andrewandsamantha

new blog!

2011-12-26T08:25:00.002-05:00

in preparation for a different new thing that's happening tomorrow (hope hope), we're moving "School|Life" over to a new home.

if you're used to this blog already, you can keep coming here for more news about our family. but we've built a cool new blog for the project all by itself: schoolife.com.

visit! join! comment! (thank you!)

and happy holidays to everyone!

ps. schoolife.com !!!!!!

mic'd up! (schoolife 5)

2011-12-25T08:56:00.000-05:00

when i first thought about our project, i though about video and pictures and images of our students and teachers. i thought about personal and public moments that could show our subjects crossing and passing. that could show their excitement or anger or sadness in the bodies and faces.

i feel like radio is a little harder that way. for example, you can't show characters or connections in the same way. believe it or not, you can see silence more easily than you can hear it. you can hear direct
silence: one person asks a question and there is no answer. but how can you hear a distant student tuning out? how do you hear the long spaces of silence in our full day?

our sound (and how we develop our sound) is the thing. we've been trying to research and test different
equipment that will give us a strong, quality sound that reflects our authentic environment and is consistent across subjects and situations.

to help test our sound, i've recorded my own life the past few days. i'm definitely down for the project. still, you notice how things are different. how the sound is different on microphones and speakers than it is in our ears. how you're different, too.

you're much more aware of what you say, at times. for sure, you forget a lot, and most conversations are mostly natural. but you can see, still, that you make subtle choices in language that are different.

i have to be more aware, i guess. in ways, i think that's good. it reminds me to be better than i am. it's like a student teacher in that way. because i know that i have to lead another teacher, i try to sharpen my ideas and my lessons. i make all of my choices, but i know that the presence of a student teacher helps me make better choices.

although, it also reminds me that it's artificial. i mean, it's not a completely authentic account of what every day is like.

of course, there is no everyday either, right?

radio writing process (schoolife #4)

2011-12-24T16:52:00.000-05:00

as we're developing the show, we'll try to keep you updated on our process. check back frequently to see what we're up to. we're hoping we can gain a small following as we're going along.

we always talk with our students about process, and we thought it might be helpful to make our process transparent. we'll open our ideas to you, and we hope that you'll open your ideas to us!

here are some things that we're thinking about as we're thinking about the content and structure of the show:

1) what does our editing look like?

in my dreams, i'd love to produce the complete tape . min, though, thinks that might be tiresome for listeners. still, as much as possible, i'd like to edit as lightly as possible. i know that we're going to have to make choices, though, so i'll just try to be honest and upfront as we're making our choices.

2) we want to show longer narrative moments.

we feel like reality television shows are so heavily edited that they really become scripted. the shows pursue singular storylines and encourage out-sized conflict and drama. our goal is to develop complicated, dynamic, and subtle characters and stories like novels, with longer essential moments that play out over time.

3) we want our subjects to have voice.

our goal is to show the real lives of students, teachers, and families. we have decided that there will be no third person narration. the subjects' voices will drive the complete story. as much as possible, we will mic subjects and locations directly. we will try to avoid intensive productions on location because supplemental crew and equipment will always alter and interrupt natural interaction.

4) everything is context.

we cannot possibly, truly show the full lives of students and teachers. the series will show one presentation of infinite possible presentations of several subjects within hundreds of other subjects. we cannot claim any concrete conclusion about education or education reform. our goal is to simply broaden our conversation about education. we hope to make some students and some teachers more real for listeners.

5) who will our subjects be?

we want to find an urban public school with a diverse population. we hope to work in a school that includes students from different class, ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. we do not want to set up a specific policy angle, so we want to avoid schools that may speak to the extremes: charter schools, title I schools, or specialized schools.

in our current vision, we hope to find 2-3 students and 1 teacher. ideally, the subjects will be communicative but different. (of course, these ideas - about the school and about the students - already start to bias the production.)

6) how will we fund and manage production?

we can produce the show at different levels of cost. each higher expense will increase production value, but how much money is it realistic for us to raise? we think we've got a pretty cool idea. . . but who else will value it? and for how much?

we're thinking about a few different ideas for now:

angel investors (maybe you?)
agency or broadcast sponsorship (arts organization, public radio, others)
independent funding (kickstarter)
independent funding (credit cards)

our treatment (schoolife #3)

2011-12-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

Schoolife

Schoolsoften fail our students and families. Thereare too many communities without strong, stable public schools, and there aretoo many classrooms that do not challenge, engage, and support our children andyoung adults. We agree that outstandingteachers help prepare students to learn and grow. We agree that prepared students learn coreideas and skills that lead to consistent achievement. And we agree that excellent schools helppromote innovative instruction and advanced student learning.

However, education reform is significantly more complicated and complex. There is a wide range of variables thatimpact student readiness, teacher instruction, and school culture. Different ideas and different pathwaysattract and engage students in different ways. Yes, what happens in theclassroom matters. A lot. But what happens outside the classroom cansometimes matter even more.

Schoolife documents the intersecting lives of teachers, students, and familiesinside and outside of school. We willprofile 1-2 6^th-8^th grade teachers and 3-5 6^th-8^thgrade students over one school year. Theseries will present the full life of students and teachers, including documentaryfootage, personal interviews, and background research. We will produce the show in 30-minute longweekly episodes that show natural curves in our subjects’ lives.

Schoolife will track theinfluence of personal, professional, and social relationships on our subjects. Each episode will advance developing storylines, including romantic interests, family dynamics, and classroom learning. Families, students,and teachers live in very different ways. How do our personal experiences andrelationships influence our public lives in school? And how do our schools influence how we liveand learn outside of class?

Schoolife broadens and deepens our conversation on education reform, studentlearning, and school achievement. Wewill show failure and success; hope and struggle; engagement anddistraction. Our goal is not to identifybest practice or scalable reform. Ourgoal is not to demonize or lionize any specific individual or idea. Our only goal is to show a more full, moredetailed, and more complex reality. Toshow a more complete picture of student lives, student learning, and teacherinstruction. To show that our schools,like our lives, are full of challenge, conflict, and meaning.

the idea, so far (schoolife #2)

2011-12-22T21:07:00.001-05:00

it's been fairly easy, so far, to work through our ideas.

my first idea was to make a documentary film to speak back to "waiting for superman". the movie was powerful! but i don't think it told enough of the story. it's not that the facts are wrong. . . it's just that there weren't enough facts.

when i thought about it, though, it seemed like i wouldn't be able to tell the full story of one school year in one documentary. it would require too much simplification. we'd be forced to shape a specific storyline. . . so i thought it might be more powerful if we filmed weekly episodes. i talked with one of my friends, and he explained that the cost to film weekly episodes of whole lives would be astronomical. it would be too much. "the idea was great," he said, "but it might not be possible."

so i explained the idea to min. he said, "you know what? that's perfect! you could do it for radio." ("i don't know if you know," he said, "but that's what i did. i was in music. i went to school for it.")

i know! nobody listens to radio, anymore. i told my students, and i think they thought it sounded like the most boring idea ever. but when i thought about it, it just made sense. it feels like a perfect match. i remembered listening to ghetto life 101 by david isay. it would be perfect! plus, it would be much easier to produce, to get started at all, and a bunch easier to get permissions.

for now, we're thinking through how to do episodes over the year. there are forty weeks in a school year and 180 days. there's a bunch of different options:

1) we do the full monty!
2) we echo morgan spurlock: 30 days
3) we echo ghetto life 101: 10 days
4) we follow a full unit: 6-10 weeks

the key thing is: how much time do we need to record in order to get across the idea? what time frame is able to show enough character complexity and also be realistically possible to record and produce? if you're here, what do you think?

schoolife (#1)

2011-12-22T18:07:00.002-05:00

i'm starting to work on a radio documentary with minkyu kim. our idea is to document the real lives of teachers and students. too often, we speak about education in ways that don't reflect real people: real teachers, real students, and real families. too often, we have policy discussions that disembody our real beliefs, concerns, and hopes.

i don't know how the process is going to go exactly, but i'm going to try and chronicle our process on the blog. i know that i'd enjoy following the process from the ground up, so we'll see how it goes! (who knows? maybe i can use it in my teaching, too?)

our basic idea is to follow 1-2 middle school teacher and 3-5 middle school students for a full school year. we'll have lavalier mics on the students and teachers, and we'll have a field recorder to pick up sound inside the classrooms.

our goal is to show more full context. it won't be possible to show entire days, but we want to avoid cutting up moments and lives too far. we want to find full, larger moments that can tell a story more like a novel. that develop characters in longer moments over time.

workshop method: top ten books

2010-05-31T13:12:00.001-04:00

1) in the middle, nancie atwell

2) teaching reading in middle school, laura robb

3) wondrous words, katie wood ray

4) how's it going (strategic conferencing), carl anderson

5) the reading zone, nancie atwell

6) strategies the work, stephanie harvey

7) thinking through genre, heather lattimer

8) you gotta be the book! (or strategic reading), jeffrey wilhelm

9) the power of grammar, mary ehrenworth

10) minilessons for literature circles, harvey daniels

workshop method: top ten tips

2010-05-19T18:16:00.005-04:00

last year, the new york times reported on a growing movement towards the reading and writing workshop. i thought it was funny at first because we have been teaching workshop for a while now, and so many teachers have started to rebel against workshop because it's now the dominant standard here.

i think the challenge now is that while so many people may have opinions about the workshop method in general, far fewer teachers understand and practice the core principles. i've been working with student teachers the last five years, and these are the top 10 tips and suggestions i give to them.

1) independent reading with a class library.

if you can only choose one thing to start your workshop, so many people agree that you should start with independent reading. traditional instruction focuses on content or new critical readings. however, we know that traditional instruction has failed so many students.

independent reading is based on the belief that students will be more engaged in reading and writing about reading if they are able to choose the books and topics they read and write about. our larger goal is to create lifelong readers who care deeply about the books they read and think about.

this is the single most transformative step for workshop teachers. new instruction focuses on reading skills and strategies, in contrast to specific content or specific readings.

2) architecture of a minilesson.

there are many different ideas and structures that teachers use to develop units and projects and activities. however, if teachers can master the basic workshop minilesson, they can consistently deliver new skills and strategies through effective instruction. this minilesson structure is largely developed and perfected by lucy calkins and the reading and writing project at teachers college.

connection

teaching point

link

guided practice (active engagement)

independent practice

3) workshop structures: models and mentor texts. write with the students: whatever genre they're writing, you should be writing too.

4) workshop structures: reading and writing rubric. the traits of really good readers and writers. readers: stamina, fluency, volume, comprehension, analysis, commitment. writers: ideas, organization, details, fluency, voice, and conventions.

5) workshop structures: conferences. one on one meetings with students. use them to buoy their work, but mostly to figure out what students need individually or what they all need to help make minilessons.

6) workshop structures: small groups. small minilessons in groups of 4 or 5. you can choose who comes or they can choose. this is something that you're noticing in groups of students but not widespread.

7) remember to always only teach things real readers and real writers really do. don't make up stuff because teachers have to teach. don't use jargon and don't use reading or writing skills or strategies that real people don't use.

8) minilessons work on three levels: big ideas, general skills, and specific strategies. the beginning of the unit should focus on larger ideas. as the unit moves on, narrow your teaching points to general skills and onto specific strategies.

writing:
a) big idea: we write poetry from our heart.
b) general skill: we write poems towards specific ideas.
c) specific strategy: we choose words that help emphasize or highlight the specific ideas.

reading:
a) big idea: readers use strategies to help understand our reading. connect, infer, question, visualize, predict, analyze, retell.
b) general skill: readers predict to help follow the story sequence.
c) specific strategy:readers make effective predictions by using specific information they already know: from the genre, from other stories, from this story

9) try out independent writing

10) portfolio assessment

11) plus: read professional books to update your practice!

for sure.

