![\"\"](\"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Levy.MagicBus.jpg\")
*<\/p>\n*<\/p>\n
Not all of us have access to a magic school bus capable of shape-shifting. Nor can we guide eight wide-eyed students (\u201cpupils with dilated pupils\u201d?) through the human body for a lesson on digestion. Not everyone has the budget for such far-out field trips, let alone the permission to keep an uncaged lizard in the classroom. Nah, Ms. Frizzle has us beat.<\/p>\n
I am at the University of Washington to become an English teacher. And the more we delve into the Honors 392 syllabus, the more I tinker and refine my goals for the future. How will I design my classroom with the Anthropocene in mind?<\/p>\n
Literature concerns itself with the \u201chuman condition.\u201d Recently, I\u2019ve rethought the connotations of this term: it no longer sounds like a diagnosis, or struggle, or burden borne. No, the human condition<\/em> is far more active; it includes agency, strength, duty. It\u2019s not merely our emotions (\u201cGatsby feels sad in this chapter\u2026\u201d) but our impact<\/em>. We aren\u2019t just victims of the limbic system: to be human is to be powerful and responsible. This is nowhere more evident than in the Anthropocene.<\/p>\n The fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of Jeremy Rifkin\u2019s The<\/em> Empathic Civilization <\/em>grasped me fast and fierce. I found much of his insights to be flint for thought. How might I incorporate technology into the classroom in a productive, novel way (#Gatsby)? How might I capitalize on the \u201ccollaborative psyche\u201d of younger generations (586)? Surely some classes\u2014weather permitting\u2014should be held outdoors. Ditto to incorporating movement. Role-playing exercises, in which students are encouraged to adopt various perspectives, would also be crucial. (My summer at the Yale Conservatory for Actors will have primed me well.)<\/p>\n Rifkin quotes Abraham Maslow in stressing that we must \u201cre-participate with nature.\u201d This sounds awkward, clunky\u2014but it\u2019s true. Interacting with nature has become, well, \u201csecond-nature.\u201d Rather than succumb to the cushion of our modern lifestyle, we must enforce \u201cno-screen time,\u201d taking walks, eating vegetables. Such re-participation is a skill that \u201chas to be practiced\u201d (611). We must actively engage our \u201cold\u201d brain systems and body movements; otherwise, we won\u2019t feel fully human. After all: we were made to do more than scroll and retweet.<\/p>\n Lakeside School requires its Upper School students to embark on a weeklong Outdoor Trip. My spring on the Deschutes River was such a terrific challenge: I learned more in that week than in an entire semester. Forget uploading your thoughts to The Cloud: ponder the actual sky.<\/p>\n \u201cLove grows brains,\u201d said Mary Gordon of Roots of Empathy<\/em> (their tagline should be: \u201cit takes a classroom to raise a child\u201d) (604). More than anything, this is what I hope to stress. Ms. Levy will not gain a reputation for being \u201csoft\u201d or \u201chokey,\u201d but (I hope) intensely passionate about her subject\u2014whether it be \u201cleaves\u201d of notebook paper or leaves on a tree, there\u2019s love here.<\/p>\n More \u201cfuel\u201d for thought (gasoline for that magic bus!)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Rifkin, Jeremy. The<\/em> Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis.<\/em> Penguin Group, New York. 2009.<\/p>\n Seaman, Camille. \u201cMelting Away.\u201d Global Oneness Project. Vaughan-Lee, Cleary. \u201cExploring Climate Change Through Art in the Classroom.\u201d PBS Teachers Lounge. PBS Education<\/em>. 20 October 2017. * Not all of us have access to a magic school bus capable of shape-shifting. Nor can we guide eight wide-eyed students (\u201cpupils with dilated pupils\u201d?) through the human body for a lesson on digestion. Not everyone has the budget for such far-out field trips, let alone the permission to keep an uncaged lizard in the classroom. Nah, Ms. Frizzle… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,56],"tags":[107,106,108],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-entries","category-week-7","tag-creativity","tag-education","tag-empathy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/honr392a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nThe final slide is particularly, ironically resonant.
\n<\/span>Their teacher, Dr. Mary Ellen Newport says: \u201cCreating art, in this case about climate change, clarifies for the artist what she does or doesn\u2019t understand\u201d (Vaughan-Lee).<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
\n<\/em>https:\/\/www.globalonenessproject.org\/library\/photo-essays\/melting-away#photo=1
\n
\n*I created the above image using an original photo by Seaman and Google Images clipart. <\/small><\/small><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.pbs.org\/education\/blog\/exploring-climate-change-through-art-in-the-sciencE-classroom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"