James E. Schwartz's Blog (3)

So, this past week I was involved in a committee meeting. This committee's job is to create faculty development opportunities at the small liberal arts college where I teach. We are in the process now of planning next August's "welcome back" faculty-development day. Ordinarily we bring in an outside speaker who dedicates at least half a day to a workshop on a relevant topic. So, the question came up, "What should the topic be next August?" After listening to a couple of tired ideas, I asked my… Continue

I used to have apple trees in my yard. One year, the buds for the apple blossoms came out a little too early due to an unusually warm late winter. They were looking good, but they were taking a big risk. Sure enough, a frost came along and killed them off. That summer there were no apples at all on my trees. It was all about timing.



My explorations of the resources, people, and discussions here at Classroom 2.0 have been exhilarating. I have jumped into a couple of discussions about… Continue

I'll never forget the time I watched a baby chick hatch from an egg. It took quite a while for it to peck through its shell and emerge into a new world. It was quite an effort. I wanted to help it somehow, but I knew that anything I did would only cause harm. I had to just watch. It was a miracle, really.



Can you imagine the perceptions of that chick? It had only known the inside of a shell, and now it was breaking that shell apart and trying to escape it. It was exhausted by the… Continue