The Best Wildflower Walk in Georgia

If you have an interest in the flora of Northwest Georgia, find a way to get to the Pocket Trail on Pigeon Mountain near LaFayette in the next few days. (Do not confuse this with the Pocket Trail in Floyd County.) Here's the map -- only use it if you swear to be a good citizen in Eden, no apples!

If you have sworn, pricked a finger, and spit over your left shoulder, then take Ga 193 west from LaFayette to Davis Crossroads; turn left onto Hogjowl Rd; just past Mt. Hermon Baptist, slow way down (you can't see to turn till you are nearly past the turn!) and turn left onto Pocket Rd, which soon turns to gravel, and go till you can't go any farther. Park.

What a show! Our friends Richard and Teresa Ware, editors of Tipularia, the journal of the Georgia Botanical Society (Richard is a past president of the group.) spent the day showing us their favorite wildflower walk. Richard is one of the most knowledgeable botanists in Georgia and leads botanical excursions all over the state; what a treat to have our own guided tour. The Georgia Botanical Society will have a field trip to Pigeon Mountain next Sunday.

I took 149 pictures. Here are only a few favorites - click on a pic to enlarge it:

Cercis canadensis (Eastern Redbud) There is a parking area near the trailhead. The path by the redbuds leads to the boardwalk through the bluebells to the waterfalls. The path to the left leads to the top of the falls and on to other trails.

What a lush array of floral displays. The blue is Mertensia virginica (Virginia Bluebells)


The Virginia Bluebells have pink buds that turn to blue when they open.



A carpet of flowers draped down the hillside. The yellow is Stylophorum diphyllum (Wood Poppy).


Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman's Breeches)


Phacelia bipinnatifida (Phacelia)


Cystopteris protrusa (Brittle Fern)


Trillium flexipes (Bent Trillium)


The falls area.


Phlox divaricata (Wild Blue Phlox)



Do you see the moth?


Aquilegia canadensis (Wild Columbine) I had to do a little rock climbing to get to these guys.


The view from the top of the falls.


Erythronium americanum (Trout Lily)

From the Pocket Trail we drove around the mountain to the east side where we found more wonders:

Conopholis americana (Squaw Root)


Jeffersonia diphylla (Twinleaf) - the only spot in Georgia this is known to grow.


Blue Hole (This water comes from deep within Pigeon Mountain in Ellison's Cave -- and Ellison's Cave is a story itself! (Here is one fellow's tale of a trip to the bottom of the "Fantastic Pit" in Ellison's Cave.)



and even more Trout Lilies!

Learning in the Great Outdoors

The very first edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors: The Carnival of Environmental Education is coming right up and , so far, the response has been.... well, underwhelming. I have had three submissions, two of which seem to be pure spam.

Help!

Pass it along, if in your surfing you've run across websites or blogposts that you have found useful in

• teaching about the environment
• learning about the environment
• enjoying the environment

..or just a site that includes some remote connection to enviromental enjoyment, preservation, recycling, destruction, hiking, nature trails, environmental policy...

Even better, write a post about the environment and ways you learned in the outdoors!

From my original call for submissions:

If you are an educator, a parent, a science buff, a naturalist -- anyone interested in sharing nature with children, I hope you will join our monthly conversation. Maybe you have a memory of a great outdoor learning experience that you participated in as a child. Maybe your children had a teacher who provided wonderful experiences in the natural world. Maybe you just visited a great nature center and saw a program that we all could profit from. Maybe you chanced upon a website that provides some great insight into the environment. Whatever your contribution, please share. You may use the handy submission form in the sidebar to the right. I promise to fix the picture soon. The first edition will be out on April Fools' Day -- no significance there, I hope.

Happy Birthday to Me!

March 22 has rolled around again. I feel pretty good for a sixty year old. I'm a little outa shape, a little overweight, have a little high BP and a little high cholesterol -- nothing terrible so far.

But 60!

That sounds like somebody else. It can't be this kid. I still feel like the same guy, and he's not 60.

