summer vacation

I was here:

and now I'm home.

Today I had this flash of what the first day of summer used to be like. The girls just started summer vacation; whereas I just returned from a fantastic hiking and camping trip in Southern Utah. Today for me was the first day back to work in many ways: back from a trip, meeting with students, sorting through papers coming in for Crossroads, writing stuff down on scraps of paper: "Order hats?" or "Budget --> motor pool" or "O'Brien -- articles". It's all stuff that is surely the mark of insanity, these random bits and pieces of information or directives that only make sense to the writer, if that. Anna and Grace are simultaneously not going to school or work

[although to interject right here, Grace today dressed up in a tie and and glasses and when I asked her what she was doing she said she was going to work and when I asked her where she worked she said Weber State and when I asked her what she did there she said, exactly, "nothing." I know lots of people with the same outfit and the same job description]

but instead are in that blissful memory of "summer", the season that is itself a vacation rather than some part of our orbit. I felt today, for the first time, that this was a foreign idea to me anymore. I remember summer seeming like it was going to be a long time -- months -- and thinking in August, the month that itself seemed so far away, there was still more than a month left. Now that all seems gone.

And at the same time I have things to do, good things, things I love. So I'm not resentful. It's just different, but it's particularly fun to be able to see and feel and remember both sides of the meaning of summer -- the meaning of my kids versus the meaning I'm now living.

So, I'm thinking about my office and putting things on the walls again and moving my dry erase board and reorganizing my desk. There are other things, those on my virtual desktop, to organize as well. 30-some papers to review, and hopefully more on the way; the summer curriculum to plan for the parks; and the summer curriculum to plan for the teachers. Focus. Breathe. I do that and then remember there's that book to be writing and maybe a couple of book chapters and a few other papers. But right now this all sounds like fun, engaging, invigorating, exciting. The perfect thing to be doing in the summer, the time that I use no longer as "vacation", but to finish projects. And leave unfinished a lot of projects. But that's okay.

We just discovered a new place downtown that makes beignets. Big, gooey, warm ones. And, I was just here:

the end

I was about to just make a quick entry about how I'm on my way out in a few minutes for southern utah, hiking some slot canyons and exploring for petroglyphs and camping in among red cliffs and hoodoos. But then, just now, I received an overdue notice from the library, telling me Aesthetics in Science Education was to have been returned last week.

In essence, the message I got was that my sabbatical is now over. On my way out to make good on a trip I've wanted to do during the entire sabbatical, and now the book checked out on my faculty card that seemed like an eternity before I needed to return it -- both signifying that I have to give up, surrender the sabbatical.

I saw a former student a few days ago who said, "I heard you were taking some time off . . . " and I was about to correct him -- tell him that I was in fact still working -- when I realized that I really was taking some time "off". I'm not sure what "off" means, or what it was off from, but it was clearly "time off". Still turned on, but not in the same room.

I need to go back, and I'm even looking forward to going back. And I'm looking forward to another sabbatical some other time and probably some other place.

For now, I need to finish packing my bag, eat some breakfast, and head out of town. The weather is starting to break, the ceiling fan that I said I wouldn't mention again is up, I have two chapter proposals still waiting for responses, and a pile of things that are now clearly understood and underway. (I also have a pile of random notes and thoughts embedded into this blog; and, more importantly, I think I have the momentum to keep doing this. I've thought that this would be useful not only when I'm just trying to think of things to write, but also while I'm teaching. Maybe more so.) I'll get to do the trip I was planning on for months. But I'll have to come back. Gladly at that point.

The overdue library book? I went online and renewed it. It's due September 24th.

Walk this Way: punk rock, design-build, and scholar activism

Today I was in the car catching the final segment of a NPR radio show called Studio 360. It's one of those shows that I only hear once in a while, I think because it plays at an obscure time or perhaps because I'm just not thoughtful enough to pay attention. But the final few minutes of this week's show struck me.

If I've done this right, there should be a player with the clip right here:

Initially, it opens with a guy's first experience with a punk rock show in the early '80s. Grace was hearing the music from the back seat and immediately wanted me to turn it up; Anna wanted just the opposite. He talks about this as being "a different world," a concert with no seats, no light show, and a bunch of people he didn't know. The "roar" of the music, as he describes, originally offended him, as he saw the music as being the director of the people -- "the music was playing them," and "it was creating a place that they wanted to be." And then he makes a reference to "pogoing" (my own favorite dance move), and then how a community was being created out of the experience, rather than the other way around.

This was all fascinating and relevant to me already, but then he extended this to how the "do it yourself attitude" of the punk rockers connected for him a desire to pursue not simply architecture -- in which he would only be designing and then leaving the building for others -- but a design-build philosophy where there was also a "do it yourself" philosophy. In this movement, the builder was also the designer and the designer the builder. So, there's no permission asking or authority or go-between or division of duty. And this punk rock blending and re-creation of how the "work" is done and relegated struck me as another example of the scholar activism and practice community components that have been created out of Crossroads. We have a culture where we allow for scholarly mohawks and the pogoing [I'm so delighted that this is a real word, at least according to spellcheck] and, I think more important, we have a community that is engaged in bridging scholarship and action. Virtuosos in a field, but also people eager to get out a shovel and start digging in the dirt.

I don't really know what to do with this, but I like the connection. [How many times have I said/thought this in this space? This is like a junk yard of connections, ideas, and random autobiographical accountings.]

Grace got tired of people talking and asked me to change the radio station. I dialed through a couple of preset until "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith was playing as a classic tribute feature this weekend on the alternative rock station. She immediately began playing air guitar along with Joe Perry and generally "rocking out." It was fantastic and terrifying as she asked me to turn it up. Sometimes we just need to rock, I suppose. I sang along with Tyler and would have done the pogo but for the fact that I was driving.

cup of emptiness

Karyn's in California for a cousin's college graduation; the girls and I are on our own, and these kinds of occasions call for funny trips. Once, when Karyn was gone, we took the bus to Denny's. Another time we rode light rail to the library in Salt Lake. This time we rode the heavy rail from Ogden to Salt Lake and went to the bookstore and lunch downtown. It's funny how public transportation becomes a theme for us, even though it's a time when we have exclusive use of the family car.

