I’m still trying to process all that we did today—improvisation, literacy timelines, digital histories, Murray cards, inquiry work, covert dealing, and a whole lot of writing. I can’t believe that we accomplished so much in one day…I almost feel as if it never happened at all or happened in some sort of bizarro-world. And now I’m starting to wonder if this is how my students feel after one of my classes because I am a huge proponent of keeping things moving in the classroom. I don’t like us to work on something for more than fifteen or twenty minutes before we move on to something different albeit related. (I think that I heard somewhere that people can maintain their attention span in direct relation to their age…or maybe it’s that you’re not supposed to keep a kid in time out for longer than his age before it becomes ineffective…regardless, I have always kept things moving as part of my pedagogy.) And today, I felt that we had that same movement in the institute, which was both exhilarating and exhausting. We really did go through the process of writing and the possibilities in a writing class just as a student would, which is why I felt like I was seeing myself through the looking glass today. I was able to see much of what I do in the classroom through the eyes of a participant or a student…it’s the same image, but from a different perspective. It made me think of Lewis Carroll’s ideas in Alice through the Looking Glass where an alternate universe/perspective exists in exact relation to the original perspective (it couldn’t exist without it). Let’s just hope there isn’t a jabberwocky around the corner…
In case you want a visual of what I’m talking about, check out this clip from one of my favorite versions of Alice in Wonderland. It’s the 1985 “Made for TV” version that has people from Ringo Starr to Scott Baio to Sammy Davis Jr. to Carol Channing—soooo good!
Through the Looking Glass/Scary Jabberwocky Clip:
I felt the exact same way after yesterday in regards to the pace! I felt like I was processing the first thing and trying to move on to the next thing. There was a constant buzz in my head! As a matter of fact, it took me forever to fall asleep thinking back on everything!
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