My mother has posted a bit of hyperbole about me. She and three of my sisters and other family threw me a little dinner where we devoured wonderful chicken and dumplings, two delicious salads, green grapes, and a homemade cake with ice cream. The Median Sib's husband, an accomplished songwriter from Nashville, called to sing an original composition in honor of my birth - it had allusions to my politics in it, but I was laughing so hard I missed most of it. I do remember this tidbit of internal rhyme, "...Obama's Mama..."

I cannot hold my eyes open-- I'm heade up to bed. If you want to see more about the old coot, check out last March.

Education Reform Needed

Democracy Should Seek
The Development of the Individual

I last wrote about a speech by Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota’s governor, concerning school reform, and expressed the idea that school reform should be based on sound ideas about motivation.

Wow. It's the school's job to motivate students? I suppose that's so if students are all hatched in test tubes and, having no parents, are wards of the state. Failing that, it is, to put it simply, the job of parents to motivate their offspring, by any legal means at their disposal, for you see, children don't always comprehend what is best for them and tend to give little thought to the future. It is a student's job to take full, daily advantage of the educational opportunities provided for them by their teachers.

It should go without saying that teachers must provide that opportunity. Of course teachers should be encouraging and should work to present interesting and engaging lessons, but ultimately, learning is not all about entertainment and the classroom is not a movie about a motivational football coach who takes a group of losers to the state championship on the force of his personality. Learning takes work. If a student is unwilling to do that work, no amount of teacher motivation will prevail.
Mike | 03.14.07 - 12:20 pm | #

These thoughts, by Mike, above, I’m sure would be welcomed by many school professionals on the front line of school work, who, regardless of their best efforts, are experiencing much student failure. Failing schools usually have quite a long blame list: society, TV, drugs, the culture. Much blame goes to parents, and, the biggest blame for student failure is often put on the individual student, himself or herself. As Mike writes: “Learning takes work. If a student is unwilling to do that work, no amount of teacher motivation will prevail.”

Mike’s comments seems to say that the system is fine -- that the problem is the individual within the system. I’ve come to believe the opposite. I believe it is the system, itself, that is the chief determiner of system success and that, therefore, our school system needs major reform. Students achieving far below their potential, at both low and high levels of achievement, I believe, is a symptom of system fault.

Pawlenty expresses the fear that today’s lackluster high schools will imperil our future economy, and, as a solution, he recommends an increase in student requirements and sanctions. It hard to imagine that Pawlenty’s reform idea is serious. Even if it works, and some students begin to function at new minimum levels, it makes no sense that our future economy will be saved. The future will demand great leaps in the educational levels of our citizenry, not simply marginal improvements.

These great leaps will not come about via new government regulations, but by allowing a clear vision of educational purpose to direct the redesign of public education. Winning -- making good grades, getting awards, getting scholarships, etc. -- seems to define current educational purpose. The argument pushing current school reform is that the system needs to be changed so that there are more winners -- no child left behind -- and fewer losers.

The problem with the current system, however, is not that there is not enough winners. The problem is that a system that uses its authority to define winners and losers is probably not a system that produces quality. The old Soviet system identified “winners,” who were allowed to shop at “dollar stores,” and who were assigned the best government apartments. Producing more winners would not have solved the Soviet’s overall problem. The Soviet system did not produce quality -- even for its winners.

Those of us who are winners, because of the present education system, usually want to think that public schools are working fine -- particularly for the good students. We want to think that the public schools’ sorting of winners and losers is appropriate: Why fix what is not broken? But the truth is, a lack of quality pervades the entire system, and a poor quality of education encumbers winners and losers alike. Winners and losers, alike, are often learning at a level far below their potential. Winners and losers, alike, are often involved in wasteful tasks that contribute nothing to their individual growth or maturity.

School reform must start by answering some basic questions, the first one being: what in the world are we trying to accomplish? Our answer must be centered in democratic values, and must be the type of answer that would not be embraced by the North Korean Ministry of Education. Our schools must do much more than guide students to align with authority, much more than train students to be society’s future workers.

