PTSW: Jenny Kissed Me / The Lamp

A Poem to Start the Week

My mother recited this poem the other day as she, a couple of my siblings, and I sat around the table. I hadn't thought of it in years. One of my blogging sisters has beaten me to the punch by posting this at her blog. But, what the heck, I'll post it too. I've had some Jenny-kisses, literal and figural, in my life, haven't you?

Jenny Kissed Me

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

-- by Leigh Hunt

That poem reminds me a little of the more serious poem Sheila recited to me during our wedding ceremony, 36 years ago. Since I got busy and skipped a PTSW last Monday, I'll give a twofer today:

The Lamp

If I can bear your love like a lamp before me,
When I go down the long steep Road of Darkness,
I shall not fear the everlasting shadows,
Nor cry in terror.

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.

~Sara Teasdale

Yes, I recited one of my own poems to her that day: Wedding Song
Another of my sister's has posted poetry this week. Check out Daddy's Roses.

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

Previous Poems to Start the Week:
Loveliest of Trees
Flax-Golden Tales
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.
And then there's Alien Invasion.

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

Dear Fellow Georgians

If you are a Georgia Blogger try submitting a post to the folks at the Georgia Carnival. The current edition is up!

The Joys of Blogging

Checking my Sitemeter, I see that there has been a dramatic drop-off of folks climbing out to visit me on my limb. No wonder! It has been loading vvvveeeerrrryyyy slowly or not at all, according to reliable reports. My friend, Mike Bock, has found it impossible to post to the Limb. (I had to post his Einstein post for him.)

The Carnival of Education folks said we crashed their system when they tried to connect this week! Yikes! When I have opened some of my recent posts I have found as many as 200 pages of nonsense html that I didn't put there! When I deleted the garbage code and re-posted, things were better, then a while later - shezammm!-- there it was again! (What is going on??)

So I have grafted the Limb onto the New Blogger tree.

Please let me know if it works better.

from Mike Bock: How Did Einstein Become Einstein?

How Did Einstein Become Einstein?
Einstein’s Science Failed To Teach Him About Himself

by Mike Bock

Einstein, in a book by Walter Isaacson, is quoted in Time Magazine as saying some pretty amazing things about human nature. Einstein says,

“Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free, but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.” And, he says, “I am a determinist. I do not believe in free will.”

These assertions astonish. If Einstein is right, we have no choice as to how or what we think, how we perceive reality, how we make decisions. Einstein liked and agreed with Shopenhauer’s statement: “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.” Amazing. Time Magazine quotes Einstein as saying, “Jews believe in free will. They believe that a man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine. In that respect I am not a Jew.”

I am wondering why Einstein would make such contrarian claims about the nature of humans. His view, it seems, are determined by his science. Einstein is quoted as saying, “Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding.” It was Einstein’s commitment to truth, it seems to me, that powered his thinking, and that produced his astonishing discoveries. When Einstein says that he is a determinist, I am guessing, he is staking out a claim to a scientifically derived hypothesis about reality: that in this universe, all is determined. And if all is determined, then, it follows, there can be no free will.

Certainly we feel like we have freedom to choose our own life’s paths. It is surprising that Einstein says No. The first impulse is simply to dismiss Einstein’s view as impossible. But, the fact that other Einsteinian ideas, that initially seemed impossible, later proved to be true should give us pause. I am wondering if Einstein discovered a basic insight into man’s nature through science that others have discovered through contemplation. I’m wondering, if maybe, in a profound way, Einstein is right. Einstein’s conclusion about humanity supports the notion that, yes, we are all sheep; yes, we are all plugged into the matrix. It is not hard to believe that humanity is sleeping; the evidence seems everywhere. It is hard to accept, however, that I, as an individual, have no more freedom to choose my path than the stars have freedom to choose their paths.

Einstein offers a hard doctrine. A great teacher may emphasize how those who think they are free, in fact, are totally enslaved -- as a means to convince his listeners as to the reality of their situation and as a way to convict his listeners that they are in desperate need for salvation, for inner change. What makes Einstein’s doctrine of free will so devastating, however, is that Einstein offers no path to salvation, even for the exceptional person -- no way to rise above the bounds of causality, no way to awaken. Einstein is recognized as a genius, but in this matter of free will, we must hope that he is wrong. If Einstein is right, then humanity is doomed.

It is hard to understand how Einstein could conceive that there is no free will. It seems to me that Einstein’s scientific insight failed him. It failed to help him to accomplish the most ancient of educational goals: “Know Thyself.” Einstein, in his own life, ascended to a consciousness where his intellect could flourish. A good question: how did that happen? Einstein did not believe in human exceptionalism, yet, it seems to me, a great model of exception was ever before him: his own self. Einstein grew into Einstein -- not a trivial accomplishment. Einsteins don’t just pop up. It seems to me that it is likely that Einstein grew into Einstein not through the forces of causality, but, through humility, through deliberate awareness, through a commitment to truth, and, through a conscious willingness to suffer for the sake of truth. And, is that not the path to growth that is available to everyone?

