look what I found in the barn

I walked out to my lumber storage barn and picked up the first board I saw, with the intention of making a table or two. It was a bit harder to dig for the walnut to make the legs. The sense of discovery that one "discovers" in working with wood is gratifying. The maple boards shown are "spalted," meaning that they are softened and colored by the process of decay, which makes them even more beautiful. You can see the delicate patterns of curl formed in the grain, called "fiddle back". The meandering line cut through the middle of the board has practical as well as decorative purposes. It allows the wide board to pass through my planer and will allow some room for expansion and contraction when the table is fully assembled. This technique was described in my table design article for Fine Woodworking, "A Fresh Take on Table Tops," issue number 187.

Now it is time to go back to the shop and work on legs.

These are intended for placement (and sale) in galleries in Eureka Springs and Little Rock, unless customers see them on-line first and want to buy them direct.

danish oil, dovetails and rocks...

And of course walnut. Today I applied the first coat of Danish Oil to the walnut bench, and I am beginning some simple tables combining walnut with natural edged spalted maple. I brought the wood in from the barn and look forward to making the first cuts. There are certain advantages that come with experience. At one time I might have agonized over design before starting. Now I plunge in. And the results are more creative and spontaneous. Stay tuned for the results.

rocks in bench top.

You can see what I've been doing today, fitting the rocks into the bench top.

All that red stuff on the rock in the photo above is lip stick. You rub the lip stick on the rock, then nestle the rock into a recess cut in the top. The lip stick rubs off onto the wood in spots that need shaving in order for the rock to fit.

Now the bench is ready for final sanding and the application of the oil finish. I will be careful to avoid getting Danish oil in the recesses where the rocks fit, so it will not interfere with the bond of the epoxy glue.

house, tree and person drawings.

I have been thinking about the narrative quality inherent in wood as I work on my artist statement for an exhibit:

We love the spoken and written word, and yet the objects crafted by the human hand tell stories too, often with even greater sincerity and meaning. One does need to understand the language, and that requires some attention.

Each piece of wood tells the story of the tree from which it came. Where there’s a knot, there had been a branch. Where the grain is wide and straight, the tree had grown quickly, straight and tall. Where the grain is crooked or dense, the tree had grown in defiance of harsh circumstances.

I have come to view my own work as framing and illuminating the story told by wood. A craftsman might choose to wrestle it to submission, making it do things to satisfy his or her sense of mastery and accomplishment. I am curious about more gentle relationships, in which the full range of textures, colors and narrative qualities of the woods might emerge and find greater voice.

Much of what I do is inspired by my concerns for the environment and I adhere to these thoughts:

Woodworkers have a unique opportunity to reveal the beauty and value of our native woods in a way that encourages understanding and preservation of our trees and forests,
and when an object is carefully and lovingly crafted, it is empowered to express the concerns and character of its maker in a voice that can resonate for generations.

I am reminded of an old Freudian child psychiatrist I worked with many years ago. He had his child clients do what he called the "house, tree and person test" which involved three drawings since children were rarely able to verbalize their relationships, particularly for an old Jewish man with a German accent. The house told about their personal state. A disproportionately large attic space described an over-sized imagination and the size of windows and doors revealed their relative openness or guardedness toward the outside. The tree described their growth and history. I particularly recall him pointing out knot holes drawn in trees. The knot hole symbolized trauma in childhood, even as the loss of a major limb was a trauma in the life of the tree. Certainly, as a woodworker, I am not in the business of story telling on my own. It is a collaboration in which I find a great deal of pleasure. Today, I was passing my hands along the well sanded walnut bench and feeling pleasure in its touch. I do not believe there will be many people who when confronted by the finished bench will not feel the same.

plugs and stones

Today I made small walnut plugs to cover the lag bolts used to assemble portions of the bench, and have begun the process of inlaying the stones on the top.

from a reader, a spoon

The spoon in the photo above is by Will Simpson. His comment was made to the post below as follows:

After reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, I set for my self the goal of carving 400 spoons. I figure that by that time I'll have something meaningful to say with my spoon carving. Currently I'm just starting number 26.

