Top 5 Funniest Movie Moments

1) Will Farrell praying to the little baby Jesus in Talledega Nights
2) Trying to wake up Bill Murrey in What About Bob?
3) Large Marge in PeeWee's Big Adventure
4) James Franco's aborted ascension into heaven  in This is the End

Advice to a New Teacher

This was a very long e-mail I wrote in 2002 to a friend of a friend who was looking for some advice about starting out as a new teacher.

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Hi Avik,

Thanks for thinking of me for next year. I'm actually not going to be in Boston. I'm in Brazil right now, and am pretty positive I'll be staying here over this next school year. (But things are still up in the air.) 

That's great that you're going to be a teacher. Honestly, I haven't heard good things about the Teach for America program. Basically, because they put kids into the hardest schools with no support and then they burn out and don't become teachers. My first year I worked at an inner city school in Houston with no training, etc. And honestly it almost killed me. I didn't sleep for three months. Everything about the school was crazy. Somehow I did manage to stick it out, even though the kids and everyone else expected me to drop at any moment. (Because all the other teachers do.) And then I moved to Boston and came to a much better school.

As for advice, I could give tons and tons and tons.

Hmmmmm....

1) Get Wong's First Days of School. I'm not sure if that's the correct title or author. And I've never read it, but everyone says it's good.

2) Make sure you really, really like kids, and that you enjoy them. If you don't like kids and don't like being around them, DROP OUT NOW. I've actually seen people who are in classrooms who don't particularly enjoy kids. Why torture them and yourself?

3) Expect it to be really, really, really hard. Make friends with other teachers and help each other out as much as possible. Having supportive friends and mentors in the building makes all the difference in the world. They're the reason I continue to teach.

4) Managing your time is really, really important. Since you don't know what you're doing, it's going to be hard to be efficient. After four years, I've come up with systems for grading that save time. Ask every teacher about their systems for grading, for conducting class, notebooks, letting kids go to the bathroom, etc. See what people do. (I can tell you mine in another e-mail if you want.) Try not to make school your entire life. But your first year, it probably will be. Try to set up some boundaries with work. Don't bring it home every night, etc.

5) Classroom management will be the hardest thing for you as a first year. (And it's still hard for veterans.) Everyone has their own philosophy, and most of it is trial and error. Don't beat yourself up when things go badly, because they will. So here are my classroom management tips.

---In the classroom, what you say goes period. Don't negotiate. EVER. You'll see how they try to negotiate everything. If you come up with a bad assignment or whatever, learn from your mistake, and make a better assignment for the next time. But don't let them think they can manhandle you.

---Spend as much time as possible with them outside the classroom. Hang out in the halls, before school, after school. Do after school activities. Talk to them. Get to know them. But not in class, because then class would be a joke, and your class has to be serious, where work happens. But do everything possible to establish rapport with them and to know personal things about their life and remember them. KEEP A JOURNAL. And then when you see them in the halls, follow up on conversations.

---When a kid is absent, ask about it when they get back. To show that you noticed they were out. And if you're really, really good (which I never was) you'd call home after 3 days of no-show.

---When a kid is obnoxious and rude, talk to them one-on-one preferably side by side, not confrontational face to face and have a little conversation.
 It kind of goes something like this:

"Do you know why you're here?"

"No."

"Well, you got up in the middle of class and slapped Tommy on the back."

"some sort of garbled noise."

"So what are we going to do about this, because you can't get up and hit people, ever, and most especially during class."

"Well, he started it. ... ." (Most of the time, they shift blame and never take responsibility for anything.)

"Okay, but we're not talking about Tommy, and I didn't see it. I saw you hit him. So, because of that, you're going to have to XX( whatever punishment will work, that really depends on the school, the community, etc.) So that you don't have to do X again, what are you going to do next time Tommy calls you a fag."

Hopefully, you get the gist.

Those little conversations are way, way important. The kids do want to voice their opinions, but at the same time it needs to be made perfectly clear, they did something and there are consequences for their

actions.

---Avoid power struggles at all costs, like "Give me that magazine/cell phone/etc." Just walk by them, and tell them to put it away. (The cell phone thing also depends on the building policy, just stick to whatever it is. I decided last year to just give up on the cell phone thing--I don't want to see it, it better not go off in my class. But I treat it kind of like cursing, if it goes off, I give them a disapproving look, which means turn it off or watch it, and usually they apologize and feel bad and turn it off.) Of course, you will have to say "Okay, Johnny, move to this seat up in the front." And Johnny will say no. So then you repeat yourself, and see if they do it. And then if they totally refuse. You say "We'll deal with this later." And then a serious punishment needs to happen.

