Gangnam Style in the Classroom: Randoms

This is going to be rambling, but here I go.  This was post was stimulated by what I saw in a classroom yesterday, but I will get to that later. 

Years ago after frustration and feeling the heartbreak that I was not appreciated as a teacher and had gotten the worse of it because of my race, I said I would never teach in America again.  I turned my back on my profession, my people, and the society.  I felt that my principal, many of my black students, and some of the white parents had taken my good intentions, enthusiasm, dedication, and concern slapped me in the face with them, threw them on the ground, and trampled them all underfoot. 

I had gone into my profession idealistic and ready to go, eager to make a deep and positive impact on young lives, but instead I had been faced with bad grades, indifference, breaking up fights in the classroom or having to run to one of my male colleagues to break up the fights, being cursed at once by a student, a parent who made it painfully clear she didn't want me to teach her little blonde daughter solely because I was black, another who subtly complained because she didn't like the fact that I taught her blonde son three different subjects. You see a black person even with a masters degree couldn't possibly be capable of giving her son a quality education because the few of us who got that far were just benefactors of the handout called affirmative action and were naturally less qualified than whites.  I faced a parent who complained I was giving too much homework, extracurricular activities were more important for her daughter than doing work at home to reinforce what she had been taught in the class. 

There was so much I faced as a young teacher so that after two years I said never again.  My soul had been slashed by knives.  My spirit deflated.  I rejected another contract for third year at that school, applied and was accepted into Peace Corps, went to the African nation of Botswana, enjoyed myself there,  felt more at home in Africa than I ever had in America, loved my students and my international set of  colleagues from various African, European, and Asian nations, loved one man in particular, it was a great romance, but it was not meant to be, came back home and went through a very dark period in my soul, recovered from the depression, and in the last few years taught English occasionally in Turkey. 

It is not easy being an educated black woman in America.  I have an Eastern bent to my mentality than most of the people I live among.  I am a hybrid of sorts, American in name but more Eastern than American.  African Americans used to be closer to our African counterparts on the continent and other Eastern people back in my grandparent's era.  My mother's parents were very much like some African and Middle Eastern people.  They were deeply religious and unselfish.  Even though they were poor they helped those they knew who were poorer and more desperate. They were devoted to the well-being of their families, hated divorced, were well liked by their communities and even by many of the whites they knew.  These were the heroes I looked at and were influenced by including my mother who is just like her beloved mother and father. They live on in her and in two of their other surviving children.  I didn't have to look to the TV and have some celebrity or sports figure as my role model.  I lived with and visited my role models. 

It is not easy to live in America.  It's even more difficult and lonely if you refuse to model yourself after everyone else.  The is a recipe to being an American, and most people follow that recipe.   Blacks expect you to be just like them, and whites expect you to be a version of their envisioned stereotype.   All my life I have longed to be free to be me, not have some vision of who I am supposed to be imposed on me by my own people or white people. 

I would say that life has gone nothing like I had hoped partly because I was very different from most in my environment from almost the very beginning.  At various points in my life I have been an outcast.  Other times I was applauded, usually by foreigners and a few others.  I've had few real friends. Either I got bored and frustrated with them or they got bored with me.  I refused to settle for less, so I have been often alone with mainly my family except in the last few years.  For a long time I have felt more at home with non-Americans than I have Americans.  I am not an optimist like many Americans.  I am more of a fatalist and realist, but I am attracted to mysticism.  The world of the mind and of a higher plain outside of what we can see with the physical eye is more real to me sometimes than the absurdity of this world.  

I have come back and for better or worse I am going to try and help my people again.  I have been substitute teaching randomly in the last several years when I was not teaching English in Turkey.  When I was certified to teach in my state, I could teach anywhere from grades 4 to 12, but after elementary school I was confined to only the subjects of social studies and English which are my two favorite areas.  If the children in these groupings are not taught love of learning and respect for teachers and other adults by this age there is very little that can be done, I feel.  This may sound harsh and discouraging to some, but by second or third grade many kids in this country are infested with arrogance and dislike learning.  Many including people in the government blame the schools, but few are courageous enough to blame the parents, but maybe they don't because of their own guilt over their lax parenting.  Some say the schools are grooming kids for our prison industrial complex, and yes the way some schools are formulated, this is probably true, but a lot of parents are also aiding in their kids' downfall.  Then at the same time there is the threatening cloud of the state taking away people's kids if there is the accusation of abuse which can come even if a parent is not being abusive, but is only trying to discipline an unruly child.  The system we live under craves more prison inmates and just sits there like some big predatory fish with his mouth wide open for small fish to just swim right in.