His comment reminds me of my college days. I had a professor who urged me to go to graduate school in creative writing. I decided that writing would be much more meaningful if I had something I wanted to say. What I realized later was that all the great books, great poems, and great works have a single thing at the heart, regardless of length and regardless of the experience on which they are based.

It is the urge that human beings have to share something of themselves with others. They may differ only in the depth of their sincerity. Check out the link to Will's spoons. In their simple sincerity, they say a lot already.

table and spoon

There are always a number of things going on in my wood shop, allowing me to shift from one thing to another. In addition to my work at school on the walnut bench, I have been making a small walnut table to surround a pre-made chessboard top. While waiting for the oil to dry, there is spoon carving to do with my Sloyd knife. There is so much pleasure in learning new things, feelings one's powers of attention grow, and then seeing the physical results of one's labor and skill. The spoon is almost ready for sanding. My level of skill has not quite reached the point at which it can be done beautifully by knife work alone, and the curves designed in the handle make dealing with grain particularly difficult. But practice is what leads to greater skill.

working on the bench again...

As you can see from the photos I am finishing the assembly of the walnut bench. I used 5/16 in. lag bolts to attach the under structure to the top and ends. In the photo below you can see the relationship between the model and the full sized bench. And you can also see what comes next. Inlaying rocks.

maya, illusion, reality and craftsmanship

A friend of mine, in response to a conversation about our worsening economic times, said,"It's not real. It's maya." So I gently explained that the concept of maya doesn't mean that the world is not real, that real people are not being thrown out of real homes and losing real jobs in this recession, but that our perceived distinctions between things is illusory. The concept of narrowly defined self that drives our economy is illusion. There are no real boundaries between us as you can see from where ever you are sitting and reading this text.

There was an old Jackson Browne song that explained it, "From the time we've known that we each are a part of one another, we've lost as much as we have won." Our economy and culture have been built on the concepts of winning and losing and we are at the time of reconciliation, understanding of reality.

The misunderstanding of the meaning of Maya is hazardous. It allows individuals to disregard, diminish and disparage the reality of each other.

In life, we are given a choice of dwelling either in our separation from each other through close examination of boundaries, or by uniting with each other through examining the extended relationships that form the framework of greater self. It is the narrow definition of self that is the lie, the gross mis-perception.

There are things about craftsmanship that lead one beyond him or herself. The immersion in creative process, taking raw materials, reshaping them toward the objective of creating greater utility and beauty for the lives of others is a process through which we transcend the boundaries of self. The other side of the process is the difficult one, that tends to challenge me. It is where I must take personal gain from the process. I have to make money. It is required by existence on the physical plane in very real physical reality. It is no illusion when the bills arrive in the mail and must be paid. The challenge is in perception of balance.

No, life is not an illusion. Life IS profound and very real. We are deeply interconnected with each other in ways that defy understanding. And it's not just the hardwires and software of the internet that make it so for it has always been. We are inextricably a part of one another.

These times are interesting. The irrational greed of those from AIG and Wall St. juxtaposed to the incredible generosity of the common people. The difference between Maya and reality is brilliantly illuminated. When we connect with each other either in craftsmanship, or in service, we enter the real world. And it is no illusion

bench support

As you can see in the photo, the bracing for the underside of the bench is nearly complete and I am marking for the hidden lag screws that will attach the ends to the under-structure. The holes that you see in the bracing are for attachment to the top and will be filled with 1 in. diameter walnut dowels. It is fun to see the project at this point of completion, and I expect to be busy inlaying rocks in the top by the weekend. I generally work with minimal sketches, leaving many of the important details to be resolved during the process of making the piece.

