where to start?

 Lizard by Martin

Martin, a fourth grader at NIS, made this excellent drawing of a Lizard for me to use on the website. Soon, i will have a new section for student art. I'll combine some of the pieces that i already have with new work from my students at NIS. Once i get the page up, i will link to it from here.

I don't know where people find the time to maintain websites. I'm realizing that to pull off the things that i hope to pull off in life right now, i need to remove a lot of unproductive time from my life. This is painfully unfortunate. Unproductive time is my favorite time of the day.

I realized today that my course planning, which i thought was aggressive, underestimated the math ability of our incoming students. This will shift all of the courses down and mean that i need to add some additional offerings for grades 9-10 this september.

If any of the teaching information is of interest, you can follow along on my website. A lot of the student section is a shell now, but it is evolving quickly. The idea has immense potential, but sucks up a lot of time also. I'm always interested in feedback, so let me know what i can do better on the site.

working outside of the standards

A boy walking along Lake Michigan, near the Adler Planetarium.

I've been trying to learn how to use my digital cameras and adobe photoshop. Since i moved to the Philippines, i've started to make prints of my favorite photos, both to save in albums as 5x7s, and to hang on the walls as 8x10 or larger.

This has completely changed how i use my photos. Before, i was primarily documenting the school year, and uploading content to the captain-ned.com website. So, i didn't care about cropping to any standard size. It made it much easier to work and create. I'm not sure why i've abandoned it. Maybe at least partly because i'm not really wanting to learn mounting. Too much on the to-do list for now to add a new project.

This photo doesn't work in 5r or 8r format. It is one of my favorites, taken in front of Chicago's Adler planetarium, facing towards the city and Shedd Aquarium.

it is all coming back to me now

 one of a dozen flies that took a rest on our clothes line the other day.

Well, i'm remembering quickly just how much work goes into planning a school year. There are still general things i can prepare, but anxiety is building because i don't know what i'm teaching yet. It is an awesome opportunity to be in on building a school from the ground up, and to play a large role in determining the direction that we take. You could also file it under be careful what you wish for.

I'm researching the courses offered in some higher-end high schools in Illinois and Colorado. I can hardly fathom how much different the environment and offerings are compared to tiny Best Practice High School in the Chicago Public School System. Students actually come into high school with algebra and geometry taken during seventh and eighth grade. I felt relieved to get my sophomores through it.

So my challenge is to create a curriculum that rivals the offerings at those high schools. We will only have 1200 students at capacity, so the choices will be pared down. But still, we need to start working on electives. Being located in the Philippines makes getting resources difficult. My summer trip to Office Depot to stock up on supplies for the year and the shipments to my door of anything that I wanted from amazon.com seem like a fantasy now.

I did realize that I need to concentrate on the middle grades curriculum since it is where I’ll be teaching. I’ve always thought the arguments against tracking were ridiculous. The country that sacrifices the full development of its most able doesn’t have a very bright future. I’m planning on three tracks.

1.     The first group will use IMPACT Mathematics for grades 6-8. This, supplemented with some extra work from the algebra book will count as high school algebra 1.

2.     The second group will use some combination of IMPACT for 6^th grade, Algebra 1 in 7^th grade, and Geometry in 8^th.

3.     The third group will take algebra 1 in 6^th, Geometry in 7^th, and Algebra 2 in 8^th.

So, all students will enter grade 9 with at least algebra out of the way. We have no idea how many students are starting in the fall, so figuring out how to roll this out is a problem.

All of the thinking about work and trying to get ready makes me realize that I need to get myself back into better time management shape. I’ve grown quite accustomed to a leisurely stroll through life. That is over. 

classrooms

To defend oneself against a fear is simply to assure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.  James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

I miss the things that i was able to do to my classroom at best practice high school. There probably aren't many places where you can do practically anything that you want to do.

As long as i put up the state mathematics standards, some vocabulary words, and the daily objective, everything else was open. I stopped asking after a while, and just painted or did whatever. It was pretty nice. I even realized it at the time, which is rare for me. 

students

i miss all of my students. even the ones that drove me crazy at the time. Please note the weekly lesson plans pinned neatly to the bulletin board in the top left of the photo. I'm very proud of that work. I don't think that anyone ever read those, except when a student used it to write the objectives and homework on the board every week.

The night before...

Can't believe that i'm going back to work tomorrow. I'm having mixed feelings. Losing lots of freedom. Lots less time with May and Christopher, and myself. On the plus side, it will keep me from financial ruin, or having to head back to the states in a few years. It allows me to live a better life. It gives me more purpose. Its motivated me to get the website in shape. We'll see.

I've been reading Frank McCourt's book Teacher Man. The attitudes and problems faced seem remarkably familiar to me. Yet he is recounting a time beginning about 50 years ago. The stories all ring true. I would have been better off reading this book instead of any of the garbage that was put upon us in ed school.

