Thanks so much for your wonderful thoughts, insights and company this afternoon. Here's the link to the full Seth Godin article (Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself) to read for next month. If you are interested in hearing his interview with Krista Tippett on On Being, visit Seth Godin: The Art of Noticing, then Creating.
While you're on the On Being site, there are some amazing education-related interviews. Two of my favorites are Learning, Doing, Being: A New Science of Education featuring Adele Diamond, and The Meaning of Intelligence with Mike Rose.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
February Meeting
The MHC is occupied tomorrow (Thursday), so we'll be meeting from 3:30-5:30 in Erin Baker's classroom. She has the biggest chairs! :) Thanks to Erin for her hospitality--see you then!
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
A Few Opportunities
I wanted to let you know about an evening opportunity being offered through Lewis and Clark College on April 2nd, a brief hour and a half Courage to Teach experience rooted in poetry as a means to reflection called Renewing Ourselves as Professionals (link).
I also have the registration information for the 2013-2014 Courage to Teach cycle that starts next October if anyone is interested. Check here for dates, and let me know if you'd like me to forward you the registration form.
I hope these last weeks of winter are treating you well. Take care of yourselves! I look forward to us meeting again soon on Thursday, February 21st at 3:30 in MCR where Dori will invite us to participate in a protocol centered around some of her work with the Primary class. Thanks to all of you also for your valuable feedback regarding my presentation for the Planning for Playful Inquiry Workshop. It was certainly stronger and more meaningful thanks to your input. I look forward to sharing the revised version with interested OES Faculty sometime soon.
I also have the registration information for the 2013-2014 Courage to Teach cycle that starts next October if anyone is interested. Check here for dates, and let me know if you'd like me to forward you the registration form.
I hope these last weeks of winter are treating you well. Take care of yourselves! I look forward to us meeting again soon on Thursday, February 21st at 3:30 in MCR where Dori will invite us to participate in a protocol centered around some of her work with the Primary class. Thanks to all of you also for your valuable feedback regarding my presentation for the Planning for Playful Inquiry Workshop. It was certainly stronger and more meaningful thanks to your input. I look forward to sharing the revised version with interested OES Faculty sometime soon.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Inspired
Hello, friends!
I feel certain each of you found, as I did, something to inspire you in our meetings with Ashley Cadwell this week. I sat near Paula a few times in the 3:30 meetings and each time she mentioned to me the pleasure of sitting around a table together to talk about what really matters. I agree and feel grateful for all of you, who have made a commitment to sitting down for those conversations that matter on a regular basis.
I wanted to share an article that has inspired me lately about teacher research. I'd encountered it before but it was reintroduced to me at a workshop at Opal School last week. This excerpt resonated with me when I reread the article after our work regarding the new building:
This is why true innovations are so difficult to accept and appreciate. They "shake up" our frames of reference because they force us to look at the world with new eyes. They open us up to what is different and unexpected. We tend to accept the status quo, that which we know and have already tried out...even when it does not satisfy us, even when it makes us feel stressed, confused or hopeless.
I love the way the rest of this article frames our hope and inspiration in the children themselves and their innate desire to search for and research meaning.
Opal teacher Kerry Salazar shared some of her own guiding teacher research questions in a presentation on 12/6 that I thought might inspire some of you. I'd like to offer them as questions that could guide some reflective writing over winter break:
What do I believe about children?
What assumptions do I carry?
How do these beliefs or assumptions show up in my daily teaching?
Does my practice/classroom reflect my beliefs?
What are my questions?
May the break be restorative to all of you, full of inspiration, reflection and renewal.
PS I also have in my notes from the Suzy Cessor workshop a reminder to give you the link to the Five Whys Protocol she referenced when she introduced the Design Thinking process. It's a simple, useful protocol, good for shorter time frames like team meetings. Here it is!
I feel certain each of you found, as I did, something to inspire you in our meetings with Ashley Cadwell this week. I sat near Paula a few times in the 3:30 meetings and each time she mentioned to me the pleasure of sitting around a table together to talk about what really matters. I agree and feel grateful for all of you, who have made a commitment to sitting down for those conversations that matter on a regular basis.
