#Lead Pedagogy

[idigitizellp21]

Lead Pedagogy: Top 5 Skills Towards A Successful Leap

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, traditional teaching methods are making way for innovative approaches that cater to the diverse needs of modern learners. One such approach gaining traction is LEAD Pedagogy, which stands for Learn, Explore, Apply, and Develop. This learner-centric framework empowers students to take charge of their learning journey while equipping them with essential skills for success.

Let’s explore the top 5 skills that pave the way to successful through LEAD Pedagogy.

Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving: At the heart of LEAD Pedagogy lies the growth of importance of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Instead of memorization, students are encouraged to analyze, evaluate, and incorporate information from various sources. They learn to explore complex problems, identify underlying patterns, and propose innovative solutions. By engaging in activities that challenge their cognitive abilities, students become capable of tackling real-world challenges, a skill that transcends the classroom and serves them well in their personal and professional lives.

Collaboration and Communication: Education places a strong emphasis on collaborative learning and effective communication. Students engage in group projects, discussions, and presentations, fostering teamwork and refining their interpersonal skills. Through these experiences, they can learn to respect diverse perspectives, negotiate differences, and articulate their ideas clearly. In an interconnected world ability to work harmoniously with others and convey thoughts effectively is a vital skill that LEAD Pedagogy nurtures.

Creativity and Innovation: Innovation is the cornerstone of progress, and LEAD Pedagogy understands this well. By encouraging creativity and independent thinking, this approach empowers students to explore new ideas and unconventional solutions. Through hands-on activities, experiential learning, and exposure to real-world scenarios, students learn that there’s often more than one way to approach a problem. They develop the confidence to push boundaries, challenge norms, and create novel solutions that can drive positive change.

Adaptability and Resilience: The world is in a constant state of flux, and the ability to adapt to change is crucial. LEAD Pedagogy equips students with adaptability and resilience skills that are indispensable in navigating life’s uncertainties. By providing opportunities to explore diverse subjects, engage in unfamiliar tasks, and overcome obstacles, students learn to embrace challenges as learning opportunities. This instills a growth mindset, enabling them to bounce back from setbacks, learn from failures, and continuously evolve.

Digital Literacy and Technological Proficiency: In the digital age, technological literacy is non-negotiable. LEAD Pedagogy integrates technology seamlessly into the learning process, ensuring students are comfortable with various digital tools and platforms. They learn to navigate the digital landscape responsibly, discerning credible sources from misinformation. Moreover, they gain hands-on experience with technology, preparing them for the tech-driven demands of higher education and the workforce.

Key takeaway:

LEAD Pedagogy transcends traditional teaching methodologies by focusing on learning, Exploring, Applying, and Developing. Through this approach, students acquire skills that are vital for success in the 21st century. From critical thinking and problem-solving to collaboration and communication, creativity and innovation to adaptability and resilience, and beyond any doubt, digital literacy and technological proficiency.

LEAD Pedagogy prepares students to thrive in a rapidly changing world, which is exactly what Harshad Valia International School prepares your kids for. As we continue to reimagine education for the future, LEAD Pedagogy stands as a beacon of progressive and active learning, guiding students toward a successful leap into an exciting and dynamic world.

[fatehbaz]

[T]he Dutch Republic, like its successor the Kingdom of the Netherlands, [...] throughout the early modern period had an advanced maritime [trading, exports] and (financial) service [banking, insurance] sector. Moreover, Dutch involvement in Atlantic slavery stretched over two and a half centuries. [...] Carefully estimating the scope of all the activities involved in moving, processing and retailing the goods derived from the forced labour performed by the enslaved in the Atlantic world [...] [shows] more clearly in what ways the gains from slavery percolated through the Dutch economy. [...] [This web] connected them [...] to the enslaved in Suriname and other Dutch colonies, as well as in non-Dutch colonies such as Saint Domingue [Haiti], which was one of the main suppliers of slave-produced goods to the Dutch economy until the enslaved revolted in 1791 and brought an end to the trade. [...] A significant part of the eighteenth-century Dutch elite was actively engaged in financing, insuring, organising and enabling the slave system, and drew much wealth from it. [...] [A] staggering 19% (expressed in value) of the Dutch Republic's trade in 1770 consisted of Atlantic slave-produced goods such as sugar, coffee, or indigo [...].

---

One point that deserves considerable emphasis is that [this slave-based Dutch wealth] [...] did not just depend on the increasing output of the Dutch Atlantic slave colonies. By 1770, the Dutch imported over fl.8 million worth of sugar and coffee from French ports. [...] [T]hese [...] routes successfully linked the Dutch trade sector to the massive expansion of slavery in Saint Domingue [the French colony of Haiti], which continued until the early 1790s when the revolution of the enslaved on the French part of that island ended slavery.