Learning in the Great Outdoors: First Edition

Volume One Number One

As the audacious creator of this Carnival of Environmental Education I welcome you to our inaugural edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors. We have had only a few entries submitted. I have listed more of my own posts than I would have had there been more submissions. I also have posted links to several websites that may be of interest to you. And I have gone out and solicited permission to post a few links to blogs that I found helpful or interesting. We hope our visitors will spread the word and help this grow into a real clearinghouse for web log posts about outdoor education.

Your host began compiling this while holed up in the Days Inn on Jekyll Island GA, as the 2007 Environmental Education Alliance of Georgia Conference came to a close. What a treat the conference was. I will use this first edition of the carnival to intersperse a few of the online resources we have here in Georgia to aid those who want to share the wonders of the natural world with young folks. One week later, in the midst of the annual high-stakes testing madness, we launch. I apologise for my tardiness.

Nature Centers, Preserves, and Trails

Riversider presents Ribble Coast & Wetlands - the Ribble becomes a Regional Park posted at Ribble Cycle Diaries.

From the header for this interesting web log:

The Ribble Diaries
A blog dedicated to the River Ribble, an Internationally important ecosystem which runs for 75 miles from Ribblehead in West Yorkshire, through Lancashire and out into the Ribble Estuary to the Irish Sea. The Ribble is one of Britain's Last Great Wilderness areas, full of wild beauty, with many moods and seasons as it meanders through its Green Belt, Floodplains, and Wetlands.

Little St. Simon's Island wraps around the northern end of the larger and heavily developed St. Simon's Island GA. It is a privale island and preserve that is an Eden for birds and other wildlife. Thursday your host visited there with a small group of Georgia educators and naturalists.

Accessible only by boat, the island is a relatively young addition to the coast. We observed a plethora of flora and fauna, including a juvenile bald eagle on the nest.

My wife and I visited the Crockford-Pigeon Mountain Wildlife Management Area near LaFayette GA a couple of weeks ago. Another Eden! Blankets of wildflowers!

And here are a few others of my posts with pics of trails:
Our School Trail I
Our School Trail II
Our School Trail III
A Leaf Walk at Berry College
Floyd County's Pocket Trail
A River walk in Rome GA


Stephanie presents My Amazing Race- posted at Stop the Ride!.

We started off well, making good time down the hill. We stopped to look at tadpoles, wildflowers, wild rose, and blackberry brambles. Upon arriving at the destination, the three oldest children quickly changed into water shoes and commenced playing in the creek. Third child enjoyed himself thoroughly, and soon was soaking wet. Meanwhile, I scoped out the daffodils and chose my prize spot.

Anco presents Mountain Hiking Tips posted at Tipskey - Unlock Practicality, saying, "Mountain hiking is one of the fun ways to learn about nature. It can be really educational."

Classroom Gardens

Rebecca Newburn presents How to Create a Labyrinth posted at Ms. Newburn's Math 7 Blog, saying, "It's easy to make a labyrinth outside with your students. Here are simple directions."

Lesson Plans

If you haven't had the chance to participate in Project Wild, Project Wet, or Project Learning Tree, you are missing a great opportunity. Check them out! If nothing else find a copy of their curriculum books around your school or buy them from eBay. They include lots of great hands-on lessons.
Project Wild
Project Wet
Project Learning Tree

EE Opinion

My co-host here at Alone on a Limb, Mike Bock, remembers his own "outdoor education" in a post about what he sees as Authentic Teaching. Mike writes:

I grew up in an old farm house in the country. We had no TV until I was nine. I was constantly outdoors. I remember seeing a huge snake shed its skin; I remember seeing a Momma skunk with five baby skunks following in a line after her; I remember playing endlessly outside -- the clucking chickens, crowing roosters, my Dad’s garden and my Mom’s flowers. All of this, and much more, was part of my education and, like a little sponge, I took it all in.

Does U.S. Environmental Education Make the Grade? asks Larry West.

Environmental education has long struggled for legitimacy alongside more traditional disciplines within the liberal arts and sciences. But “environmental literacy” studies in the late 1980s revealed that schoolchildren lacked basic knowledge about the natural environment. This convinced the U.S. Congress to take action...

The environment is a context within which all sorts of learning can happen. Human beings are naturally curious about the world around them, and it is always available, even in urban areas, for exploration. The movement to use the environment as the basic context for learning in schools is near and dear to your host's heart. Here are some sites where you can learn more about it.

The EIC Model™
Environmental Education in Georgia
Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning (EIC)
Captain Planet Foundation
State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER)

Books

Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect writes in a post called Seeds and Growing Things:

Since I am lost in thoughts of spring these days, I decided that this would be a good time to offer up a list of books on seeds and the magic they bring.

