Sorry for the lack of post after school today. No homework leaves little to really report, but I think the kids are accomplishing a lot this week. Final drafts are being typed up, anoles are being observed, rodent skeletons are being pasted onto black paper...all is right with the world.
As for today's karate entry, I wanted to talk about what karate means. The word karate means, literally translated from the Japanese, empty hand. When the samurai came through and cleaned the villagers of all of their edged weapons, they had to learn how to fight using their farm implements (hence the sai, the nunchaku, the tonfa, etc...). But more importantly, they had to learn how to use their hands and feet as weapons in case of an attack from outside forces.
What does this have to do with teaching? Well, as it turns out, almost no day ever goes according to plan. It's kind of like chaos theory. There is no way everything can go according to plan. No matter how many contingency plans you make, no matter how tight your plans are, you can almost always count on some agent of chaos entering your day. A lost tooth, a call from the office to send down three students for whatever reason, or kids being pulled out for testing for hours at a time. You always have to be ready to go on your own. I learned early on that you can't just let kids have totally idle time, so you always have to be ready to fill it--even empty-handed.
As for today's karate entry, I wanted to talk about what karate means. The word karate means, literally translated from the Japanese, empty hand. When the samurai came through and cleaned the villagers of all of their edged weapons, they had to learn how to fight using their farm implements (hence the sai, the nunchaku, the tonfa, etc...). But more importantly, they had to learn how to use their hands and feet as weapons in case of an attack from outside forces.
What does this have to do with teaching? Well, as it turns out, almost no day ever goes according to plan. It's kind of like chaos theory. There is no way everything can go according to plan. No matter how many contingency plans you make, no matter how tight your plans are, you can almost always count on some agent of chaos entering your day. A lost tooth, a call from the office to send down three students for whatever reason, or kids being pulled out for testing for hours at a time. You always have to be ready to go on your own. I learned early on that you can't just let kids have totally idle time, so you always have to be ready to fill it--even empty-handed.
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