2009 was a good year

Really, it was. A year that I'll look back on as the year of several important steps:

1. I bought my first home. Yup, I finally got my credit and personal finances solid enough to embark on that important journey of home ownership. So far, no regret. I love my house and, although paying for a mortgage on my own is expensive, it still seems like it will be worth it. The pay-free summer will probably be a challenge, but I'm trying my best to save now.

2. I bought a car. This is a recent development and the title transfer probably will not occur officially until a few days into 2010. I've had my current car for eight years, and I loved that car. It was one of the first real adult decisions I made, buying that car shortly after I moved here, and, despite the fact that I got it at a horrible interest rate, I never regretted it. The car still looks pretty nice - the body is blemish-free - and it always remained reliable despite my riding it into the ground. I'm replacing it with a car that I don't love, but which is certainly better (seven years younger, 60000 less miles, a lot of bells and whistles like heated seats and remote startup) and safer. I'm also getting it for a great deal from my dad, so it represents my dad and his care for me. Hopefully it lasts like the Grand Am did.

3. Professionally, things are going swell. I was trusted with 12th grade IB English, with our school's brightest kids and, I say, the most high-pressure external testing pressures, if only because our school has several years in a row of 93-98% pass rates on IB English. The course is a lot of work, but it's meaningful work and the students work hard for me. (Let's hope that doesn't change with the flurry of college acceptances coming through.) I'm also team leader of the 9th grade team, which is a lot of work (herding divas is like herding cats, as our department joke goes ha ha) but it's work I do anyway and just try to get everyone aligned. Lastly, National Board seems to be going well; with a perfect score on Entry 3 last year, I hope to get it all done the rest of the way this January and February.

My primary goal for 2010 is to get myself in shape. I'm losing the battle of the bulge, bigtime, and it's pretty embarassing just how badly. I've become myself in around 2001. Then, I weighed around 310, and my current weight is up over 250. I've got to lose 50 pounds and get myself right again. I hate New Years resolutions like this because then January will come and I'll be crazy busy again. But I'm pushing myself towards a heart attack at 40 if I'm not careful. Heart disease runs in my family, and I certainly work hard enough and stress myself out enough to add these correlating factors as well. More exercise will help it all - the weight, the stress. Baseball season begins in about 9 weeks and I've got to get myself ready for that. I've got the house and the car, now I have to get my health.

Update: We're closed on the 23rd

Teachers just got the email that we're closed on Dec. 23.

He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year. He thought he'd call him up, and say, "It's Christmas, and your daughter's here."

One of the all-time great Christmas songs:

A snow day on Dec. 23?

I just got back from out and about, and I think there's a decent chance of school closing on Wednesday. The side streets seem to be slicker than they have been the last couple of days. When the city doesn't plow, the melting and re-freezing on the side streets makes these pretty dangerous. I still haven't seen one plow truck the entire snow emergency; I've seen a few salt trucks, and that's it. The main roads are, of course, fine. It's just pretty shocking how bad the side streets still are - absolute soup, still.

I'm not really sure what I'm rooting for. On one hand, I guess a final snow day would be nice. Overall, there won't be much learning done tomorrow, if at all. Having the city and the state count it as one of our required 180 days of instruction would be doing a disservice to the kids. Very few students will come; I'd guess I'd have about 25% attendance. On a personal level, I'd be able to leave for Michigan on Wednesday morning instead of Thursday morning, and beat the next oncoming storm (which I heard is freezing rain, which could make the 670-mile trip a bit scary). It gives us a chance for a fresh start in January, and will make my campaign to push back midterms a week even stronger (they are currently scheduled for Jan. 11-15, and I'd like them the next week for more preparation for my students).

On the other hand, missing school tomorrow will mean missing a send-off for the holidays. We're having our departmental holiday potluck and our holiday assembly. One of my colleagues makes a terrific smoked gouda macaroni and cheese that I don't want to miss, and another makes these deviled eggs (with green olives) that are terrific. And even though I won't see many of my students if school is in, it will be nice to see the few that show up and send them off for the holidays. I do really like my students this year for the most part. I'll be able to do some planning for January, especially getting these IB Oral Commentary excerpts ready. Lastly, and importantly, I'll be able to feed my fish and water my plants and get my camera charger so I can take some Christmas photos!

