Free as a Bird . . .

In my beginning ESOL class, I asked students to use a metaphor to describe how they feel at the end of the school day. Here are a few of my favorites:

"At the end of the day, I am a bird that can fly everywhere."
"At the end of the day, I am a prisoner who got free from prison."
"When I leave school at the end of the day, I'm a crazy dog in heaven."
"At the end of the day, I am flying in the sky until I get to paradise."
"At the end of the day, I am a deer jumping in the grass." (My personal favorite. I think it's time to teach this kid the word "frolic"!).

The most common response was some variation of number 2, the released prisoner. You can see what great love of learning I transmit to my students! I do confess that I work them pretty hard, and with bigger classes this year there is no room for goofing off and I run a tight ship. The prison thing might be going a bit far, however. . .

The Power of Numbers

Why is the civilized world so mathematically impaired? And why do people who would never dream of admitting illiteracy feel no embarrassment as they claim, "Ha ha, I'm horrible at math," or "I'm not a math person"? I'm no Einstein, but some basic arithmetic skills in basic situations, please! I was recently in a meeting where my very articulate, very professional boss's boss's boss was discussing data from our school. At one point, she laughed and said, "Ha, ha, I think there's some math thing going on here!"

Wouldn't it be great if people aspired to mathematical literacy with the same drive that they do to having a great vocabulary or having read the classics? I hear people say things like, "Well, stats can prove anything." That's true, if you're using faulty data or deriving inaccurate conclusions from them. But if you are presented with the data used to achieve those stats, you can see where the holes are. You can recognize improper methodology or where correlation was assumed to be causation. You can understand how a sample size too small might skew the data (this is one which happens ALL THE TIME in public schools, but unfortunately many of the people using these skewed data--and telling us we should use them--don't understand this).

Knowledge is power, right? Want to know who's trying to pull a fast one? Go back to math class.

A Day in the Life

5:30 Wake up, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, read a bit of the paper, make lunch.
6:30 Leave for work.
6:45-7:15 Set up classroom for the day, answer early arriving students' questions, update classroom website on Blackboard.
7:15-7:20 Stand in my doorway as mandated by the principal to greet students.
7:20-8:54 Teach intermediate ESOL class: introductory lesson on plagiarism, half the class researches pros of animal research, the other researches the cons. Both paraphrase information and cite sources.
8:54-9:29 Student Assistance Period (flex time): 3 students come in to finish Powerpoint projects using classroom laptops. One student wants help editing his homework for Drivers' Education. Another has questions about an upcoming test.
9:30-10:05 Meeting with Special Education department chair and a student's mother regarding the student's progress in school and plans for the future.
10:10-10:52 Finish planning Science lesson, make copies, shovel lunch.
10:52-10:57 Stand in the door as mandated by the principal.
10:57-12:31 Teach Beginning ESOL Science class: 3 remaining groups present their Biomes projects. Teach vocabulary and concepts for "predator/prey; mutualism, commensalism, parasitism". Students complete graphs showing the relationship between wolf and deer populations and answer questions about how the increase/decrease of one population affects the other.
12:45-2:15 Sit through an instructional council meeting to discuss the "homework" reading about Professional Learning Communities, hear how Social Studies and World Languages departments are planning curriculum for upcoming years, chat about principal's priorities, and discuss procedures for long-term substitutes.
2:15-2:30 Discuss ESOL with P.E. department chair and the Assistant Principal.
2:30-3:00 Meet with a colleague to discuss a referral for special education for an ESOL student.
3:00-6:30 Create detailed sub plans with instructions on how to assist two brand new students who speak no English and have limited literacy in Spanish during class while I am out.
6:40--Heading home!

Prague!

Blissful, less highly-scheduled, slower-paced summer has ended, and I am back to my wonderful, frenetically paced job as a high school ESOL teacher. The highlight of my summer, which I have shamefully postponed sharing, was a long overdue visit to Prague.

There are many places I have visited whose most celebrated panoramas are indeed beautiful, but then they are somehow smaller or dingier or more mundane than anticipated. That's not necessarily a disappointment, as I always feel that a real place is more 3-dimensional and therefore more interesting, even with ugly sections and cheesy tourist traps, than what I'd imagined.

Prague, however, is widely reputed to be one of the world's most beautiful cities--and it absolutely lives up to the hype. The hilly west side of Prague includes the leafy Petrin, complete with a monastery and meandering paths, and Prague castle, with a Gothic cathedral in the center and surrounded by layers of the castle as added through the centuries, including the ancient halls where jousting tournaments and feasts were held. The view of the hill is also crowded with spires of baroque churches and red tile roofs. It is more beautiful in person than in any photo. From the hill itself, you look down on the eastern part of Prague, across the Vltava river. The same baroque spires and red tile roofs fill the skyline, with occasional Gothic turrets and bizarre modern architectural curiosities, like the Zizkov tower covered with plastic black crawling babies!

The view, of course, are the first things that you become aware of as you arrive in Prague. I spent my first day walking joyfully past all the major sights, which can be seen relatively quickly. I found my beloved restaurants and cafes--idyllic spots with quaint lighting and cozy corners-- and made sure to taste my favorite pastries, chocolates, and snacks (it was fortunate that my trip included lots of walking!). I wandered through Prague's meandering streets and across the picturesque and ancient (and, regrettably, tourist-packed) Charles Bridge. I felt my tongue stumble over Czech words again--and I remembered the same frustration felt years before as I became familiar with the impossible-seeming strings of consonants.

