Feed Me

If you don’t have enough feeds in your RSS reader (and really, who ever has enough?), you can check my Google Reader shared items feed.  This is the same feed or stories that you see in the sidebar at DamianBariexca.net, but you can subscribe to this in your reader of choice.  I try to limit my feed’s focus to psychology, special education, or technology that I think has potential for use in the special ed classroom (and Ira Socol’s SpeEd Change features regularly in my shared items).

Tech Geekery

I spent much of this past weekend playing with my new toy, the Asus EeePC 1000HE.  A few cons, mostly pros, and I will likely be putting up a “Tools of the Trade” post on this machine before the end of the school year.  Bottom line: best $400 I’ve spent recently.

Stop By & Say Hi

If you happen to be in the Jamesburg, NJ area on Friday, May 1, why not attend the NJASP Spring Conference?  Jim Wright, founder of Intervention Central, will be presenting on “Strategies for Working with the Unmotivated, Non-Compliant, Disorganized, Struggling Student” (link to PDF).  I’ll be there, and am considering liveblogging, if I can.  If you’re interested, see the linked PDF above for registration information.

Call for Advice

So every member of my new Child Study Team has some ‘pet project’ that they contribute to the department, and along those lines, I’ve been approached to put together a website for the department (not sure if it’s just for CST or Special Services in general; will get more details in the summer).

My supervisor and I both have some ideas as to what should go on the site, but here’s where I reach out to you: I want to make this site more than just pictures and contact info; at the very least, I want to make it an information repository for students and parents.  What information do you think would be most valuable on a high school CST/Special Services site?  Transition information?  Laws in “plain English”?  Flowcharts of legal processes?  Biographical information about the team/teachers?  A blogroll?  Monthly blog posts/articles?

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments here – parents, what info can we make readily available to you?  Special ed teachers/service providers, what “frequently asked questions” or topics would you put on a site for the community?

It’s been a long time since I had a job like that, and if I’m honest, yes, I do think I perceived the position differently than if it was a permanent job.  I don’t mean to say that I slacked off or didn’t care; rather, I think the limited time frame made me a little more aware of my thoughts and reactions to the job on a daily basis.

With this in mind, I decided to document my thoughts at the end of each day a la Doogie Howser.   To do this, I used Quillpill, a Twitter-like microblogging service.   While there are many similarities between the two services, Quillpill is promoted primarily as a story-telling, rather than IM-ish, service.  From their “About” page:

Quillpill supplies you the writer, diary keeper, poet, or reader with access to a unique writing tool for mobile and web. The mobile web offers you a much more book-like experience than even a laptop can, as the mobile phone is the first web-able device that is as portable, accessible, and personal as a paperback novel or your favorite journal. The best part is: You already own it and carry it with you!

There is a web interface, but more often than not, I found myself using the mobile interface to input my daily observations on my Palm Centro phone as I walked to and from student observations, meetings, or even in the car (passenger, natch) or on the couch at home (iPhone users have their own special interface).  Whenever the ideas struck, I was able to reach into my pocket and record.  The 140 character limit also forced me to keep my writing succinct, not a trait for which I’m known.  An unfortunate by-product of such brevity is that without context, entries don’t always come across as intended, but that’s not necessarily a problem if you’re just writing for yourself.

I’m glad I did this because I (and now, you) can look back at my daily thoughts (I think I missed fewer than 10 school days between 4 Sept and 23 Dec 2008).  I’ve made only minor edits for anonymity and clarity (remember what I said about context before you judge me, please!). For those of you who just want the Cliff’s Notes rundown, here are my top 5 takeaways:

• I hated being new at something again
• Bureaucracy and red tape were endlessly frustrating, and I sometimes felt powerless to do what I thought would help
• Parents appreciated me & my efforts much more than I thought they would
• I observed some double standards in terms of how some teachers conduct themselves & what they expect from their students
• I really enjoyed being a vocal advocate for kids who needed one

Overall, it was a very positive experience, and I’m grateful for being offered the opportunity to get my feet wet in an environment in which I was familiar and comfortable.  I’ll be starting up in a brand new position in a brand new (to me) school on Monday, 5 Jan, and I’ll absolutely use the lessons learned in this temporary position to guide me as I establish myself in a new branch of my career in education.

