See the full PicLit at PicLits.com This is a great application for teaching kids parts of speech in a fun and creative way. Especially during poetry month, this would be a fun to let kids work on both poetry, parts of speech and imagery! They will love it. You do have to have an account to generate an embed code or save it and email it to someone. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this!

Unpacking the TN READY Communication from the TN DOE

Commissioner McQueen has published two pieces to try to calm the wave of bad publicity that is washing over the DOE on the basis of what parents are seeing and hearing from students and teachers about the paper TN READY test which replaced the failed computer administered version.

I first read her blog for parents: Classroom Chronicles which is an explanation for parents about the failure of TN Ready an attempt to calm fears about the paper tests.  She says, "We too are frustrated and disappointed by our inability to provide students with an online test this year and by the logistical difficulties. We have been working tirelessly to provide a positive testing experience as much as is within our control and to reduce anxiety."  Really?  Will the DOE have their salaries cut or be fired because of their failure on the testing front?  They tie teachers success and failure every day to things that are beyond that teacher's control! Why not apply the same standard to yourselves?

Then  Dr. McQueen provides a form for parents to give them a sense of significant participation.  The form however only asks how the parent would like to receive their child's test scores.   Parents are asked to weigh in on crucial issues such as whether to report data in smiley faces, arrows, or symbols!  This appears to be a simple way to make people feel that they are part of a process.  In truth, it is like asking a man on trial for familial abuse, "when did you stop beating your kids."

What I DO KNOW is this:  I know NO teachers who:

1.  think this test is a good measure of student learning 
2. participated in its formation. 
3. have ever felt free to participate in a frank conversation it with any forum where their names and places of employment are readily seen. 

The second Classroom Chronicles blog post is supposed to dispell any of the issues raised by students, parents and teachers.

She addresses the issues raised by a number of concerned educators that the content was not appropriate for the students.  The following is a quote which further illustrates just how far removed the people who designed the test are from children!

"A very small number of questions on Part I require students to have had exposure to other mathematical content that may not actually count toward their score. For example, students may have seen a word problem that mentions a concept that they will learn more about later – like angles or ounces– but students will not be scored on their knowledge of this content. These concepts may just be used to provide context for a computational skill (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). Additional questions may require students to pull from previously learned content knowledge. As this is content that is below grade level, it would not appear on the grade level specific blueprint."

Imagine back to your eight-year-old self.  Much of what your teacher is teaching is just not too interesting to you, but you know there is this TEST coming up and you really should care about learning this stuff because it is on the test and your teacher is stressed about how you are going to do and your parents talk about how if you don't do well on the tests it will ruin your life.  Imagine for a moment that you are now reading a test question in which something right there in the midddle of it suddenly looks like a foreign language.   Do you have the intellectual ability to read the rest of the question and calm yourself sufficiently to determine that the question is not about the DNA helix but is a simple addition problem?  You get my point.  Yes if it is asking you to use cm instead of inches to measure and you have in the standard learned to use inches and you are an adult looking at the picture of a little ruler next to the question in cm you will understand how to solve the simple problem.  BUT THESE ARE CHILDREN!!

Most of them do not have the experience in solving problems to know how to approach this.  They will feel a sense of panic and collapse under the weight of the foreign words "angles" alone!  Add to that that nowhere does it say in the directions we heard read to the children (remember the administrator can only read the directions --- they cannot offer explanations because that might taint the test) to help children understand the question is considered leading the child to the right answer. NOWHERE IN THOSE DIRECTIONS DOES IT TELL CHILDREN THAT, "Hey, some of these questions may be on stuff you haven't had and those won't even count or be graded!"  How reasonable is it to assume that when you cover your classroom walls to hide every possible thing a kid might use to do well on the test -- and everyone is in a lock-down version of life (guarding test booklets, pencils and answer books as though they were radioactive) Does anyone think that a child is going to consider for a moment that some of the questions won't even count?  REALLY?

Dr. McQueen goes on to explain how reasonable the actual test was.  NEVER mind that the answer document (they called it a document, in the directions- now that is a word kids use every day, right?) looked almost identical to the test document! The whole thing was confusing to children from beginning to end.  MOST especially the vocabulary used in the directions..From an adult point of view Dr. McQueen is quite right --- it would be difficult to get mixed up about what answer went with what question.  These are CHILDREN not adults and I, as a proctor, can attest to the fact that the 3rd graders I was with were confused.  My last point is simple.  WHAT ARE THE TESTS designed to do?  If it is to help us see where to improve our instruction fine I'm good with that, but tests are misused to judge children and teachers everyday. 

They discourage educational innovation and good practice because my colleagues are always worrying about the specific things that must be covered on the test.  So with the garden in full grow mode, with the wild creatures and native plants that inhabit the perimeter of my campus budding and growing, with the night sky waiting, and the life bursting forth all around, we will be in the classroom drilling instead of out in the world writing, reading poetry, planting, wondering, exploring, and asking those impossible childhood questions.

 I AM CALLING FOR AN OVERHAUL in how we hold PUBLIC SCHOOLS accountable.  I AM CALLING FOR AN OVERHAUL that lets teachers be teachers so they are able to do what they do best with children.  Yes, that may even look different from one teacher to another teacher!  YES, teachers are as individual as students. They don't all teach the same way, understand the same way or participate in the universe in a monolithic pattern of teacher behavior!    PLEASE Dr. McQueen, I know you are young and you think you have these things down --- but listen to some seasoned educators on this topic!  Are you listening!! 

What is a hero?

