Huh. Cool.

The Roots will be Jimmy Fallon's house band when he takes over Conan's show. That's pretty sweet. It's pretty exciting to think of a such a badass hip hop (and by badass, I mean not gangsta) group getting such a prominent place in mainstream media. (As I write this, the thought that this could be seen as selling out is crossing my mind. But I don't care. The presence of this kind of hip hop in the dominant media culture is way overdue. )

It's funny to me that the Wall Street Journal article in which I first read about this persists in calling Questlove and Black Thought, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Trotter.

Dude, that's so not hip hop.

I said "shit" one time! It was an accident!

A direct quote from some student writing I'm grading. He argues that profanity should be taught in foreign language classes:

But even teachers and adults (specifically my English teacher) have slipped a 'four letter word' here and there.

Fuck.

I needed that.

Tonight I went to see Julian Bond, President of the NAACP speak on the U of I campus.

That. Guy. Is. Cool. Below are some of the photos they showed of him in the 60s. He was a student of Dr. King's; he founded SNCC, and he organized the opposition delegation to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And he's funny.

When asked if he had the sense that the NAACP could take some credit for Obama's election, one of the things he said was, "We are the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. We are not the National Association for the Advancement of One Colored Person." ha

The one thing I'm going to think on for a while, though, was the way he generalized the difference between today's student generation and the students of his generation. He made a distinction between the focus then on achieving social justice, and the focus now on increasing student participation in social service. He said, "We believed that if you had social justice, you wouldn't need social service."

I like that.

Here are some of the photos of him that they put up. I thought they were pretty cool.

"Handwriting is a historical blip in the long history of writing technologies"

I'm just getting around to online-bookmarking the websites and pages I've saved in my "when i get a chance" file, which is how I came across this article for Good magazine called "Stop Teaching Handwriting" by Anne Trubek.

I've excerpted much of the article below, because I really super like her idea. Plus, the history of writing technologies she gives is very interesting, I think.

Let’s stop brutalizing our kids with years of drills on the proper formation of a cursive capital “S”—handwriting is a historical blip in the long history of writing technologies, and it’s time to consign to the trash heap this artificial way of making letters, along with clay tablets, smoke signals, and other arcane technologies.

Many will find this argument hard to swallow because we cling to handwriting out of a romantic sense that script expresses identity. But only since the invention of the printing press has handwriting been considered a mark of self expression. Medieval monks first worried that the invention of printing would be the ruin of books, as presses were more idiosyncratic and prone to human error than manuscripts produced in scriptoriums. And the monks never conceived of handwriting as a sign of identity: For them, script was formulaic, not self-expressive. That concept did not appear until the early 18th century. Still later came the notion that personality and individuality could be deduced by analyzing handwriting. All the while, print became widely available, and handwriting lost its primacy as a vehicle of mass communication.

Huh. Makes sense.

The typewriter took handwriting down another notch. Henry James took up the then-new writing machine in the 1880s, most likely because he, like my son, had poor handwriting. By the 1890’s, James was dictating all his novels to a secretary. And as novelists and businesses were putting down their pens, others started to valorize handwriting as somehow more pure and more authentic, infusing script with nostalgic romanticism. The philosopher Martin Heidegger was particularly guilty of this, writing in 1940 of the losses wrought by typewriters: "In handwriting the relation of Being to man, namely the word, is inscribed in beings themselves. …When writing was withdrawn from the origin of its essence, i.e. from the hand, and was transferred to the machine, a transformation occurred in the relation of Being to man."

This make me feel a lot less guilty for sometimes allowing my students, especially those with disabilities, to dictate parts of their writing assignments to me while I write or type for them.

The pattern doesn’t change: As writing technologies evolve, we romanticize the old and adapt to the new. This will happen with keyboards, too—some contemporary novelists have ceased using them already. Richard Powers uses voice-recognition software to compose everything, including his novels. “Except for brief moments of duress, I haven’t touched a keyboard for years,” he says. "No fingers were tortured in producing these words—or the last half a million words of my published fiction." Powers is wonderfully free of technological nostalgia: "Writing is the act of accepting the huge shortfall between the story in the mind and what hits the page. …For that, no interface will ever be clean or invisible enough for us to get the passage right," he says to his computer.

Thinking about it this way almost makes me want to send some of them to the learning center where we've got some voice-recognition software. For although I'm often alarmed at how poor their typing skills are, it's pretty liberating to think of teaching writing as teaching thinking. It makes it much more difficult, actually, but much more important-seeming.

I don't know, maybe that's a cop-out. Would allowing voice-recognition software for students for whom writing or typing presents a roadblock to creative production sacrifice their ability to "get by" in a world that, whether I like it or not, currently requires typing skills? I fear the unintended consequences that pushing my hippie ideals on my students.

reappropriation approaching

O.K., it's gotten to the point where I need to seriously readjust my attitude about "You trippin." Because if I don't, I am just going to snap.

