Fascinating (and predictable) debate on the value of education graduate degrees in the Room for Debate blog over at the NYT. I’m going to keep most of my opinions on this to myself. I will point out that I find it hilarious that Margaret S. Croco, a professor at the definitive education school that thrives on these requirements, quotes John Dewey in the second paragraph of her case against Teach for America. As we used to say in my legal practice res ipsa loquitor.
The Unicorns – Tuff Luff. I hadn’t listened to this album in awhile. I forgot how incredible it is. Quick fact – the one time I saw the Unicorns live it was at the now defunct Knitting Factory. Chromeo and the Arcade Fire opened. It was pretty amazing.
This is not a music blog, right? I listen to music constantly during my waking hours, so it’s bound to come up. And with Fredeeky on vacation (and the subject of this post not really being in his wheelhouse) I figured I’d throw this together.
During law school I listened to A LOT of Wilco – it was a midwest thing at the time. I have a drawer of Wilco and Jeff Tweedy shows that I haven’t touched in awhile, but after unintentionally seeing two great Wilco shows this month I dug out a few and threw them on my iTunes. We used to drive from Milwaukee to Chicago for shows, so these discs brought back a lot of memories of standing in really smokey bars, drinking beers (usually on school nights), listening to him go through his pretty great catalog to-date. A few selected covers from some of those shows.
I guess these are the kinds of songs the title of this blog evokes.
From June 15, 1999 – Lounge Ax, Chicago, IL
Jeff Tweedy – Ripple The crowd noise is a little annoying, but I kind of love the banter at the end of this Dead cover. Obviously for my friend(s) in the Bay Area.
From March 26, 1998 – Lounge Ax, Chicago, IL
Jeff Tweedy – Oklahoma, USA A great Kinks song off of Muswell Hillbillies. Also covered by Yo La Tengo on Facebook (the album, not the social networking site).
Jeff Tweedy – A Fool Such As I This is a really old song that has been covered a lot, but Tweedy likely knows (among others) the Elvis Presley version or Bob Dylan version from the Basement Tapes. (Bonus track: Bob Dylan & The Band – A Fool Such As I)
Jeff Tweedy – Wish I Was Your Mother Because of this cover I tracked down the original version of this incredible, but strange, Mott the Hoople love song. The banter at the beginning means you probably won’t listen to it a ton, but the song is worth the wait.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Filed under: Reading, education, history, music | Tags: Non-fiction, Reading, Teaching
Following up on my earlier post about non-fiction, Rosa by Nikki Giovanni is exactly the kind of thing I am looking for. Giovanni is a pretty incredible woman (she was nominated for a Grammy with Tupac!) and this is a great book for readers of all ages – the illustrations are beautiful and Nikki is an exceptional writer.
Anything else like this out there?
(I skipped posting the obvious Outkast song here.)
Despite the cryptic subject, this post isn’t meant to be so apocalyptic. I just ran into a former student, her younger brother (and future student), and father in line for the pool in Red Hook. While it took my synapses a minute to figure out where the “Hi, Mr. M —- -” was coming from, it was actually a pleasant surprise and reminded me that I’m heading back to school soon. Which brings me to this request:
Quick question for whoever reads this (teachers, friends, enemies, Obama, etc…): Are there any non-fiction books about U.S. history that you use with kids, remember from childhood, or distinctly remember anything positive about? As I hinted at before, I’m working on building a much bigger library of non-fiction books for students. While the class is 8th grade, I’m interested in all elementary and middle school reading levels as long as the substantive content is there. I’m particularly interested in books covering the Civil War, Reconstruction, American Imperialism, the Great Depression, and World Wars I and II. Any ideas?
The ominious title of this post comes from the song Ethiopians by the Mountain Goats. This was left off of Tallahassee and this version is from the great folks at the Daytrotter Sessions.
Summer is almost here. Summer is almost over. That’s the argument going on in my brain right now. I’m writing fourth quarter report card comments, preparing for a last Monday at school to pack up my classroom, and wrapping up a few loose ends. Between the literacy workshop at Columbia, grad-school, visiting family, and a week of “appointments” in NYC, I feel like my summer is almost over. I meant to plan out my time off meticulously, but of course these last few weeks of school were way too hectic for me to put anything in writing.
This post about another teacher’s summer got me thinking, so here is my preliminary list of things to get done over the next month.
1. Spend at least one week out of the country. I’m thinking about heading back to Costa Rica to surf on the Pacific Coast. Just need to find that perfect flight and beach.
2. Read a ton. I just finished All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Over the last year I have read pretty much everything the guy has written except the Border Trilogy. Now I am a third of the way through that and hope to finish it up over the next week or two. I also just finished Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, which was an incredible recommendation by a reading teacher. I need to load up on some non-fiction as well, so recommendations would be appreciated. I am particularly interested in books about World War II (namely the Pacific Theater), Vietnam, and the Great Depression.
3. Re-write my first unit. I really want to show up with my unit on Reconstruction re-written based on everything I learned over the past year. I have no idea how I kept my eighth graders’ attention those first couple of weeks last year as I figured out what the hell I was doing in the classroom.
4. See a lot of free shows in NYC. I’ve already penciled in Handsome Furs at the MHOW, Animal Collective in Prospect Park, and a few others, but there are a ton of other things I need to see. I’m also going to make sure I catch the Public Theater’s Twelfth Night in Central Park.
