et502's blog

When do you need a guide? When do you guide yourself?

My "guides" are available online in magazine formatting at: http://jil.st/vVZTyB

If you'd like to download some of the images, they are available in this dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sstmzd4b742lmeg/-Ctwt0BuxR  (it might be easier to view them this way?)

I wrote this paper with Srucara: 

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/econversations-assembly-dialogue-podcasts-questions-textual-references-representation-stories-patter

Guides for fielding, co-fielding, co-guiding, following, co-following, mutuality, reflection...

When do we need a guide? When do we guide ourselves?

We started the semester with Solnit's "Field Guide for getting lost" - and now, I think we are starting to create our own guidebooks/methods for discovery.  Though it was time consuming, deciding together how to structure our outings was a way of writing out our expectations and procedures… and while some of them didn't work exactly the way we wanted, I think the process of making group decisions was worthwhile. 

When we went to Ashbridge Park, we self-selected different activities to provide for the group - choosing how/when to be leaders. And choosing to let Carmen be our leader/guide/mentor - I think this is also a form of self-efficacy. 

1. Ashbridge Memorial Park - Field Trip

Trip: planned, activities, structure/purpose, destination

I'm having a weather-conscious Monday: 2 things happened. 

#1. At breakfast, I saw an article on the front page of the Times, "As Coasts Rebuild and U.S. Pays, Repeatedly, the Critics Ask Why." The title pretty much sums up the article - What are we going to learn from Sandy & other weather events? Are we being financially and/or ecologically responsible? (short answer: no.)

- the federal government spends TONS of money on rebuilding coastal properties (one example was Dauphin Island): "Tax money will go toward putting things back as they were, essentially duplicating the vulnerability that existed before the hurricane…. At least $80 million, adjusted for inflation, has gone into patching up this one island since 1979 — more than $60,000 for every permanent resident. That does not include payments of $72 million to homeowners from the highly subsidized federal flood insurance program."

Nov. 1... 

"I need hibernation in order to create" - Terry Tempest Williams (p.58)

Nov. 8

Nov. 15 

Recap on Geological tour: We started at Pem Arch and walked all the way down the hill. The objective was to follow the course that water drains on our campus to its lowest point, Mill Creek, which is behind Batten House. On the way there, students from the E-Sem pointed out certain kinds of local rocks that were used for buildings or other purposes (Wissahickon Schist for Radnor and Denbigh, Baltimore Nice for Merion) - I was really impressed with how much our groupmates knew about this. They showed us maps of floodplains – how creek-beds and the surrounding areas are formed/changed by regular flooding. So when we got to Mill Creek, the floodplain was more observable/noticeable – we were looking for ways that water had affected the area, and we talked about creeks’ natural winding processes which cause some areas in the floodplain to be higher and others to be lower. I hadn’t put much thought into the importance of water and drainage systems when considering geological formations – but this walk changed my perspective.

"My constant contact with the street through the scraping of my cane provides me with a direct, uninfluenced connection to visual information" (Carmen Papalia)

After talking about "direct, uninfluenced" experiences in class today, I feel more and more convinced that it is not possible to experience something without its being mediated by a prior experience, a facilitator, a lens, a memory, an expectation. It's quite possible that I've been brainwashed by Dewey and my Critical Issues in Education course, but I keep going back to the idea that every exprience leads to further experiences: “there is some kind of continuity in any case since every experience affects for better or worse the attitudes which help decide the quality of further experiences, by setting up certain preference and aversion, and making it easier or harder to act for this or that end” (Dewey, Experience & Education). In terms of the classroom experience, I do believe that students should have more authority/choice in how they can frame their experiences, but again, I think there will always be a frame of some sort that helps decide what kind of information we take in. 

I think this relates to interpretation - so I thought of a statement from Frank Kermode: "Yet the world is full of interpreters... So the question arises why would we would rather interpret than not?" Still thinking about this... looking forward to continuing this discussion in class on Monday.  

“Creation of a society without dominance”

On October 3, I found that an area of my site had been sectioned off from the rest. On the hill behind Arnecliffe, there were little yellow flags, a thin yellow border sprayed on the grass around the space. And inside, the grass was either dead or dying. This was very upsetting. What could possibly be the cause of this removal, this mass extinction?

(note: Ed Harman is the Assistant Director of Grounds at Bryn Mawr)