Negro League Museum to open in Baltimore?

This should provide a cool trip to pair with Fences every year!

Though it doesn't look too pretty right now:

Former Towson student wins $8000 parking ticket judgement

Former Towson student flies back to Maryland to fight (and win) $8000 in fines

Reminds me of my case, which I won after going to court and fighting it.

There really has to be an overhaul about how this city handles parking tickets. Absolutely outrageous.

Omar's Dream Role? To Play James Baldwin on Film.

(Thanks Jackie for the tip!)

Actor Michael Kenneth Williams

"My dream role is to portray someone like James Baldwin. I've always been a fan of his writing, and I feel like he's one of our unsung heroes. He's been pretty much forgotten, and I think he needs to be recognized. He had to go all the way to Europe to find recognition and acceptance, and I'd just like to bring him to the forefront. It's a fresh story.

Rosaries as gang apparel

Religious Objects co-opted as objects of hate and violence

Worth a Read, especially here in Baltimore.

Blast from the past

My college professor from Michigan State University is in our building this week, working with and observing a colleague for a study she is conducting about the current teachings of To Kill a Mockingbird in the United States. I'm not teaching Mockingbird this year, hence my lack of inclusion in the study, and my professor actually contacted our district and school independent of me in order to conduct the research.

I haven't seen her in nine years or so, and it's neat to get re-acquainted. Apparently Michigan State now has an Urban Education program, which is interesting, although I admit my experience at college probably would not have been any different had MSU had the program then. I was not interested in Urban Education until I became a student teacher, and was placed in Lansing Eastern High School. Like my current school, it was filled with a lot of really great kids who often needed some extra support, and there I learned that providing this support as well as maintaining high expectations for these kids was my calling in life. I don't think I would have thought to be involved in an Urban Education program when I was twenty years old; it took actually getting placed in an urban school for my yearlong student teaching experience that brought me over to that viewpoint.

Still, it's good to hear that Michigan State has created the program; it speaks well of an Education program that regularly ranks as the top in the nation. Probably overdue, in fact.

It was neat catching up with my former professor, and we'll continue to chat throughout the week, I'm sure. Chatting reminds me of where I've come from and how far I've gone since that Student Teaching year, but also how a lot of my current practices are grounded in the things I learned at Michigan State. For example, I still write units based on the ways I learned to write units in her class - a key question or topic, and using the literature to explore it.

Why I love James Baldwin

I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don’t know if you’ve known anybody from that far back; if you’ve loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father’s face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother’s so easily wiped away. But no one’s hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

It's all there: Balwin's parallelism, his cataloguing of adjectives and phrases, his shifting of narrative voice ("I" to "One"), the cautionary parentheses, the long sentences constructed to form a sort of biblical rhythm, the beautiful and eloquent anger. It's so devastating and beautiful.

Dogged optimism

My favorite songs of the moment:

"I am going to make it through this year if it kills me"

>

"The end is never the end. A new challenge awaits. A test no man could be prepared for. A new hell he must conquer and destroy. A new level of growth he must confront himself. The machine in the ghost within."

Teaching James Baldwin

A few thoughts, so far:

I'm using James Baldwin's Essays collection, which looks like this:



I chose this mammoth volume for a couple of reasons. First, I didn't think it was enough to read one of Baldwin's short collections of essays (Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, or The Fire Next Time, and am pretty sure one of those volumes doesn't reach the IB minimum requirements for non-fiction. Secondly, even though we're not reading the entire 600+ pages of essays, I figured students might have to read some of Baldwin's work later in their academic lives, and now they have a volume that contains nearly all of Baldwin's essays. The total cost ($18) of the collection is pricey, but not as much as buying two of the aforementioned essay collections would have been, so I thought it work well.

And, so far, it has. My unit plan was heavily weighted towards essays in the three aforementioned collections, and students seem to be connecting well. It has gotten better as it has gone, and I'm happy with the selection. Baldwin's techniques are really clear, even if his ideas are sometimes too dense for these seniors.

