The Third Way Blog

Careful What You Wish For

 

At least once every summer I long for a winter storm;  I wish it would snow and snow and then lay down a sheet of ice so that everything would grind to a halt, no errands, no phone calls (in my imagination the phone lines are down, although the electricity still works, an old fashioned dream in this time of cell phones), nothing to do but stay home and nest and think.  So here we are this Wednesday morning surrounded by a sheet of ice, but it is already starting to melt, and I just heard the snowplow go by.  Yesterday when the storm was predicted, we brought in arm loads of wood and piled the stove high, and then put some more on the porch.  I parked the car facing downhill.  I put a pot of spaghetti sauce with the last of the frozen peppers, and tomatoes canned two years ago on the stove, and settled in.   I woke up in the night realizing that I needed to start a large bucket of ashes to spread on the path way. but other than that I am ready. However, by afternoon this one will be over, it is warming already.

 

In the meantime, I have a whole new direction in my work.   I am preparing brochures, materials, and a plan to talk directly to parents of young children about Third Way methods and curriculum, to see if there are some who would like to learn to work with their own children. So here I am in the middle of this ice storm, listening to the sump pump going on and off, keeping two fires going, and working on a brochure for parents.  The question is how to fit a brief and inspiring description of Third Way teaching methods and why they could make all the difference to parents into several 3 by 6 inch text boxes.  That's my project for the morning, before the ice melts. 

 
 
  
 So the Curt and Randy are outside shoveling the ice.  They say that by tomorrow it is suppoed to get cold so everything will freeze hard.  I dont have any choice but to finish this brochure. 

Second Stove

I know it's been ages since I wrote on this blog, and I've been thinking about the direction to take with the site.  I've noticed that most other blogs have a very clear theme.  Mine tends to wander, started out about Kenya of course, and then settled back here, and then dipped in and out of work.  This fall (which is now officially over since it snowed yesterday and I have both stoves going for the first time today) has been full of many trips to New York, two small jobs which have kept me on the road, and thinking about and designing the next step in expanding The Third Way as a business which provides training and curriculum for parents.  Somehow the blog ground to a halt in the midst of all these moves, not necessarily in my head, but on line. 

 

I pit stop at home, settle in a little, rush to put plastic on the windows, get the wood piles straight, cover the last kale and leeks with hay, pick up all the lovely kindling that is strewn around the yard, see a few friends, settle into my at home routine for a few days of work on long term projects and the next training, and then get it together to try out city life again.  I am working on being a traveling thinker/writer/teacher/artist - able to do my work wherever I am.  Yesterday we (I am traveling with a friend for a little while) got home in the late afternoon from Bridgeton New Jersey, which is far away.  The day included a stop in the morning at a fascinating flea market (vegetable stands with everything from winter crops of kale and cauliflower to nopales, sugar cane, cilantro, and agave), Christmas shopping in a thrift shop where my wallet was apparently stolen, so I had to sit in the car canceling credit cards, a long drive home because I got us on the wrong route and we sat in traffic outside of Philadelphia and then onto the turnpike in the tail end of the first winter snow, and finally home right before dark.  I rushed my friend (who is from California) outside and in the silent late afternoon winter landscape we shoveled snow and brought in wood, and rolled a big log down to the house (gathering wet snow like a giant snow man) and chopped the first wood of the season. It wasn't too cold out and all the trees were covered with snow and I felt competent and strong shoveling out the pathway, and chopping chunks for the kitchen stove.  I realized that I like this country routine.  Bending, and lifting and carrying, and hunting for just the right size chunk and the new kindling that is half hidden in the snow.  This morning I made a second fire in the kitchen, not so much because it is that cold, but rather because it looks like winter outside the window, and Bill would have wanted me to.  My bedroom at the opposite end of the house from the living room stove is cold. 

 

One project I have continued ever since I came back from Kenya is taking pictures of every line of laundry I have washed all summer long.  In the spring I decided to post some of these photos when I had the first one with snow.  . 

 

Leaves, Mice and the GED

 

A week or so ago I was making popcorn and I burnt one of my main pots.  I scrubbed it out and soaked it and took a knife to it and by the time I finished it was usable, but still has little black spots of burnt pop corn on the edges.  Now each time I use it to reheat my second cup of coffee in the morning, I take a moment to scrape away at least one of these little patches.  In a couple of months my pot should be back to normal.  Each fall, I have to relearn this approach to problem solving when I am faced with two seemingly impossible tasks that come with living in the country- the raking of leaves and the autumn war with  little wood mice, who also want to come in out of the cold.  

