Class Minutes for 1/15/09 by Deanna Russell

Due next class (Tues 1/21/09):
-Read “Learning Organizations”- link on blog
-Read Chapter 1 of Science and Society for Tuesday's class
-Draft a Grade Contract
No one noticed the lights were on in class this morning until it was mentioned.
Class rules 1) Share your food. 2) Be mindful. 3) Take class minutes. 4) Grade Contract.
Learning Organizations by Peter Senge 1990:
• Space and place where people work to create the results they desire
• Must be flexible to survive and excel
• Current structure of classrooms prevents students from engaging with each other
• Fundamental shift in mind: Understand practices, critique them, shift
• Collaborative, mindfulness, poking holes in structures
• The spirit is shutdown everywhere so we must break down structures-tool for this is grade contract

Grade Contract:
• What grade do you want and rationale
• Research questions, goals for semester
• Weaknesses, what you want to work on
• Do less essays, more functional things like resumes, mission statements, doing literary research more efficiently, cover letters, environmental impact statements, memos
• Allows student to control learning and structure of class
• Only one student in entire class has used a grade contract before

Reify: a way of doing with no connection to why it’s done; has no function anymore
Reification: to treat as though real that which is just an abstraction or a conceptualization. Sociologists since Durkheim have been accused of reifying society, which critics say is just an abstract concept and does not exist. To act as though society exists and thus can act or make decisions or coerce people is to reify society. (http://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl?alpha=R)

Andy’s Question of the Day: What’s the difference between humans and other living creatures? Why can’t we be parasitic?
• Are we parasitic? What is a parasite? Parasite lives off host without killing it even though it is capable of killing it. Humans live off the earth (host) and harm it, maybe even killing it. Is the earth living?
• Bacteria killed 1/3 world population with bubonic plague but no one considers it parasitic
• Predators must kill to eat, they have no choice.
• Scale-impact of killing
• Human commodification of our parasitic behavior
• Why are we different? Reason and consciousness (morality/ethics)
• Quantum physics 7, 9, 11 dimensions- how many do we live in?
• Maybe we aren’t hearing the words of the environment (wolves, plants, etc)