Blue oyster cultch revisited

Someone stumbled on this old post yesterday, and kindly commented. 
As we celebrate Dr. King's birthday today, it seemed like a good one to repeat....


Organizations love mottoes and mission statements and other sorts of committee-speak that expend lots of time and energy that might actually be used for, say, teaching.

Committees drink lots of coffee, committees fill appointment calendars, committees eventually compromise on some pablum. I never expect committees to spew anything resembling wisdom.

I teach at Bloomfield High. I live in Bloomfield. I grow vegetables in Bloomfield. I scan its skies through the urban glow to see miracles above me. We don't have a ton of money, but we have stoops and more than a few stay at home parents. Many of our children here will work in the family business whatever that may be--painting, masonry, landscaping, plumbing.

While the glorified among us search for bodies to fill the elite skilled positions in life, towns like Bloomfield continue to provide a sturdy class of citizens ready to roll up their sleeves, lend a hand, make a community work. We've got real bakeries, real pizza, real craftsmen (and craftswomen) and real stoops.

The motto for our school district reflects committee-speak:

Educating the Leaders of Tomorrow

Few folks buy it. While Bloomfield has produced a few leaders, even our town's namesake, General Joseph Bloomfield, did not actually live here.

Still, we're not a town of followers either. Connie Francis lived here, Tony Soprano died here, and Sarah Vaughn is buried here. We're Norman Rockwellville with an edge. It's a great place to rear edgy children.

The town supports its schools.

Let me say that again. Bloomfield, a decent but not particularly wealthy town, supports its schools. We pay taxes. We go to the school plays, the games, the art shows. Most of our local taxes go to support our schools, and most adults in town do not have kids in school.

We are not unique that way.

Our high school, however, has its own motto. I'm not sure it's the official town creed, but it's how we live.

So, Mr. Arne Duncan, let me toss my high school's motto your way, a motto painted boldly on a wall next to our arts atrium on the second floor, a wall painted by students on a weekend.

In three words it captures our town, and I think most of the nation not warped by the Wall Street madness that infects so much of our public life today.

Learn to live!

It's right up there, big as day. It's not "Learn to work!" or "Learn to follow!" or "Learn to do Algebra 2! or "Learn to kick India's ass!"

Learn to live.

***

Next week is the HSPA testing. This week the state (again) changed its mind on the curriculum. I can't really blame them--they're trying to train students for corporate jobs that don't yet exist.

When I left school today, a few dozen students were going through our musical's dress rehearsal. A dozen more young women played basketball in front of a hundred or so locals watching our kids in our gymnasium, paid for by us.

A dozen more kids were selling pretzels and candy for the Key Club, money ultimately donated to several local causes involving local people.

Here's a list of companies and foundations not giving us money:

Gates Foundation.

Walton Foundation.

Bruhn-Morris Family Foundation.

Capital One

Cartier

City First Bank

Comcast Cable

Donatelli & Klein

Graham Fund

Hattie M. Strong Foundation

Marpat Foundation

National Geographic

National Home Library Foundation

Payless ShoeSource Foundation

Radio One

The Sallie Mae Fund

Susan W. Agger Family Fund of The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region

Target Stores

The Washington Post Educational Foundation

Learn to live.

***

If I wasn't under the NCLB gun to get my kids through the HSPA, here's a lesson I might teach my lambs--the history of oystering in the United States.

We all have property rights independent of whatever patch of land the few of us might be lucky enough to own.

We all own a piece of public land, the commons. We all have a stake in the "public trust doctrine"--we, as citizens, have rights allowing us to gain access to water and land that we do not individually own.

I can gather oysters on the Delaware Bay without interference (beyond applying for a license and spitting out $10). Without the public trust doctrine, I am nothing more than a pirate (which would be way cool, of course).

I have this right because a few folks braver than me fought on the Mullica River back in 1907. Two hundred or so oystermen fought against the few who were among the privileged.

You won't read about this in any high school history textbook. You won't read much about the coal wars fought by miners, or Tom the Tinkerer (Whiskey Rebellion). Kids learn about the Boston Tea Party without grasping its anti-corporate thrust.