The purpose that should guide education design, it seems to me, is simply this: the development of the individual. Our democracy continues to fund public education because democracy depends upon the strength and wisdom found within each individual. New levels of human maturity will be needed to meet the challenges of the future. We need a system of public education that can answer this challenge.

Randon Flickr Blogging: 0088

Hold it, boy!

Brush-cutting and bush-hogging at the Crawford ranch is one thing, George, but this is a whole 'nother matter ---- and despite the legendary precedent, cutting cherry trees here is not gonna make you first in the hearts of your countrymen!
(Click on the pic to see the original.)
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Tom Hilton at If I Ran The Zoo originated and posts "Random Flickr-blogging" every Monday and invites other participants. Check out how it works here.

PTSW : Flax-golden Tales

I am a storyteller.

I love to gather some folks around me and set out a big delicious lie for them to devour. Yesterday was our quarterly PJ Day, when our fourth-graders receive yet another extrinsic reward, this time for meeting a reading goal. (Sorry, Mike!) It was my turn to tend the rewardees for the day. I told several stories and was pleasantly surprised when a few students, including one very bashful little girl, wanted to regale us with their own tales.

These are the stories I told yeaterday:
"Bud and Jim Go Skinny Dippin'" (The story and the post have some basic similarities, but it ain't the same. Both probably occasionally stray somewhat from the true history of the event.)
"Matilda Stood on a Grave" - my drawn-out and localized version on an old ghost story standard.
"The Tailor" - my version of a quick, cute, little tale specially related to storytellers.
And of course I recited "Jabberwocky". It's expected of me every time I tell stories.

I usually introduce a storytelling time (or a poetry time) by reciting Shel Silverstein's brief introductory poem, "Invitation" from Where the Sidewalk Ends. I learned this one about ten years ago when I was asked to open a Tellebration program here in Rome. Let's start this week with Shel.

Invitation

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

- Shel Silverstein

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The series of posts, A Poem to Start the Week, is my little anthology of poetry, most of which I have used with my students in elementary schools during 27 years of teaching.

Previous Poems to Start the Week:
The Dinosaurs Are Not All Dead
Owl Pellets
Mummy Slept Late
Just My Size
The Kindest Things I Know
Miles to Go
Love that Brother
Oh, Frabjous Day!

Other Posts about Children's Literature:

The Lion's Paw top kid's OOP book!
Harry
Aslan is Dead!
Multiplying People, Rice, and Readers
A Teacher's Life

You can read some of my own efforts at poetry here.

A weblog dedicated to Poetry for Children.
Watch Sonja Cole's reviews of children's books at Bookwink.com.

A Few Recent Matson Cartoons

I haven't sent you off for a chuckle at the expense of Shrub and Co. lately. Here are a few Matson cartoons to check out. Just click on the detail to visit the real thing at R.J. Matson's website.

By the way, when you vote next, remember that polls indicate that 75% of the upstanding folks who choose the Republican nominees still support The Decider. When you vote for a Republican you are voting for the choices of the Ann Coulters, Sean Hannitys, Dick Cheneys, Alberto Gonzaleses, etc. of the world.

Boring!

A Georgia elementary school principal discusses boredom. Check it out.
Nothing cures a child's boredom as fast as a rake.

Learning in the Great Outdoors

I hope you will join the very first edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors: The Carnival of Environmental Education. As I searched online for other educators who are working to use the environment as a context for all kinds of learning, I began to wish for a clearing house for that topic. Finding none I hereby audaciously set out to do the deed myself.

If you are an educator, a parent, a science buff, a naturalist -- anyone interested in sharing nature with children, I hope you will join our monthly conversation. Maybe you have a memory of a great outdoor learning experience that you participated in as a child. Maybe your children had a teacher who provided wonderful experiences in the natural world. Maybe you just visited a great nature center and saw a program that we all could profit from. Maybe you chanced upon a website that provides some great insight into the environment. Whatever your contribution, please share. You may use the handy submission form in the sidebar to the right. I promise to fix the picture soon. The first edition will be out on April Fools' Day -- no significance there, I hope.

