The Quickening!!!

*** Warning- this post is kinda’ long***

The reason for this post- the reason why I’m writing this post is because I have had a curious incident happen to me, not once, but twice. The only thing I can relate it to is one of my favorite Sci-fi series, Highlander.

As I have mentioned here before many times, I am one of the biggest Sci-fi junkies around. I love good Sci-fi and I love bad Sci-fi. Sometimes cheesy Sci-fi is the best. However, that’s neither here nor there. So, I digress. Now, on to my original point.

I’d like to relate the curious incidents that happened to me to the Sci-fi movie Highlander. The basic premise of the show is that there are Immortals who are in a mythical battle to “know everything”. They live, basically, until someone chops off their head and literally absorbs all of their knowledge. When the head is chopped off and the knowledge is released, this process is called the Quickening. This is when their knowledge, in the form of lightning, transfers from one Immortal to the next. The older the Immortal is, the flashier and bigger the Quickening process is.

Now, these Immortals, they have a very hard job. They have to assimilate hundreds, sometimes thousands of years of information at once. This isn’t a problem with them. It is, however, a problem with me.

During the year, with all of the information that’s coming at me, I simply cannot assimilate it. Information is coming at me left and right. I feel like I’m playing a game of dodgeball. I’m trying to catch and assimilate the information, but just cannot. It’s too much. However, once I have had time to take a break, the information slowly seeps into and assimilates into my consciousness. It’s like the Quickening.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me when I first experienced this in July once I had time to stop and process the information. It was weird. It’s like everything started flooding into my brain; just like the Quickening process, but without all of the fanfare.

Although I do not have the pleasure of having many years of Immortal knowledge behind me, I do have all of the information I’ve learned during my time as an Assistant and my time in the classroom as a Teacher, plus all the minds of those whose brain I choose to pick.

If there was a process like the Quickening, I’d probably be tempted not to go through all the years necessary to acquire all of the information, training, and teaching strategies necessary to become a Master teacher. However, as it stands, there is not. So I will simply have to do things the old fashioned way.

So until next time people!

The Color Of Us by Karen Katz

The Color of Us (2007), written and illustrated by Karen Katz, is a great little book. It’s very simple and uncomplicated; just the way a picture book should be. The book begins with the main character, Lena, explaining that she is the color of cinnamon, and that her mom, who is an artist, is the color of French toast. She teaches her how to mix red, yellow, black, and white paints to make the right brown color picture of her.

“The right brown? But Mom, brown is brown,” she says.

“That’s not so,” Mom says. “There are lots of different shades of brown.”

“Let’s take a walk”, says her mom, “and you’ll see.” They walk to the playground where they see her friend Sonia who is a light yellow brown, just like peanut butter. Next they see Isabella, who is chocolate brown like the cupcakes they had for her birthday. Next is Lucy who has skin that peachy and tan. Jo-Jin is the color of honey. While her cousin Kyle is reddish brown like the leaves in fall. As Lena and her mom walk the neighborhood, she discovers the many colors of brown: sienna, cinammon, peanut butter, cocoa brown, butterscotch, bronze & amber, skin the color of pizza crust, ginger, and chili powder, tawny tan like coconuts and coffee toffee.

When Lena paints a picture of everyone, she sees just how beautiful all the colors are; she realizes they are the Color of Us.

The book is a beautiful introduction to any child who needs to see how people are different, yet the same. Even though I read this book to my class, I would recommend this book for someone as young as 2½ or 3 years old. All in all this book is great for any classroom, especially Kindergarten. Give it a look-see. You’ll like what you see.