news

I'm going to miss browsing the news online if the rumors are true about Rupert Murdoch. That said, I have a friend who writes for AP, and he deserves to get paid fairly for his work. Hopefully the largest sources of news will still keep a few teaser stories or headlines up for the news voyeurs like me.

Be aggressive

My daughter won--no, received--a completely undeserved trophy for her "participation" on a youth soccer league this year. I know I sound like a horrible mother for scare-quoting my own daughter, but you weren't there to strap the shinguards on a wailing kindergartner and to give 95 versions of the same speech: "We signed up, we have to go.... Do it for the team! ...You don't have to be perfect--just try your hardest... Your goal should be to try to kick the ball two times today.... If you stop screaming and kicking me, you'll get a juicebox at the end of the game." Her best was to sit on the sidelines and cheer on her friends. I signed up only because she begged me, and I would have been perfectly happy to have the only child who never kicked the ball on the team. (She did kick it once during the last game. It floored me.) The lack of aggression didn't bother me; it was her complete antipathy that was difficult. It got so bad that I just started calling her the "goalie" in a division that isn't supposed to have goalies. It was the only way I could justify her standing in one place the whole time.

Although soccer seems to be a rite of passage in our small SoCal town (even I played 4 years as a kid), I'm not saddened that she won't be joining a team next year. For someone who loves competition, I am appalled by the behavior of a few vocal parents, overzealous coaches yelling at children, and this YouTube video:


That said, I am wholeheartedly in favor of excessive aggression when it involves a quadriplegic. Not kidding. This is rugby in raw form.

On holiday

L woke me up this morning to announce that banks are closed today. L is five. Somehow, this important fact is of pressing importance. She asked me if there were holidays when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. I explained that there were no holidays because dinosaurs didn't have days of the week or months. In fact, they didn't keep track of time. They were as unaffected by bank holidays as a five-year-old is today.

Why do we keep track of time? If I remember my Daniel Boorstin correctly, it's to guide our productivity and to give us all the illusion of accomplishment even when the task at hand is not quite finished. That certainly describes the way I'm spending my Veteran's Day: grading an infinite pile of notebook paper reminiscent of this Ig Nobel scientific experiment.

mastery

It's nice to have a job in education that rewards employees based on their education. It would be even better if the masters teaching programs were more robust, relevant, and reflective. Currently, I think far too many educational graduate degree programs are exercises in disciplined budgeting and tedious prescriptive assignments that lack authenticity.

Maybe teachers of teachers are doomed to be so horrible because teachers themselves make ornery students.

Support

It is heartening to know about the programs and resources here in California for college-bound students who come from difficult, often contentious backgrounds. Regardless what you think about undocumented students, or more frequently legal citizens who are minors with undocumented parents, I'm glad to know that there are laws to help students follow the path towards legalization and resident status as well as clear rules about what aid they are not eligible for (all state & federal).

But what really impressed me was the system in place for students from foster care. I took for granted the luxury of coming home during winter break in college, but these students are not always so lucky. Besides scholarships and grants to help with tuition and living expenses, guaranteed housing, and academic support, these campus clubs also provide a mentorship program and much-needed social activities. I am thinking of a few students in particular and all that I can do to change the statistics. 70% of kids in foster care report wanting to go to college, but they are graduating at a low rate of 20%.

The good news is that the achievement gap between ethnic and racial groups is decreasing. I know that I can have a very real impact on a handful of students. Taking just a little extra time to help someone in a "special population" is not only doable but the right thing to do.

conferences

And now, we'd like to introduce the most important speaker of all: the outstanding teacher who does everything that you're supposed to be doing and more, who inspires not just his own students but anyone who comes within 50 feet of his charismatic vibe, and who has no social life or family left. Let's give him a round of applause.

controversy

I had a guest speaker on Tuesday. He talked about personal responsibility, work ethic, goal-setting, and civic service. It caused quite a bit of controversy, I guess, but my students ate up every word Obama spoke. It was a small class of seniors who will be first-generation college students. The words about growing up in a single-parent family, not having enough money, and making the extra effort to wake up earlier, work harder, and dream that impossible dream hit home with this group.

Surprisingly, it hit home with me, too. This was not a dramatic speech. nor was it particularly original or shocking. What struck me most was the sincerity of these ideas and how deeply I believed them. It's not just an idle speech to wonder how American students will and have contributed to society at large. In fact, as Obama mentioned the students sitting "in your place" 20 years ago, I realized--yep, that was me. Our generation who takes credit for Google, Facebook, and Twitter. In fact my friend Paul from high school is a developer for one of the afore-mentioned companies, and I reconnected with him just recently using one of the afore-mentioned services. That's me.

We saw ourselves in his words. And we saw him. Afterwards, a girl in my class said, I've never heard a president talk to me and talk like he understood me. It is a nice rhetorical move and a darn effective one to buy credibility with one's own personal story. Remind me again, why is this controversial?

Meanwhile, a respected colleague completely baffled me just a day later with her shocking story about how she glimpsed a license plate that read: NO GOD. Seriously? That's shocking? She doesn't know that there are atheists in the world? She's about as secular as you get in this tiny conservative town, but even she said she felt like she should be offended that the state of California allowed that plate. I couldn't even reply because I didn't have a clue where people were coming from. I've always grown up around atheists and have assumed that t-shirts reading "God is dead" are just as much part of life as, oh, the ichthus. My liberal-minded friends around the table made snide comments like, "That's awfully brazen to claim that there's no god at all" and "Maybe they'd have a better car than a Civic if they did believe in God." What? The narrator went on to explain how she wanted to take a picture on her cell phone but didn't want to crash, so instead she just called her husband with the news that she was tailgating someone about to be struck by lightning.

What amazes me is that both of these stories come as surprises to me. Yet again, I take for granted a set of shared values and expectations that others do not. It's a good eye-opener for me, though slightly disheartening. At the end of the day, as I lie down to sleep hopeful, but without a prayer, I think I'd rather live in a society engaging in healthy debate about banal topics than in one that accepts dogmatic statements without question.