April 2008

Mi gente,

I’m here in Salt Lake City, UT, in a nice hotel with some beautiful mountains in the backdrop. Despite what others may believe, I’m not remotely bothered by the lack of racial diversity in this town. It’s been great. Customer service has been good, the conference in general is good, and the hotel’s awesome. Yes, it’s also because it’s a break from the kids, but the more I go through the conference, the more I find myself thinking about my children in the classroom, the things I do well, and my weaknesses as I hope to finish up the school year strong.

I knew I was in good shape when my group went to the New Teachers’ workshop, and left a good 15 minutes later because we were already prepared. I scoured the program book for workshop and targeted a nice, solid set of topics I wanted to focus on to improve or enhance my teaching. We set ourselves up to watch Malcolm Gladwell (the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, the first of which I read). At first, we were very excited to go because 2 of us had already read his work, but what he had to say blew us away.

This little man with glasses, a fro, and a soft but firm tone to his voice, Malcolm Gladwell really had everyone captivated for a good hour. I’m not sure if the articles that came out got the main idea of his speech, but what I got from him was that, our society really needs to rethink the way we educate our children, especially when it comes to math. He used the example of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cezanne, two of the greatest artists of the last couple of centuries. While they both have very valuable contributions to the art community, they couldn’t be any more different.

Picasso is the “conceptual innovator,” a man who had a great idea, executed it almost perfectly, and then faded after a while. On the other hand, Cezanne, the “experimental innovator,” worked hard at his craft, and got better with age. To wit, Picasso’s most valuable work was done in his mid-20’s, and he never reached that level of success again. Cezanne’s most valuable work comes in his much later years, to the point that his later work is 15 times more valuable than his earliest work.

It takes hard work and persistence, then, be successful. He continued on into other examples include the Eagles (conceptual innovators) versus Fleetwood Mac (experimental innovators) and Herman Melville (conceptual) versus Mark Twain (experimental). Of course, he brought up some excellent points and stories to coincide with the examples, and had me enthralled all in all.

What gave me pause, however, was when he spoke of KIPP schools, and he brought that up because he discussed the Asian dominance in math (they make up the top 5 countries in math for any country). In particular, he demonstrated how study after study shows that, when it comes down to it, it’s because they don’t have this rush to get these objectives done, the teaching is slower, the students’ mastery dictates the pace, and the attitudes that the students come in with as they enter the school is much more deliberate and highly focused on academic success, which due to a multitude of factors, can’t be said for here. (In one of the studies, there was a 0.9 correlation between the countries’ populations who did well in math and the same participants’ persistence and dedication to filling out a really long survey), so “how well that country does well in math doesn’t have to be measured with math questions.”

He then continued to say that these KIPP schools somewhat take the same approach, extending school time to about 3 more weeks, encouraging kids to think more carefully about their school work. He did retract a little from discussing the KIPP schools because he understood the audience and how this model procures teacher burnout. My only thought and maybe disagreement with encouraging the KIPP school model is the following: how do we expect teachers to become the Cezannes of education if we extend the school hours, take away the unions, and only give teachers a break in August?

He actually continued to talk about how our society embraces the Picasso models, with more one-hit wonders than ever before in the music business (which is why it’s not thriving the way it has before), and the auto industry. I’m interested to see this and other topics discussed more thoroughly in his new book coming out in November, but overall, he completely wowed me with his insight.

I also got a chance to meet him and take a picture with him, which was cool, and it just kicked off a rather enjoyable stay over here overall. In the coming blogs, I’ll delve more deeply into his speech and the workshops I attended. In the meantime, riddle me this, my people:

Are you a Picasso or a Cezanne? Do you see yourself as someone who has a great idea, implement it, and flatten out for a bit, or do you keep plugging away until you get it as close to perfect as possible?

Malcolm answered this with a “Maybe I’m a Picasso, but I sincerely hope, as I get older, that I’m really a Cezanne.” That drew some laughter.

jose, who has never seen mountains like this …

editor’s note: I hope I didn’t misquote Gladwell; I was typing like a madman. Also, this is the condensed version of my rather copious notes.