I took the train from Prague to nearby Karlstejn to visit its castle and beautiful countryside. How I love Czech trains! The stations are dingy in an inexplicably quaint and charming way. The trains themselves feel old but comfortable, and there is nothing to compare to the rhythmic clatter of the train over the tracks as you roll past lovely villages nestled in the hills.

My trip included visits with old friends: I had two reunions with classes of formers students, met a friend to go salsa-dancing (yikes, for someone who loves dancing so much, I am a really miserable salsa dancer!), and spent an afternoon at the park with a friend and her two kids, both born since I last saw her.



Words cannot describe the nostalgia and joy I felt. I felt like I had rediscovered a part of myself that had been lying dormant for the past 6 years. The lifestyle in Prague was so well suited to me: I worked hard, but for about 9-10 hours a day (less than now), commuted by public transport and thus never had to worry about cars, had lots of time for reading, walked everywhere. I felt so happy, healthy, and alive--my days were filled with new discoveries and interesting interactions, and the unexpected was around every corner.

I am happy in my life now. I have a job I find rewarding and meaningful, a wonderful group of friends, a comfortable place to live, a family I adore, and I always seem to make time to travel. Life is pretty good. But I can't help wondering if it will ever be so magical again.

Challenge Index

Fairfax County Public Schools has recently been hyping the inclusion of all of its high schools in Newsweek's list of the top high schools:

http://commweb.fcps.edu/newsreleases/newsrelease.cfm?newsid=1501

The obvious next question is, why are these high schools listed as the best? What are the criteria? One would hope that such criteria would be thoughtfully considered and statistically sound since they aim to measure something as complex as a school's effectiveness in teaching thousands of kids from diverse backgrounds with highly varied educational and career goals. But here's what the release says about the ranking system:

"A school’s ranking is determined by dividing the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), or Cambridge tests given by a school to all its students by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June." This system was devised by Jay Matthews, an education reporter for the Washington Post.

Side note on Matthews: I am not a fan. I often ask myself why he has been allotted as much power as he has. He has written entire pieces based on incredibly poor logic, as in (I'm paraphrasing) "most Americans speak foreign languages poorly. Therefore, foreign language programs in high schools are a waste of time." Huh? So the fact that we are so linguistically backwards means that we should scrap foreign language programs altogether? That's not the conclusion I draw.

But I digress. The purpose of this post is not to criticize Matthews, but rather how the entire Washington region, and now Newsweek (and by extension, thousands of readers) have bought into Matthews' ranking system. If I seem disproportionately angry, it's because I have seen how this system has actually driven policy in Fairfax County, where students who may not be adequately prepared, or even interested, in taking AP level courses are shoved into classes to increase the school's percentage of AP takers. More troubling to me is the possibility that other important factors in a school's effectiveness may be ignored in the frenzy for more APs. For years Fairfax County has footed the bill for all of the AP tests its students take (often woefully unprepared students who achieve a 1 or a 2) even as ever-tightening budgets force increased class sizes and salary freezes. (Although with the budget situation as dire as it is, the AP test fee will likely no longer be paid).

I certainly don't have the perfect formula for evaluating schools. But here are some factors that should at least be considered:

1. Drop out rates. What happens to the at-risk students? With Matthews's system, getting poorly performing students to drop out actually adds to a school's value, as those students will now no longer be included in the graduating total. Statistical magic: now a higher percentage of graduates will be recorded as having taken an AP exam. Any quality measure of a school's effectiveness should evaluate how the school educates ALL of its students, and having a high drop out rate is a major indication of failure.

2. Career/Vocational options. I repeat my previous statement: any quality measure of a school's effectiveness should evaluate how the school educates ALL of its students. Not all students are college-bound. Not all careers render a college education desirable. One of Fairfax County's biggest assets is its Academy program, where students can take courses, and even get certified, in everything from catering to auto mechanics, from fashion design to film and video production. The Challenge rating system completely undercuts the value of such programs simply because it fails to consider them.

3. Pass rates on the AP exams. I understand the argument that encouraging more students to take AP/IB courses and exams increases the academic rigor that the students are exposed to and discourages the harmful practice of tracking; those in favor of the Challenge Index claim that actual pass rates are secondary. That sounds plausible. But what it means is that schools are not accountable for the quality of their AP courses any more. I have talked to AP teachers who bemoan the diminishing standard of their courses: what was once the expectation and standard of an AP class has become impossible to maintain with the increased enrollment of ill-prepared or weakly motivated students. Follow this thread of thought to its extreme: an unscrupulous administrator could theoretically rename all classes "AP", pay for the ensuing exams, and voila: highest challenge rating ever. I'm not suggesting that cheating this egregious could really pass undetected, but you get the idea.

So, Jay Matthews, I am no expert. I don't have a golden formula that is a perfect alternative to the challenge index, but at least I am aware of the potential pitfalls of elevating any system to such prominence, particularly one that highlights only one measure.

L.A. Times Gaffe

Today in the print version of the L.A. Times I came across the following: "For millenniums . . . " Really? That looks so wrong! But according to the dictionary.com, both "millennia" and "millenniums" are acceptable. "Millenniums" is even listed first, and as I type this, only "millennia" gets the red spell-check underline. What's next? "Syllabuses"? Sigh. Dictionary.com lists that one, too.

Soap Box Fantasy

There is a scene in Anna Karenina where Anna is reading a romance novel and holding a paper knife up to her throat, foreshadowing her eventual affair and suicide. I remember my literature professor commenting on how one's daydreams and fantasies can reveal quite a bit about a person--although those of us living outside of novels are in control of how much of that information becomes public knowledge.

