What's Important in the Fall/Winter Issue of Curriculum in Context?

The Washington Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development does a great job with their semi-annual magazine on education issues here in Washington State. Journal editors Joan Kingrey and Kevin Foster should be commended for the great work they do.

This issue of Curriculum in Context is centered on educating the whole child, which is a push that the national ASCD took up last year. Executive Director Gene Carter leads off the issue with an overview of the ASCD initiative, then passes off to Joan Schmidt of the National School Boards Association for her take on the importance of the arts and PE. She has an especially interesting look at studies showing a correlation between learning the piano and success in mathematics.

The "That's a Mouthful!" award goes to Pauline Sameshima of WSU for this:

Karrow and Kentel argue that to prepare a future generation of teachers and their students we must teach them how to live healthily, spiritually, ethically, and sustainably. To do that they suggest that teacher candidates must have a more ontologically and ecologically attuned educative experience. The authors suggest that "such an attuned educative experience would have teacher candidates beoming more aware of the foundations of consciousness, its effet upon their thining and general way of being, and the relationship of their being with place."

I've been reading and thinking about the Sokal Affair in recent days; writing like this always reminds me of it.

Towards the end there's an article from Janel Keating of the White River School District and Robert Eaker of many, many conferences and books on how to implement professional learning communities. It's nothing you haven't hear before, but if your school or district is just beginning the journey it might be a nice article to pass around and get conversation started.

Finally, the WSASCD conference is coming up November 1st through 3rd. Big names scheduled to be there include Harvey Alvy (who I have class with this Tuesday!), Jan Hasbrouck of the Washington Reading Initiative and frequent talks for Read Naturally, and Alison Olzendam, who talks on the ideas behind Powerful Teaching and Learning and is one of those rare people who know where the hell Rochester is.