This summer I helped CPS teachers as they worked to learn to use the Internet effectively.  They published their own pages and worked to integrate the web into theeir curricula at the Web Institute for Teachers.   I am excited about the powerful tool the Internet can be to further our goals for children.   I also taught a class on science processes, Bubbles!, in Ancona’s summer school.  I enjoyed spending time outdoors  with my children before returning to finish setting up the classroom.  This is the last year that all three of my children will attend Ancona:  Kate as a graduating eighth-grader, Annie Rose as a third-grader, and Liam as a first-grader.

  Prior to coming to Ancona, I was part of the St. Louis Catholic Worker community, a group which lives with the poor, offering shelter to 35 women and children and 15 men.  When I lived there, we served dinner nightly, sometimes to over 200 guests.  I have been very active in peace and justice issues, including planning and participating in non-violent direct action.   I credit to my years in the justice and peace movement my understanding of the importance of promoting a climate for children which encourages community-building and the search for non-violent solutions. 

Hiking, cycling, and camping are restoratives.  I try to get away from Chicago often, at least as far as the Indiana Dunes.  Reading, listening to music , and just sitting are important too.  Lately I don't make time for long fiction.  I've been reading the new poems by Sharon Olds and dipping into Alice Munro's short stories and some other poets.  I'm reading John McPhee again, since I'm teaching geology this year.  I was recently introduced to Anthony Demello's meditations, which I am finding wonderfully appropo.  Mozart's quartets, Caetano Veloso, Beth Orton, Cassandra Wilson, Patricia Barber, Dylan, Sleator-Kinney and the Dead are what I find myself most listening to these days.