Teach Soviet Russia Through Klingon Empire

June 27, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: allegory, animal, bookend, cheesy, chekhov, class, classroom, closure, counterpoint, country, day, diverse, earth, expansionism, farm, hitler, klingon, last, mnemonics, original series, orwell, shakespeare, soviet, star, thin, tools, trek, undiscovered, union, vi, youtube

Allegories are the way to learn Soviet history — Animal Farm, anyone? — in no small part because it creates an relatable framework for a subject that students will find dull despite how interesting it really is. Now that the end of the Cold War is within the scope of the responsible history class, Orwell’s novella has a marvelous counterpoint — Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country.

Bear with me.

Star Trek’s original series was always a thin allegory for the Cold War and American-Soviet relations. The diverse cast of the 1960s exploited fear of the commies by creating a warlike, Soviet-like archenemy in the Klingons while simultaneously catering to the “Let’s be friends” mentality with adding that guy named Chekhov.

I grew up with the even-numbered Star Trek movies by way of library VHS, and my dad’s favorite was the last movie that had the complete Scotty-Spock-Kirk-”Nuclear Wessel” crew. Until I saw it earlier today, I didn’t appreciate how thin a Cold War allegory it really was.

At least three lines in the movie that directly flesh perfectly with some part of Cold War history. Who could forget the complete-with-context old Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon could go to China“; or “last, best hope for peace”; or “don’t wait for the translation.”

The movie doesn’t just cover Cold War, either — like any cheaply written movie with a dearth of original ideas, it lifts more than a few lines from the Bard. Klingon High Chancellor Gorbachev-wannabe gives the movie its title by making a toast to the undiscovered country: the future. Spock quips:

Hamlet: Act III, Scene i.

Later, Klingon villain Gen. Chang — in the climatic scenes will speak almost entirely in Shakespeare — justifies Klingon expansionism. We need breathing room, Chang says. Kirk quips:

Earth, Hitler: 1938.

Despite those entertaining thematic digressions, in so many ways the last old school Trek movie bookends the close of Soviet history the way Animal Farm bookends the beginning. Because of the way it definitively puts a period at the end of this period, I’d say the last, best Trek movie has more than earned its spot as the last, best day of a world history course.

Best yet, this movie ends with a slow clap. Talk about closure on the last day of class.

Rallies Don’t Create School Spirit

June 26, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: about, alma mater, baseball, care, champions, college, division, football, Fresno, fresno state, greatness, high, invested, middling, school, series, something, state, student, world

Apparently, my alma mater has a baseball team, and that baseball team kind-of-sort-of won the College World Series.

As a marching band alumnus, I was invited to play in a rally to celebrate a victory I had absolutely no part in or knowledge of until I got an e-mail late Tuesday night.  I’m more than happy to come to this rally: I have school spirit.

I’m still not used to having school spirit.

When I was in high school, school spirit was a silly thing. Though our losing football team wasn’t much to speak of, we had a genuinely talented wrestling squad. Our school put on rallies to celebrate those accomplishments.

I still didn’t care. I wasn’t in the wrestling squad.

I went to exactly one rally during high school, and that was the first of my freshman year. Fellow freshmen, screaming at the top of their lungs, stood around me in the stadium. I sat throughout the entire rally, reading my a copy of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition Monster Manual. I thought to myself:

I could do this in the school library.

So I did, for every rally between autumn of my freshman year and graduation of my senior year. I grew to appreciate rallies. Not because I liked them, but because I liked the school library.

I was proud of one thing in high school: our band program. Our marching band was the division champion in 2003 — for the 60-members-and-under division — and the concert bands regularly did very well. When I got to college, I decided to stick around the music department.

Marching band there got me interested in our college football team — this team tends to be middling with thrilling shots of greatness — and a few seasons later, I was hooked. This wasn’t school spirit so much as loving the marching band for being incredible, and without using amplification.

I was also a fan of the band trip per diem.

