Family

A few moments ago Christine Weglinski, our Production Manager, walked into my office with a heaping dish of "Death By Chocolate," her famous million-calories-per-serving dessert.

The recipe requires one package of chocolate cake mix, two large packages of instant chocolate pudding, a large container of non-dairy whipped topping, six toffee candy bars (crushed) and a very large bowl.

When the cake has cooled, cut it in layers to fit the bowl. Then place one layer of cake at the bottom of the bowl... topped by a layer of pudding ...then a layer of the non-dairy topping (mixed with the crunched candy bars). Repeat until you run out of bowl space or run out of ingredients (it feeds an army).

The appearance in our Teaching K-8 offices of such unexpected snacks is typical of the family-type happenings that go on around here as we create this magazine for you.

And yes, while it's an office sometimes filled with fattening food, it's also a workplace filled with good cheer, inspiration and - to assuage our guilt after "Death By Chocolate" - an occasional salad.

I was very young when 1 learned the importance of "family." It occurred during the tuberculosis scare in the 1930s, when x-rays revealed dark spots on my lungs.

Tell a little 10-year-old boy he has spots on his lungs he cannot see, and he would probably shrug it off with a "So what?"

But tell him he must come home from school every afternoon and take a daily nap - until the unseen spots go away - and you have a frightened, unhappy kid.

Make it worse by telling him this will go on all summer and watch him dissolve in tears. (I'm sure my mother cried, too.)

In fact, I can only imagine how hard it must have been for my mother as, day after day, she did the heavy lifting - sitting on the bed reading to me, telling me stories, hugging me as I fell asleep and perhaps greeting me with a delicious snack when 1 awoke.

Together with my father and sister, both of whom helped my mother cope, I had a loving support team - my family - that was always at my side.

Today the scars on my lungs are the only clue to what might have happened if a committed family had not pulled me through.

But you and 1 are not surprised. That's what families do; they pull us through.

At Teaching K-8 we've always had lots of family pulling us through. They were and are - the co-workers who have lovingly crafted each issue since that day, 35 years ago (in May, 1971), when the first issue appeared.

Initially called Early Years, the magazine's name was changed to Teaching K-8 when we became a part of the Highlights for Children family of companies in November 1985 - a corporate family that not only includes Highlights for Children magazine, founded in 1946, but several other companies, including Boyds Mills Press, Front Street, Inc., Essential Learning Products, SDE, Stenhouse and Zaner-Bloser.

I like the fact our parent corporation is called "a family" of companies. It's also nice to know, 60 years after Highlights for Children, Inc. was founded, that the corporation is still family-owned, with several generations of the founding family intimately involved.

Finally, when I think of family I also - and invariably - think of you and the children you teach...because you're family, too.

Allen A. Raymond, Publisher

Copyright Early Years, Inc. Nov/Dec 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved