Divine Intoxication

Our Tavern of Woods, Jan 17, 2018

In comic-strip pith, “Word” signals “That’s it!” as in “Truth!” But in real life, words only approximate and often miss the mark, frequently crafted with intention to deceive, witnessed poignantly in the discipline of rhetoric. Her cousin, Religion, focuses on guiding discernment into truth, plumbing the eternal word becoming flesh, tuning the human voice toward resonance with its Source. Both rhetoric and religion testify that not all, not even most, scratching on surfaces  approaches the sanctity of “Word.” And yet this writing and reading, this employment of words sometimes corrects a false step, sometimes allows a a scent or taste of the water of life, the "mystical intoxication."

   Concerning taste, this preoccupation with “word” came about, perhaps, due to the trouble stirred up by Hafiz choosing to feature “tavern” when “temple” is meant—isn’t it? Franklin Lewis, in his chapter in Hafiz and the Religion of Love (Ed. Leonard Lewisohn), comments:

“Thus the wine tavern becomes the locus—the ruins on the outskirts of town, where the non-Muslims drink clandestinely so as not to offend public morality, the liminal space outside society—while the dawn becomes the poetic moment when divine intervention arrives, allowing wine and relief, or mystical intoxication. [Lewis illustrates with the first line of Ghazal 479] ‘At dawn a call from the wine tavern, wishing good fortune/ It said come back, for you are an old haunter of this court.’” (pp. 274-5)

The next line from the ghazal extends the purpose of Hafiz playing the word “tavern.” In Peter Avery’s translation:

“A draught from us drink like Jamshid, so that of both worlds’ mystery/ The beam of light from the world-seeing cup might inform you.” (p. 580, Collected Lyrics of Hafiz of Shiraz)

Of course, in the spirit of good mythopoesis, Hafiz wants to shake us, to wake us, in order that we might search out hypocrisy, alert for hidden idols, finding the ones that continue to separate us from the Love of God; that we might come back to the source of inspiration, walking in the mystery of both worlds. 

God invites us every moment to do this, to purify in order to live more cleanly. To help me enter the invitations, as explained earlier, I’m intending a year-long project that connects (A) David George Haskell’s study (The Forest Unseen) of his forest mandela with 

~14 cardinals

(B) the woods that illumine our windows. We’re now on his second entry, the one for January 17. On this date, his woods like ours are filled with snow. We wonder how the snowflake reaches its essential uniqueness, turning through the spirit wind, glistening in the illuminating light.

Haskell’s meditation (pp. 8-11) flows back to Johannes Kepler (1611) who “wrote that snowflakes are showing us the spirit of the earth and God, the ‘formative soul’ that inhabits all being.” Yet Kepler was frustrated in not showing “a material explanation” and still his “musings on the snowflake…contributed to the development of our modern understanding of atoms.” Haskell brings our contemporary X-ray analysis to the design of matter: our woods, water, and us.

“The basic hexagonal shape of snowflakes is elaborated in varied ways as the ice crystal grows, with the temperature and humidity of the air determining the final shape… Other combinations of temperature and humidity cause the growth of hollow prisms, needles, or furrowed plates. As snowflakes fall, the wind tosses them through the air’s innumerable slight variations of temperature and humidity. No two flakes experience exactly the same sequence, and the particularities of these divergent histories are reflected in the uniqueness of the ice crystals that make up each snowflake.” pp. 9-10

As a side note, Kepler has also received recent attention in relation to his role in enlightening dark consciousness evident in witch hunts, including the one involving his own mother.* 

The human defines the authenticity of word as the individual resonates uniquely back into the original promise, the timeless covenant between God and human, the affirmation of sovereignty. Humans also revolve through cultural drafts and shadows that challenge each of us to sound the authentic word that is true to the Source. Thus, again, the purpose of religion. 

        Sufis talk of this walking as the Path of Attraction. But life abounds with attractions, and so many are bewitchments from the impurities picked up in the currents of culture. The true calling is to discern, to follow, and to voice the Word. God is Everywhere. The purification back to the Source leads to and follows from entering more deeply into Beauty, Truth, Love, and the array of qualities endowed uniquely in each individual.

=================

* Ulinka Rublack, The Astronomer and the Witch, Oxford, 2015.

