Good stuff

There's this website I was introduced to a couple years ago, and was reintroduced to a couple other times before I became a real fan. Good.is is good. And it's kind of me, too. They do infographics! They are global and local! They do education! They do social activism! They do design! They do geeky tech stuff! They do progressive politics! They do green! They do food without being too 'foodie'! They do 're-purposed' crafts!

It's a sweet spot for my demographic: young-ish, socially conscious, educated, progressive but not extreme, practical AND playful. They have a DIY lab for a thing they call a no-chart. Try it!

Poetry Power

I again stepped WAY beyond out of my comfort zone at school on friday.

One of the English teachers has been trying to introduce the school to SLAM poetry, or Spoken-Word poetry. She has a local poet that has been coming in, and invited some kids to share their own poetry. She wanted us as teachers to encourage more kids to perform, so after pushing the thing for a couple weeks, and after watching another TED talk, I asked if I could perform. And I did. Friday we had an assembly with some professional poets doing their stuff. Luckily we (the kids, myself, and the teacher running the thing) went first. It was incredibly uncomfortable, but I got a lot of good feedback from the teachers, and some of the kids too. One even said I inspired him! The professionals that came out were really moving. One was a graduate of LADE who has gone on to win in national poetry competitions, and has performed on HBO. Hakim Bellamy and Carlos Contreras are part of Urban Verbs. During a conversation after the show, I still felt small in comparison (literally and poetically) but I responded to something Hakim said by quoting a line from one of the poems he had performed. It was amazing to see how that affected him. He, as a poet, tries to affect people. To move them. To connect through words soul to soul, and I guess that validated him. Proved that his work was working.

As for me, is this the last time I perform my poetry? Who knows. I don't anticipate being the next Taylor Mali, but I'll probably do more here at the school. For you, though, is the poem I performed below. It's there as I wrote it, not as it came out, because nerves will have their way with you, no matter what you do.

I am a performer.

It’s “A Nite at the Improv.”

Six shows a day, five days a week. Thank you! Thank you!

Thank you very much! I’ll be here all year!

Any tips are greatly appreciated;

Please pass the hat.

I am a performer.

Playing an actor in my own life

Following the script I have written

Hoping to be the person I said I have been.

But playing myself to be younger than I am

When I start to feel old,

And pretending to be very old

When I’m looking for respect,

Hoping that you don’t put 2 and 2 together

And find out that 2 is how long I’ve been a teacher.

I am a performer.

I play everything’s cool, even if it’s not

And I get all riled up if you don’t talk

Cause I want to hear your thought.

I see something beyond that blank stare

Tempting you to speak your mind,

And I will not let you stay silent!

Because “IDK” is not the answer to a questions

But the beginning of a journey.

I am a performer.

I am a street corner preacher

Crying “Repent! Repent!”

For the end is near,

But finals are nearer.

And tik tik tock says the clock.

Time is passing, are you?

I am a performer.

But here I am.

Heart on my sleeve.

Telling you to look at me. Know me.

This is who I am.

But, in your mind,

 You will see me standing here,

And you will remember, that

I am a performer.

Podcasting power

I watch a lot of TED talks. I'll have to post on that another time. I also started listening to economics podcast so that I would get ideas for teaching my econ class. I shared one with my class once. And they really liked it, so, I'm like "Self, great day!" (to quote my favorite economics professor). But it's in a format that is hard to do in a classroom, so I wanted to make it work somehow. So, I thought about TED. TED is video, and has subtitles (the kids have a hard time with British accents), so I've shared a couple videos and had some success. But I still wanted to work in some of the audio podcasts, especially since the kids wanted me to. So again, I turned to TED. There was a talk on Changing Education Paradigms, and the cool thing was that instead of a fancy powerpoint, there was live illustration visualizing the things he talked about. It was a living storyboard for his talk. That gave me an idea.

I have a SmartBoard. So, I thought that I would live-illustrate a podcast. I proposed this to the kids, and asked if they thought it was a good idea. It was the last week of school for my seniors, so they didn't care. They thought anything was a great idea. So I did it. A little ways into it stopped and asked if it was working, and they said it was. I also admitted to them that this was WAY beyond being out of my comfort zone, but that I was doing it for them. I mean, it was NOT anything spectacular, but it wasn't distracting. So they either just listened, or they listened and watched.