Today I have been hearing the news of widespread outrage over the AIG bonuses and it seems the term most commonly used in reference to the situation is "out of touch." Can you see how all the important considerations of human life are best described through reference to the hands? The hands are a no-brainer in the very best sense of the term. When you truly understand something, you know it in your whole being, brains need not apply.

take over AIG

It is growing obvious to many of us that AIG is at the center of the worldwide financial melt down, and it is ridiculous that they still haven't come to terms with what they have done. There are lots of places you can go to research this.

The latest round of bonuses being paid to executives and the misspending of tax dollars for those bonuses provides a clear rationale for a complete government takeover of AIG. If the insurance industry is so important that we must pour billions of dollars into saving it, then it should be nationalized and its employees's salaries be based on civil service pay scale.

There are hundreds of thousands of public employees that do a much better job of serving the American people each day.

There are things that happen when the world is taken from our children's hands. We learn basic moral values in the making of real things. If everything we present in school is just words, numbers and abstractions, we offer them a world in which nothing has real significance. Even receiving bonuses of millions of dollars for abysmal failure may make sense to those completely divorced from the physical reality of crafting things from real materials. And here is my answer... It is simple, but sorry, it will take awhile... cook with our children, make things with our children, plant and harvest with our children, and take time for the scientific exploration of our environment, hand in hand with our children. Here, I quote a good friend... "there is a real world out there."

Our success and failure are dependent on imparting an understanding of it.

Make a wooden shoe

And another from Sweden which has a shoemaker, a spoon carver and chair maker. Both are interesting views into old time craftsmanship.

working on the bench

Today I am working on the Crystal Bridges walnut bench, adding the structure underneath. A photo is above. I have also played around with spoons, practicing to carve one from the cherry tree that was my daughter's climbing tree when she was young. It will be nice to save something from it.

Providence Business News has an article about the Met School, the first of the Big Picture Schools founded and co-directed by my friend Eliot Washor.
the article says:

"If there was a simple formula for success that The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center could share with other high schools, it would be the practice of taking a holistic approach to the physical, mental and intellectual welfare of each student.

That is no easy task for an inner-city school, with campuses in South Providence and Newport, whose student population in general is strained by poverty and other potentially crippling societal ills.

But then again, The Met is no ordinary high school."

The Full text of the article can be read here. The Big Picture Schools are now global with some having started in Australia.

For those interested in spoon carving knives, the photo below shows the proper use for making the first cut. Beginners tend to try to cut too much, too deep, but a few shallow strokes makes short work of cutting the bowl shape for the working end of a spoon.

How to make a spoon kinfe

I have decided to create a knol... a unit of knowledge, as an experiment. How to make a spoon knife.

I am uncertain where all this is going. As a how-to writer, I am normally paid to produce this kind of content. One of the dangers is that when you have seen things so simply and easily presented you get the impression that it is easy. Then when you actually try something, you realize that their are subtle principles. Even the challenge of getting your hands to do what you see presents a big challenge for some.

The danger is that some when they find out that things are harder than they expect may give up too soon, thinking they may have no aptitude for such things. I always hear, "I have no patience for that." But the truth may be "I've not cared enough to invest time or effort in what you do."

dummies.com?

Google is working with a site called "dummies.com" where you can post how-to information and articles in discrete units called "knols". Check it out. They have a contest. Most of it is at a very low level of expertise, apparently.

There was an article some time back questioning, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and perhaps this is their effort to change their image. One can hope that the idea of dummies is intended to be irony. Use the search box for Woodworking and see what comes up.

more on gesture

More research on gesture from the Susan Goldin-Meadow Gesture Laboratory at the University of Chicago illustrates the close relationship between hand and mind and the use of the hands in the demonstration and development of intelligence. According to the article in Science News, Kids' Gestures foretell Better Vocabularies Children's use of gestures at an early age is is an important building block in later academic success. First is gesture, then comes higher vocabularies and then greater success in schools. If the case for hands in schools were a 5-board bench, we could see that each board is cut and sanded to perfection and the nails are driven home. But of course, getting real changes in place requires that every teacher and school administrator in America rethink their profession to allow for total engagement of the hands.