Next week I begin an experiment to help my people. I will be teaching a course at a local community center on African historical figures from J.A. Rogers' first volume of World's Great Men of Color.   I have Facebook friends who live in other countries, a few who help and try to enlightened others.  They have been a big influence on me and an inspiration even though I haven't met any of them face to face.  They write prose and poetry, have gatherings to talk about geopolitics and write articles about wars and their consequences. Some are guests on international news networks that I watch online.  Some have gone on peace missions, and organize and go to demonstrations.  In other words they are trying to make a difference, a phrase commonly said in this country.   I am invited to some of their gatherings, but sadly I live too far.  Even though my residence is in a small city with a huge state university, this place is an intellectual and cultural wasteland.  I was a part of a writer's group for almost four years, but no deep and honest critiquing of anyone's work was done, When the leader of the group become so self obsessed, stop coming with anything to read and only wanted to talk about gifts she got from her grandson and men, I quit silently without saying another word to her or sending an e-mail.  I was also a part of what I call a pseudo-intellectual group run by some so-called friends who are Turkish.  They are mostly doctoral students, but they don't seem to have the dedication or level of knowledge to be Ph.D candidates. To me is it very strange to sit in a room with a group of people working on higher degrees who are too afraid to voice their own opinions.  I got tired of being one of four openly expressing my views in that group when all the rest were too afraid to open their mouths.

Recently I was invited to a gathering of black ladies, but after sitting through a presentation given by the head of the local Red Cross, a middle aged, dyed blonde, fat, white female who acted like she was still God's gift to men I said I would not go to a second meeting which I was invited to.  I've so tired of going to some prosaic gathering dressed up as something interesting and refreshing when it really isn't just to get out of the house.  I like my own company better than being bored to the edge of insanity.

As to Gangnam Style, it has replaced one of Justin Bieber's songs in some of the elementary schools here.  The pre-K and kindergarten set require more than Mary Had a Little Lamb and The Itsy Bitsy Spider nowadays.  Such nursery rhymes and childhood songs just don't cut it with kids raised on TV and Gameboys.  Learning must be backed up by entertainment or the kids go cold to it and stay jittery.  Yesterday I worked in a pre-K class and the parapro couldn't get the kids to pay much attention to swaying houses with lyrics about numbers and days of the week, but when she pulled up a version of  Psy's Gangnam Style on the smart board, the kids were all eyes.  They wouldn't dance before but when Psy and a woman dancing in hot pants, garters, and police cap got on the screen they did.  At four they are already being conditioned to become disciples of fads and commercialized entertainment like the rest of the population.  Today's media is extremely adroit in indoctrinating all ages.  It was sad to see that early they are learning to conform to what doesn't promote art and culture, the here today gone tomorrow opiates that the media pushes down their throats.  Learning for learning sake died some time ago in this country.  It is advocated in educational circles that education and entertainment must be wed in the American classroom.  American kids need an assortment of extras to get excited about learning.  Still so many of them fall short.

I liked the parapro at the school today.  Despite hating her choice of putting up a video of Gangnam Style, I guess she felt the only way she could grab the attention of a large class of 4 year olds, a number of which were highly jittery was to start up a popular pop song. She and I sat together at recess and talked, finding common ground since both of us plan to take the state teacher's certification exam this spring.  She even asked me about myself.  Often as a substitute teacher and being a black woman people just expect that you probably have only a high school diploma or less.  Most don't ask me about myself. Living abroad where people were often curious about me resulted in my being spoiled a little. I was more visible abroad and sometimes got weary of the attention.  At the schools here they probably couldn't imagine that I have taught both here and internationally and that I have a higher degree.  Sometimes as a substitute I feel invisible, but I make myself feel better about that invisibility by conducting myself professionally and dressing better than the majority of the teachers.  I still believe in professionalism in attire on the job.  In Botswana and Turkey the standards for dress at work were higher than here.  It's difficult for me to go to schools and see teachers dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and some even showing cleavage.  What happened to high standards and dress codes?   

