Today was a fun day of teaching. I had a real good time. We started off with typing tutor and SSR in all the classes as always. I find it interesting that students are asking me to put them on the typing tutor now. Maybe it's because I had a talk with them about the importance of being able to type and white collar jobs. I sweat a lot. I am a sweaty sweaty man. I got this weird skin that is hypersensitive and I've got hives as I type. Blue collar work is hard. I would be a mess. Thank God I have a job where I don't have to sweat a whole bunch. The most I'll sweat at work will be from Capoeira and that's not a bad sweat. That's not a sweat mixed with all kinds of stuff that I'd be allergic to and making me break out with puffy hard skin. Not that there is anything wrong with blue collar work, by no means whatsoever. I just know who I am and how I am. I'm the turn-the-fucking-air-conditioner-up kind of guy. Allison wants me to do a triathalon with her. I laughed at her. I have no desire to run anywhere. I'll bike around, but I hate running.
Anyways... in first period I decided to do something different from what we normally should have been covering. Since we have been talking about muslims and islam I decided to talk about terrorism. I had students come up with their own definitions of terrorism and then they got into groups and came up with a common group definition. From there I handed out fictitious stories of fictitious countries and corporations and they had to use their definitions of terrorism to decide what activities where considered terrorist activities and who were the terrorists in the situation. The trick was that of course the fictitious stories weren't fictitious. They were actual things that happened... and surprisingly they included stuff that the US and US corporations did. Fancy that. After the groups told what they thought about the story I told them who the real actors were in the story. Class had to end with that and I didn't get to go into more depth about the meaning of that.
Second period was fun yet challenging. Explain World War I. What a complicated war with so much backstory. I'm sure the students lost track of what was going on. I tried my best to explain the war using gang warfare as an analogy. All the kids understand power relationships, not getting punked out, and calling on your friends to back you up when shit goes down. World War I had a lot of that going around. After that I tried to show stuff from the internet about World War I, but was having technical difficulties. I was of course being observed by a fellow credential student when the technical difficulties happened. Of course, that's the way it works.
3rd period we talked more about the model minority myth. This class is fun and attentive and they ask serious and meaningful questions. We started to talk about racism and why does it exist. I don't have the answers... I just have my ideas and thoughts on the situation. Anyways, we ended with me showing them the website www.authentichistory.com. This website has a cool diversity section that has all kinds of racist shit of the various racial categories. I played them this crazy song during WWII called "We're gonna have to slap the dirty little jap" and they were tripping. Then to make it modern day I showed them stuff from the website that Abercrombie and Fitch had made. All that two wongs can make it white and orientalism that A&F put out. Who thought of that shit and who thought it would be a good idea to put out???
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