EARTH DAY CELEBRATION AT SCHOOL

It was Kindergarteners’ that voiced the most emotion as we rallied-up after the Earth Day parade.  Chanting “Save the Planet” repeatedly as the voice of optimism amongst this future generation that will be most impacted by the rath of climate change.

It was the crescendo of a most exciting day at St. Thomas the Apostle School with students participating in multitude of activities and experiences that send the message loud and clear to save the planet!  Kindergarteners, caught up in the moment, sent the message to older generations to act now and help preserve and protect our life-giving ecosystem.

A play, presented to address the melting of artic habitat, Bingo games emphasizing environmental stewardship and the making of wind energy products and science experiment displays became the trappings of an extraordinary Earth Day celebration and advocation.

Students in Earth Science, Life Science and Physical Science worked the entire year on Earth Stewardship Projects that encompass regenerative agriculture, Green Infrastructure, experimental growth of organic crops and green energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

The foundation of the middle school science curriculum is grounded in environmental stewardship and personal value of being committed to and being held account for the well-being of others. The urgency of the environmental and social issues that will face this generation is taxing.  Taxing on educators working to prepare students for the reality of environmental change and taxing on learners wanting to be successful and prosperous in their lives.

The cry of Kindergarteners, from the rear of this generation, is a cry for unity and collaboration needed for success during trying times.  Emotions are first to be expressed and then not far behind comes intellectual understanding.  The marriage of these human traits will be the salvation of this generation as they forge a world that will support equity among everyone.

Students must be given opportunities to express themselves in ways that can be heard dealing with important real-world issues that impact their lives.  Abilities and skills can only be extended by implementing investigation and actions.  "Saving the Planet" is one of those urgent actions needed to help hone their talents.

 

                23^rd Year into the 21^st Century

 

Inspiration can be found in big and small measures throughout educational processes in schools.  These measures evolve from dynamic curriculum, motivating leadership and innovative thinking by teachers and school administrators.  This is aspirational thinking determined to create a safe environment, prosperous future and a fulfilling livelihood for everyone in our society.

Modeling resilience and fortitude by teachers to help students achieve goals and objectives, is a measure of inspiration that is part of the education process.  Educators bring forth learning opportunities, in the classroom, that lead to accomplishments in the real-world. It develops personal attributes like confidence, empathy and a sense of worth, while sustaining long-term educational gains.

Collaborative and cooperative learning opportunities provide another measure of inspiration as students access advanced world-wide digital platforms to communicate with peers and utilize interactive online software resources. The goal is to gather data, analyze experimental results and present conclusions or discoveries.

 It is the hallmark of 21^st century education to push the envelope of achievement by integrating a wealth of knowledge, online, and utilize this sophisticated scientific analysis to manage projects, develop experimentation, quantify outcomes and communicate results to international audiences.

Large measures of inspiration are based upon working toward achieving large goals. These goals are reached by experiencing learning opportunities in schools that provide challenges to solve real-world problems like climate change, desertification, availability of fresh water and food security into the future. Efforts by students to address these critical issues, while learning critical life experiences, is the foundation of 21^st century education.

Teachers and administrators that address inspirational measures in school classrooms acknowledge the need for developing critical thinking skills in all students.  These are developed skills and abilities that dictate success into the future for everyone. Analyzing data, questioning outcomes, recognizing problems and formulating solutions are the learned critical thinking skills that students must cognitively develop.  Group collaborative effort is the essential pedagogy needed in the classroom, and it is curriculum that delivers the means for students to become involved in this dynamic 21st century learning process.

I am looking forward to this inspirational and dynamic new year in our school!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

REFLECTION ON NATIONAL KIDWIND CHALLENGE 2022 IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

As I head home to Chicago, I wanted to share a reflection to the staff at KidWind, about the National KidWind Challenge and the experiences we had being involved with this event.

It was amazing to view such imaginative ingenuity of students and their products from elementary school through college.  Just witnessing the results of so many students’ mindsets to solve problems related to energy generation makes me more hopeful for our future.  The future of the human species on this pale blue planet.

The absolute wealth of imagination, ideas, and problem-solving, that I witnessed at this KidWind event, is a true testament to the powerful influence that KidWind, as an organization, has upon education in the 21^st century.  Your efforts to pull together such a dynamic and inspiring engineering-based project will resonate for years to come with these students, teachers, and their schools!

