The comprehensive demand on students and teachers alike is this: You must change. You are living in the world as it is, of course, but right next to the world-as-such lie worlds that could be or should be but are not yet. We are products of this world, but as we reach toward a possible world, or as we work to create a more joyful and just, peaceful and loving world right here, we must simultaneously change ourselves....
When you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger works at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it. (Alexander et al., A Pattern Language, 1977, p. xiii) I rediscovered this quotation the other day—completely out of the blue—and have been thinking about how it relates to teaching and schools....
I created JUST SCREAM on a whim. Then, nearly a month after it publicly launched, it went viral. How did this happen? It started when a former colleague messaged me to say that the project had been covered by Boing Boing. Then it took off on Reddit. An Italian newsletter picked it up. Russian, Greek, German, and French websites. TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. I got interview requests from reporters around the world....
Listening has been an interest of mine for some time. As an undergraduate studying music composition, listening was the core of my creative practice. It has remained central to my practice as an educator, though I rarely teach music. I chose to study listening and its multiple meanings and implications in educational settings for my integrative masters project at Bank Street College of Education. I completed the study (and my degree) in Spring 2016 and am happy to share an excerpt of the resulting paper here....
This is the third post in a three-part series sharing surprising and illuminating stories that have so far arisen from the Listening Point project. Read part one: The Fallen Sign. Read part two: The Lion’s Roar. A Look at Listener Responses Most of the voice messages that listeners have left at listening points have been roughly 20-30 seconds long. They generally are straightforward listings of the most salient sounds in a particular place with little or no evidence of reflection on the listening experience itself....