1.Thank you for all the support thus far! The indiegogo campaign for my fellowship is almost to the halfway mark, and we’re almost halfway into the countdown. Give it a boost, will ya?
2. I have an entry in the Skillshare/GOODMaker learning plan challenge. The prize is $500, which I’ll use for learning material to prep for my fellowship—i.e. books! and language tools! But $500 is more than enough, so I’m going to donate part of the funds to get the students at my school to put together an entry for this year’s Design for Change contest. Got a few quick clicks to spare? (Yes.) Get your clicking finger ready and vote over here.
Yes, it was. The position of a lot of theologians in the Middle Ages was that there was no need to be curious, because everything we needed to know was in the scriptures, or in Aristotle and Aquinas which had acquired the status of quasi-scripture. The idea was that there was no need to look any further than that.
There is a Facebook group for a summer session I worked last year, and for the most part, it’s a forum for the kids (high school) to keep in touch, dish over AP exams, or what have you. A number of staff are also in it, but we almost never interject.
Following the NC primary results last Tuesday, a student posted, “Amendment 1 passed here in NC. Thoughts and opinions.” Over the next several days his prompt bloomed into a thread with 200+ comments. Reading through it, I kept thinking of how this conversation would have never occurred at my own high school (then, and probably today still). The points raised were sensible and well-argued and civil—much better than the hateful, adult-authored (I assume) drivel that floated the internet’s comments sections. An early comment:
No one should be justified in harshness here, and no one should call each other “ignorant” here. We are all peers to learn from each other.
What an honor to have had them in a classroom once upon a time. The kids are our future, etc. etc.
So many thanks to everyone who already contributed to my IDEX Fellowship. That I believe in the capacity for impact (the program’s and my own) is no secret, but the opportunity carries even more weight knowing that I am doing the work with your support. Continue to share the page with family, friends, and so on—every little bit helps.
One of this year’s fellows made this video. He worked with APS in Hyderabad—the same assignment I’m taking on—and shows a glimpse of a day in the community. (Watch it in HD.)
In case you missed it, click here to check out what I’ll be doing for my fellowship in India and help make it happen.
The story of the family that once worked a dancing bear, and the dancing bear park that gives bears a second chance. The sad lives of the bears is explained, the owners attempt to defend themselves, and park owners work to ensure that there are no more dancing bears in Bulgaria. (via @ohkarolle)
