Day 94: The Praxis of Pedagogy

So we finished up "The Killing Fields" and I talked with the students a bit about the history behind it. I used an overhead and showed them where Cambodia was on a map and I talked a bit about the genocide. Some estimates are up to 3 million people died in a population of 7 million. Ridiculous. Then I had them count off to 7 and then I said that everyone that was a 1, 2, or 3 would be dead from the genocide. My one Cambodian student also volunteered information about it and said that there were Khmer Rouge in San Jose. Trip out! I didn't know that. But I guess why wouldn't they be. So to change things up after that, I talked the next movie Ghost Dog. I talked about Bushido and the way of the warrior. I explained to them a bit about samurai culture and how crazy those motherfuckers were. Committing seppuku isn't some it's-over-quick affair. You gotta disembowel yourself. I also mentioned that the Rza did the music for the movie. That helped to bring them in. But it's a great movie so they were into it.

I kicked a student in the face in Capoeira class today. The kid was talking shit to me and being generally disrespectful. When I said that I was going to play him capoeira he said that he was going to shine his shoes on me. Now this kid has been talking shit to me for a while. He's pissed his CTM off and his CTM is one of the nicest guys around. So I kicked him in the face. Not hard. Just a tap enough to wake him up. After that I knew he was going to come after me so I just waited for my time. Then when he went to kick me I just swept him off his feet. Then yelled at him to stop laying around and get up and play. I enjoyed doing it to him. That's part of the reason that I wanted to stop doing capoeira. It doesn't bring out the best side of me. But hell I'm teaching a martial art to people that don't want to learn it. I've loved capoeira and don't want to teach it to people that have really shitty attitudes about it. I've never wanted to teach capoeira, even to people that wanted to learn. My mestre told me one time that he would stop asking me to teach cause every time he did I quit. Capoeira has always been something that I just enjoyed doing. Something that I did cause I loved doing it. I just wanted to play not teach. Teaching it wasn't fun. Anyways, so then I have to come up with a class for Wednesday next quarter. Film Analysis has turned to Appreciation and I'm doing that class again. So now I got to come up with another class to teach.