Upstate Master Naturalist Meeting 11/17/11

For pictures, click HERE.

For a video of Robin talking about stripping bark, click HERE.

Our speaker was Robin McGee, who is an herbalist from Anderson. Her website is Cattle Grass Fed Beef where you can find out more info about her herb classes.

Here is some of the notes I took from her presentation:

1. Wild Cherry - sweet birch is like this, great smell, original cough medicine. Use pocketknife to scrape green layer (not white) which is the medicine; scrape off and put on paper to dry it out. Anti-inflammatory. Put a handful or 2 in water, boil, simmer, and reduce by half. Let it sit for a couple of hours and then strain it. Add honey to make it syrupy. Add brandy. Make a gallon.

2. White Oak - ally for poison ivy. Make a tincture. Cut branch the size of little finger. Fill half a jar with inch long pieces. Add 100% vodka and water or Everclear. Fights the itch. Rub on the skin or drink. Stops bleeding on gums or hemorrhoids.

3. Peach Leaves – good for morning sickness. Harvest leaves after bloom (late summer). Dry and put in a jar. Label all jars. Calming and cooling. Make a tea.

4. Hawthorne (not Indian Hawthorne) – for the heart, any cardiovascular diseases. Use leaf, flower, and berry to make a tea or tincture. Berries make syrup. Lowers blood pressure.

5. Elder – antiviral; berries and flowers. Good for anemia, increase red blood cell production. Used instead of flu shots. Tincture or syrup, good fever reducer; said to be a preventative for SIDS. Cook flowers and berries. You can dip flowers in pancake batter and fry them up. Use flowers in tea. Softens the skin.

6. Lemon Balm – antiviral, tincture. Good on cold sores. Reduces fever, calming

7. Sassafras – spring tonic, make a tea in the spring, thins out blood, lymph, flush out cholesterol, pushes blood out to the periphery.

8. Sourwood – used for sour stomach. Chew leaves and swallow juice. Satisfies thirst and hunger for a little while.

9. Chagu – grows on birch trees (yellow or black, high altitudes), polypore, cancer remedy. Drink tea, grind it up and use as coffee or ½ and ½ with coffee. Good for chronic illness, great for the immune system.

10. White Pine – 5 needles in a bundle (any pine will do). Make tea. Good source for Vitamin C. Resin is nature’s band aid. Antiseptic. Harvest dried resin and melt a little in herbal oils and beeswax. Mix with honey to make syrup. Suck on pine tears.

11. It takes 150 lbs. of lavender blooms to make essential oil.

12. Sweet Gum – like pine tears or needles; remedy for burns, burn gum balls, use ashes to make a salve to use on burns.

13. Use a grated white potato on eyes – juice in eye helps get rid of pink eye

14. Tulip Poplar – anti-inflammatory, tincture or tea. Peel bark (see video). Peel bark in spring when sap is rising. Tea has no taste. Use bark off live tree.

15. Japanese Honeysuckle – cold medicine. Save flowers before they open or when they open. Fill quart jar with flowers and add brandy. Do the same with passion flower. Good for throat and respiratory infections, put a few drops in tea.

16. Blackberry – root is most astringent, also use green berries, leaves, and ripe berries. Tannins help stomach upset. Root good for diarrhea. Tincture in brandy. One inch piece, boil in cup of water for 10 min. sit until cool. Only take 1 or 2 sips and no more or you won’t crap forever!

17. White oak bark is good for diarrhea too.

18. Kudzu – remedy for hangovers

19. Rabbit Tobacco – in transition areas not fields, best remedy for asthma. Tea or tincture; use all parts. Harvest in the fall when leaves aren’t pretty green after frost has “killed” it. The medicine is more concentrated at this time. Also known as Life Everlasting or Pearly Everlasting. Thin membrane on stem is like a cottony veil (magical properties – it is said to make the veil between the worlds thin).

20. Goldenrod – not wind pollinated like ragweed. Used for allergies (especially cat allergies). Tincture. No more than 10 drops 3 times a day or allergies will be worse. Harvest top 1/3 when it starts to bloom. Dry tops and make a tea or tincture in brandy.

21. Joe Pye Weed – used for lung and kidney issues, break up kidney stones, use with hydrangea root, also used for gout. Use ½ Joe pye weed and ½ hydrangea root. Take no longer than a month. Use with hydrangea, dandelion leaf, chickweed (mild diuretic, cooling, mucilaginous) cleavers (lymphatic drainer) – strain because of fine hairs.

22. Dandelion leaves are a diuretic that doesn’t deplete potassium.

23. White color is for nerve, bone, and fevers.

24. Crossvine – trumpet shaped flowers, harvest leaves, make tea, general tonic, use like ginseng.

25. Usnea – lichen usually on oak. Lung infections, strep, urinary tract infections. Gingerly wiggle green off, see white elastic thread running through it. Dry it, cook it, must have heat to extract medicine.

26. Witch Hazel – wait until it is in flower, cut tips of twigs and make a tincture. Or cut like white oak, cook it. Turn on low boil for 20-30 minutes (known as decoction), cool and strain. Add to vodka. Crushed leaves cool eyes. Chickweed does this too.

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Original photo by Pat Hensley

Useful Information In and Out of the Classroom 11/18/11

Here are some interesting sites that I’ve found this week, thanks to my PLN. As a teacher, I feel we have to keep up to date concerning research in our field and current issues in the education system. I hope some of these inspire you, inform you, and even have you asking questions. Thank you for coming by and visiting!

