Video Age

Okay, I have to admit I was one of the original TV kids. My parents could take me anywhere there was an available television and I could be trusted to submit myself to its complete control. I have TVs in half the rooms in my house. Still it probably cannot compare to the video young people are exposed to this day and age. I do believe the art of reading has suffered because of it, but there are very creative and intellectual uses of video. Most of you are aware of my fondness for anything by Akira Kurosawa. I love Japanese/Asian film, in particular horror pix. Here is where a line should be drawn. One of the student teachers in a class I am taking was telling the story of one of her students and an assignment he turned in. The assignment was vocabulary flash cards. Each of the student's cards carried a threat of death in various stages. I instantly recognized the work of the student as a progression in the film The Ring. The student teacher had not seen the film. She took the student to an administrator and he explained that he was using scenes from the movie just to scare the teacher, you know for fun. Well the student was reprimanded., and having been told by a friend about the film the student teacher was not as traumatized. My thing about this is I have two big macho type guys that are in my close family who will not watch that film by themselves. It is that scary. I have refused to watch it a second time. I found it that disturbing, and I grew up on monster movies. How could someone let their twelve year old son watch that film? That is the type of video exposure that can be harmful, as it proved to be. I think what young people watch should be age appropriate. Certain images are not appropriate for developing minds. I'm pretty mean about that, my chidlren would say downright scary. Meanster away.

Seeing Stars

Well the students had their CA Standards Test today. I checked out the test for 9th graders. I think the CBEST was easier. The ELL class that I helped proctor today is currently working at an English level at basically the fifth grade. So all of the test levels were pretty much estupid to expect these students to have the necessary ability. The teacher and I tried to reassure the students that they would not be graded, but some of them tried so hard, it would break your heart. I asked one girls how many languages she spoke. The answer was three. I told her that was more than nearly any student on campus. The teacher also told the students that they would all be able to master the test in their own language. The students began to smile again when the teacher put a movie on for them. I'm still not smiling. Today was an argument against merit pay based on testing. Hey Arnold are you listening? Mean and getting meaner.

Literacy Today

Literacy=the ability to read and write.
I suppose you can add all of the qualities you'd like. What should be read? I say anything, anywhere. What I find intriguing may bore the pants off someone else. I tend to read alot of novels on the, shall we say "dark side". My mother and I cannot read the same books. She wants happy, happy stuff. I like happy stuff, but I guess I prefer literature that provokes my thought processes, opens up new worlds to me. I think my mother would faint if she read one page of Danielewski's House of Leaves or anything by Raymond Federman. She has read Lolita and she considered it a dirty book. She couldn't understand where Nabokov was coming from or his statement on democracy. She's reading from a different frame of reference than I am. We are both literate. I, trying to encourage reading, bought my son The Basketball Diaries. He loves basketball. He sure enough read it front to back, handed it back to me and asked, "Have you read this?" I took the book and read it. It was radically honest and about drug addiction. I was not sorry I gave it to him to read, but he seemed relieved that I did not know what I had given him to read. We discussed the book further after I had read it. He had not been psychologically damaged. I cannot define what you or anyone would consider literate. Again read and write.
Many letters have been found in garages and attics stuffed away from a time when women did not delve in the public literary sphere. The letters are gems of great historic values. They are literature. So if you can read a creative work and write a letter, well maybe that means you are literate. Apply it to e-mail or the internet if you like, but if reading and writing are involved, so is literacy. Speaking of which it is Joni Mitchell, not Joanie Mitchell. The mean one can be such a ditz. Over and Out.

