On Blogging

This semester, I was given an opportunity to do something that I have never been able to fully do until now. I was given the ability, and full artistic license, to react. That ability was completely freeing and, at least to me, very useful. Having the chance to release my thoughts to the throes of the internet was liberating. I was able to release my opinion to be fully supported or completely decimated by my peers. Getting support was helpful. Getting rebuttals was better. One of the best reasons for a blog was to experience a difference of opinion. It was a collection of open minds free to bounce or bond as they saw fit. The only problem, and I do mean the only problem, was writer's block. Sometimes after a Monday class, I simply did not have anything meaningful to write about. Maybe these blog entries should have been graded by content quality and not content quantity. I really appreciated this alternative method of assessment and hope to have more opportunities to work with tools like Blogger in the future.

Mountains Beyond Mountains

For a project in Educational Psychology project, we had to link a book that deals with large global problems to the problems that educators and citizens face every day. Our group chose the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. The book followed the career of one Dr. Paul Farmer who traveled the world with his organization, Partners In Health, and worked to cure every person he possibly could, wherever he was, whatever the opposition.

Our group faced several challenges with this book. We were to take a book about health and medicine and relate it to education. How were we to do that? What does one have to do with the other. Then, someone in our group mentioned that education was the same as working with a disease, because there was no such thing as a panacea. Not everyone can be cured by the same medicine, and not everyone can be educated by the same method. By this motto, we gathered our thoughts and drew on the theme of "Think Global, Act Local" to further illustrate how unique approaches are necessary to solve the issue of education problems in the United States.

When we had all of our major talking points outlined, we got together and wrote a script for a video. This video was to creatively present all of our information and completely present our ideas about how Paul Farmer's quest can possibly help us as educators. Please watch the video that we created. It represents all of the work that our group did with Mountains Beyond Mountains.

You Can't Afford to Get Drunk

Your brain is a fantastic organism. By sheer electricity, it has the capacity to learn, to remember, to dictate, to follow, to impulse, to react, and to retain. It's responsible for every inane action in your body that we take for granted, such as breathing and beating our hearts. The brain is the most precious and the most fragile thing in the human body, and here at Luther College, there are people that willingly destroy their own brains every weekend with a substance we all generally accept as college students. That substance is alcohol.

Our educational psychology class was treated to a lecture about alcohol's affect on the human brain. What we learned could scare anyone off of liquor for the rest of their lives. The brain, as explained to us by our quirky lecturer, is a slurpy sponge. It takes in all that it is exposed to and absorbs information at an incredible rate. If that sponge is taken up by alcohol, no information can be sucked in, and the brain is immediately impaired. In fact, when a person becomes drunk, the first function of the brain to shut down is complex judgment. That's why those girls across the bar that you would never talk to in a million years don't seem so bad after a couple of brews.

As the presenter went on, we learned that the long-lasting effects of alcohol impairing the brain are very much like the effects of a concussion. These symptoms can include severe bouts of dizziness, memory loss, spatial unawareness, and a loss of balance. The bottom line is this. Alcohol is not a harmless substance. It kills your brain, and if you kill your brain, you kill yourself. As an epileptic, I cannot afford to impair my brain any further than it is already affected. In light of the information presented to our class by this lecture, I say hold on the wonderful brains that you have. You can't afford to get drunk.

Role-Playing

Yes, role-playing. And we're not talking about Dungeons and Dragons. A while back, our professor encouraged us to wear a different pair of shoes for an hour and completely immerse ourselves in a new kind of educational experience. We were to play the roles of parents, concerned citizens, business owners, teachers, and counselors who are pondering a new educational system proposed by the community high school, High Stakes High. The proposed system would create a highly competitive school environment, not letting any students pass the bar if they did not meet grade standards. As I was reading this proposal, all I could think of was how horrible it sounded. I was chosen to play to role of an adamant supporter.

I was almost dreading to go to class that night. I hated the idea of the new system, and I had to be a supporter by 6PM. I was a hypothetical parent of an over-achieving, highly academic, and very bright son, and I had to start kissing the feet of this plan and quick.