Before that time, Dutch sugar mills processed tens of millions of pounds of sugar from the French Caribbean, which were then exported over the Rhine and through the Sound to the German and Eastern European ‘slavery hinterlands’.

---

Coffee and indigo flowed through the Dutch Republic via the same trans-imperial routes, while the Dutch also imported tobacco produced by slaves in the British colonies, [and] gold and tobacco produced [by slaves] in Brazil [...]. The value of all the different components of slave-based trade combined amounted to a sum of fl.57.3 million, more than 23% of all the Dutch trade in 1770. [...] However, trade statistics alone cannot answer the question about the weight of this sector within the economy. [...] 1770 was a peak year for the issuing of new plantation loans [...] [T]he main processing industry that was fully based on slave-produced goods was the Holland-based sugar industry [...]. It has been estimated that in 1770 Amsterdam alone housed 110 refineries, out of a total of 150 refineries in the province of Holland. These processed approximately 50 million pounds of raw sugar per year, employing over 4,000 workers. [...] [I]n the four decades from 1738 to 1779, the slave-based contribution to GDP alone grew by fl.20.5 million, thus contributing almost 40% of all growth generated in the economy of Holland in this period. [...]

---

These [slave-based Dutch commodity] chains ran from [the plantation itself, through maritime trade, through commodity processing sites like sugar refineries, through export of these goods] [...] and from there to European metropoles and hinterlands that in the eighteenth century became mass consumers of slave-produced goods such as sugar and coffee. These chains tied the Dutch economy to slave-based production in Suriname and other Dutch colonies, but also to the plantation complexes of other European powers, most crucially the French in Saint Domingue [Haiti], as the Dutch became major importers and processers of French coffee and sugar that they then redistributed to Northern and Central Europe. [...]

The explosive growth of production on slave plantations in the Dutch Guianas, combined with the international boom in coffee and sugar consumption, ensured that consistently high proportions (19% in 1770) of commodities entering and exiting Dutch harbors were produced on Atlantic slave plantations. [...] The Dutch economy profited from this Atlantic boom both as direct supplier of slave-produced goods [from slave plantations in the Dutch Guianas, from Dutch processing of sugar from slave plantations in French Haiti] and as intermediary [physically exporting sugar and coffee] between the Atlantic slave complexes of other European powers and the Northern and Central European hinterland.

---

Text above by: Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma. "Slavery and the Dutch economy, 1750-1800". Slavery & Abolition Volume 42, Issue 1. 2021. [Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[historicalfightingguide]

A list of useful games to use in historical fencing training. The point is to rely on concepts such as the constraints lead approach, games and play for learning, elements of aliveness etc. For more details on why and how these drills get made I suggest checking out the articles  section of the website. Some of these may require protective gear and safe training weapons but some may only require a pair of socks. These are also mostly, not all written with longsword in mind, but the basic ideas they revolve around can be used with slight modifications for basically any weapon.

If you are interested in learning how to use a longsword check out these few links.

For anyone who hasn’t yet seen the following links:

Some advice on how to start studying the sources generally can be found in these older posts

Remember to check out  A Guide to Starting a Liberation Martial Arts Gym as it may help with your own club/gym/dojo/school culture and approach.

Check out their curriculum too.

Fear is the Mind Killer: How to Build a Training Culture that Fosters Strength and Resilience by   Kajetan Sadowski   may be relevant as well.

“How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach & Practice Sports Skills”  by Rob Gray  

Another useful book to check out is  The Theory and Practice of Historical European Martial Arts (while about HEMA, a lot of it is applicable to other historical martial arts clubs dealing with research and recreation of old fighting systems).

Why having a systematic approach to training can be beneficial Remember that we can use sparring and tournament footage for videostudy as well.

Worth checking out are this blogs tags on pedagogy and teaching for other related useful posts.

Consider getting some patches of this sort or these cool rashguards to show support for good causes or a t-shirt like to send a good message while at training.

And stay safe

[screambirdscreaming]

This is very well articulated and true to many people's experiences, BUT with the diagnostic landscape as it stands, I think its really dangerous to assume that children who *do* get diagnosed are treated any more kindly.

Many kids who are diagnosed are not actually given words to explain their experiences. Their needs are simply dismissed as "symptoms" they have to "work on" and "get past".

Some kids are actually diagnosed with "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" - whereupon ANY need they express - even those which would be treated as reasonable from undiagnosed or neurotypical children! - is pathologized as "defiance". And yes, this diagnosis is highly racialized.

