February 2012
26 posts
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Reflections on Teaching Community
“Progressive education, education as the practice of freedom, enables us to confront feelings of loss and restore our sense of connection. It teaches us how to create community.” ~ bell hooks,Teaching Community
I’m reconnecting to the building of community within the academic environment I work, as a major focus for the seasons ahead. This work includes conversations and...
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Notes on Color: Mondrian's Evolution
“These values were represented most directly by Mondrian in Evolution (1910-11), a triptych showing the awakening of a woman to spiritual enlightenment in three stages. On the left the woman, whose abundant hair suggests that she is still close to nature, is painted in the bluish green which according to the Theosophical chart signifies ‘religious feeling tinged with fear’. The...
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WatchWinter bees on an unseasonably warm February day… Hello, little sisters. I’ll visit you again… (not a great video, but I really wanted to capture their arrival and exits from the tiny opening at the base of the hive)
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Notes from Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects
One of my favorite small books to return to, Jeanette Winterson’s Art Objects, caught my eye from the office bookshelf. It rests sidewise on top of my poetry shelf.
“Every day, in countless ways, you and I convince ourselves about ourselves. True art, when it happens to us, challenges the ‘I’ that we are.
A love-parallel would be just; falling in love challenges the...
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“The Sensory Transformation in a Swarm: In reflecting on the structural parallels...”
– Thomas D. Seeley, Honeybee Democracy
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Preparing for Notes / Arts Assessment Discussion
Notes from Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
“Teachers are designers. An essential act of our profession is the design of curriculum and learning experiences to meet specified purposes. We are also designers of assessments to diagnose student needs to guide our teaching and to enable us, our students, and others (parents and administrators) to determine whether our goals...
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Preparing for Notes for Arts Assessment Discussion
Excerpts from Carmen L. Armstrong’s Designing Assessment in Art
What Can Be Assessed?
What do art teachers want to happen as a result of students’ formal education experience with art? Would they want to assert their students
· Know about art and artists?
· Show competency in use of art tools, equipment, processes, techniques?
· Effectively give visual form to...
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Some Thoughts on Beauty (from bell hooks)
“There can be a sacred place in everyone’s life where beauty can be laid bare, where our spirits can be moved and lifted up by the creation and presence of a beautiful object…. As feminist thinkers construct feminist theory and practice to guide us into a revolutionary, revitalized feminist future, we need to place aesthetics on our agenda. We need to theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives...
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“For some reason I got thinking about a honeybee’s stinger. It is such an...”
– Doug Elliott, Swarm Tree: Of Honeybees, Honeymoons, and the Tree of Life
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