Here are the due dates for your final blogging obligations! For those doing Capstone Projects:
Folks in 1A & 4A must finish by 3:15 pm on May 2;
Folks in 2B must finish by 3:15 pm on May 1;
Folks in 2A must finish by 3:15 pm on April 30.
For those not doing Capstone Projects:
Folks in 1A & 4A must finish by 3:15 pm on May 22;
Folks in 2B must finish by 3:15 on May 19;
Folks in 2A must finish by 3:15 on May 20.
Everyone must complete FOUR more well-written, meaningful, substantial, semi-connected, aesthetically-pleasing, and carefully-proofread blog posts, complete with titles, links, labels, & captioned photos taken by you or acquired from Foter.com, dated after March 7, 2014 (20 points). Use the tagging function of Blogger to mark your TWO best posts with the label "portfolio" (40). When you complete this task, you may put the B.W.O badge on your blog (you just copy the code and paste it into the HTML gadget available from Blogger). Ask me for help, if necessary.
More new growth…a sign of spring?
I am talking with our Technology folks about how you might continue to have access to your blogs after you leave Marshall. Blogger allows you to create a backup file of your blog, and at the very least, I'll show you how to do that. There are services, free and paid, that will turn blogs into books or e-books, so that might also be an option for you. I also intend to award "Best Blog" status to one student from each class section…there might even be prizes…
"Monday Miscellany" posts contain lots of links to a variety of sources that I find interesting...
Something about this poem made me think of The Lovely Bones, but everybody should watch it.
And then there's this, from RadioLab, about what actually happens inside a chrysalis...it's fascinating (and a spring-time topic).
You might have seen this on the Duluth News Tribune's website, but here's the DNR Eagle Webcam feed (I couldn't find a way to embed it, or I would have). From Cory Fechner, "Grand Marais Drone Ice Fly Over":
Remember that conference Madame Greenan and I went to last summer in Memphis? Well, we just found out we're going back again this summer, to give a presentation on what it was like to go through our first year of the 1:1 program.
Yep, that's us in the conference program...
And, to whet your appetites for the Random Acts of Shakespeare, coming up in April (does anyone know why April would be the appropriate month?), I give you this--one of my favorites from the past…Enjoy!
For a quite some time now in English 12, and just recently in AP English, too, I've been using a new discussion technique. It's a kind of fishbowl discussion, with desks arranged in concentric circles, in which the students in the inner circle conduct a conversation for a limited amount a time, while the students in the outer circle listen and take notes for a subsequent timed Q&A session during which they converse with those in the inner circle; then, the groups switch places, and the conversation continues through another round of this pattern. In most cases, the students formed their own groups and they've stayed in these groups so that they have a chance to develop a good working relationship because teamwork is essential here. Each group gets a grade, based on the rubric below. Those who are used to dominating discussion must hold back and draw out their more quiet group members; folks who are reluctant to speak are learning (some faster than others) how to assert themselves. (I was inspired to create this technique by recent professional development conversations with Ms Vigen and Mr Neblett.)
Fishbowl rubric
I allow each team to use a shared GoogleDoc to prepare for the discussion in advance and to organize their participation during the conversation. They use Google's chat feature to urge some teammates to speak and others to hold back. While I use the timer on my phone to divide the session into parts, the students also use timers to pace themselves within the time-frame I've set for them. They can refer to their Reading Journals and, of course, they use their books to look up passages they want to mention during the conversation.
The rubric in action!
The other day, in section 1A, Andrew R didn't have his laptop, and he tried using his iPad instead, which he did have with him. It ended up not being very useful (I forget exactly why--accessing the GoogleDoc, I think, wasn't working well), but he got along just fine without it. I think I asked him if he missed having access to a timer, or if not being part of the GoogleChat was a problem for him or for his group, and he said no, because "they should be regulating themselves, anyway." I was struck by just how well he'd absorbed what the exercise was meant to teach--I'm not even sure that I had realized, until that moment, that the method was teaching self-control. I had been thinking of it in terms of cooperation and teamwork and as a way to get the students to take upon themselves the task of getting all the kids to talk. All these things involve self-control, but Andrew's comment really made that clear to me. (He is, himself, a pretty self-controlled guy, in case you haven't noticed.) His words also reminded me of
Mr Breen's recent comments to the Upper School about giving students more responsibility in defining the culture of the school... because, as Andrew said, "They should be regulating themselves."
