Teaching Funk

I'm in kind of a teaching funk lately. Which is unfortunate because I have applied to be a Spanish teacher at 5 different universities/colleges in Ohio and California. I call this a funk because maybe it is temporary and I will fall back in line in a couple of days, as many of us often do... Personally, I think I'm good at teaching Spanish for the most part. I try to simplify grammar by making it visual, and I break it down thoroughly. I've had students say that compared to previous Spanish teachers I make things very understandable. Then again, I think every TA probably has some students tell them that because we all teach differently and all students learn best through different strategies.

Enter: the problem. When I get anxious, all of my well-thought-out planning goes to shit. I start to confuse myself, and when that happens how am I supposed to explain it to a room of 21 confused faces? I get the simplest madlibs terms (verbs, nouns) mixed up not because I forget what they are, but because under pressure I'm just spitting out words without thinking. Try explaining why the gerund in English is actually represented in Spanish through both the infinitive and the gerund. And the thing is, I have done that successfully. To a T. Twice. This is my third time teaching this lesson. But something escaped me this time. After some toying with the concepts last night, I think I've broken it down adequately, and I will be reviewing the lesson to make sure it's clear. But when you have a room full of students giving you nonverbal clues that they have no idea what you are talking about, it's a little disheartening.

And that isn't even necessarily why I have been thinking that I don't want to teach. Mostly I feel less enthused about the whole thing for two reasons.
1. Many students here HAVE to take a foreign language. They don't want to be there, they hate Spanish, and they fight me and the language every step of the way. This makes it hard for me to get the information through to them, because all they can think about is how miserable they are taking a class that "will never help" them "in the real world" (I beg to differ by the by). When they resist, it really is just making it harder on them. I end up spending so much time dumbing down the material that the students who actually do care are bored stupid. I would like to apologize to them, because they are the best students.
2. Because we are in a system where grades mean everything, students want to fight with me over every point. Most often, they try to weasel their way out of the attendance policy, which I follow strictly in order to keep my job. Lately students have been basically asking me what each point I take off is for. If I give a student a 4/5 on participation for March 28, they want to know why. What happened to the authority of a teacher? I think that being a TA makes students think they can walk all over you. Especially with me because I do happen to take it easy on them sometimes. Give them an inch and they will take a mile.

Anyway, maybe if I could teach a Spanish class full of people that actually want to be there, I would be happy with my job. And those few students who care and try do make it all worth while. So it feels hypocritical to make those students sit through the bullshit so that I can make things easier on the students who don't study or pay attention as much. So it might be time for a new policy.

Also I don't think chai is much better when it comes to anxiety. I guess I'm going to have to resort to...hot water? Megann suggested yerba mate. I haven't gotten the good ol' mate out in a while, so that might be my experimental pick-me-up drink next week.

I Am Not Colorblind

I have a lot of students with the same name in the same class. In fact, I have two Zachs in my class this quarter, and they sit right next to each other. When I call on them in class, I call one Zach and one Zachary to try to avoid confusion. Zach is white, Zachary is black.

Yesterday, I had students circulate around the room to interview one another using the grammar we had just gone over. When it was time for students to share their findings, I asked "Who interviewed Zach?" When a lot of people raised their hand, I realized that people who had interviewed both were raising their hands. I looked over to them, saw Zach had a hat on, and said "The Zach with the white hat." My mentioning of white set off a wave of uncomfortable-ness. Zachary started cracking up, saying "white Zach in the white hat!" A lot of people in the class looked uncomfortable because of this declaration of race. As if we should all be colorblind.

There was a time when I thought that must be the best solution. That is, to avoid talking about race, pretending not to see it. Listening to the way my family would talk about people according to their race, at my graduation: "those black people sitting in front of us were so obnoxious during the ceremony," has made me aware of how one can bring up race unnecessarily, or in the wrong context. Had there been white obnoxious people in front of them during my graduation ceremony, I know they still would have complained. But because they prescribe to the idea that white is like the "default race," they would never have said "those white people sitting in front of us were so obnoxious during the ceremony." White would not have been a descriptor. I can't entirely blame my family for the way they see the world. I have tried to explain to them how I find that using race in this way is offensive. So when it is unnecessary, I really don't think race needs to be brought up.

