I believe

Tonight, after opening presents and sitting by the tree, two of my neices swore they saw Rudolph's nose blinking in the night sky over Mt. Greylock . . . I think I might have, too.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

"... the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world ..."

Pissing into the wind

I should have used this title for my 'smoke' blog ...

I’m eating some steaming ravioli (Chef Boyardee) for dinner with a little cilantro and a glass of cold milk ...

I just got tore up at the Y by two men, doctors actually, over forty, with a less than 2 inch vertical (between the two of ‘em) but deadly accurate hook shots ...

People amuse me, when I’m through getting frustrated. I hope that I amuse them, too.

I’ve decided I’m not sleeping tonight, because I’d rather decorate/clean our house and put up the tree I bought earlier at Lowes. Also, I think I have some sort of test to do for class and a reflection blog to write. I’d rather get it all done and go watch the Hornets tomorrow night get their first victory since Clinton was getting polished in the White House, then lay in bed alone and cold anyway.

Time flies. That’s my reflection. I’ve been so occupied, mentally and physically, for the last four months that each week seems like a day in retrospect. Since there is always more to do than I have the time for, and I’m always looking ahead to what’s next on the list (or writing, and re-writing … the list, to keep from actually attacking … the list) I haven’t done very little of this at all … reflecting. There simply is so much that needs to be done.

I already spend most days in my classroom until at least five or six at night with students getting extra help, making up work or simply providing a safe, encouraging place for them to work, when I only get paid until 3:30. We joke, we laugh, we talk … but, most importantly, we work. And every day, there is at least one student who stays that isn’t even in my class, but has work to do and needs a place to do it. Then I give them rides home, which usually takes at least another hour to get to those neighboring towns where some live. If I didn’t offer to give them a ride, they wouldn’t stay. Sometimes I go inside to talk to their families, which means a lot to me and to them. At least 2-3 days a week I try to come in early for those that can’t stay after school. That’s harder for me … I don’t move so quickly in the morning.

… and if I didn’t do all this, I would have anywhere from 5-10 kids in each class failing, who will now pass. Not because I passed them, but because they put in the time and hard work, after school, to pass. I’m sorry, but after being here for four months – that’s a goddamn accomplishment. In addition, this has cut down tremendously on many behavior problems in the classroom – since most of the kids that created issues during the day are the same ones who have to stay after school to make up work or get caught up. I haven’t gotten to all of them, and still have a few that haven’t quite come around, who continue to waste both their time and mine – but I really believe this is the major difference between the first nine weeks and the second. Aside from the normal ‘testing period’ any new teacher goes through, and me getting my shit together little by little (still not quite there yet). It’s more important for me to get across the importance of learning, to better one-self, and the reasons why one might desire to do this … before books can even be cracked. I couldn’t do all of this as a coach in the fall, but while coaching I was able to reach students in other ways.

Then, when I finally get home, around seven or eight on a good night, usually exhausted, I have to plan something for the next day … or grade … or call parents … never mind all the other task trolls that torment my nights – bills, dinner, maintaining relationships with family/friends, grad work, hygiene, etc. (don’t get me wrong, I still somehow find time to procrastinate) … No wonder most nights you can find bodies strewn around the house on floors, couches or across beds the wrong way, often in the midst of some work or ‘taking a break’ from it, only to wake up groggy at the sound of an alarm in the other room the next morning or the sun peaking it’s way through the blinds.

I’m not complaining, just explaining. I only wish that I could do more, for myself and for them. I wish I could coach – anything to spend more time outside of class with the kids. I wish I could invest myself in after-school programs several times a week – a film club, school newspaper, drama. I wish I could research scholarships and contests and grants – golden, untapped opportunities out there. I try, but it’s never enough. I also wish I could get my sorry ass into shape, exercise a little. Read more books for pleasure. Take a walk, look at the stars, try my hand at cooking, call or write an old friend …

Is this a reflection?

Kinda.

I’ve realized some of my strengths and some of my weaknesses and been challenged in many new ways. Something I’ve discovered as of late (and had been told prior, but only recently tried out myself) … my students love to act. I’ve found I can get almost every kid in my classes to read and follow along, or fight over who gets speaking parts, when I tell them we’re going to do a short one-act play today, or a longer one over several days. They laugh, they joke, they do the voices, but they’re all engaged and reading for a full fifty minutes.

Content is everything.

The pen pals are a hit, here and abroad.

My writing workshops are working very well with my English II classes (once a week they write a practice informative essay, which I grade and pick apart very closely for every mistake I can find, then later in the week I meet with each one of them one-on-one to discuss their writing, common patterns of mistakes, and how they can fix them).

Over fifty kids in my English III classes can now say they've had sushi (c/o Southern Nights' Wednesday special in Greenville), and plenty of wasabi ... and read Hemingway.

I've started work with our art teacher on a literary magazine (poems, short stories, and artwork from our students), as well as collaborating on children's books that my kids will write, hers will illustrate and then will be taken to our local elementary school.

Finally, institutional barriers need to be removed for any progress to be made. It kills me to see these kids being unnecessarily handicapped more than they already have been by birth. Right now - equal opportunity, in theory alone.

My ravioli is cold, and my milk is warm.

Come to our Christmas party on the 16th – lovers and haters alike … we’ll have mistletoe, and I’m sick of only puckering up to kiss ass.

... so broken in

I've been having a reoccuring, and relatively scary, thought fairly often for a little over the past month ...

No, not 'How the hell am I going to make it another year and a half?' or 'I can't wait to get out of Mississippi!'

Time and again, moments have made me stop and think to myself, 'I don't know how, or if, I'm going to be able to leave after my two years are up.'

When the smoke clears

So, I just killed about an hour getting caught up on my world news and book-marking articles and photo-essays on Uganda and China that I hope my students who are writing to pen pals in those countries will find interesting, and now … I blog.

Where to start ... The last time I wrote, I was pretty frustrated about a lot of things, both school and life-related, some within my control and some external to anything I should be worrying over … from breaking up bloody lunchroom brawls to, well, breaking up, from ridiculous recommendations that I be suspended without pay for insubordination to students who seem to not care about themselves nor anyone else and from our house being foreclosed, forcing us to move everything almost overnight, to pervasive prejudice and incompetance.

It’s gotten better. Like the dry dust billowing out, for weeks on end, from under the wheels of all the heavy machinery eating up the fields yield during the previous months’ cotton harvesting, I’ve since settled. My classroom management in all but one class has been fairly smooth as of late, and that one class is definitely manageable.

What’s been the difference? I didn’t give up, and I didn’t give in. I’ve gotten better and adapted to the situation rather than trying to fight it. I’ve found out what works, and what doesn’t … for me. It’s different for everyone. Football has ended and "Richard" has moved to Indiana, so I no longer have more hours to spend at the school, after school, nor an extra hour tacked onto my commute every day. More significant, though, are the relationships I’ve manage to forge and how they’ve drastically changed the dynamics of my class. Students that were initially problems bigger than I thought I could handle, will now do just about anything I ask. Kids know they can joke around with me and confide in me, are willing to be themselves, but realize also that I mean business when I ask them to get something done. If you know me at all, you know I’m a sap … but I fill up every time one of those students I formerly cursed the hell out of, both silently under my breath and in the confidential company of friends, comes into class with a smile asking, “Can I read first today Mr. D?” … I remember, weeks or months ago, when I was glad if that same student simply slept all period. At least that way they weren’t bothering anyone else. In addition, I’m more prepared. Due to having more time, but, more than that, again, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work … while realizing what work I need to do, and what work I don’t. Some individuals still make our lives harder than they need to be, via prejudice, ignorance or incompetance (or a medley of the three) - to say it nicely since I’m in a good mood … and it is Friday … while others follow suit. But, just as I ask my students to ignore negativity, deal with it maturely, and focus on themselves and their task at hand … I’ve got to take the discrimination in stride and work around it. Mind over matter, lol ...

