My back is hurting. It always hurts when I’m thinking of important things. Things I am passionate about. Things that I need to speak out about. I need to get a spine.
More on that later.
Category: News
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What I am thankful for at the moment
Coffee in the morning.
Seeing my Betty cat come home after 5 days gone.
Keith.
My students, for sharing.
That moment in the classroom where learning clicks into a buzz of activity.
Once a month dinner club with the girls is tonight. The theme is Texan. Though I had the best of intentions I hear IGA makes a great pecan pie :)
My students, for caring.
Teachers who give hugs when needed.
52 Sketchbooks to look at today.
The warmth and crackle of the fire.
Yesterday the sun came out. And was still out past 4:30.
The crunch of the snow under my dogs’ paws.
Pedagogical days.
Merguez. -
What motivates us to do good?
This was what I posted on the blog for my Contemporary World Issues class today. I decided to share it here, too. Have you been thinking of essential questions to do with our reaction to the devastation in Haiti? Have you been talking about this with your students?
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I have been addicted to the Haiti earthquake relief efforts. I spent much of the weekend reading news updates, blog updates, facebook group statuses, and listening to radio shows about how the world is reacting to what is happening in Haiti.
Countries, organizations, and individuals around the world are reaching out, to help in any way. A question that comes to mind for me is…
What motivates us to do good in the face of tragedy?
Some of the documents that triggered this question for me were the following:
A family’s wait for news from Haiti – I heard about this story in an interview on CBC this morning. I asked myself what motivated the journalist to help? Does it matter?
Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Donate $1 Million to Doctors Without Borders – Angelina Jolie said, “It is incredibly horrible to see a catastrophe of this size hit a people who have been suffering from extreme poverty, violence and unrest for so many decades,” If that is the case, why did it have to take an earthquake to inspire the donation?
B.C. students in Haiti arrive in Canada – Are Canadians helping Canadians in Haiti first? Is that why the Canadian government is sending help?
Wyclef Jean and Yele Haiti – The website of Wyclef Jean’s Haiti Relief organization.
Here is a video of Wyclef Jean defending himself and his organization in the face of accusations of misconduct. I found it via this page at npr.
Here are some other resources:
Disaster in Haiti – CBC full coverage
Haiti Earthquake 2010 – New York Times coverage
Satellite images help focus Haiti earthquake relief
Haiti Earthquake – Day 5: Reporting with a camera
What do you think?
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For those who are interested, this is what I’ve asked my students to do. It was a last minute, put together kind of assignment. I’ve put our current work in Contemporary World Issues on hold so as to focus on the events unfolding around the world in response to the earthquake in Haiti.
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Start alone – Write a quick comment to our class blog with your gut reaction to the question, What motivates us to do good in the face of tragedy?
Branch out – Explore the question in your research groups. Start with these documents and then find your own. Your group will need to:
Document your resources – this means include links to any and all articles/images/video/audio etc… that you use in your research.
Your group needs to come up with a new question that springs from the research you do about this question. Sound complicated? Don’t worry you’ll figure it out :)
Present your research and your new question in an innovative way. Some ideas are:
webpage – shortText is easy to use though less flexible than something like a wiki, which is easier for all group members to access. PBWorks is free for educational use and super easy to get started.
Video – you can decide how to present your ideas via video. If you choose this option you must include your resource list separately.
If you have another idea, clear it with me but please note that I will not allow PowerPoint for these research projects. Time to think outside the PowerPoint box!
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The part that didn’t fail
click image for sourceSo, to most accounts, the dialogue I wrote about in my last post was a big fail. At times it could have been described as bedlam, mayhem (what strange little words).
It was the debrief that didn’t fail, the debrief with the student who, as I told him, held the class hostage.
I reflected back what happened. He didn’t remember it in the same way. I said, come on. When your peers are telling you, nay, yelling at you, to be quiet, to shut up already, it’s time to stop talking!
He answered that no one told him to shut up. He hadn’t heard his friends yell at him. He was that taken with his argument.
We talked about seeking to understand before being understood. And he told me why he couldn’t do that. (this is the part that I like). That he liked his idea. That he couldn’t listen to the other boy’s (or anyone else’s) because he knew that by listening it may change his mind and he did not want that to happen. He wanted his original idea to be recognized as the right one, he did not want to, he actively did not want to change his mind and did everything he could to make sure it did not happen.
A while ago I wrote a comment on Why I Almost Quit Twitter (Jose Vilson) about an incident with 2 boys that makes virtual realities seem all the more un-real with the rawness of its to the core reality. This boy was one of those two.
My plan for the future is to speak with him for a few minutes today while I have the rest of his class read the newspaper. I want to debrief the dialogue as a class. And I want to ask him to tell the class what he did and why. He’s already demonstrated a heaping pile of courage in relation to that previous incident. I bet he’ll do it again.
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I can not change what I tolerate
This morning I yelled. But big. At my dogs, at my cat, at my house, at my students.
