arachnaphilia / iraqnaphobia

i wish i got to see blackalicious when they were in town tuesday, but i didn't really find out about it until the day of, and with kids, you have to plan.

all this talk of the anniversary of the invasion of iraq has me upset. the commentary has the feel of distance of a history textbook when it's still going on.

caught this from another teacher's blog:

Your results:

Spider-Man - 80%
Green Lantern - 65%
Hulk - 60%
Superman - 55%
Robin - 48%
Iron Man - 45%
Supergirl - 43%
The Flash - 40%
Batman - 40%
Wonder Woman - 38%
Catwoman - 30%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.



Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

i'm 100000

i get a new candle this year. a and i went to isshin for some beer and sushi goodness, and now i'm at work watching over 8th graders as they take a 2 hour entrance examination with a massive headache (me, maybe them). if only the exam required rubber gloves and no scantron...

a wants a tattoo of a ki-rin - that's cool and apropos.

i'm 'a positive'. i always thought i was type o b/c we did a blood-typing experiment in 7th grade in ms. deveaux's class. but no. i should question shit like that more often.

bell biv devoe
now you know
never trust a big butt and a smile

ohhh yes, i do know. see, bbd got all the wit and aphoristic charm; bobby got a bitchy wife and case of the 'roids.

grab the toilet paper 'cause my update is butt

oh yes, it's been nearly 3 months - a season by the measure of some and not entirely coincidental in that regard because i've just begun vocating again. except this time i have a new assignment and one that is b'dáss indeed (check the descriptors):

• selective high school <- this time in the sense that some applicants were NOT selected


• teaching the gambit (9-12)


• teaching intelligent folk


• teaching computer science, and related to previous point, even dabbling in theoretical cs from day1. we've talked about computational models of the brain, universal turing machines, cartesian dualism (which i think they'll try to model in me by cleaving me in two if i mention it one more time), zeno's paradox involving achilles and the tortoise, divisibility of time (à la Planck's constants and a discrete model of spacetime), geometrical spacetime, isotopes/decay/halflife as models of meatspace discrete processes, and (non)determinism all in the first week-and-a-half.

it's going to be on like a pot of neckbones.

my uncle used to love me but she died

that's uncle tupelo, honey.

i listened to both jay farrar/son volt and jeff tweedy/wilco, the progeny of said uncle, making them my cousins, this morning on the way to work. i remember the moment of mitosis, and being skeptical because they seemed to complement each other so well. jay braden (hey jay, where are you?), my personal harbinger of ut while we were at ut, had higher hopes. but really, i was disappointed after buying a.m. and trace. and now, i deeply appreciate the evolution of wilco and the complexity that lies on each iteration of their work. son volt, eeeeh.

but uncle tupelo had something different. it was an anachronism, not of style, but of mindset. "new country" (or "young country"?) sucks ass. anything played on country radio is fluff hewn from the politics of the nashville music scene. uncle tupelo had not really the style, but the sense of community, sorrow, and labor that premised country music.

i'm so sad i could drink all my 'shine.

tyrone's penis

as bill cosby said (and developed a tv show around), "kids say the darndest things!"

yesterday. kieran, now 4, kept talking about "tyrone's penis". "i can make so and so out of tyrone's penis." "i'm going to take tyrone's penis home with me!"

see, when supplied with a visual, it makes more sense. k's talking about styrofoam peanuts.

once, when we were walking around queens, kieran (at age 2) was screaming, "fuck! fuck! FUUUUUUUCK!"

no, he wasn't extremely angry at the world, but happy to be a part of it. he was referring to his favorite vehicle du jour, a firetruck. (firefuck?)

johnny depp says living with a child is like living with a little drunk. i move to amend that to read, "...a little drunk with tourette's."

555 - the eschaton penultimate

it's 5/5/5 - as in my number is 555-1212. when i mentioned this to my students today, they invariably referred to next year; when the day of the beast approaches:

a: "mr., next year it's gonna be 6/6/6!"
b: "yeah, so?"
a: "what are we gonna do‽"
b: "what are you talking about‽‽‽"
a: "it's 666 - the devil; we are all going to die!"
b: "i'm pretty certain that i'm not..."

yes, a is genuinely frightened. given the reading choices of my students, perhaps he's afraid he'll be left behind.

failed day

occasionally i have a day that just bitch-slaps me into a stupor. well, last friday, "field day", was such a day. oh would that the sun had not risen that day, or perhaps been eclipsed by some meteor on a collision course with mother earth. on with the show:

• we (the faculty and staff) were told that we could "wear jeans and sneakers for field day" instead of the usual tie and slacks sort of thing. yay! when i got to school, i was reprimanded for wearing jeans and chucks. "oh? you meant i should wear slacks and a tie until we actually go outside? and then i should change (i guess in my classroom) into a new set of clothes? maybe you shouldn't name an event '____ day', to avoid this type of confusion." btw, all but one of the faculty got the same reprimand...and he was born wearing a tie.


• we began the day with abbreviated classes to accommodate the large chunk of time required for field day. A typical class looked like:
  

  "hi class, remember to turn in your-"
  bell rings.
  "bye, class."



