do no harm:


idit dobb-weinstein: "teaching is action and thinking at once. What I try to guard against most when I teach is not speaking as if my answer were conclusive, so as to avoid (to the extent possible) any kind of dogmatic appropriation. It is understandable why students might wish to imitate their teachers, but there are different modes of imitation. I try very hard to avoid the mimetic appropriation that is immediate, passive, and occludes thinking. One other reason is that if I made clear what my views were, and my views appeared as if they were final, it would preclude the possibility of first, students challenging me and second, learning from my students. The relation between the student and teacher is, to me, a dynamic relationship . . . Teaching and learning is a movement that occurs between. In other words, we are at once both agent and patient, both teacher and learner. If we are not very careful, we can do a great deal of harm. And that, too, I have learned from my teachers, Maimonides especially.

I believe my task is to provoke students to think and to engage them in genuine dialogue and questioning. To paraphrase a rabbinic saying, 'I have learned from my teachers, and I have learned from my peers, but I have learned most from my students.' And that is a continuous process of learning."

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

talking with a friend about the ASO general pettiness.
and that the megan's law tidbit is an election manipulation.
of course.

but still so, i'd rather have fake sympathy than none at all!

christy passman this morning tried to ask if i meant for her to drop the case.
by all means no!
and then scourged me for sending it to sacramento, because now they are after her for an investigation.
of course.
i demurely said, oh its nice to know how the bureaucracy works.
she said she'd prefer if i'd not do that that.

and i joked, well this is not going to happen again is it?

if the school was a hate free zone with a proactive stance against discrimination and pettiness and verbal hostilities and racism, christie passman wouldn't have sacramento breathing down her neck.

i have a vision of every classroom with a placard reading "hate free zone" and numbers and emails for violations of an equal learning atmosphere, and citations to the fed and state code providing for equality in education.
citing the civil rights acts.
and so if teachers said offensive things, it would be against a backdrop of complete information disclosure, a grievance process plain to see, and the laws offended clearly on record.
and then would the students have the guts to stand up for themselves?
or enough literacy to read the placard?

a brilliant law student mentioned that when the teacher hit the student over the head with the student's project proposal, that could constitute assault, and the student could file it.
wow, good point.

and  the general inanity of the student government knows no bounds except they do not like women or women of color, or discussing anything important, but plan to spend all afternoon tomorrow in pettiness, bickering, backbiting, and staging a public crucifixion of sheila for making too many copies when the copier misfired.
they are like a pack of wild dogs, with no concern for anything concrete profound or true.
why i should drag my soul into their pathetic warmaking is not clear.

i told sheila she should report the ASO haters to christie for discrimination based on gender and ethnicity.
the male dominant types have totally taken over the legal association as well, rendering it a bombastic  place for men with big voices and big egos to boom at eachother.
when one coyly asked if i wanted to type minutes, i thought how funny,
here are all these guys looking for a big ego boost shouting a big storm asking me to type it down when they've nothing to say.
ah to be relegated to secretarial role!
i have not returned.
silliness!!!!

how many days to freedom?
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