9 posts tagged “education”
I have been dutifully doing my work to finish my incomplete. I am designing a unit of lesson plans covering the Civil War because we were allowed to choose our own subject and i couldn't think of any other subject that has so much information in print and online. Let's just say i haven't had any problems finding overheads... I am beginning to see a pattern that i will probably grow to hate as it becomes clearer. Using the MA State frameworks means i have to plan these lessons around the test they give sophomores and seniors to pass before they can graduate. Teaching from the frameworks is the same as teaching to the test, and an awful lot of narrative gets left behind.
My best buddy Mike, his wife and two kids came in for a surprise visit yesterday, which was like a shaft of sunlight at midnight. We went to college together, Mike and I, and altho i couldn't take organized Pentecostalism any more Mike, the trooper he is, has managed to begin a ministry that has both significance and relevance. He is about the only person that could actually fan to life the embers of a fire that i thought was buried in ice, the only one that could make me a little wishful about being a minister again.
Otherwise the nose is to the grindstone. It has been a long time since i have experienced this kind of stress, the kind that presses down and causes you to hunch your back when your awake and squint your eyes when your asleep. At least the weather has been cooperating, as it has been in the mid to low 70s this week. What can i say? Autumn and Spring are my two favorite seasons, and i figure in the winter, you can always put more clothes on, right? Summer is fine, but it often is accompanied by humidity, which i could do without, and you can only take off so much clothing to cool down.
I am also sitting the dogs again, till Sunday. Its kool, they have began to grow on me. Plus, these folk's TV didn't melt down, and they have NESN, the home of all the Red Sox game. The Sox gained a game on the fucking Yankees last night, and i hope we make it six tonight.... OK, time for me to get back to the lesson plans. Mike gave me a B&N gift card, which i intend to use to purchase this publication of "On the Road," the original manuscript Kerouac typed out on a scroll , as well as John Leland's new book -- next week sometime, maybe. Sigh
So things are coming down to the wire for me in terms of student teaching this semester. I have to jump thru so many useless hoops that i feel like a trained poodle. One of the last obstacles to getting this all set up is completing an incomplete i received in my Methods class.
If anyone wants to know if there is a crisis in American secondary education, i'm here to answer that question with a resounding "Yes!" There has not been a single education class that i have taken that has not made me want to pound my forehead into a brick wall until i bled. I took a curriculum class a couple of semesters back where the entire semester was utilized by the professor to teach us that there is no objective definition for the word "curriculum." That class made me want to light myself on fire, although i managed not to get an incomplete in that one.
My methods class was very hard to handle because it was sooooo frustrating. It was tied in with a pre-practicum where i had to teach five lessons and be in a classroom at least one day a week. Everything i was learning from my practical experience mocked everything that i had to do for my Methods class -- and so did the teachers at the High School. To a man/woman, every one of them pulled me aside and told me that if they would have had to go thru the bullshit i was going thru they never would have become teachers. I ran out of motivation to do this work for my Methods class very quickly.
So here i am, behind the 8 ball again because i did not grit my teeth and discipline myself to do all this busy work that will in no way pan out into anything of practical value or use. I probably won't be blogging very much this week as a result, but i will try to read the blogs produced from my neighborhood. I have to produce a unit of ten lesson plans covering the American Civil War, write out all the assessment materials, do a calendar, write five reflection papers from five of the lessons i taught last year, and to finish off the last three lessons from the reflection paper assignment.
To put this all in context, my TV just died (it was a great TV for the ten years we had it, thanks Mike), i'm behind in almost every bill by at least two months, my GSL defaulted and i have to come up with the money to "rehabilitate" it, i will be working part time so 1/2 of my paycheck will be gone while at the same time, because of the default, there will be no new student aid for yours truly, and The Wife has a habit of picking up parking tickets at the meters in NoHo and on Campus. Oh, and to top it off i'm a passive/aggressive lazy ass. Fuck me gentley with a chain saw, right?
Glory, glory, glory.