What better way to keep my privacy than to post it online? As the topic of today's post, I have chosen one particular fantasy--the home-town show-down. But to justify what has driven me to my fantasy, I'll need to give some background.

My memories of my home-town are fairly cliche: I recall small-town pride and camaraderie, but also narrow-mindedness, provincialism, and clannishness. As a disclaimer, I should mention that I moved away from my hometown at the age of 18, leaving me with an impression heavily influenced by the pettiness that any high school experience might bring. However, I do specifically recall instances of well-respected adults committing the worst kind of racism--the delusional kind. As a humor writer for my college newspaper explained it, you know you're going to hear something racist when someone begins with "I'm not racist, but. . . "

An example? A friend's father bemoaning the lack of blondes on the homecoming court. The court that year was heavily Latina, and the father's disgruntled explanation was "It's because all those Mexicans vote for their Mexican friends," as if he had made some profound breakthrough on the nature of high school race relations in America. Of course, our school was 65% Latino, meaning that his proposed preference--a blonde court--would have required not only all the white kids to vote for their white friends, but a hearty support from students of other races, too.

In the context of thinly-veiled racism, shortly after I graduated from high school, proposition 227 was passed. This proposition eliminated bilingual education and mandated that all English Language Learners be immersed in regular courses after one year of sheltered ESL instruction. It goes against everything I now know in terms of language acquisition and sound educational theory, but it passed. In defense of well-meaning Californians, I do believe that the pro-bilingual faction did a lousy job explaining why this was such a bad idea. For those less language-policy nerdy than I, allow me to summarize why this was such a rotten idea:

1. Kids are in school not only to learn English, but to learn content-area knowledge, academic vocabulary and expression, and critical-thinking skills. So when you're thinking the fastest way for kids to learn English is to immerse them--more time on task, right?--you're forgetting that while they're learning the colors and numbers, their peers are learning how to support a thesis statement, the intricacies of protein synthesis, and the underlying causes of World War II. Those kids immersed in English? Missing it all while they figure out the basics.
   
2. Language Acquisition takes time. That ESL kid who speaks with hardly any accent and you think should be in regular classes? Give him a Biology text to read or ask him to write a persuasive essay. The language required is significantly more complex than chatting about the weekend, and it takes years longer to learn.
   
3. Virtually every drop of valid, reliable research on bilingual versus immersion education that measures results over a substantial length of time (as opposed to studies covering only a year or two) show that bilingual education is measurably, objectively superior to immersion. Boo-ya!
   

So after all this rambling background, you're probably wondering what the fantasy is. The fantasy is that I'm in a school board meeting in my hometown. The discussion turns to bilingual education. I sense my chance at vindication: proclaiming the evils of undisclosed racism and informing the ignorant masses as to the merits of bilingual education--simply more effective, regardless of your political persuasion. The moment is ripe, the timing is perfect. I take the microphone and school the board and the community with my vast knowledge of all things ESL. A cynical board member attempts to derail me, but my infinite wisdom of language acquisition, my crackling wit and debate skill, and my dutiful preparation allow me to humiliate him with style.

So that's my fantasy. It doesn't say much for my superiority to my home-town counterparts, does it? I'm still thinking about how to one-up them, while I'm sure I've all but disappeared from collective memory.

Action and Reaction

I've been feeling more and more lately that American politics bear an uncanny resemblance to Newton's third law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Action: 2004: Americans re-elect Bush.

Reaction: 2006: Americans, fed up with Republicans, elect a Democratic house and senate and in 2008, Americans elect a Democratic president largely based on his mantra of "change".

Reaction: 2010: Americans, perceiving the passage of health care legislation and the bail-out bill to be too much enlargement of government, take to the streets as members of the tea-party, and oust proven, effective conservatives like Bob Bennett. (If the tea party gets their way and elects some of the more radical people they support, where do they think this is going to end up in 2012 or 2014?)

Maybe it's the inherent nature of the two-party system. It creates the illusion that life is a series of either/or choices. So it's either McCain or Obama, universal health-care or the party of "no", unenforced immigration law or a racial-profiling police state.

What saddens me is watching the way that ordinary Americans are playing into the politicians' game: because the argument is presented to us as an either/or scenario, we feel we must take one of the proposed sides. Americans, take back your opinions! Frame the argument on your terms, beyond ideology and name-calling. People can have concerns about immigration and long for reform without being racist; likewise, teachers can teach in Spanish and feel the need for ethnic studies without being communist propagandists. Convenient as it is to have someone else with more political expertise and eloquence to frame our political arguments for us, this weakens my most beloved of American ideals--freedom of thought, the necessary prerequisite to the first amendment.

Show Me the Data!

A comment on the way I think about a controversial issue: I argue it. I want to hear how my opinion holds up. I want to hear how well I can deconstruct the dominating idea. So just for practice, here it goes on the topic of grading.

Should students who do poorly on an exam be allowed opportunities to retest? Should they be allowed to take the higher grade, rather than an average of the two? According to Ken O'Connor (author of such delightful fare as How to Grade For Learning and 15 Fixes for Broken Grades), teachers should offer retakes to students and record only the score of the second test. I have sat through many frustrating meetings on this topic during the past school year, as revising grading practices is the current priority of my principal. Here is a summary of the reasons WHY O'Connor believes you should allow students to retest:

1. Forcing a student to keep his/her low grades gives the student an "out" in the sense that he or she can stop worrying about the material once the low grade is received. Retesting requires the student to try again to learn the material. (My question: how do you make a student that was originally resistant to learning and studying actually learn and study? Aren't we missing the salient point that students are beings with a will of their own?)