2009-11-26T13:29:00.002-05:00

aviyah is 3 1/2 years old now. yalei is almost 1 1/2 years old. they are still so tiny, but they feel like they're so much bigger to me. sometimes i think about how crazy this whole thing is. i am at a restaurant or at a park or on the sidewalk and i see the crazy things we do from the outside. i see parents making a really really really big deal out of really small things. and i think, what are we really doing?

i'm always afraid that i'm doing something i don't really want to do. i'm always trying to think: is this something i was taught? is this what i really want to say? is this how i really want to say it?

recently, samantha started to ask if i wanted to have a third child. i feel like yes, the answer is yes, but i feel like it's also more complicated than that. it is really really beautiful sometimes, but it's also really really hard. sometimes, i also feel like just lying down on the bed is a really really beautiful thing, too.

no, i mean for real. i mean, big picture and small picture, sometimes, being able to do exactly what you want to do in exactly that moment is so important. i mean that. i know that there is balance, but i sometimes i really also miss being able to live just my own life.

before we had aviyah, we talked about teaching overseas. we were going to apply to be in the peace corps in china. i still feel sad that we weren't able to do that. i feel like there are things that can totally change your life. you are one person, and then you are another. what happens when you do them? what happens when you don't do them?

at the end of the day, i just really want to process and i really want to understand why i really do want to have more children. i feel like people can get caught up in so many races. i just want to know for sure.

learning hebrew 4 (top ten grammar tips)

2009-08-24T13:24:00.022-04:00

people have wildly different views of how hard hebrew is to learn. people who feel hebrew is easy to learn explain that the root system, or basic verb structure, largely organizes grammar and conjugation. however, the language grammar is also very different than romantic or latin languages, so it can be quite difficult to understand what the rules and systems are and exactly how they operate.

for me, it took a little bit of hard work to get started into the language, but once i started to understand some or the really core concepts, i feel like the work started to get easier for me. the things i've listed below are some understandings that i've picked up from speaking and reading and listening over time. i imagine that the ideas aren't totally pure, but i hope they can be helpful if you're trying to find your way. each idea is something that i didn't know at first and then learned to internalize with practice.

(where possible, i've tried to give a brief explanation of what i mean, as well as a link to a useful website to explain further. some explanations are still in draft, and please forgive any spelling errors below. i will fix as soon as i see them and realize (or learn) my mistakes.)

1) gender
in hebrew, all nouns and adjectives are masculine or feminine.

when you describe nouns, you have to conjugate the adjective to match the gender of the noun. it's exactly like you would do in spanish. . . that is, it's backwards from english. generally, a word that ends with a "ה" or with a "ת" will be feminine. all other word endings will generally be masculine. (of course, there are always irregulars.)

red car
car red = מכונית אדומה

black sock
sock black = גרב שחור

2) verb conjugation
you conjugate each verb according to case, tense, and binyan.

we do conjugate our verbs in a rather regular fashion in english, but our verbs also vary according to language of origin. (we've received a mishmash of rules from a mishmash of languages.) in hebrew, you conjugate each verb according to the subject and tense, the same as in english. however, you also learn to understand different rules for different g'zarot, types or forms of the verbs. if each binyan is a building, then the g'zarot are like little rooms of verbs within the buildings.

3) verb system
there are 7 verb "buildings", or binyanim.

each verb (most often) has a 3 letter root, or שורש. you can often apply a different filter to the base root in order to cause different verbs. as you get to understand the binyanim, you start to understand how to adjust verbs for actions someone is performing, actions you are performing to somebody or something else, and actions you perform to yourself. for example:

he is wearing a shirt.
he dresses her in a shirt.
he dresses himself in a shirt.

הוא לובש חולצה.
הוא מלביש אותה בחולצה.
הוא מתלבש את החולצה.

4) "et" and "ה"
a special hebrew word identifies proper or specific nouns.

there is no direct corrolary to the hebrew word "et" in english. you simply have to learn to add it in every time the direct object is a proper or specific noun.

for example:
i do not want the orange stroller.
i do not want "et" the orange stroller.

אני לא רוצה את העגלה הכתומה.
ani lo rotze et ha-agalah ha-k'tuma.

when you have a specific noun to identify, you also place a "ה" before the noun and adjective in order to signify they are joined. (a sentence without the second "ה" will mean something different.)

5) smichut
two nouns join together to form a connected phrase.

in hebrew, when you match two nouns together, you move the "ה" from before the specific noun to between the two nouns. you also change the ending of the first noun and make the second noun (only) plural (when necessary).

feminine smichut:
swimming pool
pool swimming

בריכה + שחייה
בריכת שחייה

masculine smichut:
air temperament (weather)
temperament air

מזג אוויר

masculine plural smichut:
sun glasses
glasses sun

משקפיים + שמש
משקפיי שמש

6) prepositions
individual verbs use specific prepositions.

the specific preposition don't really make sense, although it helps to learn which means what. there can be some intuition when verbs acts towards on upon somebody. however, these can really only be learned by reading or hearing in context and then memorizing. (they are also listed in 501 Hebrew Verbs.)

לראות את
להשתמש ב
לענות ל

7) prepositions decline
the prepositions conjugate according to pronoun case.

when you form sentences, it's important to understand an important hebrew convention: you conjugate prepositions. in english, you would simply add the preposition as an independent word in a sentence. however, when prepositions connect to pronouns, you conjugate the preposition to fit the pronoun case. that is, you or he or she or us or so on. a partial list of included prepositions: of, with, towards, in, from, with, for, on, between, before, after, behind, in front, as, and without.

i am going with | you.
i am going "wiyu".
אני הולך עיתך.

(i have a great document here, but i can't find the original website, and i don't yet know how to link the document to the blog.)

8) imperative
use the future tense to order someone around.

israelis use the future tense as the colloquial imperative. that is, "do this!" there is an actual imperative that is used more in songs, films, and literature. soem words are still used in the imperative, like sit or go, but most are just used in the future tense. (the convention is to add the word בבקשה , or please, when using the future tense.)

ask!
תשאל
תשאלי

eat!
תאוכל
תאוכלי

9a) making nouns.
you can generally make exact nouns from the verb's root.

שמר
שמירה

דיבר
דיבור

התרגש
התרגשות

9b) making adjectives.
you can generally make adjectives from verb conjugation.

9c) making adverbs.
you can sometimes make adverbs from connected adjectives.

10) double negatives.
you say no and the negative verb together.

in formal english, a double negative cancels out the negative and makes a positive idea. however, hebrew requires the use of "no" as well as the negative direct object. it's more like american black english, where you could say something like, "i ain't saying nothing."

I didn't do nothing.

אני לא עסיתי שום דבר.

some extra tips just for free:
(although, strictly speaking, they're all for free, i guess.)

A) pronominal suffixes
you can add declined endings to nouns in order to show possession.

in prayerbook hebrew, you often find changed endings to the same base noun. it is possible to add the possessive noun to the end of the base noun. for example, your bagel becomes something like "bagelyr". this is largely uses only in high hebrew (prayerbooks and literature); however, there are some places where pronominal suffixes are more conventional, including body parts.

(my best suggestion is to wait for a while before you try to learn and add in these endings. they're a bit tricky and using regular possessive pronouns is also completely normal and completely fine.)

B) "ש".
that means that, but it also splits time and tense.

"ש" is used (more often than in hebrew) to split sentences with the word "that". you will start to get a sense over time of when israelis interject the word, but it is often used to split the sentence by verb tense or sentence subject.

xxxx
xxxx

xxxx
xxxx

C) sentence structure
noun + verb? verb + noun?

in hebrew, not all sentences run noun verb, noun verb. some sentences flip the noun and verb (and even the direct object) in order to emphasize the actor or the action and some sentences are simply conventional to flip:

it is raining.
falling (is) rain.
יורד גשם.

D) impersonal sentences.
you're really talking about everybody.

impersonal sentences in english use a singular verb. however, impersonal sentences in hebrew use the masculine plural conjugation and drop any preceding pronoun. it implies something like that everybody is doing something always.

one uses a fork to pick up food.
משתמשים במזלג לתקוע אוכל

E) Cardinal and ordinate numbers.
there are four different sets of numbers: masculine and feminine numbers to count and assign.

when you simply count numbers, you use the feminine set of cardinal numbers to count. however, when you count specific things, you use the specific gender to number those things. for example:

six pencils
שיש אפרונות

six monkeys
שישה קופים

there also are two sets of numbers when you use ordinal numbers to count sets or positions, like races or streets.

sixth place
XXX

8th avenue
שדרה שמינית

F) The Subjunctive.
i would like to . . .

in english, we often use the subjunctive tense in order express a want or wish more politely. for example, when we order food, we might say, "i would like to order. . . ". you make the subjunctive tense in hebrew by adding the correct conjugated past tense form of to be or להיות.

i would like
הייתי רוצה

we would like
היינו רוצים

learning hebrew 2 (program ladder)

2009-08-23T13:46:00.001-04:00

in a previous post, i listed a full collection of hebrew resources i have used. i've tried to update them over time, but i realize that it's just a huge collection of all kinds of different things. below, i tried to organize the list a bit to help identify what can be helpful at which stage. i progressed through all of these programs, so i'm reflecting on my experience and also my best judgment about what can most help you where.

my hebrew is still in progress, but i feel like i've been able to learn a good deal so far. i started really learning when aviyah was about 8 months old, January 2007. as of august 2009, i have almost 900 verbs, 500 adjectives, and a whole mess of other nouns and adverbs. i have a good accent for an american, although israelis often think that i sound french. (now that i think about it, strangers who ask me what language i'm speaking also guess that i'm speaking french.)

i really encourage you to try it out. you really can do it! i was bar mitzvah, so i did have a working knowledge of the hebrew alphabet and i was able to read hebrew from a prayerbook. however, i really knew nothing at all about how to speak or understand any hebrew at all. i always tell the story that on my first adult trip to israel my friend tried to teach me an israeli slang word for cool: סבבה. (which is actually arabic, actually.) and i went around the whole trip screaming: סבה. (which is actually grandfather, actually.) :)

so below, i've listed several major programs and resources listed by level in order to help you plan out a learning program. i hope this helps!

A or א)

Ulpan א
Textbook: עברית שלב א
BYKI Deluxe
Learn HebrewPod (iTunes Podcast)
in Flight Hebrew
topDictionaries (iPhone dictionary)
iFlipr (iPhone flashcard program)

B or ב)

Ulpan ב
Textbook: עברית שלב ב
Rosetta Stone I
Pimsleur I
Bereshit (Easy Hebrew Newspaper)

C or ג)

Ulpan ג
Textbook: עברית שלב ג
Rosetta Stone II
Pimsleur II
Hebrew Podcast (iTunes Podcast)
vocabulearn I
Children's Books
Yanshuf (Easy Hebrew Newspaper)

D or ד)

Ulpan: Advanced Sicha
Textbook: שׁReader - Modern Hebrew Prose and Poetry
Rosetta Stone III
Pimsleur III (Janauary 2010)
Heivenu Shalom
vocabulearn II
Children's Shows (Dora)
Israeli Music

E or ה)

Disney Movies
Disney Books
Young Adult Literature
Sha'ar L'Matchil (Advanced Learning Hebrew Newspaper)

learning hebrew 3 (learning principles)

2009-08-07T12:55:00.005-04:00

at camp this summer, i taught an elective session on learning hebrew. my hebrew is only so so in the bigger picture, and i still make a lot of mistakes. there are things in grammar and conjugation that are really hard to figure out without social context. still, for my situation, i feel like i've been pretty successful trying to learn and apply hebrew in a short amount of time. i try to be honest about my difficulties, and i also try to be honest about the fact that i'm not really really good, yet. i'm still working. . .

i listed the different kinds of resources that i've used to learn hebrew in a separate post. it's so nice now because there are so many different kinds of resources out there. there are professional, research based programs and textbooks, and there are also free and cheap computer-based or ipod-friendly learning programs.

there are so many ways to go, but i've really come to believe that there are core principles to learning the language that are even more important than what resources you use.

1) commit to learn.

this sounds so simple, but it's so important. it's true that i used rosetta stone to learn, or pimsleur or others. still, the programs can't actually make you learn the language. i know that sounds silly, but if you don't work the programs, they really can't work for you. whatever program or book you use to learn hebrew, you have to be really deeply committed to learning every single day. you'll really have to put in the work. i recommend setting aside 30-60 minutes every day to study for at least the first year. to study and practice learning and review learning and to learn new things. i know it sounds like a lot, but i think it's really important.

that's a really big commitment, right. but at the same time, it's really not that easy to learn and internalize a language. it isn't just memorizing words. it's about giving yourself the practice and repetition to really internalize the structure of the language. i always say that if there were a monkey who studied hebrew as much as i do, i'm pretty confident that the monkey would speak hebrew better than i do.

