Now's As Good A Time As Any

So apparently there are some future science teachers in my M.Ed. cohort who don’t “believe in” evolution. Not that they’re bad people, but…YIKES. I hope they’re not going to teach biology.

Does teaching really need to be heavily theorized? Does a classroom teacher need to be aware of all of the latest research and theories in order to be effective, or even above average?

Someone can stay in good physical condition by simply following a few rules of thumb. The rules of thumb are easy to state, but often difficult to follow: “Eat a balanced diet. Exercise regularly.”

Maybe if you’re a top athlete it’s important to understand the biochemical intricacies underlying the human metabolism (or, more likely, have an expert on your payroll). But for the average schmoe, the only knowledge you need are the basic rules of what works and what doesn’t. Beyond that, your success depends on your own will to follow through on what you know is right.

I think the same is true for teaching. It’s more of an art than a science.

Okay, so when I get my Master’s and I start teaching…then what’s my goal in life? Getting by for myself and helping other people is pretty good, but I think I’ll always be restless for more. I have some sense that I’d like to live in different places and do different things, but I’m not at all ready to move away from my family again.

P.S. I wonder who’s visiting from the Toledo Zoo…is that you, Sarah?

So I sit back, relax, and wait for the manager of Max & Erma’s to call me back about this mysterious $94.32 charge on my credit card…sigh…I like M&E’s but not that much!

I feel a little like teacher school is going to try (though not very hard) to change or confuse my existing thinking about how to teach. The difference in that regard between teacher school and law school is that I think you can pass teacher school without having to totally give up your principles. It doesn’t really challenge your moral principles, but it does try to prod your model or criteria for good teaching.

I’ve also been reading LiveJournals for a few minutes and contemplating how grateful I am not to have to deal with all that relationship drama crap. As much as I feel like I’d like more friends, I am a person who enjoys being alone most of the time. There are a lot of people who would go stir-crazy if they went a single day without social interaction. For me, a few weeks could go by before I really started going nuts. I don’t even much like chat rooms or e-mail! Don’t get me wrong: I love people, but I’m content letting them come to me most of the time instead of seeking them out.

Long, hot days in icy-cold air conditioned classrooms chasing away the yawns? Yep, it’s summer school alright…

Teacher school isn’t as dramatic or scary as law school. For the class I had today, we don’t even have to buy any books. Everything we need is online.

The real drama is when you actually get in the classroom. I just watched the documentary The First Year (about first year teachers) and it was pretty heavy, though not as bad as I thought. One thing I realized, though, is that high school physics teachers probably don’t get a lot of hugs.

So I wonder if it will be socially acceptable to bring a laptop into my education classes. I also wonder if anyone will be interested in reading my notes. We shall soon see.

So there’s this place west of Toronto called African Lion Safari and it’s truly outstanding. They have a nature preserve (they call it a “game reserve”, but that sounds like a place where you go to “play games” with animals, i.e. hunt them, so I prefer the alternative name). You drive through in your own car. They have big ol’ herds of lions, cheetahs, bison, deer, rhinos, giraffes, and a bunch of other animals whose names I didn’t catch.

I had a funny feeling that these animals were actually kind of domesticated and used to all the cars going by, because some of them got really close. I really ought to show you my pictures to give you an idea, but probably the most amazing area was where they kept the baboons. There must have been like a hundred baboons, and they were climbing all over people’s cars! There were one or two cars that had ten or twelve baboons on them at a time! I probably had five or six visitors, but not all at once.

There were also lots of baby animals! So cute! There were baby bison, baby deer, baby baboons, pretty much cute animals of nearly every different species. There was even one lonely two week old baby camel. He had been brought from a zoo where his mother wasn’t feeding him, and he was rooming with the alpacas (I thought they were llamas, but they were alpacas). They weren’t sure if he would get along with the alpacas, so they had a lady keeping an eye on him (actually, there were a lot of pretty ladies working there!).

It was truly amazing, and at about $20 Canadian (per adult) it was a good deal. If you go when they open, you can go through the safari as many times as you like! I would say if you like to look at animals, this is a must-see, almost worth a trip by itself.

This is part two of My Greatest Day Ever (well, at least in Canada). I just randomly decided to cruise Hamilton, Ontario for a place for dinner, and I picked up the local weekly alt. rag, which proclaimed that CAPTURED! By Robots was in town. YES!!! The World’s Greatest Robot Rock and Roll Band, and the World’s Greatest One-Man Band! Brothers and sisters, these robots actually play their instruments! It blows your mind! Everything operates on compressed air (frontman JBOT kept apologizing for the noisy air compressor at the side of the stage), and, presumably, some kind of MIDI interface so that all the movements are programmed into a sequencer. There’s a guitar/bass, a drum set, a tom/cymbal unit, and a horn section. YES, a pneumatic horn section!!! It was amazing! I can’t believe I only paid $8 to see it! $8 Canadian at that! I would have paid $8 just to see the robots not even moving.

Today was the kind of day that’s so mind-blowing, so amazing, that it makes all the crap all the rest of the time seem worthwhile. Details to come.

I have realized during this trip that one reason that I enjoy staying in hotels, a reason I hadn’t considered before, is that I enjoy inhabiting a place with decent furniture, if only for a few days. Maybe I should spend more on furniture for my apartment and less on travel (not to mention dining out, which I suppose I must partially do for the same reason).

