I hope you can click on these to see him.

If you click on an image you enlarge it enough to see the birds.
I was in a place rich with wild bird life.










































































































































And it was cold wind.

I took my new camera and tried to find something interesting.
I like these best. At the moment.

These are all from a beach in Ventura, Ca pretty close to the power plant that is home to egrets, pelicans, terns, hawks, blue herons, sandpipers, seagulls, ducks and others that I am not entirely sure about.

All of them....

And it was cold wind.

I took my new camera and tried to find something interesting.
I like these best. At the moment:

These are all from a beach in Ventura pretty close to the power plant that is home to egrets, pelicans, terns, hawks, blue herons, sandpipers, seagulls, ducks and others that I am not entirely sure about.

If you can pitch a ball, it moving through the eye of a needle, all the skills that you use to throw the slider or the curve can be translated into the classroom as how you angle the eraser at the bubble you mis marked and are now carefully erasing COMPLETELY so that the scan-tron can get an accurate measure of your ability.

If you can fold an origami koala bear out of a dollar bill then you probably have the dexterity and the kind of talent that can collate the class test booklets arranging them here in the test center, thank you in advance for helping us with the core mission, arranging for our success. Artful.

If you can play an instrument or have the potentials to see the mathematical relationships in the beauty of the compositions of Beethoven soaring into your mind and heart as immortal then possibly you can write the six sentences required for the perfect paragraph on what you did this Christmas using the preposition phrase, adverbial clauses, subordinate clause, introductory adverbial subordinating clause, the santa clause and the dangling participle dissected so that we can sing, dance, hum and enjoy the beauty of your writing score on our District test as we examine it in the data pile.

If you can feel a skateboard under you like riding the waves on Doheny, Rincon, Trestles, San Onfre, can grind, ollie, manual, kick-flip then you may have the capacities to carry these booklets to each class and assist your teacher in lugging down the textbooks. Certainly the 45 pound backpack full of your texts that we now require will be something we can count on you to handle. Especially on the days it rains or smoke is out in your air as you eat out with 4000 of your peers stuffed into the three picnic table space we provide you outside.

If you can draw your favorite linebacker, TV personalities, like to do line drawings of what the teacher said or need to draw to represent the meanings of the words or to grasp and visualize that would be so very good because down this blind alley we'll surely need you to draw the map back out again as we ask you to draw a cartoon for our newest edition of "Tests Saves" in the school bulletin.

If you can hum or sing out in the darkness and grasp the notes and know the tune you can help us think up the song we will be singing this year at the inspirational prep rally, not for the child we almost lost to the car accident, no we mean the song about how this year we are all going to "try our best" and do well on this allimportant state test, NO MATTER WHAT.

If inside of technology you are as if inside the dendrites and synapses of the mind of a man speaking across a universe of meanings like the light in the darkest hole, you can help us install this canned workbook drill and kill for your peers and firewall all our potentials so that we can lead them to our water hole and force them to drink of the importance of this technology "practice". You can help us establish the "norms." We can certainly use your vision to blind their's.

If you can dance in the dream of bringing to our eyes the sensual pleasure of every feeling man, how through the body he has felt through the winds of time every meaning, you can just sit still and hold your arms, legs, body in this plastic Formica chair with very nice posture for 6 hour stretches listening to me guide you in the importance of this position during the demonstration of what you really know on this test given to prove it.

If you can hear, see, feel, taste, intuit, dance, draw, march, mine, whirl, envision, touch.... then please, please , please explain to someone how to design a few tests so that children might be able to be seen for these things you know in ways that knowing can be....as well as the very, very, very few limiting ways of test makers who seemingly lack any of them now. They need you sooooo as that design devoid of multiple intelligence tests that define schools as places that can only see with blind eyes.

I went walking in the rain tonight for a long time.
After eating at an restaurant called Salvatore's. San Diego is really changed.
I'm staying at the US Grant and it's restored. I'm tagging along to a conference CSBA, just to recover from a few hard weeks. I'm never in this kind of hotel. It's really fancy the nice door guy told me that a tribe renovated this, but even though he said the tribe five times I can't recall.
I'm wanting to share my pictures of the room.


Time to sleep.

So far...this will take awhile. As we get the dolhouse ready.
Estimated done date, Dec 1

My model from which I'm working...




All these images are from a terrific article here.....

When you have a very cool collection of "multicultural clothespin dolls" they obviously need a house. A nice dollhouse and I found exactly what we want to adapt. In fact I had this as a child. I think.

So here's the day as we build the dolls a house for my 1st graders. I'm a bit in "recovering" mode from the AM med. chores. I'm enjoying the work as it goes. My builder commenting there is "No Way" he's decorating the walls. So tomorrow I'll do that. Or my girls will.

I'm off to odious tasks of the day....but I've meant to ask.
This hawk is sitting on my back wall and in nearby trees trying to catch a kitten. Or at least I think trying to catch one. Do you know what it is?

I can't find a photo to match.