So I'm not sure what I'm hoping for. Either way, I'll be fine.

CCH Pounder, Flogging Molly, and The Shield

I've begun to use Netflix mostly for watching entire runs of TV series. I'll watch them all at once, methodically, letting them unspool like a novel. I did this with The Sopranos, with Dexter, with Breaking Bad, and with Mad Men. For the last few, I've been frustrated, because the shows are incredible but they're also en medea res so I've got to wait for a while to continue watching.

I don't have this problem with The Shield, which ended last year. I'm halfway through Season 2, and am consistently amazed by the series so far. Great acting and intriguing stories. I think Season 1 was better than Season 2, so far - the tortured supporting characters really did it for me. However, Season 2 has still been pretty great, and this clip above just sort of encapsulates it for me. A great, great song ("If I Ever Leave This World Alive" by Flogging Molly) played over a montage of characters grappling with their tortured psyches. The clip starts with the great CCH Pounder reprimanding Micheal Chicles with her eyes and her voice - they've never been so commanding, and I have loved to see her go toe-to-toe with Mackey lately in the series.

Great stuff.

Another Snow Day for BCPSS for Tues, Dec. 22, 2009

I ran a lot of errands today, thinking it was my last moments of free time before two days of work and then a long drive home to Michigan. I went to a notary public to get some papers for my car purchase notarized, then to Fed-Ex to send off said papers, then to the post-office to send off grandma and grandpa's Christmas presents (wanted to go on Saturday, but was the blizzard prevented me), then to the MVA to get a clear title (the Mondawmin MVA was actually a pleasure - quick and courteous), then to Target for some last minute shopping.

I figured for sure we'd be in school tomorrow, until I picked up my friend in the early afternoon. Going up the narrow driveway to her apartment complex was tough - I kept slip-sliding around. And trying to traverse down the hill when another car came up it was impossible - literally, the other guy had to back up and let me pass because of all the snow on the sides of the driveway. We also noticed quite a few cars that hadn't been dug out yet, and now the plows pushing more snow on them would make digging out even tougher. I even got stuck a couple of times today, once parking in front of the Fed-Ex and once moving to the side for a car to pass in my Bel-Air/Edison neighborhood.

We also noticed all day that the sidewalks still had a couple of feet of snow, and that kids couldn't be walking on those sidewalks to get to school. In fact, the people who walked today were walking in the street, creating safety hazards, and thousands of schoolchildren doing the same would create quite a problem for the city and put kids in danger. Add in the increasingly icy roads (the sun melts the snow, a little, and when the sun sets, that melting turns to ice), and I began to realize that having school would be doubtful.

When I arrived back home, Baltimore County had already announced closure, so I began the ritual of clicking around to wbal.com, baltimoresun.com, and wjz.com. I find the former is the quickest, but today BCPSS was quicker. All teachers received an email from Tisha Edwards, Chief of Staff, at 5:48, stating, "Due to emergency weather conditions, Baltimore City Public Schools are closed tomorrow, December 22, 2009. Administrative offices are open. Essential employees, including all central office staff, are required to report to work. ".

I posted the message on Facebook, to let my colleagues and students, with whom I am connected, know. For about an hour, it seemed I was the only one giving out that information, as well as a few other colleagues on there. I almost got scared after a while, because none of the media outlets seemed to be reporting it. Finally, at around 7, the Baltimore City Public Schools website announced the information. I kind of like this apparent new policy of letting the teachers know firs,t and personally, over email before media outlets.

Now we're two snow days into a week that was already going to be crazy. I wonder about Wednesday. If school is canceled, it will be nice to get on the road early and start my way back to Michigan before this new winter storm (this one featuring freezing rain instead of snow) approaches on Thursday. However, I'll be disappointed to miss the department potluck and book exchange, and especially the annual Holiday Assembly. In fact, at this point, it just wouldn't be Christmas without hearing our choir sing, "Come let us adore him.. Kneel down before him.. Worship and adore him... EMMANUEL, EMMANUEL, EMMANUEL!!!" It's not very secular but it sure is awe-inspiring and gives me goosebumps every year.

