15 Apr

Global Warming

This past week was like, Boom! Summer. Temps on Friday got into the 80s. If it doesn’t get cold again, the next two months of school are going to be miserable because a) my classroom is about 10 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, making even the 70s too hot, and b) students have a hard time staying focused when it’s nice outside. All week, I heard, “Can we have class outside?” On Monday, I relented and took my creative writing class out, since it didn’t disrupt the day’s plan to respond to various prompts in journals. Unfortunately, twenty minutes after settling in at a nice location, some doofus started yelling out the 3rd-floor window, “Alex Murphy is gay!” Alex is in my class, though that’s not his real name, and to his credit, he didn’t respond, but 3rd-floor dufus kept it up, yelling out his very witty “Alex Murphy is gay!” revelation about ten more times, so we left and moved to a different location.

I think I’ve decided on going part time, though now rumor has it that we’re losing a lot of teacher allocation in the English department next year, so class size is going to go way up. If my request gets granted, I wonder if that allocation will just be lost, further burdening the rest of the English department. If so, I’m tempted to resign so the have to replace a full 100% teacher rather than lose 30% of one.

If these education budget cuts continue, the coming years will be even worse: more teachers will be “surplussed,” as they say, pushing class sizes above 30 and thereby affecting the quality of instruction because individual teachers will have to deal with more behavior issues (which increase with class size), and individual attention will become more difficult. And since grading essays takes about 15 minutes per essay (at least), an addition of 7 students per class will up the grading time by hours per week! I’m pissed.

On Thursday night, there was a wonderful electrical storm off in the distance in the western sky, clearly visible through our open bedroom window. Eileen and I had just gone to bed and we were watching the show when it started to hail. I put on my glasses and approached the window to get a closer look. Golf-ball-sized hail was thumping onto the grass and I said something like “Holy Cow” upon seeing the things, which provoked Eileen to sit up and look out the window too. “Oh my God!” she said. “They’re the size of tennis balls.”

“Uh, no,” I replied. “I think you’re looking at tennis balls,” pointing out that with her glasses on, she might notice that our dog’s outdoor stash of numerous fetch toys was a different thing altogether.

She put on her glasses and we had a good laugh over that one. If only it were so easy, when people don’t see the world like you do, to just say, “put your glasses on.”

12 Apr

Now what?

I’m coming to the realization that the process of writing may currently be more important than what I actually write down here. Most of my recent ruminations have been about my teaching career and whether or not it’s something I’ll continue. I’ve put lots of thought into it and I’ve even written about it, but because it’s not one of those this-is-an-amusing-thing-that-happened-to-me-today-type things, I haven’t posted here. But such a pattern has resulted in a disappointing two-posts-per-month batting average recently. Even Brian’s beating me.

So I’m going to try to start posting whatever tidbits I can, even if they appear a little mundane at first.

I’m in the midst of deciding whether I’m going to request a part-time teaching schedule for next year or a no-time schedule. No-time would allow me to say “I’m between jobs” at parties, which would be funny. But it would also make Treasurer Storm (aka, my wife) a little grumpy.

Part time would allow me to have a little more time to try to write and submit some manuscripts or to possibly start exploring some real grad school options more seriously. It would also keep me from burning out entirely, which is what I’m headed toward. I like being immersed in intellectual pursuits; it’s inspiring to me. What’s not inspiring are the infrequent parent complaints I get, the equally infrequent discipline problems I have, and the occasionally oppressive load of papers to grade. And I get pissed off at how absurd it is that as an English teacher, I have no time to write or read on my own.

Part time would also earn me some money and benefits, so there’s that.

Anyhow, the post below is a dialogue I had with myself spurred by reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The book chronicles the clash between Western medecine and Hmong cultural views. It does a pretty good job of illuminating how both sides think they’re right. At points in the book, I found myself siding with the doctors, whose expertise was being completely ignored/brushed aside (something which happens to teachers all the time). But at other times, the doctors were so ethnocentric it was disgusting. And I’ve seen first-hand how much guesswork, incompetence, and error-making goes on in American hospitals. The dialogue was my way of mulling over the balance between ethnocentrism and cultural relativity.

11 Apr

The Flat World

R: The world is not flat. It’s simply a fact.
I: What’s a fact?
R: Observable phenomena.
I: I haven’t observed it.
R: I could show you. There are pictures from space; airplanes base their trajectories on it; the day itself is based on the rotation of our round world.
I: Well, maybe I’d believe you if I saw it, but I haven’t. Why is it so important to you?
R: It’s a fact!
I: But it’s important that the world is round because it’s a part of your worldview and to call that into question is threatening to your worldview.
R: If we can’t start with facts, we can’t have a discussion.
I: Can you consider why the world’s being flat might possibly be important to me?
R: No.
I: Try.
R: Well, I suppose there may be some comfortable myths based on a flat world.
I: Yeah? Invent one.
R: Invent one? Okay, let’s see. Once, a great leader named Idios walked to the edge of the world.
I: Aha! See? Right away, you get to the most interesting part of the flat world: the edge.
R: The edge? Why is that so interesting?
I: Because it’s true. There is an edge to the world, a precipice beyond which we cannot go, beyond which lies a great, mysterious chasm of eternity.
R: Are you talking about death?
I: Sure.
R: What do you mean “sure”? Don’t you know what you’re saying?
I: Death fits well. So do other things. I’m talking about the edge of the flat world, which is a truth, though not what you’d call a fact since you’ve never observed it.
R: Okay. I see what you’re getting at. The flat world is a story you’d prefer.
I: Yes.
R: Still. I believe in rationality, and I can’t really believe any other approach to the world.
I: You’re going to have to. Your own sciences are discovering quantum physics and other such theories of the way the universe functions, all of which are pretty irrational. Like that famous thought experiment, Schroedinger’s cat? The cat is both alive and dead at the same time? I mean, c’mon, there are limits to rationality.
R: Still, as a teacher, I need to employ rationality as a yardstick. I am trying to prepare my students for citizenship in this country and world, and without abilities to reason and rationalize, they won’t survive.
I: Well, they may survive; they just won’t necessarily gain power.
R: Right. My job is to empower students and if they refuse to learn the norms of Cartesian philosophy upon which this society is based, they will not be empowered.
I: Well, empowered in the sense of having a position of power in society? You’re right. They won’t get it. But there are other things that empower people. Like love, belonging and purpose.
R: Agreed.
I: Good.

