Posts from — May 2008

A few notes:

1. I’m back to health mostly. It feels good, especially after taking the day off on Friday to handle that. I needed a little breather to finish out the year strong, and I wasn’t coming into work to spread my cold on anyone. Thankfully I think I’m ready for tomorrow’s challenges.

2. A pretty heated discussion popped off in that last post about the Holocaust and the Maafa. In turn, that post alone received 600+ hits. I know, I’m surprised. Before that, I’ve never gotten over 300 hits in a day.

3. I went to one of (2) regular barbershops, and there was this new guy there. Of course, everyone’s nervous about the new guy, but I said, “F*k it, what’s the worst that could happen?” Why did this man take 45 minutes to hook me up (where it should only take me 20, 30 tops)? 3 people at a different barber finished before I did. After a while, I said, “Alright, let me go!” I mean, I was literally there teaching him how to cut. And he kept making mistakes, so he kept trying to fix them. I’m surprised my hairline isn’t behind my ears after that experience.

4. To all the past and present mothers, soon-to-be-mothers, and future hot moms, Happy Mother’s Day. To everyone else, wish your mothers wherever they may be a happy and joyous one (unless you and her don’t really get along like that, then my bad). They’re the center of our universe, and there’s no way we can pay them back, but the plan is to show ‘em that we understand … you are appreciated.

I’m keeping it short today. I gotta prepare my mom a little something. In the meantime, enjoy these tidbits:

- Pandagon reports on a teacher who lost his job in Florida because he’s a wizard. No, really.

- The Free Slave puts down some interesting points of view about our current system.

- Did Edward Carson really bring up Public Enemy in a classroom effectively? Why I believe he did.

- Eva at Sassy Women Online discusses the latest You-Tube phenomena of bullying online and why it’s not cool to almost kill a girl on camera.

- NYC Educator writes another informative posts on another think tank telling teachers how terrible they are.

jose, who’s concurrently excited about glowing in the dark with Kanye, NERD, Lupe, and Rihanna on Tuesday …

p.s. - Yes, I have “Dear Mama” as a ringtone whenever my mom calls.

Wow, my face feels like a lemon-meringue stuffed pie. And I’ve been blowing my nose all day trying to get the stuff out. Ugh! This is the first time in what feels like a year or so I’ve actually been sick, versus in previous years when I’d be sick every week or two. I’m proud of my upkeep. Nonetheless, this change of weather is really messin’ with my immune system … not to mention a driver in need of a reality check. Who the hell blows their horn from 4-6AM consecutively?! Who? Inconsiderate asses.

But no, I didn’t call in sick. Rather, I just let the chips fall where they may, and do my thing.

OK, a meme, courtesy of NYC Educator:

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

I’m a little younger than most of my readers. Let’s just say I’m certified to teach myself from 10 years ago.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

• Read some more of my latest Men’s Health mag.
• Get ready for tomorrow.
• Find an exit strategy for this crazy cold of mine.
• Buy tickets to go to the Dominican Republic.
• Watch some basketball before I go to sleep.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

• Some banana-walnut muffins
• Peanut M&Ms
• Some of that Cold Stone Ice Cream, yummmmmm …

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

• Shower the people I love with love, word to James Taylor …
• Make my own school.
• Publish a couple of books.
• Invest my money so future Vilson generations can have more money.
• Travel the world.
• Attend all those events I wasn’t able to when I was a little less loaded, like an NBA All-Star Game here, World Series there …

5) Three of my bad habits:

• Sometimes I’m so focused on my writing, I tune out everything else, and I mean everything else.
• I have a hard time expressing myself, and that can come across as callous.
• I forgive, but never forget …

6) 5 places I have lived:

Only lived in one. NYC.

