OMG--I am so glad that Temple Grandin and her life story is being brought to the general public--the new movie about her is coming out soon. This talk should be required for all teachers to listen to. Her book, Thinking in Pictures, should be required reading for teacher candidates. It is far more enlightening than 3 weeks of learning about autism. Click this link and watch!
Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds Video on TED.com
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Creativity, PSSA's and childhood squandered
Please go to You Tube to see this talk on how education quashes creativity--funny and thought-provoking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
You will then want to go to the TED website to view other fascinating talks on the human potential, technology, education, and the creative process. Try this one http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html
A student's blog on his 'Life on the Spectrum' of autism is also well-worth a read.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Youtube novice
I just put a 2-year-old video on youtube. A few years ago I was experimenting with a webcam and wrote a song and recorded it. It is about the downside of high-stakes testing such as the PSSA in Pennsylvania and the pressure teachers feel to "teach what's on the test." Here is the url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Cec48Mfuw
I want to use youtube to record my parent orientation so those who cannot attend can "meet" me also, and hopefully be more at ease about to whom they are entrusting their children.
Monday, August 10, 2009
August Birthdays
My daughter, Mo, just turned 21 ten days ago. She was born on a Sunday evening, July 31, after 9 pm. Three more hours and she would have been an August baby. My mom said that wasn't allowed--too many August birthdays in our family. Today would have been my dad's 91st birthday. Saturday is my mom's 85th. Both of my grandmothers also had August birthdays. So do a brother and a sister, three nieces and a nephew and my husband. One of my sisters was married in August. It is a great month for celebrations in our family, but today, I am missing Dad.
Friday, May 15, 2009
blackandgold
Each week in elementary classrooms across the country, students are featured as "Star of the Week" or "Student of the Week" and share photos, collections, favorites. My student who was presenting today came to the item of his favorite color and without hesitation said, "blackandgold." None of the students who normally might snip that "That's two colors!" said anything. There was total acceptance of this answer. I looked at the support teacher-aide and said, "Well, in Pittsburgh, that's one color." She agreed.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Aunt Nancy's Chair
It was full of money--so Suzanne said.
She had cancer--Nancy.
She beat it for a while--ten years.
But the osteoporosis caused her so much pain, the fractures just for turning in her bed.
She sat in her recliner. A lot.
She could get comfortable there.
I don't know how with the 'bulges.'
My husband, Ed, would tease her,
"Can I have your chair when you die, Nan? You don't weigh much. It won't have much wear."
He got the chair. Suzanne, Nancy's daughter, gave it to him, and Ed's addendum of,
"If I'm still alive, Nan, since I know you'll be at my funeral" didn't come true.
We got Nan's chair.
She used to keep her money in that chair.
She and Jack, her young husband, who died at 52 and left her a widow of 50
had never had more each month than most of us hand to the pizza delivery guy.
But when Sue and husband Dave came to live with her they paid the bills.
And Nancy had dollars to stuff in her chair
And give to the needy.
Hurricane victims, cancer patients (as if she wasn't one),
the home care nurse whose daughter was a single mom struggling to get by.
Nancy had tens of dollars to give.
She was lucky, Nancy was. She was rich.
The dollars from the chair were dispensed with alacrity--
"Your daughter needs a communion dress. Take this $20 to help with the cost."
Out of the chair it came.
It helped her back, the fractures,
to get that money out of the chair
so it didn't press on her spine.
That chair sat on the second floor.
It should have fallen through with the weight of the cash that was hidden inside.
A $5 bill for a little boy. A $20 bill for a big boy.
Grandchildren, nephews, nieces, friends, the RedCross, Salvation Army.
The money fell from the chair.
It blew into lives and sometimes went to many hands like "Pay it forward."
The richer recipients understood that once in their wallets it multiplied and moved on.
Aunt Nancy made less money babysitting than some folks spend in a day,
Yet the chair became stuffed and then...
The chair is gone
but the stuffing lives on.
Suzanne had emptied the chair of all its dollars and somehow they grew as she and Dave
continued to find good causes
for the money in the envelope where the cash from the chair had been placed.
Year after year she was able to send the money out where Nancy would never go.
Nancy had agorophobia.
But through the money in her chair she went all over the world.
No wonder she had fractures in her back, sitting on that damned stuffed chair.
It was bulging with.....
I check my own chair a lot.
It's not as uncomfortable as Nancy's.
She helps me dig deep to popcorn, a barrette, a ten dollar bill.
Hey, Aunt Nancy, my back feels better.
A family nearby found a ten in their mailbox just as the milk ran out.
The note said, "Good luck. Nan."
I don't have faith, don't go to church, but my back feels better when all the
popcorn
and barrettes,
and
...stuff is cleaned out of my chair.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Obliquity of the Ecliptic
Here's a poem I wrote a few years back that I can't find saved on my computer, so here's saving it. Stargazers will recognize the theme of we earthlings thinking that we're all that when a little reading about the universe reminds us that we are, as Carl Sagan said, "a pale blue dot." Here's a youtube of Sagan speaking true poetry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luAteAz3WQ0&NR=1
The Obliquity of the Ecliptic
by Sally Coyne
The obliquity of the ecliptic
Induces solipsism
As illusions cause a profusion of confusion
About horizons and dimensions
Right ascension and declination,
Illumination of earth's presumptive supposition
Of universal hegemony
While astronomy cautions economy
Of perception
When gazing
In the direction
Of space.
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