School's Out Again, Time to Pay Attention to the News

The Dream Act-- talk about no-brainers.

750,000 young adults who are here, didn't choose to come here, most of whom aren't going anywhere, many of whom have nowhere else to go.

Now, which is the better plan?

a) Give them a choice between military service and college

or

b) Give them a choice between low-paid illegal employment (i.e. grunt work for cash under the table) or better-paid illegal employment selling crack.

However, this may be part of my weak grasp on economics. Perhaps Republican senators are profiting from plan b) in ways that I can't quite figure out.

Insights from the Community College Front

Every semester, I make it a rule to learn something myself.

Lessons from Fall 2010:

1) Although adding a website is great resource for a face-to-face class, online learning is not a viable alternative to classroom learning for any but the technically savvy and academically experienced student; in my classes, such students are about one out of twenty. At this point, I have tried as hard as I could for a year, done everything I can think of--I've taken courses in how to do it, I've spent hours with my "hybrid" class in a computer lab showing them how to do it, I have spent more hours setting up a website than I have ever devoted to course prep in my life, I have roamed Google and U-Tube, searching out ways to make the website entertaining, at least as far is is possible for a 60-something teacher to entertain a class of mostly 20-somethings. At the end of the day, most of the students are not entertained, don't do the work, are confused about what to do and don't send me emails to tell me they are confused. A third of them don't pass the course, a figure I have never confronted before. The powers that be who want us to do these hybrid courses are always pulling out studies that show students learn as well or better online. Well, the subjects of these studies either aren't the same students I'm teaching, or aren't learning the same kind of things my students need to learn. Or the teachers who are doing it know something I don't, which I really wish they could explain to me.

2) Another class, the one where I teach them how to write a college research paper, was very successful this semester, apparently as the result of a change in textbook from one I really liked to one that kind of bored me. Instead of exploring the American cultural landscape through luminous writing from the likes of Langston Hughes, Anzia Yezierska and Amy Tan, we plowed through pages on pages of textbook passages from various disciplines, interspersed with sample research papers. When they came to write their own final research papers, it turned out that the class had benefited a good deal from all this "scaffolding," to use a current education buzz word. I also found out that many of them are more interested in ecomomics than I am, and actually understand it rather better. Counter-intuitive moral: what bores the teacher can be right for the students.

It's been a long silence. After suggesting an intention to guide readers through the wheel of the year, Mrs. Drinkwalter then abandoned them in the Dark Time. The wheel of the year tends to do that, but next year she will try to provide more information.

Now the nights are long but full of expectation. The Tide of Earth that flowed at Samhain is reaching its deepest extent, frozen and hard. We wait for change.

The Season of the Hag

Your God has left you, and your Mother Goddess, too, has her own child in her, and her own concerns.

For the season to come, you are left in my care, and things are going to be a little different.

Do not come to me for food, or shelter, or comfort, for these I have no power to give.

I have no power to save you, from anything at all.

But I am the shadow that will never leave you, the sum of all that you truly know.

Be still and listen, and you will hear me speak.

For this time, shelter, comfort, feed and save yourselves and each other, as best you can.

My season is no more eternal than any season.

The world will grow bright again.

Your Lady return to you a bright maiden,

Your God will come as a newborn child.

Until that day be still, wait, listen, take care.

The Blood Moon

The full moon that follows the Fall Equinox is called the Blood Moon. This year they fell over each other, I don't know which came first, and I am a bit behindhand for both.

The grain harvest done, the harvest of blood begins. In the old days, this was to choose the breeding stock to feed through the winter, and kill and salt down the rest.

The tide now is one for setting priorities, and making hard choices.

At Mabon we hold a feast with grain, no meat, for the killing time has not yet begun. With the Blood Moon, the eating of meat begins.

There is a traditional prayer for meat, to honor the animals that feed us:

By the Power that slays you, I too will be slain,

And I too will be consumed.

The law which delivers you until my hands

Will deliver me unto other hands.

My blood and your blood run together

In the sap that feeds the tree of life.

Life comes from Life, and mine from yours.

May my life be worthy of your death.

Fall Equinox: The Grain Harvest

Breath and spark of life, Sun born in darkness,

Who brought light and fire to the land;

Who warmed the Maiden and danced with Her,

Leading Her to Motherhood of all;

The King we crowned on a summer’s day

As he rose to his throne in the sky;

All that He gave Her, she brings forth many-fold.

That we and our children and our children’s children

May take their gifts and go forward, beyond the farthest hill, across the farthest sea,

Even to the stars.

Now His fires are burning low and what light He has grows feeble.

There is more power in the bread than there is in Him,

And when we have eaten of it, He will be gone.

The fields are bare, it is almost time for Him to go.

Together They celebrate the Gift of Life, one last time.

from Dyffd ap Tower

Harvest Moon

"All the moons are beautiful, but this one is a little older, a little wiser..."

The Moon is the mirror of the Great Mother, and like her, at this season, the moon gives and takes.

She gives light for the harvest; I remember once driving over Altamont Pass at the time of the August Moon, at dusk, with the moon and the sun both shining in the sky, and all the windmills turning. She takes the fatigue at day's done, and transforms it to wisdom.