Curriculum Resource: Mardi Gras 2012

Laissez les bons temps rouler!  Or Happy Mardi Gras!  Of course, the entire Mardi Gras season began a month ago in New Orleans, but today is the biggest day of the entire period, culminating in the most prestigious parade, the appearance of the krewe of Rex, King of Carnival.

As homeschoolers, we are used to not only squeezing blood out of a stone, but the educational tidbits from the most anti-intellectual of experiences, and Mardi Gras is no exception.  And, actually, it turns out that many of the parades do have themes with educational possibilities.

So it is with the big Rex parade that happens today.  The theme of the 2012 procession is "Lore of the Ancient Americas," so many of the floats will depict myths and folk tales from a wide variety of Northern and Southern American native people.   In fact, the krewe of Rex has even created a document that explains the topic of each float, along with links to versions of the story or other information that will help give the facts related to the subject.  It's really quite a lovely list of different native American tales.  And I suppose the floats are a unique approach to storytelling.

So to see the explanation for each of the floats (should you be watching the parade), or just to read about some traditional legends, check out the 2012 Rex Parade Notes.

This Weekend Is the Last Chance to Join in the Sea Slug Lovefest!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my son's middle school environmental group, Healing Oceans Together, is running a FREE online contest entitled The Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest.  They are asking people to vote for which of eight finalists is the most beautiful sea slug--judging not only on its appearance, but also its cool features.  Click here to participate--it is anonymous and only takes a few minutes....ESPECIALLY if you are from one of these states:

• Idaho
• Kansas
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• South Dakota
• West Virginia
• Wyoming

Those are the only states that they haven't received any visits from, and they are really trying to get at least one vote from all 50 states (and we've got the District of Columbia, since that is where my father lives).  So if you can, please vote so they can get the most participation possible.  But the deadline is tomorrow, Sunday, February 12, so please act soon.

H2O also just put on two free educational workshops for the community about sea slugs.  About 68 people participated in the workshops, held at the libraries in Raleigh and Apex, NC.  In addition to scientific information about sea slugs and how people can help heal the oceans, the workshops featured making your own sea slug out of polymer clay or playdough (for the littler students), making sea slug valentines, playing games, and listening to sea slug stories.  It drew a diverse crowd, and it was great to see the teens working with the toddlers!

Math and MBTI Psychological Type

Happy Math Storytelling Day!  This is an event in honor of my dear friend, Maria Droujkova of Natural Math, whose birthday is it today.  The idea is that we share our stories about math with each other.

So my story involves math education and psychological type as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  This past winter, I taught an online class through P2PU on the Psychology of Math Learning.  The idea of the class was to look at various psychological theories, including MBTI personality type theory, to see if it would give us insight on why math can be such a struggle to so many learners.  (For more details on the class, you can read my original blog post about it).

The structure of the class was that each week, we would take an online test about one of these theories, then post our "score," such as our MBTI type, which in my case is ENFP (Extravert, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving).  Then we would reflect on our experience learning math, and see if we noticed any ways that our test results might have helped or hindered our math education.

The class didn't work out quite like I planned, because even though this approach was explained in all the class descriptions, and had a couple dozen people sign up, the only students who ever posted their scores or their reflections on the theory and their math experience were the Extraverts!  So, we ended up with a skewed sample of respondents.  But we Extraverts had a great time talking about things between ourselves.

However, it was an eye-opening revelation for me.  Math had always been my worst subject at school; worst NOT in the sense of grades, since I was the kind of student who would do whatever I needed to do to get an A, but in the sense that I knew I didn't really understand the answers I was regurgitating back on my graded work.  And that wasn't usually the case for me--generally, I understood the concepts behind all my other subjects.  So I never liked math, thought I wasn't good at math, and never took any academic math classes past my required Algebra II/Trig in my junior year of high school.

But by looking at MBTI, I could see at least part of the reason why.  Because the way I was taught math was EXACTLY opposite to my personality style.

• Math was taught as a completely I (Introvert) subject.  You stayed in your own seat, stuck to your own paper, came up with your own answers.  Any working together on a problem wasn't collaboration, it was cheating.  Even in Science, we at least had lab partners when we worked on experiments, and did lots of group projects in the Arts and Humanities (my favorite subjects).  But in math, I don't ever remember working with another student.
• Math was taught as a million different discrete problems that built up, bit by bit, to larger concepts--which is a very S (Sensing) approach.  Everything had an order and a sequence that eventually led to a comprehensive explanation of the subject.  But N (iNtuition) people like to see the big picture first, so that they understand why they are doing all the individual problems.  N people also usually don't fare very well in the high-sequenced, "show all steps of your work" approach that was used in my academic math classes.
• Why subject could possible be more T (Thinking) than math?  What does F (Feeling) have to do with whether 2 plus 2 adds up to 4, or that the area of the circle is Pi times the radius squared?  I was presented math as a completely abstract, logical, impersonal subject, which isn't something that we emotional, subjective, relationship-oriented F people particularly like.
• Finally, I was taught math as a very black/white, right/wrong, only one right answer kind of way, which is what MBTI calls J (Judging).  P (Perceiving) people like open-ended answers, multiple possibilities, and options.  But I was never given any of those shades of gray in my math classes.

