AC has taken over a crazy portion of the market lately (and by market, I mean the supermarket of course.) It’s become so that I can’t buy anything without seeing the America’s Choice version of it. From the accounts, we can tell that buying anything having to do with dairy is like playing roulette with poor sick cow. And yet, I’ve ventured into experiences with their other products with tasty goodness! Try, for example, their canned chili… man that’s good stuff. I could suck that stuff down all day! (But not really, because then I’d be dehydrated and my mouth would feel like leather.)

So my theory - are you ready? - is that America’s Choice is run by cows. I mean, sure their chili says it has beef in it, but you know how chili is. You can’t tell a bean from a speck of dirt in there! Okay, okay, so my theory is a bit flawed, but I still submit that there’s something going on here. Especially since these food blunders are slipping by even the Consumerist! (*ahem* he’s being paid off). 50 search results on “america’s choice” and not a single post on America’s Choice? C’mon, we see what’s going on here Consumerist.

On these occasions I remind myself, it’s most important to know that where there’s shadow, there’s light, and the darkness will always cast upon me in such a way that I’ll forever know where that light lives. So, while I grasp blindly day by day, I at least see the direction toward which I need to go - toward the light that I believe will eventually guide me out of these shadows, to a place where I’m no longer hidden by uncertainty.

The Plight of the Social Studies

As part of my graduate curriculum, I’m studying the theory and practice of teaching social studies. I was shocked at first to find out how overlooked the subject of social studies is in primary school, but after the shock sputtered out, it became clear to me how obvious this neglect would be – mostly thanks to a very interesting article my professor handed out to my class last Wednesday.

What Elementary Students and Teachers Say about Social Studies – Yali Zhao and John D. Hoge

What is your most memorable social studies learning experience from your own school years? This is a question posed in the article – one that had me probing my own memories for those horrible history reading and writing assignments. If I may reference the dinner plate (of which I’m a big fan), social studies is like the string beans or the Brussels sprouts of many academic careers – it’s yucky, hard to appreciate, and can take a while to digest (if only mentally), so it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the answers to the posed question be of uncertainty. On the flip side of what this unappetizing subject is statistically seen to be, it can be extremely enriching and enticing if prepared properly.

I’m at an impasse concerning my position on the topic. I happen to love string beans, Brussels sprouts, and just about every other green vegacious dinner-thing on my plate (just ask my mom), but I don’t know much about them, least of all about how to cook them to my taste. On the same note, while I’ve got a great interest in the history, present and future of our societies, I, for a greater part, don’t know how I can apply myself to these fields. That is to say, I don’t know what the hell social studies has to do with me!

But I’m going to brush that though out of my head for now, because it can only keep me from moving beyond my impasse. I need to get myself moving because the professors of Kean University see the ‘academic process’ as a holistic one – one in which the different disciplines of study shouldn’t be isolated from each other. Having been ‘brought up’ by these professors, I see the process in the same light, and I have to say that I’m pretty excited about accomplishing a plan of learning in which all subjects – from science to arithmetic to history – click with each other in a way that shows clear relevances between them. I can only imagine how hard difficult that might be, but I hope for the prospect of cooperating with teachers of subjects other than English (which is my expertise) to achieve that goal.

In truth, this was supposed to be a post about Zhao and Hoge’s article, but I’ve got a bit off track. To make amends, here are some highlights from the text.

• “Most children mentioned reading, math or science as their favorite subject because ‘it is fun to learn,’ ‘I’m good at it,’ or ‘it is useful and challenging.’”
• “Most children say that they did not like social studies because ‘it is boring and useless,’ ‘it’s reading the textbook,’ and ‘it doesn’t apply.’”
• “One teacher said [concerning their most memorable social studies experience], ‘The memorable thing . . . is that I did not do anything memorable in social studies.’”
• “… many of the teachers in our sample recognized that social studies was receiving insufficient time and resources, compared to the amount devoted to reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
• “Most second- to fourth-graders indicated that social studies was important, but they did not know why. They said it was important because ‘we have to learn it,’ and ‘it affects my grade.’”
• “When asked to identify the current president and tell what they knew about him, more than half of the kindergarteners and many first-graders named George Washington. Half of the first-graders and most of the second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders named George Bus as the president, but they knew little or nothing about him.”
• “Kindergarteners and first-graders were unable to name their region, state, and county, and many could not identify the town they lived in. Indeed, only half of those in the third grade, and one tenth of those in the second grade knew the name of the town in which they lived.”
• “Many students in the early grades (K-3) did not know the value of one hundred dollars, because they stated that they would buy a new car, a motorcycle, a big house, a pool, or a farm. About one third of the children across all of the grades elected to put the money to good use, suggesting giving the money to charity or buying things for their families.”

