iPhone Casting My Plumber as David Foster Wallace

Last night I went to sleep with David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing...book of essays on my iPhone, and the reader's voice became my plumber, who had brilliant things to say but not about what time he'd come to unclog the stopped-up bathroom sink. I finally managed to get him between sentences.

"What time can you come to fix the sink?" I asked.

That startled him out of his monologue and woke me up.

Fully awake, I called him, but he didn't pick up.

Javier, hearing that I had called him, asked, "Is that Joe the Plumber?"

I didn't know what he was talking about, but he reminded me that Sarah Palin had had someone in the audience posing as Joe the Plumber.

"I'm Working in a Sweatshop!"

My wonderful Belaruz student saw me in the hall after class and said, "Thank you for your teaching!  All your energy."

It's true that at one point my face was all wet (and not just because I was overdressed for a building in which the custodians get paid only if they turn the hit on), so as I wiped my face, I said, "I'm working in a sweatshop."  I was looking over the very insightful summary written by my Italian student, who's never met a verb form she hasn't mutilated but who has excellent comments.  Today she and an equally bright Latina had a debate from opposite sides of the room about who is responsible for keeping kids away from McDonald's Happy Meals. 

We began with an reading activity (NOT a test!)  on "The Pioneers" from Chew On This.  They had to fill in each blank space with one of the words provided .  Then we went over a page of questions and they discussed some of them in groups.  After the brief break, we talked about the meaning of "Fearsome Flashes" and how the ultraviolet lights coming from power lines are perceived as much more frightening by other mammals than by us and is causing animals to stay away from their habitat.  Then they took a quiz (one I'd already put online) on four of the topics.  Our discussion of animals segued into NorthStar's "How Smart Is Smart?" It also got us back to the summary patterns I gave them.  We worked on a one-sentence summary.

No wonder I was sweating!

Earthweek Distractions

I love Earthweek:  A Diary of the Planet.  So even when I'm overwhelmed with work and trying to create a test to run off today for tomorrow, I keep making detours to find out more.  How is yawning related to empathy, for example?  When did we first shoot a chimp out into space?  And on it goes.  Here's the quiz I finally finished in spite of my deviant behavior.  (Somehow the formatting is lost, and I don't have time to recreate it.)

Earthweek:  A Diary of the Planet, Week Ending March 21

Here are the questions I put in an e-mail message to all of you.  Now you can answer them!

1.      1.  What are "invisible" flashes coming from, and who sees these "invisible" things better than we humans do?

a.      a.  They’re coming from melting ice, and dogs see them better than we humans do.

b.   b.   They’re coming from meteorites, and deer see them better than we humans do.

c.    c.   They’re coming from the ultraviolet flashes of power lines, and dozens of mammals can see them better than we humans do.

d.d.      They’re coming from earthquakes in Peru and Chile, and cattle and pigs see them better than we humans do.

2.    2.    Speaking of humans, how do chimps feel about us if they've had good experiences with humans in the past?  

a.      They trust us almost as much as they trust baboons and members of their own species that they don’t know.

b.    They trust us as much as they trust baboons and members of their own species that they don’t know.

c.     They trust us more than they trust baboons and members of their own specie that they don’t know.

d.    They don’t trust us at all in spite of the good experiences they’ve had in the past.

3.    3.    What are three examples Earthweek gives of things we've done to chimps?

a.      We’ve hunted them for their meat.

b.    We’ve blasted them into space. 

c.     We’ve used them for medical research.

d.    We’ve done a, b, and c.

4. The dolphin ice tragedy was caused by…

a.      a whale invading their space

b.    Japanese fishermen hunting them for sale

c.     jagged pack ice trapping them

d.    a cyclone entering their habitat.

For the topics 4-9, write the letter of the place where it occurred. 

5.        Dolphin ice tragedy               

6.         Chimp trust

7.         Fearsome flashes

8.         Hottest spot

9.         Coldest spot

a.       Antarctica

b.       Emory University, SE USA

c.         Newfoundland, Canada

d.        Northern Europe (England, Norway)

e.       Sudan

J'adore mon groupe de View and Chew!

