Author: Lensyl Urbano

Self-portrait in poetry

Rilke

I recently discovered Ranier Maria Rilke’s “Self-Portrait 1906” in Edward Hirsch’s collection Poet’s Choice (which I picked up on sale at Barnes and Noble last week). The author’s integrity in this poem is quite striking. Hirsch has a very loose translation (from the German) by Robert Lowell that is very different from the more literal translation here, but both versions capture the essential meaning and honesty of the poem.

Certainly there, in the eyelids’ shape,
Of some ancient, long-ennobled race.
Childhood’s anxious blue still in the eyes,
And here and there, humility, not a fool’s
Yet a servant’s though, and feminine.
The mouth’s, a mouth, large and exact,
Unconvinced, but speaking out for
Justice. The brow’s without guile,
Gladly gazing down to quiet shadows.

This, its context’s barely suspected:
Neither in adversity nor success
To gather to precise penetration:
Yet serious reality’s being planned,
As if with scattered Things, from afar.

This version of the poem is from A.S. Kline’s “Ranier Maria Rilke: Twenty More Poems” which is free for non-commercial reproduction.

I also like this poem for middle school because serves both the Language and the Personal World curriculum. Personal World is designed to give students the time to examine themselves and their place in the society, the world and even the cosmos, and honest self assessment is always something worth working on.

Diverse China

Ethnic Mongol. Image from China Hush.

An interesting gallery of family portraits of the 56 ethnic groups in China. With traditional dress, instruments, and sometimes even animals, these pictures really show the ethnic and cultural diversity in a place that we often see as a single, uniform country. The differences in dress also demonstrate the climatic and geographic diversity of the country.

The images are from the book, “Harmonious China: A Sketch of China’s 56 Ethnicities” by photographer Chen Haiwen. Smaller sized images are posted at chinahush.com.

Robert’s Rules

CourtGavelc
Running community meetings is always a challenge, and one that gets more difficult with increasing numbers of students. Robert’s Rules are one approach that may be a bit formal but can be very useful for minimizing disruption and efficiently running meetings. It’s also a good idea for students to have a taste of parliamentary procedure.

There are the books (they sell the full, updated version as well as an abbreviated, “brief” version), but you can find the original for free (published in 1915 it’s well out of copyright, and some free basic primers online.

In Robert’s Rules, the order of precedence for things you can vote on is important. This handy table is quite useful.

The question remains, however, do I buy a gavel?

The evolutionary benefits of kindness

Evolution is often summed up in the phrase, “survival of the fittest”, well sometimes “fittest” can also refer to kindness. Having empathy is evolutionarily beneficial. As individuals, the more we give to others the more respect we gain for ourselves. As a group or a society, when people are able to cooperate they do better than when they cannot. What scientists have recently been uncovering is that empathy and the urge to cooperate are built into our very genes.

This research ties in elegantly with Montessori philosophy. The benefits of kindness and cooperation seem obvious when you think about it, but the fact that we are genetically predisposed to act in this way helps explain why the emphasis on cooperative work works so well in early childhood classrooms.

If you put this research together with the way society is currently evolving, where problems have to be dealt with with teams from different backgrounds, perspectives and disciplines, it really points out the importance of collaborative work in the middle school.

Food fight

Although we eschew warfare as a means resolving differences, this video, which “is an abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict”, provides a fascinating perspective on the world. It comes from the Food Fight website.

The key to the different food characters will probably be useful for those less familiar with American history. Watching it without the key might also be useful if you’re interested in discussing metaphors, which should become extremely obvious when you get to the World Trade Centers.

I’m really curious too see how the mini-demographic groups respond to this video. I can predict that some of the more video game (FPS) infatuated students will love this. But how will my more food oriented students react?

The future of SketchUp

World Builder from BranitVFX on Vimeo.

Google’s SketchUp software is a great way to work on, and test, higher level geometry skills. This video is a well made, poignant introduction to what software like SketchUp could one day become. It has excellent story development, and has produced a great response from my students.

Free documentaries online

The website http://www.freedocumentaries.org/ has a large number of political documentaries available for free download. Although they seem to be mostly from the perspective of the left (and some seem to come from quite far to the left), there are a number of interesting titles dealing with human rights and the media. A few titles pop out (that I’ve heard are good but have not yet seen myself):

You can also find more free documentaries at:

Atomic mass versus atomic weight

Isotopes of hydrogen: hydrogen, duterium and tritium.
Isotopes of hydrogen: hydrogen, duterium and tritium.

I have been told by reliable sources that the difference between atomic mass and atomic weight is that the atomic mass is the mass of a single atom (number of protons plus the number of neutrons), while the atomic weight is the averaged masses of all the different isotopes you would find in a natural sample.

This obviously requires a discussion of isotopes, which may be a topic best left for high school. However there are a number of interesting hooks that could capture the imagination.

One of them is the use of isotopes to trace sources of your diet. Isotopes can tell how much meat a person eats (nitrogen-15) or how much of the carbon in their body comes, ultimately, from corn.