2) learn in context

any program will give you an organized set of vocabulary words that are largely tested and pretty important. at the same time, you should focus on learning words that you want to learn and that you can really commit to using or trying to use in context. i always carried a little scrap of paper with me so i could record a word that i wanted to know. then, i would look the word up when i got back home so i could learn it. if i could use a word in context, i knew that i had so much better of a chance to really own the word. (now, i have a dictionary in my iphone, so i can look up the word in the moment and then email it to myself. it's really helpful!)

3) learn with others.

you really can't learn hebrew in isolation. it's really important to provide context for your learning. can you find a buddy to commit to learning with you? for me, aviyah (and the idea of aviyah) was so important to learning the language because it gave me consistent repetition and real context and purpose. but it doesn't have to be your daughter. is there someone you can write letters or emails to? is there someone you can ask questions to make sure you're understanding something right?is there someone who you can actually talk to (or try to talk to) in hebrew?

4) learn different ways.

they can all work. some people say that this way or that way is better for learning. that may be true in some ways, but they all have their advantages. try to use all different methods to give yourself the best chance at retaining all kinds of stuff. if you recognize the strengths or weaknesses to each method, you can work to use the best practice of each.

for example, flashcards can't help you put words in context, but they can help you process a whole mess of words that you can try to put in context later. or, when you see a flashcard, you can try to place that word in the context of an imaginary conversation with someone else.

5) keep learning.

if you are able to commit to really learning, you will pick up enough language to be functional. however, you'll need to keep going. keep using your old skills as you keep trying new and more challenging ways to move yourself forward. you'll graduate from some early programs and techniques, and you'll need to find more advanced programs and techniques to keep learning! there's so many!

good luck!
בחצלחה!

on the wild

2009-05-03T19:06:00.002-04:00

i just finished watching the sean penn film, into the wild. the book is loosely based on the jon krakauer profile, first published as a series of articles in outsider magazine and then as a book. the story is so crazy poignant, i think, because the tragedy is that he does not live to learn what he ended up learning. the treagedy isn't that he made his mistake, i think. i think it's that he doesn't ever get to learn what he learned from making the mistake that he made.

by all accounts, mccandless was a good soul. an old wind. he was crazy and off the grid in the way we really should be if we were truly sensible. what is this whole thing anyway? what are we really doing anyway? i mean, don't you ever think that this whole thing really is screwed? i mean, we sit in rows and grids of things. i mean, not in actually rows and grids, but our styles, our interests, our friendships, our lives became made into grids and patterns and systems of emotions. anyway, i feel like his sotry call this whole thing. i mean, life is, in some sense, completely wacked.

krakauer also writes how he made a choice to try to conquer the stupidest hardest craziest obstacle he could. he told the story by way of disclaimer because he understood what mccandless set out to do. and i don't think that my trip out west, on my own, is exactly the same. i certainly did not climb the steepest mountain that had not been climbed. i did not set out to sustain myself apart from all society in the wilderness. i did set out to break from myself and from the world, to live, just live and meet experiences on the street that i didn't know about. i stayed at a friend's place for some time before they became also weary of me. but i do connect with what he wanted to do, with who he was, ith who he wanted to be.

the thing i cry most about when i cry about this story is that chris never was able to come back and see that he was crazy and see that he didn't fully understand how big we are and also how much bigger everything else is. that that bigger realy could just end everything else. that we are here, now, but he is not. that people, sometimes, just don't get that chance. that it just ends.

i know that people who know more about the wildnerness think he's more hurtful to the whole sense of wilderness and so on. but i just think there's real simple tragedy in his life. he was a good man. he was different. he wasn't perfect. but he did his thing and he ws only ever trying to be closer to himself, to his wilderness, to who he really was.

krakauer guesses that mccandless died from starvation from eating a misidentified seed. the poisonous seed accelerated starvation but the tragedy isn't just that he starved to deeath. it's not that he just died. in the end, he did come so much closer to himself, to his understanding of the world, to who he was and who he was not. it's not that he's a hero. and it's not that he's a villian.

the true tragedy, i think, is that he was just a young man that wanted to understand the world, to understand himself, and he lost and he lost and he never got to be whoever it is that he really wanted to be. it'sn ot that he was going to sell out. it's not that he wasn't. it's just that the tragedy is that he was on this path to just try to figure out what the real value of this all is anyway after all? what is the real value of this all after everything anyway?

i still wonder. i still wonder, what is the wild? i wonder, could i have gone further into the wild? i wonder, can i still go?

skater tuff

2009-04-28T23:33:00.004-04:00

susim

2009-04-26T19:56:00.002-04:00

pickup artist

2009-04-26T19:38:00.002-04:00

princess bicycle of fort lauderdale, florida

2009-04-26T19:00:00.002-04:00

nadned nadned

2009-04-26T18:35:00.003-04:00

pesach 2009

2009-04-26T18:12:00.001-04:00

bat echat!

2009-04-02T11:12:00.001-04:00

happy birthday yelei! it's your first birthday! you just started to take your first steps yesterday, and you're already getting so big. i have a really bad memory, sweetheart, but i can remember holding you, very new, in front of our family and friends. we held you and we read to you what i hope for you.

i still hope for you only happiness. i hope for you, of course, so many things, but i hope, most of all, that you are happy. i think about it, now, are you happy? i am not so good sometimes with little little kids. i feel like, even more, maybe i have spent a little bit less time with you, too. i'm sorry. i know more and more i have been trying to make sure i'm explaing to aviyah and explaining to you how important you are and how much i love you.

i know it is not important to you now, but sometimes it is hard with more kids. i used to think that i wanted 9 kids. i wanted to have a baseball team i said because there are so many different personalities on a baseball team and you all could be so different. now, though, i think it's a lot harder than that. what position would you be, though?

you're so much different than aviyah. you are your very own little lady. you are independent and peaceful and you also jack all the other kids of their toys when you see them. you even take toys from aviyah and she's so much bigger, but it's like she doesn't know what to do. i am so happy that you are so independent, and i really hope that you like that. i worry, sometimes, that maybe it's because we aren't able to give you exactly as much time as we gave aviyah when she was little.

i don't want to say that we don't spend a lot of time with you. we do. and i don't want to say that we don't love you with everything and forever. we do! we also are always thinking about how to make sure you are getting enough, to make sure that you are getting your full life, and to be honest, i think sometimes we gave aviyah a little bit too much attention. it's so funny , though, too, maybe you are just different. it's so hard to figure those things out. are you different because you are different? are you different because we are different?

dual language school

2009-03-27T12:12:00.008-04:00

the other day, i was talking to another father who lives in our building. his wife is israeli, and he recognized that i was speaking hebrew with aviyah. i asked him if they or she were also trying to speak hebrew with their daughter. he said that they were not going to try to introduce hebrew until they knew that everything was okay with her first language, english.

that made sense. i'd also heard before that sometimes second language acquisition can move smoothly when learners have mastered their primary language. in some ways this makes sense, and i definitely feel that because i understand how english works, and i can understand the similarities and differences between the two languages.

at the same time, i can totally see that it just makes sense to teach a second language this early. the whole world is kind of a question, right? i mean, to young children, the whole day is exploring and testing and trying to figure out what things are, how they work, what might happen next. in some ways, language is a natural extension of that. we learn to infer and predict and analyze before we even have words, and we definitely try to express what we're thinking before we even have words. at root, our words are abstract translations of the things we actually think or feel, right? at root, our thoughts and feelings are just chemical reactions in our body?

sometimes, i get worried to see if aviyah is developing her english well. i want to teach her hebrew, but i always want to check in with samantha or the teachers at her school to make sure that they think her language is going okay and moving forward because i definitely don't want this to ever get in the way. i really do want to continue learning and speaking hebrew with aviyah for a bunch of reasons, but i definitely don't want it to slow her down from developing or anything.

when i was in israel, i definitely saw that the israeli children have so many more supports and their hebrew is so clearly better than my hebrew, too. i mean, it makes sense, right? in the same way that we are surrounded by english here, on television, in stores, in our building, on the street. and i definitely know that her hebrew is behind their hebrew. i mean, i was talking with some 5 year olds and i was kinda embarrassed because i couldn't follow all of them.

(at one point, i was like, "oh, i don't know, maybe ask your mommy." i don't know what the little boy was asking me, but i figured he'd either ask him mom and it would make sense, or he'd figure out ok, this dude can't hang.)

i also know that her hebrew is behind her english. she doesn't struggle nearly as much as she did before, and she's actually got a bunch of words that she uses. but she does forget some words she knows, and she doesn't flow anywhere near as much as she does in english. i'd say her hebrew is about at 70% of her english. that might be high, i don't know. i do know she speaks always in hebrew to me, nad sometimes she sputters or pauses but she clearly knows to speak to me in hebrew even if she is in the middle of a conversation with somebody else in english.

in an older video, she lapsed into some english when she just wanted to say something and didn't want to wait. she doesn't do that so much anymore. she's pretty much able to say what she wants to say, kind of like i was when i was further back, because the truth is you only need a certain amount of words to say most things. then, you get stuck on specific objects or specific actions and you an learn the word in context.

dora b'ivrit

2009-03-08T08:32:00.005-04:00

דורה Sticky Tape
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

dora is actually really popular for young kids in israel. it airs on hop!, the major children's channel. they actually redub dora so that she is teaching english to hebrew speakers. dora and boots speak hebrew, but the many of the friends and characters speak english. dora translates the words from english to hebrew for boots, just like she does for spanish in the american dora.

דורה Koki
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

דורה Wishes
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

דורה Ice Cream
Uploaded by xxvirtualxx

g'dolim

2009-03-01T19:04:00.005-05:00

so, aviyah is super super way way into dora. it's kinda crazy. i mean, i think it's something that maybe i would generally feel like "ahhh!", but i actually think it's really cute and i totally think that dora's a really good role model for a young girl. i mean, here are a whole bunch of parents who i think are really really annoyed with dora, and i guess i can understand. it's like any kid fad, right? a toy or a hula hoop or a boy. i think it can get tired after a while.

but the thing is is that she watches dora on the computer in hebrew, so dora was always really interesting to me too because i would learn hebrew along with aviyah. i mean, i even downloaded a few episodes on to my ipod for me to watch, and there were a few times i was on the subway and somebody would look over and be like, really? really? you're watching dora?

anyways, she's like so into it that each of us all have our own dora names. so aviyah is dora, and i'm boots, and mommy is benny (or now maybe mrs. marquez), and yalei is tico. (the extended family has names too: mommom is isa, papa is chocolate tree, and so on.) and she's pretty serious about it. i mean, first of all, when people meet her now, she's all disgruntled when i say her name is aviyah. she does settle for me saying, "her name is aviyah, but she really really likes dora, and if it's okay, if you can call her dora." and she smiles and she's very happy.

so, anyway, when we were in israel, i lost our umbrella stroller, but one of my friends was really nice and she borrowed a stroller we could use from one of her friends. when we went to pick up the stroller, there were two little girls from the family. the older girl was about 4 1/2 or 5 years old. when i introduced aviyah as kind of dora, she was very clear that she did not like dora at all. she didn't mean aviyah, she was just saying that dora was not cool at all. i asked her why and she said, "g'dolim sonim et dora. raq k'tanim ohavim et dora." big kids hate dora, she said. only little kids like dora.

then her mom explained that it was so crazy because even a month before, she was still so into dora, but now, all of a sudden, she totally did not like dora even at all. it was so sad. aviyah was like, why doesn't she like dora? how could she not like dora? and i tried to explain to her that sometimes little kids can be a little rough and she's just a little bit confused because dora is way cool. and she was okay with it, but it was so sad because it made me think about how even though she's so into dora now, not even that she won't always be into dora, which is natural, but that one day she'll specifically decided not to like dora anymore because of peer pressure, you know. it's like she could totally still like dora, but then other kids will make fun of her (and it's true, my students make fun of me when i say something about dora because of aviyah) and that's so sad, i think.

morah aviyah

2009-02-26T17:17:00.002-05:00

papa's learning hebrew!

papa v'aviyah

2009-02-26T16:48:00.002-05:00

papa and aviyah playing in the park together.

ha-kotel

2009-02-26T16:22:00.004-05:00

aviyah wonders why the men pray on one side of the wall and the women on the other. gam ani.

the prettiest girl in gan

2009-02-26T15:23:00.003-05:00

morah sarah sings this song to her at gan. my voice is not
very good. . . i'm sorry!

