Ode to My Wife

As I get ready to publish this particular entry, it's my lovely wife's birthday. She's a great lady whose company I am lucky to have on a daily basis. Angela is a beautiful woman, and she makes me a better man. She endures all of my nonsense, from cartoons to superheroes to cartoon superheroes, and even engages in some of my weirder obsessions like my love for UFC. My wife is a compassionate, empathetic, loving, gorgeous, crazy cool chick that always keeps me on my toes. Without her, my life would be much emptier.


Frosh
On Monday, we went over the class syllabus and policies for the classroom.

Tuesday, the modified dialectical journals were due. All of the journals will take awhile to grade, so try to keep that in mind when wondering when you'll see those returned. You also took the test on Animal Farm that didn't go so well. Ms. Windt and I are doing our best to see where everyone stands, and we made the mistake of giving you a test that focused more on analysis than whether or not you read, the latter of which was our purpose. Just like you students, teaching itself is a learning process. The plan is to regroup and try again testing-wise next Monday, August 29, this time with a test that focuses on more objective goals.

Wednesday, we made a trip to the library and started taking notes on the different elements of plot. Pay attention to many of these terms as you can apply them while annotating.

We discussed annotation and how to approach it on Thursday. For some of you, this was review, but you'll be applying this idea throughout the school year and your time in the honors program at ALHS. Don't lose the bookmark; it's a valuable tool to focus you any time you read.

Friday, you received the period to annotate.

Seniors
Monday, we discussed the quotes that everyone chose to exemplify their personal philosophy. Many of you clearly put some thought into your choices. My suggestion is to memorize at least one quote over the course of your life so you can use it at a social gathering to impress friends and acquaintances. Never underestimate the implementation of a good quote at an opportune time.

On Tuesday, you wrote down your own definition of philosophy and your thoughts on the distinction between ethics and morals. From there, we started discussing the three ideas so that we came to a consensus of understanding in the class. For the record, philosophy is the love or study of wisdom while morals deal with feelings of what constitutes good and bad and ethics focus on the actions that are good and bad. This is by no means the be-all and end-all definition of any of the three ideas, but it's a suitable foundation for the class. We began discussing essentialism and relativism but our the bell postponed that for another day.

We finished discussing essentialism and relativism on Wednesday so that you could begin the ethical dilemma questions and made a trip to the library. Remember that essentialism means that there is a line where one can measure right and wrong; the line never changes and anyone in the past who fell on the wrong side of the line was wrong. Relativism posits that right and wrong is completely dependent on the culture and era of the time period and location.

Thursday focused on giving you time to work on the above-mentioned questions.

I was gone on Friday, and you wrote a writing sample.

Revisiting Relativism

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
You're Not Helping - Iran's Crisis of Modernity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Watching the preceding segment from The Daily Show led me to think about our discussions dealing with relativism and essentialism.

The gist of The Daily Show's clip is that Iran's government has begun a nuclear weapons program, thus participating in the modern world, and yet also recently sentenced a woman to death by stoning, a barbaric practice that dates back to Ancient Greece where a group of people execute someone by throwing large stones at the accused until they die, after finding her guilty of adultery. As someone who attempts to look at things in a relativistic manner, it's important to determine how exactly to define where cultural boundaries lie.

When it comes to "different culture," it's difficult to get more different than Iran. Iran is located on the other side of the world and is ruled as a dictatorship with very little room for the people to have a voice. The last election in Iran was wildly fraudulent with plenty of evidence to suggest that many of those who spoke out against the government's actions during the election were silenced in some fashion, whether that meant jail or murder. Oftentimes, the overall attitude of the government is interpreted as misogynistic by other countries, thinking Iran backwards in its attitude towards women. As a relativist, am I supposed to just accept that those are just some of the differences between our culture and accept them? My own inherent cultural bias prevents that.

But I had an epiphany while watching the above clip with Jon Stewart. In the last twenty years, especially in the previous decade, our global culture has changed dramatically thanks to the Internet. Previously, the story of a woman sentenced to death would not have made air, let alone cause a righteous stir. In a past context, it's possible that such a story would be written off because of the far-away nature of Iran, both geographically and culturally. But couple that with the modern achievement of a nuclear arms program and Thomas Friedman's "flat-world" argument (summed up in such a way, probably too succinctly, that the world is now a level-playing field to the extent that local cultures risk losing their individuality), and Iran looks horribly out of touch.

If our world is moving to a global culture and that movement leads to a more accepting world of equal rights for all genders, creeds, religions, races and orientations, then it stands to reason that, from a relativistic standpoint, Iran is incorrect in how its unfair and disproportionate treatment of women. This is our time and our culture right now, so deeming Iran's misogynistic positions immoral doesn't feel like such a stretch. In the end, it's a terrific example of Iran wanting to have its cake and eat it, too.