My new GPS/toy confirms that the train rides very smoothly and quietly at almost 80 miles per hour.

At the bookstore I got nothing more than espresso. The girls picked out books, which is the thing to do while at a bookstore. Grace picked out Zen Ties, written by Jon J. Muth and featuring Stillwater the Panda who was in another favorite book of ours, Zen Shorts. There's beautiful water colors and lovely themes in the book -- the kind of book that becomes more meaningful the more you read it, which is amazing to find in a picture book. In this volume, Stillwater is visited by his nephew Koo, who speaks in succinct Haiku verse. Just to make the connection complete, Stillwater's first words to his nephew are "Hi, Koo!"

One of Koo's passages goes like this:

Tea was very good
my cup holds emptiness now
where shall I put it?

Stillwater tells Koo to save his cup for the entirety of his visit, but after the visit (with lots more going on, of course) Koo decides to keep the cup as a symbol of the entire visit -- in which characters and relationships changed as dramatically as they can in a few pages. In a sense, the cup was now full.

And then Koo went home on the train, just like we did at the end of our day.

big hole

Yesterday I went with all of Anna's second grade -- 100 kids on two school buses -- to Kennecott's Bingham Canyon Mine. This open pit copper mine is described and even celebrated as the largest manmade excavation in the world. Way to go mankind. It's both troubling and awe inspiring to see how much earth you can displace given 100 years, scoops that pick up close to 100 tons of rock in a single swallow, and trucks that carry 230 tons per load. Still, from the rim you look down into a hole that's close to a mile deep and over two miles across. It's mind boggling.

It was uncharacteristically cold, windy and snow/rain was falling. We spent some time inside the visitor's center and watched their film, but also spent a little time looking over the edge and having the class picture taken in front of a typical dump truck's tire. Mrs. Blair, here taking the picture, is perhaps the best teacher we've ever seen, and we'll miss not having her next year. I was happy just to get to talk to her on the bus.

Today there's school swim trips to the high school down the hill, a phone conference for me, a birthday party to go to for Grace; Karyn will be working and then she'll leave for California for a graduation tonight. So I'm up to see what I can get done before this all gets set into motion. So far I've made coffee and have written this much.

gratifying

Yesterday morning I was giving the opening keynote address for 350 people for the Rocky Mountain regional meeting of NACADA. It was delivered as planned, I sounded like I knew what each slide would look like, and I made these pretty simple overarching points about what education means and how we should direct it. I thought it was going well -- people were paying attention, laughing at the right things, and generally staying in the ballroom.

But when people ask "How did it go?" I have to tell them that it went really really well. At the end of the talk, people clapped, the conference chair came up to the podium and thanked me, and I started to step aside . . . and then people kept clapping, and some people started cheering, and some people even started to stand up. I was off in the corner by this point, sitting down, and I had to stand up again and give an awkward wave and mouth "thank you" in my sheepish not-sure-what-to-do-with-myself way.

And then people came up after and said things like (no joke): "I've been to a hundred of these conferences and this was the best opening keynote we've ever had." People kept stopping me with comments like that. It was getting a little ridiculous. I loved it. Jill told me that this was completely out of the norm. "These people are academic advisors she reminded me," rather than cheer leaders or groupies I guess.

I write this down because I need this to look back to on those other days.

It's great, though, that I can synthesize a lot of new and old work, put it together into something, and find that it actually means something to a lot of people all at once. I'm not sure what that means I should do in the future, but it gives me something to think about.

N40º39.829' W111º29.817'

Or, in which I mention the ceiling fan for the last time.

Rhett and I, but mostly Rhett, installed the ceiling fan today. That required, unless I lost track, 5 trips to Home Depot. One: get ceiling fan and attachment thingy that spans between joists so as to support the ceiling fan, referred hereafter as the "thingy". Two: get extra wiring and junction box suggested by Rhett while consulting on the phone. Three: get different box for wiring and mounting, this time on Rhett's way home last night. (This was after a long story filled with intrigued and engineering, mostly to find that there was another supporting "thingy" in the ceiling that we agreed would suffice, in spite of its 1940 era stylings. But our mounting methods and box wouldn't fit onto said thingy.) Four: Rhett and Adam return to Home Depot to return wiring and get washer that would accommodate the mounting of the new box to the old thingy. Five: Rhett and Adam get new machine screws that are both long enough to span from the newly mounted box and the right pitch to fit into said box.

But then it was straightforward. The ceiling fan installation itself, once there was something to mount it to, was pretty easy. I owe Rhett a lot more than the two Mexican Cokes I let him take with him back to campus.

Now I'm here:
N40º39.829' W111º29.817'
according to my new toy, courtesy of a trip to REI, exchanging a couple of things (I'm the only person in my family who doesn't adore wearing squishy Croc sandals for some reason) and cashing in a birthday check.

I thought "here" would be more conducive to writing. It's mostly just a room with a bed, a deck that overlooks the indoor pool, and two bathrobes. Too bad there's only one of me.

A few years ago David and I walked across a conference hotel in our bathrobes to meet friends for drinks. I thought of doing that now, heading for the lobby to access the wireless internet signal, but since I will probably face some of these people tomorrow morning for the talk, it seems best that I not wear the robe. That is, I should wear clothes, rather than a robe or no clothes at all.

I went through the talk by myself in my very nice but sterile hotel room to find that I know what I'm talking about. Maybe too much, since now I'm not sure if it's relevant. Too late to think about this now. Forward, onward. They never told me for sure that they'd have audio hooked up. Just "shouldn't be a problem." The probably not a problem would be problematic during my last slide; arcs aren't arcs if they don't land somewhere.

must write something

The ceiling fan isn't up. Rhett, a recent physics graduate and a licensed electrician, is coming over in a few minutes to help, at least with the box and the old wires.

The last few days I've been battling waves of excess stomach acid. i get this way sometimes, and it kind of perpetuates: excess stomach acid, worry about the condition, more excess stomach acid. The last few days I've thought it's been exacerbated by ceiling fan electrical worries, distractions, the talk I'm giving tomorrow, writing in general, the summer program, etc. Now, though, that my parents are at my sister's instead of here, I feel better. Or, maybe I just haven't had enough coffee. Probably, though, it's my mom.