However, it is quite another thing to pretend not to see race, to avoid even talking about it, and to generally invoke a policy of colorblindness. This doesn't make you enlightened, progressive or tolerant. It exposes ignorance. Why else do you think Stephen Colbert uses it as an ironic element to his on-screen personality on the Colbert Report? Colorblindness is something that intolerant people use as an excuse to pretend that they are tolerant. This is just like when people say "I don't care what gay (/trans/bi/queer) people do as long as they don't flaunt it in my face." It is a way to feign tolerance while simultaneously being intolerant.

I don't know if things will change in regards to this topic in my lifetime, but I know that I am ending a legacy of intolerance in my family by refusing to continue traditions aligning with the -isms of intolerance. I hope that many other people are similarly challenging ways in which they were brought up that might be similarly racist, sexist, classist and homophobic.

Prioritize your Life

You would think with my chronic and excessive worrying that I would be really good at prioritizing my most pressing obligations. My particular branch of worrying does not function that way.

Until my junior year of high school, I would say I was the opposite of a procrastinator. I would get an assignment, start working on it that day, and have it finished way before the deadline. Friends and acquaintances, panicking while throwing together an assignment at the last minute, would always blame their habit of procrastinating. Sometimes, they would ask me how I was coming along on said assignment, and I would lie, faking a procrastinator lifestyle myself. Why did I want to appear to be a procrastinator? It could have been because I wished that I had tons of cool things to keep me from doing my assigned work, or that dreaded "learning isn't cool" attitude that plagues not only high school, but college students as well (I see this play out in my Spanish class all of the time). Maybe because "everyone else" was procrastinating, I wanted to too. By my junior year of high school, I began to embrace the thrill of procrastination, as I adopted a more, *ahem*, well-rounded lifestyle that mixed work and play. Now, my very definition of self revolves around this balance between work and play. While I might not go out as much as I did in my undergrad, I cannot function in the academic realm without cramming in many hours of (what I call) recreation.

So now I am a procrastinator, I guess. At the very least, even if I do something productive, I do not prioritize. Exhibit A- This very blog. I should not be writing in this now, and if you get right down to it, I never should have started "La Pajarita Dice" in the first place. At least not until I knocked out my (supposed) number one priority, my master's thesis. (by the way, I just looked it up, and master's thesis isn't supposed to be capitalized).<-web of procrastination. In general, I make myself productive in some way to prove to myself that I am still as diligent as my early high school years. So I will feel productive after I write this entry. I will also feel productive after I look up 5 different versions of "Welcome to Tijuana" by Manu Chao to find the one most appropriate to play for my Spanish class, then think of some discussion questions to go to the song (will I write them on the board or use powerpoint?) Oh yeah, and I already planned today's class in its entirety, so I really shouldn't be adding anything. We rarely get through my whole lesson plan each class period anyway. This is my Exhibit B. Exhibit C- Then there are things I feel guilty about putting off, but when I do them I will be putting off thesis work to do them. Like working out. I have Wii Fit so I can have no excuse not to exercise. It's too cold outside, Ping Rec Center is too far, I can't leave the house right now. Well, that's what exergaming is for.


In case you haven't guessed, I am about to go do some Wii Fit to rid myself of this guilt. What will I do about the guilt I have about not even looking at a thesis-related document today? Maybe I will get some reading done for my Women and Gender Studies class, and that will be academically productive. Right? RIGHT? Ooo maybe I'll go grocery shopping! Needless to say, I will probably leave the most important thing for last.

Frustrations over our 21st Century Capitalistic World

It is no wonder that the peace-loving hippies of the 1960's sold out, turning in their flower power for a corporate job and a briefcase. Nonprofit work just does not bring home the bacon....

