Author: Vickie
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Courage
If not now, when? I’m committing to selling my art work. I’m committing to being myself. Even though, of course what that self is remains mysterious. What is a self that I can know it? This fierce creativity that burns remains mysterious. It frightens me. But denying it any longer is futile. I surrender to…
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Art, Joy and Teaching Art
So this is a little different sensibility than my usual rantings. I worked as a substitute art teacher yesterday at a local high school. In spite of being an artist, I don’t have an art credential. It was just the luck of the draw that they put me in this classroom. Being a substitute is…
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New wine, old skins #3: The core of schooling
I’m hoping to get to the point today. As I said, it’s a complicated argument. All that I’ve written so far is the same thing I’ve been saying for 20 years. But my recent experiences as a long-term substitute at an urban middle school, teaching 7th and 8th grade science, lead me to conclude that…
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Old Wine in New Skins Part 2
Yesterday I didn’t get to the point of the post. Perhaps today. NGSS and Common Core are grounded in particular assumptions about learning. These assumptions include: * All people can learn; learning is a characteristic of humans; * People learn by integrating new knowledge into existing knowledge; * Asking and seeking to answer questions results…
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Common Core : New Wine in Old Skins
Middle school teachers Jimmie Gilbert and Cheryl Anderson inquire into the physics of forces at a workshop. This activity was a revelation to me the first time I tried it. OMG, it’s a way to visualize force vectors. Although direction only. The magnitude is actually represented by the thickness or thinness of the paper that…
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Transformative Teaching
Today I had occasion to remember one of the best adult teaching experiences of my career. I was working as an adjunct at Cal State Northridge while I was ABD. I taught a combined math and science methods class for prospective bilingual teachers. My experience teaching elementary mathematics was using the Montessori method, pretty much…
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what is teaching anyway? (complicated argument 2)
Yesterday I ranted about politics, the reason being that education is crucial to our continued existence as a semi-democracy. The specter of a fascist, conspiracy-theory driven regime in Washington is so beyond horrifying to me. I noticed today that a group of teachers of the year have broken their own rules about remaining neutral in…