While touring The San Francisco School today I listened to Maggie talk about their teacher enrichment programs and she mentioned a program started by Harvard in 1967 called Project Zero. Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels. She explained one application, for example, a thinking and processing exercise for a kindergartner or first grader might be something like : : see - think - wonder : : so you'd ask them to remember witnessing something, think about what they saw and then explain what it made them wonder. Sounds simple right, so just try to do it right now. How'd that go?

Next, she turned the teachings on us and asked this, "So, you just finished touring our school. Tell me something you saw, what you thought about it and what it made you wonder." It was a genius 'right back at you' move. At first I drew a blank. Seriously, I think I'm so used to processing everything in a nano second that I couldn't remember how to think slowly and reflectively. Yes, indeed, I really do have this problem. So like I said, I sat there feeling stuck (ok really it wasn't a total blank that I drew. I got stuck thinking about how my tour guide said the kids often hold and hug the geese who roam freely through the adventure playground. I was wondering if that was a health hazard — bird flu anyone?!) so, obviously I wasn't one to raise my hand and expose my random paranoid thought. However, the experience has left me with a wonderfully simple mental exercise which can help me slow my mind down and process my experiences more deeply — thank you Maggie!