Cairns #80 – End of the Long Nights – 2015 Alysia has become, officially, an ambassador for teacher-powered schools. She even gets to go to Washington next month, all expenses paid, to be on a panel at a conference. I…
Author: pkrafel
Just learning how to play with all of this.
Cairns #79 – A Watershed Metaphor
pkrafel
Posted in Cairns of H.O.P.E., Chrysalis, Learning/Teaching, Nature, Turning the Prow Upstream, Uncategorized, Upward Spirals
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Cairns #79 – Beginning of the Long Nights, 2014 but massively late as days begin growing longer in 2015. The drought this summer was extreme. The ground was baked hard. Many lower branches died and easily snapped with a…
Cairns #78 – The difference between “more wealth” and “more wealth than.”
pkrafel
Posted in Cairns of H.O.P.E., Chrysalis, Learning/Teaching, Turning the Prow Upstream
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Cairns #78 – End of the Long Days, 2014 Crunching branches The West, including our area, is in severe drought. I’m a little terrified at how many of the lower branches in the blue oaks that surround our homestead are…
Watershed Metaphor – Cairns #79
pkrafel
Posted in Cairns of H.O.P.E., Nature, Turning the Prow Upstream, Upward Spirals
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A Watershed Metaphor One of the delights of having written a book is encountering how different people respond to it. To come upon a group doing urban gardening in New Jersey that drew inspiration from my book feels like allies…
The Point – Cairns #78
This year is my last, full-time year at Chrysalis. I will be retiring from administrative duties at the end of the year. I might remain teaching part-time but I view this year as an opportunity to draw on all of…
The difference between “more wealth” and “more wealth than.” – Cairns #78
At my TedX talk last year, I said something like “a wise culture holds its rain as high on the slopes as possible” where it can be absorbed by plants and transpired to fall again as rain so that as…
Why Teacher-led? – Cairns #78
I was working on showing how certain characteristics of Chrysalis emerge from our mission statement of encouraging the light within each student to shine brighter. A kind environment is obvious. Less obvious is teaching for understanding (as differentiated from covering…
Crunching Branches – Cairns #78
The West, including our area, is in severe drought. I’m a little terrified at how many of the lower branches in the blue oaks that surround our homestead are now dead, crackly branches, hanging down towards the dry grasses. I…
The Self-Organizing Trip – Cairns #77
The Self-Organizing Trip I’ve been too busy with multiple Chrysalis transitions to be able to write all I intended for this one. So, instead, a fairly straight-forward Chrysalis story, except for another strand I get to interweave at the end.…
A Story of Two Investments – Cairns #59
This last summer we installed a playground at Chrysalis for our primary and elementary students. As I watch young children climb and slide and imaginatively play on the structure, I reflect on what a wonderful investment this playground is –…
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