One of life’s great pleasures is reading serendipitously.  By one dictionary’s definition, serendipity is “the faculty of making desirable discoveries unexpectedly.”  (I concur, therefore I quote it.)  This summer I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and subsequently decided to read his first novel, Crome Yellow.  The paperback edition that I purchased on eBay is introduced by Michael Dirda.  Admittedly, I did not know of Michael Dirda, but because I liked the introduction, I did what most inquiring minds do in this day of instant information access through the Internet, I searched for Michael Dirda.  It was not difficult.  Dirda, as it turns out, is a remarkable literary critic for the Washington Post Book World, holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell, and hails from Lorain, Ohio and a working class family.  Having spent time in Lorain, Ohio years ago, I became immediately intrigued with Dirda, only to discover that the man has well written several amazing books on reading, literature, and the like.  Further, I discovered that in his earlier years as a student, Dirda struggled, until he fell in love with literature.  His memoir, An Open Book:  Chapters from a Reader’s Life, gives the details.  I have read excerpts and am ordering the book.  I did find two of Dirda’s books in the Blue Hill Public Library—a fine institution:  Book by Book:  Notes on Reading and Life (Henry Holt and Company, 2006) and Bound to Please (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004).  I have started the first this afternoon and am absolutely enthralled with its elegance and thoughtfulness.  I commend all three titles to you.

            The second joyous discovery this week has been from the New Yorker.  And I can thank my wife, Catherine, for introducing me to this one:  Jonah Lehrer, Annals of Science, “The Eureka Hunt,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2008, p. 40.  Again, I knew nothing of this writer and looked him up.  What a discovery this was for me, too!  You may read the abstract online–http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer   

            Both writers are incredible thinkers.  I will write more about them in a future blog.  I urge you to read them.  Jonah Lehrer’s website is:  www.jonahlehrer.com   A fascinating thinker and writer!

 

 

 

 

 

Since 1974, The American Institute for Creative Education has been dedicated to the proposition that teaching is an art form and effective teachers must be reflective practitioners and life-long learners.  As such, teachers’ commitment to sharpening their own skills in the areas of critical reading, writing, and thinking are essential in order to effectively teach students to do likewise in today’s classroom.

The mission of AICE is to provide educators with opportunities for professional growth by offering rigorous graduate and CEU courses in a non-traditional, creative manner.  AICE courses are predicated on an understanding of adult developmental and learning theories.  The goal is to have meaningful learning through student-centered and project-based work, with a critical emphasis on teacher reflection.

Under the leadership team of Director Melody Christensen and Dean Stephen York, the AICE faculty embraces the challenge to uphold progressive educational values in the 21^st century.

______________________________________________________________________________

Course Conceptual Framework:

The American Institute for Creative Education is committed to best practices for teaching adults.  These “best practices” are historically and philosophically informed by the progressive education movement and the contemporary research of Anne Brockbank, Ian McGill, and Patricia Cross.  AICE finds significant value in the “project based methodology” of William Heard Kilpatrick and the “experiential learning” posited by John Dewey.  Both men were leading teachers, philosophers, and reformers who taught at the Teachers College at Columbia University.  Course work is further predicated on the seminal psychological studies of Lev Vygotsky.  Consideration is also given to reflective/practitioners:  Malcolm Knowles, Paulo Freire, Jane Vella, and Myles Horton.

The instructional process values the following principles:

·         Reflective Practice

Participants will take responsibility to shape their study through an Individualized Learning Plan based on the Vygotsy’s Zone of Proximal Development and the reflective practitioner methodology of Brockbank and McGill.

·         Dedication to Teaching and Learning

Instructors respect and respond to the evolving learning goals and learner needs from the variety of settings students are participating in.  It is expected that both the instructor and the students will actively engage in the teaching/learning process.  Technology is an essential part of empowering the teaching/learning process. 

·         Synthesis of Theory and Practice

“Stories have the power to direct and change our lives.” –Nel Noddings, Stories lives tell:  Narrative and dialogue in education, (p.157) New York:  Teachers College Press. (1991) 

AICE is committed to merging theory and practice in a praxis methodology—through the lens of Vygotsky’s psychological perspective:  learning is social. 

·         Collaboration and Mentoring

AICE holds to the value that effective communication is an essential part of the creative learning process.  Trust among course participants will be emphasized for encouraging positive learning relationships.  The course aims to foster an open exchange of ideas and respect among faculty, students, and the broader community.  A key component of teaching as a reflective practice includes a strong commitment to dialogical education. Thus, many of our courses also aim to provide teachers and educational technicians with the opportunity to work together as a cohort of learners. 

