New Year, New Semester: What is school for?
As my regular readers know, I teach writing at the local community college and I’ve just earned a MA in Community, Liberation, and Ecopsychology.
Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, has been a huge influence on my teaching philosophy, and some semesters, my students and I have read chapter two of that book where he discusses the problems of banking education and suggests instead a problem-posing approach where students name a problem, investigate solutions, and put a solution into action.
Recently, marketing guru Seth Godin and author of Tribes and Linchpins targeted the ills of education: in 2012, he published Stop Stealing Dreams as a free pdf. (I last wrote about Godin’s advice here–this is about public speaking.) As I was already a big Godin fan (see photo!), I read it immediately, and had a chance to talk to Godin about his suggest
ions for community college education. He recommended that I get my students blogging–which I started doing in January 2008. (Read Cathy Davidson’s argument for blogging in the college classroom in this January 2012 NY Times article.)
If you don’t want to read the pdf, you can get a great sense of his argument from this TEDX talk above from October 2012.
Vid: Springsteen’s “Merry Christmas, Baby”
#MulledWine: you know you want it
Love #BlurredLines? How about #MulledWine? Here’s a video and a how to make it!
Back in the early 80s, when I was barely legal and going to Foothill community college, I worked at Ridge Winery in the tasting room up on Montebello Road.
For those of you who remember, you are probably laughing because there was no “tasting room” at Ridge –there was only a tasting table outside, a simple picnic table where we had five wines, usually four zins and a claret, lined up along with a basket of fresh bread (from “City of Paris” as I recall); you went inside the cellar where Kathy poured other offerings and helped you make your purchases.
We were having a Christmas party or some sort of potluck as I recall and it was quite cold. I was a newlywed with a Crockpot and as I was going to
be at the tasting room all day, I suggested I make mulled wine. After all, there…
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A Chicano reggae band Bicletas Por La Paz (Bicyclists for Peace) is bicycling its way down the coast of California from Santa Cruz to Mexico.
And they want to play for you, free, TONIGHT Friday, December 13th at the Bell Arts Factory 432 N. Ventura Ave. Also playing is The Other Band on Earth. Read more…
“SEPARATION” hits VC 8pm 12/12,13,14/13
Paul Willis Features Thursday in Ventura–see you there!
Join Art Predator and students Thursday December 12 at 7:30pm for a featured reading by Westmont Professor Paul Willis at Foster Library (in the Topping Room) 651 E. Main Street, Ventura CA 93001. Paul is also a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, host of the annual William Stafford reading, and an avid outdoorsperson.
Phil Taggart hosts and an open mic follows (one poem, no epics!) where my students and I will read from our newly published anthologies. It’s free, but we pass the hat.
Pictured is a broadside I did for the publication of part of my recent commission for the City of Pasadena on water and power. The publication has the whole thing; I read the first part last week (most of what you see here plus another stanza from later in the poem); I’ll read the last third on Thursday.
The Day John Lennon Died: A Fan’s Story
Today is the The Day John Lennon Died … guest post by Dari Silverman; photos courtesy of Dari Silverman–Dari is in the fuzzy background of the second photo from Newsweek below; second photo by Sydney Strauss.Bike To the Future–with Holiday Cheer!
There has to be some pay off for all that bicycle and active transportation activism, right?
I’m going to be submitting my water poem that I wrote as a commission for the City of Pasadena (read the beginning of it here).Yesterday Seth Godin wrote about speaking in public. Godin says that people are afraid to speak in public because they believe they are being actively judged and that the subject of the talk or presentation that they are giving is them.
This is false. The truth, he writes, is Read more…
art predator 