Tag: creativity

August To June; Bringing Life to Palm Beach Schools



AgstTJnBrngngLfSchlAmyChldrnPstr.indd

copyright © 2011 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

As any Mom or Dad might do on Parent Teacher Conference Day, Amy Valens, the Educator featured in the documentary film August To June, traveled from “classroom to classroom.”  This journey was not a conventional one. Indeed, Amy did not attend a series of Parent Teacher Conferences.  What she did was appear at Palm Beach screenings of her documentary.  The film follows twenty-six [26] third and fourth graders who studied with Amy in her last year of teaching.  The public school open classroom “Brings Life” to education.

After the movie was viewed, Ms Valens and the audiences engaged in conversations. They discussed what they saw and how it might relate to a broader dialogue.  The subjects of Education Reform, Classroom Standards, Teacher Quality, Merit Pay, Student-Rewards for Success, Parent Involvement, and Testing are but a few topics prominent in our national debate.  While the assemblies of viewers varied widely, the results were the same.  Every child, every class, all Teachers, and each parent, tells a unique tale.  Regardless of the individual or group, we see the world, or in this case the film, through our own lens.

Primary Teachers and Their Pedagogy



DddyTchr

copyright © 2011 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

I offer homage to a Teacher whose pedagogy touched me in a manner invisible to me until this moment.  For scores, I understood what a gift he was to me.  His open and caring ways were as I craved.  However, I had never imagined that this man’s schooling style made the difference in my life.  Today, I invite each of us to look beyond the boundaries or the labels.

Often in life we are asked to reflect; who was or were your most profound Teachers.  I shared my stories in a missive or more.  Those Who Can Teach; Life Lessons Learned, Those Who Can Teach; Transformative Teachers, and Why I Write and Write, Then Write Again.  There are myriad sorts of Teachers.  A few are true treasures.  These special souls take a personal interest in us as individuals.  Students are seen as whole beings, not solely a score, or a name to be identified as a number.  Without these rare Teachers we would not soar.

Innumerable Scholars seek to inform rather than interact in a way that inspires.  Academicians, an abundance of these, think to fill a brain full of facts, formulas, and figures, is to teach.  I wonder; do these Educators believe they learn from their students?  I cannot know with certainty. For myriad mentors, their labor is not born out of love, but out of need . . . the need to train students for a test.

Corporate Sponsors in Schools



Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers”

~ Jean Piaget [Swiss Psychologist. Pioneer in the study of child intelligence. 1896-1980]

“The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us”

~ Norman Cousins [Essayist, Editor associated with Saturday Evening Post 1912-1990]

“America’s noble experiment, universal education for all” may have become but an idealized theory.  In practice it long seemed the impossible dream. However, for the hopeful this statement was a reverie, although the veracity was virtually unrecognizable at best. Still the notion lived on.  The powerful prose marveled many. That is all but believers in a for-profit privatized educational system. Today, corporate aficionados have conquered.  Commerce controls School District Administrators. It shapes decisions made. Countless elementary and secondary school campuses are transformed in accordance.  Big business buys and sells city classrooms.  Our forefathers would have thought present-day headlines could only appear in fictional accounts.  Nonetheless banners blare, “This Class Is Brought to You By. [fill in the corporate enterprise of your choice]”  

Does Faith Depend on Biology?

Some have postulated before if there is, in fact, a strictly biological component to faith.  For example, many scientists, mathematicians, and left-brain dominant individuals are Atheists.  They see no role for a higher power, since the scientific process and deductive reasoning can reduce the unexplainable to mere coincidence or chance.  To them, the universe is as neat and orderly as an algebraic equation.  Taking delight and contentment in perfection, the same formula or theorem always works the same way and always produces the same result.  I never doubt the constant need for people whose ways of looking at the world are so different than my own, but they also present significant challenges.  Getting on the same page without confusion is not the least of these.  

Laugh and cry at the same time

Or at least, that’s what I did.

Watch this movie from Rosie (O’Donnell’s) blog — with her unerring taste.

http://www.rosie.com/blog/2009…

So Yeah, I’m Employed Now, Thanks!

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

After over a year, nearly losing my house, cars and other possessions, I have obtained gainful employment.  It came after applying for hundreds of jobs, not just in my area, but across the country, for anything I am qualified for.

I didn’t do it myself.  It came with help from friends, my network, my family, this community, and from the government.  

