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November 26, 2006
You, Too, Can Host A School Assembly
As y'all know, I do love me some of the serendipitous things which show up in Google Ads next to my Gmail account. Attached to a note from an educator friend in Australia was an ad for motivational speakers for school assemblies. Thought about those lately? Me neither, but the Internet has them, and I thought they were worth a quick review.
I have no idea how my own school found their assembly speakers; the Internet was a totally marginal service up through my senior year in high school, so it certainly wasn't that. Perhaps there was some sort of directory which schools received.
But by the time we were in high school, student council got to choose a number of assemblies... which in some cases was a serious mistake. Some wags in my class chose assemblies which were way below our grade level -- the "magical bubble lady" -- or were on otherwise laughable ground -- the woman who warned against cults by showing us a picture of her daughter with her cult-addled boyfriend putting his arm around her. "Note the closed fist," she directed us. That's how we were to know he was creepy. Then there were a couple of dubious performance artists, one of whom had a dance that involved a body condom which creeped us all out.
My fellow students responded with open mockery which continued well after the performers angrily left stage. Honestly, from a performance studies standpoint you could probably prove that school assemblies are doomed to fail. Students seem to view them through the roughest part of the frame of school: it's bound to be boring, out-of-date, pointless, possibly icky and weird, and always, always preachy.
You might hope this had changed since we were kids. Well, check out what's currently on offer:
Activated Storytellers, Shakespeare Shazam! [Photos on site display propeller beanies, floppy hats, bright-colored plaid.]
"A rollickin' introduction to Shakespeare, comparing excerpts from some of his plays to similar scenarios in modern English.
The production places emphasis on positive family relationships.
Shakespeare Shazam! was written especially for Middle School and Junior High students, though it is thoroughly enjoyed by all ages. "
CoolAssemblies.com, Cary Trivanovich, motivational speaker. [Photos on site display excessive mugging.]
"Cary has been a leading youth speaker in America for 25 years, and for good reason: He "kills" with teenage audiences. Cary's popular First Date sketch is known to have students laughing for months, and his facial expression routine draws complete respect. "
World of Rope Jumping [why not just "jumping rope," for christ's sake?!]
"During his visits to Washington, Mark has created excitement among the kids that is hard to describe. They have learned many rope skipping skills from his demonstrations, but more importantly, they have learned the value of leading a healthy lifestyle free of drugs. "
SchoolAssemblies.net, Keith Coast and others. [Website indicates googly-eyed puppets or magicians coquettishly tied up in string or straitjackets may be involved.]
"focuses on issues that every student needs to hear like honesty, respect, obedience, self-esteem, drug abuse, fire safety and reaching for thier dreams. " [Which good pedagogy dictates ought to be all discussed AT THE SAME TIME. "Hey kids! Don'tdocrackdon'ttellwhopperstalknicetoGrandmastopplayingwithmatchesdon'tbesuchahaterandstartplanningforcollegenowbecauseOMG YOU'RE WORTH IT!!!!!!!!1"]
Mindy and the Fun Company [NOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOO! HERE COMES THE FUN COMPANY!!! OH SWEET ANGRY MOTHER OF NOOOOOO!!!! LET'S SKIP SCHOOL THIS FRIDAY AND GO TO THE ARCADE!!!!!]
"Our high-energy, interactive show combines singing, dancing, and comedy while educating children on the importance of Reading, Staying in School, Safety Gear and Precautions, the Dangers of Drugs/Tobacco/Alcohol, cultivating Good Character traits, Family Values, Health/Fitness, Bullying, building Self-Esteem, and more!...Utilizing parodies of popular tunes like "YMCA," "Proud Mary," and "Stayin' Alive," the program relays memorable messages while simultaneously entertaining and involving children and adults alike."
Young Author's Day. [Despite purporting to teach writing, program inexplicably includes mimes.]
"Your students will watch as our performer presents skits, stories, and sketches which will include many familiar presentations using ropes, walls, ladders, apples, birds, and flowers. Even the modern day "moon walk" is demonstrated."
Dare to Dance
"Learn today's dances in a high energy and fun-filled atmosphere! Whether it's funk, disco or line dancing, students will be surprised at what they can do." [The Internet wasn't even available to the general public in the early '80s, so these performers can't possibly offer the excuse that their websites are simply out of date...]
Commandos USA
"Billy's has a very strong belief that Biblical values are not suggestions, rather solid mandates that assure some degree of civility and success in our culture. "These are the values that our founding fathers put in place that has allowed the United States Of America to be the symbol of freedom throughout the world.
His physical accomplishments include winning the Silver Medal at the Texas State Olympic Weightlifting Championships. He bench presses 480 pounds, squats and dead lifts over 600 pounds and can arm curl 225 pounds for twenty reps!... He has ripped nearly 5,000 telephone books in half. and has crushed a 10 foot wall of ice with one mighty forearm smash!"
[Billy's also has a very strong belief that punctuation, grammar, and spelling are not "solid mandates," apparently.]
You Can Run But You Cannot Hide. [Graphics include Photoshop metallics, flames, tour buses, handwritten Flash-animated links.]
"Today, there's no denying the existence of an ever-widening generation gap between parents and their kids. What began in the 60's with flowers, bellbottoms, and the Beatles, has mushroomed into an epidemic of abortion, drugs, and children being guided by the moral philosophies of bands like Marilyn Manson. Where will it all end? How can a nation's youth, driven by an insatiable thirst for rebellion, understand the value and beauty of the moral absolutes on which their country was founded? ... In a world where morality, purity and modesty are quickly becoming a thing of the past, the VIRTUE class is designed to cover issues that all girls will have to face at one time or another. Using humor, analogies, personal experience and more, we are able to speak to the heart of each girl about these important choices and give hope to those who have already made poor decisions. "
Michael Karpovich. [Website is a rambling colossus of tickertapes and repeating GIFs which takes about half an hour to load.]