Snow Day for BCPSS on Monday, Dec. 21

As the snow pummelled Maryland (we get an average of 19" of snow a year, and this was a 21" snowfall) I expected all weekend not to have school on Monday. However, today, as I was out shoveling in the sunshine and noticed how quickly the snow was melting, my hopes started to fade. When I drove around and didn't have much of a problem, they faded even more. Snow was meltin and it seemed like we'd have school tomorrow.

This last time out, though, I took a different route, around the side streets. Dang, they're bad. There's only room for one car on 2-way streets and several cars are just buried in the snow still. Then, I became confident again.

I've been refreshing the WBAL website obsessively since I returned. Finally at around 6:15pm, they announced that BCPSS is closed for Monday. There's still plenty of confusion: BCPSS is the only school district that has to make their closing nearly a whole paragraph - "Essential employees must report. Liberal Leave in effect". I'm not sure what that means, and none of my teacher colleagues seem to know either, but I'm just assuming we're not to go in. I'll be on liberal leave, thank you.

Now no excuses for not having all the papers graded.

Snow day and winter break planning in Maryland

Baltimore has been hit with a pretty significant blizzard, the biggest snowfall I've seen here since my second winter here, in 2002-2003. We were hit with around 20 inches of snow today. I sat at home like a shut-in, savoring the forced relaxation, cleaning the house, and watching a lot of The Shield. Tomorrow I'll be productive and start on the stack of papers that I have to grade.

Chances are that on Monday, school will be canceled. I'm already pretty bummed about going back to school next week. All the schools in Michigan are out already, but it seems all the schools in Maryland pretty much are staying through the 23rd. I'm not sure why, as not a whole of learning will occur in those three days, and I'm not sure what harm there is in giving everyone the two weeks off. Even without the snow, the travel on the night of the 23rd or all day on the 24th will be tough.

Now with the expected snow day, and perhaps more, next week will be an even rougher go of it. The days are rough because you don't want to plan too much, because attendance and attention will be poor, but you don't want to plan too little, because then behavior will be poor. Our school is magnifying the problem by making the holiday assemblies on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, a move that sends the messages that students aren't really expected to come on the Wednesday and thus Wednesday will be more problematic than it would have been otherwise. Now, I'm thinking we'll have school on Tuesday and Wednesday, but horrible attendance, so I'm not sure what to do. My planned quizzes are probably to be thrown out the window.

I'd be fine if Dr. Alonzo just sent out a message tomorrow canceling school for the rest of the week. Let me start my sojourn to Michigan a little early and not make me endure the mockery of education that the week will be.

Pages per minute

Yesterday, completing an idea that I think I took from one of Kelly Gallagher's books, I had my students engage in silent reading for 30 minutes. Afterwards, I had them count the number of pages they read, and had them calculate their "pages per minute" ratio. Then, I had them calculate how much time they needed to devote to the rest of the reading chunk that night.

It was really neat. Students know (and I know... I'd never actually tested this before) that they read 0.57 pages/minute, or .24 pages/minute, or 1 page/minute. It was eye-opening for me because one student got through 32 pages and other students got through 9 pages; and there was no sleeping or heads down during the time. I didn't gauge understanding while reading - that will come with the quiz on Friday - but we'll see how that goes.

All these years I've been teaching and I still try to figure out new ways to read a novel. I teach such a wide variety of skills sets - some have never really read a novel before, and one kid has read East of Eden - and need to figure out how to effectively differentiate instruction to make them all grow. (I'm having a bit of an issue with the East of Eden kid, actually... I worry the class is way too easy for him.)

300 new Board-Certified teachers in Maryland

Hopefully this is me next year.

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.


I thought about teaching Mary Oliver this year, but don't know any of her collections well enough. Maybe some year. She's on the IB List, which is pretty limited. I'm glad I did the two Shakespeares though.

The Cove

This documentary plays more like a thriller at its best parts (it's got its rogue star, who used to be the trainer on Flipper, and a ragtag group of friends from around the world), and a call-to-action at other parts. Highly recommended.

I was sort of hoping that this film could be one I use in the classroom someday, and that's possible (we're having Earth Day in the spring), but there were a few dry policy parts that I don't see 9th graders as being able to sit through. But the action is definitely there as well.

Antithesis

The extreme juxtaposition of students that I teach and coach came into view today in a dramatic way. After school, my backup SS/2B and starting pitcher stayed after school to do some work for me and keep his mind off the news that was coming tonight. While he was there, the starting 2B and starting pitcher stopped by to talk about grades.