הילדה הכי יפה בגן
יש לה עיניים הכי יפות בגן
וצמה הכי יפה בגן
ופה הכי יפה בגן

כמה שמביטים ביותר
רואים שאין מלדבר
כי היא הילדה הכי יפה יפה בגן

gan

2009-02-26T12:14:00.004-05:00

aviyah takes the bear (and other children in the back) to gan.

israel

2009-02-25T16:12:00.005-05:00

ben gurion

2009-02-25T05:22:00.001-05:00

the plane from ben gurion doesn't leave for new york until 12.40 am. still, we have to arrive to pass through customs and israeli security 3 hours earlier. aviyah plays mini dollhouse with a "dora adventure" set and the plastic box covers.

webbie

2009-02-12T19:04:00.006-05:00

muzikali

2009-02-08T17:49:00.006-05:00

yalei is really into standing up, now. (i mean, like standing up holding onto things.) she pulled herself up onto the musical table and up and down and up and down. she's not yet cruising on her own, but if we hold her hands she's on the move! (she's 10 months and 6 days. i don't know the milestones and stuff, but i think she's in her range. i don't think she's ahead or behind.)

she's very different than aviyah, i think, so far. aviyah was always kind of pretty willful and pretty attached. yalei is a more easy going, and she can already play alone pretty well. i definitely don't think that she is raised in the exact same way. in some ways, i'm pretty sure it's better, but i know that all of the attention that we gave aviyah all the time also had a lot of positives, too. it's funny, though, because sometimes aviyah will get down or something and she'll come sit on our lap and suck on her finger and yalei is off playing in the corner and it's like they've flipped ages.

sometimes, we also worry and try to make sure that she gets all of the same reading time and playing time that we gave to aviyah. it is harder, though, for sure. i mean, sometimes you're very tired or she's very calm and also i feel like sometimes we were over-present for aviyah. i mean, i think she's doing really well (aviyah), but i wish we had made sure to give her more alone time, too.

yalei likes clapping very much. she likes standing on my lap. she likes choosing which fingers to hold onto. she likes eating big people food. (she's very over baby food.) also, she likes to jack other little kids of their toys. (aviyah, i think, has never stolen a toy in her life. i love that, too, but i have a special place in my heart for feistiness.)

razor burn

2009-02-07T20:44:00.003-05:00

last night, we invited two good friends over for shabbat dinner. we were halfway into the conversation, i think, and it comes up that aviyah cut herself this morning on her arm. the details of the story are pretty gruesome, and they make me look pretty awful, i guess. she had a disposable razor in her bag that she brought to school. she had two cuts on her arm that were bleeding. i mean, that's not the whole story, but like last night, the headline buries the story.

i know it's pretty important to set the context better, but i'm pretty sure that no matter what context i give, it will be pretty easy for people to say i'm wrong. in fact, i'm pretty sure that i made a mistake, too. (although, i'm also quite sure that we won't agree on what the mistake was.) the context is this: i (sometimes) shave in the morning, and aviyah loves to hang out in the bathroom with me in the morning and pretend she's doing what i'm doing. i'm brushing my teeth, she's brushing her teeth. i'm taking a show, she's taking a shower. i'm shaving my beard, she's shaving, um, her beard. i think that's all pretty normal and regular, right?

so we were recently cleaning up our bathroom before my parents came in for samantha's bat mitzvah, and so, for some reason, two cans of shaving cream are out on our little pack-away-stuff things. they started to use some shaving cream to help draw winter scenes in gan, so she started to understand how to use the bottles and she started putting shaving cream on her face every morning. on balance, it's like super cute. she makes the faces like i make when i'm shaving. (because there are like weird angles and stuff, but anyway.) and i use an electric razor most of the time so we practice when it's off an her face, and i feel like it's totally natural. she's exploring and trying things out and connecting with daddy.

anyway, she found a handheld razor the other morning and she took it out of the pack-away drawer. she was holding it to her face, and i explained to her that she could pretend she was using it, but it's actually very sharp so it's very important that she not touch the razor to her skin. if she actually used it on her face, she would cut herself, so it was okay to pretend with daddy, but she couldn't touch her own skin. and she totally understood, and she went through the whole thing, fake faces, stroking the razor like she was shaving, and she was so proud.

i mean, i'm sure that it doesn't really matter anyhow because i'm sure that already i'm in trouble. i'm sure that are a lot of people who think they know what's up (and probably even some who do know what's up) who think i'm crazy, and i'm well aware that i've got a little different perspective on parenting and well a whole lot of things than a lot of other people.

i mean, i don't think i'm way out there on most things, and i've read quite a bit, and i work with kids, so i feel like i have some insights that i've learned. and, in full disclosure, i mostly think that most parents (including me) are pretty good people who don't have a really perfect idea about what we're doing. i mean, i think we have a sense of why we're doing something (i.e. he has to learn that it's not okay to ____, or she has to know that she can't always ______ or ______), and we feel like the choices we're making are right because we know that x behavior isn't okay or isn't right. in the end, though, we don't always know for sure that what we're doing is working or is even going to work.

i mean, i do feel like i'm a pretty thoughtful and pretty reflective parent, and i do feel like i've read things and experienced things that help give me some insights in things i can do. i do feel like i work pretty well with kids, and it's really uncommon for me not to get along with a younger kid. i mean, i think i generally know what i'm doing, although for sure, there are times when i know for absolute sure that i really don't.

anyway, i just know that whatever it we choose in whatever situtation we're in, we don't always know exactly what's going to happen. we can try (and i do try) things that have the best success with different kinds of kids, but there are always some variables that are hard to control. i guess the larger thing is that we can try to do the best things we can the most consistently that we can do them, and over time we hope that we'll really have a positive impact. for sure, there's no doubt in my mind that kids come wired for some things. still, there is also no doubt in my mind that we effect who our kids are. we change them. we change what they think about themselves, what they think about us, how they see and what they think about the world.

my larger point is this: i want my girls to feel like they can explore anything in the world, and i generally feel that even when we make mistakes (including me), we can learn from the mistake and the learning from the mistake actually makes the whole mistake thing even more positive than being prevented from doing something at all. on a simple level, our children fall when the start to walk, and yet, while we might do what we can from softening their falls, we all know that we've got to encourage them and let them fall sometimes. in fact, they start to learn how to maintain there balance when they fall out of balance on things.

obviously, the limitation to this strategy is when the accident could be so serious or so dramatic that it really wouldn't make sense to even learn from the mistake. my challenge is finding exactly where that place is, right? because i know i'm way farther out than other people. it's just i beleive so strongly that a lot of parents just straight up antagonize and limit their children in what they think are the children's best interests. of course the paretns love their children, but they don't understand that saying no to all these things large and small have unintended consequences. beyond even feeling safe to explore their interests and passions, they also start to feel like they can't even be independent. this means they either rebel (to take back their independence) or they submit (and lose parts of their independence).

in contrast, i feel like they've got to learn to negotiate their independence. it's like, okay, i can argue with aviyah for 20 minutes to put on her coat if she doesn't want to, and of course i'm right because it is freezing outside and she's gonna like it even worse than she doesn't like wearing her coat. but it doens't mater that i'm right. i feel like the bigger thing at work is she's trying to exercise her independence and i want to encourage her to make her own choices. so, then, yes, we go outside and she decides to put her coat on, but there's no power struggle, no i told you so's, no stubborness. it takes one extra minute outside, probably 10 minutes less inside, and i feel like it also builds up a whole bunch of trust.

so, what all happened with the razor? i think she went to get her bag when i was still in the bathroom, and i lost attention of her and she somewhere gave herself a small cut on her arm from the razor. i'm lucky in the sense it was a surface cut and it's no big deal. and for sure i made a mistake by losing my attention for a minute and not noticing that she walked out of the bathroom with the razor in her hand. and, already, i'm sure i don't have any possiblity of convincing anyone i did the right thing by letting her paly with the razor. but that's the thing. i'm convinced there's a larger point her, and i don't know how all this is going to play out, and no i'm not raising the world's savior, and no i'm not inventing answers that people have never thought of before, and yes all of this stuff, the posting on blogs, the writing poems or stories, the having an account on facebook (and posting 25 things about myself), is inherently self centered. it's saying, i'm important. i have ideas, why don't you pay attention to me?

see, it's not really that i think in comparison to others all the time. it's not necessarily that i'm saying, when i'm trying to design my classroom lessons to be challenging and engaging an rigorous and fun and meaningful that i'm necessarily saying i'm better than eveyrone else. i think what i'm really saying, though, is that i do take my life seriously, and i do want to do the best that i possibly can. no, i'm not saying a better parent than others. in fact, i feel like i try really hard to open some of this stuff up here in the blog: parenting isn't easy. marriage isn't easy. teaching isn't easy. i make mistakes all the time. and i feel like aviyah is a long way from being a perfectionist because she knows we all make mistakes and the important thing isn't making the mistake. it's learning from the mistake. it's not learning from the mistake that makes us have problems. it's learning from the mistake that makes up do better.

so, i'm pretty sure i believe that i still believe it's important to let her explore all sorts of things that i know at least everybody else probably thinks is completely insane and crazy. i'm not convinced she should have been told no at the beginning, although yes i do believe that there are real things to say no to right away, beginning with no not ever never hurt somebody else. no not ever yell or punch or push and pull on somebody else. it's never ever okay to hurt somebody else like that. bu there's still a whole bunch of things that i just feel like we need to say yes to.

so, what did i learn? i'm pretty sure that i just learned i've gotta make sure i'm paying attention whenever i'm making those decisions. i'm pretty sure that if i decided it was okay for her to hold the razor, then i just should have decided i was going to stay with her and watching the whole time she was holding it. because if i'm not able to do that, then i probably shouldn't have decided it was okay to play with. (by the way, what did aviyah learn from the whole situation? a) daddy makes mistakes. . . which by the way, she isn't really just learning, and b) playing with a razor isn't something she really wants to do. what's the gain? she learned it from her own choices.

what else has she learned like that?

don't tilt your head backwards when you're learning to sit up.
don't make sudden turns when you're learning to walk.
don't stick the fork all the way in your mouth when you're learning to feed yourself.
don't jump off the toilet seat.
don't jump off a moving swing.
don't run full speed into the wall.
don't touch the side of a really really hot pan. (or really, even the things inside it.)
don't rock jump on the rocking chair when you're also trying to rock it.
don't close a dresser drawer when you still have one hand inside it.
not everything you stand on is strong and stable.
it really is cold outside. (still in process. . . )

smiley gonzales

2009-01-29T23:12:00.002-05:00

xin nian kuai le

2009-01-29T23:03:00.002-05:00

2009-01-29T22:56:00.001-05:00

yalei has been on the move. it's so nice to see her start to become real. i know that sounds weird, maybe, but it is different. i mean, the first months they are so out of it, and then even when she started to do things, they are so little and small. now, she's starting to really develop her personality and habits more and more. she was playing with another little boy today and she totally jacked him. i was so proud of her! i mean, not really, but aviyah gets jacked all the time still, so it was nice to be on the other side. i mean, somebody's got to stand up around here!

