Cousins. So Thankful for Mark Crandall for Continuing to Teach Me (There are Stories Everywhere)

Here's the skinny. The move to online teaching, especially for a graduate course on Action Research in Education where all data collection has required quick pivots in the stay-at-home direction, has required tremendous ingenuity. Still, thinking fast and creatively is something of a superpower I've been blessed to have. We are in the final weeks of the course, but we're on the 7th week or so of digital learning.

I try to be creative with metaphors.

Last night's theme was Beaches. I used calming backgrounds to soothe, and remind us there's a better world. Previously, I did puppies, kittens, cartoons, etc. but went with Beaches this week.

And the topic was data analysis and naming themes from our findings. I modeled a potential question, "How might a 9th grade teacher better approach an ecological unit on beach ecosystems given the reality of COVID-19?" The data collected, I told them, was a photo essay on beach life, beach news since January 1st, 2020, and an interview of my cousin who lives near a beach. NOTE: the photo essay was on fishing from the piers of an empty bay, the articles included controversies in Florida amidst reopening the beaches, an article about Native Americans on Long Island and diminishing beaches, and an article about the Beach Boys creating an international petition to help them break a contract with an appearance to protest another guest - all three different angles of beach life.

I sent my cousin, Mark, three open ended questions and asked him to rift a response and record his answers on his phone. He lives in Amgansett, and although he's busy working hard with Hoops4Hope for a COVID-19 response throughout African communities, I asked if he could find a couple minutes to reflect on what beaches mean to him.

The goal, of course, was to put the photo essay, the news articles, and my cousins words in conversation with one other. From there, my graduate students were to make statements that collapsed the data (these, I said, can be themes named from your data collection and topics to write about).

My cousin's response was beautiful...so much so that I had to post on YouTube so I could have it for workshops (especially when modeling how stories are everywhere and how place-based narration is something we can do with K-12 kids. I'd love to have 100s of responses like Mark's).

His recording is worth listening to: it is genuine, heart-felt, familiar, and educational. There are so many ways I might use this with K-12 students.

After the photo essay, the audio from Mark, and the articles, the following assertions were provided by my graduate students: (1) For individuals who have strong relationships to locations where the ocean meets the sand, climate changes and human behaviors have been alarming, (2) Beaches, and even musicians who borrow their name, are not void of the political debates of the United States right now, and (3) Ecological studies of wetlands, including beaches, are relevant to 9th grade science curriculum, especially when current events are included.

When I set out to begin this academic tidbit for a Monday night class (late Sunday night), I had no idea it would come together as smooth as it did.

Thank you, Mark.

"...salt in my veins and learned to crawl on the sand."

It was a sliver of the night's instruction, but in my mind Mark's words took the "research model" all the way home. He has many stories in him, but this one seemed to come at exactly the right time.

Poetic. Educational. Inspiring. Relevant.

Love including family within the work. Ubuntu.