I went with my girlfriend a week ago to the American Museum of Natural History near Central Park (NYC), mainly to watch the movie Colossal Collisions with the voice of Robert Redford (wondrous, really). and it just got me to thinking about our place on this Earth. For all that we clutter our lives with, the politics, debates, bills, social life, anger, hate, and yes, even love and / or lack thereof, we also forget how really infinitesimally small we are compared to the rest of the universe, and even the galaxy. Thus, it’s imperative for us to also keep everything in perspective, even whilst the universe changes all around us.

I think of this today in light of my cousin’s mother’s death. Though I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met her mother, my heart sank when I heard the tragic news. Death is as serious as it gets for us, and what’s more, my cousin came to celebrate life (a birthday) rather than death. This cousin’s been like a sister to me, and to know that this long-time struggle with her mother’s health has come to this, hurts hard. It’s put my own relationship with my mother in perspective, with the tension we’ve had. In light of this recent death, the overall feelings for my mother is that I love her; none of our clashes can compare to that understanding.

Something Robert Redford said caught my attention somewhere between me wondering how they put this production together, and that’s the fact we look at all the major collisions that have happened in our universe, some insignificant and routine while others looked disastrous and cataclysmic. Yet, these collisions also produced Earth, and the Moon, and the universe around us, creating beauty and life all around us. Maybe we can take something away from the much larger celestial beings, as we too clash and burn, and how often, even when it seems the stars above us seem distant, they’re just like us in our rudimentary behaviors.

jose, who often theorizes on humans’ gravitational pull …

“The more you try to erase me
The more, the more
The more that I appear
Oh the more, the more
The more you try the eraser
The more, the more
The more that you appear …”- Thom Yorke, “The Eraser,” later sampled by CRS (Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Pharrell) in “Us Placers”

I try to never ever talk about my place of employ. It makes sense because, despite the lack of consistency with my kids, I’m pleased in general with how things have shaped up recently, and am always happy with the communication between my co-teachers and I (at least the main ones). However, I can’t help but feel some sort of empathy when I hear of someone who tries their hardest to maintain a sense of self while everyone around them tries to crush that identity. In other words, what’s with all the hating?

There’s the light sort of hating I usually engage in with my friends, throwing soft jabs at one another just for fun. That’s all well and good, because it’s necessary to bring that sort of levity into any amicable relationship. As long as there’s no sense that one is trying to alpha dog the other, or mortify the other person completely, then that’s fair game. There’s also the case of the teacher like me, who hates on his kids all the time, simply because I really want to see them do better. I need to keep them humble and critically thinking about various aspects of their lives, and not just the math on their sheets. Again, these are rules of engagement.

However, there’s also the sort of hating where people really try to bring you down for no apparent reason other than to further some selfish agenda, even if the first person’s trying to better the collective. I’m always amazed at the stories some of my fellow teachers tell me. Some of the anecdotes I hear compare readily to stories you hear from war veterans and seafarers. Stories of mutiny, tyranny, incompetence, and betrayal make me think that this world really is on a downhill slope on skates with no protective gear.

Granted, some people exaggerate. For instance, all those little twits on MySpace who generate hatred towards them because it’s the only way for them to get messages / page hits / friends in general and thus garner the attention and hate they so desire (versus let’s say, apathy) don’t count. Others still deserve to be hated on for the dumb trends they start like a Paris Hilton, a Cam’ron (no pink on my person), or political figures like Clarence Thomas, or a Condoleeza Rice, considered amongst the worst race traitors of all time.

But within that realm lie people who don’t deserve some of these peoples’ spew. Hypothetically speaking, if another teacher decided to discredit my teaching skills simply for my physical appearance, my skin color, or my perceived accent (it’s not that strong at all), then I might have to get gangsta up in the place. If someone decided to try and tell me how to do my job when I’m more qualified, have more years of experience, have more degrees, garnered a better reputation, and don’t have a scuff on my record whereas the hater does, then I’d have a hard time biting my tongue. Even when times call for a more professional attitude, sometimes I agree that we need to show people we can step out of that realm so they won’t get too close to our person.