Let me make two things clear.  First, I'm not saying that any of those approaches are "bad" or "wrong."  The whole basis of MBTI is these different preferences, which we are born with, are not better or worse than each other.  They are just different.  I doubt I had bad math classes, because I went to good schools and I'm sure I had good math teachers.  That was just how math was taught in those days.  And I'm sure that approach works brilliantly for some people--just not for me and my personality style.

Secondly, I now know that math doesn't have to be that way.  Math education has come a long way since then, and there are many more ways that math is presented these days in schools.  I am also so thankful that I met Maria, and through her, all the people on the Natural Math loop who have shown me math as a rainbow, not just a black and white subject.  For example, Math Mama Sue Van Hatten just recently had a blog post about how her students work together in groups.  The wonderful math-rich puzzles presented by Math Pickle encourage students to find many answers to the same problem.  Maria is constantly presenting math as fun, and as beautiful, and as creative, and as a vehicle for individual expression.  And I could go on and on about the wonderful new math educators who are diversifying the experience of this important field.

So my story has a happy ending.  Maria and others have helped me to "grow new math eyes" so I can appreciate math in a way that works for my personality.  But I think my story also has a moral, which is that math instruction (and all instruction, really) needs to meet the individual's personality and style, at least to some extent.  If you are a teacher or a parent or a homeschooler (some of my readers are all three), and your math teaching isn't working, consider the personality of the student who is having problems.  It is easy for us to get so caught up in our own MBTI preferences that we don't even notice that we are only giving open-ended exploratory problems to students who do better with more structure, or refuse to even consider a response from our creative thinkers that is different than the one in the answer key, which we find so reassuring.

Lesson Plan: The Times of Muhammad

In teaching about Islam in our World Religions class, I think it is really important for the students to understand the culture from which Islam evolved.  To deal with their questions about Osama bin Laden and 9/11 and all that, we have to try to cover the Muslim concept of jihad (which means "struggle" in Arabic, but is often translated as "Holy war" by the Western media).  And to really understand the historical development of jihad, you have to know something about the Arabic tribal culture and the life, times, and conflict/conquest that Muhammad experienced during his life.

We started with the student's favorite topic--FOOD!  I brought in a selection of foods, and asked them to select the 12 that are posted on the Internet as Muhammad's favorite foods.  They did a pretty good job of that, since they had made a lot of Middle Eastern food for the Jesus Feast we had earlier.  However, they were surprised about some of the Middle Eastern standards that were available in the communities Jesus visited that were not common among the nomadic Arabic tribes.

Some of these foods Muhammad ate daily; some he did not.

I then used a pack of cards to tell the story of Muhammad's relationship with the various tribes that are important to his story:  the tribe into which he was born, the powerful tribe that was trying to silence him and his followers, the tribe that "adopted" him when he had to leave Mecca, etc.  Besides being a good story-telling technique, I used the cards because we are trying to follow the Islamic practice of not having pictures of Muhammad, and because it was the Arabs who introduced the concept of cards, which originated in either China or India, to Western culture.

It's too complicated to go into here, but we discussed how the original concept of jihad was originally permission from God for Muhammad to attack the Arabs controlling Mecca, which the heavenly revelation said was justified (although most killing is prohibited in the Quran) because those people were interfering with the true believer's desire to worship God (or Allah) at the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam.  Only later did it become linked with the Arab's acquisition of new territory, which they believed was one means of spreading the word about Allah and Islam.

So going over the tribal history of the Arabs and the derivation of the idea of jihad helps to set up a foundation for the discussion we will be having in a few weeks about modern Islamic political affairs, including 9/11 and terrorism and such.  It is a sensitive topic, and can be difficult to discuss with this age, but I think understanding the historical background of Muhammad and the Muslims will help.

Lesson Plan: Miracles of Jesus About Food (Wedding at Cana, Disciples Catching Fish, Feeding the Multitudes)

Last week in our World Religion class, where we are currently studying Christianity, I did a lesson about the miracles Jesus did that involved food.  I started with the Wedding at Cana, which was the first miracle reported in the Gospel of John.  With all three of these miracles, I simply told the story, rather than reading it out of the Bible or a written rendition.

