Tag Archives: noticing

Looking Beneath the Surface

I suspect my neighbors thought I was crazy as I crawled around the lawn in my skirt when I got home from work today. I had spotted some new mushrooms growing this morning and noticed that one had a hole where you can see through to the inside.

After unloading my work bag and feeding my cats, I attached the macro lens to my iphone and set out to get a closer look at the underside of the mushrooms. One had been kicked over and lay with the underside exposed. It was already turning brown on the exposed texture that is in such contrast to the smooth outside surface.

And then I got down on my hands and knees to look through the hole along the edge of the mushroom top. I peered through first with my eye…and then with the lens of my camera trying to capture the interesting layers I spied beneath the surface.

These mushrooms remind me that what I see on the surface doesn’t always capture the complexity of what lies beneath. My classroom is like that too. There is so much about each of my students that isn’t visible unless I take the time to bend down and look carefully beneath the surface. And sometimes I need a special tool, like my macro lens, to bring those interesting layers into focus. Sometimes that tool is those informal conversations that I have with the students near me as we walk in lines. Other times it is the opportunity to listen into a discussion a small group is having about a math concept or a story we have read. Oftentimes it is through my students’ writing that I learn the most. Their stories reveal their interests and their experiences…and show me what they know about reading and writing and science and sometimes even math and social studies. Looking at a piece of student writing is like looking at the underside of a mushroom. When you take the time to get beyond the surface, there are layers and layers that unfold and reveal new information that helps me know my students and helps me help them learn.

What have you learned from a student lately?

Playing with Perspective in the Garden

Pattern Walk

1 Reply

Being back in my classroom preparing for my students’ arrival next week has taken much of my time, attention, and energy this week. It’s already Thursday and I haven’t really given much effort to finding patterns for my photo-a-day challenge. (#sdawpphotovoices) So today I was intentional about looking for patterns and taking some photos.

I started the morning by finding that Margit had put up a beautifully patterned backdrop on the classroom wall in anticipation of some student work that will be created next week. I love the colors and textures of the paper…and this is just a snippet of the larger wall.

As I headed to the other school for a morning of inservice, this odd assortment of chairs was sitting outside in front of a pattern of wall tiles. I like the slightly shuffled look of the chairs. And it’s funny, because when I came out three hours later the chairs were neatly ordered…a pattern I didn’t capture with my camera.

Coming back to my school I noticed this bike rack in front of the office. I was intrigued by the shadows on the right hand side, adding another dimension to the pattern.

When I left school this afternoon I ended up with a short window of time to myself. I stopped by Starbucks for an afternoon coffee and took a wonderful learning walk around the area. I was surprised by all the patterns I found. These four were all around a local restaurant. Textures, shadows, colors, and peek-a-boos all caught my eye!

I haven’t really thought about the way that looking for photo opportunities and framing interesting shots both feeds and relaxes me. My short five-minute walk and photography session was a boost to my feeling of well-being and energy level. I need to remember to find these windows of time–even when I am busy. Hours later I still feel refreshed by my afternoon pattern walk!

A Week of #Angles

4 Replies

My daily blog post is most often the result of a percolation of ideas throughout the day…written toward the end of the day. Today I knew I would be writing about my week of focusing on angles –this week’s #sdawpphotovoices topic. My morning began. as it often does on Sunday, with some time reading articles on Twitter. Today’s @brainpicker post was about a book called On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz.

As I read the review of the book I found myself thinking about how photo-a-day has impacted the way I look and what I see as I go about my daily life. And then I saw Janis’s post today on SDAWP Voices as she reflected on her week–and she was saying similar things about her experience (and she had also read the same post by @brainpicker this morning!). This book focuses on the ways a different lens opens up an entirely different experience of the place. When you walk with a toddler and pay attention to how that toddler pays attention, you see a different place than the familiar routine you are used to. What does your dog see? How about an entomologist?