In the post office the other day, I bumped into one of my favorite students with his mother. I recommended "Barry" be taken out of my class early in the year after he scored off the charts on some pre-assessment reading exams. Naturally, he loves to read. He’s amazingly gifted, but incredibly apathetic. Probably my brightest student, "Barry" was failing my class and most of his others. He skipped often, was suspended often, hated any sort of authority figure who told him what to do, even if he knew it was in his best interest, and rarely applied himself. I thought maybe getting into the honors course, since he had never been in one before (most of his previous teachers have given up on him because of his behavior, despite his talents), would be an impetus for him to start taking school a little more seriously – and he was, at first. All I know of his family is that his stepfather routinely beats him and that "Barry" was arrested early first semester for taken a gun to this man after one such beating. Not using it, but threatening to until pulled off by others. I don’t know if I should feel this way, but hearing that almost made me proud. He at least stood up for himself, and was smart enough to not make a mistake he can’t take back. On two occasions, I skipped football practice to stay after school and talk to "Barry" and his cousin, "Marshall" (a relatively smart kid as well, but complete wild card), about life, theirs and mine, and dispense some advice … I know, who the hell am I to give advice to this kid? I often have that very thought, but I haven’t yet pulled back once when given the opportunity to try and reason with a kid struggling one way or the other. But "Barry" scares me, not only with what he might do … but more so, what he probably won’t do. He dropped out of school about a week ago, and tells me he’ll be back but I doubt it. I laid into him in the post office, it being the first time I had seen him since he dropped out even though he had told me prior that he was planning on it, not in a condescending or negative way … but I cared about him goddamn it and it pissed me off to see him throwing away so much, so easily. He laughed a little, gave me a hug when I gave him my number, and said he was going to join Job Corps (I’m not even sure what that is, but I told him that’d probably be a good idea) … afterwards, a small old woman who was standing near us in line came over to me and told me that what I had just said “to that young man”, all my loud cursing and ranting in public, was the nicest thing she has ever heard someone say. She was a retired teacher at my school.

I need to stop. I’m sitting in a dark classroom, the sun having set in the time it took me to finish this blog and ‘Meet the Rams’ for basketball season is set to kick off in about 15 minutes in the gym. Then it’s the long, dark drive to Oxford.

But, it’s basketball season, I recently spent an entire night on the phone and then, inspired, with a pen and some paper, our new house is beautiful and we have internet. And I’ve just started sentences with but and and, and I don’t give a ….

To other English teachers in the Delta, don’t teach Old Man in the Sea. The only thing that keeps my kids awake, save from my stunning renditions of oral Hemingway, is the fact that I promised to bring in sushi (‘cause Santiago eats raw fish, which led to one of my numerous daily in class transgressions) when he finally catches the damn marlin.

Peanut Butter Cups for dinner, and I’m off to catch the fever.

* Had to add a little on ...

first - this last week before Thanksgiving has been insane! Tornado warnings leading to well over half the school being absent (lost day), a series of large fights broke out one day causing the school to be locked down until 3:30 (lost day), the police department searching every student and locker the day after the 'riots' so we all pretty much just chilled in the gym (lost day), and i got socked by a fifteen year-old girl ... aaaaand she was back in school the next day. Yes, I still love the kids ... and teaching, for the most part.

second - the assignment. How has my classroom management plan changed from prior to the school year? Completely, but in small ways. The basic premise of my plan is the same, but every aspect of it has had to be altered in some fasion as I realized what was working, and what wasn't. There simply is no way to plan ahead - you just need to do it and find out as you go. What works for one person, may not for another ... and what works in one school, may not in another. No amount of well-intentioned advice in advance can prepare you for the curveballs, fastballs, and change-ups you'll get on a daily basis in the classroom ... Having second-years in the school system is a tremendous help, since they've done it before and have figured out a lot of the minutiae ... and tend to be very helpful with advice rather than condescending, uninterested or overly critical. Some veteran teachers tend not to be much help at all - either being terrible teachers themselves (so you don't want to model their management), using unorthodox methods that don't appeal or aren't even available to you (paddle, for one), don't understand your questions or you can't understand their answer, they haven't got an answer and just make something up, or will do all they can to avoid interacting with you at all in the first place as if communication equals contagion.

[Ok, ok .... so that ruffles some feathers. Good. A former employer of mine used to always say,"if it doesn't apply, let it fly" .... if your ears are getting warm, and you're getting defensive, I guess it's for a reason. What I'm trying to say is we can ALL become better teachers with one another's help - myself definitely included. And I'm trying, no thanks to many others. I ask questions, and the faces or responses I often get are toxic (far from helpful). I say hello in the halls and often I'm not even acknowledged. And not just by other teachers. In fact, mostly not. If you don't agree, please, prove me wrong - I would like nothing better (but save the patronization). This has happened since August ... since August we get ignored, ridiculed, and looked down upon by supposed "professionals". If you're so great and you love the kids, you should be dying to help us be the best we can be - to make OUR school the best that it can be! I am in no way rescinding what I said above (it isn't even all bad - half of those scenarios are negative towards me) ... there is a distinctive rift between most "veteran" staff and newbies. In my opinion. Those here for an extended period of time tend to look at us as haughty know-it-alls from day one, down here for our two years and off without a second thought. We're labeled, as a group, before anyone takes the time to get to know us, as individuals. And take a look around - do you have a better alternative? I'm not saying the lack of stability is a good thing - it's terrible, but we do our best and I think that's a pretty good job for the most part. With patience and support we could do even better. At my school, there is a pervasive "us" vs "them" mentality, and sure, it goes both ways to some degree. But what do you expect when from day one we come in feeling unwelcomed, undermined and unappreciated - placed at a level barely above the kids, or below by some, and not as equals. Shit, it's our first goddamn year doing this - why hate and belittle?! We're trying dammit ... we wouldn't be here if we didn't care. If you have a gripe with the education system, or you yourself feel undervalued and overwhelmed then don't take it out on us, Napolean. We can all give each other plenty of constructive cricism. We're all working toward the same goal, aren't we? I commend you all for doing what you're doing. Maybe that's my problem, I didn't give enough props. Well ... high five. I mean it. It's not easy and you've stuck it out probably longer than most of us will. Kudos to you. But do you really need, or care about, my approval? Is that why you're doing this, to be congratulated and commended? I hope not. And if you are going to read my blog - one, realize it's my perspective only that I'm presenting. Any reader with a brain larger than a peanut should realize that and not get their panties in a bunch. I am in no way an authority on anything but my own opinions, which, heavan forbid, might be different than your own. That's why they're opinions. If you disagree with them, talk to me about it. That's one thing I sure love doing, talking. In person. Two, read the whole thing. Or, shit, like I said, discuss away. Then maybe you'll realize where I'm coming from a helluva lot better than I can explain on here, and vice versa. I do this, blog, because I have to, for class, and so my mother and a few friends can get a feel for how I'm doing. That's all. Start your own blog if you'd like - it can be very therapeutic. And finally, there has in fact been a very minimal number of consistently helpful staff, and I'm sure there are some great teachers at our school that I haven't had the opportunity of crossing paths with much yet ... again, what I write is from my experience only - which is, naturally, limited. So chill the hell out, smile a little more often, and have a Merry Christmas.]

