Collage Collage

The other day I was walking to my Tai chi class near Kingsway and Fraser and stumbled across Collage Collage a wonderful new art space/classroom/shop run by a friend of a friend Erin Boniferro. I had hear about this store but had not made it up to check it out. It's beautiful and has something for every price range, from inspiring books to 50 cent rubber dinosaurs.

I got talking to Erin and she is a very inspiring educator who has been to Reggio in Italy and has dabbled in various educational roles over the years. I am hoping to get her to come and pay us a visit at Alderwood.

I would encourage children and those with the hearts of children to visit and be inspired.

My new job

I have a new job. I have had it since September, so I guess it's not that new...but it still feels that way. I am the eco-literacy coordinator for Alderwood house School in Richmond. Here is our blog. Over the next while I will be working to create a food garden, beautify the school grounds and basically get the kids in touch with the local ecology, which includes many surrounding farms as well as forest. I am hoping that together we will better understand how it all fits together. So far, the commute is long, but I am learning to enjoy it, burning through audiobooks and aspiring to become a transit knitter. The kids are pretty amazing. The other teachers are dedicated and I am surrounded by wonderful and supportive friends and colleagues who are helping me to figure out how I will do all this. Much more to come.

Fat of the Land

Amazing blog I just found out about, has recipe ideas and inspiration for local eating. Check it.

Vancouver Peace Summit (thanks Auntie!)

This past Tuesday I was fortunate to have the opportunity to go and see a panel discussion with His Holiness the Dalai Lama along with some other brilliant speakers including Sir Kenneth Robinson, Steven Covey (author of the 7 habits of highly effective people) and three members of the Blue men who have just started a preschool in New York called the Blue School. The Conference was called "Educating the Heart" and was part of the Vancouver Peace Summit.

The panel began with a discussion of the problems with out current educational system. In particular it's focus on IQ and on facts rather than thinking. This seems to be due to the fact that our current system was born out of the industrial era, and because of this tends to view children as so many train cars and "education" as a kind of giant grain silo, theroetically filling the children up with knowledge, or in most cases information, and facts rather than nurturing creativity and developing a deeper knowledge. The Blue Men prefer to use the metaphor of children as rocket ships and their goal is to run around with some fire trying to light a fuse. They view the promotion of creativity as the most important goal of education.This to me seemed t fit nicely with what I understand of the Reggio philosophy. What do you think?

The blue men then used their performative skills to hilariously demonstrate the 6 creative mindsets they have identified which are:

-The Scientist: making connections, investigating, chinking, grouping sorting, making sense of the world analytically, rationally

-The Shaman: Using Rhythm, dancing, chanting, magic, using our intuition

-The Group Member: Keeps the Shaman in check by focusing on the importance of collaboration, the needs of everyone, but can also lead to groupthink

-The Trickster: Helps to shake things up, new fresh ideas, but can lead to anarchy if there is too much

-The Hero: Has high ideals, and goals, os a creator and gets things done, but can be a workaholic,

-The Innocent: Seeing things with fresh eyes, staying naive, seeing the beauty, taking time to appreciate be silly, childlike

They have noticed that during particularly strong performances they will feel themselves moving through all these different stages, and posit that each of us has them all to some extent and that as educators and thinkers it is important not to get stuck in any one area, and to think about how we may be able to incorporate all aspects into our daily practice. It was helpful as I sometimes feel at school as though our focus on letting the children explore may also need both guidance and ways of seeing this exploration and knowing when creative energy needs to be re-focused so that it doesn't turn into chaos, anarchy, groupthink etc. This is true of the children as well as us as teachers in my view and I hope to be able to keep these mindsets in mind over the next while as I continue to settle into the school.