Today, hopefully after a ceiling fan is hanging in the living room, I'll leave for Park City to stay over and give a keynote address tomorrow for college academic advisors. I advise, I calculated, an average of 2 graduates per year. Others whom I more informally advise in their paths towards science teaching careers have a tendency to leave the state, recently to Texas and specifically the suburbs of Houston. Clearly, I'm not qualified to talk about advising. So I'll talk about learning and overarching goals of education. Once I assembled the slides, I realized that this isn't much different than the talk I give to physicists. Either it's a good universal theme or it's true that I don't know anything else to talk about.

I'm thrilled to hear when someone reads something of mine and it brings them to tears. Either way, via laughter or despair, but laughter is better. My delight at the response plus the tearful laughter probably adds up to about 10 minutes of total joy between at least a couple of people. I think that's a good contribution.

I still need to do yoga. But I did dig out and frame some new raised beds for our garden. And I did play cribbage with Dad the night before.

I'm not sure what I'll do in Park City with a few hours to spare. Rehearse the talk. Eat something, maybe at the pub. And maybe I'll ignore all other distractions and work. Maybe the ceiling fan will be spinning stably at home.

Karyn and the girls and 10 others from Brownie troop #2366 marched to school in their new rainbow tie dye shirts, made two weeks ago at their meeting, to be worn today to their field trip to the Nature Center. They look adorable. Bright. Kind of cultish. But adorable and joyful.

The talk -- getting back to that -- worries me only a little in that I'm not sure how it ends. I have an ending, a conclusion, but I'm not sure it's clear how I'm getting there. The final "point" is a Brandi Carlile video in which she brings to the stage a girl who then gets to sing along. This, too, is stolen from another more original talk I gave (and admittedly stolen from Brandi Carlile, I guess). It culminates the emphasis that I'm making on the personal mentoring and modeling that we need in education. We are allowed, in the video and in the best educational situations, to take risks and to make mistakes ("such a classic waste of cool, so afraid to break the rules"), and we have someone next to us encouraging and pushing and demonstrating. The Sherry Southerlands, Karyn Johnstons, and John Settlages of the world seem to have that spirit, but each in their own personal way.

I should publicly admit that I am in love with Brandi Carlile. Everyone should be.

in which I only once mention the ceiling fan . . . and its absence

"Yesterday it was my birthday.  I hung one more year on the line."  That's the Paul Simon lyric that sticks in my head every May 18th.  We finished soccer season and had a barbeque to celebrate both the closing of the season and my birthday.  The Lightning stayed true to their name . . . as long as I made sure that their shoes were tied.  I'm not sure that shoe tying will be allowed next season when we move up in age bracket.

Also from Paul Simon, "I get the news I need from the weather report," especially as it's getting seasonably warmer and I'm staring up at the hole in my ceiling with three old sets of wires hanging out.  That's the hole where the ceiling fan will fit quite nicely, but I need to be more sure of how those wires should squish through the little box that I'm putting in to support said ceiling fan.  As they're old and thickly insulated wires, I'm calling an electrician tomorrow to make sure I'm not doing something unwise.

Most importantly, or at least most in need of attention, is the keynote I'm supposed to give on Wednesday. I have slides, and I have points, but I'm not sure I have an arc yet. Most importantly in terms of my overall emphasis and thinking, I have essays now from both me and John to look over; an editorial to finally top off; and my own proposal for my own conference. These are reminders to me rather than public bitch sessions. I may actually get to them -- some of them at least -- tonight. But I could also play cribbage with Dad.

in which I twice mention a ceiling fan

My parents are here. It's not as bad as I'd been anticipating. I'd been anticipating -- dreading for some reason -- the entire visit and everything about it. Dad brought beer, which made it better. We've kept busy, but not with writing a book or reviewing proposals. We bought a ceiling fan. My mom talks a lot just to fill things in, but without saying much. In fact, she's avoiding saying the other things that we need to talk about, and I've wondered if she's aware and deliberate about this, or if she's just become accustomed to it. I'm tired. Karyn went to the zoo, on a school bus, 40 miles, each way, with 100 kindergartners. She's even more tired. I should try to take up yoga . . . again. Karyn got me a DVD a few years ago called "Yoga for Inflexible People." It totally matched the intended audience, although I wondered if the multiple meanings of "inflexible" were intended. "Pilates for assholes" would be a good DVD, too. The girls had a dance recital tonight. It was fantastic. Anna, in particular, moved her feet in deliberate, fast, amazing ways. (Talking to a friend, we realized that this is remarkable in a kid not because it's deliberate, but because it's deliberate in a way that is not to gratify an immediate want.) I got a raise. Bigger than ever before (not saying much, but still saying something). I should get promoted more often. Except this was my last promotion on my current trajectory. Tomorrow is soccer. The last game of the season. And our barbeque. And my birthday. And dinner. I haven't done any writing in days. But I'm tired, and even though everyone else is off to bed, I won't write anymore. Except for this. If you looked at the kindergarten core curriculum for the state of Utah, there's a bunch of stuff that's been added to get kids ready to work with numbers and letters. But if you looked at the rest of it, the standards of learning are these:

Students will develop a sense of self. Students will develop a sense of self in relation to families and community. Students will develop an understanding of their environment.

I've long thought that these are learning goals that we can have for kindergarten . . . and for 3rd grade, and 6th, and high school, and in college. If you can understand the self, your relationships with others, and something about the universe around you, then you pretty much have it covered. Forget about learning colors, the difference between a fibula and a tibia, and the past perfect tense. Sure, you can learn those things, but if we placed it all into those three goals, wouldn't we have a better sense of what we're doing? I'm trying to remember to add this to my talk next Wednesday. Tomorrow I need to install that new ceiling fan. And Anna's going rock climbing for a birthday party. There's another list of things to do, but I need to leave it alone right now.

summer progressions

I'd always imagined that spring would simply blur into summer without me really noticing it. That's partially true. While others were grading, going to meetings, computing grades, submitting grades, etc. -- all the grimacing and grunting of the end of the semester -- I was floating on the same boat as normal, at least for sabbatical. Now, though, there are summer projects. In some ways they all seemed to start today.

