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I love playing in the Word Garden but I always feel guilty if I have to disturb someone else's stone sentence to make mine complete. Should I put it back the way it was? Their sentence will no longer make sense! It probably doesn't matter since the garden is a never ending constant work in progress.

I always think my job is a work in progress. each new semester seems to bring a change in something I do, say or realise during the first class.

Yesterday when I finally met the 21 students in my Schools and Society course I suddenly realised what an incredible experience it is to meet 21 new people all at the same time. A sea of new faces each as nervous as I am the first day of class. I always try to learn just the names on my class roster during the week leading up to class so I just have to put names to faces. I also take photos of each student which I put on eCollege so they can all get to know each other's names.

It's a neat experience being present for the first footsteps of people embarking upon a career in teaching. Their careers are all ahead of them and they are just beginning the path that will take them who knows where. One can teach in every corner of the world; one can teach anybody in the world, and one can teach about anything one likes. It really is the most open-ended profession one can think of.

One of the things we have been focusing on recently is the idea of preparing students for careers in Education in general and not just as teachers. In conjunction with the Career Development Office at St. Mike's we have set up a resource for Professional Educators.
This includes positions such as museum docent/educators, curriculum specialists, administrators, and education-related business opportunities.

Spend some time in the Word Garden; the stones themselves are so permanent but their positions so temporary.

A Good Ending Means a Good Beginning

Every gardener knows that it's really important to tidy up the garden at the end of the season so that it's all ready for a good beginning in the Spring. Here's a video of the students in FY193 Digging Down to the Roots: The Meaning of Gardens working on the Teaching Gardens at SMC to get them ready for the winter. FY193, a first year seminar, is co-taught by Professors Valerie Bang-Jensen of the Education Department and Mark Lubkowitz of the Biology Department. The course, which is becoming very popular with students, introduces them to the science and pleasures associated with gardening as well gardening related nonfiction, fiction, essays, poetry, memoir, and relevant children's literature.

All the plants in the Garden are related to various pieces of children's literature and so students get to experience the books they read through the actual plants themselves as well as the words on the pages. My particular favorite is the extensive privet hedge which comes from the Harry Potter books.

One of the other tasks the students had to do was take inventory of the words in the Word Garden. Out of the 350 or so words in the Word Garden only four were missing, COW, PEACE, LEPRECHAUN and WOOD; a testimony to the wonderful spirit of the SMC community.

I always encourage my students to make a good ending to the semester so that they are ready for a good beginning to the next one. Good endings always make for good beginnings.