matching tracksuits

Big Hand, Little Hand

Tuesday 08 June 2010

I've been in education long enough to realize that most of the fixes that have been floating around only treat this or that symptom; what's at the heart of the condition remains untouched.

Whatever is at the core usually appears to me as a nebulous confluence of technology complacence, with perhaps a bit of torpescence mixed in for thoroughness. I'm no Neo-Luddite, but I'm beginning to wonder if technology, combined with good old fashioned oppression, is not at work in our society, pushing our relative education level down, down, steadily down.

I had an eighth grade student ask me turn on the television so she could find out what time it was. I leave my television on channel fifteen, which is the channel for school announcements and such. When no announcements are posted, a digital clock appears.

I pointed to the analog clock on the wall.

"Why don't you just look at that?" I asked.

"I can't read that!" came the response, as if I'd suggested she translate the Odyssey for kicks.

Mildly shocked, I mentioned it to other teachers at lunch. They all agreed: a shocking number of students don't know how to tell time with an analog clock.

Now a reasonable case can be made that analog clocks are on the way out, that it's not that critical a skill because such clocks will almost certainly disappear in the near future. Point taken. However, what disturbed me more than anything was the girl's reaction: there was no hint of even trying to figure out what time it was. She just gave up.

Math teachers tell me this is rampant in their classrooms these days. "They want instant answers," one told me. "They're not willing to take the time to work through something, step by step." She conjectured that this was due to the ease of information availability on the internet.

I mentioned all this to K, and she sympathized, then added, "On the other hand, our grandparents knew how to do things we have no idea how to do, simply because they're not necessary anymore. Could you guide a horse and buggy?" she asked.

"No," I replied, adding, "But I would at least try to figure out how."

Granted, I'm talking about fourteen-year-olds, and they're a special breed in and of themselves. Still, taking my personal, anecdotal evidence with the fact that America is sliding steadily downward in international academic rankings, and it's obvious that something is terribly, terribly wrong. The anecdotal evidence further indicates it's not just a problem with the education system; it's a problem with the culture, with the Facebook, iPhone zeitgeist.

I find myself asking, "Don't politicians and high-level educators realize what's going on?" Don't they realize that it's a problem so much deeper than making sure teachers know how to "incorporate student test data into their planning"?

If they don't, they're seriously out of touch. There is a breakdown in communication of catastrophic proportions.

Lately, though, I've been thinking that perhaps they do know. And the state of the US education system is just what they -- and the real people running this country -- really want.

An educated public is capable of critical thinking. An educated public stops to think, "Do I really need a BMW when I won't be saving anything for my retirement as a result of my payments?" A public capable of critical thinking would wonder whether the cable news station they watch is giving them the whole story and seek out other points of view, thinking, "There might be something more to this." A public that is knowledgeable about chemistry and biology will look at the labels of most of the "food" that's for sale and demand something real. They'll wonder whether their weekends are best spent in front of the television watching sports and amassing football trivia. An educated public questions, and that's not what corporate America wants.

An uneducated population that, by and large, lacks critical thinking skills is easy to rule. They don't stop to think, "Wait -- those special interest groups and lobbying agencies are spending billions to circumvent my vote."

But what are the options? We have elections every two years for Congress, every four years for the President, and every six years for the Senate, and nothing ever changes. We throw out the Republicans and put the Democrats in; nothing changes. We throw the Democrats back out and put in the Republicans; nothing changes.

The only way this can happen is through the "pressure" of interest groups and lobbying agencies, hired by the corporations that are run by an insignificant percent of our population, people who only want more. They give the Senators, Representatives, and the President the money to get elected and reelected; what do we give them? A meaningless vote.

Maybe this is why the education system is not improving. Perhaps the corporations don't want it to improve. As George Carlin said, the corporations want citizens bright enough to run the machines and do the accounting, but stupefied enough to be content buying meaningless trinkets and ignorant enough not to realize all of this.

