Two Duets of quilts: design and classroom

Squared Illusion 6 by Gloria Hansen

 

Labor Day Celebration of the work of my grandmother continues. Two duets of quilts spoke to me. The first was all about circles cut through by straight lines.

Behind Bars by BJ Titus of Coatesville PA

 

The second duet had to do with themes from my classroom, science and horticulture.

My Last Nerve by Stacy Hurt of Orange CA

Dancing Kalanchoe by Carol Villars of Apple Valley CA

 

Wordless Wednesday ~> Candy-striped Leafhopper (Graphocephala coccinea )

Candy-striped Leafhopper, Red-banded Leafhopper, Red-and-blue Leafhopper (Graphocephala coccinea

 

Wordless Wednesday

 

 

Trees are amazing; exploring the path of water

Negative pressures. Avoiding spontaneous boiling. Surmounting great heights. And ever wasteful but important because of the waste. Love the enthusiasm shown for the splendid nature of plants.

 

Thoughts on testing my teaching

My students have many a river to cross and on top of that my PA Dutch grammar can baffle the average student. With that said, I can write tests that all will fail or tests on the same material, which all the same students will get A's. Too often us teachers see tests as indicators only on what students have learned. They are also an indicator on how the students were taught. If a question baffles many, then I need to try to teach the material differently or as a friend told me recently ~> ask the question differently.

My students would not be in my classroom if their only problem was test taking. I see this as my goal - to show them that a classroom can be a place that is not traumatic. So why fail them and have them leave feeling the same way about school. The other day in my bio class, I joined them at our communal table. I sat down at their level. I looked at them and said, "You have had a marvelous quarter. You have completed everything I have asked of you in and outside this room." It was the truth, however, I couldn't have said it to all my chemistry students.

"So now I need to see what you have learned in the past nine weeks. I really don't care if you have learned everything. I do care that you allow me to see what you have learned so I know how well I have taught you. You all have earned a fine grade from me. Don't fear this test." Then we reviewed.

The cool thing is this ~> when they are proud of themselves, I can be proud of myself.

Today my horticulture students were given a boatload of flowers and told to create something beautiful. They passed.

 

Unfolding Outward From a Quercus Alba ~ the interconnections of a Pennsylvania forest

Every year we are asked to place something on a table and/or wall to celebrate learning in our classroom. So last week, my students entered my room to see Quercus alba written in the center of a large piece of paper. I told them I had an idea. I told them it wasn't that clear.

And so it happened. We discovered the ecology of a forest in Pennsylvania.

I said ~ Tell me organisms that connect with White Oaks.

They began to tell me things ~ Humans, and many others eat the acorns. Gypsy Moths eat their leaves. Great Blue Herons nest in them. And the forest unfolded.

What shelters? What eats? What parasitizes? What competes?

I would say ~ choose this or that organism? Find me five connections.

If they told me something general like, frogs, then In most cases I would tell them to find me one living in Pennsylvania. If I wanted a connection between two organisms, I told them to search one out. We discovered new organisms and strange connectors.

I need to do this again.

 

S is for Serenity ~ the A to Z of One Word Messages

Would I have ever chosen serenity? It wasn't likely. Nothing against it, but it was not in my idea list. It is a word I almost never use. Do you? 

But my friend, Robin chose it as her word for 2013 and commissioned a stained glass piece, not a mosaic as we do most words these days.

Today is Earth Day and I was celebrating success stories with my students.  Rivers cleaned.  Birds returned. And an Iraqi man who returned to a country he had fled many years ago, to find the wetlands he loved drained. When he spoke of being a young boy on his father's boat, he used the word serenity. Then he dreamed.

My mind listened and then roamed. Maybe this is a calling to return to nature paths I love and the flowing water that soothes my soul. 

 Serenity.

Where would you go to find it? 

This is where Azzam Alwash's dream led...

digging science and how plants call out for help

I dig leaves that call out for help
and shadows
taken by
WayneStratz
via
his home garden

Today I taught a rather diverse set of classes all the same material, just used some different techniques along the way, but hopefully now all the students know that plants don't just sit there and take it when a caterpillar slobbers all over it.

Looking for super powers ~ Southern Fried Science inspires this week's homework

I came across this blog post that matched five organisms with comic book characters who have the same super powers.  The creature in the video is one of the five, which character can do this?

Thought it would be a fun homework assignment.  If anything I want my students to be amazed by life and learn the state assessment vocabulary along the way.

So here is the homework, after reading the blog post and answering some questions about those organisms.  Come on people, really the life form that emerged from Chernobyl, check it out.  Here is the part I hope to see some creative juices flowing, even if it doesn't flow from all of them. 

1. pick out five comic book heros and/or villains and find an organism with the same super power.  
2. choose a character and imagine up an organism that has the same power.  Write a paragraph describing the organism.  Or draw it and label its power.
3. find an organism that can do something which the average human cannot do and imagine a comic book character.  Write a paragraph describing the character.

I Dig Slime Molds

Photo by Lorraine Phelan

There are a few types of slime molds in this world.  I spoke of one years ago as an undergraduate.  I was discussing entropy at the time ~ how things tend to fall into chaos.  They spend their lives as individual cells but when motivated to reproduce they form into one collective being and work together to make spores.

