Category Archives: School

About being a student or a teacher

Moving Forwards

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With recent days being really tough, I’m getting sick of all of the stress. I’m going on almost 20 days of alternating insomnia and exhaustion with lots of stress, so I’m trying to somehow resolve to get rid of it. This weekend my mounting to-do list is, well, continuing to mount. That said, I’m try to nix a couple important things, like lessons for the next couple of days and presentations for this week’s class. I’m going to try to get rid of distractions, be more methodical, whatever gets the job done.

On Friday, the day of my observation, I balked a really crappy activity into my classroom. One of my colleagues was able to help me shape it better, and it turned out passable. I have a lot of work to do between my two preps and class/club at ASU, but I’m trying to blaze a trail here. I’m going to keep a log, of lots of stuff, and we’ll see how the week looks when I’m done.

Today, I resolve to get more done while being less stressed. Let’s see how I fare with resolutions.

On Needing a Stress Ball

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I’m stressed. I’m on approximately day fifteen of being incredibly lost. I thought the last half of Spring Break was a stressful fluke, but oh my goodness. I’ve been an insomniac while simultaneously being completely exhausted. I’ve been seeking shelter from my stresses all of the time. It’s been interesting.

And it’s not one aspect of life that’s stressing me out (like I thought). I’m falling behind or completely out of the game in virtually everything.

The bedroom that was being painted is still incredibly bare. The rooms that need to be cleaned have only been cleaned because of Kim. The groceries… oh, wait. I haven’t gone to the store in forever. My lesson plans continue to not come into fruition until the last minute. I had a terrible walkthrough in my class last week. I came within two seconds of doling out detentions and referrals on Monday. I have an observation on Friday. I apparently need to make and edit a video of myself teaching by Thursday – and we’re tomorrow so I don’t know when that will happen. I procrastinated the AEPA until it was too late and decided to wait until June, and now I’m pretty sure I screwed myself out of a substituting job.

But, when I think about it, things aren’t that much worse. I’ve been on an insanely high stress level for the passed ten months. At what point do I start making up for it all? Between moving to Uganda and planning a wedding, quitting my job and realizing I don’t know what I’ll be doing in two months, I haven’t been able to keep steady. I usually take this kind of thing in stride, but I think the last two weeks are throwing all that stress back at me. I need to find solace somewhere. So I’ll stay optimistic.

Today, I had a short afternoon snack with my wife at the kitchen table. I also chatted with my colleagues at lunch for a few minutes. One of my students and I had a candid conversation that was genuinely uplifting.

Last Thursday I wrote “I wish I could stop and smell the roses” on a piece of paper as a part of an art project. Supposedly that, and two other wishes, came true today.

“I am going to be a college professor.”

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This week has included a lot of thinking on top of the planning and painting.  Thinking is sometimes good, sometimes bad. On Friday I lamented with a few friends over just what future had in store for us. I chatted with my dad about what I’m doing after May.  My wife and I had a long future-based conversation last night.  Today at my dad’s Rotary club meeting a few people asked where I was headed.  I don’t know.

For a long time I wanted to be a high school history teacher and nothing else.  It was college that pushed me in about twelve other directions.  I like teaching.  I like history.  I also like human rights, politics, international relations, government, aid work and travel.  So I need to parse these things out.  The one thing I’m really sure about is that I want to get a doctorate.

I have a big word document that lists all sorts of programs and schools, financial aid and research centers.  I know I want to continue learning, and I know I want to get an advanced degree.  Between the humanities and social science I can’t really decide where to narrow my focus.  Plus, where do I put all of those other interests?  Do I try to mix and blend?  Will that make me into a traveling scholar who does aid work? A government staffer on international relations and human rights?  Maybe I’ll just try to get my own cooking show.

Seeing as how I have my eyes set on some sort of advanced degree, and seeing as how I’m just now wrapping up my undergraduate degree, I have some time.  That said, decisions made now (or soon) will determine what I do for a long, long time.  From conversations with various professors over the last two years, and a heart-hurting article in The Chronicle and some insightful, albeit less than optimistic blog posts, it will be a long, long road.  Do I want to be a college professor? Yes. When? In what? Hell if I know.

Do any of you have an idea of what you’re going to do?  Better yet, if you are a PhD student or a post-doc, any advice that’s not an outright deterrent? I’m graduating in May and it’s a big, challenging world out there.

Foiled by Libya

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So, this weekend I’ve holed up in front of my computer, wrapping up my paper on the United States and the International Criminal Court.  After spending weeks with piecemeal research and months of hypothesizing, I’m putting everything on paper (once it’s printed).  My paper starts with an introduction to the ICC, followed by page after page of American grievances.  I’ve talked about Clinton and Bush, and I am just working on the supposed lane-change of the Obama administration.  I’m gathering research on the review conference from this summer.

My thesis:  despite the near-fact that the U.S. will not be joining the Rome Statute, the Obama administration should embrace the ICC by working alongside the Court and acknowledging its usefulness.

Yesterday, the Obama administration did just that.

Time to re-work my thesis.

The Unofficial Teacher

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So, it’s unofficially official – it seems.  I’m about to close out my fourth week at my school.

