Grade 6 Community Pool Party

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Photos (top to bottom): Chiara (1), Adama (2/4), Yuki (3), Cedric, Adama & Yuki (5), Adama & Yoel (6), all the kids (7), Etienne (8), kids gather for Anouk's birthday (9).

We hope to gather the 6th grade students and families together every trimester for a social and swim party. It offers the kids a chance to play together as a whole group, and their parents an opportunity to become better acquainted. The aim, of course, is to promote a sense of community -- a felt sense of connection and shared purpose.

This first grade 6 community social was held at Club Atlantique, with most of the kids and families attending.

A Beautiful Morning at Plage Ouakam

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Definition of a perfect day: long morning dive, followed by an afternoon at home without obligations.

I went out for about four hours yesterday, long enough to get thoroughly exhausted and dehydrated. The water was calm, with a slight surge beneath the Mamelles cliffs, visibility good enough, varying from location to location, to perhaps 30 ft. The plankton and jellyfish were locally dense, and a heavy rain on Friday morning had debris drifting in areas.

There were many more folks hand-lining from shore, drawn, I suppose, by the ideal conditions. Two guys in wetsuits, snorkeling gear, spears and collection bags were poking around the base of the cliffs looking for something, abalone perhaps. A fisherman in a single-person piroque lay his net down in a wide arc. (A video clip shows this.)

I'm gradually becoming familiar with the area. The water along a south-facing cliff is rich with plants. The bluffs immediately below Phare de Mamelles (the lighthouse) drop steeply to about five meters, then gradually to maybe ten meters. The fish stocks there are abundant. Judging from the number of anchors left behind there, others recognize it as a rich area, too.

Enjoy the following video clips filmed during this dive:

clip1, clip2, clip3, clip4, clip5, clip6, clip7, clip8

Close Encounter at Plage Ouakam

At a depth of about twenty meters, I spotted the large black sea bass in a cave. Before it could get away, I sprinted into the cave and nabbed the sixty pound fish by the tail, gave it a bear hug, and clung on as best I could. The Great Fish fought wildly, but was no match. You see, I love the taste of fresh sea bass slow-smoked over the barbeque, lathered in my grandmother's secret sauce, served with steamed potatoes and snow peas. With this in mind, I wrestled the Great Fish to the surface.

I sensed the shark before I actually spotted it, a large black tip reef shark, some five meters from stem to stern, a vicious man-eating monster. I shouted at it underwater: Be gone you vicious man-eating monster. The Great Fish is mine. I love black sea bass slow-smoked over the barbeque lathered in my grandmother's secret sauce with steamed potatoes and snow peas.

The shark spun around, edged closer, and lunged at the Great Fish. With horror, I released the bass and backed away, saddened by the prospects of having to share my dinner with the shark.

We had mac and cheese for dinner that night, with steamed potatoes and snow peas.

For video footage of the incident, see West African Sea Bass and Black Tip Shark.

Doing History

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Photos (top to bottom): photo1: grade 6 students -- Moussa, Sam, Awa, Chiara, Michael -- with the Lebanese Ambassador to Senegal; photo2: Miss Debra's homeroom following a walking field trip to Plage de Ouakam, where we met and chatted with Lebou fisherman Momodou Sarr (photo3); photo4: panel of guests whose families immigrated to Senegal from Lebanese early in the 20th century; graphic of the Lebanese diaspora.

Our current unit, The Scientist & the Historian, focuses on an understanding of the two disciplines guided by the following essential questions: what is science/history? what do scientists/historians do? what are their methods?

A curriculum which aims for understanding must offer a rich context, or place students in a position where they act as if they were scientists or historians. They must feel the role, experience it, and think like a scientist/historian.

The unit includes a series of activities in which students act as if they were scientists/historians. By example, students have been assigned to complete an oral history of a family member, ideally their oldest living relative. In addition, each of the two homerooms have been engaged in a mini-history, with Miss Debra's homeroom investigating the history of the Lebou people, and my homeroom investigating the history of the Lebanese community in Senegal.

Excerpts of the interview with the panel of Senegalese residents whose families immigrated from Lebanon (be aware that the hiss is attributed to the passing of a thunder storm): audio1 audio2 audio3 audio4 audio5 audio6 audio7

Excerpts of the interview with the Lebanese Ambassador: audio1 audio2

Defying Gravity

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Photos (top to bottom): Cedric, Mahima, Sam, Michael, Alex, Allamagen, JC, Victor, Kevin, Cecile, Carlota, Ada.

