So I went to Columbia, SC tonight to hear one of my Yale Div prof's talk about Paul (btw, Prof Adela Yarboro Collins was her amazing self). I love that my cohort Thomas Whitley snapped this on his new Instagram account.... I just have to wonder how this would appear to most of the teachers at my school... would I be that annoying kid "texting" on the back row of class (we were on the back row after all) or would I be that kid engaged enough to be feverishly taking notes via the Plain Text app on my iPhone so that my notes would sync up to my DropBox account so that I could quickly send them out to my fav people and start a discussion? Ah, the internets...

Go read:

The Innovative Educator: I Learned How To Write Without School: It sounds too simple. How can people learn things if they aren’t taught the proper way? If information isn’t broken down for them into bite-sized, manageable little chunks? It’s almost like magic, and no one seems willing to believe in it. No one seems willing to believe in how much children are capable of learning and doing when they’re permitted to exist in a world where everything is interconnected.

Made me cry... And reminded me that I "learned" about God as a kid (out of my own curiosity) even though I didn't set foot into a church until I was 13. Not only that, I ended up realizing that I should learn more about God (in the academic sense) than most folks around me, so I did. The same happened with my personal study of science (mostly physics and astronomy) that happened completely outside of my middle and high schools. I've never put together my own background with how I view/practice education in general. Yet, the very way that I teach is completely informed by that inner voice telling me to "let go" as a teacher and let my 13 and 14 year old students learn about their world like I learned about religion and science (and coding and marketing and computer hardware or anything that I really have been interested in enough to master)... on their own and at their own speed. Goosebumps.

Tears:

Science teacher: The Bambification of Dr. King: "Read 'Letter From a Birmingham Jail.' Take a walk outside and watch the grace and agony of life around us. Yes, it's complicated. Life is complex, Bambi's just the celluloid illusion of a corporation that owns a good chunk of the airwaves today, including ABC. I'm betting you won't hear much about King's letter from jail Monday."

As always, do something that won't compute and practice resurrection.

Thomas and I have rebooted the Thinking Baptists podcast:

Thinking.FM - ThinkingFM - Thinking Baptists 10: Tent Pole in the Temple

Here is the mp3 (btw, when is someone going to make a good HTML 5 enabled podcast player? I don't want to waste time/resources on a Flash player since they aren't iOS supported and you can't play them on iPhones or iPads in the browser). We'll be doing the show on a weekly basis (looks like Monday or Tuesday night) again, so head over to the still-developing Thinking.FM site and grab the RSS feed if you'd like to subscribe. We should be back in iTunes shortly. I'll keep you posted.

You all realize you're just egging these folks on by making videos, tweets, etc right? I know it's good for smiles and yells (or clicks if you're a "news" org), but as a Baptist with a couple of Seminary degrees under my belt, it always frustrates me to see the level of Biblical (and religious) illiteracy on both sides. Of course Jesus didn't want us to fear "Him" or him. Of course these people have a vested political and financial interest. The issues of "righteousness," "sin," "love" and especially God have been debated by intelligent, compassionate and level-headed folks for millenia. So let's do our best to create an intelligent citizenry that realizes the ever-present existence of extremism in all cases. Confronting these folks and giving them more exposure is just silly. Thomas and I will be doing a podcast tomorrow. You all should listen. Then you should all do this.

From Discovery Education (warning, it's a PDF). It's taken me 31 years and I can barely tell the difference between the two if at all. The trick is to help students realize that science wasn't (magically) discovered in the 1600's by Galileo (as this guide would have us to "believe"). Nor has science progressed on an upward curve to its current level of awesomeness. Like the rest of humanity, science has had its ups and downs but the myth of a progression of enlightenment is hubric and dangerous. That's not to say that we should inject science with flights of philosophical fancy. However, Athens still has a great deal to do with Jerusalem and CERN has a great deal to learn from both. Otherwise, you end up like them.