Today is Friday and the end of the work week for many people; although not for me because i have to work tomorrow. Fridays and Saturdays are relatively slow days here, as most people have lives and few want to be caught in the Library on a weekend. This will give me time to catch up on my next project. I have to finish an incomplete grade from a couple of semesters ago in order to complete my student teaching requirement. The incomplete is my Methods class -- one of only two education classes i have taken that were not almost entirely worthless. However, altho this class was better than most education classes i've taken, it still didn't have an awful lot to do with the day to day work of a teacher, at least not at the school i did my pre-practicum. I pretty much was mocked and laughed at by the teachers for all the hoops the Education Department was putting me thru -- it seems the University cares more about accreditation than they do about equipping people to excel at what they will actually have to do as a teacher on the ground to survive in a public school. I need to prepare a ten lesson unit on the Civil War and a slide show presentation introducing the unit. Hopefully i can be done in two or three weeks...
Thinking about all the hoops i have to jump thru to obtain a couple scraps of paper made me think about politics. Now there are two kinds of politics, although they tend to overlap and intermingle with each other. One is Politics with a big "P" and has to do with our traditional concept of institutional intrigue and ideology. The other has to do with power as well, although in a different sphere, that of interpersonal relationships. Looked at this way, i guess someone could say that everything is politics, altho not everything has to do with ideology.
Teachers have to deal with both. The Administration in any school represents institutional power, as does the presence of a union. This is politics with a capital 'P." They also have to take into account their relationship with other teachers, with their students, and with their student's parents. There is a lot of politics happening there, albeit with a small "p." All i want to do is to be left alone enough to teach history to High School kids for a reasonable block of time each day. I have no agenda, no ideology, no plans of indoctrination. I passionately believe that the role of a teacher is two-fold: to impart a certain body of knowledge and to teach kids how to make up their own minds about what to do with that knowledge. I don't care if a kid is a Republican or a Democrat, a Christian or an atheist; all i care is that they have carefully thought out their decisions based on some kind of historical knowledge as to why they believe and act the way they do. I want these kids to do their own thinking.
Really, i am sick beyond death of people who do not have the intellectual chops, the humility, and the courage to question their own assumptions across the spectrum and come to their own conclusions. If a student at this University had an original thought his/her head would probably explode, whether that thought had to do with Politics or politics. Around here it is people like Howard and Noam who do the political thinking for almost everyone; Rush, George (Will) and Sean think pretty much for the rest Politically. on the other hand, people are very anxious to mimic the attitudes and beliefs of who ever is a) in charge enough to have the ability to control the direction of their work environment or career, or b) are very charismatic and popular. In both instances, it is amazing to see how fast people turn into parrots for the sake of politics...
Oh well, life is what it is, at least we have music to take the edge off things occasionally. I thought you's all enjoy some Cash, so here's Johnny.
I have stress.
This last week has been the beginning of the new semester, the beginning of three weeks taking care of four legged furballs, and the resumption of my regular work hours. Altho i almost fall on my knee weeping with joy at the thought of being done with Education classes, my joy is tempered by the fact History classes are actual classes with high expectations. In one of my Graduate classes i have two books a week, one 20 min. presentation, a 7-9 page paper, and a 30 page, publishable essay. Whoo Hooo. I'm going to my second class this afternoon, and i hope it is not as overwhelming.
Things have settled down a bit, although the tough part has been a two week battle against myself. I continue to struggle --- "struggle" might be too strong a word as semi-resignation would work in this context as well -- with myself, my own selfishness and self-centeredness. I swear that sometimes i feel, and even look like a middle-aged Huge Heffner, albeit a broke version living in the playboy van down by the river. I also have been struggling with my prayer life, as one either walks in the "flesh," i.e., in this mortal body for myself in sensuality, or "in the Spirit," i.e., from a new center created by God's Breath, His Spirit, where God fulfills what the Ten Commandments were all about, where i love God with all my heart and others as myself in being peaceful, loving, joyful, gentle, kind, good, faithful, self-controlled, and patient. It takes dicsipline to choose and to walk this path daily as it involves, in a spiritual way, killing off the flesh by nailing it to Messiah Jesus' cross. Everyone enters God's Kingdom through the waters of baptism, both as an outward sign of an inward work and as a physical symbol of a Christian's daily walk which could probably be taken as a warning to count the cost.