 

 

 

I am engaged with the book, FACILITATING REFLECTIVE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION, by Anne Brockbank and Ian McGill.  (It’s listed on my bibliography.)  I have known for a long time that teaching is best practiced reflectively.  Now, I am teaching a new course for AICE(The American Institute for Creative Education–see links).  The course is “Looking at Ourselves in the Mirror:  Teachers as Reflective Practitioners.”  Yesterday, for the first time, I met with my group.  Today’s blog and blogs in the near future will be focused on this topic and text.

In chapter four, “The Requirements for Reflection,” Brockbank and McGill write:

“. . . We have already referred. . . to the tendency in higher education for knowledge to be treated as static, disembodied, as a product rather than a process where students may be detached from the knowledge being imparted.”   My comment:  Is it any wonder why this “tendency” is passed down as legitimate practice in the K-12 classrooms?  No wonder our students complain of “boredom” and are disengaged with the learning process at an early age.  Apples do not fall far from the tree!  What is modeled in higher educated is too often replicated, to the detriment of the K-12 students, and legislated into policies by the bureaucrats in state departments of education and, of course, Washington, D.C.–home of unfundated and ridiculous mandates, e.g., No Child Left Behind.

” In recognizing the interaction for dialogue as constituting a relationship between teacher and learner and between learners we are saying that is knowledge that is the material of the interaction comes through communication.”  (Italics are mine.)  I remembering distinctly having a phone conversation about this very concept with Til Evans my long-time friend, mentor, and teacher from my days at Starr King School in Berkeley.  Til, now 85, has more “on the ball” then all of the bureaucrats in the entire Department of Education in Washington, D.C. put together.  Til said that the curriculum IS the communication between teachers and students.  Alfred North Whitehead in his seminal book, THE AIMS OF EDUCATION, wrote at the beginning of the 20th Century about the “inert ideas” that are taught in the classroom and the deadness of it all.  Much of what is passed along as “teaching” is really a mere “transference” of information.  Many educational bureaucrats, who in the opinion of this writer have been out of the classrooms far too long to be making policy decisions, think that “transference” and “testing” the recall of said transference is “education.”  I don’t know how much more ludicrous it can become. 

Teaching is far more than informational.  It is transformational.  It is not teaching for students to “be told” or “lectured to.”  Teaching requires dialogue–meaningful, reflective, conversation.  This level of teaching is why Brockbank and McGill are justifiably holding higher educators responsible.  Unless the Academy changes, the classrooms in K-12 will not be able to change effectively.

We must move beyond the “Henry Ford” mentalitiy of “education as product.”  For more information on that, I encourage you to read Aldous Huxley’s prophetic, prescient work, BRAVE NEW WORLD and the PS written years later.  Education is not a product.  It is a product.

Brockbank and McGillfurther write, “For us dialogue that is reflective, and enables critically reflective learning, engages the person at the edge of their knowledge, their sense of self and the world as experienced by them.  Thus their assumptions about knowledge, themselves, and their world is challenged.  By this we mean that the individual is at the edge of their current understanding and the sense of meaning they give to and with the world.  Existing assumptions about understanding, self, and the world are challenged.  That learning becomes reflectively critical when the emergent ideas are related to existing sense of knowledge, self, and the world and a new understanding emerges.”

I believe this.  What do you think?

Write back, dear readers.   Kind Regards,  Stephen York

Tom Absher, poet and a retired professor from Vermont College, published a monograph:  “Writing is Hard Work.”  I bought a copy for a dollar or two years ago and still have it to this day.  Although I never had Tom as a teacher, I appreciated his work in this mimeographed book.  It was a guide to writing annotations for various forms of genre and a very helpful tool for me.  I was navigating my uncharted waters of getting a liberal arts education in a non-traditional setting.  My experience with the book was back in the “old days’ when Vermont College was part of Norwich University.

The concept, “writing is hard work,” rang true for me then and still does.  It’s not that I am a poor writer.  It is that I find writing to be “all-consuming.”  It can be a creative flow that I can get lost in or it can be an exercise in negative self-editing before I even get the piece written.

One of the reasons that I am writing these blog entries, something that is a huge step for me, is to keep me writing.  I expect that my students in AICE (The American Institute for Creative Education) to write reflective papers, reader response/process journals, summative papers, etc.  In order for me to have the moral authority to do so, I need to be writing myself.

