Sit Spots into Nature Journals

 Some rights reserved by eliduke

Over the summer break I read Coyote's Guide.  I want to get better at mentoring people who go outside.  I used to call them Magic Spots, but in the book they are called sit spots.  Sit spots help build empathy, understanding and systems thinking in students.  By sitting outside in your specific place you can watch change, and see how nature "works". 

Last year, I tried to develop a sense of place in students by taking photos then making a time lapse to see change, and then share that change with others.  I think it worked alright, but I want to incorporate a nature journal this year. 

I had a bit of time this summer, so also read To Look Closely.  The idea of the nature journal and sit spots are tied together pretty tightly here.  It adds another level to the sit spot.  I used to sit in a circle and discuss what we saw and felt but there was no other form of documentation.  I think that by using a sit spot with a nature journal I can help develop a sense of place in students. 

I'm not quite sure what the nature journal is going to look like just yet, but I'm going to start with notebooks, hopefully with blank pages, no lines to inspire a whole no boundaries approach. 

Here's hoping.

Welcome back

 Some rights reserved by Amarand Agasi

We tried to change our domain over the summer, and we misplaced a whole a significant number of google docs.  It hasn't been great, but I've been thinking a lot about the opportunity for redefinition.

Way too often we rely on what we did last year, we change it, make it slightly better.  I wonder about the opportunity to do great, rather than the chance to do less bad.  We can make a mediocre unit slightly better, but do we take the opportunity to really change what we're doing, and make it as great as possible, I'm not sure we all have the courage. 

When we lost our documents, I thought this was the opportunity to do such a thing, but people are relying on former paper copies to reconnect what we've already done, so it's not ideal right now. 

At international schools we change teachers pretty frequently.  Teachers go to different grade levels, different teachers come from different places, but at the beginning of the year, we're not always open to these new ideas. More often, we want to stay with the status quo, and just keep what was going okay going. 

Since we've misplaced some data, I know that teachers are a little more hesitant to use computers.  I think this image really makes me think of computer literacy. If we were all a little more literate, I'm not sure we'd have misplaced this information.  The more people know, the more likely we are to save our data (not that I want it saved in this particular instance).  

So for me, at the beginning of the year, I just want teachers to take a risk to be more literate online.