I read Wills's book What Paul Meant, and i confess to being dissappointed. I know Garry is a little Left of center, orthodoxy wise, but this book highlighted the fact and was not, in my opinion, his best. In order for his version of the apostle Paul to flourish, Luke's Acts of the Apostle's had to be completely discounted as a novelized version of the travels of Paul. However, as disappointing as his thesis was, Paul managed at times to shine thru clearly. I have always considered Paul to have been God's punchdrunk apostle, a heavyweight slugger doggedly fighting to the final round, punchdrunk and unbowed from the fight that defined his life. I've always identified with Paul especially because of this fact, and it is to his epistles that i often go for comfort and clear sight during times like these.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch with the missus, I am so far down a hole, so behind the eight ball, that i cannot even think about my situation without anxiety and am suprised not to wake up every morning for the past week to find myself under the bed, curled up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb in the dark. The two Graduate classes i have are work enough, but i still have to finish my last education incomplete. I hated these Education classes so much that i actually sabotaged myself as a student; the only classes i have ever had incompletes in are Edu. classes. I felt like i was some obscure small boat fisherman facing the perfect storm from the bow of a row boat when i took those classes. I had no motivation, and each assignment was a chore that seemed to be unconnected to anything useful i could see about actually being a teacher. These classes were like giant, sucking leeches bleeding my educational life dry of satisfaction and meaning.
To give some kind of example of the difference between this semester and last, i am very excited about a 30 page publishable (THIRTY PAGES???) paper due at the end of a history class on American culture. It has to be in the 20th century, so i am tempted to write on American culture and Christianity from the 50s till now, highlighting the two different streams of Christian orthodoxy and Gnostic heterodoxy that often converge with the ocean of secular American culture. Gotta fill up 30 pages somehow, right?
The above project may be interesting if there are no charges filed when the owners of these two fucking dogs return to find i've killed and taxidermied them for pissing in the upstairs bathroom floor. Dixie has a heart condition, and the pills i feed her twice a day make her piss more than usual for two hours after she eats. I have been very particular to stay around so i can let her out, as she has been trained to do, and twice now she's sneaked upstairs to leave a pool of very noxious urine that was enough to look like a pint of water was spilled on the floor. The second time she did this, i had to put her outside for her own protection... After i've had them stuffed, i'll place them sleeping in their dog bed so that their owners may never actually notice they're dead.
As i've composed this ode, i've been watching MTV. Anyone seen the new U2 song Can'y You See what Love has Done? Coolest damn video i've seen for a while, and another addition to the prose poetry that are U2's song lyrics. I will try to keep posting regardless of my busy schedule, hopefully there won'y be many gaps like this last one in my posting pattern.
I hate being evaluated. I could give you all kinds of reasons, many different justifications, but it really boils down to the fact that it is humiliating. When I am evaluated i don't take it well, and my pride makes it ugly. Thankfully, i can still tell the difference between a legit evaluation and one completely worthless. Today was a legit evaluation, as the teacher i did my prepracticum with evaluated me on my lesson plans and performance in his class over the last semester. He is one of the best teachers in the school, and one of the best teachers i've seen in a class room, period.
That took a lot of my early morning, and by the time i got back, after stopping by McDs to read my daily USA Today, i only had time to get to work. The Wife is still sick and not feeling well, i figure if it wasn't for the Midol she'd be curled in a fetal position, sucking on her thumb and crying for her mother. I am a little wary, as the last time she had this much trouble she ended up in the hospital for a blood transfussion.
