I’m having trouble watching the news these days. Truth is, that’s been true for years now. I have to moderate my news consumption to keep from being swamped by the flow of negativity and anger. I know people have always disagreed, but it hasn’t always seemed that our view of those we disagreed with was … Continue reading
I love it when I find a website that really makes me think. I did that this week, with the site for the Global Oneness Project. The Global Oneness Project says its goal is to “to plant seeds of empathy, resilience, and a sacred relationship to our planet” through the power of stories. Their stories … Continue reading
How do your students think about you? How would they describe you? In the case of younger students, the ways they think about their teachers can be a bit of a mystery, and often amusement. I remember young students being dumbfounded at seeing me in the grocery store (“What are you doing here?” “Uh, buying … Continue reading
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Albert Einstein I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity. Eleanor Roosevelt Curiosity is at the root of so … Continue reading
If curiosity is the beginning of creativity, what does that mean for us in schools? Sadly, as I’ve noted previously, curiosity isn’t necessarily welcomed in many school environments. One of my favorite curiosity researchers, Susan Engel, describes a study in which she and her students set out to learn about how curiosity might be exhibited … Continue reading
Toddlers are the most curious of beings. I’ve been spending time lately with a young girl who spent her first nine months in the hospital and several additional months tethered to a respirator. Now she is two. She still has health issues and breathes through a trach tube in her neck, making it difficult for … Continue reading
Brian Grazer, producer of such movies as Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and Friday Night Lights, is on mission. He wants to promote curiosity. He is passionate about it. And from that passion comes a book, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. In the introduction he says: Curiosity is what gives energy … Continue reading
It doesn’t take long watching any type of media to be reminded that we change as we get older. There is no shortage of products claiming to help us preserve our youth–dyes for our hair, creams for our wrinkles, and any number of prescriptions about which we are charged to “ask our doctors.” But perhaps … Continue reading
I’ve always been curious. In one of my more memorable childhood experiments, I decided (age 5) that it was very important to know how loudly I could scream. I mean, if I never tried screaming my loudest, how would I know how loud I could be? What if something terrible happened and I wasn’t good … Continue reading
If, as the adage suggests, curiosity killed the cat, what killed curiosity? I’ve been wondering about curiosity lately. Anyone who has ever spent time with toddlers knows they are full of questions. “Why is my cat fluffier than Jane’s cat?” “Where does milk go when I drink it?” “What is dirt made of?” “Why can’t … Continue reading
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