James A. Conner, Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother. Harper, 2005.

Taking Literacies Back to Experience

   Each week in our Good Stories course we engage a favorite tale of mine with the selection determined by my sense of which one promises to advance our effort to compose destinies that promote peace and justice.  An early theme develops the “water of life” as the source of vitality and renewal needed for this quest.  The search for the renewal of life takes us to the dangerous ground suggested by our primary text, Brian Boyd’s On the Origin of Stories.   His subtitle points to three troublesome critters along this journey: Evolution, Cognition, & Fiction.  The question directing our path asks: How can the stories we tell and produce advance consciousness so that our inner and outer worlds increase peace & justice?

   Persons who dare approach the edge of consciousness best go prepared.  This week’s Good Story tells of Arthur, the King, entering the deep woods at that edge and being confronted by the ugliest creature even seen.  That’s what ebbs out of the unconscious, the primeval swamp where new meaning evolves shape-shifting, grotesque yet potentially gorgeous. 

   Surprise, surprise—Guess what?  This isn’t pretty to the hegemonic powers that be.  Today I travel to Tucson for my professional development and the university questions my choice.  Having considered the options of going to the traditional annual meetings of professional organizations, I decided instead that Zen Mind, Zen Horse has more to offer toward my teaching and research.  Knowing Arthur’s tale, why should I be surprised that the workplace questions my choice?  The Good Stories have warned me over and over: expect to be challenged when you venture to the edge.

   After an initial exasperation, I realized the challenge is good because it invites pulling the elephant out of the closet for persons who can’t yet smell it.  Think of the elephant as concrete experience and the room as symbolic representation.  School rooms too often act as if representations (e.g., literacy or letter-making) exist apart from the real world.  For example, classes study dystopian literature without first and repeatedly claiming the primacy of authentic real-world constructions that are growing within the individuals and their communities.  Another example that bothers me: teachers model and students are allowed to grab Google images for their digital media productions instead of constructing their own representations. To strangle literacies from experiences is an act of violence, harshly disrespectful of each person’s right to author and voice.

           

      

I choose Zen Mind, Zen Horse because it returns literacy to authenticity through hands-on engagement with horses, coached by persons (including a neurosurgeon horseman and a doctor in psychology) who recognize that “our left hemisphere, armed with its overwhelming power of speech, remains wary of its reticent, emotive, and mute counterpart on the right [hemisphere of the brain]” and that “the horse also shows us the joy that comes from living with the bare truth of our selves” (pp. 6, 287 in Allan Hamilton’s Zen Mind, Zen Horse).

    
  Good Stories is part of the University’s I-Series program where tending to Big Questions are prominent.  Our course connects literacy with meaningful personal and social change.  To do this, students learn to work with stories across four levels of explanation.  Brian Boyd develops these as universal, local, personal, and particular.  We elaborate the universal level by finding resonance with archetypes in traditional tales (cf. Marie Louise von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales).  As indicated in the subtitle of our course, Teaching Narratives for Peace & Justice, the construct of power takes center stage.  Across time and literature, the horse best provides the source for understanding the archetype of power, as evident in the term, horsepower. 

   My research informs the fundamental connection of literacy with meaningful pro-social personal and significant organization change (that is, peace & justice), and it comes in expanding my experience with horses and in the subsequent articulation of those experiences into courses like the Good Stories class and programs like Reins of Power that I have provided for teachers on several occasions. 

   That’s a brief on how the Zen Mind, Zen Horse program informs my work in literacy education, and it suggests the direction I think professional development needs to head.  While I don’t expect many educators will find their way to a living horse, I’m encouraged with the emphasis given to the Maker Movement and how it’s infused into prototype opportunities such as the Connected Learning MOOC featured by the National Writing Project this past summer.

Happy trails, y’all.

Saturday Morning Live

butterfly fluttering at edge of visibility

So I just spent my early morning, not as planned & more compulsively than I want to acknowledge.  I was really bothered because comments that my #CLMOOC friends said they’d added weren’t showing up! My nice-guy attempts to find them, to fix settings were not working.  Grrr.

That’s just not right!  #Connected Learning means connecting, right?  I think +Elyse Eidman-Aadahl even replaced the C in MOOC to stand for “connecting” or “collaboration” instead of “course,” and I like that. 

