Towels, Grate Art, Janet K. West, And Why I Haven't Posted About Ferguson - Choosing The Worlds We See

The Ferguson Grand Jury decision begs to be written about - and many, many people have given that beggar alms.  There's lots to write about Alaska's new governor and lieutenant governor.  The stock market is at record highs while so many people are barely scraping by.  What about the metamorphosis of our 'knowing' of Bill Cosby?

But my attention lately hasn't been controlled by cable news, newspapers, or even internet news.  No, it's been strongly influenced by two youngsters both under two years old.  That world looks very different.  I have posts bubbling up on "Why Do Toddlers Hate Naps?";  "Gaining Power By Learning To Put Words Together"; and  "How Babies Know Babies From Adults".

This post is going to focus on things we examined on a walk the other day.

Grate Art

This collage gets a little busy, but the busyness does suggest how much there is to observe in these generally unseen parts of our daily lives.  And it shows that even engineers consider aesthetics for their most mundane products.  And I couldn't help comparing the pattern on my little shark's hat, that her uncle knitted for her, to the grate art.

This puffball we encountered seemed to fit into this set of pictures well.  

But back to grates.  Here's a grate around a tree.  And in the next picture you can see what the arrow is pointing to, as people have taken this practical way to protect and water these trees stranded on sidewalk, to also honor someone they held in high esteem.

The grating does look a bit like an old zoo cage.  Does this tree feel imprisoned here?  Isolated from its tree friends?  The word we use for people, probably doesn't match what plants 'feel', but if you think this thought is totally ridiculous, read this at Scientific American.  There's so much we don't know.

I had a good feeling about Janet K. West after seeing this plaque.  However, the cynic in me also knows that anyone can buy an indulgence and replace one's past with a  rosier image.  The Catholics may have officially banned this practice, but Americans have embraced it.  Just look up the real stories of the many people whose money has put their names on public buildings and spaces.

So I did some searching about Janet K. West, and the little I found seemed to confirm that she deserved a plaque.

The first hit wasn't solid evidence, but a piece of data to be weighed along with whatever else I could find.  From the Housing Resources Board

Janet West 

This development was named after Janet West, a past mayor of Bainbridge Island and long time advocate of affordable housing. It is a nine-unit bungalow style complex consisting of one two-bedroom and eight one-bedroom apartments.

This sounds good.  There are lots of reasons they could have given, and being an long time advocate of affordable housing is a good one.  But alone, it's not convincing.  We can write anything about anyone.  But then I found a book chapter that Janet K. West wrote.  Here are just a couple of excerpts, but anyone who voluntarily gives up their power so that others can achieve more fully, especially teachers, is ok in my book.

"The biggest discovery I made when I started to have students evaluate their own work was that often they were the only ones who could do it. To put it another way, I realized I couldn't always teach them because only they could discover what they needed to learn. This revelation came when a writing class of college-bound students was working a painful route through Loren Eisley's Immense Journey. I wanted to see how much of the man and his attitudes they'd begun to discover. We had struggled with vocabulary, style, and ideas. I say "we," for I too was struggling to find means to help them cope. They took dialectic notes. We had had almost page-by-page oral analysis. They had written precis. Nothing broke through the wall of frustration, confusion, misconception, even hostility that grew higher daily. So along about Chapter Five, I turned to an exercise I'd learned to use in literature classes to help students understand the characters- the bio- poem. This time, though, they were to write one about the author."

A biopoem?  I didn't know what that was.  But  Read Write Think quickly remedied that.  Here are  the first of the 12 lines of a biopoem:

"How to Write a Biopoem 

(Line 1) First name 

(Line 2) Three or four adjectives that describe the person 

(Line 3) Important relationship (daughter of . . . , mother of . . . , etc)"

And the end of the Chapter:

"With so much going for it, I'm embarrassed to think how long it took me to discover peer evaluation. I knew, with a kind of desperation, that my students would be weaned (if only by graduation) and only by happy circumstance would have a college roommate, a secretary, or a spouse to do for them what I'd been doing-showing them the weak- nesses and errors in their writing. I also knew I hadn't provided them with enough tools or practice to do the job for themselves, to be their own evaluators. Now I feel more confident that these vital dimensions are being added to their education, largely through use of writing-to- learn exercises, which frequently require sharing and peer response. It has benefits for me, too. I can and do assign more work in smaller chunks, while actually decreasing my paper-grading load, because most of the small assignments lead to formative evaluation. Both my students and I know more clearly what I'm looking for when I grade the final product. I have a much clearer idea of the quality to expect when I read that product. Best of all, they've learned more: about the subject, about themselves, and about learning."

I can relate to this.  I used to harangue my grad students that they had to learn to think for themselves.  What were they going to do when they graduated and no longer had teachers to tell them what to read and then helped them figure out what it meant?  They were going to have to do it on their own.  So, yes, I think I'd like Janet K. West and I'm glad I got to meet her with my little shark as we walked down the street and paid attention to the little things around us, without any thought of Ferguson or Cosby.

Oh yes, the towel up on top.  It was hanging on the bench at the playground.  When we went back the next day, it was still there and I thought we could use it to dry the slide, which had some ice and snow on it.  But when I picked it up, it was frozen solid.

The shark decided to skip the slide, but had a great time on the swing after I used some leaves to dry the seat.  And she learned a little bit about the effects of cold.









I'm not saying we shouldn't pay attention to the Fergusons, Cosbys, and other national and international events.  But let's put them in perspective.  If we all could enjoy the little wonders around us, perhaps we'd have more joy and less hate altogether.