: )

arbah echad echad

2009-01-19T16:33:00.006-05:00

aviyah has been speaking hebrew really well, lately. she is probably well behind a native speaker, and for sure she gets tongue tied sometimes when she is trying to speak really fast. when she really doesn't know what a word is she'll definitely say the phrase in heblish. but, for the most part, now she's speaking to me 95% of the time in hebrew. she's even picking up on some grammar things, like the "et" and gender stuff.

one major major thing that i did do that i think that's really really helped is that i only only speak to her always in hebrew. i've only ever said one real thing to her english ("just so you i make sure you totally understand i am going to also say this in english: it is never ever never okay to push or hit mommy or daddy or anybody!"), and i started over the summer to only only respond to her if she said something to me in hebrew. it seemed really kind of harsh at first, maybe, but it is definitely the thing that pushed her to have to start speaking in hebrew to me, i think, because we do spend a lot of time together, and we are close, and i think anyways it helped her want to talk in hebrew.

i'm also still working on improving my hebrew because i'm definitely only okay. i feel like sometimes i've gotten a lot better, and i know that i've come a really long way, but sometimes i still get discouraged too. i have a really hard time listening and following, and i know i still make a lot of grammar mistakes that are probably simple but that i don't know. for the most part, i can feel like i can find the right words that i want to say. every once in a while i have to dumb down a word because i can't find the one i wanted, but we actually don't use a crazy big range of verbs or adjectives in normal conversation.

i do feel like i maybe i stalled for a little bit because it was hard with starting school last semester and also teaching and also the girls. now, i'm starting to try to get better again. i started a subscription for sha'ar la-matchil, a hebrew language newspaper, and also i started trying to listen to israeli news. it's crazy hard to follow the israeli shows yet, but hopefully if i keep trying it will get a little easier. it's definitely one thing that people have _always_ tried to encourage me to do: watch israeli tv.

hopefully, it will help. maybe it's kind of like when i think back to moments when i didn't know how to say the shapes in hebrew when i first started. isn't that crazy? (i mean, sometimes i think about what i knew when i actually started to talk to aviyah in hebrew, and it's really really crazy. i mean, it's genuinely nuts. i didn't know anything, really.) you don't know what's going on, and then, hopefully, you do.

when i was talking with my friend, i realized that i really need to keep improving. he was saying, well where does this all go? what is the end goal? when do you want to stop talking with her in hebrew?

i said that i think probably i always want to speak to her in hebrew, but i hadn't really thought about it like that. i'd gotten some pushback from some people about why was i speaking hebrew in the first place, but i think that's a little more silly. first of all, people across the world are bilingual or more, and research is pretty clear: second language fluency is a huge positive. but, mostly, i decided to speak hebrew because i want to teach a more intimate and more direct connection to judaism and jewish culture.

i feel like it's really hard to pass down theology, and i feel like it's not crazy essential that my girls grow up to be observant, whatever that means. at the same time, it is important to me that they have a strong identity and a strong jewish identity. so much of how this is done sometimes is not sustainable, and i just feel like language is a real clear way to make connections.

still, i don't think i'd thought so far down the road. i mean, i kind of just decided to do it really quickly without a really huge background. i didn't even start speaking to aviyah in hebrew, we discovered, until around 10 or 11 months. i think i said my first things in hebrew to her when we so it's been less than two years since i started. (of course, she wasn't talking so much then either.)

in the end, i've actually done a lot a lot of programs and study to learn the hebrew that i am learning. i mean, it really is possible to do. at the same time, i've really spent a lot of time and given a lot of effort to figure it all out. i've always said that if a monkey spent as much time learning hebrew as i do, the monkey would speak better than me. and, still, my listening to hebrew is way way behind. because i speak all the time in hebrew, i'm pretty good at saying what i need to say. alhtough i'm sure my vocabulary is much smaller than i'd normally use, i can find the words to describe the things i need to say. i'm sure that to really get better now i ned to have more fluent conversations and more practice listening.

b'ezrat ha-shem.

ps. a new hebrew language charter school in brooklyn got approval to approval to open this fall. yesh!

get off the road!

2009-01-18T00:04:00.002-05:00

yalei is on the move. yikes!

i've kind of been a little bit worried about yalei, sometimes. aviyah was really kind of sharp and more willful, so i felt like maybe sometimes yalei was a little bit behind. and maybe, also, sometimes i knew a little bit less about yalei because i was spending much more time with aviyah when yalei was really really little. (i mean, she's still crazy little, but anyway.)

i feel like it's definitely more difficult making sure that all of the attention that you have given to the first child you can also give to a second child. for me, i feel like it's not about interest, as in, i've played that game too many times already or i've done that already, and i'm bored now. it's more that you were so concentrated on each developmental step the first child made, and you were so focused on each challenge or each strategy. and aviyah does require a lot of attention.

in that way, though, i think it's actually good that yalei is not as crowded as maybe aviyah was. she's definitely able to chill out on her own and explore more things independently. i mean, it's always confusing though, too: how much does our response determine their character? how much does their character determine their response? i think, maybe, it's also a little that it's harder for me to work so much with yalei because aviyah is so much more engaged. i know that for both girls when they were really really little it feels like it is all going out, and it's really hard to get feedback. then, as aviyah gets older, that interaction and feedback is so engaging. and demanding.

but i really have been trying to do a lot more with yalei, now. first because i think it's especially important _right now_ for yalei, and second, i also think it's super important for aviyah to see. i mean, i think aviyah is really great in a ton of ways, but i also think that all of the focus we put on the way we work with her also helped make her a little bit more centered around us. it's hard to say for sure, but i know sometimes already aviyah seems to need to be closer to us than even yalei. sometimes i joke that i think yalei's gonna stand up when her big sister gets beat up in the school yard.

so, in some ways, i really do think yalei is good for aviyah because we do have to teach her to stay back a little bit and also for yalei because she is already more adjusted and independent in a lot of ways.

at yalei's last visit to the doctor, they said that she's met all of her developmental milestones and should be pulling up to standing and starting to crawl soon. it's funny because, of course, the milestones aren't really really important. i mean, i really do believe that everyone does their own thing in their own time. at the same time, i think we definitely want to get her into her milestones because those steps help her development. it's that in each stage they gain important abilities, so it's not to stress about, but at the same time, we do want her moving forward, right?

when she does move forward, it's crazy to see, you know? and also she's started commando crawling and crawling to go after things and she just started to crawl up on things. we were talking with a friend and they thought she was so young because when they are so young they kind of stick in that place in your mind. and sometimes i know people get frustrated if i guess the child's wrong age, but i do it too, you know? i mean, it is really crazy that she was totally in one spot, and now all of a sudden, she's moving!

she's especially into people food. she wants to eat everything we're eating and i think she's choked like 73 times on pieces of food that i give to her that are too big. although, in full disclosure, i kind of let them juggle with lit torches and sharp knives. i'm not so into the general rules about what they shouldn't be able to do or not do. i mean, i definitely believe in structure and discipline. it's not that it's all free reign. it's just i think some of these rules that we make are so crazy silly. i just feel like she should be totally okay to explore whatever, and i really feel like that even when we fall or scrape our knee, or cut our chin, we learn from that too.

anyway, one of my friends was talking the other day about how his child doesn't answer his questions or doesn't listen sometimes to what he's asking. so, anyway, he was asking me why i let aviyah do so many things that she wants to do, like go to the playroom in her underwear or play in the park without shoes or stand on the windowsill. i said, i mean, i know it seems silly or crazy or disrespectful or whatever, but think that those things that she wants to do really aren't bit deals at all. and, when something is a really big deal i want to be able to explain that no, sweetheart, this really is a real rule, an actual serious rule, something that really is important to honor and respect. something we want to make sure of. and, pooh pooh pooh, she listens.

so, i guess, making smaller pieces of food is a real actual rule that i should probably honor and respect too.

qassamcounts

2009-01-10T19:59:00.004-05:00

on facebook, organizations and movements sometimes create mini-applications to donate your status to their cause. for example, i donated my status to an election day movement that encouraged people to vote. the application automatically updates your status so it appears near the top of your friends' news feeds and attracts their attention. recently, hawkish pro-israel supporters started a "QassamCount" mini-application that updates your status to count the number of qassam rockets sent into israel.

for example, today's qassam count status writes, "QassamCount: At least 16 Hamas rockets hit Israel Saturday. 2 rockets hit houses in the city of Ashkelon."

there is no doubt that hamas rockets sent indiscriminately into israel were wrong and dangerous and should be considered offensive attacks. we must condemn them. hamas says that they want to destroy israel, and we should believe them. violence against israeli civilians is hateful and unjust. the qassamcounts aren't offensive because they are lies. i accept that the qassamcounts are probably true. (that palestinian militants continue to shoot missiles into southern israel, by the way, undermines the central mission of israel's offensive to stop rocket fire into israel proper.)

instead, i think the qassamcounts are offensive because they are so blind and deaf to real reality right now. the israeli response, in ten days of fighting, has killed more than 800 palestinians. an ap report says that just about half of that total has been civilians.

when i was a student at the university of michigan, i participated in a debate between pro-israel and pro-palestinian supporters. no hawkish pro-israel supporter accepted the invitation so a friend of mine asked me to participate. yes, the organization consistently highlighted what they felt were unjust acts committed against palestinians. and yes, the pro-palestinian supporters often undermined or rejected or ignored sensible arguments that highlighted israeli concerns or losses.

i hope that my ideas were thoughtful enough to persuade people that people who support an israeli state are not hateful or unjust. we also hope and pray for peace and justice. yet, i remember this moment, after all, because i remember that several pro-israel supporters strenuously argued that my debate helped legitimize the group's complaints and concerns. they argued that my participation amplified the group's hateful beliefs.

unfortunately, i think the same faulty reasoning lies at the heart of this conflict. there are two whole, parallel narratives that define the israeli-palestinian conflict. it is not my right to judge and dismiss either narrative. i have no power to legitimize or deligitimize someone's beliefs and opinions. in fact, the idea that we should not even talk (TALK!) with someone else because it will legitimize their opinions is so completely offensive and arrogant. in contrast, our democracy is centrally based on the free exchange of free ideas. second, when we boycott dialogue with our enemies, we also boycott the only mechanism that can lead to peaceful progress. we must talk to create peace, and we must create peace.

now. right right now.

the world needs to mobilize an immediate ceasefire and a binding resolution that refers any aggression to an international force. israel has a right to protect her citizens, but she does not have the right to lay waste to palestinian civilians. because the nature of gaza limits any opportunity for a just military action, the only just solution is an international agreement with international support for an international military force to govern the borders.

strong critics contend that israel has committed war crimes. israel has not committed war crimes. there is no holocaust. there is no question, in my opinion, that israel pursues a humane war. they hunt military targets. they try to limit causalities by projecting their advances. they drop leaflets and make radio addresses to warn civilians. they launch sound bombs as early warning signals. they have established a humanitarian corridor to alleviate some suffering. i wholly believe this is true.

however, war is not a perfectly clean operation. in fact, the very nature of war in the densely packed gaza strip insures horrific mistakes. yes, hamas fighters endanger palestinian civilians while they hide inside densely packed civilian areas. yet, we know that even precises strikes will endanger civilians. in fact, israeli strikes have misfired and accidentally killed more than 400 civilians. while i am completely certain israel does not target civilians, they have shown a basic indifference to their clear mistakes. a un school. a complete city block. whole families.

the war in gaza inhumane and unjust. it cannot be otherwise. how do you fight a war against a hateful enemy that will cause you to kill unarmed civilians in a densely packed urban area?

you don't fight it. you organize an international coalition to enforce peace.

i support israel, but i do not support this war. i believe in israel, but i do not believe in this war. i love israel, but i do not love this war.

ceasefire.

2009-01-07T15:38:00.002-05:00

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"On Black Power"
1967

pyramids.

2009-01-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

this is what i think.

2009-01-03T21:07:00.006-05:00

1) sustained peace simply cannot be achieved by war. real peace can only ever be achieved by peace.

2) the hamas government has not pursued peace. they have a clear mission: the destruction of the state of israel. they mean what they say.

3) israel pursued a diplomatic strategy to contain the hamas government through an economic blockade. they received broad support that did severely restrict governance and eroded public support.

4) a sovereign nation has every right to defend itself when it is attacked. a country must be able to protect its citizens.

5) gaza clearly cannot defeat the israeli armed forces. when israel left lebanon the first time, and when they left lebanon after the last incursion, it is not because they were not able to achieve military superiority. it is because military superiority is not governance.

6) israel learned from a failed strategy in lebanon, and they are determined not to repeat the same mistakes. this incursion will be more powerful and more successful than the incursion into lebanon.