 

In the front of my yard is a very large sycamore tree, and there are three more on the side. These trees keep the place shaded in the summer, provide all my kindling, and, I am told, prevent my basement from filling with water.  My whole ecosystem would change is these trees were not here.  However, sycamore leaves are huge and never break down - they take years to decompose, so every fall I am faced with the monumental task of disposing of four tree's (each 50 feet tall or more)  worth of sycamore leaves.  This is my least favorite outdoor job.  I go out and rake and rake and rake and rake.  I look up and see more leaves yet to come. I have to remind myself that if I just keep at it, a little at a time, the task will eventually be complete.  The point is that I cannot do it all at once, I have to keep doing just a little, and then a little more, forget about evaluating my progress. One step at a time and eventually the leaves will be raked up, at least for this year.  Every year by Christmas the leaves are gone, or at least in piles in the woods.

 

The mice, however, are different. They reproduce. There is no end. They come in from outside at this time of year.  They scamper around the kitchen, and I hear them and, of course, see the evidence they leave behind.  Every once in a while when I am sitting at my desk, one peers around the corner and then darts down the heating vent.  One year I was having guests for Christmas and I decided I had to get rid of the mice, to gather them up and dispose of them like leaves.  Night after night I set traps, using my leaf strategy.  Just keep up picking away at the problem and eventually it will be solved.  I would hear a mouse, set a trap, hear the trap snapping, go out and dispose of the remains and think, "OK that's taken care of."  When I got to 17 mice, I gave up.  This was guerrila war fare and I was losing.  I had biological and high tech weapons, but they had the numbers, infinite warriars to throw into the battle. I could not win. Unlike the leaves, which are in any given year finite in number, the mice just keep coming and always will.   

 

So I've been thinking about this in the last few weeks as I worked on a project which involves training teachers who are teaching the GED in Spanish.  I was asked to give them a training in test taking skills.  Looking at the exam myself (in Spanish), I was able to relate to the students who come in from long day's work in packing plants, or in the fields and are faced with complex diagrams of different kinds of electircal circuits, lists of all the kings and queens of England for the last three centuries, or a geometry problem involving the properties of triangles and circles.  The task seems overwhelming.  The answer, or solution is so far away and even if you answer it there is another question and then another, and then another, all of them slightly confusing.  (I could relate to their feelings since although I have taken many multiple choice tests in my life, I had never tackled one in Spanish a language I speak quite comfortably but have not written or read that much.)

 

I finally realized that test taking is a leaf problem not a mouse problem.  The solution exists; it can be found.  True, it is more difficult than raking leaves, difficult, but not impossible. There is a process to follow that will lead to finding the answers to the questions.  It is a mistake however to look at the whole tree, or in this case, the whole test. The training I gave this week and will give again, leads students through a step by step scanning process; it focuses them on that question, that diagram, that phrase, the little patch of leaves right in front of me.

 

For me personally, this is a lesson that has to be learned over and over and over; every time I start a new project, I forget and feel confused and overwhelmed and discouraged. No doubt I will again next year when the Sycamores begin to lose their leaves.  In the meantime, I have no idea what to do about the mice. 

 

Get Those Apples off the Porch

 

 

I have been sitting at my desk catching up since about six thirty. Suddenly I heard a thump from outside that actually shook this little room.  I've become an expert at telling the size of the living thing that is making the unexplainable noise in my space since living here by myself. There is a big difference between flies, mice, squirrels, deer (in the woods) and this large heavy presence.  I looked behind me and there just outside the window was a black bear pulling itself up on the lilac bush.  I rushed to find my camera, and my glasses and went out into the kitchen,  lifting up the quilt that covers the window on the front door.  There was the bear, literally at my front door.  I couldn't have opened it if I wanted to.  Which I did not.  I took a couple of pictures and then banged on the door which the bear completely ignored.  So I opened the door from the inside, leaving only the storm door between myself and the bear, not a very large one as bears go, but large enough.  I took the rest of these pictures and finally she (or he) ambled off across the yard.  This is a first for bears at this time of year.  I think it is time to move the apples from the porch to the attic, where I only have to worry about mice. 

Funny, I had been thinking that I wanted to start writing again.  Just finished a short burst of time when i had to produce training materials, and so was doing only that.  I have a lot to talk about but the bear has come first. 

