It was a very sad and exciting and busy week for me this week.
My colleague Ellie Rosenfield died. Ellie was someone who lived with so much integrity and courage. I always felt supported and embraced, and could count on her for candid feedback. Ellie, we miss you so much!
I gave my first presentation in sign language with no interpreter! Wow. Please don't get the idea that I was good -- it was definitely a C- performance -- but I did it! I presented about my team at NTID's new Major Design Project campaign and how the changes we instituted last year had worked out. My audience was the other department chairs at NTID, and a more supportive and caring bunch never existed. Small steps, but real steps forward towards my goal of mastering ASL.
Finally, I met with Gerry Bateman, Chair of the MSSE department to talk about starting a Masters of Science in Special Ed. He encouraged me to apply, saying that I'd be good for the program and the program would be good for me. I will only have to do one student teaching stint instead of two since I already have a permanent teaching certificate in the state of New York. He also said I needed to be at an "intermediate" level in sign language by the time I graduated. That's fine, I have to be there in 15 months anyway as one of the terms of my employment at NTID.
Sometimes I feel like I am not pushing hard enough to move forward towards my goals and dreams. J says I am my worst critic. I am. I can seem my failings so clearly. So it feels good to be able to move forward, even if it is just a little bit.
I sat in on a training session the other day. The topic was "How to Write Rubrics". It was an interesting workshop, although the instructor had about 10lbs of stuff to get into a 5lb sack, way too much material to cover. I'm not sure what the other participants got out of it, with no chance to practice or absorb the material.
During he workshop, the instructor referenced Bloom's Taxonomy. I was a little shocked to realize that there were people at my table who had never heard of it. Here is an image of Bloom's Taxonomy, thanks to John Manuel via the Wikipedia Common.
What Blooms Taxonmy has always done for me is to encourage me to push my teaching from the lower levels where students memorize facts (that are are so easy to score and required not much from me as a teacher) to the higher levels where students analyze, sythesize, and evaluate.
What employers are going to demand of our students is that they make knowledge, create new ideas and products, redevelop old things into new. Our students won't be able to do this if they don't learn how to do it in school. This isn't a nice-to-have. This will be absolutely mission critical. Linda Naiman of the Creativity at Work blog says,
"If you are not adding creativity to your products or services, you are doomed to commodity hell, where you are just competing on price."
Our companies in the US can't compete against emerging nations on cost. Wake up -- all those low-paying jobs have left the building. They're in India, Malaysia, China, where workers earn a fraction of what they are paid here. We have to compete on creativity. And creativity is a higher level skill.
We have a moral obligation to our students to teach them how to collaborate, how to be creative, how to generate knowledge. Otherwise we are sending them out in the world unequiped to compete in a global market. That will spell the end of our happy materialistic consumeristic society. Or as George Baily said, when he famously melted down,
"Where's that money, you silly stupid old fool? Where's that money? Do you realize what this means? It means bankruptcy and scandal and prison. That's what it means. One of us is going to jail - well, it's not gonna be me."Well, maybe not jail. But it won't be much better.
For my hearing friends who have said, "What is Deaf poetry?" Here is a hearing guy, an English teacher, explaining the poetry of his students.
Well, Buzz is here. And that changes everything. Again.
It definitely feels like most of my demographic -- the other middle aged ladies -- aren't going to be heavy adopters of social media, unless it is going to be something that serves it all up for them in one place like AOL used to do and Facebook seems to do now. At least most of my friends (the intrepid Vicki being one very notable exception) don't seem to be as excited about the world of networks and mashups as I am.
My whole life has been waiting for mashups, the ability to put a bit of this with a chunk of that, as my interests and areas of exploration change and develop. I like things together and organized. Back in the olden days, say 1999, I made websites with my favoirtie links, very crude efforts at mashups. Later, when PBWiki made the scene, I used a wiki to accomplish this. (Now PBWiki is an "online collaboration space"!) Now with IGoogle I can do it with practically no effort. Here is an article on Mashable about how to get Buzz, Facebook, and Twitter in one place.
Beyond iGoogle, this week I am exploring the fan page functionality on Facebook. I am involved with a number of organizations that would benefit from someone knowing about this.Personally, this also looks like a way I could reach people interested in consulting relationships with me. Like anything the better I understand what I actually want to achieve, the more likely I will be to achieve it! Stand by for more on this topic - I think this is going to be a major theme in my blogging this year.
