Tulips drawing process

Tulips overview
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
I heard that they give tulips in Japan on the first day of school. Actually, it turns out that they don’t (I heard this today from a Japanese schoolteacher), because school starts in April there, and tulips aren’t in season there in April.

But for my advisory group or homeroom students, I made little Artists’ Trading Cards of a bouquet of tulips, using Sachiko Umoto’s methodology from one of her books. Here are four cards in process: one with the bow, one with the background leaves added, one with the little forget-me-nots in the foreground, and then one with the three tulips.

I think they came out pretty nicely.

A milestone: no millstone

Last year, a colleague found me laboring under a pile of grading that I didn’t know how to manage.  I was trying to correct every spelling and grammatical error in every paper, and I was lost. Adrift.  At sea.  It couldn’t be done, and I’d built up a massive backlog of grading that I didn’t know how to complete or work around.

She taught me a new way.  ”You’re not their editor,” she said. “Editors and proofreaders get paid to do that kind of detail work.  Your job is to get them to explain their thinking in detail, to mandate that they tackle hard questions, and that they include facts to support their arguments, whatever those arguments might be.”

Her process that she asked me to try out was to go through each set of assignments with an eye to making 1-2 positive comments, ask a question or two about comment, and demand clarification where it seemed to be necessary.  I’ve been trying this technique on and off for about a year, and something about it clicked tonight.  Today.

My papers are graded.  I’m leaving school today with all my grading done, and no papers in my school bag for the first time in a year.  Maybe for the first time in my teaching career, too, I’m leaving school with a feeling that I’ve graded student papers properly and accurately and suitably, and that I can really dig in to plan the next few days of school without worrying about the student papers piling up.

It’s a good feeling.  Thanks, K!

Shapes on the board

A framework for design
Originally uploaded by anselm23

As you can see, those cut-out card stock shapes are taking form as a semi-public talisman — in the sense of an abstract but energetic reminder of a thought form — on this bulletin board in my school. I wish the shapes were larger, actually, and that I’d put the text in place a little more cleanly. But I wanted them to be readable at a distance.

While it may not be obvious to the teachers who read this blog, magical readers may notice that the colors and positions of some of the symbols are designed to reflect another model of another thought process — the Sefer Yetzirah, or “tree of life” in Kabbalah. Students of Kabbalah claim that the Tree is a perfect model of the universe, which can instruct anyone in the process of attuning one’s self to the mind of God. Whoa.

We don’t want to cause 15-year-olds to have that sort of experience, really, at least not while having a class on how to think through design problems. Maybe in their own religious education classes, sure. But not while they’re trying to learn how to operate a saw or a drill press.

But a lot of the principles of design run parallel to the concepts of the Tree. A problem has to be defined clearly before it can be solved; a problem has to be unpacked or brainstormed before it can be solved; visualizations of the problem’s possible solutions need to be imagined; something needs to be built; and very few people go it alone in design — so it’s important to keep asking others if they’ll help.

At the core of everything is the Sun — a source of creativity, of energy, of the constant question, “What next?” It’s a phenomenally difficult, perhaps impossible, question to get away from. No creative person can just sit back and let things happen — we have to be a source of the fire and energy we want to express in the world.

Because of the nature of design work, I couldn’t reflect the mindset of Kabbalah’s “lightning path” accurately, nor place the figures in exactly their order or associations in Kabbalah, but I made a point of trying to build up the associations in a way that would be recognizable to designers and thinkers, while still explainable to children. And if the children eventually want to learn the more esoteric aspects of Kabbalah… well. In a sense, the pump will have been primed.

Wiki & the Conversation

Today in my history classes, I had my students close their laptops for a few minutes, and we talked about what they were learning.

We did not talk about ancient Rome much.

We did talk about the nature of learning via wiki.  They mentioned that they were hunting through Wikipedia a lot more carefully, looking for answers and photographs that answered the questions I posed to them.  They were looking at their classmates’ work more frequently.  They were adding definitions to words they didn’t know.

They mentioned how happy they were that their work was lighter — to carry their computers room-to-room, instead of a massive textbook.  They liked reading primary sources, with Wikipedia as a backup, and the work of their classmates, instead of a bad textbook.

