Praxis of Pedagogy Day 23

I had trouble waking up again today... I was up till about 2 am working on my paper on Haiti that is way overdue at university. The paper sucks. There's nothing insightful in it. It's crap. But I'm less and less worried about that now. I just want to turn it in and get my grade and be done with it all.

So I went to school today and the teacher that was teaching a Drug prevention class had taken another job and today was his last day. He brought pizza and so I had pizza at around 11:00. That was nice cause I didn't bring a lunch.

After that was meta... so hard this class. We collected homework and did a journal prompt on what would they do if they were teaching the class, what would they teach, and how would they manage the class. Then we had them take their progress reports and fill out a paper saying what grade they got and what they need to do to improve things. They got done with this stuff quicker than Amanda and I anticipated. Usually they take so long doing anything but they were getting things done really quickly today for the most part. But there were a lot of discipline problems today. I had to take a number of students out to the hall and talk with them. I've developed a rapport with a number of students so this makes disciplining much better. I find it works best when I speak softly and nicely and guilt them to hell. I don't want to yell at kids. I don't want to yell at anyone. They also respond much better when I don't yell. If I yell then immediately there becomes this confrontational situation. Most of these kids are so used to confrontational situations that they have conditioned responses to them. Speaking calmly and softly and guilt tripping the hell out of them seems to work well for me. But they were still acting like idiots today. I don't think the students are mentally stupid... but they do act stupid often. Something about Meta though... we only meet once a week and there are so many "personalities" in the room. We revised the seating chart numerous times today. Those 2 weeks when Meta was good messed with my head, yet it let me know what they are capable of.

After Meta my fellow history teacher Jeff and I went to see Daniel Ellsberg speak at a nearby high school. Way cooler than attending the weekly Wednesday meeting. Ellsberg is a real interesting character. He told about knowing that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a load of shit. That the administration was lying to go to war. Surprise surprise. Then finally releasing the Pentagon Papers later. One guy who was a history teacher asked this incredibly dumb question about Ho Chi Minh that had Jeff and me clowning on him. We're such elitist snobs... LOL. Afterwards I got a chance to ask Ellsberg a question. I asked him what was it that allowed people in the administration (himself included) to continue on with the attack on Vietnam knowing that it was wrong and that they thought it was a bad idea. Earlier he had said that at one point during the war only 3 people in the administration were for the war. What was the inertia that kept the war going? Ellsberg replied that Johnson wouldn't back down from the war. I asked him again though what about the people in the administration that he had said knew it was wrong. He said fear. Fear of losing their jobs. Fear of the government coming after him.

I find it incredibly interesting when people are on one side (he worked for the administration) then they switch to the other side. What is it that triggers that change from bad to good? From the dark side of the force to the light. It's like when Vader killed the Emperor at the end of Episode VI. Yeah I'm a dork.