Trust and Teaching

Tuesday 08 June 2010

Christmas break has disappeared behind a pile of compare/contrast essays, journals, and persuasive essays. The school year has resumed, and the consequence of my inability to keep on schedule means I have in one weekend a pile of grading that I was intending to spend two weekends and the intervening week plowing through.

Plowing through -- as if this were a drudgery. It's the amount, not the work.

This week has forced me to reevaluate my career choice. Most would expect a paragraph that begins like that to end bemoaning the decision to go into education. My thoughts led to quite the opposite conclusion. Every now and then it occurs to me how fortunate I am to be doing what I love most: working with kids. Teaching is a privilege, an honor.

Most significantly, it is a position built around trust. Perhaps it's not voluntary trust, and maybe it's not trust in me personally, but public education is built on trust. One parent said told me, "You're raising my child; you see him more than I do," Parents hand their children over to me daily, believing that I will do my best to help their children grow -- intellectually and even emotionally. I feel a surge of pride and honor every time I think of the role these parents trust me to play in their children's life, and that's why the piles of paperwork this weekend don't phase me.

Ideally, there should be another relationship of trust in education: between teacher and student. If there is mutual trust, there must be mutual respect: it's hard to trust someone you don't respect, and vice versa.

I must have faith that, all variables being made equal, my students all want to learn. Some days it's more difficult than others: those variables -- parental support, presence of adult role models, family educational history (i.e., socioeconomic status) -- have aÂ resiliencyÂ that can be frustrating. But if I didn't believe all students wanted to learn (not necessarily what I'm teaching, but simply learn), how could I go to work in the morning? It would be the ultimate Sisyphean task.

The trust my students must have in me is much more multi-faceted. If they've had several bad experiences with adults, I start already behind. If they've had less-than-effective teachers in the past, I start even further behind. So many ways to gain and lose their trust.

When working with thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, it's a thin line of trust. They can have such a heightened sense of "fair," and they often confuse fairness and equality.

How many of my students would say they trust me? Certainly not one hundred percent: it's not a perfect world, and I'm not a perfect teacher. I can honestly say, though, that a good number trust me to keep their best interests in the forefront of all we do. Even in moments of classroom management crisis (e.g., acting out),

The End

Thursday 03 June 2010

The school year ended today. It was as I predicted: lots of joy, fair amounts of crying. I told one tearful girl, "It gets less painful every time you reach the end of something like this." Did I lie? She seemed to think, at the very least, that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Why is it nostalgia is so much more potent when we're young? Perhaps it's simply our general lack of experience, and we're often thinking, "It can't get any better than this was," and so we're melancholy. Maybe it's part of the naivete of youth, but this too is a result of being inexperienced in the cycles of contemporary life.

Of course, there were as many not tearful as there were with glistening cheeks. Perhaps they're not as sentimental as the rest of us. Perhaps they have more experience in their fourteen years that has taught them the transience of most things. Sadly, it might be that they learned about temporariness from the love, attention, and affection they've received.

I have at least one such student every year. I always feel like I let him down. I always look back at the year and see countless opportunities to do more, to be more, for such students.

It leaves me wondering, once again, about the marks of a successful year. Testing-wise, I was very successful: I met my MAP score goals, and my E1H EOC grades average was just where I thought it should be. Yet what use are acronyms in determining a successful year? It seems a relatively shallow metric.

The truth is, I became a teacher because I simply love working with kids. Perhaps a selfish reason: I do get a certain high when I connect with a kid and feel I've somehow helped him. It's hardly altruism, especially considering the times I'm doing the opposite: the moments when the urge to take a ridiculous behavior personally and become viscous becomes overwhelming. So maybe it's not surprising that I have the depressive phases to go along with the manic moments.

This is all to explain why I'm feeling down even though it's the end of the year.

Another kid left today that I find myself thinking, "I'd like to have another shot with him." I'd like to have him in my classroom another year and manage to get myself out of the way and see what he needs and give it to him. His needs were not to be met by following the curriculum or making him play by all the admittedly arbitrary rules of the classroom. There was more going on in his life than iPods and texting friends, and I've a suspicion a large amount of it was negative. My class might have been one of the few bright spots in his day, but looking back over the year, I doubt it. I communicated to him all the things I swore I never would express through body language and tone to a student.