Back to angles…this week’s photo-a-day focus. I took a lot of pictures this week, from a variety of angles, of a variety of angles…angles were everywhere! Some of my favorite pictures of the week I never did post on Instagram. But because I am writing every day to post to this blog, my pictures also become a stimulus for my writing and my thinking.

I love this picture of the lone fisherman with his pole angled in the surf. I don’t often take pictures of people–it feels awkward to photograph people I don’t know…and I didn’t want him to pose. Instead I took the picture from a distance, knowing I would lose the details of his face. The bonus is the reflection! I can see writing a story with this photo as the prompt…I think the story is already beginning to take shape for me.

This angry bird kite was roosting in the tree above the beach. Its angles had it caught pretty securely in the intertwining branches…in fact I saw it again several days later on a walk later in the week. I love the play on words and images of the bird kite in the tree.

Shell fragments are common on the beach, but coming across an entire shell–especially one still connected and angled like this is a rare occurrence. If you look closely you can see the strand of sea grass lying in the background. I wonder if a seagull got this tasty morsel!

Coming down the ramp from the parking lot, I got to see these wonderful flat and yet angled rooftops of the new concession stand and bathrooms. I love the way that architecture can take straight lines and create unexpected angles by the way they are placed in relation to each other.

Tomorrow I will shift my focus from angles to patterns. Added to my photography focus and blogging focus, I will also be thinking about all the other ways I might see the world through the lens of a child, or an architect, a scientist, or an artist. I’ll also try “seeing” the world through my other senses–how does what I hear impact what I see? What about smell, taste, and touch?

What have you failed to notice? How can you shift your attention to see more of your world?

A #Macro View of San Diego Natives

A Macro Kind of Day

8 Replies

Today was a macro kind of day. There’s this funky little shop in Leucadia that I’ve been wanting to visit for a while. I love the way it looks…the green building, the orange fence, and the wonderful old truck used a planted filled with succulents. It’s called Glorious Gardens Landscape and they specialize in succulents and xeriscape (drought tolerant landscaping).

I wandered through the cacti and succulents in this tiny outdoor storefront. Succulents are like plants from another world. They have unusual colors, sharp angles and often geometrical design elements, and many sprout crazy flowers like flagpoles waving a celebratory banner. I am drawn to them. They remind me of some of my favorite people: resilient and quirky! These people listen to their own drum beat and persist and follow through with what others often see as crazy dreams or unrealistic projects. Lucky for our students–many of these people are educators working to make a difference in the world!

While waiting for my plants to be potted (yeah, I couldn’t resist!) I spent some time with my macro lens looking closely at these fascinating plants. Here’s an assortment (using the app fuzel) of some of the images I captured.

I fell in love with this particular plant today…in shades of gray. It’s both delicate and sturdy. Intricate and simple…and simply beautiful. And in it’s macro close up, I feel like I am looking at it eye to eye. It’s looking closely at me while I look closely at it.

What do you notice when you have a macro kind of day?

Learning Walk: a Photo Essay

10 Replies

I made time for a learning walk this morning, just a 30 minute or so ramble up the paths around this conference center in the woods. For me a learning walk is a quiet introspective time for noticing the world around me. I find that in addition to looking for interesting images to capture with my iPhone, I am more attuned to sounds during a learning walk. This morning’s walk in the warm, but not too warm sun of Westchester, New York was accompanied by a symphony of birds as they called to one another and flitted through the leaves and branches of the plentiful trees. The backbeat percussion was provided by the hum of cicadas. Occasional scurrying sounds suggested that I was not alone on my walk.

As I headed up the hill I noticed this rustic chimney on a building along side the path. I went around the other side hoping to find a beautiful old building, but really, the chimney was the outstanding feature. I noticed a sign pointing the direction of the tree house. A tree house? I was intrigued and continued my walk.