Teaching non-fiction is somewhat tough. How much contextualization is needed? If we're reading work from throughout Baldwin's career, is it important for students to know that he wrote this particular essay in 1955, kind of at the cusp of the Civil Rights movement, and then this one in 1963, when it was in full swing? Should students know some of the key Civil Rights activities occurring when Baldwin is writing the essays? How much do they need to know? At what point is concentrating on that rather than Baldwin's techniques and what he is saying doing a disservice to the collection? I'm finding myself up in the air about these issues, and still a bit uncertain.

I'm definitely going to teach the work again next year, but need to do a better job of teaching the students how to read essays. For example, I'm finding that they often miss key things, like that it's really important to identify the conclusion that Baldwin comes up with by the end, and to re-read the introduction and conclusion to see how he arrived at the conclusion. I've also developed some handouts throughout the course of the unit that would have been better earlier, so next year I will be able to utilize those earlier in the unit.

I'll be formulating other reflections as I go and posting them here.

Car and Twitter

1. Hmmm, I'm considering tweeting under my actual name. I already am, actually, but just created a tweeter identity under "EpiphanyinBalto" that I thought I'd tweet from more often and connect to this blog. I'm still thinking about it. I have over 100 followers on the my name. It's this "sort of anonymous" goal I guess I'm worried about.

2. I'm buying my dad's 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it's a nice car that should be reliable for several years. I loved my current Pontiac; it was the best car I ever owned. And dad's giving me a great deal, one that I would be financially foolish to eschew. I'm going to be spending about $5000 less than I would if I bought it at a dealer, so I should be able to pay it off quickly. I was approved for 7.74% interest through my credit union. Not very good, but okay for my just-above-average credit in this economy; and I'm going to love not having to worry about it in the summers (they spread the payments across 10 months, not 12).

Chronic Sleep Disorder

I last went to the doctor on the day I turned 30, so going on Monday was kind of a big deal. I'm 32 now, and probably should be going at least once a year, and definitely had some reasons for it this time: my heart feels like it's gone into hyperdrive this year, beating way fast than it seems like it should be, and I'm out of breath more easily than ever. I could certainly stand to lose some weight, but I exercise 5 or 6 times a week, so I'm not in horrible shape; ask me to go run three miles or spend 2 hours working hard at the gym right now, and I could do it. So it's been weird for me.

I've been playing around with my caffeine usage, to see if that might be it. I'm not someone who drinks coffee all day, but I drink a lot of it in the morning. And when I say a lot, I mean it - probably a whole pot, or at least 3-4 glasses - guzzled, over ice. I feel like it's my pick-me-up before hitting the gym at 6am, and I figure I pee most of it out. Still, I've tried to stop doing that, to see if that would help. Results have been inconclusive; I still notice my problem all the time.

The doctor, who I met for the first time at the appointment, was the first time I'd found a doctor that was under 60 years old. A friend of mine goes to him, and he didn't even recommend him or anything, just mentioned that he goes, so that was enough. The visit was pleasant enough, as pleasant as any doctor's visit can be when you get some unpleasant tests (no prostate exam, but I did have a testicular cancer check). I get blood results back on Monday, when I'll hear about cholesterol and stuff like that.

Anyhow, his diagnosis was a little suprising: I have Chronic Sleep Disorder, which causes all the symptoms I have (elevated heart rate, shortness of breath, stress). The way he led into it was a little weird ("Do you find yourself getting angrier at little things this year? Do you have road rage?") but eventually it was clear what he was getting at, and, as he said, as a guy who made it through med school with two small children, it can happen to the best of us. It really shouldn't be a surprise to me, because I have very poor sleep habits, something that probably culminating in me having to call in sick this year because I couldn't fall asleep the night before. I look at the causes, and I see plenty: it's been an anxiety-filled year, I drink too much caffeine, I'm simply staying up too late doing work. It was a good wake-me-up call, and I plan on doing better in that area.

Thanks

Today, I got to spend the day with my parents, who drove down from Michigan to have Thanksgiving with their vegetarian son. The day was wonderful, punctuated by a call from my little sister that she became engaged today. I miss my family.

There are a lot of things I still need to do in order for the better things life has to offer, but it certainly could be worse. I've had several successes this year: I bought my first house, I was given a new class to teach, and I had at least one decent miniature relationship that probably could start back up again sometime.

I wsant to start blogging more.