Here is some context for the rant that will follow: Through his Masters in Public Administration Program, Jose has been working tirelessly on a business plan for the Athens local Habitat for Humanity for a ReStore, which is a community shop where low-income individuals and families can purchase discounted building materials. Although he gets a little school credit, he is essentially working for free, often 20 hours a week on this project. Recently, one of the key coordinators for this project told Jose that with his knowledge of the business side of the project, Jose himself could manage the ReStore when it gets up and running. The salary for such work? $20,000. I am not certain, but I am pretty sure that health benefits are not included.

Here at OU, Group 3 hires, professors with PhDs mind you, are only offered $2,500 per class per quarter, and once again, no health benefits. In fact, it is a well-known fact that educators in general are not paid enough, considering how crucially important their job is. Education truly is the foundation of the lives of not only academics, but everyone, really. We all start out with a relatively clean slate, I believe, and through our families, our communities and our experience in school, we become who we are later in life. But I diverge.

Why are nonprofit workers and educators paid so little when their professions mean so much to so many people? Why does an executive at Proctor and Gamble get paid a buttload for essentially selling products? If Obama really wants to make this nation CHANGE, then why does he not provide incentives for people who stray away from the profitable sector in lieu of a career more...I'll use "altruistic" for lack of a better term, but Ayn Rand would surely hate me. I guess it is because the US thrives a lot more off of profit-building than making the world a better place for the marginalized.

In Jose's words: "Do you know who probably does have a program with incentives like that? Chavez." And he is right. Granted, every day I like Hugo Chavez a little less. There just isn't enough room for him AND his ego. But that discussion is for another day. One thing that Hugo Chavez has done right has been his social programming.

So what kind of incentives do I think should be offered? Maybe people should be (financially) encouraged to study certain subjects, like education and social work. And then there is the age-old argument that teachers should be paid more. In my opinion, teachers have the most important job in the world, and I though that long before I ever even thought I might teach. And I hear the counter-argument over and over again: "If you pay teachers more then people will try to become teachers because they want money, not for the love of teaching." Well, Obama is apparently trying to get the ball rolling to pay teachers more, but what worries me is that it is "based on how their students perform." Not that I don't think teachers should be paid more if their students perform above average, but it is the whole idea of this "performance" that bothers me. Nowadays, teachers are handed scripts to read verbatim in their classes, and McDonalds sponsors health class curriculum. Eventually under this system, will physical teachers' bodies even be necessary? Or will we just head our classrooms with a computer and fit the students with shock collars to provide disciplinary measures?

Once again, I diverge. Moving on to non-profit work... How are we supposed to make any kind of living on the wages of nonprofit work? I do not think many people are. That is why for the most part we age, get more conservative, and sell out just like the hippies. If you have mouths to feed, a family (and yourself) to take care of, you're going to head over to Proctor and Gamble rather than Habitat for Humanity if they offer you four times as much money plus benefits in exchange for the same skill set.

When I set out to do my thesis research, I expected to see the headquarters of environmental organizations brimming with mothers fighting for environmental justice for their communities and the futures of their children. Instead, thirteen out of the nineteen women I interviewed were not mothers at all. Of those six that are mothers, five of them only started their environmental work after their children became independent.

I would like to say that it isn't all about money. I want to live comfortably but I don't need luxury. But my generation has been a spoiled one, and the one coming up is even moreso. I know my parents scraped and struggled to give me the world. Although neither of them went to college, and I do not know their salaries per se, I know that if I were not an only child, my family would have struggled financially to produce the lifestyle I have become accustomed to. A la Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, I am already too "Taker" for my own good. I am too weak to just surrender my Taker lifestyle in exchange for a leaver one. But what compromises am I going to have to make in my future if I want to live a life of service in education or the nonprofit sector? Does my worry about money run completely contrary to what I should believe as an "altruistic" individual. Maybe Ayn Rand had a point, but it saddens me that people in the US (and now the world over as globalization leaves no stone unturned) are encouraged to be so selfish, so individualistic.

I could go on and on and on, but I will stop here. Am I going to sell out some day? One more thing to worry about...