I have called for an affirmative action program for the hands, allowing hands-on thinkers to the top of the academic world, and changes to core curricula in the major universities to engage all students in work with their hands.

OK, so I'm a dreamer. In the words of John Lennon, I know I'm not the only one.

Research from Goldin-Meadow's team also suggests that gesturing may encourage children to think more creatively by bringing out new ideas and improving clarity. By manipulating how much children gestured, researchers gauged the influence of gesturing. Older children told to gesture while solving math problems on a chalkboard got the answer right more frequently than children who were told not to gesture. “These gestures are not mere hand waving. Kids are extracting meaning from gestures,” says Goldin-Meadow. “The educational relevance could be fabulous."

Thanks Joe Barry for alerting me to the article.

more

The big dovetails are now complete but for sanding, and the student's table of elements is complete, for now. A later class will improve the labeling of the elements and put finish on the lids and frame. Our table uses different woods to designate the families of elements within the collection, and of course many elements are not included as they are impossible to collect. The important part of this process has been the enthusiasm it helped to generate for the students and staff. And without educational enthusiasm, where are we? In a situation that bores students and teachers and leads to high drop out rates, poor performance at all levels and declining interest in education.

I will remind you of the Purdue study that tells that students learn science better hands-on, and that what they learn hands-on is retained longer. The matter is expressed in an old saying, use it or lose it. I was fortunate yesterday to observe the chemistry student's demonstration to the first and second grade class. It was exciting. The students were wonderful teachers, and the very young ones filled with wonder.

Today I am also reviewing the galley proofs of my new book, Rustic Furniture Basics, a black and white version that shows the text, sidebars, photos and illustrations in place. It is exciting to see the book brought to this point in its journey toward publication.

Big dovetails fitted

Today I assembled the dovetails for the bench. You can see the results. Next the surfaces will be sanded level and smooth. We finished the chemistry project, making a display for the periodic table of elements, and I will get a photo of it tomorrow.

vacuum lamination of chess boards

Today the 5th and 6th grade worked on their chess boards, adding cherry borders of thin solid stock and using chisels to miter the corners. Then we began the process of vacuum laminating the assembled veneers onto a birch plywood backing material. You can see the results below. This one is my own demonstration piece and the kid's work is not quite so neat. But in the end, they will have made some useful and beautiful chess boards. After spring break we will begin making the chess men to go with their chess boards.

attention, ADD, ADHD and the hands

I have a student in school who is extremely distracted and impulsive and his parents use the purchase of new video games to buy his cooperation. He told me yesterday that being in wood shop was the worst day of his life (though he had told me only moments before how much fun he was having). So, I asked him when his best days are. "When I get a new game and can play all day."

This blog is not an appropriate place to discuss individuals, but it is painful for me to be in a position to see cause and effect and to not have the ability to bring clarity and change. It is something that we are working on. I have been gathering articles on the connections between ADHD and ADD with television and computer game time to share with parents and staff at Clear Spring School. The widely held assumption among parents is that we are doing a good job for our children if we can provide full access to technology. That may actually be our very biggest mistake.

For many children with attention difficulties, the television and video games are the only things fast paced enough to fully occupy their attention, and to see one's exhaustingly overactive child sitting and fully occupied in an activity would lead one to feel a sense of quiet relief.

But there is an amazing amount of widely disregarded research linking tv and video game time with poor performance in school, problems in attention, behavior, obesity and poor social adjustment. The evidence of these things is stronger than the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer. And yet we do nothing.

There are positive changes that could be made with little cost and huge benefit. Engage children in crafts. Engage ourselves in crafts. Interested in woodworking? I can help.

video game addiction?

This article is interesting.
Children, TV, Video Games, and ADHD:
In This Chicken and Egg Relationship, Overexposure Can Leave Kids Fried. A combination of poor performance in school, obesity, and social alienation spell disaster in young lives. But who is ready to do something about it? Even the students at Clear Spring School spend too much time gaming. And I wish there were something I could do about it.