---Become best friends with the dean of discipline/assistant principal. These people will save you. Hopefully, if they're good. If they're no good, that makes your life harder. You should try to deal with as much stuff as possible in your class. Again, establishing rapport with the kids is key.

---I read somewhere that good teachers are highly compassionate and highly dominant. They communicate that they care about the kids and genuinely like the kids, and at the same time, it's clear that the teacher and not the kids are in charge of the classroom.

---You don't want them to be your friend. They should think Mr. Chatterjee is a serious teacher. We do work in that class. Do everything possible to ensure that your classroom is serious and work happens, and that you maintain high standards. It's so easy to give into the kids and to school and to all the messed up stuff around you. This sounds really easy, but you'll see what I'm talking about once you're in it. You communicate you care about the kids, when you do everything possible to make sure they have a good education, which means not giving in to their complaints. 

---They will always complain. Just say "Too bad, so sad." Don't take anything personally. They love saying, "This is boring." Again, too bad, so sad. They'll do whatever they can to get under your skin.

---Most of the time, like 95%, they're lying. Accept this fact and don't let them get out of stuff because of whatever story they make up. Sometimes they're grandma really did die. It's always a tough call. But if they're trying to get out of something, then most of the time they're lying. Don't look like a chump by believing everything. But then don't be an insensitive jerk if something really bad happened, because really bad stuff happens all the time. This is a balance, just like everything.

---Try to be as down as possible with everything. If I didn't speak Spanish, that would have been very, very bad because then I wouldn't have understood what they were saying in class. Pay attention to what they're saying. Don't be clueless. Start studying popular culture NOW. Listen to all the hard core hip hop stations. Know the songs, because they're going to be referring and alluding to them. Watch movies. Figure out all the ghetto lingo. Walk and drive around the neighborhood. Know about the McDonald's they go to after school. The BJ's they shop at. Etc. You want to pepper your lessons with stuff from their lives. "So when you go to Royal's, get X." Know streets, buildings, etc. The more you know about their world, the better. You'd be surprised how much this stuff helps in the classroom.

---Have eyes and ears in the back of your head. Just pay attention to everything. Be constantly vigilant. Just about every bad discipline problem could have been prevented. An adult's active presence is crucial. It's never really like the whole class just all started doing X. Someone started it. When you're vigilant, you can say "Tommy, you're going to start that again." And wow, you just saved yourself a ton of hassles.

---Kids love shows. They want to be entertained. School is boring. If they can upset the teacher, and make the teacher really mad and frustrated, so that they're cussing or even better crying, then that's fun. Do your best to show that they're not getting to you. Remain calm, and maintain an attitude like, I've seen this all before, and it'll pass. Because it will, especially if they don't get a reaction out of you.

6) Don't take anything personally. And try not to beat yourself up about things. |It's really easy to get into the "I suck" mentality. You will probably get really depressed, not just because you think your class will suck, but because of the harsh reality of life. The kids have really, really hard things they're dealing with, and it's really, really overwhelming. A big part of my depression the first year was coming to grips with the reality of most kids' situations. I had the opportunity to go to school in a stable environment with everything supporting me. It's really, really painful when you realize all the things your kids don't have, and how unfair everything in the world truly is.

7) Kids are fun. Don't ever lose your sense of humor. But try not to laugh when they're being obnoxious in class. (I always do, and that's probably really bad. But hey, it's how I cope.) Fall in love with the kids, and pray for them. I don't know if you're a religious person, but in tough situations, you'll realize that you can only do so much, God really needs to take care of the rest.

Feel free to e-mail me about anything. Veteran teachers have always saved me.

Just remember you're not alone. Every teacher has gone through this. . . And that you don't suck.

Good luck with everything,

Jane

Edward Said quote

A sense of citizenship and of critical awareness will allow you to see the whole of human history as a common enterprise, and not as a kind of Darwinian race for domination and supremacy.  Cultures are. . . in a state of continuing development and dynamic change. . . As citizens your obligation towards your community is also a commitment to the existence of other communities, and that is what the poet William Butler Yeats called the dialogue of self and soul in the dialogue taking place inside us as vigilant seekers after truth and justice, without which there can be no real education, no dialogue of cultures, no real understanding.

Edward W. Said, AUB Commencement Speech, June 2000

MainGate: American University of Beirut Quarterly Magazine, Fall 2006, Beirut, Lebanon, “From the AUB Archives: In War and Peace:” p. 39

A Desk Job

"Behind such a desk, a man resembles an invalid in an orthopaedic brace. He cannot stand up normally to shake hands, but must first disengage himself delicately from his chair and cautiously rise, attending more to the desk than the visitor, as it takes only a nudge for this rickety, spindly-legged contraption to collapse with a roar on to the parquet. The seriousness of a whole office disintegrates into sniggering when instead of an official enthroned behind a monumental sculptured desk it sees a crouching, cramped wretch imprisoned in a miniature cut-rate snare. I cannot suffer a desk!"

Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Soccer War, 1986, pp. 145-146

Black Application

Last year, my 9th grade students in the Bronx came up with an application to be black. Here it is:
(Thanks, Shakiaria, for giving me permission to post it.)
_____________________________________________________________

Black Application

Name:

Mothers Address:

(usually Black Kids Dont Leave they mama house till they get kicked out) [age mim 3O+]

BBM pin: [Blackberry Messsenger] (Note : one aspect of being black is owning a BLACKBERRY ! if not pls run to your nearest phone store & Negotiate with the clerk .. Black ppl ALWAYS negotiate EVEN IF THE ITEM IS on sale .

1.Have You ever Shoplift? if so list how many times

2.How Many Times have you been arrested?

3.How Many warrants do you Have?

4. How Many Tickets Have You Not paid?

5. When is Your Next Court date?

6. Do You Have A Cousin Named Shaquana?

7.How Many R. Kelly CD's Do you Own?

8. Do You Use the Word "N-----" after every sentence?

9. Do You Drink a 4O with every Meal?

1O. Your Dream as a A Lil Kid, was 2 be in the NBA? (Guys ONLY)

11. Do You own a Frying Pan? (every black person Love to fry)

12. How Many ppl do u owe money to?

13. How Many Times have you changed your phone number
in a month?

14. How Many Baby Mothers Do You Have?

15. Do You feel there are kids out there you might not know about?

16. Do you Have a BJ's Membership Card? if Not Please go register for one A.S.A.P !

Please Be aware That Your Application would Not Be submitted if Your answers do Not Meet the required criteria!

Bonquisha Latique Laray Jackson
Supervisor of "I want 2 Be Black"offices

___________________________________________
There were other things in previous drafts that didn't make it to this final version:

17. How much watermelon is in your fridge?
18. What's your favorite chicken spot?
19. List all your family members--through birth or marriage, all halfs, steps, etc. (There were 3 pages for this part.)

New York City irony

The organizer of the African American Day Parade in Harlem (The Largest Black Parade is America) is Abe Snyder.

When they mentioned it at the community meeting (where I was the only white person out of a group of eight black people), I was the only one to display shock and dismay. They told me, "You must be new to the neighborhood."

Letter to the Editor of Time Magazine 9/20/2010

In response to the cover article, "How to Fix Our Schools" by Amanda Ripley. (The on-line version is abridged from the print version.)
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It seems that Ripley has missed the major debate in education since No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001. The research is showing that the accountability measures that she is heralding as saving the future of American education are not actually closing the achievement gap. Neither does she address the criticism of the unions concerning charter schools. The reason they do so well is because they don’t serve special-education students and English Language Learners-- populations that keep test scores down. They also keep kids in school for longer hours.

If we fire all the “bad” teachers, where are we going to find this reserve army of “good” ones? If we shut down all the schools, the one place where most of these students find stability in their lives, where are they going to go? A different over-crowded institution that has to start everything from scratch?

A massacre is not a massacre by Ghassan Hage

A massacre is not a massacre
Ghassan Hage, The Electronic Intifada, 3 June 2010

Occupation is not occupation (Anne Paq/ActiveStills)

I don't write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems.

Long ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine;
I was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;
They also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing.
And when naive old me saw freedom fighters they patiently showed me that they were not freedom fighters, and that resistance was not resistance.
And when, stupidly, I noticed arrogance, oppression and humiliation they benevolently enlightened me so I can see that arrogance was not arrogance, oppression was not oppression, and humiliation was not humiliation.

I saw misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
But they told me that they were experts in misery, racism, inhumanity and concentration camps and I have to take their word for it: this was not misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
Over the years they've taught me so many things: invasion was not invasion, occupation was not occupation, colonialism was not colonialism and apartheid was not apartheid.

They opened my simple mind to even more complex truths that my poor brain could not on its own compute like: "having nuclear weapons" was not "having nuclear weapons," "not having weapons of mass destruction" was "having weapons of mass destruction."

And, democracy (in the Gaza Strip) was not democracy.
Having second class citizens (in Israel) was democracy.
So you'll excuse me if I am not surprised to learn today that there were more things that I thought were evident that are not: peace activists are not peace activists, piracy is not piracy, the massacre of unarmed people is not the massacre of unarmed people.

I have such a limited brain and my ignorance is unlimited.
And they're so fucking intelligent. Really.

Ghassan Hage is professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne.