Basketball players are tall. Volleyball players are tall. They have to be, for all the jumping they do. So doesn't it stand to reason that the taller you are the farther you'll jump? We tested this hypothesis in class. We plotted students' heights x the distance traveled in a standing broad jump, recording the best of three jumps. The results were sketchy, the scatter plot revealing a weak correlation, at best. So what else might be going on? Motivation, leg length, general fitness, technique, clothing, leg strength, practice/experience?

For the complete gallery of photos, see BOT at gallery1 gallery2.

Understanding 2: Multiple Points of Entry

Understanding implies a flexibility in the ways that we are able to use or apply a skill or concept. To explain something, in a form exactly as taught, like a tape recording, is not understanding. Practicing a skill by approaching it in multiple and varied ways over an extended period is necessary. Understanding is demonstrated through performance. You understand it because you can do it.

In class, we spent a week exploring the nature of understanding, through discussion, exercises, and observation. Students were then assigned to respond to four questions in writing. See understanding. The kids responses suggested that, in too many cases, the ideas remained abstract and on the surface. Some wrote that we understood something if we were able to explain it. Others said that we could assess understanding by giving a quiz or test.

Given the exercises that they had engaged in earlier in the week (the battery and bulb problem, the hole-in-the-Earth problem, and the seasons' problem), the use of the terms explain and quiz might be accurate. I wanted to capture their thinking/reasoning, and asked them to discuss and explain their ideas. They perceived that they were being quizzed. It was, however, very important that students see that a new pilot must be required to do more than pass a written test to demonstrate their competence to fly.

I opted to hover around the concept of understanding for another week, and approach it from several new angles, broadening the points of entry. (Note the following on-line references re entry points: Wiske; Wiley, see page 35; Perrone.) My students would act as if they were local experts on the topic, and enter other classrooms to share their learning. We would then spend the week preparing resources -- a poster and a video -- focusing on four aspects of understanding: what is it, how do we know when we have it, how do we get it, and how do we teach it?

While still in production, the video program, conceived in the style of Bill Nye, is important, as individual students discuss and demonstrate what it is that they understand -- skateboarding, basketball, reading, tying shoes, riding a bicycle. The film personalizes understanding in a way that is both fun and instructive.

In addition, students were daily shown video clips of people engaged in a particular activities (bicycle riding, juggling, gymnastics) and asked to assess each performer's understanding: Did they demonstrate understanding? How might they have acquired that understanding? Explain with multiple specific examples.

The kids' writing was consistently strong -- insightful and well-detailed. The notion that a person demonstrates their understanding through explanation was dropped, replaced with attention to the automaticity of sub-skills, and understanding as demonstrated through performance.

This is a BIG issue: Many of us talk about understanding, we use the term freely, as if by knowing about it we understand it. Not so. Teaching for understanding, and assessing for it, capturing student thinking, is slippery and subtle. What we get depends upon the nature of our questions, as we determine how far and in what directions understanding extends, where invention and conjecture begin to substitute for real understanding.

What do we do when our students do not understand what we teach? How do we respond? What if they are not interested or invested?

The immediate answer seems to be this: ensure that the entry points into a set of ideas are multiple and varied; aim for an internal representation that is multi-intellectual, formed from rich experience, as much as we are able to provide, given our resources.

Whether we're teaching the concept of gravity, riding a bicycle, or the nature of understanding, we begin by attending to basics, then those basics are applied in a broad, rich context. I believe what I lacked, in my initial plan, was this last piece. Then we must move on, continuing to apply the ideas in new contexts -- a study of science and history, water, geology, paleoanthropology, and early civilizations.

Note to Steve: Walking to School

I'm walking to and from school every morning and afternoon now, about thirty minutes each way. The walk has three aspects: something outward, something inward, and something from above: to listen, to breath, and to observe a third thing, which remains a bit of a mystery for now. It's an exercise in observing obstacles, patterns thereof, almost always the spinning of a formatory process, then returning to the aim, re-calibrating, developing a sense/taste of attention allocated in more than one direction.

The tendency to improvise, away from the aim, is frequent. I think, let it go, return to the aim, listen, breathe, begin again.

I have begun focusing on listening for a time, then turning to the breath, then putting them together, then awaken, return to listening.

I imagine listening as if through headphones, listening remotely from Carmel Valley, the sounds of Africa, the increasing volume of a car as it passes, the sound of birds, a THX quality IMAX landscape.

Inhale, then release it, observing it, with quality, continuously, to the next break in the sidewalk, or the next light pole, or the next street, small goals, points of reference, marking continuity across discrete distances, to there, then to there.

Marking time on aim x distance this way is very helpful.

There is nothing more important.