My Most Embarrassing Moment

Hard to choose just one, there are so many …but here is one I am willing to share.

In the 1980′s I was a sales manager for Pan American Diamonds in NYC, a wholesale jewelry manufacturer. I misunderstood instructions for a huge sales promotion, and as a result orders weren’t entered into the database correctly and  jewelry that had been ordered by stores wasn’t shipped on time. Not only was sales revenue lost, but I was cussed and scolded on a regular basis in both English and Yiddish (Yiddish is great for cussing!) by executives and sales people alike.

I didn’t want to quit the job and endured until they fired me. Oy!

Fred Hampton

Written for the UIWP newspaper

Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and fellow Panther Mark Clark, were shot to death by the Chicago Police Department on Dec. 4, 1969. In the intervening years many events have occurred that cast new light on this case.

The police raid on in the early hours of the morning was initially justified as self-defense by the CPD. The police released photographs with what they claimed were bullet holes from Panther rifle fire. As more information became available, the conservative Chicago newspapers were forced to re-evaluate their pro-police stance.

The Panthers opened up the crime scene to the public. Reporters, as well as curious citizens toured the second floor flat on West Madison street. Most of the bullet holes supposedly created by Panther rifles were actually nail heads. Panther Mark Clark was on security detail that night. He was the first one to die. It was determined he fired his rifle reflexively one time after he had been shot. All the other bullet holes in the apartment were fired from the doorway into the apartment, presumably by the police.

It was also discovered by an independent autopsy that Fred Hampton’s blood stream contained high levels of secobarbital, a powerful sleeping drug. This drug had been put in Hampton’s dinner drink by police informer and infiltrator William O’Neal http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-last-hours-of-william-oneal/Content?oid=875101. Medical testimony deemed it impossible that Hampton could have been conscious at the time of his death.

An investigation headed by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark determined that Hampton and Clark had been summarily executed by the CPD. Although a grand jury was convened no charges were ever filed against anyone other than the Black Panthers.

In 1990, on Martin Luther King day, informer William O’Neal committed suicide by running out onto the Eisenhower Expressway at 2:30 AM. Relatives said he had grown to regret his role in the deaths of Hampton and Clark. Fred Hampton’s second in command, Bobby Rush, is now a congressman from Chicago’s 1st district.

Second Chance Video

If I were to rework my masterpiece the first thing I would do is NOT delete anything from the Event Library. I should reshoot those shots done without a tripod. I’d also get better titles and transitions, frame shots better and find a way to make the shots of most of the comic covers a consistent time length. My voice-over needs work and I need to replace the missing narration.

 

But other than that, it is perfect.

Book Blog (Book #3)

I’m reading “Making the Most of the Web in your Classroom”. Some of the ideas seem simplistic and for the lower grade levels, but most can be extrapolated to a high school level. The third chapter is about creating a web site, and here I have spent the most time.

I have a (pretty crude) website for my classes that exists mainly as links and pdf’s of class documents like assignment sheets, power points of daily lessons and other handouts. A tech person at my school created it with some authoring (when did this become a word?) software and I’ve used Taco (cloud software)to keep it updated.

The book gives some useful instruction on how to tweek the HTML and get results. Since I’ve been groping in the dark up to nows, knowing what I am looking at is a big help.

Did you know that doing “View/View Source” with the pull-down menu allows you to view the source code for whatever website you’re looking at? I’m considering using this to doctor up a few of my web pages to look like faux Google or Facebook pages. That ought to get my student’s attention.

Additional Posting July 5 and 6:

One thing I’ve realized about the readings I’ve done thus far: I enjoy the practical, as opposed to the theoretical. I don’t feel the need to justify using the web in a classroom…

OK, back to the book

This book has suggested technology standards for students and teachers. Teacher standard #4b on assessment requires teachers to use technological resources to assess students by collecting  and analyzing data and communicating results to students. Some grading software (I use EZ Grade Pro) can do this. Sounds like we’re being urged to more with grading software than just crunch numbers and produce a grade 4 times a year.

This Will Surely End Badly

He was showing me a leaflet that advertised, in Spanish and English, jobs at high pay in places like Dubai and Singapore. All a job seeker had to do was pay a placement fee and then make their way to a job fair in Baotou, an industrial city near Beijing. He explained in halting English that his family back in the Dominican Republic had scrapped up the $2500 placement fee and the airfare to Hong Kong, but he wasn’t getting much help from the officials here at the visa office in Kowloon.  Could I help please?

He’d picked my American face out of the sea of Asian faces leaving the visa office. I had been in Hong Kong for 4 months so far, and several times procured visas for travel in the PRC. My Cantonese was not very good, but I knew the visa procedures, and had in fact just gotten a visa to cross the border into the mainland to shop in Shenzhen.

My hesitance was fueled by conversations I’d had with some of the amahs back at my apartment compound, where I was living with my wife and daughter. Like many cities in Southeast Asia, the Hong Kong workforce was buttressed by foreign workers from the Philippines and Malaysia. The amahs were women who did housework, cooking and cared for children. They lived in small rooms in the homes of their employers, were given one day off a week and paid a pittance. I’d heard horror stories about these job fairs. I doubted this poor soul was going to get his money’s worth.

