Greetings from Pagan Sphinx land. The heart and soul I put into my art posts needed a bit of nourishment today, so I'm coming by to say hello and tell you how it's going. In a word, my studies are rather dry. One is reading instruction related, the other math related ( oh, joy). The way I'm accustomed to working with children when it comes to pre-reading, emergent and early reading goes entirely out the window while taking courses to help the deficient reader. Out goes the fun of bringing a story to life through drama, art and the sheer joy of enjoying a great story and its illustrations while lying on the floor with little ones' hands on their chins as they are held mesmerized. If I become a special education teacher, I will have to find more fun ways of teaching reading that still get the skills in or I fear I shall wither and die along with my students. And there-in the problem lies for me. And if regular public education weren't standardized and boring enough, special education is twice as much so.
Why I am doing this, you ask? I'm doing it for the kids who are falling further and further behind so that one day they may be able to enjoy reading and learning on their own terms and not just to satisfy a bar imposed on them by the bureaucracy that is public education.
I'm doing it for myself, too. I'm trying to conquer my fear of the public education machine. Suffice it to say that I have to stay in public education because to go back to private-non-profit would mean working for a stipend. Been there, done that and flat broke. For those of you who are unfamiliar with education, yes, there is in fact another sphere of education where the pay is even less than the public school system.
I've strayed far-off! One of my classes is not too bad. The other is gruel with sop ( I did mention rumination. Sorry.) I have gruel with sop twice a week and I have to drive over an hour to get it. It's a long story and going any further about it, will only make it likely that I will break out in hives.
I have a new avatar (above) Not that you'll be seeing it much, since I'll be blogging hardly at all for the next couple of months, as some of you who read my last post know. It's a detail from a painting by Surrealist Leonor Fini.
I am smitten!
There is another surrealist by the name of Remedios Varo who has really caught my fancy, as well. I wish I had time to compose an image-laden post on her work but as it is, I'm already taking liberties with my limited by time by putting this out to share with you.
But I'm glad I did. :-)
All the love,
Ms. Sphinx
Remedios Varo
And here is Music for Sunday: Suzanne Vega's song Ironbound.
"When the Amherst sphinx styled herself a pagan, she meant she didn’t believe in the biblical God. What sort of deity, if any, she did believe in is hard to pinpoint." -- Gary Sloan, "Emily Dickinson: Pagan Sphinx,"
I believe that the images and writing posted here fall under the "fair use" section of the U.S. copyright law http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107, as they are intended for educational purposes and are not in a medium that is of commercial nature.