The first kid found out he made it into Yale this evening.

The second kid, who is good enough to play at least Division II college baseball, might not be eligible to play this spring because he's failing Spanish and Art.

Reflections from Day 1 of Song of Solomon

1. I really like reading out loud with students, even with advanced 12th graders.

2. This novel has so many layers that I think it would be easy to over-teach it.

3. A good measure of how sharp a reader a kid is: how quickly they get that Ruth is breast-feeding the 5-year old Milkman. He's sucking, his legs are dangling to the ground in the first paragraph. It's a little unclear what he's sucking at that point, though. Some got it.

4. So many colors. Why so many colors, Toni? Beloved is colored in sepia, Song of Solomon with the rainbow.

5. The big motifs are obvious right away, all mentioned in the title and the epigraph - singing, flying, naming, and fathers. The north/south thing is also really evident, right from the first paragraph (North Carolina Life Insurance and Lake Superior mentioned in the first sentence alone).

I love this book so much.

Joyful and Triumphant

I think I love Christmas music because I've always been fascinated by cover songs. I love hearing different versions of songs I love, hearing new angles and new layers depending on how it's being performed.

Listen to these two versions of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful":

City High's version. This version, available on A Very Special Christmas 5 is impossibly beautiful. Sung over a light hip-hop track, it soars - the girl's voice about two minutes in is so beautiful. The goofy "City High up in here" doesn't ruin it for me. I love it.



And, then, contrastingly, you have this Twisted Sister version. It's campy and the video is corny, but, you know, the lead singer is still able to convey the joy of the song. It's completely different from the City High version and isn't what I would call beautiful, but has this sort of communal joy to it that I think really works.

The Perils of Technology (or, the Night My Class' Discussion Board Got Raided by Anonymous Racist and Homophobic Hackers)

The perils of technology in the classroom. This one deserves a "SMH" and a "FML".

Last night, at around midnight, my class' Internet board, done through Nicenet, was attacked by Internet spammers. They spent hours posting extremely racist and homophobic content (that the students were discussing James Baldwin may or may not be relevant). Because I get sent a new email every time there is a response, my email box was filled up with hundreds of these racist and homophobic responses today; my students' were the same. I've heard that it might be originated from a group called 4chan, which apparently does these sort of spams. Some students have told me they have a "/b/" mark, and I saw that a few times in the messages I skimmed:

This message is forwarded through Nicenet's
Internet Classroom Assistant
-------------------------------------------
FROM: Anonymous2300325


Sup, raid is successful. /b/lackup delivered. I'll post some CP links shortly, thankyou.

that is all


There's also a bunch of links to gore, sexual depravity, and violence. It's really crazy.

The kids seemed funny and okay with it today, most knowing much more about this sort of raid than I am. One girl named "Jenny" was posting a thesis statement when it started happening. One of the first messages was a response to her, simply saying, "Jenny, you are a bitch." She laughed and laughed about it today. And, the group did post to just some random funny stuff, like this Youtube video, which was put in hundreds of the messages.

They got out of some homework, so I hope none of them are behind it. I don't think they are; most of them seem pretty annoyed by it and their Facebook statuses confirm their annoyance.

Has anyone heard of this before? I mean, I can read the Wikipedia entry for Anonymous group (most messages were signed Anonymous) but I still don't really get it. Why was my class targeted? It had to have been a whole army of people because each stgudent got hundreds of emails. I had to delete my class from the site and am pretty annoyed; I think it's a pretty cool learning tool.

Post-script: I just googled our class' key code and discovered it was one of my students who posted on the 4chan discussion board to blast our Nicenet discussion board so to never have to do homework on it again.

Beginning Song

Yesterday - Saturday - was so productive. Got my tire fixed, did most of my Christmas shopping, had a great workout. The endorphins from the workout are still simmering in my blood stream, and I'm heading back to the gym today. I get in these funks that are probably mostly the result of not getting myself to the gym on a regular basis.

I begin Morrison's Song of Solomon with my students on Monday. If I think about it, I have to be one of the luckiest English teachers around. I get to teach so many of my favorite writers and texts (Song of Solomon is a Top-5 for me, and James Baldwin has been one of my favorite writers for a long time. Add in Murakami last year and Steinbeck laster this year, and I really get to teach my favorites.) I just found out our midterms are earlier this year than the rest of the system, so I have to rush through Song of Solomon more than I'd like. But it will still be good.

