Teaching

Darwin's Bulldog's presents: Darwin Day #199
Start Date and Time: 2008-02-12 19:00
Event Website: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/darwins_bulldogs/

Activities:
Sponsored by the Darwin's Bulldogs, this free-to-the-public event is a video followed by panel discussion. It is a BYOB event and you are invited to bring your favorite beverage and enjoy it responsibly.

A video by the BBC titled, “A War On Science”, examines the attack on classroom pedagogical standards by religiously motivated adherents of Intelligent Design. The 49-minute programme (after all...it is a BBC production) begins with comments from Richard Dawkins, David Attenborough and Ken Miller and proceeds to examine the tactics used by ID proponents to try and influence the high school science curricula in Dover, PA.

This event culminated in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial and landed a devastating blow to the ID movement. But what is next? As stated in the BBC’s concluding remarks about this documentary: “Evolution supporters heralded this victory as the damning blow to the intelligent design movement. However, as history shows, law suits have little effect on the support for creationism in a country where over 50% of citizens believe that God created humans in their present form, the way the bible describes it.”

You may read more at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/war.shtml

Darwin Day and Evolution Teach In
Event Website: http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/events/calitem.php?which=1457

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OFFERS
SECOND ANNUAL FREE DARWIN DAY AND EVOLUTION TEACH IN
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1:00 TO 4:00 P.M.
• • • •

PHILADELPHIA, PA—Sunday, February 10, 2008, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology offers it’s second annual Darwin Day and Evolution Teach In, a free event held in honor of the 199th birthday of Charles Robert Darwin, the world-renowned author of On the Origin of Species—and the originator of the modern theory of evolution.

The free day features short “teach in” talks in galleries by renowned experts, a “sneak” video preview of Penn Museum’s upcoming exhibition, “Surviving, The Body of Evidence,” and a physical anthropologist’s corner with plaster casts of hominid skulls and other bones. WHYY TV co-sponsors two showings of a recent NOVA documentary, and the Academy of Natural Sciences joins in with show and tell of memorabilia related to Darwin’s membership at that esteemed institution. An ongoing children’s workshop, a scavenger hunt, free birthday cake and the opportunity to play some badminton, reputedly a favorite game of Darwin’s, are also part of the afternoon. Darwin himself (or a reasonable likeness) promises to make an appearance to enjoy the festivities, delivering short, impromptu readings of excerpts from his many writings.

It occurrs to me some days that I don't really work at a school. I work at a Holding Tank.

Let me share a little bit with you, and I'm sure you will understand.

Inmates are restricted to a small space, and there are too many of them. They are fed awful stuff, loaded with excess simple carbohydrates to ensure that the guards work hard for their money.

Restroom facilities are locked. Permission must be obtained to go to the restroom, and the head guard must be located to unlock the facilities. This is because inmates have repeatedly tried to set fires in the restrooms and use them more often to do drugs than to use the toilets.

In the room with you are: persons under the influence, drug dealers, gangsters who have beaten a fellow inmates head against the sink causing a broken nose, sniveling brats, wiseasses who are cracking joke after joke, none of them funny, in an effort to make the time pass more quickly, girls who have been picked up for looking like prostitutes, girls who have been picked up for acting like prostitutes, a shrieking guard who is calling the warden down every two minutes, a guard who mills about silently, for the most part, occasionally sending people up to see the warden, a guard who is tall, scary, and makes horrible threats that don't get followed up upon, and a psychotic guard who looks as stoned as the inmates because she has not been sleeping enough. Periodically, the assistant warden or the warden will wander down for a stroll through. This riles the inmates up, and as soon as they are gone, the level of interaction increases dramatically.

[Liza's note : Awesome, awesome, first time post. Good way to start the new year.]

I'd like you to meet a few people I know. Maybe this will help you better understand why I put up with so much cow manure on a daily basis.

Meet Anthony. Take a minute to read his life story, if you would. I’ll tell you my side of it. I met Anthony when he was a ninth grader. He had written a very well written story that scared his ninth grade English teacher to death. She was convinced that we had another Dylan Kliebold on our hands. I thought otherwise. He was an awkward kid, a little overweight, very unkempt. His wardrobe was limited, he wasn’t always particularly clean, and he had a temper like Vesuvius. He was also creative, bright, and articulate (even if we didn’t always like what he had to say).

So the meetings started. I asked him to get involved with the STAR program, and he did. I asked him to do his schoolwork, and he mostly did. His dad cut a deal with him and sobered up so that Anthony would graduate. I watched this awkward child blossom into a responsible almost-adult. He was the school mascot his senior year, much beloved by his classmates, even though he was still reeling from the death of his beloved step-mom. He still remains involved with the youth of the city. He attends community college, and proudly reported that he almost has a 4.0. He’s struggling with math. Hey, I understand that. I got out of math in college by taking linguistics and BASIC. He writes wonderfully expressive poetry, and has started a book about his life. He is planning on finishing his associate’s degree and moving on to university. He wants to be an English teacher, and while I know that he’s had this in him since before he met me, it is still one of the greatest honors I could have. This man has overcome things the rest of us only read about. I am proud to know him. I hope that I helped him at some point along the way, but I think it was mostly hard work on his part with help from his dad and step mom. I don't care what you believe; I know that woman is bursting with pride for him wherever she may be.