It’s like the more they try to erase you, the more you appear, and the more they use the eraser, they more they show their true colors. The sweetest part of it all comes when, after all the defamation and derision, you’re left standing on the heap of their rotting defenses, the sweetest aftertaste in a dish best served cold.

jose, who is definitely nervous about the state math test, but did as well as he could with what he had …

p.s. - Carnival of Education, EduWonks is the sponsor … 

No one knows my struggle, they only see the trouble
Not knowin it’s hard to carry on when no one loves you
Picture me inside the misery of poverty
No man alive has ever witnessed struggles I survived
Prayin’ hard for better days, promise to hold on …

Now that part of “Thug Mansion” by 2Pac feat. Nas and J. Phoenix is the only tune that replays every time I see her. At first, I thought she was as dopey as some of the other students in her class. She rarely participated, and her attention lied elsewhere, and I was a bit frustrated with her progress or lack thereof in my class. She didn’t have any points of entry where she and I could have a good conversation about something other than math, as I seem to have had with my other students. Yet, in my eternal optimism, I decided to move her to the front.

Since then, she’s been doing very well for me, even more recently opening up and scratching on the 90 she’ll soon earn when she steps it up on her participation. Her writing is more meaty, and her math skills have shined brighter. This might even be the case in her other classes. She’s grown a little taller, too, almost eclipsing my own height, and for a girl her age, that might make others around her nervous …

… and it does …

She’s constantly picked on. People start problems with her for no reason. People diss her for her height, making rumors up about her body odor (of which I’m not aware) or her lack of girly qualities, whatever that means. At first, I tried to monitor how she handled it. Her demeanor doesn’t give anything away, so there was no sense in prying since there were no inherent “symptoms” of any social problems. Then, her other teacher read an excerpt of a poem she wrote, and my heart dropped.

For the first time since I was in 5th grade, I was privy to someone who seriously considered committing suicide. While suicide attempts have even become eerily viral, many of these pronounced wishes never come to fruition. With this girl, though, I knew she was serious. And I knew because I know of someone who wanted to commit suicide, too, back in that grade. The signs were there: honest and brutal poetry, anti-socialism, concentration on school to detach oneself from their problems, and problems concerning their parents.

If the teacher doesn’t do the right thing and refer the student but also speak to the child directly about their observations, then the student becomes a victim of his or her own suicidal thoughts. In many underrepresented communities, suicide is thoroughly looked down upon as a selfish and cowardly act. Nevermind that suicide is really a call for help, and the last resort in a list of options the person had in their cry for love. So I fear for the girl, knowing that the parents might blame the suicide on her and not on the circumstances that led to her feeling like there was no way out.

In this day and age, when people quip about committing suicide sarcastically or really just as a teenage hyperbolic social indicator, it takes an awful lot of understanding and listening to know who will commit suicide. And I fear for her, since when I look into her downtrodden and detached eyes, I …

… I see me …

jose, mr. v, and all the other entities I’ve assumed over the last few decades …

All the popular blogs are doing it.From: What Privileges Do You Have? - based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. (If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college. (for 1 class)
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 assuming that sport counts.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp (requirement for the middle school I went to)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
9. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. Much less than 50% of the time.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. I got the guest room in my teens when we didn’t have guests.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course. (all free)
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (Dominican Republic, Miami)
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I actually did a Google search to get the original exercise, and I laughed really hard, because post after post had most of these lines emboldened or underlined, and I’m here with about 6 lines in bold. And as I graduated junior high school, a predominantly Latino school, I never knew I’d be inundated with products of such privilege. Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I thought that having this kind of privilege would make it easier for some of my classmates to become more benevolent, especially since they had less worries economically and got a head start on much of the material we studied in our four years.