Tricia also posts her guidelines for choosing science related books for elementary -- also worth a look: Selecting Literature for Science Instruction

And Tricia shows herself tio be a true kindred spirit to your host with this post: The Times They Are a Changin"

My faithful readers ... and students know well that I teach a course that focuses on teaching science and social studies. It is called Integrated Curriculum Methods because I want students to think about the curriculum as a whole and connected piece, not discrete little units that never relate to one another. Wherever possible we look at the ways these subjects relate to English and math, but more importantly, to each other.

Miscellany

National Environmental Education Week April 15-22, 2007

Shamelle at Inhance Life proposes 5 Life Lessons You Can Learn From World Cup Cricket!
Well, cricket is played outdoors.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of
Learning in the Great Outdoors: the Carnival of Environmental Education
using our
carnival submission form. Or send your post to thelimb (at) mac (dot) com.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on ou
blog carnival index page.Technorati tags:

learning in the great outdoors, blog carnival,

My Outdoor Education

Education For the Future
Demands Authentic Teaching

I grew up in an old farm house in the country. We had no TV until I was nine. I was constantly outdoors. I remember seeing a huge snake shed its skin; I remember seeing a Momma skunk with five baby skunks following in a line after her; I remember playing endlessly outside -- the clucking chickens, crowing roosters, my Dad’s garden and my Mom’s flowers. All of this, and much more, was part of my education and, like a little sponge, I took it all in.

I like Maria Montessori’s concept of the absorbent mind. Nature has empowered us with a great capacity for individual development, and much of this capacity is unconscious to us. Certainly we are always learning more than what we know that we are learning. And my outdoor education provided me with a wealth of input and impressions.

My first teachers were my parents. I was blessed that, throughout their lives, they grew into ever more loving and wise individuals. What I’ve come to understand is that from those who are truly are our teachers, we learn ways of seeing, ways of hearing, ways of feeling, valuing, and expressing ourselves as well -- and, that such learning happens very naturally.

The whole march of the No Child Left Behind Law and the Back to Basics movement downplays and diminishes the role of teacher, and increasingly takes away a human quality in teaching. Advances in computer instruction and the continuing revolution in computer technology raises the possibility that, in the future, teachers will literally be robots. But, I think not. I think that eventually, education, unlike today, will become based on a more valid view of human nature, and this view will cause education to define itself in human terms.

In the future, I’m thinking, today’s schools, and today’s ideas of education, likely will be viewed somewhat like we, today, view the fourteenth’s century’s ideas about medicine -- as antiquated, dangerous, misguided. Fourteenth century medicine was based on goofy ideas not rooted in reality; today, modern medicine is based on sound ideas that are well rooted in a deep understanding of nature.

We have failed, so far, to advance a scientific understanding of education, one based on nature. Such an understanding, I believe, would develop a profound understanding of the role of teacher. Our current prescriptive schools tend to define teachers as bureaucrats whose job is to oversee and dispense a government program. But the natural role of a teacher, one established through the millennia, is a role that is quite different, one that results in a model of developed humanity, one that reveals an individual who is constantly growing into the capacity of who he or she is as an individual, one that inspires and that is worthy of emulation.

Today, when I see a well kept garden, particularly if it has vigorous muskmelons plants, I realize that I see it with my Dad’s perspective and appreciation. When I see a beautiful bloom, I realize that I experience it with the love and gratitude of my Mom’s perspective. At one time, I suppose, I would have imagined that such ways of seeing were just part of my make-up, but I’ve come to better understand the impact of these influential teachers, and how my own perspectives and thoughts came to be shaped by them.

The education of the future, when it shuffles off its unscientific core, I believe, will begin to anchor the teacher role and the teacher /student dynamic within an understanding of education that is based on a deep understanding of human nature. Education in a more enlightened future will have as its goal the development of human potential and will understand and promote authentic teaching as a key aspect of that development.

PTSW : About the woodlands I will go...

The beautiful blossoms of the Pocket Trail (see below)
remind me of this favorite poem. The cultivated cherries are resplendant right now (as above). The native cherries will break out cheering a little later. I ran Housman's little declaration in a post a year ago, but it won't hurt you to see it again!

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

-A.E. Housman

For all the old geezers visiting The Limb I'll append the updated version by Margaret Haskins Durber, the poet laureate of Lake Wobegon. Garrison Keillor included it in comments on his column in October 2005.

Loveliest of Trees, Now

Loveliest of trees, the maple now
Is turning yellow on the bough.
It stands among the trees of green,
All dressed up for Halloween.

Now of my three score years and ten,
Sixty-three won't come again.
Subtract from seventy, sixty-three,
It scares the daylights out of me.

And since to look at things sublime,
Seven years is not much time.
It’s rather sobering for a fellow
To see the maples turning yellow.

-Margaret Haskins Durber

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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:
Flax-Golden Tales
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.