Saturday, April 23, 2016

Chillaxin' With My Mommy

Mother and Child Leighton, Lord Frederick
What weekends are for.
Mother's Day, May 8.

'Henry David Thoreau for Kids' uses activities to connect kids with nature

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-henry-david-thoreau-for-kids-20160414-story.html

23 Upcycling Hacks for the Classroom

http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2016/04/12/23-upcycling-hacks-for-the-classroom

Shakespeare Uncovered

http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/shakespeare-uncovered/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mktg2016

9 Tips That Have Improved My IEP Experience

http://themighty.com/2016/04/tips-for-successful-iep-meetings/

Race and the Standardized Testing Wars

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/opinion/sunday/race-and-the-standardized-testing-wars.html

We Won't Improve Education By Making Teachers Hate Their Jobs

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-wont-improve-education-making-teachers-hate-jobs-jeff-bryant

The Limitations of Teaching ‘Grit’ in the Classroom

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/when-grit-isnt-enough/418269/

Schools can do a better job of talking about the extent to which student trauma exists, teaching children coping mechanisms, and providing mental-health services.The conversation about growth mindsets has to happen in a social and cultural context, he said, because cultural, institutional, and historical forces have an effect on individuals.

National Poetry Month: Poems #20 and #21

The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso

La Guitarra, The Guitar

Federico García Lorca

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto

sobre la rama.
¡Oh, guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

The Guitar

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh,guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

Maybe the old guitarist was playing this:
Albéniz, Asturias (Leyenda), guitar solo, James Edwards (animation)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvF8XWr17nw&feature=relmfu

Concert for Bangladesh, George Harrison

Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others -- "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

George Harrison

I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it need sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you
How to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you

I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps

Teaching Is Finishing Strong

MzTeachuh: Teaching Is Finishing Strong: Finishing the School Year Strong http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/05/05/tln_ferlazzo_3.html End of Year Activities http://w...

Friday, April 22, 2016

You're Just Like Your Mom, Huh?

Which is not a bad thing.
Mother's Day, May 8.

Educational Links 4/23/16

Digital Classroom Simulations Signal New Frontier in Teacher Training

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2016/04/classroom_simulations_uva.html?cmp=SOC-EDIT-FB

We're Bridging the Wrong Gap With Our Low-Income Students, and Here's Why

http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2016/04/21/we're-bridging-the-wrong-gap-with-our-low-income-students-and-here's-why

Best Resources For Learning About Flint Water Crisis

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2016/04/22/part-10-best-resources-for-learning-about-flint-water-crisis/

Personalized Learning: The Best of Both Worlds

http://www.bamradionetwork.com/uncommon-learning/3843-personalized-learning-the-best-of-both-worlds

Why Virtual Reality Is So Important

http://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/what-is-virtual-reality/

10 Realities About Bullying at School and Online

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/04/22/10-realities-about-bullying-at-school-and-online/

Meeting The Needs of Diverse Learners

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2016/04/22/diverse-learners-gbt/

As educators, we’re continually learning about our students, what they know, where they get stuck, and how to support them to get better. It’s not easy work at all. It’s intellectually and emotionally rigorous, and is done so much better in collaboration. I hope you’ll join me, my colleagues, and my students on this journey to get better at our practice. As you view our videos, we welcome any and all thoughts, questions, and ideas. Meeting the needs of our diverse learners really is a community effort.

National Poetry Month: Poem #16

This is the longest poem I have chosen to quote--be glad it's not The Wasteland.
T. S Eliot is considered the eminent poet of the last century.
The metaphors are intoxicating.

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

by T. S. Eliot

	S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
	A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
	Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
	Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
	Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
	Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . . . . .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.	125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

After reading this poem in 1970 in college, I deliberately chose no to 'measure out my life with coffee spoons.'
The Italian passage at the beginning is from Dante's Inferno:

If I believed that my answer would be
To someone who would ever return to earth,
This flame would move no more,
But because no one from this gulf
Has ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,

I can reply with no fear of infamy.

Was Eliot a British poet or an American poet? He immigrated to the U.K. But he didn't say he measured 'I measured out my life in teaspoons but coffee spoons.' He was, afterall, born in St. Louis Missouri.

T. S. Eliot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Educational Links 4/22/16

http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/1706-infographic-characteristics-of-a-good-digital-citizen?utm_content=buffer313ae&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

9 Out Of 10 Parents Think Their Kids Are On Grade Level. They're Probably Wrong

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/21/474850688/9-out-of-10-parents-think-their-kids-are-on-grade-level-theyre-probably-wrong

Keep America Beautiful Again: Classroom Activities to Make Communities a Better Place This Spring

http://www.educationworld.com/a_news/keep-america-beautiful-again-classroom-activities-make-communities-better-place-spring

When Your Doctor Doesn’t Understand ADHD

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/adhd-millennial/2016/04/when-your-doctor-doesnt-understand-adhd/

Degrees of ADHD: It’s Not All or Nothing for a Child

https://www.understood.org/en/community-events/blogs/expert-corner/2016/04/07/degrees-of-adhd-its-not-all-or-nothing?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=understoodorg

Give Students Power in Their Learning Process

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2016/04/give_students_power_in_their_l.html?cmp=SOC-EDIT-FB

Visiting a Museum

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/museum-visit-guidelines-getty

When School Districts Get Deliberate About Desegregation

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/when-school-districts-get-deliberate-about-desegregation/479013/

"Equity and opportunity are not conversations about charity."

