BubbleUp Take5: Mindfulness, logic riddles, the Constitution and more

 It's time for a Take5 and this week I've been mulling over a range of ideas from mindfulness to help teachers tone down stress to brain teasers which encourage students to raise up their critical thinking skills. I offer a must-listen podcast segement, the idea that kids need more than one caring adult in their educational lives, and an argument in favor of a constitutional right to high-quality public education. Read on!

September is a stressful time for educators and I'll admit it -- I've been feeling pushed to the edge lately. My favorite part of a recent article from The New York Times called Cultivating Mindfulness for Educators offers several specific, easy-to-implement strategies to help teachers approach the school day. 

I ran across a fun post by Mindshift titled Three Brain Teasers to Spur Logical Thinking and Collaboration. These three short video riddles by Ted-ED would be great to share with a class to get them to work together and problem solve. And because three wasn't enough for me, I found a YouTube playllist from Ted-ED that includes fourteen additional riddles. Put your logical thinking caps on and go!

One of the podcasts to which I regularly listen is NPR's This American Life. Each show includes multiple segments, or acts, on the same theme and one of the acts in the August 18 episode stuck with me. In Past Imperfect, act II in a show focused on Afrofuturism, actor Azie Dungey shares her experience playing a slave at George Washington's Mount Vernon. This should be required listening for all humans.

I love this simple post from George Courous: "One" is not enough. Challenging a quote from Urie Bronfenbrenner, "every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her," Couros puts forth the idea that one is simply not enough.

In celebration of Constitution Day, Nowlie Rooks argues in favor of a constitutional right to a high-quality public education. I tend to agree with her -- what do you think?

-Gretchen