Writing IS hard work.  It is 5 AM.  I have already been working for a couple of hours trying to put a new course together.  Once again, the thought of writing something new on this blog was on my mind.  I acted.  I had started with the title of this blog yesterday.  Today I decided to put some things down.

For me, this blog is an opportunity for ongoing conversation with my students, who by the way, are really tremendous adults from all over the State of Maine and occasionally from Canada or a neighboring New England state.  It is also an opportunity to “practice what I preach:  writing–no matter what.”

I think that resistance to writing is not only about hard work, but it is about “risk taking.”  Putting one’s thoughts down for others to read requires courage.  It is opening oneself up to feedback from others.  Jesse Stuart admonished would-be writers to write something that they would like for themselves and not to worry about what other people would think about it.  Rainer Maria Rilke said something similar in the book, LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET.

I am curious as to what you, the reader of this blog, do to get yourself writing.  Do you write regularly?  Do you find writing to be “hard work?” 

Well, those are my thoughts this early Tuesday morning.  I’ll be looking for your response.

Kind Regards,

Stephen

I am posting my working bibliography here.  These are some of the books that I am referencing in courses that I teach for AICE–The American Institute for Creative Education.  www.aiceonline.com

It is my intention to write about what I am reading and hopefully engage you, the reader of this blog, in a dialogue.  Here’s my list.  What have you read or are you reading on my list? 

 Created at www.bibme.org

 

• Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Lincoln Van Doren. How to Read a Book. New York : Mjf Books, 1972.

 

• Adler, Mortimer J.. How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1940.

 

• Anderson, Benjamin Samuel, David R.; Bloom, and Lorin W.; Krathwohl. Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing, A: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Complete Edition. White Plains, NY: Longman Publishing Group, 2000.

 

• Ashbaker, Betty Y., and Jill Morgan. Joyce Hinckley: on the front line.(An Interview With …)(Interview): An article from: Intervention in School & Clinic. Austin, Texas: Pro-Ed, 2004.

 

• Ashbaker, Betty Y., and Jill Morgan. Paraprofessionals in the Classroom. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2005.

 

• Ashbaker, Betty Y., and Jill Morgan. Work More Effectively with Your Paraeducator.: An article from: Intervention in School & Clinic. Austin, Texas: Pro-Ed, 2001.

 

• Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. Teacher (Touchstone Books). New York: Touchstone, 1986.

 

• Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1996.

 

• Brockbank, Anne, and Ian Mcgill. Facilitating Reflective Learning Through Mentoring & Coaching. London: Kogan Page, 2006.

 

• Brockbank, Anne, and Ian Mcgill. Facilitation Skills for Higher Education.. London: Kogan Page, 1996.

 

• Brockbank, Anne. Reflective Learning in Practice. Brookfield: Gower Pub Co, 2002.

 

• Brockbank, Anne. The Action Learning Handbook: Powerful Techniques for Education, Professional Development and Training. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004.

 

• Coles, Robert. A Robert Coles Omnibus. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993.

 

• Coles, Robert. Children of Crisis. New York: Back Bay Books, 2003.

 

• Coles, Robert. Teaching Stories: An Anthology on the Power of Learning and Literature (Modern Library Paperbacks). New York: Modern Library, 2004.

 

• Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. New York: Mariner Books, 1990.

 

• Coles, Robert. The Moral Life of Children. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

 

• Coles, Robert. The Political Life of Children. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000.

 

• Coles, Robert. The Spiritual Life of Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

 

• Crowley, E. Paula. Exceptional Learners; Introduction to Special Education (Study Guide). Boston, MA: Prentice Hall College Div, 1999.

 

• Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Kappa Delta Pi Pubns, 1998.

 

• Dewey, John. How We Think – John Dewey. Little Books Of Wisdom: Book Jungle, 2007.

 

• Dewey, John. The School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum. New York: Dover Publications, 2001.

 

• Elkind, David. A Sympathetic Understanding of the Child: Birth to Sixteen (3rd Edition). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1994.

 

• Elkind, David. CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS INTERPRETIVE ESSAYS ON JEAN PIAGET. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.

 

• Elkind, David. Child Development and Education: A Piagetian Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1976.

 

• Elkind, David. Miseducation: PRESCHOOLERS AT RISK. New York: Knopf, 1987.

 

 

• Elkind, David. The Hurried Child: 25th Anniversary Edition. Cambridge: Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2006.

 

• Elkind, David. The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally. Cambridge: Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2008.

 

• Elkind, Ph.D. David. Raising Kids Who Love to Learn. Alexandria, VA: Prentice Hall, 1989.