Happy Earth Day (Every Day)

Painting: Vincent Van Gogh

Earth Day

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/earth-day

Happy Earth Day! 5 Ways to Get Kids to Help the Planet

http://www.livescience.com/50565-earth-day-get-kids-involved.html

Earth Day for Children

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Earth_Day_for_Children

How Earth Day Began: With Somber Reflection, and a Few Dump-Ins

http://time.com/3822575/earth-day-history/

Graphic: How Earth Day looks at 45

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/20/earth-day-turns-45/26062273/

Earth Day Meteor Shower

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2015/21apr_lyrids2015/

Chesterbrook Academy releases ladybugs for Earth Day

http://www.dailylocal.com/general-news/20150422/chesterbrook-academy-releases-ladybugs-for-earth-day

Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home!

Go Look--The Moon Is Shining For You

http://earthsky.org/tonight

Full Moon!

Clair de Lune (Extended)Debussy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea2WoUtbzuw

National Poetry Month: Poem #14

Cottage in Wales

By Harry Robertson

A cottage in the foothills of Snowdonia.

A very 'green' poem for Earth Day; notice the repetition of the word green in this poem. When I was an English major in college, we were told this was the best poems of the century.

Fern Hill

by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

The Official Website

http://www.dylanthomas.com/

Who Told You Stories and Sang You Songs?


Grandmother Storyteller by Ada Suina, Cochiti New Mexico

I'm giving this one to Grandma.

Mother's Day. May 8. Don't forget Granny.

Check out the pottery from New Mexico:

Pueblo Storytellers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42ubb28IEFU&feature=player_embedded

This is a little ceramic piece I found at Furnace Springs, Death Valley, CAL. I wish I could hear what Grandma was singing.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Educational Links 4/21/16

Introduction to Project-Based Learning

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/videos/introduction-to-project-based-learning#

Number of U.S. Students in Special Education Ticks Upward

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/04/20/number-of-us-students-in-special-education.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2

Educators: Win Free Wildflower Seed Bombs for Your Class

http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/78754/educators-win-free-wildflower-seed-bombs-your-class

What Screen Time Really Does to Kids' Brains

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/behind-online-behavior/201604/what-screen-time-really-does-kids-brains?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost

Music Training Fosters Children’s Success

http://www.rootsofaction.com/music-fosters-childrens-success-el-sistema/

“Resetting” Classroom Management

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2016/04/20/resetting-classroom-management/

Sensory Processing Disorder 101

http://www.additudemag.com/slideshow/50/slide-1.html

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) is a neurological condition that makes it difficult for the body to receive messages from the senses and turn them into the appropriate motor and behavioral responses. A child with SPD finds it hard to process and act upon the information received through his senses: sounds, sights, movement, touch, smell, and taste.

Who Showed You Who You Are?

Mother and Child, Andy Warhol

Your (fill in the blank) Mother.

You might choose, Irish, Italian, Mexican, English, Russian, Phillipino, German, Scottish, Chinese, Dine, Arab, Dutch, Puerto Rican, French, Welsh, Jewish, Chilean, Danish, Japanese, Basque, Canadian, Romanian, Indian, Mayan, Angolan, Brazilian, Navaho, Turkish, Costa Rican, Portuguese, Nicaraguan, Guinea Bissaun, Lithuanian, Nigerian, Egyptian, El Salvadoran, Omani, Norwegian, or all of the above (for us Heinz Fiftyseven.)

I saw this print at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Arts. Remarkable.

Mother's Day May 8.

National Poetry Month: Earth Day Every Day Gerard Manley Hopkins

This might be the first poem supporting the ecological movement.

God’s Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins


THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Spring

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,

Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,

Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Hopkins was a Jesuit priest in England during the Industrial Revolution.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gerard-manley-hopkins

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Educational Links 4/20/16

How ‘Productive Failure’ In Math Class Helps Make Lessons Stick

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/04/19/how-productive-failure-for-students-can-help-lessons-stick/

Community Partners: Making Student Learning Relevant

http://www.edutopia.org/practice/community-partners-making-student-learning-relevant

Special Education Etiquette

http://www.makespecialeducationwork.com/special-education-etiquette-2/#sthash.V4AFJNeO.JiXHndMB.dpbs

25 MORE Attention-Getters For Quieting A Noisy Classroom

http://www.buzzfeed.com/weareteachers/25-more-attention-getters-for-quieting-a-noisy-cla-h0xt

Two Newspapers' Series on Race and Education Awarded Pulitzer Prizes

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/education_and_the_media/2016/04/two_newspapers_series_on_race_and_education_awarded_pulitzer_prizes.html?cmp=SOC-EDIT-FB

My New BAM! Show Is On “What Are the Best Ways to Assess Student Work?”