When i got to work things were a bit better than the last couple of days, the clusterfuck seemed to be somewhat diffused. We got our electric cart back, so i can actually make the diliveries we need myself at my convienience, and i only have to work my normal 12-8 pm shift. However, tomorrow morning i have to get up to be present in a disciplinary meeting at 6:45 am for a worker who is continually in trouble. A few years ago he was in an auto accident, and he hasn't been "right" since. The University is running out of patience, and he continues to draw to termination step by tremulous step. But i'll go down swinging for this guy, as i sincerely believe people should be judged, especially cultures and societies, upon how they treat "the least of these."
I know now the work that needs to be done in my class for my incomplete. This is gonna take awhile, but it won't be impossible. I am going to start tomorrow, and attack it piecemeal. I sould be done by the end of the weekend with stage one.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, i have a question. What should i be thinking on? I know what Paul said, but he was wonderfully general and ambiguous as usual. I think a lot about sex and food and history and relationship and the past and the future. I love to experience music and mull over lyrics, i love to watch movies and replay them in my mind. I also think a lot about writing, altho the only writing i do is usually in my head. My mind is filled with stories. Yet under and over all those things is God. I do not have to invoke His presence, He is always there, no matter what the topic currently occuppying my mind. It took me a long time to establish a devotional life for the simple reason that God is always on the edge, always just in the corner of my eye, so to speak. When i turned my head it never left, and God's presence has shaped the child who is gone as well as the dream that only gets fuller and richer as time goes by. I am not comfortably numb in my middle age. The NLT quotes Paul as saying that the battle between the Spirit and the flesh will be an ongoing and continuous battle, and my thoughts prove him right. Its like the Battle of the Bulge in there, the flesh always trying to mount a last ditch, desperate offensive against a fate all but predestined. Sigh.
I just don't think that i am productive in my thinking. I am not very pragmatic. I need to start keeping a physical notebook on me, and a current to do list. I have a feeling that it is far better for me to discipline myself than for God to discipline me; far better for me to evaluate myself than be evaluated by God. After the long night i've just been thru, the status quo is no longer an option...
I've been reading Alan Jacobs The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of CS Lewis. It is the best biography I have read on Lewis, including The Inklings. It is simply so well written...
However, I have been having a problem that I have never had before, a problem I never ever thought I'd have. My wife and I went to a marriage retreat in Atlanta at the end of August and I was forced into facing up to a lot of things that had happened when I was growing up. It would be a touching, Hallmark kinda moment if it all came out for the best, but it really, really hasn't worked out at all for me. All I did was open open Pandora's Box, full of all kinds mostly dead shit that won't stay buried safely in the past.
My problem is is one that is not in any way isolated to only myself, it isn't in any special. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people grew up the way I did, which was mostly alone and by myself. I had what i thought was a pretty nice childhood. I grew up in Western Nebraska under big sky, in a small town on the banks of the Platte River, in an intact nuclear family. I'm the oldest of five kids, and when I go home to this day we are all very comfortable with one another. There are no fireworks or dramatics when we get together for the holidays. What I am saying is that there are a lot worst things you can do with your life than grow up in the shadow of chimney Rock on the historic Oregon Trail.
But when I remember growing up, I do not remember relationships with anyone except for my Dad when i worked with him in the summers. I spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours by myself, wandering the fields and the country roads in and around my hometown. Even when I was in school I was alone in the crowd. I only connected with one other human being for the whole time I was in High School, my best friend growing up, DannyO. I had a learning disability when I was very young, but a very good local 4th grade teacher helped me to kick the problem and by the 6th grade I was reading 12th grade level, and bu Jr. High I was reading College level. How many 8tt graders you know who read and understood The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech?
I was never trained in any type of discipline. I just adapted quickly to whatever short term circumstances i found myself in. I never learned squat from anyone, except my Dad did teach me the bee keeping business. But nadda in anything else. There was structure, I wasn't raised by wolves; but there is a reason why I can fake almost anything for the short term, and can only begin but not end strong...