Third Grade wanted to merge two concepts for Black History Month.  Students could research famous African Americans and then measure them against a rubric of what makes a hero. I could not in good conscience do a simple webpage with the people on their list. So instead I tried to accommodate by broadening the site and creating a Good Citizen Rubric as well as a Hero Rubric.  Heroes come in all colors was the result as was the accompanying Symbaloo for African American History Month. 

In our current culture we conflate the hero with celebrity. We carelessly toss this word around and in so doing we we weaken its meaning and message. When we call everyone who has served in the military a hero we risk including skin heads, bigots and those who have committed war crimes on the same list with those selfless souls who have given their lives and bodies in the service of humanity.

If, as Campbell suggests, the hero myth is designed to lead us to our better selves then the hero returns home carrying something of  the treasure.  It is the  "treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed."

This is why we yearn to teach the hero story to our children.  We want the world to be a place where power is distributed and the well being of all creation is the ultimate arbiter of our actions.   Sometimes in a world where kids pick Beyonce, and Kanye West as their heroes I tremble.....

Taize service at West End UMC -Deuteronomy 11:26-28

"See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God." 

Perhaps it was the intersection of the year's end and reading the Magna Carta by Dan Jones that set me thinking about this text, more ancient than the 1215 'great charter.' Spending New Year's Eve at a Cathedral-like building singing Latin texts could have done nothing but add to these thoughts. That scripture coupled with Genesis 12:2
"I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing." informed my early Christian development.  I can only be blest to be a blessing if I am honoring God in my living. AND it is clear that this is the intention of God; that we bless his creation.
 
So here it is - Will we make 2016 (800 years after the Magna Carta) a year full of blessing or will by our passivity allow it to be a year of curses? Just how much are we captives of our collective past?  How much are we willing to examine to understand the reality rather than the myth of that past?

Medieval looking doors of West End UMC

One of the insights I gained from reading the Magna Carta is that the document has nothing to do with democracy in its original form.  As Jones points out,"One of the great paradoxes of the Magna Carta is the fact that the less relent most of its words become to modern life, the greater the reverence attached to its name. 'Magna Carta' is today used as a byword for all types of aspiration to freedom, liberty, and (quite erroneously) democracy."  But to deny that is also absurd.  The Magna Carta was the beginning of the wresting of power from the very foundations of Feudal society -- (the King and Church) and in that respect it does have something to do with freedom and democracy.

Since we now have both these things I am allowed to  rewrite the scripture above slightly. 

See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— the blessing of democracy if you obey the commands of the Lord that you act out of intelligent, thoughtfully researched and true information for the common good.   The curse will be a return to slavery and the destruction of your home. If you disobey my command and act out of your feelings and what you want to be true refusing to look fully into your own darkness you will receive that curse.  

So if we act on this admonition, we try to live our lives in consonance with out beliefs.  It will cost us.  It will cost us more money to buy humanely produced, local, fresh produce and meat.  It will cost us the convenience of throwing everything away. It cost us in taxes if we take care of our world and its inhabitants.  It may cost us in friends who think we have lost our senses. It is not comfortable or easy to take up the cross that knowledge lays at our feet.  Receiving a blessing is not easy. The question is will I choose the blessing or the curse.

Students learn from the past in the present....

1st grade students have been learning about the pilgrims.  From their research they constructed an alphabet book using our computers and their hand illustrations. 

Learning about  something is not the same as experiencing and understanding it.  So our cleaver 1st grade teachers in conjunction with the library designed centers to let kids see what it would feel like to live in the 1600s.  First we turned out the lights and used candles (the oil lamp seemed a bit too flammable for comfort).  We started the morning in the garden harvesting root vegetables.  Back inside they learned to clean them, write with a real quill pen, sew using cards and shoelaces, take pop corn off the cob and prepare it for popping, and make butter.  They also got to go on a virtual field trip to Plimouth Plantation.

The Tennessee Agricuture Museum has a great box filled with things that would have been used in colonial America and the kids had an opportunity to handle them and ask questions.  After lunch the students got to sample the feast we made from their harvest that morning.  These children ate what I imagine was their first beets, and they declared them good.  We added Indian pudding made from cornmeal and molasses, apples, and homemade bread on which they liberally spread the butter they made.  Some liked the butter so much that they asked if they could just eat the butter!

We started the meal with a prayer that the pilgrims might have used and a chorus of "We Gather Together." It was a joyfilled day and one that the children will likely not forget.  This kind of learning is hard to measure and even more difficult to understand!  You can experience some of the things they did by using our  Live like  Pilgrim Page.


 

Paws for Reading

One of the joys this year in the Library is weekly visits by Otter our reading buddy.  He is part of a  national program, Paws for Reading , in which children read to a therapy dog.

The dog makes no judgment as to the fluency or accuracy of the reader, but the dog's human partner does.   I hear her hearty laughter at the silly stories that many children love to read.  The warmth of that laughter says,, "I am enjoying your reading. You are a becoming a capable reader and I look forward to hearing you each week."  Otter, after just a couple of weeks, recognizes his friends which also provides a positive message to the kids as they respond with joyful giggles, hugs and yes sometimes even a lick or two!

We are blessed with faculty members who find exciting things for their children.  This particular program was brought to us because of one such kindergarten teacher who loves animals and children.  Her persistence reaps benefits every Thursday as children cycle in and out reading to and loving Otter.  

Lest you think that reading to a dog is silly, let me point you to research found on the Paws website.

It’s well-known (and scientifically proven) that interaction with a gentle, friendly pet has significant benefits.

