Journey of Words

A school district in Colorado is changing the nature of school:

One Colorado school district is going to shake things up by getting rid of grades. The move includes traditional letter grades and grade levels.
The Adams County School District 50 school board approved a new system that lets students progress at their own pace. Students will need to master 10 skill levels to graduate. They could end up graduating earlier, or later than fellow classmates. It just depends upon how long they need in order to master the skills.

While I am a proponent of having not moving students to the “next level” until mastering the standards, knowledge, or what-have-you, of their current level, do not agree with the idea of dropping the grades. I also agree with the concerns that are addressed here:

How much do you wanna bet the new curriculum includes “peace and conflict resolution” and other highly useful multi-culturalist PC “skills” over traditional subjects like history or science? And how happy will colleges be, already buried by students in need of remedial education, when presented with yet more “skilled” students?

When I am presented with a class of fifth grade students and expected to have them master the fifth grade standards to pass a state test based on said standards AND a full third of the class is working at a third grade level or lower, the idea of having students promoted, taught, or grouped by ability seems all the more appealing. However, as the blogger above noted, the curriculum is a concern.

I would like to hear from the reform minded folks out there. What do think of this concept? Is it viable? Is it an idea that is worth pursuing? Or are we stuck in the chronological mindset in our education culture? Are we more concerned with a child being with his age peers as opposed to his academic peers?

I look forward to your thoughts…

P.S. Here’s another link to the story…comments are interesting.

The Christmas Story from Luke 2 in Wordle Form:

Turned into some pretty nice artwork if I don’t say so myself. What do you think?
Go an create your own Wordle here.

Only artifacts that leave the solitude of their inventor’s studios and imaginations can move the horizons of possibility and become the raw material for more culture making. Until an artifact is shared it is not culture.¹

He goes on to quote Steve Jobs: “Real artists ship”

My interpretation: Eric needs to get on with things and start posting, submitting, sharing the writing he’s doing offline with the outside world.

Enough said.

1. Andy Crouch Culture-Making, pg. 40 [↩]

Much to Darling Wife’s joy, I have been spending this evening cleaning up a stack of files several years old. Purging, condensing, and refiling. Though not as much “purging” as Wife would like.

While perusing my accumulations of papers and articles over the years I came across this one. It is an essay that was written by Bill McKibben back in 1997. I found the concept interesting and worth thinking about when I read his essay the first time and in reading it again this evening, in light of the current societal economic mess, this idea of his has even more application.

But beyond the money aspect, this piece touches on our understanding and belief in what Christmas is all about.

The headline from my copy (a reprint in the November 28, 1997 L.A. Times) reads A Holy Day of More and More Stuff and from the original (in Mother Jones November/December Issue) reads, The Christmas.

Mr. McKibben begins:

I know what I’ll be doing on Christmas Eve. My wife, my 4-year-old daughter, my dad, my brother, and I will snowshoe out into the woods in late afternoon, ready to choose a hemlock or a balsam fir and saw it down — I’ve had my eye on three or four likely candidates all year. We’ll bring it home, shake off the snow, decorate it, and then head for church, where the Sunday school class I help teach will gamely perform this year’s pageant. (Last year, along with the usual shepherds and wise people, it featured a lost star talking on a cell phone.) And then it’s home to hang stockings, stoke the fire, and off to bed. As traditional as it gets, except that there’s no sprawling pile of presents under the tree.

Several years ago, a few of us in the northern New York and Vermont conference of the United Methodist Church started a campaign for what we called “Hundred Dollar Holidays.” The church leadership voted to urge parishioners not to spend more than $100 per family on presents, to rely instead on simple homemade gifts and on presents of services — a back rub, stacking a cord of firewood. That first year I made walking sticks for everyone. Last year I made spicy chicken sausage. My mother has embraced the idea by making calendars illustrated with snapshots she’s taken.

Read the whole thing here. Then come back an offer your thoughts. Do you or could you spend only $100 for Christmas?

I came across this video the other day via Presentation Zen and realized as I was watching that this would probably be a good piece for teachers (as well as administrators) to view. What do you think?

400 years ago today the writer of Paradise Lost was brought forth into this world.

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 1.

Update: A post by John Piper on Milton

Bear with the ups and downs the next few days. I am tinkering around with this new theme (as you can see) from Darren Hoyt. I like the design and layout of the pages. Still trying to figure out certain aspects of the right sidebar on the main page. What do you think?

You have go to be kidding me!

If you ever needed to know what they were eating in the 16th. century or when humans began consuming milk for that next big historical novel you are working on, then you need to go here: Food Timeline: Food History and Historic Recipes. I haven’t gazed at the recipes yet but hey…Christmas break is coming soon…