Eat Local

As many of you know I have spent some time working on organic farms, some in Quebec, and more recently at Fraser Common Farm in Aldergrove. This year I helped out a little at the Farmer's market which takes place on Saturdays from May to October beside the Trout Lake Community Center in East Van. If any of you have never been to the Farmers market and are interested in local food issues I would urge you to check them out. The Christmas market is a really great place to pick up nice local presents, if you are into that sort of thing, it is December 20th at the wise Hall on Victoria Drive. For information about farmers markets, what available, where they are when they are etc, please check the website at http://www.eatlocal.org/. Another great resource is Farm Folk City Folk. They are "a non-profit society that works with farm & city to cultivate a local, sustainable food system" and have lots of resources.

Food in Schools

Jamie Oliver has some things to teach school cafeterias.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFkAszCA9dI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkht3noIK0E&feature=related

New York Public library top 100 books for kids

I poached this link from the wide mouthed blog

http://kids.nypl.org/reading/recommended2.cfm?ListID=61

Wide Mouted Blog

This is an amazing blog that has a really good list of books for kids and teenagers. It was started by my preschool teacher's daughter, who is now a librarian. She gives great reviews and has lots of Canadian content. It is called the wide mouthed blog.

Ted Talks: How we learn

This is a link to a bunch of short talks about education including an exceptional one by Ken Robinson

http://www.ted.com/index.php/themes/how_we_learn.html

Here is the Ken Robinson one:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html


This one is also pretty amazing and hilarious, it's about Dave Eggers a writer from Brooklyn who decided to start a tutoring center. If you like pirates, superheroes or time travel, you should definitely have a listen.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html

The Biotech Context

This is another talk in the global citizenship seminar series at UBC given by David Suzuki.

http://www.ubc.ca/podcasts/media/mp3/2006/13032006_biotech.mp3

In case you have been in some subterranean vent somewhere...or else just outside of Canada for the last 30 years here's a little bio: David Suzuki is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster, and is well known to millions as the host of CBC's popular science television series, The Nature of Things. An internationally respected geneticist, David Suzuki was a full Professor at the University of British Columbia from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. Currently, he is a professor emeritus with UBC's Sustainable Development Research Institute. Through his role as chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, is widely recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology.

The End of Education

I have listened to this talk a bunch of times and it is pretty awesome. Dr. David W. Orr is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on environmental literacy in higher education and his recent work in ecological design. This includes his efforts to build a $7.2 million Environmental Studies Center at Oberlin College, as well as a continued presence in the environmental literacy scene with 4 books and over 120 articles in scientific, social science, and popular journals. (A Global Citizenship Seminar Series seminar originally presented on 13-Jan-2006)

This is a talk he gave at UBC in January 2006

http://www.ubc.ca/podcasts/media/mp3/2006/13012006_endeducation.mp3

This American Life

This is my favorite weekly podcast. I know the title "This American Life" can be a bit of a turnoff for some of us smug Canadians, get over it, American, s many of them, are really great and this podcast helps me to remember that even a right wing American T.V. evangelist can make you think, and even better, can change his ways. It is a FREE broadcast out of Chicago by NPR. You can subscribe to it and if you have iTunes it will automatically load the new show onto your computer each week, or you can listen to the shows straight off the internet, all you have to do is go to the links and click where is says "full episode" in orange.

A few which relate to teaching in some way are:
"Music Lessons"fairly self explanatory,
"Going Big" which tells the story of a project in Harlem called Baby College which aims to put childrens' futures in their own hands rather than continually trying to "fix" their parents, but seems to accomplish both objectives. It also has the story of families coping with mosaic down syndrome, and the unconventional solution one of them comes to.
"The Cruelty of Children" again, self explanatory, but I will tell you that this tels of how a kindergarted teacher invokes a new rule "you can't say you can't play", and how it actually works.
"A Little Bit of Knowledge" is a confusing thing.

Teaching Green Books

This past summer I went to a green product convention down at Canada place and aside from all the free lip balms and reusable bags I came away with a couple of great books. One is called "Teaching Green - the elementary years" here is a link to Green Teacher Magazine which has info about this series of books and how to order them.
http://www.greenteacher.com/

Cradleboard

This one is a website full of free first nations teaching packages started by Buffy Saint Marie, just heard about it on the radio:
http://www.cradleboard.org/main.html

Roots of Empathy

Just found this podcast on the UBC podcast archives. It is about the "Roots of Empathy" program, in which a family brings their baby into the classroom several times over the course of the school year. It's pretty incredible to hear the founder Mary Gordon speak about it.

http://www.ubc.ca/podcasts/media/mp3/2005/03102005_empathy.mp3

They are a non-profit, here is their website

http://www.rootsofempathy.org/

Deconstructing Dinner

I am a big fan of a podcast called "deconstructing dinner" it is broadcast out of Nelson BC and they do great shows about local food sustainability etc. From this page you can play the episode "Deconstructing Dinner In our Schools" which is about a group from Nelson called "earth matters" (http://www.earthmatters.ca/) who teach grade 5 and 6 students about what is in their food and the connection between what they are eating and their environment, including climate change and the impacts of pesticides. It has some great interviews with kids which show just how much kids are capable of understanding about all this stuff. They have a free weekly podcast, and if you still don't know what a podcast is you owe it to yourself to ask me or figure it out yourself. They are really good sources of inspiration.
http://kootenaycoopradio.com/deconstructingdinner/041306.htm