Elizabeth Grosz on Art

My Friend Nat just told me about a great lecture she went to given by Elizabeth Grosz, I liked this quote by her and am thinking of picking up her book Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (2005)

In her lecture “Sensation. The Earth, A People, Art,” Grosz writes:

Art is of the animal. It comes, not from reason, recognition, intelligence, not from a uniquely human sensibility, or from any of man’s higher accomplishments, but from something excessive, unpredictable, lowly. What is most artistic in us is that which is the most bestial…. Art is … that energy or force, that puts life at risk for the sake of intensification—for the sake of sensation itself—not simply for pleasure or for sexuality, as psychoanalysis suggests—but for what can be magnified, for what is more, through which creation, risk, innovation are undertaken for their own sake, for how and what they may intensify.

Ted Talk on the importance of play

Just watched this and would encourage everyone else to do the same, it's amazing. Discusses the importance of play to human development and happiness...

Abstract Art

"Abstract Art is the communication of what is secret by what is secret."

-Wassily Kandinsky

local flora

Can I get 2-5 year olds to do this? I think I can I think I can I think I can....

learn learn learn

I have finally finished school. I am done my program and while there are still lots of beurocratic hoops to be jumped through in terms of signing my life away to the BCCT, I am still feeling inredibly relieved to have my life back. Also, I got a job! I will be working 4 days a week at Alderwood House School. I will be the "eco literacy facilitator" there. Much more on that later. I have been cramming to try to get back all my gardening know how and get reaquainted with all the things I love so that I can BRING IT to this new job. My brain feels a bit like this picture, which I found on the fffound website (at least I think it was there) a while back.

the most efficient

Bikes rule. I have been learning to fix mine with help from the great people at the bike kitchen at UBC. Thanks Cam!

Sun Dew

When I was up at Cat Lake a few weeks back I was sitting on a log and noticed some tiny lime green plants with little purple tentacles. Upon closer inspection I recognized these as carnivorous plants. I later looked them up and found out they were Sundews. Pretty amazing little plants that use their sticky tentacles to attract and capture insects. These are actually an indicator specis for BC! A friend of mine recently got an ant infestation in her house and has reportedly used pitcher plants to capture the bugs, pretty nice little pets to have. I am going to try growing some in a terarium I have started.

Brian Nash Gill

Just heard about this artist Brian Nash Gill from some friends. Pretty neat stuff. Makes me want to try out some nature prints!

Special Needs.

I have been taking a class that deals with exceptionalities and teaching children with special needs. It has been really eye opening, and brings up a debate about the costs and benefits of prescription drugs (think ritalin) and labeling of kids. While labels can be helpful to validate the experience of students and to help them get the help they may need to be able to work within our system, the labels themselves can also be detrimental and seem to somtimes lead to apathy on the part of teachers, parents and/or students (eg, "I can't do that assignment, I'm ADHD"). This story by this american life called Mother of Invention brings it all home for me.

here is the syopsis

Karen Sosnoski's one-year-old son, Anton, was born with what's known as Mosaic Down Syndrome, a rare condition where some of his cells have the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome and other cells don't. So as he grows, he could end up having all the health risks and challenges of Downs syndrome...or just a few of them. Through a website, Karen found a kid with the same diagnosis, named Tim Colvin, who was doing really well...perhaps because his mother, Kristy, invented a surprising and unusual way to raise her son. When some people hear about what Kristy did, they're shocked. Karen went to talk to Kristy and Tim about how Tim was raised. (13 minutes)

here is the link.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1265
just click where it says full episode in orange.

James Chamberlain is a Hero

We had an amazing talk today given by James Chamberlain, the teacher involved in the book ban that happened in the Surrey school board in the 90's. He reccommended a really good resource called GALE (Gay and Lesbian Education)

Article by Samantha

A friend of mine just wrote an article in the online Georgia Straight about the healing powers of nature, as well as her work with the environmental youth alliance, or EYA, where I did an internship a year and a half ago. Nice work Sam!

