Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Once Around



Vertical pic of the Red-Bellied Woodpecker.

I've now made it all the way around the house weeding (with one shameful small patch still to go), and planted four small plants. I've decided to wait a bit on some transplanting, until fall, when I have to split a bunch of irises. I hadn't weeded as well at the end of last fall as I should have, which made things more difficult now. But now I've pulled a heck of a lot of stuff up. And I feel good.

My bike's chain looks lovely right now. I washed the bike (and chain). And then I lubed the chain. Have you ever noticed how you think you've gotten the chain pretty clean, and then you lube it and run it backwards a few times, and suddenly it's full of gunk again? I'm guessing there's a lot of gunk on the inside, and the lube brings it out through some sort of capillary action? Anyway, this time I washed the chain again, and it's a lot less gunky after I lubed it this time.

I'm reading Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I must confess that I've read about Freire a bit, but never actually read his work. So now I am. I bet I'm not the only one who read about him rather than reading him?

The powers that be have decided that all our special first year courses need to have a theme, so I decided to modify mine and make the theme "identity and education" or something. So I'm looking for things for my first year students to read. I'll gladly take ideas, please!

3 comments:

  1. I don't know what sort of readings you're looking for, exactly (fact / fiction? length?), but here are a couple of pieces from InsideHigherEd about the branding and marketing of higher education, which sounds like it's at least tangentially related to your theme. My students usually have an interesting range of responses to Penn State Wears Prada. I haven't had a chance to assign Beware Higher Ed's 'Mad Men' yet, but I plan to next time I teach comp.

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  2. Thanks, Fretful, those sound interesting to look at :)

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  3. Anonymous10:52 AM

    What do you think about the Friere book? That made quite an impact on me.

    And maybe chains are just inherently goopy? :)

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