Chinese School vs. Black School vs. White School

African-American father to five-year-old daughter: You see? That's why I send you to a Chinese school. Because those Chinese kids know how to do math. You gotta know how to do math if you want to make something of yourself. If I sent you to a black school, you'd just turn into a crackhead. If I sent you to a white school, you'd turn into an asshole. But those Chinese kids, man, they know how to do shit.

--4 Train

From the blog Overheard in New York

A Sin And A Shame: Soul Voyeurism* And Harlem “Gospel Tours” [Racialigious]

Some quotes from a great article by Fiqah, originally published at Possum Stew
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. . .when the tourists watched the choir and the other attendees with that peculiar mixture of fascination, fear and envy that White people in spaces of color often seem to have.
 . . .

Here, an excerpt from an account by a  White tourist from London**  who went to a Harlem church specifically for the music:

I meet Tim Rawlins at the Memorial Baptist church choir practise. He’s rare proof of the fact that white men can sing gospel. He says I’ve got to surrender to the music – feel it – and forget I’m English.

That statement, which positively reeks of cultural fetishizing, gave me a headache. Forget you’re “English” (read: White and proper) and “surrender” (is it attacking you?) to the wild, untamed Black Black Blackity Blackness of the music. Hallelujah, let the Othering begin.

. . .
The unexamined sense of entitlement that accompanies the idea of White people being welcome in any space is the factor that makes these tours possible. (I’m fully convinced that if 100 casually-dressed and snap-happy Black Americans rolled up into a Lutheran church on a Sunday in Haarlem,  the ensuing outrage at their gall would cause an international incident…but I digress.)

Woman at Point Zero

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1975.)

“I developed a love of books, for with every book I learned something new.  . . But I preferred books written about rulers.  I read about a ruler whose female servants and concubines were as numerous as his army, and about another whose only interests in life were wine, women, and whipping his slaves. A third cared little for women, but enjoyed wars, killing, and torturing men. Another of these rulers loved food, money and hoarding riches without end. Still another was possessed with such an admiration for himself and his greatness that for him no one else in the land existed. There was also a ruler so obsessed with plots and conspiracies that he spent all his time distorting the facts of history and trying to fool his people.

            I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.” (26-27)

“After I had spent three years in the company, I realized that as a prostitute I had been looked upon with more respect, and been valued more highly than all the female employees, myself included . . . I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind.  She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked a the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet.” (75-76)

“But in love I gave all: my capabilities, my efforts, my feelings, my deepest emotions. Like a saint, I gave everything I had without ever counting the cost. I wanted nothing, nothing at all, except perhaps one thing. To be saved through love from it all. To find myself again, to recover the self I had lost. To become a human being who was not looked upon with scorn, or despised, but respected, and cherished and made to feel whole.” (86)

“My virtue, like the virtue of all those who are poor, could never be considered a quality, or an asset, but rather looked upon as a kind of stupidity, or simple-mindedness, to be despised even more than depravity or vice.” (86)

“The time had come for me to shed the last grain of virtue, the last drop of sanctity in my blood. Now I was aware of the reality, of the truth. Now I knew what I wanted. Now there was no room for illusions. A successful prostitute was better than a misled saint. All women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.

Now I realized that the least deluded of all women was the prostitute. That marriage was the system built on the most cruel suffering for women.” (86-87)

I hope for nothing

I want for nothing

I fear nothing

I am free. (87)

“Now I had learnt that honour required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one’s honour. An infernal circle whirling round and round, dragging me up and down with it.” (91)

“. . .the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another. Because I was intelligent I preferred to be a free prostitute, rather than an enslaved wife. . . Everybody has a price, and every profession is paid a salary. The more respectable the profession, the higher the salary, and a person’s price goes up as he climbs the social ladder. One day, when I donated some money to a charitable association, the newspaper published pictures of me and sang my praises as the model of a citizen with a sense of civic responsibility. And so from then on, whenever I needed a dose of honour or fame, I had only to draw some money from the bank.” (91)

The Rescue Industry: Turning Prostitutes into Victims

On the opposing side are advocates of decriminalization, including unionized “sex workers” and other groups, who see a wide range of transactions taking place under the heading of prostitution. Captive trafficking victims—“modern-day slaves”—occupy one end of that spectrum. (In Calcutta, organized sex workers campaign against trafficking, identifying victims, especially minors, and turning them over to rehabilitation centers.) Some of these critics see a self-admiring narrative at work in the “rescue industry,” one that seeks to turn all prostitutes, but particularly migrants, into victims.

