The daily meanderings of a teacher

Bird Droppings November 15, 2026

A Letter to My Former Students: What You Taught Me

Dear Students,

I went looking for a sunrise this morning. It was twenty-seven degrees, and a bank of fog rising off the lake hid much of the horizon. I knew the sun was coming up. I simply could not see it from where I was sitting. So I moved. I looked from another direction. Along the way, I counted thirteen deer, watched frost catch the morning light, and remembered stories attached to an old bridge.

Somewhere in my wandering, I started thinking about you. I wonder how often I sat in a classroom believing I understood what was in front of me when I needed to change where I was looking. You gave me plenty of opportunities to learn that lesson.

I came into teaching with ideas about what you needed to know. There were lessons to prepare, expectations to meet, and things I thought I could explain. Sometimes I got so caught up in teaching that I needed you to remind me to pay attention.

You taught me to listen to a question before deciding what it meant. You taught me that silence could hold understanding, uncertainty, fear, or simply a need for more time. I could not know which without getting to know the person sitting there.

One student helped me understand that an answer did not have to be spoken to demonstrate learning. Pointing opened a way for that student to show what was understood. I had been waiting for words when another doorway was already there. I still think about that.

How many doorways do we walk past because we are looking for the one we expected? Some of you needed to move. Some needed a quiet place. Some needed to talk before you could begin working. Others needed me to stop talking long enough for you to think. And sometimes you needed something I had not considered.

You taught me to ask what happened before the behavior I was seeing. What had the morning been like? What happened in the hallway? What had I asked, and how had I asked it? I did not always find an answer, but asking changed how I approached you.

There were still responsibilities and boundaries. We had work to do together. But knowing more about you helped me make better decisions about how we could do it. Some of my favorite lessons began with something that was not in the lesson plan. An animal in the room. A feather. An old object sitting on a shelf. Something you had walked past for weeks before finally asking, “What is that?”

That question might lead us somewhere I had never intended to go. You brought your experiences to it. Someone else added a story. I learned something, and we had a reason to keep looking. You helped me understand the value of a classroom where curiosity had room to grow.

When some of you called our room a sanctuary, that word stayed with me. I wanted you to have a place where you could settle enough to take a chance on learning. You helped me see how much the feeling of a room mattered. I also know I missed things.

There were questions I could have asked more gently and moments when I could have waited longer. There were days when I was tired or too certain of my own explanation. Looking back means remembering those moments too. I hope I became more willing to learn as the years went by.

Recently, a former student who is now a teacher wrote about being exhausted and wondering whether she was doing enough. Her words stayed with me. I remembered the student I knew, and I thought about the teacher she has become. I wanted to offer something useful. But before I could do that, I needed to listen. There you were, teaching me again.

Over the years, I have used the word “osmotic” to describe the teacher I hoped to become—a facilitator and fellow learner, someone who could help learning happen while remaining open to being changed by it. You gave that idea meaning. You challenged my assumptions, shared your interests, questioned my explanations, and occasionally made me laugh when I was taking myself far too seriously.

I was your teacher, and I learned from you. This morning, the sun eventually came into view. By then, I had already taken photographs of things I would have missed if I had stayed in one place waiting for the picture I expected. I think about that as I write to you.

I hope something from our time together has remained useful in your life. A question, perhaps. A story. The memory of a place where you felt welcome. Please know that something of you remains in mine. Thank you for what you taught me. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

Dr. Frank Bird
Bird droppings November 13, 2026

A Letter to Teachers from a Teacher

Dear Teacher,
Maybe you stayed late again today. Maybe you brought work home and haven’t opened it because you are too tired. Maybe you love teaching and still find yourself wondering whether you can keep doing it. I don’t know exactly what your day held. Before offering advice, I would like to hear about it.

I started teaching in public school later in life, after working in other settings. I remember getting buried in IEPs, curriculum maps, committees, meetings, and paperwork. There were days when the work surrounding teaching crowded out the work I wanted to do with students.

I remember having to argue for a reading program that respected two young men sitting in my classroom. Getting them appropriate materials took conversations, research, emails, and more persistence than it should have. They needed help learning to read. I needed someone to listen when I explained what wasn’t working. So when you say you are overwhelmed, I want to understand what is happening before I tell you how to fix it. You deserve that much.

Being exhausted does not settle the question of whether you belong in teaching. Neither does one difficult lesson, an unanswered email, or a day when you could not reach a student despite trying everything you knew.
Sometimes there really is more work than one person can reasonably finish. We need to be able to say that honestly, without making the teacher feel guilty for needing help.

My first suggestion is to find someone you can speak freely with. Someone who will let you finish a sentence. Someone with whom you can say, “This part is getting away from me,” and begin figuring out what support would actually help.

You deserve a conversation where you do not have to pretend everything is fine.
And when you have a little room to breathe, think about something in teaching that still interests you. A question a child asked. A book you want to share. Something you could bring into the room that would make you curious, too. There may be a colleague who could help make room for that moment.

