My New Job

I’m pleased to announce that I recently accepted a job with Northeastern University in Boston, MA.

Two classmates from SIT (Shei & Yukari) and I will begin teaching in the English Language Center just after Labor Day. I will teach an Advanced Reading course that will cover The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies, as well as an Intermediate Composition course.

Needless to say, I’m very excited about moving to Boston, and I hope that many friends and family will come visit in the near future.

Please get in touch.

Bye Bye Brattleboro

I had to scratch my original plans for the summer.

Initially, I wanted to stay in Brattleboro and explore various rivers and swimming holes around Vermont, hike the Long Trail through the Green Mountains, drive up to Burlington and see a show at the Higher Ground, and get a little work done on my final portfolio so I can officially graduate with an MA in TESOL from S.I.T.

My idea of summer altered when I got news that my eighty-eight year old grandfather fell and busted up his knee. What would have been a bump and bruise to most, sent him to the emergency room.

I packed my bags within a week and I was headed home.

Bye-bye Brattleboro, you will be missed, but family calls.

Summer Commencement

My graduate course work at SIT concluded a couple weeks ago. With my new and sudden free time, I've been celebrating with other folks in the Brattleboro area.

We started with swimming in the West River, a pub crawl around downtown Brattleboro, the 6th annual Strolling of the Heifers, & chicken wings at my kind neighbors apartment.

Below are some pictures* and haiku** from the aforementioned events.

Swimming holes cool splash
Pub Crawls sun drops on our feet
Celebrate nonstop!



Jaeger Bomb good idea
Two Jaeger bombs bad idea
Butt Darts game, I win.





Megaphone wake up
"Welcome to Strolling Heifers!"
Interesting day begins

Moles are brown & red
The cows are coming... the cows
Big and black and round




Heifers stroll Main St.
Retreat for Pad Thai & cheese
Pet the wool and smile

I love the heifers
Because they give me much milk
My coffee tastes good.




Hot spicy, yeah boy!
Wings, Willie Country Cobbler
Wipe those fingers clean.

Wings hot, weather more
This apartment blows my ass
pit out and stinky




Salty Celery
Yucca sweetness on our tongues
Eat hummus, Brown Beer

RISK: conquer or not!
Mike & Hey play while girls sigh
Think challenging game.

*pictures by marz & shei **haiku communally written

Dance For a Reason

SIT grad school girls make a dance video for a good cause.

If this video makes you laugh, please check out Race for a Reason.

No Pants Day

www.nopantsday.com

The Sportsman Bar & Lounge

Riddle:

You are on a horse, galloping at a constant speed.

On your right side is a sharp drop off, and on your left side is an elephant traveling at the same speed as you.

Directly in front of you is a galloping kangaroo and your horse is unable to overtake it. Behind you is a lion running at the same speed as you and the Kangaroo.

What must you do to safely get out of this highly dangerous situation?


If you do not know, see answer below.

It was 10:00pm Friday night and we were about to begin. I flipped the dome light on in my car so we could go over the assignment one more time. We were to focus on 1) the skills of observing and interviewing 2) the process of entering and belonging to a new culture and 3) translate the learning into teaching questions.

We got out of my car, walked up the old wooden steps, and I hesitantly opened the door of the Sportsman Bar & Lounge for Sunny and Akisha. The three of us, a Korean, an African American, and a W.A.S.P., were an unlikely group to enter a Vermont workingman’s bar.

We drew a few glances from a few folks playing pool in the back as we inquisitively walked up to the bar to order and were nonchalantly greeted by the bartender, “What can I get ya?”

“Um. Uh,” I stuttered, “Bud, please,” thinking it was the most generic beer.

“Well,” began the bartender, “we got a special ‘cuz the Sox game is on. Bud Light draft is only a buck.”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

We took a seat at a nearby table with two beers and a Kahlua milk that came in a beer mug. Next, we began to take in our cultural surroundings. Akisha and I, being somewhat familiar with American bar scenes, decided to just sit back and try our best to be flies on the wall.

