academic turns city into a social experiment

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transition

After seven years of teaching and completing a Master’s degree in Education, I have come to perhaps the most difficult, confusing and painful experience of this short teaching career.

I found myself in a situation that was far from healthy for me and, with the help and support of friends and family, made a very difficult decision. I have resigned from my teaching position.

I continue to love teaching and learning very much and hope this experience doesn’t take that away from me in any way.

meaningful work and curiosity…

As I enter 2009 I found the preceding interview of Gladwell on Charlie Rose very important for me at this particular time. I haven’t read his new book and to be honest, I don’t plan to at this time. I’m planning on going back to finish Blink and think about the relationship between rapid cognition, meaningful work and curiosity (important culminating point at the end of the interview) and how that affects not only my work as an educator but my day to day living as well.

I first discovered Malcolm Gladwell via his talk on TED on What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

It’s hard not to love anything on TED but this talk was particularly poignant for me at the time. I am not an artist and have never claimed to be but this talk re-affirmed for me my interest in the importance of intentionally teaching creativity (or curiosity) in schools.

It also helped support my feeling that the fact that art and visual literacy is something that is merely taught at the fringe or in an extra-curricular setting significantly hurts our students. In an attempt to help students in the area of science, math and technology, we fail to see the importance of art, creativity and visual literacy in this age. Despite our efforts and investment in science, math and technology in this country, why are our students still so significantly behind? And, more importantly, why does so much creative work seem to come from those same students from those same countries that are so significantly ahead of our students in the area of science, math and technology? It seems like these students have no problem being strong in disciplines that are both right and left brain.

Dan Pink has something to say about that.

After that talk on TED, I began reading Blink and reflected on the importance of “rapid cognition” and how it was immensely related to his talk on spaghetti sauce and how that relation was significantly relevant to teaching in a web2.0 classrooms(whatever that means since, for the most part, they really don’t exist…sticking hardware in a classroom doesn’t count…and, it may, in fact, hurt more than help).

So, again as I enter 2009 I plan to go back to finish Blink and enjoy thinking about the relationship between rapid cognition, meaningful work and curiosity and how that affects not only my work as an educator but my day to day living as well.

creativity and play

same basic principle…be who you are…

eso blu blu

is so funny how blu blu isn’t about technology.

like me is not about technology. yet i am not blu blu.

and so rightly so.

but blu blu is so damn cool. and me, well, im just me. not damn. not cool. just me.

and this is blu blu.

and now, me voy a austin. with my newly christened “austin terrier” — “el bukzy”

y claro tambien con mi novia lina…and her cat frida…

but on other not so unrelated notes…

i think about many of the kids we “teach” and wonder how many will turn out to be some kind of a blu blu, if they’re lucky. and how many won’t. due to, of course, the system they were succumbed to for so many years.

tonight mayra is graduating from high school.

mayra was my student in fifth grade. a sign i’m getting somewhat old.

i hope mayra gets through the system and does good. does real good.

but i also hope that she ends up having a little bit of blu blu left in her after the process.

i guess that’s what make a good student. going through the system and doing real good, if you can, and then having some blu blu in you left after going through the process.

that’s not easy to do. and i guess, that’s the point.

la iglesia y esa blonde redhead

it’s raining outside my window.

didn’t go to church today.

didn’t go to church yesterday.

didn’t go to church last week.

didn’t go to church last month.

didn’t go to church last year.

did go to cool hunting. for church.

or something of the sort.

sxsw-austin

Untitled from luna lopez on Vimeo.

tinkering (with) school

mi flickr