First, I had to get to campus. I rode my bike. The weather's changing for the better and the season if finally really pleasant for bike riding. Fortunately, I haven't had to keep that close track that I usually do; but I noticed that Dan (regular bike commuter in my department) didn't switch from knobby to slick tires until just last week. Usually he switches around spring break. I use Dan's tire switch as a sign of spring, like robin's coming out or tulips blooming. Spring came late this year.

The first meeting was with the coordinator of a multidistrict grant that I'm a part of. I'm "delivering" material, as they say. I've stayed pretty disconnected from this, but now that I actually understand my role in the whole thing, I'm actually excited to take part. Yeah, still some work: develop the curriculum, buy some stuff, etc., and then actually "deliver" and follow up and repeat for the next three years. But it's a good project.

Second meeting was with Charla, the student coordinator of our science-in-the-parks program. She told me that she brought a synopsis of all she'd done since finals. It was a blank piece of paper. I told her this was exactly as much as I'd wanted at this point, and then we continued on with talking about the rest of the staff, where to go from here, and when she might have the drumbone finished.

I wrote a few things after that. Email, notes, and some to-do's. Then I went to meet with my Chair and my Dean.

It was one of those meetings where I could say, "This is the way I think things really should be." And, everyone basically agreed that the way I think things should be is a potentially good direction to go. But there are these issues: pay, space, faculty, politics, etc. But then we went on and talked about if/how/what/when. it boils down to: figure out the mission of the College at this point; see if a graduate program in science education fits into that; use said graduate program as the vehicle to do lots of other things (e.g., hire other faculty, unite departments across the College towards science education initiatives, host collaborations with school districts and researchers from other places).

All of these things felt like they were leading towards something, rather than just turning a crank that runs the machine that bails the water out of the boat. This seemed to direct the boat forward a little bit. I need to now design a curriculum, write some job descriptions, and design a master's program to keep the boat going forward, but at least I know what direction to steer.

A complete aside and/or counterpoint to productivity: Here's the coolest toy/software/educational-thingy I've played with in a long time, probably ever. And it's free. And it's someone's graduate work -- a master's thesis. (I also wrote a little bit of computer code for my MS . . . this makes my work look, well, pathetic. Or worse.) And it works on three operating systems, at least. Basically, you can just "draw" a bunch of stuff, press play, and let physics take over. I'm sure I've already been distracted for hours by it; I convinced the girls that they needed to play with this (on Karyn's faster computer -- even better) and they too thought it was magical.

So there I am, on a boat with a direction and some oars, and then distractions. Wonder what I'm going to do as soon as I finish writing this sentence?

hidden valley

We found Hidden Valley, and beyond.

That big canyon on the right is Taylor Canyon, and the peak above is Ogden Peak. We -- Matt and Carl and I -- hiked from the trailhead up about 2200' in a little over two miles until we were overlooking Taylor and facing Allen Peak and Mt. Ogden. Like thus:

Not as green as it's going to be . . . yet.

And it took some route finding (it is Hidden Valley, after all) as we crossed some snow fields. I had my last improv sled run of the season -- a 30 foot run on my backside, deliberately.

Tomorrow I go to three meetings, and I suppose I should open this dossier as an external tenure reviewer. But each of the three meetings is real business: summer plans, grant participation, and the future of science education at the university. We'll see what comes of it all.

interstitial spaces

interstitial |ˌintərˈsti sh əl|adjectiveof, forming, or occupying interstices : the interstitial space.• Ecology (of minute animals) living in the spaces between individual sand grains in the soil or aquatic sediments : the interstitial fauna of marine sands.

I just kind of like the look of the word, actually. It has a certain mouthfeel.
More compelling still, we've used this a few times in descriptions of our work on professional development and conferring. It's the place in between, the middle, the transitional, generally speaking. And that's why it's compelling. Things aren't supposed to happen there. But all too often they do, so we should pay attention to them.*
One of the first really goofy theories of learning and the mind that I learned about in graduate school was connectionism. There, the mind wasn't a repository of concepts or holders of memories. Instead it consisted of all of the wiring of associations, and the actual meanings were created in the spaces between. In other words, the mind didn't make meaning itself, but the meaning transpired out of the in between connections of the associations. It was a theory that was both compelling in its novelty and complexity, and unnerving in its uselessness.
Here, though, in social situations, those in betweens are not happenstance. They're real places that just so happen to be in between other spaces. They are hallways, lunch lines, and receptions. Bus stops, walks between classes, and random thoughts after an email or journal entry is almost finished, or barely begun.
So then a good question to ask: If we make just as much, or more, meaning in the interstitial spaces, then should we create such spaces deliberately? And if we did that, would they still be the in betweens? And if they weren't, would they still have the effect we want? The goofy thing might be that in trying too hard to create or re-create deliberate spaces, you might ruin the good parts of those that were made up in the interstices.
I'm not sure I believe that. Just like I'm not sure about connectionism.

____*But all too often I begin a sentence with a conjunction. And I wonder what Ms. Sevcik would say about that. Yet, she did say you could do this sparingly, as long as you separated it from the rest of the sentence with a comma. But, I'm still not sure if I should rely too much on my 11th grade English class as a reference for all things, almost two decades [oh dear] later.

a pile and a case

Tomorrow I was supposed to be leaving for this place, and an overnight stay and more hiking around in slot canyons in the San Rafael Swell.  But slot canyons and 50% chance of thunderstorms are a bad combination.  So I consulted with the others in my group and decided that we could postpone for a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow, we may actually see more snow here.  I have a pile -- really, not just a heap or a stash or a mound -- of brush and wood that's been extracted from the backyard now on the front of my driveway, completely preventing any cars from going in nor out, and pretty much convincing neighbors that we are the blight of the neighborhood.  Except they all know that a giant dumpster -- hopefully one bigger than said pile -- is being delivered for a couple of days.

