Entrance Slip: Dancing Teachers Into Being...

 For whatever reason, this reading didn't resonate with me the way some of the others did. I'm not sure if it was my frame of mind going in, or what, but it's not firing off multiple areas of my brain. I'm not making connections, I suppose. 

I like the idea of getting "off the grid" (both literally and figuratively), and I like embracing the messy non-linear style of learning that comes with inquiry. I suppose in some ways, I'm already on board with basically everything this reading is saying. I like embodiment. I like questioning and rejecting the grid. I like learning through play. And I'm already comfortable with the syncopated rhythms of swing and jazz. I already see the cityscape as a play place (though not for parkour but for "buildering" = urban bouldering).

Perhaps I need to take this a step further and dig deeper to really fire up my brain. But I'm just not inspired to do so. And honestly? I think that's ok. 

Exit Slip: Leaf Geometry

I really enjoyed this activity. I once took a drafting course, and it reminded me of the joy I had participating in that course. It's this really nice middle-ground between art and problem-solving where you get to create your own artistic interpretation of the leaf, while still problem-solving how you are going to do so using only the compass and straight edge. 

I also quite like using these simple analog tools to explore geometry since you sometimes end up stumbling upon "proofs" of some geometry properties by exporing, say, why the methods of drawing a perpendicular or bisecting an angle actually work. 

Very cool activity, and it also correlates nicely with the mindfulness exercise of drawing or sit-spots since you have to study the leaf so carefully. I dig it!

 

Moshe Renert Response

This article blew my mind in a few ways! The first was the idea that, because of positive feedback loops and their relation to chaos theory, one small personal change that seems insignificant could actually change the world. Renert writes:

Consider the common belief that ecological problems are just too great for any one person to do anything about. This belief is founded on a linear argument that proceeds by quantitative comparison... Chaos can help change the way we think about power and influence. It teaches us that us that compex systems cannot be controlled, but can be accessed and perhaps influenced through the myriad of feedbackloops they contain.

The author goes on to explain how this type of thinking can actually help students take action if they are hopeful that they can actually make a difference. I find I'm often paralyzed by the idea that my tiny action couldn't possibly make a difference, so I really like this argument.

The other piece I enjoyed in this article was how the author framed how the modern world requires us to think and act in creative ways, rather than just be rigid rule- and algorithm-followers:

Most mathematical problem solving in today's classrooms relies on the unchallenged assumptions that each problem has one correct answer and that the teacher knows this answer. Students' creativity is tehrefore limited to replicating solutions that are already known by an adult. In contrast, the solutions to many problems of sustainability are not know a priori, and in some cases there is no certainty that solutions can be found at all. A different order of ingenuity is required to approach these problems, one that we may call radical creativity.

I used to be the kind of person that really enjoyed the cookie-cutter, black-and-white model of mathematics learning. Throughout my adult life thus far, I've learned to become much more loose, creative, and radical and I hope to inspire students to allow themselves to think in this way as well.

Exit Slip: Embodied Learning

 During the rope making, braiding, and poem-writing, I feel like it finally clicked for me what embodied learning actually means. Before, I was like "yeah cool, you use your body to learn." However, it actually took the contrast of what disembodied learning is for it to really hit home what we're trying to do here. Indeed, embodied learning is using your body to learn. But when you use your body to learn, you are also building these neurological pathways (presumably those that have to do with motor function) and associate it with the concepts or ideas.

This whole idea made me think of my own experience with playing music. I starting learning to play the piano when I was about 4 years old and guitar since I was about 7. I've taken periods away from practicing both of them, and sometimes have multi-year gaps between practice sessions. Interestingly, though, the "muscle memory" still remains and while my playing is not as polished as it once was, I can usually still remember how to play certain pieces with remarkable fluency. It's as though my fingers remember, but my brain doesn't! Now, I'm sure there's a psychological explanation to why my fingers appear to move on their own, but what's more interesting is how I can actually recall elements of music theory that I've long forgotten, simply by moving through the scales or chords with my hands. I can just let my hands play, then figure out what they did and work backwards from there. 

During class, Susan has elluded to embodying the shapes of graphs/functions by moving our hands through space in their shape. I'm really digging this idea: the students may forget what a cubic function looks like if they just draw it or view it, but what if they actually move their bodies? What if, later in life, they think "cubic" and then their body automatically traces the shape? Then suddenly everything is flooding back to them. 

I'm sure that triggering memories is just one tiny aspect of embodied learning. I'm beginning to see a lot of other benefits and am starting to make similar connections (though they aren't quite clear enough to express here yet). 

Entrance Slip: Building Change from the Ground Up

This first "stop" for me in reading this chapter was right in the very first paragraph. Kallis says,

"Participants can acknowledge where their skills are best suited to aid the community and where their own internal needs for creative fulfillment can be satisfied."

It's been a long-standing personal belief of mine that I'm "just not a creative person" or "I don't need a creative outlet". I have therefore focused on a lot more of my efforts on the former part of that quote (aid the community) than the latter (creative fulfillment). However, I've come to realize that many of my endeavours that I've previously just identified as problem solving are actually my version of a creative outlet. For example, my partner and I recently designed a carriage house (which is now under construction on our property) for us to live in. I considered this to be a strictly administrative and problem-solving task: where would the windows need to go to get the best winter sun? How does one move about the space, and can we organize it more efficiently? What are the geotechnical constraints and how do we work with them? It turns out, though, this act of design was actually a creative process veiled as problem-solving. Crafting could, similarly, be seen as simply a necessary and practical way to obtain the goods we need. And indeed it is! But it's also a way to express ourselves and explore our world creatively. 

I also enjoyed Kallis's discussion of backsourcing as a way to "re-[claim] what we outsourced when factories took over" for political/ideaological reasons, practical reasons, and individual reasons. 

And finally, I tried out the 7-strand braid by cutting up an old piece of climbing rope and rigging it up onto a coathanger. I found the process to be very meditative (once I got the hand of the method) and was actually a little disappointed when I got to the end of the rope because I wanted to keep going. The result is a beautiful (and huge!) flat braid.

Exit Slip: Human Sundials and Angles in Nature

 I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed today's class. I definitely have a bias since I am already well acquainted with the outdoors and have devoted the last 7-8 years of my career in outdoor education. However, I have never really thought of the outdoors as not only a venue but a resource to teaching anything other than "outdoors skills". Indeed, in mathematics and sciences (among other subjects), we are learning the language that describes the natural world, and what better place to learn than surrounded by it. These types of hands-on lessons like measuring the angle of the sun with our bodies is also much more memorable than studying a diagram of the sun's trajectory in a textbook. It probably also would help a lot of youth stay engaged since they don't have to 'resist the urge to fidget', but rather participate in the lesson with their whole bodies. 

Exit Slip: Frank McCourt

Prompting questions: after watching these, what do you think 'teacher inquiry' meant to McCourt? What could you take from his sense of teacher inquiry for your own inquiry process?

After watching the videos and hearing some additional anecdotes about how he adapted his teaching based on his students, I think Frank saw his students as teachers for his own practice. He listened to them and got to know them, and his own teaching was inspired by their needs and interests. Had he come into the field thinking he knew everything, he may not have been able to be as flexible and adaptable as he was, and wouldn't have built the connections with the students in the same way. 

In my own inquiry process, I hope I never lose my voracious curiousity. I don't know what Frank's internal motivations were, but I hope we share the same path of always striving to be better than before. I hope that I'm always willing to be wrong, and to learn something along the way.