Hello everyone,
I actually have a great reason why this blog isn't being updated more often. I really do.
You see, I'm once again leaping into the world of playdough and C-V-C words, counting with fingers and learning how to tie shoes, goldfish crackers and big pencils. For those of you who aren't teachers, or who aren't primary teachers, let me tell you it's a great world. There is never a shortage of curiosity and questions. For 5 and 6 year olds the world is one big question mark.
But it's not my job to feed them the answers for their big question mark.
My job is to guide them towards discovering how to find their own answers.
And that, my friends, is what it's all about.
Education as an institution, as a money-maker, as a political agenda item, gets so tangled up in conflicting and competing theories, budget belt-tightening, textbook company slick sellers and especially all things testing that everyone forgets what education is REALLY about.
It's about the kids.
It's about opening their eyes, literally and figuratively.
It's about guiding them, not to be machines that spit out memorized multiple choice answers, but to be thinkers and creators, inventors and innovators.
It's about showing them the magic behind curiosity and learning.
And while teachers are a vital, irreplacable part of this, education, in the end, isn't about teachers. It isn't about me.
It's about the kids.
So tomorrow morning, at 8:55am, I will be standing in front of a class of brand new Kindergarteners.
And I promise you, it will be an adventure, and I will once again learn from them just as much, if not more, than they learn from me.
Let the fun begin!
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
Sayonara Earth, One Glowing Drop at a Time
Hello all,
It has been a month since I last wrote....and I apologize. I have multiple excuses: TEDxKyoto planning, lesson planning, getting tangled up in the fuzziness of e-textbooks versus spending $500 to ship regular textbooks back and forth between here and the U.S.
And then there is the world.
Sigh.
I am starting to believe the cliche that ignorance is bliss. Because every time I read a newspaper, see a news program or open up Facebook, it seems that humans just can't get enough of chiseling away at, well, all the lovely things that make life worth living--kindness, empathy, intelligence, education, discovery, respect, acceptance, tolerance.
You get my drift.
And out of all the horrible news that keeps flooding my wee little computer, I'm going to stand on my tiny soapbox about just one right now: nuclear power.
There is really only once sentence that applies here:
Nuclear Power is too dangerous.
It is too dangerous to use.
Much in the same way that one can pour gasoline on a barbecue and get the coals going for those burgers. It works, it's fast, it's readily available. And IT IS JUST TOO DANGEROUS.
You see.
I stumbled across a map of all the nuclear reactors in the world.
The United States has 104.
Japan has 54.
France has 59
The UK has 32
The Russian Federation has 30.
So when I read the daily updates on the Fukushima Reactors, and how much radiation they are leaking into the Pacific Ocean, my mind automatically flashes to numbers like these.
Fukushima. One Nuclear power plant. Poisoning the Pacific.
And there are 53 more of these things just in this country alone.
Which brings me to another map I stumbled across, this new one showing both the location of nuclear power plants AND the places on earth that are most seismically active. As in, prone to earthquakes.
Let us compare these two maps.
For the most part, countries have built nuclear reactors on fairly calm spots.
I must admit that I wasn't all that wild about the California nuclear reactors, sitting right on top of a red zone for high seismic activity. And there are some reactors in the Middle East that worry me as well. And there are reactors in a number of countries that seem to be in rather iffy places.
But, holy moley, then I checked out Japan.
Japan is pretty much all red and brown on the seismology map, dangling there on the edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Then I checked out the Nuclear Reactor Map.
Wha? 54 nuclear reactors sitting right on top of earthquake central.
So....yeah. It is as if we are living in the center of a roulette wheel of danger.
All this said, I love Japan. And I love California.
I'd really, really like Japan and California to be around when Patrick and Aya reach adulthood.
I'd like our potential grandkids to be able to visit Nagoya and stroll through the shopping arcade at Osu Kannon.
I'd like them to be able to ride bikes along the Kamo River here in Kyoto, laughing at the gentle nutria and swooping hawks.
Likewise, I'd like them to be able to ride the Giant Dipper coaster on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, or eat an ice cream cone on Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf while watching sea otters and sea lions float and frolic below.