Break the funk

I gotta tell you, it's been a grueling year. Absolutely grueling.

I've been working my ass off and don't remember another year where the time change has affected me so much. I leave in the dark and return in the dark and feel like it's midnight when I get home. I'm working my students harder and thus I'm working harder, and staying in my classroom into the late afternoon or evening. I'm freaked out about all the assessments, many of which come the week of Jan. 11. I need to get these students ready and there are 3-4 that I'm significantly worried about.

I don't have much of a social life. During the week, I go home and feel like I hibernate. I plan my lesson for the next day and maybe watch a TV show. Lately, I'm into The Shield and stay up way too late and then start again the next day. My weekends are taken up by a Friday night Happy Hour and, generally, a quiet Saturday night. I'm in a funk and need to get out of it. Working too hard, not working smart enough, and not living life enough.

Break the funk.

What happens when you don't have planning periods and there are students in your classroom until 5 or 6 every night

...You send out long-ass emails where you break down common unit planning...

I'm thinking I'd rather get it done and over with before the students have a long break at the semester. I really liked how Fences worked out - finished the book fairly quickly and then did work on it after that, dividing the unit nicely into a "reading section" and a "writing section" of the unit. I also really like how the three assessments have worked out. I basically have three grades for the 9th graders this quarter (and some classwork stuff) and it's so much more manageable than tens of little assignments.

I'm passing out the books tomorrow and we will start reading it together in class for the first few days. I really want to write my unit tonight and give them a calendar. I'm thinking of having my first quiz on Friday the 18th, Chapters 1-10, (parent/teacher conferences, and I'll grade them in class and be able to show parents the kids' scores), and we'll do much of the reading together in class. That's 80 pages.

I think I'll assign another short section for a quiz the next week (Wednesday? I hate to do that because of kids taking off, but Tuesday is the assemblies), maybe Ch. 11-15. I'll assign a little bit over break (Ch. 16-20), and then we'll finish it the week of Jan. 4th upon our return. The Jefferson chapter is a tough chapter and we'll rejoin up for that and have it finished then. I think that's better than spreading it across midterm week. Then, we'll focus on the letter and any other final ideas we have upon the return to 2nd semester.

This is something I'm throwing out there to you guys. I just think that spreading the book over the semester break makes it seem burdensome to the kids and make it seem like it's going on forever. I didn't get those complaints with Fences because I think we set up the unit well.

I spoke with __ today and I agree with her that we're literary analysis-ing these kids to death too early in our program and that we're sucking the joy out of reading and they're forgetting they need to respond to books in an honest fashion in order learn how to read better. I'm not sure what a good thing for them to be working on during the reading of the book will be. Perhaps journaling? I like our idea of writing a letter at the end of the unit but what will they be doing during it? (instead of the dialectical journals) I'm going to go through my materials tonight and think about that. I think I have a good student journal activity for ALBD.

In summation, I'm thinking about this:

Friday, Dec. 18: Ch. 1-10

Wednesday, Dec. 23: Ch. 11-15

Monday, Jan. 4: Ch. 16-21

Friday, Jan. 8: End

I like to be flexible, though, so I could change. I don't think it matters that we align reading schedules, just goals and common assessments.

Thanks Curtis

The Tigers traded my favorite two players today. In particular, they traded my favorite Tiger of all time, Curtis Granderson.

It'll probably be a good trade in the end. Curtis never could hit lefties very well and we got at least one stud player, Max Scherzer from Arizona.

But when you follow someone in the minor leagues, then cheer your heart and soul for them for seven years, and then they're traded, well, wow that kind of sucks. I'm in grieving mode right now. I think there are good baseball reasons for making this trade, but I still wish Granderson could be a Trammell/Whitaker type who played his whole career with one type.

Random thoughts about A Lesson Before Dying

A colleague of mine is starting off the study of A Lesson Before Dying with a research project about Capital Punishment. I'm okay with that, because kids need to learn how to research. But I have issues with thinking of this book in terms of capital punishment. I mean, that's certainly something that happens in it, but it seems to me that it's more about what a person does when all the cards are stacked against him, when there is a mountain of injustice in his path.

