A New Year's Walk in Winter Wonderland

This holiday, we were lucky to spend a whole ten plus days with our family including, of course, Asher, our grandson.  One of my favorite memories is a walk through the snow and sparkle trees one morning with Asher and his mother and our daughter-in-law, Caroline.  We were in the midst of the fluffiest, lightest snow that poofs when you blow it, and it was piled on top of branches that were also covered with a quarter of an inch of ice.  It was a blue sky, full sun day.  Everything and everywhere was light.

We headed down to Otter View Park, near our house in Middlebury, where there is a trail that leads to Otter Creek, (which is really a river), through a wetland and bog.  All was frozen, all was silent, all was winter at its most magical.  Asher says, "AWOW!" and "snow" and "more."  We walked, we watched for birds, we pulled the sled, we played with the snow.  We went at Asher's pace.

I will remember the  morning like an image in a snow globe that you turn upside down and watch as the snow inside the glass falls and swirls around a scene of children, and houses and evergreens.  This day takes its place with my many snowy memories.  This is a day that will always come to mind when I walk the path to the river, when poofy snow lands on my shoulders and hat, when I hear a toddler exclaim at the beauty of the moment.  Fresh eyes, present moment, outside, winter, memories.  Welcome to the winter of 2014.

A Winter Walk in the Arboretum

This week I am in Boston alone as Ashley is off traveling.  I am spending the deep winter time before the holidays lighting candles at night, arranging greens and berries around our cozy condominium, baking Christmas cookies with our grandson, Asher and family, and feeling very grateful to be alive and well in this winter of 2013. As the solstice approaches, most of us find this to be a contemplative and dark time when the days are so very short.

This afternoon, I took a snowy walk in the Arnold Arboretum which is just around the corner from us.  How lucky are we to have 281 acres of trees, shrubs and vines in our neighborhood?  To me, and to many, it is a giant woods with paths and hills and vistas of the city, in the middle of the Boston.  But actually, it is a research institution governed by Harvard University, founded in 1872.   The Arboretum was designed by America's first landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted and supports world leading research and horticulture and education programs that foster understanding, appreciation and preservation of woody plants.

Today was cold and the Arboretum was covered with five or so inches of very crusty snow.  I have figured out a walk that I love that takes about an hour round trip from our door. I walk from the Arboretum entrance to the Linden Path, and continue to the top of Bussey Hill, named for a prosperous Boston merchant who gave part of his estate to Harvard in 1842.  I look out over the woods and neighborhoods and view all of Boston, and then, head back down again.

All of me is grateful this Christmas season.  For my health and the health of my family.  For a toddler who is our very own grandson who is full of wonder and delight and new words and curiosities every moment.  For my sons, who are productive in the world and happy with such wonderful women who we are privileged to have in our family.   For the natural world all around us, red winter berries in December, snow and crystal ice that sparkles, lights that shine, beloved carols that we can sing. For our good work that we continue to love and for the educators in schools who are doing such courageous and inspiring teaching and learning.

We hope that during this mid winter season, you too are keeping warm, surrounded by family and friends and that you are keeping light alive in all kinds of ways.

Ashley and I wish all of you a joyous and blessed holiday season.  And, we hope to see you somewhere in the new year.

Design Thinking Workshop at Moses Brown

In my last blog, I focused on Moses Brown’s exciting, inaugural school-wide project work, and their MB Challenge.  Here, I’ll highlight an experience I had at Moses Brown a few weeks ago with two stellar faculty from the Institute of Design at Stanford, Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft. The Scott Duo led a Design Thinking workshop for about 50 Moses Brown students, a mixed group of freshmen to seniors.  Their objective was to give the students an experience in generating ideas together...solutions to new problems.

Rather than give the students a problem to solve, the Scott and Scott asked the students to pair up, preferably with someone that they did not know well, to discover something about their partner...a story about a time when he or she created something new or something old.  Scott and Scott modeled the sort of interview they intended the students to have with each other.

After the interview rounds, the students were asked to reflect on their own on what they’d heard...to gain insights by thinking of what might be the deeper meaning behind what they’d heard.  From these insights they were asked to create some brainstorming topics, to flip the insights into questions.  Again, Scott Squared modeled the process.

With this individual exercise completed, the students were asked to rejoin their partner to review their reflections and their brainstorming questions.  Their objective was to choose one brainstorm question for each of them.

At this point, the pairs joined another pair, and conducted brainstorming sessions, four rounds, one for each question.  Ideas were written on sticky notes and gathered for the appropriate individual.  Here, Scott and Scott grabbed a couple of adults who were observing to join them as they modeled the brainstorming process.

The students were then invited to the center of the room to a table on which the Scotts had laid out a collection of plastic cups, pipe cleaners, post-it notes, duct tape, freezer tape, magic markers, et. al.  The students were asked to use any variety of the materials to develop their idea, from the brainstorming session, into a visual representation.  The next 20 minutes were filled with fabulous construction projects.

Each individual then presented their “model” to their partner.  Particular attention was given, not to the uniqueness or splendor of the creations, but rather to the idea behind it.  The presenters were trying to discover what was working in their idea, what could be improved, what new questions appeared and what new ideas came up.

Finally, each individual presented a two minute summary of their discovery to the whole group.

One student had invented for his partner, (who he discovered had diabetes and was struggling with monitoring himself in the busy school day), a new portable pouch that could be easily attached to his waste and would therefore always be with him, both as a reminder and for use.

This design thinking process is readily adaptable to many different contexts.  For more information you can visit the DSchool website.  You will find many resources there, including a free 90 minute “crash course.”  I highly recommend it.

Last look at Summer before our School Year Begins

Ashley and I just took our one real vacation of the summer and went to Maine.  We started in New York visiting friends in the Catskills and then headed to the coast.  We took an hour ferry to get to North Haven, an island off Rockland, and settled into Nebo Lodge which is a darling, magical place, unexpected.  We have friends who go to another island in Maine every summer, Ilesboro, and they say that it is like Brigadoon as it seems to rise from the mist as they travel over on the ferry every year.

We felt the same way about Nebo on New Haven.  The food is mostly local and delicious and the chef is famous.  The rooms quaint, just as you would find in a cottage with curtains blowing in the windows, painted floors and bright quilts.  We had fun riding bikes around, visiting a farm, walking on the pebble beach and playing golf!

From North Haven, we traveled to see dear friends who live in Camden on a lake.  It was heavenly too.  A group of old friends assembled, rainy days and books, sunny days and swimming and sailing.  All in all, we had a "very,very fun time," in the words of our favorite six-year-old narrator in one of our favorite movies on Vimeo.  Don't miss it if you have not seen it.

This Sunday, Louise travels to Texas where she will work with the faculty of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas A&M, and on Tuesday, Ashley and Louise both travel to Buffalo to work with the faculty of School 33 for three days! We will fill you in on all of that and more with our next blog posts which will, with mixed emotions, not be about summer fun anymore.  Happy August and welcome school year 2013-2014!

Summer Hike with my New Camera