Jacob Marine's blog

“ Given that you were primarily concerned with humans (and human inquiry), this may seem irrelevant but I think its actually quite germane. You see, humans ARE to a significant extent like trees. Like us, trees grow, trees take in nutrients, trees respond to changes in their environment, trees retain traces of prior occurrences in their lives, and so on. And they do all of those things (and more) without thinking. What that suggests is that much of what we do we probably do the same way trees do them, without thinking. In fact, there are lots of observations that indicate that that is indeed so. The "unconscious" is real, though not quite the beast that Freud (or people after him) made it out to be; see "Making the Unconscious Conscious, and Vice Versa").

I secured my new teaching position today! I will be teaching middle school science at The Global Leadership Academy Charter School.

Learning is a new source of neuronal activity...Wil says that we may help our students enlarge their networks if you engage them in inquiry as it modifies their neural networks.

I am Jack Marine. My legal given name is Jacob, but everone calls me Jack. No one in my family was a Marine, but my father was one of the few Marines in the Army!

I graduated college in 1978 and worked in the Apparel Industry for nearly twenty years.  In 1996, I went back to school at Cabrini College to study elementary education. After I earned my PA K-6 certification, I started teaching in The Philadelphia School District. I've been teaching for eleven years, teaching elementary science at two different charter schools for the past seven (years). I am currently seeking a new position for this fall.

I think some charter schools are very successful and work great. But I haven't worked for any of these schools yet, in my brief career in education.

I am so glad Wil invited me to his institute starting today, July 20, 2009. Although I have been using inquiry based educational lessons over the past seven years, I do not know where I will be teaching in September and I am cautiously optimstic that I will be teaching in a school where inquiry is welcomed!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you can help me spread the word to any 13-17 year olds that you know (and their parents)... The MEERWALD is scheduled to leave on two awesome summer camps - July 20-24th from Liberty State Park to Beach Haven and July 27-31 from Beach Haven to Cape May. Each is a Monday through Friday with a special sail for the parents of the campers on Friday afternoon.

There are a bunch of spaces left and we are offering a $150 'Recession Discount' to anyone who books between now and the start of camp. Regularly $750, now $600 for 5 days and 4 nights of potentially life-changing experiences -- character building, challenging, educational and FUN!

I was born on December 2, 1955 at Albert Einstein Medical Center in North Philadelphia. At that time my parents' house was at 1307 Paper Mill Road in Erdenheim, PA - in Eastern Montgomery County. My sister, my parents and I lived in that house until I was eight years old. I was a child who was very curious about the world around me and even at the young age of seven, I was exploring nature by witnessing giant fish swimming through a small creek behind my house, catching tomato hornworm catipillars in my father's garden and pulling around a dead rat (in a toy wagon) that my cat had brought home. I was also fascinated by the ticks that my dog brought into the house, which when full of her blood would literally crawl up the wall of our den!

WHO IS JACK MARINE?

OK, Mr. Franklin, I missed your strawberry DNA extraction. It's not that I don't find this an interesting subject, it's just that "something got in the way" this morning. I do wonder if my genes or my influence will have an altering effect on my children's habits and behaviors over the course of their lives. I know that my DNA gave both of my teenagers their flat (large) feet and curled toes. I know that my wife's DNA gave our son Max his blue eyes and our daughter Dakota has my brown eyes. Max has recently found new ways to "harness" his appearance to perpetuate an attractiveness to the opposite sex. Is that because of different body shapes originating from our combined (my wife's and my) DNA?