For the Wedding at Cana, I had made some preparations beforehand.  I had a glass pitcher of water and a tray with enough plastic cups for all the students.  However, before class, I had put a tablespoon of red Kool Aid in each cup.  So as I told the climax of the story, I poured the visibly clear water into the cups where-Voila!-they turned into red liquid.  While a younger audience might be fooled by this, the middle schoolers figured it out, and started shouting out I had stuff in the class and that it was Kool Aid instead of wine, etc.  But I never said a thing.  I neither confirmed nor denied their accusations, and, of course, I never said that I was performing a "miracle."  However, when we were reviewing last week's lesson, they all remembered the red drinks and the water into wine story--which, of course, was my real goal for doing it.

The next story I told was when Jesus told Simon/Peter and Andrew to cast their nets into the water, even though they had been fishing all night and had caught nothing.  When they did as he said, their nets were filled with fish, causing Simon (whom Jesus called Peter) to be the first disciple to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah that had been promised in the Jewish Torah.  Once again, I prepared something before class.  I took a large white piece of paper and drew a rough fishing net on it with permanent ink (I used a Sharpie pen).  In between the...well, they weren't squares...looks like maybe they were trapezoids (thank you, Google!)....anyway, in the white space in the net, I took a white crayon and drew fish shapes.  I had to press down fairly heavily to leave enough crayon, but you still couldn't see it against the white paper.  Then when I was in class, when I got to the part that Simon cast his nets in the water and they filled with fish, I took some dark blue water color paint and painted over the nets.  TAAA  DAAA--the invisible fish suddenly showed up!  They thought that was really cool, and couldn't figure that one out as easily.  Once again, when asked about it the next week, the students could tell the story.

The last one was less "magical," but may have been appreciated most of all.  As I talked about the two stories, one about feeding 4,000 families and one about feeding 5,000, both times with just a few loaves of bread and a few fishes, I took an unsliced loaf of bread I had bought and tore it into pieces, put it into a basket, and passed it around.  I also had a bag of Swedish fish candies, which I put into another basket, and passed it around.  So they had a ghastly meal of Kool Aid, Sourdough Bread (albeit high-quality, natural, and without preservatives), and Swedish fish candies--most of which I would NEVER serve my son at home.  But, of course, it was a HUGE hit.

It's one of those rules of thumbs, really with most children, I think, but definitely with middle schoolers--if you want them to love your lessons, give them some food.  But it was educationally justifiable in this case!  And, as I said, they seemed to have a much higher recall then they have had with some of my other lessons.  What can I say...food works.

Christmas Blog 2010: Digital Nativity

We have had a lovely holiday, and hope that you all have as well.

Here is a video I plan to use in Sunday School tomorrow (if we don't get snowed out).  My theme is that different cultures have told the Nativity story in their own way, regardless of what the "truth" is about the actual event.  But this video tells the story for our YouTube/Twitter/Google (etc.) generation.

Again, best wishes to all, and I hope you enjoy this new take on an ancient story.

Do We Need to Be More Conservative in Our Teaching?

I'm always on the look-out for ideas about how we can improve teaching (rather than test scores).  A new idea has popped up for me about incorporating more conservative techniques in teaching, sparked by an intriguing new book by David M. Ricci, a professor of politics and American studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  However, before this becomes a political debate, let me say I'm not talking about incorporating more conservative beliefs in teaching; I'm talking about including more of the conservative reliance on selling ideas through great stories.

Ricci's book is entitled Why Conservatives Tell Stories and Liberals Don't:  Rhetoric, Faith, and Vision on the American Right.  This book answers the puzzle posed by New York Times colonist and author of The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman, who stated just before the recent elections "The thing that baffles me about Mr. Obama is how a politician who speaks so well, and is trying to do so many worthy things, can't come up with a clear, simple, repeatable narrative to explain his politics."  It also explains why conservative leaders whom those with left-wing leanings find to be, at best, simple, and at worse, let's call it "intellectually challenged," keep winning elections.  These Conservatives may not have the Ivy League degree or the facts and figures at their fingertips.  But they tell a great tale about America's glorious possibilities, and sometimes those stories triumph--even if they turn out to be fantasies, or even worse, lies.

Ricci argues that it is in the very nature of liberalism to eschew storytelling over data.   He traces the liberal movement from the Enlightenment, and shows how they have consistently relied on science, theories, and facts to convince the population to abandon long-held policies or behaviors.  Conservatives, on the other hand, promote traditional values, conveyed through uplifting stories about such qualities as courage, decency, authenticity, and the democratic virtues of freedom and justice.  So you have President Obama trying to teach people about his national health care legislation, which was more than 2,300 pages long, while Sarah Palin talks about her mama grizzlies and tea parties.  And we all saw which approach tended to be most convincing to voters in the 2010 elections.