Honestly, knowing that ODD exists as a diagnosis really forces a person to challenge their perspective on what diagnosis is and means. Yes, diagnosis *can* be a tool of understanding, a way of banding together around shared struggles and generating shared language, tools, and resources. But it can also be a tool of opression and social control. And it *is*, currently for many people, a tool which is used to opress them. Even if it is also currently, in other people's experience, a tool of solidarity and support.

I think people who have experienced adult diagnosis as a relief, a breakthrough, a finding of community and tools of understanding - are sometimes prone to projecting this experience onto an imagined experience of childhood diagnosis, without looking into what childhood diagnosis actually entails.

It shouldn't be surprising, given the way children are dismissed, corralled, managed, and expected to conform to adult expectations at all times - that childhood diagnosis lacks the experience of autonomy, self-realization, and support found by those seeking diagnosis on their own terms as adults.

And it's understandable for people to say, "I wish I'd had this experience [of finding a diagnosis as an adult] as a child." But you can't just say, "I wish I'd been diagnosed as a child", and expect it to mean that - without MAKING childhood diagnosis mean something completely different than it currently does.

And I do absolutely think that it's crucial to change childhood diagnosis to mean eduction *of parents and caregivers* about the diagnosis, to mean kids are given tools and resources to express their needs and to process their experiences, to mean kids are given access to the same sort of supportive community that adults find through diagnosis.

But I actually don't think that's the first step. I think the first step is to create a cultural shift where we LISTEN TO CHILDREN WHEN THEY EXPRESS THEIR NEEDS, IN THEIR OWN WAYS, ON THEIR OWN TERMS. In general. For all children.

Where adults take seriously kids who are upset over problems adults find absurd. Where adults are willing to make accommodations that kids request even if they don't understand why it matters. Where kids aren't ridiculed or shut down for asking for things that don't make sense. Where kids who say they're in pain are treated as if they're in pain, not as if they're trying to get out of something. Where kids who say they need to sit something out are allowed to sit something out. Where adults make an effort to understand what kids are trying to communicate, even if they cant "use their words".

It turns out that having been dismissed by adults over something that really mattered to you as a kid is a near universal experience. And I'm not saying it's not *worse* for neurodivergent kids. I'm just saying that it's treated as bizarrely normalized in childcare that kids won't come to adults with really serious issues, like abuse. That they'll try to hide it. Why? Because they've learned that adults don't really understand them, and won't try to understand them. That adults don't really listen.

And it's hard, actually - as an adult working with kids, they'll come to you with a concern that seems absolutely ridiculous. Like, their classmate was bragging about how he's going to borrow his uncle's helicopter and fly to the north pole to meet santa. And THEY know santa isn't real and that the north pole is very dangerous - but they think it's absolutely credible that the kid could steal the helicopter, and they're terrified he's gonna get hurt. And you can't laugh! Not even a tiny little bit! You have to treat absolutely seriously their concern, and work it through with them. Because to them it's not ridiculous. They don't have the perspective you do, about what's real and possible and plausible and what isn't. All they'll see is that you've dismissed their real fear - and after that, why would they come to you with anything else they're scared of?

So you have to meet them where they are. You have to treat their experiences and perspectives as genuine, even when they don't make sense to you. You have to work towards understanding their reality, and what they're trying to convey to you, and what they want you to do for them in response. Even if they don't know what they want you to do! They're coming to you as an adult who will fix a problem for them, but if you fix the problem your way and it turns out that's not actually what they wanted, they *still* learn that adults don't understand them and can't help them. You have to learn to unpack all your concepts of what goes on in kids heads, and really meet them where they are. As complex individuals whose ways of thinking and being are probably totally different from your own, regardless of whether they - or you - are neurodivergent.

And this unpacking goes beyond kids. Not only do we need to take kids seriously, we need to take each other seriously. We need to build a world where people are able to understand and respect that other people are different from them without having to know Why and How. Where you don't NEED a diagnosis to be allowed to exist in a way that is different from other people.

anyway I don't mean to detract from the conversation about how alienating and destructive it is to your ability to relate to yourself, to grow up neurodivergent and having your own experiences constantly denied to you. I just think that while we're at it, we may as well address the problem at the root.

[metamatar]

When Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell launched the Boy Scout movement in 1908, he needed a hero his boys would respect. [...]

Civilization sapped a man's strength: as Baden-Powell put it some years later, 'with its town life, buses, hot-and-cold water laid on, everything done for you,' it tended 'to make men soft and feckless ... God made men to be men. The middle class had to lead the way, and take a lesson from the Empire. The colonists risking their lives in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or Africa had strength and initiative; in contrast to the bored or indifferent or pleasure-seeking islanders, they were real men. [...]

