Beyond School

Phuket sunset
Originally uploaded by rosswebsdale.

Nothing like an illness to clear your head. Mine taught me a lesson in balance. I’ve been so fascinated by the possibilities of our sci-fi educational reality that I’ve forgotten to take care of myself well.

It’s also a good time for silence in other ways. Things are slowing down, getting calmer. Thank Goodness.

Chris in Honolulu, Michele in Denver, and I are wrapping up our first 1001 Flat World Tales workshop (more on that when the student publishers choose the first stories for the “blook” in a few weeks).

The World War I to World War II online wiki textbook my history students are making is coming along nicely, and since they are lecturing for at least 75% of each class session, I’m more of a coach than a teacher (you can see their lectures on the wiki, since we filmed and embedded them–come back next month to see them try again with a second lecture, and we’ll see how this improves their presentation and speaking skills).

The endless 1:1 planning meetings with my admin are also winding down, and I’m waiting, with everyone else, to hear what the business department and owner finally decide. (Which gives me time to catch up on my grading.) Bless them for having the sense to include a teacher in these discussions.

The student blogging Grail still evades but still beckons. Let it. I can’t push the river.

And I’ve taken a break from my RSS subscriptions, from reading edublogs (at least reading so many), and from constantly holding my laptop to hold other things instead. Things like books, and EunJeong’s hand.

It’s nice to be reading again: Harvard historian of religion Elaine Pagel’s Adam, Eve, and the Serpent is a fascinating look at the culture wars between pre-Church Christians concerning sexuality, the body, and gender politics. It’s my second Pagels this year. During Chusok (the Korean Thanksgiving, Buddhist/Taoist style) I read her Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, along with ex-minister and New Testament Greek professor Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?, and learned how much closer to Buddhism and other advanced viewpoints early Christianity was, before Roman Imperial politics put an end to all of that. So Adam, Eve, and the Serpent continues this jag for me. I’ve got Pagel’s The Origin of Satan, another historical study of early Christian thought and politics, waiting after that. It all fascinates me. I wish I knew more Christians–any, actually–who it fascinates as well. All the amazing discoveries we’ve made about Christian history due to the Nag Hammadi Texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other pre-Catholic writings burned by the victorious Roman Church, yet nobody reads them. (Or even bothers to consciously read their Bible, for that matter.) It’s a shame. “The Christianity that was, but is no more” is a Christianity far superior to the current brand, in my book. (DaVinci Code fans, there’s more history there than pop churches are comfortable to admit. Again: fascinating.)

But enough of unsolicited book recommendations.

I’m really just writing to say that I’m off to Thailand for a nine-day Spring Break. No computers, no students, no “Mr. B.” Just a guy with a backpack full of books and a snorkel, looking forward to reconnecting to more elemental things.

See you on the flip-side.

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

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