Coastal Western Hemlock

Obviously I am not cut out for daily blogging. I am going to instead suggest a less ambitious goal of one or more plants (and some animals) a week. That seems manageable.

The other day my friend Sophie told me a story about the coastal western hemlock tree. It came up today as I had science and during my 4 hour class (ugh) the prof took us out to look at some plants, literally we only looked at 2 trees. One of these was the coastal western hemlock. I retold Sophie's story to those around me, it goes something like this:

Long ago the creator was creating. The trees were told to line up in order to receive their cones. The first trees in the line got the biggest cones. Feeling sneaky, Hemlock decided to jump the line as it wanted to have the biggest cones. The creator saw Hemlock and demanded that it move to the back of the line. Hemlock had to wait and wait and when it finally got to the front of the line only small cones were left, which is why hemlock has small cones and hangs it's head in shame.

The other tree we looked at was a yellow cedar, which the teacher said was "close enough" to the red cedar which he claimed was the dominant tree species of the area. Being a plant nerd and a bit of a stickler I tried to correct him but he shot down my suggestion that in fact, coastal western hemlock was the dominant species for this area, and that it was my understanding that red cedar liked wetter areas. To his credit, I worded this awkwardly. I later proved him wrong by looking it up online and he finally accepted defeat. A small, petty, yet satisfying victory for me.

Perspective taking

who do you see?





















How many faces in this bottom image? As a kid I had a book with these kinds of pictures where you could look at it for a while and try to find all the hidden pictures. I LOVED them and still do.
Today in socials we looked at some of these with reference to perspective taking, to show that people literally "see" things differently. Perhaps this could be useful in the classroom to take this beyond these literal interpretations to gaining better understanding of others. In order to make sense of the world our brain often has to use pre-judgments/biases, unfortunately these can impact the choices we make in unwanted ways. By "making the implicit explicit" or trying to understand where our biases lay we can hopefully try to resist the formation of stereotypes etc.

Douglas Adam story about perspective taking

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.
Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do aclue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and st back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“Cookies”

a bird in the bush

read this out loud. Did you say "A Bird in the bush"

yeah? take a second look.

the word "the" is actual repeated twice


Next, let's play with some words.
What do you see?

In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter). Now, what do you see?



You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word illusion. Look again! Can you see why this painting is called an optical illusion?

What do you see here?



This one is quite tricky!
The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.

Last one.
What do you see?

You probably read the word ME in brown, but.......
when you look through ME you will see YOU!

Do you need to look again? Test Your Brain
This is really cool. The second one is amazing so please read all the way though.

ALZHEIMERS' EYE TEST

Count every ' F ' in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...

(SEE BELOW)

HOW MANY ?
WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !
Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.


The reasoning behind is further down.
The brain cannot process 'OF'.

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.


Three is normal, four is quite rare.

Send this to your friends.
It will drive them crazy.!
And keep them occupied
For several minutes..!



look at the spinning woman and if she is turning right your right side of your brain is working . If she is turning left your left side of your brain is working . If she turns both ways for you then you have a 160 or better IQ

More Brain Stuff . . From Cambridge University .

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !!

Plant of the Day witch hazel

I am starting to believe that you people are being genuine and not just patronizing me when you seem interested in my fascination with plants. In keeping with this I am going to try to put up one plant a day with some info in hopes that you might notice it as you walk around and that, just maybe you will fall in love with plants too, and get to know them by name, at least common name, and ideally by sight, smell and touch as well. This one is Witch-hazel, a shrub which is one of the only things that blooms at this time of year. It has strange flowers with long streamer-like petals that are sometimes yellow or reddish. Take a sniff, the scent to me is a kind of lilac and citrus blend. What do you think? The bark and leaves are astringent; the extract, also referred to as witch hazel, is used medicinally. Extracts from its bark and leaves are used in aftershave lotions and lotions for treating bruises and insect bites.
One of my very best friends has a tattoo of this beautiful plant on her shoulder. It is from a water colour botanical illustration by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who deserves an entry unto himself as he is another one of my favorite artists. More on him later. Here is the picture of the water colour. Below is a picture of the leaves and other parts which will start to grow soon. To learn more on wikipedia click here. Hope you dig it!