Sunny, on the other hand, took a much more active approach. She started walking around the bar surveying all the various wall hangings. Amongst Red Sox banners, Bud beer posters, and neon signs, she spotted some thing that caused her to pause.

“Who… who’s this picture?” she asked to any willing patron seated at the bar.

A scruffy fellow, named Tony, in the corner seat of the bar decided to answer, “That there is Warren Wilcox. He was a regular here; lived upstairs, and those are his ashes in that urn. Now, he’s always with us.”

Shocked and chagrined I abandoned my passive state to check this out. Sure enough, there he was; a picture of Warren sitting with elbows on the bar and a grin from ear to ear placed directly on top of grey urn.

Meanwhile, Sunny kept exploring. “What this?” she asked and pointed to a piece of white poster board over the bar.

“That’s for Kyle Gilbert. He was killed in Iraq in 2003,” answered the bartender without batting an eye.

Again, not believing my ears, I walked across the room from Warren to Kyle. The white poster in question was nothing fancy, just a piece of white poster board with photo of a young man in uniform with the date August 6th 2003 and the words “Just Don’t Forget Me” written in a black felt tip marker.

“GEORGE BUSH!!!” Sunny hollered and pointed before I could even finish processing the poster for Kyle.

“Did George Bush come to this bar?” Sunny asked bluntly and pointed to a framed picture hanging above the bar next to Kyle.

“Naw,” the bartender shook his head. “Kyle’s parents went to D.C for a memorial service and got their picture taken with President Bush. The flag from Kyle’s coffin is downstairs in the basement.”

I think I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Then, I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking why a bar has a memorial flag in the basement.

Sunny, still investigating, managed to make her way back across the bar towards Warren’s urn. “What’s this?” Nothing could have prepared me for what was coming.

“Hup! She found the trophy!” exclaimed the bartender as he eagerly darted out from behind the bar as if he’d been waiting for that question all night. “That’s a Butt Dart trophy.”

“A what?”

“A Butt Dart trophy.”

“A what?”

I walked over to see this trophy with my own eyes. Wiping away the disbelief, I saw it. It was a standard softball trophy, but instead of a gold figurine on top swinging a bat, there was a 5’ inch, whittled wooden derriere with a 25cent piece wedged between the cheeks.

“It’s a game we play here in the bar,” came the explanation. “Ya see, here’s what ya do. Ya put a shot glass on the floor, a quarter between your butt cheeks, and ya try to drop the quarter in the glass.”

“You’re kidding, right?” is all I could muster, but in the back of my head, I was wondering if this happened with pants on or off.

“The owner of the trophy is on her way down here right now. She’ll be here in about 15 minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later, a tornado blew into the bar. “Wheeeeeew!” was the first thing I heard, and before I knew it, a heavyset woman with long blonde hair was standing on a chair and spinning around a pillar by a nearby table.

“Gina! Gina!” yelled the bartender. “Before you git goin’, we got someone here who wants to see Butt Darts.”

This perked Gina’s interest because without hesitation she jumped down off the chair, sauntered up to the bar, and demanded “Gimme a roll of quarters and a shot glass with water in it so they don’t fuckin’ bounce out.”

“Who wants to see Butt Darts?” she slurred and looked around before the bartender could point her in our direction.

“Alright, here’s what you do,” she said as she placed the shot glass on the floor next to our table. “Ya insert the quarters in ass; ya know where the glass is; ya know where yer ass is, and ya know where the quarters are, right?”

I watched in pure astonishment as Gina proceeded to insert a dollars worth of quarters into her rear end (with pants on, in case you’re still wondering), hobble over the shot glass, and successfully plop three of the four quarters into the glass.

“Yeeeaaaahhhh!” she howled and started cavorting around the bar. “Okay! Now you try!” she pointed at Sunny.