24 Mar

Library

So last night, I went to Memorial Library, which is one of the libraries on the UW campus. As a teacher in a public school, I can get a library card and check out books from public universities since I’m a technically a state employee. I walked in and saw two college girls sitting behind two separate desks; the one on the right was checking people’s IDs as they walking through the gate into the library, and the one on the right was working the information/guest pass desk. I walked up to the latter and ineloquently explained that I was a teacher and I think there’s some loophole — well, not exactly a loophole, but a, um, rule about how I can get a library pass . . . . She eventually cut me off and quickly explained, “yeah, because you’re a state employee, you can be issued a borrower’s pass.”

“Right,” I said. “Let’s make that happen.” She told me she needed to see a driver’s license with current address and proof of my being a teacher. I got out my wallet, threw the driver’s license down and then fumbled through my other cards to see if anything looked like it might prove my teacherness. All I had were insurance cards, which she wouldn’t accept. I told her we didn’t really have a card to carry around proving we were teachers. “I guess I could bring in a pay stub.”

Just as she was explaining how late she’d be there in case I wanted to come back with some proof, I interrupted and said, “Oooh. You could look me up on the Madison West website.”

At this point, college girl #2 spoke up: “Do you teach at Madison West?”

I told her yes.

“I went to Madison West!” I looked at her closely. Sure enough, I remembered her from my homeroom. For three years, she had been in my homeroom class, which, for those who don’t know, only meets about five times a year.

“Yeah,” I said. “You were in my homeroom.” She squinted at me slightly. “You have a twin brother.”

“Yeah!” she said. “Corey.”

“Yeah. Your name is Emily.”

“Oh my God!”

I turned back to college girl #1. “Do you need any more proof than that?”

“That is pretty impressive,” she conceded, but she still needed to find my name on the school’s website.

08 Mar

Guilty

I’m not sure if Eileen and I are getting sick or if the warmer night yesterday threw us off, but last night, we both slept horribly. Speaking for myself, I don’t think it was something I ate. For dinner I had pasta — pretty standard. Earlier in the evening, I snacked on a few chicken wings and an apple, and, uh, some brownies. Nothing out of the ordinary. I stayed up a little later than I planned, researching whether I could really get a free xbox 360 or mac mini through some website called freepay (it turns out I can, or rather I could if I had 8 friends), so I should have been plenty tired. But when I got into bed, the dreamworld evaded me. All I could think about was how shifty it would be to ask my students to sign up for freepay to help Mr. Storm get a free xbox.

Eventually, of course, I fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep. I woke up three or four times. Once, Eileen was up too, and she muttered something about how the dog kept getting up to go eat out of the garbage and then coming back and asking for help getting back on the bed. Eileen’s a professional sleeper, so I wasn’t sure if she was awake when she informed me of the above, but I think I responded by asking whether she had blocked the garbage can with the kitchen stool.

When morning arrived too early, I grabbed our little battery-powered alarm clock and held it to my chest. That way I can repeatedly click snooze as soon as the alarm sounds. A half an hour later, I fessed up to the fact that I wasn’t going to get up to bike in the basement for an hour. So I reset the alarm and went back to bed. I slept a little, but not enough to feel any better when the alarm went off again 45 minutes later. Tember thumped her tail a bit as I crawled over her and Eileen, but she didn’t bother to lift her head up — a subtle sign that she knew something was wrong.

When I got into the kitchen, I saw the damage she had done to the garbage. I was muttering to myself about how it didn’t make sense: she never got into the garbage in the middle of the night; she only did it when she was home alone for a long period of time and when she had too much energy to burn; yesterday, I had taken her to a nearby park to throw the ball for her. It simply didn’t make sense.

Then I saw the little carryout box in which I had gotten my chicken wings. I dug through the garbage, looking for remnants, but I couldn’t find any bones. Immediately, I thought back to a freshman English paper I had graded years ago by a student who told of how she had secretly given her dog some chicken bones. Her parents had told her not to, but she did it anyway. Two or three days later, her dog died, and she blamed herself.

The first internet article I found was pretty encouraging. It claimed that in most cases, the bones cause some constipation but otherwise pass through the system without harm. The next article I found was not as encouraging, however. It was a horror story about a dog who had died after eating chicken bones. I stopped my search. Emotional personal accounts: 2. Reasoned advice from a certified vet: 1.

When I called in, the vet assistant told me that if I wasn’t going to be home with her all day, it would be best to bring her in. I woke up Eileen and said, “I need you to do me a favor.” Tember ate chicken bones and might die! “Tember got into the garbage and ate some chicken bones, which aren’t good for dogs.”

Two x-rays and $140 later, she’s fine. If she passes a normal stool tomorrow morning, we’re totally clear. Tonight, Eileen commented that if we were to tell our Ecuadorian landlords that we just spent $140 on our dog after she ate chicken bones, they’d think we were crazy. She said this while spooning with Tember on the couch.

What can we say?