There is very little nice to say.

Today was an exercise in frustration for many reasons, many of them not school related. If the blogging becomes light or scarce or non-existent over the next two weeks, please understand that it is a result of my impending move and not a reflection of my dedication to the craft or the class. But if someone doesn't have something nice to say...well, I'll often say it anyway, which is a bad habit on my part.

One interesting thing that came out of the meeting I attended this morning was reinforcement of the idea that everyone wants what they can't have. A teacher from another high school in the district raved and raved about how much she enjoyed the previous evening's Back to School Night. Said teacher explained that it blew away the Report Card Night the school used to do, and she appreciated the fact that she could lay down the law to the attendants about the responsibility that comes with education.

Oddly enough, my experience with Back to School Night was just the opposite. Ten minute mini-periods usually don't provide enough time to really allow teachers to get across a meaningful point. Plus, the people who attend Back to School Night are not (in my humble opinion) the folks who need any kind of law laid down.

Meanwhile, Report Card Night, an event that I believe takes place shortly after the end of the first quarter, does allow parents to focus on what they perceive to be the problem subjects. While that may mean long lines for certain teachers, the parents can take the time to really find answers to any questions they have. My only hope is that the English teachers get a well-ventilated area this year, as the small gym doesn't have much in the way of air conditioning and a sweaty teacher isn't a pretty sight.

Frosh
You worked out of the grammar book on parts of speech due to my absence.

Seniors
We discussed the book options some more and set a lock-in date of September 23 in conjunction with the book check date of September 7. We then finished off our discussion about ethical essentialism and ethical relativism.

Rehearsals

I get to do this guy's job
on Saturday.

Happy birthday, Finbar.

Today I get to act in the official capacity of officiant for the first time at a friend's wedding rehearsal. The wedding itself is on Saturday, but today we're doing a run-through to make sure everyone knows where to stand. I've never performed a marriage ceremony before. In fact, I only used to joke about being ordained through an Internet church because I could talk a big game without ever needing to follow through on actually doing the deed. Then this couple called me out on it by asking me to be the man at their wedding. I'm a little nervous but mostly excited. Never before in my life have I looked at more wedding-related websites than I have in the preparation and build-up to this weekend...not even for my own. The ceremony is all written out and it's bride-approved. As long as I don't start a dry-heaving panic attack or faint due to the combination of heat and a black button-up shirt, everything should be coming up Milhouse. I imagine that I can't mess it up too bad, though, because they'll still be married at the end of the day.

Frosh
You worked to complete your life graphs and the accompanying sentences, which you then turned in at the end of the period. Good times, but work on the noise level next time, period four. Tomorrow we get to begin studying our essay writing terms.

Seniors
We had quite the lively discussion about the dilemma questions, some of which I would like to tweak next year just to make them more difficult. There's no wrong answers and yelling is always a plus during this particular discussion.

Tomorrow. Finbar. Seven.

McBride's kids rank among my favorites in the world, behind only my own niece and nephew. A buddy of mine had twins back in January, and it's still a little early to tell where they rank what with the two of them only being 7 months old and all.

Frosh
We went over a few of my personal positive and negative life events as a way to demonstrate how to use those events to create a graph. Remember to take the lists made yesterday and to pick 10 of those events to graph. You'll choose 5 of those events to represent visually, whether that means drawing a picture or finding one. You will also write 2-3 sentences explaining why you chose and ranked each of those 5 visually represented events. The idea is to aid in determining which events are more important in a text.

Seniors
You got time to work on the essentialism and relativism ethical dilemma questions. Take a side! And don't forget to explain why! We'll discuss your answers tomorrow. That's always a fun class period.

High School and Philosophy

Bonus time for both classes in yesterday's entry is still in effect until tomorrow at 11:59 PM. GET TO STEPPING!

Also, club rush began today, so join a club. Like-minded people in large groups can do some great (and sometimes scary) things.


Frosh
After finishing up our discussion about the expectations and policies in the class, student listed 14 negative life events and either 11 or 15 positive life events. The arbitrary numbering is intended to get people interested because neither is a usual listing-type number. The idea is for students to rank the events on 1 to 5 scale, positively so for the positive events and negatively so for the negative events. Each event should be written in a list in chronological order by tomorrow.

Objective: Having named various positive and negative life events, A S W rank the events in comparison to one another.


Seniors
We began by having each student write their own definition of philosophy, morality and ethics. After coming to a consensus with my input from the handout, we discussed ethical relativism and ethical essentialism. This is a dicey subject that's difficult to fully grasp. I enjoy these discussions, though, because the questions students have in trying to understand the distinction between the two concepts always helps to better my own understanding.

Objective: Having discussed ethics, morals, and philosophy, A S W be able to distinguish ethical essentialism from ethical relativism.