The Arrival of The New School Year

R. Milian

In a few weeks I will be making my return to school. For fifteen years, I have seen my teaching skills grow and by the same token, I feel that perhaps I have not grown enough as a teacher. Many students have passed through my classes, and I am blessed that I have helped many of them. They have arrived in the country alone or accompanied by their parents. Working with these new arrivals for an ESL teacher, who has been given the task to teach the Common Core, is, to say the least, difficult. Right now the teaching profession is at a crossroads. What to do when many of us think that technology is essential in the classroom yet not enough support is given to implement it in our jobs.  Our challenge today is not just in our classrooms, but with policies like the Common Core, reformers who prescribe solutions  for better teaching techniques  yet  lack any educational perspective,  the anti-tenure haters who think this is the only solution for better schools, and the union busters who claim that teacher unions are the root of all evil. But despite all the nonsense that is happening in our teaching profession,  I have not lost the hope that a better solution is on the way. I am the eternal optimist who feels that we are different, but in the end, we all want the best for our children. Writing this post brings me memories of the day when the Cuban-American poet, Richard Blanco,  read his poem " One Today" during President Obama's second  inaugural. As I re-read his poem again,  it gives me hope because he speaks of one nation, one hope that we all can believe in and share for a better tomorrow.

Richard Blanco

Experiencing the Native in You

R. Milian

The New York Times did a video on Germany and its fascination with Native Americans. The video details how Germans feel about Native American values and  specifically about the Native American character Winnetou who was created by the famous German author Karl May. May has sold the most books in Germany, including those of Goethe, the great German poet. His stories of Native Americans have penetrated the German psyche. In May's stories all his Native American characters are the good guys as opposed to the way they have been presented in American Cowboy films. May never actually experienced many of the events that he wrote in his stories, although he claimed that he did. The idea one gets of Karl May is that  he was a clever salesman. Even though the German fascination with Native Americans is well-intentioned, It is difficult to accept what they have created in their imaginations as the definition of  Native American culture. When a dominant society redefines a foreign culture, it is very selective in what it adopts. It acts like a shopper at a supermarket only choosing what they favor. For instance, the Germans in this video identify with the connection that Native Americans have to Mother Earth. Cultures are complex and cannot be reduced to what we like.  This video is reminiscent of the Europeans that colonized other continent, describing the inhabitants of those cultures, not on what was real but on their fictionalized accounts.