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2016/04/19/my-new-bam-show-is-on-what-are-the-best-ways-to-assess-student-work/

At a Glance: 7 Ways Kids With Learning and Attention Issues Can Get Tripped Up by a Math Problem

https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/math-issues/at-a-glance-7-ways-kids-with-learning-and-attention-issues-can-get-tripped-up-by-a-math-problem?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=understoodorg

Children with learning and attention issues may struggle with math for a variety of reasons. For example, kids with dyscalculia may not have a strong number sense. Trouble with working memory, visual processing and other issues can also play a role. Use this guide to learn how different aspects of a math problem might be challenging to your student.

Who Thought You Were the Cutest Little Thing in the Whole World?

'Mother and Child,' Uemura Shoen

Your Mama. あなたのママ

May 8. Mother's Day.

National Poetry Month: Poem #14

Cosmos bipinnatus, commonly called the garden cosmos or Mexican aster. And it's in my front yard!

The Cosmos in a Cosmos

William Blake

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Not to get all Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson

on you, but with so many heated discussions pro and con

about intelligent design, I'm taking a moment to think of Artistic Design.

Here is the last verse of Blake's poem.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Here is the entirety of William Blake's poem, remember, he is considered a mystic.

I see him as a caring person with a heart for the poor.

William Blake - Auguries of Innocence

http://www.artofeurope.com/blake/bla3.htm

William Blake

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-blake

Monday, April 18, 2016

The Sky Is Cheap Entertainment: Lyrid Meteor Shower 4/22/16

Full moon is out all night at the peak of this year’s Lyrid meteor shower. Best time to watch before dawn on April 22, 2016, but … will you see any meteors?

Everything you need to know: Lyrid meteor shower

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-lyrid-meteor-shower

Educational Links 4/19/16

Why ditching textbooks would be to the detriment of learning

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/why-ditching-textbooks-would-be-detriment-learning

10 Educational Resources About the American Revolution

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/04/10-educational-resources-about-american.html#.VxWza0cz4s4

National Poetry Month Event Roundup: April 18-24

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/stanza/national-poetry-month-event-roundup-april-18-24

Earth Day

http://www.kidsdiscover.com/teacherresources/resources-for-earth-day/?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Post&utm_campaign=EarthDay

What Is Competency-Based Learning?

http://teachthought.com/learning/what-is-competency-based-learning/

Learning English can be hard. This experimental new program tries to make it easier

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-english-learners-moreno-valley-20160418-story.html

What Is Understanding?

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/what-is-understanding/

Assessing understanding might be the most complex task an educator or academic institution is tasked with. Unfortunately, professional development gives a lower level of attention to developing quality assessments, training that is rarely commensurate with this complexity. The challenge of assessment is no less than figuring out what a learner knows, and where he or she needs to go next.

Teachable Moment: On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive...

Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770.) A poem was the actual caption for the illustration.

The Landlord's Tale. Paul Revere's Ride

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—

One, if by land, and two, if by sea;

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,

Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears

The muster of men at the barrack door,

The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

And the measured tread of the grenadiers,

Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch

On the sombre rafters, that round him made

Masses and moving shapes of shade, —

By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,

To the highest window in the wall,

Where he paused to listen and look down

A moment on the roofs of the town,

And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

In their night-encampment on the hill,

Wrapped in silence so deep and still

That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,

The watchful night-wind, as it went

Creeping along from tent to tent,

And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"

A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;

For suddenly all his thoughts are bent

On a shadowy something far away,

Where the river widens to meet the bay, —

A line of black that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride

On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

Now he patted his horse's side,

Now gazed at the landscape far and near,

Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,

And turned and tightened his saddle girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search

The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,

As it rose above the graves on the hill,

Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;

And under the alders, that skirt its edge,

Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock,

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,

And the barking of the farmer's dog,

And felt the damp of the river fog,

That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,

When he galloped into Lexington.

He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,

When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

He heard the bleating of the flock,

And the twitter of birds among the trees,

And felt the breath of the morning breeze

Blowing over the meadows brown.

And one was safe and asleep in his bed

Who at the bridge would be first to fall,

Who that day would be lying dead,

Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,

How the British Regulars fired and fled, —

How the farmers gave them ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

Chasing the red-coats down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again

Under the trees at the turn of the road,

And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm, —

A cry of defiance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.