Ellen, Jenna, Gene & Extended Extension

This was our small group’s response to an article used by Caleb in his demonstration.  I really appreciated his use of something local–right down to the connection with Unit 4 in Champaign, and to something that requires students to consider multiple aspects of social justice.

It has impressed me that for all our widely differing backgrounds, curricula and  age groups the importance of either (or both) a social justice or a global perspective on teaching.  Certainly I have always considered it very pertinent.  I would love to see an expansion of this into a cross-curricular approach.  I wonder… with all the discussion about charter schools and meaningful curricular change, especially at the high-school level, are there models that take an overarching theme and make connections to that theme the centerpiece of every subject taught?  So that when, say, the Spanish teacher (gee, why would that come to mind?) wanted to discuss the Caribbean, Art could bring her information on the ways Che Guevara is presented (and many of his actual goals mis-represented) or talk about Oscar de la Renta’s designs, and History could bring in a discussion of Puerto Rico and issues of representation and the biology teacher could discuss Che’s experience with lepers in South America and what leprosy is and Music could talk about ‘son’ in jazz and counselors could discuss how a blind Cuban ballerina took on New York and English could compare Julia de Burgos and Sylvia Plath and Math could look at the prodigious complexity that is the Maya calendar system.

This is what I would love to see in education, allowing every student a way in–through art, writing, science, math, languages, psychology, history…

It has distressed me for years to watch even the brightest students getting caught up in creating a academic resume rather than learning how to learn for life.  Exploration has been replaced by ever-earlier specialization with a desire to make of every gifted child a prodigy; to aim him or her rather than support their need to roam.  Many times these carefully targeted students do succeed as professors, or engineers, but I do wonder if anyone has tracked their creativity.  Do they learn later in life, after blasting through and earning the MA or PhD, to look at things from a hundred angles rather than a magnifying glass?

I was born on the other side of the binoculars, always wanting to look beyond, beyond, beyond; to trace astonishing and unexpected lines that were invisible farther in.  It’s why I read National Geographic and books about zero and the Geography of Bliss (recommended) and the Dante Club (recommended) all at the same time.

I won’t ever make a lot of money or publish anything definitive about anything, but I will have lived a meaningful life because I believe it is every person’s purpose to discover the of being human and living in community–and therefore to do good if at all possible.  As a teacher I want to provide a classroom in which students can find was to connect what I teach to their ongoing discovery of their individual life.

This all sounds so very lofty…  I should add that it is my innermost desire to come back to earth as an otter.  I am convinced that they have found joy.  I’m fine with not thinking for a life or two.

The three of us arrived at some sort of consensus about the underlying importance of choice. How much choice does a woman have who had no effective childhood education? Do we have an effective way in our system of making up for the omissions suffered by neglected children? When making choices–beyond escape–how realistic is society’s belief that public schools give all kids access to good decision-making skills? Pregnancy and contraception?
How realistic is the social response to the realities faced by millions?