Today I am beginning to write after a four week absence that seemed like ten years of doing nothing. Without my computer all I was able to do was watch television, and that bored and angered me more than I wish to tell. Although some of my readers may have thought I was taking a summer vacation or I had slipped away from this world, all I was doing for several weeks was complain because I had very little to do alone in my apartment.
Now, I am so happy to be back with my beloved computer. I also thank my son Alan, who took my broken computer to a company that carried out a long–but excellent–job of fixing my computer. Now, my only problem is that my machine is smarter than I am, and I need to learn how to use it again. One thing I like is that It lets me know when I have misspelled a word while writing, which seems to be a problem for many people of my age. And it helps me to correct my errors. So, if there are any misspelled words here, blame the machine, not me. Its job is to bring all my errors to my attention and give me the correct spellings instead.
At last, I can return to the job I have long loved, which is reading the the stories of American education and then advising teachers how to work for the success of children. Because I was once able to teach many school grades successfully and became a principal in two different schools, I learned a great deal about helping children learn to read, write, and become successful adults.
Although I plan to focus my attention on children’s education I can’t ignore all the difficulties now in our country. I am back at work and almost as healthy as my computer. I am deeply concerned about the severely damaged world we all live in today and all the difficulties our children and their parents now face. However I must say that our government’s decision to open children’s schools was completely wrong. What all of our states should have done was to tell all adults that they must wear masks for enough time to free everyone in their community from the virus before opening children’s schools. Even though that would make school openings later than usual, it could solve the problem by keeping schools open for an extra month at the end of the year.
Worst of all for me lately has been missing your support and suggestions. Now I hope that we can get together again and share our ideas for helping children and there parents. Like in the past, I will emphasize good teaching and my concern for all children in our schools. And I will continue to insist that we should teach children to read by recognizing words visually, rather than struggling to sound them out by sounding out all the letters in a word.
Finally, I plan to stand with all children and their parents by using what I learned as the mother of four children and a teacher of thousands of good kids.
The Treasure Hunter 
Hi Joanne! Glad you’re back. I missed you. I met you many years ago when I was a new teacher living in Madison, Wisconsin. I don’t remember the exact workshop or course, but I remember you were a shining star in education, especially literacy. You still are!
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Welcome back, Joanne! Glad things are looking up.
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Happy to see you back on line. We all.need to work together to defeat this virus so children and their teachers will be safe at school.
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Thanks to all of you for your messages, and I’m very happy to be with you again. I’m planing a new article for the next week already.
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Hi Joanne,
It’s so great to have you back again! I was missing your insightful and incisive commentary on public education.
So glad you are doing well!
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