Craft Coral Reef

I haven't been blogging as much recently because I've been so involved with the Healing Oceans Together (H2O) environmental education and awareness group that my son is helping to organize.  (Regular readers of this blog may remember the Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest that H2O ran earlier this year.)

Now the group has moved on from raising awareness about sea slugs to encouraging people to help save the rapidly-disappearing coral reefs.  The first step in the process is that H2O is creating a community-based Craft Coral Reef to exhibit at ChambersArts, an art gallery in downtown Cary.  This artistic version of a coral reef, which will incorporate crochet and knitting, origami, beading, and other crafts, is supposed to remind people of the precious beauty of the coral reefs, educate them about the important role they play in our ocean ecology, and inspire them to take actions to help protect and preserve them.

We've been holding a series of FREE public workshops to get other people crocheting and crafting along with our group and contributing to the growing reef.  So far we've held three public workshops, and the results have been great.

Before launching the project, H2O crocheted some sample creations to show people:

But a few weeks later, after the second public workshop, the Craft Coral Reef had grown to this:

Beautiful--and exciting to see the progress!

For more information on this project, including some photos from the workshops we've held, check out the complete write-up on the Healing Oceans Together blog.  

You can follow that blog if you are really interested.  I'll also post some more photo updates to show you how our community Coral Reef grows.

Finally, next week we are launching another exciting initiative related to our "Save the Corals" campaign.  So stay tuned for that announcement!

Post Updates, AKA Good News

I wanted to let everyone know the good news about a couple of my recent blog posts.

Most recently, I wrote a couple of posts--the original Eliminate Math Anxiety post and then the popular Mobius Marinara post--about my friend Maria Droujkova of Natural Math and her attempt to raise $6,200 through Tipping Bucket to extend her work on teaching significant math topics to children from 0-5 years  into a book and online community that could reach many more people.  The deal with Tipping Bucket is that people pledge money to projects they want to support, but if the organizers don't attract all the money they need to make the project work by a set deadline, the pledges are returned to the donors.

However, I'm happy to report that Maria's Moebius Noodles received its full funding!  So the project is now a go, thanks to many generous donors (including, I'm proud to say, my son, who gave a full week's allowance to support this effort).  If you want to find out about developments on this project, follow Maria's blog, Math Accent (which is a font of wonderful information about all sorts of different math topics, not just those related to our youngest learners).

And speaking of our youngest...at the end of last month, I also posted about one of our local homeschooling families who, unfortunately, had lost both of their twin babies.  On top of the terrible loss of their infant girls, they had a lot of bills to deal with, so we were having an online fundraising effort to support them financially.

In this case, it is still a sad story.  However, I am happy to report that this Internet effort between friends, and friends of friends,  and friends of friends of friends of...., well, it resulted in raising $8,372.32 for the family.  I know that the family really appreciates every gift, not only for helping them deal with their financial issues, but as a vote of confidence in their ability to survive through the worse circumstances that a family ever needs to confront--a loss of one (or, in this case, two) of their beloved children.

Both of these remind me of one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa, who once said:

"What we are doing is just a drop in the ocean.  But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."

Both of these projects show what is possible when a lot of ordinary people give just a little to a good cause.  It is easy to think that what you can afford--$1, $5, $10--can't make a difference.  But you put all those drops together, and it creates an ocean.

I also heard from several readers of this blog who said they had supported these efforts.  So I want to thank you personally for your support.  I know many will reap benefits from your gift, and I'm glad that you were part of our ocean.

Cary Arts Center Is Dedicated!

What a great day today was!  It was the official opening ceremonies for the new Cary Arts Center, about which I've raved in previous posts.  There were art activities going on all day, from 9:00 AM - 9:00 PM, including free concerts, dance performance, theater improv, historical lectures, art exhibits, craft projects for kids, lesson demonstrations, artists working on  and talking about their pieces under development.  The dedication ceremonies themselves were at 2:00 PM, attended not only by hundreds of Cary residents, but by many Cary politicians old (such as long-time former Mayor Koka Booth) and new (present Mayor Harold Weinberg and most of the current Cary Council).

We walked up there about 1:00, despite a fairly heavy rain--but we weren't about to let that deter us!

Once we got there (admittedly, a little soggy), I caught up with my good friend Eileen, who was there with her two boys who are my son's age, and we watched some lovely performances by the Cary Ballet:

Then a dashing Town Cryer called us all to attendance to the dedication ceremony:

Many politicians and Town of Cary staff thanked the many people who had worked on the entire project, which began about 10 years ago, although the groundbreaking was about a year and a half ago:

Many people were acknowledged, and many expressed their delight about how well this vision for an integrated facility for the arts has been manifested.  It made me really proud to live in a community that recognizes the importance of supporting the arts, especially for children, in a time of financial hard times and an educational focus on standardized testing.  And it is wonderful that a site that had been a school for almost 150 years, and one of the first public education buildings in the area, has been saved to continue its mission of educating and uplifting the citizens for a long time into the future.