After a long period of thinking how exactly I was going to pull this all off, I realized exactly what I needed to do. I needed to put myself in the position of the role that I was going to play, and look at the plan from that person's eyes. From this new perspective, I saw so many positive things about this highly-competitive school. I was completely shocked that only ten minutes previous I could not think of one saving grace that this plan had. Later that night, I played a successful devil's advocate, and learned something crucial about how people operate. We are all biased. We all have our own opinions, and most of the time, we let these opinions cloud the facts. I let my own bias cloud the fact that this proposed plan may have a few good points. I had to see it from a different person's point of view to understand that. That's what this role-playing exercise was all about.

Later on, when I am working in the field, I can remember that you have not given a fair to the other side of the table until you sit there yourself. This will prove to be extremely valuable as I will have to deal with delicate family situations, proposals to change educational plans, conflict resolution, and other matters that will require fresh points of view.

Burning our Feet

It has been said (and often it has been said by me) that the Luther Education department is, how shall we say, overly determined. We Luther students are warned from day one by our tour guides, our advisers, our professors, and even our peers that education is one of the most difficult majors to achieve, and it's even more difficult to do it in four years time. As freshmen, we turned it away, or kept it someplace deep in our subconscious with a grain of salt. We thought that it was all hype and exaggeration and that there would be no such thing as a fiery hoop for us to jump through.

As I write this, I am in the spring semester of my sophomore year in the Luther Education program, and my feet are on fire.

As students, and teenagers, we are quick to express our disgust with the sheer amount of work we have to do in this hustle bustle world of Luther Education. First it's Chalk and Wire, then we learn about the Proficiencies that we must define in that program. We fork out big bucks and we schedule our lives around a test called the PPST, which costs $130, and proves that we can read, do math, and write coherent sentences. Music educators (especially those seeking an instrumental emphasis) do back-flips to make sure their schedules work around their ensembles, so that they are free for the one hour that Double Reeds Methods is offered. They cross their fingers that the class is not full by the time they get to register.

As I look back on my two years of education here, I come to realize just how stressful it was to get everything in order for this moment, the application to the Teacher Education Program. Was it nerve-wracking? Why yes, it was. Was it maddening? At times, certainly. Despite all this, I am happy with what I have been through thus far. As I stated before, I look down from my laptop at which I sit happily typing, and see my feet below me not as flesh and blood as I new them, but having the appearance of brown toast. What am I getting at? Well, I know that as I continue my education here, and as I go out into the field of professional education, I know that my feet will be healed, and covered in callouses.

Luther is tough. This is true. If Luther students were honest with themselves, they would know that it's not just our program that is incredibly difficult. Education is one heck of a job. As I stated in a previous entry, the passion that a person must possess to be able to get through the entire process alive and functioning is superhuman. Luther is preparing us the best way that they know how for the real world of education. I know that when I leave this small part of Iowa, I will be fully ready to teach in an organized, prepared, and self-reliant way that other school's programs have no parallel to. Luther students: Be not afraid. However, if you find yourselves wondering whether or not you can really see yourself as a teacher, it's probably not the right program for you. That being said, everyone has their tough spots. This program is not easy. Work hard, and aim true, and the flames of each hoop will burn you not to harm you, but to prepare you for the bigger fires coming ahead.

Freedom is an Empty Room

This week our class was lucky enough to talk to a wonderful educator, Dr. Doan van Dieu, PhD of Ho Chi Minh University in Vietnam. Dr. van Dieu took us through a presentation of research that he conducted at the University concerning the parent-child relationship in modern Vietnam. What I expected was an eye-opening lecture about the cultural differences between our familiar American culture and the Vietnamese way of life. I received so much more than this.

Most of Dr. Van Dieu's lecture centered around a survey that he conducted on a sampling of his students. He asked them what was important to them as sons and daughters of their parents. One set of questions focused on issues dealing with marraige and choice of marraige partner, and the other set of questions dealt with what kind of values concerning their mother and father are important to them. The combined results were astonishing. The result said that most Vietnamese teenagers would not marry a person if they did not have their parent's consent to. The results also said that the values most important to the Vietnamese youth are filial piety and excellence in their studies. The bottom line was that even though this was the new Vietnam, the free Vietnam, the youth of the country was still strictly obedient and subservient to their elders, especially their parents.