And I'm sure next year I'll change up quite a bit as well ... actually, one good thing our methods prof has said - be fluid and flexible from year to year and do not allow yourself to become stagnant. I hope I can keep an open mind my entire life, be that teaching or whatever endeavor I pursue. I like the challenge - keeps me on my toes.

Ok, nuff said. Think I might take a shower ... its been a while.

Hypocritical I ... and Good Luck Crickets

I feel I might owe it to anyone who actually reads this to blog once again, almost as a self-response, to what I had written previously. It was an incredibly rough week and, debatably, even rougher weekend. Instead of hitting my head against the wall, I blogged. Less painful, but I don’t hate *#&$!@% Mississippi or *#&$!@% kids … I just find frequent occasion as of late to hate how it is here, and how they act ... and how, at times, I respond. Right - the behaviors, not the individuals.

I feel as if I am more than partly to blame. I expected this endeavor to be far easier than it has been. I expected to be welcomed by a community starving for outside assitance ... instead, I am looked at as an uninvited outsider, not to be trusted, by many and still others act as if they are offended by my mere presence before ever having taken the time to get to know me. And I was also naively confident in my teaching abilities/general social skills. I had a significant amount of previous teaching experience, and had worked for years at an intensive treatment facility with some of the more difficult children in the northeast – and loved both employments. Almost. See, I have a terrible memory, and the memories I do choose to retain are terribly selective. I didn’t love both of those jobs all of the time, and only now, removed and in a different, difficult (to say the least) situation, can reflect and say that they were positive experiences overall. Relativity, of course, can fool us all when our eyes are only pointed in one direction or focused on one problem. Now, that pseudo-confidence seems to have been replaced with ever-present disappointment and frustration.

So … the good, the bad, and the ugly. It can’t really get worse. It can’t. If I write it and say it enough, maybe I’ll begin to believe it. As I previously wrote, it isn’t the children at all. They’re kids. They’re human. I was a punk too, more often than not, and miserable to some of my teachers. I remember one, in particular. A first-year teacher handed over to us our sophomore year, I believe, to teach the honors English class – and we tormented the poor guy, day in and day out. Why? Because we could.

We are all learning as we go, us and them, and have to make mistakes in order to do that. The expectations we sometimes place upon teachers, parents and students - or ourselves - are extraordinary and often unrealistic. I do it myself, to myself and to others. Everyday I screw up in some way, small or large, in front of a very critical audience. When I am angry, disappointed and frustrated, it’s generally at myself … that I’m failing over and over again. But I can’t be hypocritical, because in the face of constant failure – a life many of my kids are more than accustomed to, for many in this demographic are perpetually suffering from the mistakes of others and from no direct result of their own actions – I’m always encouraging them to keep their heads up and do their best, even if their best never seems to be good enough, and am perpetually espousing the power of positive thinking … then turning around to self-indulgently bitch in private about my 'problems'.



So, it’s simple, just as I spend half of my day tugging chins upward and attempting to pull a smile out of the girl who just realized the fifteen year-old father of her child is sleeping with someone else and could care less about her, trying to get a grin from the kid who’s father beat him this morning or mother left them last night, encouraging the guy who is failing my class because he can hardly read while I’m asking him to do so for 50 minutes everyday, or spending my entire planning period with the child that is pissed off at the world for being born into such a seemingly hopeless predicament yet cannot verbalize this frustration and instead lashes out at the very people he needs for support and guidance and is about to throw it all away … In the same way I ask them to, for their own good, I need to keep my eyes ahead of me, not at an unrealistically, or even hopelessly, distant horizon and not down at the dirty, cockroach and cricket strewn halls of my daily existence, and must force myself to wake up every morning with the firm conviction that nothing is impossible if I have faith. Call it what you want … faith in myself and in others, faith in reaping the benefits of hard work, or faith in the distant, intangible force that miraculously put life upon this planet and keeps it going despite our disrespect.

I can’t change others, I can only change myself. If I lead by example, maybe they will desire to change themselves as well. Right now, I am not doing that. For a while, I stopped caring – it was a battle for my survival (in my mind) and all I could concentrate on was making it through another day in one piece. Release some pressure, let off some steam. Last time I blogged, I didn’t want a pep talk – this time, I’m giving myself one. This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted, teaching in the Delta, and only because it is so worthwhile am I being so hard on myself. I need to shave. I need to shower. I need a mantra.

Our school cannot be conquered in one day, nor the Delta in two years.

Thunder is currently shaking our house and a brilliant lightening storm is threatening to cut off electricity as heavy southern raindrops pound down upon the hard-earth outside. I needed this more than the crops, and am about to join my three house-mates in the front lawn to hoot and holler out this past week, this past month, and let the warm rain wash away any negativity I've allowed to accumulate. It might be ingrained in some who you would expect more from, or those that have been here for any prolonged period of time, and, even if they inadvertently lash out and blame me, I can’t blame them for it. It's the bitterness one gets when they've become jaded with their situation. It sucks, but it isn’t my fault and to some degree, neither is it theirs.

I'm playing pick-up tomorrow with a few guys I teach, and hope I can back up the trash I've been talking.

It can only get better ....

I haven’t gone for a run in a while. Think now is as good a time as any.

Teaching In the Dark

It’s so hard not to be entirely negative right now. Very rarely am I a negative person, generally being the one to try and lighten the mood or to put things in perspective for others. Yet, more often than not as of late, I am finding my sunny-side-up has turned cynically scrambled and all attempts at grounding myself have buried me instead.

I don’t want a pep talk, so I won’t say much. I just need to make some tough choices.

Ruby K. Payne’s framework for Understanding Poverty assignment: like everything these days, done last minute and not well. I’m used to having hard-work pay dividends, and when screws are loose you simply find a screwdriver and push those suckers back in. I’m realizing, again, it’s not always that simple. I had a whole lot more than this written, but I just went back and deleted it all. I also have notebook paper and post-its covered with bits and pieces of unwritten blogs that I neither have the time nor motivation to put together.

Ok, poverty, get it done. “… the extent to which an individual goes without resources” – I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this book, mainly because I still haven’t read it entirely and my mind is elsewhere ... always. Sure, poor is relative, this I have seen first hand. The less you have, the smaller your world becomes. We have a nine year-old waterboy on the football team, cute kid who works hard, is always smiling and cannot say more than a sentance without lying about something ... the motorcycle he drove to practice today, the beer he bought at Double-Quick last night, the five times he went to Disney already. He calls me Coach White, because he doesn't know my name. One day he asked me to buy more cups for the team, and when I told him I was just about broke he replied innocently, with not one ounce of intent to joke, "I thought all white people were rich." Perspective and exposure factor in of course, but there is always someone with more and someone with less, of everything. Change is also relative, and the ability or desire to do so. One of my biggest frustrations is pushing that wagon downhill so that it will pick up momentum and eventually begin to run on its own accord. I can’t change anyone, only they can change themselves. To do this, they have to want to. Why would they want to?

Hence relationships, the one part of the book I will embrace wholeheartedly; hard to make and difficult to sustain, and once established and nourished, even harder to sever … don’t I know that.

I come back to the beginning. I don’t think that the best I can do for these children or the best manner of solving their problems would come from me being a teacher. The vacations would be nice, and the experience has already opened my eyes and I’m sure will continue to do so, but so much more is needed. Perhaps education is the golden ticket, but they are not getting it, at least not in my district and not in my classroom. Because education is not received from 8-4 on a blackboard with paddles beside the desk and insight is not gained by constant emphasis on testing, results and relative “achievement”. If I did my job well, by the standards placed upon me from the powes that be and not by my own standards (which are strongly discouraged, if not strictly prohibited), my students would leave me at the end of the year knowing little more than they did when they came in. What is the point of teaching figurative language or connotation and denotation to students that cannot even read without basic comprehension? I don’t have an easy answer, and neither does Payne, unfortunately.

