Interpreting Texts, Making Meaning: Starting Small

An End: or Vision : Symbol :: Ethereal : Basics, or "to save our lives… envision" 71

I envision an organic classroom environment where individuals are 'born' into families (groups of three) and participate in communities (groups of eleven), one family member per large group, with the objective to create organizations (based on student passions and interests) that benefit them and their actual families and communities. Components of this vision are further explained in my curriculum, Exchanging Letters - Changing Legacies. ⁷² In honor of my father who writes a weekly page of encouragement to Christian Seniors and always attaches a column of humor in anecdotes and jokes (one of his passions), I will encourage my students to include with their academic daily-writings their own passions as they enhance all of our understandings via relevance to the texts and their lives and their worlds. The structure of weekly lessons and activities are predicated on the proverb, it takes a village to raise a child, where I am the villager on Mondays and the child on Fridays. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are transition days where I model for students, while meeting with each community or family group, how they are to be the villagers and to raise the literary children in the texts above as I embody them metaphorically. For practicing interpretation we will play the board game, Wise and Otherwise, discovering and interpreting proverbs from around the world! ⁷³ While doing this and practicing nOATs, we will also log analogies, similes and metaphors, and our theories about them, as we find them in literature, conversations and in shows such as How the Universe Works, expanded edition (galaxies), which are rife with figurative expressions. Local artist, Beth Grossman, will lead and share her work Table Talks and a Bill of Rights for Seeds. ⁷⁴ And this spoken-word performance by Sulibreezy that speaks to children being human and more important than data will be our model for spoken-word exercises: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-eVF_G_p-Y Enjoy!

Thank you YNI, Fellows, family and Paul, all who shared wisdom, helping transform this curriculum and me! I wish I also had room for your teachings; however, I close with Alice Walker's sagacious words: "That is why when I look at you and I can say that I love you, it's impersonal and it's also an acknowledgement that love is basically what brought us here; and, if we can remember that, then we can take care of each others' treasures." ⁷⁵ In this wisdom may Educational revelations and revolutions carry on!