Alaska blueberry aka blue huckleberry aka black huckleberry

Yesterday I got a great tip to go and find the "black huckleberries" at Camosun Bog. I had never been to Camosun bog but it wasn't too hard to find. it is just off 16th near crown. I biked there from UBC. It's beautiful and they are doing a remediation project there which you can help out with if you have time on Saturday mornings from 9am to noon.
I wasn't exaclty sure what I was looking for, my friend had said that the berries looked like the red huckle berries, but they were dark blue and grew above the leaves rather than hanging below them. Much to my delight, once I got onto the boardwalk they were hard to miss, and upon tasting them I was brought back to my childhood. I remember picking them in the summers when we would rent a cabin at Still Water near Powell River. My mum would get hours of time to herself by asking my brother and I to go and pick enough huckleberries for a pie. Huckleberries, for the unninitiated, are tiny, and I don't know if we ever actually managed to collect a pie's worth, but all the same everybody won.
It has been years since I have seen these and they are delicious! I was pleased to run into other people who were noticing the berries. One grandmother was encouraging her grandson to try the berries, another couple were noticing the berries and thought I was "brave" for trying them but were too skeptical to try them themselves. Made me a bit sad, as this is a trait I have noticed in a lot of people, a sort of poison phobia that seems to extend to all plants or mushrooms not wrapped in plastic and sold by the pound. Le sigh. At any rate the berries are there for the taking and I would encourage everyone to go and have a taste, there are plenty of red huckleberries as well and some salmon berries to boot. When I got home I looked them up and found a great website which had the botanical name and description, turns out they are actually called Alaska Blueberries, but both terms work fine as far as I'm concerned.

Vancouver Aquarium

Vancouver Aquarium job postings

https://www.cytiva.ca/vanaq/ext/detail.asp?vanaq299

4cats

franchise art school for kids?

TREK

here is a link to the TREK program run through Prince of Whales Secondary School. I tried out for this program which is selected by lottery, and I didn't get in, but my cousin did and I think it was an amazing experience for him.

Free School

Here
is a link to the Vancouver Free School, as I understand it it is a kind of anarchist shool, seems like most of their programs relate to social justice and gender issues.

Good work, green work

for all us greenies who need a job soon.
Check this out.

Outdoor School

I want to go here. May volunteer next year with the kids from my practicum.

Pacific Spirit School

Here is a link to the Pacific Spirit School website

Waldorf

Here is a link to Vancouver's Waldorf School located in North Vancouver. Here is a link to some infor about the Waldorf philosophy.
For information on applying as a TOC at the Vancouver Waldorf School
contact Ronaye Ireland at 604-985-7435 x0.

Green School

The Green School Bali,

Green Porno

Recently I helped teach "family life" a pseudonym for sex ed in the grade 5 class where I did my practicum. The students were pretty embarrased about the whole thing but were full of insightful anonymously asked questions like "does sex feel good?", "does it hurt to get my period?", "can animals be gay" and "when do men catch up to women in maturity". I found the last question particularly amusing. Unfortunately due to time constraints I was unable to answer all these questions. It is important to give students age appropriate family and sex education, it can be tricky though, for me I have sometimes thought using plants as a metaphor can be a safe gateway for talking about reproduction.

Fortunately the world has Isabella Rosellini who has managed to combine my newfound interest in quality sex ed with my obvious love for the environment. Not only that but she does it with videos which emply amazing art direction and humour. Check them out. They are hilarious, and deal quite well with the little know reproductive techniques of various insects and marine life. Enjoy!

http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/

more Ted Talks

chchch check it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/john_francis_walks_the_earth.html

Hope this doesn't jinx me but.....

I had a good day. Whew. I owe it in large part to rad art, which, along with some smiles, some love and some time in the sun make it all worthwhile.

paving the way for life without cars.

A wonderful and inspiring article about life without cars specifically in a car free community in Germany. woot woot!

Let's find another way

Check out the video at this link all about where all the STUFF we consume goes, and why it's important. My aunt sent word of this from the new york times online.