Search results matching tag 'culture'

Cutting edge? I'm on the backside of the blade....

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:27:00 GMT

I take a perverse delight in my Luddite Lite view, but it's really as simple this. Anything that distances me from the natural world, from my connection to the stuff that comes in (and leaves) my body, from the delicious sensuous (even sensual) symphony of particles and light dancing on and in my body, this body, the one with a beating heart, well, deserves a critical eye.

I am materialistic--I like the stuff around me.
I am cheap--the air, the water, the earth I walk on, the gravity that keeps me grounded, are all free.
I am mortal--I am made of this same stuff, and will be returned to the same stuff, and my particles will be dancing on other conscious beings within a few decades, perhaps sooner.

Our iPods separate us from our voices, our kazoos and guitars, our hands and our harmonies.

My favorite teachers out there talk about making stuff. Tom Hoffman and Shawn Cornally cure meats, Mary Ann Reilly creates canvases, John Spencer writes music and stories, and on and on it goes.

I do not know any effective teachers who are not passionate about something they created by the fusion of their mind and their hands, about their connection to the stuff of creation.

I confess I love playing with iPods and iPads and anything else that keeps my brain buzzing with dopamine. They are a lovely distraction from our mortality.

If I am charged with teaching a child about the universe, though (and why else teach?), the natural world should be the distraction.

A good first step would be to show them that it even exists....

I'm not Amish, but I get the point--be wary of the things that would separate you from the things you believe matter.

Travelling UK

Anonymous — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 06:08:00 GMT

The UK's Most Popular Attractions from Cheap.co.uk is a good thing to get the information about the most popular attractions in the UK. The interactive map, with a very nice design, gives a quick link to the name, the picture, the number of visitors per year, and the official site of the attraction. The resource is very convenient to use in class, and suitable to advise students to use it at

How 10 Famous Landmarks Get Clean from mental_floss

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:45:00 GMT

How 10 Famous Landmarks Get Clean from mental_floss is a very interesting thing with pictures and video about the ten famous landmarks getting cleaned. The resource is quite suitable to use in class to speak about a number of topics - jobs (interesting, unususal, dangerous), places of interest (their everyday life). It can be a good reading exercise (intermediate students), especially

Science is sensuous

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:04:00 GMT

Many of my students are unaware they are being watched in class by critters other than teachers.

As a child gets up to sharpen her pencil, a salamander scurries back under a rock, a fish darts to the surface looking for food, a cockroach slides under some lettuce.

As they become aware, and they do over the months, they start to watch. They bang on the glass, overfeed the fish, feign fear of the cockroach.They fail to see how perceptive these critters are, at least for awhile, but over time start to get to know them.

I promise my kids very little at the beginning of the year except that they will know less in June than they do in September, that the natural world is bigger than they know, and that they are not just part of it, they belong to it.

This last part is a big deal.

***

If you do not know this world, the one that bathes us with oxygen, feeds us with grain and flesh, refreshes our thirst, you cannot love it.

And, for the most part, we don't.

If you hope to teach a child the abstract models needed for science, you best start by cultivating her love of the world instead of the sad task of earning good grades for the love of her parents.

Somewhere along the way, our children lose their way.
Somewhere along the way, we encouraged this.

We threaten our laggards with tales of woe should they fail to earn a diploma, a place on the honor roll, recognition as a National Merit Finalist. Children respond to fear, as we all do--it's what drives our politics and our economy.

Fear might generate enough engineers among us, but it does not create scientists.

***

You cannot love the natural world in the abstract; the natural world, by definition, is sensuous. We use abstract thought to make sense of the sensuous. That defines science.

If your child sees the beauty in Fibonacci numbers but fails to see the deeper beauty of a pine cone's spiral, you are raising a professional student, and we have more than enough of those.

If your child is "wasting" her time staring at a pine cone instead of logging hours of math homework to please the adults who keep her alive, she just might hold onto her curiosity and love of the world long enough to do something useful as an adult.

I am not saying learning math is useless--quite the contrary.

A child who loves the world develops a fondness for patterns, and will have a use for numbers.

Celebrating Families in Early Childhood Thanksgiving Festivities

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 09:00:00 GMT

Hi! I'm Ayn and I am a Ga. Pre-K teacher, serving 4 and 5 year olds in an inclusive setting. I share my classroom adventures on my blog, little illuminations.