The groovy teacher

I think this blog needs a little comic relief. Check out Kids in the Hall skit which a friend recommended to me. It exemplifies why teachers can't always be so groovy. It's a slippery slope people!

some terms

A superstimulus or superreleaser is an exaggerated version of a stimulus to which there is an existing response tendency, or any stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus that normally releases it.

Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality.^[1][2] It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems and has been incorporated into several religious schools of thought. Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.^[3]

Posthumanism (or transhumanism to use the standard term) is the view that we ought to try to develop - in ways that are safe and ethical - technological means that will enable the exploration of the posthuman realm of possible modes of being. Transhumanists believe that all people should have access to such technologies. The choice of whether to use them, however, should normally rest with the individual.

Anthropocentrism (from Greek: άνθρωπος, anthropos, "human being"; and κέντρον, kentron, "center") is the belief that humans must be considered at the center of, and above any other aspect of, reality.^[1] This concept is sometimes known as Humanocentrism.

Robert Bateman rants a good rant!

Just went to "authorfest" at UBC and saw Robert Bateman among others. The interesting thing is, Robert didn't talk about his books, and he didn't even talk that much about his paintings (the nature paintings many love to hate). Mostly he spoke about his experience as a teacher (he taught highschool geography and then art for 20 years) and what his nearly 80 years on this planet have taught him (he looks great for his age BTW, must be all the fresh air). He spoke about how we need to get kids outside interacting with nature and learning to find their sense of place in it. I was so surprised to hear someone I had no particular expectations for saying all the things I have been wanting to hear someone say. Things like "Either we limit economic growth or it will limit us", "we have to save children from nature deficit disorder", with reference to video games he stated "violence should never be fun. It should elicit horror and pity". He called our culture "instant pudding world because it's slick, smooth, sweet, convenient and comes in a variety of artificial flavours...", he quoted Chief Seattle who reportedly said in 1854 that "Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it, Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." He quoted Magaret Mead who said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." he spoke of Rachel Carson, art history, and the nature school in the Bahamas where his son worked for some time.
In short Robert Bateman is the ranting environmental Grandfather I never had. le sigh.
to watch a video he made about the dangers of oil spills click here.
To check out Robert's "get to know program" click here.
To go staight to the teacher resources he provides on his site, click here.
He's an exceptional painter and an inspirational naturalist and a beacon for me, and I am so glad that my entire cohort, hundreds of future teachers just got an earful of his kind of learning. It's about time.

Where music should come from

You should check out this amazing little documentary that just happens to feature a bunch of my favorite artists: Coco Rosie, Devandra Banhart, Vashti Bunyan and Anthony (of Anthony and the Johnstons). It is called the eternal children, and you can watch it for free on youtube. What I love about it is that it shows these audaciously hopeful musicians who to me, are the closest things there are to fairies, and I like to hear them sing and hear why they do. Hope you like it. The "movement" they are part of is sometimes called freak folk. I just think it's amazin and fun. What art and music should be all about.

Alternative schools

Alternative schools

Windsor House School

Waldorf School in North Vancouver

Vancouver free school

The Blue School in New York

Green School Indonesia

Free Environmental resources tailored to BC curiculum!

Visit the David Suzuki Foundation website, or click here to register and download your FREE comprehensive teacher package for teaching "the nature challenge" in your classroom! In the words of the Doc:

As educators, you are in a unique position to effect real change on how we treat the earth. Teach students that small, simple steps can help protect nature, and you ground them in the awareness of that every individual – no matter how small or young – can make a big difference.

David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge Teacher’s Guide contains 20 lessons that use discovery-based learning to explore the key concepts of David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge. The introductory lessons are focused on how everything is connected to nature. Core lessons explore how choices about our homes, food, and transportation affect the environment.