Our neighbor, a bartender, was cleaning out his garage while I was cleaning out the brush; and he brought over a case -- 12 bottles -- of infused vodka.  Some grapefruit, some raspberry, and a couple of pepper.  Pepper vodka with jalapeno olives and salt on the rim is interesting.  One is enough for now.

Tomorrow instead of driving to southern regions of the state and navigating gravel roads by car and desert canyons by foot, I'll hopefully be dumping the fire hazard out of our driveway and into a giant receptacle.  And if I get some neglected writing done as well, so much the better.  No promises.

the real me

Karyn and I just saw Lars and the Real Girl tonight, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.  But that's not what this is about.

Today we were walking back from the mercantile, a sunny day and the girls riding their scooters.  I said something about how happy I was with everything.  Karyn sounded surprised, and I was surprised that she was surprised.  Here I was walking through the neighborhood with my family and the dog and the mountains in front of us and we'd just had yummy drinks at a little round table near the window; I'm on sabbatical (still -- I claim it's not over though I need to face reality soon enough) and I have a great job and I get to do things I love.  I complain . . . no, not complain, really . . . I find frustration in the multitude of things I have to do, but I don't think I'd want that to be different when I really think about it.

Karyn followed her surprise by talking about how I react to frustration, how I loose my patience, how I seem exacerbated by little things.  

And that's not true.  Not completely.  It's only true around the people I love the most.

That's the problem.  Or the problem with me, maybe.  For most of the world, I get to be my even keeled, mostly pretty good, usually thoughtful and mature self.  For the people I live with I can be even better than that sometimes.  More often, I can be worse.  Yeah, like anyone, sure; but it's still remarkable and maybe I'm a little more prone to it because I'm especially even keeled in my professional life.  Maybe I even have three selves: the teaching part of me is extroverted and interested, the professional piece of me is calm and thoughtful, and the most intimate parts of me are scattered, irrational sometimes.  There's calm, thoughtful, extroverted, and interested in there, too; but along with that everything else bubbles to the surface.  Maybe that's the most real me.  

Or more likely, a "real" anyone isn't really there in any single representation.  I could start to think that I'm complex, but really there's nothing special about that. 

Today I made dinner at the grill outside and was just finishing when I told the girls to head inside and get ready to eat.  Salmon burgers, and they were hungry, and they ran to the door.  The next thing I knew Grace was crying, at the side of the steps to the back door, about 3 feet below the base of the door itself, so it was a decent descent.  I dropped a bun, ran over, asked Grace where it hurt, but she just cried; so I asked Anna in my own stressful way, "Anna, where did she fall?!"  I meant, on what part of her body did she land; but Anna gave me the unhelpful point to the ground and said, "Right there."  

Karyn admonished me and my response of "No shit; how did she land Anna?!" and of course it just got worse then.  Anna was then crying and . . . well, Grace is okay, a few scratches here and there.  I ended up apologizing to Anna.  And talking about what I meant and how we felt.  Maybe that was me at my best.  But it followed me doing close to my worst.

Mexican coke

It's not what you think.

Grace and I stopped by our local mercantile, a little coffee shop and neighborhood store that stocks a few extra items you can't get at the regular grocery store, or you'd just as soon get nearby.  Generally, we just get coffee and a steamer or Italian soda.  Today we got bottled soda from the cooler.  They have a few specialty sodas, and I'd noticed recently that they had Coca Cola in the old fashioned bottles.  I thought that sounded good.  Grace got an orange cream soda.

What I realized later was that these particular bottles of Coke are imports from Mexico.  There's a few hints, especially the printing in Spanish, the ad hoc nutrition label . . . and the "Bottled in Mexico" message.  But the other thing I noticed was that it tastes really good.  At first I thought this was because it was nostalgia, the real glass bottle with the real capable lip (no threads, just that smooth rounded glass) . . . but then I realized it really did seem to taste better.

So I went to the authority, Google, and figured out that it was different, and I could have realized this had I just read that extra ingredient label.  This version of Coke uses cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.  It's not as thick; it tastes like the "gourmet" colas; I want more.  Karyn's recently been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and shares some of it with me.  We've started realizing how much corn and fructose is in pretty much everything bready or sweet.  And it isn't really that good for you for multiple reasons.  But now I realize that it doesn't taste as good, either.

When people reminisce about the good old days and how things aren't as good now as they used to be, I guess this is one of the examples.  I used to think that these were just the arguments that you'd start to make as you become a grumpy old person.  (Certainly, I can see myself stumbling down that path.)  Now I realize that there's some truth behind those good old days.  They used real sugar.  Yum.

Apparently some Costco locations have it.  I was just at Costco.  I got an 8-pack of black beans, a tray of sushi, 4 lbs of strawberries, and 2 8-packs of chicken sausages.  Little did I know what else I should have been searching out.

welcome New Zealand!

One of the first things I do in the morning is to get to the computer to delete emails.  I used to think that my job first thing in the morning was to read emails, but I now accept that I delete a bunch; and then I can read what's left.  That requires coffee, so lately I've woken up, I awake the computer as well, delete emails, and then make coffee and come back to read the emails that I want and need to read.  

I also come back to the ones that I need to reply to.  Last night I and others got a request to read a draft of an op-ed piece, responding to another recent op-ed piece and misinformation about climate, global warming, and the basic process of science.  So I gave some feedback this morning and had a (virtual) discussion about how frustrating this is, and a little bit about what to do about this.

I replied to a few other things; looked at the YouTube clip of animated Muppets playing roles in The Matrix (recommended by a physicist, of course), which reminded me of Muppets singing Danny Boy and also had links to R.E.M.'s "Bad Day," which is a good anthem, but also distracted me with a related clip of R.E.M. in 1983 on the Letterman Show.  "Distracting" because Michael Stipe had hair.  I never knew.  Or had forgotten.  

And then there was some back and forth about a school group to visit in June, input about school board stuffs, and the scheduling of a meeting next week, and a couple of days camping next week.

