a new video

It's been a while. This was my first attempt at using GarageBand.

Rant

I'm missing church yet again. I've got stomach problems again. This is the fourth day in a row and I haven't been all that well for several days before that. I'll be seeing my doctor on the twenty second.

I'm also emotionally up and down ... and mostly down.
I have the feeling that my perspective on the world has been flawed all my life. I seem to have delusions about my place in the work world ... it occurs to me that maybe the world doesn't owe me a living (Mother was right!).

I'm feeling somewhat disgusted with the field of education - whatever joy I've been getting out of it isn't what it's about.

I tried to watch a local tv show put on by our Board of Ed yesterday. I wish I could repeat the babble I heard to illustrate my disgust, but my brain just can't hold all that jargon. (I don't think the word "paradigm" was used. I'd have remembered that.) Here's a quote that has taken me a few minutes to dredge up:
"It's not a program, it's an initiative."
My non-professional response is: "WTF???"
And then the person ended her speech with the words "It's really just common sense." Which made me decide to turn off the TV in search of common sense.

Gwen

We were interviewing people to teach our summer 4-H program. I had written its curriculum and it was the first time I had ever been in the interview process for a teacher. Gwen was very pretty and reminding me of the girl my son was dating. She had naturally curly long dark hair and a heart-shaped face. She was compact with a narrow waist and wrists and ankles like a doll. During the school year she was a Baltimore City third grade science teacher. I asked her which unit she liked best and she named one that I had written. Of course that made her my choice.

Our program took place in inner city Baltimore neighborhoods. We offered to plug our program into existing recreation programs run by neighborhood heroes who were determined to provide positive role models and a safe recreational environment in midst of drugs, despair and depression. These programs were found in church basements and city rec centers. Gwen and I were the only white faces for blocks but that never seemed to be a problem. Gwen and her husband had moved into the inner city as Mennonite missionaries.

Gwen always wore a black lacy cap, almost a bow, at the crown of her head. Of course this was noticeable and the kids would ask her why she wore it. She would say that it was her choice to wear it because she loved Jesus.

Florence Christoplos

The previous post from Jo Ann reminds me of one of the best teachers I've had (I can't say EVER had because I had many many best teachers). I took as many of her courses for special education teachers as I could, and one was a course on teaching aesthetics. There's no special gimmic to teaching special ed, but Dr. Christoplos taught us many very basic things.

One involved teaching the elements of art using post cards. I used this with my inner city third graders and then took a few of them to the big art museum in D.C. They were able to wow surrounding strangers by walking into an exhibit and identifying the works with the artist's name. In some cases, they were able to describe which period the works were created. I had so much fun with this, that I brought my cards whenever I was visiting an art museum, even with adults. And a visit to the museum gift shop helped me expand my collection.

Here's a hint of what we did.

I'd start with very different works. Say, Audubon and Picasso. I'd say "Sort the cards into Audubon and Picasso. ... How did you know the difference?" Then I'd do the cards like flashcards which would give the kids practice saying the artists' names. Then I'd add another artist, say Rembrandt, and go through the process again. We would describe the differences ... subject matter, lighting, medium, perspective, choice of colors. Then I might introduce another work by one of the familiar artists and have the student guess who the artist might be.

Here is a work by Monet.



Can you find another painting by Monet?
(show the following post cards)






If the student chooses the wrong one, you might make a comment like "Oh that is a Matisse. I love the way its figures are kind of flat, and how there are fabric patterns and natural objects going this way and that in different directions and making your eye dance all round the picture." Such comments open the way to a later matching of Matisses.

What I like about this sort of teaching is that I didn't have to learn a whole lot of stuff before I started teaching. All I needed was the artist's name on the back of the post card, and maybe a date. The student can discover things that the teacher hasn't noticed, and each person can find his way through the art in a unique way.