Going to NH Children in Nature Conference "Building Nature Based Communities" October 1, 2009, 8:30-3:00 at Camp Yavneh in Northwood

Thursday I go to CHILDREN IN NATURE CONFERENCE in Northwood, NH. So nature deficit in children is a growing concern. Kids don't play outside after school unless it is organized and supervised. I ask kids, "So who has made a fort in the woods or built a treehouse or even climbed trees?" Three hands go up. Okay we'll do it as field trips in school around forest ecology. ways to get around things so kids can experience what will help them grow and become aware of more than a screen picture of the forest. We go to the Urban forestry Center for our September summer field trip and kids LOVE it. Is is organized? yes Is it supervised? Yes. But maybe they will go on their own on this walk near their homes one mile from the classroom. Most of the students have never been here. The woods. We looked and touched bark, We sketched, we studied biotic and abiotic factors, we used our sense to just hear, smell, feel the herbs at the nature center garden. We cupped our ears to see that bigger ears that can turn hear more - so big eared animals survived better than small eared ones - thus large eared rabbits and deer whose ears turn 360 degrees reproduced and evolved. We study the sky and learn how to determine a percentage of cloud cover. They go on a scavenger hunt to find items in nature. We make environmental art projects based on Andy Goldsworthy's work. Do this with your students. Go out on a limb.

Education News Update

Once a month I will save all of my education exploring news and give an education update on what's going on that's printed in the newspapers, yes newspapers that are dying at an alarming rate. That's another rant for later about how will our democracy survive without a first amendment – freedom of the press - investigating government and keeping people from all of this dishonesty and greed we see today? All in all the last great undercover investigative reporting was Watergate.

The government seems to be giving an increase to states for early education in a recent education bill. Per the New York Times Sunday Sept 20 shows “New Initiative Would Focus on Raising Quality of Early Learning Programs” by Sam Dillon. A higher ed bill that passed the House last week includes early learning and care programs that serve kids birth to 5. To get the money states have to show a curriculum of sorts, a way to review programs and give quality ratings, training requirements, a plan for parent involvement or reach out, and a way to collect data on children. The Dept of Ed and Health and Human services would admminsiter the Challenge Fund. Some are upset because the bill does not raise the number of kids who can get a pre-K program. This is a focus on quality not quantity attending.. 30 states have kept or increased giving money to early learning and some are reducing and eliminating as many as 12,000 children as in Illinois. The National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University follows the numbers.

Another cry for help in education is in South Africa where students are teaching themselves in classrooms where facutly don't show up. “Keen to Learn, And Let Down In south Africa” by Celia W. Dugger protrays a racist program with chronic problems in the black schools but not the wealthier neighborhoods. Students are angry as they know education is the way to a better country with a great need for bookkeepers, accountants, engineers, doctors. They are crying for an education.

I must say that when I come in to class to teach I don't have students crying for learning here in the United States public schools. We've lost so many students to a different ethic – not work, but glamor, fast fame, petty disagreements and a view that there is an easy way to money.

Other NEWS Literacy is down in Afghanistan since we have taken over because basic institutions like schools are suffering. Greg Mortenstern, author of Three Cups of Tea is making the rounds talking about his new children's books that explain his program to build and rebuild schools in Pakistan..There are small ways to be a part of that.

Aside personal noneducational news: I have a farm in western Nebraska, Banner county exactly, and there on route 14 is one of the 6 windiest places in the United States. I have experienced it. They formed a wind association to speak with companies that would like to put up windmills/turbines. A company is proposing to install 900 to 1000 wind turbines and 3 substations to run them within 10 years. The company is working on changing the laws to be able to send the electricity beyond Nebraska. It could run 750,000 homes! We'll see how it goes. They are just investigating and putting the ideas in motion in the Nebraska legislature to change the laws. People are excited about the economic lift it would give the county. They estimate that each land owner might receive $12,000 a year from the electricity generated by the windmills. It would be one of the largest windmill farms in the world.

