We teach who we are.

Tyrone Howard, a profoundly inspirational educator and speaker presented about teaching in urban schools and closing the achievement gap. I saw him when I first attended NHA training in Grand Rapids and his story and presentation was moving. He combined terrifying statistics with exemplary stories to validate the seriousness of race and education.

“A big challenge today in education is that people don’t realize that teaching is an intellectual exercise. It is a highly complex endeavor and it tends to be marginalized because people think that anyone can teach,” said Howard. “It is a challenging and physically, emotionally, and financially exhausting career.”

One of the great scenarios he provided included a hypothetical classroom comprised of just 30 students. If you could take the data of the 50+million students in the United States and represented the entire national student body with one classroom, it would look like this:

-12 students are poor
-3 live in extreme poverty (in a home of less than 20K a year)
-10 are non-white
-10 are non-native English speakers
-1 is homeless
-6 will move 4 times before they finish school
-7 are victims of abuse, though for each reported case, experts purport another case in unreported

As the old saying goes, facts don't lie. We no longer can teach the way our parents learned, or even how I learned. In order to become better teachers, our teachers have to learn how to make school relevant. We can't assume they will be interested and engaged the same way we were. A smarter man once said, "students start out in life as question marks and end up as periods." We are selling our students short and turning them into spectators and allowing there to be an end point in their education.

Learning has to be about asking and not answering.

As a elementary teacher in Compton, where Howard grew up, he instilled the important of college at an early age, calling Ivy League schools to send his students catalogs and packets without his students knowing. In the digital age, young people love getting things in the mail as it is unfortunately a rare occurrence. The students, impressed that the schools sought them out, would bring their packets to school and show the photos to Mr. Howard. Once, Mr. Howard saw a young student visibly upset and upon asking why, the child answered that he did not do well on his test and he was afraid Yale might find out.

This sort of story should not be extraordinary. This is what we need to be ordinary - we need this happening at every school.




Here is a great short documentary about race and education.

New Holland Charkoota Rye

New Holland Charkoota Rye Smoked Dopplebock Lager
19° Plato, Alc. 7.75% by Vol.
Overall: B+

Only the second of two smoked beers I have tried, I've been contemplating Charkoota for a while, hesitant to purchase it as it seems rather intense, as the name implies.

Serving type: 22 oz. bottle, about $7.00
Appearance: Very dark amber with a thing, quickly dissipating head.

Smell: Strong smoke scent up front with wood scents and a slightly sweet trail almost like caramel - a smoked meat fragrance is also apparent.

Taste: The smoke flavor is evident and immediate. The smokiness is strong, far stronger than the other smoked beer I've had, but not overbearing. The initial punch is accompanied with complex flavors as the rye and roasted malt characters follow. A slightly sweet tinge is evident in this beer, but the finish seems to be more of a less sweetened, almost bitter molasses.

Mouth: Medium carbonation - don't expect a head to last half a glass. Charkoota feels smooth, and its complex and heavy flavors definitely coat your mouth and throat, leaving a lasting effect.

Drinkability/Overall - I really enjoyed this beer and is the best if only the second smoked beer I've had. Most people I assume would characterize this beer as astringent and far too powerful in the palate, but I enjoy its blends of flavors, especially the rye, malt, and molasses tones. This beer would probably be best enjoyed paired with greatly prepared meals, opposed to other beers before or after. With the smoked flavor, smoked meats of course would be a great selection, though being a vegetarian I opted to accompany this lager with a few slices of dark pumpernickel bread. Perhaps if I have it again, a reuben sandwich would be a good selection. Given my penchant for trying new beers, although I enjoyed this, I will probably try others before I purchase this again.

A Cautionary Tale

Brad Land - Goat
3 out of 4 stars

At IU I had a class called Teaching in a Pluralistic Society, designed ostensibly to prepare student teachers for confronting and engaging students of all and any gender, religion, race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. The main assignment was to research a group we felt “resistance toward” and research said cultural enclave, in hopes to break down our assumptions. Common groups selected were gay and lesbian students, Muslims, and so forth. I had trouble finding, or as I see now, admitting, a group I felt intolerant of and ultimately chose Jews, simply to learn more about their history and practices.

Of course, I should have chosen frat guys.

A few weeks back, right around the end of the school year, I read Brad Land’s college memoir, strangely entitled Goat. Donning an illustration of a goat head reminiscent of the best or worst metal band album covers, the book caught my eye about six years ago while perusing a book store.

