2 posts from July 2008

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The education of little tree

Jul 19, 2008
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I'm sitting under this tree right now, and felt that I had to share its magnificence with the world. I've been trying to figure out a good way to observe Newton's laws through simple machines and found myself wishing that this was an apple tree and it might give me some inspiration.

I decided that this tree is probably not a physicist but instead I feel like it is more of a philosopher tree. The problem with this is that unlike the physicist trees which can drop apples on people to teach them, this tree cannot communicate it's wisdom. Which is too bad, because this tree has seen a lot of change in it's life time. I am sure that this tree has seen students from 100+ years ago probably even seeing some of it's students march off to fight in the civil war. It has observed the riots here when the first african american student enrolled at the university and I am sure that it will see much more change in it's future. If only it could share it's wisdom with the world! This tree is the ultimate listener, it soaks up the wisdom of the ages but will never share it with anyone. It is a reality that transfers into our own lives. Those who know the most are those who listen, those who give everyone a chance to share their beliefs without a need to add their own opinion to the matter. They just listen unbiased to everyone never critiquing just learning ( this was indirectly a quote from a starbucks cup) All this wisdom is wasted however, if it is never shared with anyone else.

So what am I saying? Take the time to listen. Listen to friends and foes alike, listen to the birds in the morning and the crickets in the evening, listen to the breeze as it blows through the trees, listen to your own footsteps or the crank of your bicycle.

I leave you with this story; two men are walking down the streets of San Francisco. One man is from the country and the other from the city. The country boy remarks that the birds sound beautiful and the other man responds "what birds?" The country boy says that we listen to that which is important to us to demonstrate his point he drops some change on the ground and multiple people stop and look for the falling change.

My challenge to the world; stop and listen

Godspeed

Creepin on myself

Jul 2, 2008
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I chose the title because I feel kind of weird watching myself teach. My image of self has always been internalized, so it is weird seeing me from the outside. The first thing I noticed about my teaching habits (if they can be called habits this early in my career) was that I have a couple of security blankets. The first being my clipboard, I always have it in my hand it doesn't matter whether I actually need it or not. If for some rare reason I set it down, I end up looking around like a child who just lost their parent in a crowded park. “Um, ok, um, aaaaaaa, does anyone know where Mr. Deitz left his clipboard?”

“Oh here it is” sigh of relief.

The second security blanket is the white board marker, I love the white board, especially drawing on it and always need to have a marker. What was kind of funny about this was that I didn't seem to have any particular attachment to one specific color. So when I lost the first one or the cap I would just pick up another, so eventually I noticed that there were markers everywhere. This is a slight exaggeration, but I do feel as though a tornado has blown through the classroom after every lesson. I usually have paper, pens and notes in the way of whoever is teaching next. Usually I end up wondering how it all ended up so strewn about.

I am not sure if my clipboard waving is distracting to student or entertaining so I will have to try to not wave and see how they respond. I'm not going to do anything about the markers. I have tried to quit drinking coffee, but realized you must just embrace some attachments, just as the coffee doesn't really hurt, neither do the markers.

Now for some positive self talk, what I did good. (EVERYTHING) ok not really, In my dreams right?

There were a couple things that seemed to work very well during my lesson. The students seemed a little sleepy for the first ten minutes or so of class and it was a struggle to get them to participate. But when I got them up to do an activity they became much livelier, and when we got to the post activity discussion, they were much more willing to contribute to the group note taking. I really like to have them come up to the board and they seem to enjoy it as well. So those were some good points.

I'm still learning and it will be interesting to see how I teach next summer, or even by the end of this summer!