What excites me? The people who surround me do not.
I felt even 24 months ago the excitement of revising texts for a literature curriculum. Team teaching somewhat crushed my expectations, converging with methods that I find even now thoughtless.
That does not need to be the case. I can revive that nervous excitement, that sense of planning, into something better.
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Perhaps a week later...
A week of holiday has passed by: a pomodoro of writing has been sacrificed.
For some reason I have struggled to sit with my imagination, and that struggle has existed for some time. What games can I play if I cannot sit with myself?
Each person must struggle with the uncomfortable elements of themselves. What annoys me in others says something about me, because I must recognise that in myself. Integrate those uncomfortable elements - imagine a party where they exist.
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I struggle to relax on a holiday. However, working out, eating well, avoiding the angst that might come with 'being busy'... these are worthwhile goals.
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Today I woke up a little more determined than yesterday. Can I have a 'look ahead to today'?
Shall I try a 'stream of consciousness'?
Part of me struggles to touch the marking work today... I feel that I need to move and stretch myself...
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We are in the last days of my holiday. I felt more mindful than I did before, appreciating the beauty of just lying here, of just being here.
My other blog: there is no agenda, no rewriting of the education system, but rather working within it, recognising its flaws and foibles.
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The game once again seems annoying with the changes to AP. I asked others if they want to play, but no-one has agreed. I will need to ask others if I intend to do that.
Today is a day of some 'work'? Perhaps? What do I have to write? Maybe I should listen to the 'prompts' I wrote?
1) The piece of work a student produces for school reasons: there are a still human reasons behind that. How can there be context of reception if there is not a context of production?
Art Gallery: can you speak the student about what you notice? Even then, what the aesthetics? Just bright colours?
How naked will a teacher about why you are doing work? To pass an exam etc?
2) To what extent is it possible that we can teach poetry by removing ambiguity, and finally by the end there is no... open, whacky, WTF moments... to waht extent can a teacher lead that... what might be unusual sense?
Can students create their own structures for dealing with ambiguity? An acronym? More?
Khadashi Suziki: https://alimalek01.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/suzuki-training-method/
How can these be incorporated into the classroom: how writing codifies culture and instinct, will.
3) How a lot of things that I feel are essential are not things that I was taught, but rather that I taught myself... renaissance. Notions of ambiguity of literature. Metacognition... right time vs right language.
Language that creates labels, binary...
A reflection is a recreation... the greatest song in the world...
4) Too much of artistic creation is based on originality: how about just being the first person in your family to do something... no matter how mundane, more value in that than being the first person in your village, network, profession.
5) Decrying the ideas of complaints in education... Is education is not about results but the friends we made along the way.
6) We cannot make any change to education if we don't make changes to the economic system: how many people would wnat to listen to easy, curious podcasts if they did not have to? How many teachers read?
No change can occur in isolation: are governments in sole control of this?
7) In culture, we want to follow and converge with culture, you are going to become more like the people around you than not, whether you like it or not. To go against a culture requires a certain level of belligerance, and the ability to deal with that. See professional provocateurs, and hte issues in their own lives and health.
Culture used to be thought of something that is an almagation of your physical choices, but it really is about what you are encouraged to notice, and therefore NOT notice.
8) Formative assessment, at what point does that occur. How does looking at one person's essay in a lesson apply to helping everyone else?
How easy is the concept of a topic sentence? Can a student conceptualise what a topic sentence is? Should a teacher problematise what a topic sentence might be?
Today I feel more energy than I did before. Better sleep was enjoyed. Sleep should not be optional.
Focusing for 25 minutes is spiritual. Simply walking and being in an ending way without endeavour seems to make for a poor holiday.
I do not even need to focus 'too much'.
My attitudes towards work have changed somewhat. Two people have triggered me:
a) Older Guy.
b) Older Girl.
Both are ossified in their attitudes, stuck in their ways, defensive as fuck. There is little to believe we can do to change what I seem them doing:
a) Jordan Peterson guides everything. Thing are dismissed without consideration.
b) There is little that does not irk Older Girl, and even less that 'we do already'.
To both these people we need to be intolerant of their intolerance. For a long time I have been willing and able to change my mind, working with young people and their plastic brains. How, then, will I live with conflict, being clear about my goals, and even clearer about my approach?
Today I have time to enjoy some reflection of work in a way I did not have before. For now, I will run in the way that I can.
I sit here now in the morning, fitter than I was last week. People I encountered before...
Anthropology suggests that we should embrace the limitations of our model. If we rely upon other people for our morality, if we desire to 'get away with as much as we can', where might we be left?
Celebrating the limits of my perspective, the self-contained beauty of what I might be.
What I notice in others is what I might notice in myself.
Now with language
Poised in that comfortable position, I feel my body carrying less baggage than it was before. The needless consequences hang in fat bags around my waist. They can be dropped.
Each year at this time I take examination culture seriously, adopting the mantle of 'the expert', buying chips into the game of examinations.
What games do we need to play? What rules do we need to?
Multiple games are being played in a place like Dubai, some of which I did not recognise, and some I had no wish to play.
What games am I consciously playing? What games do I think others might be playing, too? How can I use the self-contained context around me as a thing of beauty for others?
