n2teachingonline

Maurice Sendak, author of Caldecott winner, Where the Wild Things Are, changed the fundamental outlook of children’s literature by helping kids know that their wild fantasies were ways of working through problems that still led to a positive outcome. His work was influenced by Walt Disney’s Fantasia and literature of Herman Melville. While some early resistance to Where the Wild Things Are was seen, in the end, most people came to love his books, stories and illustrations.

PBS recently honored him as an American Master. His last major book for children, Swine Lake, was a collaboration with his friend, the author Jim Marshall. Mr. Sendak describes his early career and his inner struggle as an author in the Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Series. Maurice Sendak’s original art and signed prints are still available at the Michelson Gallery.

This Monday, September 15, 2008, there will be a great celebration for Maurice Sendak’s 80th birthday in New York City. It would be great to be able to be there. Where the Wild Things Are!

GROWING GOOD KIDSsm 2008 Book Award Winners

is part of an integrated project based learning opportunity and its accompanying curricula. Each year,

the Junior Master Gardener Program and the American Horticultural Society honor engaging, inspiring works of plant, garden and ecology-themed children’s literature…*

Just this past month, at the University of Delaware, the 2008 winners were named and honored at the American Horticulture Society’s 16th Annual National Children and Youth Garden Symposium. These books would be excellent resources to add to your media center, library or personal collection.

One very interesting award winner is author/illustrator, Dar Hosta’s, If I Were A Tree. A story that explores the possibility of life as a tree. Beautifully illustrated this book would be a great story starter for a variety of projects related to the environment, well-being, and a variety of educational topics.

The author, Dar Hosta, is not only a writer, but she is an illustrator who focuses on mixed media, particularly collage art.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This award winner Mother Earth and Her Children by Sybil Von Olfers, Sieglinde Schoen-Smith and illustrated by Jack Zipes shows how good quilt art can give new life to an old story. Since this book is a translation, it would also offer some excellent opportunities for  language teachers. Sieglinde Schoen-Smith used this German picture book, first published in 1906, to make a marvelous quilt celebrating life and overcoming adversity to win the coveted Best in Show award at the 2006 International Quilt Show at Houston, Texas.

For those teachers using the Six Traits of Writing, aka the Six Plus One, this book would be a superb choice to use for lessons or story starters practicing the trait Word Choice through the discovery and description of the details found in the illustrations. For these lessons, Mother Earth and Her Children could easily be used with students in the upper middle school level.

Here is a recent biography of the original author, the quilt artist who resurrected this book and the translator that relates their story:

Sibylle von Olfers is the author of Etwas von den Wurzelkindern and was an art teacher in East Prussia at the turn of the century as well as a member of the Catholic Order of St. Elizabeth. Sieglinde Schoen-Smith is a quilter whose quilted interpretation of Mother Earth and Her Children captured the coveted Best in Show award at the 2006 International Quilt Show in Houston. She lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Jack Zipes is the foremost expert on German folklore in the United States.

 
 
Another book, The Old Tree, written and illustrated by beloved children’s author Ruth Brown, received the 2008 Growing Good Kids Award.  The core of this story relates to the way in which the animals who share the habitat with the old tree, wonder why there is a big X painted on the tree and how they work together to find an answer.
 
 
 
 
Last, but not least, is the humorous story, When the Vegetables Ran Away, written by Jeffery L. Schatzer and illustrated by Jeffery Ebbeler. Through rhyming and alliterative questions, the will be drawn into this story.

Read along as Grandpa spins a tale about the night that all the plants in the garden get up and run away.

As soon as I saw my colleague/friends’ Edublogs, I thought, “I want this!”

I signed up and started in…trying to begin my Edublog. Well, it wasn’t quite as intuitive, FOR ME, as I thought and others had described.

At first, I thought, “OK! I can do this!” I write several other blogs, develop databases, transform images, etc ,so I should be able to get a handle on this blog.

After a few weeks of searching, reading and following directions, I decided that I must be doing something wrong. I decided to let the information dump begin, as I made all the Edublog information become part of my long term memory. I took time away from the whole process.

On the surface, my Edublog pool (blog) probably looked very still. That stillness most likely made it SEEM that I was not participating in Edublogs, yet I was still reading, looking and refining my search parameters. All in a conscious effort to bring my mind closer to finding the right information. The information I needed to perform seemingly simple tasks on Edublogs.

My take-away lesson in this struggle to learn, even when no one in my “World of Matter” is motivated to discover, is that I have to learn to float, before I can learn to swim. If I don’t, I might start flailing about in a most unbecoming manner, so to float is to relax, allow the opportunity to learn flow over me. There is no such thing as right or wrong in my Personal Learning Network, and time is definitely relative.

These lessons have been reassuring and a bit intimidating. On the one hand, I have been happily enlarging and enhancing my Personal Learning Network, yet on the other hand, I often find myself in a quagmire trying to find a long stick or vine to pull myself out on my own.

Why is that? Well, mostly because I am very private, yet I am also very social. I am a teacher. As long as I am teaching (helping others learn) I achieve my purpose. On the other hand, I am a teacher, so not being able to solve my own problems (in public) is sometimes difficult to accept. I am working on that!

Happily and thankfully, I have learned that I am not alone in choosing this “Pull Yourself Up by the Bootsraps” approach to learning that teachers sometimes acquire. Really, it is quite paradoxical.

Most teachers would cross a desert to help someone who needs information or knowledge, yet we forget (or are forced to hide) that feeling of vulnerability that sometimes comes with the act of “asking for help”.

Needing or accepting help from a teacher [insert any other person who shares knowledge: parent, boss, friend, etc.] can be an overwhelming, yet here I am…writing my first real Edublog entry. Discovering and remembering tips that my friend/colleagues have told me to enhance my blogging opportunities and experiences.

How about you? What do you think about this paradox of teacher as teacher yet student?

Glad to be participating in the Edublogs.org community. This is my first post on this blog, but I have participated in online communities, networks, forums and blogs since 1996. Looking forward to learning to use WordPress;D