Began by poking around at Building Character.  Didn’t quite understand the model; I think local businesses house their wares on-site but a small group manages the sales.   Either way, there was some cool thrift-store type stuff.  I liked this lamp place, mostly for some of the ideas they offered.

Best thing happening there was the Heritage Press Museum and the awesome teacher/printer/craftsman.   He utterly charmed Kara, walked through the process of several of the presses, and was a great resource.   (I often talk to my students about how I can listen to anyone who is passionate and knowledgable; this man made you want to become a printer from the 18th Century.)   We’ll be down to the Ben Franklin House again this month.

We left and went to a kitchen supply place across the street:  “Mise En Place Kitchen Store.” Bought some small stuff — cool little place — and headed for our primary destination.

If there’s a used bookstore in a city, I’m going to it.  If Yelp is to believed, Dogstar Books is the last used book place in Lancaster.  This is a great store and worth making the trip.   My particular frustration with used book stores these days are books in cruddy condition.  I’ll pay real money for a book (50-70% of the list) if it’s in good shape.   Every book I pulled off the shelf here was in very good or near-fine shape.   The music section had lots of solid titles as did the gardening/landscape/environmental shelves. I was surprised I couldn’t find a novel or two because the fiction collection, mostly hardback, was pretty great.  And the kid section kept KC happy for forty-five minutes as I browsed around.   I only got two things — couple of good collections of essays — but enjoyed every moment of the store.   Well worth the trip; hope CC plays this tournament next year so we can come back.

KC and I got slices at Espino’s Pizza down the street from Dogstar.  Great Italian style pizza; wished I’d looked a bit closer at the menu because it looked like the possibility of great Spanish food as well.  The owner was there and couldn’t have been nicer.  We talked of teaching second language — I think there was a class happening just as we entered — and of the growing Latino population in small American cities.

Hooray Lancaster!

Not a bad Saturday morning.   Learned my lesson from last year and was up way too early, drinking coffee and tending to business.  Park by Drexel, warm-up, and off I went.

I did not finish behind the man in the purple velour suit.  Victory enough.

Woke up at 3:10 AM.  Damn.

Cleared the inbox, planned a bit of the day, paid the bills.  Then the internet got me and I started digging around on the old website.  Found an on-line journal from my teaching at WPHS (ca. 1998).  Here are the four quotes I featured on the opening page:

“The interest of the oppressors lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.”
Paulo Freire

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing,  hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world and with each other.”
Paulo Freire

“The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is — second only to American political campaigns — the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.”
Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)

“We must learn to enter the classroom “whole” and not as “disembodied spirit.”
bell hooks, 1994

We often have guests through our building.  Sometimes it feels like too many guests.  It’s always a good moment, though, as a teacher/co-founder when the students describe our place in such awesome ways:

“Don’t make them do the work, make them want to do the work.”

“It’s easier to learn when you feel good.”

We’re “actually connected to our community through our projects.” 

It’s funny, too, that students describe our place as a community but focus on the fact that we do a weekend update every Monday as the way of describing how we make a community.   To me, it’s simple humanity — how was your weekend — and the other daily activities are much more valuable in building the community.  The way we learn to talk and listen to each other, to respectfully agree and disagree, to debate and deliberate… all that occurs during the work.  And because we’re “actually connected to the community”,  these conversations become real because they actually  matter.

When a student says, “They call me swaggy p” and she doesn’t blink, pause, or do anything other than continuing her line of questioning.

As their self-designed projects slowly round into shape — second drafts due tomorrow — we did some writing in defense of the project process followed by a debate where they had to stand up against the curmudgeons of the world.   Here are a number of great quotes from their writing:

If you think that project work is just playing, come spend a day there and you will most definitely see differently.  JH

We know how to solve real world problems and how to handle difficult situations.  JJ

The only issue (with creating their own projects) now is motivation.   ES

The only way (students)’ll learn is by experience and with that experience they can produce even better projects that will not only represent themselves but the school as well.   JR

The (students) who play do not define the students who don’t.  JR

Words don’t mean anything unless you can show proof.  TD

If we have an idea, (the teachers) help us turn it into reality.  JG

Look at the trackers to see what they did that day.   TC

Your mom isn’t ready for this project.  IB

My answer to the second question (always do what you ask the kids to do!)

That’s true.  Many of the students are missing basic skills.   But the only way kids “catch up” is when they want to catch up, when they realize how far behind they are.   You can’t give or install basic skills; they develop when folks are motivated.   School, then, becomes a place where they realize the basic skills they might lack and try and build them because they need them in service of a project.

Teacher journal question: what are you most excited about with the new projects?

Student response: “Taking control of my own art.”

File the retirement papers.

The books you read as a kid never leave you.  I read and re-read Lloyd Alexander’s Chroncles of Prydain.  I still find them in my kids’ rooms and read them over, mostly books four and five.

There’s a critical scene in book five when a small group turns away what was supposed to be an unstoppable army.   In a sad moment, a dying man notes that they were “the twig that turned the flood.”

Sometimes I feel like I’m Kevin Bacon in Animal House getting trampled.  Some days though, some magical days, I’m standing at a river that I’ve managed to turn with a small twig.

“If a man have not order within him, he cannot spread order about him.”

I gather this comes from Ezra Pound’s translations, although I’m not familiar enough with this literature to tell if this is real.

Great mantra for teachers thinking about their own practice, though.