burning questions – Page 7

Rumspringa.

How do you know you’re growing up?

And what does it mean to be an adult, anyway? Do we lose all of our baby teeth and start to use deodorant, is that what it means?

How do the adults in your life inform you that they recognize you are growing up?

The Amish community has a tradition called rumspringa (running around). To understand the importance of this, you need to first understand the strict conditions by which the Amish community choose to live. Strict is my description; they may view it by what they determine as ‘normal.’

Read this article carefully, and listen to it, too. What are your thoughts?

What would you do? Do you feel that society “shuns” you anyway during your teenage years? What would you like to see different? Do you think you deserve the privileges that come along with the responsibilities of adulthood?

Are you surprised that 85-90% of teenagers return to the Amish lifestyle? Why does that or doesn’t surprise you? Compare this to your own life and choices.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/amish/

Act your age!

http://www.archive.org/details/ActYourA1949

Aside from being really, really funny, this 1949 Coronet film portrays the teen angst of young Jim, who is trying to find emotional maturity. Through the guidance of his wise father-figure principal, Jim seeks atonement through sanding/varnishing the destroyed desk and an excessive amount of conversation. (I’m wondering what else Principal Edmonds has to do, because he spends a lot of time mentoring Jim…guess folks got a lot more accomplished without all those pesky e-mails!)

Now, we don’t know much about young Jim’s homelife. We don’t know what his parents do, if he has siblings, or why he’s struggling with simple algebra. We don’t know much about him at all, except that he has destructive impulses and knows the definition for ‘infantile.’ But he is trying to grow up. He even makes himself a chart.

This film is far from reality – its exposition is flimsy and message over-wrought. But it does make its point: you can’t go it alone. The spectrum of self-preservation, lizard-brain, and selfishness on one end to the extreme of martyrdom and sacrifice on the other is an internal conflict we all face. Emotional maturity is tricky. Sometimes we just need to throw a hissy fit because we are not getting what we need. There are several examples: class clown, poor sportsmanship, crying over ‘trifles,’ (I especially like that one!), not being able to take a joke; all of these ‘infantile reactions’ scream for therapy.

Maybe we should remake this film to be a more modern adaptation to our current situations. But we are still not getting what we need, much less what we want.

Opening shot: young patron writing on his arm and desks with a Sharpie pilfered from the teacher’s desk, drawing a gang symbol. Busted! Off to the Vice Principal’s office for a suspension (this is his fifth offense in two weeks for vandalism, profanity, and other violations). He stays home for a week, wandering outside only for Jack-in-the-Box shakes and to see when his friends can go hang out. During the day, he sleeps in until 10 or so, plays video games, and waits. Mom is at her first job of three. He stays up until 3AM, texting his friends, and preventing them from sleeping. Next day: very tired teenagers trying to think. Pan to teacher, narrator’s voice: “How is Miss Teacher going to gain these students’ attention, trust, and effort? She must entertain them greater than the good folks at Robot Chicken and X-Box, that’s how! Go get ’em, Miss Teacher!” (Okay, I’m going to stop here, because I feel that my vision is getting a little bitter–and I don’t want that; I really do love my job and my students–it’s the other adults/educational pundits I’m having trouble with now.)

So, I’ll think I’ll pitch my idea to my students, and see what they come up with to remake this film. Give us some production time, after the state’s high-stakes testing, the RIFs, the merit pay debate, the blah-blah-blah, and we’ll get it in the can. And, scene!

"Lioness of Iran"–Simin Behbahani

From National Public Radio:

The authorities in Iran continue to block the travel of the nation’s most prominent poet.

Last week, as she was about to board a flight to Paris, police seized the passport of Simin Behbahani, who is 82 and nearly blind.

Behbahani was interrogated all night long and then sent home — without her passport.

So far, she has not been charged with any crime. Neither the police nor the Revolutionary Court has asserted any legal basis for taking her passport.

‘We All Thought She Was Untouchable’

Known as the “lioness of Iran,” Simin Behbahani has been writing fierce poetry for decades, during the reign of Iran’s Shah, during the Islamic Revolution, during the reign of the ayatollahs, and over the past year’s political turmoil.

Through it all, she was not imprisoned and continued to enjoy the freedom to travel, says Farzaneh Milani, who teaches Persian literature at the University of Virginia and is one of Behbahani’s translators.

“We all thought that she was untouchable. And it’s amazing that a woman of 82, a woman who can barely see anymore, a woman who has brought nothing but pride for Iran, is now a prisoner in her own country,” Milani says.

behbahani

She looks very threatening, doesn’t she?

