Change

Four Perfect Pebbles chp9 "America at Last"

This final chapter in the book was more informative than narrative compared to the other chapters. I didn't feel as much of Marion or Ruth in this chapter as I have in the other chapters. I was still disheartened by the fact that things were still so hard for the Blumenthal family. I so wanted there to be a happy ending to the story, though there was a happy ending I wished it would be more immediate and easy for the family. After everything they experience and all the almost it seems only fair that they get a chance at something easy, but nothing was easy they worked very hard for everything they earned. The ember of the fruitfully happy ending that I read was how Albert and Mario were able to succeed in life, work and education. Especially Marion being able jump to her proper grade. Also to see her find love, unexpectedly albeit, warmed my spirit. What warmed my spirit even more was hearing the kind of emotion that Marion had when speaking about all her experiences and then the glowing smile that she had when she talked about her husband, her love, and her family. To be able to have that much joy in her life now compared to her childhood was the happy ending I was looking for, it just took a little longer to get there.

Keene chp7 Nothing Changes as Certain as Change

This chapter is all about change and allowing the world to mold and change our actions. As educators we need to be able to change our teaching to meet the needs of the students we also need to be able to change the direction of a lesson based on the insights that children come up with. The mentor portion of this text was the most interest portion to read next the to the figures at the end of the chapter on text structures and deciphering those structures. Otherwise the chapter kept referring to the new teacher "Tracy" and hypothetical meetings and analogies that I felt were not helping the theme of change in the text.

I also liked how Keene described the infrastructure of texts how it is understood and how students can use the infrastructure to make prediction of what might happen next in the book. Being able to read the "contours" of the text was an interesting concept that I have never thought of in those terms.

Freedom

Four Perfect Pebbles:

Freedom and Sorrow chp7/ Holland Again chp8: Finally the family is free they have experienced their liberation they are no longer trapped by the Germans. But they are emotionally, and physically shadows of their former selves. While reading this I recalled how I have heard stories of liberated captives eating themselves to death or being fed to death. The liberated people's stomachs were shrunk but the stomach that resided in their hearts and their brain. However I have never heard such an account of watching people eat themselves to death it was so depression., And on top of that for typhus to take Marion's father now after all they have been through was devastating news. The only good part was that there was the prospect that the remaining family could find salvation in continuing the initial plans that they wanted to accomplish prior to their capture. The hardship that Ruth must have gone through to live apart from her children to insure a better future was a heart touching task.

Keene chp 6 Renaissance of Understanding:

This was my favorite chapter of Keene's thus far, the ideal that we need to encourage a more Renaissance feel in our classrooms is something that I connect with immediately. Giving students a chance to be more independent inquiry based learners is something I try to instill in all of my lessons. I feel that students learn much better when they have freedom. How Keene was able to attach that sense of freedom and exploration into how students read and their literacy skills was seamless. I really connected with the idea of using varied genres and text to accomplish different tasks. This idea reminded of how we had discussions about mentor texts a few classes ago.

Escape and struggle

Keene chp5 To Savor the Struggle

The quote at the start of the dimension section of the chapter sums up the swimmingly “We struggle for insight; we savor and learn from the struggle itself; we venture into new learning territory and fight debilitating influence of judgment”. Being able to understand that the ideas and concepts that are the most important to our life are the ones we have to work to understand and struggle to grasp fully. Students now-a-days are not geared and prepared to struggle there are lots of items in life that come rather easy so instilling the values of struggle is a task that as educators we need to take care of.

Struggle is often most associated in the earlier years with literacy, learning to read is a rather intense task for many students. Struggle is full of frustration and misunderstandings and trials upon trials. The best of way to make the struggle and frustration easier is break it into more manageable pieces or to give the students a variety of decoding methods.

Four Perfect Pebbles Chp5 The Greatest Disappointment and Chp 6 The Death Train

Chapter 5 was indeed the greatest disappointment the family was so sad almost as soon as they leave the camp it is liberated. The continual traveling by the Blumenthals seemed like they kept missing the liberation. They were escaping liberation with each growing day reaming trapped in the death train watching people drop by the wayside one after the other. I just continually felt bad that the family every time they chose to move or were moved their situation got worse.

When I started this reading I thought the death train was titled the death train not because of how many souls were lost to do typhus and other disease but because I thought they figured the train was heading to Auschwitz. Though the captive son the train did think they were heading that way. When the train did stop to clear the dead there was so much freedom that the soldiers allowed that the captives were initially hesitant to take. To be honest who wouldn’t be, especially with the tricks and lies the Germans told to get their captives into the gas chambers taking things at face value certainly meant death.

Dwelling

To Understand, Keene, Dwelling in ideas:

This chapter focuses a rather large amount on vignette rather than practical use of the process in the classroom. At the same time I also enjoyed reading about the concept of using silence and listen deeply: "dwell in ideas, listen to our own teaching". The idea of listen to yourself and realizing what is important to your teaching based on self reflection and epitomizing who you are as an educator. When it comes to educating, teaching, and learning it is important to know how to reflect on your experiences to really own the information gathered from the experience. When this is done students and teachers alike begin to realize how capable the students are, more often then know the intellectual ability of the children in under estimated. When students are challenged based on their actual intellectual abilities instead of their perceived abilities they become eager and joyful while learning.

Four Perfect Pebbles: Escape to Holland and Get Dressed and Come with Us

These two chapters were full of fantastic images, some more upsetting than others but the words paint a dramatic picture. The night of broken glass really got me confused, because if they had all these people in captivity why did they let them go? Did they only let go those who had papers? I didn't see what the ultimate point was, unless it merely to put even more finical and social stress on the Jewish people. The entire process of taking personal belongings imprisoning, releasing, and then separating reminded me of what the military does to new recruits. They essentially are broken in order to insure compliance to order and regulations.

From all of that torment the escape to Holland didn't get much better the prospect of receiving the visa's finally and then not sure about being able to get to the proper departure point due to an attack on the port. The time lines that are drawn out in the start of this chapter are mind blowing I was surprised that other countries didn't intervene in Germany's actions to Czech but the moment the attack shifts to someone more friendly intervention is immediate. I was upset at lack of reaction by outsiders, and I was even more upset at the idea that these people had no control over their fate. Of course the Jewish people would have no control but the thought of lack of control was upsetting.