Make a wish.......I want to see my baby home from CalTech.
Soon, this is me waiting, it's agony.


Last Night I realized one of my two fish tanks was "in trouble."


I have one at home I made to learn how to keep an aquarium alive. A Community Tropical Freshwater aquarium. The second aquarium , the Pink Tank, is at school.


It's doing brilliantly. At the moment. I'm sure I'll go over there in awhile and goof it up.
My first graders have enjoyed it, me too. We log what we add and do, try to figure out things like PH and nitrogen levels or nitrate levels and ammonium levels.



It's funny but it takes a good while for the tank to get "in balance" so that it can break down the wastes. I kind of am learning as we go. But we keep records and journals and mostly talk about it and observe.


But....anyway, at home I went to change the water last night, once a month I change it out about half now with filter change, realizing it smelled awful.
Nothing dead but not good.
And very hot. I think the heater was too high. Hang with this... it has a point...or a laugh.
I cleaned it, changed water. Really there is an issue. Very depressing night. Bad dreams. Awful. I do not like for things to go wrong in my animal world. I'm not sure why but I keep lots of critters. Heidi my friend says it is the Appalachian in me.

So this morning I was home. I missed a day or two of work. well three, okay, a lot.
At the worst possible time. But in two weeks I've learned of serious issues in heart, kidney, system and I'm trying to figure it out. Lower stress. My Mom says when I'm faced with tough times I like to renovate, tear up the closets, go get a pet, or otherwise create something.
This is what she said as i said...I think the fish tank still looks bad. So I vacuumed the rocks. Bad smell. Re-vacuumed, more water.
Then as she was sharing her perspectives, my friend Heidi brought my birds from school.





To stay for a week or so, school is too cold necessitating immediate critical cage cleaning and lots of things to get them resettled. My cats simply going insane.
The birds, three Spice Finches are now settled and chirping. Get finches. I'm building a hutch. I hope too. Out back.

This done. (The class also logs in about the birds and I have nice journals where everyday we write a sentence or two, descriptive writing about their room animals activities. Right now they are eating millet. It is the cheeseburger of bird food. So of course this is what they want to eat.)


I stopped after picking up my middle daughter to get millet, bird food of champions, and bought live plants for my fish tank.

I have it in my mind the problems would be better with "live plants". So those purchased, went home to stick them in the now smelling better tank. And out came the plastic ones to get dumped in my sink. In this house after twenty years of life without dishwashers or garbage disposals, I do now thankfully have a wastub sink. So I'm cleaning the new plants and the sink is running water away so poorly. And I'm wondering and see something there in the drain.....and it's one of my African frogs which probably rode out on the bottom of the plastic plant. He's holding on for dear life. These frog are very dear to me.



Well this is AFTER the rescue. You can't film some stuff.



I get my finger there and get him out, of course he jumps and after a really valiant effort to escape i get everything in the right places. So now I'm waiting for the tank to cycle, clear, waiting to see if the things that brewed up this issue will abate. waiting.

I'm supposed to be baking pumpkin pie, awaiting my daughter, and am instead giving the birds a bath and casting a frog down the sink. But.......that's my life.
Happy Day before the feasts o plenty.

I'm not even going to mention the guy I brought over this morning for a shower in the casitas and a shave, clothes washing and trip to the bus station with ticket money so that I hope he can get to San Diego and his sister. Which is why Mom mentioned my issues. I'd seen him on the highway off ramp yesterday and by the grocery this morning. Boy was he a mess. ah well...

Do you think the Native American perspective on Thanksgiving would teach us all something?
Something to make us stronger?
Do you know this book?

The People Shall Continue (Paperback)
by Simon Ortiz (Author), Sharol Graves (Illustrator)

I wrote a little about it a year ago.....

I am a teacher, in 1st grade, that has used my copy of this book in November for 12 plus years in multiple grade settings and really love it.. It was sold by The Children's Press out of San Fran which put out excellent tales of bi-literacy and stories from minority and immigrant cultures. I hope they still are going strong.

In this story, one that stood the test of time for me, a kind of poetic Prufrock unfolds...a song really of Native American tradition in our world from then to now...a sad song...a flowing tale of bittersweet truths and perseverance....I usually read it with a child gently keeping a rhythm of a drum I was given a few years ago by a Native Sioux family.

What does it teach to make it worth the reading journey?

The relationship to the earth, nature, care of this relationship, responsibility to care for our children and their life spaces and places, the traditions of tribal members in the beginning prior to times when native cultures were literally pulled to pieces (tho that tone is not struck in this sensitive story), the arrival of the white men, the change this wrought, dissension, unrest, new religious practice, relating to the American government, scattering of tribal culture, reservation life, suffering of Native peoples, ultimate desire for unity and peace. It's really an elegy.