Here are the 10 things David would like you to do:
1 Reduce home energy use by ten per cent.
2 Choose an energy-efficient home & appliances.
3 Don’t use pesticides.
4 Eat meat-free meals one day a week.
5 Buy locally grown and produced food.
6 Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle.
7 Walk, bike, carpool or take transit.
8 Choose a home close to work or school.
9 Support alternative transportation.
10 Learn more and share with others.

Jacques Cousteau

Is one of the best ever.

Babar does yoga and so can you!

I have been doing some yoga with my grade 5 students, and as a result have been trying to find some good books with ideas on how to teach yoga to kids specifically. A friend from school has lent me a couple of great books, but I was still looking for more so I went to the UBC book store to take a peek. The salesladies were a bit stimped at first and then exclaimed that they had the perfect book for me. This perfect book is Babar's Yoga for Elephants. Unlike most books this one offers great sequences of poses while also being totally unintimidating. I have showed it to a few people, including my uncle who has never done yoga bt has somehow been convinced to accompany my Aunt on a yoga retreat in mexico, and he asked if he could borrow it. I am using it and feeling better myself! Sometimes when I am learning from the adult books I can't help but feel like I am doing something wrong all the time, and I likely am. My legs hate to straighten, my shoulders bunch up etc etc etc. Babar doesn't seem to worry about all this. In his world the important thing is to give it a try, so I do, and the kids so too.

Emily Dickinson

I have been looking up various artists and for some reason Emily Dickinson swam into my head. I have been thinking that I ought to read more poetry, and I love her poems and her story.

Gustav Klimt

I can't remember why but Gustav Klimt came up in conversation today and so I thought I would throw something up here about him. He remains one of my favorite artists, but I swear the photographs of his paintings don't do them justice. In real life they are breathtaking. I hope you get a chance to see one one day, and I hope I get a chance to see more of them. He loved to paint women, which is nothing terribly remarkable, but he does it in a way where they usually appear powerful, usually sexually powerful, but there is a sense of intensity even whithout that, as is the case in this portrait of Mada Primavesi.

Green Schools

I have just been looking around on the provincial education websites and have found some info on the "Green Schools" innitiative. There are links to climate change lesson plans, short videos about teachers who are making a difference and doing things like implementing composting programs, releasing salmon fry into local rivers, making 100 mile meals in home ec class etc etc etc. Lots of great ideas, home I can work some of them into my practicum!

An article from the Onion, who as usual, got it right:

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

November 5, 2008 | Issue 44•45

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

Inauguration day

Barack has invoked Lincoln since the beginning. Today he will be inaugurated with Lincoln's own bible in his pocket. Bible or no bible I am pretty excited, and this change does seem, so epic, you might say it's of relatively biblical proportions.
They did it. In the words of Sam Cooke "a change is gonna come".

Fruit is strange and beatiful

A friend sent me a neato globe and mail article about seeds and fruits. I have seen other seed books by this guy before, his pictures are pretty beautiful. Aftre thinking about how we mutilate and reform our own bodies it is interesting to think how we also like to play with the shape of others too, in my case I prefer to marvel at it, although I thinkthe idea of crosspolinating things is pretty neat...

Love your body

I'm sure there are members of every generation who believe as I so often do that "things today" must be weirder than ever before...I get freaked out sometimes about body image issues in our culture, especially when I see young girls in heels and/or tummy tops discussing how "fat" Britney Spears is or WHATEVER. This type of thing of course pales in comparison to all the freakish reality TV shows they have on now about cosmetic surgery and the like. To be honest I don't watch these shows, but even hearing about them discourages and alarms me. I got an email though the other day and well, it kind of puts the present situation in perspective and makes me think that maybe we are just AS weird, but not more so. A number of years ago my Aunt and I went to Toronto to check out the new Yoko Ono exhibit, and among other delightful stops on that trip was our visit to the shoe museum. There we saw an exhibit about foot binding. This was a custom practiced on young girls and women for approximately one thousand years in China beginning in the 10th century and ending in the early 20th century. For more details check out the wikipedia site and this crazy slideshow comparing some of today's masochistic fashions, and those of the past. Seeing this makes me feel lucky to have grown up surrounded by confident women who knew and know how beautiful they are. One of these wise women once said "In ten years you will look at a picture of yourself and think, damn! I looked great! So save yourself the time and worries and love your body today" all I know is I want to move as far as possible away from fashions that restrict, deform and disempower. I am it seems instead adopting a uniform consisting mainly of loafers, cardigans, loose dresses and tights. I just wish it were warm enough to not have to think so much about clothes. As it stands now I feel like I have to plan 3 outfits every time I go out by the time I add all the necessary layers. I hope Tahiti is still looking for teachers by the time I graduate.