Even after months of research, testing and problem-solving at our school, we had to faced-down several obstacles and challenges in the performance of our machine in the testing tunnels on Tuesday and Wednesday.  My students, experienced in manipulating their machine, were quick to diagnosis and brainstorm solutions.  Students and coaches faced down these problems, but it does generate a stressful situation that can only be successfully addressed with a calm and thoughtful response.

This was our first venture to the National KidWind Event, and I must admit I was really stressed out for a good portion of the time.  Even after 3 years of involvement in KidWind, I feel like I still stumble and bumble along sometimes and just guess as to what to do next.  With time, I know that this process becomes less hectic and more manageable, but it really tries my patience at times, to the breaking point.  I have been teaching for 27 years with education at the doctoral level, but this process, from the regional competition and through the national competition, taxes my ingenuity to its limit! 

Last year, students at St. Thomas participated in the virtual national event with two teams of 6^th grade students (11 students), but this year I had high hope for my top-flight 8^th grade team of two students to do well at this in-person event.  This year, I felt was the real test to see how we measure up with teams from across the nation after participating for three years with KidWind.

I have time now to reflect and analyze what we could have done better and what worked well.  It is a sobering effort, but it needs to be done to get better for next year.  I saw teams with a lot of technology employed in their design and then I saw team with the similar technology that our team had, but they surpass these high-tech studs.  It gets down to finding the sweet spot in design that delivers maximum performance (energy), while integrating blade design and gear ratios.  At the event this week, I saw superior blade design exceed benefits of the size of gear ratios.  Once a team consistently reaches the maximum output possible for the small KidWind turbine, then they can focus on delivering a superior judge presentation and doubling down on knowledge and experience of the challenges.

Thanks again for all your efforts and the time commitment to the KidWind organization.  I look forward to participating next year with a new group of students that will stretch their imaginations to the limit.  These are the essential 21^st century skills and abilities that our students need to master to successfully solve problems we face in energy production and in dealing with the social issues of our time.

Educating the Mind in the 21^st Century

Across America the pandemic has amplified the deficits we face as a society.  From health care to the food we consume to income inequality and education the pandemic attacked with a level of stress and strain that our current capitalistic system of commerce and political democracy struggle to defend against.

 Just as the biology of the coronavirus exploits the immunological weaknesses of its victims, so too do these disruptions of our society, caused by social and economic turmoil, render segments of our communities damaged, unusable and unable to cope left to waste away.

Changes in our society can cause upheavals that will tax our ability to render judgement upon solutions or to clearly define acceptable pathways forward.  Education is in the cross-hairs of these demanding and challenging changes taking place, especially under the tyrannical rule of a killer virus.  Education is a foundational pillar helping to carry our nation forward with understanding and with the developed ability to think critically under extreme and chaotic situations like we face today.

Peoples abilities to solve problems come from their experience and opportunities to fail at trying. It is not enough to say that it OK to know but not OK to try.  What you have learned can only be valued by your increased ability to now use it creating judgement to solve problems.  The spread of knowledge is the first essential premise for any educated society, but without taking on and surmounting challenges that tax this understanding, then the effort becomes an exercise in distraction.

Projects in education critically matter.  It is a learning strategy for long-lasting methods of teaching with students being able to diagnosis and solve problems that are critical to the wellbeing of the community.  Students are given an opportunity to develop relationships and trust of other students, then implement inquiry-driven methods to explore and develop deep understand of science, social science and artistic and cultural expression.

Educational platforms like the International Educational and Resource Network (iEARN) provide educators with scaffolding that is necessary to bring forth 21^st century collaborative project-based educational initiatives the hallmark of modern education.  Projects help to ensure that students develop needed skills and abilities to be rational thinkers, develop logical and organized strategies for implementation of projects and to use their critical thinking skills to assess crucial experimental evidence.

 Pandemic and American Education

March 7, 2020 and the word comes down from the school administration that the school is closing for the indefinite future because of the encroaching national and global pandemic.  It is 2:00 pm and school ends in 40 minutes and we will not be coming back for the rest of the school year. The disorientation is immense, and students express a mixed feel of exhilaration, fear, anxiety and unsettledness.

Why not feel a bit disoriented?  It is a living situation not faced by nearly every living person on the planet.  It is our 21^st century epidemic, bringing to all of us, social, political and economic upheaval and death.

Every aspect of what you do from here on out will be from a distance.  You will physically distance yourself from humanity and Teachers will distance themselves from their students.  It is called distance-learning and everything you as an educator have fashioned together in your bag of curriculum and experience and projects will have to be digitized and placed “online”.