BUT.

Tonight’s assignment was to add 10 definitions to our classroom wiki, to correct ten grammatical errors, and to add ten links.  I’m able to monitor the wiki from home, and I can see that no one has added anything tonight.  I find this dismaying.

AND…

In class today, a group of students discovered that YouTube was unblocked, and were watching funny videos instead of working on our class projects.  On the one hand, I understand you can’t focus on classwork all the time.  You do need some time to relax and re-focus.

But this amounts to a lot of wasted energy.  And I wonder how to bring us back on track.  I know my school’s metrics-and-assessment administrator, and he’ll not be pleased if he thinks my class is goofing off.  I have to get these guys back on track.

At the same time, I feel like a new kind of learning is going on, and I don’t know how to describe it or assess it yet.  I know I’ve done a lot less lecturing.  I know I’ve done a lot more mini-lessons — how to edit HTML code, how to add a wiki link, how to add a picture, how to search the wiki for a specific page.  These mini-lessons are adding up, and a lot of kids are now teaching each other to use these new tools.  I’m the leaven in their dough, or I was; now they’re teaching each other.

When does this hit critical mass?  How do I accelerate it?

CMK ’09: Dr. Lella Gandini

Dr. Gandini is the person I came to CMK to see.  I read a little bit about the Reggio Emilia approach; I love northern Italy; and I really wanted to understand this process of learning and teaching.  My comments will be in italics; her remarks will be in regular type.

Layering of Information

Layering of Information
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Here’s an example of some recent work from my ninth grade history class, if anyone’s interested in seeing what I do, and maybe participating in some of the exercises along with them. Here, the assignment was to write a paragraph on how comedy and tragedy were different in the Greek theatrical tradition.

Visual Thinking: Learning Cycles

Visual Thinking: Learning Cycles
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Two of the things I learned at the Learning & The Brain Conference at Avon Old Farms this year was the importance of learning cycles, and the value of face-to-face time. The brain takes in 4,000,000,000 bits of information per second through the sensorium of hearing, touch, taste, smell, sight, and kinetics.

The RAS processes this information (compresses it or filters it, we don’t know) down to 2,0000 bps, and then the Amygdala analyzes it for stress or danger. If there’s no stress or danger, the brain turns on its own reflective mode, and learning can occur, as the brain releases dopamine and seretonin, and a host of other neuro-chemicals to activate first working memory, and then long-term memory.

However, that cycle is short; you only have about 6-8 minutes of time before the neurotransmitters get re-absorbed and the mind begins to become bored. The only way to stimulate it is with a new burst of novelty that is neither stressful nor dangerous (to keep the Amygdala placated and happy).

Hence, the need to use Visual (V), Auditory (A) and Kinesthetic (K) methodologies to create novel, happy experiences so that the brain remains in a relaxed, happy, multisensory mode for a 40-minute period — the average length of a class at my school. Furthermore, there must be a priming — through homework, through classroom modification, through exposure to art, and through exposure to vocabulary — beginning a month to six weeks before the material is taught in the classroom.

Once in the classroom, this chart comes into play, quite literally. The priming feeds the cloud of energy that could/should occur in the classroom. Novelty initiates the first lesson, which encourages the students to learn by playing with, and then reviewing, a new concept every six-to-eight minutes. In a 40-minute class, this should happen 5-6 times. Furthermore, by combining this path of learning in the classroom with Ned Hallowell’s FIVE STEPS of learning, any student (EVERY student) can in fact connect-play-practice-’master’-and-be-recognized in a 40-minute period. If I as the teacher am aware that the first 8-minute period is devoted to trying to get everyone to connect to the classroom’s Daily Main Idea, then everyone should get connected. The second 8-minute period is about playing with a new concept or skill. The third is about practicing that new skill; the fourth is about working that skill to become much better at it. The last 8-minute period is about reviewing the day as a whole, and recognizing each student for what they have accomplished that day.

Then there follows a period of reflection or fermentation, where the student isn’t in your class, but is interacting with and connecting to other ideas. The ideas bubble into long-term memory, and then have a chance to re-emerge during that night’s homework. With luck, the ideas explored in class and in homework then are explored in dream that night — when we do a substantial part of the processing of information and data. Further, the homework ideally contains some element that primes the learning for a lesson in the next week, and the next month.