The Countertraffickers: Rescuing the victims of the global sex trade by William Finnegan in The New Yorker, May 5, 2008

Dance Quotes

Let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once!--Friedrich Nietzsche

To dance at all is to confront oneself. It is the art of honesty. . .It is impossible to dance out of the side of your mouth. You tell the truth when you dance. If you lie, you hurt yourself. --Shirley Maclaine

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order. ~Samuel Beckett

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? ~Friedrich Nietzsche

It is of course possible to dance a prayer. ~Glade Byron Addams

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Stifling an urge to dance is bad for your health - it rusts your spirit and your hips. ~Adabella Radici

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Through dancing many maidens have been unmaidened, whereby I may say it is the storehouse and nursery of bastardy. ~John Northbrooke
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. ~William James

Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery. ~Martha Graham

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. ~Vicki Baum

On Joy and Sorrow

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
                                                                                   --Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

With much wisdom comes much suffering;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
                               --Ecclesiastes 1:18

People's Reactions

Written on 04/06/2004, after signing a contract to teach for two years at the American International School of Gaza. (The building was reduced to rubble in January 2009, during Israel's offense/attack/demolition of the Gaza Strip.)

There’s nothing more priceless than people’s reactions:

“Does your mother know you’re going?”

“Are you f--- out of your mind?”

"Have you seen Not Without My Daughter?" ask's my dad's cousin.

“You’re going to give this family a heart attack,” says my aunt.

“You’re so selfish,” chimes in my sister.

The blank stares.

The clueless, "Oh that’s cool," because they don’t know what Gaza is. After a “in Israel…Palestine” then maybe it kind of registers, maybe.

“Anywhere but there,” says my dad. “Go to Cairo, go to Amman, go to Damascas, but don’t go there.” This is the same dad who dropped me off in a barrio of Caracas and refused to come in with me once he saw the place. I was upset and disappointed; he was going to get to meet church-goers I had been spending so much time with. When I got home that night, I asked him why he didn’t come in with me.

“Are you crazy? I would have come out and there wouldn’t have been a car there. And then if I called the police, they would have said it was my fault for having left it there.”

Years later, I related this to a friend—“So he leaves his daughter there, but he won’t leave his car there.”

So then I relay that to my dad.

His reply: “Mi hija es inteligente; ella se puede defender. El carro es bruto; no se puede defender.”

But Gaza completely freaks him out. He says of course they’ll be my best friends, 99% of them. "It’s just that 1% you have to be wary of."

“Well, isn’t it like that anywhere?”

“No. Anywhere else it’s like 1/10,000 but in Gaza it’s 1/100.”

But then they’re the people who know me, who really think it’s the coolest thing ever. Yes, their face registers concern, but they know this is right for me. Because they know me. I thought Texas would be awful, but surprisingly enough, when I went to my old high school yesterday, my former teachers and parents of my friends sincerely looked positive and happy for me.

Texas is so full of surprises.

Mechanical slavery instead of human slavery

"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends."

--Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1895)

Even if machines can do factory work, or even clean the house or cook dinner, will they ever be able to take care of children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled?

"They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor excommunicated, for they have no souls."

--Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), Case of Sutton's Hospital

But they should be. An international body has to regulate international corporations.

The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kingcaid

"My teacher was a woman who had been trained by Methodist missionaries; she was of the African people, that I could see, and she found in this a source of humiliation and self-loathing, and she wore despair like an article of clothing, like a mantle, or a staff on which she leaned constantly, a birthright which she would pass on to us" (16).

"This education I was receiving had never offered me the satisfaction I was told it would; it only filled me with question that were not answered, it only filled me with anger.  I could not like what it would lead to: a humiliation so permanent that it would replace your own skin. And your own name, whatever it might be, eventually was not the gateway to who you really were, and you could not ever say to yourself, "My name is Xuela Claudette Desvarieux." This was my mother's name, but I cannot say it was her real name, for in a life like hers, as in mine, what is a real name?

My own name is her name, Xuela Claudette, and in the place of the Desvarieux is Richardson, which is my father's name; but who are these people Claudette, Desvarieux, and Richardson? To look into it, to look at it, could only fill you with despair; the humiliation could only make you intoxicated with self-hatred. For the name of any one person is at once her history recapitulated and abbreviated, and on declaring it, that person holds herself high or low, and the person hearing it holds the declarer high or low."

Sign in Harlem

Top 5 Music Albums

1. Strangeways, Here we Come by The Smiths
2. Here Comes the Sun by Nina Simone
3. Motown Gospel: In Loving Memory
4. 18 Greatest by Mahalia Jackson
5. God's Property by Kirk Franklin's Nu Nation

Man About to Jump From Tall Building

October 14, 2009

Camping Out to See Shakespeare in the Park

The Man Selling High-Heeled Shoes

This is on Broadway in SoHo.

