com/

The pandemic underscored that too many of California’s elementary school students lack effective reading ability. EdSource noted that, prior to the pandemic, fewer than 50% of the state’s third-graders were reading at the expected level for their age. Three years later, after students had suffered through school closures and haphazard Zoom school, that had dropped to 42%.

It’s evident that one factor in the state’s reading crisis was that too many students were being subjected to a trendy form of reading instruction called “whole language,” which largely left them struggling on their own to decipher the words in their books.

_Shutterstock

For decades, California educators and politicians had been waging what were dubbed “reading wars” over whether that approach or the rival phonics method was more effective. School districts were left to decide for themselves which to use.

Joseph was one of the fiercest reading warriors. She had retired in 1982 after a long career in the state Department of Education, but became a tireless advocate for phonics after discovering that her granddaughter was struggling in reading.

Appalled to learn that the majority of California’s elementary students could not read well enough to learn from textbooks, Joseph started pestering state officials to do something. In the 1990s, then-Gov. Pete Wilson appointed her to the state Board of Education, which gave her a platform for the phonics crusade.

Joseph had some success in advancing the phonics cause, which stresses fundamental instruction in the letters and letter combinations that make up sounds, thus allowing children to sound out words and eventually whole sentences and passages.

In 2005, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy research group, honored her, saying, “Her relentless, research-based advocacy – for which the retired grandma didn’t earn a dime – is still a sterling example of what a citizen-activist and lone individual can accomplish in reforming U.S. schools.”

https://firstbook.org/

Alas, after Joseph retired for a second time, the advocates of whole language, which assumes that reading is a naturally learned skill, much like speaking, recouped and reading scores once again stagnated. However it now appears that phonics, now dubbed the “science of reading,” will become the state’s preferred method.

Phonics have a new champion in Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has struggled with dyslexia and thus has a strong personal interest in improving reading skills.

Buried on Page 123 of a trailer bill attached to Newsom’s proposed 2023-24 state budget is a $1 million appropriation to the Department of Education for creation of a “Literacy Roadmap” aimed at improving reading and other language skills using “evidence-based literacy instruction in the classroom, including explicit instruction in phonics, phonemic awareness, and other decoding skills.”

_{Logo-The California Reading & Literature Project (CRLP) UC San Diego}

Newsom’s support isn’t the only indication that Joseph’s long struggle is paying off. Beginning next year, credentialing of teacher preparation programs will require reading standards aligned with phonics.

Perhaps most importantly, 14 leading figures in California education research and advocacy, including those who have fought in reading wars on both sides, have issued a joint paper that calls for more vigorous and targeted instruction in basic reading skills, including phonics.

It’s unfortunate Joseph is not alive to see what’s finally happening to address California’s literacy crisis.

calmatters.org/commentary/2023/03/reading-instruction-phonics-california

March 13, 2020 or The Day Everything Changed

itsme — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:07:59 +0000

Note: the photo above was taken from my office not long before I left it on March 13, 2020.

John A Casey Jr

April 3, 2020

We knew that week that something big was on the horizon. Faculty had been told earlier in the week to prepare for the possibility of class cancellations and the need to teach from home. We knew that things were going to be different, but no one could appreciate just how much our lives would change.

The week before my wife and I had met her mother and step father for dinner out in Rosemont. She’d be leaving for a month in Spain the next day. I had misgivings. I told my wife “Are they really sure they want to travel. This coronavirus seems kind of deadly. A lot worse than people are saying.” I’d talked to my students from China. They were scared for their families. Not always getting accurate information on what was going on. Almost all of them had been wearing masks already back in January. I looked at my father in law, already frail from Parkinson’s disease, and wondered if I’d ever see him again.

But we pressed on. We pressed on because no one ever wants to believe that a calamity of this scale can happen. Especially to them. This is historic shit. It belongs in sepia tone. Not in my community. Not on my Facebook wall. But it happened anyway. It happened the week of March 13, 2020.

That week began with premonitions. I told my students to expect guidance soon from the university on what to expect in the weeks to come. I told them to wash their hands and clean their phones and computers regularly to help them stay well.

On Wednesday, I got home. My wife had a hair appointment so I drove the car. While eating dinner, I saw the President give a speech. The US borders closed to foreign travelers. I thought of my mother in law still in Spain. I texted my wife. “Can she get back in the county? What will happen? They better leave now.” Her mother decided to stay a few more days. It would soon blow over. No one seemed all that worried in Bilbao.