Unfortunately, that not only proved false, but it’s one of the many factors that played into my antagonism towards some of my classmates. They were so comfortable with their privileges, they more readily demeaned others who couldn’t / wouldn’t get certain items. And naturally, it only got worse in Syracuse, where stories about massive car wrecks only made me and my friends roll our eyes after the person who caused the accident would say “I’ll just get a new one from my Daddy in a couple of weeks. No big deal.” And when you have “Juicy” sprawled across your ass, it’s a really easy life … really.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t had a lot of luck in my own right. I went to a poor but well-managed public school, a good middle school with small class sizes, and a private high school with its share of good resources. I had a lot of opportunities that most people in my demographic didn’t get, nor even realized they could. I’m a product of these fortunate events, and I’m happy I got what I got.

In this country, there’s this politics of access. Those to the right of the issue say that everyone has access so long as they try their hardest. They’re the ones that usually ask “Why don’t these people work hard to attain what the rest of us have?” Those to the left of the issue are the ones usually asking “Why doesn’t everyone have the same access to these privileges?” I find myself to the left, since the politics of the left demands a lot of deep digging, and deflecting the images posted in front of us about the grandness of this empire. Underneath it all, there’s no equity, and underneath it all, we don’t do enough to reinterpret successful tips for the underprivileged in this country (and in dirty not-so-secret secret news: in order to have rich people, there must be poor, and thus with all the very rich people there are many destitute areas all over this country.)

You can give people access to museums for free (NYC does it), but will they have the proper education or historical background to understand what they’re observing at the museum, even with the little notes telling them what the artifacts and painting represent?

You can have free opera showings and Caucasian-centric musicals for the masses, but do you risk telling other cultures theirs is not good enough to be considered “cultured”?

You can give as much financial aid to some of your less privileged but promising students so they can attend your institution, but are we preparing the population who got in through a trust fund or as a legacy for the culture shock as well?

Because if not, access is simply a way of telling people “See, we did something” knowing that it would do nothing to ameliorate the problem, quasi-placating the critics and thrusting the responsibility on the victim.

I’m even aiming this at well-to-do Blacks and Latinos, many of whom forget from whence they came, but that’s another post altogether. The politics of access demands that some people have it and some many don’t, because if it’s something everyone has, it’s not that special and hence not a privilege. Yet, those who already get the privilege consider it a right of birth, and don’t know what to do with themselves when they lose those “rights.”

I suppose that’s the irony of not having anything; having something above anything is considered a privilege, and when you have nothing to lose, there’s nowhere else to go but up.  Right?

jose, who wants to know how to get  1/2 a million without the FBI catching feelings …

Am I sure I want to make this kind of leap?
Why leave the confined of a blog where I amassed what feels like thousands of comments (100+ comments in my “Fuck Bush” post alone)?
300+ subscribers?
almost 5 years of blogging?
Tons of forwards, friends, and acquaintances
And I was able to start some shit at will?

Good question …

A year ago, I started this humble blog in the hopes of upgrading from an energetic and random blog to a more personal and grown-up vision for how I wanted to represent myself, not just on the Internet, but in real life. While my site, The Jose Vilson, is really my home, the blog under that name is really the mouthpiece, analogous to rap’s role in the hip-hop culture. While there the other elements of hip-hop like breakdancing, turntablism, graffiti, and knowledge make their presence felt, rap is the centerpiece now for the rest of the culture.

In February, I was just trying to find my way around this vast blogosphere, hoping I could take some of my Xanga brethren along with me for the ride. That worked only within my inner circle (you know who you are). Thus, unlike Xanga where it’s much easier to reach out to others, join communities, and subscribe to other blogs, and have all these activities neatly centralized, I had to go and reach out to the blogosphere is much more messy, hoping my Google results let me run into someone who shared a similar interest in topics I held most vital in my mind. By May, I had already settled on writing about teaching, because I didn’t find very interesting educational bloggers through any of the search engines at first.

I would be the first Black-Latino NYC / LES educator / poet / blogger, and that’s my niche, and I wouldn’t compromise my message for fear of retribution from any school district, board, administration, or any other person who even remotely knew me. No pseudonyms. Just me.