I have often brought animals into my classrooms. Sometimes a gecko gave us something to gather around, something to wonder about together. Your opening may be entirely different. I hope someone helps you find it.

That moment won’t finish the paperwork or resolve an unreasonable demand. Those things still need attention. But you deserve opportunities to experience the teaching you love while you work through the things that are wearing you down.

I cannot sit beside every teacher who reads this, although I wish I could sit with a few more. I can offer this encouragement: tell someone what you need. Be specific if you can. Ask for company, help with a lesson, an explanation, or someone willing to listen.

And those of us who have been teaching for years need to make time to answer.
You should not have to reach the end of yourself before someone pulls up a chair.

With care,
Dr. Frank Bird
Bird Droppings November 14, 2026

Learning to Focus Our Own Lens

Wandering around looking for deer and chasing the sunrise this morning, I found myself wondering: How do we know if we are good teachers? I joked that perhaps I could give students a little questionnaire. “Am I a good teacher? Yes or no?” If only it were that simple.

Sometimes we receive a note. A former student remembers something we said years ago. A student tells us how much they enjoyed our class or how much they learned. Those moments matter. But many days pass with no note, and we go home wondering whether we reached anyone.

A few minutes of observation can leave a great deal unseen, too. Someone walking into a classroom may see a student sitting quietly. The teacher may know how much trust it took for that student to enter the room at all. Understanding what we are seeing takes time, attention, and a willingness to ask.

As I thought about supporting another teacher, I caught myself wanting to explain what I could see. After all these years, surely, I could offer an answer or two. But I kept coming back to the same thought: I want that teacher to see it for themself. Then binoculars came to mind.

When I hand my binoculars to one of my grandchildren, I must remind them to adjust the focus. I wear glasses. My eyes are different from theirs. What looks clear to me may look blurry to them, even though we are looking at the same deer, the same bird, the same patch of woods. I can help them find where to look. They still have to focus with their own eyes.

Perhaps that is part of what we can offer one another as teachers. We can sit together and ask, “What did you notice? What happened before that? What did the student do next? What do you think made the difference?” And then we need to listen. Their answers may bring something into focus for us, too.

I think about the objects in my old classroom and office. A feather, an old stickball stick, a photograph. A student might pass something for weeks before finally asking about it. That question could open a conversation neither of us had planned. The object had been there all along. On that day, something caught their attention. Learning often happened that way in my room. I could make space for it, pay attention, and be ready when the question came.

I am still pondering how we recognize good teaching. A student’s note is one piece. What students learn and can do is another. So are the questions they begin asking, their willingness to try again, and the growing confidence to share what they think. We need to keep looking at those pieces, including the ones that tell us something needs to change.

For a teacher who is tired and questioning everything, another person’s patient attention may help them begin looking again. This morning, somewhere between a deer sighting and a conversation about teaching, I realized I have spent years reminding my grandchildren to adjust the binoculars. I am still learning to offer teachers that same room to focus. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird
Bird Droppings November 12, 2026

A Few Seconds to Notice

It is amazing what a few seconds can change. This morning, while driving my familiar back roads, I encountered fourteen deer, three crows, four squirrels, and a red-shouldered hawk. The sky was painted in shades of orange as the sun slowly appeared. Nothing unusual, really, for a morning in rural Georgia. Yet somehow, everything seemed extraordinary. I could have driven past most of it without noticing. I could have been thinking about the day’s responsibilities, the work waiting on my computers, assignments needing attention, or anything else occupying my mind.

Instead, I looked. I stopped for a few seconds, watched, and occasionally took a photograph.

Someone commented on my morning photographs, and it struck me that anyone could have seen what I saw. Nothing particularly special about where I was standing or the road I was traveling. The deer were there. The hawk was there. The sunrise was there. All someone had to do was look.

I began thinking about how often this same idea applies to teaching. For more than fifty years, I have worked with children and young people, many of whom carried labels that seemed to define them before anyone really got to know them. Learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders, autism, and a host of other classifications sometimes became more important than the children themselves. We were so busy looking at what was wrong that we occasionally forgot to notice what was right.

I remember a student who was selectively mute. Traditional reading assessments required spoken responses. But what happens when a child understands something and simply cannot communicate that understanding in the way the assessment demands? The solution was remarkably simple. Instead of requiring a spoken answer, I let the student point. Suddenly, a way to demonstrate understanding was there all along. The doorway was there all along. We simply needed to notice it.

I have often wondered how many children spend their days waiting for someone to recognize a doorway that has been overlooked. John Dewey wrote extensively about experience and education. Learning was not simply transferring information from teacher to student. It was an active process involving observation, experience, reflection, and participation. For me, this is part of what I call the Osmotic Teacher.