Princeton Friends School

A visit to Princeton Friends School If you want to see a state of the art school with 130 students k-8th grade, this is it. It began in the late 80s. I taught there in the early 90s when it was 3 years old - walked in and said this will become a remarkable school, and Ernie Boyer at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in his book Basic School, a community of learning thought so too. This school has such a profound sense of respect and encouragement for each and every student. The attitude is projected from the top by Jane Fremon, the director. There is a beginning school of 4's and 5's, then the advisories are identified by age or grades 2nd and 3rd, 4th and 5th, 6th -8th. I advised an advisory of 3rd through 6th graders. I also taught everything as elementary teachers often do with drama, Central Study, Math and PE. With a class of 4th through 8th graders in PE I thought it would be a challenge. How could I teach a gifted athlete who is raging to show off how to play with a clumsy non-athletic 4th grader? I asked him to take up a challenge. "You're good" I said, "if you can get that 4th grader to score a soccer goal. You must coach a young newby in soccer to follow you up and you'll be the assist for his scoring -- then you're good." He accepted that challenge and learned to respect that younger athlete too. The school is designed around the library which has risers to sit on in front of the books as a place to read. There is the big room for all school gatherings for Friday folk dance, singing, and meeting. It now has a playground and basketball court, but that all came after 1997. The core of the school is the amazing faculty. The courtesy, respect and time spent to instill a wonder about the world is palpable. princetonfriendsschool.org can give you some understanding and pictures. Here are a few of their programs: canoe trips to the New JerseyPine Barrons to learn about brackish water and ecology, an annual trip to Guatemala with a sister school there a trip to Kentucky for a folk dancing festival sometimes. Richard Fischer produces a math problem of the week that includes information about mathematicians and encourages parents and student collaboration toward work, study and play with the problem; sometimes its games pr designs. Each student gets a schedule to follow. Each student has an advisor, but also goes from class to class to follow central study: this year work and play, other years Walls and Bridges, or Rivers -- a topic that is discussed and read about and studied in metaphor, non-fiction, fiction, science and throughout the curriculum; devised in a customized fashion by the entire faculty. I had an amazing day watching students love being there because the entire staff loved being there. If you're interested I can tell you more details of the classes I attended. write back

A trip in the clouds

We took off at 6:35 PM 9/12/09 on a cloudy rainy day from Manchester, New Hampshire. Clouds low in the sky, maybe only 500 feet off the ground. We were at probably a 45 degree angle and climbing surprisingly smoothly and swiftly through the cream soup fog seeing nothing.

I could barely see the end of the airplane wing. I wondered if we'd break through and see the sun after such a rainy day in New Hampshire. But it was a long ride before it started to get light. The cloud cover was really thick.

I have never flown through clouds this thick and broken through to landlike topography in the clouds., This is white and blue with popcorn clusters spread as far as the eye can see. Care Bear Land. You could easily walk over this rippled surface of hills and valleys.

The clouds are all at different levels, maybe a mile apart looking down. The ones closest to the window go by faster than the ones farther down. All the levels are passing by at different speeds. A few holes allow a look all the way down to the dark ground..

There is a special effect with the setting sun and angle of the cloud's shadows. There are stratus and cumulus clouds miles high, wavy ones that look like the rippled bottom of the ocean. Some are smooth and a little swirly like wheat being blown in the mid west farms.

Blues and white light change at certain levels, look almost pinky golden skin color..

I can't stop looking because as we travel west the thick clouds extend forever. Far in the distance is a giant anvil, one sticking up far above the stratus fields like a slightly slanted butte. Miles high.

It's getting grayer down below but with different shades of gray that show the contours in the folds and bumps. The many layers give an unusual depth perception.

Right now as we head a little bit south the whole sky all the way to the horizon is popcorn looking clouds in undulating mass. Still the higher wispier clouds, sort of sheer are closer to the window and go by faster giving a constant reminder that this isn't a flat picture. Above us is a circle rainbow. I've never seen one. The very thin cirrus clouds way, way up veil the setting sun. The bright round right-in-the-eyes sunshine dances over the tops of the clouds showing a blue shadow or pink gold as it puts on another blanket of slanted light..

Hills tare ouched by the sun, and valleys are bathed in blue or gray shadow, and there in the middle is a baby cloud just hanging by itself going by faster because it's closer than the ones below giving the whole scene it's 3-D image.

Sunset is at about 7 PM on the ground but up here at 26,000 feet we have a few more minutes.

It's an ocean now as we start the descent and are eye to eye level with the tops of the cloud sea. The sun directly in my eyes now as it sets with the cloud horizon. We sink into the gray and whi

Now a gold path from me to the sunset.at 7:10 as the sun sinks below the cloud line. .