A child can go through school in Jersey without learning a thing about how to get an oyster just a few miles away from her classroom while being forced to learn the quadratic equation if she wants to earn a diploma.

Oystering melds biology and history and craftsmanship and industrial arts and nutrition and, perhaps most important, citizenship. The story reminds us how we, as American citizens, serve as the foundation of the Great Experiment.

HSPA won't test this. It's not in the biology curriculum. It's not in the history curriculum. It's not in the industrial arts curriculum.

Still, it matters. And I teach in a town that still recognizes this.

***

Oysters live on oyster beds. They cannot live on bare sand or mud--they'd suffocate.

When I pull a few oysters off a bed, I just about always pull a few off that are too small too eat. Oysters wrap themselves around each other, and pulling one involves pulling several.

When I get a handful of oysters, I break off the small ones and toss them back to the bed. Oysters pile on top of oysters which pile on top of oysters.

The cultch is the pile of shells and debris that allow oysters to continue to reproduce. Oysters need hard surfaces, oysters need calcium. When I toss my tiny oysters back, I am helping the community to survive.

I cannot oyster on Sundays, but I usually return to the beds anyway, to toss back the shells of the oysters I ate the day before.

I could throw them in the garbage. A truck comes by every week to pick up most anything I want to throw away.

My oysters were alive Friday. I killed them Saturday. On Sunday, I return the shells to the bed. The flesh of the oysters is a true gift, unearned.

I was born in America yesterday. I reap the benefits today. I hope to give back to the children what I have enjoyed. Living in America, our America, is a true gift, unearned.

The least I can do is prepare the bed for future generations.

My bias is, obviously, oysters. The American story can be told by weavers, by farmers, by miners, by carpenters, told by soldiers.

Our story is local.
Our story is real.
Our story matters.

I do not recognize the American Diploma Project as citizens, despite the name; I do not recognize multinational corporations as American; I do not believe that CEOs of multinationals have my town's interests at heart.

I cannot think globally. No one can. It's a lie. I can imagine a village here, a city there, but imagining a global village is like imagining a million deaths--both become abstract piles of numbers . I can imagine, however, a single child dying. We all can. We're human.

Get your butt outside, get to know your neighbors. Get involved with your school district's curriculum.

I'll take care of the oyster cultch. You take care of what matters in your neighborhood.

And if you think your neighbor is worthy of teaching your children your local history, get involved in education.

ATT isn't going to take care of you when you're old or ill, but your neighbor will.

Photo by Leslie.

The Bambification of Dr. King

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice....Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

Martin Luther King, Jr., from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

***

Death's shadow stretches long on a mid-day January beach.


Energy's no longer cheap. Last year's abundance has become scarce, and  the sun is too oblique to fulfill last summer's promises.

Purple sandpipers picked at the remnants of horseshoe crabs that failed to return with the last tide; several vultures hunkered down at the edge of the bay.Glistening glass orbs marked the end of comb jellies just out of reach of the receding waters.

We stumbled upon a hole dug by a gull, its presence betrayed by its footprints. Next to the whole lay a small, live clam. I tossed it back into the bay, figuring the gull had given up.

A few steps later, I found another displaced clam, again sitting next to a hole dug out by a gull, and again I tossed the critter back in the sea.

Then a third.

Winter beaches kill the ignorant. I looked around. Several similar holes, each with a clam next to it.

Gulls know how to open clams--I've watched them do it. They pick them up, hover over the jetty, then drop them, following them as they fall, ready to eat the freshly exposed flesh as the shell shatters on the rocks.

I suspect the clams had been left to die--their gaping shells would have saved a gull a few trips over the jetty.

I left the remaining clams on the beach.

One creature's death is another creature's grace. Powerful stories emerge daily from the beach--stories of grace and power and even love. None of them, however, are "nice."

Bambi never lived in the real world.

***

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was loving, and kind, and powerful. His words still resonate, should you choose to hear them.

Do not confuse non-violence with passivity.
Do not confuse kindness with niceness.

During school announcements yesterday, our students were told that Dr. King pushed "cooperation." Rania Jones, a 3rd grade winner of the Milwaukee Public Schools' "People Must Work Together" King contest wrote "That's what we must do today - demonstrate cooperation." This is the Dr. King lite version of a complex story. This is the version that gives so many of us the day off on Monday.