An Osmotic Teacher is not merely someone standing in front of a classroom delivering knowledge. The teacher is a facilitator, an observer, a participant, and perhaps most importantly, a learner. Sometimes the child teaches the teacher. Sometimes the greatest lesson of the day never appears in the lesson plan. I think back to the classrooms I tried to create over the years. Comfortable places with sofas, aquariums, animals, and opportunities for conversation. Places where students could feel safe enough to be themselves. I called them sanctuary classrooms, but perhaps the sanctuary began long before the furniture was arranged, or the first aquarium was filled. Perhaps it began the moment a child realized someone had noticed them. Noticed they were struggling. Noticed they were frightened. Noticed they had something important to say, even when they couldn’t find the words.

And sometimes, noticed they were capable of far more than anyone expected. We talk a great deal about the importance of relationships in education. We discuss trust, respect, empathy, and understanding. Yet I wonder whether all those things begin with something much simpler. A few seconds to notice. A few seconds to recognize that the child sitting quietly in the corner may have an extraordinary story. A few seconds to see that challenging behavior might be communicating something we have not yet understood. A few seconds to realize that a student who appears disengaged might simply be waiting for someone to find a different doorway.

This morning, fifteen deer and a red-shouldered hawk reminded me of something I have believed throughout my teaching career. Noticing is only the beginning. What we do with what we notice is what makes the difference. I can photograph a hawk and appreciate its beauty. But when I notice a child, I have an opportunity to change something far more important.

Perhaps a lesson. Perhaps a relationship. Perhaps the direction of a life. And perhaps that is why, even after all these years, I still find myself thinking about teaching while driving down a country road, watching the sunrise. There is always something worth noticing. We simply have to take a few seconds to look. I will go looking for another sunrise tomorrow. I wonder what I will notice. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird
Bird Droppings • November 11, 2026

What We Notice When We Slow Down

I went looking for a sunrise this morning. I often do. There are places along my morning drive where I can watch the sky change, familiar trees and fences that somehow offer a different picture each day. I can return to the same place with the same camera, and there will still be something I have not seen. This morning, the colors caught my attention. Later, looking at the photograph, I found myself drawn to a heart in the metal gate. I had photographed the whole scene, but I had to look again to appreciate what was right in front of me.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the colors that I overlook the heart. I have been thinking about how often that happens in a classroom. Certain things demand our attention immediately. A student refuses to work. Someone interrupts. An argument begins. A child sits silently while everyone else gets started. We have a lesson planned, a schedule to follow, and something we are supposed to accomplish before the bell rings. Our attention goes where it seems to be needed. Yet what we notice first may leave us with questions we have not taken time to ask.

What happened before this child walked into the room? What does this assignment ask them to risk? Have they learned that trying can lead to embarrassment? Is there someone here they trust enough to ask for help? I could see behavior. Understanding it required a relationship, and relationships took time. Over the years, I tried to make my classroom a place where that time was possible. There were sofas, animals, conversations, and moments when listening mattered more than getting to the next item on my lesson plan. My students called the room a sanctuary. I still carry that word with me.

A sanctuary gave us somewhere to begin. We could sit down, catch our breath, and perhaps find a way into the work together. Sometimes I needed to change what I was doing before a student could change what they were doing. Sometimes I needed to look again. That is part of what I keep returning to when I think about the Osmotic Teacher. I bring my experience and preparation into the classroom, but I also have to remain willing to learn from the people sitting there. A student may show me something my plans did not account for. Whether I recognize it depends partly on how closely I am paying attention. My morning photographs give me practice.

I have taken pictures of the same tree day after day. I know where it stands. Still, some mornings a photograph of it catches me by surprise. I look through the pictures afterward and linger over one I almost passed by. There is something hopeful in that. Familiarity does not have to mean we are finished discovering. Today, a heart in a gate held my attention after the bright sky first drew me in. It has me wondering what else deserves another look in my photographs, in my teaching, and in the people I think I already know. I will probably go looking for another sunrise tomorrow. I wonder what I will notice. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird
Bird Droppings November 10, 2026

When the Students Tell Us Whether It Is Working

I have been wandering back through some memories of teaching in Warner Robins in the mid-1970s. Funny how a conversation today can take me back fifty years and leave me thinking about something I am still trying to understand. I had encountered Foxfire in a bookstore in Pennsylvania a few years earlier. I bought Foxfire 2, and somewhere between reading it and working with a group of teenagers, I began wondering what would happen if I gave students more say in their learning.

I taught at a private school, working with teenagers who had learning disabilities. The school’s beginnings were personal. The principal had a son who was profoundly deaf, and she wanted educational opportunities for him that she had struggled to find. A mother saw a need and acted on it. That seems a pretty good place for a school to begin.