It’s an ideal to work for, and I’m looking forward to trying it.

Seminary to Paganism

A while back asked me this question: What led you from seminary to paganism? Are your parents down with that?.

At the time, I gave her a flip answer, which was a question directed back at her… in other words, no sort of answer at all. So, I’m going to try to reconstruct the last ten years or so and figure out, publically, how I got from there to here. It’s mostly a timeline, with some narrative. You’re welcome to interpolate as much as you like.

Late Spring 1996: graduate from Seminary with a not particularly useful degree.
June 1996: move to Connecticut, begin teaching. Have a hard summer school — school thinks I’m going to quit, secretly interviews candidates to replace me (didn’t find out about that part for years and years).
Sept 1996: School starts. I have no friends locally. Feel very disconnected.
Sometime in 1997: Jen and Sam get in touch with me, then Toni and Ben. Later get connected to Jim. This is my crowd for a while. I go to Providence to hang out with all of them together, or to Hartford for time with T&B. When they move to Hawaii, it’s just Jim for a while in Hartford. I was pretty closed up back then, and felt this fundamental disconnect between what I thought about inside myself, and what I expressed outside of myself. In August, the school asked me to become Chaplain; I hadn’t started in that role, I took it up later after I made it through my first year of school. Sometime around here I wrote my first piece for White Wolf Games, a book called Jerusalem by Night. I thought I wrote very badly, and that they hated my work. Started writing poetry about here, too.
1998: Started going to Monday Night Poetry Readings in Worcester, MA. Met and later . A number of other folks came into my life around then, but peripherally: , , and others. Dated some poets, didn’t do so hot. 95% my fault they didn’t work. Went out to hawaii, where I played video games, hid from people, and got no tan. Even so, got exposed to a lot of things during this year: Zen, taoism, buddhism, some good drugs, some bad drugs, friendship, new ideas, new hopes. I think it was this year that Jim went to Starwood for the first time. Met up with some fellow seminary grads in August, had a good time, but began to see how pompous and full of ourselves we all were, and how narrow-minded. Realized I had relatively few friends, and yet that all of them were better Christians than most of us, while yet not being Christian.
1999: I went to Starwood with Jim and Ben. Blew my mind. A woman came up to me the night of the bonfire. The Maiden, I think now, but at the time she was just pretty. “Would you please carry water for people who need it?” Lithe, in blue, and wings. Met and took a lover that night. Went to the seminary gathering later that year, and felt totally out of place, like I’d blown it. Kept preaching in chapel at school, but felt… gone. Disconnected.
2000: Very hard year at school. Felt more disconnected from the Church. Went to Starwood again. Carried water all week, except for one night when I tended fire. Earned my red suspenders, became a wood-buster or water carrier or whatever you want to call it.

2001: VERY hard year at school. The bishop finally came to visit the school. He got a 20 minute tour, a two-hour conversation with the head of school, and spared 5 minutes for me. All sorts of people looked to me to help them, mocked me behind my back, treated me like some sort of mysterious religious oddity, and no one was expected to help me out spiritually mentally or creatively. By the end of school, I’d quit. Went to Starwood again, took a year of classes to finish my master’s degree, hung out at a coffee house in Middletown. Basically, I was rebuilding my psyche, I think. Somehow I managed to get a degree at the same time. Probably one of the more useful mental breakdowns anyone’s ever had. Spent 9/11/01 in the living room of my new house, copying out the Tao Te Ching in Chinese while listening to the news from New York and Washington and around the world. It’s not really about me and what I need; It’s really about what the world needs, I thought. Pulled myself together, finished my degree, asked for my old job back. Missed being appointed Department Chair for the history department by about 48 hours. Oh well. Now I don’t have to do paperwork.
2002: First SpiritFire? Recognized I couldn’t much expect to function at Starwood without having to change myself completely all over again… but figured I needed that powerful place to work magic in my life. Chose SpiritFire. I’m still nervous about the idea of going back to Starwood. Ever.
2003: Second SpiritFire? Flew out to California for FireDance. Had a great time. Met and connected with her at the airport and over dinner when I came back.
2004: Third SpiritFire? Took with me to FireDance this time. A little rough, with both of us there, but safe re-entry.
2005: Fourth SpiritFire? Deepened my commitment to paganism this year by deciding to write a poem for each full and new moon — and I’ve got one coming up, don’t I? — and in the process discovered that there’s this whole rich calendar of natural phenomena worthy of being noticed, and that this calendar applies pretty specifically to where I live — It probably doesn’t describe things in Arizona, or even in New Hampshire. It was a way to think globally and act locally, which is sort of where I stand on paganism these days… I still go to church, but I also go to Jewish temple services and pagan rites, and I create my own rituals…. for me, for my friends, for the Boy Scouts, for the world apparently (given how many compliments I’m getting on my poetry from the Tribe e-mail lists). I’m living about as rich a spiritual life as it’s possible to live, and I never would have had any of it without opening up in sweet surrender to all of the spiritual traditions I encountered.