The frontier myth supported the frontiersman as a cult figure, it used 'primitive' races such as the 'Red' Indian and the Zulu as examples of martial virility, and, in Baden-Powell at Mafeking, it made the imperial scout a national hero. The outward symbols of the frontiersman - his cowboy hat, his flannel shirt and neckerchief, and perhaps most oddly, his short trousers (as used by Baden-Powell in India and on the South African veld) - dramatized through the Boy Scout movement the call to a revitalized manhood. [...]

The social ideas that informed and inspired the youth movements can be simplified, but they were by no means simple; Scouting cannot be understood without some summary of its historical background. Both it and the other youth movements reflected and were a response to several quite different influences: popular imperialism, social Darwinism, the crisis of masculinity and the search for 'national efficiency,' social concerns about poverty and slum conditions, new theories of education, and the value of fresh air. [...]

For Baden-Powell, the Matabele campaign [a region in what is now known as Zimbabwe] was a succession of hot days and cool nights on the high veld, scouting the Ndebele, tracking their spoor, spying on their positions, escaping their ambushes, killing them in their caves.

In the Matopos hills Baden-Powell learned the necessity of studying his enemy, using the landscape, and the importance of camouflage. Scouting was thus a science, no longer an inbred sense peculiar to the native. [...] Baden-Powell discovered that though the Ndebele were clever in many little ways, they rarely took the trouble to cover their own spoor, and they were useless in the dark. The civilized scout could answer intuition with logic, and meet nature with science.

[Sons of the Empire, The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement, 1890-1918. Robert H. MacDonald]

While girls wanted to join the Scouts, Baden-Powell rejected this idea, fearing girls’ femininizing influence on boys and that girls would turn into tomboys. He instead advocated for the development of a separate organization, the Girl Guides, to provide girls with distinctive training that centered around their future roles as wives and mothers. [Elizabeth Dillenburg]

[Girl Scouts USA was founded by] Juliette Gordon Low in 1912, a year after she had met Robert Baden-Powell [...] Low was the granddaughter of Juliette Magill Kinzie and John Harris Kinzie, and her maternal grandparents were one of the earliest settlers of Chicago. Juliette Kinzie wrote about her experiences in the Northwest Territory (now the state of Wisconsin) in her book Wau-Bun: The Early Day. Low incorporated some of her grandmother's experiences on the frontier into the traditions of Girl Scouts. [Wikipedia]

Militarism, racist pedagogy, and colonialist violence, some of the strongest threads that wove together Baden-Powell’s two lives, were also at the heart of the genocidal education projects developed by settler states during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Canada, these included the federally funded and church-run Indian Residential Schools, where Scout and Guide groups were thought to provide Indigenous students with an important training in appropriate gender roles and physical discipline.[...] While in Toronto, Baden-Powell also gave an invited speech at the Imperial Education Conference, where he proudly claimed that the Guides and Scouts had been “found particularly useful in the schools for Red Indian children, just as [they] had also proved useful in a like manner on the West Coast of Africa and in Baghdad.” [..]

At the same time, Scouting and Guiding were – and in some contexts, remain – proponents of what historian Philip Deloria calls the modern practice of “playing Indian” – appropriating and mimicking so-called uncivilized and pre-historic Indigenous cultural practices with the aim of strengthening modern white bodies and spirits. [...]

Having non-Indigenous Scouts and Guides don “Indian dress,” participate in “pow wows,” and perform “Indian dances,” then, was an especially complicated proposition in settler states like Canada – places where imaginary Indians and assimilatory government policies collided with Indigenous nations whose members, contrary to contemporary expectations, were stubbornly refusing to die out. [Kristine Alexander and Mary Jane Logan McCallum]

[teacherstudiies]

April 22, 2023 | 🐇

What I worked on today:

studied for my pedagogy exam (self-harm behavior and anxiety disorder)

studied for my politics didactic exam (leading conversations in the classroom, differentiation and individualization)

graded a couple English exams of my 6th graders 

Currently reading:

- Icebreaker Hannah Grace - I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki Baek Sehee

[diaryofaphilosopher]

The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed. No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so. Attempting to be more human, individualistically, leads to having more, egotistically, a form of dehumanization.

— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[haggishlyhagging]

The medieval student drank, fought, and in general conducted himself with the same swaggering nonsense as undergraduates do today. And just as today, this could lead to tensions between these temporary and rebellious residents of the university towns and the townspeople (and their pesky laws).

