Author Archives: irenelylalee

The birds have alighted. They are making their moves and plans. It’s spring. They’re coming home. Go outside and watch them, see what you can learn. Take binoculars, or open your own two eyes into awareness of the trees and buildings around where you live. Bringing a field guide a plus, as you learn theContinue reading “The Birds are Calling”

Water is a limited resource, and yet it is constantly renewing itself, being recycled, cleansed and redistributed over and over again (or at least it should). Water came from meteors, it’s a thing of stars, and the fact that it exists here on earth is nothing less than a miracle. Human life is never far fromContinue reading “Watersheds”

On Monday, February 1 it was the Lunar new year, celebrated throughout the world from a Lunar calendar based in many Asian countries, but celebrated worldwide. This is not the only one. It is one of so many renewals worldwide.  This new moon is based around a story in which a race took place, ofContinue reading “A New Year: Through Stories of Rice”

In honor of Black liberation movements today, as we think about the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we must continue the conversation, make moves that carry forth into being the legacy from which he came. On Sunday night I found, through a long search in blogs and message boards, a blog with aContinue reading “I Got Life”

In folktales, snow is often categorized by the elderly, and of course. The year has come and gone. The spring and the growing and the harvest. All that there is time for is . Yes, there are many creatures of the snow who play, elves, gnomes, jack frost: nimble creatures who act like snowflakes, twirlingContinue reading “A Winter Folktale”

Writing non-fiction can be a difficult kind of process to teach. Namely because it must be true, and as any writer, journalist, or regular (child or adult) student of history knows, truth is rarely as simple as it seems. The type of research students do, and the way they cite, or honor their findings, isContinue reading “The Bloom of Research”

Refrigerators are just the tip of the iceberg and not as cool as they think they are. ba-dum ching! I can’t stop thinking about food preservation. In fact, take away history all together. This is a study of society. Indeed, even a lesson on food justice. What can we learn about the art of food,Continue reading “History and the Pickle”

I teach French. I am not a native speaker, but I have studied the language for many years and have, over time, with effort, wrangled myself into fluency. And the process continues. I pride myself in not being perfect, because there is always so much to learn about the French language. And what is more,Continue reading “Teaching Language: A Lesson on Falling in Love”

I want to pause in the phrase, “reading comprehension” in an attempt to consider what it even means to understand what we read. Despite what I, for many years, believed, we are learning to read all the time. Understanding words and their myriad connections to each other and the outside world is a lifelong skill.Continue reading “What is “Reading Comprehension””

By turning a simple experiment of observing the growth of bacteria, we can enter into art, history, writing, and maybe even some filmmaking. We can study how bacteria are supportive of our very digestions, and may be an invisible hand that orchestrates the world around us, and how our ability to protect our foods fromContinue reading “Bacteria: Life in Art”