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Art by Tim Iverson

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Exploration Day: Art from Within

                                                                                                                                                                        On Friday of this week, our entire school took a break from our normal schedule, and instituted a day of "exploration." Teachers were asked to prepare lessons outside of their normal curriculum, and we offered everything from mask-making  to "reading cafe," cooking, "Shrinky Dinks," one-act plays, thoughtful movie watching, and even a trip to the local police station (and much more). Although it was a ...
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Working skillfully with the teenage mind

Mindfulness in the classroom sounds like a good idea on paper.  Take a break. Let kids breathe. Listen to the bell. Follow your thoughts. Simple, right?  Maybe... or maybe not.  Anyone who has worked with teenagers knows that even the best lesson plan can go awry, or that a teacher can encounter unexpected resistance from unexpected quarters. Then the teacher is dealing with the resistance of the student, and possibly,  their own irritation at the  student's "misbehavior." Resisting resistance! Jeremy Squires is a veteran social studies teacher at Highview, and recently shared how he deals with students who don't want to "follow the program" during mindfulness time (also called, "brain break").  Paradoxically, he found, by allowing kids to opt out of the exercise, it  gave  them permission to participate-while letting them save face in the process. His discovery  also reminds us of the self-consciousness that many kids feel at this age. He...
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Twilight Zone Thinking

For our exploration day in June, I offered a class entitled, "The Twilight Zone and Philosophy." I have used an episode of the old Twilight Zone series in my humanities class, with some success, so I thought I'd expand on this idea for my explore class. I was not disappointed. In addition to watching a couple episodes of this classic TV series, I gave a very brief introduction to philosophy and we had some structured thinking exercises that related to the content of the videos.  When the morning of explore day came however, I was still a bit unsure how to start. I had my basic outline, and videos ready to go, but still didn't have that introductory "hook" that felt right. As I was scurrying to get ready, I was listening to a short history of the series on youtube. The narrator mentioned that the name of the series came from that time of day between the light and dark- the twilight. And that this was also a metaphor for that type of moral ambiguity or gra...
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