ah, just like old times
i almost feel a lil guilty.
my first year of grad school concluded a month ago, and now i spend my days biking, playing tennis, watching movies, bummin’ around, reading, and wedding planning. seattle summers are always really nice, and i’m very fortunate to have the time to mostly do whatever i please. this of course won’t last forever, so for now i’ll block from memory the master’s qualifying exam and research project waiting in the wings, and focus all my energy on being a hedonist.
Filed under: personal, random | 2 Comments
bye seattle supersonics =\
i am gonna miss the sonics. they were a big part of my childhood - i loved “working” on my math homework while watching the sonics game on tv, and i loved waking up in the morning to read the game’s box score in the seattle times. despite a 41 year legacy, greed and inept leadership from the city had the final say.
oh, howard schultz. we bought your $4 latte’s, and in return you sold a seattle icon away. disgusting.
kemp’s 10 greatest dunks — what a showman. #1 will definitely be one of my enduring memories.
gary payton + shawn kemp = great memories.
ray allen’s 3-point barrage. this is just absolutely ridiculous — especially that last shot.
Filed under: random, sports | 0 Comments
patriotism
at the annual “state of the city” address in denver, rene marie was hired to sing the national anthem. but instead, she shocked her audience and sang “lift every voice and sing” (black national anthem) to the tune of the star spangled banner.
i was perusing some user comments on abcnews’ article about the story, and the vast majority of the readers were, at the very least, offended by the performance. most agreed that it was disrespectful. others unfortunately thought it was a foretaste of things to come should america elect its first black president. predictably, some bad apples took their comments too far and called for marie to “go back to africa.” some bad apples are just insanely ignorant…
personally, i’m still forming an opinion, but to be honest, i respect her boldness and courage. i don’t know her motivation for doing this, but i know singing the black national anthem to the tune of the star spangled banner in front of city politicians is one helluva gutsy political statement. my question is: was that patriotic? — dissent is the highest form of patriotism, after all. gonna need to chew on that for awhile.
Filed under: random | 2 Comments
congratulations, doctor dennis
dennis liked to finish what he started. for example, when i’d ask him for help on a math problem, he wouldn’t stop going through old lecture notes until he figured out how to get the answer. or when my dad would buy another addition to our wannabe home theatre, dennis wouldn’t go to bed until he thoroughly reviewed the instructions and literature and had everything installed. when everything was all hooked up, all the packaging thrown out, and all the furniture moved back into place at 2 in the morning, dennis would celebrate his accomplishment by watching the terminator with the speakers turned way up.
some things never change. dennis began work on his doctor of pharmacy at the uw school of pharmacy while i was a junior undergrad. right after his first year, he got cancer. a year and a half later, he died. true to form, dennis tried to return to school a couple of times during his treatment, but the physical toll of chemotherapy wouldn’t allow him to stay awake long enough to study.
he was a big dreamer though: my parents, dennis, and i talked about throwing a big party after his graduation. we talked about him getting married and starting a family. talked about him becoming a doctor, and how great it’d be for my parents — both with little formal education — to have two sons with graduate degrees.
Filed under: personal | 13 Comments
proof
i can’t prove the friendship of my friend. when i experience it, i don’t need to prove it. when i don’t experience it, no proof will do…
i cannot prove that life is better than death or love better than hate. i cannot prove the greatness of the great or the beauty of the beautiful. i cannot even prove my own free will; maybe my most heroic act, my truest love, my deepest thought, are all just subtler versions of what happens when the doctor taps my knee with his little rubber hammer and my foot jumps.
faith can’t prove a damned thing. or a blessed thing either.
[frederick beuchner - wishful thinking]
Filed under: books, faith | 2 Comments
that’s racist!
i’m sitting in suzallo cafe, trying to work on a paper, when a white female student approaches me and asks if i speak english. my blood pressures suddenly spikes. i think to myself — “well, at least i’m gonna have a great story to share after this…”
“yes,” i emphatically reply. she asks if i’d like to participate in a study. i wonder if i should let her know some of my thoughts regarding her initial question. i decide not to, and agree to the study.
it’s a word study game. the letters a, e, t, s, l, r and s are on top of the page and my instructions are to arrange the letters to make as many words as possible. i write words down at a torrid pace, but i only fill up 16 of the 20 blank spaces. i ask if i’m being timed and she says no, i can finish whenever i want.
so i stop.
then, she hands me a few more pages with a questionnaire. first, some interesting biographical info.
how american do you feel? how much do you identify as an american? when you were twelve, did you want to be an american? is it important that people see you as american? Continue reading ‘that’s racist!’
