we never had to take any of it seriously, did we?

anyone who has met me even briefly would probably know that if i were asked to label myself politically, i would say that i’m a libertarian. i really have tried to challenge my beliefs, but i still cannot wrap my mind around the rationale of the differing points of view. call it closed-minded or something, but i simply don’t get it.

why is it radical to think that i keep the money that i earn? that i respect the rights and individual liberties of others? i suppose there’s an easier way to put it: why do people feel they have the right to get involved with others’ lives? democrats take your money, republicans tell you how to live your life. i find both options unacceptable.

considering who reads this blog, i don’t really have to argue against the republican point of view. i would say that most of you think that republicans are lucifer incarnate. you picture the racist redneck hillbilly gun-toting southern-accented nascar fan with very few teeth who wants to build a border fence to “keep them mexicans out” and whose vocabulary consists mostly of “get ‘er done!” and “well shewwwt”. right? am i close? you don’t think of the middle-class family who is sick of having half of their income taken away by their government under the guise of “redistribution of wealth”. it’s the middle class who’s getting screwed.

you need the data? then read this wall street journal article and give me a rebuttal. here’s one of its arguments: “We should also keep in mind that the economic well-being of the country is not measured by how much taxes the government can collect, or even the size of the deficit. Rather, it is measured by the country’s productive capacity…to put it directly, Sen. Obama’s plan would reduce an entrepreneur’s after-tax profits by $70,000 – $56,000 in lost profits and $14,000 more in taxes – just to produce a net revenue gain to the government of $14,000. It is shocking to think that we have a presidential candidate who would make the private sector $5 poorer in order to make the government $1 richer.” do people not understand that whether it’s the government’s money or my money, it’s still the economy? if my earnings are going to be misspent, i’d like them to be misspent by me and not my government (considering, you know, it is MY MONEY to begin with).

we’re in the middle of a three trillion dollar war. we’re spending half a billion dollars a day in iraq. you know, i bet i could use some of that money to buy textbooks for my students.

one of my favorite stories is an exchange between henry david thoreau and ralph waldo emerson. thoreau was imprisoned for refusing to pay a poll tax in 1846 because he didn’t want to support the war with mexico (you know, the one where we beat them up and took their land). emerson visited thoreau in prison and said, “henry, what are you doing in there?” thoreau replied, “waldo, the real question is, what are you doing out there?”

later reflecting in his cell, thoreau wrote, “if there were a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was still a more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as i was.”

what’s it going to take to break through the wall? i guess a better question would be: how was the wall built in the first place?

so wes introduced me to this website called www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com. hilarious. i laughed out loud at pretty much every quote.

anyway, i shared it with andrew and he said that i should create a rival site where i would share his quotes. i think (hope?) he was joking. i mean, he is funny sometimes, but it certainly does not warrant an entire site. maybe just a blog post.

apt analogy

a- hilariously, the bengals released another wide receiver today.

m- um, what.

a- i’m trying to think of a good analogy for that…like an aids patient donating white blood cells?

he does teach math

while walking on the beach, i pick up a sand dollar that’s been broken in half and hand it to him.

a- [no hesitation] hey, 50 cents!

he still got an A-

in college, he took an art history class his senior year. he thought it was boring. to spice up one of his papers, he decided to analyze a painting using as many p-words in one sentence as possible.

a- Moroni’s “Two Donors,” then, can be seen as a classic example of Renaissance portraiture in that it is focused on displaying the individual characteristics of the almost precociously priestly - but perhaps piously - praying patrons pointing towards a perilously and precariously perched Madonna, who is positively passive while presciently pondering and powwowing over her precious package, the Christ child.

sensitive

i took my students on a 5-day field trip from houston to dc, which included about 50 hours on a bus. by the end of the trip, my ankles had turned into cankles because of all of the walking and non-horizontal sleeping. i told him about it and received these texts the next morning:

text 1: did the swelling go down in your ankles?

text 2: whoops, sorry, i meant to send that to my grandma.

the mating mind

he’s currently on an evolutionary psychology kick, meaning that he’s been reading a lot about sexual selection.

a- i’m at a very sexy chapter in this book. the chapter’s called “bodies of evidence” and the section headers include “the evolution of the penis,” “size mattered,” “female choice continued after copulation began,” “breasts,” and “buttocks and waists.”

m- saucy.

a- yeah, it’s like porn for the intelligentsia.

schwa

gchatting:

a- yeah it’s versitile.

m- that’s an interesting spelling.

a- stupid vowel sounds. versatile.

m- don’t you teach that? vowel sounds?

a- fuck the schwa.

chick flick

a-is that the romantic comedy where the two main characters are ill fit for love, then through some mishap they come together and it’s wonderful, but some misunderstanding or accident happens that tears them apart, but then they work it out in the end?

he works out a lot

a- tomorrow i have to teach a lesson on muscles for health day. i think i’ll just take my shirt off.

michael scott, anyone?

at lunch with his 10-year-old students:

a- that’s a big burrito.

student- ehh, i’ve seen bigger.

a- that’s what she said.

vonnegut

a- he’s on the list of men i’d sleep with

m- and he’s dead!

a- all the more reason. (pause) are necrophilia jokes in bad taste?

accurate?

a- you’re a power-hungry bitch.

cha-ching

m- what if my first name was “cash”?

a- you’d be money.

actually, maybe i could develop a rival website. it looks like i have more than enough material.

this blog has kind of turned into a forum of postings that i like. it takes a lot less time to find things that i enjoy as opposed to writing about things that i enjoy. also, i’m a lot less angsty now that school’s over, so i don’t need this form of therapy as much.

regardless, read this article. its themes are obvious and somewhat trite, but the manner in which she says them are uniquely j.k.

http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/k-12/2008/04/11/two-teach-for-america-recruits-share-their-stories.html

incredibly accurate:

After two years at Locke, he thought, he was going to be scarred. He was scarred already. He knew he would never forget the drunks on street corners he saw at 6 a.m. on the way to work, or tough little José and troubled Cale. He would always remember the kid who sat there shivering and licking his lips throughout class—Is he on drugs or just hungry? And the gangbangers and the kids who looked like they’d been beaten. And the boy he often drove home from school because he lived so far away. He felt, too, for the kids who came to class every day to “get their learning on” against all odds. Yes, Teach for America was life changing.