Follow me over the fold to tell you about how I see us all as interdependent and what a truly great this country is, if you choose to see it.  

New Year 2009: Bring It On Home To Me

joyfully cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

“Bring It On Home to Me” is a 1961 soul song written and recorded by R&B singer-songwriter Sam Cooke. The song, about infidelity, was a hit for Cooke and has become a pop standard covered by numerous artists of different genres. It is one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Cooke’s recorded version has Lou Rawls singing responses as an uncredited background singer.

This song is considered by many historians of soul music to be the founding, or at least definitive soul song, as it provides the formula that is still popular today

Wiki

The song itself is simple enough:

If you ever change your mind

About leavin’, leavin’ me behind

Oh, oh, bring it to me

Bring your sweet lovin’

Bring it on home to me, oh yeah

You know I laughed (ha ha) when you left

But now I know I’ve only hurt myself

Oh, oh, bring it to me

Bring your sweet lovin’

Bring it on home to me.

source

Yes, it’s simple.  And there have been so many different versions.  So many variations.  So many different ways of playing and singing it.  Many people have dug deed into their own understanding, their creativity, their desire to express themselves and have chosen this song.  It is a truly remarkable vehicle.

It’s remarkable how each of the versions is at once the same.  And very, very different.

And so, as an illustration of my 2009 resolution, to continue to explore my own voice, to find my own way of expression, to expand in creativity and inventiveness, I give you for your year end inspiration, Bring It On Home To Me, Ten+ Versions:  

Writing Challenges and Figuring Out the Scene Cards

Thinking that it would drop kick me back into noveling action, I thought that I would step into the Book in a Month challenge set forward by Victoria Lynn Schmidt.

So off I went and joined the Yahoo e-group connected to the book (VBIAMClub), which seems to have garnered quite a number of members. While the current challenge is running from 15 March to 15 April, there appear to be any number of different challenges going on simultaneously. Or at least a couple seem to be couple different challenges going on…or starting.

Zen Writing and Feeling Lost in the Exploration…

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.–E.L. Doctorow

I have to say, those are the exact right words that explain the space I’m in right now. I’m in the exploration. There are lots of different ways that this book can go, and each decision heads it in a completely different direction.

In some ways it reminds me of this thing a friend and I used to do back in college. We’d get in the car with our sodas and a couple bags of chips or whatever. We’d make sure that the tank was full. And we’d just head out and zen drive our way through the afternoon.

Sure…we had a map. But the point wasn’t to know exactly where we were going. It was to experience the drive…to see the world…and to find new and unusual things that we were certain none of our peers would see of the state we’d made our adoptive home for the time being.

Sunday Night Scribblings: The Love Interest

As I write this…the Academy Awards is going on.

On stage, Harrison Ford is talking about imagination. And a former exotic dancer who wrote the script for Juno (Diablo Cody) has just won the Oscar for writing Juno.

And that totally rocks!!!

But also going on is my own writing and trying to figure out some of the stuff going on in my novel. The interview is still in progress between my protagonist and antagonist.

McBad Guy has just threatened the life and wellbeing on my protagonist’s aunt. I wasn’t sure  how she was going to react to this threat. So I tossed in something that Lee Abbot would call a tank that I’ll have to fix when I merge the interview in with the rest of the book. In other words, my protagonist is wearing a wire.

And on the other side of the wire are a pair of guys listening to the bad guy threaten to hurt my protagonist’s aunt if he does not get what he wants. She turns tables on him by letting him know that the threat, and its implied confession to kidnapping her aunt, has been overheard and caught on tape. Tape that will make its way to the police…thereby making his life that much more difficult.

One of the guys on the other end of that mike is a Mentor. The other? The Love Interest.

Plotting Technique and Working with the Opponent

As many of you know I’ve been working on “The Novel.”

I’ve gone back and forth with regards to what kind of story it’s going to turn out to be. There are elements of mystery…chick lit…adventure…pirate…faerie embedded within the story itself.

I have a protagonist, an antagonist, and a whole host of other characters. Some of them are friendly to the protagonist’s mission. Others? Not so much.

I have a John Doe who was killed early on in the novel. While my protagonist wants to know why, the antagonist really isn’t interested in explaining why he hired someone to kill the gentleman.

 

don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me

His hair was long and stringy, he lifted weights, he had a twitch….

Load more