Sunny voluntarily got up and received the wet quarters. “Okay, but you have to help me.”

Gina reassuringly walked up behind Sunny and told her, “You need an inserter? Okay, here,” she said as she took the quarters from Sunny’s hand and bent down and began placing the change in Sunny’s gluteus maximus.

Sunny squeezed and shambled over to the shot glass with a look of total discomfort and determination.

“Whoa! Back up a little bit,” Gina coached her from behind. “That looks good. Let ‘em go!”

Sunny relaxed her backside and to her own amazement, all four quarters fell directly into the glass without touching the rim. “I win! I win!”

“Fucking bitch,” huffed Gina. “Peter, pour me two shots of tequila. One for me, and one for the new Butt Dart champion.”

Riddle Answer:

Get your drunk ass off the Merry-Go-Round

Back in Brattleboro

It seems my blog got derailed somewhere in Mexico, but I hope to get it back on track in the near future.

Please stay tuned.

Veracruz Music

SIT MAT38 Blog

Recently, I've been learning about various approaches to teaching languages and the guiding principles behind each specific approach.

As I was looking into one approach, it occured to me how much emphasis and value I put into the concept of community. I've come to realize that 'community' is very important to me everywhere and I go, and my actions reflect this in different ways.

In the same vain as the Meet the MATs podcast I started earlier this year, which has slowed down recently, my newest project is a team blog for all my classmates.

The SIT MAT38 blog is now up and running. Hopefully, in the coming months as everyone goes out into various corners of the world for their internships, this blog will give some interesting insights.

http://sitmat38.blogspot.com/

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

Multiple Intelligences

I'm currently doing research about Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and how they apply to an ESL/EFL classroom.

I came across this 15min clip on Google and thought it's really interesting. It concentrates more on the emotional aspect of intelligence, but if you're in the field of education it's worth taking a look.

Learning Log Pt. 2

This is an email I sent a colleague in Japan as part of a school assignment. I'm trying to retain my sense of humor as I wade through years of linguistic theory, and I think it's working. My teacher loved these analogies!

Dear Mrs. Keiko,

I hope you are doing well! It's time for me to write you another email for school, so I hope you don't mind. I want to tell you about some of the things I am studying, but I'm worried it might be difficult to understand. If you have any questions, please ask me and I will try my best to answer them. I hope this will be a good learning experience for both of us!

In my Second Language Acquisition (SLA) class, I have been studying about many theories for language teaching. In class, we recently had a very fun assignment to summarize all the various theories from the past 50 years using metaphors. My classmates all presented very interesting metaphors, but I want to share my musical themed presentation with you.

In the 1950s & 1960s language learning was characterized by a theory known a Behaviorism. Linguists thought that learning a language was like learning anything else; it's a formation of habits based on stimuli and responses. This is very similar to the "Call & Response" technique we used in Jyushiyama JHS. The teacher is always the center of attention and the students listen and repeat.

The metaphor I used to describe Behaviorism was an album by James Brown. He was a very famous musician in the '60s because people could not take their eyes off him. He was the center of attention and he conducted his band and the audience with call & response techniques.

In the 1970s, a linguist named Corder began studying students' errors and a new theory called Error Analysis was born. This theory noted the fact that many errors by students did not originate from their native language. For example, Spanish and English have very similar plural tenses, but Spanish speakers often forget to add the plural marking when speaking English. Linguists could not understand where these kinds of errors were coming from.

To associate the Error Analysis theory I used Led Zeppelin's first album, which has a famous picture of the Hindenburg crashing. To me, aside from the fact that the Hindenburg was a major error in and of itself, Led Zeppelin's music was based on electric blues, but it was full of feedback, and listeners were baffled at where this new genre, dubbed heavy metal, came from.

