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Our example is how children learn.
Bird Droppings February 2, 2025Our example is how children learn. “We taught our children by both example and instruction, but with an emphasis on example, because all learning is a dead language to one who gets it second hand.” Kent Nerburn, The Wisdom of the Native Americans For nearly fifteen years, I have looked to…
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A morning meandering while thinking about the moon glowing.
Bird Droppings January 31, 2025A morning meandering while thinking about the moon glowing. Last night, as I looked out at the night sky, I honestly was not sure if the moon was glowing or not. It was too overcast. However, I started thinking back to tutoring a student trying to get caught up and return…
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I am Reading and listening to a philosopher.
Bird Droppings January 28, 2025I am Reading and listening to a philosopher. There was a beautiful sky this morning as I walked out; the weather was wreaking havoc with my sinuses: cold, hot, colder, and humid. On the one hand, I can count the number of mornings with frost this year. The sky, while partially…
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What is the freedom we desire?
Bird Droppings January 25, 2025What is the freedom we desire? “Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom and dignity. It is not enough, as communist systems have assumed, merely to provide people with food, shelter, and clothing. Human nature needs to breathe the precious air of…
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Seeing and hearing an owl and thinking about happiness
Bird Droppings January 24, 2025 Seeing and hearing an owl and thinking about happiness “If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that…
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For some, creating and writing in a digital world is difficult.
Bird Droppings January 22, 2025For some, creating and writing in a digital world is difficult. “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” Aldus Huxley In 1965, I was introduced to this author in a tenth-grade English Class. The book Brave New World was…
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Learning is a journey strewn with boulders
Bird Droppings January 21, 2025 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 have graduated, at which point we…
The daily meanderings of a teacher 