Monday, January 21, 2008
Martin Luther King Day
Also, Barack Obama delivered an AMAZING sermon at Dr. King's old church yesterday, in honor of Dr. King's birthday. Whatever anyone thinks of his politics, I hope there isn't anyone in the US today that doubts the power of Obama's rhetoric, or his speaking abilities. I have never heard another living politician that has the sincerity to truly to be inspiring the way he is. This man makes me proud to be an American.
Check out the text or video of the speech here.
Weekend of Cross-Cultural Awesomeness
Saturday we went to a really cool exhibit at the Jewish Museum on the art of William Steig, who was with the New Yorker for forever and also did some really awesome childrens' books, like Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Shrek!, Doctor De Soto and the like. It was really cool to see his sketches, and get a better feel for his books, some of which I've got in my classroom. Ever since the beginning of the school year, I've started to fall more and more in love again with children's books. I can't wait to have some chilluns to share them with.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Bodily fluids and you
I have learned the hard way that one should always believe a child when they say they are feeling sick to their stomach—even if in every other circumstance they tend to try to exaggerate or lie to get out of work. Because that kid, THIS time, might actually BE sick to his stomach. My classroom floor can testify to the reality of this hard, sticky, something-with-beef-in-it truth.
The janitor side of Mr. Straubhaar-the-4th-grade-teacher cannot wait for Martin Luther King day.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Back from the E-Dead
So, despite all my best and naïve intentions during the summer to share all of my experiences with Teach For America via blog, I soon discovered a few weeks into Teach For America training that my life was soon to be sucked into oblivion. And thus it was. A very satisfying, chance-to-help-others, good-karma type of oblivion, but still. Especially during those first few weeks, it was hard enough to find enough time for five hours of sleep a night, much less blogging. And though in the time since then I've finished training, gotten halfway through my first year as a 4th grade teacher in Washington Heights, prepared my kids for and led my kids through one of their big annual standardized tests (the English Language Arts one) and started preparing them for their second (the math one), and improved significantly as a teacher (through the throw-you-in-a-classroom-and-pray training method), it still took me a long time to even want to think about restarting a blog.
Not to mention the other amazing happening in the life o' Rolf, which most of you folks that read this should most surely know about—I got married to the most amazing person on earth, Kristy Money, an astoundingly loving, empathetic and caring woman, who for some reason said yes to me. She's the product of two academics as well, and has moved around a lot—she's currently a doctoral candidate in psychology from BYU. And did I mention she's the most amazing woman alive?
So yes. Time management over the last six months has not yielded much blogginess. But in the spirit of new beginnings (more so in terms of new beginnings as a married person than new beginnings with a new year—I never was much of a New Years' resolutions type), I am determined to try to remedy that.
Today I missed a couple of my favorite kids, who were absent today—especially Jaabar. Jaabar is about four feet tall, walks a kinda crooked line because he doesn't have very good balance, and is the most hilarious and mature 4th grader you've ever seen. He's the kind of kid who forgets to bring his lunchbox home almost every day, yet has the most insightful questions of all when we're reading a book together. His handwriting is atrocious, but the ideas in his essays are the most complex in the class. And he's about the most endearing little duder ever. We give each other high fives a lot.
Kristy and I are ensconced in our New York apartment for a quiet evening in this Monday—we tend to have lots of those. Mainly because we don't have anything we'd rather do than be with each other. Married life is AWESOME.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Church in Jamaica
Since I got here in
And then there’s the ward itself—I’ve seriously never seen a more multicultural congregation in all my time in the church. There’s the Indian-descended guy from Guyana with his family (the ward mission leader), the Ecuadorian guy who speaks Portuguese and is really into capoeira because his wife is from Rio (he’s the young men’s president), the gaúcho bald white brasileiro with a goatee with his family (the ward clerk), the black Haitian guy in the bishopric, the hilarious Jamaican guy in the bishopric, the numerous Caribbean-sounding women, the very academic and smart man from Trinidad (who’s the High Priest rep in the ward), the older, frail-looking white woman with a German accent (who’s the bishop’s mom), the older man from Haiti who bore his testimony about feeling healed after a problem with his spine, the African-American guy who works in security who teaches Sunday School, and a number of other folks from all sorts of backgrounds (various parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, a lot more African-American and Hispanic folks). The first week I went, there was also a visiting black lady from
I want you to prove me wrong
I felt floored by a realization I had the other day.
As part of our training for teaching in the fall, we have diversity training sessions every Friday. This Friday’s session was amazing. We were talking about recognizing and dealing with bias, and we started off by doing some mental exercises that got me thinking. Scott (our curriculum specialist, who leads the sessions) asked us to write down, for each of a list of things, what the first mental image was that came to mind. He started his list: a student with behavioral problems, a student with a troubled home life, a student who is not a successful student—and it really troubled me that, at least for all of the categories I just mentioned, the image that came to mind was of a black boy.
I know I’ve thought a lot about bias, and racism, especially in the past few years—an experience I had in my last semester at Rice really got me thinking about it. It was spring of 2004, and one time at night I was heading to the library to do some studying. On the way there, I passed by a friend of mine from my dorm, a really nice upper-middle-class black guy with glasses and a Cosby-kid look to him, who I said hi to without thinking much of it. Soon after, though, I passed by another black guy who was wearing warm-up pants and sports clothes, and I remember just catching myself thinking, “This guy is probably here on a sports scholarship.” When I caught myself thinking that, I was shocked to have caught myself being so openly racist. It made me think of Mom’s Relief Society friend from
Well, this mental exercise that Scott had us do really bothered me, because it reminded me that despite all the time I’ve spent thinking about this, and despite the many personal examples of amazing and successful black men that I’ve known, the dominant social assumption about black males is still the dominant image that comes first to mind when I think of troubled students. The fact that that is my kneejerk, instinctive mental image, despite all the thinking I try to do to the contrary—that infuriates me. It really infuriates me.
As I thought about it in that session, though, I realized that this rage I was feeling can be channeled. If I want to fight my biases, there is no better way to do so than to let the existence of my biases, and my frustration and rage at their existence, drive my performance as a teacher. Let it fan my flame, let it stoke my passion, let it keep me pushing myself and keep me pushing my kids—not just because I want them to dispel the stereotypes that are held against them, and not just because I want them to prove society wrong. Rather, at its root, because I want them, and need them, to prove me wrong.
As I thought about this, and realized how much I needed them to succeed, not just for them, but for myself, the quote came to mind: "If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." The next two years will be an amazing chance to do just that.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Life and Times at P.S. 42
Wow—it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve posted on here, and it’s crazy to sit down and realize that the reason for that is that this is the first time I’ve had a relatively free evening in the last three weeks. It’s been amazing, but very intensely amazing.
The schedule here is pretty insane, bringing back memories of the missionary training center—though this version is a lot less spiritual (not to say that there aren’t religious underpinnings to this work) and a lot less well-rested (most of us, myself included, are averaging about 4-5 hours of sleep a night, on a good night). Two weeks ago our training really started, when we were split up into schools where we would be teaching summer school—I’m at P.S. 42 in the