By the time I was there, I was trying my own version of what I understood from Foxfire. The students chose books they wanted to read. We worked on magazines. Their interests gave us somewhere to start, and we went from there. My reading scores went up tremendously. Looking back, I cannot assign every bit of that improvement to one decision or one approach. I do know that giving students a choice mattered. Reading became connected to something they wanted to do.

Another part of that experience struck me as I talked about it today. I had considerable freedom in that classroom. No one was continually coming in to evaluate whether I was following a prescribed sequence. As I remember it, much of my appraisal came down to what the principal’s son thought of the class. He was one of my students. That sounds a little corny when I say it aloud. Yet it leaves me with a question. What did that child experience in my classroom?

Since then, I have spent many years filling out paperwork, attending meetings, examining scores, and trying to explain what was happening with students. Those things can provide information. But I keep returning to the child sitting in the room. Did he find a reason to read? Did he find a reason to read? Was I paying enough attention to recognize it? I was learning to teach, and the students were giving me information every day. Their choices told me something. So did their interest, their frustration, and the work they were willing to take on. I had to decide what to do with what they showed me.

Years later, I began using the idea of the osmotic teacher—a teacher who facilitates and learns alongside students, who remains open to what comes into the room. I did not have that language in Warner Robins. I was beginning to experience something I would spend decades trying to name. Giving students choices also gave me responsibilities. I had to help them find their way into the reading. I had to notice where they struggled and consider what might help. Their interests were a beginning. Teaching still required thought, preparation, and a willingness to change direction.

Perhaps that is one reason Foxfire stayed with me. It gave me a way to think about the relationship between a student’s life and the work of a classroom. There was room for curiosity. There was room for the teacher to discover something, too.

As I look back across the years, I realize how much of my teaching has grown from those encounters. A student chooses a book. A story catches someone’s attention. Something happens that asks me to reconsider what I thought I knew. I am still reconsidering.

This morning, the tree I photograph every day stood against a sky that changes every day. I return with my camera, often to nearly the same spot, and still find something worth noticing. Familiarity does not mean I have seen everything. I wonder whether I could carry that same expectation into every classroom. Would it be better if, alongside asking how much material we covered, we took time to ask students what helped them learn and listened long enough to let their answers influence tomorrow? After all these years, I still have something to learn from their answers. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird
Bird Droppings November 9, 2026

When Teaching Gets in the Way of Teaching

I have been thinking a great deal lately about teaching, learning, and the strange things we sometimes do in the name of education. After more than fifty years of wandering in and out of classrooms, I am still learning what it means to be a teacher. Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all. A teacher friend recently shared a thought about not having enough time to really teach because of all the curriculum she was required to cover. I suspect many teachers understand exactly what she meant.

Somewhere along the way, we began confusing covering material with teaching children. We began measuring how much information was presented rather than how much understanding was developed. We started watching clocks, pacing guides, and test scores, sometimes forgetting to watch the children sitting in front of us. I have often wondered how many children we leave behind in our efforts to leave no child behind.

Over the past several days, I have reflected on practical principles that have guided my teaching. They did not come from a textbook or a professional development seminar. They came from children, from mistakes, from conversations, and occasionally from those wonderful moments when something happened in a classroom that I never could have planned.

One of the first things I learned was that trust must come before performance. A child who doesn’t trust the adult standing in front of them is unlikely to risk making a mistake, asking a question, or admitting they don’t understand. I remember students who arrived in my classroom carrying years of failure, frustration, and labels. Some had become remarkably good at avoiding anything that might expose another weakness. Their behavior was often described as defiance, disruption, or noncompliance. I began wondering what happened before the behavior.

In behavior analysis, we often speak of antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. For years, schools have devoted tremendous energy to consequences: detentions, suspensions, lost privileges, and various reward and punishment systems. But what happens when we change the antecedent? What happens when a child walks into a room where they feel safe? Where someone knows their name, listens to their story, and offers a place to sit without immediately demanding something?

My classroom gradually became something of a living room. There were sofas, tables, animals, aquariums, and occasionally the sounds of a flute or water moving through a small fountain. Some colleagues thought it was cluttered. Perhaps it was. But the children found places to work, talk, think, and sometimes be. I called it a sanctuary.

It was never about the furniture. It was about the relationships and the atmosphere we created together. The classroom changed as the students changed, and I changed along with them. That brings me to another lesson. We need to teach the child standing in front of us, not some imaginary average child described in a curriculum guide.

I once worked with a student who was selectively mute. Traditional reading assessments required spoken responses, which created an obstacle before we even began measuring what the child knew. By allowing pointing rather than speaking, we discovered abilities that had been hidden by the assessment itself. The doorway was there all along. We had to recognize it.

I have also come to believe that we spend far too much time asking children for answers and not nearly enough time asking how they arrived at those answers. In mathematics especially, the thinking is often more valuable than the answer. A wrong answer may reveal an extraordinary thought process. A correct answer may reveal little more than a memorized procedure. When we ask a child to explain their thinking, we are inviting them into the learning process rather than simply judging the result.

