Rethinking Schools

If you think the future belongs to our children and that a good start to solving any of tomorrow's problems created today (example, the environment) is through education, you are right! Where should we start? Well, look no further than early childhood education!


I get goose pimples reading enlightened words from the Rethinking Schools. Check it out if you are passionate about education! Visit Rethinking Schools at:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/

The following words should excite you like it did me. It's thoroughly breathtaking!

'Rethinking Early Childhood Education is alive with the conviction that teaching young children involves values and vision. This anthology collects inspiring stories about social justice teaching with young children. Included here is outstanding writing from childcare teachers, early-grade public school teachers, scholars, and parents.
Early childhood is when we develop our core dispositions — the habits of thinking that shape how we live. This book shows how educators can nurture empathy, an ecological consciousness, curiosity, collaboration, and activism in young children. It invites readers to rethink early childhood education, reminding them that it is inseparable from social justice and ecological education.
An outstanding resource for childcare providers, early-grade teachers, as well as teacher education and staff development programs.'

[Orignal excerpt can be read here.]

WOW! Take heart! Ecological Education!

Joe Lai : )

Wild Geese

In this beautiful poem I finally found a voice that so closely echoed all that was whispering in my heart one distilling dawn by the remote sea at Beting Bronok. There then I felt a gift had been given me - an epiphany of light and truth and the passion and joy of life screaming out to celebrate and to share. I felt so happy and I have learned so much. I am glad too the fleeting moment of my wondering at Beting Bronok I did capture. I called it Passion.

Mary Oliver's Wild Geese should move you out from wherever you may be into the light of living in the freedom of a priceless life, of discovering who you are and the world about you... i.e. if you chose to... fearlessly and lovingly... with acceptance and reckless abandonment. There is no time to lose.

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal in your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue sky,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Source: Dream Work by Mary Oliver

published by Atlantic Monthly Press

Dead Colugo found near Chestnut Drive

This is a belated sad news: a colugo had been found dead by the roadside near Chestnut Drive on Monday morning of 22nd December 2008.

Clarence Chua, who found it, commented:

"The specimen was laid out on the kerb. I think the driver put it there after hitting it. It was an adult I think. Hardly damaged, with only small drops of blood from mouth. Estimate that it died last night as the blood had dried. The spot was by a small sparsely wooded area in between Dairy Farm and Chestnut Drive Roads, about 1km off BTNR. I think it got hit by a car as it tried to glide from the wooded area to bukit gombak forest across the road.It's indeed saddening to see a relatively rare mammal die this way".

That morning, Clarence gave me an SOS call and started me off on a series of frantic phone calls to people who can help. Mr Leong Kwok Peng of nearby Diary Farm Adventure Centre responsed most expeditiously. He collected the specimen near Lamp post no. 142 within minutes of my call. He took photos and later called staff from Bukit Timah Nature Reserve to take it off his hands.


Thanks Clarence, thanks Kwok Peng, for your concern and speedy action. The colugo may have died, but because of you, some invaluable data (which could well be revealed by expert studies of a rare fresh carcass) did not die along with it. Interestingly, the first people I called - RMBR (Raffles Museum) - turned down my offer of a fresh specimen.

[Photo credit: Leong Kwok Peng]