Dr. van Dieu went on to talk about what freedom was in the modern Vietnam. Previously, every marraige was arranged. Children were expected to be obedient at all times. Now, children are allowed to be as independant as they want to be, and make their own decisions about love and marraige. The question that was so puzzling to me was this: What prevented these teenagers from wanting to exercise every freedom that was handed to them by the new and free Vietnam? The answer was simple. As, Dr. van Dieu explained, Vietnam is not free, and neither is anyplace else.

The purest form of freedom, Dr. van Dieu said, was an empty room. In an empty room, when noone is watching, you are free to do whatever you want whenever you please. However, when somebody else is in the room with you, you have to share your freedom. You are no longer free. You are a slave to the collective freedom that rules over both people in the room. When one really thinks about it, love and responsibilities are not freedom, even though a person is free to fall in love and accept responsibility as he pleases. Obedience is not freedom, and neither is gratitude. Freedom is anarchy and lawlessness, and we humans live in a lawful society. We are not free, we are bound by the context of the law, our families and loved ones, and even our very emotions.

So, what does this mean for education and society? To us educators, the answer is clear. We are preparing every child in that classroom for lives of constant law. However, our American culture highly values the creativity in every child. The real question is this: Where is the line between creative deviance and the law? In our bill of rights, it clearly states that we are free to speak freely, yet, to use a classic example, it is unlawful to yell "Fire" in a movie theatre. Do we teach children to challenge authority to let their true creativity come alive, or do we teach them that the rules are there for a reason, and that they must be followed. From what I gathered from our wonderful presentation, the Vietnamese don't think of this issue as pertaining to law, but more concerning ethics. Why does one obey their parents? Because it is right to. On the very same train of thought, who teaches the child what is right and what is wrong? The parents do. Therefore, parents teach their children that obeying them is the right thing to do, and from that point on, expect them to do it, not because the law governs them, but because they do.

As we educators go out into the world, we must think about how we use our freedom. Do we choose to follow the law, or are we constrained by it? Do we push the envelope of our freedom or do we play by the strict rules already in place. This can only be decided on an individual basis. As for this editorial source, I choose to act based on whether or not my actions are right, and not on whether or not my actions are lawful. I choose not to live in a place that makes me follow a law that I do not believe in. That is a freedom that no law can take away.

David Dunlap Scribbles a Dot

Last night, I decided to attend a lecture in the atrium of Luther College's Center for the Arts given by guest artist, David Dunlap. Dr. Dunlap is best known for his bizarre artwork, art materials, and art galleries ranging from topics such as Martin Luther King Junior, the common walnut, anchors, swastikas, beer that supports tyrants, underwear to be worn in tandem, and an exploration of what exactly it means to be 'obscene'. However, this lecture was started in a very simple way. Dr. Dunlap took a small notebook out from his pocket, a Bic four-color pen from his shirt, and scribbled a sizable black dot on an empty white sheet. He explained, after he numbered and dated this black dot, that the process of drawing this dot was soothing for him, and that he has notebooks filled with such collections of dots.

It was at this point of the lecture that I became skeptical of this man. What does a scribbled black dot have to do with art? As he continued to speak, it came to me. To David Dunlap, this dot of ink on his small notebook was the most basic unit of art. It is the most basic of subjects, and is nearly impossible to draw incorrectly. Of course it would be soothing to go back to the very beginnings of what art is at it's very base.

Being a music education major, I could not just leave this explanation alone. I pried into my own mind to discover my own thoughts about my own field. What is the most basic unit of education? Is it the lecture? Is it the spoken word or the gesture? For me, the answer was clear. The thing that an educator can go back to over and over again and embrace to remind himself why he does this job is his passion. Much like Dr. Dunlap and his strange dot, the passion for education can be inconceivable to the outside observer. They are confounded, and scratch their heads wondering what in the world could keep a person doing a job so difficult and demanding. One has to be fully immersed in the respective professions and truly determined to make an impression on the student or the viewer.

Dr. Dunlap may have been speaking about a field that I did not fully understand. However, I could relate to much of what he spoke about. We all push the boundaries of our own professions. We test our limits, and some ideas succeed while others do not. No matter what happens, we each have a method of recharging our batteries. We go back to the very beginning and we remind ourselves why we got into the job in the first place. For some artists, like Dr. Dunlap, it is the creation of art, no matter how simple. For some educators, it is the reminder that one small step forward is a success, and that they would do anything for that step. This steady march of learning is what reminds educators how much they love their job.