Pedagogy and Praxis Day 4

I'm going to sleep soon.

Today I read Animal Farm to all the classes. I told them it was about the Russian Revolution and the fight between the capitalists and the workers. Orwell is one of my favorite writers of all time and I've learned more from his books about politics than many of the classes that I've had. Thie idea is to affect the audiolingual intelligence. All they got to do is sit and listen too and it really calms them and me down when we start off with something where they just got to sit and be quite. I suppose I crave the structure and calm just like them.

In my Asian American class we finished up the L part of the KWL. Oh yeah I also put in a seating chart. People were unhappy and I had to admit a bit of schadenfreude. The little chatty groups were starting to really piss me off and I had to break it up for my own sanity. I tried to put people out of their comfort zone areas of sitting. A student that I like basically said that she taped her voice and listened to it... I was dying. She was basically saying that she loved to hear the sound of her own voice and I was thinking, "oh man I'm in trouble..." but she says good things so I don't mind. Sweet young lady though. And I had a surprise visit by one of the teacher teacher from my credentialing program. I have to admit being nervous when someone comes to watch me. I can stand in front of a rooomful of students, elementary or high school, but when I got other adults in the room...

In my US history, seating charts too. More schadenfreude. It's the little things like that that make my day. Moving high energy away from high energy. Finding people's complements...still a work in progress. In this class I modeled with their help the classic outline format. I am trying to get across to all the kids to learn study skills. To work smarter and not harder. Hard effort for a short period of time is better than to have to work longer and get back less later. The classic outline forces them to think about categories. If they can think in chunks then things will be easier for them. We used the Butler essay and I just did the first chapter with them. Then I assigned the rest of it to be due on Tuesday next week. With the little bit of remaining time, we read a paper on SQ4R reading strategy. Next week we will use the strategy with the textbook and the chapter on US imperialism.

For my multicultural ed class, I had them work on work they hadn't turned in. I did assignments turned in and missing last night on the computer and many people were missing a lot of work. The class that doesn't hand in assignments... Friday was supposed to be the makeup work day but since so many were missing so many assignments I had them start today.

After that I had to go to my Latino experience in US class at uni. I had to present about a paper I am going to have to write on Haiti. The speech went well. Haiti has a fascinating history. I had no idea that the US occupied haiti in 1915 and stayed there for 19 years. Then of course the imperialists say that they provided infrastructure like roads. A common line by imperial powers (I've heard Danes say that about a the Faroese, Chinese about the Tibetans), though the roads are really to facilitate troop movement and movement of goods and resources for easier exploitation. But I was thinking about it too, the US made the roads with forced labor... or slaves. I mean the US invades and occupies Haiti and then forces people to labor for them doing things. That's slavery... some slave conditions. Old habits die hard. Not too far off from 1865. The US ran the show in Haiti and we sent up a local US trained military, which were the only well run institution in Haiti after the US left. I had no idea that Haiti beating off the French is one of the reasons Napoleon sold the Louisiana Purchase to the US. I find it interesting that the US supported Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier because they weren't those godless commies in Cuba. Papa Doc's regime lead to the brain drain from Haiti... that's always good for a country. Oh yeah and the US has basically been through the IMF and the World Bank uses SAP programs to get Haiti into a low wage, no union sweatshop. And of course the US couldn't have a working Black Republic so close to it when it had slaves. Can't have slaves having all these big ideas like freedom. All of this sounds so damn familiar... Got Empire?