Cool Bike

Top 5 Karaoke Songs

1. Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin
2. Don't Cry by Guns N' Roses
3. Sober by Pink
4. Take a Look at Me Now by Marriah Carey
5. Estoy Aqui by Shakira

Top 5 Poems

1. i thank You God for most this amazing by e.e. cummings 

2. The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe 

3. Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God by John Donne 

4. Theme for English B by Langston Hughes 

5. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

Top 5 Books

1. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
2. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
3. Sula by Toni Morrison
4. Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie
5. The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Give Peace a Chance?: Encounter Point (Documentary Review)

Netflix summary of Encounter Point:

As violence continues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some of those touched by the bloodshed become advocates for peace. This documentary introduces citizens on both sides for whom an end to conflict has become a personal crusade. Family members of slain Palestinians and Israelis, both military and civilian, share their stories and how they've turned their grief into a force for change in the region.

Ahh, another balanced movie about a very balanced conflict. Anything that claims to be balanced in this conflict is on the side of the Jews. The reality is a huge power disparity, where Jews do not suffer as much as Arabs. The director and production company are Israeli.

This is a feel-good movie. I should feel good because I see Jews and Arabs in Israel coming together to talk about their bereavement, become friends, and go to peace rallies together. They go on the radio and say they want peace. But nowhere in the film does a Jewish person say, "The only way to bring peace is through justice. The occupation is unjust and needs to end." One Jewish man publishes his slain daughter's book of poetry about peace. Another Jewish woman goes to a settlement in Gaza and tells the people they are using the same arguments that white people used in apartheid South Africa, but she comes short of calling Israel an apartheid state.

All the same stereotypes of Palestinians are reinforced. The Jews come off calm, collected, and rational. The Palestinians come off as violent and irrational. At a Jewish funeral, everyone is calm and quiet. At the Palestinian funeral, they take to the streets. The Jewish mother is calm when she talks to the reporters. The Palestinian father yells in the microphone at his daughter's funeral. The Palestinian hero of the film, Ali, who lost his brother and his leg, says that he does not have to forgive or love to be peaceful. The Jew speaks of forgiveness. When the Palestinian suggest that Jews and Palestinians should live in peace, he gets laughed at by his friends. Palestinians, however, repeat that they don't want peace, they want resistance. They, themselves, admit to causing violence. When a peace NGO schedules an event in Occupied Territory, the Jewish woman remains calm in resolving the practical difficulties, while the Arab gives up, hangs up on her, and refuses to pick up the phone. The Jewish woman fights on, despite his belligerent immaturity, and because of her perseverance, the meeting happens. He's just smoking cigarettes and a hooka pipe and chatting with his buddies. 

What's the problem with reinforcing stereotypes? As long as the world can empathize with one group (Jews) and fear the other (Arabs), the power disparity will stay put.  As long as the oppressed is seen as the oppressor (Arabs), nothing changes. No justice, no peace.
 
Some might claim this movie is pro-Palestinian. Maybe because it clearly shows that Palestinians have every right to be angry and violent. The movie clearly displays all the injustices daily forced upon them. But this still reinforces the stereotype that all Palestinians are violent. Wouldn't you be if you lived in those conditions?

Peace is a band-aid. It is a coping mechanism for grieving families. Never do they get to the point of asking what is causing the problems. They don't get to the point where they say I have to change my fundamental assumptions and my comforts. What does the mantra "Stop the killing" supposed to mean? Isn't the Jew peace advocate just blaming angry Palestinians when she says that?

The character who makes the biggest strides is Shlomo. At the beginning, he is the stereotypical settler. He believes that the Jews should be occupying Palestine, that it is their land. And he believes that now. But he engages in a process. His thinking changes. He comes far. That process started when he met a left-leaning religious Jewish man, who helped him see past the brainwashing of the settlement where he grew up. He goes to checkpoints and asks what is happening. He decides to meet with a Palestinian (Ali) for the first time in his life. He's asking real questions.

No one else in the film displays a critical, flexible mind. In this conflict, like in all conflicts, people need the imaginative capacity to place themselves in other people's shoes. Developing empathy requires a flexible mind that comes from having a critical stance that can evaluate sources and analyze arguments. It's a process that goes against our nature and our socialization. Shlomo's character isn't feel-good. He's disconcerting (because he is an Israeli settler). But he proves to be the real hero. Instead of paying lip service to peace, he's engaging in expanding his mind and questioning all his beliefs. In this film, he is the only one who really gives peace a chance.

Building a Better Teacher

Elizabeth Green's New York Times article, "Building a Better Teacher" has been receiving a lot of press as of late. It's true. I was never trained to be a teacher. I have a master's degree in education and jumped all the hoops to get my licensure, and I was absolutely never trained in the practical everyday-ness of being a teacher. When I taught in private schools, I struggled somewhat, but it was never debilitating. But my lack of skills has made me completely incompetent to do my job now. 