In order to ensure that their students never experienced legal consequences for their behavior—a key demand from wealthy medieval parents, as much as it is from well-to-do benefactors now—the universities came up with a unique work-around: all university students would take holy orders. That way, if they got in trouble, say, for running out on the bill at a local inn, as students from the University of Paris were fond of doing, they would be tried in ecclesiastical courts rather than local ones. There they would receive a slap on the wrist and be sent back to their studies, rather than face any meaningful punishment. This meant that every medieval university student was technically a clergy member, with a holy cassock to prove it. In fact, this is where the term town-gown relations comes from.

This requirement of holy orders also meant that the two major ways to be educated in the medieval period, joining a monastery school or going to university, were effectively closed to women. So even as Plato and Hippocrates and Galen and the Genesis myth were becoming locked into the standard pedagogic system, and even as pedagogy itself was becoming systematized, women were excluded from weighing in. The nature of our natures was being decided, and we weren't even present for the discussion. Most medieval thought about women was thus written by men, for men, based on readings of work by men.

-Eleanor Janega, The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society

[swiftthistletea]

I really do not believe that alternative pedagogies are worth it over traditional schooling. There are plenty of problems with traditional schooling sure. And I think that the only alternative type of schooling that has any sort of merit is Montessori but there are still problems with Montessori that I do not like. I like the focus on independence and calm environments within Montessori, and I think Montessori toys and furniture rule. My lead teacher/mentor came from a Montessori background and its been really interesting listening to her describe why she decided to leave. For example, if youre doing Montessori properly youre not supposed to praise children when they achieve something. Self motivation is a big part of it. Personally I believe children thrive when praise that's earned is given. It's not a bad thing to hype up a kid when they zipped their coat up for the first time, especially if its something that they've been struggling with for a while. Now Waldorf is just a fuckin mess. I think the method and schools lull a lot of parents in with the anti-tech sentiments, the focus on art and imaginative play, and heavy reverence and importance placed on nature and children experiencing nature. But Rudolf Steiner was a big esoteric occultist theosophy head before there was a schism and he formed his own philosophy/spirituality. This philosophy/spirituality informs the Waldorf teaching method even if it doesn't seem so overtly. The delayed academics and importance placed on Preserving the Magic of Childhood seems nice. Until you learn that they believe children should not be introduced to any kind of reading readiness (aka letters and phonics) until their baby teeth fall out; which means children that go through Waldorf education will not learn how to read until 1st through 3rd grade. That is way too late from a developmental standard imo; it wont fuck them up but if they switch to a traditional school they will be behind their peers because well, they ARE behind and this is intentional. Teachers and parents are told to discourage children from seeking out more academic pursuits until they are deemed to be old enough. How is that "child focused"? Also a lot of the things they teach like their specific obsession with wet on wet watercolors and eurythmy IS occultic in nature, the Waldorf true believers will tell you this. They believe that preschool children shouldnt use the color black in art or use any sort of "sharp" art tools like regular crayons and pencils until a certain age because it it's damaging to the soul. Preschool children forming basic shapes and symbols in art like hearts and smiles too early is considered an attack on their innocence. How could an educational method that bills itself as being "imagination and arts focused" say that while herding children into making very specific types of art with very specific colors? It's interesting that a lot of big tech people send their kids to Waldorf schools, Hollywood families as well. It's getting more popular recently. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates to Waldorf organizations. I still believe that parents have a fundamental right to seek out schools they think is best for their children, and they have a right to raise their children as they see fit barring like, abusive situations or whatever. But I think parents should also be cautious. And I 100% think Christian parents who are interested in Waldorf/"Forest Schools" because of the anti tech and nature walks need to be extra cautious. Anthroposophy and eurthymy ARE absolutely spiritual in nature and Waldorf is NOT "just about nature and art".

[lesb0]

rewatching john berger ways of seeing the 46454th time and though I enjoy his benjaminian analysis of the leonardo to the dutch baroque art market, the most impactful scenes to my life trajectory are how he cuts the goya third of may with videos from a loud hippie band and then with videos from a no audio televised firing squad execution. this is the way I wanted to do art history, how you can SHOCK a viewer into disorientation that forces you to look at political art the right way, leading a viewer into conclusions through a kind of a chaotic juxtaposition that you cannot achieve in a white room. taking advantage of how TV can do what museums and academia can't (won't).

and then in the scene when he shows caravaggio to a group of children and they immediately discussed the semiotics of the composition, the sexually and gender of christ, without even realizing that that was what they were doing. god.

THIS is how you do art pedagogy and communication, not with vasarian connoisseurial details. Its always breathtakingly good especially after youve already watched it. hope I can make something as good as this.....