Why do I use it? I think this text alone is one of the most powerful ways to try to bring into the primary room a kind of talking back story, a kind of story like understanding about history and past and awareness that will take many years, many stories, many kinds of experiences to be able to fuller absorb and understand. It's a validation of something. It's a story of message, of empowering by acknowledging, it's a story of the kinds of things history can deny or do a great job of telling in another way.

I use it to bring to the story of the first Thanksgiving the story of the giant change these times signaled to Native American's...and to begin talk about indigenous peoples, immigration and all the complexities of societies and communities.

The tone set inside the text is unique...listen...

" But one day, something unusual began to happen.

Maybe there was a small change in the wind.
Maybe there was a shift in the stars.
Maybe it was a dream that someone dreamed.
Maybe it was the strange behavior of an animal.
The People thought and remembered,

"A long time ago, there were Yellow-skinned men
who came upon the ocean to the Western Coasts"
The People Thought and remembered,
"A long time ago , there were Red-haired men who came upon the ocean to the Eastern Coasts"
But these visitors had not stayed for long.
They met with some of the People
and soon they left upon the ocean for their homes.".......

You can see the way the story unfolds the perspectives of these events and allows a teacher to drop in the facts and the fictions, the then, now and the kinds of pieces needed to bring students into awareness of cultural perspectives. It's a treasure, hope you can find and use it with a child..

When I worked at Warner the need to be heard on personal history, on suffering was so great. My children were learning lifetimes of Native Perspectives.

I remember wondering about this holiday. And from my notes one father, a Cahuilla said, “It is a time to remember, for thanks we have survived, for teaching the children.”
I expected something else maybe. He went on to tell me of his families contribution to America.

A time to remember.

Here are a few things we made today.

This week the student dolls began to appear.
These came with this story from “The Fish.” one of my student's pen names. His grand mom gave him a hand making.

“ These are like we make in Mexico. My Grandmom made dolls when she was little everyday. She dressed them in the way we dressed in her town. “

I stopped here to ask the name of the town but my student wasn’t able to answer so he has to go home and try again.

“She could not buy the dolls and they make everything so she was the one that made them for all the children. She used pieces of clothes that were worn out and little things she found. My grandmom likes this. “

I went on to ask my student about his grandmother. She is close to him. He mostly nodded. But he is 6 and I know from this he is listening to her. So in one home the Molly’s Pilgrim project allowed a little boy to know a bit more about his grandmother’s childhood, and what she can make.

Jasmine who comes to me several times everyday and who considers my 1st graders “her kids” coming from a 6th grade and remarkably good at just being in the space-at being just there and a help always…made this doll. She said to me, “It is a kimono doll.” And indeed it is. Of the curly blond hair it’s probably what came in the kit I made them. Why a Japanese doll I asked? “I’d like to go there one day.”
Ah a doll to inspire a tomorrow. I like that. To see the world, even better. How can we do that?
Indeed.

How?

Tell me about your doll I asked.

“She is dressed for a very important dance..the quinceanera. We like this in our family. I am going to have a party then and wear a dress with a big skirt. In our family we have this party for the girls who get presents and are so pretty.”

This student literally rolled the contents of his doll making things around a pin, no family involved. He not only did not show it to his mom, his mom has never shown herself at school.kind of like my son does. Walks himself wherever he goes and has a savvy unlike other students in my room. With work together we made this. I don’t think we have a why.

Of this he said, “That’s how it looks right teacher?”

And so I made up a little story about a Gingerbread maker that had a face of a lion that made the cookies for holidays of little lost children. A special job in the Land of Green Dresses. She was rather interesting in her black curls and a really good baker. One bite and a child was able to wish any wish…….

And the wish of my student…….”I wish I could have another cookie.”

Well here she is. The doll with a doll stand jammed on her head. By a worried little boy who said it took “A lot of work to get that onto her head.”

This is my child who asked me if I was “Going to be happy today.” I could only answer…
"Well I’ll try.”
Of this doll he said, “ In Mexico This is how the Momma looks.”

Okay.

This child presented her doll with a smile and silence.

So I have dubbed her “Silent One” I asked if she was thinking. “Yes,”
What is she thinking about? “She’s thinking in her mind.”

Yes. Of course.



Years ago I taught in Greenfield. I taught a student, Steven Cole. I would like to know 20 years later how he is, where he is. He was such a nice kid. In 4th grade we were at that time working so often on writing. Essays I think at the time. I had a rather long test, essay format. We had worked a great deal on using the question to formulate the answer, I’m sure I allowed notes. The question as I recall it was to describe the life of the California Indians from the perspective of one tribal group.

To this Seven Cole on a two page answer sheet wrote, “Rough.”

I was unable to fail him. It just made me laugh. I am THAT KIND of teacher.

This was a wonderful doll. I looked at my student bringing it in, so happy. I asked her about this….did it represent the family, how did they get their ideas?
She looked at me, “Ask my Mom, she made it.”

And so…….I did.
“I made a teacher for you. From a village."



For now these are the Pilgrim dolls that have come to our class first Thanksgiving. Next week we will try to build them a little community.

To share their stories and write some more.