 Physical Health:

• lowers blood pressure
• improves cardiovascular health
• releases endorphins (oxytocin) that have a calming effect
• diminishes overall physical pain
• the act of petting produces an automatic relaxation response, reducing the amount of medication some folks need

 Mental Health:

• lifts spirits and lessens depression
• decreases feelings of isolation and alienation
• encourages communcation
• provides comfort
• increases socialization
• reduces boredom
• lowers anxiety
• helps children overcome speech and emotional disorders
• creates motivation for the client to recover faster
• reduces loneliness

 Reading: (PAWS for Reading)

• helps children focus better
• improves literacy skills
• provides non-stressful, non-judgmental environment
• increases self-confidence, reduces self-consciousness

What happens when I do reserach on the common core....the rabbits warren of research...

Thus far we have focused on the literature and sites which expose the Common Core as an evil. In this post I will focus on the actual common core standards and some examples from classrooms which demonstrate the common core in practice. Because of the breadth and depth of the core we will look at 1st grade to get a sense of what it is and what it is not. 1st the core sets standards but doesn't dictate curriculum. This gives each state, town, school a lot of latitude to teach those things that are near and dear in that region! Doesn't sound much like government control does it?

Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the appointment of William Bennett as Secretary of Education, monumental changes have driven the educational practice.  Bennett published "A Nation at Risk" in 1983.  This report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, a Reagan created commission, largely indicted our entire educational system. It was based on a perception that our educational system was not able to compete with education offered in other countries. Here is a brief history of the department of Education.

In no small part because of this frenetic pace of experimentation and change brought on by this report teachers can expect yearly changes is what they are to teach, how they are to teach, what measures are used to determine if they succeed, and the philosophy driving their teaching.  I can think of no other profession which has been subjected to this constantly shifting philosophy. 

One of the teachers who came to my school after graduating from a premier college of education, believed that she knew better than those older teachers how to teach has succumbed to this pace of change and the frustrating impossibility of keeping up.  She is starting to sound like one of the older teachers.  I did not hesitate to point this out to her since she used to readily stand in judgment of the poor practices of those teachers whose skills were out of date.

As I began thinking about this I had questions.  It is what happens when you do research.  Sometimes it seems like your questions are leading you down a rabbit's warren. You must follow these leads to increase your scope of understanding.  Ideally this is what the common core leads students to do.  The whole goal is to create curiosity and encourage sound development of a students ability to question, seek answers, and determine what the best choice is.  It also helps students learn that answers will continually be refined as new information presents.  What could be bad about that!?

Indeed this is the reason I support the core.  For the years following Sputnik when we had emphasis on math and science (sound familiar?) a push was born to modernize public education which culminated in raising the Department to a cabinet level position, which ironically is where it began in 1867.    One of the things the Core fuels in those who fear it is that the core is a Government takeover of education.  What it really means is the federal government is offering incentives (or bribes if you prefer) to work toward the overarching goals (standards) set by the committee which foes claim were not even educators.  After checking that out I learned, as those who support the core rightly suggest,  that they were educators.

Yes, actually the majority of those who wrote these standards were members of faculties of university departments of education.  That means that they were most likely K-12 teachers at one time, but in any case they were deeply involved in the quality of education and preparing teachers to teach!
In the next post we look just at the standards themselves.

Part II - Thinking Critically about the Common Core -

This piece on why the common core is bad is impressive. It had me agreeing with it by the time the young man from Knox county completed his attack on the core.
Even the two experts who helped create the core, according to this video speak out against the final product.  But once again when you dig deeper this claim is not what it seems. Bits and pieces, partially true, are culled out and used in slightly twisted form to elicit your agreement and lead you down a very manipulative path. For example the two educational experts mentioned were not part of creating the standards, but are rather part of the vetting process at the end.  In the case of the math standards This article artfully explains the fallacy of Dr. Milgram's vocal objections. 

The fellow who created this video is a Canadian, living in Japan (which immediately sent up "red flags" about why he was interested in the common core and made me look at his entire body of work).  I determined that he is one of the group of folks who see conspiracies to create a "new world order" in many things.  

He vilifies Bill Gates who gave millions to help create the Common Core suggesting he had an ulterior motive.  While I personally prefer that we fund education from our commons (taxes) rather than relying on philanthropy, I don't believe that there was any evil intent behind the money Gates gave for the common core development.  The google search I did on Common Core (hereafter dubbed CC) yielded conspiracy stuff all over the map.  There are those that think it s carrying forward an evil United Nations agenda and others who think it is leading to tracking what your children think so that the government can control your mind.  

One of the skills I learned in school was about vetting sources by recognizing the bias of those who wrote the material. Even someone who seriously wants to learn about the CC presents real problems. In large part when you do a google search you will see things Goggle has decided to show you based on the algorithms of your previous searches. Google analyzes your search history and presents you with what it thinks you want to see.  This results already skew your data to your preexisting biases.  I get different results from the same search so how do I know I have "valid and good" information?
Google further puts what it decides you want to see in order of what other people who are like you read.  So you see how difficult it is to ferret out the "truth" of anything.  Thus, items by conspiracy theorists rise like cream to the top of the google search for the person who google thinks might be interested in this kind of thing over scholarly studies from universities.  Site after Site are posts by groups like right-reason.com, Freedom Works.org, Karen Bracken (a talk show host is leading an impeach the President and save our country effort) most of these and others are self-described tea party patriots"  who see everything as an attack on freedom.  The people in these groups tend to see everything as black and white. 

They take a specific anecdote, and apply it as though it is happening everywhere.  Let me give you a specific example from one of these websites. "An elementary school librarian told the group that elementary kids in her school "are being forced to read technical books instead of stories and they don't like it.  They said the books are boring and they are losing interest in reading."  The Librarian said she was instructed to tell the kids they must learn how to read these manuals if they expect to get a job at Volkswagen (VW has a facility in TN)."