Thanksgiving here in the U.S. is swiftly approaching. This week, we have had professional development and the rest of the week my class will be with my assistant and a sub while I'm am ever so busy in ~~teacher heaven,~~ I mean, at the 2012 NAEYC Annual Conference!!!!! Woot, woot, holla! (Sorry, got just a little excited there!)

When I return, we only have one week before we are out for Thanksgiving break. There won't be time to do many of the fun things we usually do in Pre-K, but there are some things that are a big part of my Thanksgiving teaching traditions and I can't skip them! In Georgia Pre-K, one of our standards is that students become aware of family and community celebrations and events, so that is the main thing we will be learning about and discussing in class.

Family Homework Project-Save A Turkey!

I don't usually send home homework in Pre-K, but when I do, it is usually an activity that the family can do together, then share the results. The Turkey In Disguise family project is a favorite every year and I've heard a few families with older siblings may already be planning Tom's disguise for this year! I send home a turkey blackline master on cardstock and ask each family to help disguise the turkey so that he will be spared from Thanksgiving dinner. This would be fun as a family, too! Just print out your favorite turkey coloring page (there are thousands on the internet) and have each member disguise him any way they like!

Turkey Cooking Tips

Every year, I like to ask the kids to sit down with me one on one and tell me how their family prepares the turkey or thanksgiving dinner. If a family usually eats something else, I ask them to tell me about that. It's a great time for them to practice their language skills. I compile the answers and share them with the families at the school Thanksgiving Feast. While the are not accurate enough to use as an exact recipe, they make for EXCELLENT reading!

Talkin' Turkey

We are famous for our colloquialisms in the South. I can't tell you how many times one of the kids has come to school and repeated something they've heard a family member say, usually with a little of their own spin on it. I like to give them part of the phrase and have THEM complete is for me. The answers are hilarious! Thanksgiving is the perfect time of year to have the kids share their answers. I think it also gives a little insight into how a 4 year old brain thinks!

Making Butter

We make butter using heavy whipping cream and our muscles. We pour it in a bowl pop in a marble and take turns shaking with all of our might! Usually the butter is ready by the time all 22 friends have had a turn to shake. We share the butter with our families at our school wide Family Feast.

Family Feast at School

Every year, our school administration cooks a large Thanksgiving feast and invites all the families to come in and eat with their children. It's a great time of food, fellowship and fun! (I usually don't get to take many pictures since my hands are usually full. The picture below is of the children waiting for their parents to join them so we can start serving.)

Expectations Are Everything!

Thanksgiving is a very big social occasion here in the south. Such occasions can be overwhelming for small children. One of the things we will be discussing is how the children's families celebrate and what to expect. It is so much less scary for kids when we give them a chance to talk about their fears or apprehensions!

Coming Soon!

Be sure to visit me at little illuminations soon! I'll be sharing my experiences at NAEYC and details about my meet up with some FANTASTIC Early Childhood Bloggers (you'll know most of them from here ;)!!!!

If you are lucky enough to make it to NAEYC, too, look for me, I'll be the one with the goofy ear to ear grin, looking like I've died and landed in teacher heaven!

Stop by and visit me anytime at littleilluminations.blogspot.com or visit the little illuminations fanpage on facebook!

What do you care to know about the world?

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:13:00 GMT

Teaching matters.

We owe it to our children to get it right.

What do you care to know about the world?

There's a place for what used to be called boredom, for empty spaces to slide into your mind. It's not particularly unpleasant, but it lacks the dopamine we've programmed our children, ourselves, to crave.

If you sit still long enough outside, you will see things, hear things, smell wondrous things you hardly knew existed. But you need to sit still. Without music, without a screen. Close your eyes and listen. Sniff. Touch the earth.

We train our children to believe that we have mastered our universe. We teach them how to avert their eyes. We answer their simplest questions ("Why are people poor?") with You're too young to understand...It's complicated...It will make sense when you're older. We actively work to make our children jaded.

Science teachers, like art teachers, have an obligation to teach children how to seek what's true, if we hope to teach them anything at all. We cannot tell them.

