Systems of Discipline

I teach at a school where each of the students needs, for one reason or another, a second chance. The reasons vary. Sometimes it's academic or emotional. Sometimes it's addiction recovery. A lot of them, however, have made incredibly poor decisions that either poisoned their social scene or got them kicked out of their previous schools. Regardless, many of these kids benefit from more than the usual watchful teacher eye. Not because they are bad kids, but because our presence (and intervention) becomes like an external reminder to check their behavior. The hope is that the external check becomes internal over time.

It doesn't always work and the kids are kids...they don't often appreciate the interference until much later in life. This system is rough on the teachers too. We monitor technology use and conversation. We have to account for the students' locations and issue and maintain a two tiered discipline documentation system. The only way for it to work is to be consistent and sometimes it feels more like being a warden than an educator. We educators get a bit ground down and have little time to take care of the more normal teacher duties like grading. It takes time, but for whose kids who are essentially good people but impulsive, it can have great results despite the flaws in the system.

I had the opportunity a couple of days ago to see a very different type of school. At this school the kids maintain their own discipline. The teachers don't watch the students the way do and seem to inherently trust them. The kids walk the halls without passes and show up for classes on time, for the most part, without the use of bells. The students seemed more mature and more relaxed. They were still kids though. I saw inappropriate technology use and kids cutting up in class but for the most part this didn't seem to require teacher intervention. It was an interesting experience.

Now, I have to acknowledge that the two schools deal in some very different student populations. The kids at my school often don't know how to disengage or deescalate social situations and they engage in activities impulsively instead of thoughtfully which leads to academic issues. In some ways they are not capable of self-moderating which is how they ended up with us. However, I also sometimes wonder if the reason that we spend so much time in discipline conference is because we have so many rules. Truly, our student handbook looks like mish mash of legal precedent gone awry. We can't do without rules, obviously, but it could be less complicated and confusing. It often feels like we can't just say - "Hey, look that interferes with your work." Instead, we have this tome that we cite page numbers out of.

It feels adversarial.

Armada by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ernest Cline’s second book is about Zack Lightman, a high school kid with a talent for video games in general and an anger management problem. He’s a pretty normal kid until he sees an alien spacecraft right out of his favorite game lurking around the skies of his hometown. Then everything changes.

It’s not a new idea: what if video games are some kind of training for interstellar battle. Cline is pretty clear that it’s a recycled idea within the narrative, but he develops and refines it. He wraps earlier cinema and games into an elaborate conspiracy theory and then makes it all real. In some ways it is a similar technique to Ready Player One which read like 1980’s retrospective on pop culture.

It was a good read but there is something about Cline’s writing style that makes it hard to immerse in. I haven’t quite figured out what the problem is, but I find that I can only read a chapter or two at a time no matter how much I might be enjoying it which is odd for me. I tend to persevere because many of my students are a fan of Cline and I’m generally glad that I kept at it by the end.


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October Monster Lists

I'm at such a weird crossroads with so many things. Reading is constant though, it's grounding in fact. I'm still behind in my non-YA but I'm making up ground. I was about 12 behind and now I'm only eight behind. It's slightly more impressive when one considers that I've continued reading YA too.  It's progress anyway. I'm still increasing the Non-YA list to equal the YA list until I get back into balance. The problem is that I keep tripping across YA that I read in a day or less. It's like eating candy.

Non-YA

1. Bradbury Stories by Ray Bradbury
2. The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman
3. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
4. The Universe in a Single Atom by Dalai Lama
5. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
6. Reading Reasons by Kelly Gallagher
7. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
8. An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris
9. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
10. Alice by Christina Henry
11. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
12. Simply Ramen by Amy Kimoto-Kahn
13. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
14. When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning
15. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
16. Mastering the Art Japanese Home Cooking by Morimoto
17. The Pho Cookbook by Adrea Nguyen
18. Ringworld by Larry Niven
19. Cooked by Michael Pollan
20. Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
21. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
22. The Song Rising by Smantha Shannon
23. Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer
24. The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard
25. Takashi's Noodles by Takashi Yagihashi
26. The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama (Library)