2. We claim that students should be held accountable for scores on their first tests because that is the way of the real world, but in truth, the "real world" allows for retests: think of the driver's test, SAT's, bar exam, etc. (My question: what about performance in the real world that is not measured by a test--which is indeed the vast majority of our professional careers? So, Dr. Smith, you killed your first three surgery patients? Not to worry, you got it right THIS time. Or imagine you totally screwed up your proposal for an architectural project. You lost the commission--no second chances.)

3. Grades should be a reflection of WHAT the student knows, not how long it took to get there. If a student eventually relearns the material, why does it matter if it was not for the date of the original exam? (Rebuttal: I think this is actually his best point. Still, the reality is that schools function on a timeline. Quarters end, grades are due, the class moves on to the next topic. Accommodating individuals is not inherently bad, but in practice, does this mean the teacher has 30 lesson plans per class?)

4. Change is good. Anyone who doubts proposed changes fears change. This one actually comes from leadership at the school. (Now that I've stripped that idea free from the accompanying rhetoric, do I need to rebut it?)

I've started some preliminary research on test retakes. What I've found so far are many advocates of grading systems similar to Ken O'Connor's. They can give philosophical and theoretical reasons for their opinion, but none so far has offered empirical proof. While they cite plenty of research indicating the negative effects of traditional grading practices on learning and motivation, I have yet to see any research that shows improvement in these areas under the proposed changes: I want them to show me that students actually LEARNED more because of this change. Otherwise, all this hoopla about grades is only conjecture. (Disclosure: I need to research this more carefully; I don't recall seeing any research that fits this bill, but I need to check O'Connor again carefully, and there is certainly a lot of research out there that I haven't seen yet).

If I'm feeling bold enough and like it's worth the ensuing unpleasantness, I may suggest in our next meeting that we actually pilot our proposed grade changes by collecting data: to start, what were grades in previous years in identical classes? How do they compare? But grades can't be used alone because the proposed changes could potentially result in grade inflation. What about state exam and AP test scores?

While I realize data aren't everything, I find it comforting that carefully collected, honestly presented data are a powerful tool for convincing people to look beyond their own philosophies and politics. You want me to believe revising grading practices in this manner will have a powerful effect on learning? Show me it works, don't just tell me why it should.

Here's To You, Fairfax County Taxpayers!

Today was kind of rotten. Because I teach at a school with such a small ESOL population, I teach the same students for 3 periods. They are generally not bad kids, but they see each other (and me) all the time, I think we've all gotten a little too casual lately, and today they were just punks. I confess that I had a few moments where mild expletives may have been whirling through my brain in reference to my students, which frankly does not happen often. I would say that today was the worst day of teaching I've had for about 2 1/2 years--definitely NOT the worst ever (that would hands down be summer school 2007) but a low point. I also was at school from 6:45 to 5:00, which happens more often than I would like. So my title refers to the great deal Fairfax County taxpayers get in employing me--I definitely earned my paycheck today!

Just as a side note, on my way home from the crazy day I stopped at the gym. On Saturday I saw advertisements for my gym reading "6 months free!" Then I went in today and there were no parking spots and no treadmills open. So here is the angry letter I composed in my head:

"Dear X-Sport Fitness,

While I realize that your business plan, naturally, is to suck as much money out of me and as many other people as you possibly can, it annoys me that you are giving away free months while I am dutifully paying for what is already limited space. I am hereby withdrawing my membership because I refuse to be treated in such a manner. And also because I am spiteful, crave revenge, and I want you to beg me to come back just like the Washington Post did when I canceled my subscription.

Sincerely,

Fed Up"

I'll never send it. I was over my rage five minutes later when a treadmill spot opened up. I guess you know you have a pretty easy life when your worst day in a while consists of snotty teenagers and a crowded gym!

If You Want to Feel Good About the State of Humanity . . . .

. . . don't ever read the "comments" sections beneath online news articles. Is it the anonymity that makes people so nasty? Perhaps. Then what's the excuse for their atrocious spelling and poor logic? I'm just hoping that those with any sense have better things to do than post vitriolic comments under an article. So what does that say about me for reading them?

Top 10 Non-Fiction

As promised to my sister Jen, a list of some of my favorite non-fiction through the years. I probably left out some good stuff, but it was fun to remember all my favorites as I wrote this.