And I really wanted to see those specific comments.  One new connection (and I hope collaboration) I’d made by participating in the MOOC was +Terry Elliott, and his note in the Google+ Community said he’d commented in my blog.  To boot, an “old” friend, +Kevin Hodgson, @dogtrax, my model of reckless productivity, said he had too. So I was almost at toothgnashing about missing comments. 

Prior to #CLMOOC, no comments was blog-norm.  I’m basically ok with writing for myself and throwing it into the ocean, but a bit of response was certainly delicious.

So today I was relatively determined to suss it out.  I googled for help, followed the directions as best I could: Nada.  Well, no joy immediately; but I mucked about.  The “messing around” of HOMAGO doesn’t quite fit me since I’m not on track to geekdom. I can’t even manage remixing off of +Chad Sansing & friends' terrific mozilla thimbles.  Maybe another new CLMOO-Collaborator +Sheri Edwards will help me out since she’s doing it beautifully.

Anyway, the muck of it was that I lost my background image.  The beautiful sunset scene got zapped completely from my blog.  Double Grr--that had probably been my favorite part of the blog other than the hope that somebody might one day comment. 

So I backed up another step and tried risked re-making with a completely different design from Blogger’s options.  Voilà!  I was also able to piddle around rearranging the gadgets that I’d tried unsuccessfully to add before, and the new design page let's me do that too.  I got the background image up again & now I see the long-lost comments.  Thanks, guys!

Lesson of the day:  Muck on, John Donne!

Why write? Because you love to.

Why Write?

Because you love to.

At heart, that’s the only reason to do anything.  (Of course, we might have to continue to penetrate the meaning of love.  But, back on-topic--)

If you’re not so sure that you love to write, please let me continue.

1) Humans “write” because it is our distinctive character.  Kenneth Burke, called the most important rhetorician of the 20th century, distinguishes humans as the “the symbol-using, symbol-making, and symbol-misusing animal” (Language as Symbolic Action).  If your symbolic action doesn’t correspond with “writing,” consider expanding the field of composition.

2) If you have difficulty claiming that you love to write, explore options.  Troy Hicks uses the acronym MMAPS to guide teaching of comp, digital or otherwise.  Look at the mode, media, audience, purpose, and situation that you use and play with them.  I discovered joy in composing as I played with digital media.  I got into DMP in ought-to mode; but as I tried out production programs that matched up with my disposition, I connected the photography I love with words, found ease of precise editing, and focused on a topic of passion (riding horses). I’ve continued to grow in love with Digital Media Production, but it’s still hard work.  (on DMP, check this.)

3) Let writing go to edge of consciousness.  That’s where vitality comes in.  Like dressage masters, we should always keep in mind that if, at the end of the lesson, the writer is not happier and healthier, then something needs attending.  If we don’t write until we find this for ourselves, how can we expect it in our classroom?

3+) If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for the kids.  Sorry about pulling that card, but we know that good teachers of writing write, like good teachers of reading read.  And we know that the best teachers teach what they love: enthusiasm motivates intrinsic, authentic, life-long learning like nothing else.  Check the process-product research; or better yet, check out your own self-directed drive.

4 or 5) Can’t find time?  No easy solution here, but try buying yourself out.  Explore paying someone to do something you’d rather not do (house cleaning, food prep, walking the dog) or even doing without x (a meal, a TV show, a graded assignment).  You might be surprised how hard it is to prioritize what we love, especially the kind of passion that takes time and tending.

Text & Context Frame in Wonder

       The joy of composing often dances in the way a sense of light guides the focal point until awe half releases breath and holds, filling the frame so that the centerpiece arranges like a hummingbird poised, counterbalanced by the invisible scent of nectar.  The rule of thirds handily reassures the steady pressure needed to claim a capture of beauty, and then the kept breath escapes.  But the texture and grace has been brought closer by presuming to enter the flow of light, to still the falling petals, to treasure the residue of storm clouds.  And having entered this, the delicate exchange of finding the center of focus flows, a half-step from the midpoint for the harmony with a slightly blurred background, a bow to mystery, the unknown, longing, calling.

       When one holds peace, we compose: as a rider knows about how balance in the riding trot cannot be fixed but continuously moves to complement a mythical perfection, or how the poet circled the tower as a falcon or a moon marking the magnetic field.

