My Life as a Reader

A few years ago, my father presented me with a very special gift. He had searched painstakingly, calling a number of used bookstores, to find a copy of The Big Tidy Up, the first book I ever "read" all by myself.

I still remember the opening lines:

"Jennifer knew as well as you

that everything has its place.

But she just didn't care a whit, a bit

So her room was a real disgrace."

I memorized the entire book at age 3 and from that moment on, was an incredibly avid reader.

My favorite outing as a child was to the public library. I could have spent all day, every day, wandering amongst the shelves. I would pick out a book, open it, and get lost. I would take home huge stacks of books and immediately dive in. I loved the Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew series. My parents made rules. For example, I was not allowed to read at the dinner table. I was not supposed to read while walking.

Now, many years later, I am a teacher and mother. There were several reasons I chose to become a teacher; one of them was based in my love of reading. I love to share books and reading with children. As a 4th/5th grade classroom teacher, I read aloud to my students almost every day. As a mother of a 10-year old daughter and a 7 year-old son, I read aloud to my children almost every night before bed. I have even started reading aloud to my husband. The bookstore and the library are still two of my favorite places.

I attribute most of my academic success to reading. It was through reading that I really learned to write, spell, and love stories. Through reading I have improved my vocabulary and increased my knowledge about the world. Through reading I have learned about history, psychology and myself. Through reading I traveled to places and times, inhabited the minds of characters I might never get to meet.

I once had the pleasure of hearing Kurt Vonnegut speak. One thing he said that really made an impression was "Reading is meditating with someone else's mind."

I guess I really like getting into the minds and thoughts, imaginations and ideas of others.

The Flat Classroom- Are We Really Ready?

Global Learning=Good

Global collaboration, global awareness, global connections.... these are some of the exciting possibilities of technology in education. Having students learn about, with and from their peers around the world has inspired some amazing projects like the Flat Classroom project and Around the World with 80 Schools. I believe in the power of education to build a more tolerant and peaceful world.

Last year, middle school students at our Jewish Day School had some amazing skype calls with students from Muslim schools. They compared prayer books and each group showed the other how they prayed. Afterwards, our students reflected in writing. Here is what one 7th grader wrote about that experience:

Interestingly, we discovered that Muslim and Jewish beliefs are very similar in certain

ways. We both have certain times to pray, traditional articles of clothing, forbidden foods, as well as so much more.

It is important to learn about other religions, to realize the similarities between all cultures around the world. We have to set aside our differences and look at the ways that we are all alike... Hopefully, one friendly interaction at a time, more and more people will begin to realize the similarities connecting people around the world.

The Project

When I heard, recently, about a project for students from around the world who speak both English and another language, I thought it was a good fit since our school has a dual-language program, English and Hebrew. The project organizer is a world language teacher in an English-speaking country who I feel I "know" in that twitter/blogger way and whose work I respect. The project uses food as a theme- sharing our foods and our languages. Liat, our fourth grade Hebrew teacher, agreed to work with me; the students were interested as well.

Clusters

Let me make it clear that, while I have joined many of these projects, I have never organized one. I try to be a helpful participant, to stay on top of things and to contribute meaningfully, but I can only imagine the work that goes into actually organizing it. The organizer of this project decided that it would be more manageable to group schools into smaller clusters to allow for more extensive contact. Our school was "clustered" with one school in Australia and a second school in an Arabic nation. I was very excited to be partnered with the Arabic school. Because I believe that, through these types of projects we can teach peace by accentuating how much we are alike and by planting the seeds of understanding, I thought that having our school partnered with this school represented a unique opportunity.

As I have stated, our school is a Jewish school with an English-Hebrew curriculum. We have strong ties to Israel- the Israeli flag flies alongside the American flag, students sing the Hatikvah (Israeli national anthem) every morning, many of our teachers are Israeli.

It is widely known that there is a history of conflict and violence between Israel and its Arabic neighbors. It is truly a horrible situation that exists between these countries, and I can not claim to be an unbiased observer. Still I felt excited that our two classes might have an opportunity to talk about lunch and languages as part of a friendly school project.

It was not to be. Almost immediately after the cluster groupings were shared, I received another email saying that there was to be a change. That change was to separate our school from the Arabic-speaking school. I was disappointed but not surprised.

And then...

As part of the project, each school was to contribute a slide that showed a picture of a "typical" lunch in your country, as well as the name of the country written in your two languages. Here is the slide we shared:

Pretty benign, right? A PBJ sandwich with some cheese puffs- a typical lunch for kids at our school. It was interesting for our students to hear the comments as other schools reacted to our slide- they liked the sandwich, they didn't like the sandwich, the lunch looked unhealthy, etc.

In the course of sharing information about our school and viewing the media shared by the other schools, we visited the wiki page of the Arabic school. First we looked at pictures and video showing typical food from their country, which is located in the same part of the world as Israel. Liat, who is Israeli, pointed out the similarities between their food and Israeli food (more alike than different?) Then we watched an adorable video of the students reacting to the slideshow. Liat and I both noticed that all of the slides were shown except for the one from our school.

I had not reacted when our clusters were changed, but now I was upset. The teacher would not even allow her students to view the slide from our school? I felt that to purposely ignore one school went against one of the main goals of the project- cultural awareness.

Naive

I emailed the project organizer to share my feelings.

Today we watched the "reaction to the lunches" video from the school in ___, where they showed every slide except for the one we uploaded, which had some writing in Hebrew. What is the point of doing a "global awareness" project if not to promote tolerance, acceptance and eventually to teach the next generation that things like hatred and anti-semitism must be overcome?...I feel that no school in the project should be allowed to simply ignore another school because of language or culture. I am really upset by this... How do you teach 9-10 year olds that people in the world hate Jews so much that the adults will not allow the children to look at a slide that has Hebrew writing on it?

