One player who wasn’t as enthusiastic about the team’s White House visit was Rasheed Wallace. Asked on Sunday what he would say to President Bush when they met, the Pistons forward told the Free Press: “I don’t have [expletive] to say to him. I didn’t vote for him. It’s just something we have to do.”
Monthly Archive for January, 2005
Well…everything went great today in my first day of student-teaching. Woo Whoo! I was falling asleep in the back of the classroom “observing” but hey we have to start somewhere. My master teacher is way cool and it turns out that she is related to two of my friends. Yeah, I know. Weird. Actually, it seemed like it was a high school reunion. The Office manager turned out to be a girl that used to sit in front of me in Economics. Weird. Anyhow, my Master teacher is sick and will be out tomorrow and I get to take over the class manana. I guess there is no better way to start a rapport with the students than to go solo and sub the class your second day of Student-Teaching. Isn’t there anything better than jumping in head first…or is it feet first? I think that for me it is head first.
So I start student-teaching this coming Monday and I am a nervous wreck. Why am I so anxious? I have worked as a substitute for about two years. I know what to expect in the classroom. As a sub I have probably experienced the worst about teaching. I have had students vomit in the middle of the classroom. Middle-school students have confronted me and refused to comply with my directions and instead tell me off. Pretentious teachers have attempted to bring me down. With all of this behind me one would think that student-teaching would be a breeze but I am still nervous. It is just a class of 6th graders. Why is it that no matter how much experience I have in the classroom I still wallow in self-doubt?
I have always been one to defend a student’s right to self expression in the way they dress or the way they style their hair, etc., but I think that I am now done with that (at least for the primary grades). When my parents decided that they had had enough with the U.S. and moved back to Jalisco, Mexico (a year later they moved back to Cali for economic reasons, of course), I was forced to enroll in school. What a shock. I was forced to wear a uniform which consisted of dark plaid pants and a white button up shirt. Every morning before we went to class we had to line up for a daily inspection by the administration. They made sure that our hair was combed, our finger nails nicely clipped, and our clothing clean and ironed. Those that did not meet the standards were reprimanded with a swift blow to the head with a ruler. Now, this may sound harsh in comparison to the freedoms that kids have in American schools but maybe it does have a significant impact in the learning process. If a student feels good about himself, won’t that make him a better student and more likely to learn? Students are not oblivious to their surroundings. Students have a sense of smell and are quick to point out a “Stinky Pete” or a “Lorena Pee-body.” This labeling is going to inevitably affect these students which are singled out. Kids in the primary grades can be unkind in their name-calling and this can lead to many other problems.
As a substitute-teacher I am exposed to everything, from girls wearing the same set of clothes for the entire week, or boys wearing mullets and lately diamond studs (as young as 3ed grade) The worst problem though is poor hygiene (when you get close to certain students you can smell a certain odor that just isn’t right). Now, where does the fault lie with this issue? I will go out on a limb and say that it is the parent’s responsibility to assure that their children are bathed and properly dressed and ready to learn. It is unfortunate that many parents do not care. I am now in favor of schools mandating uniform use for all students in the primary grades. Schools should set up rules whereby the parents know what is expected of their children in regards to dress and proper hygiene. The problem though, is that if an administrator dared to institute such policies he would be bombarded with complaints by parents. They would stress such things as their children’s right to individualism and other such arguments. The bottom line is that children that are enrolled in school are there to learn and it is not a day care center.
Last night as I was driving around Bakersfield looking for an In-N-Out (I am addicted!), after a student-teaching seminar, I noticed people with signs at a major intersection. I thought it was supermarket strikers but I remembered that that labor dispute had since been resolved. I was surprised to see older adults with signs with slogans that read “Military families Against the War”, “Does Death and Destruction Equal Democracy?” and more. I felt so ashamed for being so complacent. I have not been out protesting the war, probably since its inception. I guess Dubya’s inauguration can serve as a reminder that the war in Iraq is still happening. Innocent Iraqi civilians are still dying. American troops are coming home in caskets. The war machine is still reaping in the profits. Have we all been co-opted by the machine?
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked – and rightly so – what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
… Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.
… Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed,whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution.
…I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
… A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane,of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
From “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City
The abuse stopped with me. My parents rejected the abuse that characterized their upbringing. This wasn’t the case for some of my cousins. Many of them suffered from the same psychological and physical abuse. Some of my cousins refused to accept this type of existence and chose to leave and make a life of their own without the constant fear and pressure hovering over them. My uncle E. is now alone. Whenever I visit him he tends to talk about his failure as a parent. Why couldn’t he stop the cycle of violence? Why did he continue to abuse his children the same way that his father abused him? The feeling of guilt dominates his life.
It is obvious to me that even as adults, the upbringing of my uncles and aunts continues to haunt their lives. My uncle J. always seeks me for career advice. I always try to encourage him with positive words and assist him in any way that I can but the end result is always the same. He thinks that he is not good enough and never manages to finish what he started. My uncle A. is the one that completely rejects his past. My uncle A. refused to lay a hand on his children as they grew up. Whenever he saw a family member wanting to spank an unruly child he was quick to intervene and explain that there are better ways of disciplining a child.
My family, like most families, has its share of problems. It is sad to see the regret in the eyes of several of my aunts and uncles. I know that they wonder what could have been if they could have done things differently. As a student at Fresno State I took many criminology courses under a great professor by the name of Candice Skrapec. Dr. Skrapec always stressed the importance of not using violence in disciplining your children. Dr. Skrapec would throw study after study at us which stated that spanking or other type of physical discipline was counterproductive to the development of a child. Dr Skrapec stated that if you, as a parent, knew that spanking could lead to developmental problems in your child, how could you take the risk? If only my grandfather and his father knew of the negative consequences of physical abuse.
One day, as I watched Televisa, Mexico’s monopolistic television network. My abuelo sat across me. His eyes looked tired and for the first time in my life he looked like an ansiano. He started talking to me about how he met my abuela. He sounded sad in the way he told the story. My abuelo explained to me that while his parents helped his two other brothers with their wedding expenses, they refused to help him. My abuelo had to work hard to save up the money for his marriage. During this time, he took off the United States to work as a bracero in Northern California. He continued to tell me that his father would always tell him that he was worthless and that he would encourage him to leave the house from a very early age. Whenever my tatarabuelo felt like it, he would beat my abuelo with whatever was close at hand. My abuelo, looked at me, tears in his eyes and told me that he felt as though he wasn’t really that man’s son. He felt that maybe he was adopted. How could his own father treat him in that manner?
I think anyone that watches Spanish language television is addicted to telenovelas. First, second, even third generation Mexican-Americans love novelas. Why this fascination with the soap opera? I always question how you can watch these Televisa productions that are in no way representative of the people of Mexico. On the novelas the majority of the actors tend to be lighter skinned with lighter colored eyes, driving fancy foreign cars and dressing in the latest American style. Don’t get me wrong, there is much diversity in Mexico but the majority of Mexicans do not have blonde hair and blue eyes. Es mas, nunca e visto un indijena en una novela. Y no me salgan con la novela de Maria Isabel. How awful, Televisa even made a novela of an indigenous girl who starts talking castellano and dresses like the rich and she is able to conquer the galan of the novela. In Mexico it is even worse. Televisa manages to incorporate commercials into the novelas (In the U.S. Univision edits these commercials). For example, a character will say something like “Ay, tengo que lavar…que huevo,” and her friend will proceed to say “Pues, yo uso Tide con Bleach para lavar mi ropa.” While she says this she will be holding a box of Tide in her hand. Give me a break!