10. In Defense of Food, by Michal Pollan. This book is a simple and quick read, but simple in the sense of elegant cohesion rather than simple-mindedness. The author's premise is (simply): eat food (not processed chemicals), not too much, mostly plants. His point is that nutrition science is how we got into our current confusion about food, and that since its advent our diets have rapidly deteriorated, leading to epidemic obesity and heart disease. He promotes going back to basics, like actually eating whole foods rather than nutritionally-concocted food products like snack packs and diet bars. We once knew how to eat when it was passed down through families and cultural tradition. Time to go back.
9. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks is a brilliant writer as well as a neurologist; the extraordinary case studies he cites wouldn't be quite as dazzling in lesser hands. Sacks explores the many strange ways music can interact with the brain, offering examples as diverse as Nabokov's purported "amusicality" (complete lack of enjoyment in music, hearing it only as an unpleasant din) to how musicians with debilitating memory loss can reclaim a part of their identity through performance. Fascinating and fun.
8. The Children in Room E4, by Susan Eaton. I enjoy reading books based on education, but I am often suspicious of them: too often, they are so often heavily political or obnoxiously sappy (my Foundations of Education professor actually made us read Tuesdays with Morrie. For a grad school level course! Shudder). Even Kozol's excellent Savage Inequalities felt at times forced and manipulative to me. The Children in Room E4, in contrast, meticulously cites the history of desegregation legal battles and Civil Rights advocacy: Eaton uses this foundation to build an excellent argument for how education in the years since Brown v. the Board of Education has become increasingly resegregated due to white flight and the housing industry's racist policies of the '60's and '70's. The book then goes on to promote integration as a solution best for everyone--if we believe in a the virtues of a racially and economically diverse society, where better to start teaching mutual tolerance and understanding than in public schools?
7. Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount Jr. I love Blount's premise--that words really maybe aren't just arbitrary symbols for the things they represent, as linguists claim--and I love even more how he goes about whimsically and unscientifically cataloguing the way words' connotations shift based on their sounds. It is more of a celebration of words than an actual argument, and so fun for a language-lover to read!
6. The First Word, by Christine Kenneally. Kenneally provides a succinct history of linguistics, from the 19th century through and including Chomsky with his various adherents and detractors. The purpose of the book is to explore the new research into evolutionary linguistics, long a taboo topic among linguists who considered it to irrelevant or unscientific. She takes a chapter by chapter approach, examining research into what aspects of anatomy, cognition, culture, and socialization may have been necessary to the evolution of language. Ambitious and far-reaching yet designed for someone with little or no background in linguistics, though to be frank, those without a passion for the field may find it tedious.
5. Green Metropolis, by David Owen. This book was fantastic: practical, logical, well-supported, convincing of the need to conserve energy and rely less on oil, and heavily critical of the popular "green" movement with all its inconsistencies. The author asserts that the American, Thoreau-based environmental tradition is counterproductive in focusing on movement away from the cities, long demonized as environmentally unfriendly. Convincing data show that city-dwellers, by virtue of public transport and smaller apartments (and therefore less stuff) are far more environmentally efficient than their suburban and rural counterparts; they are fitter, too, from all that walking. He attacks architectural organizations for awarding "green" awards to commercial buildings with all the new ecological bells and whistles, located miles from where any of its employees live and thus requiring them all to commute large distances to get to work. He likewise pokes holes in the logic of a wealthy family in a huge home, interviewed for the newspapers for their recent environmentally friendly, multi-thousand dollar gadgets. In the interview, the patriarch congratulates himself for doing "the right thing." As Owen points out, the positive environmental effect would have been far greater if the family had simply bought an "energy efficient" (i.e. smaller) home. Good stuff.
4. Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman. I read this book a few years ago, and unlike most of the other books on this list, it is filled with a book-lover's ruminations, and is therefore not an informational text. Fadiman is intensely readable, likable, and relatable. She has that rare gift for description where you find yourself squealing in delight, "yes! yes that's it exactly!" A fast, pleasurable read.
3. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell is a premier story-teller, and here he explores the role of snap judgments, which can be astoundingly accurate, uncomfortably revealing, or harmful, depending on the situation. His arguments are not always the most air-tight I've ever seen, but the questions he asks and the angles he takes are invariably interesting and fun. Blink was my first experience with Gladwell, and it was easily devoured. He's good brain candy!
2. Into Thin Air/Into the Wild. Yes, these are two different titles by John Krakauer. And they are both fabulous--the first describing the author's role in the disastrous Mount Everest expeditions of 1996, the second an attempt to understand the intense and uncompromising personality of Chris McCandless, who ventured into the wild to live a Thoreau-like, simple, and deliberate life without hypocrisy, and ended up being killed: the wild unpredictability of nature that he had come to crave was his undoing. After reading Krakauer's account, I don't believe McCandless would have seen his death as the ultimate tragedy.
1. Collapse/Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. Really, these two books could be separately listed as my number 1 and 2 entries. While both are written in the incomparable style of Jared Diamond, their subjects are sufficiently diverse to stand alone. Jared Diamond is hands down my favorite non-fiction writer. His entire process is so appealing to me: come up with a befuddling, comprehensive, unanswered question--why did the Old World conquer the New, and not the other way around? (Guns, Germs, and Steel), or why do some societies suddenly collapse? (Collapse, clearly)--compile a mountain of data, build a theory, test it against the data, and then overwhelm your reader with extensive and meticulous evidence. His books are the scientific method at its best: intensely creative, painstakingly methodical, refreshingly interdisciplinary. LOVE his stuff.

Super Combined Skiing Versus Ice Dancing

I just watched last night's Olympic coverage on our digital recorder. The mens' super combined? Breathtaking feat of skill, agility, strength, timing, and quick reflexes. Interspersed was ice dancing: Russians dressed in fake Aborigine costumes, grimacing and doing fancy footwork. Certainly ice dancing takes coordination, skill, hours of practice. But if it's an Olympic sport, why not add ballroom dancing? Ballet? Cheerleading? Perhaps, as a friend pointed out, the Summer Olympics equivalent is synchronized swimming. So the rule must be that it is a sport if you're not doing it on a traditional surface (i.e. "the ground"). As the same friend pointed out (thanks, Jenica), we do have trampoline. High-flying trapeze, anyone?

Favorite Fiction

I promised my sister Jen that I would make a book list to match my movie list of a few weeks back. While that list covered only the previous decade, I decided not to limit this one, and it includes all my favorites. I realize it is heavily slanted to the nineteenth century, but this is unapologetically a list of my favorites and not intended to represent any kind of impartial judgment.