What was the “worst job” you ever had that ironically helped prepare you to one day become an educator?

I’ve been extremely fortunate in that I’ve never had any terrible jobs, but for the sake of the meme, I’ll say dorm security at The College of New Jersey during my undergrad years:

• Shifts lasting til 2am enabled me to work long into the night, like I had to during my first few years of teaching
• It was my first taste of working as an authority figure (to use the term loosely), which helped when I was 23 and faced with a class of 18-year-olds
• Conflict resolution (and avoidance!) skills came into play, especially when dealing with drunk freshmen. Similar scenarios have played out in my presence at school (presumably, minus the alcohol), and I learned to always keep the coolest head of the group.

Thanks for tagging me, Christian. I hereby tag some folks whose blogs I most sincerely wish I had more time on which to comment:

1. Jose Vilson
2. Ken Rodoff
3. Kyle Lichtenwald
4. Diane Cordell
5. Jeff Wasserman

What I Was Doing Ten Years Ago

I was two months shy of my 21st birthday and finishing up my Junior Professional Experience in a 7th grade English classroom. I’m told my cooperating teacher remarked to a friend of mine, “He’ll be a good… high school English teacher” (haha, joke’s on her!). Also, I was getting paperwork in order to student teach at – wait for it – Allentown High School, where I got to student teach under my former 11th grade teacher and one of my main influences in becoming a teacher (this wasn’t my high school; I just followed her there!).

Five Things on my To-Do List for Today

Not much, I’m afraid, as it’s after 10pm, but here are 5 things I did today:

1. Scored some reading quizzes on Twelfth Night
2. Attended my final Statistics class – significant because it’s my last class of my last course of my graduate degree!
3. Put together more application packets for school psychologist positions for next school year
4. Set up a new wiki for my Multicultural Studies students to pool their research on contemporary Native Americans (it’s empty now, but check back in a week or two!)
5. Agreed to do a guest speaker spot in a graduate ed-tech class being taught by a colleague in July. Details are sketchy as yet, but wikis, Twitter, Skype, and RSS were all part of the discussion. I’m really looking forward to this!

Snacks I Enjoy

• Chunky peanut butter and honey on whole wheat
• Extra sharp cheddar cheese (no such thing as too sharp!)
• Dark chocolate (no such thing as too bitter!)
• Raw vegetables
• Grilled chicken and baby spinach salad
• Salt & vinegar potato chips

Things I Would Do if I Were a Billionaire

• Become a full-time doctoral student
• Pay off my house
• Throw $1 million into a 529 account for each of my kids’ college funds, but only $120K at a time, so as to avoid the gift tax (wait… better make it $5 million apiece).
• Donate much and often
• Travel. Everywhere.

Three of My Bad Habits

Mine are really similar to Doug’s:

1. Nail biting
2. Unchecked sarcasm
3. Habitual swearing (but only on personal time, prospective employers who may have Googled me!)

Five Places I’ve Lived

1. Manchester Twp., New Jersey – Born and raised
2. 31 General Guisan-Strasse, Basel, Switzerland – Lived here for a year (June 1983 – June 1984) and attended International School of Basel while my dad temporarily worked at the global headquarters of Ciba (then Ciba-Geigy)
3. Claude Gibb Hall, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK – Did a semester abroad here from Sept – Dec 1997 – fell in love with the city and started supporting Newcastle United (for my sins)
4. Woodbridge Drive, Doylestown, Pennsylvania – Our first foray into homeownership! We lived here from May 2004 – Aug 2006
5. Bedminster Twp., Pennsylvania – Where I currently reside with my wife Stephanie and our two kids, Dylan & Kiera

