Conseil de Classe (pt. 1)

Yesterday evening I went to a “conseil de classe” at the middle school. It’s a meeting that takes place at the end of each trimester, in both the high school and middle school, and is a central part of the French education system.

Eight teachers, two parents, two students, a guidance counselor, and an administrator met for roughly an hour and a half to discuss the grades, classroom behavior, progress, and overall state of each student in a group of 28. Like the “clusters” I had in middle school, the school separates students into multiple groups within each grade.

Ideally, the teachers include each educator that the group of students has. The two students are elected representatives who take notes and serve as liaisons between their peers and the “conseil de classe.” Parent representatives serve the same role, talking with other parents, and come as volunteers.

Because teachers had already submitted grades for the trimester, the principal used a laptop and projector to show each student’s results. The representation of grades via bar graph allowed him to compare the grades to the class average and the student’s results from the previous trimester.

Beaten to the (glancing) Punch

My seven-year sweetheart brought this article to my attention, prompting the following letter to the editor at the New Yorker:

Joan Acocella’s question, “Why Do Vampires Still Thrill?” leads her through the transformation of the vampire’s portrayal, from “grotesque creatures” in Eastern Europe to a “handsome revenant” in Louisiana. Acocella also mentions the many modern analyses of vampire stories, specifically Stoker’s “Dracula,” and their prevalent focus on sex. She does not, however, give much attention to the religious origins of the vampire –a curse from God for severe sinners – or the role of religion in following vampire stories. I wonder if Acocella or other vampire scholars have considered the vampire’s change from repulsive curse to sex symbol – look at the modern actors and actresses who have played vampire roles – as indicative of a shift in cultural beliefs, specifically from religious to secular. Eternity on earth when there’s no promise of heaven.

Subtleties

Last week I told both of my 4ieme classes (French equivalent of 7th graders) to work in groups of four and create sketches. One of the scenarios I assigned is "Teacher talks with a student," and I suggested they discuss a recent exam grade, or something like that. Here's what one group came up with, performed yesterday:

"Teacher" : Hello Johnny.

"Student" : Hello Mr. Bean.

T: Can I talk with you?

S: Yes. When?

T: Now.

S: OK.

"Student" sits down, "Teacher" stays standing.

T: You're a loser.



That's it. I once heard that French is the language of diplomacy because one can say many words without saying much of anything, so I guess this is what happens when you translate - or distill - from French to English.

Education (Complete First Draft)

The children sat on the thin rug, its neatly gridded town map covered by their squirming circle. “And so Juan decided to try finding the wind.” Ms. Daniel, with the memory of her third grade teacher doing the same, slowly swept the illustration in front of her students. She kept the open book facing them as she read the next page. With a tilt of the head, her eyes could flicker between the words and their audience.

“Who thinks they know what happens next?” Geoff let go of the marker basket on the shelf, swiveled on his knees, and grasped Katie’s shoulder as he leaned forward to get his free hand as close to Ms. Daniel’s face as allowed. Katie gave in to his weight. His volunteer hand waved closer. “Geoff, please stay seated.”

The children waited on the thin rug, its toy town print the same as their classroom’s. “And so Ms. Daniel’s class will be our guests until lunchtime.” Ms. King’s class, having done this before, welcomed their guests in unison. They pretended not to hear the noise in the next room over. With nervous flicks of the eyes, the children waited for the teacher’s reassurance.

“It’s because of me.” Katie looked down at the carpet, confessing to a best friend, thinking that if she had held Geoff up none of this would be happening. Geoff pounded on the other side of the wall. She squeezed the tears in. “Katie, it’s okay.”

The teachers sat at the classroom table, its height forcing them to turn their knees to one side. “And so I don’t see why a boy like Geoff should be in this school.” Ms. Daniel, with her head lowered while Ms. Penn talked, nervously shifted a tomato in her salad. She kept her eyes down as Ms. Mole told all she’d heard about Geoff’s family. Without looking up, she could imagine the looks on the other teachers’ faces.

“Who knows what goes on in that boy’s head.” Ms. Daniel stood up from the table, avoiding eye contact with the teacher who’d just spoken, and walked to the almost familiar reading area. Another teacher coughed. She approached the window. “Well, I hope the rest of them are alright.”