Deadline.

I’ve been doing a post-a-day faithfully since January 1, 2010. I skipped yesterday’s post. Instead, I spent from about 8am-3pm writing for one of my own personal BIG projects. And then I went with my family to watch “Alice in Wonderland” at the IMAX theatre in 3-D. (Kind of a disappointment, but visually breathtaking. Maybe Mrs. Wagner is right, and Tim Burton should just stick to set design; he can’t pick scripts.)

ANYWAY…in order to meet a big deadline, things, life, people, have been pushed aside while I focus on this…ONE….BIG….THING….and it does have a hard and fast deadline.

“Deadline” sounds so much more ominous than “due date.” Due date sounds kind of like, well, great if you get it done, but if not, it’s flexible. “Deadline” has the word “dead” in it, as in all life will cease to exist unless this task is completed on this metaphorical line. I keep thinking, “When this is over…I will…(fill in the blank).” The blank is filled in with everything from getting the oven fixed, paying bills on time, going shopping, spending more time with my sons, husband, and friends; spring-cleaning the house and writing the great American novel. (Or, at least a new script for “Alice”- maybe Burton can take a mulligan on that one.)

Sometimes I wonder if we (teachers) are doing you (students) a disservice when it comes to project-based learning. Project-based learning is when the assignments are layered, building on one another to create one final project, like our Burning Questions unit. You had several steps along the way, and for the most part, you did a really good job. But I’m sure some of your other classes’ work/assignments were pushed aside. Now that you’re done with that, your focus went to other classes. We really are poor at multi-tasking, no matter what we say. But maybe we should embrace this more, recognize it, admit it, and deal with it: wouldn’t it be great if in all of your classes, Math, Science, Social Studies, your Elective, Language Arts, and PE/Health, what you were learning was all connected at any one time? That’s called “integration.” It’s when your classes all work together to teach the BIG ideas.

For example, if you were studying Ancient Greece in World History, we would do our Greek mythology unit, and you would learn about Ancient Greece’s contributions to Math and Science, and maybe play Olympic style games in PE, and in your art elective, learn about classical art and architecture, and its influences on our own government buildings, including the White House. You would definitely have a deeper understanding of culture and influences over time, wouldn’t you?

Well, that’s just a dream of mine, to really have integrated curriculum, where you apply your learning across many areas. I cringe every time I have tried this and a student says, “This isn’t MATH CLASS!”

It’s not? Then why do I need to know how to read a bank statement, a mortgage loan document, understand my taxes, and be able to read contracts?

Those deadlines and due dates wouldn’t seem so scary if you knew that everything you were learning worked together, would they?

Deadlines and due dates aren’t going to go away. They will be part of your life from now on. When you work, you will have to meet goals in order to keep your job. Even if you’re a barista at Starbucks, they time you from when the order’s taken to the time you call the drink out to the customer. (I know, because I was a barista.) Each drink has specifications – extra foamy non-fat drinks need to weigh this many grams, and need to be at specific temperatures. And yes, there is a supervisor who comes around to all of the stores and checks to make sure you’re meeting quality standards. Thanks a latte.

In any job or career you choose there are standards and levels of quality performance. It may not be funny or fun to think about right now, and you don’t really have to. Dig into your learning now. I wish someone had said to me, “Gee, why don’t you go read a novel instead of cleaning the bathrooms?” but alas, that won’t happen.

Next time you’re grumbling about your free, public education with highly qualified teachers who are pushing you toward meeting and exceeding academic standards, perhaps you will think to yourself this is one deadline you can handle, and you don’t have to clean a toilet.

Misconception.

Conception: the birth of an idea, an understanding:

So, it would stand to reason, that the word “misconception” means a wrong idea.

The other day, a very curious and inquisitive student asked me, during a quiet moment in the library, “Would we die if we run out of oil, because our bodies need it?”

Huh?

I didn’t even know where to begin to unravel this one. Somewhere along the way of his journey between two cultures and two languages, he got the notion that somehow humans had OIL, as in fossil fuels, dinosaur guts, T-Rex juice, in their bodies, and that when it ran out, we would die as a species. I know this is what he thought, because I clarified at least this much.

I said no, humans would not die per se if oil runs out. What would happen is our cars, trucks, and other forms of transportation would cease to run as they are engineered now. He then said something about plastics…are we plastic?

No. We are not plastic. We will not die if we run out of oil. If anything, we might go back to horse and buggy days.

Really? Wow.