"Love" is a complex word, and one not easily used in public settings. "Cooperation" is much safer, more sanitary.

And it's the wrong message.

***

My Dad joined  the 1963 March on Washington, dressed in full uniform, a proud US Marine officer. He flew A4 Phantom Skyhawks off carriers, in love with a country that let poor first generation children fly.

My dad was pulled to the front of the parade, or so the story goes. If you see a full-dressed USMC officer in photos from the parade, it may well be Bill Doyle. Dr. King later went on to oppose the Viet Nam War as unjust, and my father, a die-hard leatherneck, resigned his commission for the same reason.

I grew up in an Irish Catholic home, but Dr. King held as much influence as the Pope, maybe more, years before he was assassinated. My Dad loved the man, not the cartoon he has become.

Read "Letter From a Birmingham Jail."
Take a walk outside and watch the grace and agony of life around us.

Yes, it's complicated. Life is complex,

Bambi's just the celluloid illusion of a corporation that owns a good chunk of the airwaves today, including ABC. I'm betting you won't hear much about King's letter from jail Monday.

You want to learn about Dr. King? Go read his words, listen to his speeches, learn everything you can about him. But don't "cooperate" with those who would steal his image without his words, the Glenn Becks, the Arne Duncans, the innumerable talking heads that will piously bow on Monday.

Take a walk on Monday, a walk outside, away from noise. Carry a copy of King's letter and read it under the January sunlight.

Share it. Live it.
Don't let the dream die.

The photo of Dr. King (D.C., August, 1963)  is from the National Archives and is the public domain.

The crab claw was taken by Leslie.

Bell jar

No, nothing metaphorical. The real thing.

I cleared out some space from one of our hallway exhibits to make room for our horseshoe crab art exhibit--a wonderful art teacher is integrating art and science, and the results have been lovely.

I took out an old microscope, a shark jaw (and the log-dead critter drew blood yet one more time), and a big glass bell jar.

***

Bell jars command attention, sometimes the wrong kind ("yes, Ralph, I realize it looks like a giant condom, let's get back to the lesson...").

I wiled away a lunch period with two other science teachers, trying to see how long we could keep a candle burning inside the bell jar, using various plants and light sources, ostensibly to create a nice demo for the kids, but the three of us were, well, having fun.

We "failed," or rather, ran out of time before we got a workable demo, and I'm sure we'll play with the bell jar again.

It dawned on me that there is little science in the demo.

"Look kids, no plants, candle goes out...." Kids stare for a minute as the flame dies.
"Look kids, lots of plants, candle stays lit..." Kids stare out the windows.

I would ask the obvious questions, then, waiting for the magical words, another science class liturgy, the teacher leading a communal response, another ritual without much thought.

***

For a few students, the demo could be brain-popping amazing, I suppose. For most, it cannot compete with the electronic looking glass resting in their pocket, a dopamine injecting machine, pure jolts of pleasure that does not diminish with dose after dose after dose.

Playing with a candle, a bell jar, and a couple of plants through lunch soaked my limbic system with dopamine. I would like my students to get stoked, too, but the joy comes from the discovery, not the finished product.

Because we lack time, because we have a state end-of-course exam, I rush through science as a bad history lesson ("We know this and this and this and this...."). Teaching science this way would be like an English teacher asking children to enjoy literature through SparkNotes.

It cannot be done.
We try to do it anyway.

***

The longer I teach, the messier it becomes, again not metaphorical.



Biology is messy and wet. At the end of each day my classroom screams entropy. Yesterday I picked up a remnant of fat left from sheep's heart on a lab table, rescued a couple of red worms abandoned in a Petri dish, and wiped off the Vaseline used to seal the bell jar on my desk. I put away the microscope used to show the soldier fly's compound eyes via the class projector. I tossed two peat pots left with dead seedlings--not all children care for their plants, and they die.

While my classroom gets plenty messy, my lessons may not be messy enough. I can show the bell jar demo in 5 minutes, or I can let go and let the kids figure it out themselves at the risk of broken glass, burned fingers, and Vaseline smeared all over the room.