Tagged as: education, gladwell, nctm

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Today, I found myself in a whirlwind of activity, getting ready for the NCTM Conference in Salt Lake City, UT (math conference for my non-teacher folk). This included decorating my room a bit, cleaning out my desk, and getting those grants for Penny Harvest ready with my kids, along with trying to maintain some sort of peace within my class. Yesterday, I spent all afternoon copying some exercises for them to do while the substitute is present, mainly because whenever I’m not in the school, something disastrous usually happens. It’s been well documented, and every administrator and even my kids are on alert this week from what I understand. This time, I hope that some of the things I’ve left thwart the bad luck, or at least curb it.

I also spent all afternoon making inspirational mini-posters for the classroom, like:

and printing them out, and meeting probably the most helpful Kinko’s rep I’ve ever met. After he couldn’t fully laminate my door dec, he gave it to me for free. Well done.

Anyways, I was thinking about live-blogging the NCTM (maybe then I’ll get invited into the virtual math club, not), but then I decided against it. No one in their right mind would live-blog something unless they were getting paid for it. Personally, I have no such aspirations. I won’t be another statistic for blog stress. But I’ll definitely have my laptop with me, and maybe I’ll post some thoughts so everyone has a little access into what’s going on there.

This afternoon, I also found myself in this type of mood:

Tug only slightly at my heart string
Collapse your hair across my shoulders
Let me unburden you
Heal bruises too clothed for me to reach
Coat you in my love
To be everything and nothing to you all at once
To love you and not hurt you
To close my eyelids and see nothing
But us
Confusion for the future
Trepidation in the present
Recanting from our past
You are the strongest lesson planned for me
Hoping to learn the rubric to grade me by memory …

jose, who has like 4 or so hours to get ready for this conference …

Tagged as: poetry, reflection

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The first question I got asked was from Frumteacher, who looked forward to me answering these questions:

Two requests for you to delve into, Jose:

1) What made you become a teacher?

2) How do you feel when you stand in front of the blackboard?

Most of you are privy to my Vilson Manifesto in which I detail, and divulge, my purpose as a teacher, and how I wish to do this for as long as I possibly can. And it’s been linked over and again, in blog carnivals and other articles, possibly passed along through friends and family, and maybe even printed out as an inspirational post, most of which I’m grateful for.

But this weekend, I had a mental lapse.

Like so many of us going through these days and time, the pressure to maintain oneself while the weather gets warmer and the kids get ready to levitate off their seats is building to steam-pot proportions. No sense of relief comes to me from knowing that I have a conference in a couple of days nor that there’s realistically only a couple of months left until the school year’s over, and I’ll get to truly reflect on my position as an educator.  Despite my years of teaching now, I can’t help but second-guess myself just a little. While I understand that it takes more years to truly grow into that master teacher, my idealist visions for entering the profession have come into conflict with my utter confrontation with reality. I can’t dream up ideas without understanding where they came from much the way I can’t argue / discussion something with anyone without understanding where that reasoning comes from.

But I became a teacher for this: I have the necessary temperament for the job, I come from where my students come from, and without the teachers who so readily became educators for me and many of my brethren, I wouldn’t have been the man I am today. The idea of paying it forward is alive and well in me. That’s why I keep ruminating on the roles of our former Civil Rights leaders even when others find it cliche, or why I might deviate a little from math with my kids, and have these moments of second-guessing. If someone asked me that giving it my all was what I would need to cause a revolution, then I have no reason to go there.

In front of a classroom, I can make that happen, even when it’s all very subconscious. I’m not directly saying that being able to solve two-step equations is how my students will become the greatest people they can be, but my ability to transmit positive thoughts and affirmations of their own ability to work will have positive effects on their own self-esteems as well as my community, and I sincerely believe that. When I’m up there, I’m a stage performer, but I also have to get up there and give the most convincing performance I can day in and day out, or else I risk losing my audience.

Nevermind that I curse out in real life, and really, I’m a bit disorganized. I also don’t always think carefully about what I might say, and I’ve sometimes said inappropriate things to different people. To wit, I’ll even let out some nasty sarcasm at someone testing my gangsta. Yet, I know how critical my job is, and if, as an educator, you don’t have a belief in the importance of your career, then you’re probably the reason why the rest of us have to justify why we get summers off, tenure, and health benefits.