Earthquake in the House

Bernie, the word "ludite is not in any of my dictionaries, not even my American Heritage. That's pretty bad. However, I think I can answer the prompt. Art is Art is Art is Art. I don't think anyone can label a particular method as unacceptable in form.
Art="Creative or imaginative activity, the expressive arrangement of elements within a medium." Who defines which medium is acceptable? If it's a ludite I'm not sure it counts.
Anyway, back to earthquakes in the house. At 4:06 My husband and I were jolted awake by the moving of the earth in a dramatic fashion. Feeling relieved my husband needed to relieve himself. On his way back to bed he tripped while trying to avoid stepping on the lying dog. I could not see him in the dark but the noise he created was astounding. The crashing and bumping and pounding seemed to go on forever as he fell into my chaval (standing) mirror, somehow gently leaning it against the wall while he fell halfway through the window (on the second story). He knocked the screen out onto the neighbor's roof. We are quite sure the neighbors thought that little aftershock made quite a racket. Yes, my husband the aftershock. When I could compose myself long enough to speak I lamely tried to make my husband feel better by stating that at least he had not fallen out the window. He declared, "Oh, I couldn't fall out there naked!" Yes, my husband the aftershock is a modest man.
No school today, so I cleaned the windows and the mirror and replaced the screen. My husband and the neighbor had a good laugh, so all is well.
The day was crazy. I found out that someone apparently rode their bicycle into the side of my truck, leaving a huge dent, but no note. I left my purse in the shopping cart at the market and went all the way home. Fortunately it was still there when I discovered it was missing and ran back to the store. Oh, and I ruined a full dryer load of clothes by leaving a black ink pen in a pocket. It is Wednesday the 13th. I guess I don't need it to be Friday to be a ditz.
On to the six disc and better things. Listening now to Joanie Mitchell's "Blue". It is on the list of essential CDs.
Bye for now the mean one has to get herself off of this bad trip.

phew!

Wow! What a day! What a week!
Well I found out a few things that soothe the mean soul. First my students have up to six times to take the CAHSEE. The student I was most concerned about, of course, could not pass right now, but the master teacher in the class had everyone take the test, knowing the impossibility of it. She explained that she instructed them to just see what is involved in taking the test without trying to pass it. Experience is good. My ADHD student who I felt had no advocate is getting tested for special needs. I feel like I had a small hand in that. Hurray! And I've been assured a spot for my student teaching when I reach the high school level next spring. There was an article in a magazine for women over forty (shhhh) about women changing careers midlife. It listed all of the little and huge insecurities involved. I have them all. I put on a confident front, but sometimes I feel like the littlest kid in the class, and I wonder what I'm doing to myself. So every little accomplishment is so precious to me.
I had a couple interesting experiences with the students last week. They had to write a short essay from the POV of a character in a book they are reading. I noticed ADHD was having trouble getting started. I told him to pretend he was telling a friend what had happened to him as this character. The kid wrote two pages. Write on. I have little catch phrases I use like, Write, write like the wind. A little humor please. One of the students was especially tired that day. I told him he should have had a cup of coffee (it's okay, it's culturally acceptable for him). I asked him if he worked. He told me yes, I assumed as much. I told him I knew it was hard because I work and go to school (among other things). He said yeah, he felt that was why most kids in his culture dropped out of school. It's more important to work. I said "But you're not going to drop out, Right?" He said "No Way!" So much good stuff for the meanie. Still love these kids.
From the six disc: Just picked up Beck's newest stuff Guerro . It's his best output for a long while. Also picked up Moby's Hotel Loved it. He really took a different road.
Rented the first two episodes of HBO's new western, hated it, disgusting language and content. Also totally unrealistic. I felt like I needed to wash my eyeballs after watching it. Never more.
Ptui. Trash. Ugly. Ick.
Well back to the grind. The mean one is off ( in more ways than one).

Hey where have I been?

Well the topic for today is instant messaging. Personally I find it intrusive and a bit of a pain. I'm not a very strong keyboardist, and I am usually busy at something when someone I'm not really interested in chatting with interrupts the usually busy at something with some la-te-da blah blah. Do I sound anti-social?. As for using it in the classroom, well it seems to me that you had better have a group of highly motivated and focused students in your class. I just can't see a bunch of teen types not taking advantage of the opportunity to la-te-da blah blah on class time. As a rule adolescents don't have the risk blocking tools necessary to keep them from getting involved in volatile situations such as info sharing, stranger affiliating, pornography pandering, etc. Sorry, just don't like it. When I was IMing with a buddy in Missouri a young girl (I could tell) decided to IM me. I didn't know her and was somewhat distressed at this young princess being able to access me without my prior approval. For her part I could have been some psychotic lunatic with evil intent, very happy to happen upon her young and oh so innocent self. Lucky for her I'm just mean and didn't want anything to do with her let alone chat the la-te-da blah blah. It's all just too too ugly.
In class today the students had a quiz, just a quiz. A 10 point something or other. I have read the book they were being quizzed on, and I didn't do as well as some of the students. True /false can be so misleading. Anyway one of the girls didn't do so well either, and she took it real hard. She cried. I think I need to tell her I had a tough time, but I wasn't getting 10 points. Now I want to cry too, but the mean in me won't permit it.
What to do, what to do?
Well I need sustenance before class so I don't pass out from the stress. Meanie out.