But leaving politics aside--I think this is a valuable insight for us to consider in education.  How many of us are liberal thinkers, and so think the most important thing is to teach our students the facts and figures of what ever subject we are teaching?  If we are, how powerful would it be NOT to abandon facts, but to combine it with the more conservative bent towards storytelling?  Because when I think back to the best teachers I've ever had, they weren't the ones who necessarily fed me the most theories and data.  The best ones, for me at least, were those who brought the subject alive through their passion for and, yes, stories about their subject matter.

Of course, it may seem that storytelling lends itself more to some disciplines than others.  Literature, of course, is all about stories, and history can easily be taught (although, unfortunately, too often is not) as a series of narratives about historical dates, facts, and figures--tales of the who and why that enliven the when and what.  But how about math?  For many of us, that is one of the most fixed, inflexible, and uninteresting (and, unfortunately, for some incomprehensible) subjects.  However, you only need to meet a master math teacher like my friend, Maria Droujkova of Natural Math, to learn otherwise.   No matter what topic she is teaching, Maria is always conveying a story of math as a fun, creative, flexible, beautiful, and personal medium through which each student can express him- or herself and make life better.  Maria changes people's stories about math, and that can make all the difference in their ability to learn math.

Or how about science?  There has been an intense discussion lately on the Natural Math e-loop on how science differs from math in regards to storytelling (which, unfortunately, has gone over my head, or at least over my ability to devote the time and attention to comprehend all the posts and links that have been exchanged by people with much more specialized knowledge in those fields).  But I still believe that there is a place for storytelling in science and that science, too, in the end tells different stories about the world.  If you have read Thomas Kuhn's classic work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, major shifts in the fundamental theories in science, like moving from the Ptolemy to the Copernican astronomy or from mechanical to quantum physics, also change our story of who we are and how our worlds operate.

Once again, I haven't actually read the book, so I'm not sure that I completely buy Ricci's argument.  But I think he raises a fascinating point to consider, and shines a light on something that may be a bit of a blind spot for some of us.

Lesson Plan: The Story of the US National Anthem

We are studying the War of 1812 right now, of which one of the most significant events was that it inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that eventually became our National Anthem.  But as we started to talk about it, I realized that my son had made it to middle school without ever really understanding what the song is all about.  (I thought that might be an area that might be overlooked in a homeschooling setting than in public schools, although I've since heard from other parents that the school children aren't all that aware of the meaning of the whole thing either.)  So I decided to do a lesson on the story behind the song, The Star Spangled Banner, as part of our 19th Century History Coop.

We started with a discussion of the song in general and what they need about it, which was mostly that it was written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812.  When I asked them what it was about, most of them said it was about the flag.  But is it really about the flag?  I responded.  That comment generated some thought.

I began by giving them the lyrics of the song and asked them to restate each line in their own words.  This was a great eye-opener, because it showed that most of them had never really considered what the song was trying to say, and didn't even know the meaning of some of the words.  The lyrics I gave them also had the lines in an incorrect order (to try to get them off autopilot), and they also were supposed to put them in the correct order.  It's amazing, as many times as we have sung the song, but even I had a hard time putting them in the correct order without singing through the song in my mind.  Try it yourself WITHOUT singing along and see how you do:

A.  O say! can you see, by the dawn's early light,
B.  And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
C.  O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
D.  O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming!
E.  What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
F.  O say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave,
G.  Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
H.  Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight

Then I gave them black card stock, along with metallic markers, gel pens, and light-on-dark colored pencils, and had them draw the picture they thought was described in the song.  While they were drawing, I told them the story behind the National Anthem (or, at least, my version of it...basically, as follows):

The Star-Spangled Banner was written in response to Francis Scott Keys' experience during the Battle of Fort McHenry.  It was 1814, and while the War of 1812 had gone better for the Americans at the beginning, by now England is no longer distracted by battling with Napoleon, and has turned more of its military force to this war with its former colony.  In defeating Napoleon, England had not only demonstrated that it had the mightiest Naval military force in the world, but had enhanced the status of its army as well.  The invading forces had defeated an American army twice its size at Bladensburg, overrun and burned the capitol city of Washington DC, and was now marching to the 3rd largest city of the time, Baltimore, Maryland.  Baltimore was only 40 miles from Washington, so news had reached the city of how the British had devastated that city and were on the march, presumably to do the same to Baltimore.  At the same time, the mighty British Navy, after defeating forces at Alexandria in Virginia, were sailing up the Potomac to attack the city by sea while the Army marched by land.

