read with caution

It's been quite awhile for me and while I had great expectations of catching up with all things work related this past week off (our extended school year gives us a blessed break in Oct!), I found myself blissfully focused on all things mommy.  And it was a WONDERFUL week!

I think part of my reluctance to blog is the craziness that is happening in education right now.  And all the national lunacy, shameful politicizing, and inexcusable neglect that is all over this country is really hitting home--to all of us.  I read several teacher-authored blogs, and have teacher friends from all over the US, and no matter where the location is, the story is the same.  And the problems are systemic--starting at the very top, yet all the blame I hear is placed on the ONLY people actually taking any action--the teachers.  Bad, bad, bad things are happening and for the first time in my career, I truly feel utterly hopeless about education.

Thank goodness for the primates, who despite all this ridiculous adult crap, still enter the classroom eager and excited and willing to learn and laugh and share their lives.  And that is what I want to focus my blogging on--the good.  Last year the weaving project and the blog were a great escape for me, a chance to focus on all the GOOD that happens in my classroom vs just venting about all the crap from above that is constantly piled on top of everything I try to do as a teacher.  I need to have a place where I can reflect and focus on the real matters at hand--teaching and learning, and I'll save my venting for comments on the blogs of the other frustrated, worn down teachers who are brave enough to speak out.

But please, read with caution.  Please keep in mind that with every valuable teaching and learning moment I may write about, there is a whole other world of education outside our classroom that is crumbling and taking many good and great teachers down--not to mention the effect all of this has on our students.  It's not enough to say "we value teachers" (not that anyone is saying that these days), our society needs to take action against using the education and well-being of American students as political tools or news stories.  I'm sure every now and then my frustration will spill into a post, but my goal is to talk about the GOOD, and I hope that this focus will sustain me as a teacher this year and show an alternative, realistic view of what does happen in a classroom.

I don't want to leave this post all gloom and doom, so here's a start of concentrating on the brighter side:

blind contour drawing

Here's one of our first lessons in sketching, specifically "blind contour drawing", which requires sketching something without looking at what you are drawing.  We used "shields" to help us "not look". I heard many cries of "this is too hard!"...but no one quit.

Our subject matter was gourds to align with the current season, autumn.

Some chose to concentrate more time on one gourd and others chose to make several attempts using different gourds.

 Many primates felt frustration with this task and frustration is an unavoidable--maybe even a necessary--step in the process of learning something new.  And everyone experienced frustration with blind contour drawings.  The learners were frustrated, yet motivated, and that's a successful learning experience.  So we'll continue with this task a few more times, and it will be interesting to see how frustration/motivation unfolds in the individual primates in other areas: reading, writing, math, science, socially.

Ahhhhh, feels GOOD!