So much of teaching has nothing to do with ‘teaching.’ It has nothing to do with meetings, no child left behind, state tests, data, or whether or not they have a pencil. Teaching is in those moments where the misconceptions are revealed, the background knowledge steered, and the conversation is safe, and no one is made to feel stupid.

But I still ask, how did this young man, who is bright, come to think that humans have oil in their bodies?

How does this happen? Perhaps if we explore these questions in our tough, “fire all the teachers” current state of education, we should just stop for a moment, and have a little time to just read. To talk. To think.

To clear up misunderstandings.

Wired.

No, this isn’t a post about drinking too many Red Bulls or Monsters.

This is about how we’re wired. What makes us go. What makes us stop. What makes us unsure.

Now, if we were all automatons, robots, gizmos, or devices, we would be wired to turn on when a human decided we should, programmed us to, or determined when we would be turned off. We would boot up at their discretion. They would push our buttons. The tragedy and bliss would be that if we were those robots, those motherboards, we wouldn’t care. We work for them. If I was an i-Pod and someone loaded me full of Lawrence Welk accordion music or Slim Whitman (look them up, kids) I wouldn’t have any say about it. I would play the music, and not have the opportunity to weigh in with my likes and dislikes.

Not so with people.

We LOVE to let everyone know what we think, how we feel, how others make us feel, all the time. That’s all we do. We are in our own little mortal coil packages, wired uniquely from all others. No one else knows what it’s like to be us, and we cannot ever completely imagine what it’s like to be them.

The tragedy and bliss comes from when we attempt to understand others, when we’re sympathetic, empathic, or antithetic. There’s the rub. When others think they are allowed just as much freedom as we are to weigh in with opinions, positions, ideas, and viewpoints, we think they’re geniuses when they agree with us, knuckleheads when they don’t.

That’s the very essence of tolerance. We do not have to agree with each other, but if we want to hang onto our humanity, we have to at least provide the free speech, free press, and basic human rights to each other. Otherwise, we might just be powered down.

Love letters…

From: The Writer’s Almanac, February 8, 2010:

Valentine’s Day is coming up on Sunday, and we’re celebrating all week with love letters from the literary world.

Poet John Keats (books by this author) lived to be just 25 years old, but in that time he wrote some of the most exquisite love letters in the English language. The letters were to Fanny Brawne to whom he became engaged.

He was 23 years old, recently back from a walking tour of Scotland, England, and Ireland (during which time he’d probably caught the tuberculosis that would soon kill him), and had moved back to a grassy area of London, where he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. During this time, he composed a number of his great poems, including Ode to a Nightingale. And one Wednesday in the autumn, he wrote this letter, considered by many the most beautiful in the English language:

My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my soul I can think of nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving — I should exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love … I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my religion — love is my religion — I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavored often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever
John Keats

The following spring, Keats wrote: “My dear Girl, I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The more I have known you the more I have lov’d. … You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass’d my window home yesterday, I was filled with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time.”

Keats and Brawne became engaged. He wanted to earn some money for them before they got married. But then he began coughing up blood. When he saw it, he said: “I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.” He wrote to tell her that she was free to break off their engagement since he would likely not survive. But she would not, and he was hugely relieved. But he died before they married.

Allusions are no illusions.

In the Simpsons’ episode, “Lisa Gets An A,”, Homer becomes discouraged by the price per pound of fresh lobster, and seeks to “grow” his own lobster for his consumption. However, he bonds with the lobster, caring, feeding, talking to it, and even taking it for walks.

As I’m watching the episode, it strikes me as odd that Homer would grow to care for his potential dinner so much that he would take it for a walk, but it’s funny nonetheless.

As most things, I didn’t realize really how clever the good writers of the Simpsons were at the time, until….

…I was reading Mary Karr’s novel, Lit.

It’s a definitely a “grown up” book–she battles her long-standing deep emotional scars of her past. Her crazy, butcher-knife wielding mother and wild-cat, alcoholic daddy play key roles, and she must come to terms with her own choices, and try to improve on being a wife and mother, before it’s too late. She’s trying to find the power of prayer right now; and it dawned on me, that if you’re battling demons, you probably need a few angels on your side, in whatever manifestation that takes.

ANYWAY…..(sorry). There is a section where she ALLUDES to the father of surrealism, who, YOU GUESSED IT…used to take his PET LOBSTER FOR WALKS.

I thought I bookmarked that passage in my Kindle, but I didn’t. However, because of the POWER OF THE E-READER, I can do a search for “lobster,” and voila! It was “Apollinaire in Paris, just in from walking his lobster down the street on a leash.”

