Teaching and Peace Talks

BH

My day teaching began with myself walking into a blazing hot room (air conditioner is broken) full of tired, uninterested nine and ten year olds. Nevertheless, we hit the ground running and got them engaged and motivated through some humor, and an introduction to the book that we are going to be reading for the first part of the year "James and the Giant Peach". My major error today was planning on today being only an introduction to the course and its materials without any sort of backup lesson should the intro and discussion on class procedures not fill the whole class time today (which of course it did not) . I would have begun a short ways into our novel for English (math didn't end up being such an issue time wise) but With the holidays being what they are this month Class days are so disjointed, i just worried that the students might have a hard time keeping up with the book. Looking forward to tomorrow!

Middle east peace talks have begun this week between President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and PA President Abbas. for what ever reason , everyone seems very disenfranchised with the whole process, I couldn't imagine why....

New York

BH

New York Is so interesting. One of the pieces of this blanket statement that has been somewhere on my mind recently is the way people view and interact with other from different groups (races, religions). It seems that one of the byproducts of a city of a zillion people going a zillion miles a minute is the "necessity" stereotypes. It has become wildly apparent that most people here run completely off of stereotypes. In fact, it appears to be the only thing that has transcended the racial/cultural divide.this is not my big gripe about New york, nor is it something that is "the problem with this place", It just seems that while most people (all?) are aware of stereotypes, everyone flagrantly and deliberately runs all interactions and notions of others through stereotypes. It's like some impenetrable force field that insures nobody ever has to waste their time actually looking at someone because they already know who they are and where they came from. The best part is, because everyone works from this set of preconceived notions about one another, no one seems to mind at all. in fact it saves them the time from having to make a friend or an enemy, or neither.

La Haine

BH

Long, Long day of school meetings and curriculum writing hoopla. Once I finally got home I watched La Haine. great French movie from the mid nineties set during the riots in Paris. two days till school starts. on the bright side, it looks like we'll be taking a vacation to Nashville to visit family later in the month! It'll be mice to be out of Brooklyn for a while. Speaking of which, Murfreesboro made it in the news all the way up here! Of course, it was for someone trying to stop the mosque construction in town by setting the equipment on fire, but I can still be excited. Whats bets it turns out the owners did it just for the money, that would have been as good a time as any. It would be nice if i was correct.

Not to overdo it but...

BH

So I'm not sure if anyone here has ever taken a gander at Chinese Universities at all, but none of their websites are functional in almost anyway, especially the English versions (not exactly translated well either). Just thought I would share as I was perusing Beijing schools. however i will say that both Japan and China have surprisingly well developed philosophy and religious studies departments, as far as a cursory glance would tell anyway.

http://www.blcu.edu.cn/english/index.asp
http://ev.buaa.edu.cn/index.php
http://english.ruc.edu.cn/
http://www.ouc.edu.cn/E_ouqd.html

Heres where to find them all:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/highschool/66744.htm

Times, they are a changin'

BH


Up all night working on the curriculum for math, science, Rosh Hashanna, and Shlach(in a loose definition of the word work). Had a Farbrenging for Chai Elul which turned out to be much more productive that I had thought it would have been (or at least I hope it will be ;) ) One thing I'm noticing as far as this curriculum I am working on is that almost no one has asked to see it prior to two days before school starts. Its nice to feel as though my administration trusts me but somehow my intuition tells me that it has more to do with oversight and apathy than my extrodanaire ability as an brand new educator, but that might just be me. In any case I am looking forward to the coming year teaching and finishing smicha (BH) because I need to start Grad school soon! I'm going to be here's some photos of things until school actually starts!

The colour blue and a new Kurdish voice

The colour blue and a new Kurdish voice: "Al Jazeera Blogs"

Purim in Spokane!

BH

So here I am in spokane, washington for purim. How did i get here? Well, I was chosen as one of Dovid Luna's friends to go and represent everyone at the yeshiva who were friends with Dovid. There was, unfotunatly, only enough money for one ticket. anyway, due to this tragedy, I am making frelich in Spokane. I'm glad I could be here for Dovid even though I wish it was under much differant curcimstances, and I also wish I could be with my Kallah and all my friends (including Dovid) in Crown Heights, but this is were I am and am supposed to be right now. So frelichen Purim to everyone and I can't wait to get back and see everyone!!