The Girl with the Brown Crayon makes an eye in the storm

I have written about Vivian Gussin Paley before, here and here. I even already quoted the passage that I came to the blog today to quote, but I'm going to do it anyways-
"I too require passion in the classroom. I need the intense preoccupation of a group of children and teachers inventing new worlds as they learn to know each others dreams. To invent is to come alive. Even more than the unexamined classroom, I resist the uninvented classroom." p 50 in The Girl with the Brown Crayon.
I finished The Girl with the Brown Crayon (for the something like fourth time) this morning on the streetcar on the way here. What is remarkable, and inspires and excites me to keep at school so that I can GET MY OWN CLASSROOM, FINALLY is the intense and profound things that happen in Kindergarten. So much learning, so much discovery, so much thoughtfulness documented in Vivian Gussin Paley's writing. Her self-reflection is a balm.
In the hurly-burly of this semester, with research projects and work and IEPs and working here at the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, reading this stuff is really good tonic - the long perspective Vivian Paley brings to her writing helps calm me down.

very smart - Hara Estroff Marano on over-invested parents and brittle kids

Hara Estroff Marano is the Editor-at-Large of Psychology Today in the US, and in this fantastic interview talks with Australian broadcaster Richard Fidler.
 Lots of great stuff talked about - letting kids have a childhood is now a revolutionary idea.
She talks about the importance of play, contemporary interest in learning, helicopter parenting and children building resilience through bumps and bruises, scrapes, mistakes and failure.
She's pretty awesome!

Nerd Out!

schooling the world - the film