This isn’t my definition of a tree house. Looks more like a conference building near trees–not stunning or particularly interesting. But…I took a few minutes to sit on a picnic bench and attach my macro lens to my phone and then set off to explore some of the plant life.

I love the texture of this thistly plant…and its spiky stem and leaves. But this week is orange in my photo-a-day challenge, so while I was drawn to this beautiful purplish-pink I continued to look for examples of orange.

I discovered that these berries that I had seen as red, had a stage where orange was prominent. And I love the hint of orange highlights on this berry!

As I looped around the tree house to head back I noticed some other buildings and happened on this interesting little building…with a rusty orange stovepipe!

I backtracked the way I had come, noticing things I had missed on my way up. A tree stump with a hole. I wonder what might live in there?

I also wondered if there were storms here in the winter. These roots from a very large tree are facing up instead of anchoring the tree in the ground.

I came across this clearing…a surprise opening in the otherwise moderately dense woods. I wonder why this space is open? Does it have a use? Is it a pasture of some sort? It looks freshly mowed.

I returned to the conference center with lots of interesting things to think about. I love taking the time to notice and wonder. It’s a great way to explore a new place and also to allow for re-seeing someplace you already know. For me, the photography aspect keeps me from turning my learning walk into a work-out, speeding by without taking the time to stop and notice something that catches my eye…or ear. I saw so much more than I captured with my camera…the elegant white moths that fluttered around the plants, the way the sky looked through the trees, the tiny white flowers that were enough off the path that I didn’t venture through the brush in my flip flops.

I want to provide time for my students to take some learning walks this year. We might take our ipads and do some photography. Or we might take our sketch pads and stop to capture our noticings that way. We might even head out with our writer’s notebooks. Whichever tool we choose, the important part of the process is taking the time to notice…and then taking the time to think and reflect to make sense of the experience once we return. I hope to share some of our class learning walks when school starts in the fall.

I invite you to try a learning walk. I’d love to know what you notice and learn along the way.

Being Intentional

8 Replies

Barb’s blog post about her yellow walk on Wear the Cape Tuesday takes me back to a week or so ago when I first heard of something called streetview that seems to be some version of something we are tagging in the Connected Learning MOOC as a #learning walk. The streetview/learning walk is not really something new, it involves that ever important skill of noticing that I wrote about the other day and adds another intentional element: documenting the noticing. The documenting described in the sreetview make was photography—convenient for me!

I tried my own version of a learning walk last week focused on the parking garage at UCSD. I took some pictures, found an app that would let me put them in a collage (many collage apps seem to have a six photo limit—but I needed more), and then thought about what that composition said to me about my experience.

I love that this composition takes away a lot of the cold, institutional feel of the garage and highlights the icons, textures, and angularity. It would be interesting to capture the smells and sounds of the garage as well as the things to see–capturing more layers of the garage experience. Mostly what occurs to me by doing this exercise is that I was more aware of interesting details, noticing things I hadn’t noticed before. (I hadn’t been aware of the electric cart parking space–is that for the all the golf cart-like vehicles? I’ve never seen one parked in the parking garage!)

In addition to my streetview and Barb’s yellow walk, on Wednesday Linda @hirshmiller, who is also participating in SDAWP Photo Voices photo-a-day, read a piece of writing about her increased noticing as a result of her search for yellow this week. We were all incredulous as she described her amazement at noticing that her cat, Flounder, had yellow eyes. And how that discovery sent her on a mission to wake the sleeping pets and peer into their eyes to see what color they are. (For me, that would have been a small job…for her with her husband’s animal rescue mission and her kids’ aspirations toward animal-focused careers, that meant checking the eyes of 55 animals!)

These experiences are reminding me how important it is to be intentional as we move through our lives, to be open to noticing new details, and to uncovering interesting connections. Writing does that too…when I write regularly (like I am doing now with this new blogging adventure) I pay close attention to the world around me and make connections in unexpected ways. What have you noticed lately?