To wit, everytime I have a poetry performance, I have similar routines to what I do before I teach (or when I was in some high school musicals): I look at myself in an imaginary mirror and rap along to a little Talib Kweli or Rage Against the Machine, or sing along to some Juan Luis Guerra, Hector Lavoe, or just let U2 aurally serenade me until I’m a few steps away from the school building. I’m going to rock the crowd as hard as possible, make sure everyone in the building is listening to what I’m saying, maybe even get a little feedback after my performance, and hope somehow that whatever I’ve said resonates with the audience. If it didn’t, I gotta go back and work on my rhymes once more …

jose, who’d like to thank his girlfriend for just listening while I rambled and sobbed over some coffee before I came back to Earth …

p.s. - Maybe I’ll post a bit of that rant on Thursday while at the NCTM Conference in Utah. We’ll see.

p.p.s. - As a poet, should I be hitting y’all up with more poems? It is National Poetry Month after all. Hmm …

Tagged as: education, inspiration, questions

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The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. constantly remind me why we need to find peace, even to this day. Barack Obama’s latest speech on race invoked those sort of images from past civil rights leaders (and probably planned in many ways), while even Condoleeza Rice, a woman I’ve been very critical of, spoke up about issues of race in this country and how the legacy of this bias continues to divide us. People like Lou Dobbs and Jason Whitlock who say that race is no longer a conversation or is a conversation that no longer matters these days usually misspeak and confound even themselves, proving just how entrenched these biases are. We even get some people who call educated and well-versed Blacks and Latinos “articulate,” most of whom mean well, but a few of them who say that word with a bit of surprise, as if we’re part of some group of savages.

And MLK wasn’t the first to address these issues, nor the first to address racial inequalities, or the first to protest and preach non-violence ever. But he was the truest embodiment of the double consciousness that Blacks in this country, the understanding that we are all Americans, but within the United States, Blacks are second-class citizens bonded together by a common experience. Unlike his brethren in the struggle, he didn’t want to divide America, or make a separate Black nation, undeniably speaking out on issues of national concern for all. But his primary objective was to address the racial inequalities in this country. He didn’t just want us to hold hands in a circle and sing “Kumbaya”; he wanted institutional restitution and true integration.

Fast-forward to today, and while we have a day off for the man, we still go into war needlessly. We speak up about issues, but fear our government to the point where many of us won’t protest on a local, state, or national level against these injustices. We still find ourselves enamored with King, but some of us hold our bags and purses tightly to ourselves when a Black person walks by, and find every excuse in the book to not hire someone whose background is different from ours because we don’t want to sound racist. King helped the government realize that we need racial integration in this country in different institutions, but we still see the segregation in our schools, in our homes, and in many of the statistics dealing with poverty, employment, college matriculation, infant mortality, hospital quality, immigration, and the prison industrial complex.

While I do think that many underrepresented people have made huge strides in fields where we had no one to represent us, the general populace tends to fall into the trap of visual synecdoche, where one person or a small group of people represent the whole of the population from whence they came. For example, people see Jay-Z, Barack Obama, or Oprah Winfrey and think “See? Racial equality is here. No more need to discuss it.” Yet, that’s really a subtle way of saying “OK, no more. I can’t take any more of them on the screen.”

It’s disgraceful really. For all my discussions of racial inequality, I also fall somewhere in the spectrum of the racial integration arguments. I don’t believe in assimilation, but I also see the potential for much greater unity amongst everyone here. Yet, the institution set in place often hinders said progress. The subtleness of suggesting for instance that affirmative action has no place in America anymore is ludicrous since it was that set of policies that forcibly encouraged America to hire people regardless of our perceived divisions.

America, we have a long way to go. Let’s find the solutions to these inequalities and, then, let’s be the solution. Let’s make dreams into realities. 40 years ago, MLK died, calling America to task on its many indiscretions. 40 years from now, what will that generation think of how we responded?

jose, who reminisces over you, my G_d …

p.s. - Tomorrow, I’ll have a little inspirational post and answer some of your questions.