 

• Erikson, Erik H.. Identity: Youth and Crisis (Austen Riggs Monograph, No 7). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1968.

 

• Faber, Adele, and Elaine Mazlish. How to Talk So Kids Can Learn. London: Piccadilly Press Ltd, 2003.

 

• Faber, Adele, and Elaine Mazlish. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk (How to Help Your Child). London: Piccadilly Press Ltd, 2001.

 

• Freire, Ana Maria Araujo (Fwd), Paulo Freire, and Donaldo (Fwd) Macedo. Teachers As Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach. Oxford: Westview Press, 2006.

 

• Freire, Paulo, and Ira Shor. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey Paperback, 1986.

 

• Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001.

 

• Fromm, Eric. Escape From Freedom. Boston: Avon, 1966.

 

• Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

 

• Frye, Northrop. The Educated Imagination (Cbc Massey Lectures Series). Toronto: House Of Anansi Pr, 1998.

 

• Hallahan, Daniel P., and James M. Kauffman. Exceptional Learners: An Introduction to Special Education. Boston, MA: Pearson Education / Allyn & Bacon, 2005.

 

• Hentoff, Nat. Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentless Censor Each Other. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

 

• Hoffer, Eric. The Ordeal of Change. Crossville: Hopewell Publications, 2006.

 

• Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002.

 

• Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Vintage, 1966.

 

• Horton, Myles, Herbert Kohl, and Judith Kohl. The Long Haul: An Autobiography. New York: Teachers College Press, 1990.

 

• Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (P.S.). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

 

• Kauffman, James M., Mark P. Mostert, Patricia L. Pullen, and Stanley C. Trent. Managing Classroom Behavior: A Reflective Case-Based Approach (4th Edition). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2005.

 

• Kidney, Dorothy Boone. Away from it all. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1969.

 

• Kidney, Dorothy Boone. Wilderness Journal: Life, Living, Contentment in the Allagash Woods of Maine. Portland: G. Gannett Pub. Co, 1980.

 

• Knowles, Paul, and Lynn Plourde. Celebration of Maine Children’s Books. Orono: University Of Maine Press, 1998.

 

• Kozol, Jonathan. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (2000). New York: Harper Collins Publishers – Perennial, 2000.

 

• Kozol, Jonathan. Death At An Early Age. United States and Canada: Bantam, 1968.

 

• Kozol, Jonathan. Illiterate America. New York: Plume, 1986.

 

• Kozol, Jonathan. Letters to a Young Teacher. New York: Crown, 2007.

 

• Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. Bob Land: Amazon Remainders Account, 1992.

 

• Lapham, Lewis H., and Marshall Mcluhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: The Mit Press, 1994.

 

• Lasch, Christopher. Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979.

 

• Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

 

 

• Lasch, Christopher. True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.

 

• Lewis, Sinclair. It Can’t Happen Here. New York: NAL Trade, 2005.

 

• Louis, Paul Lauter, and (Editors) Kampf. The Politics of Literature Dissenting Essays on the Teaching of English. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

 

• Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York: Harper Perennial, 1978.

 

• Marchand, Philip. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger. London: The Mit Press, 1998.

 

• May, Rollo. The Courage to Create. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975.

 

• Mcluhan, Marshall. Understanding Media- The Extensions of Man. New York: New American Library, 1964.

 

• Nachmanovitch, Stephen. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. New York: Tarcher, 1991.

 

• Oliver, Mary. New and Selected Poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

 

• Palmer, Parker J., and Megan Scribner. The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

 

• Palmer, Parker J.. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999.

 

• Palmer, Parker J.. The Active Life: Wisdom of Work, Creativity and Caring. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1983.

 

• Palmer, Parker J.. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

 

• Palmer, Parker J.. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

 

• Palmer, Parker J.. To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. New York: Harperone, 1993.

 

• Peck, M.. The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

 

• Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. Teaching As a Subversive Activity. New York: Delta, 1971.

 

• Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. Teaching As a Subversive Activity. New York: Delta, 1971.

 

• Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Boston: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005.

 

• Postman, Neil. Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education. New York: Vintage, 1992.

 

• Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage, 1993.

 

• Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Vintage, 1994.

 

• Ravitch, Diane. Left Back: A Century of Battles over School  Reform. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

 

• Schon, Donald A.. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 1987.

 

• Schon, Donald A.. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (Arena). Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing, 1995.

 

• Sizer, Theodore R.. Horace’s Hope: What Works for the American High School. New York: Mariner Books, 1997.