Robert dnous a accueillis comme toujours  d’une façon tres chaud, et  Jana nous a servis une boisson de fruit de passion et gin !  Il y a des années, je pensais qu’Emily Dickinson parlait métaphoriquement quand elle a écrit « I taste a liqueur never brewed. »  Mais je crois que c’était de cette boisson qu’elle parlait!  J’avais presque décidée de ne plus boire d’alcool, mais j’ai change d’avis une fois que j’aie bu cette potion magique.  Joël a accepté de  signer le nom de Jana chaque mois pour qu'elle l'apporte, mais maintenant qu’on connait très bien tous les gens du village français, Joël pour signer Jean Marchetti pour le mois de mais, Hortense pour le mois de juin, et les autres pendant le reste de l’année pour que chacun prenne son tour !

Et maintenant nous avons le sous-titrage pour sourds et malentendants! 

How to Bake for View and Chew

Yes, I have to finish mid-term reports and get my grades online.  And today, after the Y and joining Javier in la recamara, we met another couple at The Plant at the Embarcadero to have lunch for her birthday, and then we went to the Railroad Car Museum and to the California History Museum.  But that's not how to bake for View and Chew.  This is how:

You come back from a big day out (and a big day for you means doing more the one thing or staying out for more than 3 hours).  Then you start the gateau basque that your German friend Jutta sent to you in the form of a postcard recipe years ago with the suggestion that you make it together.

You decide not to do it with the recipe in French because you can't convert the measures of grams, etc.  So you look one up online.

Then you see that it calls for butter at room temperature, so you look up how to get butter to room temperature without doing that aniquated things called waiting.  You see that you can put it between two sheets of wax paper and roll it with a rolling pin, so you do that.

Then you see that it calls for an egg at room temperature but you don't think you should press that under a rolling pin, so you get an egg out of the refrigerator and put it under a comforter and an afghan.  But then in occurs to you that there may be another way, so you look that up online too.  The suggestion is to put it in warm--not hot--water.  So you do that.

And you use your paddle attachment for the mixer for the first time!

To be continued.

A Student Seeking Tutoring Becomes a Suspect

I may have misconstrued this, but I don't think so.  A student got off work to see me in my office to discuss further tutoring, and her husband demanded to know where she was.  I didn't know this, but she contacted me after our office hour to ask me to talk to her husband.  At the time, I thought maybe he wanted tutoring too.

Doing What I Love about Teaching

Last night and this morning I tried to work on grade reports, but I really needed to do something more satisfying, so I looked up EarthWeek and planned a lesson around that.  I sent my students a message in hopes that it would alert them and give them reading practice even reading my message.

Dear ESL 140 Students,

Earthweek for the week previous to March 21 is now online, and there are a lot of interesting reports.  I'm busy with midterm reports right now, but if I have the chance, I'll put some guiding questions on our website.  In the meantime, here are some interesting things to find out:  

What are "invisible" flashes coming from, and who sees these "invisible" things better than we humans do?

Speaking of humans, how do chimps feel about us if they've had good experiences with humans in the past?  What are three examples Earthweek gives of things we've done to chimps?  (How have we used them in ways that have hurt them?)  There's also a funny part about yawns.  Are yawns contagious?  (As a teacher and as a former student, I really enjoyed learning about this!)  

What caused the death of 40 dolphins?  Where did this happen?

Where is the world's largest solar thermal power plant that employs generating towers?   When did it open?  What's a possible problem with it?

I know everyone is also interested in the plane that disappeared.  By the time you read this--and certainly by Tuesday when we meet again--we may know the answers to these questions:  What is the object the satellites spotted that is almost 80 feet long?  Where did they spot this and a 14-foot object?

Have a good time reading this weekend, and be happy that the temperature in the Bay Area is neither 113.4 degrees F (45.2 degrees Celsius) as it was last week in the Sudan nor minus 92.4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 61.1 degrees Celsius) as it was at Russia's Vostok Antarctic research station!

Tina

To be continued!

Words of Encouragement from a Student

I have given myself far too much homework and was feeling a bit overwhelmed and under-competent this evening.  Then I received this much-needed message from a student:

hello my lovely teacher 

MY husband tries to see what i read everyday so he  told me yesterday you have a very smart teacher ,because she keeps y reading a lot of interesting topics , and he surprised about Earth week topics  and also i think you are realy smart bcause you encorage us to read more , and  my reading improved a lot since i took this class

I appreciate you 

thank you so much

Sugar Coach

I have a wonderful student form Belaruz.  He's really charming, and he's also a professional soccer coach.  Today when we were in a circle to hear the highlights of each student's interview on forbidden food, he reported on the high school student who is his goalie and has been his "coachee" for the past three years.  He was surprised that she never went to McDonald's.  He said another surprise was that she was now turning down the candy he gives the students after they perform well.  I asked about the recent concern about sugar as an unhealthy addiction, and he said there were a lot of addictions, and I understood what he meant.  Candy was always the standard reward--that better-than-a-carrot incentive for all us little donkeys.  But I wondered whether the new health consciousness would affect him eventually.  Then another student reported on tofu worms.  Still another mentioned the monkeys whose brains are eaten "alive."

