A little historical humor

The subtitle of this post  :I don't care who you are, that's funny

• "I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land."
  -Jon Stewart
• Let's celebrate Columbus Day by walking into someone else's house and telling them we live there now. 
• Lincoln  is doing well in theaters. Historically, this has not been true. 
• We had a substitute in English today whose name was Mr. Priest. During attendance a guy in class suddenly called out: "Can you sell me some indulgences?"
• There's no time for Stalin when you're Russian to industrialize. 
• Ain't no party like the Communist party cuz the Communist party don't allow no other party. 

And finally 

By the way, I am highly tempted to hand these Valentines out next year. So. Tempted. And I will probably repost these at some time in my Valentines celebrations. 

A student of teachers. A teacher of students.

For this, my final semester, I am student teaching in a 9th grade geography classroom at Timpview High School. Yes. It's going well. Thank you for asking. 


It's an awkward stage to be in. Student teaching. Did you ever think about those two words together? And why is it that the second word is the verb? We never say we're studenting. But I've gotta say, that as much as I'm teaching, I'm studenting much more. 


It seems ironic that when teaching we learn the very most. In fact we talk about this often in the education major. If you want students to really learn the material, have them teach it to someone else. Seems backwards-ish. But teaching is the most active form of learning. I always understood that. Ethereally. (Is that a word too? I'm not getting a red squiggle under it. So I'm trusting spellcheck here. But can anyone actually say that out loud? Ethereally. That's not easy.Try it.)

 But now I am beginning to really understand. The other day I taught about landform production. Subduction. Plate tectonics. Weathering. Yawn. Keep in mind folks, I'm actually a history teaching major. History ≠ Geography. I mean I love the human element of geography but the physical element? Let's just say that was one of my less good grades in college. So my mentor teacher, after watching me lecture on it the first time, told me to study it until I cared about it. 

So home I went and National Geographics I did study. At one point, while reading about subduction and tsunamis, all of the sudden I wanted to, nay, had to see a video of a tsunami. I was interested! I watched Youtube videos of tsunamis for a while then quickly wanted to finish the article I was reading and move on to another I'd found about earthquakes. 

So basically what I'm saying is. So far I've learned a lot of things through student teaching. Mostly, however, so far I've learned to learn. Even though I thought that was what college was all about. My mentor teacher put it well today when she said that's what is great about being a teacher, you have to study continually. 

Well good. Because I love to learn. I just have to remind myself every once in a while. 

Mmmm...Books.

At the end of every semester a wonderful thing happens. Textbook sell-back. Now I know most people complain about textbook sell-back because they don't get back the money they paid for their overpriced books. Believe me, I also feel that textbooks are overpriced (secret combinations anyone?). However, I have such a weird sense of money that by the time I sell back my textbooks it has nothing to do with paying me back for those books I already bought. Instead it is a "you-finished-finals!" bonus.

After selling back my books in order to exit the building I have to pass this evil/amazing section entitled "Bargain Books". I usually spend at least an hour there. My loot this year includes:

After The Darkness: Reflections on the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel (and it's illustrated with pictures from the US Holocaust Museum!)
Words That Ring Through Time: From Moses and Pericles to Obama, Fifty-One of the Most Important Speeches in History and How They Changed our World
P.J. O'Rourke on the Wealth of Nations
Great Issues in American History Volume II (collection of primary documents, win for the history nerd!)
Time-line History of the World by Gordon Kerr
Mesoamerican Myth: A Treasury of Central American Legends, Art, and History by Anita Ganeri
November General Conference Ensign

This is a great haul. All for $30!

Of course as soon as I left I saw Daniel Pink's Drive for $16. Do you know how much I want that book? You want it too you just don't know it yet.

A coup!

If you do a google image search on coup d'etat this is what comes up. Keep these images in mind. A coup d'etat is, according to Wikipedia "the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government". 

This week of my life I experience a coup of sorts. My emotions were sick of being subservient to my Louis XIVth logic. This parallel may not be chronologically or factually accurate, but conceptually I promise it makes sense, just stay with me. 

So for reasons that I attribute mostly to stress, not enough sleep and, let's be honest, hormones, my emotions were bolstered enough to stand up to my reason. I thought it was bad at the first of the week, things were tricky, difficult, hard to handle, etc. But THEN, then my friends, came the Reign of Terror. That's right, Robespierre made an appearance, in the form of complete hysterics. I have never felt like I'm completely not in control of my emotions, it was terrifying (thus the reign of terror...). 

Thankfully Napoleon didn't factor into this (this turned from a coup to the French Revolution somehow, probably because the word is French). So there was no conquering and there was definitely no disaster in Russia (because we all you know you should never get involved in a land war in Asia). In fact I think my coup d'etat/French Revolution ended with Marie Antoinette telling me to eat cake. And I complied.

Maybe I will be a good history teacher...