Borrowed from J. Dakar:

The Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.
5. 8 is a magic number. Though three is the magic number. (I changed this line.)

Eight Obscure Things About Me:

1. Derek Jeter’s my favorite baseball player. I love the heart and determination he shows on and off the field. From baggin’ every chick most dudes want to to baggin’ awards and stats left and right, he’s the epitome of awesome. That and the media gives him a pass for everything he does. He’s one of NY’s true kings. Plus, I got his home and away jerseys.

2. Alex Rodriguez is now a close second, surpassing just about anyone I can think of. I think the fact that he’s been playing with a “chip on his shoulder” really endears me to him more than anything. Despite the little blond streaks and the cheating sprees, he’s still a fantastic player on both ends of the field, so give him his crown already people. If he stays in NY, give him his “true Yankee” label already. ::rolls eyes::

2. If something were to ever happen to my favorite city ever (NYC), I’d move to either D.C., Chicago, or San Francisco. Let’s not let that happen, though.

3. As a math teacher, I gotta say: I didn’t choose math; math chose me. When I filled out the application through the NYCTF process, I don’t even remember what I wrote in, but they figured since I have a computer science degree, I must be good at math. I’m good, but if I had a choice, I’d teach … everything. Math, ELA, and social studies. Then again, maybe not. Math it is.

4. I have a slew of books I haven’t read yet, and that are waiting to be read. By my estimates, it’s a good 25 of them. I’ll get to them eventually …

5. I sing along to my favorite songs on my iPod (Common’s Finding Forever currently on rotation), no matter what song it is or time of day. I don’t care how people look at me; I’m going to sing and/or rap, f******.

6. I search for myself on Google just to see if my name is inappropriately associated with anything … and usually run into very interesting things. It’s mostly positive now, but wow.

7. I’m somewhere in between obscure and easily found. I have a MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo, AIM, MSN, GMail, my own site, an NYCDOE e-mail, CCNY, Syr, and a few other accounts out there I haven’t taken into account. I’ve had most of the social networking sites even before they became trendy. With that said, people always say how hard it is to reach me. Please …

8. The five contemporary famous people I’d like to meet are: Common, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Jay-Z, and Joe Budden. There it goes. The Rock would be cool, and I’ve already met Talib, Rakim, and Chuck D, so I’m fine.

Tag. You’re it:

You, you, you, you, you, you, you, and you …

jose, going to New Orleans this weekend …

My first day in my middle school literacy course has already made me reflect a little bit. We were discussing what it means to read. At first, it was hard for these grad students to get around the idea that, even though all their life, they’ve been looking at texts and had the ability to say out loud what those combinations of symbols meant, if they’re not able to understand or process what that means, then they’re not reading.

Definition: read - v. tr. - to attach a meaning to something

It completely made sense to me because, as many texts as I’ve read, I can honestly say there’s a good 10 - 20% of stuff I had no understanding of, and the overwhelming majority of that 20% were items like textbooks and books I didn’t want to read. Fortunately for me, I had the capacity for taking a text, memorizing a bit of it, and answering the appropriate questions on the tests administered, but it didn’t mean I fully got a depth for what I saw.

The professor in our class, then, shed a little light on how we read. For one, when we look at literature, reading becomes easier when we have a motivation or point of view, similar to an actor. I agree. Let’s take The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. For most of the people in my class during high school, they thought it was a good book. I disliked it mainly because I had no motivation nor could I grasp anything that was going on. However, a book like Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy was a book I definitely got into. I could relate to the storyline in a few ways: I understood what it meant to be young, have friends that turned into enemies, and be in an all-boys school.

Then, someone in the class makes a really good analogy: the difference between looking at these words and actually reading them is like hearing and listening. “I could be hearing you talk while I’m doing whatever it is I’m doing, but it doesn’t mean I listened to anything you just said.” And that’s when someone who was thus converted to the “understanding” said,

“But wait, my issue right now is that we don’t really have a word for what that means.”

Ah. Thus, our language, as much as it lets us describe an enormous range of situations and experiences we have in our lives, restricts us from finding a word that says we can take a series of words, look at them, know what each word means in the sequence, memorize them, and maybe even understand a few sentences within that passage, but not gain any meaning from the passage as a whole. Wow.

And in a room full of potential masters in education, a few writers (such as myself), and a doctor in education, we still couldn’t piece it together. That has to bode well for the kids we teach …

jose, who’s looking for new words as we speak …

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been reading 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez (great book, just takes some getting used to), and the central theme of the book is the idea that life simply works in cycles: it doesn’t just move forward, but plays hopscotch with its past.

While that may not seem like a detriment in the general sense, the characters might have had a better chance of preventing the tragedies that occur in their lives if they actually took the time to learn the lessons form the past. As this town of Macondo changes, the family Buendía develops a pattern of misfortunes that only give credence to the last one. The matriarch of the family, Úrsula, observes that the many characters in in her family are really doppelgangers of their ancestors. (Won’t spoil the rest for you, really. Just go read it.)

It made me wonder how the past entraps us as a society, especially in light of the recent Virginia Tech tragedy. Unfortunately, not only did the killer fit the “suicidal and ostracized loner” profile, he also laid his plans out for the media to see. I have to ask, when will we come to a consensus on the way to make sure these events don’t happen? Unfortunately, the shock factor has died amongst some of this country’s citizens for various reasons, and it will only continue to dissipate …

Not only do I see this as a security issue, but also student development issue. If, for instance, institutions of (any level of) learning took a hard look at themselves and decided to take preventive measures against these incidents from happening, we would most likely see a change for the better in the student population as a whole, not just those who are at risk for passive-aggressive behaviors.

More importantly, though, those of us who aren’t part of the infrastructure of these institution (as in people like you and me) need to become aware of ways to prevent our loved ones from becoming a Cho Seung-Hui or one of the Columbine shooters. Unfortunately, the hateful speech made against Cho spurs on the very violence and isolation that begot this incident to begin with.

Somewhere, Márquez must be observing us the way he observes Macondo …

jose, who wishes the families of the tragedies his deepest condolences …