I finally caught on at the end of the year. (Why did it take so damn long? I knew -- I had a similar student last year, and I swore I wouldn't do what I did this year.) While other students were working on a final project, I realized the project might easily turn into yet another zero for him, and so I differentiated: I had him write an essay on three things he could do next year to meet with more success in the classroom. I gave him a pencil and a legal pad (he seldom had materials), and he always replaced the items on my desk at the end of the class.

What I read when he was done was a stinging condemnation, though he was polite in his tone and word choice. He didn't even mean to condemn me. He just shared some feelings. Feelings of inadequacy that I fear I only heightened. Feelings of hopelessness that I worry I did nothing to assuage. Feelings of being trapped and only vaguely realizing it.

Real success in the classroom is not measured in completed assignments and MAP/ITBS/PASS scores. Success in the classroom is measured with a metric that, like black holes and dark matter, is hypothetical at best. We can infer it from a student's smile, or a boy's pride at walking into class having pencil and paper, or a girl's wide eyes at getting a C on a test.

I forget this too often.

The school year ended today. It was as I predicted: lots of joy, fair amounts of crying. One girl said, "It's not going to hit me until tonight. Then I'll be sad." And another student added, "And happy, cause we're in high school."

I know just how they feel. If only I can keep all this in mind until next August, when I'll surely another Denny.

Unpacking Pakistan

Wednesday 02 June 2010

Pakistan is the most dangerous country on the planet. That’s old news. What isn’t old news — for me — is that it has been the most dangerous country for about twenty-five years. I learned this, amid a great deal of frustration, by reading Adrian Levy’s and Catherine Scott-Clark’s Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons,

Both Reagan and Bush 45 reported that Pakistan was not engaged in nuclear research and development even when there was ample intelligence to suggest — no, to prove — otherwise. Due to inter- and intra- department squabbling, the intelligence never made it to Congress.

Indeed, as some government agencies were trying to keep up with and report the nuclear development of Pakistan, other agencies slowed the investigations up — or worse. As some government agencies tried to shut down the Pakistanis’ purchase of equipment used in making centrifuges, the State Department was tipping off the various Pakistani purchasers. (167) Busts came to naught because the Pakistani purchasing agents never showed up or were long gone by the time authorities arrived.

In the meantime, Congress was pumping millions of dollars to Afghanistan through Pakistan, and providing additional direct aid to Pakistan. Significant portions of this aid was funneled to the Pakistani nuclear program. In other words, the US taxpayers financed Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Clinton was no better, and Bush 47 cozied up to the man who actively encouraged the creation of the Taliban and terrorist organizations. Bush repeatedly called Musharraf our friend and ally when he was anything but. However, Afghanistan once again trumped everything, and once again, we displayed a willful short-sightedness that is, especially in retrospect, ineffably stupid.

Just how bad was “Mush”? In 1988, Musharraf had a “tribal band of Pashtun and Sunni irregulars” reignite the Kashmir uprising. Rather than involve the army proper, Musharraf relied on the efforts of a mercenary named Osama bin Laden. Around the same time, Musharraf also had a plan to inject thousands of jihadis into Kashmir by graduates of the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad join the newly-formed Lashkar-e-Taiba. Twenty years later, Lashkar-e-Taiba would carry out an attack on Bombay, India that killed 173 people.

All the while, other intelligence agencies were warning us. Our first round of mujahideen funding in Afghanistan went so well that they eventually became the Taliban — we funded our own enemy. However, there were plenty of intelligence organs that saw this coming, and even warned America:

The joint intelligence committee in New Delhi […] presented a file of evidence to the US, warning that fundamentalist were being infiltrated into Kashmir and Musharraf was at the helm. They asked the US to consider where these fighters would go next, when they grew bored with the Kashmiri war or had been forced from the territory by the military reprisals that India was now planning. Naresh Chandra, India’s former ambassador to Washington, recalled: “The US was not interested. I was shouting and no one in the State Department or elsewhere could have cared less.”

