Tracks & Tracings
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Snow Monkeys?!?
As one child began to look for the snow monkeys we wondered where this came from. Of course, we can never be fully sure, but the guess is that it began with the vines that are intertwined throughout the forest space, tangled around and across the trees (both the living and the dead). The vines are called monkey vines. But one particular walk there was a lot of snow that clung to the trees and vines, and when you shook them the snow fell and hit our faces, bodies, and the ground. Perhaps the movements of hands, limbs (human and nonhuman) and snow together storied the mythical snow monkey. Perhaps…
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Paths
Seeing tracks on the ground from animals and others. Making our own tracks in the snow. Noticing and following tracks and paths of tree branches and vines twining through the snow. Trying to follow an auditory track of a bird we hear in the trees but cannot see. Using landmarks like the school, the path, to find our path out of the forest. Looking at a path as a route or course that tracks movement. We see this in charcoal works, in the concentrated energies in some places, then the trickle-out effect where marks and energy are less dense but still there. Following animal tracks that will presumably lead us…
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Tracks in the Snow
Poems continue to inspire thought – Wanderings and Wonderings Snow reveals the passing tracks of those that have come before us, if only for a brief moment But I wonder what other tracks go unnoticed when snow is not there to remind us Following, leading, erasing Walking, crawling, slithering, running, leaping Away from and towards Paths converging and pulling apart Prints in the snow How many other humans AND nonhumans have stood where I stand Neither alone nor lonely Waiting watching listening Who/what has walked these place before What might these tracks tell us about the presences of others Being and belonging in a multispecies world “Poetry shuts out the…
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Working with Charcoal and Paper – response
Its interesting how Shelley and I track charcoal beyond its materiality. It is not about charcoal, but it is about charcoal…bodies and movements with charcoal, paper, and the floor together, on the ‘inside’ inspire/reflect/remind us of bodies and movements with pathways, critters, plants, wind together on the ‘outside’ so then does inside-outside blur? Can it? or do they remain separated? and Why!
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Working with Charcoal and Paper
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Working with Charcoal and Paper
My relationship with charcoal is one of indifference. As much as I adore stirring the hot coals in a bonfire, boxed-up uniform artists’ charcoal for me leaves something to be desired. I sat back, committed to observing the toddlers as they confronted this new material in their space. As I watched, I started to make marks with the broken bits of charcoal that had scattered across the paper. I found myself distracted by the movement of the little bodies all around me. Distracted in a good way… I began to attend to the physicality of the experience—the energy shifts, the varying density of the marks they left behind on the…
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Working with Charcoal and Paper – response
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Invasion of the Charcoal!
How can such a tiny piece of black charcoal create such angst and yet generate moments of clarity? As the toddler room begins its exploration with paper and charcoal we notice: markings, movements, mess, and at times mayhem! But within the tension of exploring how footprints-bodies-charcoal-papers become entangled, something unexpected emerges! Paper transforms, charcoal bits and pieces transform, tracing transforms, and human relations with charcoal transform. As Shelley and I reflect on the happenings of the past couple of days we sit with the uncomfortable feeling that charcoal is not welcome in the classroom. But we are not abandoning our contentious relationship. Instead we zoom in with great focus. EDGES!…
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A Walk in the Forest with Educators
We (educators, pedagogists, researchers) took a walk in the forest with the intention to pay attention, notice, engage in the presence of more-than-human others. We asked ourselves…. What and how do we notice when I walk in the presence of others – including non-humans? What relations do we notice? What logics do we notice and how might we follow these logics? Our Engagements… We noticed life, death, playfulness, garbage and plastics, patterns and textures, sounds (wind, squirrels, sticks and leaves under our feet, a plane flying above us), human-made and organic structures, levels and heights, animals (frogs and insects), a wide variety of trees and plants, strength and resiliency. The…
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Witnessing Ruins of Progress: Recuperating “Staying with the Trouble”
Our pedagogy is guided by a devoted commitment to the aspiration of noticing and the active and ever shifting process of paying attention. We are committed to an aspiration, as opposed to a tangible goal or outcome, because it signals our willingness to engage with the only true constants our world offers us: uncertainty and mutability. In this extended moment of history, our world (the children’s world) is characterized by ecological and economic precarity, one that educational systems too often try to soothe by fostering illusions of stasis and stability. We are committed to bringing this essential instability of our surroundings to the surface of educational encounters with the children.…
