Treehugger article about play structures

I'm not a fan of play structures, feeling that they are the lazy persons idea of how to entertain children, just stick one of those in the park/school ground and problem solved. An article over at Treehugger highlights the dangers of a lack of risk.

The video above is from a documentary about an adventure playground in North Wales called The Land.

Slow Life

Slow Life from Daniel Stoupin on Vimeo.


WOW.

UN releases Climate Change assessment study

 
A UN panel has released the most comprehensive assessment yet of the effects of climate change on our planet.

• In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans.
• Adaptation is becoming embedded in some planning processes, with more limited implementation of response. 
• The overall risks of climate change impacts can be reduced by limiting the rate and magnitude of climate change.
• Climate change is projected to amplify existing climate-related risks and create new risks for natural and human systems.  

BBC News website's science editor Paul Rincon breaks down the key findings from above at the link.

Sobering stuff.

Persil Kids Today Project

The washing powder giants, Persil, have just released 6 new videos about kids today and how "dirt is good".

Play face is above but checkout their website to see the others. This was found via Tim Gill, who wrote a very interesting post on the commercials.

Galillee School

Not a jungle gym in sight. Delightful.

George Lucas on The Meaning of Life

"It is possible that on a spiritual level we are all connected in a way that continues beyond the comings and goings of various life forms. My best guess is that we share a collective spirit or life force or consciousness that encompasses and goes beyond individual life forms. There’s a part of us that connects to other humans, connects to other animals, connects to plants, connects to the planet, connects to the universe. I don’t think we can understand it through any kind of verbal, written or intellectual means. But I do believe that we all know this, even if it is on a level beyond our normal conscious thoughts.

If we have a meaningful place in this process, it is to try to fit into a healthy, symbiotic relationship with other life force. Everybody, ultimately, is trying to reach a harmony with the other parts of the life force. And in trying to figure out what life is all about, we ultimately come down to expressions of compassion and love, helping the rest of the life force, caring about others without any conditions or expectations, without expecting to get anything in return. This is expressed in every religion, by every prophet."

Via Brainpickings.

Susan Slyter's resignation letter

February 12, 2014

I am writing today to let you know that I am resigning my position as PreK and Kindergarten teacher in the Cambridge Public Schools.  It is with deep sadness that I have reached this decision, as I have loved my job, my school community, and the families and amazing and dedicated faculty I have been connected with throughout the district for the past eighteen years.  I have always seen myself as a public school teacher, and fully intended to work until retirement in the public school system.  Further, I am the product of public schools, and my son attended Cambridge Public Schools from PreK through Grade 12.  I am and always have been a firm believer in quality public education.

In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools, I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in the classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children.  I have experienced, over the past few years, the same mandates that all teachers in the district have experienced.   I have watched as my job requirements swung away from a focus on the children, their individual learning styles, emotional needs, and their individual families, interests and strengths to a focus on testing, assessing, and scoring young children, thereby ramping up the academic demands and pressures on them.  Each year, I have been required to spend more time attending classes and workshops to learn about new academic demands that smack of 1^st and 2^nd grade, instead of Kindergarten and PreK.  I have needed to schedule and attend more and more meetings about increasingly extreme behaviors and emotional needs of children in my classroom; I recognize many of these behaviors as children shouting out to the adults in their world, “I can’t do this!  Look at me!  Know me!  Help me!  See me!”  I have changed my practice over the years to allow the necessary time and focus for all the demands coming down from above.  Each year there are more.  Each year I have had less and less time to teach the children I love in the way I know best—and in the way child development experts recommend.  I reached the place last year where I began to feel I was part of a broken system that was causing damage to those very children I was there to serve.

I was trying to survive in a community of colleagues who were struggling to do the same:  to adapt and survive, to continue to hold onto what we could, and to affirm what we believe to be quality teaching for an early childhood classroom.  I began to feel a deep sense of loss of integrity.  I felt my spirit, my passion as a teacher, slip away.  I felt anger rise inside me.  I felt I needed to survive by looking elsewhere and leaving the community I love so dearly.  I did not feel I was leaving my job.  I felt then and feel now that my job left me.

It is with deep love and a broken heart that I write this letter.

Sincerely,
Suzi Sluyter

This letter was published in The Washington Post and it says a lot about our education system today. Sadly....