I don't worry so much about the majority or white culture around me.  My concern is for my people.  I am not sure there is much hope for us locked into an alien identity that has scarred us.  I am not saying that all white people are bad, but there is so much that is wrong in the culture which destroys lasting human connections on so many levels.  I remained connected to my ancestral values mainly due to how I was taught by my mother and witnessed from her parents.  My father is very American in his outlook.  He admits that even as a child he dreamed of having what white people had.  His family was not close and very dysfunctional.  He and some other family members say they don't like having people coming around visiting all the time.  In all the years that he visited his in-laws he never allowed himself to open my grandparents' refrigerator once even though almost everyone they allowed into their home were treated with hospitality.  You're at home, my grandmother would say.  I wonder how my grandparents felt about my father never trying to really make himself at home for all those years.  Dad's mother grew up in an abusive and violent home and then married my grandfather who drank, was abusive and unfaithful.  He said she would tell him to never accept food at the home of his friends even if he was offered it.  I feel the suspicion, competitiveness, narcissism, and paranoia that some of the members of my father's family have, including himself, are some of the worse symptoms of white American culture.  However, despite the differences I've had with my father and continue to have I must say that one spot I praise him in is that he has successfully run a small business for many years and states that black people must become more independent, productive, and have their own businesses.

So this is my rambling post.  I guess I just wanted to get a few things off my mind even though this was inspired by seeing little kids dance to Gangnam Style in a classroom.  I wonder often where are we going as people.  It never gets better despite all of the so-called improvements, all the "grand" propaganda that is touted.  It will never get better until we examine ourselves and realize where we are heading.  

  

I'm Not Sei Shonagon, But Her Ancient Book is My Inspiration

My copy of Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book came about two weeks ago.  I ordered it used through Amazon, and it looks completely new except for a little buckling on the cover at its spine.  

I see as I get older my tastes are becoming more Eastern almost against my will, but really I was always an Eastern person at heart. I jokingly told my mother the other week that I believe I was kidnapped as an infant from another country and bought here and placed with this family and that my real parents have been looking for me ever since.  She told me oh yes I was her child.  She knows what she had to go though having me.  She said she also knows I'm her's because I resemble my dad a lot and her slightly, and that I have her character.  Mom has a big heart. Her parents had big hearts and were generous and un-bigoted.  They had high morals and little or no education.  Grandma only got to the sixth grade.  Grandpa went to school one day and hated it.  He never went back. The most he could do with book learning was write his name, but he had more wisdom and goodness than a lot of educated or rich men.  

My mother and I have plenty of eccentric conversations that we immensely enjoy and laugh about.  Mom is excellent with sarcastic and deadly humorous one liners.  We love those little moments when such as the other day I made us both an amaretto flavored cappuccino with cinnamon, and we just relaxed and talked.  It's those little moments.  Living in Turkey taught me to slow down and smell the roses and love the little things.  I never liked the rat race here, but for a very long time this was all I knew.  


Well, I'm not trying to completely copy Sei Shonagon, a Japanese court lady who live a thousand years ago.  Perhaps if we could meet we might find out that we have some things in common besides writing, and perhaps we might not.  Anyway, Sei wrote random thoughts, observations, and lists in her book that is a classic in Japanese literature. These writings were about her time, existence, and way of life.  I don't live in medieval Japan.  I'm not a Japanese noble woman.  I live now in a very complicated and confusing world that moves too fast and senselessly sometimes because some very powerful, wicked, and irresponsible people are trying to make it into their image.  I don't know anything really about Sei Shonagon's Heian Japan, but a glimpse of the Wikipedia page on it shows it might have have been a more easygoing, artistic, and civilized time than now.  

