In prepping for the workshop tonight I’ve: gone over a mental picture of everyone and their names; written out a handful of review questions covering the biggest conceptual lessons we learned in the last session; settled on a schedule with the group facilitator to accommodate a short dinner, birthday celebrations (song and cake), and evaluations—in addition to the review, activity, and presentations; followed up on a photo release so I can take pictures of the Read more…
Phew! Now that that‘s out of the way, I can get around to some other things that I wanted to write about. The brouhaha surrounding teacher evaluations here in NYC depresses me, so I wanted to pick out a nice little nugget from an opinion piece submitted to the Times by the supposedly “bad” (according to the NYC DOE) teacher, William Johnson. His definition of good teachers (and, incidentally, his take on the underlying problem Read more…
I spent all of yesterday with a deep feeling of being unsettled and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it till this morning, and this post will be my attempt at getting a better grasp on it. The vagueness of that last sentence already betrays a bit of the source of my anxiety. It is this: writing. Or rather, the writing part of blogging. (This will likely be a long, meandering post, but if I don’t try to hammer it out, I won’t be able to focus on much else.) (more…)
Let’s talk about pilot programs! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m piloting bits of my Coming of Age program at New Alternatives for Children (NAC). I’m especially excited about the upcoming workshop, which will allow participants to take what we discussed in our last meeting—coming of age rituals—and synthesize it for themselves by designing rites of passage that resonate with their personal definitions of adulthood. As opposed to the last session, where I needed to hit several conceptual points in a presentation and discussion, this is the part of the program where I have no agenda and no expectations. I’m not familiar with this group, but even the facilitator who knows them well is curious to see what the youths come up with. After the presentations, we will have everyone fill out another survey that will hopefully give us a measure the impact of the workshop and allow them to evaluate my role as an educator.
The group facilitator and I debated whether or not we should have participants fill out post-workshop evaluations so soon. (more…)
I just came back from a week visiting family, which meant I spent a bit of time explaining what I’m doing with myself these days. I was quite used to fielding these sorts of inquiries as a graduate student, but now that I’m “out in the world” I find I’m having to answer another volley of questions altogether. Namely, family members want to know how I spend my time and what any of this has to do with my degree. I’ll answer the first question of how I spend my time by way of tackling the more difficult question of what a PhD in Spanish is “doing” for my career. (more…)
In a prior post I gave a brief summary of the one of the biggest ideas that I learned in college: that everything is contextual, contingent, and contested. (You might even throw in the term “constructed,” though I think that tends to raise a few eyebrows.) Here are two case studies—one polemical, the other simply delightful—of how this handy tool brings to light some thought-provoking historical lessons. (more…)
Yesterday I debuted my Rites of Passage workshop at New Alternatives for Children (NAC). I expected a lot of awkward silence, but there were so many talkative and knowledgeable people in the room, and many of their questions and comments pushed me in exactly the right direction. I have a lot to process, but I’ll offer some initial observations here: (more…)
I’ve been debating whether or not it’s a good idea to have students keep a food journal. It’s really quite a chore to keep track of everything one consumes on a daily basis, it might detract from the enjoyment of meals, and as with any sort of diary, it could feel like an invasion of privacy. Nevertheless, I think there are some benefits to the exercise. (more…)
I mentioned wanting to teach a program on food and nutrition that gives participants the tools to develop healthful (and joyful) eating habits on their own, rather than one that mandates a strict regimen. This does not mean ignoring others’ recommendations and encouraging everyone to eat willy-nilly. To the contrary, this means doing the work of comparing different dietary guidelines and evaluating them. One way of going about this is by looking at graphic nutrition guides such as food pyramids. (more…)
Part of my fascination with the chicken nugget issue is that it raises the question not only of what we feed our kids, but who decides what they eat in the first place. The story of Stacey Irvine, the seventeen year-old who collapsed after a steady diet of almost nothing but chicken nuggets since the age of two, is an extreme case of what could happen if we let kids set diets entirely for themselves. In her own defense, Stacey’s mother said that her daughter presented problems that her other two children never did with respect to their eating habits. They even happily consume plenty of fruits and vegetables. Stacey, however, shunned all foods to the extent that for her mother it was a relief when she discovered her daughter’s penchant for chicken nuggets.This got me wondering just how persistent adults should be in ensuring that kids get a healthful and varied diet. (more…)