       When I entered the gravity of “What’s the Most Beautiful Thing About a Horse,” my being suspended into the question.  It’s a field of joy, wonder, in the power, amid beauty.  So when I assembled the array of images and words, the forced separation of work and play evaporates like the disappearing dew, the magic of mist; and we dance with the feel of this and then this, and ah, hmm, and . . .  One gift comes in the distilled glance at contents in a flexible frame so that tentative words offer inadequate names.

       When I look back at the composition, I look for my response to the invitation, and I see or, better yet, feel the smile of a stranger-no-more (see ~2:04 in What’s the Most Beautiful Thing About ).  

On either flank of the horse float the two sides of the globe, making words but much more.  It’s the weaving of peace, the soothing of mistrust, moving closer to power, the dissolve of difference.

Reflections/Diffractions on NWP's Making Learning Connected

Very surprisingly, CLMOOC (National Writing Project’s on-line Making Learning Connected) is carrying to me the tone of NWP in-person events; the tone that vibrates a certain voltage of the small-retreat quality, signaling community and the kind that I seek out and prefer over other gatherings.  The NWP-tone has provided me with a balm in a profession that forces isolation because working at the edge of consciousness drives one into an inarticulate zone where easy conversation has the luke-warmness that Revelation 3:16 despises. 

In the hot/cold tumultuous shoreline, I have to bumble about.  And while I’d rather be alone than banal or criticized for using fragments, yet I yearn for professional intimacy. And, more importantly, I’m certain that acting toward social justice depends on collaboration right here at the shoreline, not in the calm waters where words have high clarity and formulaic reactions that have already been tried, found failing, and harnessed by powers-that-be, rendered lukewarm.

How many years did I endure large professional conferences and their excruciating publications because I didn’t even know that there was an option to sharing and extending scholarship.  Finally along came in-person NWP.  And now, this summer, I’m getting the NWP-tone even in the bumptious choppy fragmatic tweetchat (Storify summary forthcoming).  How surprising is that!

The special resonance hums in like-mindedness; perhaps the word “soul” could even be used; it’s a dangerous term that needs to be reserved for times when we trust its special meaning to be shared.  The vibration that I value has to penetrate into the inarticulate, like Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” and so often association with persons who flaunt the term leads into disappointment, possibly on into deeper isolation and alienation, even despair.  It’s better to be alone than to be false.

This calls to mind the Rilke poem, “Too Alone,” translated by Robert Bly in Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

     I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,

     as it goes toward action,

     and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times

     when something is coming near,

     I want to be with those who know secret things

     or else alone.

Passion such as this has the distinctive quality of demanding action because it “contains” suffering, not so much personal but toward compassion for injustice in the world.  To choose the passionate life calls one toward companionship and to service or stewardship that tends the “soul of the world” (elusive meaning but more toward Carl Jung than Google’s top responses: Coelho’s Alchemist).   

I’m hesitant to sound the name anima mundi because it draws us toward the out-of-control and reminds me of that bar where Luke Skywalker found so many weird creatures.  But to traffic with passion means going where it takes you.  In last night’s tweetchat, the conversation around “access” and “equity” and then “collaboration/co-labor” carried the kind of tingling in my skin that said “yes.”  Isn’t it time to venture ahead trusting in the NWP-tone and a few reckless adventurers?

Credo & Digital Media Production

“Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself in a dark wood.”

           So begins, Dante’s Divine Comedy as translated by Anthony Esolen. 

And here we are about midway through the #CLMOOC with our own invitation into composing a credo with particular application to the principles of Connected Learning.  Here's a video on mine and a few production notes:

Credo July 9 2013 (the link)

 I find this an imposing task, even slightly frightening, and yet much appreciate the opportunity and the models that have been offered.  I’m increasingly aware of the importance of making access, a topic that Terry Elliott rightly emphasizes.  The first weeks’ focus on comic-style avatars and re-mixing toys probably paved the road, opened gates, or lowered barriers, in Terry’s metaphor.  The early stage of HOMAGO (Ito, etal.) suggests that our design efforts with digital media, with connected learning, should consider how to allow and encourage “hanging out.”  It’s not only a foundation for the apprenticeship of observation, it builds the trust needed to go into the dark wood. 

