RattleBag and Rhubarb

The September Welcome Picnic

The weather held, everyone ate, children played, old friends caught up and new friendships were made. Magnificent garden gate prizes for everyone! The annual back to school welcome picnic was a fun, families and food fiesta. Construction made the usual Gilkeson venue out of bounds so we moved to the back of Kenyon – a change that worked very well.…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Transformation

Last week I found this huge moth attached to my back screen door. It was several inches across and a beautiful fluorescent green. It’s a luna moth (luna actius) and quite common in deciduous wooded areas of north America. I had never seen one before. And by morning it was gone. Last Monday – in the orientation for new faculty…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Problem-solving is what you do when ….

Problem solving is what you do when you don’t know what to do. – Alinda. That’s just one of the things we learned yesterday at the new teachers orientation in Kenyon. Each teacher had five minutes to present a lesson to the group. These were videotaped and the playback classes used as a starting point for the discussion of learning,…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

School Reports: The Stories Behind the Numbers

I’ve done a deal of packing and moving and unpacking in the last couple of years. And amid all the pains is the pleasure of the unexpected find. Unearthed this week is this school report from the 1950’s. I remember Miss Kempster well, although I cannot say with fondness my chief memory being that of a generalized fear and the…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Cashing in

I caught this Lehrer Newshour segment on cash payments for learning –  one of the latest in a series of appalling ideas spawned by testing mania. Surprise: A startling effect- the cash  only made things worse. Watch the video and see what you think about this latest example of disincentives for learning. Can you think of a better use for…

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Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Many Minds in Math and Art

I just finished A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines – Janna Levin‘s novel that weaves threads from the lives of Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. I was already familiar with Turing and his code-breaking exploits that enabled the allied victory in the battle of the Atlantic from Robert Harris’s thriller Enigma and various historical accounts including the fascinating Most Secret…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

If you have a problem … ask everyone

Did you catch this NYTimes article on open-source science and seeking collaborative solutions to new challenges? “If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone”. The process, according to John Seely Brown, a theorist of information technology and former director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, reflects “a huge shift in popular culture, from consuming to participating” enabled by the interactivity…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Kids Know Things

Solar panels, wind turbines, solid waste fuel, electronic generators and all manner of imaginative and greener ways to power cars, boats, tanks, military transporters, barges and trucks The task for the first and second grade was to imagine a vehicle powered by an alternate fuel source. And then build the model. With the rise in gas prices this spring it…

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Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

The Book is Dead: Long Live the Book

And they smell good and feel good too! In a fascinating article in the current New York Review of Books the historian Robert Darnton provides some good historical context to the hand-wringing over the instability of texts and the unreliability of information in the age of information overload. Darnton argues that texts have always been unstable and that news and…

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Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb

How To Be Creative: Look Sideways

Some attributes of creativity: Challenge assumptions Be receptive to new ideas Recognize similarities or differences Make unlikely connections Take risks Build on ideas to make better ideas Look at things in new ways Take advantage of the unexpected from The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher  

Art, Film, Photography, Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Multiple Perspectives

Still Life with Fruit Basket – Paul Cezanne Think globally with awareness and understanding of complexity and multiple perspectives Predators have eyes in the front so they can see their prey. Prey have eyes on each side so they can watch out for predators. Flatfish, like the flounder, have eyes on one side so they can blend into the sea…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Construction Begins: June Progress Report

Out with the old hoops, in with the new floor. The gym is looking good. Checking the plans in the parking lot, checking the rock shelf in front of Gilkeson Moving the rock in the playground and the summer camp has lunch on the porch of Kenyon House.

RattleBag and Rhubarb

Keep the Connection … Expand the Horizon

Children are natural learners. It’s what they do. And the learning is joyful and the thirst for knowledge, understanding and mastery of skills insatiable. The primary task of school is to keep that connection with joyful learning vibrant and intact. The second task is to expand the horizons of learners – to provide opportunity, to create new contexts and scaffold…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

What do we know about bees?

The pre-k children know a lot about bees and their wall display shows it. I found this on their classroom wall and it reminded me of a wonderful interview Listen to the Bees in About Town – the local community paper for northern Dutchess that I picked up at the grocery store. My mother kept bees and I have always…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Digital Deluge

Do you suffer from email apnea? Are your hunter-gatherer instincts affecting your attention span and productivity? Help – or at least serious recognition of the problem – may be at hand. See today’s NYTimes Lost in E-M ail,Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast. Photo: Jeremy Bishop