December gave the world a lot to celebrate: Bodhi Day, Day of Our Lady Guadalupe, Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas, Kwanza, Zarathost Diso, and New Year’s Eve. Colorful lights and crackling fires against a crisp winter canvas always help me find time to ponder spiritual connections and how humanity has attempted to make sense of and, perhaps ironically, immortalize our understandings. The written word and art have always been equally powerful mediums for capturing abstract yet visceral emotions. Even tentatively opening the door to a museum or a used bookstore makes me catch my breath in anticipation and reverence for the sheer energetic power combined in one space from so many inspired, deeply affected souls.
Posts filed under Education
The Current State of Sexual Health Education in Michigan
It wasn’t until later that I learned that my experience with sexual health education was not uncommon. I assumed, as a kid whose whole world was based around school, that everything in the curriculum was what was required to be successful in life. At the time, I didn’t realize how career-driven it was: Math, Science, English, and History were the four main subjects. Nothing about growing your own food, repairing clothes, doing your taxes, paying a mortgage, how to have fulfilling relationships, how to maintain good mental health practice, and more.
Book Review: Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari
In an age characterized by ceaseless distractions and a relentless assault on our attention spans, Johann Hari’s thought-provoking work, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, emerges as a timely and illuminating exploration of the modern cognitive landscape. In a world where the stimulating call of smartphones, social media, and constant connectivity beckons incessantly, Hari navigates the turbulent seas of our digital age with insight and personal resonance. The narrative provides astute observations, practical wisdom, and the hope that we can reclaim the ability to think deeply and engage meaningfully in our world.
Tantre Farm Honeybee Nut Festival A Fall Celebration of Nature’s Bounty
If you’re looking for a fun, free, educational, and delicious way to celebrate fall, the Third Annual Tantre Farm Honeybee Nut Festival in Ann Arbor is the place to be on Sunday Ocotber 8th.
Herbs for Your Garden: Yarrow
Yarrow is an indispensable herb that you’ll always find growing in my herb garden. Its versatility is formidable, making it an excellent tool in your herbal medicine kit. If you asked an herbalist what single plant they would bring with them to a deserted island, their answer will most likely be “Yarrow!”
Book Review: Trauma-Informed Music Therapy: Theory and Practice
The timely book Trauma-Informed Music Therapy: Theory and Practice is a collaboration of the expertise of music therapists, educators with experience in psychological health and trauma-informed education, clinicians, and psychotherapists. Based on the intersection of music therapy and trauma healing, the resulting body of work is an expansive text readers can utilize repeatedly.
Elements Preschool
I discovered Elements Preschool a few months ago during my extended early childhood education studies. To my delight, it is not only a place of discovery for children, but also for adults. Soon after being introduced to Elements Preschool, I started working with Kirsten Voiles, the founder and director, with whom I share a passion for education and the arts.
Gateway Farm: Growing with Permaculture
The mid-January day I visited Gateway Farm in Plymouth was breezy, and the temperature was in the low thirties with faint flurries falling. At the farm’s small, dirt parking lot off Joy Road, I met Bridget O’Brien who, along with her husband Dr. Charlie Brennan, is the farm’s co-director. After we greeted each other, I said, “Not the best time of the year for me to see the farm, I guess.” “It’ll be okay,” she replied cheerfully. “We’ll be able to see everything because there’s no snow on the ground. Plus,” she added, “The sorrel is still green.”
Herbs for Your Garden: Calendula
Calendula is grown as a self-seeding annual in USDA grow zones two through eight. In areas with warm winters (above 25⁰F), it blooms year-round. Calendula thrives in full sun with well-drained soil. I recommend sowing Calendula seed directly into the garden early to mid-spring. It’s ideal to plant the seeds as soon as the soil is workable since germination benefits from cool weather, but don’t stress too much about timing. I’ve had success planting seeds year-round. Calendula is a self-seeding annual, which means seeds dropped by the plants in the fall will lay dormant on the ground all winter and then sprout the next spring. However, it’s not an aggressively spreading plant, so don’t worry about it taking over your garden.
Black Men Read: Expanding Possibilities Through Storytelling
“This has to change, on my watch,” Yodit Mesfin Johhson realized. The need for change became urgent when her own son was in second grade. Her life’s work in racial justice organizing took a big pivot toward the education sector with one call. It was Black History month and there were no Black men on the Mitchell Elementary School’s faculty. Her son’s teacher called to ask if she knew any Black men that would read to his classes. Of course, Mesfin Johnson arranged a roster of volunteers that rotated through the school's reading hours all throughout February. The realization that her son had no Black male role models at school collided with her own awakening to spur a deep dive of research into the educational system. “It turns out that less than 2% of U.S. teachers are Black men.”