"Candy!  Candy!"  I cried out.

Demon-istration

More on my student's report--and a correction.  I knew he was pronouncing demonstration with a demon at the start, but now I see he's written demonistration, which combines demon with administration!  I see this from the written report I confiscated because I don't let students use a written report when they're speaking.  (They tend to read instead of speaking if they have one, and they read from something they downloaded and do not understand.)  I told him he could give it without notes that day (Friday) or bring notes on Monday and give it then.  He chose to speak on the spot without any notes. 

I was pleased that he really understood what he'd written up.  He was able to express it without the written word.  But here's the written word as typed by me.  (His handwriting is very special too.)

Yesterday a lot of people had been standing to show they are sadness.  The demonistration started 12:30 at in front of Smith Hall.  Afterwhile when the people emotion and pain raised up demonstrant moved to Conlan Hall to proved they are questions and to get answers.  At that moment police came and clothed (his spelling of closed!)  Conlan Hall door stood banch of police in front that building.   the main point of the demonistrant question is stop dictatorial ship payment policy.  it means undocument people and poor people no opportunity of education.  Adminstration officers are going work to cut students class and facilites.  It means to put 18,000 students and 20000 workers in the problem.  CCSF activities has been working incourage student to productive people.  For example a lot of homeless people get eduction started their life.  in SF those fancy restaurants chefs studied from CCSF culurary (culinary) art.  So why CCSF in trouble if it is good for people and society. 

Migrating Heart

I ordered sheets online.  (No store in real life had the sheets I love--small roses in rows) and found out mine's a double bed, not queen.  Meanwhile I've watched the migration of a heart--the Valentine balloon my meque brought a month ago, a pumped-with-helium heart that's floated from the living room to above the vase of flowers that he brings (refreshed each week unlike the sweet balloon) that says "Te amo," I love you in Spanish, and snuggles up against the vase of flowers, its printed-on rose on its latex/polychloroprene/ nylon skin a perfect match for the real ones in the vase.

A Short Answer vs. an Essay from Teachers in Response to My Question

This morning at 4:30 AM  I sent two separate messages to two friends and colleagues who are very knowledgeable.  The both responded shortly after 8:00 AM.  They both strongly recommended giving money to the DCC, but notice how different they are in the detail!  One gives a short answer, and the other writes an essay!

Short-Answer Response

Best place right now. DCC needs all the support we can give them. Please thank your friend.

Sent from my iPhone

 Essay Response

Tina, thank you for passing on the question that someone asked you, thereby giving me an opportunity to think about it. Maybe my thoughts can be helpful to others who are advocating for this cause. I'm sorry this is long but there are a lot of reasons to support the DCC!! They've put out their own list. Here's mine.

There is never any one most worthy cause to donate to---there are always competing places to put one's resources for which an excellent case can be made. However, the Department Chairs Council has some compelling things going for  it in terms of what would be now a very important cause to support. I've donated twice before, and will do so again. From my own perspective, never having been a chair, here are some unique benefits of supporting that particular cause and why now. Both current employees and retirees may want to consider these points:

The danger is genuine of completely losing the department chairs system at CCSF and having all decisions affecting us directly made by deans. The Department Chair Council (DCC) has been strongly targeted by those who would completely transform the nature of the college and who state that as their goal. When Pamela Fisher first got here and the chairs introduced themselves, her very first reaction ---essentially before "nice to meet you" ---was that she was "against all that." There was a written proposal under the next interim chancellor to drastically reduce the number of chairs, even eliminating the chair of ESL (largest CCSF department)! It was only the strong pushback  that reinstated that position. Our pushback and advocacy remain critical. Every document released relating to  the school or campus deans positions now attempts to usurp duties that are contractually the chairs' duties. Eliminating the DCC is clearly at the top of the list, the agenda. The onslaught is continuous and requires a counter-force or it will be victorious.

