Literacy, Beauty, Blogging and Gratitude

What to do in a thirty minute class period the day before Thanksgiving? We started class today with the Dove self esteem site and viewed the video of a young lady being made up and then computer enhanced for a billboard ad. It was very powerful. (Thanks for the link goes to Keri for sending me a blog post from Will Richardson, who used it in his class.) Kids were highly interested - and interested as well in how visual literacy impacts our views of gender, race and ethnicity. I'm thinking that a related multi media study would be a great opportunity for the kids.

Even though my late summer accident landed me in a temporary condition of no walking or use of my right hand, it gave me a very small taste of what life could be like being shut in and limited to the use of a wheel chair. We talked about that today, and if nothing else, I'd sure like for humans to look inside for beauty. I asked kids why people don't make eye contact with people in wheel chairs. (I found this to be somewhat true.) Anyway, awareness and gratitude are the topics for the day.