In the 1980s, a linguist named Krashen put forth a theory about comprehensible input. Comprehensible input is defined as "second language input just beyond the learner's current second language competence." This is more commonly referred to as "i + 1." It claims that if a student is studying something too easy or too difficult, it will not be useful for learning, but if the input is slightly higher, the student will be intrigued and want to learn.

This was my favorite metaphor. I used Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album. Michael Jackson was the first pop star in the '80s to take traditional musical input (audio) and add a visual component (video). By adding a new aspect to music, he captured the world's attention and intrigued millions.

As language learning moved into the 1990s, a new humanist approach started to take hold. Linguists continued to build upon theories explored in previous decades, but they started looking into more social, cultural, and psychological variables. More emphasis was put on the learners individual characteristics like motivation, personality, and personal learning style.

To capture this refined humanist approach, I used a CD by a band called the Flaming Lips. Their album "The Soft Bulletin" was a symphonic pop album created by modern technology melding synthesizers with guitars to make blissful melodies. All the while, the humanity of the album comes through loud and clear because the lyrics are about basic human emotions like love and loss and the beauty of life.

Now in the 21st century, my teacher says, "we're wearing a lot of hats." Linguists tend not to adhere to any one specific theory, but to a multitude of possible approaches centered around the learner.

To represent this all-encompassing idea, I brought a DVD called "1 Giant Leap." I used this because it's a fusion of all kinds of music from all over the world, spoken word, and very powerful visual imagery. It's presented in a surround sound mix for home theaters, so the listener really is encompassed!

I hope this was informative for you, and I look forward to reading your response. Again, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.


Take care,


heyhey

Just so you know, my teacher asked to borrow the Lips CD and the Giant Leap film!

Burn Your Pants & Dance!

As the winter weather set in, I earned a reputation around campus because I advocated everyone at SIT burn their pants & dance at a bonfire party.

This may sound like a crazy idea, but there was logic behind my lunacy, and I just submitted this essay to our school paper in order to explain myself.

Why I Burned My Pants (And Danced)

Over the past few weeks, I conducted a social experiment on the campus of SIT called "Burn Your Pants & Dance." I advocated students burn their pants at a bonfire party, and now, after a few days of reflection, I want to explain why.

I love SIT; I love the various people. I revel in the diversity and knowing that this campus and its myriad of personalities have the potential to make a deep positive impact on the world. This idea alone helps me wake up for my 8:30am classes.

With that said, I feel it is necessary to address an underlying aspect of our campus. Everyday we send emails to inform about various religious holidays, sexual orientation parties, and immigration action meetings. These are all very serious topics. In some parts of the world these are a hotbed of discussion that create major turmoil and it’s just the stuff piling up day-to-day in our email Inbox! This is the reality we live in at SIT.

In an effort to combat the level of daily seriousness, lighten the mood, bring some kind of balance to our campus, and shed the proverbial PC layer that keeps building up, I sent, what I thought, was a humorous email. I advocated that everyone burn their pants at the next bonfire party. Burning pants, to my knowledge, does not infringe on anyone's religious beliefs, sexual orientation, nor does it have anything to do with immigration. It simply targets the opposite end of the contextual spectrum, and if you feel so inclined, it could be seen as a symbolic gesture.

The reactions from campus I received for doing this ridiculous thing are very interesting to me, and I actually feel I learned a lot about diversity and acceptance. I can separate the responses into three contrasting categories that I call the Partiers, the Questioners, and the Silencers. The Partiers' reaction was the most entertaining to me. They just laughed at me, gave me high fives for doing something silly, pointed and yelled in unquestioning solidarity "Burn your pants!"

The reaction of the Questioners was a little more interesting to me. They laughingly approached me and asked, "You want me to do what!?" "Why do you want me to burn my pants?" To them, I tried to explain the idea of a group of people working towards world peace standing around a bonfire in their underwear seems like a hilarious concept, and one I want to put into action because of the novelty. Can you imagine sitting in a conflict transformation class, looking over at your classmates during an intense debate, and realizing they were standing around in the cold in their underwear with you last week? It would have to put a different perspective on things, not to mention the bonds and the memories that would be formed by doing something so simple.