Then on Thursday sports leagues started to shut down. First the NBA and then the NHL. Suddenly it seemed real. Without sports to distract us, people began to freak out.

I decided on Wednesday to make Friday my first distance learning class for my First Year Writing Students. But I still had an exam to proctor for my American Literature class. I came to an eerily quiet campus, quieter than I had seen it since 9/11 and taught my comp classes on line from my office while waiting to proctor the exam.

Going into the classroom building, I discovered my classroom had been locked. An ominous sign. We took the room next-door because it was unlocked. Most classrooms already seemed empty. The custodians nervous. Wearing face masks and gloves as they swept and sanitized the building.

I gave my students the exam and they completed it in silence. Were they nervous about the exam or the possibility of catching what was now being called COVID-19? I have no idea. The last student finished around 3 pm. Those still remaining packed up to leave.

As I walked outside the classroom and prepared to head back to my office, a student stopped for a moment to talk to me. “What do you think will happen?” “I don’t know.” I said. “We’ll try to make things work on line, but I don’t see us coming back to campus this semester.” “I don’t know,” he said, “some classes don’t work well online. Like this one.” “Yeah,” I said, “but we don’t have much of a choice. We’ll all do our best. Just be patient with me and I’ll be patient with you.” I wished him the best and told him I’d pray for his grandparents with whom he lived. He worried about their health just like I worried about that of my family. My dad has COPD and my mom MS. Even a regular cold is a cause for concern. And this shit, ain’t no cold or flu.

_{March 2020: Streets of downtown Chicago are completely desolated, empty due to the national COVID pandemic.}
_{— Photo by Wirestock/ Deposit Photos}

Going back to my office, I started to pack things up in my bag. I wondered when or if I would ever see this space again. I’ve never liked the Brutalist architecture on campus, but I felt a sense of sadness at losing the routine of going to work and coming home again. I put away things I knew I would need and headed outside to wait for my wife to pick me up in the car.

Deserted. Quieter than 9/11. That was my impression as I waited. Today was the end of something. I didn’t know what. I just knew that what came out on the other side would never be like this again. When I got in the car, I told my wife “Let’s go out to eat. This will probably be our last normal meal for a long time.” We went to Portillos. To date, it is the last night we have been out to eat.

We then decided to go to the store. We thought that maybe Friday night would be quieter than Saturday afternoon. We were wrong. The Jewel was more crowded than I had ever seen it before. Store shelves decimated of the most random things. Someone had bought all the cheap frozen pizza, all the onions, all the flour. But they had left behind the TV dinners, the eggs, and the yeast. There was also a lot of alcohol to be had. But no toilet paper. Thank God I had bought some on Wednesday before the panic buying had hit high gear.

That night we brought our purchases inside in stages along with the items from work. My wife would still have to go to the office for a few more days. Then the governor would shut the state down, sending us all home for an indefinite period of time.

So here I sit. Writing this blog post today on April 3, 2020. Like many of you, I feel like I have lived more than a year in a few weeks. And yet, the bad news continues. Death upon death. Disaster upon disaster.

Who knows what the future holds. But my mother in law and her husband eventually got home before Spain and all of Europe shut down. They are both healthy. Thank God. As are my family so far.

I work from home now. Teach distantly. Grade papers as before. Looking over my shoulder as history happens. Reminded again of the tenuous hold humans have on their environment. We have always been mastered by our setting. It’s just that living in a city, one not prone to many natural disasters, has given me the privilege of ignoring this for a long time.

No more. Only God and our immune system can tell us what the future holds. May they both be kind to you and yours.

johnacaseyjr.com/2020/04/03/march-13-2020-or-the-day-everything-changed

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Can learning cursive help kids read better?

itsme — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 20:14:57 +0000

Pennsylvania is considering legislation that mandates cursive instruction in public schools.
Angela Guthrie/iStock via Getty Images

Some policymakers think it’s worth a try

Shawn Datchuk

May 6, 2025

Recently, my 8-year-old son received a birthday card from his grandmother. He opened the card, looked at it and said, “I can’t read cursive yet.”

Image: Cartoonstock

Then he handed it to me to read.

If you have a child in the Philadelphia School District, chances are they have not been taught how to read or write cursive either.

