Day at the Zoo or Why I Am Stubborn

Today we spent the day at the zoo. Check out the pictures.

I knew it would be a lot of walking and that it would be hot, but I chose not to rent a wheelchair. I have now come to the conclusion that when I have to walk around a theme park or mall for any extended period of time, I will rent a chair to save my legs and energy for later.

See, it isn’t just the MS that is problematic for me; it’s my muscle disorder as well. (I would link to some explanation of what the disorder is, but it doesn’t really have a name. Suffice to say that exercise is problematic at best.) So it’s two for the price of one body.  Despite of all that, I don’t appear to have any disability (I don’t limp or walk with a cane). In the past (the one or two times that I have used a wheelchair) I’ve gotten strange looks that become stranger still when I stand up and walk away. I’ve even gotten yelled at by a complete stranger for using my legally-obtained handicapped parking decal because “I didn’t look handicapped.” These instances have lead to my reticence to rent a chair.

But today I learned to give up a little pride to save my energy.  It isn’t much, but it’s a start.

Ideas Floating Through the Jelly of My Brain

It’s a beautiful day, and I’m inside at the local big box bookstore waiting on my wife and daughter to call.  Beautiful is an understatement- gorgeous blue skies, cool breeze, trees roaring back to life.  This is the start of Spring Break.  My hope is to write at least one new post a day during break.  This may be far more ambitious than originally conceived, but I have to start somewhere.
Yesterday, a student asked me, “If I wasn’t teaching, what would I do?”  A bit non sequitur, but after a few moments hesitation I replied, “Writing.”  To be honest, this was only a half-truth.  I do want to write; I want to tell stories.  I want to share all the ideas floating through the jelly of my brain, like this one:

A young man knocks on the door and casually, with the familiarity of a nephew, asks the occupant if he’d like to buy some books to sponsor his college and if he buys a few items he has a greater chance of winning a $15,000 scholarship for college and won’t he just buy one because I even have children’s books and you can buy some books for your daughter c’mon man you can buy a few can’tcha? The man smiles thinly and says we’re about to have dinner, why don’t you come in and join us for a bit and we’ll take a closer look at your lists of items to sell. The boy, whose face is marked by late adolescent acne, hesitates for a the briefest of moments, but seeing the man has a daughter and smelling the scent of something cooking from the kitchen decides the sale just might be worth taking a few extra minutes and enters the small, suburban home much to his regret.

I do want to write, but I’m not sure that I can give up time in the classroom, time away from young people.  What I really should have said was, “I want to start a business like Dave Eggers started in New York and in Los Angeles.  I want to create a place where young people can learn about computers and writing and media production, where the young people can discover their voice and express that voice in a safe, comfortable environment, a place where what they produce isn’t graded on a rubric or dictated by state standards, where if they come late or stay later they won’t be punished or pushed out the door, where a young person can rediscover that learning can be and is fun.   An after school program that will support classroom learning in a way that is non-threatening, inviting, open.

I am tired of the rules of the classroom. Tired of the grading, the rubrics, the state mandates, the budget cuts, etc.  I want to have fun learning again.  I want my students to have fun too, not just see learning as something they have to do but rather something they want to do.

Thinking Aloud

Been doing some thinking lately about how this exponential growth in technology affects poor and rural students, and if, as 21st C. educators, we are supposed to be helping our students gain the skills needed to navigate this brave new world, how do we address the issues of access and equity in the classroom?

Does that make sense?

This stems from a conversation I had yesterday with my seniors about their passions. This particulary class is comprised of low-ability readers and writers who have lost interest in school and have been blinded by the light at the end of the tunnel called graduation. Most are students from working-class families who expect to be manual labors in the forseeable future.

I think of them (and my other students of a predominately rural and low/middle-class community) and wonder about their place in the tech world?

Skills are skills right? All students need to be able to read critically and write cohearently and effectively- that doesn’t change…right?

TED Talk Inspires Again

Dave Eggers delivers an inspiring speach about the power of one-one help for all students.

I’m always amazed by the TED talks.

What’s your favorite talk?

Statute of Limitations?

This rock’s been rolling around my head for a bit:

Is there a statute of limitations on writing about past blog posts written on other’s blogs?

Would writing about old posts be the equivallent of approaching an acquaintance after not seeing that person for a year and saying, “Remember when you said _____________? Well, I was thinking about it and realized ________________.”

Just curious.