So my problem is this: unrealized and unrecoverable opportunity and potential. I had the mind, I think, to really excel academically. But there wasn't anyone to direct or push me, I was left to my own devices. I read shit till I was in college, and even then what I chose to read wasn't didn't exactly challenge me intellectually. I think I coulda learned Latin or Greek when I was a kid, I think I could have been read better than I did when I was a kid, but all I had was myself and I wanted to read Sgt. Rock, John Carter: Warlord of Mars, and Louis L'mour westerns. My teachers made me read Hamlet, McBeth, and Romeo and Juliet along with Ray Bradbury and edgar Allen Poe, and I will stay eternally grateful to them. I am not complaining about my imagination -- my reading proves I had a vivid one. But I needed something a bit heftier in the intellectual direction. Really, even when I read Shakespeare, it was taught by a little Mexican drunk who didn't understand these plays any better than we the students did. What about Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy for a teenage reading list? Was I completely asleep? Was I just ignorant? Why not Greek or Roman Myths? Why? Because I was left to my own devices, and I wasn't enough, that is why.
I never read a Great Book until I was in my late twenties, and I didn't read Homer or Plato till just a few years ago. I have great potential, maybe. I've read Kerouac, King, James Lee Burke, and Hunter Thompson. I have the experience and the ablity and the literary muscle to pull off some interesting distinctly American creative literature. But I am still all alone by myself, kinda put on a shelf (that one was for any larry Norman fans out there, if there are any larry Norman fans left). I do not have the ability to begin something and actually finish it, to connect with people in a way that might make them interested in what i might have to write.
I am gratified for all the folks reading this that have made me a friend or neighbor -- it is strange to get feedback that is actually encouraging. But I still feel like Dr. Johnny Fever DJing for WKRP and being greatful for the ten or twenty people in the greater Cincinati area that listened to the station. I am completely caught up in The Drift now at the end of the semester, and I dunno how to actually break free.
I'm reading this biography and am continually reminded of my own childhood and how that formed and informed who I am now. I hate this kind of funge state, I hate that feel like I am just wasting my time away in futility. But mostly, I hate thinking I am doing this all by myself.
Yes, these immortal words of Def Leopard have been in my mind's ear a lot these last two days as I've manned my work statation while making less that $50 in two days. But what the hell, am I being paid on commission? I think not! So life is good, if a bit boring. It gives me some time, however, to blog. Yay!
So Nebraska is beginning to look like a real football team again. I watched them kick the shit outta Colorado, which gave me immense satisfaction. I've attended NU vs CU games in Colorado, and every time I see those no class, low rent, low brow peckerwoods that populate the trailer park that is the CU campus lose I experience sunshine in my heart. We've locked down the north in the Big 12 and will play either Texas or Oklahoma for the championship and a BSC bowl bid. :o)) I'd much rather play Texas, but they lost yesterday to Texas A&M. The only way we play Texas is if the hillbillies from OU lose to the Oklahoma State today... Hell, the only reason the high plains don't blow away is because Oklahoma sucks... Go Cowboys!!!!
The Wife and I had a nice Thanksgiving at her Mom's house. It usually is a nice time, although my mother-in-law has never much liked me. She accepts me, but as for like, I dunno. I was 32 when I married her 22 year old daughter, which is probably part of the whole dynamic. Another is that we understand God way differently: she enjoys an afternoon of watching Trinity Broadcasting Network, whereas I would be throwing things at my TV and shouting anathamas on both the used car salesmen that passes for preachers on the "network," and the heresies they spew forth. But my MIL and I usually keep things very civil, and I must say she is one of the most generous people I have ever met.
There are only a couple of more weeks of classes left before finals, and I have mucho work to do, beginning tonight. Time to hunker down and make myself do the work I don't wanna do. My education classes have been, on the whole, almost totally useless. Seriously. If you want to know why public education in America is in the crisis it is, consider this: The superintendant from the local school taugh the class Organizing Curriculum for a whole semester with the intention of teaching his students that there really is no sure definition of the word "curriculum." I kid you not. I am now doing lesson plans so detailed for my methods class that the teachers in the school I am doing my pre-practicum in actually mock me for the work I have to do that will never transfer to the class room. Sigh.
