Professional Development Minutes

After reading Naomi Klein's latest opinion piece, " Geoengineering: Testing the Waters ", I started thinking about the night I saw the little bandit.  It was dark. I was headed towards the campus library. I did not expect to see him:  a raccoon, crunched near a  garbage-can eating remnants of a left over  McDonald's meal. courtesy of clker.com When people saw him, they started snapping pictures.  Perhaps, they intended to show the world.  Look what I saw! Look what I saw! Even raccoons like Mickey D's!  And that was tragic. This  wild animal was familiar with our garbage,  dependent on it  for a meal. The natural diet of a raccoon is berries, acorns, apples, corn, cherries and so on.  But these foo ds are not readily available for the "suburban raccoon". Therefore, this creature resorts to foods that we leave behind.  This includes  high-cholesterol fatty treats. Still, this is not the m...

images created by melissa fockler 2012

T he schoolyard is a site of struggle:  a space where "the bully (the powerful) learns to subordinate and exclude "the other" (the powerless).   Why has bullying  become the norm?  I had my first contact with bullying when I was in elementary school.  I say, "contact with bullying" because it was common for my classmates to throw garbage at me and push me into bushes that were planted on school grounds. I was tossed about and picked on so often that even my teachers turned a blind-eye. No one spoke up for me and I was taught not to speak-up for myself.  Don't rock the boat , so-to-speak.  With more and more teen suicides due to bullying , it is time to speak-up against bullying.  It is time to undo the silence.   

                  Photos taken by melissa fockler 2012