A slightly different, but frequent, response I heard from the Questioners was, "I like my pants, and I don't have any pants to burn," or, "I would rather donate my pants to the homeless." For this, I suggested they go to a thrift store, donate to the local economy, and buy a pair of pants that expressed who they were, or a pair they felt was begging to be burned because of the hideousness of the pattern. To me, this made sound sense.

The third and final reaction, from the Silencers, was one I least expected, but one that assisted my learning the most. I categorize this response as peoples' total silence or aloofness to my absurd request. I could overhear the Silencers whispering at lunch tables, "I can’t believe he did that. It’s completely inappropriate." The most hurtful response I heard came straight to my face. A person looked me in the eye and bluntly said, "I don’t get you." I do not know what that person meant, but it felt like they were trying to distance themself from me because they didn't understand where I was coming from. This reaction was most surprising because I didn't expect it on SIT's campus.

The heaviness of these reactions hit me like a lightning bolt as I was standing around under the stars in my underwear. If I got reactions like this from people on our campus for making and following through on a preposterous request about burning pants at a party, I can not imagine the reactions that someone might get for making serious statements they wholeheartedly believe in that might not fit with our societal norms.

Of all the places in the world that can benefit from political incorrectness, it is SIT. Our mission is world peace, but how can we work towards such a goal if we continue to shroud our language and actions in a polite, but lifeless, manner because we fear we might be misunderstood? I think we need to expose ourselves to draw out feelings that might be deemed incorrect, so we can look at them objectively, and analyze why we feel that way.

Bob Dylan once sang, "You’re invisible now, you got too many secrets to conceal." Only when we open up our secrets, speak, and act from the heart, will it be possible to see the true differences between everyone on this campus. When that happens, we can start learning how to approach the real problems that arise, and take what we learn away from this tiny microcosm on a hilltop in Vermont and apply it to the rest of the world.

Now get out there and take your pants off!!

Vermont Fall '06

I've spent the past couple weekends playing soccer and driving around with friends taking pictures of the scenery. Check out the photo gallery here:
Vermont Fall '06

Highlights include:

* driving one hour west to Bennington College with four friends in total silence because everyone was staring out the window at the Fruit Loop Mountains

* going to an apple pie festival in Dummerston to find all the apple pies were sold out due to an influx of Harley Davidson riders, so we decided to go for a drive on a few dirt roads; got lost, found Dummerston, got lost again, found Dummerston again, got lost again!, found hot apple pie, then found Brattleboro

* having Stiles come up for a few days driving a rented PT Cruiser with a red dash board and knowing he was in Brattleboro a whole ten minutes before buying a Neil Young LP

* going to Marlboro College for a soccer game; arriving an hour early to warm up, and actually seeing people play Quidditch, from the Harry Potter books, for real!

Brattleboro is treating me well.
Come visit!

My Morning Drive

This is a snippet of my drive up Black Mountain Rd to SIT's campus. I do this every morning and recently the weather has been perfect!

Learning Log

As an assignment for one of my classes I have to keep a reflective journal about my learning process and write a letter to a colleague explaining what I'm studying.

I thought I could incorporate this blog into the journal and get some feedback from anyone who reads this, so below I copied & pasted the first email I sent to a teaching liason I worked with in Japan, and in the future I'll try to do more reflective writing about what's happening here in Brattleboro, VT.

Dear Mrs. Keiko,

Long time no see! How are you? Is everything okay at Jyushiyama JHS?

Recently, I have been very busy with graduate school, and I have a homework assignment to write to a colleague about my studies, so I thought it would be a great idea to tell you a little bit about what I'm learning here.