Five Jobs I’ve Had

1. Bag boy/cart wrangler/cashier, Shop Rite – my first job, junior year of high school!
2. Dorm security, The College of New Jersey – it guaranteed me on-campus housing and put gas in my car
3. Television service representative – one summer, I was hired to go room-to-room in a hospital and charge patients $5/day for the privilege of watching 5 channels and the same 4 movies on an endless loop. I still have lingering guilt over the moral implications of that job, and it’s been over 10 years. At least I got a lot of reading done that summer.
4. Long-term substitute teacher – I really enjoyed the 3 months or so I spent subbing for a middle school phys. ed. teacher. The physical educators with whom I worked were absolutely fantastic, model professionals, and a lot of fun to work with. I still think about them from time to time.
5. High school English teacher – since September 2000!

I’ll beg off from tagging anyone, and do as Doug did – if you want to take part, consider yourself tagged.

Passion Quilt Meme Rules:
1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

Here we go:

Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugs!

 http://flickr.com/photos/fred_dela/390265044/

I was perseverating over a few photos, but I ended up with this one for a few reasons:

1. High school can be an isolating time – I do what I can to help students feel that they are part of a caring, supportive group of people when they’re in our class, and encourage them to be each other’s academic and personal support systems.
2. There’s a lot of personal connecting going on in this picture.  While I’m not always successful, I always strive to make the material meaningful and relevant to my students so they can engage it on familiar turf.
3. I know this wasn’t great, but my feet hurt and I’m tired, so I’m going to bed now.

Who to tag, who to tag… howzabout:

1. Jackie
2. Dave
3. Jeff
4. David
5. Pam

Please do a better job than I did (shouldn’t be too difficult).

(PS: Extra credit if you get the title)

I got to the end of the second paragraph and had to do a double take:

Yeah, lemme get right on that. Before one of those other Damian Bariexcas ganks it on me.

This post was brought to you by FireDoodle, the Firefox add-on that turns your browser into a whiteboard.

I was introduced to rap the same way as many other white suburban kids my age – when Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaborated on a cover of “Walk This Way.” I was 9 and in fourth grade, and I ate it right up – that was my gateway into hip-hop.

By the time I hit high school I was discovering the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Clapton, Hendrix, and focusing on rock music, but in that five-year span from 1986 to 1991 I’d absorbed a lot of rap (mostly via Yo! MTV Raps)*, including Eric B & Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions, EPMD, Digital Underground (featuring a pre-solo success Tupac), Ice-T, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, N.W.A., and my personal favorite, Public Enemy.

My inability to musically multi-task as a teenager shut me off to a lot of great stuff of all genres, I’m sure, and I regret that. Even with my blinders on, though, I managed to pick up on Cube, Snoop, Dre, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, the evolution of the Beastie Boys, and later, Biggie, Busta Rhymes, and Wu-Tang Clan.

These days, in addition to the classics, I’m listening to Madvillain and Little Brother, both of whom I discovered through eMusic.

There’s a reason I’m posting this, to be revealed in Part II. For now, I’m just trying to stir the pot a bit. If you’re with me, drop me a comment – who are your picks for top rap artists?  Who’s out there right now that’s good that isn’t getting radio play?

*I’m showing my age – I’m so old I remember when MTV showed music videos.

20-divide-kreate-illiterate-city.mp3

Edit: Source: “Illiterate City”, by Divide & Kreate.  Best of Bootie 2007 .

When I first posted this, I had only been blogging for four days, and it was my fourth post. Since Statcounter and Feedburner tell me I’ve got more readers now than I did in August, consider this “New to You” content for most of you.

***

My 8 Random Things:

1. Though I’ve spent most of my life in New Jersey (and I still work there), I went to first grade in Switzerland at the International School of Basel. Goodnight, Ms. Cozens, wherever you are.

2. I have been an ardent fan of Newcastle United FC for the better part of a decade (at least no one can accuse me of being a front-runner!).