Let's unpack her comments.  First teachers are being required to use non-fiction (not technical manuals) but a technical manual would qualify as non-fiction.   Indeed, as a librarian I am purchasing more non-fiction than I used to.  I believe this is good -- Many kids who never wanted to read fiction are captivated by non-fiction.  It is more difficult to read non-fiction because you must learn factual material instead of just remembering a story line.  It is also easier to teach critical thinking from a non-fiction text as you tear into it pulling out the most important fact and the supporting data.   Do I believe elementary students were reading technical manuals? 

No!  They might be exposed to reading real technical manuals.  The teacher  might have been told to tell kids they need to learn this skills so that they can read technical manuals -- and get a high paying job at a place like VW -- probably.  I often tell kids that I taught myself to play the guitar because I could read a "technical manual" in the form of a how-to book!  Once unpacked this anecdote sounds a lot less ominous.  Also, let's be honest, the people in our communities have accused schools of teaching irrelevant material for a long time and it seems reasonable that we would be justifying what kids are learning not only to the kids but also to the general public showing how one could get gainful employment from it.

We must learn how to look at things to find the biases and then how to find good unbiased information.  That will be the next post. 

Critical thinking for adults in a world flush with "information" and conspiracy theory about the common core!

One of my teacher friends sent me this link.  She had received it from a friend on Face Book and was quite rightly confused by it. It said that Lily saw the common core as the same curriculum she experienced when a child in Maoist China.  I listened to the whole thing trying to find out how the CURRICULUM WAS LIKE that of communist China. I learned that it was not the curriculum that was like the curriculum of Maoist China.  What Lily feared was that anything that was a government program that collected data about you could be used to hurt you.  AND in Communist China that certainly was true.  She sees the data collection (which we use in school to drive instruction) would be used to turn us into silent subservient slaves to a central government.  Here is the link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilaSvC9PGKk
 

What Lily misses is an important difference between our government and the government of communist china.  Our government is US ---we regularly vote people into office and out of office.  We have constitutional issues we vote on.  IN TRUTH the common core may be tossed out before we find out if it is good or not because their is so much conspiracy theory out there about it!  I hate to be the bearer of these tidings, but Lily, the government already knows you are a citizen and the IRS has your number in case you to do not pay your taxes (the price of belonging to this great club we call The U.S. and having public schools, garbage collection, roads, social security, libraries, public colleges and land grant institutions etc....all goods that we share in common and support with our TAXES.)  Yup who knew -- TAXES can be good especially when they fix the pot hole down the street!

My friend found this post disturbing.  Did I know anything about this?  Well, no. But as a librarian, it is my job to find out! I immediately began to search for information on that great heap of TREASURE and TRASH that is the internet.  What I found was a lot of conspiracy theory and virtually no real information about what is actually in the common core in the first pages of my google search!  People get a buzz from being angry or upset, while peaceful thoughts don't boost the blood pressure.  What fun is that?!  

I am going to dedicate several posts to this since it deserves more than a cursory look.  So today I would like to focus on who we believe when we are looking for information.  I will be showing you some things that on the surface seem very reasonable and only upon deeper inspection send up red flags as the authors move deftly from fact to fantasy.  Stay tuned if you are really curious about what Common Core is and whether we need to tweak it or throw the baby out with the bathwater  Of course,  this is ALL from my analysis and point of view.  You see we cannot divorce ourselves from the baggage of our experience, education, reading, friends, and the time in which we are born and raised!! AT best we are aware of our bias and struggle to understand and combat it! That is the first important fact.  If you want to know what biases I have you might want to check out who I am .....am I trustworthy?  Am I widely read?  Do I know a lot of people with different viewpoints or do I have only friends who reflect my personal belief system? Do I have experience with the subject I am writing about? These are valid questions and need to be asked whenever we read information.  By the way teaching this skill is one of the common core objectives...hmmm 

When I was growing up the news was separated (in as much as is ever possible) from opinion. There was the editorial and news.  News attempted to be dispassionate.  Example #1  - You could not interject something like this article from the Heartland Institute does.  Let's take the first bit of its reporting about the common core. 

"Montana legislators are debating a proposal that would repeal the state’s implementation of the Common Core State Standards, a set of requirements for what elementary and secondary school children should know in each grade in math and English.
On November 4, 2011, Montana was the last of 46 states to adopt Common Core. Other states, such as Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia, never adopted the standards, and a recent nationwide backlash has led to successful repeals in Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina."  so far it is only factual reporting with a foreshadowing of where we are headed since the article is focusing on repeal already.

Common Core supporters say implementing standards that are both high and unified with other states will jumpstart the U.S. education system and improve student achievement on a mass scale.   Still factual -- but wait here it comes...."A study from the Brookings Institution contradicts that claim, instead finding government-mandated standards fail to correlate with student achievement. For example, every state has had its own set of standards for many years, yet variation in achievement is four to five times larger within states than between them, despite the quality or rigor of the standards."  source https://www.heartland.org/policy-documents/research-commentary-montana-common-core

This is a tame example.  So first things first -- who is the Heartland Institute and the nice thing about this particular cite is that their site has an about feature which lets you learn about them.  Following it you find out that this is an organization dedicated to " discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems."  Armed with this information I can pretty well guess where they will land on any number of issues --- like environment, constitutional reform, healthcare, taxation and government....but at least we start with an understanding.   NOW AS ACTUAL INFORMATION --- NOT SO MUCH!  I need to first LEARN about what is actually in the common core.  To do that I need to go to a website like http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/.  Here I found Information about what the core is, how it came to be, and I can even link to specific curriculum.  So this is where I began my exploration.  Is this site without a viewpoint.  NOT HARDLY --- these guys spent years of work creating the common core.  Think they have an investment in getting you to understand and appreciate it.  You bet they do.  Tomorrow we will explore that!