Today in the woodshop

At Clear Spring School today, we, first and second graders and staff went "walkabout" on the ridge behind the woodshop, a short journey of discovery, then returned to tell about it, aboriginal style. We used sticks and paint and the experience of "walkabout" to decorate large beads for making necklaces. It was really fun using the Australian method of painting. Dip the stick in paint and then dab. It leads to some precise and interesting work.

In the 3rd and 4th grade class, we used paper sloyd to make pinwheels for the pre-primary students. It has become a near annual event. Each student is making one to keep and two to give away.

rocks, artifacts and showcase

This afternoon I went to the Kings River to gather small rocks to use in the Crystal Bridges bench. You stand on the shore of this beautiful free flowing stream in the Arkansas Ozarks and look down. There are billions of rocks to choose from. Yes, they are only rocks, but once the rock is selected, picked up and gathered for use, it is an artifact. It records intangible things inside the mind, the eye and hand. It tells the story of millions of years of earth's history, but also describes relationship with the individual craftsman (in this case me) as I put it to use in telling a story of our culture and our time on this earth.

Last year at this time I was preparing for the Woodworker's Showcase, and the photo below shows Chris Schwarz, Wayne Barton, Peter Korn and myself in examination of the relative merits of wonderful work.

Artifact

Artifact: n. [Latin ars, artis, skill, art + factus; see FACT] 1. Any object made of human work. 2. in histology, any structure or changed appearance produced artificially or by death. Also spelled artefact

While the definition is simple, and it appears than any man-made object might fit, we have come to know the term as something more... that an artifact tells a story of human culture and civilization, or on a more personal level, the story of our own lives.

When you make something from wood it serves as an artifact in several ways. First it tells the story of the wood itself, interpreted and recorded in the maker's use of grain, color and form. Then it tells the story of the culture within which the maker works, and his or her experiences and capabilities. It then records and tells the story of its own making. And of course any of these can be read and understood only by those literate in reading between lines, in subtleties and nuances. these are the kinds of things that you learn through the education of the hands.

Today I am leaving tracks on wood, assembling and gluing wood into larger forms that will be shaped, cut and fitted to form an artifact, telling the story of conservation, respect for the natural world, the making of museums, and the teaching of kids.

Next, I go looking for rocks.

texturing walnut

The walnut bench for Crystal Bridges has a meandering line cut from end to end in tribute to the man considered responsible for our nation's first and only designated National Scenic River. The simple texture created with a rotary chisel creates a sense of the ripple found in water on the edges where the two parts of the table intersect.

The wood came from the Crystal Bridges Museum site, which was previously owned by Neil Compton former head of the Ozark Society and leader in the movement to preserve the Buffalo River as a completely natural resource.

As you can see, I am making progress on the bench. The texturing on the outside edges as you will see in later photos was done by students at Clear Spring School with gouges supplied by Lee Valley Tool Co.

romance of the 8 hooters

Barred owls like the one I see in the woods in back of my house are also called 8 hooters because of their distinctive call. Today I heard one at some distance from the house, and then our own answered very near by. What does this mean? could there be romance in the woods? The only visible difference between the mail and female is in size, with the female being larger. Click here for a site where you can hear the owl's eight note call.

Today we worked to remove downed limbs and debris from the recent ice storm. It has been an ongoing process for weeks, just taking care of the woods along our road. Nature will have to heal the rest of it. Standing dead trees make great homes for barred owls so there should be plenty of nesting places available for our nesting pair.

dovetails fit!

You can see in the photo that the dovetails are beginning to fit together. They required more chiseling than I hoped, but at least I won't have to start over a third time to get them right. Here I am gently tapping them into place, but won't go all the way. By pulling them apart before final assembly I can see the places where they have rubbed during the trial fit, and I can adjust slightly with a chisel, so that when they are finally assembled, I won't have to force them together and risk cracking the wood.

