Today I subbed in a Grade 4 class and got to teach writing - one of my favorite subjects! The plan was to talk about similes. The teacher had a plan but I decided to add a bit of my own flair to it. I figured if I could share something I'm excited about they might get more out of the lesson. I have been reading Inkheart again and so I picked it up and looked for similes in there. They weren't hard to find. Cornelia Funke really uses a lot of literacy devices to make her writing great.
....which brings me to my topic for this post: laziness.
While I was teaching the lesson we worked on all sorts of similes:
- as big as a...
- as quiet as a....
- as silly as a....
- as lazy as....
They came up with a lot of great ones...but a few surprised me. When we were doing 'as lazy as...' some of the kids said, "as lazy as my dad" or "as lazy as me" came up a few times.
I was disturbed. My first thought was that I sure hope my kids would never think to say "as lazy as my mom" or "as lazy as my dad" or even "as lazy as me". Never.
Some people think it's a bit of a joke. I don't get the humor. There's so much to do in life. There is no room for laziness.
I thought Julie Beck's talk last conference had an interesting perspective on this. She said: A good woman knows that she does not have enough time, energy, or opportunity to take care of all of the people or do all of the worthy things her heart yearns to do. Life is not calm for most women, and each day seems to require the accomplishment of a million things, most of which are important. A good woman must constantly resist alluring and deceptive messages from many sources telling her that she is entitled to more time away from her responsibilities and that she deserves a life of greater ease and independence. But with personal revelation, she can prioritize correctly and navigate this life confidently.
I'm sure not perfect at this - but I do want to be "a good woman" as Julie Beck describes one.
No comments:
Post a Comment