And as I write about Janet K. West, I realize I know nothing about her but these tidbits.  And possibly the people who admired her didn't know about or ignored some hidden trait she had that cast her in a less positive light.  We all have done or said things we wish we could take back.  We have to learn to understand the complexity of human beings who so often combine both great, admirable qualities  with darker ones.  And we have to figure out ways to minimize the darkness and find just ways to deal with the darkness when it casts shadows on the greatness.

Being with young, young children helps one concentrate on the possibility inherent in each person and reflect on what mysterious (and not so mysterious) forces stain, or even derail those possibilities in so many.  Reading great literature from many cultures, reminds us that the complexity of humans has been around since the beginning in every culture.  

Gonna Be Hard Going Home - The Beach, Then Spanish Lessons [UPDATE: Fire and Film]

LA weather isn't helping me prepare to go back to Anchorage.  The picture is from yesterday afternoon at Venice Beach.  The temperature was back in the low 80s again.  The air was clear.  And on Monday, the beach wasn't too crowded.  The surf was much lower than it was Saturday when I biked with B. 

It was a good chance for J and me to relax a bit and catch up after her quick trip to Seattle to see our daughter and Z and the others.

On the way home we stopped at La Fiesta Brava to pick up some Mexican food for

Spanish Teacher and Chef

dinner.  The chef wouldn't let me speak English.  And forced me to dredge up my 50 year old junior high school Spanish.  I could tell him that "Mi Español es muy malo" and I could understand most of what he said, but the one saving grace of Thai and Chinese is that you don't conjugate the verbs.  I couldn't remember how to do past tense or future at all.  Another employee there said that the customers who come every day have learned to speak enough Spanish to do all their ordering and chit chat in Spanish.  I believe it.  As bad as I was, I still am surprised at what still lives in my brain.

As I juggled the bags of take out on the bike ride home, more words began to emerge - things I could have said.

Here's the card - for good food with free Spanish lessons.  



I'm hoping we can find a little more time at the beach this afternoon, though  so far I'm inside prepping for class on Friday in Anchorage - my first for credit UAA class since I retired.  I'm looking forward to it.  It's the capstone class, so it only meets six or seven times over the semester, but there is lots of consultation with the students.  In the past I've always known the students, but not this time.  There will be other faculty helping.  We also have some errands to run before we leave tomorrow.  But it's too nice a day not to hit the beach once more, even if just for an hour. 


UPDATE Tuesday 5:30pm (PT)  - After doing our errands, we biked back to the beach about 4pm today in time to see smoke billowing up somewhere north of the Santa Monica pier.  Two planes were bombing it with water then turning around and going out to sea to get more water.  We never saw them getting the sea water - they disappeared at a certain point - but from maybe two miles away we could see the water being dumped.

The fire was to the right of the photo from yesterday.  The plane disappeared from our sight against the mountains where they start to go down to the lest.

Right near us on the beach was a film crew.  A guy was standing in trunks with a gal in front of him.  She'd put out her arms and move like she was falling.  I couldn't figure it out as they did it a couple of times.  But then the last time someone threw a bucket of water on the woman as she was 'falling.'  That's when I saw they were standing on a surf board on the sand.  I'm assuming they were getting them and the sand in the background.

I forgot my camera at home so my fire shot - below - is from Santa Monica Patch which seems to have gotten it from KCAL - 9.  The report says it was just a brush fire, but if they hadn't been bombing it every three or four minutes, it would have been more.  From our vantage point much further away, there was lots of brown smoke that was blowing out to the ocean.  The temps were in the 80s today and the humidity down below 10 percent - with red flag fire warning for all around the LA area. 


Tomorrow we visit an old friend in Portland for a few hours before continuing on back home.

"I can't believe this guy didn't understand the expectations" - Anchorage Police Chief

Last Wednesday's Anchorage Daily News had an article about a police officer who used the APD's computer system to look up information about people for non-work related reasons.

Reporter Casey Grove writes,

Police Chief Mark Mew said Tuesday that he had warned the recruits on the academy's first day about inappropriate behavior while on duty.
"I can't believe this guy didn't understand the expectations," Mew said.

I've seen Chief Mew in action over the years and I think he's grown a lot and is dedicated  to making Anchorage as safe a place as possible.

But as a teacher, I'd point out that people often don't hear what they are told, especially on the first day.  I know that my students, on the first day, basically wanted to know how much work they would have to do, how many papers, how much reading, so they could figure out if they could do ok in class.

Even if they did hear anything else, there was no guarantee that what they understood was what I had intended.  And if the class wasn't interactive, where the students were forced to think and respond, the odds of them getting other stuff, especially information that was not part of what they already knew, was low.  Even when I told students exactly what they needed to do to prepare for the next week's class, they didn't believe me.  Until they had a quiz the next week and they realized that if they had done what I said, they would have passed the quiz.

So warning recruits on the academy's first day about inappropriate behavior isn't going to impact performance unless they actually listen and understand the details. And while some may get it, the others won't unless they are engaged in the discussion and given opportunities to role play, respond to case studies,  or otherwise actively participate in ways that force them to put their understanding into action. Which allows the instructor and the student to see if the student understood.  Just because you say it, doesn't mean they learned it. 

I imagine though, that the recruits got the information more than that one time from the Chief on the first day.  But understanding how humans learn new ideas (not easily) and new behaviors (by practicing them rather than hearing about them)  will make changing recruits' understanding and behavior more likely.

And there are some whom the academy simply won't reach.  And the academy has to have ways to detect who those people are and help them find more appropriate employment.

The Pros(e) and Cons of Computers Grading Essays

There was lots of coverage today about a new computer program for grading essays.  As a retired college professor who graded thousands of student papers, I have a few thoughts on this.

