froggies315's blog

I found this floating around on facebook this morning. It's awesome.

wind map

I was a little confused by the prompt for this posting.  Part of the prompt asked about the direction we want the class to head in for the remainder of the semester, but there was also stuff about gender and the environment.  I decided to reflect on the conversation we had this week on text vs. experience.

In my education class, one of our weekly assignments is to listen to a recording of a group of high school students talking about teaching and learning.  The dialogue I just finished listening to seemed very related to the conversation we had in class today about Berry’s proposed college curriculum.  His writing communicated to me that he had no understanding of what many students need to get from school.  For example, in class I wrote: “for me, all signs point to a job with health benefits and a 401K.  This curriculum probably wouldn’t get me that.”  I so appreciated hearing what these high school students had to say about what they wanted/needed from school because it provided relief from Berry’s esoteric text.  Here are a few quotes which I found particularly shiny.  The prompt was: What do you want to see in your classrooms?

I usually visit my sit spot in the mornings.  I only lasted a little while today...I came out of the woods and wrote! a poem?? I haven’t written a poem since the glory days of acrostics in elementary school. weird.  All this talk about words must be rubbing off on me.

That year,
when I leaned against your trunk
and felt your rough bark in my back

three things that prompted this post:

1. something that happened this summer:  After a three day paddle around a lake, a fourteen year-old shared a story about her adventure during Meeting.  She said that one morning she woke up with the sun and went to stand on a rock which overlooked the lake.  It was windy, and she spread her arms out like bird.  She said that she felt “so solid” and after lamenting about the problems of the world, she finished with: “I wish that more people could stand with me on that rock in the wind to feel the simple power that is just enough.”

I usually get to class 15-20 minutes early to eat lunch or talk on the phone or look at the trees.  If you want, I will sit and look at spiders with you.  It’s a lot easier for me to do scary things when I have someone sitting next to me.  I've witnessed and experienced the transformation that happens when we do the things that scare us, and I'm convinced that this is how we go about finding the "love, wisdom, grace, and inspiration" that Solnit writes of in her book.  Scary is how to get lost.

As was visible from class on Wednesday, I was pretty frustrated with the Bohm reading and our conversation about it.  I interrupted a bunch which is immature.  I am sorry.  I thought about Wednesday’s class when I was at my sit spot yesterday evening and into today.  I think I’ve figured out two causes of my frustration:

Know

The Oxford English Dictionary

Hi, my name is Aliza.  I didn’t get a chance to go around to these sites until this morning, and all of the inside spaces were locked or occupied, but I can imagine how I would feel in them.  Here is my ranking:

1. Morris Woods
2. The campus center parking lot
3. Room 20, Park Science Building