Not A Straight Line

Been doin' some thinkin' lately and one thing that popped up is that life for me has not been linear.  There used to be this drawing toy, I think it was called a Spirograph.  With the Spirograph you could draw these little circles all over the place.  I was thinking today that life has been more like one of those Spirograph drawings - going off in a direction but constantly circling back on itself.  I've been doing a lot of that circling back lately for one reason or another.

Keep circling back to past experiences or lessons or interests, but still kind of moving forward at the same time.  I've lately been trying to figure out why I've been pushing so hard against all of the recent trends in education in my own teaching and my own philosophy regarding education.  It's all been such a monumental mountain of crap lately.  Yet I've been pulled strongly back to my roots of environmental education, and putting so damn much time and effort into an educational endeavor that is running completely counter to what it seems like everybody else has been embracing(assessment and data analysis).  I know the kids don't give a rat's ass about assessment and analysis, and neither have I.

Ya, sure, you have to play the game if you want to stay employed, but my heart has been into taking the curriculum and winding it up as much as possible with the outdoors for these kids.  Why?  Well I came across this old video of Floyd Red Crow Westerman talking.  The whole thing is good, and definitely worth watching, but the part that hit me where it counts is at about the 7:36 mark, entitled "Corrupting the Children."  This is it.  This is why.