1) I want to make more time in class this week to discuss and process your experiences at CCW. To that end, please bring your lab notebooks to class. We will be using them both to discuss your interactions at CCW and to think toward the exhibition and exhibition catalog. 

I had my second visit at the XX school today.  I came earlier this time at 10:30 and I stayed until 12:00.  I got to see math and a little bit of poetry.

I had my second visit at the Friends School in Haverford today.  I came earlier this time at 10:30 and I stayed until 12:00.  I got to see math and a little bit of poetry.

Today was my first real visit to a first grade classroom at XX School.  Here are some notes and observations:

Classroom/School:

The school feels more like a large house to me, than a school.  It is homey and comfortbale, and warm. Susan's classroom is actuallly pretty big, and broken up into two sections.  One half seems more casual and activity based and the other is more learning based with tables.  There is a turtle in teh classroom named Shelley.  I actually feel kind of bad for it because it is pretty big and it's tank is pretty small.  I think it is more important to teach kids about respecting animals and their wild habitats and taking field trips to see them instead of having them in cages.

The Students:

Last paper I wrote about how scientific education can be empowering or disempowering. This paper I wish to focus instead on what I have learned from my field notes. Looking at my field notes I find that I focus a lot on student to student interactions, and how the teachers can enhance or disrupt these interactions. I want to go through my field notes with a fine comb and talk about some of the different interactions that I have witnessed between students that teachers perhaps should have disrupted (fighting, mean words) or should not have disrupted (bonding, playing) and the compare those to experiences enhanced by teachers (sharing circle, snack and story, playing).

            I would like to further explore the topic put forward in my first paper, and really investigate what the act of helping and supporting disabled people in the most positive, least damaging way can look like. My experiences at the Center for Creative Works have inspired me, but have also raised some concerns, the concerns I mentioned in the March 22^nd postcard.

I want to write a paper that further explores a postcard about mindfulness in education. This grows out of my goal to better understand the usefulness of mindfulness practice as it relates to education and the feasibility of applying it in a way that is, “active in the world, without having to step out of it in order to feel emptiness and peace” (Postcard). In the postcard, I talked about my initially negative reaction to the writings of Pema Chodron, whose teachings I thought were inspiring, but not directly relevant in an educational context, and further, fairly problematic. I want to revisit this thought after reading classmates’ responses to the postcard and after spending more time in class on this topic.

I guess that I'm thinking about proposing that this course only be offered as credit/no credit and possibly extending that into a conversation about grades and how to assess learning. I just finished my weekly meeting for the TLI program and I had mentioned that one of my frustrations coming out of college is that I felt like I haven't learned anything in the classroom (that's not to say that the learning hasn't happened, but rather that what I have learned has happened in my experiences outside of the classroom). This leads me into a larger question about what does it mean to learn and how do we assess it, is it measured in grades? What does pass/fail mean? What is passing? Would each assignment be pass/fail?

I'd like to focus this paper around the tension between looking beyond diagnosis (for example, at the center, where we do not name people's diagnoses/particular intellectual disabilities), and the values of trauma-informed care/trauma-sensitive schooling (which emphasize the importance of meaning learners/patients where they are, a process entirely dependent upon understanding what histories, experiences, and health concerns they bring into the space. 

I came into CCW this morning in the midst of a really rough week, so I probably wasn't entering that space in the ideal mindset. The moment I came in, though, Jessica noticed that I seemed a little nervous and immidiately asked me what was happening, and I was really frank and honest with her. She told me that I had a choice of what I wanted to do today, and that I could do whatever made me feel safest/most comfortable. I ended up working with Ronnie again from last week, and we continued on with the project that we had left off with earlier. I felt really in tun with her mood today, and I think she was in tune with mine too. At one point, she was repeatedly dropping the needle and I could see her beginning to get frustrated.