In fact, I've gotten in arguments about whether the book was about racism or not. Dana Huff, my favorite teacher blogger, has a webquest for students, all pointing them to sites about capital punishment and Jim Crow and racism. But, I wonder, is that what this book is about?

Jefferson makes a poor decision and gets in the car with his two drunk friends. His two drunk friends hold up a liquor store and shoot the storeowner, who shoots them back. All three are dead. Jefferson is in shock, and decides to steal the money out of the cash register and take a shot of whiskey to calm himself down. When the next people come into the store, he is stealing the money and drinking whiskey. Forget the racist 1940s south: that circumstantial evidence would have convicted anybody anywhere. Perhaps modern ballistics would be able to test whether Jefferson had shot a gun or not, and perhaps there was an air of inevitability to his conviction because of racism, but Gaines wanted there to be ambiguity there in his character. You can't blame the judge nor the jury for the conviction, which doesn't seem to be a product of racism but, rather, more the product of a couple of bad choices and a horrible wrong-place-in-the-wrong-time incident.

The rest of the novel does have some significant undercurrents of racism - the defense attorney's hyper-racist "defense" of Jefferson, the superintendent's inspection of the black schoolchildren like a slaveowner would inspect prospective slave purchases, the mixed-race bricklayers picking a fight with dark-skinned Grant, the can't-act-smart-in-front-of-white-people act that Grant has to fake - but to look at the main "lessons" learned by both characters, they're not about race or facing racism. They're about standing up and standing strong (perhaps, in Jefferson's case, against unbelievable injustice). Against white people? Perhaps. I might be convincing myself of things that I didn't quite believe before I started writing this.

But I guess one of my points is this: with To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (in a setting about 15 years before A Lesson Before Dying) wanted us to examine racism in the south. She made her innocent black character, Tom Robinson, so ridiculously innocent (he can't use his hand! he couldn't possibly have choked Mayella!) and her accuser so ridiculously malignant that only a jury completely blinded by racism could find him guilty. And she spent a lot of time on that trial, as we see all the witnesses called and hear from both sides and all the onlookers. We see just how innocent Tom is, so his guilty verdict is a shock (or, at least, it is to the innocent Jem, who had not yet realized the racism of his society).

On the other hand, Gaines gives us a 5-page description of the trial, and Grant's first words about it ("I was not there, yet I was there") also speak to its inevitability. The trial is a given. The racism, ironically, is mainly demonstrated (and rather cartoonishly at that) by the defense. It's everything else that matters - the redemption that Jefferson gets, the two horrible choices he was faced with (no matter how bad life is, no matter how much injustice you are faced with, you still have a choice) and the relationship between Grant and Jefferson.

What's my point in all this? I guess it's that I think capital punishment and racism are both important for the story, but that it's more universal than that. It's about the Lesson that both men learn, which I don't really think is about either. The capital punishment and the racism were inevitable parts of their world. But was that their lesson before dying? No, it's about dealing. Jefferson learns to accept and to stand up and die like a man, to be strong for his community, even though he doesn't deserve to die. Grant learns (maybe - I love his ambiguous ending) to stand strong for his community as well, to (hopefully) not bitterly run away but stand strong.

I often introduce this text with the film Dead Man Walking (I know, I know, it's about capital punishment), which basically tells the story without racism and without innocence. It's still remarkably similar, at least in a lot of ways, and talking about these similarities and differences makes for some really interesting discussions in class.

Mini-Reviews

Hamilton Tavern: Still the best veggie burger in the city. I've been there quite a bit lately, and it's always pretty charming.

Maisy's: A friend of mine opened this place up a few months ago. It took me forever to get down there, but it was worth it. It's basically the same decor as Copra (re: classy, nice bar), but the food is better. I had macaroni and cheese with scallops and it was terrific.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox: Great little movie, really droll, pretty amazing stop-motion animation. Highly recommended.

The latest Entertainment Weekly: There are a number of dumb choices and initially I was annoyed with trying to lump all genres into the '100 Greatest of the Decade' list, but where else would you put the "I'm F***ing Matt Damon" video? The Wire only gets #26, though... way low. And some of the writeups on the list are just so dumb. (They cite Dixie Chicks' Home as one of the 100 best things to come out of the decade, which I disagree with but can deal with, but then explain it by listing the two cover songs on the album as great roots music.)

