Actions and personal responsibility

character development, finding my path View Comments
Jul 302005

I wanted to share a quote I read on Rosa Say’s blog the other day.

“You can’t talk yourself out of a problem that you behaved yourself into.”

I’ve been trying to make this point with my campers all summer. Many of them seem to believe that a simple “I’m sorry” will fix everything they do, regardless of what it has happened. They also believe that they’re entitled to do whatever they want without any repercussions.

Everything we do affects somebody, even if that somebody is just ourselves. It takes a lot of courage to step up and say, “Yes, I screwed this up, and I’m going to fix it by correcting my poor decision/action.” But it is complete and utter foolishness (and a real sign of the times) to expect to make poor choices and then expect to just say a couple of words and make everything all right. We have to choose to change the behavior that put us in that position to begin with.

It’s about personal responsibility, and when you can make better choices, people respond better to you.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:48 am Tagged with:

The Magic Clipboard Fairy

creativity, motivation View Comments
Jul 302005

Camp is still in full swing, but I find that it’s led to something very funny. I have no links to share today, so in place of the link dump I’d like to share one of the more memorable camp moments of the summer.

During the first four weeks of camp, I was running a very nice site. Every morning, my instructor and I would come in and start setting up for the day. For me, this usually amounted to laying out supplies on my counter. My instructor, however, usually had some prep work to get through, and then she prepared the worksheets for the day. This usually left her very little time to do small things like create name tags for her campers or make sure her clipboard had a pen on it. I normally took care of these things for her.

One day during the first week, I didn’t have time to get her name tags made. That’s when I discovered she honestly had never realized I was doing this for her. She had assumed there was some mystical little camp fairy helping her out.

Thus was born the Magic Clipboard Fairy, maker of name tags, supplier of pens, and giver of Starbucks cards in teacher appreciation.

This weekend, I’m planning on taking the old beadie pattern for the fairies from Spyro the Dragon and create a Magic Clipboard Fairy for this instructor. I think she’ll totally get a kick out of it!

Design tip of the week- the old beadie paterns should be resurrected into fun uses, like keychains, ornaments, and suncatchers!

Posted by Rebecca at 10:46 am Tagged with:

Does the Digital Age remove the need for a human Librarian?

education View Comments
Jul 242005

Here’s a link to an article on the need for librarians in the age where anyone can look up anything on the internet. While I appreciate Jessamyn West’s initial position, I think the interview bit she posted sits better with my own worldview (however misguided) on the librarian’s role in our society.

It is wrong to assume that a librarian only sits there and looks up books or information or shelves books or checks books in and out. I worked in both my high school library for a couple of years and then a public library for several months after that. Much of that work is completed by student workers and others without the training to be a full librarian.

While a librarian can do these tasks when needed, they are fulfilling other roles. They are creating educational experiences, trying to help build literacy and a love of reading in the public they serve. They help with locating obscure pieces of information. They make sure that their collection is serving the public by making sure materials are available and in usable condition.

They preserve knowledge. They disseminate knowledge. They encourage others to learn how to find knowledge, and many of them make it quite enjoyable.

In my own opinion, even in these changing times, there will always be a need for librarians in the exact same way there will always be a need for teachers.

Any librarian who stumbles on this and thinks my worldview is off is welcomed to correct me.

Found via librarian.net

Posted by Rebecca at 10:43 am

Children and idiomatic language

teaching View Comments
Jul 242005

The discovery of some new reading material reminded me of a very funny incident that happened at camp this past week.

One of my first graders had some definite problems with his manners. We spent the better part of the week trying to introduce “please” and “thank you” into his vocabulary. (His mother has been working on the same dilemma.)

At one point, one of the fourth graders helped save one of his projects from being completely ruined, and he said nothing to her. I prodded him to thank her, so he did. Trying to help him see why gratitude is so necessary, I said, “It’s always good to say thank you, because when you say it, people will want to help you again down the road.”

Now you have to understand, this is a very sweet boy who unfortunately wasn’t the brightest light bulb in the world. He looks at me and says, “But what if I’m not driving?”

I must have just been incredibly dense that afternoon, because I couldn’t figure out why he was talking about driving. About five minutes later, trying to figure out why we were suddenly talking about driving, he said, “But you said, ‘help you again driving down the road’!”

The rather dim light bulb in my own mind suddenly went off and I told him, “No, ‘down the road’ is just an expression. It means in the future.”

His little face lit up, and he said, “Oh!”

We had a great laugh over it.

It’s important to remember, especially when dealing with younger children, that many of them are not exposed to idiomatic or metaphorical language early in life. There are dozens of children’s picture books that use this to their advantage rather well. Many stories that fall under the “kids say the darnedest things” often stem from this lack of understanding of this indirect language form.