Sometimes the hardest thing for a teacher is to remain quiet long enough for a child to think.

Learning should also be something children experience. I have always appreciated the Foxfire approach because it recognizes that learning is not simply transferring information from one person to another. We construct it through experience, reflection, conversation, and participation. An aquarium can become a biology lesson. A garden can become mathematics. A walk through the woods can become literature, science, history, and perhaps even philosophy. And sometimes a child teaches us something we never knew we needed to learn.

Years ago, I began thinking about three kinds of teachers: parasitic, symbiotic, and osmotic. The osmotic teacher, as I envision that person, doesn’t merely deliver information. The teacher is participating in an ongoing exchange of ideas, learning alongside students, watching, listening, and adjusting. Teaching becomes less about controlling every moment and more about creating the conditions for discovery.

That does not mean abandoning instruction or expectations. I have long believed in a simple process I learned through experience: tell, show, test, and check. Explain something, demonstrate it, invite the learner to try, and then check for understanding. If it does not work, find another way.

My late Aunt Margaret participated in an adult literacy program years ago that used the expression, “Each one teach one.” I have always liked that thought. It recognizes that teaching and learning are human exchanges, not simply institutional procedures.

We also need to respect the many different ways children think. Some need to see something. Others need to touch it, hear it, discuss it, or move through it. Some need more time. Others need a different question.

A teacher’s responsibility is not to make every child learn in precisely the same way. It is to keep looking for the doorway through which that child can enter. Perhaps principals have an especially important role in all of this. A principal can create the conditions in which teachers feel trusted enough to take risks, adapt instruction, and know their students. Or a principal can create an atmosphere in which everyone is so concerned about compliance that little room remains for curiosity. Teachers need sanctuaries, too.

Recently, I have been thinking about artificial intelligence and the way conversations develop. What we say, what came before, and the context surrounding an exchange can change what happens next. It has reminded me again how important antecedents are in human learning. We cannot always control what a child brings into our classroom. But we can influence what happens after they arrive.

I wonder sometimes whether the greatest obstacle to learning is not a lack of information but our failure to notice what is happening around us. We move so quickly to the next standard, the next assessment, the next lesson, that we overlook the child still trying to make sense of the last one.

Perhaps we need to slow down.

Perhaps we need to listen before we explain.

Perhaps we need to remember that education is not simply preparation for life. It is life happening in front of us.

After all these years, I still believe the most important quality a teacher can possess is a willingness to remain a learner. The moment I believe I have nothing left to learn from a child is probably the moment I should stop teaching. And perhaps that is the heart of those ten practical principles I have been thinking about. Build trust. Understand behavior. Create sanctuary. Value thinking. Know the child. Make learning experiential. Listen. Adapt. Respect differences. And never stop learning. They are not ten separate rules so much as ten ways of looking at the same human experience.

I keep coming back to one question. How many children do we fail to see because we are moving too fast? Perhaps the answer is not another program, another test, or another curriculum. Perhaps it begins with simply seeing the child. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart. Namaste.

My friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
bird
Bird Droppings November 6, 2026

The Moon Was There All Along

Some mornings the sky simply takes your breath away. This morning was one of those mornings. I started out in the darkness, following roads I have traveled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times. The crescent moon hung in the sky, and there was just enough light along the horizon to suggest something special might be coming. Over the years, I’ve learned to pay attention to those little suggestions.

As the morning unfolded, brilliant oranges, pinks, and golds stretched across the horizon. Fog settled into the valleys and drifted across the reservoir, softening the landscape and giving everything an almost mystical appearance. I hurried toward the reservoir, hoping the colors would hold long enough for a few photographs. That is always a gamble. Sometimes the most spectacular colors disappear in seconds. Other mornings they linger, changing almost imperceptibly as the sun climbs. This morning they lingered.

I have photographed the same places for years. Once, I spent a month or two photographing virtually the same view every morning. Not one photograph was identical. The trees were the same, the road was the same, and the horizon had not moved. Yet every morning offered something different. Perhaps that is one reason I continue getting up before sunrise.

Something new is always waiting to be seen. I drove along Deer Road, looking at the pastures and fence lines. Initially, there were no deer. I had almost resigned myself to a morning of beautiful skies without any wildlife encounters. But something told me to go back.

I returned toward the pasture, where the old board fence had several missing boards. Just as I approached, a doe suddenly came through the fence and crossed the road in front of me.

I stopped and gave her a moment to settle before taking her photograph. Then I turned and discovered another doe on the opposite side of the road. She appeared ready to follow.

Another photograph. Another unexpected moment. It reminded me of yesterday’s encounter with the doe and her three youngsters, grazing beside the road on a morning when I had not expected to see any deer at all.I sometimes wonder about these little coincidences.