Random Flickr Blogging: 6534

Don't you feel better now?
Click on the pic to see the original. Play the slideshow and relax with gorgeous landscapes from the Czech Republic.
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Tom Hilton at If I Ran The Zoo originated and posts "Random Flickr-blogging" every Monday and invites other participants. Check out how it works here.

More Nature Trail Madness

The nature trail project at our school continues to occupy my thoughts. The deadline for a pair of grants I am working on is April 27, so I need to clarify, quantify, budget, gather approvals, map, etc. Our planning day Friday was a chance for me to take an hour and a half to tromp about the woods of our campus and just beyond it. I took 80 pictures. I worked at finding a logical path down the steepest portion of my proposed general route. This is a great time to plan a route since the visibility is so good without leaves on the bushes and trees.

I also explored the Berry College woods immediately adjacent to ours...

...and found another opportunity for an extended trail (to add to my proposals at some later date!)

It turns out that the nineteenth century railroad from Rome to Summerville passed less than a quarter mile behind us...

and the ruins of a CCC camp are there including a lovely little wetland where the CCC had dammed...

...the stream that washes across the layers of sandstone where thousands of little snails gather their nourishment...

Dentaria heterophylla - Slender Toothwort (I think.)

...through open hardwood forest hillsides...

... down to our current nature walk.

Coming downstream I spy familiar territory ahead.

Our little nature walk!

A trail from our Nature Walk to the wetland would be only about o.2 miles long.

PTSW: The dinosaurs are not all dead...

Steam Shovel

The dinosaurs are not all dead.
I saw one raise its iron head
To watch me walking down the road
Beyond our house today.
Its jaws were dripping with a load
Of earth and grass that it had cropped.
It must have heard me where I stopped,
Snorted white steam my way,
And stretched its long neck out to see,
And chewed, and grinned quite amiably.

by Charles Malam

I found this little poem in the very first reading book I taught from in 1969 and I've used it ever since. Just an entertaining little extended metaphor. The name is dated, of course. Nowadays the steam shovels are all "dead" -- I have to explain what a steam shovel was. "Cropped" and "amiably" also need explanation to most elementary students. Challenge your students to personify an inanimate object in an extended metaphor. Other extended metaphor poems that I use include "Metaphor" by Eve Merriam and "Fog" by Carl Sandburg

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The series of posts, A Poem to Start the Week, is my little anthology of poetry, most of which I have used with my students in elementary schools during 27 years of teaching.

Previous Poems to Start the Week:
Owl Pellets
Mummy Slept Late
Just My Size
The Kindest Things I Know
Miles to Go
Love that Brother
Oh, Frabjous Day!

Other Posts about Children's Literature:

The Lion's Paw top kid's OOP book!
Harry
Aslan is Dead!
Multiplying People, Rice, and Readers
A Teacher's Life

You can read some of my own efforts at poetry here.

A weblog dedicated to Poetry for Children.
Watch Sonja Cole's reviews of children's books at Bookwink.com.

Lies

Tom Hilton at If I Ran the Zoo has performed a valuable service for those who haven't been paying attention. He has published a chart to distinquish the lies of Scooter Libby from the famous lie of Bill Clinton.

The most telling thing about the Libby case is that it left no reasonable doubt that the priorities of the Republican administration were not winning the war in Iraq, securing Afghanistan, protecting New Orleans, taking care of our wounded troops, finding OBL, etc., etc., etc. Bush, Rove, Libby, Cheney and company were instead concentrating their considerable talents on smearing their political enemies and covering their tracks on the hyping of the war.

Do High School Slackers Imperil Our Future?

Motivation, Not Curriculum:
The Key to School Reform

Minnesota’s governor, Tim Pawlenty, says that too many Minnesota high school students are goofing off. In his “State of the State” speech, Pawlenty says:

“Too many of our high school students today are engaged in academic loitering for much of their high school career. In too many cases, our high school students are bored, checked-out, coasting, not even vaguely aware of their post-high school plans, if they have any, and they are just marking time.”