5. Educate myself on stuff my students are really into. This seems weird, but given the number of times WWE wrestling, Harry Potter, Twilight, Kanye, and terrible movies came up over the year, I need to mainline about 48 hours of knowledge on this stuff simply for conversation purposes. I also probably should start playing video games. 75% of classroom management is about relationships and being able to hold substantive conversations with students about their interests (and making connections to classwork) is crucial. For those of you doing the math at home, the other 25% is about systems.
6. Hit the beach, bike a ton, and enjoy not having to go to work again until August 10.
Any other suggestions for my summer? Education related or not.
(In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been trying to post the songs that I steal my post titles from. This is an unreleased tMG song from a show in Portland earlier this year (it also happens to be about Portland).
The Mountain Goats – You’re in Maya
My students love music. They love everything and almost anything, so I try to use it in class as much as possible. Using music correctly is tricky, but I think I have it down. I have a few basic rules, some that apply to me and some that apply to them:
1. Always provide students with a complete copy of lyrics (if available).
2. Require students to mark up their copy of the text as the song plays – think “active reading skills.”
3. Listen to the entire recording of the song prior to class. Make sure it is the EXACT clip you plan on playing.
4. If the song is short, play it twice and have them free-write the second time through.
5. I will usually require them to write down two adjectives, two adverbs, two nouns, and two verbs that come to mind.
6. I will also usually ask students to write an additional verse. These can be great – I have a lot of “aspiring” MCs in my class. The additional verses to Take the A Train and the dust bowl ballads were only incredible.
7. Run through the rules and expectations before every song. I rolled out the rules the first time, and now I have students list them off.
8. One student always repeats the disclaimer: “There is no expectation that you are going to love this jam. You may hope you never hear it again. Very few of us are going to run home and download it, but, that doesn’t mean that we can’t listen respectfully and learn something from the song.”
9. Other rules include, absolutely no ‘mocking’ the song or disrupting class in anyway. You are welcome to tap your foot or sing along quietly, but as soon as you become the focus of the song and not the song itself, you will be asked to leave the class.
Below is an abbreviated list of songs I have used. Any other suggestions? Would love the song title and the subject matter.
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Band: End of the Civil War, Southern Pride, Reconstruction (Thanks Mrs. H. for this idea.)
Talkin World War III Blues - Bob Dylan: McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and the Cold War.
Blowing Down That Old Dusty Road - Woody Guthrie: Great Depression, Dust Bowl
A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke: Civil Rights Era
I used a ton of Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith, among others, for our unit on the Harlem Renaissance, but that is material for another post.
A few people have asked, so I figured it’s worth a post:
The photo at the top was taken at Ribeira Surf Camp in Ericeira, Portugal. I spent a week there between lawyer jobs a few years back. It’s an incredible place run by the nicest people in the world.
As for the blog name, it (obviously) comes from the Mountain Goats song Distant Stations off of All Hail West Texas. Now this album is a great introduction to his music. My favorite version of this song is a live one from 2007’s Zoop.
Filed under: music
I think I’ve mentioned three or four times that this isn’t a music blog. Unfortunately, anyone that has spent much time with me probably knows that after drink three I start babbling about music, and more often than not it’s about the Mountain Goats. So with that out of the way, here we go.
Went to see them (well, really just him) on Friday at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The show was part of the Wordless Music Series. Kind of an amazing venue. All around great show packed with a lot of real obscure gems, some pretty hilarious banter, and crowd pleasers. One of the reasons I love his shows is I’m often reminded of a song or two that I haven’t heard in years, which is exactly what happened on Friday.
After opening with a new song on piano (1 John 4:16), and while the sound guys worked out some problems, he launched into the never-played-live-before Song for Tura Santana off-mic. (Hilarious that there is already a bad copy of it on youtube, right?) I forgot how much I liked this song from Zopolite Machine.
If I remember correctly, after the show and a few drinks we were ready to drive 8 hours to our alma mater for tonight’s show.
I still haven’t figured out how to post MP3s, so anyone interested is going to have to hit Amazon on their own.
Update and Disclosure: This is not the best intro to his work – the album version is from 1994 and representative of his early work recorded on a boom-box. And it’s played on a cheap keyboard.
Filed under: music
I’m not completely sure how I feel about this article, but it is worth the read. I’m in no rush to hang out with Darnielle, but I will admit I tend to go for days only listening to the mountain goats. He writes incredible depictions of almost any type of situation – the bible, history, relationships, etc…… That’s about all I am going to say. His story is also fascinating.
By the time Darnielle graduated from high school, he was using heroin and later crystal meth. Eventually, a therapist told him he might find a salve for his own pain in helping others. He started taking classes to become a psychiatric-nurse technician and found work at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California. “It’s not that complicated,” Darnielle says. “My favorite movies are gory horror films. I love Faulkner. I wanted to see the most painful things possible. Maybe it was to see people worse off than me, but a lot of it was just to see how many bullets I could eat.”
Revised 3/3/09 – I think this raises some important points. I’ll leave it at that. For now.
Filed under: music
I realize this wasn’t intended to be a music blog, but I discovered bitorrent this weekend and have been in heaven. Before the Animal Collective show last week, they were playing some pretty incredible dub that I didn’t recognize and Shazam really let me down. In what can only be described as divine intervention, the Village Voice actually mentioned the song in the review. How that happened, I don’t know. But anyway, I now know who Bullwackie (aka Lloyd Barnes, The Mysterious Mixer, etc…) is. I’m having trouble finding stuff and I haven’t figured out how to upload my own, so enjoy these.