But the email award for the day goes to Heidi from UNC @ G, who gave me new images of the similarities between 5-year-olds kicking soccer goals and the process by which we get tenure.  And there were responses to this blog, which made me realize that readership now occasionally [I always spell "occasionally" wrong at first, and now have gotten in the habit of reminding myself that there is no "ass" in the word . . . which helps, but only after I'm making the correction] extends beyond the walls of Utah and shores of Connecticut to North Carolina.  So I took a look on Google Analytics (a terrifyingly spectacular tool to trace the sources and numbers of visitors and lots of other stuff) to confirm that, yes, wow, the state of NC has been lit up in the last couple of days.  And then I realized something else:  One hit from New Zealand, just days ago.

So, welcome New Zealand and all international readers.  Or robots.  Or 3-year-olds playing with the mouse.  Give it back to your parents so that they can research something truly interesting.

This does, potentially, point to the fact that the drivel I can write late at night before I go to bed without any proofing or further thought gets broader readership than my peer-reviewed research.

fame and mundane; beans and martini

I got this link forwarded to me today, officially displaying the video footage of the Circus of Physics that Colin and I put on at the Physics Open House a few weeks ago.  It's the 2nd of the two "performances" that night, probably the less fluid of the two.  I don't think the woman with the ongoing response/commentary was any help.  

In spite of that fame, I spent my night in a school board meeting listening to the pros and cons of a uniform policy.  In the end, it got tabled and sent to a committee of students, faculty, administration, and parents to come to a consensus.  The most interesting things were:

1. If you want to get a lot of students to stay late for a board meeting, threaten them with a school uniform.

2. People seem really bent on equating "education" with "work,"  or a "school" with a "business."  I never like that, and I don't get it.  Are we really that unimaginative that we have to use the same model for capitalism as we do for education?

3. I presented some curriculum ideas to the board in an open discussion, but by that time most of the audience had left.  We were done talking about what they would wear, and were on to what they would learn.  Hmmm.  I don't really blame them, but it is ironic.  I think the issue is that what clothes you put on your body in the morning is something you can have a vision for when you're 15.  What your education is designed to help you achieve is something that adolescents have a hard time grasping.  Most adults have a hard time with this too.  Thus, we equate education with competitive business practice.

I got home and tried to finish a meal that had begun before I left for the meeting.  The first course was a handful of crackers, a banana, and a chocolate mint LaraBar, followed by a piece of gum and a bottle of water.  Upon getting home, I ate some re-heated black beans with a touch of salsa, and a martini.  A balanced diet.

Oh look.  Olives!

inside myself

I started reading The Political Incorrect Guide to Science last night.  It's as bad as I thought.  I want to read this and discuss it with other "liberals [who] have hijacked science for long enough."  (This is a project for the fall, and my dean will even throw in for the books.)  After only one chapter I'm already at a loss for how to combat the misinformation, religious zeal, and anthropomorphic egocentricism that promotes this stuff.  But I'm not biased.

I also enjoyed this from David Lee:

shit young feller, you ain't got started yet and the reason's cause you trying to do it outside yourself and ain't looking in and if you wanna by god write pomes you gotta write pomes about what you know and not about the rest

which seems to me to be good advice.  Granted, I don't write poems nor pomes (not well, anyway) and I don't raise pigs.  But I suspect there's plenty, or at least something, just as good as pigs and pomes.

barely qualifies as a shitty first draft

I'm drafting -- freewriting, really -- the "Vexation & Venture" proposal for Crossroads . . . and what I write comes out mostly as a whiny, disconnected smattering of things. Half of this will get cut; the rest will get focused and better explained. I'm trying to set up my current professional situation, and trying to figure out how to really describe what that is. I think that this is actually the problem: What I do becomes so convoluted and confused that it's no longer only difficult to describe to my mom. I can barely describe it to people who really know the academy and really know me. The "Venture" will be to talk about how to find better support and focus through structural changes around me. This sounds to me like a selfish proposition -- it partly is -- but I also really want to push my institution to create a more coherent atmosphere for science education research and public outreach. But I have to be able to describe what is opposite of that vision, that is the current state of affairs, without sounding like a whiner. I'm not, really. So this draft will all look different soon. May as well remind myself of what it looked like when it started: As conference organizers, we maintain this strict rule of “all conference attendees are also presenters.” In the Crossroads format and attitude, this is appropriate, but even I get frustrated with the amount of effort this requires. It’s not so much the extra work required to produce a coherent paper, but the reconsideration needed to come up with a new vexation and venture. For many of us, we have recurring vexations and we are continually working on the same project. I’m always delighted to see people who evolve a previous venture into a new one, or who are able to show progress and adaptation to new progress. In my case, I feel as though I haven’t really made progress on my past ventures, aside from new directions and the laying of foundations for future work. (I’ve proposed creating an edited volume and a new journal; the book I still have good intentions for but have set aside in light of other projects, and the journal has evolved into smaller projects and collaborations for now.) The challenge in coming up with something “new” is that there’s a natural tendency to try to create something new, and this “something new” seems to be something that you would either need to finish in the next year (before you propose something else to Crossroads, provided you feel an intrinsic need to attend and/or you are a conference co-organizer) or something with so many pieces that it has a continual vexation and venture to be focused on. In many ways I’ve always pictured “vexation” as a natural and necessary state for professional and societal change. I should always feel so “vexed” about my professional life – to feel otherwise would be to be an inert body in an interactive field. I’d just be adding dead ballast to the vessel, and not doing much to even entertain myself in the meantime. On the other hand, the things I often feel troubled by and naturally want to address are things that simply require more work. My office needs to be organized. I need to read some things. I need to put more effort into writing. I need to push forward a course proposal. These, very necessary and sometime even innovative things, are still just the equivalent of making sure that there is enough air in the tires to get to the next destination. Or, more analogously, these are the different turns that I need to negotiate and the hills I need to climb to get things done. At a Crossroads, these aren’t always interesting to dwell on too much, and I feel like I’d just be wasting the time of others to bring them to the table. The things that get the most attention and care at Crossroads are those that have a radically new initiative, and sometimes I wonder if we can individually sustain this. Or maybe I’m just getting lazy in my own proposing. So here’s where I am left. I don’t want to bring the “I’m still working on that idea for a new ____ (book, journal, conference, etc. – fill in the blank); what should I do now?” Not exactly. I’m at the point where I need to bring up the “I’ve been on sabbatical and I’ve really been thinking about my career and my identity as a science education scholar.” “Identity” is nothing new to this venue. It’s been a piece of research frameworks that many use to look at learners (teachers and students) with, and individuals have considered their own identities as researchers (Cox-Peterson, 2007), teachers (Ceglie, 2006), students (Drits, 2007), and even administrators (Meadows, 2007). My sabbatical has given me lots of things – time to walk the kids to school, time to write, time to plan . . . but mostly time to think a bit about what I’m doing. There’s never enough of this. I’ve long thought that one of my “problems” was that I could find myself too much to do. Some context: I’m likely the only active (defined as someone who regularly interacts with others on a national level) science education scholar in a 30-mile radius. And, where I’m positioned is at a regional, undergraduate-focused teaching university with a strong research mentality in many departments – mine being one of those. That is to say, I teach generally 3 courses and some labs each semester, as do my colleagues, and I and others still get a publication or two out in a year, along with a couple of conference presentations. I’m stationed in a department of physics within a college of science, where I’ve earned my promotions by doing research in science education and teaching some of our science ed coursework, in addition to physics coursework. The uniqueness of this combination means that I also get to do a fair amount of service. In fact, my service and research and teaching blend fairly well, Crossroads being one of the best examples of this. Being within the walls of a college of science but doing research as an educator means that I’m called on often, even if not well understood all the time. This ranges from being literally in a circus show – a set of physics demonstrations during an open house – to being called upon for committee work and task forces to being the go-to-academic when a grant proposal needs an evaluator documented on the project team. Most notable (beside Crossroads) are the efforts I’ve taken on that have strong community service components. This ranges from consulting with our planetarium and science museum to actually bringing an outreach program to our public parks during the summer. Back in those days when I was in graduate school, I really did dream that I would land this kind of teaching position at an undergraduate focused institution, but be able to maintain a high profile research record. The research record, I’ve realized and accepted, will never be award winning. I’m more hopeful, though, that my combination of teaching, research, and service, will become coherent and notable, at least in a particular local context. To make this really happen, though, I think I need a different structure.