The resulting email conversation really opened my eyes and made me realize how sheltered and naive I am. This is from the teacher in the Arabic-speaking school (from an email she sent to the project organizer):

I do believe that we are really one world and one heart, no matter where we come from or what our religion is...We can't make any relation with Israel no matter what the relation is. It will be dangerous for me and for my family...I feel sorry not being able to communicate with her...but this is the situation in our country.

I can not imagine putting myself and my family in danger through my participation in a project, no matter what countries were involved. From my comfortable vantage point here in the US, I have been able to shelter myself from some truths about the world. I allowed myself to believe that all you need are good intentions, that individuals connecting could eventually change the world. I still believe in education and friendships, learning about others, tolerance and global awareness. I just feel incredibly naive and incredibly grateful that I live in a place where I am able to have such naivete. I am not the only one. From the project organizer (who lives on another continent):

When I made up those clusters I had no idea that having your two schools together would be a problem. When ___first emailed me I immediately thought that I should have been more aware and perhaps not put your two schools in the same group to begin with which is why I was so quick to change the groups...it is not a situation I am very familiar with...

Here is another point-of-view, from the Rabbi who is associated with our school:

Given the political climate in ______, this teacher may be justifiably fearful (as I’m sure that there would have been German teachers in the 30s). That being said, if the [project] folk can rationalize the discrimination (after all, this is not our school issuing Israeli political propaganda, but simply existing and being itself), it does quite the opposite of promoting co-existence. Participants in______ can’t have it both ways – global understanding . . . except for those whose right to exist we won’t acknowledge.

I find all of these reactions understandable and also confusing. I understand the emotions of fear, anger, denial and regret. I understand being unfamiliar with certain parts of the world and their problems. I don't understand what to do with it all.

Never would I want to put another teacher or her family at risk. Nor do I want my students to learn firsthand, through a school project, about hatred, discrimination, anti-semitism/anti-Israel or that the world can be a confusing, conflicted and violent place. It is especially difficult when these harsh sentiments are directed at them, as Jews and supporters of Israel.

To be honest with myself, I am nervous about posting this. It feels like I'm stirring up some dust that might turn out to be poison. However, I feel hopeful that something good might still come of it.

Image Credit: AWW80S-Skype with Minnesota

The Best Plan

the Preface

I sometimes feel compelled to stay "on topic." EdTechWorkshop-- it's about education and/or technology, right? But it is my unique path that has made me the person who cares about educational technology enough to blog about it. I feel that some of my stories are worth sharing even if they're not about what I'm teaching tomorrow or the latest cool new thing I've found online. So I hope you will bear with me if I sometimes go off course. I offer my thoughts and experiences as that which I have to share, and I hope that someone learns from or even simply enjoys reading them.

The Planner

I often hear people proclaim with pride, "I'm a planner."

What I sense they are saying is "Subconsciously I know that life is unpredictable and some things are out of my control. By being a planner, I stay in control!"

Ah well. Good for you.

I, Andrea, am not "a planner." This seems to really bother people. I had almost become convinced that it was a regrettable personality flaw. But, you know what they say about plans.

When I rode my bike through the US, Mexico and Guatemala, my traveling partner, Daniel, and I had a saying, "The best plan is no plan, and that's our plan." It worked well for us-- time and time again something amazing would cross our path at just the right moment.

Here is one story of a time I didn't have a plan but everything worked out better than fine. Around 15 years ago I had my first teaching job. This job was actually two part-time jobs at the same school. One of the two jobs was that of environmental/outdoor ed. coordinator at an inner-city public school in San Francisco. I took all of the kids in the school on overnight camping trips.

If you know me at all, you know that I was passionate about the work I was doing and threw myself into it wholeheartedly. So when I heard about a large experiential education conference in Texas I thought, "that sounds interesting. I'd like to go to that."

When I asked my principal if I could go, she gave me a strange look. She told me that the school would not pay my way, but that I could go and still get paid for working. So I signed up as a volunteer for the conference which gave me free admission. I found a super-cheap plane ticket to Austin. And I packed my bags. I had never been to Austin, never been to a professional conference, didn't know another soul who would be there and did not know where I would stay once I arrived. Obviously this was before the days of having access to people, places and information online. As I headed to the airport, I began to question myself. What in the world was I doing?

I arrived at the conference hotel in time for the volunteer orientation. As I sat in the circle with the other volunteers I wondered where I would sleep that night. I noticed a woman looking at me and smiling. At the break, she walked over and asked if I knew Ken W. Know him? He was a close friend!! She, too, was friends with him and reminded me that we had gone hiking together when she was living in SF, and he had come to visit. Now she lived in LA and worked for an environmental ed organization there. They had sent her to the conference.

When I confided to her that I had made no plans for a hotel room, she generously invited me to share hers. She was supposed to have come with a work colleague who couldn't make it last minute, and she had a nice double room.

We had a great time together at the conference, and it sparked a friendship that lasted for many years.

It reminds me of a vivid dream I once had. I was planning a trip with a co-worker (a planner). He was busy collecting maps and plotting the route. He became frustrated with me because I didn't have a map. I told him I didn't need a map, I would follow the signs.

And that is pretty much what I have always done. While I have never stayed in one job or one house or even one place for too long, I have always felt that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I have always been pretty happy where I am at the moment. So who's to say that planners are superior to non-planners? I think the best plan is to try to accept ourselves and others. Most of us are doing the best we can. It's not as if life is a race to the end.