So, here are the screen shots of my live-illustrated podcast, which you can listen to here.

My duplicate

I was reading an article. You can read it, if you want to, but it's not important. The article had a picture, which you see, of my duplicate AKA my doppelgänger. You can see by the scene that you've got a high school teacher. You can see by the prominent placement of flags, the MLK picture, etc. that you're dealing with a high school social studies teacher. He has MC Escher and fractal prints and a calculator poster, so he probably teaches multiple subjects. He's using a projector and smart board, so he's somewhat tech-savvy. He also has longer, shaggy hair, glasses, and a beard kept short. He's wearing khakis and a blue button-down shirt, which I also was wearing when I saw the picture.


Creepy. But, Kamila says I'm better looking.

Pay Teachers More - NYTimes.com

Pay Teachers More - NYTimes.com

Thoughts of the day

I don't post regularly. I imagine that leads my readers to not read regularly. Or if you do, this will be a surprise. I suppose that there is also a notable trend that I often title my posts, in one form or another, saying that these are random thoughts. The following contents then prove to be paragraphical ramblings on disconnected topics that have been brewing for the previous weeks. Here's the thing, if I posted regularly, these would be just normal blog posts characteristic of most non-themed blogs, and not be 'random thoughts' strung to each other in the one post I am able to throw together when I have time. Therefore, if you do read my blog, consider my posts actually to be a number of entries that have been collected into one spot, and I will try not to always refer to my thoughts as random.

I have jury duty. For three weeks. One week down, two to go. I have to call in every day to see if I have to go in. Now, I am a very civic minded person. I teach kids about the virtues of our system, and I'm actually a little excited to serve. But seriously! I haven't had to go in yet, but I'm all stressed about it. I have to have two lesson plans in my head for each day, just in case I'm gone. I mean, I could just have them watch movies, but I feel uneasy about running my classroom that way.

I love having my students complain that something is hard. Most of the things aren't that hard, but do require thinking. I have the reputation at school as having a hard class. The reason that I love it when they complain is that it means that they are actually attempting, to some small degree, the task at hand. They are pushing their mental limits. And that's what I care about.

I like taking pictures. I also like the think that I'm good at it. But I am an amateur photographer and if I don't even have enough time to blog regularly, I don't get around to posting pictures online, geotagging, writing descriptions, and forget about recording light aperture or anything else. If I got more time, I would probably try to enhance some of the pictures with cropping, experimenting with b&w, boosting color tones or the drama of the shadows, etc. But since I never get around to that, I have developed in my mind that I am producing photographs just as they are captured by the camera, and that there's some kind of integrity in that. I suppose there is, but I also want the pictures to reflect the vibrance of the scene that is possible to my eye when I shot it.

There has got to be a very powerful rbST lobby out there. Consider this, on all dairy products that I can remember seeing in the past year they proclaim that they do not use milk from cows treated with rbST (some growth hormone). But then they also have to legally (I assume) disclaim that rbST has not been proven to be in any way negative. So, though no one is using it, the company is still making sure that everyone knows that even if they were, no one has proved that you'll start growing an extra set of ears.

A while ago I had some dreams that I wanted to share. One had a part where Glenn Beck and two other men had set themselves up as 'holy men' and were all dressed in white suites. He was actually an evil sorcerer, and was trying to capture my family (in the dream, I was not myself) and destroy us and the good that we had worked for. In another dream we were preparing for Mark's wedding. Mark had long (to just below the chin), white hair. It was pretty tight. The preparations included all of us being fitted for Victorian style clothes. The swords seemed fit the style.

My birthday was in November, and then there was Christmas. I really feel that I have not been grateful enough for the things that I received. And I was about to go through some of the things I've been given and thank the people that gave them to me, but I won't. That's tacky. So I will thank you more appropriately the next time we talk. But, in the meantime, know that I am very grateful and appreciate you very much.