Back in the States I’d be able to find a way to determine if this guy was being taken advantage of. I could see him arriving in Baotou and learning that the high paying job was actually street cleaning for a pittance in Saudi Arabia, where he’d live in a compound with other foreign workers and have his meager wages routinely garnished. In effect, I feared, he was headed for a life of slavery. He was not the only person in this conversation who felt helpless.

Could I help him please, he asked again. I took him inside the visa office and found the forms he needed. When he began signing his name, I realized he was barely literate. How, I wondered, could I help him? His family, I asked, had he been in contact with his family since leaving the DR? He had not, nor did he know how to do so. I tried to explain that I had heard that sometimes these employment situations did not work out, and he needed an exit plan. The look in his eyes told me he suspected this, but he told me he was sure everything was on the up-and-up.

No, he was sure the employment scheme was legitimate, since a “big man” in his local community was involved in recruiting people for this program (and collecting the money, I was sure.) I went with him back into the consulate and stayed for an hour until he had his travel papers. Then I asked him how much money he had. He misunderstood and offered me money from his meager stash. Keep your money, I said. I walked him outside and helped him buy a phone card at a kiosk, so he could call home if he got into trouble. I wished him luck, we shook hands and I walked away, leaving him stranded on the other side of the world.

Hawaiian Poem (It’s not what you might think)

I guess it says something about me that I could spend 10 days in vacation in Hawaii and have a great time, and yet the only writing the experience  produces is basically a complaint. Let me explain.

Hawaii was wonderful. No two ways about it. Most of the time  my family was immersed in the ocean, though like Napoleon’s army, we traveled on our stomachs. And therein hangs the tale.

We spent three days at a bed and breakfast in Maui. This was a lovely place to stay, with a pool and jacuzzi, comfortable suites with full kitchen and a patio for breakfast. It was the breakfast that inspired my poem.

Half of a B and B is breakfast. It was with this half that I found fault. The breakfast consisted of several slices of pineapple, a slice of papaya, a banana and an English muffin with grape jelly.  To drink there was a small carton of apple juice. Every day.

It was great the first day. Then the same the next day. On the third day I realized that this was the only breakfast they ever served. Good thing we weren’t staying longer.

The room had a guest book for comments, and I wanted to remark on the meal monotony, but I didn’t want to annoy the owner, who was a nice guy. Besides, it seemed crazy to complain about anything in Hawaii. I hit on the idea of a poem as a way to convey my complaint in a light hearted, humorous way. I composed it at breakfast, with help from my wife and daughter. Here it is:

—————————————————————–

Variation on Vacation

Breakfast was always very delicious

But after 3 days, a wee bit repetitious

Though in general I don’t mind roughin’ it

I find each day I’m English muffin it

I long for carbo treat other than

Maybe corn or wheat or bran

And upon said muffin each day I scrape

The same flavor jelly, eternal grape

And on rising, I’d like to try a

Fruit besides banana and papaya

Now I hope this doesn’t make you unhapple

But give me, now and then, juice other than apple

I write these words with sincere affection

In hope of wider breakfast selection

————————————————————

I signed the poem Robert Frosty and left it on the table.

All Work And No Play Dyson Article

In the All work and No Play piece I gather Dyson is writing about younger children than those I teach, but I feel gratified in the sense that she is indirectly vindicating the active learning approach I use in class. Currently there is a move to lessen the amount of homework given to students. I wonder where Dyson stands on that?

Dyson writings

Dyson’s piece “All Work and No Play” concerns children much younger than those I teach. Still, it resonated with me in that it indirectly validates the active learning approach to math teaching that I use in class.

In “Pine Cone Wars” in am unsure what is meant by “official literacy practices can generate and become a resource for unofficial childhood practices; and, at least potentially, those unofficial practices may inform and even transform official possibilities.”

My First Week at UIWP

Every day I go home and relate to my family about the new stuff I learned that day at UIWP. Prezi, Google groups, Twitter, Blogging are not unfamiliar words to me, but I had not done them before. Definitely these are things I can use in my classroom, and also just for my own enjoyment.

I do better with structure and routine. Once I determined the daily routine here (writing at 9, presentation after break…) I felt more comfortable. Still mildly anxious about my own presentation next week, but I’ll survive.

I am a little perturbed by the expectation that I will spend time outside of the 9-4 workshop hours getting things ready for UIWP, like the presentation, since I am under pressure in the summer to do family things. During the teaching months I often defer certain household tasks and acts of repair and maintenance until the summer.

OK, no more griping. I definitely find this to be a positive experience.

 

I Stand By My Guns (Still quibbling with “citizen bloggers routinely beat…”)

I think by “citizen bloggers” the author means amateurs. An example of a  journalist tweeting the gist of their scoop, which will be in print in a few hours, does not support the author’s claim of bloggers routinely beating print media to the story. Certainly electronic media gets to press faster than print media, but professional journalists, who have the resources of their publications behind them (and who are paid salaries, Arianna Huffington!) will always be the ones who uncover the dirt.

Social media had a central role in organizing the Arab spring revolution. But here Facebook and Twitter  were making news as much as they were reporting it. I acknowledge that in a repressive society, these social media can become a way of reporting news. The sense that they are beating print media to the story is false, however, since traditional media had their hands tied, and could not report those particular stories in Egypt and Tunisia.