Avatar: The Last Airbender

I'm watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, an animated series from Nickelodeon. M. Night Shyamalan just made a really, really bad movie out of it, which you should only see if you haven't seen the series. Then you can watch the series and both appreciate its own awesomeness, and understand how bad the movie was.

There are two contenders for Best Line so far:

"I'm too young to die!"

"I'm not, but I don't wanna!"

But I think the clear winner is:

"Don't worry, Sokka. Where we're going, you won't need any pants!"

Is Oakland Burning?

There's a website to tell you! http://isoaklandburning.com/, in the tradition of things like istwitterdown.com and isobamapresidentyet.com.

Riots in Oakland come along every year or two for various things. Usually it's the Raiders, but there's also no shortage of police brutality, and this time it's the shooting of Oscar Grant, an apparently mellow guy who was restrained face-down on the ground, pinned by one or two other officers, when Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART, the light-rail system) cop Johannes Mehserle pulled his gun and shot him.

This probably would have gone the way of all police-violence cover-ups, except it was New Year's Eve, and a train full of people recorded the arrest and eventual shooting on their cell phones. YouTube has a bunch of videos; they're unsettling, obviously, what with the guy being shot and all, but mostly it's just baffling. It seems to come out of nowhere, and then Mehserle looks as surprised as anyone else at what he just did.

The BART transit police, while legally equivalent to real police, are a sort of under-supervised, over-armed version of real police. They've been known to go walking the trains in full paramilitary uniforms, with body armor and automatic weapons. That seems a little excessive considering they're usually dealing with violent drunks, rather than drug cartels or cult militias. But hey, the department spent all that money for the equipment, why not use it?

BART's response to the shootout was almost comically awful: first complete silence, then the inevitable support for the officer in question, denial of wrongdoing, claiming the victim had been a threat to the officers. More than anything, it looked like they were trying to buy time to come up with a credible story to get Mehserle and the department off the hook (and I'm pretty sure that's what it was). This is standard operating procedure for a police department, but while BART refused to comment on anything, all those cell phone videos spread like wildfire, and the rest of us drew our own conclusions--"He shot a restrained, motionless man in the back"--and moved on to speculating about motives. It was so smooth and fast that it looked almost like an execution, but then Mehserle was obviously upset afterward, and what kind of idiot would purposefully kill a guy under those circumstances? With several other officers and a station full of witnesses?

The other option was that he meant to go for his Taser and screwed up. This also seemed barely credible, because a Taser and a Glock are nothing alike, and the cops are theoretically well-trained to know the difference and which side of their belt they're kept on. And why was he going for his Taser when Grant was already restrained?

Well, never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, and it turns out Mehserle was just an idiot, went for his Taser and pulled and fired the gun instead. I didn't follow the details of the trial, so I don't know why he was even going for his Taser. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. A lot of people I know were upset (or at least annoyed) by the verdict, but I don't know why: he accidentally killed the guy without meaning to. That's what the involuntary manslaughter charge is for. So he's going to jail, and his life is ruined.

Today is Mehserle's sentencing, which is why everyone's on Oakland Riot Watch. Thankfully he won't be a cop again: whatever his previous record, I, uh, don't think he's a good choice for the job.

UPDATE: He got "two years," with credit for time served, so he'll probably only do another couple of months. Bleh.

durrr, you're sick

I went to a doctor this morning, of all the crazy things, and for being randomly sick, not for something obvious like a broken bone, or a chunk missing out of my lip, or an obvious case of conjunctivitis. Usually, if I can't figure out what's wrong, a doctor can't either. But sweating and chills, plus tactile hyperesthesia, will get my attention, so after a day or two I decided to go pay someone to tell me it wasn't anything serious. Whatever, it's covered by the program insurance.

The people at Clinica Valparaiso are very nice and helpful. The doctor said I have a virus, which is sort of obvious since this started with having a cold. The sweating and chills are "toxins from the virus"; I don't even have a fever. The dizziness/balance issues are because both my ears are seriously obstructed by earwax. (I'm not sure of the mechanism on that, but it seems intuitively possible and the Internet agrees.) She prescribed a particular over-the-counter anti-cold thinger, and next week I go see an ENT doctor about the ears.

In the meantime, I seem to be needing a 1-hour nap for every 3-5 hours of activity, which is lame, although I do feel less awful than yesterday. Hopefully I can go in on Monday to run tests with the kids.

ow.

Crazy enough, I have a fever today, which I haven't had in many many years. I did crawl in to school to run tests with 1-A, but crawled back home again immediately afterward, followed by alternating heat and shivers. And everything hurts, although that's mostly due to some rock-hard back muscles. I think I've been storing up all this crap for the past 8 months and then finally it all just snapped and my body fell to pieces. If I'm not feeling better tomorrow I may see a doctor, but I think I'll be improved.

New pics are up from the past few weeks, though not yet labeled. More cats, of course, and pics of Anna's visit.

Not much going on, frankly. Just a couple of weeks of classes left, so there's a bit of short-timer syndrome, and I'm focused on testing all my classes (tricky with classes being randomly canceled).

Tomorrow will be 39 days until I get home.

not dead, just resting

Anna visited again! In return for chocolate chips, mini-Snickers bars, and a couple of books, there was "conversation" and "spending time together." At home I would have grabbed a beer and told her to go knit me a sweater or make me a sandwich, but living in a foreign country necessarily involves some hardship. And relationships are full of compromise, I suppose. But, hey! Snickers bars!