10. Crime and Punishment, by Feodor Dostoevsky. Dark—overwhelmingly dark, a book that can get you inside the mind of a cold-blooded murderer and make his act seem not only possible, but disturbingly familiar: reading it was like living through a nightmare where you find yourself committing an unthinkable act. One of many nineteenth century novels where the main male character is haunted by the legacy of Napoleon.

9. Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell. The plot and characters echo Austen: marriageable daughters, an extraordinarily self-centered step-mother, local gossip threatening to turn a respectable girl's innocent act into a scandal; cads, fools, and disapproving parents muck up chances for the couple you know should be together. But where Austen holds up a mirror to society and invites her reader to laugh, Gaskell illicits sympathy, repeatedly asking “what if?”: What if a man had recognized how silly and shallow a woman was before marrying her as a replacement mother for his child, what if a woman reacted to her own daughter with more maternal instincts and less selfishness and jealousy, what if a man realized the pain and distress he caused his wife by erupting into bursts of temper before her untimely death? There is no going back in such cases, but the tragedy of poor choices is apparent.

8. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. A twisting plot, misleading certainty, and an ending both satisfying and fraught with ambiguity characterize this thinking person’s Da Vinci Code. The story opens as a mystery—monks are dying in morbid fashion—with “William of Baskerville” and his Watson-like apprentice, Adso, being brought in to solve the mystery. Weird, surprising, and filled with literary in-jokes (there is a character modeled and even named after Jorge de Borges, author of Labyrinths, listed below).

7. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. As a general rule, I am not such a fan of Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and Tortilla Flat though beautiful, sometimes funny, and powerful, I found too bleak to be riveting. East of Eden has its flaws, but it is such a rich tale and so simlutaneously compassionate and unflinching in its portrayal of humankind—but infused with great love and hope—that I felt a huge sadness when I finished reading it. Recommended to me by my mother, I read this book my freshman year in high school, making it the first book I completed on this list. As such, it holds special emotional value.

6. Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. This is not actually a novel but a collection of short stories and essays. Weird, science-fiction-esque, and so utterly imaginative and unexpected that reading it was thrilling and exciting; its intelligence also made it satisfying. I have never read anything quite like it, and it was extraordinarily fun.

5. Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James. Bravo to Henry James for the construction of one of the most interesting women in fiction, Isabel Archer. She is beautiful, intelligent, and fascinating. She acts from a desire for freedom and independence, and one senses a desire not to be pigeon-holed, or passive in the course of her life, only to end up married to a man who wants to keep her and control her as if she were a painting in his collection. Social mores limit her freedom to escape, but she likewise refuses to reject society and accept another suitor’s offer of scandalous escape—what would that be, after all, except another sort of prison and dependence?

4. Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg. What exactly is this book? Conspiracy thriller? Mystery? Science fiction? The title character is bluntly rude and direct to the point of being anti-social, and she is fantastic. She routinely shocks with her brutality, both in cutting through the niceties to expose hidden agendas, and in her unexpected physical capabilities. No one in the book is quite who they seem, everyone has a hidden agenda, and Smilla herself has a history that makes her both complicit with and sharply antagonistic to the establishment.

3. Middlemarch, by George Eliot. In terms of sheer emotional connection, this is probably my favorite book. The title refers to an entire village and follows the lives of many of the villagers, so like East of Eden it is grand in scope. While I love the character of Dorothy, the closest the book comes to a central heroine, I am equally fascinated by Doctor Lydgate, a brilliant and well-intentioned local doctor who finds his ambitions cut short by his marriage to a beautiful, charming, and utterly vapid and self-centered woman. This is the nineteenth century before divorce was considered a viable option, and it is never even really implied that he has ceased to love her: it is more that his professional and personal ideals are irreconcilable with what attracts him in women.

2. Persuasion, by Jane Austen. I am annoyed by how Austen has been appropriated by the chick lit crowd. If people like her stuff, why should I care what their reason is? Those who crave Austen only for the romance only are missing what makes her so brilliant: her sharp wit and good-natured eye for what makes people universally ridiculous. Her observations, while very centered in the world of the early 19^th century British upper classes, are completely hilarious for how timeless they are. My copy of Persuasion is currently lent out, but I can drop in a favorite excerpt from Emma: “One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by surprize (sic) –a second, slightly but correctly taken by Frank Churchill. Her pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and every thing usual followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and perfect knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he nothing of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted.” Besides the social commentary, her prose is brilliant: rhythmical, and somehow both acerbic and gentle. No one but Austen would write a line like that.

1. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. As in the likewise brilliant but often rambling War and Peace, Tolstoy succeeds in creating scenes and characters that are not only realistic but true. There are passages, dialogues, and even internal monologues that so perfectly capture what it is to be human that I am in awe of Tolstoy’s powers. How can a man possibly portray a young woman in her late teens with such astonishing accuracy? And then he depicts interactions between people in a manner so painfully convincing that, were it not that the sheer number of such events in his books makes it unlikely, the only explanation seems to be that he must have lived through many similar moments himself. A book enjoyable, moving, and wonderfully executed.

Things to do during a snow day . . . make that a snow week!

1. Read

2. Play online boggle

3. Catch up on lesson plans

4. Taxes

5. Clean out the refrigerator (only--rats!--they aren't picking up trash because there's no curb anymore!)

6. Play online boggle

7. Call your sister

8. Check your email obsessively

9. Play online boggle

10. Check netflix in the vain hopes that an excellent looking movie will be on the "watch instantly" feature

11. Try youtube for movies you have an inkling to watch that aren't on netflix "watch instantly"

12. Eat your neighbors' baked goods

13. Shovel. And then shovel again!

14. Play online boggle

15. Kitchen dance parties

16. Write the mundane details of your boring life on your blog

17. Play online boggle

Plot Structure and Teaching

There is a linguistics professor at Georgetown who specializes in the way that people unconsciously convert their lives into narratives. As we relate important events, over time what we tell begins to have a more and more story-like structure with the typical plot elements of rising action, climax, and resolution. We may even add in devices like foreshadowing for effect. It's not that we're lying, but we're trying to see the sense in our lives, and telling stories is the ways that humans construct pattern and meaning.