But of course, I couldn’t arrive at this by myself. Despite my independent nature, I have a great understanding that, like the blog carnivals and Technorati authority numbers we see around the blogosphere, I couldn’t have arrived at the place I’m at without a little help from some awesome bloggers. Naturally, I’m inclined to thank NYC Educator for his awesome advice regarding my classroom situations. His was the first blog I read dealing specifically with NYC education, and he pulls no punches. I also thank him for linking me and one of my first popular blogs (”16 Things I Learned This Year“).

NYC Ed led to me meeting many of the blogs I link to or have in my Google Reader or blogroll. Miss Profe, who introduced me to other underrepresented bloggers like The Field Negro, a man so popular now, I can hardly get to the bottom of his box comment to write to him. Just his link to me in his “Blogs I Am Feeling” section led a lot of traffic this way, and I couldn’t be more grateful. From Miss Profe, I also found thefreeslave, who in turn put me on to the Afrospear. Of course, that group helped me find other random blogs like The Unapologetic Mexican, and the slew of Latino blogs I needed to balance the other parts of my identity. Of course, the Carnival of Education helped me find teachers like Repairman, dy/dan, Frumteacher, and Ms. Whatsit.

And before I knew it (July 2K7 or so), I stopped blogging over there and focused on blogging here. Finito …

But even after 4 layout changes, 84 readers, a Weblog Award finalist award, and 874 comments later, I’m still humbled by the love shown to my blog. Granted, it takes a while for me to write these essays after my long day at work, and it’s more about staying reflective in my teaching and life in general, but I also see the importance of sharing those experiences with people around the world. As cheesy as it sounds, I would prefer that I stay at the level I’m at if it means I can keep inspiring others at the rate I’m at than becoming more popular and not inspiring anyone at all.

Because of this blogoversary, I present my top 5 lists …

My Favorite 5 Blog Posts:

1. L’Chayim: I Wish For You 100 Years of Success But It’s My Time
2. Walk On Water
3. A Synopsis of the Road Less Wanted
4. Having Your Cake and Eating It Too, Workshop Model Style
5. 16 Things I Learned This School Year

My Posts I Wish More People Read:

1. Actions Affirmative
2. It Doesn’t Feel Right
3. Follow The Leader
4. Love, Reign O’er Me
5. I Remember When … (School Edition)

Top 5 Post Topics That Didn’t Quite Make It Out Of Draft Mode

1. The day I found staplers in my pastelito (I still get queasy thinking about it), then had a roach slip out of my piece of cheesecake, and when I went to shower, there was no hot water … all in a matter of 4 hours ….
2. My dedication to Joe Budden (cool dude, but Mood Musik 3 wasn’t better than MM2)
3. Why I can’t stand those kids who still wear 80s gear like Reagan’s still alive
4. My workout plan (because I stopped doing it for a good 3-4 months and only recently resumed)
5. A flashback to my days in Catholic private school (it’s not ready yet)

Top 5 Reasons Why I Really Moved to My Own Site

1. If you’re a writer that has the means to host your own site, have control of its content, and use whatever editing software you want, then you should have your own blog site. Ownership of your own material is important.
2. It’s rare to find Black- and Latino-owned blog sites in general, so here’s +1.
3. I hate having to Google my full name and find everyone else but me.
4. As previously mentioned, there aren’t many (any) bloggers who write about my experience at all.
5. A deep-seated necessity for needing to change my space.

Top Five Tag Lines I Might Use Again in 2008

1. jose, your favorite math’s teacher’s favorite math teacher …
2. jose, who laughs at sites like Boycott Chuck Norris …
3. jose, who wishes he could thank every single blogger, new and old, that shows him love, which he might have just done …
4. jose, who has constant cravings for some …
5. jose, who stands by his contradictions …

jose, who must do this again next year …

It is my birthday. More on that later.

Apparently, I’m going to the National Council of Teachers for Mathematics National Conference in April. I don’t know if you heard, but I’m kind of a big deal … . I hope to see some of you who are teachers there as well. I’ll be the sharply dressed dude listening to Malcolm Gladwell.

