Winter Break

You know in Super Mario Bros. 3, in the desert world, there's that one level with the tornado that follows you around? You don't necessarily die if it catches you; you just lose temporary control until you get spit back down into the sand. Is this ringing a bell? My method of passing the level includes running at full-tilt, avoiding any inconvenient question-blocks. Priority number one is staying out of that tornado.

This Friday I finished my first half-year of teaching (not quite half, but we'll count it). If I had to relate my experience so far to any Super Mario Bros. 3 level, I would probably choose the one previously mentioned. I occasionally got pulled into that tornado of paperwork, "what the heck am I going to teach next period," data, e-mails, grading, lesson planning... but each time, I was able to come out of it still sprinting for my life.

I've fallen in love with so many things about teaching. My students are amazing. After looking at the data I've collected this fall, it is clear that as a result of my instruction and their hard work, many have internalized the knowledge and skills we've worked on so far. I feel prepared to hit the ground running when we get back, and I'm excited to see how much my students will grow. My co-workers are passionate, supportive, and fun. It simply wouldn't be the same experience without our lunches together.

A few highlights of first semester:

• The National Junior Honor Society-sponsored Safe Trick or Treating - students came up with all of the ideas, planned, and executed a great night in which they hosted elementary students and their families for a night of candy and games. It was magical the way the students took charge, pulled together, and had a blast. At one point, I saw a few students huddled around a crying child. Before I could make it over to see what was going on, KB (a 7th grader) had grabbed a megaphone and announced in both English and Spanish that there was a missing child over by the bag-toss. It was my first real opportunity to see a lot of my students outside of the math classroom, and in leadership roles. It was a definite transformational moment that popped me right out of the disillusionment stage.
• My Pre-AP class applauding after discovering the Pythagorean Theorem
  
• Anytime that I say "Adios" to my non-english-speaking students and they respond with "Good-Bye"
• Running with the cross country team in the Jingle Bell Run through the streets of downtown Houston - DLC took 5th place in his age-group, and JL2 hilariously took first place in his (due to a registration error that put him in the 70+ age group)
• JS putting me in my place during Pre-AP class when I started teaching cross-multiplying as a method of solving proportions. "But why does it work? Why can we cross multiply?" Awesome. Thankfully, I was able to give him (and the rest of the class) an explanation that met his approval (and promptly confused the heck out of the rest of the class)
• LVV making an snowflake before one of our fieldtrips. It looked cool, but then he folded it back up to reveal that his initial cuts formed the word "MATH." Simply amazing.
  
• ET playing Nirvana in homeroom when I brought my guitar in and then singing along while I played Say It Ain't So by Weezer, one of the two songs I know.
  

As for Winter Break, it feels like I jumped up and grabbed the star at the end the desert level. Now I can sit back, stretch my thumbs, and rub my eyes before starting the next one. I'm looking forward to hanging out with friends and family, eating a lot of food, sleeping in, and basically pretending like I'm unemployed for a little while.

Happy Holidays, Let's Talk Immigration Reform!

After my second trip in as many weeks to the DPS (the Texan version of the DMV), I'm 6-8 weeks away from receiving a Texas drivers license in the mail. I'm not going to run out and buy an Andre Johnson jersey or anything, but it's looking more and more like I'm a real-life resident of the Lone Star State.

Of course the wait at the DPS was terrible, and of course I ended up leaving during the peak of rush hour traffic. So I decided to wait it out at a nearby Barnes and Noble. I bought a book called Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America, which I had borrowed from Jeff "The Baseball Tourist" Aucoin while we were visiting Memphis over Thanksgiving break. I'm only 70 pages in, but the book describes in honest, accurate, and sometimes brutal detail the experience I've had with Teach for America so far. But we'll save that for another post.

After that, I thumbed through a book that caught my eye by none other than Geraldo Rivera called The Great Progression: How Hispanics Will Lead America to a New Era of Prosperity. The topic was much more interesting than Rivera delivered it, but in addition to claiming that Hispanics won the election for Obama, he mentioned something that I thought was worth repeating here.

In 2007, the average age of the US Population was 36.4 years old. Meanwhile the average age of the Hispanic US Population was 27.4 years old. By now, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that in the immediate future, American demographics will shift drastically. I grew up in a monochromatic pocket of the world where this kind of change was spoken of under furrowed brow. ...but no longer (I am 6-8 weeks away from holding a Texan License, after all).

Texas is a minority-majority state and Houston is a minority-majority city, meaning that less than 50% of their populations are white (non-Hispanic white, that is). The 2000 census showed that Houston's racial make-up was 25% African American and 49% White. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos made up 37% and non-Hispanic whites made up 30% of Houston's population.

I'm more than a little excited about the fact that in my lifetime, America will become a minority-majority country (or more accurately, a country where no one racial or ethnic demographic has the majority). As a member of the future former majority, I'm excited to see how we respond, because how we respond will be part of what defines us as a generation. Will we thrash desperately under the fear that diminishing percentages mean diminishing power and unprecedented oppression? Will we embrace the inevitable diversity, drinking in its richness?

Another interesting factoid I picked up on Wikipedia is that an estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants reside in the Greater Houston area. I also found this cool map.

I understand that as you read that, you may feel a variety of emotions or responses. One reasonable response might be "That's 400,000 people who are enjoying the benefits of my taxes without paying their fair share. Give em the boot!"

Me? I don't really know. I mean, among those 400,000 are some of the kids I teach. Among those 400,000 are their families. It might be naiveté, but after seeing some of the faces of illegal immigration, I want them to find everything in America that I have found: education, employment, acceptance, opportunity...

Bush was supposedly on the verge of an important Immigration bill when September 11th put it on the back-burner. Obama announced in June that he wants to "recognize and legalize" undocumented immigrants, so I'm excited to see what comes next.

Rather than further oversimplifying a complex topic that I know little about, I'll open it up at this point to reader reactions and rebuttals...

On a One Horse Open Sleigh,
-Andy