Red Letter Days: Re-Writing the Wrongs, Pedagogical Prerogatives.  

JOY X 2, Uncensored: As we grew up, most of us, our parents and teachers alike tried to instill both the joy and importance of taking information in, in whatever forms -- whether it was reading in the most traditional form, having stuff read to us by parents, siblings, Alexa, observing things from up close or at a distance, or...through free play! All the ways in which we as children learned to learn, the pure joy of it. And, on the other side, put information 'out there', whether through the most traditional forms of writing, speaking, 'acting out', playfully! Questioning as well...Why, how do you know...???!!! We didn't know any better early on, before our words, thinking, while well intentioned on the part of adults, became corrected, censured, erased...redacted! All this to make us Sharpie😕, one color of which grew into the meme "dread the red"😟😠😢

On the (high)lighter side: While we ourselves became dependent on the yellow versions of highlighters, in a bit more advanced learning, when we learned how to condense stuff, just find the 'take aways' that our teachers, then professors if we were lucky enough to matriculate that far, might make us responsible for on a quiz, mid-term or the ever feared..."cumulative final"😟, in which we were sometimes allowed a mini 'cheat sheet' with as many facts and formulas we could cram on a 3 X 5 card😌with one of those mini pencils that we learned to sharpen to extremes...talk about sharpie...

Proof, Positive: And in the third 'R' (actually, more technically correct, starts with A, but 'contains' r) of the three R's we were promised once we got past the rote stuff, like memorizing times tables, we would "advance" to some interesting 'higher order' operations, which would require lots of formulas, where we initially had to show all our work so as our teachers could somehow peer into our minds, to see if we were reaching the correct answers in the correct manner, following the steps, even being called on to go to the black/chalkboard...white, erasable board...green 'scream' !!!  

A Balanced Equation: As we continued to grow, educationally and otherwise, we learned that our parents and teachers had tried their best to establish, maintain a balance between drilling the basics into us, while also encouraging free thinking, creativity...which in the subject of English was represented by plenty of opportunities for creative writing, uninhibited, free thinking, stream of consciousness; balanced by keeping us 'composed' as in correct punctuation, structuring paragraphs, and clear expression of ideas...all the while keeping in mind what the teacher might write (in red ink, of course) what we had to make right, a second chance...a final draft after the initial sloppy copy. And in Mathematics, otherwise referred to by many as Arithmetic but, to be more precise, "right on the money!" as my fourth grade teacher liked to exclaim, the latter is a branch of the former, more inclusive term, with the latter concerning itself with "...traditional operations...adding, subtracting..." Which was the first time I remember someone in class commenting "it's all Greek to me" which, as it turns out, is precisely the case, as in "arithmos" ("numbers"😄)...the latter being the most "elementary" part of the world of math, which I guess is why they taught us this stuff in elementary school...which thankfully, after all the drilling, the repetitions of "show all your work if you want full credit" (once again risking the red Sharpie, trying to keep us sharp)...and, of course, the caveat, prompt, gentle nudge at both home and school..."you might want to use a pencil with a good erasure (which they don't seem to make anymore...have you noticed how the newer gens of erasures smudge, rip...😠?) The early emphasis on precision, repetition, rote-ness to gradually be supplemented by "don't be afraid to think outside the box in problem solving; there's more than one way to..." While initially confusing ("what exactly do they want from me here?!") became a welcome departure for many of us free thinking, unconventional, unorthodox, a bit radical, in how we came to look at what they taught us being 'free radicals' in math...which took us back to the (square) roots of what they were really trying to get at here...for us, the more 'Rogue Scholars', balancing out the more traditional smarty "Rhode Scholars' we heard about...

Playing Forward; Advanced Thinkers: Or thinking in advance, they were..."they" being our parents and more formally trained educators...as how to motivate ("the love of learning" or, "if you don't finish your homework, you'll..."), stimulate, throughout all our (in)formative years, from grade school all the way into college for some of us fortunates. My goodness, I even learned about learning, in why and how people think, learn, as in "Learning Theory", a course in my Educational Psychology curriculum from graduate school (!) which I hardly conceived of in grade school, let alone capable of, which became for me a lesson in endurance more than smarts...

Beyond: The brick and mortar and the formative years, lie an infinite opportunity to continue learning -- many elders in our extended family who have since gone to 'the beyond' were prime examples of those who yearned to learn well beyond their prime...numbers. Us graduates eventually learned (partly through our alma maters soliciting us, after being so endowed, to become part of the 'great endowment' as in annual giving), to be part of the "college of lifelong learning". Through other subsequent experiences we learned the meaning of "while you can't stay in college forever, you never have to lose the collegiate spirit" (e.g., the never-ending tailgates, college sweatshirts, and...endless intellectual curiosity). For those of you returning to the 'brick and mortar' places of education, "Welcome Back!" and for all of us who have long departed such places but continued more traditional, composed approaches to acquiring information, and for the rest of us more Rogue Scholars, in the colleges of lifelong learning, "See Ya around campus!" 

School Daze, ways we got Sharpie.