7) however, military incursions simply cannot deliver this peace. you can acknowledge that hamas incited this conflict, even as you acknowledge that israeli force will not deliver sustained peace.

8) israel clearly uses disproportionate force when they conduct air operations. further, bombs flown into densely populated areas are unjust. in my opinion, israel simply cannot pursue the heavy air operations if they inflict such high civilian casualties. leaflets, radio addresses, phone calls, and sound bombs simply do not justify those operations.

9) all civilian death is unjustified. it's not justified if a civilian is israeli. it's not justified if a civilian is palestinian.

10) we have to stand up when we believe things are not just. it doesn't matter who does what. it is not just for hamas militants to send missiles into israel. it is not just for israel to send heavy bomb barrages into densely populated civilian areas.

11) i would tell my kids the same thing. you punch a kid in the face it doesn't solve your problem. your problem is still there. and it's probably a little bit more pissed off.

12) why? war cannot deliver peace.

13) peace now.

happy new year bunny rabbit!

2009-01-01T06:21:00.001-05:00

bike ride

2008-12-31T23:26:00.005-05:00

this is yalei's first bike ride!

smiles

2008-12-31T09:55:00.006-05:00

aviyah's sleeping!

2008-12-30T13:23:00.002-05:00

carnivale!

2008-12-29T18:51:00.002-05:00

chanukat florida 2008

2008-12-29T15:27:00.005-05:00

a poetry stage

2008-12-25T10:29:00.002-05:00

today, the new york times introduces elizabeth alexander, a yale professor. president elect obama chose ms. alexander to read a poem at his inauguration. the article reviews past inaugural poems and profiles a few poems from ms. alexander. inside the article, ms. alexander talks about how she is using other poets and other poems to help craft her inaugural poem:

She is going about making a poem for Mr. Obama, she said, by casting an eye back. “I have read the previous inaugural poems, as well as many others,” she said. “The ones that appeal to me have a sense of focus and a kind of gravitas, an ability to appeal to larger issues without getting corny.” One thing Ms. Alexander wants to do, she said, is speak clearly but artfully. “I don’t want the poem to talk down to some imagined audience,” she said. Among the poets she has been reading for guidance are Virgil, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Gwendolyn Brooks.

it's crazy cool to see that she's using other poets to help inform her own poetry. that's something we work on with students. we learn how to be good writers by reading other good writers. it's something we really do, and it's something that real writers really really do! it's important in our workshop that we teach authentic writing. . . that we teach students to write like real writers. that we let them write like they write. they they are able to write the things they want to write in the way they want to write them. we can teach them how to make them better, but one of the most powerful ways to help their writing is to get them reading. reading writers they really like. writers that really know how to write.

independent writing

2008-12-04T22:34:00.001-05:00

i've been trying to think a lot about how to make the students' writer's notebooks more effective. . .

wiki

2008-11-26T20:47:00.002-05:00

i'm starting a new wiki for my classroom at:
www.mrravin.pbwiki.com

self efficacy

2008-11-25T22:55:00.004-05:00

in social work, i studied young adolescent identity development. i was deeply interested in how young adults tested and confirmed their personal and social identities. in order establish a clear definition of identity for reserach, it's necessary to define identity and the variables that define identity exploration and identity confirmation.

i remember that one very important variable in my research, self-efficacy, measured an individual's belief that they would succeed or fail in relation to real personal experience. for example, high self efficacy means that an individual has a strong belief that he or she will succeed, even though objective personal experience may not show that to be true. in contrast, low self efficacy means that an individual believes that he or she will fail, even though all personal experience should lead the individual to believe that they will be successful.

i am thinking about that know because it's always really stuck with me. i've felt, when i've looked at myself, that i succeed. i know that if i set out to achieve a goal, i will achieve that goal. i've really deeply beleived that, and of course, there are a series of goals that i have been fortunate to accomplish. at the same time, i realize also, that by choosing to beleive that i am a string of successes, i have chosen to deemphasize or outright ignore significant experiences where i have failed or simply not achieved my goal.

it's interesting, though, because i see that as you believe, as you genuinely believe that you can accomplish hard tasks, you are first increasingly likely to take them on and second increasingly likely to succeed at them. you unconsciously marginalize marginal setbacks and emphasize personal accomplishments as representative.

it reminds me of when somebody says to a young teacher, "fake it til you make it." i don't really believe it's like that because i don't think you set out to marginalize or emphasize this accomplishment or that failure. i think, inside of the matirx of variables of identity, when you come to clearly confirm a personal identity, it is because you have a deep seated understanding of who you are and who you truly want to be.

unless of course, it isn't true at all. unless, of course, this whole thing is a sham and i'm right back where i was when i was 16. who am i? who am i now? who was i then? who do i want to be? how can i be that person i really want to be? and, most importantly, how is it that sometimes, sometimes it feels like i'm so terribly far away?

san antonio

2008-11-25T22:49:00.002-05:00

i recently returned from a conference of big dorks and geeks in san antonio. each year, the national council of teachers of english hosts a convention on new research and best practice in the field. last year, the conference really turned me onto multiple literacies. the outgoing president strongly emphasized that we just plain don't read and write today like we used to. we read differently. we write differently. we write shorter or longer or more infomrally or with links instead of citations. and she really sharged us to bring digital literacies into our classroom.

last year, i tried to start a weblog for student writing, and we brought in heroes. . .

this year, i've brought in a radio documentary project, a performance art piece, and now we're starting to work on a film journalism project. wiki. weblog. . . we'll see. i think the larger question is: do students receive enough support for core literacies? if not, does increased engagement and commitment override a step short in formal writing?

detroit

2008-11-20T19:17:00.003-05:00

i don't know the whole story, and i'm certain that i don't know all of the information. still, i can't help thinking that there are class issues circling in the ongoing debates on federal relief and bailout programs. it seemed there was a fierce urgency of now to complete the bank bailouts. many people claimed immediate bailouts were necessary to prevent a complete collapse of the worldwide economic system. and the stock market clearly thought that first word of the bailout was positive.

for a long time, i've maintained that free market advocates haven't understood that we already live in a clearly regulated economy. our regulation even predates government stakes in major banks and insurers. we have long lived in a modified free market and modified socialist economy. in many ways, i've felt like our economy mirrors our two party system. we have two stringent poles that advocate for static ideas, even against what real research and real data tells us. (although, i don't know if more economic systems would help our economy in the same way more political parties might help our democracy.)

still, i feel like there is a strong element of class discrimination in the heightened politics of the auto bailout versus the smash mouth agenda of the bank bailouts. while i certainly believe that each bailout should have required tough questions and clear financial plans from congress, why is it that only detroit received an extreme toungue lashing? why, further, does it seem that poor people and lending to poor people served as the right's talking point to explain the mortgage crisis, when in reality, the leadership of banks and need for extreme profits led to greedy and overly risky mortgage driven securities and sub-prime mortgages? why were bankers sitting on one side of the table while auto executives sit on the other?

yes, of course, detroit made serious mistakes in the operation and management of their product lines, including missed opportunities in hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles. and, of course, detroit unions overbargained and failed to realize burdensome corporate debt is also not good for retirement and health care plans. and yes, of course, our government needs to ensure that our money is protected and that there are clear rules for transparency and accountability. yes, we need to reign in executive compensation and make sure that government funds actually work in the way they are intended to help. yes, yes, yes.

but why only for the auto makers? why were the wheels greased for wall street and stopped for woodward avenue? however, why is there such umbrage only at blue collar auto workers? why do white collar workers need to keep their bonuses while blue collar workers need to receive pink slips?

let's regulate. i'm for it. let's help struggling industries. i'm for it. let's have oversight. i'm for it. but, really, why such different perspectives? i think it's class.

what yalei saying?

2008-11-20T19:14:00.004-05:00

yalei is sitting up really well now. on wednesday nights, i watch aviyah and yalei together. (mommy is at big people school on wednesdays, and i have big people school on monday and tuesday.) the past wednesday, yalei fell down a couple of times. aviyah takes a lot of attention so sometimes you jump away for a minute and bonk! but now, already in one week, she is sitting up and not falling down at all.

the clapper

2008-11-17T20:00:00.004-05:00

yalei is starting to be a real person!

she is very grabby now, and she is starting to wave and to clap her hands. i think this stage is so crazy because they are starting to really be there, you know? it's like the baby really isn't anything for a while, but then they start to do things and you realize, that's right! this is what happens!

little star

2008-11-17T18:21:00.004-05:00

בא כוכב כוכב קטן
אל תבכה אנחנו קאן
בשמיים מנצנצ
יהלום קטן נוצץ
בא כוכב כוכב קטן
אל תבכה אנחנו קאן

come star little star
don't cry, we are here
in the sky (you) shine
a tiny sparkling diamond
come star little star
don't cry, we are here

bullies

2008-11-16T13:28:00.004-05:00

last year, aviyah was bullied several times by a young girl. one time, she was scratched so deeply that a long, light scar is still on her cheek. at that time, we tried to make it clear to the school that while we didn't blame the young girl or the parents or the teachers, we certainly wanted to come up with strategies that could help prevent future incidents. when we approached the parents to speak together on constructive ways we could help the two girls, they refused to talk to us. the school also refused to come up with new plans to make sure that she was safe. when they challenged me to come up with ideas and i came up with seven, they simply said they'd consider them and get back to us.

each party clearly felt that aggressiveness was just a normal stage for many young toddlers to go through. and, in fact, i am sure that it is a completely normal developmental stage. however, i refused to accept it was "normative" behavior, or behavior we have to accept as socially appropriate. we clearly need to react and respond to what our children are doing in order to teach them what we want to encourage. i always believed that actual teachable moments are not the moments when kids are actually in the middle struggle, but instead, the moments and spaces between the struggles. in these longer moments, we build up our connections to our children and students, and in these quieter moments, we have more important, more substantial, and more real conversations.

i've always felt that our reaction to our childrens' behaviors was more important than our childrens' actual behaviors. and we knew that the first strategies clearly weren't working because she was attacked by the same girl on four different occasions. it wasn't getting any better!

(on a quick aside: we were walking in front of my school the other day, on our way to the park. aviyah spotted a cute dog, and we walked up to the man walking the dog and asked if aviyah could pet her. it turns out that the man walking the dog was the little girl's father, and well, within four minutes, the girl stepped up to aviyah and just flat pushed her down to the ground. just yesterday, i was talking with aviyah and i was a little bit frustrated by everything and i said to her something that i've worked a year and a half to not say: i told her that i didn't realy like the other girl because i felt she was mean to aviyah. i love you very much, i said, and it kind of hurts me too when people are mean to you.)

anyway, when we decided to change schools, i tried to make clear to the old school, to the teachers, and to our friends, that we were not leaving the school because we felt it was so abnormal for kids at that age to push or pull or scratch. we left the school because we just didn't feel like she was totally safe. we felt the school was so great in so many ways, and we definitely did not want to and did not bad mouth the school to anyone. we tried to give a fair and honest answer about why we left, but we always made certain to explain that we felt that everyone was good people.

long story short, last week, aviyah was pushed for a second time by a new boy in her new school. last spring, we chose the new school specifically because the director assured us that their lead teachers are graduates from early childhood education programs, and the agency also employs social workers that they agreed to speak with in challenging situations.

i spoke with the director of the new school on tuesday, and i explained to her that we were not upset at the child, the teachers, or the parents. i also explained that i understand that children sometimes go through devleopmental stages that frustrate us and others. at the same time, i said, we have to distinguish ourselves by how we react and respond to challenging situations. she agreed and she said the issue just came up on the radar for them. i definitely appreciated her honesty, and she said the teachers and staff were going to speak and develop a plan last week, so i'll check in with them early this week to see what they think.

we've thought a lot about this, obviously, over the last year. i think aviyah has moved on, but she was definitely sad to leave the old school and she took a minute to really adjust to the new school. and, more, i've thought if i'm a too pushy parent because i'm involved in education and youth development. i've talked about it with a bunch of different educators, and i definitely think i don't ever want to choose their curriculum or choose their intervention strategies. however, i do want to make sure they they think about their choices and that they communicate their reasoning with parents. still, i want to be sure that they do have a curriculum, that they do have intervention strategies, that they do have reasons they are making the choices they are making.