The Clinton administration stood back. Pakistan escalated. The Islamic Republic’s strategy in Kashmir dovetailed with another of Musharraf’s policies, the promotion of the Taliban. (240)

Lastly, there’s Iraq and the question of proliferation. We went into Iraq for fear of WMDs and proliferation thereof. Supposedly, we had good intelligence. The problem is, we had better intelligence that Pakistan was proliferating like a rabbit:

Iran
Iraq (attempted; Saddam thought it was a set-up and didn’t buy it.)
North Korea
Libya
Syria

Pakistan was — and still is — the true danger. As the book concludes, if when there is a terrorist nuclear bombing of an American or European city, the know-how, materials, or even the device itself will be traced back to Pakistan.

May’s Pages

Monday 31 May 2010

May began with a release of the budding libertarian in me. And it ended with a long book on the history of nuclear Pakistan that took me forever and a day to read.

Author	Book
David Harsanyi	Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children
Adrian Levy, Catherine Scott-Clark	Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons

Scottish Games

Saturday 29 May 2010

K and I often tend to find events by accident and then, becoming somewhat enthralled, work those events annually into our calendar of outings. In two weeks, we'll be going to the Bluff Mountain festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina, and it has been an annual trip since we first went in June 2006.

We've added another one: the Greenville Scottish Games. We arrived late, but we were lucky: we made it for the best portion of the day. But first, some exploring.

Kilts and the fried food -- the perfect combination, I suppose.

As with all festivals, food was everywhere. As with most festivals, non-standard dress was everywhere. Granted, some of the non-standard was actually standard. One can't have a Scottish festival without the kilts, or the traditional Scottish favorite, deep fried Snickers.

Some of the non-standard clothing seemed not necessarily to be "standard" anywhere but Celtic legends. And so I guess there, in a round-about kind of way, was the connection.

The day was filled oldÂ crafts and new styles.

As Mystery Man dabbed paint, the Scottish band Albannach performed in the big tent. They struck me as a Scottish version of Kapela ze Wsi Warszawa: traditional instruments with somewhat modern rhythms.

The highlight, of course, was the pipe and drum combination. We managed good last-minute seats and watched them all march in,

ready themselves,

perform for the judges,

and march out.

At the end of the day, all bands came out and played.

Four hundred and some pipers and drummers.

An amazing sight and sound.

Posing and Playing

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Final Days

Monday 24 May 2010

The school year is nearing completion: just under two more weeks remain. Everyone — teachers, students, administrators, custodial staff — everyone in the building is counting the days.

Such an odd thing: we’ve spent 170+ days working together, and we’re all sick of each other, rather like a family on a long vacation. A bit of time apart and all would be well. Yet “a bit of time apart” is impossible: the students move on, and we teachers remain, waiting for the next group.

It’s as if we’re on a cosmic treadmill. We take a few steps with the kids, and though we all (teachers, students, parents, administrators) keep walking, the students slowly move on ahead of us teachers, occasionally looking back with a smile of thanks, occasionally staring straight ahead, occasionally — tragically — looking down.

“I’m so sick of all this,” we all mutter, but come what may, there will be tears on the final day, and I’ll probably be accused of laughing at someone’s tears as I was last year. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you,” I’ll insist. “I’m just smiling because it’s all rather sweet.”

It’s this time of year that I start making resolutions for the next year. Knee deep in all the mistakes I’ve made this year, I resolve not to do this or that, promise myself to be more systematic about some thing or other, commit myself publicly to more of this, less of that. I’ve a six-page, detailed outline of changes I’ll be making in one course next year, and I’ve only just begun recording my thoughts and plans. (A lesson learned from last year: all the brilliant ideas one has about changes to this or that unit tend to disappear the day school is out.)

And in the midst of all this planning for next year while making sure this year ends positively and productively comes a call from a parent.Â The long conversation includes a story about how her son came into my class apprehensive. Now he admits that the class is “alright” because I’m a “cool” teacher.