Introduction to a new blog and website

Anyone who has been alive for sometime, knows that things don't always go as we plan... particularly when we are doing new things. So today I am cutting new dovetails on the Crystal Bridges bench. This is the first time I have used this technique and I've never cut dovetails so large before, so there are some things I am learning.

I have also set up a new blog and website dedicated to introductory and intermediate box making. Please feel free to visit BoxMaking101.com and explore.

It is a work in progress and will show signs of improvement over the weekend.

Periodic table of elements

In our high school chemistry class, we are finishing up our periodic table of elements as you can see in the photo. Of course, the framework and lids are only a very small bit of the amount of work that has gone into the collection of samples and the analysis of materials for inclusion in the collection. Interesting things happen in education when you have enthusiastic teachers, empowered to explore their interests and share them with kids.

Math dance-kinesthetic learning

Kinesthetic learning of math? Do the Math Dance!This article in Science Daily shows that the mind/body are not separate things, and that if you want to engage the intellect, there is no better way than to engage the body first. For some of us, this evidence comes as no surprise.
In the meantime, the 5th and 6th grade students at Clear Spring began working on their chess boards, and I spent some time cutting dovetails and got the new spoon knifes sharp and ready to use. Some of the upper middle and highschool students began practicing with them this afternoon.

Big dovetails

I have started cutting the big dovetails for the walnut bench. I clalmped the leg sections in place to mark the shape of the tails directly from the pins, and then used the dozuki saw to cut along the lines to the marking gauge lines, scribed on the top and bottom. Next comes chiseling.

gesture and learning

Science daily has a new article about Susan Goldin-Meadow's research on the use of gesture in the teaching of math.

Today in the wood shop at Clear Spring School the 3rd and 4th grades students continued working on paper sloyd. The system of paper folding from the early 1900s is designed to develop skills in measuring and spatial sense as well as fine motor skills in cutting, and folding flat sheets of paper into 3-dimensional useful items. The first and second grade students finished their small boxes for their imaginary travel to Australia.

sustaining democracy Charles B. Gilbert 1905

Charles B. Gilbert 1905

The business of the schools is to train democratic people; and every teacher in every line of work should endeavor to bring up the boys and the girls to the feeling that they must be democratic--that they stand equal in opportunity and in obligation with all other boys and girls who are growing up.

This may seem remote from this subject (manual training in schools); but it is not. If you have your manual training high school as distinct from manual training in high schools, then you have a lot of boys and girls put off by themselves. You deprive all the others of the educational value--of the training--which the manual training affords and then, having shut these off by themselves, the psychological tendency among teachers and pupils is to distinguish the mechanical from the high and aesthetic or social or more intellectual work; and the tendency is for all such schools (and I have watched it for years) to become more and more like trade schools, with the emphasis on the mechanical. The teachers inevitably drift that way; they need--you need--the counteracting influence in your own school of the teachers of Greek and Latin and history, literature and all the other things; otherwise they tend to become master mechanics--instructors in mechanics. That is a great danger to both teacher and pupil.

The boy and girl needs to be right along in the school side by side with the boy or girl fitting for college, in order to have the proper effect produced upon their minds, the proper social training; and social training is the great training of the schools after all.

Mr. Gilbert's point, passionately raised in the Eastern Manual Training Association's 1905 meeting is an important one. Democracy is severely injured by distinct divisions in economic and social class, and at one time, manual training in schools was understood to be a means through which democracy and democratic principles were sustained.

cutting teeny tiny pieces?

This week I'll help the 5th and 6th grade students begin making chess boards. So how do you cut teeny tiny thin pieces safely and accurately on the table saw? This is an adult operation, but even for adults it can be a challenge.

I use a sliding stop block on the table saw sled. It takes just a few minutes to make one. Slide it to the left to begin and place your stock against it to prepare for the cut. Then slide it out of the way to the right and make your cut. This provides clearance allowing the cut-off piece to avoid being "trapped" between the stop block and blade. Later in the week you will see the chess board parts being made. I am also working on the bench for Crystal Bridges and am preparing to cut the dovetails to fit the pins cut last week.