Advice needed...

Maybe someone can give advice: I'm trying to buy my dad's car in Michigan. He's giving me a deal I can't refuse. I was approved for an auto loan from Mecu, but they won't do a sale for an out-of-state car. In doing some googling, I'm seeing quite a few banks that also won't (M&T won't, for example). It doesn't make sense to me, but I have to figure out a solution. Anyone ever bought a car out of state? Should I try to get financing in MI and just switch title/registration to MD later?Try a bank that is more national than regional M&T and Mecu?

Car Update

I'm not sure if I've shared yet, but I've chosen my next car. My dad is selling me his. He is, of course, giving me a good deal, a deal I cannot refuse. This probably isn't the time of financial security and comfort for me to be able to get something that I really want (a Honda CRV for $20,000 or so), so I'll be getting a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix for less than half that. It's worth quite a bit more, but dad is helping me out, and he's also excited to get himself another car. The car is fairly fancy (leather seats, automatic starter, heated seats) and silver (not my trademark blue), but nicer than any car I've ever driven and I'm pretty excited.

I've been approved for a loan with a mediocre interest rate from my credit union. Because the car is cheap, I'll be able to pay it off quicker than the length of the loan. My credit union, MECU, has about the worst customer service ever (I've been calling them all week, and unable to get a live person on the phone), but I like that they'll take it directly out of my paycheck for ten months, and not ask for a payment during the summer, when I'm not being paid.

Now it's just the logistics: how to physically get the loan, how to exchange cars, how to sell my current car (blue book value is $500). I'm not good with logistics and feel like I'm working harder than ever lately, but I'm away on this Saturday morning to see about getting this loan.

All of these lines across my face tell you the story of who I am

I have not as into the female singer/songwriter thing in recent years, crowded out by the likes of Lupe Fiasco (a former student burned his new mixtape for me, thankfully, as I still have no idea how to download music in a post-Kazaa, non-ITunes way) and Kid Cudi and such. I still will follow Melissa Ferrick and Tracy Chapman to eternity and see them live whenever they're near, and still count Brenda Kahn as one of my favorite songwriters. But no one new, at least in recent years, though my obsession with Lauryn Hill did start within the last two or three years.

But, wow. Just discovered Brandi Carlile. I'm a little late jumping on the train, but I just can't stop listening. This song, too. The lyrics probably wouldn't do anything for me if written on page, but her delivery is so raw and beautiful. I just can't stop listening.

I also think she's beautiful. Just read she's a lesbian. Typical.

The Lighting of the Monument

Seven years ago was a historic evening, one of the best nights of my life.

My first year in Baltimore, going to the Lighting of the Monument was just about the first social event that I ever was involved in. I went with my old friend Marcia; I brought my newly acquired dog Holden; I got a girl's number; I heard beautiful music and saw this magnificent thing light up in the middle of a bunch of old buildings. It was really the first time I felt like I was part of this city. It was amazing.

That's not the night I'm talking about, though. The second year I was here, the year that was seven years ago, was even better. By then, I'd made plenty of friends. Now, the Lighting of the Monument always occurs on the first Thursday of December. That year, though, there was a bad snow/ice storm on Thursday, so they delayed the Lighting to Friday. I think school was canceled, too, which made it even better.

We started off at Sascha's for dinner and drinks, then headed to the lighting. The monument looked so beautiful and I really felt like I was a part of this city. I was at the lowest point in my weight loss ever (right around 195), so I felt svelte and great. I sure felt good about myself then. And, I was in love, and it might have been that night when I realized it. Such a great night, ended by getting kicked out of Spy Club in the early morning hours several hours later, and talking to her in the cab the whole night home. I was at a crossroads then, and probably didn't turn the right way, but one never knows. I also might have dodged a bullet. But that night, everything felt perfect.

If my Baltimore experience is defined by moments, that one shines brightest in my memory. I still try to head to the lighting every year, but even tonight I barely made it in time to see it from my car (I heard Sheila spoke; that would have been cool). Too many responsibilities and commitments.

Honestly, they should just change them to Fridays permanently.