So after checking out a variety of takes on credos, I returned to some of my treasures, favorite photos I’ve taken and depths of living I’ve tasted.  I thought I might try some of those apps (like Haiku Deck or Story Creator, both added to my iPad from the MOOC), but I chose to work with my medium of choice.  Not exactly, because I thought I’d be using Camtasia as I favor some of its editing capacity; but it didn’t want to import images I’d mixed on Power Point.  I find it easier to play with text fonts, shaping and sizing photos, etc., in PPT than in the production programs I use.  Then it’s easy to do screen captures of the slides and import.  I found it easier to bring them into iMovie than to Camtasia, and I want to keep working with iMovie because it’s more and more the program of choice and use by my college students.  I prefer other programs for adjusting visuals, mixing audio tracks, but . . .

My sound track came from a mix I’d composed on Ujam.com.  I’d recorded our front porch chimes (key of C) and birdsongs in our woods.  I mixed that with a jazz option, I think.  I wish I had more knowledge and skill with music, but I’m determined that digital media production should be as authentic as possible.  So I “make” as much of it as I can. 

The script for voice over came through early morning musing, travel to tend my horse (not able to ride due to a lameness issue so I’m currently soaking her front hooves in Epsom salts instead of riding), reading other credos, and dialoging with favorite images. 

I’m thinking making credos might be a good activity for professional development with teachers.  Choice is so important and I’ve seen terrific variety in the apps and other presentational formats that have used for presenting credos in the MOOC.  I also like this focus because the content is anything but superficial; and this depth, therefore, counterbalances the capacity of technology to go glitzy.  I remember far back in rhetoric classes when I first heard, “Style is the man.”  The split of style from substance costs dearly.  Integrity must be key.  Authenticity.  Meaning.  However we make literacy, let’s walk the talk.  And let’s make a path toward someplace worth going.

Quantum Shift in Professional Development

The paradigm shift into quantum timespacematter/ing drives authentic professional development.  This shift requires:

• Willingness to risk, to fail, & to push past comfortable formulas,
• Tolerance for indeterminacy; deliberate acceptance of multiples,
• Determination to move (quantum’s wave) and to build (quantum’s particle) simultaneously, even in the experience of multiplicity, and
• Revolution against reliance on high-stakes testing, similar accountability models, & concurrent curricula because they are premised on objective reality, the old and dead paradigm.

When we ask for and teach from the formulaic models and the knowledge base of that dominant paradigm, we deny the calling of our profession and perpetuate the endangered condition of our children, civilization, and the environment.

I realize that this opening paragraph risks making me appear to be radical, if not crazed; but I’m really just restating scientific insight that’s about a hundred years old.  Google “quantum physics.”  Also in philosophy, psychology, and theology, similar notions can be traced much further back.  Check out the heritage of phenomenology and gnosis.  The tone even comes through a 2013 commencement speech:

So here’s the thing about changing the world. It turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You are going to change the world, because that is actually what the world is. You do not pass through this life; it passes through you. Joss Whedon at Wesleyan

While I’m not yet a hundred years old, for almost that long an inarticulate knowing within me has been reaching for the quantum paradigm.  As a committed professional, I could seldom stomach what was presented as “professional” development.  After a decade or so of participating in star-on-the-stage “professional” conferences, the failure of integrity became too great.  I had to run for my life because:

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.  Dostoyevsky in Brothers Karamazov

Most of us wish for an ordered universe with clear preformulated objectives, neatly scaffolded mastery learning, and the safety of possessing bound knowledge.  For example, look at the appeal of 8 Steps to Great Digital Storytelling.  In my judgment, this resource offers much of value, and it also represents the old dominant paradigm in key features:  the “great” destination, step-by-step mapping, and “readily-available source materials.”  While I hope to utilize this resource, I’ll engage it in a quantum manner rather than from the formulaic, linear, and presumptive mode.

For example, consider the assertion in Step 1: “All stories begin with an idea.” 

From twenty-plus years of experience in storytelling, I know many stories come from experience, perhaps in some transaction with words, but to isolate and prioritize the cognitive denies the opportunities in quantum.   Generative stories plumb dialectically across image and word; they don’t come from script first.  I also believe that digital stories with strongest voice are not made with “readily available source materials” but are crafted artistically and organically with more adherence to situated learning than to Google’s warehouse.  The formulaic elements evident both in the assertion and in the lock-step process sound like head dominance and hand subordination.  Quantum PD features, instead, a dynamic process-product allowing for pathways and adaptations not known in advance.