The photo below shows the small thin pieces cut from maple and walnut to begin making a chess board.

stone hammers

Fitting knife handles to my own hands reminded me of this stone. Men have always made things, even in their earliest days. It is what makes us human. Some tools are matters of opportunity. You pick up the first rock and put it directly to use. Others might be sculpted into objects of beauty. Some might be shaped just enough to meed standards of greater utility. By making things we shape our own lives in every dimension. So this as you can see is a hammer, very modestly shaped for the fit of fingers and hand of a man long gone from the earth. No one would look at it and think it anything but a rock. This one and more similar to it, including one for lefties were found by a gardener when he was working in our yard.

another knife project

Since I've been working on knives, I decided to finish one that has lingered here too long. Last year I did two knife boxes for Woodcraft Magazine to fit a knife made with a knife blank that they sell in their catalog. As a result, I ended up with two boxes and a freebie knife blank. The two boxes have more meaning if there is a knife that fits and I'll order another blank so each box can have its own.

The project is nearly too easy for words. The two piece knife handle was cut from wood and the first half is being glued in place in the photo above. Next, the holes were drilled for the brass pins so the other side of the handle is glued in place as shown below.

Now you can begin to see the problem with kits. Things are far more rewarding when you have to work harder for success and when success is not so nearly guaranteed. But surely even I can mess up the sanding or something! The knife blade was made in China and is available from Woodcraft.com item #147830.
The finished knife is shown with the knife boxes below.

What happens when you learn by doing

I've started a new group on the LinkedIn networking site called "Hands-on Learning." and we are already having interesting discussions and have 13 members already. If you want to join in, email me and ask for an invitation to connect at LinkedIn.

The following is from yesterday's discussion:

EB: "I'm currently reading Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner (Multiple Intelligences researcher from Harvard). As a building principal for over 1000 students, I'm VERY concerned about making sure that we are preparing students for the very uncertain future ahead of them. He has identified five things that he believes will be crucial to future career success (discipline, synthesizing, creating, respect, and ethics). I have been surveying other thinkers on this topic too. Arthur Costa (Learning and Leading With Habits of Mind) has identified 16 characteristics of success. What aspects of the mind/body do you believe are crucial?"

DS: Academics like to take things apart, so we have a mind/body, 9 different kinds of intelligence and 16 characteristics of success, so it all appears like a replicable recipe that can be tested, proved and measured. I know that may sound sarcastic, but I mean no disrespect. I have the greatest respect for Howard Gardner and know that Costa is probably onto something. But you ask a very important question that I could spend days in contemplation and attempted response.

I have come to the conclusion that the real challenge is to constantly lure students into engagement with ever expanding sense of self. So we start with the mind/body.

There are two directions for the expansion of self. The first is vertical in which the student becomes aware of and challenged to reach things like skill and increased understanding. The other is the part that schools seldom teach, lateral sense of self, in which each student discovers that the assumed boundaries of personal mind/body are illusion. In essence each of us is reflection of greater mind/body of culture, society, species, life, and planetary consciousness that demands response.

Educational Sloyd was a deliberate attempt to extend Froebel's theories of "self-activity" into the upper grades. The belief was that what you learned required balance in action to express and reflect heightened awareness and understanding. Schools have become passive places when they need to be active and expressive. So in order to integrate mind/body, you can see that you need to teach the mind while the body expresses learning. It is a two way street. You know there are two meanings of the root word of educate. One is to teach in the common sense, and the other is to draw forth. We too often do the former without the latter.

The interesting thing about the wood shop is that all Howard Gardner's intelligences are expressed in its activities... Even music, which is what the trained ear hears when children are equipped with hammers and saws.

This may be a little deep for a discussion that began, How do I get my kids involved in the woodshop. But I have hopes that the new group will become a place for exchange of ideas and advocacy for hands-on learning.