NCTE

I'm blogging this from the NCTE Convention in Philadelphia, PA. It's my third day here, and, so far, the conference has pretty much been worth it. This is partly because you reached me at a really good time; I just got to see Kelly Gallagher speak, and he's someone I've read for years, and I'm happy to say that his discussion was one of the best I've seen in a while about the practice of teaching. I'm rushing over in a bit to buy his latest book, Readacide, which seems to be about a lot of what he talked about today - how schools are killing reading in this country, and how this is partially fueled by NCLB.

A colleague and I presented together yesterday, a session that we called "Found in Translation: Changing World, Changing Books." We pulled it off. A third person in our group dropped out two days before we left, which was a bummer, but I think the small group we presented to was appreciative. I hate talking so long, and wish I had worked on the presentation longer, but overall, well, we pulled it off. I'll hopefully to it again someday - maybe about teaching James Baldwin, perhaps in concert with other under-appreciated authors for study.

Coming to this conference is mostly a humbling experience for me. I see so many great ideas, and this causes me to reflect on my own practice, and I just feel inadequate. Kelly Gallagher, for example, just used an example of a teacher who makes her students put a post-it on every page of Romeo and Juliet to annotate the text, and asked, rhetorically, if we would want to stop a film every four minutes to stop and take notes. Of course not. I'm not a natural text-marker except when I feel the need to remember something, and I have caught myself requiring students to do it before. As early as last week, in fact - once per paragraph. It was for something short, but still... Ugh. Am I committing Readacide? I hope not. (Judging by the mostly positive reactions I've had to Baldwin, so far, I think I am not, though.)

I'm about to head back to the exhibitions, to look for Gallagher's latest book. I'm excited about getting back to school, though daunted by the prospect of going back on Monday. So much going on right now. I wish I could just slow things down for a bit. Hopefully after Thanksgiving I can feel normal again, after my folks come down for their visit.

48 hours from now, I'll be watching Junot Diaz speak. Until that point, I have 2 days of sub plans to write, tomorrow's 9th grade reflect-about-your-first-high-school-report-card lesson, a train ticket to buy, quizzes to grade (really want to post grades tomorrow before I leave to inspire hard work while I am gone), and, most importantly, an NCTE presentation and packet to finish.

Updates

I'm going to go back to blogging just here. I'm not blogging nearly enough anymore for two blogs, and it just doesn't make as much sense to keep both of them running. School and education issues will be here. So will mundane life issues, like buying a car.

So, what's new?

(1) Over the summer, I decided that it would be very worthwhile to read a Shakespeare play and then see it live. I searched around for local theaters performing Shakespeare, and ended up with the logical choice - the Folger Shakespeare Library, where I studied at the NEH-funded Teaching Shakespeare Institute a couple of summers ago. They were performing Much Ado About Nothing in the fall, so I would teach that play and then we would go and view it. The plan involved some risks - I would could choose the play, but something could happen with the field trip, or it could be sold out. Because it would have sold out otherwise, the plan also involved me buying the tickets before school began, putting out my own money. Also, I had real issues with chaperones and help. However, I'm happy to say that the field trip and the play was an overwhelming success. I have honestly never had so much fun at a play, and I think the students really enjoyed it and got a lot out of viewing it.

(2) I present at the National Council of English Teachers Conference on Friday. The presentation isn't finished yet.

(3) Very, very busy. Can't even think about buying a car right now. Too busy.

(4) Will be gone through Sunday, then parents come down on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. Need to clean the house!

Another sleepless night

I had another one of those nearly-sleepless-nights last night, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it. It was different than the previous one, though. For one, I didn't feel all that tired. I had slept in that Sunday morning until 9pm, and went to bed sometime before Saturday Night Live went off the air, so I slept over 8 hours. This is unheard of for me.

Secondly, I worked really hard into the night, finishing my grading (grades were due today) and planning for the next day. The previous time, I had a calm night and went to bed fairly early. Last night, I had a harried night until 1:30am or so, then went to bed feeling kind of harried still. I was not surprised when I couldn't fall asleep. I began to feel some anxiety after I lay there a while that I would never be able to fall asleep, but I did fall asleep, at around 4 or so. The alarm clock rang at 5:30, and I was up and at 'em then. I didn't feel miserable in the morning, but I did feel miserable most of the day.