 
  

 
  
 

Pattern Recognition

My partner, who died in 2004, destroyed any picture he found of himself.  This was partly, I suspect, vanity (he didn't like the way he looked in pictures), but it was also his philosophy of living.  "I want to be like a shooting star," he would say, "When I am gone I am gone..."  Well, in many ways he is indeed gone, but sometimes it seems like he left a very strong tail of light across my sky.  

 

I am especially aware of this in the fall as the cold weather comes, since it was his job to prepare for winter.  I think about him and ask for his approval as I go about getting the wood organized, the plastic on the windows, the porch cleaned off, the chimneys cleaned, and learn once again to pay attention to the stove. These last few days his presence has been especially strong.  It all started when we had a terrific wind storm.  It blew and blew and about noon the power went out.  I had let my car run low on gas and no one was pumping, so nowhere to go. Stores in town closed; everything came to a halt and I, unable to do anything else, went out into the garden to get it ready for winter.  About four oclock, I realized that the power might not come on soon and that I had to do something about lights.  I went into the house, and there in the corner of the living room were the six kerosene lights that my country boy had bought at yard sales and stashed at least ten years ago, just in case.  I carefully pulled out three; dusted off the chimneys, checked the wicks, lit them experimentally, and adjusted the wick again.  Light!  I found the big rechargeable flashlight that had also been purchased about 8 years ago for just such an emergency. I said "thanks" and went back out into the garden.  

 

The next morning the power was on and  I found one of the little scraps of paper and ideas that he left around and which still float in and out of my life.  He had many little notebooks, and a very characteristic neat clear hand; over the years I have kept all the little notes, comments, ideas, descriptions, that I find. So I found one talking about pattern recognition, about this skill as a cornerstone of thought, and the basis of an approach to teaching reading.  The notes say,  "want to take advantage of the 'sixth' sense - the ability to perceive patterns effortlessly.  This leads to the ability to think."  He then goes on to outline three steps in the "Initial phases of learning to read,"  starting with the first step "Recognition of patterns - this is the key to reading. Then comes the understanding of real meaning - moving from symbols to meaning.."  There is a note at the top of the page....."Separate pattern recognition from comprehension at first."  This idea of  reading as a physical skill first, and then eventually a combined physical and mental activity, is pretty interesting, especially since it preceded by ten years the whole revolution in brain science that is taking place, and in fact, a discussion of pattern recognition as a primary human tool for making meaning out of complexity.  

 

Somehow there seems to me to be a metaphor here – the lanterns in the corner of the living room, sitting waiting to be used, and the many scraps of paper that shed a little light on how we learn to read, a truly mysterious process, and one that is not taught very successfully in school.

 

Under A Tree

I woke up this October morning to the sounds of wind, rustling leaves, not quite rain, but soon.  Fall is certainly here.  Coffee and a fire were in order.  Half an hour later the phone rang and I looked at the long string of numbers and realized it was either a call from some place far away.  I answered the phone and heard a voice speaking to me in a combination of Kipsigis and Swahili. Esther checking in.  Eventually she switched to English.  "We're under your tree,"  she said, "We're here arranging our first loans; and the women all said 'this is Peggy's tree, where she used to teach us English' and she has forgotten us.  Where is Peggy?"  So they called.  Esther told me that she had been training the women using the methods and materials that I developed for her, and that it was working!  For the first time the small cells of women understood how to keep their records, how to keep track of the money.  They were ready to make the first loans in over a year.  "Your system worked," she told me.

 

All I did was look carefully at what they needed to do, and then break it down into a simple clear, step by step process. I kept taking the process apart - what do they need to know in order to take this step? I asked myself.  When I was a child my father used to give us Christmas presents in a big box.  We would open the box, only to find a smaller one inside, and then another inside that, layer after layer.  That's what I did with the training process, after sitting in the office in Sosiot for hours, then watching the women at meetings, sitting on the edge of group meetings, listening to the government trainers,and of course talking to Esther late into the night, I began to pick the whole process apart.  They needed to fill out a simple report at the end of the month.  OK, what information did they need in that report?  That led to the question of their books, how did they write it down when people brought them money.  What did the columns look like?  Back, back, back to the first interaction.  What did they say to each other and write down when money changed hands?   I ended up sending the forms and a small training manual after I got back home; I had to not only create the forms themselves, but break down the training process- so a method for the women themselves and also for their trainers.    I remember wondering, doubting really, that this would work.  It seemed like I would have to be there to make the whole thing run smoothly.  But apparently not - the whole process is working, at least partially. 

