Fifth-grade teacher Keith Morey said he soon came to realize that he actually had very little classroom time with his students. "School began at 9:05 a.m.," Berler wrote. "But class didn't effectively start till the conclusion of the Pledge of Allegiance and the morning announcements, at 9:25. On a typical day, the children might have gym from 9:52 to 10:22. Snack time was ten minutes, starting at 11 a.m. Recess ran from 12:45 to 1 p.m., followed by lunch. Chorus might go from 1:42 to 2:42. Other days, they might break for art, music, the computer room, or library time. At 3:15 in the afternoon, Mr. Morey sent the students to their lockers to gather their coats and book bags. Dismissal was at 3:25. That left three hours and twenty-five minutes for learning – minus the time lost when the children rummaged through their desks for their workbooks and homework, when they took bathroom breaks, and when they grew noisy and Mr. Morey had to call for order."
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