[recomvery]

GET TO KNOW ME

About me

My name is Caroline and I am 28 years old. I live in France with my fiancé Raphael (who is the love of my life) and his family on the countryside. I am currently finishing up a bachelor degree in early childhood and pedagogy at Uni and want to do a Masters in counseling. My biggest dream is to one day be a licensed counselor, have an office at home and my own business counseling people online, which lead me to create this blog and spread positivity and encourage people to be gentle to themselves. My passion is helping people accept and love themselves ♡ My biggest hobby is reading fluffy little romance books (about cowboys) on my kindle and relax at home with my cat Ursa. My favorite tv shows are Gilmore Girls, Jane the virgin, adventure time, and silly dating reality tv shows. I am neurodivergent & queer, I like to draw, film youtube videos, and make friends online.

Fun facts:

- I always wanted to get back into Taylor swift as I loved her as a child but I keep putting it off

- I don't like sad media of any form

- I am scared of Zeppelins and how big the Eifel tower is

- I love stardew valley

- pink roses are my favorite

- I'm literally incapable of doing math

- I like reading children's books

Links

YOUTUBE CHANNEL

[fatehbaz]

[D]eviance and mischief. [...] [F]urtive [...]. [O]ther poetically inspiring words: secretive, surreptitious, clandestine, covert, conspiratorial, oblique [...]. We must fold these small acts of love and creativity and play (and laughter and irreverence and whimsy) into other resistant projects against white supremacy [...]. In various trans-American imaginaries, the boonies are raced as nonproductive land inhabited by people who are not fully part of the Western episteme. [...] Caribbean(ist) people are familiar with el monte, the hills, or les mornes. El monte is always just around the corner, encroaching, sprouting persistently [...] amid the rubble of hurricane disasters or abandoned plantation and industrial sites. [...] The hills, like much of our hemisphere, are sites of damage containing the residual energy of violence, [...] the “places of irresolution.” [...] [T]urn over rocks and push thorny vines to the side to find wet dirt, small creatures, and, perhaps, delightful hidden treasures [...]. I open my hands so that these and other surprises "jump into [them] with all the pleasures of the unasked for and the unexpected" [...]. Remaining open to these gifts of the nonhuman natural world [...]. How much ruddier might we be against the multiheaded hydra of white supremacy as “a world of mutually-flourishing companions” [...]?

Text by: Dixa Ramirez D'Oleo. "Mushrooms and Mischief: On Questions of Blackness." Small Axe 23 (2 (2)): 152-163. July 2019.

---

Every day I wake up and rehearse the person I would like to be. […] To use the words of [...] C.L.R. James, “every cook can govern.” [...] [T]his is what happens when people consciously decide to come together and “shape change,” [...]. And to move through the world with the intention of making it a better place for living creatures to inhabit. […] And most importantly, it’s an invitation to join in. And it is a reminder that liberation is not a destination but an ongoing process, a praxis. Every day, groups of parents, librarians, nurses, temp workers, ordinary people, tired of the horrors of the present, come together to decide what kind of world they want to inhabit. […] [W]e bear witness to rehearsal, study, experimentation in form, a multiplicity of formations of struggle being waged, often most strongly by people for whom freedom has been most denied. [...] “If We Must Die”: “Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” [...] [F]or so many people, whether abandoned by the state [...] or abandoned by society in a carceral site, fighting back, by virtue of necessity as well as of ethics, is building, always building. This [...] the care work, of rehearsal.

Text by: Robyn Maynard. “Every Day We Must Get Up and Relearn the World: An Interview with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.” Intefere: Journal for Critical Thought and Radical Politics Volume 2, pages 140-165. 19 November 2021.

---

The no of refusal is a mode of survival: an impenetrable boundary, silent or shouted. It is a refusal to be killed or to succumb [...]. Vast ecosystems flattened for plantations and fields, raw minerals pulled from the ground and sea for the building of nation-states [...]. Being-with requires a pause from which to imagine this otherwise, in all of its vastness and uncertainty. [...] To be-with [...] needs a disposition of attentiveness, listening, curiosity and noticing, [...] a "pedagogy of deep engagement". [...] The scale of violence [...] is immeasurable. [...] The immensity of the loss of people and ecologies to capitalist brutalities exceeds what we can comprehend. But [...] so do the myriad, and insuppressible flourishings and alliances, the joyfulness and love, the lives lived otherways. Attunement leads us to the gaps and silences and soundings that run through everything [...]. [T]hose imaginations of life [...] might rise to the surface.

Text by: AM Kanngieser. "To undo nature; on refusal as return." transmediale Almanac. 2021.

[historicalfightingguide]

“The Perception & Action Podcast began in May 2015. It explores how psychological research can be applied to improving performance, accelerating skill acquisition and designing new technologies in sports and other high performance domains.