The children flowed and clustered in the playground, its openness daunting and liberating. “And so please have Geoff be okay.” Katie, standing on the tree’s rolling roots, watched its fallen leaves sweep off the ground and spiral into the air by the enclosed corner where the school walls met. She imagined God’s finger stirring the leaves to their twirl. Without looking down, she walked off the roots towards the rising swirl.

“It’s not your turn!” Katie passed her classmates on the swingset, traced her fingers in the gaps between the wall’s bricks, and sharply inhaled as she neared the turning leaves. The wind cut and the cyclone fell. She noticed a discarded wrapper. “Mr. Joseph, he’s not waiting his turn.”

The teachers went into the room, its construction paper projects ripped from the walls and tiny chairs upturned. “And so I appreciate it but you don’t have to help.” Ms. Daniel, her lips pursing as she swept her eyes along the room, tried to remember the order that she’d created in the class. She rearranged desks while making her way to the reading rug. With the market basket in hand, she noticed a scribbling on the wall.

“God, that boy sure made a mess.” The teachers stood by Ms. Daniel, eyeing the room and each other, and shook their heads as they squinted to make out the scribbled writing. They decided it was nonsense and started to turn to the scattered books and markers. Ms. Daniel cleared her throat. “I want my momma.”

Sexy Curses: Part 3

True Blood’s lead vampire, Bill, grudgingly works to accept his vampire existence. His main source of suffering, one that often comes up in modern stories of vampires, is the complete solitude he faces. Seeing his family and friends age and die while he remains undead. And this solitude exists for the original vampire as well – having to live eternally, not only without the love of one’s family but as a source of terror for them. Yet the cultural view of solitude, the tortured individual, has changed.

As the great Greek philosophers found in Dante’s first circle of hell, Limbo, explain, their sole punishment in Hell is separation from God. To some modern readers, Limbo doesn’t sound like hell. But Dante’s culture valued God’s presence as the singular reason for existence. A vampire must live eternally not only without God’s presence, but without one of God’s greatest gifts: free will. The punishment fits the crime: by misusing God’s gift of free will in life – choosing to sin – the vampire is without it in eternal undeath. That is why feeds on its family and friends, in complete solitude, separated from God…

Sexy Curses: Part 2

...An Upir, the name for vampires in Romanian folklore, was God’s curse reserved for heavy sinners. After death, the person would rise from the grave and return home to feast on their loved ones. The amount of time between death and rising depended on the severity of the sin - a witch would become a vampire almost immediately, the un-baptized child becomes a vampire seven years after its death. The vampire had no free will. Though many people are attracted to, or at least intrigued by, dark themes, there’s nothing sexy or romantic – in the literary sense – about feeding on one’s family and friends. In fact, the curse of an Upir reminds me of the darkness in Hera’s curse for Hercules, driving him to a rage in which he kills he wife and children.

Just as Hercules has shifted into modern times, namely with Disney’s Hercules and the 90s TV series, the list of modern actors and actresses who played vampire roles includes Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Aaliyah, and Kate Beckinsale. Twilight’s lead vampire could (or has, for all I know) make the cover of teen magazines worldwide. High school goths daydream about becoming vampires. Even Stoker’s Dracula, 111 years old, gets literary critics excited by the symbolism of sexuality and seduction in Victorian society. So how did the vampire go from the most revolting curse to a mainstream symbol of dark seduction?...

Sexy Curses: Part 1

A couple of weeks ago I finished the first season of “True Blood.” It didn’t take me long, watching an episode a night, and after the finale I missed having evenings with the supernatural. I then watched season one of “Deadwood,” but its gritty and often grim depiction of life only accentuated my need for otherworldly elements. At the same time my two younger sisters also got into the vampire scene with the release of the movie “Twilight.” In thinking about why this brand of the supernatural appeals to us, I remembered an essay I wrote during college about the symbolism of vampires.