Sorry, I had to bitch a little. I love my kids, I do, and the small, silent flames that I can ignite once in a while in their minds. I just wish I could do more to help them, and that I didn’t have so many limitations keeping me from doing so.

“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Your Mom

Once again, it’s late Sunday night and I’ve got a plate of procrastination piled high with more homework than I can possibly fit into my face like its some sort of all-you-can-eat assignment buffet for only $5 at Guyton Hall and I haven’t eaten in days … which is almost true. And am I doing it? Of course not; I’m fasting. Why work when you can blog?

Though I'd much rather be laying on a blanket beside Lake Patsy, feeling the minutes pass but not the moment, as the sun dips slowly below the tree-line ...

Video blog dos. My tie was not that short! According to Mrs. Cornelius, it was hobbit-sized. It was choking me though, and I’m pretty sure I can see my face getting several shades darker, from casper to barney, by the end of the period – that shirt is too damn small. I’m still wavering between some of those crucial classroom management questions, such as “to tie or not to tie”. Not quite comfortable in my costume yet.

You can watch me now … but I won’t stop now … ‘cause I cant stop now …

What else? … my mother (who, along with other mothers, was the topic of classroom humor all week) would love to hear me say this … “don’t mumble, marbles”. I tend to forget what I was saying mid-sentence sometimes, and then find myself not exactly talking but instead following my words through a forest of blank stares wherever they want to take me without any significant thought attached to them. Then I walk into a tree, or trip over the overhead cord, and wake up long enough to field a question on comprehension, generally mine. Maybe I should sleep at night, rather than run wind-sprints in the Ole Miss football stadium. Also con mumbles, slow down speed-talker. And I think that I do need to start off the year practicing some of my lesson plans before taking my place on stage, a dry run in the morning before my vanity mirror at home wearing nothing but boxers and sunglasses while munching on Berry Kix and chocolate milk. This will make my lesson plans run more smoothly, with a little flow, if I was . . . organized. Kix essential, of course.

Most important of all, get rid of the Lloyd Christmas and paint one of my classroom walls fuscia – it compliments my post-embarrassing moment blush perfectly.

Reminder: Kidnap RB and bring him up to Williams as the Black History Month keynote speaker, in conjunction with a blues circuit of local southern musicians who would play at Amherst and Williams, etc., as well as venues like the Ironhorse or other smaller bar’s in Western Mass. The first idea followed from Mr. B’s moving lecture and a showing of Lalee’s Kin, the second precipitated out of a night on the town where I bumped into the same guitarist that I had taken a cell-phone snapshot of playing his six-string on a dimly lit side street off of Bourbon a few months ago while Spring Break. Crazy, I’m thinking . . .

Spent an electic first night in Leland, sans water or power, with dancing candles replacing light bulbs and iced red wine filling the china. While shadows flickered on the wall behind us, AJ and I dined on a Sonic buffet, siped on the wine and smiled at one another in the dim candlelight. Despite all the discomforts of an evening without utilities, it was one of the best nights I've had in a while. I'm looking forward to Biloxi more than ever before ...

Stop looking at me swan.

Bombs Over Baghdad

First and foremost, the saga continues ....
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/news/story?id=2509226

About to head over to the Grove to wave the flag a little, but first, read what Frederick Douglass (http://www.thepoorman.net/) had to say about the 4th of July ....

.... then ask the thousands living in poverty and 'working' in third world countries for the foreign corporations which fill the shelves of WalMart and the refrigerators of McDonalds if slavery still exists in this commercial world without borders ....

Fireworks and bbq buffets at home, air strikes and hunger abroad.

Be proud, but don't be blind. Below are some other takes to ponder on Independence Day:

"You can be certain that on this, as on every July 4th, patriotic oratory will flow as well from liberals declaring their love of flag, country and the Declaration of Independence. Many will speak of how our constitutional republic is to be revered especially for its guarantees of liberty and justice for all and — hint, hint — limits on the powers of overreaching monarchs.

But the progressive and the reformer have a problem with what passes for unadulterated patriotism. By nature, the reformer is bound to insist that the country, however glorious, is not a perfect place, that it is capable of doing wrong as well as right. The nation that declared 'all men are created equal' was, at the time those words were written, the home of an extensive system of slavery.

Most reformers guard their patriotic credentials by moving quickly to the next logical step: that the true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I’d assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world’s first flawless nation."
- E.J. Dionne JR


"I think patriotism starts with telling the truth. Truth is the American bottom line. I don’t think it’s an accident that among the first words of the first declaration of our national existence it is proclaimed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident…'.

Patriotism also means dissent — when it’s hardest. The bedrock of America’s greatest advances–the foundation of what we know today are defining values–was formed not by cheering on things as they were, but by taking them on and demanding change. […]

So, on this Fourth of July, the bottom line is that we will only be stronger if we reclaim America’s true character and strength — if we declare our independence from a politics that lets America down –if we truly commit ourselves to the big hearted patriotism determined to ‘make it right’ and 'keep it right' once again."
- John Kerry

Haha, Viva la Revolution! Loosen your blue and red tie Mason, I'm not trying to pick a fight - just end one ;-)

No Black. No White. Just Blues.

It seems like a lot has happened since my last blog, but it’s all become a blur of sleepless nights and excessively industrious days. Snapshots of last weekend: windows-down, volume-up drives in the minivan along Delta drags, including Highway 61, the ‘Blues Highway’ (the very same that Dylan commemorated in ‘Highway 61 Revisited’); a wine blurry and booze-buzzed late night/early morning walk along the creek and through the streets of Indianola with Bunny and our new friend TKO; one part fried oysters, two parts cold Coronas, on a evening of fireflies blinking to the beat of the Beatles, Harrison’s chords and Lennon’s call barely audible once outdoors and overwhelmed by a million competing male crickets, beneath a blanket of brilliant stars in a hunting lodge alongside the mighty Mississippi River; pool at Po’ Monkeys (see picture), the dimly-lit, low-roofed, sporadically opened, raised shack in Merigold, just outside Cleveland, that lays claim to being ‘the last, authentic juke joint in the delta’ (a juke joint is a BYOB social gathering place, not far from a bar in derivation, where blues music and dirty dancing reign supreme - the original term ‘jook’ comes from a Nigerian tribal word for ‘wicked’); arriving back on campus at one am on the Sabbath, after some drinks and dancing complimented by AH’s wailing harmonica in Indianola’s Club Ebony, just in time to start my focus paper ....

And school on Monday. This was the last week of summer classes for us in Holly Springs, meaning hectic administering of final exams, grade compilations, and goodbye’s to both our students and our second years. As busy as this past month has been, I’ve grown as an ‘educator’ ten-fold, thanks to the experience I’ve gotten, and freedom I’ve been allowed, in front of a classroom, as well as the tutelage from our one-year vets (big thanks to BH and AT) and professors/administrators. Given the keys without a license and barely a manual let me learn on the fly, the way I would prefer. As far as the kids are concerned, hopefully they’ve gotten something, either academic or life lessons, out of my daily soap-box ramblings.