 

So I sit here in my desk, in my room, the only sounds the stove, the wind, the plastic on one window creaking, and I wonder if this work and writing make any sense.  This is one of the parts of working alone much of the time; there isn't much feed back and there's lots of room for doubt.  It helps to know that I have a tree in Kenya and that the women are getting their loans again. 

 

Which way is north?

Walking around New York recently, I found myself in a neighborhood that I knew well from my childhood.  We were on our way to the farmer's market in Union Square, which is much changed from the scruffy, often empty park I knew in the late fifties.  My brother and I used to walk across it every Tuesday evening on our way to our father's office.  The trip from the upper west side was complicated because it involved changing trains twice and then walking through the park.  It was the first time we were allowed on the subway without an adult and so I remember it well.

Anyway, as I instinctively turned down fifteenth street in the direction of Union Square, I began telling my companions how I still figure out directions by imagining myself on a corner in New York City.  This very summer I stood by the lake out west trying to decide which side was the west side and which the east.  I closed myself and imagined myself facing uptown (north) and then I knew west was to my left and east to my right.  I have used this method to figure out directions in all parts of the world - traveling from Huancayo to Cuzco in Peru, from Kapsoit to Sondu in Kenya, and in my own bedroom when I try to figure out if the window faces south or not. 

One of my companions, a person who is often half lost, even in familiar places, described an even more complex process for figuring out directions.  She closes her eyes and decides which way "feels like north."  She then pictures a map of the United States, and pictures herself facing Canada.  She then has to picture herself playing the piano to determine which is her left hand and which is her right.  Then she knows that California (we) is on the left and New York (east is on the right).  Finally she is able to put it all together to figure out which way to go.  The third member of our party is much more grounded in the here and now.  He uses the sun, the time of day, and time of year to determine where he is. So, three different learning/thinking styles.  One is based on visualization of a deeply familiar place, another on reference to the printed page, to playing music and the use of a complicated ritual, and one which is based on actual clues from the real world.  All three work, in a manner of speaking, although some better than others I suspect.

I have been thinking about this discussion ever since.  As an educator I suspect there are lessons to be learned her.  First of all, the power of familiarity, of deep memory, of experiences repeated over and over in childhood.  Secondly, the power of visualization of picturing things in the minds eye as a tool for learning and problem solving.  And finally how differently we all solve the same problem.  There is much talk these days of "learning styles" and of teaching to children's strengths.  I prefer to use the strengths as the foundation, the beginning, and then to try to mobilize all the different ways of learning in every child.  So I have begun to think of games that help us learn direction using pictures of familiar places, drawings, clues from around us, and words.  I am going to start asking everyone I know how they figure out which way is north. 

If you read this, why not submit a comment describing what you do when you find yourself in a new place and have to figure out which was is north.  I'd like to know. 

PS - sorry for the long delay between posts.  I am back on track again. 

Monday Morning

 

Written a week ago: Sunday August 15

Yesterday was Sunday and a very quiet day. One phone call, I think, and I didn't leave the house, except to work in the yard.  One person stopped by briefly and I wandered up to his car, picking my barefoot way over the stones, to check on another foolish friend who just nearly killed himself riding a motorcycle too fast.  Other than that I wrote some stuff on Kenya someone had asked me for, posted a blog, pulled weeds, rearranged my watering system,  took pictures, read old New Yorkers, tried to watch some shitty TV,  and continued to brush away cob webs, both inside and out.

I got home four days ago and have been getting used to the pace and also the space ever since.   I came home full of ideas and plans of things to dive into.  But it did not work out that way.  For the first two days I took care of emergency business, knocked down cob webs fom my bedroom door and my favorite chair, the bathroom mirror, and my big blue coffee cup: I pulled grass from between the California Poppies and the green beans (which will be ready in about a week.)  Interestingly, there were no signs of mice.  Is this because it is summer, or is my old friend the black snake back in residence?   I saw a few good friends, went to one party, exercised enthusiastically, thought about all the things I planned to do, made a few lists, read old New Yorkers, and felt uneasy about the fact that I was not busy all the time and was alone most of the time.  