1.  Humans have abilities that computers still don't have.

For an easy example, let's start with CAPTCHA which is based on the premise that human brains can make simple distinctions that computers can't make:

"CAPTCHA: Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically

A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can't:
The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University."

Computers do a great job of spell-checking and some grammar checking.   But when it comes to evaluating the development of an argument, supporting the argument, the flow from beginning to end, and any number of other more subtle aspects of language usage, skilled humans are still significantly better.  If you need a human to read a captcha, you need a human to read a poem or an essay. 

I took the second (italicized) sentence from the paragraph above and asked Bing's translation page to turn it into Turkish and then back into English.  Here's the resulting English sentence:

"But when it comes to evaluating the development of this argument, the argument, in the end, and many other, more subtle aspects of language use startup current supporting people still significantly better."

How is a computer that can write that sentence in English going to evaluate a student's writing?  

That doesn't mean that in ten years computers won't be much better.  And I'm not saying there aren't uses for such a program.  It would be great for students to run their own essays through such a program, just as many of them use a spell-check and grammar-check.  But ultimately they need a skilled and dedicated reader to give them really good feedback. 

Would a program like this be better than a teacher who does nothing more than put a grade at the bottom of the paper?  The question then becomes about bad teachers and mediocre machines.  Again, I'd say it should be used by the student, like spell-check, not as a substitute for the teacher.  And I suspect if it's available, students will use it.  Will teachers forbid such use as cheating?  I hope not.  There will still be issues for the teacher to address. 

2.  Computers are likely to penalize non-standard and creative approaches

Computers can evaluate essays by absorbing a lot of rules on grammar, spelling, style, and perhaps even logical arguments against which they can measure the essay.  But the rules aren't enough.  In some cases there are conflicting rules or disagreements about the rules.  And the malleability of language means the rules are constantly evolving.

But even the best writers don't necessarily follow the rules, and often it's in breaking the rule that they do their best writing.   Strunk and White wrote the basic English writing style rule book, The Elements of Style.  In the introduction they write:

"It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. "

But will the computer see the compensating merit or just the violation?   I'm afraid that the necessarily limited boundaries of the computer program would lead student writing to get more and more homogenous. 



3.  Grading essays is feedback for teachers about what the students are learning

Perhaps my biggest objection is in response to this statement in the NY Times article:

"The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks."

Other tasks, like what?  Going to departmental meetings?  I found in my teaching experience that reading student papers gave me invaluable feedback on how my students were doing which reflected directly on how well I was teaching.  Reading the papers told me most of what I needed to know to improve my teaching.   Machine grading dilutes this feedback source significantly.  The job of the teacher, as I see it,  is to know each student and find ways to get the student from where he is to where he ought to be in terms of basic skills and understanding of concepts.

The argument that faculty have too many students to be able to grade the essays says a lot about how colleges have moved away from being educational institutions  to being degree factories. 

The answer isn't more machines.   I have no problem with students using such programs the way they now use spell-check. Ultimately, though,  the teachers should still grade them in the end. 

 

Productivity and Teaching

 Legislators want more productivity these days.  In classrooms, particularly at the college level, this often means more students per faculty member.  If you give a lecture to 20 students, they think, you'll be twice as productive if you have 40 students in the class.  What they really like is the idea of faculty teaching internet classes with 90 students. 

There are two basic ways to increase productivity:
1.   have the same output using fewer resources
2.   increase the output using the same or fewer resources

When legislators want to increase class size, they may achieve an increase in productivity if by that they mean more tuition coming to the university for the same resources, or more students complete the class for the same resources.  But if you mean how much each student learns, the output goes down.  Learning involves interaction between the students and the teacher - during class, after class, and through comments students get about their work.  The more students in the class, the less interaction and feedback (and learning) students get.  (I'm assuming a good teacher here, who does actively give students in depth feedback.)

 All this comes up because I've been reading Robert Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members, in preparation for the new faculty mentor program I'm working on this coming semester.  A key concern for Boice is that new faculty work way too hard.  He's come to this conclusion from studying new faculty for many years.  I got to that conclusion by living it.

Boice quantifies the work load of a new faculty member teaching six hours (typically two classes) a week, a lower than average course load.

• 6 hr/wk in class plus some 20 min/day interacting with students before and/or after each class meeting (total = at least 10 hr/wk)
• 18-30 hr/wk preparing lectures/classroom materials via reading, notetaking, writing, plus another 2 hr/wk, on average, grading tests and paper, etc. (total = at least 18 hr/wk, often as much as 40 hr/wk)
• 6 hr/wk for office hours (total= at least 6 hr/wk, much more for faculty who do not keep office doors closed past official office hours) (p. 13)

This comes to  between 30 and 56 hours a week.  We're only talking about teaching now.

This is a reality I faced as a faculty member.  My preparation for class, after many years, could be reduced by relying on notes and handouts from previous semesters, though usually I wanted to tweak my old materials and that could get me back to the 18-30 hours Boice lists for new faculty.  I found, though, that my grading load was much higher than 2 hr/wk.  I had  students write essays and short papers.  I found I needed at least 30 minutes per paper to read them carefully and give useful feedback.  For papers that needed more feedback, an hour wasn't unusual.

Boice's example above is the load just for teaching two classes, while many, if not most faculty, have a three or four class schedule.  Boice's example  doesn't include time for the other two major functions of faculty - research and service.  At the University of Alaska Anchorage where I taught, the normal faculty load was 3-1-1.  That is 3 parts (60%) teaching, 1 part (20%) research, and 1 part (20%) service.  So, in addition to teaching, there is another 40% expected, and again for research and service, another eight hours each, isn't going to cut it.