But cursive handwriting is making a comeback of sorts for K-8 students in the United States. Several states in recent years passed legislation mandating instruction in cursive handwriting, including California, Iowa and Oklahoma.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey are considering similar legislation, as are other states.

I’m an associate professor of special education and the director of the Iowa Reading Research Center. At the center, we’re conducting a systematic review of prior research to improve cursive handwriting instruction.

We also want to know how learning cursive affects the development of reading and writing skills.

Cursive instruction sidelined

In cursive handwriting, the individual letters of a word are joined with connecting strokes, such as in a person’s signature.

Cursive fell out of favor in U.S. schools over a decade ago. In 2010, most states adopted Common Core academic standards which omitted cursive handwriting from expected academic skills to be learned by K-8 students. In fact, the standards only briefly mention print handwriting, a writing style in which the individual letters of a word are unconnected, as a skill to be taught in early elementary grades.

Educators often have trouble finding enough time in the school day to teach all the expected writing skills, let alone something that’s not mandated such as cursive handwriting.

In several national surveys, teachers have reported limited amounts of time for writing instruction and that they have found it difficult to address both the basic skills of writing, such as handwriting, and more advanced skills, such as essay composition.

Benefits of handwriting

The increased interest in cursive handwriting likely stems from effort by policymakers to improve the literacy performance of K-12 students across the country.

Ode to Cursive
Amy DiGi

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment, a measure of nationwide reading progress, only 31% of fourth grade students scored proficient or above. Philadelphia’s numbers were worse, with just 19% of fourth grade students scoring proficient or above.

Research suggests it may be possible to improve overall writing and reading through handwriting instruction.

The benefits have been more closely studied with print handwriting, but preliminary evidence suggests cursive handwriting instruction may also be beneficial. Some studies have found cursive handwriting instruction can improve handwriting legibility, writing length and select reading skills. In a 2020 study, researchers found cursive handwriting instruction can also improve spelling accuracy and storytelling ability.

Why might cursive make a difference? On the surface, it seems like a simple motor skill. But under the surface, cursive handwriting draws upon deep reading knowledge and requires the coordination of multiple cognitive and physical processes.

To handwrite letters or spell words in print or cursive, students need to commit multiple aspects of each letter to memory. For example, if students handwrite the word “cat,” they need to know the overall shape of each letter, as well as its name and sound.

After drawing upon this reading knowledge from memory, students use a combination of motor and vision systems to write each letter and the entire word. Gross motor movements are used to adjust the body and arm to the writing surface. Fine motor movements are used to manipulate the pencil with one’s fingers. And visual-motor coordination is used to write each letter and adjust movements as needed.

A skill with staying power?

Besides potential benefits to overall writing and reading development, cursive handwriting continues to have social importance.

It is often used to sign formal documents via a cursive signature, or to communicate with close friends or loved ones. Furthermore, understanding cursive is needed to read important historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Even in the digital age, touch-screen tablets and other devices often come with the ability to handwrite text with an electronic pencil. I teach courses at the University of Iowa, and many of my students handwrite their notes on electronic tablets.

For schools, low-tech options such as paper and pencils remain more cost-efficient than high-tech options. For example, it can be time-consuming and expensive to replace a broken laptop but relatively cheap to sharpen a broken pencil or get a new piece of paper.

Although it may be difficult for educators to find sufficient time for writing instruction, students will likely benefit from developing the capacity to express their ideas in a variety of ways, including cursive handwriting.

For anyone interested in learning about cursive handwriting and teaching it to their children or students, the Iowa Reading Research Center will release a free online course and curricula called CLIFTER on June 2, 2025.

theconversation.com/can-learning-cursive-help-kids-read-better-some-policymakers-think-its-worth-a-try-253610

‘Number sense’ is one of the building blocks of math

itsme — Fri, 02 May 2025 20:23:48 +0000

By Holly Korbey

February 19, 2025

The building blocks of math that students need to excel — but aren’t always getting

ATLANTA — Students gathered around a bright blue number board in Melissa Williams’ kindergarten class at the Westminster School, gazing at the bank of 100 blank squares, organized in rows and columns of 10. Their assignment was to pick a numbered tile and figure out where it should go on the board.

The task seems simple, but Williams’ goal was to bolster students’ “number sense” — a difficult-to-define skill, but one that is nevertheless essential for more advanced mathematics.

