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This is Beulah helping me with my exams. She was not happy until I pulled a chair as close to me as possible and covered it with a furry throw.
After working on exams from the end of December until the middle of January, I came back to Cambridge with a new philosophy: "Choose the easiest courses I can find, get the lovely degree from Harvard, and go back to the life that I had before this upheaval." Then I started shopping classes and of the eighteen classes that sounded interesting, I have finally narrowed the number down to 5.5 (one class only runs through March). So much for personal philosophies.
The classes I am taking - I think - are the following:
HT100 - Cognitive Neuroscience - the core class for our program continues from last semester
Adult Development and Learning - taught by Dr. Robert Kegan
Universal Design for Learning - Dr. David Rose (he was one of our professors from last semester)
Introduction to Education Neuroscience - Dr. Todd Rose (he was a teaching fellow when Amy was in the program and his wife is in some of my classes - small world)
The Science of Learning, Behavior and Health: Implications for Early Childhood Policy - taught by Dr. Jack Shonkoff (This is the man that many of you have heard me quote. He was a pediatrician for years until he decided that to truly affect the lives of young children living in poverty, one has to know the science and leverage the science in lobbying for money and change. He is the man on the panel when I came to visit last April who, when people continued to whine about all of the many class offerings and lack of time to take them, responded that we were experiencing the "agony of privilege."
Tools for Mind, Brain, Education: Investigating process and outcome in cognition literacy, language, and numeracy - taught by Joanna Christodoulou who works at MIT and who is taking us on a tour of the MRI facilities there tomorrow. I did not have the nerve to volunteer to have my brain scanned - most of you can imagine why!
When I got back to Boston, there were still frozen banks of snow along all of the streets and sidewalks. Today we got new snow and then sleet and then snow - now it is raining, but it is a kind of frozen rain.
This picture is taken in front of one of the ed school buildings facing the common where George Washington organized his troops which is especially interesting as Amy and I have been watching the HBO John Adams series.
This is Longfellow Hall. Isn't it beautiful?
Finally, this is the bench that Amy wants Meredith to make for her - we know you can do it for less than Anthropologie charges and it will be lovely!
