Are you helping?*
On my recent trip to Wisconsin, I stopped by the Bird Sanctuary in Green Bay. I was attracted to this display of birdhouses. Each birdhouse (and one bird "shelf" for robins) are designed for different types of birds. Each display contained a QR code linked to plans for that specific birdhouse. So, the idea is not just informational, but inspirational (political?). There are different kinds of birds and they need different safe lodgings. You can help, and here are the plans.
I like that type of display. It links knowledge and action, and HELPFUL action. I thought of this the other day after a run when I sat on a local park bench and saw that someone had left their empty milk-shake to-go cup with platic top and straw on the ground. I picked it up to throw it in the trash can which was 5 feet away and noticed that straw wrapper was also on the ground, even closer to the trash can. It seemed like a n emblem of self-centeredness, entitlement, lack of connection, laziness.
Are your daily actions adding to the Wall-E trashscape? are you making the park less useable or attractive for others? are you helping? are you making things better in small ways? or are you a bystander?
So what? I've been thinking more generally about this idea, inspired by some posts on Threads from Zero Waste Chef and this Japanese woman living in Portland who is on a 30-day-challenge of mending, making, not buying. How can I frame more of my everyday with this lens?
Using Videos in Education during Covid*
Just an observation: during Covid, my daughter was in a band class where the homework assignment was sometimes to record a video of playing a specific scale. You could record it again and again until you got it right (there might have been additional requirements about intonation?). I like this homework: it encourages practice and doing something right and has clear expectations: it needs to be correct. When I met with the new AP teachers earlier this week, they said that they'd learned (in an APSI) that you could have students record themselves during discussion. That's an interesting idea! Discussion, working with others with words, is a performance in some ways like learning how to do a scale. What other English assessments can be done like this? (How can I make sure that students are really doing it?)
Principles or Methods?*
From James Clear: Engineer Harrington Emerson on knowing your principles:
“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The person who grasps principles can successfully select their own methods. The person who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
Source: The Clothier and Furnisher (July 1911)
So what? What are your principles? Can you name them? This makes me think of Thoreau's Life Without Principle, which was a revelation the first time I read it.
Some Other Things
- In Fullersburg Woods, the robin's nest (part of the 3-flat) is empty again. Two cycles of hatching so far that I've noticed on my Friday runs.
- Only about 1/2 of the groups on the FB path seem to understand: "On your left, please"
- Milkweed in FB is growing tall in the forest floor. In sunny areas, it's blooming.
- I picked another handful of raspberries. They seem small and tight. Yesterday I picked a handful of peas (some past their prime), and a few early tomatoes
On This Day (07/04):
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