The times this last week that I've seen Jake F, Jenna L, Eric D, and Erin P cleaning up the Upper School Commons... because they were "regulating themselves."
How this discussion method makes me almost unnecessary because while I time the session, and tally the score, and use pointed looks, urgent hand signals, and the occasional message on a sticky note to nudge the conversation in certain directions, I really say very little, because the students are "regulating themselves."
This quotation from a talk by Jay Griffiths about her new book Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape: "The true opposite of control is not chaos, but self-control."
I'm embedding the video of Griffith's entire talk below, because I've listened to it several times now and I'm still learning things from it. The talk itself is a bit longer than a half hour (you don't need to listen to the Q&A session that follows), and I'd like you to listen to it. You might not agree with everything she says, and that's okay. I'm not sure I agree with all that she says. But I'm really intrigued by her ideas, and her talk relates to myprevious post.One day several weeks ago, Mr Breen asked me in passing why so many kids are in crisis these days... I don't know, but it might be because they never get enough practice in "regulating themselves." Let me know what you think.
< Jay Griffiths: The Riddle of the Childscape from Stuart Platt on Vimeo.
Last weekend, I got out to Munger Trail for a walk. It was a bright day, and although the snow was deep, it was packed hard (thanks to all the snowmobilers who use the trail) so walking was easy. Since my last post about spring, we've had quite a bit more snow. Spring in Duluth is a wild and unpredictable season. The weather may be changeable--bright and warm one day, then blizzard-y the next--but the season itself proceeds at a steady pace nonetheless: I saw signs of spring everywhere I looked. Soon, I'll start Mungering (as I've come to call it) as often as I can. I'll start hunting for the spring ephemerals that I love so much. I'll take hundreds of photos just of Trillium grandiflorum alone and bore my friends and family by sharing all of them. Undoubtedly, some of those photos will end up here on my blog. One of the first flowers I'll look for is Hepatica.
Hepatica's leaves stay green all winter; it grows at the base
of this tree, & since snow had melted here, I knew I could
find it & take a photo.
One of the things I love most about Mungering is the sense of freedom it gives me. On the Trail, I feel as if I've stepped into another world, and even another time. I guess it brings me back to my childhood. I was lucky enough to grow up at a time when I could explore the world around me in relative safety, and my childhood was almost entirely unstructured, in that I didn't engage in organized activities, or team sports, or "play dates" (what a horrendous term!). I read a lot and didn't watch much television. I took long walks. I rode my bicycle all around the neighborhood. I played in vacant lots and on undeveloped parcels of land. I built forts and invented elaborate games that sometimes involved tracking my younger brother on his own meanderings through the underbrush. My parents didn't schedule my free time for me, so it was up to me to entertain myself. I was sometimes lonely, but I was never bored. My imagination ran free.
This fern stays green all winter--it just curls up during the cold.
Mullein is another plant that never really dies in the winter. Its furry leaves
fade from green to yellow, but they remain soft and unfrozen.
Duluth still has places, quite a lot them actually, where you can feel like you've stepped into another world, and the Munger Trail is, for me, a spot where I can still re-connect with that childhood sense of total freedom. (In the warmer seasons, it's easiest to do this in the early morning, before all the spandex-covered joggers and "serious" cyclists show up!) But I rarely come across children there who are unaccompanied by adults... I suspect fewer and fewer children now have the kind of freedom I had when I was young. Perhaps technology and the phenomenon of risk-averse parenting have already cleared the woods of "free-range" children...
Of course, children and young adults now have other kinds of freedom that I lacked--they seem to have more access to cars than kids did in my day, and they seem to spend less time with their parents than I did (we always had dinner as a family--I can remember sometimes resenting that back then, but I now see the value in it). They have unprecedented access to information and entertainment because of technology, which I think is good in some ways and bad in others. Some high school students even go on Spring Break trips with no adult supervision...