Teaching Young Naturalists

What is really exciting about our new partnership with Percy Warner Parks Nature Center is the heightened interest by faculty in learning about our natural world.

Tomorrow we will take a "field trip" to our garden and students will each select something special to observe in old fashioned naturalist  tradition.  They will be carefully drawing what they observe, framing their observations and questions, learning how to think like a scientist.  They will model on the great naturalists from the past.  I hope to get some of our kids and teachers to read - The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.  It's the perfect book to set young students on the path to be naturalists. Calpernia is a young girl at the turn of the last century whose curiosity leads her to be a naturalist in a time when girls rarely did these things. Her relationship deepens with her grandfather who opens this wonderful world to her as she struggles against the traces of being a girl in a boys world. While those themes may dominate in some readers minds, the beauty of this book for me is that it gives children today, not only a glimpse of life in a different time, but also gives them a glimpse of how they might look at the real world at this moment!

Another book that helps students see the world and how interacting with it can change us is One Beetle too many! If for no other reason than its author, Kathryn Lasky, it is worth reading.  Lasky never misses an opportunity to help kids gain insight into what motivates people.  She carries us along as we see how Charles disappoints his Dad, but remains true to what is stimulating his curiosity.  Why are there sea shells on mountain tops?    What makes plants and animals of the same species so different in different parts of the world?  The book is a mixed-media treasure trove for kids to explore.

  Kathryn Lasky undertook a biography of John Muir, arguably America's greatest environmentalist.  Like all naturalists he begins with a love of the land.  The book traces his ever growing commitment to the land in all its variety.  As the founder of the Sierra Club in 1892 he was
 influential at a time when other naturalists were beginning to frame the idea of preserving land for its own sake.  This book is full of stories from his childhood that lead him into the path that changed our understanding of the wilderness.  I will be starting a Young Naturalist's book club afterschool soon, and I invite you to follow our exploits, journaling, as we inspire our students  to love this precious planet.

Of course for me, though I will not purvey this to my students, this involves my deep experience and understanding of our Lord who calls us to be stewards in His garden.  "Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it."  Genesis 2:15 (JPS Tanakh 1917)
Here is a link to Jean Ritchie singing the old Appalachian song Now is the Cool of the Day Now is the Cool of the Day- 
 

Hebrews 10:26 - How working in a garden changed my life....

1st graders harvest what they planted and roast the veggies!

Since 2008, when we first started the school garden, I have been on a deepening path of trying to live out my principles relating to conserving and leading a healthy life.

As early the 70's it was clear that fundamental change to our consumption patterns was necessary.  After Reagan became president I gave up on changing things. His strong opposition to government regulation rendered large swaths of environmental legislation  impotent. (This is not a republican/democrat issue - EPA and the Clean Air Act were Nixonian--remember) I couldn't even teach about Earth Day in the public schools. To do so brought accusatory phone calls from parents who believed that mentioning it was teaching a communistic world view.  There was no reasoning with these folk that planting seeds, growing food, or using less plastic was a simple recognition that resources are finite. No matter how I talked about these issues I could not convince these parents that teaching about this was an act of patriotism. 

Read how school gardens make strong minds and healthy bodies!

When we began the garden it was mostly about student health, food security and healthy outdoor life-long activity.  When over time, I saw the soil go from being dusty, dead dirt to being an exciting living community of organisms.  I realized that I did not need commercial fertilizer if I used composted  cafeteria waste to enrich it each season, nor did I need to use herbicides or pesticides if I was careful about complimentary planting and weeding.  So we became an organic garden.

Memories flooded back from childhood in the garden with my parents and grandparents, in thickets on Sunday afternoons by the side of the road, walking down the canes and getting scratched up as we picked the plump sun ripened berries that soon became cobbler with home made ice cream melting on top!  These berries were part of a common wealth growing as they were in hedgerows and bar ditches!

I got to know other people who were also on this path, and together with Chef Martha Stamps, a leader in the slow food movement here in Nashville,  we spent an hour a week becoming more aware of the many perspectives about the importance of local, fresh food to our health and well being.  We learned about agribusiness and how our food was being grown and transported around the world with HUGE  carbon impacts.  We learned about how animals were being raised, slaughtered and processed with the huge polluting of watersheds.  We learned about overfishing, the acidification of the oceans, and the added pollution by farmed seafood and the impact of plastic waste aggregating there! 

I was stunned to see animals bred so that they could not even support their own weight and were contained for the entire short miserable lives in metal crates. Knowledge is a terrible thing.  As a Christian I was well aware of the scripture from Hebrews 10:26 "Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins." 

It became critical for me to find local farmers who raised their own animals humanely without hormones and antibiotics, who raised their vegetables without pesticides, herbicides, and artificial fertilizers.  These things cost far more than the heavily subsidized agribusiness of Smithfield or Hormel, but I chose to pay these prices and found myself wasting far less food and eating less meat.  I learned from these farmers and the food that I put on my plate took on a new meaning.

By now, I believed that there would be no movement on the major issues relating to these issues, but as for me, I was going to live out my deeper understanding in as much as possible.  I was committed to help children learn to taste the difference between the food they bought at the grocery store and what was grown in the garden.  I learned that they will eat and enjoy tasty vegetables especially if they help grow them!  We made spinach salad, roasted vegetables, and fried green tomatoes.  The children helped cook in the library, and declared everything to be tasty!  I knew I was on the right track last spring when I saw a flock of children descend on the garden and eat (unwashed mind you) pea pods filled with sweet English peas.  In 2009 children would regularly say, "EWE that has dirt on it"  and sometimes they didn't want to eat it even after washing it (the vegetables in the store afterall are shiny with wax and packaged in wrap)!