I have been trying to reestablish a devotional life, Advent is almost upon us and I love praying and reading Scripture to the Christian calander. It gives me a sense of rthym and stability that I don't get from other routines... This is something I need, as this and next week are the worst weeks in my year. They didn't used to be until my Mom died four years ago on December third. You'd think the hurt of that would have been greater the first few years and then have diminished over time, but no: it just gets worse and worse as each annaversary comes and goes. I had a very complicated relationship with my Mom, and too much went unsaid and unexplained. But I very much believe in the communion of the saints, and to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I ask God to say hello every time I pray and to give her my love (instead of vise versa, I ain't Catholic for a reason); she knows as she was known there, she understands now what she didn't before when she was here on earth. I am very anxious to meet her again when sin is no longer part of either our perspectives...
I will probably take some time, mull thru these thoughts. However, now its time to say goodbye and check the ESPN score board!
One of my favorite CS Lewis books is "The Abolition of Man." It isn't just about education, but it is a book about education. He protested the teaching of subjectivity because he believed it produced people without hearts, without a universal core "tao" of ethics. He asks then what happens when these people are then called upon to act as if they had chests...
I was in my law and education class the other day when the subject happened to be the law and the personal lives of teachers. The Prof., wanting to get some discussion going, gave the following senerio: a teacher in a town consistently gets drunk on Saturday night in the downtown area. He isn't in the gutter by the end of the night, but hes not walking a straight line, either. Parents observe this and complain to the school. The administration calls in the teacher, and instead of calling him on the carpet offers him assistance. They mention voluntary AA meetings, or a paid absence to enter a detox center. The teacher, however, tells them to go to hell, this is his personal life and they have no right to interfere with his personal life. He points to many years of consistent attendence, the fact that he has never been accused of drinking during the school day, and the fact that drinking on Saturday night helps him cope with the stress of teaching. Question: can the teacher then be disciplined or even eventually fired for non-cooperation?
The discussion that followed truly made my heart fall into my colon. To almost a person, with great anger and indignation, almost everyone in the class couldn't believe that the school had the right to interfere in a person's off time except in the case of someone acting illegally. Everyone agreed that if he had been driving, the school would have had a case. The conversasion moved then on to homosexuality and about a morals clause in teacher's contracts. We were unable to finish because of time. We will finish this discussion next class period, but I was amazed by 90% of the classe's reaction. The question really boiled down to this: are teachers role models? The OVERWHELMING response was a resounding NO from a very large group of future teachers.
Just how self-centered have we, as a culture, become? To the extent that those who will be educating tomorrow's citizens reject their role as a role model?
I know its a bit more complicated than this, but I have to say that it isn't by much. Whatever happened to common sense? Paul says the world is condemned by the Law, whether it is written on stone tablets or in the consciences of people -- regardless, both are condemned because who can measure up? I mean really? I know I have my own expectations for myself, and when I am honest with myself I know I can't even live up to my own standards. But do you give up even trying? Do you just embrace the lowest common denominator and proclaim that everyone's just trying their best?
A very very good friend of mine is a bartender in a regional bar who for his day job works with young kids with disabilities in a local elementary school. He sells weed and a small amount of coke to people who he knows and trusts. He has a drinking problem, although he isn't drunk everytime I see him. I genuinely like the guy, and believe he has a real gift with kids. But until he can clean up his act, he shouldn't be within a football field of a school full of kids. He eventually was pulled ovcer and a small amont of drugs were found. He got off, but he lost his job. However, he is going back to school for his degree in child development and education -- he might very well find himself teaching again. Sometimes, at the thought of my not having any kids, I fall down to my knees and weep in gratitude....
I work at a division I university in the northeast, and this weekend marks the annual return of the students for a new school year. Summers here are great because the students are gone from the five college area and traffic, along with the noise, is light. However, at the end of every summer, I begin to miss the activity and energy that students will bring back with them.
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