It's become glaringly obvious to me. My heart rate increases when I hear students mutter, "She trippin," under their breaths when I say perfectly even-keeled, normal things like, "Alright, let's get started."

It'll be kinda like the time when Kasey and I reappropriated Soulja Boy's "Report Card."

The thing is, I can't think of a new meaning for you-trippin. Whereas it seemed natural to change "Throw some D's on that bitch" to "Let's introduce a Dialogue on the subect so that the understandings of all parties involved grow and adapt with diverse input," this one feels like more of a leap. What can I make you-trippin?

It's days like these that I love love love my job.

Here's a direct quote from a piece of student writing I collected yesterday.

"(Good news! Unicorns only have one emotion -- happiness!)"

It's from her manifesto. It calls for the legal requirement of all children fourteen and under to have unicorn caretakers. It's awesome.

writing is SO hard

My students are writing manifestos this week, and they've been having a hard time wrapping their minds around the assignment. This morning, they were working on them in the computer lab, and I was walking around to offer support.

This one kid called me over and said, "Ms. Dahlke, I know how I want to do this, but I just don't know what I want to put in my introduction." And I was like, "Well, why don't you save your introduction for later. Maybe you'll know then?" He looked and me, sincerely surprised, and said, "You mean, I don't have to write my introduction first?" I didn't really say anything, just shook my head 'no.'

And he goes, "Ugh! I have so much to learn!"

HI-larious.

Almost makes me want to have a kid. So that I can drug her//him, videotape it, and post it on the Internets.

Cool.

For more, click here.

UPDATE: I'm being mocked.

Not funny.

OK, it is.

I am NOT tripping.

For whatever reason, I have developed an intense aversion to the word trippin. I'm NOT trippin.

Today in class, after we excerpted the Communist Manifesto, listened to John Lennon's "Imagine" and then to Pitbull and Nas's remix of that song, I asked the students to write a paragraph summarizing the overlapping main ideas in these songs and commenting on personal connections they could make with these main ideas. The second the word paragraph escaped my lips, it was greeted with a chorus of "Man, you trippin"s. (They're well able to write paragraphs in a few short minutes, and thoughtful ones at that. It's like my distaste for the word trippin is matched only by their distaste for the idea of writing. How do I get rid of that?) WTF.

I probably wouldn't have written a blog post about the word, though, if it hadn't been for an incident later that same class period in which I told a student doing math homework while Molly was giving directions to put it away. Her response? "Oh my GAWD! Why are you TRIPPIN?"

The thought occurred to me as I was taking a shower this evening, that it might be convenient and funny (for me) to create a poster that says, "I AM NOT TRIPPIN," that I could silently point to whenever a kid says it. Too much?

(That "Too much?" is not rhetorical. Seriously, mood-lightener or whack? Seeking feedback on this one.)

25 things

I forgot vital stuff at school this afternoon, and decided to use that as a much needed excuse to fuck around online all evening.

I really like this new "25 Things" craze on Facebook. The thing is, I have super-interesting friends. I'm too scared to write one of these thingies myself, though, because I don't want people to think I'm totally narcissistic. (Um, hullo? Who am I kidding? I have a blog. Of COURSE I'm narcissistic.) But I'm not finding other people narcissistic at all. Au contraire. I find them cool. And I get really excited when a new one pops up on my mini-feed.

So because I've been big into time-wasting this last hour or so, and since I've been big into 25 Things for the last few weeks or so, I compiled a list. It's a list of 25 interesting things that people I like listed in their lists of 25 things.

1. First and foremost, I am ashamed that I am doing this. I usually laugh at such silly facebook things.

2. I like Wizard of Oz. It is probably my favorite movie, but I don't like it as much as my family thinks I do. I don't know what to do with all of the odd Wizard of Oz paraphernalia that I have.

Fact number four: Under pure pressure, I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior when I was 11 for Gummi Worms.

4. I was such a terribly behaved toddler that my parents had to go with me to an obedience school where they learned how to train me. Eventually I stopped being such a bratty kid and I really am sorry that I put red nail polish all over the face of my sister’s Rainbo Bright doll.

5. The most humorous, frightening, and heartbreaking concept I know of is when someone's belief in the Bible, Book of Mormon, or Qu'ran supersedes their belief in God.

6. When we lived in town, we knew the lock code to get into the Catholic church. There was 24-hour adoration, so we would sneak in and up to the balcony at 2 or 3 am and scare whatever old lady was down in the pews praying. If they caught us, we would just pretend like we were praying. Then we would sneak into the hall and eat the ice cream in the freezer. Yeah, I’m a terrible person. We did this with our neighbors, who I babysat. One of them was my age. If a kid out there comes upon this, the lock code is 1234.

