Not So Distant Future

“In our youth our hearts were touched with fire” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.)

What are you passionate about?  That’s the key to the “passion quilt meme.”   The idea is to pick a photo from Flickr (or take a photo) that reflects what you feel passionately about regarding your students.

At a recent Austin citywide art event, First Night, attendees were given chalk to decorate the First Street bridge.  While walking across it, I ran across this image, sketched in chalk there.   It captured me because it conveyed so much about my views of education.

What we can give our students is a belief in their own abilities and in the possibilities before them–belief that isn’t confined by borders of any kind, neither physical nor intellectual.   And we can show them a world that is filled with kindness and support and hope.   We have to believe in the best of them in order to reveal to them their own potential.

Thanks to Robin Ellis for tapping me for this meme.   A further way to extend this is to stitch the photographs from this meme into a “quilt” and that project has already begun.  (If the photo you use is your own, tag it with passionquilt08, so that it can be found on flickr easily.)

Here are the rules:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

I’m going to tag:

John Pederson

Patrick Higgins  (oops–after I posted this, was reminded that Patrick has already posted his photo!  I’m just tagging him again so that if you haven’t seen his photo, you’ll go visit it now ;))

Scott Schwister

Arthus Erea

quotation credit:  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/passion

    ”My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?”
~ Bob Hope

We’ve decided to give our own children a gift for others this year. 

How about a flock of ducks, a child’s health, a tree to prevent erosion,  a shelter for a child, or a child’s first book?

A few places to consider giving a gift of love:

Heifer Project

Mercy Corps

The GreenBelt Movement 

Austin Children’s Shelter

Habitat for Humanity

Reading is Fundamental

What greater honor can we give our own children or our students than giving a gift in their names?   How better can we show them that the world is truly a community?

image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/alykat/7735593/

Create a 30 second to 2 minute creative video  “professing a deep, abiding love of libraries, librarians and those who depend on them”  and enter to win $10,000 in Thomson Gale’s “I love my library” contest.   Students, teachers, public library patrons and librarians can participate!

Videos will be uploaded to a YouTube group (Librareo)and the five finalists will be up for a vote in June.  More details on how to enter here (click past the opening screen) and here at School Library Journal – the deadline is May 25. 

The winner will get $10,000–half as a prize, and half to go to the library of their choice.

How much do you love your library? 

A followup on our library displays for National Library week–following a web 2.0 philosophy, we set up a blank table in the library during National Library week and asked students to contribute their favorite books to the table along with writing their recommendation of the books.  Here are a few photos of the display they are creating.

   Today some students on our campus are observing the National Day of Silence in support of our student Gay-Straight Alliance. 

What can we as educators do?   Check here for a list of ideas on ways to support students.

As I watch the news about Virginia Tech tonight, I can’t help but think of a memorial I read about Kurt Vonnegut in the New York Times.

“To Mr. Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine,” summed up his philosophy:

‘Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ “

I’ve been “tagged!”  If you aren’t familiar with this, it’s a blog game where a theme or question circulates, and people tag other people to respond to the theme or question.

Scott Schwister of Higher Edison tagged me(which I have to say made me feel really honored because I think he’s a very interesting writer). Now I’m supposed to share five to ten “simply successful secrets”  and then tag a few more people to share theirs. 

Here’s the full description:

“List the top 5 to 10 things that you do almost every day that help you to be successful. They can be anything at all, but they have to be things that you do at least 4 or 5 times every week. Anything less than that may be a hobby that helps you out, but we are after the real day in and day out habits that help you to be successful.”  

I have been struggling with answering this because I don’t know how I feel about the word success, not to mention that I think it might come across as a little arrogant because I work with a lot of excellent and talented people.   So in pondering this, I researched a few quotations and found this one that I like:

Try not to be a man of success, but rather to be a man of value.
     – Albert Einstein

I assume Einstein would have applied this to women as well   Einstein’s exhortation appeals to me because there is something in the word success to me that implies the idea of failure as its opposite, and I believe every person has much to offer and success is defined differently for each of us. 

In any case, here are a few things I do daily that hopefully might contribute to me being considered a person of value –

1.  Try to cultivate good relationships with people

2.  Experiment with new things

3.  Read widely online and off

4.  Have quiet time

5.  Encourage others

6.  Be open

7.  Share

8.  Be enthusiastic

Here’s a few things I should do more often:

1.  Go to yoga

2.  Sleep more

I’m usually too excited about things I want to do to sleep as much as a human being should!

Now I’m supposed to tag a few more folks.  I’d like to hear from Chris Lehmann(principal at the Science Leadership Academy),  Kelly Christopherson(an administrator who blogs–but I see he’s already been tagged),  Patrick Higgins (who I just “met” on Ning.com), and  Vaughn Branom (a librarian in Houston).

Also, if anyone here feels compelled to share how they try to be a “person of value,” please join in and post your ideas here!  Tag, you’re it!

Want to be a celebrity?  Put yourself on the cover of Wired magazine!

 It’s really spring here.  After a year or two of drought, we’ve had a lot of rain and now we have sunshine and bluebonnets blooming everywhere.   It feels so refreshing.  I was starting to feel like I was dried up and crispy myself, and now everything feels lush and fruitful.

    Even though Earth Day is 22 days away, in honor of this lovely spring afternoon, here’s a link to WWF’s Time For Change website, where people (including many teenagers) from around the world are sharing their ideas for how to help the planet.  Add your ideas or encourage your students to share theirs.

It’s a day to celebrate the internet’s power for good.

Ok, this is what I feel like after the first week back from spring break.  Anyone else?