There is a lot of middle ground that can be explored and that could be done to the benefit of the college, but in order to do that, the DCC must be kept in place. I think there is some acknowledgement that the deans, the administration, have not always been ready to draw a line and say, "This is something on which we will take input, but for various reasons it needs to be an administrative decision. The college is best served by that."  Occasionally, that can be the case and when it is the case, the deans need to know what their job is, and it needs to be clear to everyone else too. That is different from changing what their job is. Deans are already in charge of the chairs in all the ways that count. Each constituency has its part to play. Faculty/chairs are assertive and administration should also make their case when necessary. If it has not done so when required, administration's inaction should not be blamed on the DCC. When there's a leadership vacuum of any kind, it will certainly be filled by whoever notes that vacuum, and can fill it with their own energy and talent.

Why is that only "occasionally" the case that decisions affecting instructional programs be left primarily to administration? Those decisions are best made with maximum information about what is happening in the field--at ground level. Those decisions should be made at least in part by chairs who know what is going on because they are in the classroom, have years of experience in the classroom, and are meeting regularly with their faculty who are in the classroom. It's about informed decision-making from the ground up, not from an ivory tower level by a dean who has been told what to do by superiors who take their directions straight from the top. In the worst case, that can ultimately be by big money that finances election campaigns---a wholly non-academic and profit-oriented perspective. It's far superior to have the ground-level (chair) and bottom-down (dean) supervisors meet to discuss what the issues are from their perspectives and work something out that takes into account both perspectives. Chairs are not only working with their faculty and their dean. DCC representatives participate also in venues that allow Board of Trustees, student input, and classified input into a well-informed decision-making process. 

This system of "academic democracy" allows faculty ---and to some extent indirectly, the students they work with daily--- to have some vehicle for direct input into overall decision-making through the elected chair. It's a good system that mirrors our representative democracy system in the United States. As a model for other colleges, it's been made a target for elimination before it can spread. But maybe it SHOULD spread. And it certainly "fits to a t" the grassroots democracy traditions of SF and the Bay Area. It's a visible and effective representation of our values.

The DCC is a bargaining unit, but the difference is that they are an independent union. That means that unlike AFT2121 or SEIU 1021, they do not have a parent organization which can support their struggles by providing financial and logistical resources. The chairs receive different levels of stipends depending on the size of their responsibilities, but those stipends do not take into account the costs of defending against political attacks that have statewide and even national origins. The chair system benefits the whole college in helping to give employees a voice. It's only one mechanism for that and cannot guarantee that each person will be heard. However, compared to a dean-only system,  it goes a long way towards making that possible. Many hands make light work---we cannot expect the chairs to have all the resources required to defend their own organization against this political attack. All of us who benefit by academic democracy need to lend our support. Those who are fortunate to be able to lend major financial support should do so.

A primary milestone for reducing further the number of chairs is to consolidate various diversity-related departments under a single chair. But diversity has so many elements to it and a major point in having department chairs is that even a smaller department has an advocate. Do none of these need their own advocate---Women's Studies, LGBT Studies, Latino Studies, African American Studies, Disabled Students Programs, etc.? No one person can advocate with equal passion for each department and that would not be the purpose of "consolidation" anyway. Consolidation of diversity-related departments would undermine the whole social justice thrust of our college. Of course that is part of the intent of this conservative attack on our structure.

When the funding of chairs was cut back as part of this political onslaught, the funding of coordinators at the campuses was also  drastically curtailed. In my experience working for the enrollment campaign, I have noticed that it makes it much harder to get coordinators to do yet another thing outside of the small number of things they are now actually paid to do. The practical effect that we experience in the Enrollment Campaign is that some departments or campuses cannot even get a flyer together that could be used to promote their programs! Not one flyer! We can't say "that's your job!" because their jobs have been curtailed so much that it really isn't even on their plate. It doesn't make sense to cut coordination back that much. That's only one example of the impact of cuts to coordinating time. We could probably draw up a long list. The primary rationale for those cuts  in coordination time is to transfer any essential duties to rank-and-file classroom teachers who are then expected to do the coordination work for free. In fact, one of the interim chancellors stated that---it's about making more work unpaid.

This is the time that the DCC has chosen to hold a major fundraiser, so obviously this is a time they can really use our donations of any size. For all the above reasons, and probably even more, it's our turn to step up when they need us.

Susan