, I hope that answers your question.

Gas Protest?

I’ve just gotten an e-mail that asks people not to buy gas tomorrow, September 1, as a protest against gas-price gouging because of the hurricane. I’ve decided I won’t buy gas tomorrow — an easy choice to make since I almost have a full tank, anyway, and not buying gas is easy when you’re almost fully loaded — but I get the sense that people don’t really get what’s going on.

So, a quick recap:

1. There’s a war going on in one of the world’s major oil producing regions. A war started perhaps on misrepresented intelligence, possibly for bogus reasons, but a war nonetheless.

2. China and India, thanks to the telecom and internet booms and busts in the nineties, are both developing internal-combustion economies that need fuel. The demands of two billion people in search of oil raises prices for us three hundred million Americans.

3. Environmental concerns and not-in-my-backyard attitudes have prevented the construction of new oil refineries in the US for several decades. Fewer refineries must now produce more gasoline.

4. Large numbers of SUVs and pickup trucks on the roads increase the size of gas tanks and the frequency at which those gas tanks must be filled.

5. Several oil companies have recently downgraded the size and abundance of their proven oil reserves, meaning that they have said, “sorry, but we don’t have quite as much oil in the ground that we can pump out as we thought we did.”

6. One of the major oil-producing regions of the US has just been shut down due to weather issues, and may remain shut down for several weeks. This deprives refineries of the raw materials necessary to make gasoline, which they must now buy and transport over greater distances.

7. At least two Gulf of Mexico oil rigs broke free of their moorings; one smashed into a bridge, the other got flung up onto the coastal highway in Mississippi. I’ve seen pictures. The cost of that equipment lost, at least, and more, will be passed on by oil companies to the refineries, and by the refineries to us, the consumers.

8. Saudi Arabia has had difficulties exceeding its daily and monthly pumping quotas for some time now; it is possible that the oil fields there are closing in on their maximum production thresholds.

9. The world appears to be approaching “Peak Production” overall: that is, the amount of oil pumped out, refined, and burned is greater than the amount of oil left in the ground. The remaining oil will need to be extracted using more expensive, more elaborate, more technically difficult, and more environmentally challenging methods.

10. Accidents at several major US refineries (which are overworked because no one wants a refinery built near them) have shut down other parts of the American system for producing gasoline and other petroleum byproducts.

Therefore…

Because of increasing demand and diminishing supplies of a non-renewable resource, which must be refined using a complex and environmentally unfriendly manufacturing process, prices for this resource and its byproducts will rise.

Thank you for your alleged attention.

“Diet” update…

I’ve been doing this diet from the doctor down in White Plains for a while now, and while I’ve not been great about following it, I have noticed some changes. Yesterday I put on a shirt that hasn’t ever really fit me properly. It’s labeled “large”, which means it should be tight on me, and not really comfortable. All that changed yesterday, when I put it on and it was snug where it should have been, and loose where it shouldn’t. I look better and I feel better, too. And these regular outbreaks of pimples on my flesh are slowing down and appearing much less frequently.

The doc said these skin outbreaks were the result of my skin doing its secondary function of flushing waste out of my body. The fact that there are a lot fewer pimples means that there’s a lot less waste inside, and it’s likely less toxic as a result. So far, so good.