timeline

I'm not sure how this is going to look, but here's an export of my attempt to use OmniOutliner to make a TimeLine/ToDo list for Crossroads. It looks way better like this, exported a different way. Once I really tasked myself with drafting this timeline, I started abandoning the paper/pencil method and looking into things like project planning/management software. I kept tossing those aside until I got into different pieces of Omni Group's software, and kept finding more and more simple things from them (and less and less expensive) until I got to this outliner that used to come with Macs years ago. Now the software is better, and only a little more expensive than free. The bigger, and more important, issue is putting this into place. ____ Task Priority Date(s) ▼ – Crossroads 2008 10/02/2020 ▼ ❑ Updates 3 05/09/2008 • ❑ David Lee details • ❑ email reminder • ❑ Review Proposals 1 05/30/2008 • ❑ Proceedings ▼ ❑ Alta Lodge • ❑ Food menus 2 09/15/2008 • ❑ All lodging booked 1 09/01/2008 Room block released 30 days prior • ❑ Final schedule/rooms 2 • ❑ Stuff: notebooks and water bottles 3 ▼ – David Lee • ❑ Check $1500 10/01/2008 • ✓ Room @ Alta 04/22/2008 • ❑ Dinner reservations 09/01/2008 • ❑ pre-ship books? 09/01/2008 ▼ ❑ Crossroads evaluation • ❑ Web Blog/Wiki/Forum 1 05/31/2008 Adam to set up web where each participant has an individual space to document outcomes and extensions from Crossroads work. ▼ ❑ Interview/visit 2007 Participants 2 08/31/2008 • ❑ Divide tasks? Julie/John/Adam? 05/19/2008 • ❑ Theoretical framework, methodology 05/19/2008 ▼ ❑ Crossroads Dissemination • ❑ JSTE Editorial 1 05/10/2008 Adam to work on most recent draft from John. • ❑ "Resistance" Book Chapter 2 09/01/2008 Prospectus in review with Terry Osborn Authors: Johnston, Settlage, Moss, Carlone • ❑ Article: Track 5 XRoad Participants 1 05/19/2008 Send this piece to Science Education • ❑ Article: Framing Principles of Professional Development 1 05/06/2008 Contrast to Communities of Practice; Send to IJSE ??? ▼ ❑ Crossroads Book 1 A cross between evaluation and dissemination of Science Education at the Crossroads, but also a whole other project. At this point I have no real idea if these dates are reasonable or too laxed. Could use current agreement with publisher, or pursue others. Current publisher probably would allow for most flexibility and quickest printing. • ❑ Essay Drafts 1 07/31/2008 • ❑ Companion pieces 2 11/01/2008 We have some ideas for these, but should get more once the evaluation process is more • ❑ Full edits 1 02/01/2009 • ❑ Crossroads 2009 10/01/2009 Hosted in Athens, GA. The last of the first generation of Crossroads conferences, completing our first 5-year-cycle. This will run like a "normal" Crossroads, but with the first attempt to have hosts other than the conference organizers. This gives us a sense for how to farm out the meetings to other site organizers. ▼ ❑ Crossroads, Generation II ▼ ❑ Funding 1 • ❑ NSF DRK-12 grant proposal 1 11/01/2008 4 year study to measure impact of mentoring and collaboration established by regionally hosted, nationally attended, networked Crossroads meetings. • ❑ Foundation proposals 2 12/01/2008 Look for regional support for individual meetings, as well as national support for the network of conferences. • ❑ Interim Meeting, 2010 1 06/01/2010 This meeting is planned to be a decidedly different format, taking a break from the tradition and preparing for a new set of conferences at regional levels. This could take place in the spring/summer 2010 as a preparation for Fall 2010 or Fall 2011 conferences. • ❑ Site proposals due 1 09/01/2010 In this scenario, we meet with prospective conference hosts in the spring, and then accept proposals in the fall. Conference hosts will then be notified of support by late fall 2010 in order to host a conference the following year. Question: Would someone propose a site for 4 years, or would there be different proposals for different sites each year? Or, the possibility of both? • ❑ Crossroads 2nd Generation Meetings begin: 1 06/01/2011 Could envision meetings gathering annually at various sites at at various dates from summer - fall. • ❑ Completion of 2nd Generation Meetings: 11/01/2015

abstract

Today was graduation, or commencement as they call it.  Not an end, but a beginning they say.  Every year they say that.  The President and the Dean have a few key lines that they, too, say every year.  But I guess not too many people know that.

