Pastoral interlude

Saturday morning my birding mentor Judith from down the street asked me to join her as she lead a group of students from Leo Politi Elementary School on a bird walk around MacArthur Park.   The principal at Politi is also a birder.  At about 9 am about 20 students ranging from kindergarten to sixth grade and some parents arrived at the park with the principal.  Judith had prepared lists of birds found in the park, and she appointed students to search at ground level and up in the trees. 

We began our walk.  Right away we saw a bushtit in a tree.  Then we studied the birds in the lake--ducks, geese, gulls, a few cormorants--and then...a juvenile black-crowned night heron!  Later a bunch of crows, a black phoebe, a wounded gull, some feral parakeets.    The principal seized every opportunity to expand their language usage in Spanish and English and to draw information and opinion from the students.  After circling the park we gathered for pictures and reviewed what we had seen.  The kids had a great time, as did we all.  And dear old Leo Politi, whose ageless children's books celebrated the rich diversity of a child's Los Angeles, would have been thrilled.

MacArthur Park is a heavily used urban park, but it is still home to a wide assortment of birds, some permanent and some just passing through.  The boat house is closed due to budget cuts, but the fall migration south is still beginning.  Right there in the heart of Los Angeles these students got a taste of life in the air, life that might go from Canada to Argentina in a month’s time.  What did they learn?  They learned to look closely around them and up in the treetops, to search for the details in the world, and to wonder about everything. 

Most formal schooling takes place in classrooms, but it’s very important to remember how much learning can happen out in the world.  Good schools and good teachers can help that process along.   This bird walk was a reminder that we should support learning wherever it happens.

Long day....side trip on Show Boat

Short post today:  With the block schedule we do three periods each day.  Wed and Fri are the days that I don't have a conference period, so it's non-stop boys from 830-330 with a half-hour lunch.  Very tiring (much too tiring for complete sentences).   Plus I have a 6th period which I think will be very challenging.  Many low-skilled, high-energy students with after-lunch energy....got milk?

I'm getting closer to squaring the circle--tighter organization to "guide" behavior but still student-centered instruction to deepen the learning.  I think the answer lies in cooperative learning groups.  I'm consulting my sources.

I want to insert a brief musical digression.  Somehow I have gotten hooked on "Show Boat," the ground-breaking 1927 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II based on Edna Ferber's bestseller.  The score includes such classics as Ol' Man River, Can't Help Lovin That Man, You Are Love, Bill, Make Believe, After the Ball, and others.  It revolutionized the American musical theatre, bringing an intense drama that followed a show business family for 40 years and included topics such as segregation, miscegenation, alcoholism, and wife abandonment.  

Before Show Boat, American musicals had been pale imitations of Viennese and French operettas.  I have listened to 4 or 5 different versions from different revivals and films.  It's a great score with songs that support many interpretations and speak to the heart.  Ol' Man River usually steals the show, of course, and has had immortal interpretations by Paul Robeson, William Warfield, Frank Sinatra, and others, but the other songs are also great.  

Show Boat is strong evidence that the 1920's were a creative high point in the U.S. Remember that the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing.  Show Boat includes Black performers working right along with the white performers, unheard of at the time.  The score also reflects the emergence of jazz--"Black" music--into American popular culture. I highly recommend that you check it out.

That's all for now.  Day 4 tomorrow.

Lord of the Flies or Brave New World?

Whew!  One day down, 8 million to go.  I must have forgotten how much raw energy is unleashed in a roomful of boys.  I could almost see sparks flying.  I feel younger already, but also so, so old!   (Maybe that’s what Dylan meant.)   Anyway, I really like the students, as I expected to.  I can see that they’re interesting, lively, eager to learn, lively, friendly, respectful, lively, and...did I say lively?

Seventh grade English starts with 8-10 weeks on narrative writing.  That’s a great beginning since it’s just telling stories.  So we’ll read stories and tell stories and then analyze them and discuss their parts and their meanings.  It’ll be easy to connect stories to their lives in what we read but most of all in what they write.  Their own stories, their family stories, their friends’ and neighbors’ stories--all will be a fit subject for these English classes.  I’m envisioning small group work to develop stories, collections of stories bound and illustrated, stories read or acted aloud, oral histories, community histories (I’ll call you Susan!). 

But I’m also facing the age old dilemma of defining the teacher’s role on a continuum from Lord of the Flies to Brave New World, or maybe from Socrates to Aquinas.  Many colleagues and friends have admonished me to “Get control right away!” or the class will devolve into raging chaos for the whole year. 

I know that these seventh graders are immature and lack self-control--after all they’re not even teenagers yet!  I also know that there is a natural resistance to focusing and working, a desire to play and goof around.  I’ve even known adults who feel that way!

But I also know that loving stories--reading them, writing them, acting them out, talking about them--requires a wild, free-spirited atmosphere of adventure and excitement.  I also know that their own peer interactions are as likely to bear fruit in advancing their understanding and engagement as anything I might say or do. 

So this is THE teacher dilemma.  How much control do I seek to guide the students to learn and expand their understanding?  How much control do I cede to the students for the sake of their freely choosing to engage with writing and reading? 

I hope you didn’t expect an answer to that.  I’m working on it.  Suggestions are welcome, desperately!  More next time.