Student Mosaics at the Steiner School — A Culmination of an Inspired Education
It is a custom at many high schools for each graduating class to give a gift to the school. Seniors typically raise money to buy a bench, a tree, or perhaps to create a scholarship fund. The class gift tradition at the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor High School is different—it is built right into the curriculum. Almost every year since the school graduated its first class in 2000, the seniors, under the direction of the school’s art teachers, Elena Efimova, Riccardo Capraro, and Nataliya Pryzant, create a large mosaic that is then permanently mounted at the school’s Pontiac Trail campus building. The resulting mosaics are remarkable in a number of ways and fulfill several functions. First, there’s their size. Last year’s piece, for example, is eight feet by eight feet, which in square footage doesn’t even qualify it into the top three of the fourteen mosaics that students have created over the years.
Unschooling — Child-Led-Learning
Unschooling is a term coined in the 1970s by John Holt whose books Learning All the Time and Teach Your Own (among others), have empowered parents for decades to homeschool their children in a liberating way. Rethinking the definition of education, schooling “outside the box,” is as unique as every parent and child. It is apparent to those who observe young children that learning does indeed happen in every moment, thus children are naturally their own best teachers. Unschoolers see the community as their school.
Unsiiciyapi, Wawoohola, Cantognake: Humility, Respect, Love-- Healing through Service
What do you get when you merge a life called to support adolescents, spiritual awakening that all are one, and an ongoing relationship with the Lakota people? Omega Commons and a staff that lives to serve in higher truth and humility.
The Creations and Howls of Darryl "Barking Dog" Brown
There is a frenetic energy. There is also a stillness. There is a shape propelling into infinity. There is a cluster of dots, bound so tightly together it makes a heart ache. Here, in this painting, the creative freedom of dreams is restricted only by canvas size. Darryl “Barking Dog” Brown paints to create works that “connect us to the spirit world, through which we may learn to live a more sustainable life on planet Earth.”
Raptors to the Rescue! Wildlife Ambassadors Teach Lessons in Conservation
Like many people I know, if you told me in the summer of 2020 that the pandemic would probably drag on for two years or more, I would not have believed you. In fact, I would have thought you were a negative, defeatist person, and I would have avoided you like—well, the plague.
Hand Crafting: Wet Felted Vessels
Wet felted vessels: Looking for a fun craft to make with the kids or an easy to make, but beautiful, gift for a friend? Learning to wet felt a small vessel is quick and easy. You just need a few supplies, many of which you already have in your home!
Green Living: Putting Our Yards to Bed For Winter
Over the past six months, we’ve witnessed the transformation from last winter’s dormancy into a lush and verdant summer. We’ve been enjoying the fruits of Nature’s labors—beauty, food, and shade from flowers, vegetables, and trees. Now is the time in our cycle when all this foliar production returns to earth. What has increased must decrease. For leafy life to begin anew next spring, all this green must become brown and nourish the soil.
How a Pandemic Transformed My Life After High School--Perspectives and Resources from a 2020 High School Graduate
For the past eight years, music has been my life. As I progressed through high school, I began feeling pressured to say yes to opportunities because I felt like I needed to—for college applications, for my future career as a professional musician, and even as someone that couldn’t let my teachers (who had invested so much into my musical development) down. This pressure came from what I call the “Ann Arbor Excellence Phenomenon” (A2EP) – a force that values external accomplishments more than happiness and well-being.
Crazy Wisdom Kids in the Community: Remote Programs in 2021
What programs and groups are available for kids to connect during social distancing? It’s a problem that has continued to evolve this year as conditions shift, especially for younger ones. I was concerned when after a long spring and summer in semi-quarantine, my daughter seemed a bit sedentary and missed her friends. We enjoy being home, but we’ve never been home for months on end before. So, I started looking for programs that were flexible which we could join now or through the winter.
Book Review: Being at Your BEST When Your Kids Are at Their Worst By Kim John Payne, M.ED.
Have you ever felt the “red mist” (of frustration) rise in you regarding something one of your children said or did? Did it soon follow with saying or doing something you later regretted? Author Kim John Payne understands this experience from the perspective of a parent, but also as a child that witnessed such behavior.