I'd even like them to maybe have a chance to lay back and float aimlessly in the warm Pacific water that laps up on Emon Beach on Kwaj.
I'd like there to be a THERE for them. Somewhere. Everywhere.
And yet, as I watch the reports coming in from the Fukushima reactors, and I consider the hundreds of reactors across the world, all equally dangerous given the right toxic combination of earthquakes and radiation and human error, I can't help but get pessimistic about it all.
Because now TEPCO and all the head-scratchers are trying to figure out how to stop what they've started. And no one seems to have a solution.
Which is....darn scary.
Until next time....
*nuclearinfo.net
*http://0.tqn.com/d/geology/1/0/q/j/1/worldseismap.png
It has been a month since I last wrote....and I apologize. I have multiple excuses: TEDxKyoto planning, lesson planning, getting tangled up in the fuzziness of e-textbooks versus spending $500 to ship regular textbooks back and forth between here and the U.S.
And then there is the world.
Sigh.
I am starting to believe the cliche that ignorance is bliss. Because every time I read a newspaper, see a news program or open up Facebook, it seems that humans just can't get enough of chiseling away at, well, all the lovely things that make life worth living--kindness, empathy, intelligence, education, discovery, respect, acceptance, tolerance.
You get my drift.
And out of all the horrible news that keeps flooding my wee little computer, I'm going to stand on my tiny soapbox about just one right now: nuclear power.
There is really only once sentence that applies here:
Nuclear Power is too dangerous.
It is too dangerous to use.
Much in the same way that one can pour gasoline on a barbecue and get the coals going for those burgers. It works, it's fast, it's readily available. And IT IS JUST TOO DANGEROUS.
You see.
I stumbled across a map of all the nuclear reactors in the world.
The United States has 104.
Japan has 54.
France has 59
The UK has 32
The Russian Federation has 30.
So when I read the daily updates on the Fukushima Reactors, and how much radiation they are leaking into the Pacific Ocean, my mind automatically flashes to numbers like these.
Fukushima. One Nuclear power plant. Poisoning the Pacific.
And there are 53 more of these things just in this country alone.
Which brings me to another map I stumbled across, this new one showing both the location of nuclear power plants AND the places on earth that are most seismically active. As in, prone to earthquakes.
Let us compare these two maps.
For the most part, countries have built nuclear reactors on fairly calm spots.
I must admit that I wasn't all that wild about the California nuclear reactors, sitting right on top of a red zone for high seismic activity. And there are some reactors in the Middle East that worry me as well. And there are reactors in a number of countries that seem to be in rather iffy places.
But, holy moley, then I checked out Japan.
Japan is pretty much all red and brown on the seismology map, dangling there on the edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Then I checked out the Nuclear Reactor Map.
Wha? 54 nuclear reactors sitting right on top of earthquake central.
So....yeah. It is as if we are living in the center of a roulette wheel of danger.
All this said, I love Japan. And I love California.
I'd really, really like Japan and California to be around when Patrick and Aya reach adulthood.
I'd like our potential grandkids to be able to visit Nagoya and stroll through the shopping arcade at Osu Kannon.
I'd like them to be able to ride bikes along the Kamo River here in Kyoto, laughing at the gentle nutria and swooping hawks.
Likewise, I'd like them to be able to ride the Giant Dipper coaster on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, or eat an ice cream cone on Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf while watching sea otters and sea lions float and frolic below.
I'd even like them to maybe have a chance to lay back and float aimlessly in the warm Pacific water that laps up on Emon Beach on Kwaj.
I'd like there to be a THERE for them. Somewhere. Everywhere.
And yet, as I watch the reports coming in from the Fukushima reactors, and I consider the hundreds of reactors across the world, all equally dangerous given the right toxic combination of earthquakes and radiation and human error, I can't help but get pessimistic about it all.
Because now TEPCO and all the head-scratchers are trying to figure out how to stop what they've started. And no one seems to have a solution.
Which is....darn scary.
Until next time....
*nuclearinfo.net
*http://0.tqn.com/d/geology/1/0/q/j/1/worldseismap.png
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