So where do we go from here?  I'm open to suggestions.

Good Book and Good Food Go Together!

Sara Weeks, author of Pie, inspired four girls to give baking a try in the true tradition of the book.  It is a satisfying story of  Alice whose Aunt Polly leaves her award winning pie crust recipe to her cat and then leaves the cat to Alice!   I admit that the kind of story that Weeks writes is one that I encourage my students to read and take to heart.  It is about shared family ties, friendship and doing what is right. Charmingly written it has a pie recipe at the beginning of each chapter and each turn of phrase tastes good on the tongue.

Making things from scratch might not be a familiar experience for most  my friends and soon flour, shortening, butter, and salt to create the crust were everywhere.  Most people today just buy ready made crust or use a mix.  Fortunately, flour is easy to clean up.  After we rolled out the pie crust we started on the filling; peaches canned last summer.  As we were measuring out a cup of sugar one of the girls asked why we weren't using "that sugar" pointing to the sugar packets that were in a basket from the Garden-to-table dinner from the night before.  "Think of how many of the packets we would have to open to make one cup of sugar."  I replied.  "Yeah, but that is better sugar."   I asked her why she thought that and learned that in her world "restaurant" meant good.   Our children have learned to eat processed foods and fast foods and restaurant foods and believe that homemade, homegrown is not as good.

We also had a recipe book that I found in an old bookstore from 1881.  It was great fun to open it up and see if we could follow a recipe that was 130 years old.  When we opened the old binding several recipes and clippings feel out.  These were dated November 17, 1912 and were in themselves instructive, illustrating how different times were.  None of us would build a fire in our stove to make a pie for example, and one of the line drawings in these newspaper clippings were prompted a discussion about racism.  You never know where things will lead when you embark on a journey.  But in the end we had a satisfying experience and on Monday shared a berry pie that I had made and good conversation over what often brings people together -- food and good books.       

Singers come from around the Southeastern U.S. to Junaluska, N.C. every fall. This beautiful spot nestled in the mountains near Asheville is awash with the hues of fall for Choir Weekend.

I do storytelling in worship, usually as one of the scripture readings.  This year I was tasked with doing something around the creeds and storytelling.  I thought, OH MAN, the creeds are things that are considered inviolate and people have been put to death over changing even a jot or tittle of  them.  The early followers of Christ felt the need to address heresy by creating a clear statement of faith (a creed that could be recited in worship).

Growing up in the church I could recite the Apostle's by the time I was in 1st grade.  I remembered from my confirmation class the heresies that the Nicene creed, (the first major creed following the Apostles creed) addressed.   Beyond that I knew little so I did the first thing that any good librarian does,  research.  As is often the case, I started thinking about this in traffic between home and school.  If the church were writing a creed now what would the heresy of our time be?  As I was pondering this at the light where I often wait through three light changes my phone started to ring.  The screen lit up as it played a ring tone telling me it was my husband.

In a flash of insight the heresy of our time came clearly into focus.  It is that we deny the real for the virtual.  We prefer images on a lighted screen to the reality of those sitting directly across from us at a dining table.  Over the past few years, I have noticed that children do not possess even the simplest fine motor skills when they arrive at school. The only skills they have revolve around poking an icon on a screen.

While these skills are important in our world,  the child who has mastered them often has no awareness of the real world.  When I take them into the garden for the first time, I often ask what they hear.  They hear the sounds of cars and and other human activity.  I then point out the insect sounds, the sounds of birds, the wind through the white pine next to the garden. These sounds are perfectly audible, but unrecognized by them. 

Next we line up at the cafeteria door as though we had just come into the building from the garden (in other words they form a backward conga line).  Then we take one step back at a time until each one has passed from darkness into the "golden light of the sun."  I learned this little trick from my favorite West Texas art teacher who used the experience to teach students the power of light to warm a landscape.  I stole the activity to teach the power of sunlight to give life to a garden!

Next we move to the cabbage patch.  Most people grow cabbage as a vegetable.  I grow it primarily as host to the cabbage moth.  I ask the students to look carefully at the plants to see if they can find a caterpillar.  It is utterly astounding to me to learn that even though the plants are covered with the caterpillars the students do not see them (what an opportunity to teach camouflage!).  When I point one of the little critters out there are squeals all around as one after another the see ALL of the caterpillars right in front of their eyes.

All of this to say, the heresy of our age is not technology, but our failure to use it wisely!  If technology replaces real experience and real relationships it is heresy.  If we use it to amuse ourselves to death, we are not only fools but heretics.

Samuel stood at the check in computer.  He looked around and noticed the trees and snowmen decorating the library.  "Do you celebrate Christmas?" He followed that quickly with, "I hope not!"
Samuel is an ebullient child who is Jewish.  "Samuel, I do celebrate Christmas, but I also celebrate Hanukkah, Ramadan and Dwali and I would be deeply saddened if I weren't able to share the joy of all of them."

What he was really saying to me was I hope you are part of my tribe.  It touched my heart.  I know that for children of faith backgrounds other than Christian The season of Advent and Christmas can overwhelm them and make them feel isolated.  Even for those of us who are Christian, Christmas in the commercialized way that it is celebrated, often overwhelms us, too.    Little Samuel's comment made me deeply joyful and sad at the same moment.  How often do we do something that draws a circle of exclusion, without intention or even awareness? 