 It covers disciplines including sports science, psychology, human systems engineering, sport analytics, human factors, neuroscience and cognitive science. The podcast reviews basic concepts and discusses the latest research in these areas.

 It is targeted at academics, researchers, coaches, performance analysts, technology developers and students working in/studying these areas. Formats include: 

(i) full episodes covering key topics in detail (ii) Perception & Action News which examines recently published journal articles, (iii) Sports Science Shorts which discuss current issues, and (iii) interviews with academics, practioners and product developers. 

Hope you Enjoy!You can listen to the podcast in a variety of different places and subscribe (for free!) so that you automatically receive new episodes“

[jeannereames]

While reading stories of Alexander & his friends, it often feels like they could very well be today's youths. Is it because the authors present Alexander's world in a way relatable to the modern reader? Or there are things about youth common in all eras, like teenage crisis, romance, dreams, bold & adventurous spirit? And if I'm not wrong, you mention at one place that you don't "heroize" Alexander. That's interesting, since he's often worshipped a mythical hero. Why did you move away from that?

Alexander and the boys

This query was really two, or at least I want to separate them into two, so I’ll address the matter of heroizing Alexander in a different post.

The reason teen Alexander feels familiar owes to the simple fact biology makes certain aspects of adolescence universal. That said, while all human beings go through (suffer?) adolescence, whether it’s recognized as a “stage of life” depends on place and era. Does X culture have an adolescent moratorium, or time period between childhood and adulthood when teens are not (yet) saddled with the full responsibilities of adulthood?

Ancient Greece did, at least for some classes; they even had a specialized term: ephebe/έφηβος. Later, it came to signify a specific military class for training (18-20), but originally, it just meant a teenage boy, although the start age was imagined as later, more like 15+. Up to that, the generic pais (child) was more common. Ephebe has the implication of “starting to look like a man.”

Of more import, they invented what’s become the Western pedagogical system. The word pedagogy is GREEK: pais (child) agōgē (guiding/training): a paidagōgos was a nanny, but also a method of teaching children. The specific Spartan schooling system is referred to as the Agōgē, but the word has a generic meaning too. All of that is related to the Greek word for “work” (agōn) but also “to lead” (egōn).

There’s your Greek lesson for the day.

The Greeks had a pretty firm idea of the proper way to train up boys* and shape young minds. By the Classical era, and arguably the late Archaic, city Greeks were sending boys between the ages of 7 and 12 to school. These were private, so parents paid for the privilege of getting junior out of the house so somebody else could run herd on him. Mom and Dad had work to do. What were boys taught? The Three Rs (reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic) but also phys-ed (PE) and music. Again, the basics of a proper European primary-school education.

At 12, most boys returned home to take up their father’s occupation. So these were not all wealthy boys. Some were what we’d call middle class, but their families had enough money to invest in their education, and then, as now, the pricier the tuition, the better the teachers. But most stopped on the cusp of adolescence and went to work; they had no adolescent moratorium.

Only the wealthiest boys could afford to go on to what amounted to secondary education: lessons with a philosopher in order to prep them for their future careers as politicians, generals, and city leaders. What they learned now were rhetoric, eristics (art of argument), some literature, laws, theory on government, etc.

This higher-level tutoring is what Aristotle was hired for. Alexander (and friends) had already had the basics. A “philosophic education” had been around for over a century by the time Philip called Aristotle to Pella, although it wasn’t as set in form as it would become by the Hellenistic and Roman eras. In some of his more famous works, such as the Politics, Aristotle talks about the importance of education in the formation of a state: specifically in Book 7.18, and most of Book 8. He gets very specific in Book 8. He puts forward a number of common ideas the ancients had about the nature of the child. Most believed character was unchanging, so education would work to curb a person’s vices and elevate their virtues.

The Greeks, btw, did not invent schools themselves. Egyptians and Mesopotamians both had schools for children before the Greeks did. Greeks got the idea from them. But they did create their own notion of what school should include, which is what they passed down to the Romans, then to Europe, and finally, to most school systems in the West.

Anyway, when a culture introduces the adolescent moratorium, it frees up teenagers to, well, do “stupid teen shit.” Schools provide an environment where they create their own society with their own rules. In cultures where they begin adult jobs at 12/13 (or even sooner), they’re integrated and don’t have the chance to create these little sub-societies that percolate with all the drama of wildly pumping hormones.

So, a society that creates an environment where groups of teens regularly congregate in disproportionate numbers to either adults or children, like secondary school, squire/military, maid, or scribal training--or the Macedonian Pages Corps--will feel familiar to modern societies that have high schools.

Put a bunch of teens together, suffering through adolescence, and it’ll produce similar results anywhere, any time.