After a dinner of Chicken Schnitzel, mashed potatoes and potato salad, I found a couple of treasures at a record store: a used LP copy of Slade’s “Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply” and a very reasonably priced new copy of Joni Mitchell’s “Court and Spark” on CD. Together, about $21 Canadian. I successfully shepherded my treasures into and out of the opening night gala of the Worldwide Short Film Fest and got on the subway to head back to my car, parked at the end of the line. Just after the second-to-last stop, I switched seats and put the bag on the seat next to me. Then I started snapping some long-exposure pictures out the window. When we got to Kipling Station, I hopped out of my seat and jauntily made my way to the escalator. Halfway down, it hit me: NO BAG! At which point I comically started dashing the wrong way back up the down escalator. Then I started waving my arms around going: “WAAAIIT! STOP THE TRAIN!” I ran all the way from one end of the train to the other, looking into each car for my yellow, LP-sized bag. The train was about to leave and I had nothing. Halfway back the other way, I gave a shrug to the conductor and gave up as the train pulled away. CRAAAP!

Now what I could have done, but didn’t think of until about two minutes later, was get back on the train and search, car to car, for my bag. When and if I found it, I could get back off that train and get on another train going back the other way. That would have been kind of fun.

What did happen was I tried to find some sort of lost and found. The best I could do was find the “inspector” (I guess that’s what he was called) and get a little business card with the phone number for the system-wide lost and found at Bay Street Station (downtown). So if somebody turned it in, I could go on another subway ride to get it (at a cost of $5 round trip). Or maybe they’d mail the stuff to me (at a cost of considerably more).

Oh well…how much do I really listen to LPs anyway? I’ll enjoy telling the story about losing the stuff more than I would have really enjoyed the stuff itself. At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself. As least I’ll tell myself that until I find the stuff again. Then I’d have the story and the stuff, and then, why, I’ll just start losing and finding everything I own because it’s so exciting and fun!

• Appropriately, I literally learned about the Michael Jackson verdict from a comedian. I went to the Alt.Comedy night at the Rivoli and the first guy got up and said: “So…Michael Jackson not guilty on all counts, huh?” I thought he was making it up for the joke. I was thinking: “Yesterday was Sunday. I haven’t heard anything about that.” I forget the joke he told, but it was pretty funny that I heard it from him, because that’s pretty much the level of significance of the event.
• I made one big ATM withdrawal yesterday to minimize the ATM charges as a percent of the total. I stashed away part of the cash away and I won’t tell you where. I was meticulously careful during the day to make sure I had $14.00 Canadian left at the end of the day so I could pay to validate my parking ticket to get out of the garage. The Alt.Comedy was even “pay what you can”, and I had to make my offering in greenbacks to preserve my small remaining C$ holdings for the day. But then I got to the parking garage and found out it was $14 until 6 PM, and then $6 for everything after. CRAP! But then I discovered that the parking machine took American dough! (And, yeah, okay, credit cards, but I’m not keen on the exchange rate you get with those.) Well, alright, I was back in business. I figured it would take my $20 like a Canadian $20, but to my surprise, it gave me back four loonies! I joyfully started toward my car when I heard a heavenly voice. I couldn’t quite make it out at first, so, in awe, I turned around, looked skyward and said, “Pardon me?” The heavenly voice said with an Indian accent: “Please take your ticket, sir.” I had left the $*#@$! thing in the machine!!! Thank goodness for my unseen benefactor and God Save The Toronto Parking Authority!
• I’m not relating these anecdotes in order, but it’s 12:37 in the morning and I walked probably 10 km today, so…I had a couple of hours to kill before my next activity (which was watching the silent Greta Garbo film Wild Orchids with live piano accompaniment) and I had just finished having a Guinness at a corner pub and studying my Lonely Planet guide. I started walking around a couple of different neighborhoods when it started getting overcast. I thought to myself: “Is it going to rain, or is it just going to be overcast?” I didn’t see anyone else carrying around umbrellas. Not a soul. So I kept walking, and it kept getting darker, and then I felt the first raindrops. ARRGH! I had nothing: no poncho, no umbrella, nothing water-resistant of any kind (sorry Mom!). I dashed from one tree to another and was happy there was significant city foliage. Finally, I saw a 7-11 and thought to myself: “Boy, all of the sudden, I really want to buy something from 7-11!” So I got a hot chocolate. Then probably the highlight of the day occurred in terms of craziness. I was watching the rain outside and sipping my hot chocolate when I heard a scream. There was this clearly mentally ill lady just plain freaking out. She was swearing, she was screaming about God and how everybody was against her. Finally, the clerk started SCREAMING back at her and telling her to get out. She started throwing things and messing up displays. That’s about the time that I dashed out of the store and laid low (under an awning, it was still pouring at this point). I could tell that the clerk and probably at least one bystander were calling 911. Finally, I started to make my way down the street into Chinatown for dinner. Just as I got about 20 feet away, the crazy lady burst out of the 7-11, still screaming and throwing newspapers. She walked out into the street into the middle of traffic. I kept walking. I heard extended honking from at least one car. I turned back one more time, and there was the coup de grace: she had taken her shirt off and was half-naked in the middle of the street. Luckily, I only saw her back (she was a kind of gross semi-old lady).
• Again, proceeding in reverse order for some reason, I had some transit craziness, too. I was debating between parking at the local suburban “GO” rail station and riding downtown, driving to the end of the subway line and riding downtown a shorter distance from there, or going for the gusto and parking downtown. Well, I already told you what I ended up doing. But I sure spent a long time driving around Kipling and Bloor looking for the stupid parking lot for the subway. Kipling south, Kipling north. Bloor east, Bloor west. Islington, all sorts of crazy places. Finally, I discovered the lot for the Kipling subway station (end of the line) was already full. CRAP AGAIN! I didn’t want to miss the “Music Mondays” performance at the Church of the Holy Trinity (which was totally worthwhile), so…yeah, you know what I did, I drove downtown.

Tomorrow, I’m sleeping in and I’m doing more driving-around activities as opposed to walking-all-over-the-place type stuff.