The daily meanderings of a teacher

Bird Droppings April 17, 2014 Education should be turning mirrors into windows I was unable to attend many sporting events this year for numerous reasons and my last year about this time my excuse for not taking pictures was my good camera had been stolen. A year ago or so today I went to check…

Bird Droppings April 16, 2014 Are you a Weginahsa? “The work of a teacher – exhausting, complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same – is at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations, a calling that shepherds a multitude of other callings. It is an activity that is intensely practical…

Bird Droppings April 15, 2014 As a teacher we should always be near the edge I recall taking groups hiking in North Georgia and always there is that one person who has to be at the edge of a gorge or edge of the trail dropping two hundred feet down looking over and nearly falling.…

Bird Droppings April 15, 2014 It is not always all in a name On February 3, 2003, I officially started calling daily emailing and journaling Bird Droppings. I went back in my files and pulled up a few old thoughts and ideas. Along with my new name in 2003 some other bits and pieces as…

Bird Droppings April 13, 2014 Is a circle a confined space or infinite undertaking? It has been a quick all too quick spring break or so it seems. Mine ended with a dash 350 miles to Southern Pines North Carolina to see our son his wife and our grandbaby. As I walked in the house…

Bird Droppings April 11, 2014 A rock flower and song A journey begins with a step and apathy begins with turning your back and saying I don’t care. Last week I had my last IEP of the year. I recall another afternoon when my laptop was acting weirder than normal and all of my school…

Bird Droppings April 10, 2014 The journey starts here now “Who, then, shall conduct education so that humanity may improve?” John Dewey A very deep and broad question, I was thinking back to my own community and associations. We elect school board members who hire teachers and principals, they decide on schools to build and…

Bird Droppings April 9, 2014 How could it be neither wolf nor dog? I was approached as I walked up the hill at the Atlanta Zoo by an elderly man. I had never met this man previously and hope to never meet again. He saw my camera around my neck and asked if I saw…

Bird Droppings April 8, 2014 Teaching is it a habit or a routine? “Habit is an effect of repeated acts and an aptitude to reproduce them, and may be defined as – a quality difficult to change, whereby an agent whose nature it is to work one way or another indeterminately, is disposed easily and…

Bird Droppings April 7, 2014 Teaching is making a difference each day “Dialogue, is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world” Paulo Freire A Brazilian educationalist and one of the most influential thinkers of the late twentieth century made famous the term dialogue in his writing. As I…