Tagged as: mlk, race

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I had a late start because my Internet connection hit the fritz a few hours ago and has been nasty ever since. It finally decided to work in time for me to post my musings after watching Keith Olbermann’s 5th Anniversary episode (man, he’s a cool ass dude). In situations like that, a lot of people might do irrational things like fling their modem at the nearest window or eat a huge bowl of ice cream and fester over how they’re going to drop the People’s Elbow on the next Time Warner Cable representative they come in contact with. Me? I’m cool like dat.

Lately, I’ve lived so calmly, it’s almost eerie that I don’t get worked up over too much. I probably learned that from this profession. As many of you read, I needed to chill out after another rough day at the woodshop, so I needed to remember why I came into the profession to begin with: to influence children’s lives in a positive manner as well as teach them math. (I think my main idea coming into the program was, “I didn’t choose math, math chose me.”) After a little reflection, I realize I lost a little sight of that; the kids are starting to lose their bearings on reality, and the wear-and-tear of their multiple tests they’re putting me through pushed my proverbial wall down, thus losing some of my composure.

Sometimes I forget to not take things too personally when the kids get the way they do, and that often brings me to the point where I feel like quitting. Trekking from the Lower East Side of Manhattan all the way to Washington Heights is an hour commute on the train, but rarely have I actually stopped mid-path and asked myself if I really wanted to come in that day. I did. I realized that, despite my Aquarian traits, all in all, I’m fairly reliable. I come into work a good 15-30 minutes early, dress professionally, and come ready to teach a lesson, and hopefully teach it well. I have high expectations. I want to improve as a person, a communicator, teacher, et. al. In other words, I’m ready for it all.

So even after all the situations I’ve encountered, like the fights and nasty disputes (along with some kids actually researching me online and finding this site), I’ve actually maintained a level head. Nothing’s going to bother me, not even the soreness in my back from the gym or the constant little chatter and lack of urgency on the part of some of my kids. Yes, I’m going to try my best, as I always do, but I just have to realize that there are things in my past or present that I can’t alter.

Sometimes when I get a painful memory or something I really haven’t let go of, I clench my fist and scream internally to release its vice grip on me. Then I breathe deeply, and smile a little, with the knowledge that I’ll make it another day. I’m just cool like dat.

jose, who has to push the post he had for today for Sunday …

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It was a rough day again at the old factory, mi gente. I find it hard to try and not take things too personally when kids get nasty with me, but today was an especially different case. I just found the level of disrespect at inordinate levels. I really looked at some of them like I didn’t even know them for the past couple of years. That coupled with my nervousness about the future has subconsciously messed with my sleep.

In other words, I need another vacation.

But all is not lost.

I do have ways of dealing with funks like these:

1. Go to the gym (went yesterday, but that’s because I need to stay on my weight loss game).

2. Plan something special for myself (like a trip out to DC, or Europe, or a Syracuse University alumni conference in September *CBT for my Cuse heads*)

3. Think positive thoughts (like me going to the Kanye / Lupe / NERD / Rihanna concert in May, or all the positive feedback I get from some of my closest associates and friends)

4. Breathe, laugh, and bite into a Twizzler.

5. Write (like I’m doing now).

6. Read (I’m still working on A People’s History … by Howard Zinn, but I have a good 80 or so blogs in my GReader).

7. Upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.

8. Listen to the following tracks:

• Scarface feat. 2Pac and Johnny P, “Smile”
• Metallica, “Hero of the Day”
• Metallica, “One”
• Jay-Z, “All I Need”
• The Beatles, “Free as a Bird”
• CRS (Kanye, Lupe, and Pharrell) - “Us Placers”
• KoRn - “Got the Life”
• Joe Budden - “Broken Wings”
• Alanis Morisette, “Thank You”
• Juan Luis Guerra, “El Niagara En Bicicleta”
• Lupe Fiasco, “Hurt Me Soul”
• The Verve, “Bittersweet Symphony”
• Anything else my iPod / iTunes has in store for this brotha …

9. Think and think hard about what my next move’s going to be for the next day.

10. To interpolate Jay, “Take off the blazer, loosen up the tie, step inside the classroom, Mr. Vilson’s alive …”

How do you de-stress? Not just for educators, but everyone.

jose, who’s still fielding questions. I’ll take more than one.

p.s. - Happy B-Day, Amber.

Tagged as: education, lists, playlists

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