Rinn Explains it All

Alright, so this is the 5th time I’ve seen it this week, so I must debunk the meme. 

1) kids still play on the street.  So no, if you were born between the beginning of time and the 90s, you were not the last generation to play in the street.

2) the first video game was invented in the 1950s, created for a oscilloscope, but the Magnavox Odessy didn’t come out until 1972. This was the first home system. Of course, only the rich could afford them until the late 70s, and they were popular until the Nintendo’s NES in 1985.

So, chances are actually pretty slim that if you were born in the 50s you played a video game until you were an adult, and the vast majority of those born int he 60s wouldn’t have either.

3) I recorded my last song off the radio onto to cassette tape in the late 90s, and my family was fairly well off middle class wise.  Poor kids did it even longer.

4) Kidnapping has been a documented issue in the US since the 1800s.  If you think you roamed the streets without your parents worrying, you probably didn’t live in an urban area, or your parents sucked.

5) My parents were born in the 70s, and still cannot program the VCR or the DVD player, my brother born in 1985 does it all for them.  My grandmother sure as heck doesn’t.

6) As stated before, kids in the 80s and 90s also played from Atari to Nintendo, and kids in the 90s and 00s still will because of their nostalgic parents.

7) Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes still play. Capt. Kangaroo replayed until 1984 and was redone in the early 90s, and then recently acquired in 2011 as a future project.

8) Seat belts were invented in 1885, and the first legislation to wear them passed in 1961 in the U.S. Being without lifesaving technology isn’t something to be proud of.

9) There are still millions of people who do not have iPods, surround sound, Facebook, Twitter, computers, the internet. In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of households (approximately one in seven), were food insecure. In one percent of households (3 millionish) with children, one or more of the children experienced the most severe food-insecure condition measured by USDA, very low food security, in which meals were irregular and food intake was below levels considered adequate by caregivers. The national rate of homelessness in 2011 was 21 homeless people per 10,000 people in the general population. The rate for veterans was 31 homeless veterans per 10,000 veterans in the general population.

These types of memes make you look like an idiot, and they make you look like a terrible, insensitive, and uneducated person. Think about what you post before you do it.

So Project for Awesome happens every December, and started as a spammingly spammilicious way to take over the youtubes and donate money to charity.  I wanted to share some of this with my class today, as we wrap up our reading class and paper towns, but it seems we spammed P4A so hard and so well that…

I cannot locate the winners video for any year under all of the spam.

And, Nerdfighteria surprised me by lacking the info on the wikis, both the Nerdfighteria wiki AND wikipedia.

Seriously, people, a list of winners each year.  This needs to happen. An easy to find list on the Nerdfighteria wiki AND wikipedia.

Alas, I must leave in 5 minutes to teach, so I won’t be able to share this info with my students in class today. Sad face. But, if anyone knows where to find this info and tips me off, I can get it on the class wiki to share with them before the semester ends (on Friday).

I’m teaching OVERLOAD. AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Actually, this is a good thing.  The money is a nice bonus, and it means they trust me to teach more classes than anyone in their right mind takes at a time. 15 credit hours.  Now, here’s the evil part.  As a TA, I taught 3 credit hours, and had 10 hours total a week with 2 office hours.  That means I had three hours to do lesson planning and such. So, if each course is to take 10 hours, that’s now a 50 hour work week. But, since the one was assigned on FRIDAY, these first few weeks it will be more like 100 hours, because I have 2 textbooks and an old half finished syllabus to work with.

To make the situation more insane, I am presenting at the Illinois TESOL BE Convention at the end of February, and the BIG International TESOL Convention in Philly at the end of March, and have to finish my prep for them.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So, this semester, it’s 2 sections of writing for ESL grads, 2 sections of reading for ESL, and a section of grammar for ESL.

And I have to finish setting up our wikis…

I’m kinda glad I didn’t have time to apply to teach in the linguistics department or at the community college…

No spoilers.

Neener.

I laughed. I cried. It’s easily one of my favorites. Not just for the kids.

Thanks John for another great book.  Luckily, I’m a speed reader and could finish it with a good sit down after dinner so my bestie doesn’t explode waiting for me.  It was worth the weight.