Every morning while I eat my whole grain flax cereal, I read our local Rochester paper, the Democrat and Chronicle. Mostly my reading is the comics, but occasionally I have a few extra minutes and read something else. Today the column on faith and daily living by Marketta Gregory caught my eye. It was titled On the Road to Meditation and Faith. In her article, Marketta, a Baptist woman, describes her attempt at meditation while driving on the highways of Rochester, NY.
I was really distressed at her description of meditation, which she believes is not a part of her Christian tradition. Apparently Marketta picked up her meditation instruction from Eat Pray Love, a book about Elizabeth Gilbert's experiences. Marketta believes that meditation is has something to do with humming -- being quiet and humming.
Marketta, meditation has a long history in Christianity. It also can be practiced with no religious overtones at all. Even if practiced for a very short time a day, say 10 minutes, you can get the benefit of thinking more clearly. And that helps everyone.
Here are instructions for a simple kind of meditation called "calming the mind". I recommend that you try this for 30 days, and then if you don't notice any benefit, abandon it. For people who currently are doing some sort of spiritual practice such as a daily Bible study, I would suggest you do this immediately before your study time.
1. Find a quite place/time. You need 10 to 15 minutes of relative peace, so do this when the kids are napping, or at school, and turn off the tv and your cell phone. You don't need a dedicated place, but that can be nice. But for heaven's sake, don't create requirements for yourself like, "I'll meditate when I get the spare bedroom cleaned out and made into a meditation room." Starting now is better than starting tomorrow.
2. Sit comfortably with your back straight, your hands resting naturally in your lap. You don't need to sit cross legged on the floor, although many people do assume that posture. Most important is that your back is straight and you are experiencing a minimum of discomfort.
3. Your eyes should be open, focused about 18 inches in fron of you, a little above your nose. I suggest eyes open, with a soft gaze. Your tongue should be resting in your mouth. You are going to breath thru your nose if possible. Your breath should be natural and unforced.
4. Start by considering your motivation. Your meditation will lead to a clearer mind, which will make it possible for you to more effectively carry out whatever you see as your mission in this life. Take a few minutes to think about this and then make a heart-felt aspiration that your meditation will lead to this.
5. Focus your attention on your breath. As thoughts arise in your mind, simply label them as thoughts and redirect your focus to your breath. Don't allow your mind to grasp those thoughts. Just let them go as they arise and continue to bring your mind back to the breath. This is what meditation is, the effort of refocusing your mind on the object of meditation, in this case the breath. Some meditation techniques focus on an object, such as a picture, a rock, a flower, a small statue. Some meditation techniques focus on a sound, a phrase, a word. I have heard that in early Christian times, people focused on the phrase, "Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner." A link to information about this practice can be found here. In the meditation I am telling you about, you focus on the breath.
6. Continue to redirect the mind to the breath for a period of time, maybe 10 - 15 minutes. It is helpful to have a small timer so you don't have to continually distract yourself by checking the time.
7. When the time has ended, take another moment and make a short aspiration prayer that your meditation will lead to you being able to better carry out your mission in this life. This will be different for each person, based on their own faith tradition.
There are some common problems that come up. If you become sleepy, it is suggested that you mediate at a different time of day when you are more alert. Raise your gaze slightly. Also, you could have a cup of coffee or tea before you meditate. If your mind becomes super busy, that is also very normal. it is suggested that you lower your gaze slightly. Also, several shorter sessions might be better to start.
Don't become discouraged, however. No one that I know of meditates without thoughts arising, which is good because it is the practice of controlling your mind when thoughts arise that is true meditation. You will be amazed at the control you can develop during the rest of your day. So, if for example, you have negative thoughts, you will be able to control those thougts with greater ease. You will also find that you can think more clearly when you do your bible study or other spiritual reading.
Good luck, and may all benefit from your fruitful meditation practice!
Rochester NY is a sea of gray in the wintertime. The sky is gray, the ground is white, the tree trunks are black with white snow. Usually, by the time we get to February, I have already come home and told J that I MUST MUST MUST get out of here. Now.
But this year I can't get out of here this winter because we are planning a long and expensive trip to Africa. Every vacation day and every penny is being carefully squirreled away.
Last Sunday, to help me make it through the winter, J took me to Arena's Florist, and i bought a bouquet with this beautiful rose. I had a lovely hour shooting pictures. Don't know if this will be enough to get me through, but it sure helped me make it for this week.