[On Saturdays my topic of focus is A Small, Good Thing, inspired by one of my favorite Raymond Carver stories.]

Some people like to make large, dramatic life changes, while others aspire to gradual, incremental improvements. (Personally, I’m of that second camp.)

Joel Fuhrman’s excellent book, Eat to Live, contains valuable nutrition advice for everyone.

I’m hoping that as math instruction improves and becomes more “brain-friendly,” we’ll see fewer kids struggling in math.

When I was in my doctoral program, I was amazed at some of the research coming out on kids’ understanding of math concepts. We assume that children all learn pretty much the same math at roughly the same ages, and that they learn these concepts in math class.

In fact, there’s a wide natural variation, and not necessarily a lot of correlation between the math kids are taught in school and the math they actually know.

Instead of leaping right into my 2012 agenda, I’m focusing today on what I’ve learned in 2011. Here’s my list so far:

• I really do know how to be happy. Listening to my own internal voice and allowing myself to Be Leigh, works well for me. This includes becoming OK with the parts of me that so often feel less-than-ideal, like my messiness / lack of attention to dress and housekeeping, and my enormous need for oceans of reading and sleeping and quiet-contemplation time (which eat up so many hours and make me less “productive”…well, so be it!)