At least since Dewey, educators know to condemn the funnel-in design; and yet most curricula, testing, and PD live and die in that paradigm more than any other.  When we fail to see that, we are lying to ourselves and risk ceasing to love.

Adaptive life doesn’t deny formula but it won’t be contained by it.  William Sennett’s study of The Craftsman shows how even disciplines distinguished by apprenticeship know that “fertility incorporated incompleteness and ambiguity” (p. 204).  Sennett illustrates with Christopher Wren’s proposal for rebuilding London after the great fire.  Wren imagined rather than redid what was.  The craftsman’s imagination honors the link between hand and head.

Quantum Professional Development (QPD) shifts our attitude on making mistakes opening the way to taking risks, living in multiplicity, and not feeling so bad about it.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett offers supportive guidance:

We philosophers specialize in all the ways there are of getting things so mixed up, so deeply wrong, that nobody is even sure what the right questions are, let alone the answers. . . Try to acquire the weird practice of savoring your mistakes, delighting in uncovering the strange quirks that led you astray. Then, once you have sucked out all the goodness to be gained from having made them, you can cheerfully set them behind you, and go on to the next big opportunity. But that is not enough: you should actively seek out opportunities to make grand mistakes, just so you can then recover from them.

Sennett also elaborates the necessity and value of making mistakes and embracing them for their difficult gold: “Put simply, it is by fixing things that we often get to understand how they work” (page 199).  On the next page, he continues, “we can tolerate the frustration because we are now also curious; the possibility of making a dynamic repair will stimulate, and the multipurpose tool will serve as curiosity’s instrument.”

While QPD brings excitement, it’s also alien and scary.  In trying to do collaborative PD in the quantum paradigm, I get troubled about not being able to say just what we’re going to do.  While I know we have to get into it in order to feel the way, the old voices say “poor leadership.”  Sennett tells how craftsmen build understanding out of working with the matter, and we haven’t had our hands on quantum PD long enough to articulate the key principles. 

The cognitive-dominant paradigm provides the comfort of making a map, and it hushes the whispers saying the world’s no longer flat like that.  Instead, QPD provides an experience for dwelling in error long enough to reach understanding. 

Sennett says, “In making music we certainly prepare yet cannot recoil when our hand does not then fit its aim or purpose; to correct, we have to be willing—more, to desire—to dwell in error a bit longer in order to understand fully what was wrong about the initial preparation,” (p. 161).

Another characteristic of QPD extends from the term timespacemattering. For example, I think Maker Faire and Connected Learning are on the right track in terms of providing a focus on matter; that’s vital to QPD.   At the same time, I feel it very important to carry consciousness related to the quality of time and the inseparable overlapping with the other complements in timespacemattering.  Consider the contested claim that achieving a “great” level takes 10,000 hours.  I wonder if a day’s dabbling in a Maker event could lead someone to think that’s all there is, mistaking false gold for the real thing.  QPD deals with the challenge of composing not answers, but “tasters” that tantalize a person enough to drive the investment that strives for and eventually develops feel for the sublime.

I’m focusing on developing these tasters and want to know:

How do we engage the capacity of timespacemattering so that a “taste” of joy and quality (traditionally associated with 10K hours) resonates within a 1-5 min video production?

Another pressing question for me concerns the dynamic locus of authority.  How do we contain the tension around the source of authority?  How do we learn to allow for a dynamic flow?  Situated, local knowing affirms personal authority; building expertise in complex multiplicity depends on submitting to being coached, to accepting external authority.  I’m encouraged with the nature of PLN that perhaps allows us to carry a dynamic of respectful tension and without star worship/envy, but I think we need a ballast to hold the balance. 

Pursuing that question deserves a separate space.  I want to explore how commitment to a physical discipline hones the feel of dynamic knowing.  Riding dressage gives me the rebalancing for living in multiples, including the multiple sources of authority.

Quantum PD sounds overwhelming, but it’s better than living in a lie.  A bit of comfort comes from Rilke’s challenge about one who wrestles with the angel(ic):

          “This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,/
           by constantly greater beings.”

