Vivian Gussin Paley makes me excited

Among the 18 other books I'm reading, studying for my midterm tomorrow and working on two papers, shoveling the snow, and getting ready to go to Montreal for the weekend, i am reading the amazing Vivian Gussin Paley's The Girl With the Brown Crayon.
I can just barely handle how excited I feel about getting back to the classrooms I spend time in, about having a classroom of my own...yowza!

Check this -

"It is passion Reeny wants: a roomful of dancing brown girls and dreamy mice, mother rabbits who rescue babies from an eagle's nest, princesses who sleep with their cousins and have crocodiles for pets, and friends who color and hug and whisper to each other all day long.

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 other's dreams. To invent is to come alive. Even more than the unexamined classroom, i resist the uninvented classroom."
- Paley, V.G. (1997) The girl with the brown crayon. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. (p. 50)



Nerd Out.

the book tree

I'm in placement this semester at Bloorview Nursery School, it's High Park site. It's an integrated classroom, meeting the requirements of our second year Children with Special Needs placement - there are about half and half kids with extra support needs and kids with typical needs. I am lucky - it's a really great school, and I'm learning tons.

My field educator Isabel is really great, and encourages me to 'be artistic' in the classroom. We laugh about it, as her background is in performance, and so we're a good match of artistic temperaments.

So...we're decorating the book-nook. I am into this - DEEPLY. I've already done a chalk mural of a pirate ship, following some of the kids fascination with pirates from a couple of weeks ago. But this project feels a little bit more integrated. Anyway, Isabel and i were jamming ideas about how to pull documentation, the kids' art and beautifying the classroom all together, when we realized that making a 'book tree' on the wall above the book area was the way to do it.

I sketched and cut out the bare bones of a tree (one of my favourite motifs) and stuck it up on the wall last week, on my first day of placement for the week. Then, on the second, we started a collage project with the kids, getting them gluing and cutting with different colours of cellophane paper and glue to make leaves to add to the tree.

The kids got right into it, glopping glue on and layering the clear colours on top of each other in a totally unexpected (why didn't i see that coming?) way. A couple of random objects also made their way into it, as well as the inevitable bits of glitter. Isabel and her team-teacher Tatiana continued it with the kids while i was gone, and i got back today to an interesting, still drying (after 5 days, that's how much glue) layered piece of work.



After all the kids left, i got to it with the scissors, chopping up the bigger collage into vaguely leaf shaped pieces, and this is what resulted.



The idea is to start with these leaves, all different colours of the imagination, and slowly add photos of the kids reading, pictures of favourite books and characters, and maybe even letter or words to the tree, tying it all together into a living documentation of creation and literacy in the classroom.




I feel real good about how we documented this too - the only thing is I forgot to take a picture of the bare-branched tree and the collage before i started cutting it up - but I'm a learner, it's ok.

I am proud of this. It feels great to merge two of my worlds, and felt great to put it together like this. I can't wait to see what the kids say tomorrow...



Nerd Out!

beauty and the smartypants

"...aesthetics are a quality as of play, describing it as a meaning-making process, capable of generating both cognitive and affective engagement - important components of the aesthetic dimension."
- L. Vygotsky in Wright, 2003 p. 213.

Wright, S. (2003). The arts, young children and learning. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

And isn't this one of the most powerful reasons we love education - using beauty as a way of making meaning with children, so as to help them become as deeply engaged in the world as we can.



Nerd Out.

Quotes from Bluma...

My dear friend Bluma has been in the hospital for about a month now. She's an older person, and has a neuropathic disorder that has severely affected her balance and motor skills. She's in the hospital because she contracted pneumonia, and since her family is far away in Rochester, I've been visiting her as much as possible.

This lady kinda reminds me of her...



She is an awesome, hilarious, crotchety jewish lady, who swears more than I do and cracks one-liners non-stop. She is a talented musician, who sang and played both flute and guitar. She also worked for years as a music teacher and an arts educator, both here in Toronto and in New York, and has about a million stories and tons of advice to share. She's become a real mentor to me, and has been totally supportive of my switching over from the arts to teaching.

I biked over there in between classes (the hospital is real close to school) and found her sitting up in the sun, going through some of her papers. Her illness has been a real kick in the teeth, as she can't play music or sing anymore, and pretty much feels like she won't be able to again. Instead of getting real depressed or gloomy, she's been pretty realistic and her amazing sense of humour keeps her from going completely crazy.
She was feeling a little sleepy, so after i got her a coffee and a couple of timbits, she said, "OK, what words of wisdom can i impart to you today?" Here's what she had to offer-

"I loved it. The children, all the different kids, shining like a garden. Their responsiveness, and their differences -- that is what i loved most about the work."



"To feed them with the things that they need, and to be sensitive to who they are."

She told me that even as a child she strove to "make the unfamiliar familiar." And that's what we can be doing with our kids, too.

Pretty awesome...but she didn't even swear once.



Nerd OUT.

wow the amazingness of the early childhood education blog

In honour of the total amazingness that is the early childhood educational presence out there in blog-o-land, I've connected the folks who are really inspiring me these days out there on the internet to this blog. Over on the right there's a list of blogs written by thoughtful, insightful educators all over.

Really really amazing thinkers out there. Thanks folks - it's really inspiring and affirming.

Nerd Out!

ok

so - i think that i'll start this thing - a record of my writing and thinking about education, my nerding out about this stuff that is FASCINATING to me. I'm going to start by importing some of my writing from those other blogs of mine about education. Nerd out! That is what's below.

Up above, will be little articles and thoughts and excitement about school, learning, curriculum, education and all that kinda stuff.

awesomeness. Nerd Out!

school SCHOOL school! from AofU

wahooo! It's started again! Thank goodness - even with gardening, i was starting to get dried up by doing too much all the time. School is back, and now i can rest somewhat, within it's schedule.
I love my classes, i'm real interested in everything we're talking about, i'm nerding out. Feels awesome!
Time to go learn more about how to help little things grow.



images found on the internet.