Learning and Loss
  Charles V. Balch

While there are numerous theories and models for learning process stages, our understanding of the learning process may still be improved through investigation of developmental stage theories in other fields. This article demonstrates that our understanding of the learning process is improved with a comparison of Perry's stages of learning with Kublar-Ross's stages of response to profound loss. The comparison is reasonable, as people often identify themselves with their beliefs and understandings. When learning causes these beliefs to change, a person may experience a sense of loss as they lose a sense of identity.    full text >>>

Mountain Woman
  Elie Antopol

Eudora Horton awoke remembering a dream in which she had arrived at an imposing edifice, a university or a museum, but could not locate the reception room where she was to be honored. It was her standard anxiety dream, so she lay back in bed without analyzing it and watched a bee fly through her open window and alight on drooping cornflowers. She had picked the fragile, doomed bouquet the day before on the steep hillside of a former meadow, where crabapple and wild pear now grew and where dairy farmers once hayed. Sleepily she wondered if the insect got any pleasure from rubbing its abdomen against the not-yet-withered stamens.   full text >>>

Revisions
  Carol Fletcher

It's Sunday night, never a good time for us. The police have left, tempers are cooling, and even the dog has settled down in front of the TV. Then the doorbell rings.

At 9 p.m., I'm guessing it is my daughter's boyfriend. But when I open the front door, there, shivering in the snow in high-heeled boots and no jacket, is my former journalism student.    full text >>>