A Novel Project

I am starting a project that has had several false starts already. I think maybe this time it will work. It is a multi-stranded novel based on a central character (in his early twenties as of 2009) written in the first person. The strands will include people from his family as far back or forward or sideways as it is possible to go and still be connected to this character.

I am calling it The Silk Weaver’s Tree.

I am hoping for it to be a cooperative effort. I really have no idea how it will look when it is finished. With Anansi’s help along with anyone else who is interested, I am hoping for a huge web of intriguing stories all connected.

101 in 1001

Self-Experiment #?

I have been inspired by fellow blogger  Three World Chant to create a list of 101 things I will accomplish in 1001 days. I have posted the list on a separate page here. I have been so inspired I started immediately working on the list before it was even finished.

Yesterday I walked a mile and a half at a place I had never been before and took 16 pictures some of which are below. I also got my bike out and started fixing it up and today I got a helmet. I put my car on Craigslist and wrote in my journal. I am still diligently reading 2666 by Robert Bolano which is so intreaguing in a very wierd way, but, also, so very long. I am half way through it. I hope I can finish before it is due at the library. I have another week off to tackle other things on the list. I worked on my novel for 5 hours the other day and will do more tonight. I am off now to clean out my moldy car so I can have people look at it on Sunday. So much time and so little to do. Wait strike that. Reverse it. Pictures from the sculpture garden tucked away in the middle of  a foresty part of a park in the middle of a nice little neighborhood in the middle of our charming little city.

Beginning the Journey Again

I wrote a comment on a list to a student who was wondering if the Reggio Emilia child centered approach to preschool was they way to go for a teacher just starting out. After I wrote I realized it really was a pep talk for myself.

I love teaching 3 to 5 year olds, but I am often left frustrated and de-inspired by the program I work for and my supervisor, who has a philosophy that you must keep children in line and under control. And then there is the never ending paperwork that has nothing to do with teaching or learning. I am nearing the end of another year in this program and I realize that I have been guilty of giving up the soul of my teaching out of laziness and frustration instead of putting into practice my philosophy where I can squeeze it in. It is so easy to fall into the I can get through this attitude when faced with the ever present status quo thinking, but the bottom line is I have not done enough to create the learning community I want my classroom to be. If I am not committed to the ideas that inspire me then how can I convince others to step onto the path. If I start now I will be ready for tomorrow and that will launch me into the next day. Little steps, carefully taken on the path to my goal of a classroom of engaged learning, I can do this if  I seize my opportunities and inspire others. If start with a little dreaming today, I can go into tomorrows planning session with some fire to light the first steps to finish off the year with some enthusiasm.

Here is my pep talk:

1. If you are working in large program or with a team, what are the approaches they use now and can the Reggio approach be used within the existing structure? How much do your team members know about this approach and are you ready to inspire change? It is challenging to be the only teacher in a program using this model.

2. Have you done the work of exploring your ideas about children and how they learn? On what inspires you and how you form relationships with children, parents and other teachers? If you are ready and committed to the philosophy then even if you stumble around a little, you will know that it is all part of the process of becoming an authentic teacher, but you have to know how you fit into the process first.

You have to know that whatever you do will look different than anything else if you are doing it right. This approach is about building a community of learners: Teachers, students, parents, siblings other members of the enveloping community. Your learning community will be a collaboration of all its members and so unique. If you are ready for being open to whatever happens and to building relationships based on respect and creativity then you are ready to start. The main thing is to reflect on the journey as you take the steps and not be too impatient. Have big ideas as you take the little steps along the way.

A Failed Experiment: A New Plan

I started out this week intent on focusing on the light and got lost in a dense gray fog of fatigue and indifference ending in a black funk. I have no idea how things happen this way. This all ended with my lovely Mary telling me I had to make a plan for what I was going to do with my life because this isn’t working for anyone. She is, as usual, right, but making long range plans is not one of things I have never been good at. I tend to just take life as it comes, and living out a scripted plan makes me feel like I am on the gray road to the end without surprises or bright spontaneus  flowers of inspiration that bloom by accident on a less planned route. But then I have been thinking that maybe by not planning I have looked at all the possible roads and have spontaneusly moved myself down smaller and smaller roads until I have run up against this dead end. Maybe if I look at a larger map, I can plan a route with the option of taking unplanned turns.

I need to pull back my perspective so I can see the options available to me. For five years I have been working with people myopically focussed on what they can objectively quantify. I know that this is not the only approach to education or life. I have experienced places and people who are not confined to the clinical academic roads that trap life into boxes of jargon and numbers. I need to find a community based on ever opening vistas of human experience and creativity. I need to make a plan that opens out into broad roadless fields and rugged wilderness of unknown adventures. Maybe my plan will be to construct an offroad vehicle that will take me to places I haven’t been before. I have little bits of my mind that I can spare from my work and class focussed brain,  busily nibbling away, gathering bits and pieces, with mouselike energy constructing a plan for such a vehicle. I see the progress in my dreams and my attitude. Today I am full of hope even though I still have to face the almost overwhelming wall of small thinking each day. I have the power of creativity, synthesis, poetry, and the magic language of dreams working tirelessly to make a me sized hole in that wall. I will see the light of a new life of my own making.

What can I do now? That is the question at this point. I can write each day, which I didn’t last week. Writing frames my world in possibilities and allows me to exorcise my dark demons of despair. I need to put ideas into words every day that will at least save a little bit of my sanity until I can devote more time to my escape plan. It keeps the door open just a crack so the light can leak in. It is really impossible to get any quality work done in the dark.

Time for another self-experiment

It is so easy for me to dwell on negatives. My mind just tends to get trapped on the dark side of things. Things are rarely as bad as I think they are and later after looking back I often find I could have enjoyed my life at least a little more if I had looked at some of the little lights that always shine no matter how difficult and dark things get. So I am going to challenge myself to find as much light as possible and hopefully make some to write about each day for a month. In the end I hope to be in a much better mood while I am dealing with a month full of challenges. Maybe focussing on positives will bring some good things forward. Hopefully I can make my forced positive focus permanent and natural as the negative feelings have been.