I've been Sunday School President in the ward for about two months now. It's the first time I've been in leadership (besides the mission) since I was a youth. Today I taught a teacher improvement lesson, and I wanted to share a thought that I made central to my message. We are preparing for a testimony, not a test.

3 things

First item up for discussion: social media and the gospel.

A few years back Elder Ballard invited us to use social media sources to share our testimonies. I thought, cool! The church has since started a YouTube channel, updated its site again with new directory profiles, created facebook pages, etc. And I was ok with it since I have often carried on gospel related chats with some friends who aren't members. But I felt pretty off when people started facebook fan pages of Christ. It's not that I'm not a fan, but it just seemed that "out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being" we should "avoid the too frequent use of his name". I am also a staunch supporter of only supporting official sources. As a missionary I campaigned against the use of the official church logo on t-shirts, and avoided commercial sources for materials such as Deseret Book. I am not a huge fan of facebook either, and I choose not to display a lot of personal information on there anyway. Broadcasting myself is not what I do, especially when it concerns something so sacred. I have, though, always been a supporter of mormon.org and the Church's banner ads that I've seen pop up on the web.

This led me to avoid things like the Mormon Channel or 'liking' many religiously themed messages of any of my friends online. But the week before Conference in Priesthood meeting we watched a couple of the Mormon Messages put out by the Church. I really, really liked them. They were not trite tidbits of Utah-Mormon culture, but genuine, Spirit-filled media spots. That prepared me to be receptive of the message given by Elder Nelson at the General Priesthood Meeting. So, I went on the web and started following the LDS Newsroom, and I am in the process of creating a public profile on mormon.org. When in discussions with students of an evangelical tradition from BIOLA a couple years ago, I admired how they talked so easily of their faith. I do have a testimony, and I don't want to over-bushel my light.

Second item: school

I started my first real teaching job in August. Last year I worked as an intern. I cannot say enough how much that has helped me. If I had only done regular student teaching I would have tanked. I'm not sure I would still be alive right now.

My school, La Academia de Esperanza is a charter school focused on helping students that have moderate to severe social and learning disabilities as well as serving a population that cannot successfully function in regular schools. Many of my students have parents who are or have been in jail, have been in jail themselves, have absentee parents, have a number of substance abuse issues, etc. I have a few students who were very concerned about being convicted of crimes as juveniles. I have another who has been pulled out from class a couple times to meet with her parole officer. I have a kid who wears a hoodie in class and hardly speaks. He's smart, but supremely unmotivated and uncooperative. I think I have about 5 kids who AREN"T pierced, most in some bizarre manner.

When leaving Orem JH, I told the principal that the most important thing I learned was that I could do it. I could teach. I could wrangle teenagers into some half-hazard submission. I could deal with self-centered coworkers that didn't support me. And it turns out that's mostly all I could have learned that would have served me here. I teach US and World History and Government and Economics. That's only two different classes. Apparently our goal is to graduate as many students as possible, which means that they need to fulfill credits. There is no end-of-course exam for social studies like there is for math, science, or reading. So they lump the students into US/World and US/NM history classes. I had a student that transferred from a US to a World history class, but she stayed in the same period. It's only dependent on what credit she needs to graduate. When I tried to wrap my head around it, I couldn't. What do I teach? There's no way I can teach the state core for both classes. I can't teach one half of the class one thing, and the other something else. It would be pure chaos. My Government/Economics class has 15 taking government and 3 taking econ. So, I just teach them history and civics. And as one of the other teachers told me, if they get repeated information, so be it. They need to know it. If they miss something, they won't know and it will be filed along with all the things that they forget even day to day, regardless of long-term retention.

I have issues with this. I know that colleges are have more and more trouble with incoming freshman that have to spend time remediating because they didn't learn it in high school. Getting an A with me is far easier than an A at a regular institution because I'm shooting at the median. How do I maintain higher standards? How do I maintain regular standards? I have some brilliant students, and some who are very motivated to learn. But so many of them have been gone more in the last month than I was through all of high school. And because the situations that have led them to be at our school are still affecting them, we must support them. Because that's what we do. We have to be the ones that care.