And another student sends me an email: “Thank you for helping me get through this year maintaining my grades.”

Bittersweet moments, indeed.

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday 23 May 2010

We thought about going to the beach today. None of us really wanted to -- well, none of us who would have been doing the driving and paying. We ended up going to the park for some bike riding:

And then to McDonald's for shakes and a televised softball game:

We all felt thoroughly red, white, and blue.

Running Club

Saturday 22 May 2010

When I was around six, I was obsessed with Star Wars (especially the action figures), and my father was obsessed with running. I shared my obsession with him (naturally), and he came up with a way to join our interests: incentivized running. For every mile, as memory serves, that I ran, I got a new Star Wars figure. Most often, I managed to make a lap around the quarter-mile track before heading to the long-jump pit to play in the sand. It took me a long time to get a figure. (Then I discovered that holding my father's hand as I ran made all the pain disappear: I got figures more quickly soon after).

The Girl is starting even earlier than I, through her own choice. L's school has established a running club. For the children L's age, this means stretching out and running some laps around the parking lot every Thursday. At first, she wasn't keen on the idea. Then, as she saw her friends heading out every Thursday, she became curious. Finally, she asked, "Mommy, can I join the running club?"

Today, we had our first run. It was probably less than a quarter of a mile, but for three-, four-, and five-year-olds (and the occasional older child), it was quite something.

It was not entirely surprising that said older children -- especially the boys -- took off at full speed.

The rest, accompanied by parents, took a more leisurely approach.

"Way to pace yourselves!" I called out as they passed.

I was particularly proud to see the Girl's fine running form: relaxed, pumping the arms, taking good, long strides. She was running with a purpose: not to win any race (indeed, the adults constantly urged the kids not to think of it as a race but as a test of endurance), but merely to finish strong.

And she did, with a brief walking break.

Afterward, the celebration began, as did the rain. Rather than decrease excitement, however, the rain was merely an added bonus: what three-year-old doesn't love stomping in puddles?

And more.

Toward the end, the water balloons appeared, and the morning's DJ was a favored target -- not without some encouragement from the DJ himself.

Dinner

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Crepes wrapped around a mix of pureed fresh strawberries, farmer's cheese, homemade whipped cream.

Strawberries: they're what's for dinner...

The Patch

Sunday 16 May 2010

So many enjoyable things require so little effort or money. Thinking of what to do this afternoon, K suggested we go strawberry picking. The Girl was soon excited, then disappointed when it began raining, then thrilled when it stopped.

"Can we go? Can we go?"

Half an hour later, L had her first fruit.

Within less than fifteen minutes, we had two buckets of berries.

We probably would have filled the buckets even sooner if we weren't snacking so frequently. L used the 1-2 method: pick one, eat two.

It is a favored method...

Big Bed

Saturday 15 May 2010

We've measured the Girl with her beds all her life.

From the strange, transparent bassinet of the hospital to her latest upgrade, L's bed has served as a constant against which to measure her growth.

For most of her life, she's had the same crib, though. In the early days, theÂ mattressÂ was high: she couldn't move about, so there was no danger, and it put her within easy reach. She soon outgrew it, though: as soon as she began rolling around and pulling herself up, we had to lower the springs that suspended the mattress.

But it seemed like she was able to crawl out of it almost instantly. We began thinking about changing it to a day bed, but we never quite made it. Instead, we jumped straight to the full.

"You'll have a new bed when you get home," K told the Girl as she took her to Nana and Papa's house today. We were eager to see her reaction: would she be frightened (L doesn't like changes) or thrilled?

The response:

squeals and shrieks.

The next test: would she like the bedding selections? After all, there was not a single princess to be seen.

But there were flowers -- almost as good.

There was little left to do but practice snoring in the big bed.

Summer Approaches

Thursday 13 May 2010

Pathetique

Tuesday 11 May 2010

When we got our tax return, K and I decided to invest a small amount into a piano. We considered a Steinway Concert Grand, but at close to a thousand pounds, we thought the floor might not agree. We settled for a digital, and the three of us have been playing away.