Boice writes:

". . . where campuses demand loads of 9 - 12 hours, time spent at teaching usually equals 50-60 hr/wk during the first two years.  . . [T]hese averages afford far less time than anticipated for good starts at scholarly writing, for setting up labs and research and field programs, for preparing grant applications, for reading of the professional literatures, for keeping in touch with colleagues at other campuses, and for socializing on the new campus.  [Finally] the dearest costs of this heavy demand come in social/family life, exercising, health, and sleep." (p. 13)

People would hear that I taught three classes a semester - nine hours a week in the classroom and think I had it pretty easy.  They didn't consider the prep time, grading, and the research and service work that made my work week go into 50 - 70 hours.

But when I think of elementary school teachers, who are in with the students for six or seven hours a day, five days a week, I know my load was easy.  Being in charge of a classroom - the learning and the behavior of a classroom of students  - takes a lot of energy.  It's like performing and directing.  And so good teachers have to do most of their class prep and assignment feedback on their own time. 

Yet many legislators and the some of the public think that teachers have it easy.

Are there problems?  Plenty.  Some college faculty do take advantage of their autonomy and don't spend that kind of time on teaching.  The vast majority though are conscientious and there is a lot of pressure to get way too many things done in way too little time.  There's no such thing as overtime.  And for K-12 teachers, the much higher amount of in classroom time makes for a very exhausting job. 

How Do You Know?

I've been reading Jeffrey L. Buller's The Essential College Professor, as I'm thinking about this mentoring program for new faculty.  I thought I'd pass on some ideas from the chapter on Assessing Student Learning. This is probably the hardest and most time consuming (if done well) activity of teaching.  While for some this is well known, I'm sure there are those for whom this is new or needs refreshing.

Buller points out that you have to know what your learning goals are for the students before you can assess them.  And as part of this discussion he identifies different ways people have described 'knowing.'

Column 1Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning and Knowing Processes (1956) Knowledge Comprehension Application Analysis Synthesis Evaluation

Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (1983) Musical Bodily-Kinesthetic Logical-mathematical intelligence Linguistic intelligence Spatial intelligence Interpersonal intelligence Intrapersonal intelligence PLUS (2003) Naturalist intelligence Spiritual intelligence

Anderson and Krathwohl’s Respose to Bloom (2001) 6 Cognitive processes Remembering:  Recognizing, recalling, and retrieving relevant knowledge from long-term memory Understanding Applying Analyzing Evaluating Creating 4 Kinds of knowledge Factual knowledge Conceptual Procedural Metacognitive The links will give you more information on each model.

Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning Foundational Knowledge.  Understanding and remembering: information ideas Application.  Utilizing skills thinking  - critical, creative, practical managing projects Integration.  Connecting: ideas people realms of life Human dimension.  Learning about: oneself others Caring.  Developing new: feelings Interests values Learning how to learn by: becoming a better student inquiring about a subject improving as a self-directed learner

HTML Tables

It's useful to recognize that there are different ways of 'knowing' and different kinds of intelligence. Mostly college grades focus on logical-mathematical intelligence, but as Gardner points out, there are other kinds of intelligence that are important.

The chapter doesn't really tell us how to apply these models to construct class goals and to assess student work except in the most general way.  It does highlight an important thought on teaching:

Truly effective instruction is not measured by how much college professors teach, but by how much college students learn.

That ought to be posted above every college professor's desk. 

What New Faculty Need . . .

First, each new faculty member is unique, so each will have different needs, but I think they all need a support system of other good local faculty across disciplines and they all need ways to make the best use of the time they have.   They'll need some straight talk on how the tenure and promotion system works and how they can best prepare.  And an introduction to this campus and to Anchorage and Alaska.  Beyond that, some will want help with teaching issues and others with research issues. 

I met with some folks at UAA yesterday to talk about setting up an informal group of new faculty for the fall semester.  As someone who has taught for many years here, it seemed like something I could do.  I used to go to the new faculty reception and look for the most interesting new scholars and get a small group together at lunch.  It gave them a chance to meet people in other fields and me a chance to connect with interesting new scholars.   I went to the library after the meeting and pulled out some books just to see what others are saying on this topic.

The black book on the bottom was a nasty piece of work.  Anonymous - he said he had to be anonymous so he wouldn't lose his job - trashes everything about universities.  The faculty don't do any work, the students don't either, and the administrators are former faculty who couldn't teach or do research.  If it really was a faculty member, he would have been the kind he was complaining about.  But if it really was a faculty member, then the reason he had to be anonymous was because the book was so bad, no documentation, and totally unbalanced.  The tone starts off with a dedication to Hubert Humphrey:

"who, AFTER LOSING IN 1968, BECAME A PROFESSOR - AND THEREBY PROVED THE CORRECTNESS OF MY VOTE FOR RICHARD NIXON"

That's probably the most objective part of the book.   It was published in 1972.  The publisher, according to Wikipedia, 

Arlington House, Inc., (dba as Arlington House Publishers), now-defunct, was an American book publisher of jazz discographies, as well as conservative and anti-communist titles.

This book seems to be part of the early anti-public university movement.

I could tell you lots of things wrong with universities - but for the most part, faculty work incredibly hard.  Yes there are those who abuse the system, but the others more than make up for them.  So, I've got to write up a little more on this project.  If we can make it work, maybe next year we can bring in some other retired faculty to work with more faculty.  The other books have more useful content. 

When I first came here, all the faculty were pretty much in one building and people in different disciplines had offices near by and we all went to the faculty senate meetings.  But nowadays, it's harder for new faculty to find the people they ought to know in other fields.

