Alleen Brown

Here are the elephant’s fosas nazales, third grade Andersen Elementary teacher Michelle Fonseca says, in Spanish. (Nostrils.)

He has a trompa (trunk), which one third-grader says he can use to “agarrar comida para poner en la boca.” (Grab food to put in his mouth.)

His orejas (ears) are largas (long), says one student, and suaves (soft), says another. Each writes his or her own description, in Spanish, of the estructuras (structures) that make up the elephant.

Judging from the rhetoric coming from some educators, data is going to save us all. They’re right that it might help, but not if we don’t understand it.

Things are different at St. Paul’s Michelle and Barack Obama Service Learning Elementary.

Winona LaDuke’s talk March 29 at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Center fell somewhere between a political rally and a couch-bound conversation with an old friend.