Pawlenty adds: “This is a silent crisis and has the potential to devastate our future prosperity, if we don’t fix it.” His solution is to ratchet up high school math and foreign language requirements and to push more students into completing a year of college work before completing high school.

Pawlenty warns that future prosperity is in jeopardy, but, the truth is, more is in jeoprady than prosperity: inadequate education of our youth not only threatens our economy, it threatens our very democracy. It is crucial that our educational system begin to function at a much higher level and, in order to reach that higher level, there must be major reforms that successfully finds a way to substantially increase student motivation.

Motivation, I believe, is tied to a principle that Americans have long held. This principle states that motivation does not come from central planning and bureaucratic control, but comes via individual freedom and democratic processes. The wealth of a nation often comes via the efforts of highly motivated entrepreneurs, and happens within a system that is structured to encourage individual efforts. The old Soviet Union, the current North Korea and the current Cuba prove that an educated / trained citizenry is not enough to produce prosperity. A Bill Gates could not have flourished in those countries. It seems a sound idea that motivation and prosperity come from the same sources: freedom and opportunity. And children who are immersed in freedom, opportunity and responsibility are the children who are best prepared to contribute to a democratic society.

It would seem that this American insight about motivation should be the insight that guides the operation of American schools. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and, instead, schools seek quality in a manner that cannot possibly work. The guiding philosophy of school management, in fact, is that quality comes via hierarchical processes and bureaucratic control. And, though this approach, again and again, has shown to be a disaster, the solution to low quality that is offered, repeatedly, is that more hierarchical processes and more bureaucratic control is the answer.

Pawlenty makes a case for increased governmental regulations. He appeals to the common sense notion of the importance of education. He says that because the future is perilous, we must provide young people with the best education possible. Yes. And where will this best education come from? Pawlenty’s answer seems to be: by establishing more governmental requirements, using more technology, and giving more rewards and punishments.

But, the problem is not that schools lack adequate curriculum, technology or power over students. The problem is that even top students are working far below their potential. Minnesota, like all states, already has a big system of academic rewards, requirements, and punishments that already fail to motivate the slacking high school students that Pawlenty cites. It seems unlikely that Pawlenty’s more-of-the-same reforms will result in much increase in motivation -- within failing students or within top students -- and motivation is the key to accomplishment.

As in medicine, the first order of schools should be: do no harm. Yet schools, by implementing a consensus view of education, systematically infantilize students and impede students’ natural motivation toward individual growth. Humans have an untold potential to produce an amazing wealth of ideas, compassion, peace, and prosperity. Schools must find ways to strengthen the will and determination of each student. The future will demand solutions that will stretch the limits of human maturity. Schools must find ways to inspire students to new levels of individual effort and individual maturity -- levels so high that they could not be mandated.

Meaningful school reform, I believe, would show how to personalize each student’s education. A personalized education is the key to generating amazing new levels of student motivation. This school reform would not be easy: putting motivation at the center of school design, via a personalized approach, would require a major upheaval in how we think about schools and a major upheaval in how schools conduct themselves.

Pawlenty’s plan defines education as the transmission of curriculum, but, education must be much more than that. Education, ultimately, is not what the system does, it is what the student does. Education, as Yeats said, is not about filling a pail, it is about lighting a fire.

Watch the Pedestrian Bridge Go Up...

Sheila and I pass the construction site for Rome's new pedestrian bridge over the Oostanaula River frequently on our evening walks. Here are a few of the pics I've been meaning to post.

But today I found a webcam site sponsored by the city of Rome that will let you watch its progress. Check it out occasionally here.

Random Flickr #5259: Bugdom

Wow! This guy took a trip to Equador to photograph insects. And more insects! What beautiful and strange creatures he found.

Here's another example of this fellow's finds...


and another...


Click on each pic to see the original.
Click here to visit mcclarinj's flickr photo archives.
Check out this amatuer entomologist here.

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Tom Hilton at If I Ran The Zoo originated and posts "Random Flickr-blogging" every Monday and invites other participants. Check out how it works here.