I wanted to share an article that has inspired me lately about teacher research. I'd encountered it before but it was reintroduced to me at a workshop at Opal School last week. This excerpt resonated with me when I reread the article after our work regarding the new building:
This is why true innovations are so difficult to accept and appreciate. They "shake up" our frames of reference because they force us to look at the world with new eyes. They open us up to what is different and unexpected. We tend to accept the status quo, that which we know and have already tried out...even when it does not satisfy us, even when it makes us feel stressed, confused or hopeless.
I love the way the rest of this article frames our hope and inspiration in the children themselves and their innate desire to search for and research meaning.
Opal teacher Kerry Salazar shared some of her own guiding teacher research questions in a presentation on 12/6 that I thought might inspire some of you. I'd like to offer them as questions that could guide some reflective writing over winter break:
What do I believe about children?
What assumptions do I carry?
How do these beliefs or assumptions show up in my daily teaching?
Does my practice/classroom reflect my beliefs?
What are my questions?
May the break be restorative to all of you, full of inspiration, reflection and renewal.
PS I also have in my notes from the Suzy Cessor workshop a reminder to give you the link to the Five Whys Protocol she referenced when she introduced the Design Thinking process. It's a simple, useful protocol, good for shorter time frames like team meetings. Here it is!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Dec. 6th Meeting Cancelled
Happy December, Friends!
You'll know this already if you were able to make it to the Nov. meeting, but we've had to cancel our December 6th meeting due to the planning session about the new building. I'll leave you with a poem to ponder instead!
Praise Song For the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other's eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of some one and then others, who said I need to see what's on the other side.
I know there's something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national, love that casts a widening pool of light, love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, any thing can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
Wishing you much warmth, friendship, and a sense of walking forward...
Kirstin
You'll know this already if you were able to make it to the Nov. meeting, but we've had to cancel our December 6th meeting due to the planning session about the new building. I'll leave you with a poem to ponder instead!
Praise Song For the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other's eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of some one and then others, who said I need to see what's on the other side.
I know there's something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national, love that casts a widening pool of light, love with no need to pre-empt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, any thing can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light.
Wishing you much warmth, friendship, and a sense of walking forward...
Kirstin
Friday, November 9, 2012
Looking for Warmth
As the leaves fall and the temperatures drop, I know I'm noticing the places around me that offer warmth. We went on a cold walk yesterday to draw branches and the children were so ready to come in to warm up they suggested skipping recess and going directly back to the classroom. But I'm seeing inner warmth in so many places, too; the teachers next door who have offered hugs of encouragement, the way my class all spontaneously lay on their bellies and stretched their hands to meet when we learned a new song about roots, exclaiming, "Look, our roots are all connected!"
Just a reminder that we'll all have an opportunity to participate in The Final Word Protocol with the Roland Barth article, so please look over both the article and the protocol in advance. I'm also still looking for a presenter so we can further explore protocols to deepen our work. If you have some curriculum to fine-tune, a question you want to explore or a dilemma you want some insight into, please let me know so we can talk briefly this weekend or early next week to plan.
If you weren't able to join us last time, the poem we used to begin our work was Where the Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore and we participated in a Consultancy Protocol about a question Deborah has been thinking about in her classroom. Copies of the handouts should have been delivered to your boxes on Friday if you've attended a meeting or are subscribed to the CFG website--please let me know if you didn't receive one and would like to.
Until Wednesday,
Kirstin
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Turn to Wonder
I'm on an email list from The Courage To Teach that sends periodic videos of what it calls "Stories of Authenticity." This week's video is from a business leader who talks about how the Circle of Trust Touchstone "Turn to Wonder" has helped him grow as a community member. It's a short video, just 2:28, but I thought some of you might appreciate this reflection on the strength in our diversity as we enter conference season, communicating with many different people from different backgrounds and experiences. May this time with the people who love our students most enrich all of our perspectives.
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