Friday, our final day, began with a sunrise drive with Bunny, MG and RK in the Pontiac back to the Sardis Lake beach where we had thrown a bbq for our second years and administrators the evening before. As the sun climbed the sky behind us, we scoured the sand and pine needles for a few pairs of glasses and a set of keys left behind – nearly all lost items were found before we had to hop back in the car and groggily speed up Hwy. 7, caramel latte in hand, in order get to the school, button up in the parking lot, and make it inside before first period. The day flew by, most of it test-taking, culminating in a project our students had been working on. Our class compiled a booklet of autobiographies and we invited parents in for a chip & soda party to hear them read their work aloud (as AM noted in class, the autobios revealed, among other things, that all three of our boys have either been shot or stabbed already). I will definitely be doing a similar exercise at the beginning of the school year coming up, in order to get to know my students more intimately and personally. After the ‘party’, we got our principal to open up the gym so we could show these punk eighth-graders what a couple of has-been ballers can do on the court. On the way home, RK convinced us to swing by ‘the pink house’, which turned out to be the infamous Graceland II, one (deranged?) man’s tribute to the late-Elvis Pressley. Opened 24/7, ‘just knock’, it houses a floor-to-ceiling collection of Elvis memorabilia/junk, including a ‘$10 million’ record, stored behind a thin glass door and your average Master-Lock. I’m pretty sure I heard, more than once, the soft and deep questioning croon coming from behind one of the many sparkling mannequins, of ‘Are you lonesome tonight?’


Saturday and Sunday were spent crammed in the back of MG’s bright yellow pickup for some fruitless furniture-shopping on the way to and from our new house. After a meal of Kool-Aid pickles, fried tamales, hog maws and dirty south burgers at Big Jim’s in Clarksdale (note: apparently Tuesday nights at Po’ Monkeys are for the ‘bad folk’ while Thursdays are for the ‘good folk’) and a drive past Morgan Freeman’s famous club, Ground Zero, we shared ice cream and cake with the mosquitoes in the country for RK’s birthday, then spent our first night in our Leland estate (myself on an air mattress in the front living room by our wall of windows). Will put pictures of the place up on smugmug soon.

And last night, back on campus after another 24 of no repose, sat under the sleepless stars until the sun came up and finally got to see Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s spot, in the light of dawn after a wooded hike with Bunny through spider webs and dried up sandy steams behind the Ole Miss baseball field. Somtimes staying up all night can leave you more refreshed than all the sleep in the world. The sun is out, the sky is breathing - I'm wide awake and dreaming.

And tonight, Chevron for dinner ....

“freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose …”

Happy 4th of July! Are you feeling your freedom?

You’re so vain, I bet you think this blog is about you

Reminiscent of a radio-editing exercise I had to do at Williams in which I spent 45 unbroken minutes talking steadily into a recorder about whatever it was that came to mind, the first reaction I had to seeing/hearing myself in the video taken while teaching a lesson plan earlier this week was that I really cannot stand the sound of my own voice. I sound like I picked a handful of soy beans from the side of the road on my way to work and shoved them all straight up my nostrils. Talk less, listen more. Some people talk too fast, I talk too much.

In general, I’ve got a lot that I need to work on and a long way to go. It’s easy to be critical of others until it’s you under the microscope (judge not, less ye shall be judged). The same criticisms I had for my peers, I could just as easily flip around onto myself – be louder, clearer, more energetic and enthusiastic when in front of the classroom. Instead of singing the songs of pedagogy with a smile and a clever hook, my passion was passive and harmonized by the lethargic hum of the overhead projector. I could see the two hours of sleep I got the night prior in my slug-like reflexes and shadowy raccoon-esque eyes, the double espresso with whip cream in my nervous twitch, and the last minute lesson plan screaming smoke and mirrors from every corner of the room .... standing up there with my monotone delivery and paisley tie, I was exposed for the perceptive Lilliputians to read like a simple Dr. Seuss story book. It’s Halloween every day and I’m dressing up like a teacher (only for this perverted holiday I have to be the one always shelling out the candy), or I’m back up on stage and auditioning for the lead role of idealistic educator .... how does my hair look? And I thought I was slick.

Other, more concrete notes: Probably shouldn’t have drawn on that sleeping student's head with a dry-erase pen; or spent five minutes of my class shooting notebook paper balls into the trash basket; I need to get some new ties; I tend to laugh a lot – sometimes at the students, mostly at myself; I need to tuck my shirt in and shave (I can hear my mother now, ‘Daniel Joseph, you need to be more professional. You look like a street person!’); zip fly.

Also, I recently read something about the Rosenwald Schools in Mississippi and thought I’d post a little reference link about them (Rosenwald Schools). The schools take their name from Julius Rosenwald, early chairman and partner in Sears, Roebuck & Co. and a prominent philanthropist. The Rosenwald rural school building program was a major effort to improve the quality of public education for African-Americans in the South in the early 1900s.

I'm focused man ....

I don't even know where to start to e-ruminate on this past weekend staying with AH, ES and crossing trails with a cast of characters I don't think I could have possibly imagined before meeting. I need some time to recover before I decide what I want to write .... maybe I'll sleep. Haven't done that in a while.

Take a moment to read this NPR article (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5495373), written by the aforementioned AH; living in Indianola, where I'll be teaching, and teaching himself not too far away. Good guy, plays a mean harmonica.

Below is my focus paper - very open ended, our choice of topic as long as it's thesis is a relatively close cousin to the subject of education. I remembered talking about Highlander (http://www.highlandercenter.org/) withProf. Willingham last year, and seriously considering making the trek to Tennessee to enroll in one of their workshops after undergrad, so I started out laaaaate last night with that in mind. That gradually evolved, as the hours ticked towards dawn, into a more broad look at teaching for social change, or popular education, in the Highlander model; specifically, a closer look at several of the key players in its inception. I had some books on Myles Horton and, in a dorm filled with liberal-minded wannabe teachers from up north who are fixin' to "enlighten" the dirty south (count me in), it wasn't hard to find plenty of material on Freire. Alinsky is the anvil of the three, a Chicago gangster with an impeccable conscience - and was more focused with self-education rather than buying into the ideological, and fundamentally politically driven, system of education in the United States at all. Kareem you'd be proud.

Popular education is an educational technique designed to raise the consciousness of its participants and allow them to become more aware of how an individual's personal experiences are connected to larger societal problems. Participants are empowered to act to effect change on the problems that affect them (gotta love wikipedia).

Conscientizacao

The Awakening of Critical Consciousness
In Educational Forums

~ Horton, Alinksy & Freire ~

EDSE 500: Principles of Secondary Classroom Instruction

6.26.06

Historically there has been a direct relationship between social class and knowledge or opportunity, both in this country and even more apparently on an international scale, which continues to exist today in multiple manifestations. The work of leading educational activists for social justice such as Saul Alinsky, Myles Horton and Paulo Freire has shown just how implicitly “people’s knowledge and understanding of the world is the consequence of their education, regardless of its source”.[i] However, the distribution and direction of this knowledge, or lack thereof, is severely disproportional and most often dogmatic. That being said, the burden of breaching this gap between ignorance and enlightenment falls squarely on the shoulders of the educators who either work to promote existing institutional ideologies or provoke original thought and critical observation. Alinksy, Horton and Freire each have dedicated their life to the latter. Yet there also exists an “impulse for people to invent their own identities and realities”[ii] and a drive towards “personal and social liberation”[iii] which, when coupled with liberating pedagogy, can “give community people sufficient sense of their own dignity and power so that they can argue on their behalf”[iv] and truly bring about changes that will directly answer to their specific, individual needs. If education plays such a central role in shaping the society we share, then it is important to ask the same questions that those three prominent figures have asked themselves; “what kind of education, to what end, and in whose interest?”[v]

Educating for social change in America saw its beginnings in the labor college movement following World War I, when soldiers returned from Europe with worker’s educational program models in mind. The majority of the working class, primarily immigrants, found the public school system inadequately provided opportunities for the upward social mobility that our democratic structure promised and thus created American Labor Colleges “to facilitate fundamental social change on behalf of ordinary citizens.”[vi] Similarly, Alinsky organized lower-income working-class Americans around unions in urban centers throughout the country in order to gain and maintain leverage in political forums. With the prevalence of racism and sexism in this country, many other disadvantaged and discriminated against communities, generally poor and minority, likewise sought to provide educational opportunities with a social center of interest. The Highlander Center in Tennessee, “a school meant to prepare potential activists to bring about radical social change”[vii] which was founded by Horton during the civil rights movement, pioneered this growing movement of “popular education and participatory research” through experimental education for social transformation in both practice and theory. By providing the tools and capacity for underprivileged communities in the South to organize around this central ideology of progressive thinking, Highlander educators facilitated radical democratic shifts in awareness, comprehension and ultimately action. In Brazil, Freire was following a path akin to his contemporaries in the North, establishing educational practices for poor rural families and laborers that beseeched its students to think critically of their social situation and embrace democratic reform.