So far I've taken the ostensibly low-risk, high efficiency  route, cradling "science" with demos that hold science in a bell jar, a few students watching the show, many just amused by any diversion in rooms of cinder block and white boards.

It's long past time to take the bell jar off of the lessons.

The doll heads in the bell jars photo was lifted from Eliot Glazer's post on urlesque here, permission pending.

November light

The last time these parts saw 9 1/2 hours of sunlight was the last day in November. The darkest 6 weeks of the year are over.

Amen.

Photons strike chlorophyll, electrons get pumped up, organic compounds grow. We need the sun. Not in a metaphorical sense.

Every breath you take, every thought you think, every sound you make requires energy, energy released when you break the bonds in the bread you eat.

The energy came from the sun, caught by plants, stored in bonds. The bonds get broken, our daily bread again reduced to (or, I suppose, oxidized, for you chemistry folks out there) to carbon dioxide, to water, the raw ingredients plants need for creating the stuff that ultimately creates us.

I cannot (and would not) presume to teach any religious creed in class. I do talk about this, though. Photosynthesis and respiration, molecules dancing together, joined together by the grace of sunlight, then breaking apart to release the energy within ourselves, energy needed to read these words.

The sunlight is returning. The days are lengthening.

And our lives depend on it.

Photo by Leslie.

Crocuses and clams

We're a few weeks away from the crocuses. They know the sun is coming back. I do not know how they know but they do. Soon green fingers will break through the corms.

Meanwhile, my clams have settled in for the winter. Not deep, maybe 2 or 3 inches deeper than July, but still deeper, clammed up tight, waiting for the water to warm. Deep for a clam, though.




We still have a few stalks of Brussels sprouts growing, still with a few tiny sprouts left.

At this moment, the tide is just starting to rise again on the mudflats, under a crescent moon dancing between wintry clouds low in the west. The clams are there, under the black water glistening from the sliver of moonlight, as they have been before we came, as they will be when we're gone.

In a few more hours, a few feet of water will rise over the clams, then recede again before dawn.

***

We can teach about tides and the moon, we can talk of gravity, but until a child wrestles a clam from the mud, she knows nothing about them.

Most of what we teach, or pretend to teach, means nothing to a child, but often, sadly, nothing to the teacher as well.

I know of tides, but not the taiga or the tiger.

I know of quahogs, and reasonably well, but my words and pictures cannot replace an afternoon on the mudflats, the pungent sweet smell of life mingling with death, jolting young noses more familiar with Amber Romance and Axe.

A single afternoon on the flats can be ruined if I emphasize the abstract, especially to a generation that knows only the abstract. So I will pretend to care about mantles and siphons and the economic importance of hard shell clams while I hope that a few of the children get curious about this unknowable universe we've kept hidden from them.

And for the next few weeks, I am trapped in their world, until the crocuses come back.

Thanks to PSE&G, about 150 young adults will get to spend a day on a tidal flat in May.

Should I Stager should I go?

Dr. Gary S. Stager is one of the good guys. He works and thinks hard, has no trouble crashing through conventions, and he has spent his life helping teachers focus on how learning works, infusing technology into the bigger questions of how learning happens.

He's also a Jets fan, so he's got that going for him.

He recently posted quick thoughts on screen time in the classroom, asked by the ISTE "to participate in a Point/Counterpoint faux debate."

I thought maybe his response was tongue-in-cheek, he assured me it was not.

Here was my response. His words are italicized.

Dear Gary,

At the risk of falling into a Swiftian rabbit hole, I’ll bite. I am a parent, a science teacher, and a retired pediatrician.

It is wrong to be capriciously mean to children.

If you care to have a constructive discussion, you’d do better than to assume off the bat that those of us who minimize “screen time” do so to be “capriciously mean.” If an adult believes (and has evidence) that a particular practice may be harmful, well, a responsible adult would limit the harm. I would not allow a two year old to drink whiskey, nor an eight year old drive a car, even if I do risk escalating inter-generational tension.

Children only do things for long periods of time that they find interesting.

Another strawman–I’ll counter with a lazy jab. Children breathe, pretty much all the time, whether or not they’re interested.

More to the point, just because an activity can hold a child’s interest doesn’t make it useful or safe. More than a few of us could have completely blown away our later childhood doing really dumb things that kept our interest.

