Luggage

Pupil Paté (from 2012)

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:15:00 -0400

With age, our minds become expanded, our eyes open to new things and ideas. Possibilities become endless for the optimistic and inevitable doom perpetuates for the aging cynic. My husband woke up the other day and proclaimed, “There’s gotta be a book out there that’s just full of mind blowing facts. I just wanna know more mind blowing facts, y’ know?!” The knowledge that I’ve procured, since coming into my adulthood comes form a wide range of studies and experiences. Everything from changing my own oil to how to reverse applique. I can brew my own Kombucha tea, plan a fundraiser and tell you a thousand reasons to use Rustolium. Now, this isn’t to say that all of my DIY efforts result in amazing skills. I have certainly had my fair share of failures. There’s the infamous sewing excursions that resulted in a pair of pants with one really large leg instead of two normal ones, or the closet full of “potential” projects that remain unfinished and even unattempted for years.

My most recent endevours have been in the culinary department. By no means would I consider myself an expert ( i accidentally doubled only the butter in a batch of cookies i made just this week!), but there are certainly things that I know now, that I didn’t know then. Like how to brew a good cup of coffee or choose a complimentary glass of wine for a specific meal.

One of the things that made me excited about my new job was that the school had a classroom kitchen and that each teacher had a garden plot to grow and cultivate with their kids. We’ve had lessons where we made fusion dishes to learn about various countries and regions of the world. Similarly, we designed menus when we discovered our own continents, to give other classes a taste of the local fare that our townspeople dined on. We’ve learned about what foods are good for cleansing your mind and body and about the medicinal properties of the herbs that grow in our own backyard.

I find myself daydreaming about menus, gardening and observing the overall health effects of paying attention to what you put into your body.

Today I was forced, by the ever present legislation of “No Child Left Behind” to observe, pace and tiptoe around my tortured students while they diligently filled in bubbles, just as they were instructed, as I read like a robot from the prompts in my “NC EOG ADMINISTRATORS MANUAL”-a 120 some page document that could make even the most eager of rule-followers go batty.

I watched as my students eliminated answers, calculated area and sums of angles. Two kids cried, one threw-up and another simply beat his head on the desk in frustration. I watched, but was held hostage by the EOG protocol that explains that, “Administrators are only allowed to use dialog that has been provided in the scripts within this manual”. I thumbed through this thing a dozen times and nowhere does it explain how to relieve the feelings of torture for these young minds. So, instead, I daydreamed. I thought about food, and then eventually composed an analogy that seemed fitting for this situation:

A month or so ago, my friend Nick, who gets a twisted sense of pleasure out of the subtilties of shock, shared some culinary wisdom with me. He taught me about a dish that is prepared by boiling a song-bird live, in brandy, so that it swallows the liquor and marinates itself from the inside out. He also clued me into something called, well exactly what it is, blood soup.

However, the one delicacy that I was most intrigued by, in this moment of shame and helplessness, was foie gras. This dish, which is French for “fatty liver”, is produced by the, “deliberate fattening of a bird (usually duck or goose) through force-feeding”. You see, with birds, as with humans, over-eating causes disease. However, when you’re going to dine on the diseased, it’s apparently much tastier for their liver to be plump and ridden with fatty tissue.

The EOG’s are the foie gras of education. These poor little things are stuffed to the brim with useless trivia to try to remember. It’s pounded into their brains until they can think no more. Until finally, they are forced to regurgitate it all, pour it all onto one little scantron sheet for some pompous ass whose never been in a classroom before, to record it and deem whether the child is worthy or fit for society (if Nick was writing this, he’d remind us that there was once another group of people who worked hard to build a perfect and intelligent “society”).

The truth of it all is that these tests mean nothing. I could take or leave my ABC bonus. These kids don’t need to know the total of the measures of the angles in a rhombus, they need to know how to hold a conversation, how to be brave and bold. They need to know how to share their feelings, write a letter, fill out an application. They need to live. They need to try to use a staple gun and end up with stitches or try skate down the stairs. They need to fall down the hill or out of the tree, they need to pick up bugs and dead things and take things apart to look at their insides. They want this, more than anything, but we are somehow deciding that for our own information, we’d be better off taking this away from them. We’d know more about the science of education if we disected it under a microscope instead of observing it in its natural habitat.

It’s that “cut-it-up-and-kill-it-mentality” that has got our educational system into this mess in the first place. We’re reactive not preventative. We look how to fix things after they’re a mess instead of stop them from happening in the first place.

Kids will grow and learn, they can’t help it, it’s inherent within human nature. They will dig, they will explore, they will doodle and sing. Kids will talk your ear off if you let them. Somehow as a society, we’ve got to get a grip on our expectations. Sure, we could have page after page of educational objectives. We can look at percentiles and benchmarks until our eyes bleed. But, where’s that getting us? We’ve got a population of students that are exhausted, disgruntled and disenchanted with the whole idea of school.