Third: Albuquerque

We live by the zoo. Like, not close enough that we can smell it, but at night you can hear the seals barking and the exotic birds having a go at each other. Every day we cross the Rio Grande. During the day the water looks like mud, and it's mostly all that's there. But in the mornings, the light hits the water so that it shimmers white. Kamila's grandma told me in a moment of clarity that her favorite part of Albuquerque was the river. I can see why.

I like the cold more than the heat. I was surprised when I lived in Arizona during a summer that the feat was even possible. But I love fall the most. All during the summer i could not get over the weirdness of the sun. It cannot possibly be 9:30, the sun is still up! And the winter is just as bad. It just doesn't seem natural for it to be so dark so much. But the fall just grooves with you. It's cool at night! The day ends when your activities are ending. As a teacher its when you've got things in order and the kids are finally used to being in school again. I love the fall.

This weekend we went to see the morning Balloon Launch at the International Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. It was one of the most spectacular sights ever. I don't think I enjoyed the experience of it as much as I could have since I was madly taking pictures, but I enjoyed it tremendously! If anyone visits Albuquerque only once it should be during the Balloon Fiesta. Every morning this last week there were balloons in the air. There's just a special wimzy in the air.

Schools out

Here I am. Posting from school, right before I shut the door. I've turned in my keys, and all I have to do is give up the computer and meet with the principal. Its been a bittersweet year. I've loved it, but it's been crazy hard. I've learned a lot, but mostly I've learned that I can do it. It feels good to have been here, but I'm glad to be moving on. The future may be grim for teachers this next year, but I feel really good about it, actually. So I guess we'll see.

did you know?

Czechistankia is a country in Europe? neither did i...

End of the year

Not once or twice, but maybe 5 times these last weeks I have misplaced something in my classroom. Not just a stack of papers, but a copy of the final, my master key to a test, my ipod, etc. after checking the usual spots, plus the second usual spots, and still not finding the item, my first thought is: some punk kid came in and stole it. I wasn't looking, and they swiped it right under my nose. Ironically, one occasion was just minutes after I slathered praise on a pair of students doing some work for me after school for how much I trusted not only them, but ALL of my students. Apparently my trust is not too deep.

I think 'there was that one guy who wasn't my student sitting right next to my desk during flex', or 'it was the one kid that is ALWAYS in trouble that even the other kids don't trust'. It never has been, though. A couple months ago I thought that I had left out my mp3 player one day when there were ESL classes in my room that night. The next morning I searched my room frantically. Luckily I didn't send an accusing email to the administration because it turned up in one of my (way too) many drawers. They've all turned up in some odd spot or under something I never move.

This last week I had a real occurrence. My 8th graders were reviewing for a test and I had magnetted a copy of all the note sheets we had used during the unit. I noticed a particularly cool magnet of mine missing from the board. After I threatened to keep the class after the bell, and everyone accused the one person I actually suspected, someone found it under a cart. I think that the kid that stole it slipped it down there so that it would be found, but he wouldn't be blamed for it.

So, maybe I'm losing my mind. Maybe my suspicions are unfounded and ludicrous. Or maybe I've just been in a junior high too long. Yeah summer.

National Poetry Month

April is national poetry month. i've never really celebrated before, but i've missed poetry. also, when stuck on what assignment to give my ninth graders after watching a movie about apartheid, i decided on a poem. so they have to write a poem, any kind, about cry freedom. Here's one of my own that has been brewing in my head since friday.

     sit me down at the sea

     and be by me to look out over the world

     lost in horizons and sunsets.

     the bigness of it all, sinking in.

     but not really.

     we pretend to contemplate the universe

     but minds slip back to calendars and tasks.

     so we say, 'one day'.

     one day

     i will sit at the sea

     with no cares in the world, but the world

     and the bigness of it all.

PTC

Parent teacher conferences are weird. We sit around for 4 hours, half of which we're actually with a parent. 90% of the kids whose parents we see are the star students who are trying to figure out how to get from an A- to an A. I try grading stuff, but right when I get into it somebody shows up. We had midterms go out last week. This week all the 9th graders get with the counselors in meetings with their parents looking over grades and test scores. And as you can see, I have more than enough time to blog in the middle of it.

I also performed the National Anthem for my US History class today. woot!