Wow! I can't believe that I haven't posted in so long on this, my professional blog--not that I haven't been doing a tremendous amount of writing in other places because of my passionate stance in this past election cycle. I try to keep my blog free of partisan politics*, which is very difficult for me to do because of the intensity of my deeply-held political beliefs and my broadening concerns about the future of our nation and the world we are leaving our children.

Additionally, I have been busier in the past few months traveling and presenting to audiences all around the world than I ever anticipated I would be. In fact, I just totaled it up. In the past 7 weeks alone, I've flown over 50,000 miles and worked in four countries with students, parents, and educators from four continents.

Hopefully, with a bit of a slower travel schedule in December, I can catch up on some other things that are important to me, including blogging here as well as working on several recording projects in which I am involved.

In the meantime, I want to share a video I find very moving.

As you watch it, keep in mind that the "Generation We" depicted in this short needs the progressive guidance and wisdom our best educators can offer them.

• We, the educators, need to be front and center in facilitating the development of a better future for our youth, the hope of a better tomorrow.
• We, the educators, need to shape and fashion an educational setting that speaks to the deepest part of who we are inclusively as an American people, what we as a people cherish in our souls, and what we as educators fundamentally believe is sound educational practice for the children entrusted to our care.
• We, the educators, need to aggressively re-evaluate and re-invent our instructional practice.
• We, the educators, need to offer the youth of our nation the very best job performance we can breathe our life breath into in this moment.

Never, in my lifetime, has America needed more what we, the educators of this land, can rise up to provide. Never have we needed to be more politically and civically active, more socially active and responsible, more attentive and inclusive, more participatory in the shaping of our communities and our nation's future.

This is an historic moment. This is the time for metamorphosis!

This is a call to our destiny!

*Not to be confused with non-partisan policy positions such as those espoused by NCLB!

Because you are here!

I talk about this a lot in my presentations: empowering children to make the world a better place because of their school work. The internet affords each of us, adults and children, that very capacity. It affords us as educators the capacity to empower children to create content in school that literally makes the world a better place. In its purest forms, this is such a simple process.

I just came across this project by a young man, Matt Harding, and his girl friend, Melissa Nixon. They just travelled the world with a video camera dancing with people, mostly children, and set it to Praan, by Garry Schyman, who set to music an adaptation of the poem below, Stream of Life, by Rabindranath Tagore. They recruited vocalist Palbasha Siddique from YouTube to sing the piece for the video.

This project is brilliant, from the way it was conceived to the way it was executed. Matt connects to and shares the joyous rhythm of life that has pulsed through all of time to unite us into one humanity. To see his finished project is to just want to stand up and start dancing with them–everyone, everywhere. What a joyous and celebratory journey made possible by a simple idea to create a new kind of music video that brings people, the world over, together in harmony through social media.

Watch the video, and then check out the next video of Matt talking about how they did this.

Brilliant! Joyous!!

In the video below, Matt talks about the project.

The lyrics, which are adapted from a Rabindranath Tagore poem, are also very significant in understanding the full scope of Harding's vision. The poet describes an epiphany in which he sees all of existence, from the natural world around him to the entire history of humanity, dancing with the same blood - the same stream of life. Thus in Harding's video we are all tied by this unseen energy, personified in dance, and illuminated by the joy that surrounds us as we watch. In many ways Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the Internet have improved our access to the stream, but it is up to us to follow Harding and continue to make art that ties humanity together.

[From Obtusity: The Life-Throb of Ages: Garry Schyman "Praan"]

I have been reading CogDog (Alan Levine) for many years. He's brilliant! He has a really interesting post about Ocarina, the iPhone application that turns your iPhone into a wind instrument--magic flute. The application lets you listen to people around the world playing their iPhone Ocarina in real time. Check it out at the iTunes Store at this link. Astounding!