Sunday Seven: Pics from a Month at School

1. The Rewards of School Fundraising (The Penny Drop)

Our class won a Limo ride to the pizza parlor...



The secretary got pied...



and the assistent principal kissed a goat (a three-day-old kid!)



2. Faux-spring Days on the Nature Trail

Tell this little beauty that it's not Spring yet!


Can you find the little lizard, all warm and active?



Or these little lizards burning with Spring Fever?



3. Science Fair

164 projects in all, 84 from my students --
from extracting DNA to attracting wildlife with bobcat urine!





4. Tornado Drill
We take these things seriously here 'bouts.



5. Valentines Day
I was good -- I stayed on the diet and gave all those little heart-shaped boxes away.



6. Recess
One of our environmental studies this year we call "Metatarsal Mayhem": we are studying the effect of foot-traffic on our playground. It is significant.



7. My student teacher with her Show 'n' Tell
I do love to hold babies!




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Visit other Sunday Seven blogs though the Sunday Seven "hub".

PTSW : Owl Pellets

This is the first time I've posted A Poem to Start the Week that I haven't used in my own classroom. I discovered this poem thanks to the Poetry for Children web log. Since both owl pellet dissection and love occur in my classroom annually, I wonder if I could use this poem! Better suited for older students, I guess, but ain't it great?

Owl Pellets

A month ago
in biology lab
you sat close to me
knee touching mine
your sweet smell
almost drowning out
the formaldehyde stink
which crinkled up
your nose
while i dissected a fetal pig.

Now I take apart
this owl pellet
small bag that holds
skin and hair and bones
little skeletons
what the owl ate
but couldn’t digest
and coughed back up

You sit with Jon Fox
ignore me completely
laugh at his dumb jokes
let your head fall onto
his bony shoulder
while i attempt
to piece together
with trembling hands
the tiny bones
of a baby snake

Certain things
are just about
impossible
to swallow.

By Ralph Fletcher
From I Am Wings: Poems about Love

Now go dissect an owl pellet of your own, virtually: The Virtual Owl Pellet Dissection Page.

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The series of posts, A Poem to Start the Week, is my little anthology of poetry, most of which I have used with my students in elementary schools during 27 years of teaching.

Previous Poems to Start the Week:

Mummy Slept Late
Just My Size
The Kindest Things I Know
Miles to Go
Love that Brother
Oh, Frabjous Day!

Other Posts about Children's Literature:

The Lion's Paw top kid's OOP book!
Harry
Aslan is Dead!
Multiplying People, Rice, and Readers
A Teacher's Life

You can read some of my own efforts at poetry here.

A weblog dedicated to Poetry for Children.
Watch Sonja Cole's reviews of children's books at Bookwink.com.

Romney: Coulter speech "a good thing"

Governor Mitt Romney believes that Jesus preached among the horse-riding!, steel-using!, pre-Columbian Indians and that Joseph Smith found some gold tablets with that whole astounding new chapter of history engraved on them (sometimes in King James' or Shakespeare's words a thousand years before either lived) -- I'll try not to hold that against him: Harry Reid shares those same strange beliefs. I personally know a number of fine up-standing folk who are Mormons. I happen to believe their religion is among the goofiest of major cults. But I would consider an otherwise level-headed Mormon for President if I shared his/her ethical, moral, and political views.

Despite my disbelief in Mormonism (Sorry Rachel, I respect your right to believe it, but it doesn't fly in my book of mixed metaphors), his astonishing religious beliefs do not disqualify Brother Mitt.

But Mr. Romney also believes that Ann Coulter occupying a prestigious conservative podium to rant about "faggots" is "a good thing". It is fine to afterwards admit to the outragegeousness of her comments, but you, Mr. Mitt, knew of her previous vile words. Any conservative who treats Ann Coulter as a legitimate spokesperson for his cause has lost his moral compass and I can no longer give his moral, ethical, or political judgments any credence. Period.

The Georgia Carnival - Fifth Edition

The Georgia Carnival - Fifth Edition

is also up. Check it out!