Bitter Milk

There's been a book on the table where I'm staying called Bitter Milk.  I've been trying to imagine what it might mean.  Think about it.  What is bitter milk?  Why would it be the title of a book on women and teaching?   Pause a bit and think about it.  I know.  Today we just want the answers.  So most of you are going to rush ahead to see without stopping to think about it.  But such brain exercises are important to keep our grey muscle agile.  But the instant gratification google offers us is making us forgot to take those pauses and let our brains do the thinking.  So look at the clock on your computer screen - better yet if you have a timer set it for 30 seconds - then shut your eyes and think about bitter milk for half a minute.  Yes, you do have 30 seconds to spare.  That's all I ask. 

OK.  That was kind of nice, to close your eyes and think for 30 seconds, wasn't it?  Here's what the author says in the preface:

In Sri Lanka, young women sometimes experience psychotic responses to adolescence as they struggle with the ambivalence provoked by the separation from their families.  In Medusa's Hair the anthropologist Gananath Obeyeskere tells us that these periods of distress are called "dark night of the soul" experiences.  He describes a ritual tonic that the afflicted girls drink to release them from their trouble.  It is called bitter milk and is a mixture of milk and crushed margosa leaves, the same bitter potion that mothers apply to their nipples when they wish to wean their babies.

 I can imagine author Grumet sipping bitter milk and swishing it gently in her mouth as she tastes and feels its meaning:

Bitter milk, fluid of contradictions, love and rejection, sustenance and abstinence, nurturance and denial.

She then goes on to say that these are the contradictions of teaching and her book explores these contradictions as she tries to understand what teaching means to women.  

Rosy Fingered Dawn

Looking out the window about 9:30 this morning my thoughts went back to a college classroom where Professor Pasinetti* lectured us in Humanities at UCLA. He recited in whatever language was appropriate - Latin, Italian, Greek, English - and he recited it so beautifully, that I was transported, even when I couldn't understand a word.  (Most of the time he lectured in English)  It was in that class that I read some of the greatest books ever written, including the Odyssey.

And as I looked out at the fleecy pink clouds, the words "Rosy fingered dawn" immediately came to mind. So here's a bit of Homer - from Chapter IX - where he's plotting how to deal with Cyclops.

"When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, he again lit his fire, milked his goats and ewes, all quite rightly, and then let each have her own young one; as soon as he had got through with all his work, he clutched up two more of my men, and began eating them for his morning's meal. Presently, with the utmost ease, he rolled the stone away from the door and drove out his sheep, but he at once put it back again- as easily as though he were merely clapping the lid on to a quiver full of arrows. As soon as he had done so he shouted, and cried 'Shoo, shoo,' after his sheep to drive them on to the mountain; so I was left to scheme some way of taking my revenge and covering myself with glory.

"In the end I deemed it would be the best plan to do as follows. The Cyclops had a great club which was lying near one of the sheep pens; it was of green olive wood, and he had cut it intending to use it for a staff as soon as it should be dry. It was so huge that we could only compare it to the mast of a twenty-oared merchant vessel of large burden, and able to venture out into open sea. I went up to this club and cut off about six feet of it; I then gave this piece to the men and told them to fine it evenly off at one end, which they proceeded to do, and lastly I brought it to a point myself, charring the end in the fire to make it harder. When I had done this I hid it under dung, which was lying about all over the cave, and told the men to cast lots which of them should venture along with myself to lift it and bore it into the monster's eye while he was asleep. The lot fell upon the very four whom I should have chosen, and I myself made five. In the evening the wretch came back from shepherding, and drove his flocks into the cave- this time driving them all inside, and not leaving any in the yards; I suppose some fancy must have taken him, or a god must have prompted him to do so. As soon as he had put the stone back to its place against the door, he sat down, milked his ewes and his goats all quite rightly, and then let each have her own young one; when he had got through with all this work, he gripped up two more of my men, and made his supper off them. So I went up to him with an ivy-wood bowl of black wine in my hands:

"'Look here, Cyclops,' said I, you have been eating a great deal of man's flesh, so take this and drink some wine, that you may see what kind of liquor we had on board my ship. I was bringing it to you as a drink-offering, in the hope that you would take compassion upon me and further me on my way home, whereas all you do is to go on ramping and raving most intolerably. You ought to be ashamed yourself; how can you expect people to come see you any more if you treat them in this way?'

You can read it all at classics.mit.  I don't have any cyclops to battle today, but I do have some things to do. 

*This is for college students.  I googled Prof. Pasinetti to make sure I spelled his name right and found a whole Wikipedia page on him.  I really had no idea (until now) who he was when I was his student - I was a freshman.  I knew he was a fantastic lecturer, but I had no idea about who he was beyond that lecture hall.  So, check out your professors.  Know who they are.  And go talk to them about their lives and yours.  Get the most out of your education.

Who is that Masked Man?

I sort of got mentioned in the Bangkok Post today. There's a story about Somprasong Mang-ana, headmaster of a school in a remote rural Thailand village. (From an Alaskan perspective it isn't all that remote, since you can drive to it, but that's a lot of other stories.) Here's the reference:

Somprasong himself knows first-hand of the perils of being poor and lacking in opportunities. While growing up in the northern province of Kamphaeng Phet in the 1960s, he studied English thanks to a Peace Corps volunteer.

I'm the English teacher. I posted about Somprasong when we visited Umphang in 2007. He's done incredible things with this school and is the Northern Thailand teacher of the year. This is the sort of thing that makes teaching so worthwhile.

The story begins this way:

Rare dedication

English in the hills of Tak at the Umphang Wittayakom School

Story by NIKI THONGBORISUTE

It is the daily roll call in one of Thailand's most remote schools. Khaiwan stands in front of her fellow students and announces:

"There are 15 in our dorm, but today there are 14 because Lata has gone home. Thank you. Please sit down."

This is not a translation. The shy 16-year-old has just stood in front of 325 of her classmates and spoken in English.