Students in English 12 are currently reading The Lovely Bones, a novel set in the '70's, a time when (what no one then would have called) "slow parenting" and "free-range" kids gave way to "hyper-parenting" and the "over-scheduled child." The novel is about a girl named Susie Salmon who is murdered on her way home from school, but who watches from "heaven" the process of grieving and recovery that her family and friends undergo. We've been talking a lot about parenting styles and just a bit (perhaps not enough) about how childhood has changed over the decades. We've been thinking about how the loss of a child affects parents (thanks to the students from 2B for this great link).
We've also been reading a blog called "Confessions of a First-Time Mom," written by Molly, a Marshall alum ('02), who is now the parent of a toddler named Liam. Abigail, Susie Salmon's mother, is a pretty important character in the novel, and I've been hoping that reading about Molly's experiences of motherhood might help my students understand her better. (This post in particular was the one that caught my eye.) I also hoped that Molly's great sense of humor would provide a little comic relief as the students read a very sad and tragic but unforgettable novel. I think Molly's blog has served both purposes well. (We'll be Skyping with her next week during class, and I'm excited about that!)
Icicles on Munger Trail.
Spring, though it seems like the season of birth and re-birth, always makes me think of death, too, for as I said in a recent post, it's at this time of year that we see, and smell, and feel beneath our muddy boots the decomposing earth from which all green things rise. I can only imagine the pain of losing a child or the trauma that Susie experiences--but reading The Lovely Bones helps me to imagine those things. That's what reading literature is for, after all, to help us extend our imaginations, even into painful, uncomfortable territory, so that we might understand it better. Like Mungering, literature helps us step into another world, into another kind of experience, where we can safely and freely explore various aspects of the human experience. Adults, as well as children, need to be able to do this.
Watch out for falling rocks on Munger Trail in the spring:
as the ice melts, it loosens big chunks, and they fall.
No one lives a life free of tragedy and pain; no one is exempt from suffering. Life itself is risky--don't let it stop you from doing your version of Mungering. Don't be the "Last Child in the Woods." Even if you've had an over-scheduled, over-protected childhood, you can still recover a sense of play, which is so important for developing creativity. When you go off to college, you'll have lots of freedom and a ton of unscheduled time: you'll need to learn how to use it wisely and well. It would be wise, I think, to leave yourself plenty of time for Mungering (and for reading).
The other day, Clara E told me about a comment that her little sister left on one of her blog posts. It was pretty funny (and very well written). I asked around and found out that Mrs Snyder had asked some of her fifth graders to read the senior blogs and leave some comments.
Annie E gives her big sister some sass!
She told me that some of the fifth graders were afraid to leave comments, so I thought I would extend a very special invitation to all Middle School students to read and comment on any of the senior blogs! Please do! I hear that some blogging is going on here and there in the Middle School, and that some Upper School teachers are also starting to have their students blog. That's great! Perhaps we really are on our way to having a digital writing community at Marshall… Go blog-walking and leave some comments on posts that interest you! (Middle School students should feel perfectly free to point out in their comments any errors they might find in the older students' posts!)
Today and over the weekend, it finally felt like spring might actually be on its way. (The Vernal Equinox is just around the corner.) I took a walk in Leif Erickson Park after school to look for signs of spring--there were places where the snow had melted completely away. I bumped into Brady N--he and lots of other folks were out and about, walking and jogging. Some people were even wearing shorts. When I got back inside, I started tearing down the plastic film I put up over my windows many months ago to keep out the drafts. I was tempted to open a window, but I didn't.
I'll have to be satisfied with these sweet-smelling
Paperwhite Narcissus until the spring wildflowers bloom.
We're getting close to my favorite time of year now, when the snow will melt away, and the first wildflowers will sprout. I know, I know--March is typically our snowiest month, and we've had blizzards in April, but as some people were saying in class today, you can smell a change in the air.
Yeah, you know what that is...
In fact, for a time this afternoon, folks in F-Wing caught a whiff of skunk in the building. Spring doesn't always smell sweet. As more and more of the snow melts, and as the sun warms the soil, all the dead vegetation (and other detritus!) from last fall that was frozen under the snow will resume the process of decomposition that winter interrupted. Underneath the freshness of the spring air, we'll detect the odor of death as well. That sounds a bit ominous, but it's true. The fresh, green beauty of spring rises up from the rotten, brown ugliness of the past. It's a sublime and miraculous process, and one the poets love to ponder. I always think of the lines from "Shine, Perishing Republic" by Robinson Jeffers: "the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to makeearth. / Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother." And, of course, there's also the phrase I've quoted several times this year from Seamus Heaney's "The Grauballe Man" about "beauty and atrocity." Mother Earth continually creates life out of death, greenery from garbage.
