Cosmic Geometry

Cosmic Geometry is the name of a suite of prints made by Sabra Field, a 78 year old artist based in Vermont who works with print media.  I first noticed it when it was being installed on the back wall of Wright Theater at Middlebury College as a mural.  Sabra Field is a graduate of Middlebury College and the installation is the result of a student's collaboration with her to transform a blank wall in the back of a building into something inspiring and provocative. The suite of prints represents repeated patterns in the universe from the cellular level to our galaxy and how these universal patterns in the natural world make their way into the man made world, in architecture, in design, and in our thinking.  The patterns are: spiraling as in the galaxy and a sheep horn, scaling as in fish scales or on an artichoke, branching as in river deltas and leaf veins, and bubbling in soap suds or the hexagonal pattern of a honey comb.

In an interview with the artist published in the Times Argus in 2014, we get a view into her creative thinking and process:

“Our ability to see the cosmos has expanded far beyond what we dreamed half a century ago: from inside our DNA to far beyond our galaxy,” she writes in the show’s introduction. “Instead of overwhelming us, we are enchanted to find in these new images a sense of familiarity.”

Field points to the spirals of a fingerprint or fiddlehead fern, the scales found on an artichoke — her favorite vegetable — or along the many fish her late husband Spencer caught.Her kitchen in East Barnard — population 183 — also came in handy for creating model bubble patterns.

“I took dish detergent and made my own suds, then put it between two pieces of plexiglass.” Why? Because astrophysicists believe the intersection of galaxies exhibit a similar structure. The more Field studies, the more she believes in order over chaos.

“Everything is part of everything, All these phenomena take place at an enormous range of scale, but they do something for me,” the artist says. “The ancient Greeks and the contemporary art world are not that far apart. We’re talking the same language.”

We wanted to have this suite hanging in our house as the idea and the reality of Sabra Field's work is compelling and inspiring.  If you want to see it or her other prints or purchase them go to her website.  We all see patterns everywhere that are living inside of us, part of our cellular structure, and appear in the natural world near and far.  That is indeed, a miracle and a mystery including math, biology, chemistry, art, design, architecture, astro physics and all.  If you come to Middlebury, drive up to campus and find Wright Theater.  Don't miss Cosmic Geometry.

What Do You Care About and Why?

This year at Middlebury College, on several Fridays every semester, you can go have lunch and listen to a conversation where one person, an alum, a faculty member or a student, speaks about what he or she cares about and why. This event is sponsored by the Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Apparently, this kind of thing happens also at Yale and Stanford and other colleges and universities. Last November,  I attended one of these Reflection Fridays, as they are called, to hear Laurie Patton, the new president of Middlebury College. I have been thinking about her responses ever since because her voice, her presence and her stories completely captured my imagination.

Here is what she said.

What matters to me and why.

The way I like to think about that question is: "What is my question?"

What is the one question that I’ll never be able to answer and that I will never get tired of asking.

I’d like to pose that to all of us.

We are all endlessly curious about something and we never get tired of being curious about it.

Every single one of us has that place of endless fascination and curiosity and joy.

It is not: "What is your passion?" though it could be part of that.

It is not, "What do you love the most?"

It is not is your identity. It’s none of those things.

It is what is the question that you keep asking and it always needs to end with a question mark.

For me, it is: “What is the nature of the poet in society?” That is the only thing I care about, actually.

I love this idea so much.  Of course, I started thinking about what my question would be right away.  I am still not sure why this seems so different than stating what you care about in a declarative sentence, but it is completely different.  Having this kind of question as a guide means that you are always a researcher, always looking for deeper meaning, always wondering, always seeking relationships and connections.  You are part of a process, an unfolding, a journey.

With students and teachers in schools we often refer to Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings which come from Grant Wiggins and his theories and frameworks for Understanding by Design.  This idea of searching for and articulating a Life Question puts us in direct relationship to these big ideas as Grant Wiggins calls them.

