Posts Tagged ‘library’
It took trying to fill three still mostly empty bookshelves to make me realize how anemic my personal library really is.
Sure, I have a nice, leatherbound copy of The Hobbit — somewhere — and you’d be hard pressed to find a better collection of roleplaying source books on my floor — alas, for the guy upstairs is even nerdier than I — but most of the rest of my books amount to novels I forgot to return, paperbacks I lent out and haven’t gotten back, yet, and textbooks from classes dating back to middle school. There’s the odd classic — I still haven’t read Wuthering Heights — and some science fiction — I’ve read A Canticle for Leibowitz many, many times — but that’s about it.
For someone who spent half of his free time in a library and the other half in a home wall-to-wall with at least nine full bookshelves — one of them strictly my dad’s sheet music — there are few things more damaging to the spirit than empty bookshelves.
Blame it on nostalgia, but it doesn’t quite seem like home without corner-torn volumes of fiction, reference and history. To alliterate — am I too illiterate? — bare bookshelves are the bibliophile’s bane.
I need to get on this. If only I could afford to.
One of the library’s chairs must have hated my dress slacks even more than I did. I sat in such a chair, minding my students’ business, when I decided to get up and make the rounds.
Rip.
A thread on my left pocket had stuck a little on the lip of the armrest. Now it hung loose, with a gash about four inches long between it and my belt-loops.
It’s a good thing that my shirts are longer than used to be — I tucked my shirt in so nobody would see my chonies. I faked a “nothing is wrong, nothing at all” attitude long enough to find a first aid kit and safety-pin myself up.
Embarrassed, I asked my master teacher if she was a seamstress. I had lost my needle-and-thread kit in one of my many recent moves, though I had never any talent in sewing things back together.
Fortunately, she got the heavy-handed hint and offered to help me out sometime during Spring Break.
I wasn’t that desperate. Though job interviews start in less than a month, I could have done without that pair of pants. I have a whole other second pair available.
Moral of the story? Sit not in unfamiliar chairs or those with evil armrests.
Government can be boring and abstract, especially if my students lack an understanding of the fundamental basics of American history.
They do.
That’s where fun little simulations come in handy. My master teacher and the department have a wonderful one on how a bill becomes a law.
For a week, students are to research the provisions of an almost ludicrously far-reaching bill that would limit tobacco usage, advertising and acreage.
As part of the fun, all students have roles to play.
Some represent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a bureaucratic agency against tobacco use but also against the bill because the agency would rather focus on fighting terrorism than smoking. Some represent the DARE prevention program, a group lobbying in favor for the bill almost as aggressively as the students representing the advertising industry lobby against it.
These lobbyists and bureaucrats speak to a student-led committee. These students are graded on how well they present their information, and on its relevance and abundance it has. Committee members are charged with hearing the testimony, and those students are graded on how often they speak and how much sense they make.
Once everyone has testified, students begin work on their essays and committee members begin work on revising the bill. Then, once we’re done with that, our class suddenly becomes a general assembly of representatives who debate and eventually vote on the bill.
Students learn by doing and speaking. There’s a no shortage of either here.
On a side note, the funny thing is that there was quite a lot of lecture involved — without explanation or background of the material, they would have had no idea how to even do the activity.
After all that, though, they’ve pulled it off spectacularly. I’m going to hold on to this one.
Moral of the story? Solid simulations take weeks of preparation and execution. Years of practice also help.