As organization proves necessary, then so to is an ongoing critique of the players involved and their motivations for organizing. This movement sees the community organizer as a natural instructor, or educator, whose role is not just teaching but meaningful teaching through critical questioning. The direct role of the organizer, or educator in this sense of the word, is stressed by Freire and Horton, while Alinsky veered more towards self-education and a separation from the derived and popular ideological tactics. His belief was that free from outside influence, the indelible sense of right and wrong would lead individuals towards seeking the truth out themselves. Perhaps he was expressing the short-sighted organizer that Horton feared, who organizes with a specific limited goal in mind, rather than solving the deeper problem of education first. This role of the liberating educator, or at least the existence of education, then is fundamental in this process of change and the creation of a liberated, aware social class. Freire delves into this substantially, outlining the delicate nature of ideological transformation in competition with prevailing attitudes towards education. He encourages the educator to be invested in making choices, as they ask the students to be, without compulsion or manipulation and exemplifying the power to perceive, formulate and react; to take the lessons from the classroom and apply them to a political venue. Freire explains through an example of Spanish farm workers in Germany this idea of the educator “doing with the students instead of doing for.”[viii] Then, once the people are sufficiently prepared to act, they will be equipped with the knowledge and confidence necessary to be successful.

In Leading the People, Robert Fisher and Joseph M. King examine this complex issue of ideology, or the body of ideas, doctrines and beliefs which reflect the social needs and aspirations of an individual or larger group. Rather than echoing the status quo or “inherited ideology”, they assert that progressive organizing must be centered on the notion of formulating and evaluating ideologies “which challenge existing arrangements of political and economic domination” and “mobilize oppressed groups towards fundamental change.” [ix] Whether those ideas arise from within or without the communities and individuals they come to represent is qualified through two general types; derived and inherent, popular ideology. Based on direct experience, inherent ideology reflects most accurately what the constituents themselves saw as existing problems and potential solutions while derived ideology is best articulated by outside representatives who are able to introduce radical alternatives to tradition while keeping these new concepts accessible and recognizable. In conclusion, Fisher and King seem to promote the notion that successful attempts at grassroots social education within American populism must rely on a combination of inherent and derived ideology, a mixture of community traditions and values with an informed progressive vision.

Yet even if organized and ideologically driven by inspired educators, many roadblocks have been set up to keep radical change from moving along any further than the local level. Always under attack from conservatives, the left must be willing to suffer defeats and stay on its feet. The labor colleges were closed due to their proximity with socialist and communist parties, the original Highlander campus was forced to operate illegally and eventually shut down, and Freire was labeled a traitor and imprisoned. Today, aptitude tests continue to cloak discrimination in public education. Perhaps one of the greatest threats toward educating for radical social change is the fear of cooption with the status quo, often in the form of government (or the holders of any institutional power, such as corporate heads) absorption of any opposition, where an organization finds itself defending the very institutions that it hopes to alter. If recognized, novel movements might be pressured to negotiate or compromise. With the funding necessary to actually promote change, governments can often lure independent democratically constituted organizations into cooption in this way, assure slow progress by making grass-roots movements compete for resources and/or continuously undermine their original assertions through negligent, irresponsible or discriminatory policies – all far from the participatory democratic ideal that is at the core of community organizing.

Freire, Alinsky and Horton force critical analysis of how free our speech and thought actually is, or if it is determined by greater forces that seek to influence the minds of the majority. This being the case, they rely upon their vision of a participatory progressive educational system that teaches for radical change and encourages novel ideas through empowerment and involvement. This movement often must exist on the margins of what is accepted or conventional, with a cultivation of conflict at the heart of their empirical model. Theirs is a dynamic system, as Horton articulates; “The best education is action … and the best action is the struggle for social change.”[x] To survive, these practices must continue “to be reinvented and re-clarified according to changing political and intellectual thought and social movements.”[xi] Not only is true democracy strengthened by education and learning, it is then able to meet the demands of this continued re-evaluation and constant change. However important it is to act, it is more important to first understand. This is the difference between superficial learning and tangible knowledge, between actual education and visionless training. It is not necessarily these educators’ goal to change the consciousness of each one of their students, but only to encourage them all to be conscious in their education and lives, and to take it from the dialogic to the free spaces within communities, to an organizing infrastructure, and eventually to an overwhelming social movement.

ENDNOTES:
[i] John Hurst, “Popular Education, Labor and Social Change.” In Teaching for Change: Popular Education and the Labor Movement, edited by Linda Delp, Miranda Outman-Kramer, Susan Schurman and Kent Wong. Los Angeles and Silver Spring: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, & George Meany Center for Labor Studies, The Labor College, 2002, p. 9
[ii] Leslie Bentley. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed, 1999 [cited 2004]. p.3
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Robert Fisher and Joseph Kling. “Leading the People: Two Approaches to the Role of Ideology in Community Organizing.” Radical America 21 (1987), p. 41
[v] John Hurst, “Popular Education, Labor and Social Change.” In Teaching for Change: Popular Education and the Labor Movement, edited by Linda Delp, Miranda Outman-Kramer, Susan Schurman and Kent Wong. Los Angelese and Silver Spring: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, & George Meany Center for Labor Studies, The Labor College, 2002, p. 9
[vi] Ibid, p. 15
[vii] “Myles Horton.” In The Citizen Action Encyclopedia: Groups and Movements that have Changed America, edited by Richard S. Halsey. Westport, CT: Oryx Press, 2002, p. 1
[viii] Ira Shore and Paulo Freire. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. South Hadley, MA: Bergen and Garvey Publishers, 1987, p. 177
[ix] Robert Fisher and Joseph Kling. “Leading the People: Two Approaches to the Role of Ideology in Community Organizing.” Radical America 21 (1987), p. 32
[x] John Hurst, “Popular Education, Labor and Social Change.” In Teaching for Change: Popular Education and the Labor Movement, edited by Linda Delp, Miranda Outman-Kramer, Susan Schurman and Kent Wong. Los Angelese and Silver Spring: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, & George Meany Center for Labor Studies, The Labor College, 2002, p.13
[xi] Leslie Bentley. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed, 1999 [cited 2004], p.3

Cheers

“Jehovah Witness knock on my door to spill the word,
Seven minutes later we drunk off of that Steel Reserve.”

This blog is brought to you by 40 oz. of 211 (cheaper than bottled water); getting tilted in the back seat of my own car with AJ, RC chilling with Marley in the front, while headed southwest towards the delta netherlands and a rained-out Friday night bonfire. It also wouldn’t be possible without this red-pen I sacked from the Guyton supply closet … a poor teacher’s sticky-finger frugality. Only regret was that I didn’t inform my compatriots in paucity of the all-off special just next door.