i want to be like the best parents i see at my school. parents who are clear and fair about questions they ask, and parents who want to understand clearly what is going on in the classroom. good parents can mean so much to making sure their children get the right attention in the right ways, and i certainly don't want to be overbearing or intrusive. for real, i appreciate the strengths at both schools. at the same time, they have to own the things that happen there, and they've got to be smart and prepared to intervene during situations and prevent new ones from happening.

in the meantime, the director did give me a tip that we can use to help aviyah stand up for herself. we've looked at a few books that we might buy, and i worked with aviyah a lot this morning to role play what she can do to let the other kids know she can stand up for herself. i told her that she should stand up immediately if she is sitting down, and she should say in a loud and firm voice to the other child, "no thank you. that's not nice." she can also choose to just move away from the other child if she needs to.

she was doing really well, and i think she likes raising her voice a little. it's hard to say, though. it seems like, so far, the real big problem is that she knows that i'm just daddy, so she smiles and giggles the whole time she's standing up to me.

radiance and rosebud

2008-11-11T11:50:00.007-05:00

so many writers explain that obama's ascent is confirmation of dr. king's boldest dream. of course, i don't think that that's true. it's clear that while 43% of whites did vote for obama, and more than 54% of young whites ages 18 to 29 voted for obama, there are still grim realities in america. we know that blacks are disproportionately poor, black and latinos dramatically underperform their white and asian peers in school, and our neighborhoods and institutions are still wildly segregated.

and while the far right is staggeringly afraid that obama will tilt america socialist, it's clear to real liberals that obama governs a centered coalition. rep. john clybourn recently explained that he may sometimes be "center-right, sometimes center-left, but always from the center." cabinet appointments that may include republicans, including current secretary of defense robert gates, make it clear that obama is not interested in being overtly partisan.

in fact, i hesitated to support obama in the primaries because i felt john edwards' policies were more clearly focused on redistribuiting opportunities and access to the poorest and most disenfranchised. i also felt that hillary clinton's clear and express support for universal health care advanced more sustainable protections for more underserved than obama's employer/employee based health plan. while many wealthy can still afford private health care in socialized health plans in europe and canada, the larger advantages of prevention and protection more clearly help the second 95% of the population.

yes, it is still clear that obama is interested in change, and it's even more clear to me that he also has the vision and the pragmatism to serve us all. it has also been clear that people across america are aware of this moment. people left, center, and wrong are proud that we have made such an historic leap forward in our history. it is true that the first 14 president could have legally owned a black slave. it also true that the first 35 presidents could not have even voted for not have even been able to a candidate obama in some places in the united states.

yes, we can. si, se puede. ken, anu y'cholim.

still, i believe obama's election will have the greatest impact on those even too young to realize what just happened. for those who are 80 years old and older, they have heard biological arguments that served to barbarize and colonize blacks. they witnessed and maybe participated in or demonstrated against violent laws that forcibly segregated and oppressed blacks. for our oldest seniors to know that america has rejected our past as vile, contemptible, and disgraceful is a just reward and a dish served cold.

yes, i am unendingly happy that barack obama will be the next president of the united states. and yes, i do believe it sends a powerful message to the world that americans are real people. we are not the caricature of all the right or wrong decisions our elected government makes. we are smarter than our history has sometimes shown us to be because i have always believed this country makes a slow but steady walk forward.

still, our middle aged have been too slow to this moment and we will be too slow to change again. we have been colored already. i don't think his election means we have arrived. it's been disgraceful that we've only had 43 white men serve as president. and yes, i'll have to change a long standing lesson i give where i explain that we have never ever elected anything but a rich white male. but, man, we've still got a long way to go.

so, now, i don't think we haven't arrived anywhere, yet. but i really do believe that radiance and rosebud have. i am beyond amazed and thrilled and happy to see that malia and sasha will be the face of the kids of the first family for everyone to see.

for our youngest, this is the absolutely most powerful new show on the wb or disney. we will see young african american girls the ages of my students and younger inside the white house. girls with locks or braids or flat irons. girls who go to black church. girls who sing "lift ev'ry voice and sing". girls with names like malia and sasha and radiance and rosebud. in fact, the first time i cried this election is when i read an article this morning that revealed the new secret service names for the obama family.

the faces of the kids on america's front lawn are young african american girls. they'll be reading books and doing their homework and hugging their mom and dad. they'll be young and strong and fun and all over the place. they'll just be regular little girls and they'll like whatever they like and they'll do whatever they do and they'll be the president's daughters. and they'll be black.

now, that's deep.

independence

2008-11-10T12:25:00.004-05:00

(disclaimer: this is way "inside baseball" stuff that may only be remotely interesting, at best, to other teachers.)

i have started taking courses for a new program, and i'm lucky to be taking a course with mary ehrenworth and a course with lucy caulkins. i really decided to start a new program when i took a course last year with sheridan blau. i was thinking about it, and i realized how important it is to challenge and tighten my theory and practice. we talked with sheridan a lot about reader response, but i also remember how sharp he was about really distilling what it is we read, how important it is to be honest and critical and clear about what we thinks and what they think and why.

i just remember thinking a lot about the things that he brought up in class and how it really helped me bring new things in my thinking right into my classroom. i think it really inspired us to start setting our framework for what we're teaching and why we're teaching, and my big thing at the end of last year was to help us set out some clear and consistent goals for our students. in my new class, one of my classmates asked me, "so why are you doing this? is it like some sort of professional development?"

i guess that's exactly what it is. i feel like when we separate our education and our experience that it means we've lost something. i know that sometimes the theory at universities can feel far from my 100 students on the ground, but i also know that they can come up with some of the purest, most important methods in universities away from the pull of department bureaucracy.

this year, my class with lucy is getting me to think about a lot of things in my pattern and philosophy of teaching. in the past, i've worked hard towards developing reading strategies that mirror what real strong readers do when they're reading. and i've worked towards developing writing and revision strategies that mirror what real strong writers do. i think it's so important that we make writing and reading really relevant to how and why we really read. still, it's hard to so closely mirror the independence and choice that are there for real writers in the real world.

so, i've been working through this a lot in lucy's class. the other day she was really strong about getting back to the core principles of writing workshop. it was her george h.w. moment. ("i know writing workshop. i am friends with writing workshop. you, sir, are no writing workshop!) and i know what she means. in some sense, i think, the writing workshop has been so co-opted by being the system, what has become commonplace in workshop is not really workshop at all. and in some other ways i've written in class about how i've been co-opted and inside the system without seeing it. it's hard to see which way is which sometimes.

i've been working a lot with my student teacher to understand exactly what are the principles that support my classroom teaching and learning to make sure that the thigns that we teach are in line with the principles. so, the big thing i'm thinking about is how do we balance independence and choice? and, still, how do we make sure that the students are getting the core skills and competencies that they need? there's no doubt that studetns are more engaged and more invested when they have opportunity and choice. there's also no doubt that they will learn to perform (in the short term) specific skills and strategies when they are taught explicitly and applied directly.

so, what is the balance? where is the balance? i'm thinking the largest balance is by affording choice for projects, and trying to provide consistent small groups that can teach into specific strategies and skills. i feel worried, though, that right now i'm caught right in between both and neither is getting done. i don't wnat to flash on one and feel better. i want to feel like i'm doing better than both, altogether.

more pictures

2008-11-09T22:32:00.005-05:00

new pictures part 1

2008-11-09T22:23:00.003-05:00

twofer

2008-11-09T05:06:00.001-05:00

a lot of people ask what it is like to have two children. i remember when i asked my cousin what it was like to have four kids. he said that the biggest jump was from 2 kids to 3 kids because they had to play zone defense now. there's no more man to man, he said.

maybe that is true. still, so far, for us, i think the jump from having 0 to having 1 is much bigger than the jump from 1 to 2. i think the biggest difference with 2 is that there is far less independent free time. when it was only aviyah, samantha and i could both do turns of one on one time and we could also do times when all of us hung out together. still, when it was the other's one on one time, we still had our personal free time to surf the internet or read or take a nap or whatever.

now, i think the big difference is that during the one's one on one times, we have one on one time with the other child. so, for the most part, when there is downtime with the one because they are playing with the other parent or because they are napping, it isn't really totally downtime because you are playing with the other child.

i think we have been really committed to bedtimes, though, and that's made a huge difference for us. we can know that at a certain time of day or by a certain time of night we are going to be off duty, you know? i think it would be a crazy mess without a naptime and bedtime schedule. aviyah has had more difficulty napping consistently at her new school. i think she's trying to adjust, and she's started to nap more regularly in the past week or two, but it's crazy because if i think about it, no matter where we have been, here or another home, she has always always always taken her naps. i think i can probably count on one hand the times she has just jumped her nap in her whole life.

i think the big reason i personally bought into the schedule times for sleeping is because 1) i know from teaching that if you don't have consistent systems then all of the fun stuff gets piled over and 2) dr. weisbluth convinced me that the bigge picture is that healthy sleep supports healthy development. i think, no doubt, people think it's a little crazy, and it may have it's drawbacks too. ( it may be that aviyah is a little bit more clingy to us sometmes because she is so used to a schedule and so used to routines.)

i think the truth is that each big system or method you chose, also in teaching, has its big pluses and drawbacks. i think the thing is is that if you have a general philosophy about what you want to do and why you want to do it it makes it easier to make your choices for which approach fits best.

in the end, all i know is that when the girls sleep well, really everybody is happier.

potty training

2008-11-09T04:33:00.000-05:00

we moved around a lot recently. over the summer, we actually lived in 5 different places together, and we didn't really have the internet. i got really badly out of the habit of posting, and i know that it made it harder for some of you who live far away to follow the girls. i'm sorry! it also is so easy to just post a picture from my iphone now to my facebook, that i posted a lot of my photos right there.

anyway, it's kinda crazy to try and catch everything up. aviyah recently started really potty training. she wears only pullups now, and i think for about a month she's been almost always going in the potty or on the toilet. we've had a potty (really like 4 different potties) for a long while, but we also didn't want to stress her out. she had gone a few random times on the potty, but i think it was still early. anyway, our thing was we didn't want to really pressure her to do this at a certain time. we wanted to make sure we supported her wanting to go and gave her the option to go, but we definitely didn't want to shock train her.

a book i read mentioned that there is a traditional kind of sticker rewards system, and we did start a system around when she started school. she gets a new heart sticker to put on the potty to show each time she goes, and she started also asking to get one picture bandaid that she puts on herself or her clothes. so it's kind of funny 1) because then everybody always thinks she's her because she got bandaids all over her face and knees and 2) because she asks me and samantha sometimes if we want bandaids too after we go to the bathroom. at the same time, her best friend at school started potty training and i think that really inspired her, too. (maybe even more!)

so, i don't think there was any super huge smart thing that we did. i think she was not ready and then she was ready. there are a lot of parents who are a little bit exasperated that the kids haven't been more serious yet about potty training, but i definitely think this is a thing that parents get all worked up and either proud or upset over. i think different kids do it at different times. i really really think that yes the things we do can encourage or discourage what our kids do or want to do. at the same time, i also think that we stress a little bit too much first on what is exceptional or smart or fast, and then for sure, we stress too much on what is normal. i think there are different kinds of things and different kinds of kids and different kinds of normal.

i think there are all these little stages that probably start with sleeping and that go all the way up to what college your kid goes to college. i think the competition is silly. certainly, i do see other things that parents do and sometimes i think, yikes! but i try to think yikes! more i don't want to do that with my kid than i think this is what causes their kid to do a or b because i know sometimes our kids do a or b and it just is.

i do take what we do with the girls very seriously, and i imagine like other things, it's something i get made fun of for. at the same time, i think we try our best to have a conssitent philosophy and a consistent system and to learn how to do things better because i see so much of how the kids i teach are shaped by their parents. you can see so many things clearly: which kids are encouraged, which kids are shut down, which kids are carbon copies, which kids are independent and confident. i know that so much has to do with who kids are, but i also know so much has to do with how we parent, too.

i guess that's the juggling act,then. you don't know, necessarliy, which things the children are going to push on and which things they are going to respond to. i think knowing that everything you do matters is important, but i also think it's important to release thinking that kids do everything because of what you do. i do think it's important to set up a clear and consistent system that encourages creativity, communication, and happiness at the same time that it establishes discipline. i believe that you should almost always tell your child yes. i also believe that it is really important to know when to say no and to say it clearly, consistently, and convincingly at those times. i guess that i think it's like how i think about my observance. in the little picture, all the observances really are silly and wierd. at the same time, i think, the discipline and the system sets up opportunities to be more real and more close more often.

shana tova 5768

2008-10-01T15:21:00.000-04:00

pictures

2008-09-13T21:07:00.005-04:00

orthodox stance

2008-08-05T22:55:00.001-04:00

brattiness

2008-07-10T22:32:00.001-04:00

so we've been trying to work on brattiness. there are kids in my classroom who are straight brats sometimes, and i know that i would leave the country before i would raise a bratty kid. so, i think the real big question for us is how do we raise a kind and respectful child at the same time that we teach her to be independent and empowered. i feel like there is a really important line between children who feel entitled and children who feel empowered.

entitled/empowered

2008-07-09T22:49:00.000-04:00

entitlement v. empowerment

freedom. . ..

i admit it.