Carl Jung used the term synchronicity to describe meaningful coincidences that seem connected even when no obvious causal relationship exists. One of his best-known accounts involved a patient describing a dream about a golden scarab. As she talked, Jung heard a tapping at the window. When he opened it, he discovered a beetle resembling the one in her dream.

The event became meaningful because of its timing and its connection to what they were discussing. I am not suggesting that the deer somehow knew I was coming or that the universe arranged their appearance for my benefit. Deer have their own reasons for moving through the woods and crossing roads.But I do find myself wondering about the relationship between being present, paying attention, and recognizing moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

Had I continued driving instead of turning around, I would have missed those deer. Had I stayed in bed another thirty minutes, I might have missed the sunrise. Had I been preoccupied with everything waiting for me at home, I might have driven past without seeing much of anything.

Perhaps what Jung called synchronicity sometimes begins with our willingness to notice.

I think about that in terms of teaching as well.

For years, I tried to create classrooms where students could discover things for themselves. I filled rooms with books, animals, aquariums, plants, and opportunities to explore. I wanted students to ask questions, make connections, and occasionally find something they had not been looking for. Learning seldom follows a perfectly straight line. Sometimes the most important lesson is the one that interrupts the lesson we had planned. John Dewey understood the importance of experience in education. But experience alone is not enough. We must reflect on what we experience, make connections, and let those experiences shape what comes next.

Perhaps my morning drives are a little like that. I go looking for deer and discover a sunrise.

I go looking for a photograph and find myself thinking about Jung.

I watch the fog drifting across a pasture and remember students who found something meaningful in a classroom full of living things. One experience leads to another.

And I have come to appreciate something else. The landscape does not need to change dramatically to offer something new. Sometimes all that changes is the light, the clouds, the fog, or the angle from which we are looking. The same might be said of people. We can encounter someone day after day and still discover something new if we are willing to look carefully enough.

This morning, the sky was crisscrossed with aircraft condensation trails. They added another pattern to an already remarkable sky. Even those changing atmospheric conditions became part of the morning’s picture. Nothing stays quite the same. Eventually, I headed home for breakfast, my morning medicine, and the responsibilities waiting for me. Photographs to sort through, schoolwork to complete, and the ordinary concerns that seem to accompany every day.

But for a little while, none of those things mattered quite as much as the light spreading across the horizon and two deer appearing unexpectedly along a familiar road. I have often written that the deer don’t wear watches. Apparently, neither does the sunrise. Both arrive on their own schedules, whether I am ready or not.

Maybe the lesson this morning is simply that we cannot control every moment, but we can learn to recognize the beauty in the moments we are given. The moon was there all along. The deer were somewhere beyond the fence. And the sunrise was waiting for anyone willing to look.

Perhaps the greatest discoveries are not always found by searching harder, but by paying closer attention. Please keep all the children in harm’s way in your hearts and on your minds. Namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird
Bird Droppings November 5, 2026

The Deer Don’t Wear Watches, and Neither Does the Journey

It was a gloomy morning in northeast Georgia. The clouds hung low, rain threatened, and I tried to finish my morning routine before the weather changed. I had dictated my daily Bird Droppings and stopped at one of my familiar places along the road to upload it. Nothing particularly unusual about that. I have stopped there hundreds of times. But this morning was different.

A doe and her three youngsters stood beside the road, quietly grazing. I suspect they were the same four deer I had encountered earlier in the spring, when the little ones were considerably smaller. Here they were again, months later, going about their morning without the slightest concern for my schedule. The doe noticed me and began to move. I stopped completely. No sudden movements, no effort to get closer, no attempt to interfere. I simply watched. For a few moments, our world overlapped.

The light was terrible for photography. The delayed exposure made it hard to capture a clear image, but I managed to get all four deer in one photograph. It wasn’t a perfect picture, but it was a perfect moment. I have written before that the deer don’t wear watches. They don’t concern themselves with appointments, deadlines, or the thousand little obligations we humans construct to organize our lives. They live within the rhythms of the natural world. I sometimes wonder whether we have become so concerned with managing our time that we have forgotten how to experience it.

Carl Jung wrote about synchronicity, those meaningful coincidences that seem to connect events in ways that go beyond ordinary cause and effect. I have been thinking about Jung quite a bit lately. Perhaps these encounters are simply coincidences. Perhaps the deer were grazing where deer have always grazed, and I happened to arrive at precisely the right moment. But does explaining an encounter diminish its meaning? I don’t think so.

Over fifty years of teaching, I have found that some of the most important moments in a classroom happened when I stopped trying to control everything. A student would ask an unexpected question. A conversation would wander away from the lesson plan. A child who had remained silent for weeks would suddenly offer an observation that changed the direction of our discussion. Those moments rarely appeared in the curriculum guide.

John Dewey understood that experience was central to learning. Learning was not simply transferring information from one person to another. It emerged through interaction, reflection, and engagement with the world around us.