                  (Robert Bly’s Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke)

Text & Mentor Text & Live Text

  

If we were playing word association and I prompted you with “text,” what would you say?  Well, fifty or so years ago, my response would likely have been “sermon” or “scripture” or maybe even a specific memory verse because I heard “text” most frequently in the phrase “Our text for today’s sermon is . . .”  Now, of course, “text” has moved from noun to verb as in “Text me!” transmitted on portable devices.  In between now and then, “text” referenced a specific literary work that had been selected for study, such as Hamlet; in brief, book (or a particular passage) was synonymous with text.

When we look at how educators are now using the term “mentor text,” the meaning is grounded in that “old” (but not ancient) literary connection with an authoritative book.  We’ll do better if we step up into the quantum age of time-space-matter-ing. If we do this, when we construct mentor-text, we would be able to bridge across the past-present-future; we could claim our inheritance from those good old days as well as the vigor of our liberated youth.  We could construct our live-meaning of “mentor text” to fit situated-learning in digitally-informed classrooms for quantum time-space-matter-ing.  

For the past nine months, I’ve participated regularly in an elementary school that has been my mentor text on implementing technology into teaching and learning.  Just as the Bible texts were meant to be translated into daily life, this school enacts the meaning into schooling, not just words on a page.  The mentor text that has meaning for me is not in the already-outdated books on “Today’s Digital Classroom,” but it’s in the daily life of Ms. Nicholson, Principal Poling, and all teaching/learning at EKD Elementary.  While I haven’t seen texting, I’m impressed with EKD’s mentor text in class blogs, emails, Facebook postings, iPad connected to learning science, math, literacy, art, and just about everything else.  This EKD Mentor Text, like King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail, still needs to be articulated if it is to mentor others who want to transform their practice.

If this articulation and transformation are to happen, we’ll have to claim the authority of our situated truth and authorize this specific time and space as mattering.  When I met with teachers in EKD Elementary yesterday to advance this agenda, I showed them the two-minute video (shown at the top of this blog) that reflected their text across grades 1 through 5.  I wanted them to witness themselves as Mentor Text because K-12 teachers are often so beautifully modest that they don’t see their power.  When I see this snapshot of their work, I’m almost breathless.

After watching this video, I told the teachers that our mission is now to articulate the EKD Mentor Text.  Each teacher was asked to identify one activity in which he or she was implementing technology in a way that boosted learning.  As background for naming and connecting our mentor texts, I showed another video I’d made that elaborates mentor text in a progressive three-step process and that textures the concept with examples.

After watching these two videos, it took Ms. Nicholson, a second-grade teacher at EKD, about 15 minutes to summarize her mentor text on Writing Informational Essays about Spiders.  I’m immediately impressed with how she’s integrating STEM, Literacy, & Technology!

Her overview states:
“After reading Charlotte's Web, students embarked on a research project where they researched a spider to write an essay and then created a model of their chosen spider. First, students opened up a KWL chart from the graphic organizer’s website, http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/. They opened it up in Type on PDF. After that, students went on My Big Campus [the school system’s Learning Management System] and opened up a MentorMob bundle that I created. The bundle contains videos and informational articles about spiders in general. As they worked though the bundle, they recorded their facts on their KWL charts (on their iPads).

Next, students are going to choose one specific spider that they would like to further research. They will gather information on their iPads using the Simple Minds map App. They will print out their organizer and then use it to write their informational essay. After writing their essay, they will create a model of their spider and create an Animate it movie with their Spider model.  In this, they’ll share the most important facts they learned about the spider.”
Ms. Nicholson identifies one of the Common Core Standards that this activity addresses: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section. 

While I highlight Ms. Nicholson here, I could also have presented what the other teachers are doing.  EKD Elementary, with support from the University of Maryland Writing Project, is making a magnificent mentor text.  Stay tuned for more.

Technology 's Gift to Documenting a Collaboration

Documentation for Collaboration between School and NWP Site

            Both time-intensive and quite significant, the decisions about documenting the process of collaboration merit elaboration and continued reflection.  With the support of a grant from the National Writing Project, the University of Maryland Writing Project (UMdWP) has been very fortunate to connect with an elementary school that is implementing 1-1 iPad and iPod touch technology into its instructional program.  The school is an integrated arts and technology magnet for the Washington County Public School system in Maryland.  I’m director of UMdWP, project director for this collaboration, and “production manager” for our documentary videos; in this blog, I feature two of our methods of documentation.