"You can host a program for your high school students, your middle school students (Becoming the Best Generation), your elementary school students (Positive Peer Pressure), your "at-risk" students (Never Let it Get the Best of Me!), and your student leaders (Contagious Leadership) -- all during the same day!... Whether he is speaking about substance abuse prevention, student leadership, self-esteem or his most popular topic -- resiliency skills… Michael’s message will make a difference. His programs will change the entire student body and its school environment. Wouldn’t it be great if kids were nicer to each other?!"
Boy howdy yes, but wouldn't it be more likely that they would be if they weren't stuck in a chair developing pent-up aggression while being preached to by clowns for an hour every Friday?
* * *
Just think... all their booking information is available right there on the Internet. I wonder if any of them need proof you're actually inviting them to a school?
Hmm... What ELSE could you put in that deep, dark hole? --Shel Silverstein
Posted by me at 11:05 PM | Comments (3)
November 22, 2006
Chillin' With The Bear
Absolutely the best part of being in a school of education is the giant stuffed bear in the library which you can sit on when you read. Here's a picture of me and the bear. I am probably procrastinating from reading some descendant of continental philosophy in this picture. See, these worlds don't have to be so distinct from each other...
Posted by me at 2:11 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2006
Big Year For Publishing!
I've got yet another publishing milestone to my name this year: my first academic book review is up on the Teachers College Record website. It's a review of Ian Bogost's book Unit Operations. The review is only up on the site for free for a week before it goes to members only, so don't put this off til next week if you can't make time now!
Unit Operations is one of the first approaches to video game theory I've seen which takes computation into account. As a result, I think it's quite valuable. The book is very theory-heavy, but if you're into that stuff -- or into comp lit, which is Bogost's background -- it's a worthwhile read.
I should note I genuinely need to thank the TCR editors for putting the review up again -- I didn't figure out when it was up the first time, but they reopened it and put it back on the front page when I noted I hadn't managed to point the article out to people! Very, very gracious of them. Thanks!
* * *
Late addenda: First, what a day -- I also got notice I had a paper based on my Masters' thesis accepted to AERA, the biggest education conference in the US, and was invited to contribute a chapter on DDR to a book! Lest you start snarling about me getting more than I deserve, please note that a number of my peers in the TC program started hitting these milestones earlier in their careers, so I'm actually a late bloomer by department standards...
Second, another thought on Ian's book. In Unit Operations, he suggests the phenomenon of "simulation fever," drawing on Derrida's "archive fever," with which I'm not familiar. Simulation fever is supposed to encompass users' reactions to simulations. Drawing on studies of people who use simulation software (among them, government agents working with complex disaster and economic simulations, etc) Ian cites two common attitudes. One is to dismiss the simulations as inaccurate, and refuse to use them. Another is to basically say "well, this simulation is flawed, but it's the best tool we have to understand the situation." (I personally think we need to account for other attitudes, particularly those of uninformed acceptance, but we'll get there at some point.)
It occurred to me tonight that these two attitudes are kind of like quantitative and qualitative approaches to knowledge. The qualitative phenomenologist, in the extreme, succumbs to the view that any simulation we make of human behavior will be near-fatally incomplete. From there, he or she tries to tell the story as accurately and comprehensively as possible, allowing often as to the limitations of his or her perspective. Meanwhile, the quantitative empiricist tries to make the best model possible, outlining the potential weak points of his or her data wherever possible, but still insisting some knowledge can be gleaned from it.
Maybe I'm still too naive to really understand these epistemologies, but it feels similar....
Posted by me at 6:35 PM | Comments (1)
November 13, 2006
Certifiable!
So, following up on my post about the certification exam, I am now partly certified to begin the doctoral process at TC! I got my letter saying I passed the exam, and the faculty who read my paper went out of their way to tell me they thought it went quite well. So now I am partly certified to comment on and/or teach about all this crap. Remaining steps for certification include doing a pilot study for my dissertation and turning in my doctoral study plan.
Then I can do my dissertation, whose soft theoretical underbelly I've taken a few perfunctory stabs at. For those of you wondering about timeline, hopefully this won't take me more than another year and a half, knock wood. My funding runs out at the end of spring semester, I think :(
Standing in my way are a number of other unfinished research projects -- one on Civilization and Sim City players, whose core questions are a little up in the air at the moment, as we had some problems getting data; the other is the lower-and-upperclass kids and their gameplay comparison study I'm doing for an M.Ed., which is almost done. I think I'm going to be able to get a lot of mileage out of that one -- it goes distinctly counter to some of the key hypotheses about gaming and literacy practices, and I have a lot of data about things ranging from gender to kids' conceptions of violence in games.
Yeeeeaaah. So, writing ABOUT this is much more appealing than actually working. Get back to work, Andrews...
Posted by me at 11:27 AM | Comments (3)
November 4, 2006
Statistically improbable phrases in Riddley Walker
yellerboy stoan, cud feal, wernt nothing, divvy roof, sharna pax, fools circel, littl eyes, unner neath, wer stil, ben jus, girt big thing, littl man, broakin stoans, chard coal, littl salting, putcha putcha, sarvering gallack seas, wer thinking, arga warga, girt dants, hard clof, stoan trees, woal lot, ist connexion, woal thing
Posted by me at 2:26 PM | Comments (2)