A whole history revealed...
Spring (with some help from City snow-removal equipment) took a big slice out of winter today, and in the places where the knife was sharpest, you can see the whole history of the last few months, the good and the bad, clearly revealed. I think of Third Quarter in the same way: it shows everyone who you really are--who you are after you receive those college acceptance letters; who you are when you think you have no more responsibilities... Every year, I see the same thing happen: senior grades drop, sometimes dramatically, during Third Quarter; then, most seniors get their act together and do better during Fourth Quarter. Sometimes, seniors have to slide quite a bit before they realize how much they're letting themselves (and others) down.
Yet another bud on Queen Vic, just starting to open...
You still have time this year to determine how you will be remembered, to work on leaving a legacy you can be proud of, to limit the number of regrets you'll have someday when you look back on your senior year. If Third Quarter is revealing your weaknesses, you can still face them and work on them. It takes real courage to admit you've messed up and then declare that you'll do better. Morgan F did just that in a recent blog post. Now's the time to grow up and out of your own past, with all its mistakes and its low-points, and create from it something good and green.
In English 12 today (section 2B), we were working on finishing a paper on Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. The students had been working on this paper for quite some time. I'd given them feedback on their intro paragraphs and their drafts, and then they were to finish revising the paper by the end of class today. As the students were working and I was walking around, answering questions and giving help, I noticed that AJ was really going above and beyond the call of duty in helping Tony P. AJ was saying the kinds of things that a teacher would say, making suggestions and asking clarifying questions, explaining the function of each component of the paper. Together, the two students took the paper apart and put it back together again. Pretty quickly, I realized that they didn't need any help from me. At least in this instance, I was irrelevant. --That's what all teachers should strive to become, I suppose. Our students should learn to do for themselves what we do for them. As the teaching profession moves away from the "sage on the stage" model towards the "guide on the side" model, I hope that all our students will learn to help each other in this way, not by giving each other answers, or doing each other's work, but by guiding each other towards a greater understanding of what it means to write papers, for instance, or organize their ideas. "What are you trying to prove?" AJ asked. "I…I don't know," said Tony. "Look at your thesis," said AJ. Indeed.
"Monday Miscellany" posts contain lots of links to a variety of sources that I find interesting...
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing wax-- Of cabbages--and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings." Lewis Carroll, from Through the Looking-Glass
Each weekend during the school-year, I take some time to pack up all my lunches for the coming week. I've done this most of my life, now, so it's a deeply ingrained habit. Lately, I've started pre-preparing my breakfasts as well.
Wide-mouth half-pint jars full of plain non-fat yogurt
& frozen wild blueberries, with some quick oats & chia seeds to soak up the juices from the berries.
I like to use good, sturdy containers, and my search for the perfect kind has led me right into the thick of the Mason Jar Craze. (By the way, have you seen Mr Anderson's cool leather handle/holder for his Mason Jar? Ask him to show it to you!) I'm a bit late to the party, since Mason Jar Mania has been in full swing for a few years now (and perhaps some aspects of the trend are already dying). I think of it as an off-shoot of the revival of interest in home-canning, which has been on the rise since the recession, and it probably also has something to do with the locavore movement and some wildly popular books by Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan.
A batch of golden beet & white radish pickles, with
one jar of cranberry sauce.
I've mentioned before my desire to learn how to make pickles, and I've made a few batches with my case of newly-acquired Mason Jars, but I haven't yet been thrilled with the results. (Either I'm putting too much salt or not enough sugar in my pickling brine, or I'm using the wrong mix of spices... I'll figure it out, eventually.) I tried again just last night. I found a lovely head of Romanesco at the Co-op and used a recipe from one of my favorite canning blogs, which is called "Food in Jars." I didn't follow the recipe exactly (I don't like coriander seeds!), but I hope the Romanesco pickles turn out well anyway.
Isn't it mesmerizing?