Week 1 – learned close to 200 names (there were only a handful I still couldn’t get by week’s end), and heard about some rumbling drama in which my teacher grappled with parents and administration.  Taught a full day on my second day.

Week 2 – Graded scores of tests for the first time. Taught a little, and went to my first staff meetings.  On Wednesday, my mentor teacher went on administrative leave.  I spent two days winging it as I wrapped up the week. Led a controversial debate on SB1070.  On Friday, I found out my mentor teacher resigned, and I’d stay another week for transition.

Week 3 – Working with a sub to supervise me. Began the lesson planning process.  Managed to put together three study guides, two worksheets, and two group projects for the unit.  Began the grueling task of grading ~220 one page essays.  Numerous conversations with teachers, administrators, university supervisor over my status as student teacher.  Find out I might be able to stay.

Week 4 – Meet the permanent substitute under whom I will be teaching.  Instead of co-teaching and lesson plan-sharing, determine that I will be planning lessons on my own and in full control of the class.  My permanent sub leaves for a family emergency – back to temporary subs.  Engage in meetings with other teachers to ensure that my upcoming units will be sufficient for standards and such.  Try to get into Spirit Week.

And that’s it.  I’ve spent about two hours overall putting together two crack units that should last the next few weeks – but still need to fill those lesson plans with information.  Ideally, putting together some powerpoints and audio supplements by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Classroom Announcement

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Today, I stood in front of five different classes of students who I have really gotten to know over the past two weeks. After teaching several lessons on my own and even more alongside my mentor teacher, after dealing with a grading discrepancy and going through a trial by fire, after reviewing the grading process and preparing all 192 of them for how I graded, I told them that I may or may not be there anymore.  I taught today, and I am teaching tomorrow.  Nothing else is up to me. Blahhhhh. I’ll post more when I have more to post.

A Campaign Deferred

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In April of this year I met with a number of like-minded individuals at Arizona State University.  By like-minded, I mean people who are concerned about social justice and human rights.  We had a vision of linking our student organizations – interests like women’s rights and fair trade, LGBTQ equality and anti-genocide came together.  Our primary goal was to establish something ASU didn’t have, but that we thought it needed: a Committee for Socially Responsible Investing.’

A number of universities have these committees.  They’ve manifested themselves in different structures and with different goals.  One early and prominent campaign was the campaign to cripple the South African regime through divestment (which started in the US with the Sullivan Principles and in universities with Stanford).  Recently there has been a push to divest from companies like PetroChina that do business with Sudan, a frequent human rights abuser.  Currently a number of universities have begun the controversial but justified effort to sever ties with the aggressive and abusive Israeli government.  Yet ASU does not have a committee to oversee what money is spent on.  There is definitely no one looking over the Fulton Foundation’s investments.

So we established the ASU Coalition for Human Rights.  And we drafted a proposal.  And we began meeting with Vice President for University Student Initiatives Dr. James Rund.  We began making progress.  I was among four students in a meeting with Dr. Rund at the end of September.  We spent the better part of an hour debating the need for a committee and the trend of social responsibility that ASU is missing.  We began debating the structure of such a committee – who would serve on it? how would the Coalition be involved? would the committee’s decisions be binding? It was at this point that I turned to Dr. Rund and asked, bluntly: “So, are you saying that you support the creation of a committee, but want to debate the structure of it?”  To which he casually responded, “I’d say yes, yes I am.” We later adjourned the meeting and agreed to speak with Student Government’s Council of Presidents on the issue and come back to Dr. Rund.

Last week, a number of my like-minded peers met with Dr. Rund.  Just weeks after telling me that, yes, yes he supported the idea of creating a committee, we were told that the committee was a bad idea.  We were challenged not only on the structure of the committee, but on the structure of the Coalition itself (we had recently voted down an application from a political student organization on the grounds of the Coalition being apolitical and purely human rights-oriented) and even on the premise of the necessity of such a committee.  We were told that, if there is a question of ASU’s investments, feel free to bring it up with ASU’s leadership.

A lot of our success has been curbed, but we’re not stopping.  ASU has not yet made an official proclamation to have sweatshop-free merchandise (although ASU did cut its contract with Russell Athletic over labor disputes, which deserves some applause).  ASU has not taken a stance in making sure its electronics are audited to be conflict mineral-free.  The Fulton Foundation’s finances have not been made public, so I personally have no idea if my tuition dollars are indirectly supporting genocide in Darfur now or election-disruption in South Sudan in January.  Who knows where that money goes?

I still have hopes that my university will take a step forward.  I have hopes that our organization will be able to keep the pressure on until a permanent Committee for Socially Responsible Investing is established at Arizona State University.  Let’s keep this going.