The conveying of experiences, knowledge, understanding and problem-solving to students will now be done at a digital distance with technology, programs, multimedia tools, internet websites and interactive programs.  As a teacher you have passed completely through the looking-glass of education and find yourself in an alternative universe.  Ways of measuring learning will forever be masked behind a computer screen and true understanding defaults to a measure how self-driven student are now more than ever before.   

Not that students were not self-driven in the physical classroom with direct human to human contact, they were motivated but with a healthy dose of humanity.  Now students gather digitally for learning sake and for understanding.  Student motivation to access resources on the Internet and within computerized programs has never been more important.  In fact, in this alternative universe of school, motivated self-directed student learning has taken command like a coup takes over a government.  It is complete.  Now, those most motivated and supported with the greatest access to technology will be the most successful.

If American schools, over the century, have held our society together in a form delivering prescribed commonality of things learned, with a good dose of systematic segregation, then this digital divide will clearly separate us to a far greater extent than can be comprehended.  Access to technology will dictate who are the winners and who are the losers.  Access, support, specialized teaching and enriching opportunities will go to the most well connect and in America that usually means those at the top of the financial economy.

LEARNING

To become more knowledgeable, more understanding, more enlightened is what it means to be a learned person.  That is an accepted premise, for me, as I begin the school year delivering an educational process designed to meet these expectations.

George Washington Carver, the famous American born-into-slavery botanist and inventor, who Time magazine in 1941 called the “Black Leonardo da Vinci.” He said: “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” The learning process that we call education is really a transitory means by which people fulfill their own expectations of themselves, while providing a pathway to become loving and loveable people within our society.

The diversity of students’ abilities to learn, comprehend and articulate is as widely dispersed as grains of sands on a beach.  To hold students accountable in the classroom to learn is like piling up buckets of sand with each new disbursement as impactful as the previous one and at the same time disruptive to final outcomes.  Each new idea, new concept and new resolution to problems leads to further questions, more changes in mindsets of people and increased intrinsic motivations to want to know more. Learning is a physiological and psychological disruptive process.

But it is learning. It is what we work toward for our children and for our own well-being.  To become learned opens doors of opportunities and it leaves us with a greater awareness of our measure in life with respect to all that has been given to us and with respect to the people that fill our lives.

The ability to think critically and solve problems is not innate.  It takes a certain level of both understanding and experience, together, to be able to perform when called upon to do so.  Education and the learning that takes place in the classroom lays a foundation for students to develop self-efficacy and move forward with confidence and with a sense of resoluteness.

Next generation science standards provide a framework for science teachers to operate and design curriculum with, but it is not a substitute for measuring real learning in the classroom. Real learning is a human endeavor as diverse as the population it serves.  Learning reflects the broad composition of human experiences with its complexities and its uniqueness.

Twenty-first century education models in science are doubling-down on standards-based curriculum as a method of documenting student performance, but it is the diversity of our student population, driven by social economic factors in our society, that ultimately determine true outcomes in student performance.

Learning is a human endeavor that demands continual vigilance and fortitude on the part of the teacher.  The goal is to deliver a curriculum to students that provide them the means and opportunity to develop and express understanding and knowledge, to solve problems and to increase their awareness of the universe that surrounds us all.

 Fate vs. Destiny

A quote by S.L. Scott, New York Times BestSELLING AUTHOR:

“Fate is the life you lead if you never put yourself in the path of greatness. That’s the direction your life moves in without any effort on your part. That’s your fate.”

“Destiny is your potential waiting to happen. It’s the top tier in the grand scheme of possibilities and where your dreams come true. You have to be willing to take that first step to reach your potential, even if it’s a risk.”

Fall always visually presents these two dynamics (fate vs. destiny) with me in my life.  The transformation witnessed every day, in the peak of the fall color season, is the fate of all vegetation progressing into the winter months.

Yet there is always a sense of renewal in the springtime and a feeling of hope.  That is the destiny I seek.  The possibility for change that nourishes the soul and stimulates the mind.

The fall colors, brilliant and stunning, leave me with a feeling of inevitability.  This course of events leads us into winter, and I witness these changes taking place in the environment as a bystander present outside of it without applying any effort.  That is fate.

The flood of colors in the peak fall season washes over us and it makes me rejoice over the beauty of life and the exquisite gift to be alive on this planet! 

Destiny provides the opportunity for all of us to live the fullest life possible in the shortest amount of time we have in this world. To truly appreciate the gift of life is to embrace destiny as a way of living every day.