Yes, that's right. Daily roll call in the remote school is in English, which is not bad considering these are students whose first language isn't even Thai. In fact, 11 dialects are represented at the school, and the students come from all 26 hill tribe communities in the region.

Niki contacted me because she saw my posts on Somprasong - blogging has its rewards too. For the full story go to the Bangkok Post.

Breaking Bad Habits Through TaeKwonDo Kickathon

Today was one of those days that reminded me

• how much I'm missing because my kids are grown up and gone
• how much is happening, but invisible
  
  
  
  
  

I got invited to see some friends at their TaeKwonDo Kickathon. If you drive, even walk or bike, by this mall, you'd have no idea of the excitement going on inside. In other cultures much of what is going on is much more out in the open and the whole community is at least aware if not involved. But here, lots of things are going on, well hidden from the rest of the world.




Malls like this aren't built for bikers. The positive spin would be this is a "natural and recyclable" bike rack. There are a lot of these in Anchorage, but not enough near destinations if more people start biking.




But what could be more fun for kids that breaking things and making noise. I have to say they were also very quiet and attentive when they were supposed to be, but they were also given time to break boards and make noise. All in the framework of breaking boards as an inspiration to break bad habits. (The only actual bad habit I heard about that someone was breaking was biting fingernails.)

So, here's the video.



Here's S taking his kindling home.

Reading Between The Lines

The following was Part III of a four part post on how to evaluate poetry that I posted on Hungrywriterspoetry.blogspot.com some time ago. Hungrywriters.blogspot.com is open - I think to anyone - but the other parts of the the blog need permission.

This is the long explanation about why it's both useful and personally rewarding to read good stuff carefully and slowly.


The best class I had in college was 17th Century English Literature. It was the hardest and the one in which I learned the most. Professor Clayton, probably in his 30s, seemed much older to my 20 year old self. His gaunt body moved constantly, his eyes darted around lighting first on one victim, then on another. “What did Donne mean in this poem?” he’d challenge. If your answer didn’t meet expectations you might be ignored, or worse, your response was dismissed as, “Rubbish!” If your reply was more than routine, he might lavish you with, “Point.” And if your answer showed actual insight, he might even say, “Point well taken.”

Needless to say, people quickly stopped raising their hands unless they were certain they knew the answer. Being rubbished was far more likely than being praised. But if there were no volunteers, he would select a sacrificial lamb. To avoid humiliation I began to study ferociously. On the midterm, I got a D. The essay part was fine.. But the exam also included a huge table with columns titled: Poet, birth date, death date, meter, rhyme scheme, imagery, line from a poem. Some of the boxes were filled in. Most were empty. And there was a long list, from a – zz, of the names, dates, and other words, that belonged in those empty boxes. We had to put the letters of each answer in the right boxes. That part of the test was unexpected and disastrous.

All the students who got D’s or F’s had to meet with Professor Clayton privately in his office. Much to my surprise, the cold and merciless professor in class, was warm and friendly in his office. This had been a rough semester for me altogether. My midterm grades were two D’s and two F’s. I launched a new study regimen. Class was from 8-11 every day. I worked from noon to five. I was in the library at six till midnight.

We read Paradise Lost in the second half of that semester and I had more notes than there was text. I noted the meter. I noted the rhyme scheme. I noted each character, the images used for each character, and everything the character did. I also noted Milton’s birth and death dates. I did this with every poet and every poem we had to read. I loved Paradise Lost. With this level of effort, I was starting to see patterns. This character was always surrounded by black, that one by fire. I began to anticipate things before they appeared on the page. Suddenly I was part of the poem and felt its complexity, saw the details I had missed the first half of the semester. I began raising my hand in class, and getting ‘Points’ and occasional “Points well taken.”

What I remember of the Final Exam was the mystery poem. The assignment was to identify the poet. I began to check the rhyme scheme and the meter. I found historical references and could eliminate those poets who had died before these events took place. Eventually, I had eliminated most of the poets. The color green was pervasive in this poem and so I chose Andrew Marvell as my likely poet.

I got a B in the class. My A on the final wasn’t enough to make up for the midterm. But that grade gave me more satisfaction than any A I got. Marvell was the mystery poet and I’d figured it out. In hindsight, I realize that this class didn't just teach me how to only read poetry, but how to read anything, to a depth that allowed me to find its heart. It also taught me that by memorizing what seemed like insignificant details, I could know enough to recognize pieces that fit together and ones that were out of place. I could logically figure out the mystery poet in any situation.

Professor Clayton taught me the value of concentrated work and discipline. He taught me that being prepared with in-depth knowledge, enabled me to take full advantage of the clues. While I decided that I would rather apply these skills to what I perceived as more useful areas than the works of long dead poets, this class on 17th Century English Literature was the class that taught me the most useful lessons of all my college courses.


[If anyone knows Dr. Clayton - I took his class in the English Department at UCLA in 1965 or 1966 - please pass this on to him with my most sincere and profuse thanks.]

Euro Students Again - Plus You Can Meet Them Too

The European Education students came over for lunch today and we discussed values. Each brought some food and a memento that would help us understand who they are, told us about a value that they felt strongly about and what happened in their life to make that so important. They felt strongly about things like respect for others, responsibility, honesty. Again, I was very impressed with all of them. We were lucky because the sun was shining as we sat on the deck and talked and ate. I got everything into the house after they left just seconds before it started to rain. (As I'm about to post this, there's rare - for Anchorage - thunder.)