What tips did I pick up from the article:

1. Stand still when giving directions. Don't walk around or be doing anything else at the same time.
2. Be very specific with directions and model.
3. Point out and thank the kids who are doing that behavior.
4. Correction needs to come with a smile and a reason. "Sweetie, we don't do that because it distracts our classmates."
5. Ask the question, and then call a random student.
6. Give students nicknames.
7. Play learning games.
8. Establish norms and routines for classroom discourse. 

You have to not only know the subject matter intimately, but you have to be able to think the way the students think. You have to think of at least 30 ways another brain might be interacting with this information. The teachers that are the most successful at that get higher test scores. They've made an M.K.T. (Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching) test that can test this ability for math teachers.

Freedom Writers (Movie Review)

What is completely unrealistic about this movie:

1) The way she dresses. No urban public school teacher would wear heels and suits and pearls.

2) How completely clueless she is about the kids and the job on the first day of school.

3) On the first day of school, it looks as if she's never been inside her classroom.

4) Her unwavering energy and optimism. Never once in the whole movie does she feel defeated or depressed or wanting to throw in the towel.

5)Taking on two other jobs at night and on the weekends. That is completely impossible. This job sucks the life out of you!

6) It doesn't show her other 3 classes, with her other 120 students.

The following are sucky, but could possibly be true. Shows how much times have changed in 10 years.

1) Chalk boards, and not a single computer in the classroom.

2) $27,000 seems too low, even in 1997.

3) She doesn't stand at the door greeting the students on the first day of school, and she calls off their names in a roll call at the beginning of class.

4) The department head who didn't want her to use the books in the storage room.

How this movie positively influenced me. It reminded me that to succeed in the classroom, urban public school teachers must:

1) Get to know the students. Playing a get-to-know-you game, like the Line. Reading their journals. Hanging out in their neighborhoods.

2) Show they care by making personal sacrifices, like buying them stuff, including food and treats and prizes and rewards.

3) Spend time with them outside of class. After school, at lunch, weekends. FIELD TRIPS!!!!!

4) Tailor the curriculum to their lives. Screw the tests!!!!

I knew all these things. But it's always good to be reminded.

How I Hate Football

Football is brutish. This is from someone who trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

I went to high school in Texas. Every Monday, there would be at least two guys with a new set of crutches. My debate partner got slammed. When he got out of the hospital, he had metal up his right leg and was banned from ever playing football again. My cousin still deals with debilitating back pain.

But when I was in high school, I did go to Friday night football games. Not that I was into football. The first couple times I went, it was to see my older cousins playing. Then, my classmates. Not really my friends. Because my friends were all nerds and didn't play football. I had friends in the band. Actually, my friends wouldn't go to football games. I was kind of strange in that sense. Having grown up in the same neighborhood my entire life, I actually did know some people out of my high school nerd clique, like friends from Girl Scouts in elementary school or my junior high volleyball and track mates. So I would find someone to hang with. And there was something fun about being outside in the fall air. I liked that it was multi-generational: parents, adults. I would make the rounds, shmoozing it up with people of all ages and cliques.

But I hated football. It was an evil--that should be banned. When one guy was down and the trainers ran out to the field, my friend who had just moved from a small town in East Texas got pissed, "Those cheerleaders should be down on their knees praying." We were slightly more progressive (in terms of separating church and state) in Katy.

It was always the same routine. I'd stand next to someone, sometimes a boy I liked, and I would ask how the game works, kind of playing dumb, but not really "playing" because I always had the same conversation, and I never really paid attention enough to learn how the game worked. Something about 4 downs.

I learned a little better when I played Powder Puff my junior year. It was a source of amusement in Texas to watch girls play football. Every year, the Juniors played the Seniors. The football players of our respective classes coached us. Practices started about a month before the game. These same guys would dress as cheerleaders for the game, and come up with funny cheers. It was all gender-bender.

Yeah, I was offended as a woman, that we were the "butt" of the joke. But I wasn't as offended as a real football game. There were no major injuries during our games. And I personally didn't feel like I was risking injury. I was a running back. I never really had to learn the game either, just run and try to catch the ball and take it to the endzone without getting tackled or throw it to a team mate before getting tackled. That's all I needed to know.

So the question comes down to: Is brutality a fundamental aspect of the game? Or could protections, regulations, and some rule changing make it more . . . responsible?"

According to a recent article in The New Yorker "Offensive Play" by Malcolm Gladwell, it is inherent to the game. Players experience the equivalent of multiple head-on auto collisions every practice. They experience depression and loss of motor control as a result of their head injuries later in their lives.