This is my fifth year on this whirlwind project that takes me out west from the middle of July till the middle of August.  Besides the obvious pleasures of being in a beautiful place, working smoothly as part of a team, and doing interesting work, there are some underlying elements to this experience that I really enjoy.  Last year I noticed how restful it was to stop reading the paper - to not follow national and international news, to stop paying attention to problems I can't solve.   Local papers, which pass under my nose occasionally, are all about forest fires, rodeos, state politics, the occasional car or boating accident.  Briefly, my world becomes one where I have the power to solve problems, to direct my energy and thinking to concrete ends.  It is liberating and restful. This year, I realized something else that is personally very restful for me. I get to focus exclusively on one project, unlike when I am at home and usually have many projects going simultaneously.  Writing this, I wonder why this is - is this a natural consequence of the kind of work life I have chosen or do I do this to myself.   

Three days ago, I tore all the yellow sheets, and six week old lists of things to do, off the wall in front of my desk, and now it is blank except for a few photos, two of my own water colors, and my favorite quotes.  Soon the lists will go back up.  There are at least three, if not four, projects to come back to, and a final report on the work I just did, also a level of uncertainty in my life that is absent when I am out west.   In theory, I know that the key to handling all this is to think about one thing at a time, take it step by step.   I also know that it is also important to not think about any of it some of the time.

Written yesterday:  Sunday August 23  (scribbled on a yellow pad that I keep on my desk next to the computer)

"I feel like a muddy pond + the water is slowly settling, clearing.  I can dimly see the shape of...........  is this how it works?" 

Underneath I wrote..."quiet, time to settle - can't keep stirring, quiet."  Then a list:  Kenya, parents, final report, people I need to talk to, my writing."

So,  I woke up yesterday morning with this image of a pond in my head; and as I exercise, clean up the garden, put papers away, reclai my space indoors and out, and work the final report, this blog, and other projects, the shapes of next steps are slowly emerging.  It is so hard to remember that this will happen when I am in the transition state from one project to the next, when I am picking up the pieces.  I berate myself - why don't I always of a claer picture of the path, why am I  at age 64 (I almost wrote 63) still finding the pond cloudy? 

Written this morning:  Monday August 24

Now it is Monday morning and I am back at my desk, looking up at the white wall which is slowly filling with papers, an outline of the final report, three sheets with diagrams (pictures) of projects.  I start my day.    Perhaps, the most interesting thing that happened in the last week is that I finished examining and entering onto a spread sheet the over 150 two page assessments that we filled out for children who played games repeatedly in the orchards, and I realized how much information we now have on these children.  This method of assessment, using observation only (no testing), has evolved over the last five years and I think it is a good one.  Reading many of these, I can see exactly where the child is at in her math thinking, attention, ability to work with numbers, problem solving, where the holes are, what should happen next. Each one was like a  portrait of a child - it was coherent and informative, and in fact much more complete and useful than any test score, I have ever seen.  Parents could use this information. 

 

 

Back to School

 

Checking the NY Times on line, I come across a front page article on new federal initiatives and funding in education; this new program is named "Race to the Top."  I flashed on the work of George Lakoff and his discussion of "framing",  the idea that the way you name and talk about something "frames" it and generates a whole set of assumptions and conditions.    OK, so "Race to the Top"; I think of  - speed, pressure, pre race jitters, competition, winners, and, of course, losers, especially losers.  Most races have one winner and many losers. Is this really the best way to frame an educational initiative? 

 

I read this, sighed, and then went back to my own work.  Taking a break a while later,  I padded up to the road to see if my mail had come yet.  It had, and along with a couple of bills, I found a catalog for test review materials in my mail box.  It is called, are you ready for this?, "Buckle Down." ! So buckle down and join the race; this is the message as school starts next week, back to the world of pressure, competition and speed, of having to measure up, or not measure up.      

 

Interesting, when I just came back from an education program where we worked very hard to (1) take off the pressure and (2) slow down.  And we did this specifically so children could learn the very skills covered in that test prep book, skills which they are not, in fact,  learning in school.  This was obvious as we played the games, and, interestingly, obvious to the children themselves.

 

This year I spent time talking to teen.   asked them about math, about what they knew and what they didn’t know, about what they wanted to learn.  They said they only half knew their times tables, they didn’t understand fractions and percents, they were puzzled by big numbers, word problems were terrifying,; they were nervous about the state wide high school assessment tests coming up.  They asked for a “test prep’ course next summer.  We  hope to do this, but not as a race,  rather as a journey, a liesurely, systematic examination of typical test questions and how to answer them.  One more skill that can be learned in the orchards, I hope. 

 

More Pictures Than Words

I seem to have temporarily run out of words.  So here are some pictures to document my move across the country, from mountains and lakes, to New York city, to my own front porch and garden.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And home again.