Watching eclectic neighborhoods being torn down and replaced with sky scrapper apartment buildings has become commonplace for me living in Seoul.

I never thought to take notice until I started to think about where I grew up. The buildings are still there from the 1800s. Decades passed and not much has changed but a week in Seoul and you can see neighborhoods go down. I looked out the window from my doctor’s office and saw a whole neighborhood demolished and in its place was the foundations of new high rise apartments. I looked at the pictures I took and I learned something. It takes months and months just to build the foundation. After that the structure of the building is supported beam by beam.

The philosophy of Vygotsky’s learning principle of proximal development is very similar to scaffolding a building.

You can’t build a tenth floor if you don’t have a ninth floor. In my case I’m excited about what my students can do and I like to see some production but that production is nowhere even a fraction of the learning progress. This is especially true in second language learning. I always want to see creativity and help students to express themselves so I gave them a project to introduce themselves through hands across the classroom project. I expected students to be able to write the sentences we have been practicing for two weeks. They had no problem writing sentences in their notebook but when I handed out a blank piece of paper and showed them the finished product they just stared at me. I then remembered Vygotsky. I had to help them every step of the way. This is scaffolding.

Today in open class the administration came in the middle of class when I was explaining how to do an activity and give a demonstration.

This is the most boring part of the lesson but they came in and looked at the students and the structure of my classroom and left pleased. They were not interested in the product but how I got to that product and the classroom environment and procedures in place to create an environment for learning.

Vygotsky scaffolding is not only limited to education but to relationships with people. A friendship is built on a foundation.

The foundation sometimes takes years. I see the words “friend” and “love” a lot. I sign my post with “I love you all”. Maybe I need to change it to “I love you all who are not spammers.” But to a degree I love spammers and have some hope that they can be changed. I can still love someone or something that irritates me. So I guess I can still say, “I love you all.” But still a relationship takes a long time to build. As time goes on we see the weaknesses and faults of those we love and can despair. A person who is friendly calls himself or herself a friend but a friendship is built on a foundation that takes years to lay. The foundation is made through suffering hardships together, sometimes clashing and restoring, forgiveness and starting again. You can take scaffolding one step further and look at your spiritual relationship. I will end the explanation here and jump into today’s poem.

Original Poem @mineopoly

Scaffold

Excavators and pile drivers pound
Deep in earth sediments
Impenetrable granite
Moved by unforeseen
Measures of explosive
Ingenuity.

Tainted blood runs through
A man’s veins aching a pain no one can feel
Emptied of life and cold

Fortitude of relationship
Tested with hail and sleet
Winds of time blow
Yet are not moved.

Pillars stand together strong
Planted in a blood that heals
The vine grows
First the roots
And then the stalk and the stem
Branches come alive
Flower and fruit ripen
The delicious fruit of the gods
Enjoyed by mortal men

The beams are laid in place
Ignorance is erased
A life of scaffolding
Oh, when will construction
On the first floor begin?

This is my 18th poem in the Steemitschool poetry competition @d-pend.(Steemitschool Discord)

Verse of the Day/ Isaiah 5:1

"I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard..."

Mineopoly Quote:

How do you pronounce that guy's name?

Check out my recent post @mineopoly

The Other Side
A Shrimp is Crushed
Love it Shove it Paradox
Tactile Learning - touch
What's the Matter?

Except that one mountain picture from pixabay all the pictures here are original photos @mineopoly :)

QTTA: (QUESTION TO THINK ABOUT)

Do you like to scaffold or jump levels?

I love you all.

For amazing adventure in English please follow @mineopoly mining the heart.