Laurie Patton went on to say:

I carry books around with me by Adrienne Rich and others, people who write about the role of the poet in society.  I carry them in my bag so I can always go back to them.  I learned some tough languages, Sanskrit and Gaelic because I had to understand the poetry of those languages. 

At a certain point, I realized that part of this for me is wanting everyone to find their voice.  The more I did academic administration and I loved it and people loved the way that I did it, I thought, "Why is this working so well?" And the reason is that what is so joyful about doing administration well is helping people come to voice, helping things that aren’t visible become more visible, and helping people speak whatever that truth is even if it is hard for others to hear.

And building a world, even if it is a small world, where we are better at it every day, even though we are never going to be really good at it because it is so hard, is so important.

Everything that I do is related to helping people come to voice and come to voice in the most poetic way possible. I don’t mean help them write great poetry, though some people can do that. Poetry is about seeing something new and juxtaposing two things together that are not usually together, that is what good metaphor is and there are various cognitive theories about that. What I love about good metaphor is that it allows you to hold difference in tension in a way that maintains relationship.

What I mean by coming to poetic voice… is that it allows for the deepest and newest meaning in our lives to emerge.

I am still working on my question and I will write about that in a future blog post.  In the meantime, think about your question. What matters to you and why and how does that take the form of an endlessly fascinating, always leading you on, always nourishing and inspiring, kind of question?

You can hear Laurie Patton in conversation with John Isham during this Reflection Friday here.

Baby Steps: Making Learning Visible

A few months ago I had an email exchange with an elementary school teacher. Here is what he asked me.

Hi Louise,

I have read several books including "Making Learning Visible" by Project Zero and "Visible Learners" by the PZ team. I have also read several books on Reggio and visited a Reggio preschool here in Atlanta called Saint Anne's. So I have a pretty good sense of what to do, but I feel overwhelmed and I don't know where to begin.

What is a simple, baby step 1, way to begin?

I will check out the books on your website.

Thank you so much.

Here is what I wrote back:

Start to have real conversations with your students and write down their ideas and perspectives. Put their quotes on the wall. (Read Talking Their Way into Science by Karen Gallas)

Take pictures of your students at work…with your phone.  Or shoot a video.  Print some photos… put them on the wall with their quotes and ideas about what they are thinking and learning.  Take good photos and edit them to select the really good ones that communicate curiosity, joy, collaboration, skill etc. and clear subjects with uncluttered backgrounds.)

Ask your students to draw and take time to draw. Get some nice black fine line markers Sharpies from Office Depot or somewhere. Teach your students to use them confidently to draw lines.  Ask them to draw objects, scenes, themselves, visual representations of what they are learning...put their drawings on the wall with their quotes and the photos of them at work…or ask them to take photos of themselves at work. Or ask them to write down each other’s ideas and have them select quotes for the wall. They are old enough to be co creators wtih you of visible learning. (Read the new second edition of In the Spirit of the Studio which I edited with others.) Look at Austin’s Butterfly video of Ron Berger doing peer critque with students. Google it. Read his book too, An Ethic of Excellence.

One last thing…study good layout and design, look at the way museums do it. Find a talented parent to help you. Find a graphic artist to help you.

You want what you put on the wall to be powerful, effective communication.  Find clear push pins, don’t staple or tape if you can avoid it.

Good luck! I know you, your students, your parents and your community will be thrilled and you will model making learning visible for everyone else.

*The images in this post are from The College School, Buckingham Browne and Nichols, Lesley University and La Scuola. Click on the images to go to their websites.

Yes, We Can Teach Fairness...Starting with Relationships

Frequently when I observe a classroom or a small group of students I become fascinated not only with the ideas that they come up with (whether with 3-4 year olds in blocks or 5th graders discussing "Matilda"), but also with their behavior, their interactions around sharing ideas. In recent article in the New Yorker magazine, "How We Learn Fairness," author, Maria Konnikova discussed current research that provides new insight on common behaviors around sharing ideas.