 

• Solmitz, David O.. Schooling for Humanity: When Big Brother Isn’t Watching. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2001.

 

• Stuart, Jesse. Mr. Gallion’s School. Ashland: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1999.

 

• Stuart, Jesse. The Thread That Runs So True. Ashland: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2006.

 

• Stuart, Jesse. To Teach to Love. Ashland: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1992.

 

• Team, Gale Reference. Biography – Postman, Neil (1931-2003): An article from: Contemporary Authors Online. Chicago: Thomson Gale, 2005.

 

• Whitehead, Alfred North. Aims of Education. New York City: Free Press, 1967.

 

• Yates, Elizabeth. Someday you’ll write / Elizabeth Yates. New York: Dutton, 1969.

•  Zinn, Howard. People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

 

DVD List

 

• Beyond F.A.T. City: A Look Back, A Look Ahead. Dir. PBS DIRECT. Perf. Richard Lavoie. DVD. Pbs (Direct), 2004.

 

• How Difficult Can This Be? the F.A.T. City Workshop: Understanding Learning Disabilities. Dir. Richard Lavoie. Perf. Richard Lavoie. DVD. Pbs Video, 2004.

 

• It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend: Helping the Learning Disabled Child Find Social Success. Dir. Richard Lavoie. Perf. Richard Lavoie. DVD. Pbs (Direct), 2005.

 

• Rick Lavoie: Motivation Breakthrough. Dir. Gerardine Wurzburg. Perf. Richard Lavoie. DVD. Pbs (Direct), 2007.

 

 

 

Created at www.bibme.org

 

 

Authentic teaching requires of the teacher, humility and wisdom.  Those of us who teach must come to grips with the fact that we do not know all of the questions, let alone all of the answers.  Arrogance has no place in the life of the authentic teacher, although all of us can struggle with its presence within us–at least I do.  No one likes a “know-it-all” person.  This applies to teachers as well as students. 

Rainer Mara Rilke admonished in letters, later published by the recipient in LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET, “…love the question.”   Today’s educational dysfunctional system loves “the answer,” not the question, as exemplified in the standardized testing gone amok. 

I learned a long time ago from my teacher, Til Evans, professor of education and religion at the Starr King School in Berkeley, California, that authentic teaching also requires a teacher to be, “fully present.”  To be “fully present” requires much more than possession of a degree, certification, successful Praxis test scores, and showing up in the classroom in the morning.  Some of the best teachers in the world never even went to college, were cetified, or experienced the Praxis tests.  Consider Jesus, Socrates, Aristotle, or Plato.

Authentic teaching also requires the teacher to look at the macrocosm of our global culture and not only the microcosm of the individual classroom.  For me these days, the writings of Neil Postman in AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH: PUBLIC DISCOURSE IN AN AGE OF SHOW BUSINESS, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHILDHOOD, and TECHNOPOLY, really bring home the importance of looking at the larger picture in dealing with the literacy issues in the classroom.  Marshall McLuhan writes critically in UNDERSTANDING MEDIA.  That, too, is important for teachers to know in order to successfully discern and interpret the contextualized issues of teaching in the postmodern classroom.

I take courage in the fine teachers that I am meeting these days in my own classrooms across the State of Maine.  These men and women want to make a serious difference in the lives of children and young people.  Some of them have entered my class sessions in The American Institute for Creative Education (AICE) under the weight of stress and unreasonable demands from all stakeholders.  I find it a joy to work with them!   I want to see all of my students once again capture the vision that live on in the words of the too-soon-forgotten world educator and Kentuckian writer Jesse Stuart:

“And I am firm in my belief that a teacher lives on and on through his students. I will live if my teaching is inspirational, good, and stands firm for good values and character training. Tell me how can good teaching ever die? Good teaching is forever and the teacher is immortal.”

–THE THREAD THAT RUNS SO TRUE

1949 National Education Association Book of the Year

I encourage you to read Jesse Stuart’s books, all sixty or so of them:  novels, poetry, memoir, children’s, and essays.  His books started impacting me more than forty years ago.  For more information go to the Jesse Stuart Foundation web site: http://www.jsfbooks.com/

I hope to hear your thoughts.  Write me.

Kind Regards,

Stephen York, Dean

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR CREATIVE EDUCATION  www.aiceonline.com

 

Here’s a moment for the records; I have started a blog. I want to share thoughts with my students from The American Institute for Creative Education, write about education, books, politics, and Christianity. I look forward to your response.

—-Kind Regards, Stephen