3. I first met my wife in a teacher work room at our high school (and you thought prep periods were for grading!).

4. Yeah, so we took our honeymoon in Disney World, so what? It’s not just for kids anymore manchildren like it too.

5. Geek cred – I’ve only been blogging for a week, but I’ve been online since 1992 – how many of you remember connecting at 1200 baud (and when the 14.4 line at your BBS felt lightning-fast!)?

6. My Twitter name is actually a mild malapropism for an album by The Stone Roses called “Garage Flower”. I picked it because I like the contrasting imagery (and garages).

7. My first instrument? Alto sax in fifth grade; only lasted a year. Picked up bass guitar in eighth grade because it looked cool (and only had 4 strings, therefore easier to learn than guitar, right?). Learned guitar and started singing at 16, and have played out here and there ever since, both alone and with bands.

8. I’ve acted, too. Up until family life and grad school sank their claws into me started occupying more of my time, I acted with Shakespeare ‘70 Repertory Company, based in Mercer County, NJ. Favorite role? Sir Walter Blunt in Henry IV, Part I. Not too many lines to memorize, and I got to go out in a blaze of glory after a broadsword battle with a man so bad he precedes his name with a definite article, The Douglas.

***

I wish I could blame a writer’s strike, but what can you do? I feel a big post coming on soon on my shifting professional role and what that means for my contribution to education (wasn’t that part of the original plan?), but I really need to sort out some structure first – it may be my first two-parter.

My first recollection of a TV commercial that really impacted me was for Murphy’s Oil Soap, from 1979 or 1980 (age 2-3). It wasn’t so much the commercial as it was the jingle and the copy shot, “The work is finished and the finish is fine.” Since then, I’ve filed away massive amounts of similar lines. Anyone else remember:

• You deserve a break today!
• Just do it
• Where’s the beef?
• The choice of a new generation
• Food, folks, and fun
• Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is
• I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!
• Calgon, take me away
• What would you do for a Klondike bar?
• He-Man, He-Man, He-Man (jeez, who got paid to come up with that one?)

The Consumerist brought these all flooding back to my conscious mind Monday when they linked to an article by Nick Padmore at A List Apart in which he analyzes the 115 best advertising slogans and catchphrases of the last century (courtesy of The Advertising Hall of Fame).

Anyone interested in the use of language should read Padmore’s article in full, but Consumerist gives us the Cliff’s Notes version with a few interesting take-away notes:

Some of his findings:

• only 50% of the top copy shots mention a brand
• 17% of copy shots are “lexically deviant”—as Padmore puts it, “it’s a weird spelling almost 2wice in every ten whirds”
• 84% of the copy shots contain some sort of rhetorical device, although Padmore thinks this is more than likely simply a reflection of how we naturally speak and write

He also comes up with a theory of how to produce a great copy shot, writing that “nobody else (as far as I know), has attempted to come up with a linguistically determined Greatest Copy Shot, so this is at least a start.”

Nick’s theory is as follows:

All great copy shots should:

1. Be five words in length.
2. Not mention the brand name.
3. Be declarative.
4. Be grammatically complete.
5. Be otherwise standard.
6. Contain alliteration, metaphor, or rhyme.

Read his complete article to see how he narrows the field from 115 to 19 with the first criterion, and then proceeds through the list to arrive at the greatest copy shot ever written.

Lots of potential classroom applications here – perhaps a multidisciplinary lesson in math and English that examines the success rate of slogans with certain grammatic properties or rhetorical devices? What percentage of the top 50 use onomatopoeia? Create a pie chart showing prevalence of alliteration, metaphor, simile, etc.? More advanced classes might just be given the top 10 (20, 25, 50, etc.) and be asked to conduct their own analysis and come to their own conclusions about the impact of linguistic choices on success.

From a media literacy standpoint, a discussion of why I still vividly remember a 28-year-old commercial jingle could lead into a larger discussion on the pervasiveness of advertising and its effects.

Maybe watching all that TV was good for something after all (“Five more minutes, mom! It’s professional development, I swear!”).