_{www.beginlearning.com}

One student with a “42” tile carefully counted the squares in each row. “Ten!” he said. Counting each row by tens — 10, 20, 30 — he came to 40, then moved his finger to the next row and counted the next two to arrive at 42.

The fact that the student was able to count by tens and then add two, rather than counting each square up to 42, is an example of number sense.

Other examples include understanding the size of numbers in relation to one another, finding missing numbers in a sequence, understanding that written numbers like “100” represent 100 items, and counting by ones, twos, fives and tens. Each of these skills is critical to understanding math, just like grasping the connection between letters and the sounds they represent is a must-have skill for fluent reading.

Number sense is so innate to many adults that they may not remember being taught such skills. It is crucial to mastering more complex math skills like manipulating fractions and decimals, or solving equations with unknown variables, experts say. Research shows that a flexible understanding of numbers is strongly correlated to later math achievement and the ability to solve problems presented in different ways.

Unlike the recent surge of evidence on science-based reading instruction, research and emphasis on number sense isn’t making its way into schools and classrooms in the same way. Students spend less time on foundational numeracy compared with what they spend on reading; elementary teachers often receive less training in how to teach math effectively; and schools use fewer interventions for students who need extra math support.

https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/

Many American students struggle in math. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, nearly 1 in 4 fourth graders and 39 percent of eighth graders scored “below basic,” the test’s lowest category. An analysis of state tests shows that few states have recovered students from pandemic math losses, with disadvantaged students from low-income neighborhoods hit especially hard.

For those struggling students — including those diagnosed with dyscalculia and related learning challenges — lack of number sense often plays a significant role.

“For kids that have a fundamental weakness in mathematics, 80 percent or 90 percent of the time that’s going to be linked to a lack of understanding numbers,” said Ben Clarke, an early math researcher and department head of special education and clinical sciences at the University of Oregon. “If we want students to be able to access other pieces of mathematics that are really important, then they need to build this foundational understanding of numbers.”

_{For the Love of Teaching}

Doug Clements, the Kennedy endowed chair in early childhood learning at the University of Denver, said many American students struggle with seeing relationships between numbers. “Children who see 98 plus 99 and line them up vertically, draw a bar underneath with an addition sign, then sum the eight and the nine, carry the one and so forth — they are not showing relational thinking,” Clements said. “Children who immediately say, ‘That’s 200 take away three, so 197,’ are showing number sense.”

Even in the early years of school, researchers can spot students who can make connections between numbers and use more sophisticated strategies to solve problems, just as there are some students who start school already reading.

Also as with reading, gaps between students are present on the first day of kindergarten. Students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds arrive at school with less math knowledge than high-income students. Boston College psychologist and early math researcher Elida Laski said research has found income-based differences in how families talk about math with children before they ever reach school.

“Lower-income families are more likely to think about math as narrow, it’s counting and numbers,” Laski said. “Whereas higher-income families tend to think about math as more conceptual and around in everyday life.”

These differences in thinking play out in how flexible students are with numbers in early elementary school. In one study, Laski and her team found that higher-income kindergarten and first grade students used more sophisticated problem-solving strategies than lower-income students, who more often relied on counting. The higher-income students also had more basic math facts committed to memory, like the answer to one plus two.

The memory recall and relatively advanced strategies used by higher-income students produced more efficient problem-solving and more correct answers than counting did. Also, when students from high-income families produced a wrong answer, it was often less wrong than students who were relying on strategies like counting.

Solving math education

Laski said many of the low-income students in the study struggled with addition because they didn’t have a firm understanding of how basic concepts of numbers work. For example, “When we’d ask, ‘What’s three plus four,’ we’d get answers like ‘34,’” Laski said. “Whatever ways they’re practicing arithmetic, they don’t have the conceptual basis to make sense of it. They didn’t have the number sense, really.”

Laski said early childhood classrooms could be “far more direct” with students in teaching number sense, weaving it in explicitly when working on more concrete skills like addition.

PBS Learning Media

Clarke, the early math researcher at University of Oregon, agreed.

“Our understanding has drastically grown in the last 20, 25 years about effective instructional approaches” to help students learn number sense, said Clarke. “If you are only going to get X number of minutes in kindergarten or first grade to support student development in mathematics, kids that are not responding to the core instruction — you have to be pretty focused on what you do and what you offer.”

