Category: Meanderings

Playing Through

Sometimes laughter is the best medicine. Colbert, Stewart, and Maher on politics (via TheDailyBeast).

Stephen Colbert testifying in front of Congress. Bill Maher serving as a one-man opposition research division against Wingnut Queen Christine O’Donnell. Jon Stewart hosting a pre-election “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the Washington Mall.

It’s no joke: Comedians are driving the political debate this year. Consider it a sign of the times – laughter and satire is the only sane response to the sickening spin cycle we’re subjected to on a daily basis.

Sharon Hodde Miller shares her sense that the overshare on social networks is not God-honoring.

I am grateful for persons who state better something I have been thinking. I am trying these days to share the learning adventures I have without airing the family laundry (both biological and church family). Read the full post at EdStetzer.com and follow Sharon at SheWorships

I want to examine a particular “abuse” of tweeting/posting status updates. It is the practice of posting at (what I would consider to be) inappropriate times. No, I’m not trying to be the Emily Post of social media etiquette here to lecture you on the rudeness of tweeting during a meeting or meal. The kind of “inappropriate” I’m referring to is one that not only impacts the quality of Christian discipleship but the authenticity of our church leaders.

I began to notice this misuse of social networking when friends updated their statuses while on dates with their spouses, or even on their wedding nights. Such an anti-social by-product of social media is ironic, to say the least. Yet out of those habits emerged a more troubling one: Tweeting about deeply personal, intimate moments. Although I understand the desire to share one’s life with community, Twitter has gradually become a window into private moments and experiences that, in the past, would have been reserved for God and family.

via edstetzer.com

Pay attention to the opportunities for your learners to enjoy the richer fare … they are searching for it.

Mike Rose offers a challenge: Can we begin to pay enough attention to real intelligence, wherever we find it, to invite people to continue the educational enterprise because they will find joy in the journey (and not just a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow).

People, affluent as well as poor, go back to school for all kinds of reasons, but our current policy incentives and the rhetoric that frames them don’t capture this rich web of motives.

One consequence of this narrow understanding is the missed opportunity to create a more robust appeal for returning to school. As we just witnessed, people sign up for educational programs for economic reasons but also because further education pulls at their minds, hearts, and sense of who they are and who they want to become. The prospect of a good job is hugely motivating, but it can seem far off, especially during the first difficult months of returning to school.

People need other, complementary motivators: engagement with the work in front of you, the recognition that you’re learning new things, becoming competent, using your mind, doing something good for yourself and your family. It’s common in occupational programs — from welding to nursing to culinary and cosmetology — to hear participants express with some emotion their involvement with and commitment to what they’re learning. In the high-testosterone world of the welding shop, for example, I hear one guy after another talk about the “beauty” of a weld and how much they “love” welding. There’s more than a financial calculus involved here.

Mike Rose suggests there is more to education reform than structural shifts. Why not ask a teacher or a child?

The following is a critique of our tendency to look for structural and technical processes to change what is ultimately a relational enterprise. How kids play on the playground, how a teacher interacts with the children, how we relate to “neck up” learners and “neck down” doers shape the process.

Over the last week or two when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and Bill Gates and D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee were on Oprah, I have been reading Deborah Meier, Brenda Engel, and Beth Taylor’s wonderful new book, Playing for Keeps: Life and Learning on a Public School Playground. The book is a record of children playing during recess at Mission Hill School in Boston. A simple framework and a simple focus: What do kids do when they play? The resulting book, though, is anything but simple, for the authors demonstrate the intelligence and imagination that is tapped during play, and they use this rich record to argue for a capacious and humane understanding of the role of play in children’s lives. And this argument, in turn, is embedded in a broader one about the need to acknowledge this intellectual and imaginative richness in current education policy, a policy that seems hell-bent (my phrasing) on advancing a very different approach to education and child development.

As I read Playing for Keeps, I keep thinking about how little we see in current reform efforts that reflect Meier, Engel, and Taylor’s view of children. You won’t find much of school life in NCLB or Race to the Top; in fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find a single example of a teacher thinking through a lesson or interacting with a child or a child learning a scientific concept or being engaged with a book. What we do have is a technocratic and structural approach to education, and sadly it has become the coin of the realm.

Bill McKibben speaks with Krista Tippett about the moral math of climate change (via Speaking of Faith)

» Six Americas
The Six Americas of Climate Change

A Yale study identified “six Americas” when it comes to climate change. Where are you on the spectrum?

via being.publicradio.org

I am grateful to Dave Graybeal, Drew Theological Seminary professor, for introducing me to Bill’s book, The End of Nature. He still writes with great passion about the gift of the earth upon which we live.

Neuseway Nature Center ranked 18th most popular field trip destination in NC (via Kinston Free Press).

One of the state’s best field trip destinations is in our own backyard.

The Neuseway Nature Center was recently honored as one of the top field trip destinations for the 2009-2010 school year. According to the annual survey conducted by Carolina Field Trips Magazine, the park ranked No. 18 in its list of the top 25 locations in North Carolina.

The park, which began its 15th year of operation in June, has evolved from just a campground and nature center to a destination for nearly 30,000 North Carolina students.

The Nature Center beat out destinations including Linville Caverns, Battleship North Carolina and the N.C. Museum of Art in the number of students visiting on field trips. Dan Nicholas Park in Salisbury ranked No. 1 last year with over 126,000 field trip visitors.

Bobby Cox has been Neuseway’s naturalist since 1996. He said the park offers a lot of different things for field trips, including an inexpensive learning experience.

“We’re one of the cheapest planetariums in (North Carolina) you can go to,” Cox said. “Our cave exhibit downstairs in the nature center is pretty much one of a kind. We’re constantly adding exhibits.”

The park charges $1 per child for each activity during the field trip. Park officials said teachers are allowed in free and the average price is only $3 per child per trip.

The planetarium offers shows designed to follow the state’s curriculum guidelines for the third, sixth and ninth grades, as well as custom shows.   

In addition to the planetarium and cave exhibit, the park includes a train ride — the Big Daddy Express — and playground, as well as several science exhibits. A campground is also available for overnight guests.

Planetarium Director Cindy Bingham said schools have to sign up pretty early in order to reserve a date to visit the nature park — the park is already booked for October and most of November. She added every second grade student in Lenoir County will visit at some point during the school year.

“Teachers have to have a purpose for their trips. They have to meet objectives. Our site allows them fulfill those,” Bingham said. “I think we draw a lot of folks in Eastern North Carolina, especially with budget cutbacks, because we’re closer than Raleigh.”

Bingham said the park is busy with field trips year round. She added summer can be one of the busiest times of the year, with several summer camps visiting each week.

Nature center staff can handle between 70 and 80 children at a time. But Cox said there were days where over 250 people would cycle through.

Park officials reported 8,200 groups visited the park from 13 counties last year — from as far away as Greensboro.

Plans to continue expanding the nature park include an exhibit on fossils found in Eastern N.C.

“It’s probably going to be an impulsive thing,” Cox said of the park’s growth. “When we come up with an idea, if our director approves it, then we go with it.”

Justin Hill can be reached at 252-559-1078 or jhill@freedomenc.com.

Breakout box:

Neuseway Nature Park hours

Tuesday – Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sunday – 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Planetarium Shows

Tuesday – Friday 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Saturday – 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Sunday – 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Call 252-939-3302 for more information

via kinston.com

Kudos to Bobby Cox and Cindy Bingham (my wife!) for their work at putting this 15 year old park on the map!