The Agro Dolce Classroom

Blueberries on Salmon?  That’s what Melissa Clark of the New York Times, came up with last week in her weekly column on food.  This is a bumper crop year for blueberries at my parents' home in Pittsford, Vermont.  Their many decades old bushes are loaded with blue fruit.  So, I decided I’d try Ms. Clark’s recipe, Salmon with Agrodolce Blueberries.  It was a huge hit with my 90-year-old parents.  Mother, who is an excellent cook, was surprised and pleased.  Dad, who loves salmon, thought it looked strange, but loved the flavors.  I reprised the performance piece for Louise and two dear friends last night with great success.

Agro Dolce is an ancient formula of sweet and sour, that we inherit through Sicily (and they via Arabia).  It requires a juxtaposition of ingredients, most pointedly in the case above, blueberries and shallots, vinegar and honey.  Ingredients that would seem to be working against each other, in fact, complement each other...even enhance each other.  Each flavor brightens in contrast to the other.  The chemistry of one is a catalyst for releasing the other.

While in the midst of summer feasting, it’s fun to push Agro Dolce as a metaphor into the classroom.  Classrooms are always a challenge that include children of many different abilities and multiple intelligences.  The least informed among our educators tend to simplify things to a monotone, teaching all the children as though they are alike.  The classroom becomes as monotonous as milk-toast.  The most informed among our educators see the classroom for what it is, a diverse, rich mixture.  These educators are inventive, yet disciplined with their discoveries.  To them, their classrooms are a recipe for Agro Dolce.  The diverse ingredients are all there to be matched appropriately, in ways that enhance each other.  The results: what the children invent and produce are colorful contrasts of rich ideas, beautifully inventive expressions, and wonderful contributions to the community.

So, here’s to the Agro Dolce Classroom (try the recipe, too!).

Ecoliterate

I just received a notice about a new book, Ecoliterate, co-authored by Lisa Bennett and Zenobia Barlow from Center for Ecoliteracy and Daniel Goleman.  Seems timely.  I wrote last week about literally bumping into Howard Gardner while I was writing a piece on constructivist theory and sustainability for Maplewood Richmond Heights School District in St. Louis.  Ecoliterate comes with high praise from Howard Gardner.

The new book brings theory, practice and twenty-first century skills together and I can't wait to read it.  It will be released next month and "has received early praise from Sir Ken Robinson ("powerful and persuasive"), Linda Darling-Hammond ("practical and inspirational"), and Howard Gardner ("vivid and compelling")."

To quote the announcement...Building on the success of emotional and social learning, Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence, offers a new integration of these three intelligences that advances academic achievement, fosters resilience, and helps schools play a vital role in protecting the natural world...Ecoliterate presents stories of innovative educators, activists, and students from across the nation; a comprehensive professional development guide; and the five practices of emotionally and socially engaged ecoliteracy. We invite you to pre-order your copy today at Amazon.com. 

This book takes Howard Gardner's foundational work in Multiple Intelligences and Daniel Goleman's research and writing in the domain of social and emotional intelligence and builds on it.  At the same time, this book takes a leap into new territory.  From looking at the preview material at Amazon.com, I was struck by the title of the Introduction: From Breakdown to Breakthrough.  Here the authors write about instability in systems, any systems, as a time for new creativity and unexpected breakthroughs.  They write, "In these times of instability-in our schools, our nation, and our biosphere-this book reflects our core belief that educators are ideally situated to lead a breakthrough to a new and enlivening ecological sensibility for the twenty-first Century."

This core belief drives our work at Cadwell Collaborative and inspires us as well as the educators with whom we work.  It looks as if this book will be a must read for all of us.  Thank you Center for Ecoliteracy and Daniel Goleman.

Entering Boston

For the last few days I have been focused on three things: writing a piece on constructivist theory and practice for the Maplewood Richmond Heights School District; falling in love with my new grandbaby, Asher; and moving into a new place and a new state as well as renovating a beloved house in Vermont.  Though exhausted, I am thrilled to be  in Boston. The second night I was here, Wednesday, the 11th of July, a friend of a friend who is on the board of the Landmark Orchestra, invited me to attend the first in a series of free Wednesday outdoor concerts at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade in downtown Boston.  She said I should also attend a cocktail party before with board members and friends on Beacon Street.  I thought this all sounded like a fabulous introduction to my new city, so of course, I accepted.