We're fixated on traditional plots, in fact. Maybe this is why every romantic comedy is staler and more clichéd than the last. It's become so bad that I only saw the poster for the latest Amy Adams movie and I could summarize the entire plot. And then when you do finally get a movie with a more innovative story, which maybe defies a convention or two, you get people complaining, "this movie has no plot!"

I do think our lives have meaning, or at least that they can be meaningful if we choose to live deliberately. But I also think that real life doesn't fit well into the traditional plot structure boxes, and maybe this is why so many movies on subjects I know and understand very well play a little false. Take "Stand and Deliver"--a great film, based on the very real and very inspirational teaching career of Jaime Escalante. Watching it again as a new teacher, I couldn't help but feel very discouraged: I had challenging students and background deficits to overcome, just as he did, but I never reached the triumphant turning point where the troubled student became inspired, cooperative, and suddenly blossomed into a star.

I had the same experience with "Freedom Writers." The opening scenes where she feels overwhelmed and discouraged are familiar; likewise I can absolutely relate to her determination and the way she is touched by her students’ daunting struggles. Again, though, I have never had a breakthrough with the toughest kid in the way the movie portrayed, and while I feel that students have learned well and been successful, I’ve never achieved anything approaching the soaring triumph of so many traditionally low-achieving students. What I have seen is the student who was failing come to a realization of his potential and convert F’s into C’s, or a child who claimed to hate reading realize that maybe reading could be okay if she could just find the right book.

Teaching, much like I imagine parenting, is powerful, but you cannot work all miracles. Reading up about “Stand and Deliver,” I learned that Jaime Escalante pointed out the discrepancies between the film and reality: the years that passed between beginning his teaching career and offering the advanced mathematics courses, and more notably the fact that students in remedial math could never have taken advanced calculus and been successful on the AP exam, particularly in the passage of one year. I am glad that the screenwriters and directors of these films chose to convey a positive message, but I can’t help thinking that the message could still be inspiring if it admitted the occasional failure, the outlier to the traditional plot. I recently saw “The Class”, a French film based on the memoirs of a middle school teacher working in a troubled, low-income school. There is a moment towards the beginning of the film where he has a bit of a breakthrough with one of his most reluctant students. You see the student beaming and can sense the teacher’s thrill. And then later, the same student has a violent outburst in class, at least partially caused by the teacher’s thoughtless and offensive comment regarding another student; the student is later expelled, and you hear no more about him. The moment is heartbreaking, depressing, but ultimately truthful.

I do believe there is purpose behind my work, and that keeps me motivated. But I also have a string of "stories" with no resolution--their names are Rosbin, Helton, Danny, Huma, Suju, Elber, Nelson. Perhaps a stronger teacher could have found a way to help these students succeed. Or perhaps their stories more accurately represent the truth of my profession—the kids whose unresolved failures fit so poorly into a traditional plot.

Movies From Childhood: Xanadu

Thanks to a series of youtube posts from my little sister on facebook, I've been on an '80's kick lately. Allow me to share one of my favorite childhood memories: "Xanadu."

The nine muses of Greek mythology make an appearance in Venice, California in order to inspire a lackluster artist and a washed up clarinetist to create an oeuvre only conceivable in the early '80's: a roller disco with a touch of '40's class. Yep, I've seen this again recently and it is utterly terrible: incoherent concept, laughable screenplay, and the worst acting imaginable. The costuming, art direction, and dancing, however, are pretty interesting (kind of like an extended music video), and I'm sure this is why my sister Jen and I loved this so much. The fact that we revered this movie so much goes a long way towards explaining the crazy dance-aholics we are!

Good Teacher

When I got back to school after winter break, the first words out of one of my student's mouths were, "Ay Miss! I don't remember nothing!" Of course I laughed--great teaching, right?

This reminded me of a recent conversation I had when I was recently talking to a dear friend who I taught with in Prague. She reminded me of one of my favorite Prague memories. Rod, one of our colleagues, had finished the year teaching his students: they had had 3 hours of English a day for five days a week, September -June. On the second to the last day of class, the students and staff went on their annual year-end picnic. One girl gave Rod a note that read: "Thank you, Rod. I learned many. See you yesterday!"

Classic!

Great job on being rich!

My school district's website is celebrating 36 schools in our system that were received the Governor's Award for Educational Excellence. There were four high schools listed out of my district's 25, and I immediately noticed that they looked like the "rich schools": Langley High School, Madison High School, McLean High School, Oakton High School. So I read the criteria for the Governor's Award, which the district website lists:

"Schools must meet all state and federal benchmarks for at least two consecutive years and achieve goals for elementary reading, enrollment in Algebra 1 by grade 8, enrollment in college-level courses, high school graduation, attainment of advanced diplomas, increased attainment of career and industry certifications, and participation in the Virginia Preschool Initiatives" (http://commweb.fcps.edu/newsreleases/newsrelease.cfm?newsid=1335, accessed 1/20).

