Bird Droppings April 18, 2026
Going to school another day

So often, as I start writing each morning, there has been a recent experience to build upon. It is utilizing these previous experiences that provide windows and doors into future experiences. I was driving through our town, and a shop I had seen numerous times caught my eye. It is a store that caters specifically to chefs and those of us who like to cook, selling fancy spices, exotic cheeses, wines, and utensils. I stopped in. I needed a good knife to cut and chop herbs as I cook. As I walked in, a wonderful lady greeted me, and we talked for nearly an hour about education and cooking.

As life would have it, she was also, prior to retirement, a teacher of Emotional and Behavior Disorders. That sounds familiar, a small world perhaps, synchronicity at work again in my life. I think I know what Carl G. Jung would say. My master’s degree always confuses folks when I say I have an MAT in EBD. Most teacher graduate students go for that Leadership degree required for administrative positions, or maybe an instructional degree. I went for Emotional Behavior Disorders.

It has been nearly twenty years since I started my doctoral studies at Georgia Southern University. My major, for some, may be a bit obscure, being in curriculum theory, and at the time, it was a relatively new endeavor, listed in the course catalog as Curriculum Studies. One of the first pieces that caught my attention was “The Autobiographical Method of Currere, a Method Focused on Self-Understanding” by William Pinar in his book, What is Curriculum Theory. As I discussed with this retired teacher and now shop owner and purveyor of fine cheese, wines, and meats, we talked about education, and even various cuts of meat, since my livestock background came out.

I have been listening to R. Carlos Nakai, a Navajo Ute from Arizona, for a number of years now as I read, write, and study. Nakai is a classically trained coronet and trumpet player who, forty years ago, took up the Native American seven-note flute. He carves his own flutes from cedar, and his haunting melodies stir the soul and calm the wild beast. I play his music in my room at school. As I was thinking about Pinar’s thoughts on the autobiographical method, I recalled a note in one of Carlos Nakai’s CDs.

“A lot of what I’ve been taught culturally comes from an awareness of the environment. …How I feel is based on my impressions of being in certain spaces at certain times. Thinking back…on personal tribal stories and the history of my culture figures into how I organize my music.” R. Carlos Nakai

One of the founders of pragmatism in philosophy is John Dewey, who is also well known for his contributions to education and progressivism. Many of his ideas are from the early 1900’s. Dewey based his thinking on our experience.

“Every experience lives on in further experiences. Hence, the central problem of an education based on experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and create subsequent experiences.” John Dewey

Dewey is a hard read, and since I was only looking for a quote, he is back on the shelf for now, but only for a minute or two, as I am using several Dewey books in papers I am currently working on. As I switched CDs to a Hawaiian-themed CD where Nakai and Keola Beamer, a Hawaiian slap-guitar master, combine for “Our Beloved Land,” another jacket note caught my eye.

“We were put on the earth to experience life in its totality. And if you’re not doing that, you’re essentially wasting your time.” R. Carlos Nakai

I thought of my professor in that first doctoral class as I read, and of a comment she made about how many of the courses are online and the online evaluations that follow professors. She said she always gets better reviews with the online courses than in person. On one of the first days in class, she wore a black suit, a starched white long-sleeved shirt, dark shoes, and argyle socks. She had one pirate-type earring in one ear, after removing her jacket and rolling up her sleeves, tattoos covering her arms to her wrists.

As I watched the class watch her come in, being mostly conservative southern teachers, the reactions were interesting as I thought about my professor’s comment about why she did not understand why she always gets better reviews online. I thought as I listened to a recognized scholar in curriculum theory. Maybe the biases of the masses of people in the world really are insignificant. You need to live life, and if you are not doing that, you are wasting time.

I got the impression within a few minutes that my professor is not wasting anyone’s time; she is who she is and is comfortable with that. Maybe we all should try to be, who knows what might happen with self-understanding and experiences. It comes down to all of the pieces of our life’s puzzle falling into place one by one. As I close, as always, please keep all who are in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts. Namaste.

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