Visuwords--A Cool Tool for Word Nerds

I found this site just way too much fun. It appeals to those people who are in love with words, by making the dictionary and the thesaurus into a visual, interactive toy. You know who you are--the ones who people call a walking, talking thesaurus, the ones who read dictionaries (and etymologies!) for fun, the ones who love to play with words.

Here is an example of the view for "school." In the actual site, you can hover over a word in the illustration, and it will provide you with a definition and loads of information. The site automatically loads on library, with the link I've made above.

Enjoy.

Appreciating the "Wonder"-Full

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

( Abraham Joshua Heschel)

The life work of most teachers and librarians I know is to instill in children that appreciation of wonder.

The Politics of Principle

“No one should seek to impose his or her religious convictions on society, but we should seek to bring the insights of our respective faiths to the public conversation about the principles for which we stand and the values we share. That would involve, for the religious groups within society, a shift from the politics of interests to the politics of principle. It is when our horizons extend beyond our own faith communities that our separate journeys converge and we become joint builders of amore gracious world.” (124)

--from To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

I find this concept particularly important right now, given what is happening in the United States. I care deeply--both as a citizen and as a teacher--about how our country behaves and about how our leaders (and prospective leaders) behave. And I find myself longing for a dialogue of candidates exploring the politics of principle. I want to know how we can all work together, how we can build a community and a world that is founded on respect, where people listen to each other and explore their commonalities.

I think I need to stop watching television. The commercials for the upcoming elections are making me despair that we will never find the ability to have a civil conversation with those with whom we disagree. Instead, people shout, lie, and throw mud. Different is somehow evil. I wish we could all step back, take a deep breath, and say, "Let's be reasonable with each other. Let's celebrate what we share and present where we differ in a calm and reasonable fashion."

I am, at heart, an optimist. That is why I teach. I work to imbue students with these views.

Thoughts on the First Day of School

“We cannot change the world altogether in one go, but we can have an effect, one act at a time, one day at a time, one person at a time. That is what it is, intimates Maimonides, to be awake: to know that our acts make a difference, sometimes all the difference in the world.”

(from To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, p.233)

The faces are engaged, enthusiastic, excited--whether on the children, parents, or teachers. Being a teacher, an educator, a parent, requires of us the belief that Sacks so eloquently states--that not only can each of us have an impact on another, but we cannot help but to have an effect. To that end, may we keep the hopes, dreams, and enthusiasms of this first day in our hearts to feed our needs as the year progresses.

And may we never forget that "our acts make a difference, sometimes all the difference in the world."

Justice versus Law

As I noted in my last entry, I am currently working through my responses to the book, "To Heal a Fractured World" by Rabbi Sacks. Here is the next quotation I wanted to explore.

“Justice in the Hebrew Bible is thus more than a matter of law. It restores a broken order. By suffering the wrong he inflicted on others, the wrongdoer comes to feel remorse. He or she repairs the damage they have done. Exile ends in homecoming, and something of the lost harmony of the world is restored. Jewish mysticism thus shares with the non-mystical side of Judaism a fundamental vision of order disrupted and repaired.” (77)

This idea of justice is perhaps one of the most appealing aspects of Judaism to me. It isn't enough to say who is right or who is wrong: rather, to achieve true justice, the communal order must be re-established. The people who do wrong cannot just apologise, repent, or serve a prison sentence--they must do everything in their power to mend what they broke. By doing so, they repair the world they disrupted, both by fixing what was damaged and thus thereby reintegrating themselves into the community.

Justice here becomes not just for the victim, but for the villain. The community becomes whole. It is practical, pragmatic, and healing. It is completely focused on THIS world, and the actions are wholly (holy?) dependent on HUMAN, not divine action.



What could be more just and beautiful than that?


At our school, we try to implement this concept of justice with our students and their interactions with each other and the staff. Sometimes it works, often it is difficult and frustrating. Yet I can think of no goal that could be higher and more worthy of us as adults and teachers than to impart such a value and concept of justice.