Today, I was supposed to have an observation, but it didn’t happen due to the 5th Grade ELA test, and I’m grateful in some ways. I felt I was rushing things a bit, and that’s a feeling I don’t like. I especially believe after this new (solar) year, I’ve made a concerted effort to see the classroom and actions through the kids’ eyes. I stayed in my classroom until 530pm making sure that, when the kids came in the morning, they had a more comfortable setting for themselves than what I felt I provided. I’m tired of the negative energy my homeroom class has, so maybe if I change the environment a bit, I’d get a little more positivity back.

Because, as much confidence as I have in my skills, I also have a weakness for the kids that often makes me lose sleep and become emotional and admittedly defensive for them. On the surface, I remain stern and critical of them, but I can’t help but love them even at their worst. I still show up to school 30 minutes before I should just to get a good lesson plan going. I follow my homeroom sometimes through their classes just to see how they’re doing in those classes, and I’ll even sit in. Most teachers like that because it gives them a sense that we’re all working together. Obviously, there’s a sense of trust there and I would never violate it. I just know that I’d do as much as I had to to make sure my kids got as far as they needed to in life.  Frankly, I can only hope to teach as much to them as I’ve learned from them.

Everyday, something new and different appears on my doorstep. So much oscillation, yet I take it in stride, hoping to learn something from these vast experiences.

jose, who still can’t believe he’s going to the home of the utah jazz …

A certain unease across the school has settled in and has taken a life of its own. It’s similar to that poltergeist we keep hearing about in scary movies: inaudible yet palpable, invisible yet uncanny. With all the people who walk around the school like phantasms anyways, we start our séances in the teachers’ lounges, speaking of this ghost in tongues.

“I kid you not, there’s just something weird in the school.”

“The teacher morale is definitely at an all-time low this year.”

“I can’t say what it is, but I feel like the NYC school system will definitely get better before it gets worse.”

The pressures and mandates to keep one’s job have led the majority of teachers to do work they unfortunately see as detrimental. The constant changes and lack of efficiency coupled with the conspicuous efforts to dismantle the unions both locally and citywide has translated into more work for less pay. Teachers who had no problem staying until 4pm discussing better classroom management and individualized academic reports for students now leave disheartened from the meaningless time they spend with children who prefer not to be there until 310pm simply because they didn’t do as well as the rest of their classmates.

Yet, when it comes time to actually voice those concerns, we do it in the recesses of our sane zones: the bar, the phone, our blogs, the temporarily empty classroom, or in our minds. Where once we at least felt someone was listening to our concerns and addressing them, we no longer have that sense of community to discuss school concerns. Instead, the talkers lay out the talking points for us, and where once a choice actually meant a choice to voice, this implicitly means these choices are someone else’s and any other concerns have no validity.

And who am I to argue? I’m definitely one of the dissenters of the current educational stance Michael Bloomberg and Co. have taken with teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Yet, these policies have also trickled down to the local school level, where many teachers wonder just how much of what we hear everyday from the higher-ups really comes from supported fact and actual research or is based on bamboozling and hoodwinking the teachers into believing a certain (and oft detrimental) mantra. Many teachers have taken notice of the often demeaning messages sent from different parties and have found the root of these problems.

There’s one little problem: no one’s bold enough to disobey. Not one. Walking down the hallway, in our classrooms, in our professional development meetings, and our pre- and post-observations, we would more readily hide our faces or nod along with the program than pay careful attention to the messages higher-ups broadcast and question like they question their own students in class. This is not to say that sometimes teachers don’t need constructive criticism (I know I do), but teachers are professionals, and thus deserve that level of respect, not just the spiritual adoration and pat-on-the-back, but institutional recognition of our efforts.

Who will go into battle alone? No warrior has ever not had a team behind him or her. The risks are tremendous: losing one’s job, getting sent to a rubber room, getting a letter in your record, getting a restriction placed on your application for tenure, and a general blackmailing across the system as a recluse and a rebel rouser will certainly do a number on one’s reputation, which certainly explains the insane amount of anonymous educational bloggers, many of whom exhibit a certain freedom of speech once their name hasn’t been attached to their own opinions. Unfortunately, what that also means is that critics will quickly abandon this anonymous opinion because a real person won’t stand behind it.