I decided to test my theory to see if these were indeed the richest schools in Fairfax County. The same helpful fcps.edu website lists profiles for all schools that include demographics, so I looked at the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch. Here's what I found: of the 25 high schools in Fairfax County, the only schools that have less than 10% of the student body receiving free and reduced lunch are:

1. Langley High School (1.46%)

2. Thomas Jefferson High School (1.73%--I can only assume this school wasn't eligible, as this is Fairfax County's vaunted magnet school, listed for many years by U.S. News and World Report as the top public school in the nation. Trust me, if reaching benchmarks, taking college level classes, graduating, and obtaining advanced diplomas are your benchmarks, this would be out of the park.)

3. Madison High School (6.72%)

4. Woodson High School (7.22%)

5. McLean High School (7.79%)

6. Oakton High School (8.97%)

First thoughts? What happened to you, Woodson? No seriously, it just made me think a lot about what we choose to celebrate in education. What is there to praise here? These schools teach the population of students most likely to be from wealthy, stable families. It's not so much that they did something great as that they did not screw up their head start. Our society wants to believe that good schools, good teachers, make a huge impact on the educational outcomes of our students. I am a teacher, work hard, and believe in what I do, so I want to believe this, too. And those things certainly matter and can make a significant impact. The ugly truth, and the reason why I decided to look up the statistics on free and reduced lunch in the first place, is that income remains the largest predictor of all.

Most Enjoyed Movies of the Decade

I've been enjoying reading various lists commemorating the end of the year and the decade: best movies of the decade, worst political flubs, what's in, what's out, etc. So I thought I'd make a list of my own, but seeing as this blog exists for my own entertainment and I therefore do not need to feign the discipline or impartiality of professional writers, I thought I'd dispense with that whole idea of "best" and just call my list "most enjoyed." I'm sure there was better cinema out there than some of my choices, but I either didn't see it because I wasn't interested, or I did see it, recognized it as good stuff, but for whatever reason didn't enjoy it as much as the movies listed below.

10. "Mad Hot Ballroom." This film was certainly flawed and even emotionally manipulative at times. What earns this a place on my list is not brilliance of film-making, but the subject matter itself: public school kids, many disadvantaged, learning to love ballroom dancing. It was a combination of two of my passions, what can I say?

9. "Zoolander." There are parts of this movie that make me laugh harder with each viewing: the entire WHAM! music/video sequence with male models culminating in a gas station explosion, the very idea of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller as male models, the "MerMAN! MerMAN!" advertisement playing inopportunely in the mining town bar. . . . hilarious, for all its flaws.

8. "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" George Clooney plays a hair-obsessed redneck on the run in the depression era south in a remake of the Odyssey. What's not to love?

7. "Spirited Away." Too often, filmmakers seem to forget what a visual medium they are working with. Not so with the animated "Spirited Away, " which was utterly bizarre and original. Most certainly NOT predictable, and most definitely beautiful.

6. "The Incredibles." This one was sheer enjoyment from start to finish. I loved the mysterious island with its super high-tech gadgetry, the interaction with Bob and his family and boss, but mostly how fun and imaginative it all was. My favorite moment occurs when Dash, the little boy with super-human speed, discovers that he can actually run across the water as he is being pursued by dangerous bad guys trying to kill him. The surprised delight on his face is priceless.

Dash Running

5. "Dark Knight." So I confess that I didn't totally enjoy this the first time I watched it--I was so tense, so terrified of the unpredictable horrors . The story-telling was so effective that even knowing that it was only a movie, I almost couldn't bear the suspense. And then the moral message was beautifully complex: does no a no-compromises approach always result in an escalation? Do the ends justify the means? How do good people become corrupt? Riveting, beautifully written, refreshingly unpredictable. And then there's the added bonus that Maggie Gyllenhall brought intelligence and believability to a role that Katie Holmes botched so severely in the first one.

4. "Up." Like "The Incredibles", had moments that were pure delight: Dug's collar vocalizing his thoughts, including the random interjection of "squirrel!", Kevin's uncanny imitation of crotchety Karl, Russell's lovable clumsiness. But then there was also the way it so tastefully and subtly treated topics as serious as childlessness, death, and divorce, somehow managing to be both real and retain its lightness.

3. "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy. Super-long, virtually unwatchable in its stretched-out DVD format, nerdy to the extreme, but nevertheless a superhuman feat of film-making. Scene after scene I was gasping at the precision of detail not only in special effects and costuming, but even in atmosphere. Watching it made me think of the movie you'd dream of making as a ten-year old kid, before reality and cynicism had caught up with you: you'd want tens of thousands of disgustingly ugly villains engaging in elaborate battle sequences, mythical flying monsters, gigantic elephants, extended battle scenes of astounding athleticism, epic music, sweeping landscapes, and a beautiful cast. Somehow, Peter Jackson achieved the unimaginable and accomplished everything the ten year-old could dream.

2. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon": again, a visual feast! I saw this movie when it first reached the mainstream theater without really knowing what to expect, and I still remember the audience's collective gasp of disbelief the first time Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi skimmed across the roofs. Aside from the compelling story-telling and the ground-breaking martial-arts sequences, there were breathtaking shots of the Gobi desert and Beijing's Forbidden City, and I reveled in the way the two female characters defied every stereotype while maintaining their very potent femininity. One of my favorite movies from any decade.

1. "Whale Rider": I loved this movie. Besides being visually breath-taking, it managed to walk the tight-rope between extremes: heart-wrenching without being sentimental or manipulative, questioning of tribal traditions while still holding them in profound respect, and mystical and even supernatural without being cartoonish. The scene towards the end of the movie when Pai actually RIDES A WHALE was one of the most delightful and moving surprises a movie has given me.