Category Archives: Random Reflections

Tilling some soil and playing with links – some rough draft blogging to think out loud

Posted on by
Reply

Third graders at The Kincaid School in Texas are cultivating their learning in a community garden of global connectedness:

At my school the 3rd grade teachers have established a terrific blogging program for our 3rd graders. Not only do our students blog openly but they also visit and comment on other blogs. This year, a comment that a 3rd grader made on the blog of an author of a book his class was reading started a process that ended up with the author having a Skype call with the student’s 3rd grade class. [empasis added]

– Larry Kahn, http://plpnetwork.com/2011/12/21/meet-our-team-larry-kahn/

Bravo to these third grade teachers and their students for growing positive digital footprints among an authentic audience of beyond-school readers and thinkers. Such connectedness and the powerful learning that can come from such harvest are under-surface themes of @jgough’s latest post, “Integrated Studies: Gardening, Obesity, Open Source Learning.” Moreover, @whatedsaid placed the exclamation mark on the themes with her post, “What does it mean to be educated?”

Most students want to grow something meaningful by planting seeds, watering and fertilizing the sprouts, and sharing the harvest of their labors. As the students in Edna’s video proclaim – to be educated means to seize opportunities to make a positive difference in this world. We teachers should make sure that we are facilitating that “playing in the soil” at least as much as we are asking students to read from a recipe book. In my opinion, students should be doing the gardening and recipe creating much more than just following others’ recipes. Students deserve to be creators, not just consumers. In so doing, they just might learn better to feed themselves as lifelong gardeners and inventors…I mean learners – lifelong learners.

Pracademics

Posted on by
1

 

In a nutshell, the quote below sheds great light on why I believe in “pracademics” – those people who DO project-based learning and share their joys and frustrations, those people who speak about online presence only while developing a significant digital footprint themselves, those people who experience PLCs before commenting positively or negatively on their function and value, those who use the tools of a faculty growth plan to organize their professional learning if they expect others to do so, those who model faculty meetings in the form which they expect from classrooms, etc., etc.

Learning is useless if it isn’t applied. Reading a recipe book is not the same as picking up a utensil and cooking. Albert Einstein once said, “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” Simply studying the wisdom of others isn’t enough, you must put it into practice.

From “The Ultimate Gift,” sblankenship, Connected Principals, Dec. 19, 2011

Learn by doing. Encourage others to learn by doing. Promote learning by doing. Build wisdom by employing your growing knowledge in order to make a positive difference in this world. If you haven’t already, start today. Start now. Go. Do.

When learning is open and connected…thanks Homaro Cantu

Posted on by
1

I imagine I am a middle schooler – maybe around age 13. I just watched a TED talk because my teacher has guided me to an interest in the plethora of “teachers” on TED. I write a blog post on the TED talk because I write for an authentic audience now, not only for my teacher’s eyes. My blog posts automatically tweet. The author of the TED talk sees the tweet and responds. He sends me this link in his @reply:

http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/29/chefs-miracle-berries-turn-sour-foods-sweet/

I become more interested in molecular gastronomy because my learning has been open and connected. I become more interested in sustainability because of my online teacher’s example of edible menus. I learn to help feed the world with an increased interest in health and an added flair for design. I am forging myself into a pattern of lifelong learning. I am thankful my school allows such open and connected learning. It seems scary to do this without such guidance and leadership…my parents don’t really understand this way of learning.

[Many thanks to Homaro Cantu for replying to this 41-year-old, lifelong learner’s pre-post thinking and automatically tweeted blog post on Dec. 16! What a thrill and path of learning! May I help make it so for others.]

“Restoration of the ability to perceive beauty is inspiring” – Charles Limb

Posted on by
3

Charles Limb performs cochlear implantation, a surgery that treats hearing loss and can restore the ability to hear speech. But as a musician too, Limb thinks about what the implants lack: They don’t let you fully experience music yet. (There’s a hair-raising example.) At TEDMED, Limb reviews the state of the art and the way forward. (“About this talk” description at TED.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_building_the_musical_muscle.html)

At this point, I have watched Charles Limb’s talk multiple times. I am intrigued by it. For me, the talk elicits all kinds of excited thinking about possible projects of integrated studies. In my mind’s eye, I can see a team of student-learners, guided by a pair of co-teacher-learners, studying the intersection of music, physics, biology, robotic medicine, and beauty. Who knows, perhaps such a course would plant the seed that would grow into the physician-researcher who advances cochlear implants to the next level.

But, as regular readers here will surely anticipate, I am also touched by a more symbolic message inherent in Limb’s talk. I wonder: Are we working with students in our schools who have grown to be partially “deaf or blind” to the beauty around them? As young children – particularly around ages two to seven – people seem defined by their sense of wonder, exploration, and sense of searching and discovery. Often I worry that we dull those senses when we insist that children sit so long inside of school houses and study disjointed, disconnected facts.

How can we educators help to enhance the senses of our student learners? For that matter, how can we help to enhance the senses of all of the learners in a school house? How can we restore the ability to perceive beauty and inspire? Certainly, I think we do this for some students, but do we do this for all of the students in our care? Does school allow students to fully experience the wonder and beauty of their world? How can we ensure better that it does so? What would that school look like, smell like, taste like, and sound like? What an adventure!

Emerging from my principal gestation

Posted on by
Reply

Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb — from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods. (“About this talk” description at TED.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_paul_what_we_learn_before_we_re_born.html)

In her talk, Annie Murphy Paul discusses fetal origins and the idea that “our health and well-being throughout our lives is crucially affected by the nine months we spend in the womb” (Paul, near 1:45 in talk). She is not talking about the “Baby Einstein” movement. She is talking about gestation affecting our learning about the environment to which we are soon to be born.

At the literal surface, Paul’s TED talk is a powerful listen for educators, as we work to better understand the diversity of inputs responsible for any individual’s lifelong learning. As Paul spoke, I wondered quite a bit about the “nature vs. nurture” debates. But Paul’s TED talk has me wondering on an entirely different level, as well.

As I complete this, my ninth, year as principal, I am curious if a year of being principal is analogous to a month of gestation. If the metaphor works at all, then I am even more excited about what my next phase of life in education will be like, for I am soon to be born into a profound period of development as an educator. And I am eternally grateful for the care that Westminster’s womb has provided me. My gestation has provided deep learning about the educational environment into which I next will emerge, and learn, and grow. I wonder what that world will look like, smell like, sound like, and taste like. What an adventure.