The daily meanderings of a teacher

Bird Droppings July 8, 2010 I saw a Red Tailed Hawk As I look at that statement it is meaningless for many, a red tailed hawk crossed my path as I traveled yesterday flying across the road landing in a tree. For some there is significance. It has been a few summers since I had…

Bird Droppings July 7, 2010 We need a few cool days here and there “All Sioux ceremonies end with the words, mitakuye oyasin, ‘all my relations’ meaning every living being on this Earth, every plant and animal, down to the smallest flower and tiniest bug.” Richard Erdoes, Crying for a Dream It has been a…

Bird Droppings July 6, 2010 Trying to see the world with a narrow lens and or Doing is the way to learn “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird…

Bird Droppings July 5, 2010 Searching for heart It has been several months since I took a book to school to share a passage from with one of my students. Yesterday as I was sorting through my books I happened to pick it up and bring it home to use for my research. I have…

Bird Droppings July 4, 2010 Finding Soul in looking at Curriculum Or Can I get a nickels worth of cheese There is something about the first light on a summer’s morning. It could be about trying to discern how many different birds are singing and calling back and forth as they are waking up. Near…

Bird Droppings July 3, 2010 Belong I walked out perhaps two hours earlier with our White West highland Terrier for her morning break from missing my youngest son. She was stretching and doing her duty in the early morning sounds that surround us here in the country. Overhead a half moon was still literally high…

Bird Droppings July 2, 2010 Being who we are It has been nearly six years since I was directly involved in Foxfire teaching at Piedmont College. I sat through my own training program which at the time was an experimental approach in the Piedmont Specialist program. One of the reasons I chose to drive to…

Bird Droppings July 1, 2010 A reflection on a pond or window of two I brought a couple of boxes of junk into my class room today. Teachable moment items for when school starts back collected from my father and mother’s house. Mom has been getting his things sorted through and it must be genetic…

Bird Droppings June 30, 2010 Learning and teaching are inevitable – if we try “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.” Dr. Mortimer J. Adler Dr. Adler founded the Center for the Study of…

Bird Droppings June 29, 2010 Researching Education a bit With the bulk of education in the early 1900’s following closely the Industrial Revolution and mass production, a few great thinkers took the concept of the individual child in psychology and education in new directions as to its relationship to children. How children were viewed became…