Musings from Mrs. Galvan

Three weeks into grad school and once again last night I was sleepless at 1 am, second guessing my ability to learn new things quickly and participate intelligently. Why can't I make connections quickly and speak my mind in class? While walking to class this morning, I was re-listening to an episode of  This American Life called Is This Working  on the role of punishment in the School to Prison Pipeline. It opens with a mother talking about her preschool age son being suspended unfairly. Even though I had heard this before, it brought me to tears. It also made parts of what we have learned the last three weeks come together for me. Specifically, how Nodding's ethic of caring points to the shortcomings of some No Excuses schools to help students grow emotionally by learning from mistakes versus facing no-tolerance punishment. How do strict discipline practices in No Excuses schools fulfill their responsibility to complete the sense of caring within their students? It isn...

I want to write about my school choice class, actually I need to also for an assignment, but instead we are exploring the city. The Empire State Building is tall and the Natural History museum is huge.

Dave and the kids are here. I think I spent all of Friday evening cuddling their faces, smelling their hair and telling them how much I had missed them. Having finished the big paper, we spent the weekend exploring the city: Central Park, the Village, 9/11 Memorial, Brooklyn, the High-line and Wil's favorite, the subway. I started two new classes - Privatization and Research - both are, surprise, heavy on the reading. This experience is challenging my ability to process vast amounts of information, stay up late, write efficiently, participate (at all - not going for eloquent at this point), and my confidence overall. I am grateful for my spouse. He has supported me from the moment I thought of applying, cared for the kids in my absence, carted them all over the city via stroller and subway (with a backpack loaded with their supplies), cooked meals, proof-read papers and provided much needed reassurance. <3

1. Laundry 2. Check Facebook 3. Take out the trash 4. Use the foam roller to painfully, stretch my IT band (when did this become a thing??) 5. Clean the stove 6. Sun Salutation 7. Make coffee 8. Google vegetarian dining options 9. Ballet 10. Check Instagram (I refuse the Twitter temptation - too prone to suck time) 11. Stellar kickboxing routine the tune of Eye of the Tiger, choreographed on the spot 12. Gaze out the window to watch the pigeons 13. Write silly blog posts This is what I need to do!!!

Tomorrow will mark the end of mt first two weeks in New York. My family arrives this evening. I am both incredibly excited for their arrival and a teensy bit nervous about balancing the workload with my desire to spend time with them (BTW apparently "teensy" isn't a word but "weensy" is - what's with that?). Today then seems to be the shift from being a mom set loose in the big city to learn and grapple with being alone to being a busy mom trying both to learn and have fun with Dave and the kiddos. It seemed appropriate then to take a break from writing the 10 page ethics paper to write a blog post. Somehow I have become a person who takes a break from writing to write something else. I mentioned in my last two posts that things have been making more sense. Yesterday, our class on ethics ended and I am no longer in a quandary over ethics, or rather I am at peace with its vagueness. I finally have a sense as to the possible meaning(s) of the word aestheti...