Is the lead in the stone (of our stoneware), or in the glaze covering the stone?
Is the cadmium in the stone (of our stoneware), or in the glaze sealing the stone?
Who knows the answer to this important question?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Clinic offers free lead testing on dishes - 13 WTHR
Clinic offers free lead testing on dishes - 13 WTHR
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Green Cleaning Recipes – Women's Voices for the Earth
Green Cleaning Recipes – Women's Voices for the Earth
See this site for safe and simple and effective household clearning recipees...I have used many overtime, haveing found them posted in the newspapers over the past forty years by Eloise (and her syndicated neighborhood of Dedicated Housewives, before a few became desperate!).
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A really good teacher I worked with for years in a challenged school community, contacted me at the closure of a stint in an international school. Apparently, the school elsewhere endured under the direction of a difficult administrator as well as the one we had just endured together. He asked how does this happen in education? How do we keep bumping into schools stressed by the constrictions an administrator who has his focus on administration, really not student learning - nor the conditions that facilitate teachers' practice?
We know as teachers we are devoted to facilitating conditions of learning for our kids. What gets in the way and how is it allowed?
I suspect that some district somewhere expanded the wrong fork in the road and led everyone else astray: administrivia was once completed by the building's "principal Teacher" - AKA the Lead Teacher, the most experienced teacher, the communitiy's master teacher. Since this person was also a practicing teacher, focus remained on student learning and teachers' ability to practice and grow in their craft. This kept data and bureaucracy to a minimum. Then oops "administration" became a full time job with assistants even! Whatever we make space for grows...especially when we feed it...
Time now to put first things first...kids real and ever-changing needs, creative pedagogy, teaching as an extended apprenticeship, master teachers as mentors -assessing, guiding, coaching the developmental practice of apprentices ... all leading to allowing kids to develop according to their strengths and their pace. Let's put the focus of schools on engaged learning, the reciprocal practice of learners-teachers, craft sharing, and pedagogy. Let's let educators design schools (not corporate or political entities) so that schools can practice according to sound educational foundations and research.
We know as teachers we are devoted to facilitating conditions of learning for our kids. What gets in the way and how is it allowed?
I suspect that some district somewhere expanded the wrong fork in the road and led everyone else astray: administrivia was once completed by the building's "principal Teacher" - AKA the Lead Teacher, the most experienced teacher, the communitiy's master teacher. Since this person was also a practicing teacher, focus remained on student learning and teachers' ability to practice and grow in their craft. This kept data and bureaucracy to a minimum. Then oops "administration" became a full time job with assistants even! Whatever we make space for grows...especially when we feed it...
Time now to put first things first...kids real and ever-changing needs, creative pedagogy, teaching as an extended apprenticeship, master teachers as mentors -assessing, guiding, coaching the developmental practice of apprentices ... all leading to allowing kids to develop according to their strengths and their pace. Let's put the focus of schools on engaged learning, the reciprocal practice of learners-teachers, craft sharing, and pedagogy. Let's let educators design schools (not corporate or political entities) so that schools can practice according to sound educational foundations and research.
- How do administrative goals, needs, and favorites become system-wide decisions, to the functional exclusion of those who practice School's Craft every day?
- How do administrators at all four levels override everything teachers know to be true? At the local building and district and state and federal levels?
- How do the needs and wants of a MANufactured bureaucracy take precedence over that which experienced classroom teachers know to be true?
- How does "the king's need" for numbers and quantity assurance become systematized, squeezing out the life of solidly good pedagogy? (This thinking and resulting structure reflects a "hierarchy" in which the "special" one's needs matter more than everyone else's authentic needs. Has our modern world outgrown this yet???
- How do we graduate systematically from a hierarchy model to one of INTERDEPENDENCE?
Friday, March 11, 2011
Love in the Right Places
Just now on the Jitney heading to NoFo, having flown into JFK on the red-eye, I am more than happy to simply sit back relaxing into the peaceful noontime Friday whisk along the L.I.E. Reading the Buddha Brain and being in the chapter on wisdom, I am prone to notice a very sweet couple across from me...nuzzling each other, resting in each other's embrace. And I am touched by the wisdom inherent in this clear and poignant union ... for the "couple" is comprised of a twenty-something female (ring less) and her very well-cared-for clean and curly Shihtzu! (I asked her to spell it for me.)
The love between the two of them is palpable...I can feel it wafting toward me across the aisle. The twenty-something (let's call her Kelly) cuddled her beloved companion (let's call her Trixie) and whispered in her ear while passengers sporadically boarded the Jitney at 44th and 3rd. Whatever she was whispering, Trixie appeared to be avidly listening and watching passers-by from a place of perfect contentment...just the right mix of stimulation and security.
I thought to myself, "It's Friday and wherever Kelly is going with Trixie for the weekend, it will be a place of happiness amidst the two of them! They harbor happiness, they generate happiness, they bathe in the glow of their sweetly nourishing union. Wherever they go, there will be tranquility, contentment, rapture, and joy....the Buddha's pathway to inner peace. Kelly needs no boyfriend!" Since she doesn't NEED one, there need be no pressure coercing her to leave her already-made inner peace to go find her true love and work on a meaningful intimate male-female relationship...and all that. She already generates true love.
Instead, Kelly will be predisposed to draw like-minded candidates to her if she so desires. The attraction of harmony (true love) is a natural draw! When she feels her biological clock ticking ... the organic evolution of a very common longing, timing ... she will also have a template for what generative mutual love feels like! And this kind of adult-adult attraction can simply unfold in Kelly's right time and place.
Rewiring all this, I thought even more reflectively: Maybe all young women, once they have mastered taking very good care of themselves and the balance in their lives, should consider adopting the kind of pet that stirs their heart - a good place to start to practice commitment, where there is true love.
The love between the two of them is palpable...I can feel it wafting toward me across the aisle. The twenty-something (let's call her Kelly) cuddled her beloved companion (let's call her Trixie) and whispered in her ear while passengers sporadically boarded the Jitney at 44th and 3rd. Whatever she was whispering, Trixie appeared to be avidly listening and watching passers-by from a place of perfect contentment...just the right mix of stimulation and security.
I thought to myself, "It's Friday and wherever Kelly is going with Trixie for the weekend, it will be a place of happiness amidst the two of them! They harbor happiness, they generate happiness, they bathe in the glow of their sweetly nourishing union. Wherever they go, there will be tranquility, contentment, rapture, and joy....the Buddha's pathway to inner peace. Kelly needs no boyfriend!" Since she doesn't NEED one, there need be no pressure coercing her to leave her already-made inner peace to go find her true love and work on a meaningful intimate male-female relationship...and all that. She already generates true love.
Instead, Kelly will be predisposed to draw like-minded candidates to her if she so desires. The attraction of harmony (true love) is a natural draw! When she feels her biological clock ticking ... the organic evolution of a very common longing, timing ... she will also have a template for what generative mutual love feels like! And this kind of adult-adult attraction can simply unfold in Kelly's right time and place.
Rewiring all this, I thought even more reflectively: Maybe all young women, once they have mastered taking very good care of themselves and the balance in their lives, should consider adopting the kind of pet that stirs their heart - a good place to start to practice commitment, where there is true love.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)