Bridges to Cross

Bridges to Cross

Teachers engaged in authentic PD, Brown-Lowry Provincial Park, Oct 31, 2014

As a group of teachers sharing their ideas for PD opportunities and learning to support an OES program it was apparent that we would have a much more productive and authentic experience having our conversations in the outdoors.  Robin immediately mentioned a place that her parents took her that was a potentially great place to take students.  Now our PD session also incorporates a site inspection.

                                    

Our ideas where as free to grow as branches reaching into the sky, and then the atmosphere welcomed them as much as the lithosphere supported them.  Mapping and navigation activities, models for teachable moments, assessing places for learning, sharing stories that connect people to places, were some of the conversations.

One of the ideas that I was able to share was identifying triggers that create anxiety for students and parents in our program and ways to mitigate as many as possible. 

Ahhhh  Cornus Canadensis

So it occurred to us, that each of  our PLC meetings should be outside in places were we would be with students.  This is quite possible the best PD idea yet.  We felt refreshed, grateful, awakened, inspired, and motivated.  But in all truth, it takes a a great leader to understand this and support it, thank-you Dr. Christison.

Day 3

Day 3 & 4

Standing on the bridge between Ontario and Quebec at the confluents of the Rideau Canal and the Ottawa River.

Transdisciplinary Curriculum

Technology Panel
Biggest task is making sense of the abundance of information.
Network Literacies
Networked Education IS NOT institutional education


MSC
Most significant Change
How did it go?  Say more about that?

Inquiry Based - Real World Research
Biology authentic learning
An observation with 2 questions?

Building the Next Generation of Leaders
David Jayo
Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, in the US Department of the Interior.

"Each new generation is a new people"  Tocqueville

"Change doesn't come from Washington, change comes to Washington." Obama

Pope Francis has 85,000 audience members as per the usual 5,000.  The church knows the audience better and is making changes.

Holocaust Museum in NY "Never forget" to "What you do matters"

"What gets measured gets managed" audience member


First Nation Elders at Luncheon
"We acknowledge you."
They raised many animals, including bears, but she remembers her father telling her what bears to not  befriend.

Bright Spots 2:30- 4pm after the luncheon, the last sessions and the place is quite, but I search for the last gold nuggets of wisdom.

Lincoln Zoo Bird Survey observations: 3 stations, 25 species ID key, binoculars.

"No data is still DATA"

Day 2:

The next day

SEPN

A small contingent of Canadians show up for the first session on a study looking at all sustainable policies in each of the 389 school boards across Canada, to see the relationship between practice and policy and policy to practice.  

I shared my thoughts, "As a teacher, I enjoy working on projects that change our school into a more sustainable school, however I would much rather use that time reflecting with the students creating transformative learning experiences.  In fact, we wouldn't even need to be teaching sustainbility if every aspect of the the school operated in a sustainable way."  In otherwords, it doesn't really matter what the educational piece is as long as the students are doing it.  Two comments followed with the need to educate, and then like a storm that came from no where across the prairies of Saskatchewan, Karen McIver, recipient of an 2014 EECOM award for EE said, "doing is to know".   

So I couldn't help myself, "In fact if we all lived in sustainable healthy communities we wouldn't need schools" of which a long time friend from parks said, "Careful Carter you might be out of a job", and I felt quite proud to say, "I would give up my job to be healthy and living in a sustainable community.  In fact, would we really need schools if every community was sustainable and healthy?" 
I imagine that once we are living sustainably there will always be projects to do as the earth continues to change.  

The above slide is the time teachers in the VSB, spend of EE initiatives.  What was really exciting to hear is that the Vancouver School Board is drafting a policy that reimburses  any staff that ride their bicycle for work.

Drew Lanham
"Words Matter"
"Magnify not minimize"
"Breathing is the connection between the heart and head"
"EE is the about helping others love the earth for the well being of all life on earth"
"It's all about love.  Head.  Voice.  Heart."
"In order to care for something, you must be able to see a part of yourself in it"

Our Attunement to the Natural World through our Ecological Identity
Alan Warner

I, It, We, ITS Model
"The strongest predictors of environmental sensitivity, action and world views in adults is (time spent in nature as a child with a caring adult"

Day 1
Science Friday's with Ira Flatow

Ira is no Bob McDonald, but I'm biased.   In all fairness, I have listened to Quirk and Quarks for many years and I haven't even heard of Science Friday's till Ira spoke as the Keynote speaker at the NAAEE conference in Ottawa.  Yet, the number of Canadian's at this conference appears to be about 10%, however, 35 million verses 317 million is 11%, so perhaps I shouldn't feel like 'why aren't more Canadians here telling our stories?'

Ira does have a passion for telling stories that are very much influenced by his own interest in science, and the important role it plays.  He did however in a very American way show how the media - TV, is now starting to use the 'idea' of science as sexy, and I suppose we are supposed to be happy about this. It sells. A woman at the end of his talk asked him to change the image of women portrayed in his presentation, in the name of gender equality.

Perhaps the only way we are going to live sustainably is to sell it.  Is that really the reality of today?  Idealism and optimism may disrupt the current state of consumption, but will there be enough time to heal our planet?

I was really excited about Ira's, observe everything project, that gets students to just observe, reminds me of the hermeneutic argument between the social sciences vs the natural sciences methodology.  The opportunity for making learning visible, jumps out at me.  An audience member observed how he was using both Climate Change and Global warming and he replied that he now prefers to use Global warming that is causing climate change, her recommendation was to call it Climate Chaos.  

 Ira showed us the cover to Kristin Ohlson's book "The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet".  So, I immediately wondered how many  english teachers would shed the Shakespearean texts for something that might  make a difference?  

Currently, the Alberta Government is in the process of re-desiging the curriculum and Kristin's book is an example to me of how the mechanism that is part of the problem won't be where we find the solution.  Why don't we let a student who would is interested in this story and its cause, be the journey of learning for that student?  Freeman Tilden, one of the founders of Interpretation, wrote seven principals for communicating and teaching learners about our world.  One of the principals, states that what ever you are teaching it must be relevant to the learner.  

Ira reinforces the notion that we are currently at a critical moment in time where we have the opportunity to change.  

So lets change; stop consuming stuff that ends up in landfills,  stop consuming food that isn't food or local (just read Pollan's "Food Rules"), stop making human made compounds (~215,000) that don't exist in nature and/or kills cells, stop polluting our water, air, soil.  How about just stop, take the time heal and then the world might stop hating, and the $500 billion dollars that one country spends on military could be spent on healing the planet.  

I know, I know, I can hear more criticism of my own words, than compliance.  Idealism and optimism get the better of me.  Change inherited through time is evolution, and if any species plans on surviving they are constantly adapting and changing, and if we don't change then we will just be repeating the same mistakes that earlier cultures made, and the thinkers that believed phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny.

 WE (7.1 billion) can change.


http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

http://www.sciencefriday.com