Malcolm X Day

I work at the college where the Black Panthers got started. Well, technically, the college where the Black Panthers got started was then moved by the District from the border of Oakland to Berkeley to the Oakland Hills, in an attempt to calm things down. There it has languished from low energy and enrollment ever since, while the radicals just moved down 880 to my college instead.

When I tell people in other parts of the world that we have a Malcolm X holiday, they roll their eyes--how Berkeley can you get. However, Malcolm had the good foresight to be born just before finals week, when a long weekend endears him to students and staff alike, and gives me time to post to my blog.

Rose Moon Rose

By surprise, in the cold and rain,

the moon of a fertile love

long past,

with only a little vigilance and care,

The Rose Moon Rose.

The Problem with Those ******* Tests

I had an interesting box lunch at a state-wide teachers’ conference yesterday; English teachers of high school students on one side of the room and of students entering college on the other. On each side of the room, teachers were divided into small groups and each group composed a list of four or five things their students needed to know in order to succeed in their respective courses. Then each group joined with a group from the other side of the room, and compared notes, and finally there was a whole-group sharing of results

The results were both illuminating and disturbing. The high school teachers’ responses focused on specific skills and information apparently required to prepare for standardized testing; identifying genres, terms, vocabulary, even test-taking skills. The college teachers did not answer this question in terms of specific knowledge at all. In the final discussion, it became clear that our side of the room we are actually quite flexible about what, specifically, we are prepared to teach; if they don’t know the difference between an argumentative essay and a cause-and-effect essay, we are ready with numerous examples. At the same time, we expect resourcefulness and initiative from our students that the high school teachers do not; we want them to go look up things they don't understand and to ask us if they are still confused. Our responses to the question of student success had largely to do with what might be described as student identity: taking responsibility for their own learning, asking for clarification, knowing how to find and evaluate information, willingness to examine and evaluate conflicting information and points of view, and (curiously not mentioned by the high school teachers) understanding that they need to come to class, come on time and do all the assignments, and that not doing those things throughout the semester leads inevitably to a low grade.

Responses from these two groups of teachers were apples and oranges. High school teachers are forced, because of the high stakes of the standardized tests, to focus on knowledge specifics. Success in college depends less on what, exactly, students already know than on how willing and able they are to find out. Whatever it is those tests measure, it isn’t college readiness.

Perhaps a better test of college readiness might be a sort of individualized information scavenger hunt. Each student gets his or her own randomly selected list of questions, and an hour or so in a library to find the answers.

Bobby, here. Mrs. D. finally figured out how to get me an email address and get me onto this blog. A few false starts, including figuring out that she can't sign me up for an email account using my real birth date, duh...like I said before, not the brightest chipmunk in the tree. I'm about 45 in dog years, but they don't know how that works at Google.

We went to Texas for Spring Break, where things are not going especially well. We're staying with the folks who have a pet pig I'm not allowed to chase, and now they have a new puppy with no manners that I'm also supposed to get along with. This puppy thinks I am a puppy, apparently. I'm not.

The humans seem to be enjoying themselves, however. They think the puppy is cute, and they think the things they say to each other are important and sometimes even funny.

I am hunkered down and hoping for better days, but just thought I'd let you know I'm hooked up.

Wind Moon Waning

The Moon in Aries, after the Spring Equinox, called by disparate names—magic moon, seed moon, wind moon. Why this one should be more magic than any other, I don’t know. For the best Magic, I would favor the Harvest Moon, the one that falls in Virgo, in late August or early September, but perhaps that’s because I’m a Virgo myself.

Seed Moon makes sense, because the Spring Equinox begins the Planting Time, when the ebb-tide of Fire makes the earth ready for the powers of humankind to sow it.

But this year it was most of all the Wind Moon, blustery and wet. Monday night we met at the accustomed bar and hofbrau down near the shore, with our long-standing plan to go down to the water to greet the Moon after dinner. But one friend was sick, another exhausted, the weather impossible. Three of us drank, ate, felt kind of old, and called it a night. It felt like a defeat of sorts.

The work week has passed, the wind and rain continue. Hard on the old joints. A flyer from the teachers’ union in our mailboxes at work urges us to consider retiring now, before the current contract expires, because after they negotiate a new contract our retirement benefits may look rather different. However, I think my Magic for this season will be to just keep doing what I do, wind or no wind.

The story behind the way of things runs in a circle, and can be entered at any moment of the year.

This is the time of the God's transformation from child to man. He beholds the Lady, now a mature maiden, and is overwhelmed with love. She is ready for union, but knows that he is not yet ready for her.

Some say that there must be a swift, secret mating at this time, because it is nine months from now that the new God will be born. But there is really no need for the Gods to conform to the biological time frame of humankind, or any other species.

Be that as it may, the Lady sends him away, into the Greenwood. She gives him work to do, to prove his manhood; mysterious tasks, secret gifts--it is whispered between them, what is to do be done.

She sends him away, to live wild in the Greenwood until time and work are accomplished. She promises that if he does all that she requires, she will meet him on May Eve in the Greenwood, and become his wife.

Equinox

At the Spring Equinox, I was told by by first teacher of the Craft, the Fire tide reaches its height and begins to ebb. It marks the coming-of-age of the young God, who was born at Yule and will be crowned at Midsummer. With the ebbing of the fire tide comes the season for sowing; seed is sown for new life, new workings and new endeavors. Fire has the power to destroy and create anew, and now, in the ebb-tide, I have found that a Witch's power grows--the tides flow at the Great Sabbats, ushering in times ruled by the powers of Nature; the ebb-tides are more susceptible to the influence of human magic.

This, and the time of Harvest between Lammas and the Fall Equinox, are the two most demanding times of the year.

There may be hard work on many levels--professional, emotional, and magical. Projects to start, new developments in your relationships with others. Magical work that you undertake at this time may have far-reaching implications. All this work will use to the utmost the resources you have been mustering during the past few seasons.

You may well have feelings of pressure and urgency about all that needs to be done during this season, and you may find that you have little or no leisure time for a while. Be sure that you get enough food, sleep, and rest to sustain your health. Pay conscious attention to time
management, and do not get swept away by the feeling that you are too busy to be organized.

Seek out companions in your work whose company gives you pleasure and who share your values and goals. Such friends will make the work more enjoyable, and mutual-assistance arrangements can help get jobs done.

This is a time for sharing resources and tools, as in the old days a team of oxen and a plow could be shared around several farms until all the fields were sown.