After tonight, the weekend will be spent in the delta, for my first extended visit, with our second year hosts AH & ES and a billion hungry ‘skeeters’. I’ve been told huge amounts of spray is rained down over the area several times every year to keep them at bay (the mosquitoes, not AH or ES). In addition, the crop dusting prevalent in any large-agricultural region gets right into our water and food supply, if not taking a straight shot through our lungs. Ahhh, clean country air. Perhaps if we didn’t kill off all of their predators we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.

Right, the assignment: inductive, collaborative paper-folding. I joke. I guess I attempted group work this week in class, but because of absences and time constraints my troupes quickly became tandems. We only have six aspiring scholars anyway, so every class is essentially an exercise in group work, as it’s generally assumed in 20-30 person classes. Our students were working on autobiographies, and had been taken through the entire process from thesis formulation to final revision. Before turning in a completed copy, I wanted them to do a little peer reviewing. Or a lot, preferably. Armed with multi-colored pens, my mercenaries were loosed onto one another’s hand-written memoirs. I guess our summer school approach to grammar has been somewhat inductive, conducting several self-guided lessons where the student’s assess the formal integrity of their own sentences on the dry erase board by what sounds/looks right vs. what sounds/looks wrong. There simply isn’t enough time under a month to build a solid foundation, but there is always time for a little interior decorating. While peer editing (after self-editing) their autobiographies, they were not asked to provide explanations as to why or how they know it is incorrect but to simply make suggestions for improvement. Then we discussed a few examples of problem sentences and elaborated on the reasons for specific, oft-repeated mistakes. It went well, and I think they get a lot more out of analyzing their own writing rather than sentences that a generic textbook or my own bland imagination can come up with. Again, this worked so well because of the small number of students we have in our class, which has enabled us to form a quick, strong rapport amongst one another. But I do see the translation into a larger classroom environment – divide and conquer. Disappointingly I opted for no paper burritos or parchment chilli-pups - but two out of three isn’t bad.

Time to stop at another gas station.

.... ain't no place i'd rather be

“Do you believe in love and
that we were meant to be?
Two words can free us,
so repeat them after me
‘I do’ from a boy in love
to a girl called Tennessee”

Bonnaroo was .... more than good. It was a nice kick, and a soft rub.But gone by too soon. I think I may have achieved short bursts of egotistical enlightenment between cheese-filled Venezuelan arepas and sun-soaked puddle naps. Or maybe I was writing someone else’s words down altogether… most likely I was just dreaming out loud.

eternity, you mean the world to me
close your eyes while I unbutton my flow
hold onto my words love, don’t say no
swallow me with these tears you cry
im falling so high, but it feels so right
im in love with my life
though she keeps letting me down

Laugh, I am. And Matisyahu blew me away: divinely. People, self included, are so easily impressionable, and that’s both terrifying and gratifying. Reminder that on a regular basis I eat, sleep, and talk too much – waste less, share more.



After allowing reality to pull me away from the tranquility of doing nothing at all but looking and listening, I followed the sunset away from Manchester and towards Nashville to pick up the beautiful AJ, who was kind enough to help keep me awake (she's got game too). With the moon came a much welcomed heavy, warm rain, providing the opportunity for me to pull off on the
hub of Hwy. 24, hit the hazards, then disappear over a brambled ridge to shower and brush in the sudden deluge amongst tall, blossoming bull thistles, the armored knights of the vegetable kingdom. I remember as a kid I used to chew on their purple flower heads, then spit purple plant juice. I only got one honk when I returned to the car in wet boxers, ducking down to change behind the passenger side door while head-strong mac trucks sped by. It felt good, refreshing, and now I’d be slightly less ‘natural’ for the ride home. Home, ha.

On Monday, after a quick nap between 4-6 AM (the most sleep I had gotten since last Thursday) RC and I made a second pilgrimage to Sunflower County. We are officially hired teachers, I think, ushered into the brotherhood by a panel of five mad hatters, and one step closer to securing an abode for the school year. Leaning towards Leland, down to two houses that were both decent – one smaller, older and cheaper than the larger, nicer and more expensive alternative. Both by the creek that dissects the town in two. Looking forward to long late night walks along the shore, past rows of wraithlike Cypress trees rising out of the water. Apparently the creek is a center of celebration on many holidays, when floats are sent downstream or displays erected halfway out and people come from all over the south to enjoy. We also hit up the library for a book sale – at ten cents a pop, $20 got me more than a few boxes that should sufficiently fill my classroom bookshelves come fall. Hopefully after this coming weekend we’ll have a house to call home.

Going to start posting all of my pictures on http://www.ddadams.smugmug.com/ that will correlate somewhat with what’s being written on here. Swing on by.

To Shanghai with Love

Ok, what’s the assignment? Questioning Techniques. Sexy.

It’s not that difficult with only six students, but I use cold-calling often and plan on continuing to do so come fall – emphasizing the importance of knowing names – and eventually really getting to know the personalities that go with those smiling mugs. Mike G. mentioned he was going to take pictures of all the kids on the first day and then study them that first night, through the first week, to learn all of the names as soon as possible. I think I’m going to be having somewhere in the vicinity of 90 young Einsteins – cake compared to the meaninglessness of art history memorization. Cold-calling (not asking for hands, but just randomly hitting bewildered gophers on the head with the precision of Payton – am I allowed to say that in Oxford? He is better.) gives the teacher the liberty of picking off easy prey: the head-nodders, day-dreamers, jokers and the miiiiidnight tokers. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Leave the mad-doggers alone, they bite. It also keeps me on my toes and being attentive to the subtle fluctuations in vibe from the pack.

Just you wait and see how stealthy I can be.

I’m also down with experimenting a little. I liked the crumbled balls of frustration technique – tossing scrap paper questions around the room, which students pick up to answer for points. Maybe an alternative to a quiz if everyone had an equal opportunity. I also remember a certain teacher of mine with a side-arm like Eckersley and a tangled mess of red hair engulfing a pair of neon green eye-glasses that never made it down to her eyes, who would hurl her smiling, yellow ‘Happy Ball’ at unsuspecting seventh-graders if she wanted an answer. I think the only person happy was her, and that usually came at the expense of those hormonal teenagers too busy staring at Suzy or checking out Joe to notice her airborne inquiry, and that usually was me.

Had my first visit to Indianola yesterday con RC. Kinda stoked. After two hours of corn, cotton and catfish farms we rolled down B.B. King Drive and into our new home. Most of the school has no indoor halls. Instead, classrooms open up to roofed walk-ways surrounding central quadrangles. Each subject has a wing. Apparently I’ll have my own classroom, vacated by a teacher who had a serious car-accident last year. Definitely going to have to call the karma police to bust out the sage in that sh*t. I’ll be coaching defensive backs, supposedly (sweet to know now that I have five offensive-line instructional videos), and met a bunch of the players and coaches stoking their pigskin passion under the brutal delta sun. They have spring ball that starts in March and runs straight through the summer until football season in August. No balls or pads can be used, but otherwise full practices are held daily with coaches. I’m no expert, but I’m certain those oblong, brown things were balls. I was told, in this context and others, that “there are rules and laws in the delta, but nobody really pays and mind to ‘em”. Same goes for basketball practice, through the summer and fall, into the winter season. In hoops they were runner-up in the state last year. Girls finished in the top four. I was told the “Ram’s Den” gets hoppin’, and cannot wait. Very jealous of RC if he gets an assistant coaching position. I might be doing golf as well, and definitely pissed the Asst. Principal off when I said incredulously, “You have a gooolf team!?” while chuckling. Actually, it was more of a guffaw (vocab word from today). The only house we looked at had fleas, but will have time to survey some others on Monday when we go back down for our district interviews.