So all we have is a bunch of people sitting on their hands, brooding over their next move, ingesting the apparition’s ghastly images and cursing the morbid thoughts this apparition brought upon these once-idealistic individuals. We debate with the apparition more readily than we discuss our own fears and conjectures. And we do it in our own private space, as pseudonymous as that ghost.

jose, who believes that unjust laws are not laws at all …

Ah yes, a year in review, and how better to end the year than the same way I started it: discussing the things I learned. I’m always reflective, and always seeking new answers to the lessons and questions life teaches me on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. Maybe someday I’ll walk in a path that’ll make me at one as I bury 2007. (You might want to sit down for this one.)

A Recap of Some of The Events of My 2007:

In the winter, I rediscovered my love for the Beatles after watching the cover band Strawberry Fields Forever at BB King’s. I had a small lust-crush on Nicole Scherzinger, and just finished reading 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, The Bad Guys Won by Jeff Pearlman, and Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler. My step-grandfather died, and I stopped caring about what everyone else thought about what I did in my classroom and stepped up my leadership.

In the spring, my kids took the 8th grade math test and did pretty well in it, Whole Foods on the Lower East Side opened to my utter dismay, I rediscovered Gary Jules’ “Mad World,” YouTube had a channel looking for America’s Next Black Leader (whomp), I went to Detroit for a week to visit some friends here and there, I met Rakim in Syracuse (holla at ya boy …), met some world-famous b-boys from Planet B-Boy (the Tribeca Film Festival movie), and finished up 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In the interim, I also partied a bit, saw almost every #1 or 2 movie of the season, and appeared on Comedy Central as an audience member while Artie Lange dissed me and Al Jackson praised me. My cousin Kevin also became the 4th graduate of the same junior high school and high school in our family.

In the summer, I was feeling Spiderman 3, Linkin Park, Grover Washington, Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness,” and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Common (Finding Forever), Talib Kweli (Eardrum), Kanye West (Graduation) rocked my iPod with new albums every 2 weeks. I was also into Public Enemy, jury duty (because it ended in 2 days), Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang, visitors from Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. Oh yeah, and I was the featured artist for RainTiger.com’s online magazine (August 2K7). Skin loves summer. edit @ 245am: I keep forgetting things I did. I went to New Orleans, too. Lovely.

In the fall, I started school again, prayed that A-Rod would become the hero for the New York Yankees’ 2007 championship hopes (not so much), I performed for a good crowd for the first time in a year thanks to Cathy Delaleu, got pissed at the Jena 6 incident, loved Across the Universe the movie and was reintroduced to Salma Hayek (yum), became a full fledged member of the Schomburg Center for Black Research, ruminated on the murder of Jayson Tirado (R.I.P.), watched American Gangster the film and bought the album by Jay-Z, found myself totally peeved at Jimmy’s BBQ on 34th St. Midtown here in NYC, and lamented Kanye West’s mom’s death. Oh yeah, and I went from Penny Harvest novice to Penny Harvest welterweight champion / coach in a matter of months.

In the winter, I found a liking for Led Zeppelin, Soul II Soul, Robbie Williams all over again, went to Atlantic City and shopped like I had serious money, ruminated on Will Smith’s I Am Legend, and had one of the greatest Christmas’ of all time.

As busy as that sounds, it still doesn’t encapsulate the 5 major themes of 2007 for me personally:

5) I changed my blog platform from Xanga to The Jose Vilson, completely and utterly. It might seem insignificant to some, but I built a huge following in that Xanga blog, in the order of 300 or so readers a day and 200 or so random visitors from elsewhere. Eventually, though, I had to let it go, because I was growing into myself. My writing became more sophisticated, and the writing demanded a new, and more grown, platform. I’ve gotten so much love from the blogosphere that there’s no sense in ever going back. I even got nominated for some awards, something I certainly couldn’t have planned. I still visit my old blog for nostalgia, but then I get reminded why I left in the first place. Other minor reasons included the lack of maturity I found in some circles, and the lack of truly insightful blogs there. The ones I still subscribe to there are the last of the dying breed, and I wish them well. The grass is definitely greener here.