Fortunately, kids are pretty resilient and clever in their own right and figure it out fairly quickly.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:40 am

Sometimes, the best choice is storytelling

anthropology, storytelling, teaching View Comments
Jul 182005

After my very crazy weekend, I didn’t get much prep time for camp today. I had no earthly idea how I was going to start my second lesson this morning.

According to the curriculum guide, I was supposed to put up seven stars to represent Ursa Major. Fine. In my pavilion? Right. I was pretty nervous about this.

Somewhere between the beginning and ending of the first break, the part of me that spent four years teaching in planetaria kicked in. When we got back, I cut out the seven stars to create Ursa Major and started weaving my story, an old Puebloan myth of how Coyote filled the night sky. In the process, to demonstrate Coyote throwing Bear into the air, I put up the seven stars. I then used it to segue into the Greek myth of Callisto and her son.

Apparently, my storytelling mojo was completely on. Not only did I have my own kids enthralled, but the other kids in the pavilion were completely distracted by my story as well. That will pull a bit of the punch tomorrow when I have to teach the same lesson to the kids, but I’ll handle it.

Not bad for someone who often feels her storytelling skills are out of shape!

Posted by Rebecca at 10:35 am

The accidental path lies before me

writing View Comments
Jul 062005

This writing bug really has a firm grip on me. This spring, I edited a section of an e-book now published. In May, I wrote a sidebar for an upcoming book. Last month, I submitted a piece to an inspirational series. This morning, I mailed off a short story to a science fiction contest Admittedly, I’m only in it for the first round comments because I doubt the story is good enough to move on beyond that. I basically wrote, put through a beta reader, and edited a 5,000-word story in a week.

Last night, I responded to my very first fan review, a review of a three-year-old story I posted to fanfiction.net last fall. It was very favorable, and asked me to keep writing. I directed the reviewer to my fictionpress.com account, where I actually have some of my NaNoWriMo attempts published.

Now, I’m watching Under the Tuscan Sun while reading a manuscript for a friend, and trying to decide whether I should do a full technical edit, or if I should just beta the thing.

I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know if this accidental path to become a freelance writer/editor will amount to anything, but wouldn’t it be funny if it did?

Posted by Rebecca at 10:34 am

Blogs as informal learning settings

teaching View Comments
Jul 052005

One of the most effective informal learning methods I know of (and one that I use and abuse frequently at camp) is peer teaching. When you allow people to explain things to others, you’ve done a number of thing.

First, you’ve taken somebody who may not get to be in the spotlight very often and put them center stage. When they realize they’re the local expert, that boosts a potentially low self-image.

Secondly, you’ve encouraged the class as a whole to pay attention. This one isn’t obvious until you see it at work. Last week at camp, I had a girl who wouldn’t listen to instructions and couldn’t figure out how to do most projects. I would have to build her projects more often than not. Then she’d ask to go help others. Finally, I sat her down. “Sweetie, you can’t help people with a project you can’t do on your own.”  Amazingly, she did all of her own projects from that point on, even if she had to struggle through it, just so she could have the privilege of helping other students at her table.

Third, students learn better when they have to turn around and explain to somebody else. It sticks in their brain and becomes more clear for them.

Fourth, by encouraging peer teaching, you crate a situation where the students regard you more as a resource that the authority, and that’s wonderful feeling. It creates a bit of self-reliance in the students. It can help build bridges of (momentary) respect as a student realizes they need help from a student they normally wouldn’t talk to.

Blogs are a great peer teaching tool. They encourage the students to write, to become reflective, to handle criticism gracefully, how to give criticism constructively. They allow students to discuss and debate without the direct interference of the teacher. I think there’s also a fair bit of authentic assessment inherent in the educational value of blogs.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:31 am Tagged with:

Designing for the user to take something away

education View Comments
Jul 052005

When I think about posting to this blog, it’s usually because I’ve found a web/graphic design resource I want to remember, or had a funny experience with some handcraft medium.

Sometimes, I just want to sit and ramble about my own projects. Today is kind of like that. When I think about design issues, I really kind of narrow myself to the categories listed in the side bar. Then, I run across posts like this, and it reminds me of just how much planning occurs in instruction design before you can even teach a class.

Most people think developing education is a simple thing, but when you’re in an informal setting it’s really pretty challenging. You have to create something that people will want to read, and then design it in such a way that people will want to keep reading it. If you’re really lucky (read: if you’ve done your homework and worked hard to create a quality product), they come back for more educational experiences with you.

Not only do you have to design enticing content in the informal context, but you also have to give it an enticing wrapper to draw people in to take that first glance at your content. This is something I’m struggling with as I’m working on developing a series of pattern and technique cards for the jewelry web site.

It just goes o show that my simple theory still holds: everything involves some level design, and many design elements are universal.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:26 am
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