My favorite part of the ceremony, however, was related to the cornerstone, which was supposed to be placed in the theater flybridge that day, but had to be postponed due to the rain.  But in that cornerstone was placed a time capsule with items contributed by 37 Cary-based arts and cultural organizations.  Some were parts of the Town government or local educational institutions, some were discipline-specific arts organization, and some were related to ethnic minorities.  But it was so wonderful to see representatives from groups seeking to share the culture of African, Turkish, Hispanic, Indian, Nepalese, Sister Cities in France, Belgium, Ireland, and China, Philippine, and I've probably forgotten a few more.  It was wonderful to see such diversity in a Southern community that 50 years ago was basically a rural train stop outside Raleigh with 5,000 residents, pretty exclusively white and black.

The plans are for the time capsule to be opened up in 70 years.  So I may not be around then, but I certainly hope my son is.  I took a picture of him next to the cornerstone/time capsule that maybe he can put into the time capsule when they seal it for the NEXT 70 years!

We also ran into our friends Angie and Todd, who came from a beading party for their daughter's birthday, and later into my friend Bridget, whose all-too-old son was supposed to be playing as part of the Cary High School Marching Band (another old tradition in Cary) for the dedication, but which unfortunately for us got rained out (although I'm not sure the kids, who have been practicing for up to 12 hours a day for a couple of weeks now, minded the break).

All together, it was just a lovely, lovely day, full of great art, great friends, and a great accomplishment on the part of the Town of Cary.

Writing Contest Encourages Intergeneration Connections

Next month will mark the 11 year anniversary of my organizing monthly visits to a local assisted living facility.  Ever since my son was one year old, he and his peers have been going every month to bring some joy and to create some bonds with some seniors.  We have done so many different things with the residents of this assisted living community--played games, done old fashioned dances (Charleston, anyone?), watched educational films, made ice cream in a bag, read Christmas stories, carved Halloween pumpkins, and done many, many crafts together.  We've benefitted a lot from the regular contact with older citizens, although I also consider it to be one of our community service projects.

This year, however, the assisted living facility is having our students interview the residents about their lives and opinions.  Each month, one or two students ask a resident one question on what advice they would give young people about....one month, it was education, another month, it was being married or having a mate or partner.  At the end of the year, the company will compile all the responses and publish them as a book.  It has been really interesting, because we are learning more about the lives of the residents, and I hope our children are listening to some of their wise advice.

So I can recommend entering a writing contest I discovered lately.  The "Listen To A Life Contest" being sponsored by the Legacy Project seeks to connect young writers with people over 50 (parents not included).  The elder tells the student or students (ages 8-18) true stories about his or her life, and the student(s) turn it into a 300 word (maximum) essay.  There is one grand prize of a computer and iPod nano, $800 in learning software, and an additional $25,000 of software for the school, and 20 runner up prizes of an MP3 player and $400 in software.  However, the deadline is March 31, 2011, so writers will have to get started soon (click here for a full set of rules).

Of course, I think everyone can be a winner with this contest, because I think anything that encourages our kids to learn from these wise, seasoned elders is a great gift than any piece of technology.

Collaboration and Community in Education

There are two items I've worked on with my friend and colleague, Maria D of Natural Math, that I would love for people to check out and comment on.  One is the conclusion of the "Family Educator Commons" article that we wrote for the Shareable website.  This part, entitled "Online Communities, Agile Methods and the Commons" addresses the common myth that homeschool students are sitting at home, tackling their subjects alone or with just the company of their immediate family.  We share one example of "a day in the life of" a homeschool student that shows how family educators, working within a community setting, share their different abilities and resources, usually in a non-monetary or informal bartering system, and work together to ensure that all their children receive a complete, stimulating, and individualized education.  We also discuss online education, the ability to change educational directions on the fly when something is not working, and what is possible when you channel the parents' commitment to their children's educational success into a connected and cohesive community.  

On another front, I've been helping Maria with a grant proposal for her idea of constructing an international database of math education communities that want to support students and families in developing their math capabilities.  You can see her proposal to the Knight Foundation News Challenge, and even vote for or comment on it, at least through tomorrow.  Or if you miss that deadline (I don't know how long they will keep up the proposals), you can comment through her blog at http://www.naturalmath.com/blog/math-2-0-at-knight-news-challenge-please-comment-and-vote/.  What would you like to see from an effort like this?

What Schools Can Learn from Homeschooling

As homeschoolers, we are always borrowing things from the school systems--teaching techniques, class structures, but particularly curricula and lesson plans.  However, at least some of us think that the schools could learn a thing or two from us as well!

My friend Maria of Natural Math and I wrote an article on this topic that has just been published on the Shareable website.  You can access the first part of the article here.

The gist of our argument is that while some schools are making some incredible strides in transforming themselves so that students experience success rather than failure (see my recent post on "Waiting for Superman" for more information), they still have to operate within the established school paradigm.  But there are some educators who are not constrained by the traditional school structures and funding mechanism.  Those are, of course, homeschoolers--or, as we prefer to call them in the article, family educators, because most of what we do is very different from "schooling," and if you are anything like us, it seems like we're never at home!  For example, I'm writing this post at a local library while my son is writing articles for our homeschool Newspaper Club that is run by another friend of mine.  And it is this kind of community-based learning--you teach my son to write, I'll teach your daughter about history or psychology (two of the classes I'm teaching right now)....and, of course, Maria will teach them all her wonderfully vibrant and engaging approach to math--that is the focus of our article.  It is creating networks of teachers and learning that allows us to prepare our children to participate effectively in the broad spectrum of the curriculum (not just the subjects we personally know well) without spending a fortune, since most of us are single-income families.

In the article, we're not arguing that everyone should homeschool, or that homeschooling is inherently better.  Also, schools obviously have to deal with a whole range of issues that home educator networks usually don't need to address.  Our point is just to present home education as a realm where teachers and learners have the freedom to redesign education from the ground floor up, and to suggest that communities just consider some of the things that are working for us in homeschooling as we continue to investigate the kind of fundamental school reform that is required for our information society.

Anyway, check out the article at http://shareable.net/blog/family-educator-commons and let us know what you think.

The Great Raleigh Trolley Adventure

This has really been a fabulous week, because I got to have another special experience this evening.  The keynote speaker at our summer conference on Teaching Your Middle Schooler, Dr. Candy Beal from NC State University who specializes in middle school education, invited me to join her graduate students on an event she does every year, The Great Raleigh Trolley Adventure.

Those who attended the conference know what a great speaker Candy Beal is.  Tonight I got to see her more in her role as university professor, demonstrating to her students what it is to be an exceptional teacher.

The contents of The Great Raleigh Trolley Adventure is around 20 people in a trolley-style bus traveling all around downtown Raleigh and learning about the history of various sites in the city.  The context of the tour, however, is Candy's belief that teachers need to learn about and be actively visible in the community that they end up teaching in to help demonstrate their commitment to and credibility within that community.  Another contextual aspect to the trip is Candy's assertion that middle schoolers are particularly concerned about two questions:

• Who am I?
• What is my place in the world?

Candy says that for most middle schoolers, the latter question about place revolves around four important components of students' lives:  their family, their school, their peers, and their community.  So another point about an activity like The Great Raleigh Trolley Adventure, according to Candy, is to help middle schoolers find a place in their community as "keepers of history" by knowing and understanding the evolution of their area.

I think those are really important points for us all to keep in mind, whether we are parents, paid teachers, middle school volunteers, or homeschoolers.  Another thing that I appreciated about participating in this activity was Candy modeling the importance of teacher as storyteller.  As we zipped around the city in our colorful trolley, Candy was telling us even more colorful stories about the places we were seeing and the people who created, inhabited, and then left them.  It was great evidence for me in my belief that history is not about facts and figures and dates and such, but rather a narrative about events that have happened in our past and why they matter.  But, then, that might have been a factor of a theory I heard in another educational podcast I listened to today:  You don't believe what you see, you see what you believe.

Anyway, it was a fun evening.  I was actually familiar with most of the major historical sites we passed, and had already had an educational field trip there with my son and his peers (one of the great advantages of homeschooling is being able to go study where things took place, rather than doing it in a classroom).  But I really see the value of having visited the parts, then pulling them together as a whole, as we did in this trip.  For example, we have visited Oakwood Cemetery, which is on land donated from the Mordecai plantation, and we have visited the Mordecai House, which was located on the other end of the plantation.  But we have never traveled from the Mordecai House to Oakwood Cemetery and thus gotten a physical representation of how large the estate was.  We have gone to the Joel Lane House and heard all about how Raleigh was established when Joel Lane sold 1,000 acres to the state legislature.  But we have never gone from the Joel Lane House to North Street, West Street, South Street, and East Street, and covered the traditional boundaries of the original capitol city made from those 1,000 acres.

So once again I learned some valuable lessons about teaching middle schoolers from Dr. Beal.  And because she was generous enough to share her insight with me, I wanted to share it with you.