Filed under: personal, race, social justice | 17 Comments
the new conspirators
in my reflection seminar, we read the dissertation of a uw phd candidate that looked at how poor, ethnic minority kids are socially ostracized in schools by students and teachers. the paper shared story after story of racist acts, and sadly, these were all recent examples around the seattle area. schools are supposed to be a social justice-oriented institution… they should give all students equal access to power, especially students of minority groups who historically have been denied access.
the dissertation found that schools actually serve the opposite function. despite being a foundational pillar of any democracy, our schools help the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. how bizarre…
i’ve been reading a book called the new conspirators by tom sine. a very well-researched book that definitely stands out to me as one i’ll want to revisit often. on education, he says:
the public education system contributes to the widening gap between rich and poor in the united states. in the shame of the nation, jonathan kozol documents that over the past twelve years, american public schools are resegregating america. unlike other western countries that fund public education through taxes, american public schools rely on local levies; consequently wealthy school districts often spend twice as much per pupil as poor school districts. this means that the growing number of children who attend poorly funded urban public schools have less of a chance of going on to college than their suburban counterparts who attend highly financed schools with cutting-edge technology. as a consequence, some, like their parents, will be stuck in dead-end service jobs that don’t pay a living wage. frankly, this new global economy is going to leave growing numbers of the poor behind in all countries if we don’t discover how god might use our mustard seeds individually and collectively to be an expression of god’s compassion for the marginalized.
[the new conspirators: creating the future one mustard seed at a time, by tom sine] Continue reading ‘the new conspirators’
Filed under: books, education, faith, personal, race, social justice | 2 Comments
from postsecret
i saw this postcard from postsecret. my first thought when i saw it: i wish my high school students would take this to heart. then i thought — actually, it’d be great if everyone did.
there’s a woman in one of my classes that some of my peers don’t take kindly to. unfortunately, i haven’t been warm to her, either. then one day after class, we walked out of class together, and we chatted for a lil while as we went to our cars. she shared with me some of her story. pretty intense. i was quickly reminded that everyone, no matter how unpleasant they are to be around, has a story. and like everyone else, she is fighting a hard battle. it’s amazing how harsh people can be to one another, but i think everything changes when we see the other’s perspective.
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Love
While they were considering whether to stone her –
and why not? — he knelt
and with his finger wrote
something in the dust. We are
as you know made from
dust, and the unknown
word
was, therefore, and is
and forever will be written in our flesh
in gray folds of
memory’s
flesh. En
[franz wright - god's silence]
Filed under: books, random | 0 Comments
conventional wisdom would tell you that a raise in the average teacher’s salary would lead to better teachers in more classrooms. and getting better teachers might be a worthy goal: i hear often that the single most important factor in pursuing educational equity is having more bad-ass teachers in schools. better technology, healthier foods, and more resources will always help, but attracting (and keeping) great teachers may have the most significant impact of them all.
one charter school in ny is taking this theory very seriously. the equity project charter school, the brain-child of a tfa alumnus, is set to pay their teachers $125,000/year when it opens in 2009. or about 3x more than i’ll be making. the principal won’t even make that much — and he’s the founder of the school! predictably, they’ve been receiving inquiries from people all over, some of whom will be invited to go through their rigorous application process.
this wall street journal article tempers the enthusiasm surrounding the idea that better teacher pay is “the answer” by arguing that better compensation hasn’t been demonstrated to make all that much of a difference. at $34.06/hr, public school teachers are already paid better than many other professionals (why, oh why does progressive seattle give their teachers the lowest salaries on the west coast??), but districts who offered teachers higher pay did not see much of a pay-off in the way of better student performances.
but i have a feeling that a six-figure salary might be a game-changer.
Filed under: education, social justice | 6 Comments