I really need to start getting stories down. even just beginning from now. they disappear and fade so quickly. Events that seem vivid in my head sometimes shrink when i try to put hard details into them. Or try to expand on the thought beyond the little museum style description in my mind. anyway, i am almost inspired.

For tonight, i was going to have a great little story about my favorite painting. But the documents appear to be missing. i'll have to make a vague version.

My mother bought the painting at a Chicago Public Schools art show. She only had $15; she claims that this kept her from buying more from the artist. She saved an article about a prize he won at the show.

The painting has always been my favorite piece of artwork. Somehow, i first finagled it out of my mother's house when i went to Purdue University. As i remember, it was just hanging in the garage, and i saved it from obscurity. The painting has made it almost everywhere that i've lived since then. Once the painting went up, i knew that i was 'home'.

When i was divesting myself of my possessions last summer, i gave the painting back to my mother, who maintains that she's always been sorry that she let me take it. I'm thinking up ways to get it back again as i type.

As part of the return, i looked up the artist on google. Google really is our friend. Warren Linn is a professor in maryland, and a very accomplished artist. I sent an email to express my appreciation for his early painting. I told him our story with the painting (briefly, which i'm sure he appreciated). It has been a big part of my life for nearly all of my life. Probably even before i remember, as it was in the house when i was born.

Anyway, he wrote back and said that he didn't really remember anything about the painting, but that he was glad that i had enjoyed it so much. It was a nice note.

Another topic might be how i never send email to anyone in the public spotlight, because i assume that they never see it nor have time for it. When i was living in Boston, i sent an email to a poet, name escaping me, that has sold millions of copies of his poems. I assumed i'd hear nothing back, but, because his work had moved me, i wanted to try.

I got a really nice letter back. It actually said that he'd been feeling down lately. I don't think that i replied back again. Now it strikes me as odd that i didn't write back after receiving such a personal note. hard to figure out the correct etiquette in somewhat unique situations, huh?

Maybe more people would respond than i imagine. It seems a small price to pay if you really enjoy something.

Random info--I WON'T be sending an email to the people responsible for The Incredible Hulk. That is about as outside the mainstream as we get for movies here. I need to start downloading.

Happy Birthday!

  

 Happy Birthday!

In less than an hour it will be Christopher's 6 month birthday. He claims not to have any big plans--just sitting around the house. We're hoping for some new tricks out of young Christopher soon.

Today we bought things for the house. One of the items that we picked up is a plastic tree. I don't really understand it, but plastic trees and flowers seem to be a big thing here.

In the states, i loved filling my home and classroom with tropical plants. Here, i fulfill that pleasure in my yard. All of the plants here are tropical plants, so they aren't quite so exotic. So the inside gets filled with fake plastic flowers and trees. 

What Would You Say?

Christopher Ban almost 6 months old

A while ago, i was sitting in a coffee shop at a local shopping mall. For some reason, i remembered when my sister Sara was downloading the song Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd. She told me that the advice in the song was advice that she hoped she could pass on to her sons.

From there, i took a tangent to my own personal battle with truisms. I've spent most of my life fighting against them, only to realize, usually at some embarrassingly old age, that they were truisms for a reason. So, when someone tells you that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, it isn't worth trying to prove them wrong. They are, too often for my taste, right.

Combining these ideas, i wondered what advise people would pass on to those that they loved the most if they were about to die, run away, take a trip to space, get sent to war, and so on. I didn't want pages of advise. Just a boiled-down couple of paragraphs that got right to the point.

If you could only pass on a paragraph (or two) worth of advice, what would you say? I'm still thinking about it myself.

I emailed a couple of friends as a trial, but didn't get a response. Maybe it's that they couldn't think of anything, or thought it was too personal, or forgot who i was. I don't know. But i'd really like to get the project going. I think that it could make an excellent collection. And maybe i could use the advice myself.

If you want to share, email me at captain-ned@captain-ned.com  I'll keep it anonymous if you want.

There aren't any great vids of Simple Man, but i did find this video uploaded by a guy who had Shinedown visit his house and play a couple of tunes. Pretty awesome.

Getting Back at It

Buster and Turtle in the garage. Age about 8 months. Weight about 31 and 45 kilos.

I'm about to take buster and turtle for a late night walk, but i wanted to at least get in a quick entry.

It has been a busy week! I accepted a job at Noblesse International School here in Angeles City. I'll be teaching ESL over the summer, then teaching middle/high school math. The school is brand new, but we don't know if the building will be ready for September yet.

So, now i've got to go into overdrive on the website and preparing for classes. I think that in the first year, i'll teach 5th through 10th grade math. We're expecting 300 students from K-10 this fall. Building capacity is 1200.

I haven't really accepted the full consequences of a full time teaching and coordinator position. Its been about 14 months since i left CPS. What a fourteen months! Not quite the 40 years that i originally planned, but a few good turns in the road.