Ipad in Education – “information related to the iPad in Education sponsored by the Department of Educational Technology in the School District of Palm Beach County.”

Videodropper – “Videodropper lets you send YouTube videos directly to your Dropbox folder, so that you can watch them later at your leisure. You can also choose to optimize videos for viewing in an iPhone/iPod Touch.”

Olympic Challenge 2012 – “An exciting collaborative project in which schools can compete against each other in a series of Olympic themed challenges.”

Story Wheel – free app for iphone and ipad; “Story Wheel is a cooperative story creation application for the iPhone and iPad, designed to work in conjunction with one of the most powerful computers in the world - The human mind. It will help you create stories, improve your child's cognitive abilities and most importantly, have fun!”

Typing Adventure – typing game for students

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Original Image: Pat Hensley

8 Tips for Explaining Inclusion to Parents

As I mentioned yesterday, I am a mentor for our Council for Exceptional Children organization and mentor a college student who is getting a degree in Special Education. My mentee mentioned a situation where a child was removed from an inclusion classroom but she didn’t think the parent had a clue about what inclusion was.

I know we explained this to the parent at an IEP meeting but I feel that the parents are so overwhelmed with information during these meetings that they really don’t understand the concept of Inclusion. At the beginning of the year, I think all of the parents of students in an inclusion classroom should be invited to a presentation that explains what inclusion is. Granted, some parents might not come but at least the opportunity is offered. Handouts can be sent to the parents who were unable to attend the meeting. This meeting should be well advertised in case some parents from other classes are interested in learning about inclusion also.

Every school handles inclusion differently so I can’t tell you how to explain your school’s inclusion program to the parents. I can suggest what I believe should be included in the presentation.

1. Explain that this presentation is an overview about the Inclusion program and not about individual students.

2. Offer to set up an appointment to talk about individual student’s needs.

3. Information about your school’s inclusion program and why your school feels it is important.

4. Discuss how inclusion meets student’s needs in the classroom.

5. Explain how everyone benefits and that general ed students are not held back. Give specific examples.

6. Have the teachers involved explain their planning process for lessons.

7. If possible, have parents of students already in the program speak about how it has benefit their child.

8. Allow parents to ask questions. If you don’t have the answers, admit this and offer to find the answers for them. Don’t try to bluff the parents because they can sense this.

Did I leave out anything? Feel free to give suggestions about what else should be included in a presentation for parents. I truly believe that communication is vital for any program to be successful.

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Image: 'IMGP9329'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64519085@N00/3439518204

Making Inclusion Work

I am a mentor for our Council for Exceptional Children organization and currently mentor a college student who is getting a degree in Special Education. My mentee emailed me about a situation that occurred and I thought it would be a great topic to talk about in my blog.

If you came to this post thinking you would find the magic answer, I’m sorry but it just isn’t out there. I can make suggestions that might make your experience more successful though.

Suppose you are told that beginning the semester, you would be coteaching with a colleague in an inclusion classroom. There was no request or suggestion for this pairing but it is now written in stone. What do you do? How do you begin? Here are some ideas to start with:

1. Suggest a meeting with the other teacher to brainstorm ways to make this model work. Don’t wait or expect the other teacher to make the first step.

2. Suggest that you both write down your strengths and weaknesses in the classroom as well as preferences and bring it to the meeting. Sometimes I tend to think the worse or assume that another person may feel a certain way only to find out that I was wrong. If another person’s strength is my weakness, we can build on that.

3. During the meeting, someone should take notes that can be emailed to both of you so that you can refer back to this information when needed. Both of you may be in highly emotional state at this time and won’t remember what you talked about.

4. Talk about the elephant in the room. Acknowledge that you both may be nervous and have different expectations so communication is essential for both of you to be successful.

5. As the subject area teacher, I feel that teacher should come up with the list of topics/curriculum for the year. In some schools, this may already be standardized and expected. If there is a specific topic that interests you or that you have some great material, share it at this time.

6. Talk about classroom procedures. Decide on a procedure that works for both of you. Sometimes you may need to give in to certain procedures that you don’t necessarily agree with but it isn’t the end of the world. Fight the battles that are important and not argue over the trivial.

7. Decide who will introduce the lesson, how both of you will instruct and interact with the students, how will assessment be done. This is a great time to talk about accommodations that can be done as well as alternative assessments.

8. Talk about record keeping and who will be responsible for what.

9. Decide on a discipline that you both can live with. This will be vital because by nature, students will play 2 adults against each other when given the chance.

For those of you who have worked in this kind of model, what suggestions do you have that would help these teachers be successful? If you haven’t worked in this model, what do you think would help you if you were put into this situation? Thanks for sharing!

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Image: 'Teamwork'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12426416@N00/253055698

Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite - A Book Review

I recently read the book Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite By Anna Harwell Celenza  and Illustrated by Don Tate which was mentioned on The Picnic Basket. This is the review that I gave the book (I am not being paid to give this review):
This was a great picture book with audio CD. It was really interesting and entertaining. The illustrations would definitely hold a student’s interest. This book could be used to introduce many topics or even enhance lessons on these topics. Topics could include Duke Ellington, Billy StrayhornTchaikovsky, different music genres, general music appreciation, jazz, geography, new vocabulary, musical instruments,
The audio CD was awesome too and I think children would enjoy that. It would be fun to hear children talk about what they think the music is saying. One of my favorite activities when I was in elementary school was to use my imagination and write stories to go along with the music.
I would give this book a 5 out of 5.
Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).