Then I got this email that says you can come see and hear them yourselves:

The participants of the US Department of State sponsored Summer Institute for Outstanding Student Leaders in Education will present their perspectives of the "New Faces of Europe" on [Tuesday] August 12 and [Wednesday] August 20 from 4-7 p.m. in Rasmuson Hall, room 110. [at UAA]

This presentation is open to the public and is an opportunity to find out how Europe is changing for 13 outstanding student educators who will lead Europe into the future.

Contact Russ Howell at (907) 786-4338 or anrbh@uaa.alaska.edu for additional information.

The presentations of last year's group were very interesting - a rare opportunity here in Anchorage to have a number of young European adults talking about how they see the world. Plus you can ask them questions. They're from Germany, France, Spain, and England. All speak very good English. The Germans include students of Turkish, Greek, and Albanian ethnicity.

[Sorry I didn't get pictures of them all. Some I missed and some I took bad pictures. Double-click the picture to enlarge it.]

Visiting European Education Students at UAA

Yesterday afternoon I had the chance to do a two hour workshop with a group of European education students (one is already a teacher) who are in Anchorage for a month studying education topics, and if I understand it right, with a focus on teaching about diversity. This is the third summer I've worked with one of these groups and they've always had a very interesting mix of students and this year's group is no exception.



There are students from Germany, Spain, France, and England this year.



The German groups have always sent students with diverse ethnicity. This year among the German group were people of Albanian, Greek, and Turkish descent.



The official title of this program which is administered by the American Russian Center at UAA is 2008 Summer Institute for Outstanding European Students in Education. (Actually, the paper I have has two similar titles. The other one is for "European student leaders.")

The participants all speak excellent English and have great senses of humor. They'll be getting classroom teaching and, if the program follows last year's, they'll be making various education related field trips - to ,schools in the Anchorage School District, McLaughlin Youth Center, etc. They are not a shy group and I asked their before posting the pictures.

Doug Reminds Me of the Petrol Tank Hole

Doug made a comment on the post about the road to McCarthy. He said the pictures and text

...are great appetizers for my coming visit. Spikes in the road (shades of sharp rocks taking out petrol tanks on Ugandan roads!), mosquitos and and tropical temperatures suggest that travelling in Alaska can still present the odd challenge...

As he says, Doug is coming to visit at the end of this month. Last time I saw Doug he was seeing me off at the airport in Entebbe. Doug was teaching in Kampala, Uganda. That was May 1970, before Idi Amin came to power in Uganda.

I met Doug first at the Heineken's Brewery in Amsterdam in 1965 where we'd retreated in the rain instead of biking to see the tulips. The next day, with a sunny blue sky, Doug joined us on bikes to the tulips. At the end of the school year (I was studying in Göttingen, Germany that year) I crashed at Doug's flat when I was in London and we traveled a bit together through England.

When he went to teach in Uganda, I was just about to return from my Peace Corps teaching in Thailand. So, I added Uganda to my route home.

Now to the petrol tank he mentions. We were driving across the red dirt roads of Uganda in his little Ford when we ran out of gas. The road had wheel ruts and a little ridge in the middle and we bottomed out more than a few times. At one point something harder than dirt made a loud noise under the car as we were barreling along.

The petrol tank was leaking. So there we were on the road, miles from anywhere, with no gas. Then a big tanker truck pulled up. Two Ugandans jumped out to see what the problem was.

A hole in the gas tank? No problem. The got out a little gas stove and boiled some water. They put a bar of soap into the water until it was soft. Then they molded the soap so it fit very tightly into the hole in the petrol tank. They let it harden. "The truck's gas tank is locked, but we can give you the gas that's in the hose." I think we got a few liters. Then we made it to the next town by shutting off the engine and coasting down the hills.

In Alaska, Doug, we fix everything with Duct tape.

Thailand Teacher of the Year - Somprasong Mang-ana

Old Peace Corps buddy Jim Lehman sent me to Wednesday's Bangkok Post to this story on four Thai teachers who were honored on Teachers' Day as the Thai Teachers of the Year. One of them, Somprasong Mang-ana, was my student when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand in the late 1960s. We got to visit his school for a few days last March. I certainly was impressed and I'm delighted to see that more important people than me were also impressed. Here's a link to the five posts I have labeled Umphang. There are pictures of the school in the last three posts. From the Bangkok Post article:

Awards given to mark Teachers Day today

SIRIKUL BUNNAG

The Education Ministry has honoured four teachers for their teaching spirit and devotion to their work to mark Teachers Day today. The four are Somprasong Mang-ana, director of Umphang Witthayakhom school in Tak; Pol Sgt-Maj Sophon Ritthisarn, a teacher at Wat Chonglarp school in Ratchaburi; Banchong Sombat, a teacher at Nong Rua Witthaya school in Khon Kaen; and Suleela Chanthanu, director of Ban Samnak in Ranong.

Mr Somprasong has been praised for his campaign to provide education opportunities for marginalised children in Tak while Pol Sgt Maj Sophon developed a remote school into a quality one. . .

Mr Somprasong said he chose to work at Umphang Witthaya school in the remote district of Umphang on the Thai-Burmese border because he was determined to help tribal and marginalised children get access to basic education.

''When I first took up my job at the school, there were 398 students and only seven were tribal or stateless pupils,'' said Mr Somprasong.

''I thought those children deserved an education, so I decided to travel to remote villages to persuade parents to send their children to study at my school, which offers free education.

''Now, our school has a total of 845 students, of whom 284 are stateless hilltribe children.''

He donates his 5,600-baht monthly academic entitlement allowance to cover the expenses of poor students. . . .

Kasama Voravan na Ayudhaya, secretary-general of the Basic Education Commission, said the four teachers would each be granted a certificate of honour, a golden plaque, a golden pin and a 300,000 baht cash from Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont on Teachers Day today.

