Lee Newberry (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cloveralmighty) wrote,@ 2007-12-26 17:18:00 |
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Where I'm At and Where I'll Be
[A lot has happened since I last wrote here. All the things in my last post have transpired and then some. I'm not given to broadcasting the minutae of my life, which is one reason I tell people I'm a terrible correspondant. For the past six months my life has not chrystalized in a way that allows me to say "this is where I am". A friend recently asked me what I was up to. My response formed the germ of this post.]
Mexico is warm, humid, and very tasty. I'm in a seaside town called Manzanillo where my grandma lives. I'm here for christmas, which is done differently in this part of the world. Christmas eve is the big day, with presents and fireworks and music and the midnight mass, while Christmas day is spent in a collecive hangover.
In a couple days I'll go to Guadalajara with my uncle. He's a schoolteacher there, the kind of man whose brain whirls with the effort of connecting everything he knows with everything else. He lives in a gorgeous house that may or may not be haunted.
On the 30th I fly back to Portland. The 31st will be spent unpacking, repacking, setting my affairs in order, saying goodbye to friends, and dancing until the small hours. Early on the morning of the first I'll catch a plane to San Diego and jump aboard the 1812 privateer schooner Lynx, at which point the real fun begins.
I've signed on as the education officer, which is equal parts deckhand, teacher and cat herder. I'll be on the boat as she slowly climbs the coast until until May; we'll be somewhere in the San Francisco bay by then.
I go to the boats to grow. It's a conscoius, daily process of improving every part of my thought and action as I work myself into exhaustion every single day for three to six months. What seems impossibly difficult one month becomes routine the next. Every challenge I overcome brings me to another. The brutal, exhilirating physicality of it makes the lessons solid and meaningful.
I go to the boats to teach. Most people hate my job. I introduce hundreds of schoolkids to the boat every day and I mediate their interaction with it. I work the necessary logistics, making sure every kid gets to spend time experiencing everything we're prepared to share with them. I teach the teachers, ensuring the consistent quality and richness of the educational program. I get to plant the idea in every kid's head that the world is much larger and more engaging than their classroom.
Our schools are filled with kids who can't sit still, who learn by doing, and who are highly incompatible with the office worker's metaskills that the school system is designed to impart. I don't just give them a field trip to make history class a little more relevant. I introduce them to a whole new method of learning and interacting with the outside world. Every idea I communicate has a physical analogue on the boat and they all get put in the kids' hands. You'd be surprised how many ADD kids get real sharp when abstract symbols are put away in favor of concrete reality.
And that's where I'm at right now; relaxing, memorizing the education program for the Lynx, and looking forward to four or five months of very difficult and rewarding work.
[A lot has happened since I last wrote here. All the things in my last post have transpired and then some. I'm not given to broadcasting the minutae of my life, which is one reason I tell people I'm a terrible correspondant. For the past six months my life has not chrystalized in a way that allows me to say "this is where I am". A friend recently asked me what I was up to. My response formed the germ of this post.]
Mexico is warm, humid, and very tasty. I'm in a seaside town called Manzanillo where my grandma lives. I'm here for christmas, which is done differently in this part of the world. Christmas eve is the big day, with presents and fireworks and music and the midnight mass, while Christmas day is spent in a collecive hangover.
In a couple days I'll go to Guadalajara with my uncle. He's a schoolteacher there, the kind of man whose brain whirls with the effort of connecting everything he knows with everything else. He lives in a gorgeous house that may or may not be haunted.
On the 30th I fly back to Portland. The 31st will be spent unpacking, repacking, setting my affairs in order, saying goodbye to friends, and dancing until the small hours. Early on the morning of the first I'll catch a plane to San Diego and jump aboard the 1812 privateer schooner Lynx, at which point the real fun begins.
I've signed on as the education officer, which is equal parts deckhand, teacher and cat herder. I'll be on the boat as she slowly climbs the coast until until May; we'll be somewhere in the San Francisco bay by then.
I go to the boats to grow. It's a conscoius, daily process of improving every part of my thought and action as I work myself into exhaustion every single day for three to six months. What seems impossibly difficult one month becomes routine the next. Every challenge I overcome brings me to another. The brutal, exhilirating physicality of it makes the lessons solid and meaningful.
I go to the boats to teach. Most people hate my job. I introduce hundreds of schoolkids to the boat every day and I mediate their interaction with it. I work the necessary logistics, making sure every kid gets to spend time experiencing everything we're prepared to share with them. I teach the teachers, ensuring the consistent quality and richness of the educational program. I get to plant the idea in every kid's head that the world is much larger and more engaging than their classroom.
Our schools are filled with kids who can't sit still, who learn by doing, and who are highly incompatible with the office worker's metaskills that the school system is designed to impart. I don't just give them a field trip to make history class a little more relevant. I introduce them to a whole new method of learning and interacting with the outside world. Every idea I communicate has a physical analogue on the boat and they all get put in the kids' hands. You'd be surprised how many ADD kids get real sharp when abstract symbols are put away in favor of concrete reality.
And that's where I'm at right now; relaxing, memorizing the education program for the Lynx, and looking forward to four or five months of very difficult and rewarding work.