7) 5 jobs I have had:

• Basketball manager
• Concession worker at a movie theatre
• Data entry clerk
• Intern at a financial corp.
• Teacher

6 peeps I wanna know more about:

• Friedrich Nietzche
• Arturo Schomburg
• Karl Marx
• Lolita Lebron
• My grandfather on my father’s side
• Raul Julia

I tag … the starting line-up of the Los Angeles Lakers, since they’re not busy with anything right now.

jose, who can’t believe he’s this sick with only 33 days left for school …

Before I continue, a quick apology / shoutout to The Science Goddess at What It’s Like on the Inside. I never shouted you out for hosting / posting a great Ed Carnival, and I should have. Whoops.

Today, I began reading my Derek Jeter-covered Men’s Health, and in it, they start, as usual, with a letter from the editor Dave Zinczenko about leadership, and the intangibles, a set of characteristics that have defined Derek’s whole career. Yet, it takes decades to prepare and foster a baseball player of his caliber into the man he is today. Sure, most of the credit goes to his own determination and will-power, yet every baseball fan, Yankee fan or not, recognizes that his evolution into future first-ballot Hall of Famer and legend started from really young, and that talent was developed over time, and with a considerable amount of practice.

If we give it thought, his real career started at the little league level, developing the necessary skills and mannerisms that would eventually give him successful options in the future. His stats and awards weren’t important, though I’m sure he received a few. His coaches most likely saw promise in the little things that he did, and those elements separated him from the others. Did he always show up on time? How did he handle defeats? Was he early to practice? Does he contribute positive to his environment? Is he a valuable member of the team or only out for himself?

Maybe we personally can’t answer those questions, but we know that whenever he fell out of line, his coaches reminded him, and his parents made sure he followed through with his passion. The answers to some of the aforementioned questions made Jeter into the leader we see him as today. He wasn’t nor is he perfect. At times, he can be a little vindictive, and he’s sometimes called out teammates in the media when he probably shouldn’t have. However, we still have the deepest respect for him as the captain of arguably the most legendary team in America.

The assumed role of educators from Little League and high school to Double and Triple-A is undoubtedly to make sure is to make sure their players realize their potential on and even off the field. On the field, the managers have the most direct impact on whether the player will succeed baseball-wise. Yes, we’ve seen countless examples of athletes whose extracurricular activities often hinder their progress, some ending in tragic endings. Yet, we also see examples of players who, when moved from one team to the next, do better in the latter team or vice versa, and that has lots to do with the managers they’ve worked with.

It gets even more complex if we look deeper into the managerial styles of these students. Are they in-your-face old school style like Lou Pinella, or laid back and patient like Joe Torre? Are they blunt and fiery like Ozzie Guillen or the men of men like Terry Francona? Do they live in the tape room or just have a knack for managing? We also understand the roles of a Brian Cashman or a Billy Beane in making sure the right staff comes together, but we can also see how the mere presence of a manager in the dugout can completely revamp the way the team sits in there. Do they look downtrodden or are they in intense anticipation?

And maybe our students don’t always turn out to be a Derek, much the way some of us aren’t Tony LaRussa, but every manager has the potential to help a player become a strong leader, so even if his or her baseball career fizzles out, the student still remembers and reuses the same skills of patience, hard work, perfect practice, and determination in the other fields they wish to play in. Any role player, utility player, journeyman, or All-Star recognizes these essentials, but it’s the manager pushing the buttons, making sure they remember these pillars, and even through the harshest of times, getting his players ready for the postseason …

jose, who wants to be the greatest manager for his team …

p.s. - I recognize that professional baseball managers make a boatload more money than we do, but this is purely about the analogy.

p.p.s. - For the record, yesterday was the first day I eclipsed over 300 hits, so shout-outs to Taylor for that nod you gave to my post yesterday about the Holocaust and Maafa :-).

My first real exposure to the atrocities of the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis probably came in elementary school, at a time when most of my teachers were of Jewish descent, and when the Lower East Side still had a strong Jewish population. Thus, I learned more about the Holocaust than any other human tragedy, even more than slavery. That might have been more relevant to the students they taught (most of the students in my class were Black or Latino with a couple of Asians and one White girl). They did the best they could in showing us how terrible slavery was, but I couldn’t blame my teachers for their focus on the Holocaust because their hurt was more immediate, and they could tell us more readily the struggles their family members faced during the Holocaust. Plus, the details are really graphic.

