The daily meanderings of a teacher

Category: The Foxfire Approach to Teaching

  • Trying to find a way back to normal

    Bird Droppings January 15, 2014 Trying to find a way back to normal “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio. Gotta get down to it soldiers are cutting us down should have been done long ago. What if you knew her and…

  • We have to try and care

    Bird Droppings January 14, 2014 We have to try and care So far for this year and the tail end of last year all the snow, sleet and ice predicted have never showed up. It has been unseasonably colder than normal with scatterings of warm weather still only a few nights getting below freezing. I…

  • Learning is a journey strewn with boulders

    Bird Droppings January 13, 2014 Learning is a journey strewn with boulders “In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we…

  • Walking and listening among the Cotton Woods

    Bird Droppings January 12, 2014 Walking and listening among the Cotton Woods I walked outside earlier as I do many mornings listening observing trying to understand this reality I am walking about in. The sky was almost bright this morning with a very faint moon still hanging around and a few wisps of clouds were…

  • Can we say true heroism and humility are spelled the same?

    Bird Droppings January 10, 2014 Can we say true heroism and humility are spelled the same? Even though I am one of the worst spellers in this local area I know heroism and humility are technically spelled differently. I will concede to using words to come up with a perhaps catchy title for my daily…

  • Caring is a very precious commodity in life

    Bird Droppings January 9, 2014 Caring is a very precious commodity in life As I am pondering my early hours today before heading to the local Super Walmart all night everything store I read an article dealing with charter schools and how they exclude many students. The air temperature is chilly outside and we are…

  • Horses and Trains and learning

    Bird Droppings January 8, 2014 Horses and Trains and learning It has been many years since I last rode on a train. I mean a serious train going more than the distance between concourses at an airport. Years ago when I lived in the Philadelphia area, we all used mass transit to commute, to go…

  • Intuitiveness and being there

    Bird Droppings January 7, 2014 Intuitiveness and being there I have always thought that teachers need to be two things intuitive and empathetic. Both require an element of compassion and caring. I wonder often how people teach without these capabilities. Over the last week with several other teachers we have been discussing this in detail.…

  • A chill in the air

    Bird Droppings January 5, 2014 A chill in the air For several days the now we have been below freezing in the early mornings which totally silences the crickets and tree frogs who need an ambient temperature a bit more warm maybe high fifties low sixties. So for today my orchestra was silent as a…

  • Building Sandcastles drip by drip

    Bird Droppings January 3, 2014 Building Sandcastles drip by drip It was nearly fourteen years ago when I was physically attending classes in graduate school nearly every day and before switching to Internet classes and WebCT. This took some getting used to going to school and then going to teach school. I was teaching from…