Skip to main content

starting again

I've been a little stuck trying to find things to write about now that school is over. I want to share thoughts and inspiration here but I think sometimes I get weighed down by expectations that it must be a particular length or profound in some way. I have to admit that I don't feel inspired to keep writing but I made the commitment so I will do 40 blog posts. It's just going to take a bit longer than I thought.

So what is inspiring me lately? Where is there joy? I've been preparing to give a talk on Education for Life and it's been fun to ponder all the amazing ways the EFL principles are present and expanding and spreading in our world and throughout education. People are starting to really rethink the purpose and methods of education in a whole new way. The old systems are breaking down and suddenly we're trying to prepare children for a world that doesn't yet exist, that we can't imagine, that they will create!

In the midst of the pandemic even we are finding we have to redefine what we're doing. The good thing is we have a certain built in flexibility to make that a bit easier. We don't have lots of strict rules, regulations and standards that dictate who and what we teach. Both as a school and as classroom teachers we are constantly responding to the needs of the moment, of the individual child or family or circumstance. We expect to do this. Every year we reconfigure the grades and classes to best suit the students and teachers, the numbers and the needs of each class. Each day we are willing to meet our students and our class as a whole and work with whatever energy is there, no matter what our plan might have been Certainly the circumstance and needs of this moment are unique and somewhat unprecedented but the creativity and intuition that are required are skills that we have been cultivating and applying all along and they are skills that we are cultivating in our students too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

look for the light

Some might recognize this quote from the movie Pollyanna. I recently rewatched this movie and was deeply inspired by the way Pollyanna looked for the good in every situation and especially in every person. The people in the town were transformed by her perspective. Our thoughts and expectations can be more powerful than we realize. What struck me is that it wasn't merely positive thinking. Pollyanna genuine looked for the good in each situation, even if she needed to stretch a bit and she felt the benefit of that effort. Then gradually those around her began to feel the effects as well. They weren't instantly won over but with a bit of persistence, they began to see and feel the benefit of the "glad game" as she called it. I still remember taking the first course in Education for Life through the online training program . The instructor gave us our homework assignment the first week: look for the light. We were to look for moment of lightness and childlikeness, moment...
Post a Comment
Read more

our potential

I think that sense that you have, when you’re caring for a child, that this individual child — just them, just because of who they are — is the most valuable thing in the world — not because they are particularly smart or particularly pretty; it’s just them; they’re incredibly valuable — I think that’s when we’re seeing people clearly. That’s when we’re actually understanding what human values are like. -Allison Gopnik from On Being podcast This is from an interview with Allison Gopnik, a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at U.C. Berkeley. She studies the minds of babies and children to help us understand ourselves and what it means to be human. This entire interview was very moving but this part hit me so deeply today that I had to try to share.  In the interview, after the above quote, she goes on to say how she and her sisters joke about their grandchild being best. I think, even if we haven't had kids, we all can think of someone special that we...
Post a Comment
Read more

what's trying to happen?

The unknowns seem to multiply by the day and the questions outnumber the answers. It's an interesting time to be alive! I just finished up a staff meeting via Zoom where we continue to discuss possibilities for the future of our little school, our classes and our community. This "great pause" and the gradual transition back toward movement and activity is giving us an opportunity to rethink how we really want to do things and envision new possibilities. There are many ideas and opinions but as we often ask here at Ananda, what's trying to happen? It's a deep question that gets tossed about a lot but how do we really go about answering it? First, we have to take our opinions, our expectations, our likes and dislikes out of the mix, which is harder than it sounds. Or perhaps just as hard as it sounds!  We have to be willing to put those things aside, to consider that there is a bigger picture beyond simply what we currently see or have known. We have to expand beyo...
Post a Comment
Read more