“You’re name?” Doober Dudley

“Can you read, write and cipher some?” Yes ma’am. ‘Cept for the cipherin’.

“Are you crazy, boy?” A little bit ma’am.

“Do you go to church?” I … sometimes.

Bonnaroooo this weekend. Four hours and a full head to Manchester. Going to be a mess of, um, musically-induced exhaustion come Monday morning. Don’t worry, teacher man, I’ll be lesson planning in the midst of all those mud-lovin’ children of the moonflower, creative juices flowing fast. Will leave my clothes, and come back with a little hope.

Mea Culpa

"See where your own energy wants to go, not where you think it should go. Do something because it feels right, not because it makes sense. Follow the spiritual impulse."
~ The Kitchen Mystic

It’s 3 am and rather than writing this focus paper response which was actually due last night, if one was to be fastidious about the whole thing, I’ve been diligently trolling through other MTC blogs, leap-frogging from cynic to optimist in one graceful but lethargic click of the index. Took about a half-hour break somewhere between civil rights steam-of-consciousness, poetry slams and sage words of wisdom from second years in order to pull something sharp out of my bare sole, swat a few small, black bugs to the side, and catch up on the world news for the first time in weeks. It appears we still have a planet, it’s still ruled (poorly) by ponderous primates, and I can bet my bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow, again. Persistent, that sun is.

Probably not going to sleep tonight and probably shouldn’t be admitting to such since administrators with a head-shaking power of influence over me are watching from above with their green highlighters poised and ready to swipe. I stopped to smell the magnolias, jiminy! Don’t worry, tomorrow in class we’re on the letter Zzzzzz …

Did I really just write jiminy? Yea, you did.

I’ll let my inner dialogue segue into what I think I’ve indecisively decided that I may, or may not, want to write my focus paper on: the 21st-Century sedatives, soma (in pink, baby blue or mauve capsules), tranquilizing and stifling the spirit of a million children every day. Cigarettes and booze? That’s so 1900’s. We want their minds, not only their bodies, in this brave new world. Or should I say novel?

For the past several years, while irresponsibly and ungratefully sleep-walking my way through Williams, I’ve worked in a variety of capacities, switching caps from blue to red and back again, at a residential home for at-risk adolescents in Hancock, MA. Hillcrest Educational Center has several campuses in the Berkshires, housing 30-60 children, ranging from age 7-17, at each. I chose to work at the Intensive Treatment Unit, which never had more than 11 children at one time, and “specializes in the treatment of boys and girls with extreme psychiatric/psychotic, emotional and behavior disorders. Most ITU students have experienced physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse and have become severely aggressive, sexually reactive and self injurious. Most have been in psychiatric hospitals and/or have not succeeded in other residential settings due to the severity of their needs and behaviors. Many Center students have moderate to serious learning disabilities.”

But they were good, smart kids! Without giving a dissertation, because a lesson still needs to be planned before the sun comes up and I may even iron some spiffy new clothes for tomorrow, I found that these hopeless children trapped in the system were no different than myself, aside from circumstance. Could I do the things I was asking these distraught, scared, lost little boys and girls to do on a daily basis if I were in their shoes? I really don’t think so. Especially if I was being force-fed a cocktail of personality suppressing skittles three times a day like they are; drugs of names I can’t pronounce, origins I don’t want to know, and side-effects that nobody accurately understands. Their spark is all but burnt out, their innocence left in the womb, their faith in such an unfair world justifiably shattered. The cracks are growing wider and swallowing more than society can afford to lose. If you ask me, one is too much. But I’m sure by now you’ve clearly recognized the established idealistic motif of a naïve crusader (don’t worry, I’m still plenty selfish).

Yes, this is my response to a focus paper … ready? Now!

These pills we pop into the mouths of developing children, experimenting with their lives for profit, are a means of control. Society, the government, the maniacal minority; choose your semantic. Someone or something very large is responsible for this quieting of wills, assumedly free, slaying dragons and dreams to the applause of the paying public. It’s not just in residential care facilities across the country, but in public schools, in private schools, in kitchens and bathroom cupboards hiding behind white-picket fantasies and in the pockets of every demographic from you to me. Why are we afraid of ourselves? Take off the tethers, return to the pastures with the flock and wander from field to field at your own discretion.

I spent some time teaching and tutoring at the Montessori in Santa Cruz, CA, and this is what I like the most about their system: the implied freedom of academic pursuit, initiated by the individuals. The opposite of control. This arena of mutual respect empowers the child and instills priceless self-confidence. This puts the responsibility on the student for their own education. You can lead a horse to the edge of the fountain of knowledge, but that horse needs to read the words written in the water if he wants his thirst quenched. Teachers cannot drink for their students, but can hold the cup and refill it when empty. This “self-creating” process that JW discusses in her focus paper is a paradigm I’d like to attempt in my classroom. Education should not only be valued and desired, but fun. I’ll be there, choking myself with a tie, eagerly waiting to provide the resources and help when needed, and gently pushing that stubborn horse down the stairs. Investment comes quicker when it’s voluntary, providing a stimulating and encouraging environment exists. Practice patience as an administrator of education above all. By dragging reluctant or ‘slow’ students along with the strong majority current, you are turning them off from the passion of discovery and learning. By pushing them off the dock into the deep end, rather than letting them jump in themselves, or locking them in a unlit room to overcome their fear of the dark, you are not showing them that they are safe and that there is no reason to be afraid.

Montessori espoused her idea that “backwards children needed special education rather than medical treatment” Pills are a crutch - a cheap, Wal-Mart Sponge Bob band-aid covering a gaping psychological wound so that nobody happening by would get queasy at the sight of pain or discomfort. I am also in general agreement with her basic tenet that the best way to learn is to teach, hence the mentorship aspect of mixing grades/ages together. However, today the Montessori system has gotten far, far away from those in need. As always, those that can afford a private school tend to be those that need it the least.

All education is special, and most doesn’t happen inside of the classroom.

Forgive me if my tenses don’t match, my verbs don’t agree or my thoughts don’t sing hallelujah on your screen. My eyes are taking micro-naps in between thoughts, and at this point there is plenty of vacant space. Also, sorry if I became disjointed at the end, or started that way. The buzz of my fluorescent desk lamp is sounding a little bit like ‘Light My Fire’ and I think I dozed off after .... right, tomorrow’s lesson, the letter Zzzzzz ....

Bible Beltin'

"Well, I don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the bible
I got my own special way"

Just wanted to briefly salute my first blog, a recap of week one in Miss'ippi - initial impressions and all that jazz. Or blues, maybe. The people in the MTC program are .... interesting. An extremely intelligent and eclectic mix. I'm definitely looking forward to getting to know them all better in the coming days, months and years. The weather is hot and wet, the campus is very pretty and pretty large, covered in magnolia trees (particularly in 'the grove') and red-brick buildings. The downtown square, surrounding the old oxford court house, has some great bookstores, restaurants and a classic, southern ambiance.



... my eyelids are heavy, morning birds are chirping and I still have work to do. Buzzing from my opening week in the MTC, several days spent playing catch-up that I'm still a few steps behind of, naturally. Can see all sorts of MTC info at our site (http://www.olemiss.edu/programs/mtc/) - including participant bios, videos, pictures, links to other blogs, etc. Couzapalooza put me to bed last night with a full stomach and stories to tell (including a pajama'ed trip to grab some great mexican food), and a baptist pastor with a steely stare and a thunderously accusing delivery woke me right up in the morning. A sunset over Sardis Lake and some friends from Williams sealed the weekend, before I could settle down for some silence under a full moon and .... write.

Still the same old song, just a different verse.