He might not end up being an educator—at this point, there was no way—but down the line, years from now, he knew he would care about the achievement gap when 95 percent of the world did not.

Hrag’s old college buddies noticed the changes in him. He set aside several hours every Saturday morning for E-mails and phone calls, desperately wanting to stay connected. They all took note of his newfound maturity—and the fact that he had stopped cracking all those corny jokes for which he was famous. They also said they respected what he was doing and admired him. That felt good. The glory was there—at 21, Hrag was a teacher in a position of power. By contrast, his friends’ lives seemed mundane—they sat at desks, crunched numbers, drove home, watched TV, and went to sleep. Being a TFA teacher was by far the hardest thing he had ever done, but he’d pick this pressure-cooker life of his over anyone else’s any day.

(to my seventh period, a.k.a. the class that has turned me into a violent individual)

me: so your actions right now are telling me that you are content with not knowing the last 100 years of your country’s history.

student 1: all of this happened in texas?

student 2: wait, you were talking about mexico?

that exchange would be hilarious if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

i have been reviewing the bill of rights with my students the past few days, and i’ve discovered something quite interesting. as i explain some of our most important civil liberties, i have been qualifying every single one. instead of saying “we have freedom of speech”, i say “we have freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that you can say whatever you want…”

so i have decided to rewrite our civil liberties as they stand today. it was really fun. and by “fun” i mean “depressing”.

Freedom of Speech and the Press: you are (sort of) permitted to hate people, but you definitely can’t say that you hate them. the press can print some things, but government censorship has become much more pervasive– especially in the context of the “war on terror”.

Freedom to peaceably assemble …as long as you don’t do it near anyone who may be offended by your message.

Right to a Speedy and Public Trial: thanks to the patriot act, there are people who have been detained for YEARS without trial. cheers, guantanamo.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment …but waterboarding isn’t considered torture, right?

Due Process: your property may be seized by local authorities under the guise of “eminent domain” as long as the future establishment would generate larger tax revenue (kelo vs. the city of new london). in other words, any neighborhood can be demolished by the government if a wal-mart decides to move in. so much for the unalienable right to property.

Equal Protection under the law …unless you are homosexual.

this is the grossest blog post i’ve ever written. let’s get things back to how they’re supposed to be, yeah?

so i have this perfect little betta fish by the name of shadrach. he is the apple of my eye, as far as fish go. he has a somewhat unconventional name, and those who aren’t up on their biblical stories generally have no idea why i wouldn’t just call him “swimmy” or something. honestly, i just like to make people think.

the story goes something like this: these three guys, shadrach, meshach and abednego, were living in babylon back in the day with king nebuchadnezzar. king neb, as we’ll call him, decided one day that everyone in babylon should worship this idol made of gold. shad, mesh and abed refused, so king neb threw them into a furnace. the flames were so hot that the soldiers who threw the three of them in were killed immediately. however, when king neb looked in the furnace, he saw the shad, mesh and abed walking around (with an angel!) unharmed.

considering i’m not religious, one might wonder why i like this story. well, it’s a lovely allegory for teach for america. my fellow corps members and i are shadrach, meshach and abednego. the u.s. department of education is king nebuchadnezzar. the golden idol is the achievement gap. the furnace is our title 1 schools. the flames are our students. the angel is our common purpose and stubborn will to succeed.

we’re walking amongst the flames…and we’re surviving.  28 instructional days left.

today’s lesson was a review of the federalists/antifederalists and their views on the constitution and bill of rights. as i was introducing the lesson, i was trying to have them see the (obvious) connection between the federalists and the federal government.

me: so when you look at the word “federalist,” what word do you see in it?

isaac: list!

i have a lot that i need to write about, but i don’t know how to start. it’s pretty strange, actually, because it is rarely difficult for me to express my thoughts in words. for whatever reason, i’m completely inarticulate now.

there’s a lot going on in life right now. i think that’s a good thing–there were a few months last year that all i had in my life was work (and we all know how fulfilling my job is). i was not a well-functioning human being. that’s not to say that i am a well-functioning human being now, but i think i’m a little further down the path of normalcy. (remember how i said that “i’m completely inarticulate now” in the last paragraph? that last sentence was a beautiful example.)

anyway, one of the things that has been on my mind is that i recently realized that i have been more concerned about my students’ future than my own.  i plan on taking the lsat in june, and i have yet to come up with a study schedule.  instead, i try to plan kickass lessons; the problem, here, is that many of my students will refuse to do work whether it’s a kickass lesson or book work.  i need to find some sort of balance between doing my job as well as i possibly can and making sure that i remember that i’m not going to be a teacher for the rest of my life (or, for that matter, in a year and a half).

the roommates and i were talking last night and susanna was being her usual insightful self.  she said something like, “you know, i still don’t understand why we can’t just say what we feel.  when did everyone decide that there had to be this whole process to go through when you like someone?  can’t you just say, ‘i like you, i think you like me, let’s do something about it.’  why is that so incredibly difficult to do?”  erin and i blamed it on the media, as usual.

i wish i had a better answer.  meanwhile, i’ll continue to be an amateur.