In a fitting ending to my week in Washington DC, with a few hours left to spare, a colleague and I wondered into the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. The museum is celebrating 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Arts Project, an amazing undertaking initiated by Roosevelt in the depth of Great Depression in 1934. It became the first federal project to support the arts nationally. Many of the paintings have a decidedly social realism look and feel. Made me wonder if people in those days organized town hall meetings and protests against the “socialist” President. I can only hope that something as beautiful and lasting will come out of this Depression (or are we still calling it a recession?). (more…)

This is the title of a book written by Donald Finkel, a former professor at the Evergreen State College. Unfortunately Dr. Finkel passed away in 1999 but his daughter Zoe loaned me this book after reading a draft of my essay about Peninsula school. The book sat on my desk for a while until I happened to take it to a bluegrass festival one weekend. Finding myself digitally deprived and with lots of unstructured time on my hands, I started reading the book. It took only a few pages before I was taken in by both, the book and the author. I wish I could’ve met professor Finkel, I wish I were a student in one of his seminars, and I wish every teacher would read this book.

Finkel’s exhorts readers to abandon the prevalent model of teaching as TELLING, He writes:
“Our natural, unexamined model for teaching is Telling…The fundamental act of teaching is to carefully and clearly tell students something they did not previously know. Knowledge is transmitted, we imagine through the act of telling.” What we think of as good teachers just do this in a more captivating way than the not so good ones. (more…)