Has any young child not been charmed by the edge of a July pond, or by a tray of watercolor paint? Both teem with countless possibilities that cannot be measured or tested. We cede control when we hand a child a paintbrush, a magnifying glass, a few moments of unstructured time.

Before you dare restructure the world of a child--the heart of teaching--dare to ask yourself what do you care to know about this world? If you do not yet know, get out of the classroom until you do.

What do you care to know about the world?

I have stared into the eyes of animals as millions of my triceps muscle cells release calcium ions, triggering almost simultaneous contraction, driving the club between the eyes of the critter I am slaying.

It remains an awful moment for me, that last instant.

Awful comes from agheful, "worthy of respect or fear," full of awe, full of fear, a word now reduced to meaning "very bad." We've long lost our sense of awe, at least those running the show now--if we had it, we'd not destroy the world mindlessly.

Yet when I mindfully take a life, so that I may eat, I slide into a rich universe devoid of words, but not of feelings, in the most basic sense of the word--the rhythmic writhing flesh in my hands now quivers chaotically, if the blow is true.

Yet to do so in a classroom would be obscene, an affront to our children, an act of career suicide, and (*gasp*) a deviation from our lesson plans,. with every minute programmed to match a standard designed by folks who long ago lost touch with what matters.

What do you care to know about the world ?

As fundamental as this is, that we are here on a planet, inextricably linked to each other and to everything else alive, and to many things not, many of us live in worlds that are but shells of the fundamental one held up by the ground.

Just like the earthworm, we eat, we breathe, we toss shite from our backside, we entangle together to share genetic memories we pass on to new life, and we die. We're of the earth, and for those who believe that this is but a tiny journey to bide time until another world finds them, may earthy joy find you before your last breath.

And you will draw a last, agonal breath from this world, the only one we can know, the world of art, of science, of writhing life, of decay, of dirt, of us.

The world worth knowing...

Watercolor tray from Officemax site here.
Other photos ours, usual CC applies.

American Culture, Tradition, and Patriotism

Anonymous — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 08:30:00 GMT

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 778 4435 Family Child Care Partnerships Auburn University 36 8 5446 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Greetings from an American traveler! This summer my family and I have embarked on a journey across the states to celebrate our son’s graduation from high school. As I have contemplated what to put together for this blog coming out just after our country’s birthday celebration, I began thinking about patriotism, why we celebrate days like the Fourth of July, how we celebrate days like this and the traditions we follow, etc., etc. This lead me down a path of considering culture and what it means to be American. Which lead me back to thinking about why I decided to make it possible for the family to get in the car the night of June 14 and set out across the western states to experience our country.

Charles Miller, High School Grad (at last)

Disclaimer……this blog is very much about my personal (although professionally influenced) thoughts about being an American and the American culture and traditions that people share that make us Americans. It is not meant in any way to diminish any or be insensitive to other cultural heritage. I firmly believe there is a time and place to celebrate and promote other cultures, but during a time of year where we parade around the American flag, I’d like to take a few minutes to encourage you to think about what makes you an American and how that might be incorporated into your early care and education programs.

What is culture and how is it transmitted from one generation to the next?

According to lingualinks.com, “Cultural transmission is the process of passing on culturally relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values from person to person or from culture to culture” (1996). “For anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns” (http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/culture_1.htm). There is a vast amount of scholarly literature in the social development and anthropological fields of study that can be referenced about culture, cultural transmission, and social learning theory. In deference to making this blog the most reader-friendly as possible, I will not go into any more detail than to say that the basic premise is that children learn what they are taught…..if you provide opportunities for children in your program to learn about culture, they will learn it.

The Grand Tetons....a natural American icon.

Here are some things to think about when you contemplate program planning in the future and how you might renew or implement teaching the American culture and continuing traditions in your corner of our amazing United States:

1. So, just what does make a person American? Not just citizenship, but what is the American way? I believe there are certain ideals that Americans hold that make us unique in the world. Ideas like freedom of speech, rights to assemble, working hard for prosperity and success come to mind. How do you define being an American? Do you create learning/play opportunities that promote those ideals and beliefs?

Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park

2. How do you define your American culture and your traditions?

Back to our trip…..Doing this blog topic made me think about why I decided to take the family in a car to camp across 17 states and 2 provinces in 30 days this summer. When I was growing up, my parents had summers off as educators often do, and we would pack up a car or van every 3 years or so and head out to explore our country. It’s amazing how vast and diverse yet similar our country is. We started off in Georgia and have been through Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta (Canada), British Columbia (Canada), Washington, Oregon, California, and are now in Nevada. This afternoon (July 5) we are setting out for Utah again and then Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and back home. We are camping, and in a car (no DVD players…but ipods and cell phones are allowed). To me, this is an excellent way to experience our country and learn about being American……the vast expanses of lands, the ability to cross close boarders (between states) without military involvement, the ability to use the same currency and speak the same language and expect and receive similar goods and services over 5,000 miles. During this time we have had a chance not only to bond, but to tell our children about each state, ourselves, and our history. It has been a way to experience and further define our American culture within ourselves through the family tradition of travel.

Camping in Yellowstone...Great American Bison 20 yds from our tents!

Note: There is a difference between culture and tradition. Culture is a more broad, historically influenced way of being and considering ourselves. Traditions are more individualized and help display culture. You might think of culture as a set of beliefs with history behind them that define a group of people in a large context, and traditions are behaviors that allow you to see and demonstrate those beliefs.

3. What traditions are you passing down in your program that help children identify and demonstrate their American culture?

Trout fishing...3 keepers from Yellowstone Lake.

4. Patriotism….what is it? How do you convey it to children?

I leave you with those questions to ponder as you either continue in or plan for your new year with young minds who are just now learning what it means to be a person. How are you helping pass on the culture of Americanism?

Preview for July 31…….why travel is important for the educator and creating a virtual field trip.

~Dr. Ellaine B. Miller

Miller family experiencing the Redwood Forrest!

Blog entry by Dr. Ellaine B. Miller, PhD. Family Child Care Partnerships at Auburn University.www.humsci.auburn.edu/fccp

The beauty of making things

Anonymous — Sat, 26 May 2012 12:23:00 GMT

A lot of people have asked me how they can get a trolley like mine to play with. And I usually say, "Why don't you just make one?
Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

A child finds joy making things.
An adult finds release buying them instead.

One of the pleasures of compulsively tossing out words has been hearing from others.

Quilbilly is a science teacher who, not unexpectedly, likes to figure out how things work. I like to brew beer and fix typewriters, he likes to, well, smelt iron.

He wrote a lovely post describing his students' reactions to his hobby.
He makes it sound so simple:

"You really need just four things:

iron ore (the right kind of dirt), charcoal, a furnace, and a source of air."

He's right, of course, but it's the process that makes it joyful.

"And there is nothing more profoundly simple than staring into the depths of the coals and thinking about nothing and thinking about everything."Quilbilly

Mr. Rogers loved children for who they are, for who we are, for what we are. He showed children "how people make things," taking the magic woo woo out of technology and putting it back into people's hands. Things like sneakers, crayons, and fortune cookies. Harmonicas and pretzels, zippers and fortune cookies. Jeans. Kazoos. Dolls. Flashlights. Erasers. Tortilla chips. Towels. Plates. Trumpets. And money.

Mr. Rogers fostered interest in our world, and his passion to make the world accessible to children created far more scientists than our current efforts to standardize education ever will. Quilbill's handful of iron gleaned from dirt reconnects children to the earth and stardust that make us possible.

Thanks to my sis-in-law Jan for the heads-up of the first video, which can be found on pictures for sad children.

NGSS: The first "S" means "science"

Anonymous — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:50:00 GMT

As I sink deeper into the morass of words that pretends to advance science in the name of economic security (which is like asking a flower to open in order to fulfill an order for FTD), I find comfort in reading Walt Kelly's Pogo, a document at least as sophisticated as anything "managed" by Achieve, an organization of governors and business folks working to push "college and career readiness" as the primary purpose of public education. (They are starting to pay lip service to citizenry now...)

When you mix a corporate agenda with "science," you get oddly unscientific practices:

"Obtain and communicate information about..."

The above phrase appears nine times in the performance expectations of the prepubescent crowd (4th grade and under) in the draft of the Next Generation Science Standards. You could look it up.