Back to Academics

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It’s mid- to late-August, which means school is back in session.  I’ve officially spent a half-week in school now (classes started on a Thursday, which was pretty odd) so I’ve got some reporting to do on first impressions.  School overall looks to be pretty good, albeit bad scheduling.  I got to see Dr. Fuchs before she sped off to France, so that was good.  However, I’m still trying to fenagle Schools For Schools meetings into a comprehensible schedule.  I got to see a lot of friends at Passport, where S4S also got a lot of e-mail addresses.  I’ve got a lot of friends in my global studies classes, as usual, but I will still have a few big projects going on this semester.  Here’s a vague breakdown of what I’m thinking:

German 201.  I like languages but that doesn’t make learning them any easier.  I’m glad Kim and I have a class together for once but it will still be interesting to trudge through the syntax and semantics of German.  The TA seems nice and helpful, and hopefully the courseload isn’t too much and it’s mostly practicing language and such.

SGS Research Methods. Not sure how this class will go.  Big research paper (duh) with activities mixed in.  At least I’ve got a half-dozen friends in there for three hours every Monday.  I’m already trying to decide what I’ll concentrate on – I don’t often have a clean slate for thinking of topics.

Social Statistics. I don’t know anything about stats.  We’ll see how that translates.

U.S. 20th Century Foreign Relations. My third and last class with Dr. Bass, who is great.  He teaches well, uses media a lot, and makes things pretty easy to understand.  That said, I’m worried what won’t make the cut in a busy semester (in Contemporary U.S. History he skipped Clinton’s foreign policy problems, so I’m hoping we visit them this time around).  Either way I’ll be learning and hopefully get some good stuff out of it.

Global Environmental Conflict. I’m really excited about this class because it’s stuff I’ve never even thought to think about.  We’re talking about how the environment can cause conflict, which inevitably means we’ll spend time on oil and diamonds, but we’ll also visit conflict minerals in the DRC which I’m excited about. What I’m really excited about, though, is some more abstract studies like the mass atrocities in Darfur being caused by climate change rather than ethnic divisions.  Also, the final paper takes the form of a policy brief, which will be a first for me.

The Politics of Global Justice. My last Peskin class will also be functioning as my capstone, which means I’m probably going to end up doubling my paper length or adding something extra onto the workload.  There’s a cadre of like a dozen friends (and almost all of us are ardent Peskin-fans) that I get to sit with too, which always helps.  We’re talking a lot about the international courts, about which I’m always stoked to learn more.  Plus – for the first time ever – no course reader! Instead of his usual three books and a $40 reader, Peskin put the extra readings online! I should go have an expensive lunch.

And now, it’s time for me to go to those last four classes.  This will be a good semester, I think.  Let’s hope work, wedding, clubs, and life continue to follow suit.

Educate

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Typed the morning of Wednesday the 22nd of July.

This Friday, to round out my week of bouncing around town for work, I went to a small nursery school run out of a Swedish woman named Erika’s home. I spent the day helping five children between ages 3 and 5 with geography, mathematics, and English and monitored playtime as well. It was really interesting because it was such a small atmosphere and the students were really getting attention to help them learn. I helped children find different cities on a map of Uganda, made sure they counted, added, and subtracted straws correctly, and made sure they copied down the right letters. Now, I haven’t been to a regular school in Uganda yet, which is a real shame because i know it would be a very interesting sight.

Just from footing passed a small school on my way to the matatu from George’s place and passed St. Anne’s on my way to NACWOLA I’ve heard the drone of hundreds of children reciting numbers and reading words off the board.  Some of my friends refer to it as “chanting class.” Rote learning can really only take you so far.  Since they are paid by salary and there is little accountability, there are a lot of cases of teachers not even attending class.  There are still many schools that are basically a teacher sitting under a tree talking to students with no materials or curricula.  Being in a small school with adequate attention being given to students was really nice.

I went back to the school yesterday to help out some more.  The power and water were both out (water is apparently out in all or most of Lira town, so we’re all rationing and Erik borrowed a bunch from us last night) but we were able to still do some math and some English.  I’ll probably go back at least one more day before my time here is up.  Here are a few pictures from my two days at school:

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School’s In For Summer

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Typed on the 7th of July

Tuesday marked the beginning of the second five-week session of summer school at ASU.  For the first time since driver’s ed, I’m taking summer school!  Going into this summer, I was worried about whether or not I’d be able to pull off overseas adventures and interning with fast-paced classes.  The main motivator behind signing up was to clear the field for this fall semester’s schedule.  So, I’m fulfilling my internship but also taking a class on the history of exploration and imperialism and another on the culture of teaching.

The history one is looking a bit intimidating, like all history courses. Lots of reading, lots of papers.  In the five weeks of class I am to read four books and write five papers.  I got some heads up on the reading and have been chipping away at book #1, and on the first day of class I actually started and finished my first paper (due next week).  I’ve never been very good at keeping up with online classes during the actual school year, so I was hoping that the environment here would be more accommodating for it, but regardless I resolved to get started quickly and do everything as soon as possible.

The education class is pretty up in the air.  Like most education classes, it seems like a breeze.  It shouldn’t be too intensive, but the number of assignments is a lot bigger, albeit probably made up of easier work.  I’m just hoping to stay on the ball and get everything done and out of the way.  I have a few days to decide if anything is too much and I can kick a class off, but as of right now I don’t intend on doing so.  Ideally, I’ll get these out of the way and free up an already busy schedule this fall.  We’ll see how it goes!