…on doing what I need to do to make me happy, to make me feel instrumental. That will make me a better teacher.
What about you?
Category: Inspiration
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The winding down of summer vacation
This time of year always seems rather unreal. Logically I know that my vacation is waning – the stark reality is that I head back to work next Wednesday but until I walk into the school, it doesn’t seem real.
Even though I have definitely been thinking about the school year to come. I started two new blogs this week (I’m a little blog crazy, but I like them) – both to do with art and inspired by the winding down of summer vacation.
One morning I woke up and realized that I had not painted a single thing since moving here. One week of holiday left and not a paint drop to be seen, even with a whole room to dedicate to my studio! So I decided to do something about it. Paint for 30 is a way to remind me to paint for at least 30 minutes each day. Right now I know of one person who has it in her feedreader (my sister, who blogs/podcasts at Within a Quarter Inch. It’s freestyle podcasting on her latest quilty (and sometimes guilty) endeavors as well as commentary on other crafty blogs and living with 2 1/2 yr old twins and her husband in Athens, Ohio.) so just that helps me to paint each day. I’m finding the process helpful so far – both in the ‘just do it already’ area as well as the creative process.
I’m going to be teaching 3 sections of art this year. If I am not mistaken that might make up a heck of a lot of my teaching time and so I decided to start reaching out to the kids even before school started. A lot of my students are connected to me on facebook so after I made the blog I asked them to read it and start commenting. So far I’ve received a couple of comments and 2 images to add to the page. One of which may even need to become the class logo (yay to Evan for getting excited about art class)
I’ll need to create spaces for the other 3 courses I’ll be teaching (holy crap. 4 courses, I was down to 3 but now I am back up to 4). Having sites for my courses helps me to keep them organized and alive in my head. Knowing that my students and I can always check in on them is reassuring.
But for today I plan to set up my easel (I just splurged on an easel, probably paid way too much for it but I was too impatient to wait until I got to Montreal or Ottawa so bought it at the little stationery store in Alexandria), paint for 30 minutes, and then maybe do some gardening, tidy up this here house, putter putter.
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The Watkinson Garden
[cross-posted at 09/10~Looking Forward]
During our conversation on climate change, Marcy Webb told me about a girl named Mary, a high school student who “…has chosen to devote her summer to sustainability. She is helping to cultivate an herb and veggie garden, on the school grounds. The goal is that the bounty from the garden will be used in the preparation of lunch meals at the school. She is maintaining a blog.”
So this post is about that blog. The blog is a diary of what she is doing to take care of the garden on a daily basis, though there is no description of why she is doing it. For that, I will trust Marcy’s description above :) I’d like to find more examples of initiatives like these to share with my students, not to mention to remind me about everything that continues to inspire me as a teacher.
Do you know of any? Please share!
Here is a sample from Mary’s blog, Watkinson Garden:
Day 14!
Today I went to school and spent my time weeding along the entrance. I also deadheaded flowers around campus, once again there was no reason to water the plants because the rain we have been having.
Very simple gestures that make such an impact.
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Being together
Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life. Isaac Bashevis Singer (via nezua)
Sea Lions live in colonies. These ones are hanging out together in San Francisco. They can also spend weeks at a time hunting in the open sea. Click image for source. Yesterday I commented on Kelly Hines’ post Core Beliefs about my own core belief that learning happens in community.
Today I found this beautiful sentence in Michael Doyle’s post Puddles:
When one wanders away from one’s usual world, it’s good to have company.
I remember how Meg Wheatley’s words created a shift in me when I first read them a few years ago, that conversation is the natural way we humans think together (from the book Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope for the Future).
So what does this all have to do with my job as a teacher?
Learning can be about wandering away from one’s usual world, I think that good learning must. When we are learning new ideas we are changing our cognitive framework.
Imagine, we have the innate ability to change our thinking processes, biologically.
While this is happening, especially if it is with a paradigmatic shift in our thinking and beliefs, it is not only good to have company, I think it is necessary.
There are certain states that people need to feel they are in for learning (or change) to be able to happen – a sense of belonging, of safety, of worth. As teachers, we don’t always know if our students experience those states outside of our classroom (though we can sometimes guess based on the behaviours that we see in it!). A big part of my job is to create an environment that encourages these states to be. Not only for students in my classroom but for my colleagues in theirs as well.
Sometimes we need to tell it like it is. Photograph by Joel Sartore, click to view source at National Geographic. I’m not talking lovey-dovey group hug, you are so special all the time kind of support. I just mean good solid, I know you are here for me and I am here for you and we will be honest kind of support. The kind of support that allows for conflict – the best learning often happens through it.
The support that we as teachers and that our students as co-learners can give each other is vital for learning (change) to happen.
I think of the hard-as-nails student who, in June, wrote a personal reflection on how she had changed over the year. She sobbed openly throughout the hour or so she took to write, shaking her head no when I asked if she wanted to write somewhere else.
Sometimes it can be as basic as just being together that allows us to take the risks we need to take to change how and what we learn.