I adopted a cat (Betty) a few weeks ago because of the mice. Not into mice. But my big dog (Toby) stalks her and my little dog (Jacob) alternates between ignoring her, stealing her toys, and barking his head off at her. Things have broken (teapots, my pepper plant, wine glasses…) as Toby chases her into the kitchen. This morning I set myself up in a spot in the sunshine to do some coursework and, after a few forgot my coffee, pen, post-its, battery is dead need the charger, trips back into the house I finally settled in to do my readings for this week’s class discussion. Then Toby darts into the house and I hear a crash. I’m guessing that Betty, thinking it was safe (dog-free) ventured out of her hiding spot on the top shelf of my kitchen cabinets and into the house. Toby must have heard this, at which point he chased her back up on top of the fridge, where her food bowl was, which she hit and it crashed onto my ceramic countertop, hitting the coffeemaker, and so I was left with coffee soaked cat food all over the place. Then of course Jacob came in to eat it so I yelled at him, Don’t even think it, but he did, and I threw a towel at him, so he jumped away right into the dog bowl full of water, spilling it everywhere, including on a vacuum cleaner which is impossible to dry with all of its parts and wires.
So that is when I yelled at the dogs, cat, house, my life. One of the things I yelled was, All I do is clean up what is left after you creeps (ok, the actual word was different but I prefer not to repeat it here) destroy my house and I do the same thing at work. Everything’s a mess! Everywhere!
The other day Jacob tore apart a down comforter in my bedroom. Take a moment. Imagine the scene.
Yesterday I only taught 2 periods and managed to get myself all worked up over the blatant disrespect I witnessed in some of my students. Students feeling they could just sit themselves down at any computer and use it – including teacher computers – without permission. Students taking things from my desk or from the top of a pile of my books on a table in the hallway. Not even just to look at or to borrow. Taking. Students leaving newspapers, plastic wrappers, napkins, broken pens, wherever they last were. Students having their own conversations while other students/teachers are addressing the group. Then continuing even after the class is stopped to get silence for the speakers. I have other students also complaining about this, that they can’t focus in class because of a chatty climate of disrespect. I walked into my classroom after lunch and just about lost it when a student was sitting at my desk, checking her email on my computer while behind her I saw written on my white board a student’s name with a few different phone numbers and the caption – Man whore, call after 12.
I am exhausted. I was supposed to go to a New Year’s dinner with my family last night but instead I stayed home. I went to bed at 7:30. I was so tired I could not imagine driving. I didn’t think it was safe.
What is tiring me out is that I am acting reactively. Responding reactively to these annoying day-to-day activities requires way more brain power, brain power that should be conserved for more important activities, than if I approach my life proactively. Instead of yelling at my students, my dogs, my house when something goes wrong, I need to prepare for things to go right. If I tolerate the disrespect, if I tolerate the canine craziness in my house then I certainly can’t change it.
So what can this look like?
At school. I’m starting over on Monday. As if it were day one. Since a third of our students are returning students I assumed that the climate of respect that we worked towards last year would continue. It is mainly those students however that are acting as if my classroom was their private gaming hall. I love that my students are comfortable with me but they are too comfortable. They need reminding and the new students need more structure than I provided them based on my initial assumptions. I need to set them up to succeed, not to get into trouble. At the same time it saves me from turning into a crazy teacher. By exploding once in a while and not changing systems, it shows that I tolerate the behaviour for a while, until I get angry, and then I tolerate it again until the next time. I can’t change my environment if I tolerate what is going on in it.
At home. I need to keep my house tidy. Some things broke because they were on the counter instead of away in a cupboard. But mainly I need to crate Jacob when I am not at home. I don’t like crating dogs, I prefer to teach them where to be and how to be. But that’s not working so much with Jacob. By allowing him to roam the house even after he eats the comforter, poops in the living room, destroys a kleenex box I am tolerating the destruction. And when I don’t want to be interupted I need to tie the dogs up so they can’t dash into the house all goofy-like to chase poor Betty.
In myself. I get frustrated at myself for being so tired and not having the time to do what I want, for having a messy house, for not being able to find that brown blazer I want to wear 5 minutes after I was supposed to leave the house in the morning… I’m hoping that some of the changes I make at home and school will help in this area as well. At least, I’ll start on those two areas and see.
You’re in control you know. It’s your life and it’s up to you to make it what you want it to be. Tolerate nothing. You are in control. This is your life, not a dress rehearsal. – Jim Donovan
Phew. Needed to get that out there.
Enjoy your day. And now that I have cleaned up the coffee flavoured Chicken Soup for the Kitten Lovers Soul and broken glass from my kitchen floor, wiped up the water from all over the dining room, and tied the dogs to trees in the yard, I am ready to get my reading done. Just in case you are interested, it’s on the reliability of oral histories for my course called first nations peoples.****note added just after posting….****
As I returned to my spot in the sun outside I noticed that, though I could hear Jacob yip, I couldn’t see him. He is now stuck under my deck. He managed to get under it and get his leash wound around something under there. I need to take apart part of the deck to rescue him. Looks like I won’t be getting to my reading this morning.