• my "team" (as described below) opted to sit in the cafeteria in silence rather than participate. so those who were left were at a distinct disadvantage. our soccer team consisted of 8 individuals, rather than 11. we had two girls who had to participate in every event, because the other girls were in the cafeteria.


• apparently, the "goth team" was now transformed into the "nerd team" through extensive pruning. i got tired of the jeers and gestures. one of my students on another team came up to me and said,
  

  "mr., you got stuck with the nerd team? i feel sorry for you..."
  "you should feel sorry for them, they got stuck with me."
  



• one of our members sabotaged any event he was in; needless to say, the team was not amused. i had to quell minor rumblings of mob violence.


• one teacher in charge of an event explained to me that though we had waited in line for 20+ minutes for an event, he didn't see us waiting, so we had to wait for two more teams. i don't know if i can convey this with the typed word - he talked to me like a student he was pissed at. i can't stand the way some teachers speak to students, and i definitely do not want to be spoken to in the same way. also, i'm a friggin' teacher. if i said we were waiting before another group, we were. i don't lie, for the sake of fuck! anyway, we skipped that event.


• i got stopped by an administrator and questioned why i was not with my students when i went to take a pee-break. "umm, i have to tinkle?"


• i got sunburned in a bad way. it hurt all weekend, and, as it was still red, when i returned to school, i got may, many questions about it. no surprise since it's virtually impossible for any of my students to get sunburned. presently, my face peels.

print out another sheet of labels

my students are very much into labels. some of them have attained, and others search for, personal identity. and, of course, a name must be attached to it. like dogs' obsessions with sniffing out pheromones, they must know the label repertoire of the person they are speaking with; it's necessary.

i am sponsoring a team for field day (yes, field day) at our school tomorrow. a group of students (mostly girls) asked me to sponsor them, and when i agreed, the other students began assaulting me with, "mr., why are you with the goth team?" it's so strange; labels are everything. color affiliations (which i used to think were indicative of gang-affiliation, but are really more like sports team advocacy, "rah! rah! go-o-o-o-o bloodz!"), music genre leanings, or less prevalently, color and nationality.

i never really got into this sort of thing much when i was their age (maybe it's because no group would have me), and now it's even more meaningless when they ask me what color i like or, my favorite, what kind of music i like. here's a sample conversation i had with one of my students today:

him: mr., what kind of music do you like?
me: what do you mean?
him: you know: rap, punk, country, ...
me: umm, i don't know. it depends on the individual artist(s).
him: but what kind? who do you like?
me: okay, well, this morning i listened to the sea and cake, club 8, and don caballero on the way to work. i like all of those.
him: what? i've never even heard of those...
me: maybe that's because you confine yourself to certain a genre; you should get out more. transcend your "labels".
him: haha, whatever. i'll find out what kind of music you like.

i'm all for generalizing. it's a powerful tool, but comes with the following price -- you lose information about individuals when you gain the ease of speaking in terms of classifying features. okay, so what? apples are apples. my students-in-question, and those who never shake the bonds of group identities, disagree with me on one point -- people are not people. maybe i should say a "person" is not representative of "people" the way an "apple" is representative of "apples". whereas i completely recognize the validity of statistical measures of human behavior, i reject the application of these measures to predicting individual behaviors, muchless knee-jerk qualitative observations. the impact of interaction between people is much stronger than that between apples and _______. the stakes for error chalked up to 'generalizing mistake' are too great.

if i convey one thing to my students this year, i wish it to be that. but this seems too difficult in the face of teenage peer group identification (kohlberg stage 3). even my field day team, who claim to embrace individuality, do so under the moniker 'goth' -- the label for those who wish to remain unlabeled.

japain

i wish i'd never seen this

taksing students

time for my 3rd annual taks-rant. this time i won't decry the usual: pitfalls of high stakes testing, wasted instruction time, bush-bashing, etc. instead, i'd like to provide an anecdote meant to illustrate the insanity caused by this miserable juggernaut of a test:

administrator 1: we've just met with the monitor and there were many problems. i can't believe that the teachers of ______ school would behave in this manner. we could get our names in the paper...blah blah.
teacher 1: what happened?
administrator 1 (rattles off some points of concern (some well-grounded, others not), then says): and you were told numerous times to cover up all instructional materials on your walls.
teacher 2: well, the monitor had objections to non-instructional material in my classroom, such as a banner stating "be all you can be".
administrator 2: cover it up. cover up anything and everything.
teacher 3: so, i suppose we should also cover up this board in the cafeteria since there are students testing in here (points to a bulletin board with various notices and an inspirational message "something to buzz about").
administrators 1&2: yes! we will take care of that.
(lots more ranting, tons more raving, gnashing of the teeth, grimacing, and gnawing on the furniture.)

next day

(sign still hangs on wall.)
teacher 4: wasn't it mentioned that the "something to buzz about" sign would be covered or removed?
administrator 1: what? aren't you being picky? (takes down sign with an arrogant smirk).

we know that educational administrators are the Embodiment of Ineptitude. but isn't this exaggerated when the fires of motivation are lit? my school has become a microcosm for the movie brazil this week.