6. Sometimes I think my Dad is hysterical, but I usually think his jokes are bad. For example, I was complaining to him that /Elizabeth/ is too long of a name especially with a last name like /----------/*. He looked up with the straightest face and said, "Girl, you were lucky to get name. I wanted to just call you girl. He called me /Girl/ for the rest of the night. I thought that was pretty good. *Removed by me for Eliz’s privacy

8. The day I turned 18 one of the first things I did was register to vote--as a Republican.

9. Due to the heavy and emotional influence music has had on me personally, my daughter and I only listen to Christian based music: rap, gospel, contemporary, rock. The funny thing is we still are exposed to other secular music (how can you not be exposed), but we do not dance or move our heads to it. Its weird I know. Sometimes I will wake up in the morning with a secular song in my head usually Beyonce or Lauryn Hill and I have to catch myself. I usually just start singing a Baptist hymn.

12. I believe the '80s produced just as much good and bad music as any other decade in European and American history.

Fact number twelve: I called Bush a vacuous twit at his train tour stop in Bloomington, IL in 2000. Unfortunately, I was humped by a middle aged Republican who didn't like what I was saying and felt that this was appropriate retaliation.

13. I like to find common ground in conversations, but I won’t compromise about my dislike of diamond engagement rings

14. My dream job would be a host of a show on HGTV.

Fact number fourteen: Over the years I have worked as a bagel maker, paralegal, baker, musical violinist, skateboard shop gal, museum archivist, and anti-death penalty organizer.

15. On January 5, 2009 I celebrated 3 full years of abstaining from sexual intercourse. For those of you who feel as if this is something you are struggling with I read Lady in Waiting several times. I prayed and read my Bible every night (and still do). I cried hard for the first SIX months. It was extremely hard, but after those six months God made it easier for me. I do not know if that is the same for everyone. The hardest thing was waiting for God's answer regarding marriage knowing that confirmation is not permitted to everyone.

16. I lived in Sevilla last year. I could live in the country in Northern Spain forever I think, but I don’t get Sevilla and Sevilla doesn’t get me. This made me embarrassingly patriotic, and in love with English. I’m sorry about this, and confused by it.

17. I use to have a jerri curl that I loathed especially when the movies House Party came out. "Follow the drip." It made my hair grow though.

18. My dissertation topic is on paternal presence and adolescent sexual behavior in adolescents living in extreme poverty.

18. I met my husband, Broch, on eHarmony.com.

22. I lose everything, and I don’t ever care, and then I always find the things again, and I don’t care about that either. I drove my car into a flash flood a few years ago, and had to make an emergency escape onto the roof while my car floated downstream, and all my possessions were in the car, and I had no more car, and I laughed. I was talking to my mom on the phone in the rain and she thought I went temporarily insane. Then again, I’ve never really owned anything. I think I am renting my body.

23. I want to open a dorm for people with disabilities someday.

23. I once watched a U of I basketball game at a Scottish Bar in France. Some guy pulled a live pet rat out of his shirt, and it was weird.

23. My dad used to play a lot of Stevie Wonder. One of my favorite songs was "I Just Called to Say I Love You." While at a writing workshop for local elementary school students one weekend, we had to write a poem or something to share with the audience (mostly parents). Thinking I could do something people would recognize and laugh at, I changed the words of Stevie's song to "I Just Called to Say I Hate You." I proudly stood up to recite the words to everyone and when I was finished, everyone just stared at me, no applause or anything. It didn't really bother me at the time but I felt bad for my mom because she was the parent of that weird child who hated people. I've made several calls over the years to tell people I hate them, in honor of that song I wrote :)

25. I played Abraham Lincoln’s wife in a play in kindergarten, because I was really tall so that somehow made sense, and I don’t know what Lynice Lemenager was, but we both peed our pants.

Fact number twenty-five: I have worn glasses since I was five years old and my first pair of frames said “Battlestar Galactica” on the side.

By the way, I'm pretty sure everyone's just copying off of Susan.

Attention adoring fans! (i.e. Mom)

For anyone interested, Cross Country Co-Teach, is back in action after a long hiatus due to the mid-winter slump.

wanted:

Kasey, Jess, and I have come to the realization that we really need an intern.

Seeking Unpaid Intern

Job Requirements:

• Male.
• For-profit.
• Single, but not looking AND/OR happily married with a cool wife.
• Not douchey.
• Common decency.

Highly Preferred:

• Not White Liberal.
• Bachelor’s Degree.
• Boring.

Job Decription:

• Make sure the shower is hot.
• Talk to (an unspecified) my mom.
• Check (an unspecified) my ass.
• Talk to boring people.
• Talk to interesting people when they are being boring.
• Get us fondue supplies, salad stuff, and orange juice when we don’t want to.
• Jump Alex’s car AND/OR find Jessica’ s battery.
• Ensure Jordan’s life as necessary.
• Go to Blockbuster, sucka!
• Identify all possible locations where Combos are available for purchase.
• Make Ellen’s copies.

Uniform:

• Snuggie.

*We are equal-opportunity, non-paying employers. But we seriously don't want a female intern because she'd probably just turn into our friend.

also this is funny

The guy on the left is like, "Uh... yeah. So uh... any questions?"

kinda speechless

I'm creating a video about activism to show my students, because they'll be writing manifestos in the coming weeks. Here's one of the images I've come across: