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Archive for January, 2012

The following article covers a topic that has recently moved to center stage–at least it seems that way. If you’ve been thinking you need to know more about unconditional love, here’s your opportunity.

When darkness turns to day, the sun moves over the horizon and touches everything in sight. This movement across the landscape brightens everything. Such an illumination awakens us all. We rise with energy moving in and through us allowing us to create a new day. A day unique from all the rest and creatively woven into our soul.

This is the landscape of our soul. As you can see, nature has a way of showing us just how powerful we are. The same power that created the moon and the stars and the movement of all space and time lies within the human heart. It is the heart of creation itself, and perhaps, the heart of our Creator.

Human beings are fortunate to be able to be aware of our awareness. This awareness gives us an opportunity to reflect on our soul and find blessing in being alive. Our consciousness of a creative force inside us guiding us into this world, through it, and eventually to our eternal home allows us to fulfill a purpose on this earth.

Such a purpose is beyond our own ability to really know. Yet, we can open our heart enough to allow our purpose to find us. This is done by recognizing that the things in life that really matter ARE the things in life that isn’t matter.
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Ataxic cerebral palsy accounts for five to ten percent of all cases of cerebral palsy. In this form of cerebral palsy, there is damage to a part of the brain called the cerebellum that helps maintain balance and coordination. When the cerebellum is damaged, it can result in poor muscle tone or hypotonia, difficulty maintaining balance and a normal gait, tremors, disorders of depth perception and an inability to control the range and motion of voluntary movements. As a result, children with ataxic cerebral palsy often demonstrate a wide-based, unsteady gait. They may also have intention tremors that are tremors that occur while attempting voluntary movements. Voluntary movements are typically clumsy and difficult to perform; finer movements, such as writing, are most severely affected. Coarser movements such as reaching for objects may also be difficult due to altered depth perception. Rapid, involuntary side-to-side movements of the eyeballs, or nystagmus, may also be present. Children with ataxic cerebral palsy may also suffer from several other conditions, such as seizures, mental retardation, and visual and hearing defects.

Poor muscle tone, abnormal posture or movements and a delay in achieving the normal developmental milestones of infancy may raise the suspicion of ataxic cerebral palsy. A physician makes a diagnosis of cerebral palsy by combining a careful physical examination of the patient with findings from imaging methods, such as CT scans and MRIs. These findings are collectively used to determine whether the brain is developing normally or not. Read the rest of this entry »

Finding the best course to learn Spanish can be a daunting task, especially on the internet where there is so much to choose from. So, how do you find the best one? Here are a few things to consider when deciding which course is the best to help you learn Spanish:

1. Choose a Spanish course that offers interactive learning, where you actually participate and use your voice to repeat words and phrases out loud. This is important because it will help to reinforce the learning in your brain, and help you learn Spanish faster.

2. Choose a course that has Spanish learning games included. If you are doing something fun such as playing a game, you are much more likely to learn Spanish faster and easier because you are having fun. Anything is easier to learn when you’re having fun doing it!

3. Make sure the course has enough material and is complete. There are many courses that fall short in this area. You want to make sure there are enough exercises and lessons in the course to enable you to learn Spanish thoroughly enough to carry on conversations. Ideally, you want to find a course that offers beginner through advanced Spanish.
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With declining enrollment and building space for tens of thousands more students than they have enrolled, the Baltimore schools announced last December their restructuring plans to close several elementary, middle and high schools with others becoming combined K-8 schools.

The Baltimore schools held a series of community meetings, where they released a list of possible options they were considering. The options included schools to close, some to renovate, and where to build new ones. The options also were listed at their web site, where parents and community voted on which options they thought were best.

All options would close several Baltimore schools middle schools with consistently low test scores and high rates of violence. Some of these targeted schools are on the state’s “persistently dangerous” schools list, while others are being watched closely for inclusion to the list. The troubled Thurgood Marshall High School, site of a shooting in the 2004-2005 school year, also is included in all options. A new building will replace the current middle school, located at the same site, and be a K-8 school.

The Baltimore schools are dealing with deteriorating buildings, declining enrollment, and state demands that they operate the school system more efficiently. The Baltimore schools’ chief executive officer Bonnie S. Copeland stated that community committees, which used public input gathered earlier last fall, developed the options.

Copeland believed that much of the community shared her vision to expand the K-8 schools, which have been outperforming the traditional middle schools. Many parents, as well as community activist groups, were outraged and vehemently opposed several proposed options and school closings.

Many do not wish to see K-8 schools, unhappy with older children who set bad examples being mixed in with younger children. They believe the low test scores of several middle schools is more complex than just integrating the students with the elementary schools. Additionally, some high-performing schools could be closed, due to building conditions and capacity. Read the rest of this entry »