1. Developing “cases” of best practice.

            As UMdWP has specialized in DMAL (digital media and learning, Henry Jenkins’ term), we’ve explored the development of documentary videos that provide both an opportunity for a teacher to articulate his/her best practice and for our site to prepare resources for professional development.  We believe that the punitive policies toward teachers and schools are in part due to our being too modest about the excellence of teaching.  Identification of and broadcast-worthy documentation of best practice have potential to redress this negative PR situation.

            As part of developing cases of best practice, we intend to produce documentary videos that focus on specific instructional activities of particular teachers.  In the resultant production, a 3-5 minute video shows the teacher explaining the activity, referencing Common Core Standards and foundational theory, and illustrating with samples from classroom instruction, student process and work.

            While the “finished” video provides a resource for subsequent professional development, perhaps even more important is the process of making it.  Teachers who are often too modest even to name their excellence are supported in seeing their distinctive value and in articulating it.  This process increases transferability and adaptation appropriate for situated learning.  The documentation also pushes our collaboration to honor the variety of contributions across the staff, thereby extending recognition beyond the narrow spectrum targeted in high-stakes accountability.

            As any choice carries special considerations, documentary videos demands particular cautions related to confidentiality.  Visuals showing faces, names, and/or work samples require care that persons are protected from anyone who might harm or misuse.  Secondly, to the extent the production is published, attenton to the quality of sound, image, and other production considerations increases.  Fortunately, digital media are now available at reasonable cost and high quality, but this still depends on good technical practice (e.g., use of tripod, limitation of background noise, use of good production program) and artistic choices (e.g., shot selection, mixing, composing). Our work at UMdWP has benefited especially in this regard by bringing in a consultant from our sister site, Bonnie Kaplan of Hudson Valley WP.  A third consideration concerns the context of a “model.”  When a documentary video is published, the risks of inappropriate transfer expand, and the need increases for guidance and coaching in making good situational adaptations.

            We are still in the documentary video process with this collaboration.  Samples made from work with UMdWP’s Teacher Consultants who are working in Title 1 schools include ones I’ve made with Shana and Michelle.  Here are links to the videos:

Mentor Text with Michelle  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBhPNqYqud4

The image at the top of this blog shows Michelle and a frame from the video that features one of her students' drawings.  The mentor text was a promo for visiting Ocean City and Michelle's students made a "promo" for their home community with images and text.  

Digital Media with Shana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mebIhk1NCow

Shana describes her work using digital media to engage 3rd graders both in an after-school club and in her classroom. She credits the University of Maryland Writing Project and National Writing Project with support of her learning to use digital media for herself and for her students. Shana's a member of UMdWP's Documentary Video Team. Production made in Camtasia.

            Our documentary video work in process includes a teacher using iPads to complement the class' work in STEM.  The teacher reflected that students in a science project often get so involved that they don’t take notes on their emergent hypothesis testing and then do not have the detail they need to write up the research, but with their iPads they eagerly took photos that were valuable in subsequently describing and analyzing their study.

Use iPad to record the height of tower

Use recorded measures to hypothesize about structure  

2. Records of teachers’ implementation and their comments. 

            A second and equally, if not more, important form of documenting is coming through our good fortune of collaborating with a school system commited to technology and with a principal having special expertise in technology.  The county system employs an online system, My Big Campus; and the principal has been very effectively using its Discussion Board feature to have faculty comment on their practices.   For example, she recently asked them: “In what ways have you used your iPads/iPod Touches to improve digital writing and collaboration?”  The teachers’ responses in the Discussion Board provide written records of their choices among apps, their uses of them, and their satisfaction.  Students’ work has also been produced in Discussion Board and is available for documentation.

            Here’s a visual of the Discussion Board and below that is some information about My Big Campus.

 “My Big Campus provides an engaging online environment to promote blended learning within a safe monitored platform that balances educational use of Web 2.0 with network and student safety.”

http://www.lightspeedsystems.com/products/My-Big-Campus.aspx