I am going to forego the Morning Reading Group meeting this morning in the interest of finishing some end of term course evaluation work.
If the merit of last session’s reading were to know a common perspective of faculty, then the merit of this week (Moore, Bill Guilty Bystanders WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges December 2006 (A reprint from June 1998)) is as an antidote to that . Among the quotes I highlighted in that article was this:
…creating a real community—one in which people genuinely depend on each other for enhancing the quality of learning—out of an artificial context requires letting go of some power and control within the classroom…
And I note how that resonates with some of Chuck Pezeshki’s comments in an OpEd piece in yesterday’s Daily News, where he says:
* Students must be allowed some choices on how they spend their time in the classroom. When confronted with no control over their lives, they become submissive and passive thinkers.
Chuck’s whole item below.
HIS VIEW: Whither education in the 21st century?
By Chuck Pezeshki
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 – Page Updated at 10:07:20 AM
It’s all over the news again, like it has been for the past 20 years. This week, it’s on the front of Time magazine. Whither education? And what’s happening to our kids?
It’s exciting to see Moscow residents have been active in the debate themselves. The conference on Nov. 27 regarding vocational education is an important first step in any dialogue the community has in coming up with solutions that affect the future of our young people.
I am a mechanical engineering professor, and have been involved in solutions for progressive education my whole career. I run a design clinic, where senior college students complete real work for sponsor companies that pay thousands of dollars for that work. I’ve directed the clinic for 13 years. Many of my students are hired from my class by the sponsor companies. Students work in teams of four to six, and while I have high standards, I do not grade, other than an “A” or an incomplete. As in the Real World, students must complete real work, defined by a specification that is agreed upon by the company, and benchmarked at the end for performance. I have close to 100 percent delivery rate, with a product that conforms to the specification, and a 70 percent adoption rate. When students leave my class, they are truly “ready to work.”
You might think that either a) I’m lying, or b) I use such advanced technology that students by default produce good work. Neither is true. But I have secrets.
* If you want students to learn, you must believe that they can learn. Judging anyone constantly is not the recipe for anyone’s personal success.
* Students must be allowed some choices on how they spend their time in the classroom. When confronted with no control over their lives, they become submissive and passive thinkers.
* Plenty of hard questions, but no trick questions. Too much of education has been involved with fooling the students. No one likes to be made a fool — a recipe for disaster.
* A classroom must be a safe place, where students can explore, and not fear humiliation. The moment that any person is scared, they are operating out of the same part of the brain we have in common with a hamster — and it’s not the thinking part.
* Teachers must have some discretionary funding, to try new things, and some respect for their discretion as they experiment. Without this, we cannot move forward. I recently sat down with my son’s third-grade teacher. She is engaged, obviously very bright, and still young enough to not be cynical. Because of the WASL, every day she has is scripted by someone else. The same things that disempower students disempower our educators.
* We have to recognize that we are a society in transition from a more verbal/symbol-based literacy to a visual literacy. As I wrap up my class today, I’ll talk to some corporate sponsors on the phone. I’ll use the Internet to deliver an electronic portfolio of student work to another corporation, consisting of animations, video, a PowerPoint presentation, design drawings and a standard report. After that, I’m meeting a group of students to make our own production video of their final, constructed project. Needless to say, this is very different than turning in a standard, typewritten report to end the semester.
* Instead of the notion of rewarding individual students with the status of gifted, we must recognize that all students can be educated. We have to reward teamwork, instead of the current notion of winners and losers. In order to do this, teachers must move to a paradigm of classroom performance ownership. This means, especially in later grades where developmental issues are not such a large factor, we should be shooting for all students to learn the material presented equally — and then give individuals opportunities to express their own creativity in guided ways. Teachers must be accountable as well as students.
* We must recognize the tools students need to use today — from home-produced video, to computer-aided design, to video games — are different from the ones we learned. And while we as parents must be engaged, there are going to be topics we are not familiar with. Support for teachers now is critical in assuring that they have the educational background.
Finally, we have to love our children. Too often, I hear young people being blamed for the world’s problems. Young people haven’t had a chance to mess up the world yet. And blame gets us nowhere. Let’s keep the dialogue going, and get to work.
Chuck Pezeshki is a professor in mechanical and materials engineering at Washington State University, and chairman of the WSU Faculty Senate.
On 12/18/06 5:10 PM, “Ater-Kranov, Ashley” wrote:
Hi Folks,
Please visit the MRG wiki page http://wiki.wsu.edu/wsuwiki/Category:MorningReadingGroup to access the Moore article proposed by Gary Brown. I’ve included the link and rationale here as well.