YA

1. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
2. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
3. Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
4. Amulet book seven: Firelight by Kazu Kibuishi
5. Amulet book eight: Supernova by Kazu Kibuishi
6. The Diabolic by S.J. Kincaid
7. Relish: My Life In the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley
8. The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee (Finished 10/3/2018)
9. Legend by Marie Lu
10. Prodigy by Marie Lu
11. Champion by Marie Lu
12. Grip of the Shadow Plague by Brandon Mull
13. Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary by Brandon Mull
14. Keys to the Demon Prison by Brandon Mull
15. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
16. When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds (Finished 10/3/2018)
17. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
18. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
19. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
20. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling
21. The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey
22. The Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey
23. The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey
24. The Final Descent by Rick Yancey

Church BBQ

Once a year my in-laws's church does a BBQ. It's not your average pick it up from a restaurant in bulk. These guys used to dig pits, build and bank a fire in it, then roast pigs over the course of a whole night and day. These days, the event has grown to the point that they are renting smokers and only handling Boston butts, but it is still excellent.

This stuff is like magic. I've turned bags of it into pots of thai soup or french bean soup, fried rice, and lo mein. It's one of those utterly mutable flavors and will blend well with pretty much any cuisine and does well as a starting point for any meal.

Here's one of my favorites:

2 Tbs. Olive Oil
1 onion, chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
4 c. cooked white beans, drained and rinsed (about 2 15 oz cans)
2 qt. stock or water
2 lbs. pulled pork
1 pound egg noodles

In a large pot, saute onion, carrots, and celery in the olive oil until soft and beginning to brown.  Add the rinsed beans and stock or water and raise heat. Bring to a boil.

Add pulled pork and egg noodles and simmer until noodles are cooked through. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 12

Assuming you have the beans cooked and pulled pork on hand, the whole thing takes about 30 minutes.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Forever War is one of those classics. It shows up on lists; it has fans. On the surface, this is a novel about a guy trapped fighting an interstellar war in giant combat suits. As such, is seems like it should be an action novel. The main character, Mandella, spends his time travelling between conflicts at near the speed of light. Because he’s moving so quickly, relativity comes into play. From Mandella’s point of view only a few years have passed since the beginning of the war, but on Earth, centuries have passed.

As the war progresses, Mandella glimpses the evolution of the human species and culture on fast forward. Therefore, this is really a book about how humans develop in response to the many pressures they face. As Mandella moves farther and farther from the point of his birth, humanity drifts into a less and less recognizable species.

It’s a good book and surprisingly approachable despite the cultural attitude shifts since the time it was written in the 70’s. Many of the social shifts that Haldeman predicts are less obvious because culture has already moved a couple steps in that direction. Otherwise, it has held up well. There are several times when I think the use of profanity borders on the silly, but it isn’t really a problem.


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The new plan...

I've been doing the blog the same way for long that I'm having a hard time figuring out how reorganize it. The whole idea is to shake up my writing, but life is busy and I'm having a hard time writing at all. The best idea I have is to theme the days that I write for my blog and try to reestablish the writing habit and then go from there.

So if I'm writing three to four posts a week here's the plan (for now

Sunday - Food or cooking
Monday - On Reading
Thursday- On Education
Saturday - Wild Card

I'm trying to play to my interests ;0)

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, I’ve figured it out. People who read tend to have well developed imaginations. People with well developed imaginations like to daydream about being action heros. Librarians, as a group, are big readers. Therefore, Librarians like to imagine themselves as action heros. Ta Da!

This explains this recent trend of Librarian action heros. Between “The Mummy” and “The Librarians,” it is starting to become ‘a thing’. Highly enjoyable though.

The Invisible Library posits a universe filled with alternate realities and a somewhat mystical library situated in the space inbetween the alternates. Agents of the library (i.e. librarians) go on missions to the alternate versions of earth to collect up rare literature. So....spy-librarians.

Irene is one such librarian and she takes her student, Kai, to a quarantined world to find a rare text. Only the mission isn’t what it seems, the library’s biggest threat is on site, and Kai is something other than he appears to be. Oh...and there is a Sherlock Holmes analog knocking about. Good times.

If you are looking for a fun action packed read, this is a good pick. It’s fluff, yummy fun fluff.


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