So what’s a young brotha gonna do to find out about parts of his history? I couldn’t turn to bachata songs because they usually reflected the sorrows of a forlorn lover, and merengue just started making obscure references to the female anatomy or a new dance. Hip-hop turned away from the Black nationalist message and more towards gangsterism, at once reflecting the greater oppression of the system and in many ways perpetuating said criminality. So of course, a group of concerned African-American women and men (about 3 of them in all) at the local Boys Club showed me the seminal documentary “Eyes on the Prize,” enticing the 20 of us with cookies and treats to come and watch as people hung, shot, lynched, sprayed, harassed, and discriminated based on the series of features we attest to as race.

Over the next few years, not to discredit any of the  educators, I didn’t hear much about the harsh realities of either harsh reality until senior year, after I hastily charged White people in general of racism and benefiting from slavery. My teacher completely leveled me for that one and made me submit a retraction, essentially. I bit it because I needed to graduate, but it only made me angrier, possibly more bitter, and more inclined to divisive discussions, and maybe more reticent in admitting how my friends of all backgrounds shaped my understanding of the way the world worked.

Fast-forward to today, and I’ve visited 2 Holocaust museums thus far, and both of them made me think thoroughly about the comparisons and contrasts we can make between the Holocaust and the Maafa (African Enslavement). While the Jews who helped raise worldwide awareness of the Holocaust through monuments, museums, and a motto of “forgive but never forget,” the more widespread descendants of the slaves and murder victims of the Maafa across the Americas don’t yield the same reverence.

Is it because of a racial difference, and the expansion of the definition of what it meant to be white in the earlier part of last century? Could it also be the differences in access and prioritizing education between White Jews and descendants of Africans who were enslaved, education the key in solidifying catastrophic events in history? Is it because we can’t directly implicate the United States for reaping benefits from German Jews, but we can most certainly see the legacy of slavery throughout the Americas, and we can hold America responsible for reparations in America? And is it because somewhere between 2 to million 6 million people died in the Holocaust all across Europe but somewhere between 50 to 100 million people died in Africa, and all across the Americas? I assume it’s a strong mixture of all these questions.

Nonetheless, when I walked through the halls of the Holocaust Museum in DC, I never once heard anyone say “get over it,” deriding those who have been affected negatively by that experience. Never once did anyone question whether this Holocaust was true (there are Holocaust doubters out there, but they’re been proven wrong thoroughly). Never once did someone say “Wow, those Jews haven’t done anything since then to contribute to our society.” The same can’t be said for African-Americans in this country. And just as a matter of reference, there are two proposals for actual monument museums dedicated to slavery in the United States, but nothing concrete. Yet, even through African-American history museums, much like the Holocaust museums, we can only get a snippet of the harsh realities of

The one thought that rings true to both of these genocides was that we do need to learn more about them. We can’t pretend to have been there, even with some ill-conceived role-play. Knowing of the tragedy and really trying to understand the point of view of descendants of these tragedies really improves, not hinders, true unity. If these atrocities don’t come to light on an academic and personal level, then we’ll be doomed to another of those again. It’s no wonder why incidents like the Crown Heights Riot keep happening, and why Michael Richards had no problem saying what he said in such a public and caustic way.