My thesis, vague as it is, argued that in Mikhael Lermontov’s novella, A Hero Of Our Time, the narrator’s comparing himself to a vampire has different implications in the context of the Lermontov’s time period than in the context of my/our time period. The symbol of the vampire shifts between 1839, the novella’s publication date (Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897), and 2004, my essay’s “publication” date. In the essay I focused on how an understanding of the 1839 vampire gives a 2004 American reader a new understanding of the narrator’s self understanding. Upon recently rereading the essay, however, I began to wonder if this shift in vampire symbolism could give insight beyond the analysis of a nearly 170-year-old Russian novella...

Poetry Pals

With much appreciated help, I've worked on a previously posted poem and have it to the point of almost satisfaction. It goes as follows:

Grasp

These gassy ideas
shift and search,
wisp along my mind,

could mean anything to anyone,
or nothing to no one,
like animals in the clouds.

I need tidy oceans,
deep and powerful,
to sail for uncharted lands.

Even a passing shower,
palpable, nourishing,
some liquid to sate this thirst.

Better yet: concrete,
solid and steady,
supporting others’ weight.

Maybe a pebble
to toss at your head -
something you could feel.

-spk

Grappling

Last week I started Judo classes. I’d been antsy for some kind of physical activity since I got to France, and I wanted experience with a new martial art too. Perfect. The knuckles on a couple of my fingers got skinned – not sure if it was from rolling on the mat or gripping someone’s gi. I got a couple of bruises on my chest too. My body’s sore, but in a satisfying way.

So far I have basically no idea what I’m doing, and from what I gather Judo’s a technical sport. The main thing I’m trying to work on in these early days is staying relaxed. Fluid. It’s something I strived for in boxing too. Keeping loose, while moving with speed and strength when the timing’s right. Fighting the instinct to tense up. Or rewiring the instincts. Mentally I understand what I need to do, but then it’s transferring that to the physical.

That state of relaxation with speed and strength – speed and strength coming from relaxation, even – transfers beyond boxing and judo. It’s the same as being “cool under fire.” Keeping the mind open to all possibilities and solutions even when the stress of the situation makes us want to shut down. Talking about it as liquid reminds me of the Tao, too. Or good teachers who have that intangible “presence” in the classroom – poised while passionate.

When I started learning classical guitar my teacher would often remind me to relax. If the hands are tense they move slower. And when I would practice sheet reading I’d enter tunnel vision if I started to stress. Thinking about it, though, didn’t seem to make the difference. In all of these examples, the main solution is experience. Practice. But is that the only means to this presence of mind? Or does some of it come a priori?

Spread Out the Speed

One day, as I read Scientific American while eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese, I thought of creating a new version of chess. Since the current version only uses x and y axes, two dimensions, why not add a z axis? You know, like up and down. I started thinking of plastic cubes and intricate magnet wands to move the pieces.

Turns out my idea for 3D chess didn’t break any ground. Mathematicians have already gone beyond 3D and 4D versions of the game, or at least that’s what I hear. Still, I came upon the idea on my own. That makes me an original imitator. And really, accounting for time as a dimension, my chess would be 4D.

Now hold on. If I think of time as a dimension, don’t we imagine only one axis on which motion occurs in one direction? Obviously we can think of going back in time, as Michael J. Fox brilliantly portrayed, but what about going up or down in time? Side to side?

Nevermind. What’s important is that I learned something new last night. Reading Briane Greene’s explanation of Special Relativity, it turns out all objects move at a fixed speed – the speed of light – but that motion divides into the four dimensions. Like, right now I’m going at a certain speed through time while also moving at certain speeds in the spatial dimensions.

If I managed to move at something close to light speed in one of the spatial dimensions, the speed at which I move through time would decrease proportionally. The total speed remains constant. That’s theoretical physics’ time travel: go super fast and you will live eight years while others live sixty. Jump into their future.

But does this connect with the motion of our minds? Do all people have a fixed speed that their consciousness moves at, which is then divided into varying “directions”? Or do we start at different speeds? Can we level up?

I’m thinking of the “Create a Character” mode in video games. You get a certain amount of points – say, twenty – which you divide into the character’s different abilities. I put ten into speed, three into balance, five into strength, and two into stamina. Or ten into processing, three into communication, five into confidence, and two into focus.