The British Army arrived first, but were deflected by the American military at Baltimore.  They pulled back, and awaited the arrival of the Navy to destroy American defenses so they could conquer the city.  Fort McHenry, which was built to defend the Port of Baltimore, was the place that would have to keep the British Navy from entering the city.

The battle began at 6:30 AM on September 13.  For an entire day, the British bombed Fort McHenry.  But all during the day, the people of Baltimore could see that the US flag was still flying from the Fort, signifying that the British had not yet taken over the facility.  Day turned into night, and finally it was too dark to see what flag was flying over the Fort.  Yet still the British bombardment continued.  Through the entire night, the people of Baltimore could hear the battle, the bombs and the armaments, and wonder, "Have the British won?  Are they coming to burn down our city as well?"

But after 25 continuous hours of bombing, the British Navy decided that they could not defeat Fort McHenry, and withdrew.  At that point, the commander of the Fort lowered its smaller battle flag, and raised a larger flag, one that measured 42 ft long by 30 ft high.  (At this point, we stop the story to estimate the dimensions of the flag using the numerous picnic tables in the shelter where we are holding the class--seven picnic table long, to be precise.)

Why did they have such a big flag?  the students asked.  So I asked them if they knew where Francis Scott Key was when he was watching the battle.  The fact is, he was eight miles down the river, but he could see the flag that inspired the song.  And THAT is why the Fort had such a big flag.

So with that in mind, we can understand the lyrics of the song that became our National Anthem, especially when put into our own words:

A.  O say! can you see, by the dawn's early light,

(Now that dawn is breaking, can you see it?)

E.  What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?

(What we welcomed so proudly as the sun finally set last night)

H.  Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight

(Those stars and stripes that, despite the dangerous battle)

D.  O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming!

(continued to flow over the top of our fort)

B.  And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

(and the bombs and explosives that lit up the night)

G.  Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

(sometimes let us see that our flag still flew over the fort)

F.  O say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave,

(But is the flag still hanging there)

C.  O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

(over this place of freedom and courage?)

That original flag now is the center of a big exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  It is an inspiring display, and I recommend it to all.  But, in the meantime, telling your children the story of this decisive battle in the War of 1812, which caused an upsurge in nationalism among the new nation, is a great way to help them put greater meaning behind the words they may be singing almost automatically.

Lesson Plan: Learning with a Maggid

Today in our world religion class, we got to hear from a Maggid, or ordained Jewish storyteller.  The maggids are part of a 17th century Hasidic tradition that incorporates storytelling into Jewish religious practices.  According to Maggid Rachel Galper, the woman who spoke to our class today, the role of the maggid is to take the same stories that might be in the Torah and other religious writings and might be addressed by the Rabbi in a Shabbat service, but to present it to people in a more informal, or in her words, "user-friendly" way.

Maggid Galper started out by asking the students, What makes someone Jewish?  They discussed various aspects--food, clothes, holidays, family heritage (especially through the mother)--but Maggid Galper said that in her mind (admittedly, she is of the Reform persuasion), people choose to be Jewish when they believe in and follow Jewish faith practices, regardless of family background or other factors.

Maggid Galper covered many of the great Jewish patriarch stories--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses, Jonah, and David, among others.  She raised the issue that some take these tales as literal truth, and others as teaching stories where events or people may be symbols for a larger truth.  She explained that the name "Isreal" means "God Wrestler," and stated her belief that to be Jewish is to argue with or wrestle with "God" or spiritual truths or stories.  "If you ask a Jew about a spiritual question," she claimed, "You'll get 10 different answers."  But in Maggid Galper's mind, that is a good thing.

What was particularly great about listening to Maggid Galper, though, was that she also talked about the stories of women found in Jewish writing.  So it was that we heard the version of the Abraham and Isaac story in which Abraham's wife, Sara, is the one to rescue Isaac, or the important role Mose's sister, Miriam, had in protecting Moses and making sure the flight from Egypt and search for the promised land was successful.

She talked about the Torah, made up of black writing, known as "black fire," and white space, known as "white fire."  She related that to a story about Miriam, who received a gift of an empty box from the angels while Moses was receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai.  White fire, she said, was given to women to represent all the wonderful, valuable stories and wisdom that are NOT contained in the Torah.  Finding and telling those stories, according to Maggid Galper, is the purview of women--a teaching that I just loved.



















It was a great gift to have her, and both the students and I learned a lot to add to our understanding of the rich traditon of Judaism.