Listen to Things and It Will Be Better

It sucks doing things you don't want to do. Luckily, I have found a way to turn crappy things into awesome things. Check this out- It's a list of things I don't really like doing, matched with musical genres to make it badass.

Grading Papers = Fantasy Metal (ie: DragonForce)
Cleaning the House = Pop (Preferably British and Female-Fronted, ie: Ace of Base, Lilly Allen)
Washing Dishes = Songs of the Ocean
Playing With the Kids = Fugazi

Just kidding on one of those...

It can also be an enhancer. Like, take something pretty cool and then kick it up a few notches.

Example: Cooking Breakfast + Rock Ballads = Epic (see Classic Rock Breakfast Showdown)

So actually, that's where the washing dishes example should go- under enhancement. Of course, I like washing dishes. What do you think I am, an a*hole? baddoom chiish.

The Banality of the State Capitol Tour

Want to understand the fundamental failures of "representative democracy"? Take the Denver Capitol Tour. While led by well-intentioned guides, the field trip is the best way to alienate youth, especially if they are working class or not white.

From the Depths of DNC Organizing I Emerge!!

 DNC is over and I escaped unscathed.  No arrests and no tear gas to the eyes.  My emergency sub plans were never carried out and so for me, a small personal success at the DNC protests must be noted.

So now, after months of organizing, were the protests successful?  Was all that work worthwhile?

The brief answer to the first question is- to my initial standards the protests were an utter failure, but to my later amended expectations they were a solid success.  

As for the second question- Absolutely.  I'm really glad I was involved with Unconventional Denver.  I gained a better orientation of the Denver Left (for better or for worse) and made some good friends along the way.  I've got some fresh perspectives on things and some skills too.  I also went on Fox News, the national one.  That might have been the highlight of it all.

I'll probably be posting a long winded analysis of things in a few weeks, but right now it's nice to just know that it's over.

Beetle Plays Dead

So Obsidian brought this beetle home that he found with Jeremy. He said it was dead so we set it on the counter. About a half hour later we were eating mac and cheese when I look over to see the resurrected beetle crawling across the floor!! Obsidian's first response was, "We have to get it!! Mom is going to get really mad if she knows we have a beetle in the house!!!" That's because the other day we caught some grasshoppers and tried boiling them alive so we could cover them in chocolate and eat them. They all hopped out, one met its death on the burner and the other three are still unaccounted for. We also left a dead beetle next to the phone. She threatened that if she ever found a live bug crawling in our house that we wouldn't be able to bring them inside anymore, not even in jars.

For one, this bug is a really freaky looking thing. Also, when it's disturbed it lets out this weird hissing noise when it is disturbed. Plus, we thought it was dead so it was pretty exciting to capture this specimen. We went to whatsthatbug.com and found this picture

Blizzzzzzard!!!!

Oh man I love blizzards! It has been snowing for two days straight. We have over 25 inches of snow and the city at a standstill. The last two days of school for the semester were cancelled and I took sick day on Tuesday so I only had to go in on Monday.

Yesterday Obsidian and I made a snow fort. At that time the wind was blowing super hard but we didn't really care. By the end of our adventures Obsidian looked like one of those grizzly mountain men who had just summited Mount Everest (see photo).

Obsidian and Ember's eyelashes are sooo long. It's really cute. The snow was clumping onto Obsidian's eyelashes when he was outside.

The nice thing about blizzards is that it makes people slow down in this crazy capitalist world. I met three of my neighbors for the first time, borrowed a snow shovel from one and helped another's stuck car out of the snow. The stranded neighbor gave me 5 bucks for helping him!! I tried turning it away but he insisted. It's nice that there's still some sense of community around here. We should have more blizzards to get to know each other in.

the horrors of unschooling

This morning there was a breakfast for staff. I overheard a teacher say in disgust "I read an article in the Post today on something called 'unschooling'. It made me want to vomit! It's some sort of new movement where the kids get to learn whatever they want!" She was livid, as was the other teacher listening to her explain this absurd concept. It's interesting. Why is someone a teacher when the idea of kids following their desires is nauseating?

Typically the more a teacher has a martyr complex, the more they distrust and dislike students. They're the ones that spend the entire lunch hour gossiping about students and their families. It's something I need to start intervening with. The level of disrespect that is demonstrated sometimes is shocking and typically I bear and grin it. Gossiping from teachers about their fellow workmates is rampant as well. It's pretty ridiculous and is a real indicator of the type of environments that sometimes take hold in the school setting. Resolution- I'm going to start sticking up for students and teachers and calling this stuff out.

moving mountains

Everytime I sit down to try and write thoughts I have on my first year of teaching an outpouring and rambleness pours out. This job is the most layered, complex, overwhelming job I have ever taken on. In some ways the venting is helpful but then I found myself exactly where I was beforehand. So, to try and make things manageable I am going to take Whitney's advice, or well Whitney's cleaning mentor's advice.

Whitney has this website she goes to called Fly Lady and it gives people a home cleaning regiment. She also gives people advice on how to get their house under control. When the totally disorganized, cluttered people come to her pleading for advice on where to start she says the kitchen sink. Just shine the kitchen sink- It's an easy, quick yet rewarding task.

I can say that slowly but surely my classroom has moved to become a super boring assembly of activities. I am in survival mode and it sucks. We aren't doing much of anything cool. Somehow any real science or social studies has slipped to the wayside and the students are writing these essays that they don't care about and honestly I don't really either. I need to kill this project now- it's a giant leech sucking our creativity, energy and whatever little love these kids previously had for writing.

Well this post actually isn't going to start with the kitchen sink after all. I just spent the past 10-20 minutes surfing the net trying to find resources for radical teachers. I've come up with some semi-good stuff and stumbled across an article giving advice to new teachers. This particular quote isn't exactly advice, but it really describes this setting and explains why I am here in the first place. I mean I'm an anarchist working for the government, working in a job with some of the highest amounts of bureaucratic nonsense concentrated in one profession. However, as teacher activist Stan Karp says

"...it's helpful for new teachers to understand that as social institutions, schools have a very contradictory character. On the one hand, they are probably the last place where an increasingly diverse and divided population still comes together for a common purpose. They remain places where people can struggle to improve the conditions of their lives, to increase their access to wealth, power, and opportunity. On the other hand, schools are state institutions that reproduce the class, race, and gender inequalities of the larger society in a host of obvious and not so obvious ways. It's a system that doesn't work as it should, and all of us have a hand in trying to set it right."

Yeah exactly- my life is one giant contradiction. The tensions drive me nuts sometimes, but at the same time I get excited every time I get a new tool to push the margins and infuse critical thinking into a wasteland of standardization and cynicism.