Books, Christianity, And Hobbies

i brought in a bunch of my books from childhood, and we started having one-on-one reading lessons with the littles. then i went out and bought about fifty more books secondhand. first step was covering the pictures so the kids couldnt guess what the words said and had to actually TRY reading them first. second step was making a list of new words for each kid so we could learn about those words, what they meant, and if the kids were old enough, some of the etymology behind them (because if you can recognize latin root words, it's easier to make connections for pronunciation later on eg. unicorn -> universe).

the kids HATED this. reading was previously the easiest class and now it was really, really hard. but reading class had also previously been the most boring class; their books were ten pictures with a single sentence on the opposite page. we got through it by taking turns reading books the kids picked out from my collection- they would read one sentence or paragraph, then i would read the whole page complete with funny voices, then it would be their turn again, etc. it turns out that if kids are motivated to hear the rest of a good story or a lot of information about a topic they love, they're more willing to struggle.

the kids improved so rapidly that i honestly almost cried a few times from how proud i was. one little girl (kindergarten aged) went from being unable to sound out the whole alphabet to reading goodnight moon by herself in two months :'>

all this, though, was NOT my job. my job was to keep the kids on task during their online schooling and prevent them from killing each other or starving. i am not a teacher. the school system was failing these kids to the degree that outside individual reading lessons were necessary, and school systems across the US are still doing this!

if this backwards way of teaching reading keeps up, then in the future it is going to create more issues, not only those kids but all of us. if you are in the US, i would encourage any adult to look into their local public school district. some school districts have curricula that can be accessed through their website. if what you find concerns you, then it's time to head to a school board meeting and bring it up.

it might feel weird or uncomfortable, but i assure you, you are as a much of a member of the community as anyone else. it is not weird to care about the community and the school district.

this is a problem that is already affecting all of us and it's only going to grow with time. but there are things we can all do regardless of our status as a parent, childcare worker, or teacher.

(p.s. i think sometimes these things are assumed to be the fault of a teacher, but it is almost always a school board issue. teacher's don't typically get to decide on the curriculum)

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

the original post

I don’t remember what version it was, only that it was a very long time ago. Food healed hearts directly, and- this is the important part- mossy cobblestone could not be crafted or mined anywhere in the overworld save the floors of dungeons.

It also was a brilliant, vibrant green, so much more aggressive than its current gentle texture, but that’s neither here nor there.

I was playing on a survival server I’ve long since forgotten the name of, and I was putting the finishing touches on my lovely brick house. But the floor, no no. I was a picky child; only the finest of flooring would do.

I wanted mossy cobblestone.

Immediately I was at an impasse. I could strip mine and explore caves in the hope of finding one dungeon; but I needed two whole stacks of it for my floor. There was no /locate command at the time, and I knew nobody else well enough to ask for it. And at the time, chunkbase and other seed scanning tools didn’t exist; not that it would have helped, since I didn’t have the world seed.

Perplexed, I logged off and consulted with friends at school the next day.

There, I was advised to try an x-ray texture pack.

So I did.

And it worked a treat! The dungeons were rendered perfectly visible to me, and I easily dug straight down (smart and subtle!) and raked in the precious mossy cobblestone I needed.

At one point, one of the mods asked me in chat if I was x-raying. Having just turned off the pack minutes before the message came through, I cheerfully said no and skipped off to finish my floor.

Humpback whales singing off the leeward coast of O’ahu

but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.