Socratic Seminars and James Baldwin

I teach two classes of IB Seniors. They are back to back and I have lunch right afterwards, so I have time to reflect immediately about how the classes went. Often, this reflection is thinking about the differences between the two classes, which are as strikingly different as any two classes of the same prep and size could be. The first class contains most of the stereotypically "top" students in the Class of 2010 in terms of grades, while the second class is filled with smart kids who are not necessarily the ones with the highest GPA. As students, perhaps they're a little rougher around the edges, at least as a whole, but of course both groups are great kids.

Still, often their class goes much smoother than the other class. First, they generally seem to listen to each other more, and seem to operate in a way that is less competitive. Secondly, the lesson is being delivered for the second time from me, and I'm sure I've, at least subconsciously, worked out some of the kinks. These classes are full of all new literature and all new lessons and assessments for me, and I'd be lying if I said there weren't some kinks sometimes. So, I like both classes, but generally that second class feels more relaxed and successful.

Today was one of those days, however, when the first class felt much more successful than the second class. We were discussing the James Baldwin essay "Notes for a Hypothetical Novel." It's a tough essay, with Baldwin using the titular hypothetical novel to muse about the status of America, which he writes is "a handful of incoherent people in an incoherent country. The overall essay is basically an examination of this incoherence, which springs out of American mythology and the "melting pot" mentality that even I can't quite get if Baldwin is critiquing or praising. I didn't have to assign the essay, but I thought it had some really interesting ideas about America and about the function of the American writer, and thought at least a few students would find it interesting.

The first discussion today was not perfect, but it felt like an honest grappling with the text. Students had intriguing ideas and used their classmates to further their understanding. "This sentence is really weird," one student asked. "Can anyone else make sense of it?" Another even connected this sort of question to techniques Baldwin uses, asking "Do you guys think that the parallelism here is emphasizing an uncertainty or a certainty about America's shapelessness?" There were too many silent students and not enough attention to devices, but overall I loved hearing what these students talked about with this tough, very tough essay. They spoke for 25 minutes without teacher interference and really, I think, got to the bottom of some of Baldwin's ideas.

The second discussion, though, felt totally different. About two or three students came very well prepared, having comments thought about ahead of time and plenty of clear devices and techniques. Others had half-formed comments that were apropos of nothing much else being said. Still others did not seem to be prepared but said intriguing things that unfortunately were cloaked within a din of incoherence that drowned out the intriguing ideas. Students were not, in large part, listening to each other, and the discussion was largely unsuccessful. Only a couple of conclusions made, with overall minimum attention to what Baldwin is doing to create these ideas. And I feel like I can't come down too hard because I don't want any of them who are trying to stop trying and shut down. Students who can sit silent for 25 minutes in a graded Socratic Seminar are also an issue that I'm trying to fix, and I don't want to multiply them. Socratic Seminars are supposed to raise questions, but not in this way.

It's also so hard to assess, because often it is about the dynamic of the students in the particular Socratic Seminar. I want some students to elevate the discussion ("a rising tide lifts all boats") but I'm tempted to put all the super-quiet kids in one seminar to make sure they talk, and the talkative and quick kids in another so they don't drown out other students. But then the feedback will come, from the outside circle, and that might be too harsh for certain groups who need to be more concerned with reaching an analytic understanding rather than the format of their comments. I don't particularly want a student who barely has the guts to share a comment to be critiqued for mispronouncing the word "etiquette," for example.

So much dissonance for me right now, about a forum that I love to teach in but often end up with issues like this. For this text, we're spending three weeks with two Seminars a week, so the issues with seminars are coming back to the forefront for me in my classroom practice. I'm grappling with it so much, in fact, it's almost like I need to have a Socratic Seminar to talk it out with a group of like-minded folks.

Baldwin Redux

The first collection of Baldwin's essays, Notes of a Native Son was awesome.

The second one, Nobody Knows My Name is just alright. I'm getting bored and my two-Socratic Seminars a week schedule is getting monotonous.

I have to bring it in for a home run with next week's study of The Fire Next Time. Need to change things up at least a little.

In other words, teaching 9th graders to write their first literary essay is a trying experience. I'd forgotten. Or I'd never done it this early in the year before. Today was Peer Review day. They were supposed to bring in a first draft to do a Peer Review. I got a third turned in for every class. So what to do with the other two-thirds of the students? Ugh.