Disclosures

My first trial blog was June 28, 2007. My first words were:

Disclosure First: Tom was a student of mine a while ago. I don't remember when I talked to him last. However, I have been disturbed by this case since the beginning. I haven't blogged about this, in part, because I can't talk about anything I learned about Tom through our student/teacher relationship which is the only relationship I've had with him. I decided I should go to court and hear the evidence for myself. What I say here is strictly reporting what I saw in court, stuff anyone who went could have seen.

We nodded to each other in the courtroom and shook hands a couple of times, but said nothing more than pleasantries. But I did want to talk to him before he leaves for his incarceration and so I emailed about a week ago. We talked on the phone for a couple of hours and Monday he came over for lunch.

When I started blogging, the separation between my life and my blog was ambiguous, but it really didn’t matter because I wasn’t writing about public topics and hardly anyone was reading the blog. That changed when I started blogging the trials.

At this point, since I have been writing about public events, I do think I need to be open about relationships I have with people I write about. On the other hand, my interest in talking to Tom was not about getting material for the blog. He was my student and that relationship takes precedence over the blog. There may come a time when we both feel that it is appropriate to post something about Tom here. At this point I simply want to be open about the fact that someone I have blogged about extensively and I are having conversations, even though they will not appear in the blog.

With Tom’s permission I’ll just say that I’m convinced that Tom clearly understands that he has broken the law and violated the public trust. He’s still going back through all the things he could have done differently at every step of the way - from saying “No” to Bobrick and flat out rejecting Prewitt, to whether he should have continued to work with the agreement to help the prosecutors. And he’s still frustrated in the disparity in time different players are likely to spend in prison. I think this is probably normal for someone who has screwed up and is now trying to move on. There's stuff you have to work through. I've already commented in several posts at the obvious imbalance of power in court between the resources of the government and those of the defendants. My conversation with Tom makes it clear that even those of us who sat through all three trials only saw a small portion of what all went on before everyone got to court. Perhaps more than the tip of the iceberg, but not all that much more.

As Tom looks to the future, he makes me think of the old Peace Corps ads that went something like: "Optimists see a glass of water as half-full. Pessimists see a glass of water as half-empty. Peace Corps volunteers see a glass of water and say, 'I can take a bath with that.'" In terms of optimism and seeing a positive spin on things, Tom would qualify for the Peace Corps. But I think that his ability to see the good and block out the bad is partly what got him into trouble.

Second disclosure: I've also mentioned very briefly here that I have three UAA honor students who are doing a directed studies class with me. We've been meeting, generally over dinner, with people from different academic fields and different professions to find out how their fields deal with the idea of truth. What meaning(s) does truth have in their fields? What criteria do they use to measure it? How do they know it when they see it? We have a couple of justice students in the small group and so last night our guest was Mary Beth Kepner, the FBI agent who has coordinated the Alaska political corruptions investigations and who has been at the prosecutors' table at all the trials. I had a chance to talk to her during a break in the trial and asked if she'd come to class. What she said last night was focused on the concept of truth more than the cases. We both were clear that whatever she said was not going to the blog. But as I said above with Tom, since I have been writing about the trials and am still writing about topics that arose at the trials, I feel that I need to disclose when I meet with people involved in the trials. Even if I that's all I can put on the blog.

Fun Time at Central Middle School

KS, an Indian Ed teacher in the Anchorage School District invited me to meet with some of his students to talk about the Peace Corps. What do you say to 7th and 8th graders in 30 minutes? Well, I grabbed some pakimas, a farmer shirt, some Karen hill tribe shirts, a yellow King's polo shirt, and a pink polo shirt from my school in Kamphaengphet along with some books and pictures.

We had a good time learning how to put on a pakima (the blue and the red checked men's sarong like cloths) trying out the different shirts and looking at pictures of my 7th and 8th graders 40 years ago. Time went by fast and the kids were great.

Visiting European Education Students

The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) is hosting ten students from Europe for several weeks of study of education in the US. They're from Germany, France, Spain, and Denmark. Some are already teaching. One of the themes is diversity education and they're getting a mix of classroom presentations and field trips to schools. I got to work with them last Tuesday and go back tomorrow. Last week we discussed Power and the power implications of lecture and participatory teaching methods. The requirements for the German students was that they had to be immigrants or from immigrant families in Germany. (Last year the group was all Germans.) The other countries made that optional but did require an interest in diversity issues. Here they are in class writing down the answer to "Who was your best teacher? What did the teacher do that was so good?" The responses tended to be combinations of caring about the students, being genuine, and knowing the subject.

Class

I have six students – three MBA students, three doctoral students. And then there were four more doctoral students who don’t need to take classes anymore, but wanted to sit in. We talked about the book mix up and I now have an array of power points I can choose from as the need arises. We went over my patterns of tension concept and did a lot on ways of knowing and models.

Students working in small groups.

The students were willing participants and no one fell asleep. The age ranges from late 20s or early 30s to about almost 50. About equal men and women. We already have offers to show us the nearby National Parks. And tonight Chuck (a nickname he picked up in Tennessee where that was a close to his last name as they could get) took us downtown by two of his gold shops (his great grandparents came to China over 100 years ago) to the town square where a thousands of people, mostly in yellow polo shirts were sitting in chairs listening to speeches in celebration of the beginning of the Chinese New Years. And he’s already invited us to a classical Thai music concert March 4 before class.

But by Sunday afternoon, there are signs that they were expecting a more traditional class covering 'current issues in management.' They want 'leadership' and 'organizational culture.' But I'm giving them material much further along than that. But since we are covering 'ways of knowing' I'm hoping I've set the foundations for them to see that their filters are looking for specific things, with specific names. But I'm covering material they have never heard of, not the labels they are looking for. We'll get there.