Romanesco is a pretty amazing vegetable. It tastes like a milder version of broccoli and looks like some Martian version of cauliflower. Its growth patterns follow a fractal pattern, and it is often cited as an example of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, or maybe also as an example of Fermat's spiral,or both. (I guess if you can think of a math-related word that starts with an "F," then Romanesco is an example of it!)
Two jars of pickles. I steamed the remainder of the
Romanesco & had it with dinner.
I've been exploring some rather exotic vegetables all winter. Some weeks ago, I was making pickles out of golden beets, Spanish Black radishes, and Daikon. Shortly after that, I bought a fennel bulb for a batch of lunch salads (more about this later). Because I already have some glass lunch containers, I don't make "salad in a jar" for lunch (something you can now buy from vending machines in Chicago), but I follow the same principles. That means I spend a lot of time chopping up vegetables. I'm a south-paw, a lefty, and my knife-skills are not great. So I appreciate kitchen tools that make the slicing of vegetables easier and faster.
Julienne peeler, attacking a carrot.
One of my favorite new tools is my julienne peeler. It makes really thin strips of vegetables. It's the sort of tool folks use to make zucchini noodles, another hot food trend these days. With most of these slicers and peelers, you can hurt yourself if you're not careful. I hold one end of the vegetable with my right hand and then pull the peeler from right to left with my left hand. Back to the fennel bulb I mentioned earlier. I wanted to make a beautiful salad of sliced fennel and red Bell peppers, and I wanted to write a blog post about it, a "Meatless Monday" post. I decided I would use my snazzy new German mandoline to slice the fennel and peppers. I should have known that when the promotional video for a kitchen tool looks and sounds like an excerpt from a James Bond film, I'm in trouble.
I knew that mandolines are dangerous--I read all the reviews on Amazon in which folks talk about slicing their fingers and ending up in the Emergency Room. But I know my way around a kitchen, and I'm smart. Right? I'd also used the mandoline successfully and uneventfully a few weeks before to make the Hasselback Gratin. So, clearly, I was a pro. Right?!
Mandolines are dangerous!
Well, let's just say that I was so focused on taking photos and planning what I'd say in the post, that I wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing. (Who knew blogging could be so dangerous?) I also got a bit hasty and thought I could get just one more slice off that red pepper if I put aside the hand-guard (which is something you're NEVER supposed to do), and of course I sliced a tiny portion of my little finger on my left hand clean off.
Lovely thin slices of fennel. See the hand guard to the left?
...And after I got back from Urgent Care, I couldn't find it when I sorted through the pepper slices and cleaned up the mandoline. I can only assume it got mixed into my salad, and that I ate it! (Believe me, I kept an eye out for it all week...) I joked around with Madame Greenan that my Monday was only almost "Meatless"! Mr Mattson, who has lots of experience cooking in restaurants, tells me that mandolines are often not allowed in professional kitchens because they are so dangerous. My brother, who also has some restaurant-kitchen experience, told me to throw the mandoline away, but I haven't... That Hasselback Gratin is just too good...
Used the mandoline to slice cukes &
daikon, but not for the red pepper.
My finger has almost completely healed now, though it still hurts a bit to type the letter "A." I used the mandoline yesterday, for the first time since I hurt myself: I made sure to use the hand-guard at all times, and I focused on my task. The memory of the pain (and all the blood) is still fresh in my memory and serves as a useful reminder to be cautious and careful.
All ready to go!
The result was a nice batch of salads in Glasslock containers, totally meatless. So now I'm all ready for the week, with a fridge full of ready-to-eat breakfasts and lunches.
Pay attention to what you're
doing, & follow directions!
Are you ready for the week? It's a busy one! English 12 students have a paper due. Drafts of the Capstone Project proposals are due in Advisory today. AP students are giving very important presentations. And on Friday, all seniors need to have five blog posts up, dated after January 5 (that's five well-written, meaningful, substantial, semi-connected, aesthetically-pleasing, and carefully-proofread posts, complete with titles, links, labels, and captioned photos). Please choose the best two posts from your five and give them the label "portfolio."If you'll miss school for the hockey tournament, do your teachers a favor and talk to them about your responsibilities before you leave. Stay focused this week, and be safe!