This weekend I saw part of a movie on one of the "Christian" T.V. channel about the "war" on Christmas,  Indeed the movie mixed patriotism and advent ending with a pagent where a flag was carried into the manger.  It sent a chill up my spine.  If we wrap the baby Jesus in the American flag we draw a circle of exclusion, for all the other countries around the world.  We also draw a circle of exclusion for those Americans who are not Christian.

When I was a teenager, Glide Memorial United Methodist Church took the cross out of the Sanctuary.  It was a move that caused a firestorm of controversy in the denomination and since we were United Methodists it was a point of discussion around our dinner table.  .  The minister suggested that the congregation focus on life  and he viewed the cross as a symbol of death.  At the time Mother was outraged for her the cross as a symbol of eternal life and I totally concur, but I also know that it doesn't mean that to everyone.  It doesn't mean that to little Samuel, and because I understood that long ago, I stopped wearing the simple gold cross that my husband gave me shortly after we were married to school.    Now I think the reason to take the cross out of Glide's sanctuary might simply have been to keep from excluding people who would be put off by it. 

Pulling Weeds

"Ever since the eclipse of our native cultures, the dominant American view has been that we should cultivate the self rather than the community; that we should look to the individual as the source of hope and the center of value, while expecting hindrance and harm from society. We have understood freedom for the most part negatively rather than positively, as release from constraints rather than as a condition for making a decent life in common......We have a Bill of Rights, which protects each of us from a bullying society, but no Bill of Responsibilities, which would oblige us to answer the needs of others."                                from The Web of Life by Scott Russell Sanders

Just as I was about to pull up these weeds in my school berry patch this little guy landed. He made me ponder the quote above.  It was part of a Northwest Institute Course I have been taking with 6 other stalwart people on Wednesdays  nights at church.  The course, called Discovering a Sense of Place, has helped me understand a bit more about my relationship to Middle Tennessee.  It caused me to pause.  Should I pull the thistle up because it is my right to have a beautifully manicured garden or should I leave it for my beautiful Goldfinch friends as one of their primary food sources?  I know what my native American friends would have done.  They left most of the natural world as they found it.

This thistle is a natural source of food, unlike the meal worms I provide when we fledge bluebirds.  We diligently try to assist them in their attempts to survive pitted as they are against the invasive house sparrows brought to this country by immigrants 300 years ago.   How ironic.  Do I pull out a natural food source and then go buy niger seed for the finches?  You tell me

 

Water from the rocks..... Numbers 20:11

"Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff and water gushed out and the community and their livestock drank."   Growing up on the desert in California did not prepare me for water gushing from rocks.

It still shocks and delights me to see a sight like this one on my way to school after a healthy rain last week.  I couldn't resist pulling over to get the picture with my smart phone!  I remembered a friend in New Mexico relating the story of visiting family in Tennessee as a child and having her Dad stop so they could get a taste of cold water projecting from the rocks by the roadside like a water fountain.  I wondered if this water would be safe to drink today. 

Tiny amounts of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, hormones, mood stabilizers, and other drugs -- are in our drinking water supplies.  In an investigation by the Associated Press, drinking water supplies in 24 major metropolitan areas were found to include drugs.  Disturbingly I searched for the EPA information on our water system in Metro.  "There are no reports for your area"  the search screen established!  I suppose in a time when we continually cut funding to our government with the idea that "anything the government touches is messed up."  We cannot expect there to be enough people to do the testing and enforcement that the EPA is supposed to do.  Disturbing!  

But there are watchdog organizations that report.  One that I regularly contribute to is te NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)    There is much interesting information here -- but the bottom line is that in order to have safe water we must filter so much more than simple bacteria.  And the truth is that to have safe water for everyone we must stop polluting the water with so many kinds of waste, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.  In the end Nature provides the best filtration if given the opportunity and if we do not overload the system!  

As I was thinking about this I walked past the garden on my way to put my compost into the compost pile, I found one of the painters washing his paint bucket into the storm drain in the middle of the garden area.  I have been thrilled to see these excellent painters take care and pride as they painted our halls, but instinct kicked in, "What are you doing?"  I asked in a tone of voice that says I am your mother and you are in so much trouble.  The man looked at me as though I was a bit daft, after all it was easy to see what he was doing. 

"I'm washing out my paint bucket."   I caught my breath.  "When you wash things into a storm drain you might as well drink it you know --- it is gong to end up in your drinking glass." 

"But it is environmentally friendly paint,"  he spoke somewhat defensively.

I tried to explain that low VOC paint only referred to volatile dangerous vapors produced by the chemicals.  Paint is not meant for human consumption. How do we educate people to the fact that our actions impact our health and well-being.  I guess the answer is one person/child at a time.

I ended my day with the words of Jeremiah 4:23-36, "....I have seen, and here the garden-land is now the wasteland, and all its cities are pulled down, because of God and his hot anger."  Amen

Big Miracles come in small packages!

Dad's use plans & work together

I pulled into the parking lot at school today (Saturday April 26th) at 9:30 after swimming.  The lot was full of cars and their were busy folks everywhere near the garden. 

It was girl scout greenhouse build day!  Dads had tools --- not just tools, but TOOLS.  You know the kind that make a lot of noise.  They were consulting plans retrieved over the Internet, and orchestrating it all was one of the most dedicated parents I have ever enjoyed working with, Kathy Ferguson.  She has led our girl scout troop for several years and has overseen the year-long effort to collect the bottles and do the ground work required for such a large scale effort.

The girls have been learning about the water cycle and conservation all year.  They have also been learning about perseverance, dedication, postponing gratification, seeking funding, giving back to their community, and pride in accomplishment.

