Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Random Learning in Our World, While Yet Intentional

   Isn't she darling? She's holding my schnitzel. She had pineapple fried rice and bubble tea made with coconut cream. Food truck yummy. We hit up the food trucks after an Oregon Ballet Theater 25th anniversary event. Pink Martini performed live!
 Reading and Discussing
   I don't like the provocative title of this article, but it certainly offers some worthy thoughts for consideration. How do we bring discovery to every avenue of learning? We live in a world that desperately needs risk takers. How do we help kids: home schooled, public schooled, or hybrid schooled discover, risk, persevere, and find and share creative solutions to incredibly complex world problems? One teacher, one mentor at a time, community involvement, discovery based learning with tangible outcomes for success, and making failure acceptable, but expecting them to take ownership to challenge themselves to grow, learn, and stretch. We must model passion in what we do. Kids pick up on anything adults are passionate about. What's your passion? What's your investment? What hits your truth button? What makes the world a better place to live?

   Given pandemics, food shortages, inequalities and injustices, gun violence, global warming, and the earth quaking in response, what are we going to do about it?  Even here in the quiet Pacific Northwest, change is upon us, while Decade Volcanoes snooze. Slumbering giants, don't snooze forever, we'd better be doing something with our time.* An education book I read, aptly said, "the east coast may slice the pie, but the west coast makes it." We need more pie.   (*My plate tectonics theory :-)

   Seattle will have another city the size of Portland crammed into its metro area within the next 20 years. Who's working on their transportation system? I sat in traffic for 7 hours last week. Who will build more schools and feed these people, when we're not expanding farmland? Where will they obtain health care? Live? Because of real questions like these, First Lego League challenges kids to ask hard questions and seek solutions today, for their time and future.

   This year, our FLL 2014 team is learning about architecture. Architects: those crazy people who invent, design, and build. It might just make us go crazy, but we are going to learn a lot while we go crazy, and we might, just might, do something crazy good with our time: invent, design, and build, in a fun, crazy kind of way. We visited the University of Oregon Architectural Majors Faire this week, met some people, and asked some questions:

Why did you choose to teach architecture instead of joining an architectural firm?
Why did you choose to pursue your current field of architecture?
What do you think has been the most major contribution to the world through your field of architecture, and what do you think your field of architecture will contribute in the future?
If you were to change the current licensing process in Oregon, what would you change? 

   As a sideline participant, I learned architects in training like their coffee black. (I would not do well here.) They have no time for sugar and cream, they are too darn busy! I also learned they are social engineers. You'd better be an extrovert to be a good architect, because you're going to work with a lot of people!
They really liked Product Design, as does everyone else!
Talking to Professor Chan in Landscape Architecture
Overheard on Orthodontia
    On the scale of really nice cuddly kitty cat that wants to cuddle with you, and the other end of the scale is the annoying brother who barges into the bathroom while you are trying to use it, I would rate my expander, as losing an argument with your mom about whether you can have pie for breakfast. 

Books Are Good
   We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can't make people listen. The have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up and under them. It can't last. ~ Fahrenheit 451
Friday Fun
Mom, you get light coconut milk. 

     You might have noticed: I'm barely keeping up with the blog these days. All the learning we are doing around here is hard work. Did I mention I'm back to algebra? If someone had told me years ago, I would repeat algebra through my child, we might not have had any, but we're gonna make it. What doesn't make me go crazy will make me stronger. Right? I am tweaking a few writing projects here and there and some new ideas flowed in this week. New ideas are good. They remind me my brain is still working, and God's grace flowing.

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