But elementary school teachers often aren’t trained well on the evidence base for best practices in teaching number sense. A 2022 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality highlights that while teacher training programs have improved in the last decade, they still have a long way to go. By their standard, only 15 percent of undergraduate elementary education programs earned an A for adequately covering both math content and pedagogy.

Teachers aren’t often taught to look at math learning as a whole, a progression of skills that takes students through elementary math, beginning with learning to count and ending up in fractions and decimals — something that some instructional coaches say would help emphasize the importance of how early number sense connects to advanced math. Grade-level standards are the focus that can leave out the bigger picture.

Both the Common Core State Standards and Clements, who served on the 2008 National Mathematics Advisory Panel and helped create a resource of early math learning trajectories, outline those skills progressions. But many teachers are unaware of them.

https://us.sofatutor.com

Instructional coach and math consultant Neily Boyd, who is based in Nashville, Tennessee, said she often works with teachers on understanding how one skill builds on another in sequence, how skills are connected, using the progressions as a jumping-off point.

“When teachers have been trained on both the whole math concept and how the pieces progress from year to year, they’re able to teach their grade-level piece in a way that builds from the previous pieces and towards the future pieces,” she said. “Learning math becomes about widening and refining understandings you’ve already built, rather than a never-ending list of seemingly disconnected components.”

Young students also spend less time with numbers, which often only appear during “math time,” than they do with letters, reading and literacy.

“Often I’ll go into classrooms with literacy stuff all over the walls, but nothing in terms of number,” said Nancy Jordan, professor of learning sciences at the University of Delaware and author of “Number Sense Interventions.” “In the early grades, there are so many ways to build number sense outside of instructional time as well — playing games, number lines in the classroom. Teachers can think of other ways to build these informal understandings of math and relate them to formal understanding.”

On a recent fall day at Nashville Classical Charter School, in Nashville, Tennessee, fourth grade math teacher Catherine Schwartz was walking students through a complicated subtraction problem with big numbers: “Lyle has 2,302 dog treats, but he needs 13,400. How many more treats does Lyle need?”

To solve it, students had to “subtract across zeros,” regrouping from one place value to the next. Subtraction’s standard algorithm is an important skill to learn, Schwartz said, but can’t be done well without strong number sense.

Number sense for older students has some of the same ideas of magnitude and relationships, Schwartz said, but the numbers get bigger. Students began the subtraction problem using 13 thousands and four hundreds to recognize the magnitude of the numbers in each place value, for example, but slowly simplified it into the classic stack-and-subtract method.

Schwartz, who has taught for seven years, said at first she didn’t realize how big a role number sense played in calculations like subtraction with big numbers. ”Number sense or number flexibility, it’s never truly named” in the curriculum, Schwartz said. “We try to practice it.”

Even something as simple as counting big numbers, including hundred thousands and millions, some educators say, can help develop number sense. Counting might seem simple, but for young children it’s foundational and essential. “These are really big ideas for little kids,” Jordan said.

hechingerreport.org/the-building-blocks-of-math-students-need-to-excel

This story about number sense was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

_{^{This story also appeared Mind/Shift}}

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Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org

Do you know the Ten Cannots?

itsme — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 21:24:05 +0000

Lawrence W. Reed

“That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.”

_{William J. H. Boetc}_ker _{(1873–1962)}

There’s a lot of valuable and timeless wisdom in that one sentence! Its author was William J. H. Boetcker, who died at 89 in 1962. Born in Germany, he emigrated to America as a young man, became an ordained Presbyterian minister, and gained a national reputation as a superb public speaker. He also said, famously,

“A man is judged by the company he keeps, and a company is judged by the men it keeps, and the people of democratic nations are judged by the caliber of officers they elect.”

I recently learned of Boetcker and his short essay, “The Ten Cannots,” published in 1916. It was widely circulated while he was alive and is the one thing he is probably best remembered for. Its core principles are well worth taping to your refrigerator. If you’re a politician, get them engraved on both your lectern and your heart. And if you watch tonight’s presidential debate, make a note each time one of them is violated:

What a difference for the better these truths would make if every citizen took them to heart and lived up to them. Think about it.

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed is FEE’s President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty. He previously served as president of FEE from 2008-2019. He chaired FEE’s board of trustees in the 1990s and has been both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

fee.org/articles/do-you-know-the-ten-cannots