The other type which I spoke of today can have millions of nuclei in their one celled slimy body, which allows them to do some advance thinking like figuring out the fastest way through a maze.  Think of all those nuclei communicating like all those neurons in your brain.  Cool stuff, which is why ~ I spoke of them today in my bio class and that always makes me happy.

Which of the Polybus humours are you?

being sanguineous?

My students had the option of doing this or that today in the computer lab.  Those that chose this were met with some questions about the history of biology.  The discussion that emerged as they met the four humours and the personalities associated with them was at times more than I expected.  It also drew some students from the crowd who had chosen to do "that."  The students seemed ready to analyze each other as much as they were open to tackle their own humours.

The humours are part of a long history of humans attempt to classify personalities and this site concludes with matching Myers-Briggs to the humours.  I am ISTP, so the website suggests blood is my humour (better than one of those biles) and I am Sanguineous.  A word that baffled my students, but seems true of some time spent in the glass studio

Vampire Algae, even if they are not vampires do something amazing

photo by Jenny Audring

My first period students start the week in the computer lab.  This week I had them checking out a DNA tutorial which got higher than average marks (DNA from the beginning).   Once they are rolling I sit back and wait for questions and occasionally throw one out to the masses.  I pull out my gadget and check my science list on Twitter.  "Vampire Algae" caught my eye.

As the students were putting the laptops away I prepared to tell them about the vampires.  And then all my classes got to hear about the vampires.  Not because they were vampires but because they are predators that can digest what we fail at, and we are animals with teeth and digestive juices and symbiotic enzymes.  Stressed out algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, (low levels of CO2) suck cellulose from other plants and use it for energy.  How cool is that!  And how cool to think of other amazing things plants can do that we cannot do that are waiting to be discovered.  Of course the article turns to how we can use these algae to help fuel our vehicles.

This was a fine thing to stumble upon a day after celebrating my botany professor.  

Mystical Monday ~ St Francis inspires a new generation

Our Wednesday nights of pie have continued as the seasons change here in PA.  But we are missing one member as the daughter of Red and the Chef has gone off to college.  She is studying biology (well one class in four years), so I have been sending her daily links to info I find interesting.  This could go on for decades as my interest in biology has been already around for decades.

The other night I found a story about how there has been an adaptation to large urban settings taking place.  Coyote pups are more likely to survive there than rural areas.  And now reports of larger animals are rising.

So yesterday, when our new priest told the story of St Francis taming the wolf... I was thinking we needed a new mystic for our times.  Mother Amanda proceeded to bless the domesticated beasts which were pondering why they were doing something new this Sunday morning.

Maybe from the midsts of these blessings of the animals a mystic will arrive, who will calm the fears of the humans and help to feed the hunger of the beasts.

Science Friday : why just Fridays and why not Friday

Photo by Jeff Potter 

Science Fridays on NPR airs during my 8th period class, which means I almost never hear it.  But a recent desire to boost my Twitter science list led to finding them on twitter, which led me to their website.  So now I can listen to a story here and there and quit bemoaning the fact that I miss it.

And the videos are great.  So I made my own science Friday moment this week.

I showed how plants need to be filmed to be able to watch them behave and went into a discussion tendrils...

and then it was to show them how the opposite had to be done to study bats...
I showed them a video that showed them just how amazing an octopus can be but also a close up of chromatophores.

and then to show the creativity of a man with a house boat... the first floating outhouse with a natural sewage treatment center...

Inside the Wernersville Tree

Above is the first photo from within the tree, which I showed as I approached it on a previous post.  The trip to this tree and then inside the tree is the only time I used my camera while on the silent retreat:

on a branch at eye level

Propioception in the studio: Science Mondays

We try to be mindful humans, but there are some things we should just let the mind take care of by itself.  Like our sense of where our body is in space.  I can close my eyes, and move my arms about and know clearly where they are, just as if I was staring at it with open eyes.  I can fling them about and prevent collisions by way of propioception.  I know I am walking, whether or not my eyes are open and if I try to control exactly where my feet will land, my gait will lose its fluidity.  Welcome to your 6th sense.

Not that I should cut glass with my eyes closed, but I should trust my body to find a natural and comfortable position while doing it.

Until we can do that our backs will ache.  So for now we are trusting a multitude of timers to remind us that time is passing.  The timer goes off and I stretch as I reset it.  We float between studio and computer glad to know where we are in space and time.

Those who lack propioception will likely fall down if they close their eyes.  The sensors in their muscles will not tell the brain that they are standing and they will topple.  Taking large doses of vitamin B6 will let a person know this feeling, a clear example of too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

So sit back and close your eyes and be glad to know where your body is in space. It is a blessing we rarely give thanks for, eyes to see, ears to hear, ... muscles to locate ourselves.

Science Mondays: Z is for Zoogenesis, second definition

Back in the day when I studied Biology I was drawn away from the molecular to the ecological. I wanted to be pondering a wetland not looking at chemical reactions. I wanted to understand the relationship between a plant and an insect, not the human genome.