And now, on to Emma and the Werewolves.  Oh Jane Austen horror fanfic, how I do love you so.

That’s a song, btw.  Just in case you didn’t know.

Well, the kids are returning or getting  ready to return to college for the spring semester, and we, your overworked and underpaid lecturers are here already.  I’ve been pounding out materials all weekend, and today we started testing the incoming international students.

Speaking of materials, I’m working on a workbook (there is too much work in this sentence and in my life) to go with John Green’s Paper Town for my ESL Reading class (freshman are close enough to seniors, they’ll still enjoy it.  I hope.  If nothing else, they’ll enjoy the bottle trick…). If this goes over well, I’ll use the others.

Speaking of others, B&N emailed me to let me know THE FAULT IN OUR STARS shipped. Awesome.  Too bad they ship on the release date, so I will get it two days later (my copy, according to UPS is chillin like a villain in Lexington, which is a problem, seeing as I’m in Iowa City) than I would if I just walked down to the B&N next door…but I wanted that signature for my collection.

You know, Penguin, it used to be that when someone preo-rdered something, it shipped sooner.  You know, in the days of yor before JK Rowling Midnight Release Potter Parties.  Some things were good about this process.  Having worked at B&N to pay my way through part of college, I can assure you, midnight parties hold no happiness for me anymore-terrible people whoa re fans of good books and their over-tired children ruined them for me. But, I am a fan of holding a book in my hand that was pre-ordered BEFORE I can walk down the street and get it.  Just saying.

It’s important to point out that I like Green’s books even as an adult, and you can’t always say that about YA fiction.  YA fiction is the foundation upon which I teach all of these wonderful people from all over the world the very real and very hard language we speak every day, and how to navigate it with your eyes.  I can’t teach using Twilight (although I could with Host, Stephanie got a much better editor for that one, hmm…), because, not only is it strife with grammar errors and word choice issues that are really hard to explain to a second language learner, but books like Twilight alienate half my class.  You know-the straight males. But, I also can’t use them because I believe in teaching relevant materials.  My students are never going to meet an Edward Cullen, but they could meet a Quentin, or a Margo, or a Radar or a Ben. And, these characters, these kids, are so much like the kids my friends and I once were.  Who am I kidding-we still are, we just pay for it in pain and advil the next day now. I’m teaching words, but I’m also teaching America.  Ups, downs, culture, diversity…all of these things are things I NEED in a  book to make it worth the horror that is the current process I am going through.

Dissecting, line for line.  Predicting vocabulary and grammar issues. writing pre-reading, comprehension, inferencing, analysis, and so on and so forth questions is tedious and somewhat difficult work.  I read a chapter, minimally, 4 times. In.A.Row. I have to navigate dictionaries (oxford and merriam-webster’s learner’s dictionary), the BYU Corpus of Contemporary American Language (Mark is doing some really awesome work over there linguists-go and get your clearance to play), syntax and grammar books, pronunciation guides, and then everything to do with our somewhat evil textbook too. One reading of 25 pages will take me a week to produce. A WEEK! And then, I have to draw pictures, and make graphic organizaers and do more reading.

I could teach the classics, but then what would they learn?  Vocabulary? Kind of.  I mean, as defined, but not how it’s used today.  We did Pride & Prejudice & Zombies last semester, and half of the lectures/discussions were on historical references and language use in the 17-1800s in Britain.  Not exactly relevant to a students studying in America to learn out special brand of English. And relevance is the key to motivating your students, and to just being a plain ol’ good teacher.

So, booo work.  Yey TFIOS!  Can’t wait!

<3 Glæd Geol and Gesælig Niw Gear <3 Milad Majid <3 Feliz Navidad <3 Tchestita Koleda <3 聖誕快樂 <3 メリークリスマス <3 즐거운 성탄절 보내시고 새해 복 많이 받으세요  <3 Hyvaa joulua <3 Joyeux Noel <3     Wesołych świąt i szczęśliwego Nowego Roku <3 Chúc Giáng Sinh Vui Vẻ và Chúc Năm Mới Tốt Lành <3 Веселого Різдва і з Новим Роком <3      Καλά Χριστούγεννα!  <3     To all of my family and friends, near and far, a Merry Christmas to you, a Merry Christmas all!