I contracted school spirit only since I left the band, and, more recently, the school. My school spirit is derivative of nostalgia, and my nostalgia is integral to school spirit. It works mathematically. Nostalgia requires active interest; it takes effort toward some cause; most importantly, it requires spending some time away from that cause. School spirit works the same way.

My high school threw rallies and sort of expected us to be excited about something other than skipping class for a day. That’s the wrong way about it. How can we reasonably expect students to have school spirit without getting first getting them actively involved?

I’m off to play last chair second trombone at a rally, to celebrate the accomplishments of athletes I hadn’t heard much about until last Monday and hadn’t followed much since then. That’s alumni involvement, and all schools need that, too — active alumni have school spirit.

Schools need to foster school spirit, and most schools know it. High school administrations also realize that they must give their students something to have school spirit about.

Rallies don’t count. Schools forget this.

Some Districts Learn Motivation from Alec Baldwin

June 25, 2008 in Personal Reflection, Reading Response
Tags: alec, baldwin, cadillac, classroom, edublog, edublogosphere, education, film, fired, glen, glengarry, jack, knives, lemmon, metaphor, motivation, movie, not safe for work, nsfw, rant, ross, speech, steak, teacher, teachers, you're, youtube

Technically, the following video is not safe for work. Personally, I think it’s perfect for work.

During Alec Baldwin’s tirade against the failing quality of this particular office, salesman Jack Lemmon responds with excuses.

The leads are weak, Lemmon says.

You’re weak, Baldwin says.

In this short clip from Glengarry Glen Ross — spoilers ahead — this exchange describes much of the working world, and most professions.

Let’s use education.

So many educators make excuses, as they try to make do with the alleged students in their classes. Some favorite excuses: It’s the family life at home; it’s the socioeconomic level; it’s that they’re learning English as a second language. Alec Baldwin character, transposed to education, could care less about these excuses.

In the movie, it’s Lemmon’s job to sell real estate. In education, it’s your job to teach children content, at the very least. but you’re having trouble with the group of kids you have, over at that urban school district. In this transposition, you are Lemmon.

Baldwin comes from downtown. He doesn’t care. Why aren’t your kids passing? You are a teacher: Teach. It isn’t that hard. They’re showing up, and are just waiting to learn. He knows: He has years of experience in education.

In the movie, when Lemmon gets a lead, he is paid to sell property to that investor. When you get children — sometimes you even get students — you are paid to teach them, whoever they are. That’s the bottom line, says Superintendent Baldwin.

Professionals can do it easily. If you can’t do it, you aren’t a professional.

No ifs. No ands. No buts.

Even late in his rant, Baldwin’s mentality easily translates to the teaching profession: I do have some positions at Glen Ross Unified, that golden, trouble-free district in a wealthy part of Florida — but you can’t have even interview for them. That district is for teachers, and you peons aren’t very good teachers at all if you can’t teach who you have, already. If your students right now aren’t learning, you can’t teach anyone.

There are a lot of Baldwin characters angry at education in this country. They don’t care about your excuses. They care about your results. If you don’t have results, you’re worthless. Excuses just prove it, and so Lemmon does himself a disservice by offering up his excuses.

Yet some excuses are legitimate. Sometimes, just sometimes, the cards are as stacked against you as you claim they are. That students have a rocky home life is important, and does affect the effectiveness of your teaching. That students can’t speak much less read English, yet, will affect their score on the test. When the cards are stacked against you, you really can’t do anything about it.

As Lemmon finds out at the end of the movie, this was exactly the case. The cards were almost purposefully stacked against him, and Baldwin isn’t his enemy. He had been all-but doomed even before Baldwin showed up and made all that noise.

To wit: In both the movie and the field of education, Baldwin’s appearance didn’t raise the difficulty of success. It raised the stakes of failure.

First prize: Cadillac. Second prize: steak knives. Third prize: you’re fired.

That’s motivation.