Writtensoul.Net

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."
Anias Nin

Good Design. Do it.

The past few weeks, I have come to realize the great importance of good design. This sounds obvious, but I think that there are few true designers in this world.  And, everyone is a designer in one way or another.  A teacher designs lessons.  An artist or a web designer designs their crafts and artwork.  A lawyer crafts their argument.  And yet, few people do it well.  Why?

There is a need to adopt a backward design methodology wherein desired results are FIRST identified and then decisions are made to support and achieve those desired results.  This is why objectives are such a key period of planning.  Incumbent on choosing these desired results is a deep understanding of the audience of your product or service.  For example, a teacher cannot decide on appropriate objectives if they are unaware of a student’s socioemotional environment or if they do not now the level of the students’ requisite knowledge.  Likewise, in web designing, the artist needs to consider the audience that will be viewing the site.  The artist should use bright colors if the audience is kids under age 12 or a simple, clean design to attract business people.  Further, with keeping the audience in mind and the purposes of the site, making the site user-friendly and easy-to-navigate will eventually increase its productivity.

“Community”

The one thing that always surprised me about Summerbridge was the sense of community there. SBC was where I first understood what community meant. I suppose it’s because we’re all united by the same love for these middle-school students that we’re serving and that’s what keeps us together. And during orientation, there’s such a focus on us being a tight and loving community; we played lots of getting-to-know-you games and there’s a sense of community membership where everyone helps each other out that you just don’t get elsewhere.

Maybe the sense of fellowship is really weaved together when a group of high school and college-age students are jumping around the cafeteria screaming ridiculous cheers like “See Banana, See, see, see banana” or “Just give me some MILK, Moo, Moo, Moo” just to get the students excited about learning. Or maybe it’s the glimmer in a reluctant student’s eye when they finally understand what you’re teaching and are super-engaged in the material. Whatever magic bonds us together as a team of teachers and faculty running this summer academic enrichment program, it works.

I remember the last time I taught at SBC and I re-entered the real world with a sense of culture shock. It’s almost like when you come back from studying abroad and you try to matriculate back into the world you knew before, but your whole mindset has changed. When I left SBC, I didn’t find another bunch of people with the same sense of community membership or anyone who understood my need to snap at everything (during staff meetings, we snap at other people’s statements in agreement to be more efficient in a 40-person meeting).

SBC reminds me of what a community could be. But, it always makes me wonder why we can’t find the same sense of community membership and belonging in a church. You’d think that if we all truly devoted our lives to Christ and loved serving Him so much, it would unite us too, with God’s help. Why if having been through multiple different Christian fellowships, Summerbridge was the first place I felt like a true community?

Rain, Rain Go Away, PLEASE.

I think it’s funny how kids always sing that rhyme…
Rain, rain go away
Come again another day

But really, do I want the rain to come back another day? I think it has literally rained every other day in Boston during this entire summer. The humidity here is just ridiculous; maybe it’s the city pollution cloud that keeps all of the moisture from escaping so we just get thick humidity and rain all the time. But, it’s absolutely disgusting and upsetting.

I’m reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and the autistic narrator describes how his measure of a good or bad day is the number of cars of a certain color that pass while they are driving to school. So, three red cars in a row counts as a good day but three yellow cars in a row counts as a bad day. The longer the pattern, the more intense the feeling. He notes that other people think his method is silly, but he explains that it is as arbitrary as other people deciding their feelings based upon the weather.

But the rain really does make me sad and tired and lazy. It makes me just want to curl up with a book next to the air conditioner (since there’s only one in this entire house) and read all day long or take a nap in a couch and just sit and be. It’s actually quite a lot like pulling teeth to get me to go outside in the rain. And when we took some of the students out on a field trip to the aquarium when it was absolutely down pouring, it took an enormous amount of energy to try and keep positive for the kids.

I was soaking wet. And I was wearing jeans. The kind that start to weight 50 lbs after their weight. I was also wearing sneakers with holes and socks. Socks that just suck up the water and squish until you come home and your feet have pruned and smell nasty. Blah.

Go away rain, please.