Now she's gone again, and I have to knit my own sweaters and make my own sandwiches, which is sad. Luckily, I'm coming home in 6 weeks. Six weeks! Not even 2 months. Crazytown. Here's the tentative schedule:

1. End of classes: November 19th. Possibly the 22nd, but I'll try to avoid that.
2. WorldTeach End-of-Service thing: November 25th.
3. English Opens Doors/Ministry of Education End-of-Service thing: November 27th.
4. South to Chiloe and wherever else: November 28th - December 11th.
5. Santiago: December 11-12.
6. Fly out of Santiago: December 13.
7. Land in San Francisco: December 14.

Then you'll get to read about culture shock again, but in reverse.

I'm also sick, which is lame, but not so bad, since I'm sort of mentally exhausted and not feeling an urge to teach that would make me push through the nose-blowing and coughing and repeatedly falling asleep.

41 days until I'm home.

testing and tears

1-J had their test scheduled for today, and yesterday they started campaigning for me to delay it. They claimed they had my test, another test, and a Biology project due all today, and the rules said they don't have to have more than two tests in a day. We had a similar rule in college about exams, but of course I don't have the language skills and contextual knowledge to know when the kids are trying to con me--although they usually are. They were genuinely distraught; yesterday I told them I'd think about it, but they should be ready for the test. I said they should talk to the U.T.P., the Unidad Técnica Pedagógica, which is literally something like "Educational Technique Unit," and I translate as "Curriculum Director," because they're the school's academic overlords. A couple girls said they'd do that.

Today they campaigned harder, and of course no one had actually talked to the Curriculum Overlords (perhaps thinking they had a better chance with me alone), so when they came to my classroom, I said, "Okay, let's go talk to the U.T.P., the rest of you hang out here." I don't know the rules of the school very well, it'd be a pain for me to delay the test, and I didn't like the power dynamics of me making the decision--of either giving in to a silly student demand (they knew the test was coming and we prepped for it last week), or of their perceiving an injustice if I remained hard-nosed.

Funny enough, the three students went in to talk to Uberlinda, the Power-That-Is, and when I showed up a few steps later, her assistant Claudia basically blocked the door and asked how she could help, so I had to say "I'm with them" to get in to watch the conversation.

Uberlinda told them they were SOL: that yes, they can only have two tests in a day, and that's all they have, the Biology project is something they're supposed to do at home, well before the day it's due. So we went back to the room and crushed everyone's hopes and started the testing.

The test was two parts, equally weighted: give me the English words for 10 pictures, and then ask me 3 of the 4 questions we learned (things like "What do you do for work?" and "What's your favorite food?". I'm pretty generous by American standards, and I try really hard to help the kids get at least partial credit, by prompting them with initial consonants and stuff. Even so, we had a few bad results and one set of tears, and several requests for a way to raise their grade.

In a school where their learning experience were reasonable (especially if I were creating it), I'd say "tough," but...a lot of these kids already have lousy grades in English, and if they don't keep their grades up, they'll get booted out to another school. I know for a fact that these are smart kids, and most of them aren't any lazier than normal 15-year olds; and I know that between the huge, untracked classes and bad curriculum, their overall English-learning experience is crap.

Maybe they'll succeed under the Chilean system, maybe they won't; but I think I want to help them as much as I can while being fair to everyone and still insisting that they be assessed on what they know.

what are we doing here?

Greg, a volunteer down in Punta Arenas, has a wonderfully-titled and well-written post called "The Novelty Has Simply Worn Off."

In this situation, I never expected to be an afterthought. At that point, it feels like we're all kind of missing the point of me being here. I came to make kids excited about English, to expose teachers to new ideas of how to teach and to exchange cultural experiences and traditions with my family and community. As we press on through these last weeks, I feel that much of that has been tossed out the window. I'm not the new, exciting person that just showed up one day. I'm just part of the scenery now which certainly represents my cue to find an exit.

I see what he's talking about: I've been part of the routine at INSUCO for a while now. Two things strike me about that:

1. It's inevitable. Novelty is unsustainable by definition.
2. It's a good thing.

The lack of novelty means that everyone has changed and adjusted. My kids are used to me! I'm pretty offbeat even for a North American, so it took some time. We have really good relationships, where they like me (with one conspicuous exception) and know I care about them. I've adapted to them, sure, but I didn't have as far to go, because I have no experience with large groups of 15-year olds, so if they happened to be Chilean, well, whatever.

They, on the other hand, had to adjust to me, who:

• Required them to participate: to talk and stand up and move around.
• Forbade cell phones and eating in class.
• Checked to make sure they understood stuff.
• Took time to make them say things when they had trouble.
• Didn't make them--didn't let them--write anything down.
• Had no compunction about doing silly dances or making chicken noises in class.

That's all completely different from their experience, where they have to shut up and copy stuff down all the time and they get to check out and eat and wander around the room. And Chilean teachers do not, as a rule, make chicken noises.

And I got to be the Non-Parental Adult Who Cares. I tried to see them and accept them for who they are, while I push them to do things they were embarrassed about, and encourage them to act as adult as they can manage.

The WorldTeach orientation set my expectations pretty well. English education here is broken five ways from Sunday, and I had no illusions that I could fix it, fight it, or even teach a whole ton of English. This, for example, is what we've done this semester: 41 words and 4 questions/responses.

What they learned with me won't help them on their standardized test, the SIMCE, which is unfortunately the government's metric for success. Even if they gave the authority to rewrite the school's curriculum--which would include revolutionizing their structure so that students could be grouped by level instead of a random set of 45 kids all having the same classes--I don't know anywhere near enough about ESL/EFL education to know what to do.

I don't know that any of my kids are more motivated about English now; honestly, I doubt it. But they know they can learn at least a little bit of it, and that some random person from far away showed up and cared enough to help them do it, and to me that's the important thing.