veryone to me all the time
talking on the phone is too much info like all these extra words and tics with no context man no nonverbal cues i need it and then texting is like too little info and you reply and then you just have to wait for more info
people are either half or they’re double
We didn’t in the light; we didn’t in darkness. We didn’t in the fresh-cut summer grass or in the mounds of autumn leaves or on the snow where moonlight threw down our shadows. We didn’t in your room on the canopy bed you slept in, the bed you’d slept in as a child, or in the backseat of my father’s rusted Rambler, which smelled of the chubs and kielbasa he delivered on weekends from my uncle Vincent’s meat market. We didn’t in your mother’s Buick Eight, where a rosary twined the rearview mirror like a beaded, black snake with silver, cruciform fangs.
— Stuart Dybek, “We Didn’t”
Curious Grade for Teachers - Nearly All Pass - NYTimes.com (via infoneer-pulse)
I’m not against teacher evaluation. Here’s the thing. I mean, I won’t even say ‘we.’ I’ll speak for myself. I know I can be an awesome teacher on any given day. Out of a 40 day term, though? I might be living up to my potential a third of the time. I just don’t have the stamina.
A kick ass lesson takes forever to plan. Also, it takes several repetitions to get it right. Maybe you teach it three or four times because you have the same class several periods a day. Maybe you teach several different classes and have to prepare even more lessons. Either way, the turn around for reflection and improvement is either too fast or too slow. You have five minutes between periods, while also welcoming students and making sure they move seamlessly from movement and jest to learning, or else you have a whole year before you can try the lesson again.
Teacher evaluations, therefore, need to take into consideration not how well a teacher will do when I know I’m observed. It needs to figure out how well we do everyday. I’m not saying I need to be monitored everyday. But we have to figure out how to tell exactly how well I’m helping kids.
The other part to this is the difference between effective and highly effective. As far as I’m concerned, most teachers are awesome. I have no doubt that most of us can pull off “effective” on most days. I need to strive to be highly effective, though, and I think that’s what the public wants from us. It’s a tall order, and sometimes I feel like we’re asked to be better than is humanly possible, but we should strive for that. So don’t kill us for being ineffective when you really mean we’re not meeting impossible standards and then don’t pat us on the back for being effective when everyone wants us to be highly effective.
By J. Bryan Lowder
Since I realize that Jason Collins—the 34 year-old NBA center who made headlines today by coming out as gay in Sports Illustrated—will soon be receiving (strike that, it’s already started) a mess of ignorant and/or homophobic push-back to his announcement, let me start by extending a big gay welcome—hey girl!
Hopefully, other closeted male athletes will feel emboldened to follow suit within a profession that remains undeniably homophobic. But before they do, maybe we can push back a little on the language Collins uses in his lengthy and occasionally awkward confession, lest other people use it as a model.
First, a small thing: I checked with an LGBT historian and, though we can’t be totally sure, I am pretty comfortable saying that 98—Collins’ current number that he claims was a secret symbol of solidarity with LGBT folk—is not a “number [that] has great significance to the gay community.” Yes, Matthew Shepard was indeed murdered in 1998, but (call me cynical) that whole line read as a bit of PR revisionism.
But my main beef begins with how frustratingly wishy-washy Collins is about why he stayed in the closet for so long. In one memorable line, Collins compares coming out to baking: “Imagine you’re in the oven, baking. Some of us know and accept our sexuality right away and some need more time to cook. I should know—I baked for 33 years.” This makes it sound like Collins only just realized or came to terms with his orientation. And yet, according to his own account, he knew he was attracted to guys as a teenager but “resisted [those] impulses” through high school. This is not uncommon. But given the support of his gay and gay-friendly family members and friends he mentions, one is left wondering what exactly kept Collins in that oven throughout his twenties.
At least one of the answers, of course, is the homophobic nature of his industry, and, unfortunately, that is a state of affairs he never criticizes directly beyond promising to set “hard picks” against individuals who trash-talk him. If anything, Collins takes pains to appease the players, coaches and fans who make up the sports-masculinity complex that will determine whether his career continues, and unwittingly, insults some of his new friends in the process. To start, Collins makes the classic maneuver of exempting himself from the dreaded gay “LABEL” (I’m never sure what that means) and then spends multiple paragraphs telling us how butch and eager to foul he is. At this point, I’m waiting for it, and Collins delivers: “I go against the gay stereotype, which is why I think a lot of players will be shocked: That guy is gay?”
Ah, yes. The good ol’ gay stereotype. You know, faggots, sissies, femme-swishy types that make the sporty ones look bad. But lucky for us, Collins still has the “same mannerisms” that he did before he came out—I know I was personally worried that his wrists would turn to rubber—and he hopes we and his teammates will recall that he is not an “in-your-face kind of guy.” There will be no feather boas in the locker room or yucky tales of the dude he bottomed for last night, guys. No, Collins makes clear that he will be as tough and masculine and professional as he has always been, because he’s not going to suddenly become that kind of gay.
Sigh. I really want to like Collins, to celebrate the lifting of what I know was a terrible burden for him. But I just can’t get with it when his self-reinvention is predicated on the denigration of a whole swath of the community he now hopes to Pride-march with. And the saddest part is, I doubt he’s actually all that intolerant on a personal level. The majority of this stuff reads as posturing for an audience that is voraciously needy for assurance that gay athletes won’t queen-up the game. Or perhaps, as Benoit Denizet-Lewis writes today, it’s about challenging those who think you can’t be black and gay without betraying your race. I don’t know. What’s clear, though, is that while Collins may be out of the closet, he’s just entered into an arena that is only slightly less stifling. Maybe his presence there will change it. But as long as the price-of-admission is anti-femme, hand-holding apologetics, I’m not hopeful.
Pursue understanding. Deconstruct systems in order to taste building blocks. Happiness waits else/everywhere. And the heart(h). Do spheres not pull at each other?
Victoria Stoyanova
The only time early mornings are worth it are for views like this. (at Diamond...
Poipu Beach, Kauai
to tha window