Somehow, somewhere, we’ve got to get a handle on the idea that learning comes naturally to these young people, and that maybe one day they too can wake up at age 29 and desire nothing more than mind-blowing facts. That is of course, unless we force-feed it out of them.

cpsclibrary: Keri Smith has authored, curated and created many...

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:23:33 -0400

cpsclibrary:

Keri Smith has authored, curated and created many wonderful things for curious minds and out-of-the-box thinkers.

Recently, I had the oppertunity to share her “Seed Bomb” recipe with a 1st grade class at CPSC. The students were studying plants, but were also focusing on Service Learning.

In our first session, we talked about what it means to grow something. I shared with their class the book “Weslandia” by Paul Fleischman, in which the main character, struggling to make friends and wanting more than anything to learn and explore the world around him, starts his own self-sustaining civilization with just one small garden.

As the class continued their work in studying plants and the environment with their student teacher and classroom teacher, they looked for ways that they could take what they were learning and turn it into something that they could do to give back to mother nature. I introduced the idea of Seed Bombs to both of the teachers and they were immediately on board. In the name of peace and non-violence, we did decide to change the name to “Seed Bursts”;)

The students made the bursts in-class with a wildflower seed mix donated by Stone Brothers and Bird. They mixed the seeds with compost and clay and packaged them in recycled toilet paper tubes that make for perfect tossing vessels. To spread this idea even further, the students set up shop at recess one day and showed other students how to make their own Seed Bursts!

The thing I like the most about Seed Bombs/Bursts is that it’s a true, selfless act of kindness to mother nature. By tossing one in a random space, that looks like it needs some love and beauty, you don’t expect anything in return. No thanks or recognition is supposed to come back your way, nothing more than maybe a peek at the green or gold that pops up from the ground once the seeds settle into their new home.

Keri Smith has a lot of ideas like this collected in her books, “Guerilla Art Kit” and “How to Be an Explorer of Your Own World”. Everything from Moss Graffiti to Guerilla Mail (where you write kind notes for strangers to find on their porches, in the park or in their neighborhood). I love this idea of spreading simple bits of happiness that anyone can enjoy.

“It is something to be able to paint a particular picture or to carve a statue, and so, make a few objects beautiful: but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day-that is the highest of arts.” -Henry David Thoreau

CPSC Library: The Blog: Iggy Peck & The Missed Jellyfish Lesson

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:40:46 -0400

CPSC Library: The Blog: Iggy Peck & The Missed Jellyfish Lesson:

cpsclibrary:

A few years ago when I did a training on Project Based Learning I was told a story about a teacher who was recapping spring break with her students. In starting this conversation, she was hoping to introduce a lesson about weather by getting students to talk about what the weather was like over…

by @f_letter (http://society6.com/fletter/My-State_Print) (Taken...

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:07:12 -0400

by @f_letter (http://society6.com/fletter/My-State_Print) (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

RIP Adam Yauch (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:52:54 -0400

RIP Adam Yauch (Taken with instagram)

Desk Gifts (Taken with Instagram at Central Park School for...

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:39:58 -0400

Desk Gifts (Taken with Instagram at Central Park School for Children)

Waking up on the right side of the bed. (Taken with Instagram at...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:13:46 -0400

Waking up on the right side of the bed. (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Dogs-1 Diaper Pail-0 #timeout (Taken with Instagram at Bull...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:22:31 -0500

Dogs-1 Diaper Pail-0 #timeout (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Packers Win! (Taken with Instagram at Charlie &...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:49:34 -0500

Packers Win! (Taken with Instagram at Charlie & Christel’s)

I am the light (Taken with Instagram at Charlie &...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:00:03 -0500

I am the light (Taken with Instagram at Charlie & Christel’s)

Naps (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:03:58 -0400

Naps (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

E-Man (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:31:23 -0400

E-Man (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Isss my backyard for today! (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:25:52 -0400

Isss my backyard for today! (Taken with instagram)

Bathtime pt III (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:51:33 -0400

Bathtime pt III (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Bathtime pt II (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:50:34 -0400

Bathtime pt II (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Bath Time pt I (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:49:25 -0400

Bath Time pt I (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Three peas in a pod (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:03:35 -0400

Three peas in a pod (Taken with Instagram at Bull City, NC)

Made it! (Taken with Instagram at Beasley’s Chicken And...

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 21:11:25 -0400

Made it! (Taken with Instagram at Beasley’s Chicken And Honey)

Dudes ride the train (Taken with Instagram at Target Field)

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:39:04 -0400

Dudes ride the train (Taken with Instagram at Target Field)

Everyone’s a winner #grainbelt (Taken with Instagram at...

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:55:45 -0400

Everyone’s a winner #grainbelt (Taken with Instagram at Target Field)