Buckminster Fuller once observed: “I call intuition ‘cosmic fishing.’ You feel the nibble, and then you hook the fish.” These days, local educators are increasingly turning to experiential learning to help students feel that nibble. John Dewey, a leading 20th-century educational theorist and reformer, pioneered the concept of learning by doing. As early as 1938, … Read more
In the beginning, according to Explore! magazine, there was the C-word: curiosity. But it soon became clear that there’s no end to that curiosity. The small, multitalented staff of this locally produced, nationally distributed kids’ magazine has a mission: Leave no stone unturned. Explore! is the brainchild of publisher/founder Nat Belz. The idea was born … Read more
You can’t throw a rock in Asheville without hitting a massage therapist. OK, maybe that’s a tad exaggerated — but people inside the holistic-health loop can verify that therapeutic massage therapy is one of the country’s fastest-growing professions. The three local massage schools crank out upward of 150 graduates every year — contributing to the … Read more
Those twin tremors of terror and excitement, fear and hope, endings and beginnings, could signify only one thing — the first day of school. Who can forget the interminable wait at that familiar corner for the school bus? Or, once at school, the meandering journey through the bureaucracy of classroom rules, subject outlines and future … Read more
One in a million Being only elementary-school kids, we didn’t understand why our parents snorted when they heard our new principal’s name, or why our homeroom teacher smiled when she announced his arrival. Granted, Mr. Pfluke (the P was silent) did have peculiar ideas — but those took awhile to surface. At the time, his … Read more