I'm not trying to completely copy Sei Shonagon's book with this blog.  I haven't even started to read it all yet. I've just scanned bits of it.  But the book will be my model for writing about my time and existence.  My loves and hates.  I will write about beauty and madness.  I will be controversial without being vulgar.  I don't know why some folks always equate controversy with vulgarity. It doesn't really make you sophisticated or cool.  I like realism, but just being ugly, nasty, and cheap isn't my style.  The kind of controversy I'm talking about will be the truth since a lot of people don't like the truth.  That's a big problem in this country. I have to really put on a mask and veil here to survive, but I get tired of it sometimes and fling them off.  I will write about sweet nothings too like Sei Shonagon. I will even be kookie at times.  

I like this which Sei Shonagon wrote about clouds long ago.

Clouds

I love white, purple, and black clouds, and rain clouds when they are driven by the wind.  It is charming at dawn to see the dark clouds gradually turn white.  I believe this has been described in a Chinese poem that says something about 'the tints that leave at dawn.'

It is moving to see a thin wisp of cloud across a very bright moon.

Bring in the Parrots: Language Predictability and Other Insanity

The average person is pretty unimaginative.  The average is just that...Average.  Everyone does about the same thing when it's all average.  Everyone waits to copy the next boring or vulgar idea when it's all average.  Everyone says about the same thing, uses the same words when it's all average.  We live in a very average society that's falling even lower where mediocrity and evil are concerned. Not being able to communicate very well and listening to feel good messages with no depth are all very much part of the now in America.  

I'm thinking about overused words and phrases that a lot of people use.  Language can have so much beauty and depths of meaning even in a very utilitarian language like English.  No, English is not Mandarin Chinese, Arabic or Persian, but we could do much better than we do in our use of it. We could stop the linguistic laziness we've fallen over into and try to arrange our words creatively and with more thought. 

When I was younger, black people were sometimes criticized regularly for using bad English. Then when I was in graduate school, a new term came out called "Ebonics" which gave a name for black slang and BAD English.  One thing black people did manage to do and never got any credit for was make English in this country a little more colorful and complicated.  Racism and being in a kind of a isolation from the majority group, led many blacks to rebel and not want to "talk like white folks".  Black people did their own thing with English by making it colorful, raw, poetic, humorous, even deliberately changing the spelling.  Some of us even would get angry with other minorities who decided to assimilate and use terminology and voice intonation that imitated white people.  

Still I just drifted over into the race and language issue before it knew it. Really this is about words and phrases that really get on my nerves because they are over used, and when I hear people my age who are middle aged or older using them I think they must be going through a mid life crisis.  Fewer and fewer people want to grow up in America anymore, so woe to the children.  I see it everyday too when I'm not living the life of a part time hermit.

These are the overused words and phrases I keep hearing and reading, and that I despise with untold passion.

*kicking the can down the road--- A favorite with our mainstream "journalists", economic "experts," and our politicians (the respectable mafioso).  When I hear them say it I get visions of a Norman Rockwell painting the subject a little redheaded boy in overalls, barefoot, kicking a can down a dirt road that runs between two farms.  Maybe the phrase is coded. The "journalists", economic "experts", and mafioso politicians want us to be unaware and asleep to the present.  If we are naive and innocent like that little redheaded boy and believe in fairytales and wait with our bowls held out for their feel good messages not based on reality, we're more easy to handle.  

*at the end of the day--- Another favorite with the trio mentioned just above.  Maybe they think by using this near the end of their comments, they sound rhetorical or dramatic. They do kind of lean back in their chairs, if they are sitting, and nearly sigh, "at the end of the day," so languidly.  Ahhh, the actors.

*the 1% and the 99%--- These two overused statistics appeared with the Occupy Wall Street Movement which was inspired by the so-called Arab Spring or as some call it The Islamic Awakening.  We Americans don't put much thought into what we do or who we follow.  We just jump in like adolescents emotional and sentimental sans research and follow the titanic down the drain.  Yes, I'll admit that I believed in the "revolution" when it started in Egypt.  Being who I am, I haven't had a totally cushy existence that I can identify with an oppressor, but I noted the warnings from unconventional sources rather early, so now that Egypt is ruled by a junta and some say the Muslim Brother is bad news, Libya ruled by atrocity and mayhem, and some say it ain't all that terrific in Tunisia, along with the other horror shows that are playing out in the Middle East moving down from North Africa south, east, and west into sub-Sahara Africa, the thrill is totally gone.  Besides being driven by sinister elements and entities and the pitifully gullible and young, I just see it as a tragic farce, I mean fad. How do the Occupy Wall Street crowd know the rich comprise 1% for sure.  They could be .1%.  Sorry bro, but I like facts myself.  Can they prove to me we are the 99% or the 99.5%.  See what I mean?  People just jump on a bandwagon and roll.  If they had really been smart, they would have never modeled their "revolution" after the "Arab Spring".  But what do I know?