2008-07-09T21:24:00.013-04:00

i haven't really written a substantial post for a bit. it's been a little crazy. i feel like it's funny, but that's already a blog trope, right? i met with a teacher friend recently, and she said she had a friend who wrote a crazy popular blog on motherhood.

my blog is not really popular, but one of the reasons that i really wanted to write on aviyah and now the girls was to counter some of the tropes that people say about parenting. i feel like a lot of times people want to make a really pretty face. we don't want to look like we're less than somebody else, right? still, i feel like it's important to talk about the things that are pretty hard. and i feel like sometimes people say pretty silly stuff just because they've heard other people say it. i know that i don't know the answers, but i do know that some of the answers i've heard are just plain off, sometimes.

anyway, aviyah had a really really tough time when yalei was first born. she was and she is pretty kind to yalei, but she had a crazy tough time with samantha and me. we were a little crazy. she started pushing us sometimes. she even bit me twice. i was, for real, at a loss. i was like, where did you learn this? i can't front. i was really offended. so, i made crazy mistakes when i was younger, but i'm pretty nonviolent. i don't believe in any kind of violence, so i was like, where did you get this from? where did you even get the idea that that's even possible to do? to bite people? it was tiring just thinking on it.

and i think that's one thing that people want to put a face on, right? one of my friends asked me if i had any good tips for helping their new son adjust. i said, for real, there are some really good tips we learned, but i don't know that you want to know our tips because aviyah was crazy rough for a minute. i don't know that we did things all off, though. i think some of it is just a gamble, right? i mean, i don't know that you can know how it's all gonna play out, and i think sometimes it's just gonna play out rough. at the same time, our reaction doesn't have to be a gamble. our parenting doesn't have to be a gamble. maybe we don't know how she's always going to react. we can't predict that, right. still, we can predict what we want to do, and when we don't know for sure, we can find out what works.

we bought a few books on toddler discipline to help us through some things. she did get a lot better at around a month, but it was crazy nuts for those weeks, and i kinda thought the cuteness was all gone. i mean, aviyah's always had a little edge. she's got that mischievous thing, like she knows she's pulling something, and then you look at her and she gives this look back and starts giggling. but this was different, right? i felt like, okay, though, this is where we earn our money. we've just got to figure out how to do this right.

it's like teaching, in that sense. yes, there is some instinct to being a good teacher or a good parent. you've got to make some real important decisions in the moment that are just gonna work out or they're not. still, i don't buy the sense that you're only gonna do this by instinct and experience. for sure, our experience matters, and i value my experience with kids. at the same time, if i've worked with x amount of kids, there's people that've worked with x*2 kids.

the bottom line is that there's real research out there. we don't have to make stuff up. there's real data, right? there's real information that tells us how to react better, how to make smarter choices, what the smarter choices are. i've always said that teachers who don't value what they learned in their teacher training either were terrible students or went to terrible schools. of course there's things to learn! of course you don't come knowing how to do this stuff right. i think we've got to figure out how to do our own parent research, our own parent training. and i feel like if we say we don't value that parent training, we're either being bad parenting students or going to bad parenting schools, you know?

sometimes i don't know which way is which, and sometimes, as a parent, i hope i'm making the right choice, but sometimes i'm not and i've got to figure out how to. i know, always, i can learn stuff. so i admit it. i know it's not always popular. but i'm an english teacher and sometimes i read books to find answers.

new pictures

2008-06-30T22:11:00.003-04:00

yom huledet sameach

2008-05-27T22:23:00.005-04:00

happy birthday aviyah! number 2! (yikes.)

mother's day

2008-05-27T22:21:00.003-04:00

mommy and yalei and aviyah and daddy went to make pottery to celebrate mother's day. aviyah really wanted to paint the dog. she also wanted to play in the park. and break the picture frame. and eat the penguin.

nu skool

2008-05-18T20:59:00.005-04:00

aquarium

2008-05-18T20:57:00.002-04:00

team ravin

2008-05-11T15:52:00.004-04:00

5 weeks

2008-05-11T15:46:00.003-04:00

skuuullll

2008-05-09T04:46:00.004-04:00

sisters!

2008-04-30T22:02:00.001-04:00

zoo

2008-04-23T13:26:00.002-04:00

florida

2008-04-23T13:19:00.003-04:00

pooh ha-dov

2008-04-13T22:40:00.004-04:00

skuuuuuuuul

2008-04-11T13:39:00.006-04:00

so, aviyah's started to do this really cute thing. (that's on the side from her being a little bit haywire adjusting to everything that's happening and learning that we don't yell and flap our arms wildly when we want someone to stop something.) anyway, she's started translating hebrew for mommy. this morning, aviyah really wanted to go to the park, but we were really close to her naptime. i told her in hebrew that first we would take a nap, and then we would go to the park to play afterwards. she then turned and told mommy, "daddy say, first sleep, then park."

group hug

2008-04-09T22:44:00.003-04:00

aviyah, photographer esq.

2008-04-09T22:38:00.005-04:00

mommydaddy

yalei

nights and days

2008-04-09T10:57:00.005-04:00

we are trying to help yalei know her nights and days. she is starting to stay up a little longer during the day. this morning she was up for almost an hour! i can't remember for sure, but i don't think aviyah was this calm. i think aviyah was always a little bit of pistol. for a brief bit last night, yalei needed to be held a little bit longer to fall asleep, and i remembered that i think aviyah was like that all the time.

it's hard for me to tell exactly who she looks like, and i think her face still changes every dat. i remember that a lot of people also felt that aviyah looked like me at first, but i think it's because of course the babies don't look exactly chinese. but, i think aviyah and yalei have always looked different than my family too. samantha insists, though, that yalei has my nose. (mine's is soft! she says.)

yalei has gained back a lot of the weight that she lost in the hospital. it is normal that babies who breastfeed can lose up to 10% of their bodyweight by the time they leave. it sometimes takes a few days for the mom's breastmilk to come in. she was born at 8'1 and left at 7'6 but was back up to 7'11 on monday. everybody is healthy, b'h.

aynayim afurot

2008-04-08T11:44:00.005-04:00

abc 123

2008-04-08T09:45:00.004-04:00

aviyah has started to count to ten in english and hebrew. i don't know how all this starts. one day she just busted out 5 through 10 in a rush, over and over again. she does not like to do her alef bet _at all_, but she loves her abc's. (by the way, i discovered that papa says lnmop for some reason.)

butterfly wings

2008-04-07T17:57:00.006-04:00

yalei was breech, and her position in the belly caused her feet and legs to bow a great deal. we were a little concerned because we didn't even notice it at first. the baby is swaddled so often, and she sleeps so often, that it took a minute.

it caught us by surprise because you really get nervous that the baby will be okay at first. she did actually have a tough time right at first; she didn't breathe right away. still, she was okay! the doctors explained that c-section babies sometimes don't get all of the fluid out of their lungs at birth. they think that the pressure from a vaginal birth helps the baby absorb the fluid into their blood. sometimes,in a c-section, some fluid remains and the doctors agitate her a bit to get her started. so, anyway, then she was okay, thank god, and i felt really relieved. i felt really scared, but then i felt like i got away with something, or something like that.

the other night, though, we first noticed that her legs were bowed and her feet bent at a severe angle under each other. it has improved a bunch, already, but you can still see the angle. if you look at the pictures, her right foot is really twisted underneath her left foot. in fact, both of her ankles are bowed. we've tried to do a little bit of work to get them straighter, but it's a little tough because there was just so much time that they were set in the other position in the womb.

the doctor today did say that it's very natural for breech babies because of their position. he suggested some specific stretches and massages to do, and he also said that her legs may stay bowed until 18 months. it is or was a bit scary, so we're very relieved and hopeful everything will be okay, god willing.

leaving!

2008-04-06T05:07:00.014-04:00

gan pesach

2008-04-06T00:06:00.001-04:00

and action!

2008-04-04T12:34:00.001-04:00

yalei's awake!

footsie!

2008-04-04T00:19:00.004-04:00

sometimes, aviyah finds the kookiest stuff really funny.

ha-yom he-sheni

2008-04-03T19:52:00.006-04:00

i think yalei kinda looks like an old man!

sisters!

2008-04-03T16:46:00.001-04:00

people are very up on helping aviyah be happy and comfortable and excited for yalei. (i think aviyah's actually gotten more gifts than yalei has!) for real, i think aviyah thinks celebrating yalei's birthday was fun, and b'h, she's been the super nicest girl ever to yalei. she likes to hug and kiss her, and she's upset about her belly button booboo. she helped us to change one of her diapers, too. (she's been praciticing.)

i think that's been really nice to see because i think the whole sister thing is a gamble, right? i mean, i think it's one of those things that even if you try to do certain things really well, it's still just a complete world change that upsets the order you have. i think it's really important to help prepare her, but at the same time, it's also something that's unprepareable and unpredictable, right? how _do_ we adjust when our world completely changes?

one thing that i've noticed, though, is that i feel a bit uncomfortable with the whole "big sister" thing. (i should say this isn't about anybody or anything anybody said. i know for sure that i don't expect anybody else to read this and adjust how they act or speak. and, i don't even know if i'm completely right.) i guess i just feel awkward really reinforcing that she's the "big" sister. (she did make a pretty cool hat at chai tots, though!)

i feel like it's important to get across to her that she's a sister, and definitely that it's important to love and help and be nice to our sister. still, i feel like the emphasis on being a big sister, that a big sister can do more and knows more, can set up a weird situation. i think maybe my perspective is colored by being the "younger" brother. still, i think if we think, which we do, that the things that we say and do now matter later, and the things that we teach her help build her identity and how she sees the world, and i think that we do and it does, then how we communicate being a sister is really important as well.

i don't want to really reinforce the idea that she's bigger and all of the things that come with that. there's one book that we've been reading that says "i can use the potty" or "i can feed myself" or "i can dress myself". (put aside the fact that aviyah's still kinda young, and she can't do all of those things all of the time anyway.) it also then kinda makes her feel better and bigger because it says that the baby cannot yet do those things. anyway, i just feel like it's an empty ego feeder, and i don't want to _reinforce_ this idea that she just knows more and can do more than yalei. i want to reinforce the idea that aviyah is wonderful for the things that she knows how to do, and yalei is wonderful for the things that she knows how to do.

i understand, of course, that aviyah _is_ physically bigger, but why is it necessary to give her credit for being nice as the "big" sister? i feel like that limits the message. isn't the message really that she should get credit for being nice as a -stam- sister. we are nice to people because it is right to be nice to people. we love people because we care for them and how they are. we don't like or love because we are a big sister or a little brother. i think i want to teach her that we love our family because we love our family. we love each other because we are mommies and daddies and brothers and sisters. not so much because we are bigger or smaller or prettier or smarter or whatever. anyway, we'll see.

day 2

2008-04-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

yalei shiri

2008-04-02T14:22:00.004-04:00

mommy and baby are healthy, b"h.

i'll post more later. thanks for checking in!

old world

2008-04-01T19:31:00.000-04:00

gan

2008-03-29T21:01:00.004-04:00

transportation

2008-03-27T22:58:00.001-04:00