Obtaining and communicating information is what business folks do. Science is not in the business of information, it's in the business of grasping how the natural world works. It starts with observation.

We're talking about children. The committee might consider renting one out, and setting it up on a beach somewhere. Observe what a young child does as she runs, crouches, runs, then crouches some more. She's observing. Sure, it's undirected, and yes, she'll need context and language and technological tools to help her along--but what she doesn't need is a formal education that confounds science with obtaining and communicating information.

We don't need science teachers and business leaders leading the charge here, we need child development specialists, we need pediatricians, we need Mommies and Daddies. Heck, we need could use a few children on the committee.

We got too much Howland Owl, a pedantic pricklish sort, and not enough Porky Pine, a wise, if cynical, denizen of the swamp. I'd make Grundoon the chile woodchunk or his sister Li'l Honey Bunny Ducky Downy Sweetie Chicken Pie Li'l Everlovin' Jelly Bean the chair.

Francis W. Parker had a few words to say about this long before public schools fell prey to the agenda of careerists more interested in the dubious concept of "global economy" than the interests of America and its children:

I wish to earnestly protest against making school-children wander though a long desert and wilderness of words before a few of them, who intellectually survive, can have the inestimable privileges of direct observation found in the laboratories of universities. When pupils in the lower schools study science throughout the course there will be a hundred students in our universities where now there is one.
Francis W. Parker, Talks on Pedagogics

Maybe, just maybe, elementary school teachers know a tad more about the Grundoons of this world than do Eli, Bill, and Arne. Maybe, just maybe, they'll do what they have always done when faced with nonsense imposed from on high.

Put a nice poster of George Washington on the window, close the door, ~~teach~~ and explore the world together.

Yes, of course, communication is a huge part of what scientists do--

but it's what they do after the science is done, to share their observations, to keep them honest.

The Walt Kelly cartoons used without permission, but hopefully fall under educational use.

I hope the Kelly family agrees. Let me know if you don't--we've chatted before. =)

What we risk losing

Anonymous — Sun, 20 May 2012 13:21:00 GMT

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
"The Second Coming," W.B. Yeats

I watched a grackle along the edge of our ocean yesterday.

It gallumphed down the surf's edge like a drunken sandpiper, got smacked with a wave, then fluttered back to the top of the now receding wave.

Over and over again.

I sat on the sand with Leslie, and we chatted about our grackle as it battled the wash. I love grackles, hands down my favorite bird, and this one was being particularly grackly. What would possess a bird to challenge the edge of the sea?

After a few minutes, the grackle answered my question--it nabbed a writhing sand crab, then picked it apart a few feet away. The grackle got its reward, and we got our story.
The sand crab did not fare as well.

***

There is a risk challenging those who hope to transform public education into data farms feeding the intricate morass we still call economics.

Look at the humorless smiles of those running the show, the lupine grins of Arne Duncan, of Bill Gates, of Eli Broad. They may even believe what they are spewing--it takes a certain lack of humor to get to reign over the destruction of things that matter.

They can hurt you, and will if you pose a threat to their goals.

But that's not the risk I am talking about. As much fun as it is to pretend otherwise, a few words shared among a very small community of teachers poses no threat at all to the ed "reformers" who value power over democracy.

The risk is falling into their language, into their world, into their ethos.
The risk is spending too many hours pouring over their dull documents (Next Generation Science Standards, anyone?), trying to parse out meaning of individual phrases when we should be calling out the process that created such a document.
The risk is weighing an offer to make real money sitting at the table breaking bread with them under the hum of fluorescent lights.
The risk is not losing the battle--I am not so blind not to see that any remnants of "public" and "democracy" are likely to be crushed for the foreseeable future--the risk is losing ourselves.

I am a happy person, blessed with the grace of a grackle wrestling with the ocean for its food.
I am a mortal person, as doomed as the sand crab picked apart by the grackle.

A grackle will still be wrestling with the ocean long after I am gone. So long as grackles continue to be grackles, our children will have larger stories to learn than the ones foisted on them in the name of the global economy.

It takes little courage to tweet in an echo chamber.

Live well, be part of your community, grow some food, use your hands, love.

Bill Gates from Seattle Weekly.

Grackle from Wikipedia via CC 3.0 by mdq