Here are a couple of pics of a little impromptu art/o/graphy project that Jaime, Kim and I did. Well, really, they did the work and I just stood there getting decorated. Pretty sweet deal for me. They hot glued all these pretty little fabric scraps onto me. I hope this "dress" it is still kicking around somewhere because I want it!

Personal Hygiene

Apparently the issue of personal hygiene is one that parents have battled children about for much longer than I can imagine. It seems the answer for Heinrich Hoffmann was to create scary stories about monsters who would come and chop of the thumb you were intent on sucking...or something like that. Cool pictures though. Apparently Maurice Sendak is a big fan of the old illustrations too. Looks like someone has decided to take a modern spin on things too. I must say that some days at school when I smell the stinky feet and see the unclipped nails I wonder if maybe I ought to give these scare tactics a try?

The Japanese Solution to getting kids to eat healthy

Here's another Ted Talk, pretty inspiring. Evelyn Glennie is a musician, a percussionist to be more specific. She is also hearing impaired, but I would never of known that. She shows why we shouldn't judge books by covers, and why we should listen with our whole bodies.

Tiffany Bozic

Here's another fave, Tiffany Bozic I like her animals, and her muted colours and the way she creates stories with unlikely companions. She is an amazing painter to boot. I like her circles and how comfortably and beautifully she deals with death as an inherent and amazing part of the natural world. She is contemporary, and her stuff has blown my mind ever since I found out about it. Also I heard from a friend that Tiffany's good friend works for the Museum of natural history in San Francisco and that their shared love of animals and nature has led to a show recently where she colaborated with the California Academy of Sciences’ marine invertebrate collections to create a show entitled From the Depths, a sort of love child born from art and science. Featuring large-scale paintings and sketches this exhibit "transported visitors into the depths of both the ocean and the imagination, and present an artist’s vision of the life-and-death drama that unfolds beneath the sea. The exhibit also included photographs, preserved specimens from the Invertebrate Zoology collection, and artfully designed tanks with live fish."

Rather than have me give a butchered explanation here is more info straight from Tiffany's website:
"This exhibit is the result of a year-long collaboration between Bozic and Dr. Rich Mooi, curator of Invertebrate Zoology & Geology at the Academy. Despite examining the museum collections from very different perspectives, they found common ground in their passion for discovery and understanding life. Nature’s ability to inspire both artist and scientist will form an important theme throughout the exhibit.

Artists

think it is time to switch from food to something else...art. I have seen a fair bit of pretty boring art projects in the public school system. There are glimmers of hope out there and I hope that I and my colleagues will help to change that...Here is a starting place. I am going to just start putting up links to some of my favorite artists.
The first is a guy who's name I can almost never remember, but who is an incredible inspiration. I love his colours, I love his eccentricity. Check him out Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

Today was better. whew. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Also, I am listening to a radio show about the T25, a new super efficient car being designed by an ex-race car designer. He aims to create cars which are smaller, lighter, made of upcycled plastic, and overall infinitely more efficient than the cars being produced at present. Here are some pictures and here is a link to his website.

It could be the "model T of today" it's all about urban mobility.

Today was a harder day than I have been used to. The kids were noisy, I was tired. I had to use my big voice. They didn't understand. It was painful. Noisy and painful. Nowhere to go but up.