If your point is that children find screens interesting, well, um, yeah–that’s why we’re discussing whether screen time should be monitored.

Educators have (limited) jurisdiction over classrooms and playgrounds, not living rooms.

Yep, no argument here. I can only control what I can control–but if it’s harmful, then it should be limited. We can debate whether it’s harmful, or whether it cuts into activities that matter more in school.

I disagree vehemently that computers should be used for science experiments, unless you want to compare the acceleration of an iPod against, say, a Dell PC in a vacuum in a 100 meter fall. Simulated experiments kill inquiry, and should go the way of filmstrips and ink wells.

I do agree that we need to frame our discussions more coherently–”screen time” is so nebulous it’s near useless. I would also suggest that we tone down the hyperbole. “Bankruptcy of imaginations”? Really?

I suspect you have other articles where you appeal to the cortex instead of the amygdala, and I’d be glad to read some of them if you’d be kind enough to point the way. You have a wonderful reputation in the edu-sphere. Don’t fritter it away.

His response:

I’m a fan of tactile messy science experiences. I don’t believe I made any statement that chooses computers over real stuff. I want kids to have access to the widest deepest range of experiences possible. Nothing in the article I completely stand behind, or in my 29 years of work, suggest otherwise.

His words surprised me.

Geez, Dr. Stager, I know you're busy, I know you have almost 3 decades of heft behind you, I get that you're hoi oligoi, but if you're going to respond at all to hoi polloi, talk to us.

Some of us who love children, have a modicum of maturity, and experience with "screen time" have concerns. The cult of personality thrives in the edutech world. Quite a few folks make a decent living rousing the crowds, spreading the edutech gospel.

Most of us in the classrooms, however, are working hard every day to open the world to a generation of children living inside their glass screens. Most of us are willing to change our ways to make the world more interesting, to help our children lead happy and productive lives.

I know you do, too.

Dr. Gary S. Stager's original post is on Stager-To-Go.

Cartoon by Robin Hutton, used under CC. some rights reserved.

And, oh, one more thing--I use 1:1 computing, and encourage all kinds of screens in class.
Not so good at it, yet, but getting better.

Pension tension

(A heads up--this is local and has little to do with science, unless economics counts.)

We're in the dead of winter now, the last few days of the darkest six weeks of the year. My crank-o-meter needle is dancing on the right side of the dial (yes, it's analog).

Last year Governor Christie skipped a 3.1 billion dollar payment to the pension fund, one of the few truly bipartisan acts we get these days--preceding Democratic and Republican governors had done the same for over a decade!

Our fine money managers managed to blow huge chunks of the money that had been put in, losing "almost 9 billion dollars in October [2008]," and over 20 billion dollars the same year. (In 2008, the total payout by the state was 5.2 billion dollars.)

Yesterday, on a snowy Friday when folks were busy shoveling, the NJ Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat, joined forces with Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, another Democrat, to announce the end of the current state pension plan.

"We're blowing up the system that exists to create one that's going to eliminate politics."

Stephen Sweeney, today's Star -Ledger

Those of us not yet retired, all of us, are affected. Those of us with less than 5 years of service are affected more--we will lose cost of living adjustments.

Those of you retired are safe.

This is the best case scenario. Sweeney and Oliver are doing this to help us.

If you are looking for a teaching position in New Jersey, great news! Any rational teacher vested in the pension system has a hard decision to make. Some will stay because they love (and live) for teaching, and never planned to retire anyway.

Many will need to leave because as much as they love teaching, they love the idea of eating and keeping a roof over their heads during their retirement years.

I entered teaching way too late for this to be disastrous news--the newer members of the profession were already getting hammered while local unions strived to protect the dwindling benefits for their more senior members. Property taxes were already becoming unsustainable.

Anyone with even a modicum of economic sense saw the massive market bubble was about to burst the year I entered teaching. (The state market managers used the ol' wing and a prayer strategy--oops....)

The only thing I trust for my retirement is that the seeds will still grow, and that clams and fish will still be in the bay. I trust the laws of nature more than I trust the laws of humans.

The burning money image is from Naked Capitalism.

The money numbers for 2008 came from Ridgewood Views here.