 *awesome; amazing--- I can kinda accept a teenager or someone in their 20s using these two even if it is a little grinding to hear and read over and over. I've even thrown out hints on my Facebook page to find a synonym for these words.  I'm an English teacher by profession.  I've taught in three countries and on four continents.  I come from a poetic background that goes back to reading nursery rhymes when I was a little girl to Shakespeare in high school and majoring in English literature.  I don't like to see the language trashed and brought down to the minimal.  I became even more radical about my beliefs on language being used well and expressively and not repetitiously when I began reading Sufi poetry.  

We've lost the art of conversation and debate in this culture. We just hop up with some little slogan or platitude too frequently for my tastes.  In some ways social media like Facebook cause us to communicate less and express ourselves less.  I try to use Facebook as an educational tool, and what I post is controversial at times, but I am just a fanatic about putting information out there for people to use and to contemplate.  I want people to think critically, so they can truly be free.  I don't know where "awesome" and "amazing" came from.  I suspect a movie or TV show, but it is overused.  When I hear people my age and those in their 60s using it over and over I cringe because hearing it repeatedly ain't cool.  It's past time to stop running with the crowd like you did when you were in grade school and college, and talk like an adult.  

My message in the end is to be yourself even where language is involved.  Be an individual with your own gifts that God gave you.  Stop being bland and a carbon copy. 

Bursting the Bubble... Among Other Things

I like bubbles.  Last summer I was thinking about buying a nice bubble blowing set from The Dollar Tree, a store where everything is just $1.  Yes, I was thinking about doing this and I'm 49!  I'm a little eccentric though some people might not notice. ;) This particular bubble set had a huge wand and came with a big bottle of sudsy liquid.  Back in the day when I was a kid, most of the bubble blowing sets same with a tiny wand that was small enough to fit inside the small bottle of bubbly liquid.  The liquid didn't last long, so I would make up for it by taking some of my mother's Joy dish washing liquid and make my own sudsy water, placing it inside the bottle.

I like bubbles because they are harmless and innocent, floating glass orbs reflecting the light, hints of pink, blues, greens.  Bubbles can be burst too.  We have our bubbles, the illusions and fairytales we like to hold unto. Some of us do this into middle and old age, but hey! life is tough, so I can understand.  Sometimes...  It's even tough for the folks who appear to have it all.  They REALLY don't have it all though, believe me. I gather this from my observations.

The other year I read a novel called The Tale of Murasaki about a Japanese court lady who lived over 1000 years ago and who is believed to have written the first novel The Tale of Genji.  In the Tale of M. a character is mentioned named Sei Shonagon.  Like Lady Murasaki Sei Shonagon was also a court lady who became a celebrity, but unlike Lady Murasaki, who was a reluctant idol and would have rather been left alone, Sei Shonagon bathed and luxuriated in being popular.  Her character did not have a large role in the novel, but even though she didn't I was intrigued by the mention of her collection of writings called The Pillow Book.  It was a collection of lists, observations, poetry, gossip, and other fragments.  This style of writing is referred to as zuihitsu. I recently found out that Sei Shonagon was a real person.

I haven't actually read Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book, but I've read a few portions online.  I have a copy of it on order right now.  Even though I haven't read it yet, I felt I could go ahead and create my own Pillow Book online, and it will deal with the now, my now and a lot of other things.  So it begins...  I have never done a blog of this nature.  Usually I have written about others lives and what I put down was fine, but in some ways what I wrote was safe and impersonal.  So it begins... Let's see what happens. :)