Too Connected

Recently, I decided to unplug from Twitter and Facebook and Stumbleupon and only allow myself to check email and peak at my Bloglines reader.  I did this for two reasons: 1) My wife was reminding me how much time the computer was taking out of my days. This was a truth I didn’t want to admit and one I’d been struggling with.  Between teaching and the computer, I wasn’t devoting much time to the things that are important (i.e. wife and daughter) [Disclaimer: I wasn't shirking responsibilities or daddy-daughter time, really.] 2) I was feeling overloaded, too connected. Does this make sense?  These were my thoughts the morning I read Teach42’s post about joining a  PLN.

“I also know quite a few educators that are becoming more and more disillusioned with their jobs and are leaving teaching, and I can’t help but wonder how much of the blame falls on being part of an open network.”

There’s a simplicity in Teach42’s statement, but something in it resonated in me.

“Yeah, that’s me,” I whispered into my coffee cup.

Why is  it that the more I am connected, the more overloaded and disconnected I feel to what is happening before my eyes? I’ve learned more that I thought possible through Twitter and in reading others blogs, but more times than not, the information is coming so quickly that I have difficulty sifting for the kernels of nourishing corn.

And what does that say for my teaching practice? Am I uncomfortable with the challenges of teaching in the 21stC?  Am I too self-centered to realize that that the more connected I am to other teachers around the country and world, the better I can teach my students how to navigate this flat world?

I’m left with more questions than answers.

Namaste

Word(s) for the Year

My wife and her friend have this habit of selecting a “word for the year.” They refer to it as a touchstone, a reminder of what they want out of themselves for the year.

So, I got to thinking about my own word for the year. Since I feel as if I am in flux with my career and need a focus in my life, I settled on the word “direction.” And when I thought of “direction,” I also thought of the word “discovery.”  Don’t those ideas go together?

Teaching has been a wonderful career for the past 10 years. In truth, I can’t imagine doing anything else, and that’s what has me in a bit of a funk lately. Why can’t I do something else? What’s stopping me?

(random voice from the ether): So what would you want to be doing, Paul, instead of teaching?

Paul: (crickets heard chirpping off stage)

That’s why “direction” and “discovery” are my words of the year.

What is/are your word(s) for the new year?

Reflection for today, for life

A verse from the Tao Te Ching

verse 9

fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill
keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt
chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench
care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner

do your work, then step back
the only path to serenity

The original can be found here

Safety First

Jaguar

My life online has grown in the past year or so.  Writing a blog, twittering, using delicious, and socializing on facebook are now a regular part of my day-to-day life.  O.K., not so much the writing-a-blog thing, but I do read quite a few blogs- does that count?  Regardless, safety and identity theft are never far from my mind.

Tonight my wife and I were having a discussion about youtube.  I told her that I started an account on youtube in hopes of making and uploading a few videos from our upcoming family vacation.  I would also post to a flickr account so that our family and friends could access the pictures.  Her reaction was, safe to say, a resounding negative one.  She didn’t want any image of herself or our daughter online for all to see.  She has a different perspective of safety because of her job as a social worker.  I, on the other hand, want to use these new technologies both in my classroom and for my personal life. Where’s the balance?

So make a long story into a question: how do you balance the use of sites like flickr, youtube, facebook, etc. with personal online safety?  How do you handle the need for safety with the desire to share with others?

What’s the buzz? Tell me what’sa happenin’

Cicada

A year ago, I suppose I would’ve felt much link Mrs. Huff when she says, “For one thing, the cacophony just sounds scary to me, and for another, it sounds like a time leech.”

The cacophony is a bit scary at times.  So many ideas, links, tweets coming faster than I can refresh the page.  But it’s in that cacophony that I’ve come to find so many intriguing, inspiring, and intellecually challenging ideas that I’ve often wondered why my school district doesn’t give me inservice points (hours used for recertification in FL)  for reading twitter.

When I was trying to clean out my feeds, I came across this post by English teacher Dana Huff (who, has many phenomenal resources for teaching high school English) in which she asks the question I continually ask myself everytime I head over to twitter to see what other people are doing:  what’s the point?

For instance: this summer I had decided not to attend Alan November’s “Building Learning Communities” conference in Boston.  A friend and former co-worker was able to attend, and through her and the use of twitter and ustream, I was able to lurk and listen in on several empowering workshops. Her updates on twitter allowed me and others to find her video streams and participate.

So, here are a few questions to you:  What have you learned from your network on twitter that you might not have learned otherwise?  Have you been able to make connections with other educators you might not have made without twitter?  How has using twitter helped shape your own learning?