So Standardized School is the opposite of World-Class Education,
not its divine incarnation?
Good then.
Let's hear no more about the necessary sacrifice of consigning all children to one-dimensional forehand factories for high-priced, high-stakes stamping into quality-controlled widgets, by has-been and never-were corporate charismatics and labor union drones.

Do you know what words of advice inspire the greatest players in the world as they enter Centre Court for Wimbledon, to show what they know and can do?

“If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”-
“If” by Rudyard Kipling.

IF we inscribed this on every standardized test booklet for every child our Congressional Coaches promise never to leave behind languishing in the locker room, IF we took it to heart ourselves, then we still might not win 'em all but maybe we could stop feeling like such losers?

I've long called test score mania (in both triumph and disaster) the two-edged sword, but "two-edged imposter" could work even better, might at least shut up the most rigid standard skunks -- clever fellow Kipling.

The PDE website was founded by JJ Ross and Nance Confer. It contains a variety of opinions and information on various aspects of education -- all designed to assist parents in making informed choices. In parent-directed education, there usually isn't a "right" answer that fits everyone because it all depends on one's personal thought process.

I sent the following letter today, inspired by the NYT story below to pay the one compliment that deserving teachers treasure and the undeserving don't, probably because they: a) never hear it and b) never think to miss it.

It made my children's teachers cry.
They must be VERY deserving!

DEAR MISS MICHELE, Damien, and your handpicked staff of oh-so-special teachers,

No one finds and loves the unique best in each child the way you do, so they can find their own happy spot onstage and the star they are inside as well as out - you are gifted artists and teachers all, but for my children at least, what counts at our studio isn't so much your class but your CLASS!

What you do for your students is so complex and often unseen, steeped in Power of Story, family, teamwork -- it is as this news feature describes the experiences you offer through your art: elegant, graceful, smooth, supple and refined.

I know great technique when I see it demonstrated, and you know I'm a doctor of education, not dance. So you know I'm not just talking about the dancing.

Love to all!

The backstory to this letter is that my kids are definitely not standard issue. Not just their minds and heart but even their bodies are not standard. They aren't particularly built for dancing, nor are their parents; we didn't pass it to them by either nature or nurture, I am reasonably sure. But they love it, are drawn to it and everything to do with it. And their teachers help them love it more, rather than discourage them out of some sense of duty to be practical, because they might never dance professionally.

Ministry supervisor Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter's Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom made the difference between School and Education crystal-gazing clear.

[quote=JK Rowling in Order of the Phoenix]- "This is School, Mr. Potter. Not the Real World," she said softly.

- "So we're not supposed to be prepared for what's waiting out there?"

- "There's nothing waiting out there . . .
who do you imagine wants to attack children like yourselves? If you are still worried, if someone is alarming you with fibs, I would like to hear about it. I am your friend. Now kindly continue your reading."[/quote]

I had to blog this while the Stupid Girls debate is on, because I consider JK Rowling's cultural smarts to reach far beyond Stupid Girls and the Tyranny of Thin. Having read every Harry Potter book at least once, I'd argue that the Culture of Schooling is a specialty of Rowling's. I'd argue that Order of the Phoenix would make a first-class focus for modern citizenship education throughout all worlds muggle and magical, in any language.

Are we just a pretend world of fashionable thought, obsessed with trying to look and feel smart for each other, neglecting and perhaps unable to actually BE smart and DO smart?

Today I'm admiring three women in the cultural eye who do better, with more to learn and balance, than I've ever attempted. I'm considering what their individual identity-crafting might teach me as I shape whatever complicated identities I might claim tomorrow.

I could argue my own identity as native American blue-eyed whitebread. I was born here, as were generations of ancestors.

I can speak no language except Americanized English, though God knows I've tried. My enthusiastic but inept efforts both in school and out to learn French were Dave Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day-like as comedy. I was raised a polite and unassuming Sunday-Methodist because everyone else was too, with no party or doctrine in particular to set me culturally apart. Females are technically a majority, so I can't deny I grew up in cultural comfort.

It wasn't until I found myself a homeschooling mom that I felt real culture shock. Keeping my family completely out of school meant abandoning my cultural and professional homeland (public schooling) and moving to a foreign and somewhat frightening culture without a reliable guide.

Maybe I got it wrong before, and moving school nurses to mega-grocery stores is a good idea?

I didn't see the disaster-preparedness angle when I wrote:

We're getting one of these fancy food-clinic combos in my state, right in Miami where school corruption is a more popular sport than football and jai alai put together. Miami is the perfect place to play around with anything that disadvantages schoolkids to generate ill-gotten profits for greedy grownups.

So now I'm thinking, what's best for kids if their school can't be accessed, maybe isn't there at all?

Where are we wiser to place expensive institutional electric generators, to avoid Katrina-scale misery -- in schools or grocery stores?

It could be that South Florida culture is doing something smart for survival preparedness even if they didn't exactly plan it that way, haven't recognized it and never admit it.

HURRICANE SEASON
By Elaine Walker

The next time a major hurricane strikes South Florida, shoppers should be able to find their local Publix stocked with milk, cheese and ice even before the power returns.