Two areas emerge: "disadvantageous-inequity aversion" (DI) and "advantageous-inequity aversion" (AI).  To put it simply, DI is: I don’t like getting the short end of the stick; and AI is: I don’t like getting the long end of the stick either.  In most cases, we humans prefer fairness.  (And, NO, I’m going to draw any parallels with the current political climate in the US…though you are welcome to.)

But why is this?

As teachers and parents, there are times when we witness ruthless competition among children: I am happiest when I have the advantage.  Yet, the research seems to bear out that students accept or reject offers (Here, you can have more candy…and not you….) not out of some abstract idea like “equality,” but rather from a perception of their social status.  Konnikova writes, Its not about right or wrong.  It’s all about me, and how do I come off in this scenario.

According to Paul Bloom DI is not about principles, it’s about status.  We have a natural aversion to getting less, not inequity.  The kids’ behavior isn't principled; on the contrary, it seems motivated by something very much like spite.  And the message is clear: I want to emerge on top.  The absolute number of candies matters less that my relative status.

Apparently, AI is also about social status.  If you live in a society where ideas of fairness and equality hold a privileged position, then it becomes meaningful to show yourself as embracing those ideas, even at personal cost…status gained by being an admirable role model (Konnikova).

To add more perspective on DI and AI, research shows that DI is innate (all over the world and in the animal kingdom, getting less than others is perceived as an insult); and AI seems to be a product of social life or culture.

This suggests that AI might require certain kinds of social environments in which to thrive.

Konnikova summarizes as follows: All of these findings have something to say about why we value fairness. Our ideas about fairness are relativistic, rather than absolute. In many ways, we approach fairness as a form of social signalling. People tend not to care about equality as an abstract principle; instead, they use fairness to negotiate their place in a social hierarchy. And, for that reason, we’re especially willing to give up our unfair advantages when there’s the possibility of strengthening a future relationship.

And there’s the kicker…perhaps the key, the same key we reference in almost every aspect of our work with teachers…it’s about relationships.  Study after study showed that, When participants…became more invested in their relationships…they gave up more to nourish and maintain them (Konnikova).

Yes, you can teach fairness, and it begins with growing relationships…awareness of others…honoring other.

Documentation Panels at The St. Michael School of Clayton

The St. Michael School of Clayton (SMS), 5 miles from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, has recently uploaded to their website an impressive array of documentation panels, 21 in all.  Each panel is easily viewed and read as a PDF.   SMS has also printed each of the panels as a 2’x3’ poster to display in the hallways, turning the school into a gallery of student work.

The SMS faculty has been composing documentation panels for over 20 years having adapted this reflective practice from their colleagues/mentors in early childhoods schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy.  The first panels were attempts to tell the stories of student projects through teacher narrative, photos of students working, student dialogue and artifacts of student work.  Some displays would take up entire walls of the hallways…as large as 4 feet high and 15-20 feet long.  Most also included a long and detailed narrative by the guiding teachers…more than you’d want to know…however, each narrative was a concerted attempt to articulate the process that the students went through and to explain the artifacts as evidence of learning.

The current panels are much more succinct and they are composed with a high level of graphic design skill, yet they include all the same elements as the original panels.  As you read through the panels you get a sense of the essence of a project, rather than a detailed explanation of the process.  However, what is more clear than in the older panels, is the connection between spontaneous or planned provocations and the deliberate development of skills and habits of mind.

For instance, in the panel Mapping the Movement of Animals we see that the teachers artfully captured the students’ fascination with a class cat and connected it with the concept and tool of mapping.  The teachers even helped the students transfer this knowledge to the science lab where they were studying millipedes.

From a whole school perspective, including preprimary through eighth grade, when you read through the panels, you develop a strong sense of the ways a strong reflective practice effects the day to day life in the school; and how the daily intentions the teachers support a gradual, profound development of skills and habits of mind within the students.

That SMS has uploaded their panels to their website for easy access to all is a gift to all educators...a generous collaborative action for which all can be thankful.