Both incidents highlight another reason why it’s important to infuse our curriculum with deeper understanding of the continuing tragedies that occur daily, from the kids murdered in Philadelphia and South Central Los Angeles to the families separated in Baghdad and the Sudan. We’ll never see the end of this until we start to see human life (including our own) as indispensable. The idea of massive collections of bodies lying in a pit isn’t a foreign concept to people that come from these places. Once you turn a blind eye to it, that pit looks awfully bottomless …

jose, who wants you to help him sings, these songs of freedom, ’cause all he’s ever had … redemption songs …

A few notes:

1. Ironman was really good. Better than SpiderMan 1 and X-Men 1, but not better than the second part of either series. It stayed true to the original comic book for the most part, and more than anything, it was made more for adults than children (which makes me wonder why children were present in the theatre. A couple of people doubted whether Robert Downey Jr. was the right guy for the role, but even watching the trailers, there’s no other person on Earth more qualified for the role. Directly after, I have to download the original Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

2. Yes, I did show up on NY1 because of the immigration protest on May 1st. I knew it would happen since the camera usually finds me one way or another, but it wasn’t about me. It was about the message we were sending to the rest of the world, and that’s important. The strangest part about the whole protest was the observers on the sides of Broadway. They were all so shocked and in awe of the protest that they decided to just look at us. There was neither encouragement nor anger, just people watching, taking pictures with their cell phones, mouth agape, as if they’d never seen a protest before. Pictures and video coming soon.

3. Kobe Bryant wins MVP, and all is right with the world.

4. I’m due for a complete main site redesign this summer. Not so much the blog, but everything else here. Same goes for my MySpaces, but I can put that off. I’m still trying to get some ideas for how I want my redesign to look like, but that’s the beauty of being one’s own web designer; I don’t have any artistic limitations really.

5. Digsby has officially taken over all my old IM clients, and even let me rediscover my old ones, and it’s taken much less RAM than those heavy programs do. I now have my 3 AIMs, MSN, GMail, and recently added Facebook Chat all under one umbrella, plus checking my MSN, Yahoo, and GMail e-mails. It’s been a world of difference as far as clutter is concerned.

6. Going to the gym makes me feel good. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go do that. Got a lot on my plate. Peace …

jose, who will actually write a report on his 3rd year of teaching soon …

After the Immigration Protest today in Union Square (all the way to Federal Square), I finally decided to draw some lines where I needed to. If I’m going to talk about standards, then I need to start applying those in my life. Not that I haven’t, but I think I gave too much leeway because I’m always looking at another person’s world-view. This time though, I need to state my case since I don’t think anyone addressed it well at all. Sorry for being so vague, but follow me. The first line I’m drawing is in poetic form.

“Drawing The Line” by Jose Vilson

Let my verse rock a little
My thoughts flow through tumultuous waters
Either I’ll drown, swim, or walk
Either I’ll burn, learn, or elevate
Either I’ll die, live, or live past my death
I’m ready for the first, but I’m aiming for the third
I’ve been doing the second preparing for both
Focused on my works, my work, and what works
Passionately and proficiently
My etchings the scripture of a forlorn teacher
Searching for rebellion in the midst of conformists
Wondering where people get ideas that they’ve defected
When they confess they’re aligned with standards
Of a master yoking cattle led astray
Nothing less expensive than self-oppression
Or self-repression
Whether in the name of a religious figure 2000 years removed
Or in the name of a six-syllable word
Supposedly interpreted to mean that
These writings right here would deem me
Too far removed from the situation at hand
To understand the accuracy and dedication it takes
To handle mine
Yet, I subvert the cult
Banish the stoicisms
Break from the rites
And rituals we’re inundated with
Let the rabbis exalt us
Even when the pundits destroy us
The workers dismiss us
When the parents support us
The reporters represent us
Even when there’s condescension from our supervisors and peers alike
We’ll still conduct ourselves the way we will, alright?
My extracurricular activities don’t divert me from my job
They fuel the fire and keep it stoked
And higher than some overblown high-stakes state test
So when the winds blow
The roof shakes and people fear the makings of their foundation too shaky
It’s the lines I drew on the paper and my stances
Take my chances
Back when I wrote the blueprint of the house
That helped me shift back to the present matter
The people I teach, my delivery, my subject, my work
Intact because and not despite all of that
Professionalism
I know the word well
And I’ve been drawing that line ever since my pencil fell …