At eye level or a little below the spikes or tips of the clouds are defined with the sun just nicking them off the top. Wow. Thick seas above and black evening below. I want to draw it. I want to walk on it or swim in it. I take a picture but I know it won't do it justice. Well, dreams are made of this.

Princeton Friends School and reunions

What do people do at reunions? Eat fabulous famous family meals, talk about what they are doing and play sports! We played tennis, went horseback riding and swimming in the pool. I am very lucky to have a great sister-in-law who has this place outside of Philadelphia. But what did I learn today? I am not a half bad tennis player when I thought I was pretty bad. I guess the recent playing 3 times a week is making a difference. Any time you want to do something well you have to do it a lot. Eventually I am hoping my writing will improve with this project. Especially as I tell you more about myself and my teaching experiences in the past and the ones I'll have this year around the country. A little more about Princeton Friends School. It was mentioned as one of the best examples of progressive education following some of the principles of excellent teaching because much of the curriculum within the yearly theme is directed by children. There are also yearly events. One that I remember so well is a Story Telling Festival. Every student with workshops on performing and speaking and lots of theater games learns a story to tell to a group of parents and teachers over the period of about 2 weeks. Students don't memorize the words they learn the plot and points of the story and tell it with expression, accents, sound effects, gestures, and movement. If they enter the school in kindergarten they do 9 stories by the time they graduate at the end of 8th grade. Each year they improve and learn much about literature as they search for their story the want to retell and much about themselves as they perform. That's just one of the experiences that students have at PFS. Not only is there a story festival at PFS, but they also visit other schools and classrooms in the area to tell their stories. More later Must run for another fabulous meal. Ciao

I am wiped! All day in a multi-media technology library course at Plymouth State U. which has a state of the art library. I am there to learn to produce and design materials for the classroom. BUT almost everything in the world is copyrighted. We all just choose to ignore most of it. That was today's lesson. We can take a photo and use it in our final multi-media projects. Or we can use like 3 pages of a book with sound overlays or we can compose our own music and use that. Google images... - copyrighted... and really shouldn't be used in the classroom. All songs, Youtube, shouldn't use. The public domain is almost nonexistent. Everyone should be reading the fine print, but no one does. So for this course as a teacher/librarian we have to follow the rules. All video on the Internet is basically off limits unless we get copyright permission. Many copyright clearinghouses have a membership fee so it is nearly impossible to get it. We'll be studying copyright more than production of materials. It's incredible. But I am zipping off to West Chester outside of Philadelphia for a family reunion right now. More on all of this later. Monday I will be visiting my old favorite school, Princeton Friends School. I'll tell you all about it.

Today is the first day of my post, but everyone must have the first fateful jump-off-and-do-it day. My 15 year old dog, Elizabeth is curled up by my side. I have a year to follow my quest. My mission is to write about a year in the life of a teacher explorer who looks at all kinds of places of teaching and learning, from the great outdoors to libraries to travel to other school settings. My travels will take me to my own public elementary school in Portsmouth. NH to a Boston Public Middle School (Bill Gates school), a Quaker School in Princeton, NJ, an MBA program at the Flagler school at U. of North Carolina, a garden learning center, a preschool nature's classroom school. You'll see it all this year right here ... coming soon. At Plymouth State College in New Hampshire I am taking a course to get up to speed with technology. Pictures are the key and pretty soon I'll get some good ones up to brighten this forlorn looking blog. I really want the web site that can be run and designed each day ... in its time. Monday I am going to Princeton Friends School in Princeton, NJ www.princetonfriendsschool.org (K-8) where I taught some time ago (c.1993) when the school was only 3 years old with 21 students. It now has a new building and is expanding with about 100 students. Friends schools are Quaker, like the one the Obama girls go to in DC. The first day I walked into the school it was obvious the school would do well with the kind of deep thinking and active curriculum they were doing. This place is special, truly remarkable because of what they do: imaginative fun curriculum that is centralized around a year lon theme , how they teach: intensely, intelligently, actively, and what they expect: homework, memorization, acting, thoughtful math problem of the week, and family involvement academically. Some of the highlights of the school are its central study theme that is carried through the year. One year they had rivers and streams, another was bridges and walls. Pictures are necessary and I will get them on Monday. The director of the school is Jane Fremon who began the school with an idea after graduating in the first coed class from Princeton University. I'll keep you posted. Deb