"In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called an emergency summit at the White House, alarmed, as the historian John Sayle Watterson writes, “that the brutality of the prize ring had invaded college football and might end up destroying it.” Columbia University dropped the sport entirely. A professor at the University of Chicago called it a “boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport.” In December of 1905, the presidents of twelve prominent colleges met in New York and came within one vote of abolishing the game. But the main objection at the time was to a style of play—densely and dangerously packed offensive strategies—that, it turns out, could be largely corrected with rule changes, like the legalization of the forward pass and the doubling of the first-down distance from five yards to ten. Today, when we consider subtler and more insidious forms of injury, it’s far from clear whether the problem is the style of play or the play itself."

Should there be legislation? Regulation? Should the government step in? Most people and any libertarian would claim that every citizen should be able to spend her money and risk her life how she pleases, as long as she doesn't harm anyone else. The free market should be able to do its thing. But the free market must be regulated--to stop rich people from stealing from poor people--either through exploitation, i.e. not paying a living wage, or practicing fraud, i.e. Wall Street.

Is stealing the health and life from grown men who choose to play football a form of exploitation or fraud? That is the question.

The Lesbian Salsa Bar

I was forced to go to the edge of my comfort zone recently.

I like to pride myself on the fact that I can enter most situations, especially involving people of different cultures, skin colors, and socio-economic class backgrounds, and feel completely at ease. Working in the hood where rumors of wild teenagers running loose who could potentially slash my face to get initiated into their gang doesn't bother me. I don't fear "the other."

And yet, I was standing in the lesbian salsa bar unsure of myself. The music was good. I wanted to dance, but I was scared.  .  .What if one of the women saw me and asked me to dance? Then I would be false advertising. So I decided not to dance. In fact, I moved closer to the male friend who brought me there.

And so what happened?  . . . Nothing. A lady came up to my blond friend and kept trying to get her to dance. And she was awful (none of the native rhythm that flows naturally from my Latina blood. . . !)

Ultimamente, no one came up to me. At the beginning, I was so concerned of a misunderstanding and maybe offending someone, and in the end it was just an experience of rejection. No Latina lesbians wanted to dance with me.

I later asked one of the women the protocol. Here it is: If someone asks you to dance, then if you feel like it, dance with her. You don't have to tell her you're straight. I mean, why are you assuming she wants anything with you anyways? And then if later, she starts to push it a little, then you can tell her you're straight. No problem.

As usual, I was making a big deal out of nothing.

Lentils

1)Dump a package of lentils (any color or type) into a big pot. Sort through them looking for rocks.  Don't be lazy! You should find at least one.

2) Fill the pot with water covering the lentils, mix it with your hand, and then rinse out the water. Repeat twice.

3) Fill the pot with water. Put it on the stove and set the burner on high.

4) Cut up a whole onion, some garlic, carrots, and celery. Chop them big or small, according to your preference. They will be very soft and mushy at the end.

5) Let the lentils come to a boil. Keep sloughing off the nasty foam that forms on the top.

6) When it stops making that foam, throw in the chopped vegetables.

7) After about 20 minutes, the lentils should be soft. Add white vinegar and soy sauce. Add water to keep them watery, or stop adding water if you don't want it soupy. Make it as liquidy as you like.

8) Add a lot of cumin, a good amount of curry powder, some chili powder, some black pepper, and some cinnamon.  Add spicy peppers and chili. Again, the amounts are to your taste. Raisins are great, as well as dried cranberries.

9) Try it to see if the salt is right, if not, add vinegar, soy sauce, or salt.

Apocalypto (Movie Review)

Some Social Studies teacher is going to show Apocalypto when she discusses the Aztec civilization. (Or maybe the Mayan. . . Mel Gibson doesn't really clarify in the movie.) It will be that scene on top of the pyramid (probably in Tenochtitlan, close to the present-day capital of Mexico City) that shows the priests sacrificing humans to appease their gods.

As we all know, the Aztecs participated in religious rituals of human sacrifice. Some of us also know that it was a great civilization that made many advances in science and astronomy. But you would never get that from the movie. The characters in this movie (the Mayan/Aztecs) are violent and savage. They paint and tattoo and pierce themselves in freakish ways, and blood spurts out of their head. Nowhere in this movie would Mexicans feel proud of their heritage.

The movie opens with the quote: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."--W. Durant

So the natives are savages, and European aren't to be blamed for being marauding, imperialist thieves and murderers. The textbooks also support this position. They discuss how the Aztecs were an imperialistic power. When the Spanish arrived, it was easy for them to ally with local groups who had long held grievances towards their Aztec conquerors. Therefore, according to textbooks, W. Durant, and Mel Gibson, Europeans should be taken off the hook.

So should the teacher be fired?

I might actually show it in my class, to show how racist American cinema is and how media maintains power structures in society through reinforcing racial stereotypes. As a media literacy lesson, I might show this piece of trash.