Alan posted a screenshot from his iPhone of what the application looks like as you listen to someone, someplace in the world, playing their iPhone instrument. Their notes just float off from the face of the earth as you listen to their ethereal tones. So cool!

I knew I had seen a post months back about screen capture for the iPhone, but didn't remember how to do it. So, for everyone with an iPhone (iPod Touch?), here's the magic trick: Press and hold the "Home" button, and then press the "Power" button at the top of the phone, and: snap + white flash, a capture of your screen is stored in your photos on your phone. I'm note sure if this will work pre-version 2 of the software. You can see the example I shot from Ocarina below.

So, now you know how you can turn your iPhone into a flute, listen to peaceful music being played around the world in real time, and create a screen capture from your iPhone.

Check out the high resolution YouTube movie, embedded below, about the Ocarina. In a future post I'll share how you embed higher resolution video from YouTube into your blog when a high resolution video is available.

In the meantime: Enjoy!

The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Classroom Instruction

I was sitting in the Houston airport waiting for my flight. CNN was blaring. As I so rarely watch television, I somehow always feel like I'm being victimized by Big Brother when I walk through a place and the same television channel is talking at me–this is no comment on CNN, it could be any channel attempting to broadcast its way into my cognitive state. But now I'm way off track from the ideas through which I wanted to meander and reflect.

CNN is apparently producing a segment on "Who's Hiring." This particular segment was speaking about public schools as a potential employment opportunity for the millions around our country who are losing their jobs in this terrible time of economic "downturn," of "recession." The reporter presented what is required in most states to earn certification for teaching. One might think, on the face of the idea, this to be a wonderful solution: millions of people need jobs. The nation is in need of millions of teachers. Match made in heaven? Not so fast!

Actually, I was rather troubled by this thought. Being a teacher requires so much more than a state teaching certificate. Teaching is so much more than a profession of economic last resort.

As a retired school principal I believe that perhaps the greatest legacy a school principal can leave in a school is the staff that s/he hires. Finding exemplary staff that are not only passionate about subject matter but also have the capacity to inspire learning within a classroom of human souls is a challenge not to be taken lightly. The teaching profession is both art and science requiring perhaps the highest attainment of creative endeavor to which anyone can aspire. The act of teaching, of truly unfolding substantive and meaningful content in a way that creates a thirst for deeper understanding and for fashioning that understanding into relevant solutions for the world's greatest challenges is, in my opinion, nothing short of heroic work. This is all but the work of gods!

Regrettably this work has rarely earned the respect from American consumption-based culture that is deserved. In the 1990's I recall a school board member going on a crusade to make public schools more like businesses–a model which was gaining national traction and one which I found rather offensive at the time. Emphasis on this model still exists today, fed by the very structures of NCLB, with for-profit industry trying to make money off of the education of our children in what I believe to be a seriously flawed ideology that the public trust is best served by a capitalist model. I could not disagree more! (I'm trying to avoid yet another opportunity to go rogue in this post!)

The teacher focuses on the empowerment of people. Business focuses on profit margins. Capitalism gone awry focuses on maximizing profit margins above all else to the complete neglect of the social contract that each of us has to our fellow humans. We have seen where unfettered desire for profit takes business: the creation of an unsustainable "it's all about me" consumption based economic model that has little regard for those upon whom it feasts.

Greed and excess can not sustain themselves. We have seen this before in our own history. Sadly, how quickly we forget.

For over a year now, I have had the great privilege of traveling and meeting teachers the world over. In every city, every country I've been, I see the same characteristic in the teachers I meet: Teachers don't work a job, as do many business people. Teachers live a calling. They thrive in their reflections in the eyes of their pupils as they join together to explore, to create, to fashion anew, to inspire, to empower, to unleash, to transcend, to care. Teaching isn't about profit margins or numbers, despite the appalling emphasis on the later by NCLB. Expertise in teaching is not earned by a degree nor by a state teaching certificate.

Teaching must always remain a calling of the heart and soul.

Photo by: amrufm at flickr.com