The jacket introduces the book as a recounting of Land’s pledge into a fraternity in South Carolina. Written in an erratic, fragmented, and urgent style, the prose is more emotional than lavish and reads like the diary of a person unwillingly living through a Brett Easton Ellis novel. Land’s experience with violence, even before his pledge, sets the pace for unsettling and disturbing events later to come.

Fearing interaction and intimacy with anyone except his brother, Brad, like so many others, pledges simply because he feels it is the right thing to do. With emotional abuse and manipulation which rivals the physical maltreatment, Brad’s time at Clemson is more about fear and survival than education and growth. His ever complex, waxing and waning relationship with his brother propels the narrative and the reader down a chaotic spiral. And although the connection with the book’s title was not as disturbing as I had anticipated, it is dehumanizing and graphic in the way film’s cut away from unsettling images.

Pledges are treated like anything but brothers, required to wait on their upper classmen hand and foot, beaten physically, forced to consume dangerous amounts of alcohol, and ridiculed for any imaginary offense possible.

Of course, this book didn’t assuage my apprehension toward Greek life – in which social power and authority dictate – but in the end, how different is that from the rest of the world? I am sure there exemplary fraternities and sororities that have contributed greatly to their community, but the label of Greek isn’t compulsory with social work.

Ultimately, what is needed is greater prudence on the part of incoming college students and stark investigations and consequences by universities.

One Amazon reviewer disagreed, stating “This book is about a pledge that couldn't cut it. I am sorry the author suffered through what he did in the beginning of the book, but I am sick of people whining about how terrible hazing is. Hazing is the only way fraternities can keep out the guys who aren't serious about joining.”

I am not sure if this reviewer understands the word sorry, considering the subject line of his synopsis is Weak kid, weak book. Blaming a victim is hardly sympathetic. This is just another example of “the ends justify the means” and for many, apparently this tradition is worth human suffering.

Hulu has a documentary up called Haze, which I’ve yet to watch though plan to over my break.

Young Man Blues

Thank you Modern Life is War.

I'm walkin' past liquor stores and immigrant homes...
Check into cash...
And men with eyes like ghosts.
As boys we were taught to dream in stacks and rows...
Cause to dream any bigger is to dig yourself a hole...
One bigger than you're already in from the moment your life begins.
I'm soaked to the bone at Lawson Arms at 3 a.m.
This cold world has convinced me to betray myself again.
Some faceless men.
Shivering.
Betrayal.
I am one of them.
Never again.
I feel the loneliness of the long distance runner now.
This sterility is rotting me out.
Can't live in service.
I'm dropping out.
Dropping out of tomorrow morning's white washed suburban schemes.
Billboard Masturbation:
Satisfaction Guaranteed.
I am the 4 a.m.
Arcade Street white bloodshot witness.
I'm just another kid in the chorus.
An empty street corner prophet.

Grimy hands clawing at the gutter on the eve of letting go of crimes against my soul.
They planted their seed...
But I won't let them...
Won't let them tear through me.
'Cause I'm a real cool killer with a killer blow.
A lock-jawed apprentice to my guts of gold.
Plastic surgery to fit the mold.

They'll get you when you're ugly and you're feeling alone.
In this modern life...
Cheap and disconnected...
Where there is a siege going on and the besieged will be the last to know
That the race we are running is a joke,
And I'm a dropout.
Drop-Out.

The Natural World

"Rediscovering the natural world ought not to be difficult. It ought to be an instinctive act. Not just in random bursts of virtuousness should we be moved to replace our divots. If the Earth felt less like something out there and more like an extension of our bodies, we'd care for it like kin. We'd engage in what German philospher Immanuel Kant called "beautiful acts" rather than "moral acts." We'd pull in the direction of global survivan not because we felt duty-bound to do so but because it felt right and good. At a 1990 conference titled "psychology As If the Whole Earth Mattered" at Harvard University's Center for Psych. and Social Change, panelists concluded, "If the self is expanded to include the natural world, behavior leading to destruction of this world will be experienced as self-destruction." - Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn

A Childhood Suspicion is Remembered

As a kid, I was always weary of those Neighborhood Watch signs, mostly because of the shadowy silhouette is just a little too creepy. Then today while jogging, I remembered why I harbored such disdain for the presumably helpful symbol - because it is Clayface in a stetson hat and overcoat. Be warned.

What's in a name?

Name: Keith
Origin: Gaelic
Meaning: Woods

Name: Gough
Origin: Welsh
Meaning: The name Gough is derived from the Welsh word "coch" which means red. Gough was originally a nicknamed used for a ruddy or red complexioned person, and later became a hereditary surname.
I finally appreciate my name, the Red Woods.

Gough Coat of Arms