I wanted to understand evolution by studying how the environment created new species, not how molecules were involved.

Zoogenesis does mean how the first animal came into existence, but it can be applied to the first vertebrate, or bird, or warbler, or how the first Northern Waterthrush emerged.


photo by Orchidgalore



Zoogenesis is full of grays, it is not black and white. Life unfolded.

Two years ago I went in search of a book to help me teach evolution and found a great one at the Doylestown Bookshop: The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution by Sean B Carroll. And suddenly I was drawn into what I avoided as an undergrad. If you want to understand zoogenesis, it is a great place to start.

for example: Understanding mutations (you and I have many that came from the creation of the sperm and egg that formed us) became as simple as understanding my keyboard mistakes--- deletions, repetitions, copy and paste, additions. All the ways we can mess up the code of English, our bodies can do with our DNA.

I still find it a bit of a mystery, but less so than before I read the book. Here is a photo I took while taking notes in Doylestown's library (a great place to learn about many things including jazz-- they have an amazing CD collection)...

Z is for Zoogenesis

Lets end this month of a to z with a beginning, which is a mystery and though best guesses may approach what happened when the first "animal" emerged on the Earth, we will never know for sure. I dig that.

When my students enter into a biology class they sit as I tell 7 origin hypothesis/myths. Then I make my claim that it will always be a mystery. I say, "Even if life is created in a lab, that does not prove that that is the way it happened on the Earth." I encourage them to enjoy that some things will always be a mystery and then encourage them to feel free to believe what they want to believe.

Then I say, "Now lets enter the realm of what biologists have discovered about life ever since it mysteriously came into being."

and that ends it, with a beginning I love.

two minds, where I often am these days

Intelligent Design is a phrase that can explode my mind, but I have two, so the other says, "bring on the mystery."

There are those that look at life on this planet and say that it could only be this way if there was an Intelligent Designer behind it. This phrase is somehow supposed to be scientific. Yet, they mean God.

There are those who say it is all rational and can be explained by science. They then claim that that is proof that God does not exist.

I disagree with both. You cannot prove an existence out of confusion (and it is not science) and you cannot disclaim something out of certainty of something else.

Recently when a student raised his hand and asked if we were going to talk about how life started, I said, "No." Then we talked about it. Briefly.

I told him it will always be a mystery. It goes against thermodynamics to go from simple to complex, to go from dead to alive. Energy had to be involved.

It mystifies me. I like that there are mysteries. It does not prove God exists. But it opens up a place to believe. To imagine that spirit blowing across the waters...

I did not say that last part. I did say, "The more certain someone is about how life started, the more you might want to doubt them." You can't prove anything by certainty either.

I am glad that I am writing about the joy of being uncertain, because it shows I am feeling less overwhelmed and more comfortable with the mystery.

back to grades.... 1/4 of the year has passed by.

being enthused

Roles change. In the beginning (at my present school) I taught life skills or functional academics, then in a major leap in equilibrium, I became horticulture guy. Now at the school I am introduced as the man who runs horticulture and teaches advance science.

I am well aware of my increase in enthusiasm these past days. Last year I taught physics (2nd time) and human anatomy (1st time). Physics was a breeze in high school then in college it knocked me for a loop for which I will for ever be recovering. And how exactly did I get a degree in Biology without a class on humans? I had way more BIO credits than needed but I was attracted to ecology.

One benefit of teaching where I work is I get questions like, "What science do you want to teach this year?" I wanted to teach biology. But I also added geology. Yes, make life more difficult by teaching something new.

Another benefit... text book choices. I decided to turn away from traditional texts that make eyes go foggy. So I searched on-line. Then in libraries. Then in bookstores (three this past weekend) including this survivor of the big chains in Doylestown, PA. Yesterday I covered our bed with books and went back on the computer trying to make final decisions.




I struggled with this decision more than I do with most. Maybe it was I had an idea of what I wanted to find and kept looking, but a decision had to be made and I did it.

Each class will have a book to cover the basics. But I also wanted the students to read from those who write well about science. The geology students will read John McPhee's Annals of the Former World which combines four of his books of traveling with geologists, including a look at the Delaware Water Gap which could be a long but cool field trip since we could stop at the Boulder Field at Hickory Run ... Here is a photo by Mr. Biggs called "mom goat" at his FLICKR photostream.

( "mom goat" a found photo by Mr Biggs at his FLICKR photostream)

For Biology I chose Anatomy of a Rose by Sharman Apt Russell which is a great book about the life of flowers, not just roses.

Anyway, I am being drawn into these classes. Yesterday I began reading the book sent to me by Loyola Press, A Well Built Faith. In an early chapter, Joe Paprocki compares folk who force relationships with God with those folk who are called by God. Things go better if not perfectly for the latter group. Something is happening here in my heart as I prepare with enthusiasm. I hope that it is arising from a call to teach on subjects for which I have passion and a desire that this will help me to become a better teacher. Speaking of which, I plan to introduce the biology students to birds. Flowers, birds, the land of Pennsylvania they are blessings that deserve my enthusiasm.