First Wall

Though I have only been a small part of this my heart swelled with pride as I watched the organized chaos in the garden while I shifted books with four other parent volunteers inside the library.  They worked all morning and well into the afternoon.  The girls saw their Dad's and Grand Dad's in a new light as they worked together, altering the plans when they weren't quite right, compensating for slight flaws in the frame, using their experience melded with the reality of the moment to change what they were doing together to get the greenhouse built.

We hear educators talk about 21st century skills when in fact these were 1st century skills as well.  If you do not have the ability to confront circumstances, assess what tools and materials you have at hand, and then work together to come up with a solution, it will not matter how capable you are on a computer, you will not succeed.   But perhaps the best moment was when one of the girls confided to Kathy that she loved this day above others because she got to spend time with her Dad.  Thanks to every person and every scout for the Greenhouse that will make our school garden easier to experience and learn from since we will be able to start our gardens much earlier in the year!

Hey YOU STOP LITTERING!

Hey you, STOP LITTERING! I never see you but the stuff you throw out is left for me to pick up!  You drive off in you nice clean vehicle!  What kind of person throws their trash out on the roadside?  On my way into the Martin Professional Development Center yesterday I found a plastic bottle wedged into a plant, bits of trash scattered along the way, and the worst of all -- as I drove to Murfreesboro Rd (the main thoroughfare I drive to go anywhere from my housing development) I saw one McDonald's bag, and 4 plastic water bottles.  Unfortunately I couldn't stop to pick each one up because of traffic.  I can only hope that a jogger or community worker picked them up.

When I returned to school after the all day meeting, one of the little girls, a first grader, rushed up to me.  "I asked my Mom to recycle a bottle this weekend. and you know what she said?"  "No," I replied, expecting the Mom to commend her daughter for her desire to keep the earth clean.  "She said we don't recycle."

"You did the right thing, I said, maybe I could talk with your Mom."  I'll let you know how that goes.

Do Butterflies have ears? and other GREEN Questions...

The reason I am a librarian is because I love questions.  I love the hunt for an answer.  I love the paradox. In our month of nature activities I shared some milkweed seeds with the kindergartners and discussed why we plant them to encourage Monarch butterflies. So when one of the kindergarten students asked, "Do Butterflies have ears." I was tempted to say, do you see any ears?!  But that wouldn't have answered her real question.  What she really wanted to know was  do they hear?

As is often the case in science the answer is complex.  Some butterflies appear to have fairly sophisticated "ears," some appear to not possess the ability to hear.  But what is most interesting is how scientists discover these fascinating facts.   For example when the question is extended to caterpillars the story of how scientists discovered that they hear is fascinating.   A budding scientist  decided to do a test to see if caterpillars reacted to sound.  He had a little sound generator and tested different frequencies to see if they noticed any reaction from the caterpillars.

The caterpillars ignored most sounds but there was a narrow band of frequencies that caused them to "dance." The interesting thing is that these frequencies were very low. He thought about this and tested different things in nature that make that low frequency, and he found that that frequency is created when birds flap their wings! Makes sense, doesn't it? A caterpillar can hear when a bird is flying overhead and take cover.

This is where the science gets so interesting.   Clearly they could hear, but how did they?  A college student noticed that the little hairs on the caterpillar's back were equidistant from each other. The spacing was the same length as the sound frequency to which they responded. They hypothesized that the hairs on the caterpillar's back acted like the little hairs in our ear, making the caterpillar act like a walking ear drum. To test this out, they shaved the hairs off a caterpillar and noticed that it didn't react anymore to the low frequency sound.

I learned once again that we do not know enough to be so bold as to think our knowledge will be sufficient to save us from environmental destruction.  We are filled with hubris. There is a wonderful verse in Isaiah (55:8-9)  For My thoughts are not your thoughts,  Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts

Earthships, Clubhouses and Girl Scout Greenhouses

1st grade architectural drawing of the perfect clubhouse!

A wonderful week of sustainability.  Ms. Burgett's were the 1st of five classes exploring energy conservation.  Since buildings are the major source of global demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases building green is an important concept that must be understood if we are to ameliorate rising carbon levels in the atmosphere.

The students used their developing presentation skills to show off their architectural drawings of the perfect energy-efficient (see checklist in the picture) clubhouse. 
They have been thinking seriously about using energy and the impact it has on the environment.  They have conscientiously been picking up trash, recycling not only to keep waste materials out of the environment, but also because using raw materials to make new things uses so much more energy.  Even though the mathematics of percents are not 1st grade concepts they can understand that recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy that making a can from scratch requires.    

Next week they will meet a real architect who works to design and build Leed certified buildings.  I took the student's drawings and the book they read to him yesterday so that he would know what they have been thinking.  Cory Dugan works for TLC Engineering, a firm that designs buildings for corporate and governmental organizations that meet LEED standards.  They also adopted the Architecture 2030 challenge which intends to create carbon neutral buildings by 2030.  As I write I am looking out at the framework for the Girl Scount Greenhouse going up.  We will have the greenhouse set up next weekend! Cheers to sustainability!

The kids were fascinated to see people building earthships. These buildings are completely self-contained.  They take no water, electricity or gas from the grid, and they produce no waste. I was equally stunned by the use of so many materials that we regularly discard to make lovely homes that are totally carbon neutral and healthy!  As I think about the impact we have in schools I think that this quote by Neil  Gaiman says it best.  “Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”  M is for Magic   I would just change one thing about Neil's quote.  It isn't only the stories we read or hear that never quite leave us---it is the story we see being lived in those around us that awakens us to our own potential!