Moore, Bill Guilty Bystanders WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges December 2006 (A reprint from June 1998) http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/docs/education/assess/eWAG/2006december/ewagdecember06.html
Moore, who coordinates the Washington State Assessment Conference, spouse of a former HEC Board member, National Learning Community Fellow, great softball player and a good guy expresses the need for a new impatience with educators who fail to participate in assessment. As we head into a new push toward accreditation, this article may be useful for sharing with chairs and others even as it re-energizes our commitment to assessment and transformation.
See you Wednesday morning!
Ashley

From: Ater-Kranov, Ashley
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2006 3:24 PM
To: CTLT.Designers; Johnson-Shull, Lisa Ann; Jorgensen, Randy; Peterson, Nils; Weathermon, Karen Lynn
Subject: RE: a call for MRG reading material for 12/20
Hi MRG participants,
I’ve had one suggestion for MRG reading material so far for Wednesday’s session (12/20) – please send me as well as post your suggestion with the rationale behind the choice on the MRG wiki page by Monday afternoon, so we can get the selection decided upon in time to read it.
Thanks!
Ashley
Ashley Ater Kranov
Assistant Director
Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology
Washington State University
Smith CUE 503N
(509) 335-6212
Passion for trees
February 14, 2014Appearing in Moscow Pullman Daily News, editorial page, Feb 14, 2014
HIS VIEW: Pitching in as a volunteer urban forester
byline: Nils Peterson is a member of the Moscow Tree Commission, who celebrates his passion for trees by building timber frames such as the Berman Creekside Park picnic shelter.
I am passionate about trees. When I was in 4th or 5th grade my parents took us to see the wooden naval ships in Baltimore Harbor. That is my first memory of being impressed by big wood. Since then I’ve been awestruck by both individual redwoods and old growth forests.
My passion for trees increased when I discovered the Timber Framers Guild and their efforts at recovering a lost building art. I find that working with hand tools allows me to attend to idiosyncrasies of timbers, which helps me appreciate trees as individuals.
Working with wood gives me a deep appreciation for Eric Sloane’s great little book “Reverence for Wood,” and inspired a talk I gave a few years ago at the Unitarian Universalist church in Moscow. The beginning of the presentation invited the audience to engage in one of my favorite activities in the church — staring at the floor. The floor is red fir, installed 100 years ago. Its knot free straight grain suggest to me that it grew in an old growth forest and was maybe 100 years old when it was harvested — saplings at the time of Lewis and Clark. That wood connects me to ecosystems and to time.
The birch tree that stood in former Moscow resident Lynn Unger’s front yard now spans the center of my barn. It unwittingly turned me into an urban hardwood lumberjack. I discovered the diverse beauty of the trees growing in our city. Ash, box elder, chestnut, cherry, elm, linden, locust, maple, Russian olive and walnut all found places in the barn before I finished. I made friends with some of the area arborists and became something of an ambulance chaser after local hardwood.
Harvesting urban hardwoods also connected me to some of the area’s wood turners. They often took pieces too small or knotty for me and turned them into art. You can often see examples of their art at Farmer’s Market.
Now I have a small orchard, mostly plum and apple. Pruning the young trees each spring is a meditation, a chance to see how each tree responded to last year’s cuts and to choose my next step training the tree. And then in the fall I learn if my efforts are bearing fruit. The orchard is teaching me patience in a collaboration with the life of the trees.
But perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned from my passion for trees is about community. Barn raising requires community. For me, almost two decades after raising my first timber frame, the whole activity is less about building and more about engaging, sharing, connecting. The process, and the trees, have become my teachers, helping me to be more in tune, more connected, more reverent.
Cultivating Moscow’s urban forest is also a community activity. Inevitably, I suppose, my passion for trees and they lessons they taught, brought me to the Moscow Tree Commission. Recently the DNews reported on a new project of the Commission, “Adopt-a-Tree.” (Feb. 1&2)
The idea of Adopt-a-Tree is like Adopt-a-Highway, to provide a mechanism for individuals and community service organizations to volunteer assistance to Moscow’s urban forest by providing specific services to select trees that are on City property and Rights-of-Way. The goal of the program is to extend the resources of the Parks Department staff, promote civic pride, and enhance the urban forest.
I hope this program creates a channel for community members to direct some of their own passion into enhancing our community trees. Learn more on the City website, or come see the Commission when we have a booth at Farmers Market. And follow your passion for trees.
Tags:article, dnews
Posted in Commentary, Reflection-in-action | 1 Comment »