Leave it to Joy, my department chair at Woodlawn and the only person to ask me a relevant question (like what my philosophy of teaching Spanish was, and how I'd go about teaching simple present tense -ar verbs) in any of the 4 interviews I had in Baltimore schools before deciding to teach there last year, to continue to ask me timely and interesting questions. On the eve of my 24th birthday, she asked me how my worldview was changing since I'd come down here. Here's what's been kicking around in the back parts of my mind lately:
- First, I think that there are deep deep flaws in the early education system in the inner cities and rural areas of the U.S. Flaws that allow kids to pass through to high school with severely limited vocabularies and reasoning skills, who struggle, because they lack the tools to learn. I don't want to say by high school it's already too late for them... but I do think that by high school it becomes incredibly difficult to inculcate these basic reasoning/learning/reading skills that are supposed to be developed early on. I heard a podcast about the Harlem Children's Zone, which is run by this guy who is attempting to reach every child in Harlem by teaching parents how to raise their kids so that they have these skills later in life. I like his approach. I think it's probably the best way to solve this problem. Here's the podcast: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1311
- So people burn their trash here. They like, throw it out outside of their houses, or out of bus windows so that it collects on the side of the road, and then they rake it into a pile and burn it. Now, my first reaction was to pretty much be horrified, and just sad every time I saw smoking piles of plastic. I've come to understand that people here really don't see themselves as having any other option, since there is no dump, nor any municipal trash pick up. I've come to understand that it's really really really hard to change a habit that's ingrained into a culture. But I still think it's possible.
- also, I've started gardening. Kind of. I've really started doing manual labor clearing weeds, turning soil, and moving trash and rocks (tomorrow I get to go get fertilizer from one of my family's farms (where they raise cows, and thus have a ready supply), which I will apparently be hauling back on an adult-sized tricycle with a little basket on the back to put things in; I will attempt to take pictures). I can't explain or convey how satisfying it's been to be doing that work. There is something about manual labor, where you can see the results of your work immediately and leave everyday feeling accomplished that is deeply satisfying in ways that teaching never was for me.
- I've been following the health care debate kind of closely (ok, probably ridiculously closely). I was a little devastated on Tuesday night when I heard the results of the Massachusetts senate election, and read that the bill is probably dead in its current form. The whole process has led me to conclude that 1) American government cannot function with the rules currently prevailing in the system, where you need 60 votes to pass something in the Senate, and that 2) It will be impossible to govern America if the opposition party can stop any complicated and nuanced piece of legislation that has broad popular support for most of its pieces by stonewalling it in congress, and spreading lies about it which are easier to understand and grab ahold of than the legislation itself to their constituents. It's been incredibly disheartening, and seeing it from afar, I have trouble convincing myself that I want to come back.
- as kind of a corollary to the last two, I think there's way more information in our lives now than we were ever meant to be dealing with.
so yeah. That's what's been on my mind, more or less. If people reading this would like to comment on how their worldviews have been changing lately, I think that would be cool.
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