There's really not getting around it: I am really burning the candle at both ends. I don't use my weekend time well enough, true, but I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon and then a huge portion Sunday on school work (planning and grading), I still feel behind. This is a big week, too: an observation by the Assistant Principal, a field trip, grades due. I'm also dealing with a particularly irritating situation at school in regards to my presenting at the National English Teachers Conference next week, and the situation is causing me lots of unneeded stress. I hope it might be rectified with a meeting tomorrow.

I didn't call in sick today after my 90 minutes of sleep, but I did skip my Monday night "class". I also made a doctor appointment, with a new doctor that I'm trying out. I haven't had a doctor in a really long time, but I feel like it's time. I've lost about a dozen pounds in the last couple of weeks as I've concentrated more and more on my health and my fitness, but I'm still getting strange heart racing and I'm still out of breath way more than someone who exercises as much as I do should be. I think it's probably stress related, or caffeine related (I've cut down on caffeine recently, and the weird heart stuff has stopped), but it's still scary. I'd also like a doctor who is mean to me about my weight. Really. I heard this guy is, kind of.

I realized just now that I made the appointment for 4 o'clock on Thursday, which is when I'm in Washington DC for the field trip. Oops. I was really excited about the doctor appointment, or at least excited that I went ahead and did it.

Cars and cleaning

Thank you all for the tips about used car buying.

It doesn't appear my credit union has a used car broker, although that would be nice. My dad, however, is best friends with a used car salesman (back in Michigan), so he's on the lookout for me. I think I've narrowed it down to 6 or 7 cars: CRV, Rav 4, Nissan Versa, Subaru Forester, Kia Sportage, Toyota Matrix, and a Scion. I fell in love with a blue Rav 4 in the parking lot at Trader Joe's yesterday, and that's my #1 choice right now. I found a blue 2004 Rav 4 for around $11K on Craig's List today, and called the number, and might test-drive it this week sometime. I'm looking to spend $14K at the top of my price range, but I need a good interest rate too.

(By the way, the car has to be blue, red, orange, or yellow. No browns, tans, grays, whites, or blacks for me.)

If the friend in Michigan comes through, he'd charge me his minimum upcharge (I think it would be $800 more than he paid for it), and my savings would probably be worth all the hassles of getting registered in Maryland with a car bought in Michigan.

I'd really like to buy by Christmas.

That's all. I'm also re-considering combining my blogs back to this one. I get about 75 hits a day there, and, unbelievably, over 100 hits a day here, so it might make sense to keep everything here. Everyone who wants to know who I am knows anyway. And I so like the name 'Epiphany in Baltimore.'

Lastly, can anyone recommend a good housecleaner in Baltimore? I know this is kind of ridiculous, but I think I might need a deep cleaning of my house and maybe even a regular thing. I just can't do it, or I don't care enough about it, and a recent visit to the house by someone of the opposite gender sort of confirms that I should care about it more. And it's almost all dog hair that makes things a mess, nothing else. But that is overwhelming to me, and the vacuums don't work on it, no matter how many new vacuums I've bought over the last several years.

I could use my dad here in Baltimore...

I'm realizing I don't really know how to shop for a used car.

My process 9 years ago was to go to the first used car store I saw, get out, and see this beautiful grand am. I had a dream about it that night and went back to buy it the next day. I've been very happy with the car, but I got hosed on the interest rate and don't want that to happen again. I was 23 and fresh out of college and I won't let it happen again.

I could go back there (the guy sent my car a birthday card every year for the first five years or so), because it's really not their fault their financer gave me a bad rate. But, eh... seems I could do better. I'm fishing around for an hour or so a night on the internet, reading up on things, but still don't really know the best place to buy a car. Should I go to a dealer? Well, then it seems I would already have to know what kind of car I'm getting. But I don't know. I have it narrowed down, I think (CR-V, Rav4, Forester, Saturn Vue, Pontiac Aztek are some of my ideas), but part of me also is thinking about a hybrid, like a Ford Escape Hybrid or even a Prius, which I like. They're all just so expensive, though! Maybe I should just get a cheap 4-door car or a hatchback that will last me a few years until I really have some savings.

I want to buy by Christmas.

We'll see.