—————-

*Girls were obviously not included in misogynistic Greece.

[marvelstars]

Anakin & Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi

So while I get where the fandom is coming from when they criticize Anakin´s style of teaching Ahsoka how to protect herself by having their soldiers fire at her at the same time on the jedi temple, compared to real world learning of martial arts, which was an actual inspiration for Lucas when he designed the Jedi Order, Anakin´s way of teaching Ahsoka how to defend herself in a war was very tame honestly. In martial arts training it isn´t unusual for students to break a leg practicing or have their hands bleed from the effort.

I don´t think Anakin could have found a safer way to teach her how to defend herself under overwhelming odds and this is my pet peeve with the fandom because they expect Anakin to use a safer pedagogy used in not combat circunstances for a pair of characters who are active leaders in a war, no matter how good or bad of a teacher Anakin could be, he can´t control under how much fire they are going to be on their next mission, he can´t control Ahsoka being kidnapped, missing or tortured or fired at by hundreds of droids at the same time, he can´t be there to protect her all the time while also leading an army without losing either her or many of their soldiers.

So him having her practice over and over again, because battles last hours, there´s not a thing called breaks in a battle, under the watchful eye of their captain, inside the Jedi temple where she has instant access to an infirmary in case it´s neccesary, is honestly the best thing Anakin could have her do for her to really get at the level she needed to be to survive the war and that isn´t being a bad teacher, that´s him trusting her to practice and having faith in her skills as a padawan.

The reason why Anakin disliked Jedi´s traditional tranning wasn´t because it was set in tradition, he himself passed those trials after all, he was proud to pass them but he, on his first real mission in the war, lost the battle, his master and his men on a sigle day and barely scaped with his life, thanks to the sacrifice of his commander official, this was around the time he had that duel with Ventress when she kidnnaped Obi-Wan and Anakin/the Jedi thought he was dead.

This is why Anakin disliked Ahsoka´s trials even if she passed them, because he knew for a fact they were not going to be enough, many padawans died in battle who passed those same trials but who just were not used to the challenges war would bring to them.

And in the end Anakin was right, Ahsoka was able to survive not only the war but being a fugitive persecuted by their own men, Order 66 and the Empire´s army. So I would say that he did good for Ahsoka as her Jedi Master given he looked to train her under the best circunstances he could find to teach her safely.

[ballet-symphonie]

what's the deal with joy womack ? I got into ballet after the whole scandal at the bolshoi and i've always heard bad things about her but I don't really know the story. Also she apparently lied about her position at POB?

Ooof I'll try to do the quick version based on what I remember, she is basically one drama after another, she tends to...misrepresent information. She left BT after saying she had to pay or even sleep with someone to get soloist parts. This was disputed by some, and confirmed by others.

After she went to work i the Kremlin Ballet Theatre of Moscow, she became a leading soloist with them, despite often calling herself a principal. There was some tension here as she was making vlogs filming class despite her coworkers asking her not to and occasionally sharing some no-so-nice information about her coworkers, things got messy when she divorced her ex and she left, even after she got promoted to principal.

After Kremlin, she won a prize at Varna in 2017, did some unsuccessful company auditions, and did short stints at Universal Ballet in Korea and guesting around Bulgaria and Poland. At one point she was going back Russian State Theatre Arts Ballet Pedagogy and Choreography (GITIS) for higher education in pedagogy. She has repeatedly expressed disdain for both the American and Russian systems, and there is a lot of speculation that this, along with her desire to be a principal *asap* hindered her career.

She was at Boston Ballet for a short period, but didn't like the setup, said she preferred being in Russian/European companies where they provided more individual coaching and often more benefits (housing) and with low layoffs...yet she has also repeatedly complained about the low pay/exchange rate when she was working in Russia. She left here when COVID happened.

After trying a couple of times, I believe she got a "contractuelle" position at POB, where you're generally hired for specific productions (eg, something with a huge corps, or for a specific choreographic nice that a dancer excels in). POB, with its extremely involved hiring and promotion systems/competitions, takes a while to move dancers into the corps sometimes. I'm not sure if she was offered a corps contract and didn't take it, or didn't get one, but regardless, she's no longer working with POB.

And now, if you go to her website she's starting a foundation and a school and company....? This is in addition to her freelancing around and the project prima bars that I think no longer exist and some film work. She's just a lotttttt and does not portray herself as the most self-aware or humble person.

As far as my personal interactions with her go, I know she came to audition at my company before I started my professional career and was not accepted. I took a couple classes with her in NYC by chance, the diva attitude was overtly present.

I didn't do much googling here, of course open to corrections of this mass of speculation