At the cocktail party, which was crowded, I found myself elbow to elbow with Howard Gardner, whom I admire, and coincidentally had been writing paragraphs on in the piece for Maplewood.  Any educator would know of the work of Howard Gardner, his theory of multiple intelligences and more recently his book, Five Minds for the Future.  We have Reggio Emilia in common and are friends and colleagues with the same people there: Carlina Rinaldi, Amelia Gambetti, Vea Vecchi.  Howard Gardner and Project Zero co-authored a book with the educators in Reggio Emilia called Making Learning Visible.  It turned out that we had a great conversation about connections and recent experiences in Italy.  That was exciting!

From the party, we walked the few blocks to The Esplanade.  The concert was all Arron Copland, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, all the pieces that I love, quintessential American heritage.  A chorus that was made up of all 21 Boston neighborhoods sang in full voice.  The night was clear with a breeze over the Charles River.  We sat on blankets and seats on the ground and ate picnics prepared for this VIP group that somehow I was included in.

Today I look out on the blue lace cap hydrangea through an open window where I have located my laptop. I hear children and families and birds and squirrels.  It is early morning in my new neighborhood and peaceful.  Lucky and grateful, that is how I feel.

By the Sea

This week, we are fortunate to be living by the sea on an island off Massachusetts only accessible by boat or air...Martha's Vineyard.  No one seems to know who the namesake of this island was, but we are grateful to Martha and to the Vineyard for offering us a welcome respite from the moving, sorting, and packing involved in turning our life eastward. Today, Ashley and I took a beautiful walk in the woods on the Menemsha Hills Reservation maintained by the Vineyard Conservation Society.   We found the walk because Ashley's brother, Steve, told us repeatedly to "buy the little booklet by William Flender, Walking Trails of Martha's Vineyard and take a walk a day!  You won't regret it."

Today's walk winds several miles through a largely oak forest, up and down and to various lookouts over the long beaches of the vineyard and out to the Elizabeth Islands.  The trail ends by sloping down hill, becoming mostly sand and then opening out to a dramatic pebble beach.  We stretched out on big, hot granite rocks and snoozed, listening to the surf and the rolling round stones turning over as the waves rocked them.  We noticed sculptures of stones dotting the shore.  And, I began to be transported back to my childhood on the coast of Maine.

I remember building with stones and gazing out to sea with my mother long ago.  I remember the sounds and the smells of the salt air and the feel of the hot stones on my feet.  I remember the joy in playing with the most basic and sensual elements of earth...stones, water, sunlight, breezes, ripples, shadows, coolness and warmth.

I think now about the sounds and smells and seemingly endless summer days and feel grateful for those memories and for this present time, here, this week.  I am blessed that the sea and the shore are a deeply connected to my sense of place even though I was born in the heartland of the midwest.

Soon we will be joined by our family that now spans three generations and all this goodness of summer will be ours for a timeless weekend!

Happy summer to all of you and Happy Fourth of July.

Louise and Ashley

Moving

We have been out of touch, out of reach and otherwise occupied these last three weeks! Yikes, that is a long time to be away from our scheduled blog posts.  During those weeks, we packed up our belongings in St. Louis, sold and closed on our house, drove to Vermont to find our other property in Middlebury, (that we have rented to students for, ahem, 2o years), torn apart and well underway in the renovation process.  Then, we started all over again, packing, sorting and storing well loved items from our past as well as rethinking where new walls, windows and doors would go.  Next move...to take furniture to our newly rented condominium in Boston. Whew. So, what does this all have to do with education? Ashley said, "Let's write a blog post about reconstructing thinking...and compare it to reconstructing our house." We could do that, and maybe we will, when we have time to think about it!  For now, we want to show you some photos of all this reconstruction in progress, just so you can get the picture of the creative process...tearing down the old to make way for the new.

We promise to back now more regularly, posting weekly.  And, we certainly wish you all a happy summer as the solstice is upon us and the days are long and hot.