This year for the University ceremony we had the Episcopal Bishop of Utah, Carolyn Tanner Irish, give the address.  This is interesting for many reasons: she isn't going to give the university a large sum of money, she is a leader of a religion that is not the dominant one in Utah, and she is a "she".  It became more interesting as she gave one of the best commencement addresses I can remember.  It was biting rather than sweet; she did not cast blame (except on her own generation) but assigned responsibility to the graduates for cleaning up a mess in our planet's environmental anguish and an economy of growth that cannot be sustained.  She asked these graduates to educate not only future generations, but her own generation.  While I could despair in the thought that many wouldn't remember and might even resent this call, I had some hope that maybe even a few would take heed.  

The College ceremony was great just because we get to stand in a line and shake everyone's hand.  Occasionally there's something else good, but really the best part is seeing a student that I've had in a class or a lab get their degree.  It doesn't get old.

This afternoon I was asked for a title and abstract for the keynote I'm supposed to give next . . . er, this month.  I didn't panic; things aren't late; Jill acknowledged that I didn't need to be rushed.  But I even have a title, or at least I pinned it down in a few minutes.  I'll call this, "Extraordinary Education from Ordinary Ideals."  I think.  The conference theme is about "making the ordinary extraordinary" or something so appropriate and cliche.  In some ways the talk could be really similar to other talks I've been touring around with -- here's a little bit about what our research points out, here are what we do in classrooms, and here's how they contradict our stated or assumed goals for education.  I don't think I can do this exactly, though.  The talk is for college advisors -- they have a view of themselves and their field as educators.  This was interesting to me, as my model has been that they are counselors, advice givers, and maybe even managers of some kind.  But to couch their role as educators is much more empowering.  

So I guess that this brings up the question of what it means to be successful as an advisor.  As a teacher, I feel successful when a student learns something new, or overcomes some kind of difficulty, or sees the world in a new light.  Perhaps this is exactly what an advisor does.  We have, ultimately, the same goal . . . well, wait, as soon as I state this it begs the question, "What's the goal?"  Okay, so that gets me back to my original intent for the talk.  What are our goals?  These are big and abstract.  But I have to write an abstract to describe this abstract thing.  

Students' goals, in my experience, are very immediate.  What class do I take?  How do I get into this class?  How do I get this prerequisite waived?  How do I pass this class?  Get an 'A'?  Our goals, when we have the chance to come up for air and look towards a horizon, are to prepare individuals to comprise some kind of civilized, forward thinking society.  We are, as Bishop Tanner implores us to do, striving to give students the tools and sense of responsibility to take on the challenges of making things better.  Of embracing those things they most care about and find the most joy in, and making this their mission in life.  This is an abstract goal.

Advisors have it even more difficult than traditional teachers, as they work on fringes of students' academic careers.  The have limited control over both the students and the curriculum.  I'm imagining a pond of remote control sail boats, the advisors trying to direct these things around, but the boats and the wind and the water all have the most immediate effect on what's actually taking place.  Advisors nudge the crafts in one way or another and hope they reach a goal that is possible and amenable to the student and the rest of us.

My problem is that these advisors probably already know the metaphor.  They live it.  Now I have to put that abstract essence into an abstract.  

teaching tradition

My own first year of college I had a math professor, John Krussel, who would put a poem at the head of each exam.  I think of this occasionally as I put poems on the top of my own exams, both a tribute and an idea completely stolen from Dr. Krussel.  I remember that I didn't always even like the poems and I didn't even really read poetry, but I liked the fact that they were there.  I don't know how I held on to that idea for so long that I'd still think to do it for my own students years later.  Some ideas are just like that.

Today I was signing 12 copies of Richard Feynman's The Character of Physical Law.  We've been giving these to our department's graduates for the last few years, ever since we were looking for a gift of some sort and books came to mind and I reflected on the moment of my own graduation.  Michael Broide handed me that book while I walked through the formation of faculty in their regalia, and I've read the book several times since. It's another one of those traditions that has just stuck with me.

What's funny and humbling about these memories is that I have a hard time remember the details of the fundamental theorem of calculus or some specifics about circular polarization (although I could re-understand them pretty quickly, I think, if I opened up the book for a few minutes), but I remember the poems and the books.  I remember a kid high on mushrooms during presentations of modern physics more than I remember the presentations themselves.  I remember racing my professor down the stairs to get to Quantum Mechanics.  I remember bouncing the laser off a window pane and I remember getting microwaves to tunnel through a gap between a couple of wax blocks.  I remember these images, moments, and traditions of the culture in which I was academically raised more than I remember any screen, reading passage, or chalkboard.

In my classes and research, I advocate trying to find really deep meanings in things.  But sometimes it seems like the harder you strive for this the more you miss the overall point of just getting a feeling for something, an aesthetic, an attitude.  And maybe that's all we can expect.  Some of the research that Eric and I are doing on general ed and different kinds of classrooms seems to suggest that students just gradually figure out how the professor is thinking, and the better they can do this, the better off they'll be in the long run.

It could also be that the skills, ideas, and current mental currency that any of us has is completely in the present, but it has been built up from all the things that have come in the past.  Maybe this sounds too simple, too obvious.  I think it's more interesting if we consider that the stuff you did in the past is not something you know now.  You know now only what is currently with you, and you were building that up five minutes ago.  And that five minutes ago state was being build five minutes before that.  Probably there's a little bit more memory and staging that takes place, but I think it's reasonable to believe that what you know if very temporal and based on the present.  What you did previously is not the direct cause of what you're doing and thinking now.  The past is related to the present (and the future), but not in the simple building-a-stack-of-knowledge kind of way that we may all too commonly assume.