The Weekly Roundup 10.18.08
October 19th, 2008I spent the early part of the weekend taking senior photos for one of my kids at MRHS. She and a friend dragged me all around Creation, which was an entirely enjoyable and pleasant way to spend the morning while my wife had to work.
However, as we drove towards Harrisville, we passed the site of the new county prison. The sad part was the comment by the student:
“Do you realize that when the prison is done it’ll be a nicer building than our high school?”
Ouch.
I love watching Mr. Pickering work. Thursday afternoon he swooped to the lunch table many of the MC2 students had claimed as their own, and sat down. He chatted for a few minutes (in that way only he has) and then swooped back up.
Along the way, he picked up everyone’s trash off the table. “Hey, no, don’t worry about it, I’ll get it.”
Someone remarked, “I was half expecting him to start washing people’s feet.”
Not many of the kids got the reference, but I sure did. It’s amazingly apt, and one of the reasons this year has started off so very well.
I made a dollar this week.
About halfway through the discussion in my class at Keene State, the professor points out that the first line of the poem we were looking at was a reference to another poem. In one of those moments every professor lives to regret, he pulls out his wallet and bets us none of us will know where the line is from.
Except… well, I have an internet-enabled phone. In about a minute I offered the correct answer¹, and had I been a less honest man, would have earned a dollar. As it was, I told him to keep it.
But the point is (or should be) clear. Knowledge used to be hard to find, hard to get. If there was a library at all in small-town America, it was not going to be a place to do serious research. Technology, the internet especially, has changed all that, and democratized knowledge. It’s no longer the educated elite that only have access to information—it’s everyone with the ability to find it.
Finding is not as good as knowing, of course, and there are things which are vital to know how to do (competencies!) in order to survive and prosper. However, one of the things we need to teach is how to access information, how to find the answers.
It’s not as simple as going to Google.
Senior projects have started in ernest at the high school. I’m fortunate and lucky enough to be an advisor for a student—a new structure for the senior project that is being test-piloted. The idea (and need) is simple: with each student having an individual project, they all need someone to help them navigate the requirements of the project, and not just one lone English teacher.
It’s a great idea, mirroring the structure that’s in place with MC2. More importantly, it gets more people involved with the senior project, rather than making it a task of the English department. Hopefully, it will help build the senior project into the end-cap project is should be, something that builds on all the skills they’ve learned through four years of high school.
Good things are happening.
1 A minute bought for me by the stalling tactics of my classmates, admittedly. ↺