I put my foot down, sir!

Tomorrow I’ll have a chunk of the day to myself since this week is technically my “vacation” (if you can call it that, since I still have several tutoring sessions). After tonight’s magazine meeting, I’m reading to get my head back into my story.

I’ve come upon a nice lump of cash in light of the summer program’s end. I’m tempted to spend it! In fact, I’ve already spent a good amount of money on a new iriver Spinn (which is working wonderfully, I should add). I’m a big fan of iriver’s unique style and phenomenal sound, so this was a real treat. Now I’m contemplating whether or not I really need a new laptop.

I love my current lappy: the HP dv1000. It took a spill from about 3 feet this summer and was behaving a bit weirdly for a while - scratchy feedback from the speakers, unidentifiable DVD drive, constant overheating - but it seems to be doing better now. I bought it the last year the model was being sold by HP in 2006, but I still love the way it looks, the way it feel and the way it performs.

For the past month or so, I’ve been meaning to replace it because I thought there’d been some permanent damage, but it seems to be running smoothly now. If I do replace it, it would be with the Pavilion dv3t. That little thing’s got a crazy 8-hour battery life. The problem is, I don’t like the way the new Pavilions look, and the glossy metallic touch pads feel weird and uncomfortable.

Before making a new 3-year commitment with a new laptop, I think I’ll see how things turn out with my current lappy. In the meantime, I hope HP puts out some designs I’m more into.

The learning center’s summer program began around June 22 and ended just last week on Aug 28. It was non-stop craziness through that block of time… the kind of craziness that you don’t see anywhere else. Still, there are lasting memories that I feel blessed to have. Yet another chapter of my life that’s closed. Don’t worry, the second act is still only beginning.

I feel that whenever a parent tells tells me that I’ve done a good job teaching, I shouldn’t believe it. I can always do better, and they don’t know that.

I’m back to my old part-time schedule (thank God), and I have about a week off until I start my graduate studies in Education back at Kean U. In fact, I’m heading down there tomorrow to hand in my immunization records and buy my obscenely expensive books. I’ve driven down there a couple of times over the summer to straighten out paperwork and whatever else needed to be done, and man have they changed that place. Gigantic new dorms, classrooms converted into glass-walled study lounges, new food areas with on-site chefs. I like :D Of course I’ve yet to experience any of that.

I’ll be going in for an orientation sometime this week too. Can’t wait!

Almost every day I would see a bird fly up there above the entrance, trying to fit into the slim slit that leads into the spacious inside. When it comes out, I would sometimes see it get stuck by its foot and start fluttering wildly above the glass door entrance. I was afraid it would injure itself because it looked pretty dangerous. Then, during one Saturday program, a blue egg fell from up there and squished to the ground. Eventually, a really bad stench started coming from the housing.

While I’m a big fan of not disturbing animals, even I knew something had to be done because the smell was getting overwhelming, and there were feathers everywhere from the birds that would get stuck. Earlier today, the property owner and his son (a friend of mine) cleared the housing out. They found five dead birds and a squirrel nest…

How they ever learned to live together up there, I’ll never know. Maybe the squirrels had something to do with the deaths, or maybe the birds didn’t get enouth to eat because the parents couldn’t get up there often enough.

I came just as they were putting up some chicken wire to block up the opening to the thing, and while the friend of mine filled me in on what they found, two squirrels came running up the stairs to where we were. One of them wasn’t afraid of us at all - walked right past our feet, looked at us with its big black eyes, and put its paw on the glass door of our entrance. It then jumped up on the railing below the housing despite the property owner there on a ladder, sealing it up. It wouldn’t leave until he banged on the railing a few times - then the squirrel went flying to the ground and scurried away across the street. Poor little guy. I hope it finds a new home.