I have often described three kinds of teachers: parasitic, symbiotic, and osmotic. The osmotic teacher doesn’t merely deliver information but participates in the learning experience, allowing ideas and understanding to move in both directions. Perhaps watching deer requires something of the same disposition. If I had moved toward the doe, she might have taken her youngsters into the woods. If I had insisted on getting the perfect photograph, I might have lost the experience entirely. Instead, I stopped and allowed the moment to unfold.

I think about the children I have taught who needed precisely that kind of patience. Children whose behavior challenged conventional expectations, whose learning did not follow the prescribed sequence, whose trust could not be demanded but had to be earned. Sometimes the doorway was there all along. We adults simply kept knocking on the wrong door.

I travel a gravel road regularly, winding through trees that change with the seasons. In the spring, the woods awaken with new growth. Summer brings deep green shadows. Autumn scatters leaves across the gravel, and winter opens views that remain hidden during the warmer months. It is the same road, yet it is never quite the same journey. Perhaps that is true of education. Perhaps it is true to grow older.

At seventy-seven, I am still a student, still taking graduate courses, still considering opportunities to teach, and still trying to understand the pieces of a puzzle I have been assembling for most of my life. Just this morning, I was thinking about an application I submitted to teach an online undergraduate special education course. A long shot, perhaps. But then again, I have never been particularly good at deciding that the journey is finished. There is always another possibility, another question, another road to explore. And sometimes, when we least expect it, a doe and her three youngsters are waiting beside that road. I have been thinking about how much of life we spend looking for answers when perhaps we should be paying more attention to the questions. How much time we spend searching for meaningful experiences when meaning may already be standing quietly beside us.

The deer were not there for my benefit. They were simply living their lives. Yet their presence changed my morning. The clouds were still there. The rain was still coming. My obligations had not disappeared. But something had shifted. I drove away feeling better than I had when I arrived. Maybe that is enough. Sometimes observation is participation enough. And sometimes the most important lesson of the morning comes not from a book, a classroom, or a carefully prepared lesson plan, but from four deer grazing quietly beside a country road. The deer don’t wear watches. Perhaps, every now and then, we shouldn’t either. Peace, my friends, please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

docbird
Bird Droppings November 3–4, 2026
Sometimes the Lesson Is in the Interruption

Life has a way of arranging lessons we never planned to teach or learn. Over the past two days, I have been reminded repeatedly that the most meaningful experiences seldom fit neatly into a lesson plan, a calendar, or even the expectations we have for ourselves. I have been thinking again about Carl Jung and synchronicity, those seemingly unrelated events that somehow find their way into the same moment. Perhaps there is no mysterious explanation. Perhaps we simply become more aware of the connections when we slow down enough to notice them. Yet I continue to find that the pieces of my life have an interesting way of coming together.
Yesterday morning began with the sky, the lake, and my usual wandering through the countryside. There is something about those early hours when the world has not quite awakened. The deer, the birds, the changing light, and even the absence of a spectacular sunrise offer their own lessons. Nature does not operate according to my schedule. The deer do not wear watches, and the sun does not rise for my camera. I have spent much of my life watching, listening, and wondering. Perhaps that is why I have always believed that observation is at the heart of good teaching.
Over the past several days, my grandson Henry has provided more than a few reminders of that belief. Henry spent the night with us, something he managed to arrange with considerable persuasion. He is becoming quite skilled at negotiating with his grandparents. The agreement included a bath, though that was hardly a sacrifice since he loves taking baths.
The next morning, we looked through books, including one we had created together with illustrations and caricatures of Henry and me. He quickly noticed that Grandma looked realistic while he and I looked more like cartoon characters. His questions were genuine, and his observations were remarkably precise. I have often said that children see things adults have learned to overlook.
Henry had also been making a tractor-trailer from cardboard boxes. That simple activity brought back a memory from more than seventy years ago, a red metal Tonka livestock tractor-trailer my father brought home from a National Safety Conference in Chicago around 1954. That truck is still upstairs in our toy room. Think about that for a moment. A toy given to a little boy in Pennsylvania more than seventy years ago is still part of the world his grandson explores today. My father could hardly have imagined that his gift would become a connection between generations.
Henry was also selecting toys to take to his father’s new apartment. Many of those toys had belonged to his father when he was a boy. Watching that little process brought tears to my eyes. Childhood moves along, sometimes quietly, sometimes far too quickly. The toys remain, but the children grow up, have children of their own, and begin making new homes. Perhaps this is another form of synchronicity, or perhaps simply the continuity of life.
Meanwhile, I have been immersed in mathematics. At seventy-seven, I find myself once again a student, working through fraction models, division strategies, mathematical discussions, and journal reflections. I sometimes wonder how many people my age are sitting at a computer struggling with virtual pattern blocks and trying to understand why a particular representation makes sense. The fascinating part is that I am not simply learning mathematics. I am watching teachers and children think about mathematics.
One third-grade student, Siena, was solving a problem involving a turtle eating one-sixth of a cucumber each day for twenty-six days. She organized the sixths into groups, finding four whole cucumbers and two-sixths remaining. What interested me most was not the answer but the teacher’s questions. How did you do that? How did you get that? How did you come up with that? The teacher didn’t rush to demonstrate the correct procedure. She listened, asked questions, and let the child explain her thinking.
Another student, Ariana, worked through a problem involving bags of sunflower seeds and bird feeders. She found that two and one-fourth bags could fill eighteen feeders when each required one-eighth of a bag. Again, the teacher wanted to understand the thinking behind the answer. I keep returning to that idea.
For years I have described three approaches to teaching: parasitic, symbiotic, and osmotic. The osmotic teacher doesn’t simply deliver information; they create an environment where learning can occur through interaction, observation, questioning, and shared experience. Watching these mathematics lessons reminded me of classrooms I tried to create over the years, places where students could think aloud, make mistakes, and explore ideas without fear of embarrassment.
But being a student again has also reminded me how frustrating learning can be. I spent considerable time trying to manipulate geometric shapes on a computer screen. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, but the technology did not always cooperate. I found myself thinking about the children who become frustrated when the tools we provide get in the way of the thinking we hope to encourage. There is a lesson there for teachers.
Sometimes the obstacle is not mathematics. Sometimes it is the way we have asked the student to demonstrate understanding. I thought again about my son John in eighth grade. He had been moved into another mathematics class after difficulties with his gifted mathematics teacher resigned. His new teacher questioned how he solved a problem. Only later did John recognize that he had approached it using calculus. He eventually earned fives on both AP Calculus examinations.
What might have happened if his mathematical thinking had been dismissed simply because it did not follow the expected procedure? How often do we confuse compliance with understanding? These thoughts have been running through my mind as I try to finish my own assignments. Deadlines, journal entries, problem sets, reflections, and projects fill the space. I understand the importance of accountability, but I also recognize the tension between completing an assignment and genuinely exploring an idea.
I have spent fifty years trying to help students discover that learning is more than producing the expected answer. Now I am experiencing that tension from the other side of the desk. Life outside the classroom has not been particularly cooperative either.
Yesterday, exhaustion caught up with me. Poor sleep worries about an approaching IRS letter, and the ordinary demands of family and school left me feeling overwhelmed. I struggled to concentrate on things I ordinarily enjoy. Then I took a nap, using my CPAP, and woke up feeling remarkably different.
The problems had not disappeared. The letter was still coming. The assignments were still waiting. Yet my ability to face them had changed. I sometimes forget that the mind and body are not separate entities. We can become so absorbed in our responsibilities that we overlook the simplest requirements of being human. Rest matters.
This morning brought medical appointments, a blood draw that bruised my arm, and a frustrating adventure involving hearing aids and insurance coverage. I’ve had my hearing aids since 2017. They are nearly nine years old, and replacement parts are no longer available. The price of new hearing aids was staggering, and the insurance benefit wasn’t what I understood it to be. After considerable frustration, I returned to the people who had originally helped me. They got my old hearing aids working reasonably well again. They are not perfect, but I can hear. There is something rather symbolic about that. Perhaps hearing and listening are two very different things. I have spent much of these past two days thinking about teachers who listen to children, grandparents who listen to grandchildren, and the importance of listening to ourselves when exhaustion tells us we have reached our limits.
Henry reminded me of that during an earlier mathematics activity. After counting marbles and exploring different ways to represent eighteen plus seven, he eventually announced, “Do it by yourself, Pop Pop.” I had pushed beyond the point where his curiosity was carrying out the activity. That was not a failure of learning. It was a lesson in teaching. Sometimes the best teacher move is to stop.
I have been thinking about the sanctuaries I tried to create in my classrooms over the years. The sofas, aquariums, animals, music, and opportunities to talk were not simply decorations. They were part of an effort to make students feel safe enough to learn. Perhaps what I was really trying to create was a place where someone would listen. As I finish these thoughts, I am reminded that the past two days have been filled with apparent contradictions. Frustration and discovery. Exhaustion and renewal. Old toys and new beginnings. A grandfather teaches a grandson and a grandfather learning from children on a computer screen.
I am still trying to finish my mathematics assignments. I am still waiting for answers to questions that have nothing to do with fractions. I am still watching the sunrise, looking for deer, and wondering about those little connections that seem to appear when least expected. Perhaps Jung would have found something interesting in all of this. Perhaps John Dewey would simply have reminded me that education grows out of experience. And perhaps Henry would have told me to put the computer away and come play. That suggestion may hold more wisdom than we sometimes realize. The lesson is not always where we planned to find it. Sometimes it is interrupted. So, for today, CARPE DIEM, and as always, please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird

A Letter to My Former Students: What You Taught Me

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