In fact, three instances of the word “lobster” appear in Karr’s novel: 1. lobster grip, location 2167; 2. lobster down the street, location 3392; 3. we boil lobsters and stuff ourselves with…location 4856.

So, now the reference to Homer being such as Apollinaire in the early 20th century Paris, is even funnier. I get it. And that is the power of allusions – increasing comprehension by increasing and deepening connections.

Now, I am even more curious. Who was the father of surrealism? And who was Apollinaire?

When I searched for the “father of surrealism” I found: http://www.vincesear.com/giuseppe-arcimboldo-father-of-surrealism/

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who painted paintings such as this example:

But, Karr is referring to Guillaume Apollinaire: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/737

From continuing research, it seems like he liked to draw poems:

Today we call this Shape Poetry.

Want to know more about “surrealism?” Check this out:

http://library.thinkquest.org/J001159/artstyle.htm

Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Rene Magritte are a few artists who created in the style of surrealism.

i-Forgot.

Many consider Steve Jobs a master presenter. His signature black turtleneck and jeans, and projection of an easy, creative style stir thousands to listen to what he has to say. And buy what he has to sell.

The end of unit presentations were due today: there is usually a pattern of how students respond. There is a percentage, unfortunately usually small, who is prepared, finished, completed, and projects are turned in before the due date.

However.

However, many are not as on top of the projects, although each assignment was carefully scaffolded, reviewed, and class time given for completion, etc. Many are even unpleasantly suprised and say, with dismay, “What presentation?!” For some, there may be a crisis at home, illness, not a lot of structure, or a sense of being overwhelmed because of all that is due at the end of a semester.

But, mostly I think about myself. And I have found that:

I am not Steve Jobs. Not even close.

My “product” is not as flashy, pingy, boingy, colorful, wow-ee, zam bang boom as an i-Pod, i-Pad, i-Phone: a school day is more of an i-Ignore, i-Forgot, or an i-Invisible.

It’s just stodgy, old learning, discussing, and creating. BOR-Rrrrring!

Well, perhaps not. The presentations I did see completed today were amazingly thought-provoking, deep, and they all really tried to find as many sources of media to answer their “burning questions.”

So, Mr. Jobs, you may lead the masses in entertainment and apps. But I’m changing the world too, and so are my students. Can you make an app for that?

Postscript: And let’s not forget the lost files, lost e-mails, lost uploads, and lost saves.

Epic.

Fail.

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/02/this-is-your-brain-on-technology.html#posts

Caffeinated.

I am sensing a disturbance in the force.

Really.

What are typical behaviors in the spring–nervousness, anxiety, an atmosphere of expectation and bedlam, we are experiencing here and now: my 8th grade students act like it’s spring. It’s not. Now, granted we are having one of the warmest winters in years. And everyone is jumping up out of their holes like Whack-A-Moles.

But what is making me grumpy is they are actually resentful and disgruntled when I try to keep the lid on them, using the mallet of my brilliant teaching to hit them over the head and get them to learn, LEARN! WHAM! NOW!

But they are not cooperating.

They are challenging, cantankerous, contrary, edgy, and larcenous. Yes, I have noticed all year they, in general, behave like little magpies and steal whatever they think is “shiny, pretty.” When I opened a drawer and found an empty highlighter packet, with all three highlighters taken and nothing left but the over-produced packaging, I felt more than a “tsk tsk.” I paid for those highlighters, and yet someone felt that the lines between what’s mine and theirs were fuzzy.

I am not happy.

But I don’t want to play martyr either. This is one of those days when I realize that I need to stop and reflect myself. What made me lose my temper? Apparently asking them to work quietly a few times on their final projects (due tomorrow) was not a reasonable request. But they’re not able to tell me what IS a reasonable request. They are only 14 after all. I must put myself in their shoes and figure out what I would consider reasonable. Hmmmm….

The larceny doesn’t stop with my highlighters. (And it’s not just about highlighters; that’s just the latest example.) There was a Red Bull incident. Let’s not go into details. But it’s not good.

And when I tried to explain to a particular demographic of students why drinking highly caffeinated/sugary drinks is not healthy for a young growing human, I get flak.

And I’m tired of flak.

But…deeeeeeeeeep breath…….in…….out……..in……out……let me set my Iced Venti Americano with cream and shots over ice down, and think about this: middle school students are very much like toddlers that can get their own juice. All I can do at this point is try to keep my own blood pressure down.

And maybe choose water next time instead.