Song: “I Wonder” by Kanye West

4) The first kids I ever taught graduated from the 8th grade. I was almost in tears looking at some of my kids grow up. My first homeroom, the one I battled with, the one that threw me a surprise birthday party but a few months later almost made me quit teaching, the one that scarily resembled me as a class, were graduating, along with other students who I also came to enjoy and cherish. While I had already taught an 8th grade class, this was the class I felt most attached to. No matter their shortcomings, I still hold that first homeroom in such high regard. It also gave me a sense of fatherhood: they were my children for better or worse, and they taught me as much as I taught them.

Song: “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon

3) I graduated from CCNY, finally. I’m the first member of my family with a masters and that’s something I’m very proud of. The struggles that Indira and I went through for those years in the Fellows program taught us a lot about balancing work, school, and personal schedules. Yet, it’s also the main reason why I’m a proponent of the Fellows program: without it, I’d have a much harder time becoming a teacher, and that’s something I tried to convey to the 2000 or so new Fellows who came to the event in Lincoln Center. The NYCTF provided me with an opportunity of a lifetime, and for that I’m thankful.

Song: “Oh My God” by Jay-Z

2) I got a girlfriend. I kid you not, the faces went from awe and astonishment to dismay and eventually congratulations. While I won’t divulge all the details of the relationship, I will say that I was about as surprised as my friends were and still are. Of course, some people weren’t too pleased about the news, but fuck ‘em. I would love to talk about how fuzzy and horny she makes me feel inside, but I’m generally a private person, even if there’ve been hints of this all over my blog. We have some issues to work out on both sides of the equation but she’s great, and I love her. Word.

Song: “Umbrella” by Rihanna

1) On January 24th, I came to the realization that I’m a grown-azz man. Not that I didn’t know that before, when I was already paying bills to my neck, or visiting my younger brother Ralf in Syracuse 3 years after my own graduating. I just felt it. All of a sudden, the first trip to Miami in February became that much easier when I had to visit my then-healthy father. For the first time ever, I felt I had forgiven him for being himself, and if something fatal would happen to him after that, I’d be liberated from my own mental tyranny. When his condition almost proved fatal, I went to Miami again in September and delivered some spirit into his comatose body. He couldn’t even remember me being there when he came to, but it’s OK. As I told my brothers at the time, I didn’t get angry when I found out more about his lecherous ways, his chauvinism and homophobia, or his inability to just hang out with his son, who recently graduated with a masters and paid his own way to his father’s house. When I looked in the mirror, I saw pieces of him. The charm, the charisma, and the easy-going energy that kept even the most pessimistic of us enthralled by him. When I saw him lying at his bed, I immediately caught the resemblance even down to his hands and feet. I already made my peace, so that sense of angst or pain was subdued by a sense of love.

While in Miami that first time, I just cranked up my iPod and all I kept hearing was this song:

And you feel like no-one before
You steal right under my door
And I kneel ’cause I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you’re not

Everywhere you go you shout it
You don’t have to be shy about it …

Song: “Original of the Species” by U2

I wrote out my thoughts and there it was, and soon came to be. G_d speaks to us in mysterious ways …

jose, who will take 10, cube it, multiply it by 2, and add the cube of 2 with a bottle of Korbel …

I tried my best to impress Sue of SpeechTeach, since I asked to be tagged to this meme. As far as who’s tagged after this, I pick you, and you, and you, and you … Scroll over the image to know what the image means.

1. Age at next birthday…

2. Place I would like to travel to…

3. My favorite place…

4. Favorite objects…

5. Favorite foods…

6. Favorite color…

7. Nickname…

8. Place where you were born…

jose, who didn’t to compete for a shot at love with tila tequila …