For the past month, my new classmates and I have been getting to know each other and our new surroundings. During school orientation, we played many fun games like: 60 people lining up in alphabetical order without talking! This was a fantastic activity because everyone learned each other’s names while having fun. We also cooked dinner together and went contra dancing! This was great because we had to take responsibility for each other and work together while learning about local culture.

This school puts a lot of emphasis on group work and reflection, so we have been given many group projects. For example, my first group project was to find information about local restaurants and display our findings on a bulletin board for other students. I learned many things about my new town and I got to share the information with others.

The first two weeks of class were very interesting too! I had two classes: Shock Language and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Shock Language class was very thought provoking because I had to study a language I’ve never spoken before. I learned Korean! It was easy for me because the grammar rules are similar to Japanese, and my teacher was great! She used many games and activities to make the class fun; I learned what it feels like to be in a language class as a student.

My SLA class is much more difficult because I’m studying about language teaching theories. I’m reading about famous linguists like Chomsky, Krashen, Swain, and Vygotsky who changed the way education systems teach languages. Also, there are a lot of new vocabulary terms I have to know, but my teacher is very good and lets me ask lots of questions.

Just recently, I began three new classes: Approaches (a class where I have to analyze myself and my teaching techniques), Four Skills (a class where I learn how to incorporate speaking, listening, reading, and writing into to my own classes), and Language Analysis & Lesson Planning (a class where I study about English grammar and making lesson plans). These classes are new to me, so I can’t write about them yet, but I want to share them with you when I learn more.

I hope you are doing well, and please tell all the students at Jyushiyama JHS I said hello.


Take care,


heyhey

If anyone finds this the least bit interesting, please leave a comment because I can use it in my classes.

Thanx.

Podcast Preview

It's been a while since my last post, and I apologize. Moving to Brattleboro, VT and starting school at SIT have kept me pretty busy; not to mention it took three weeks to get the Internet hooked up in my new apartment.

Anyway, things are up and running at full speed now, and I do mean FULL SPEED. For the first time in my life, I need a day-planner to keep track of everything that's happening.

In the coming weeks, I promise to get some pictures online of the Vermont foliage, but in the meantime I started working on another project to interview all of my fellow classmates one by one and podcast it on my DotMac site.

If you're interested, please check it out: HeyHey's Podcast

Peace.

Letter of Acceptance to SIT

Dear Heyward,

On behalf of the Admissions Committee and faculty, I would like to congratulate you on your acceptance to the Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages course work that begins Fall of 2006. We are confident that you will both enhance SIT's learning community and benefit from the degree.

Within the next few days, you'll receive a paper packet containing documents related to your acceptance. If you would like to access an Acceptance Packet instantly online, you may visit:
http://www.sit.edu/graduate/accepted/ Please save this email to direct you to this Accepted-Students only website.

In the packet and online, you will find an enrollment card. The Admissions staff recommends that you submit the $400 non-refundable deposit as soon as possible. The deposit reserves your place in the class and will be deducted from your first semester tuition payment.

If you need support accessing on-line documents please feel free to request assistance by replying to this message.

Again, congratulations and, on behalf of the faculty, the Admissions Committee and SIT, welcome. We look forward to meeting and working with you.

Sincerely yours,

Donald Freeman, Ed.D.
Dean, Graduate and Professional Studies in
Language Teacher Education

School for International Training

Earlier this month I sent off an application to the School for International Training. I'm applying for their Master of Art in Teaching with an emphasis on teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL).

As part of the application process, I had to write a 1500 word essay on an international experience or cultural exchange that was important to me. It took me months before I decided on an approach, but I finally settled on giving a brief overview of my life in Japan.

If anyone would like to read my essay, please click here: SIT Essay.doc

It's not the greatest thing I've ever written, but it's the first time I've actually summed up on paper the impact Japan has had on me, and I'm very grateful to my good friends Cem & Alexis for proof reading it and giving me constructive criticisms and ideas.

Thank you.