Fruit for Thought: the Intersection of Education, Culture, and Performance

Today was a good, no, a great day to be a Sox Fan. When you are dealing with perfection, you will always ask yourself, “What if?” What if that foul ball hit by Pat Burrell was a few inches to the right? What if Ozzie Guillen never made that substitution? What if Dewayne Wise took a misstep, mistimed his jump or dropped the ball? What if, what if…what if? I have a what if: What if I was at the game? This has been one of my only free weeks all summer. No road trips, no camp excursions, no tech classes. I was free to do whatever I pleased and I thought about taking in a White Sox game. The 11pm SportsCenter “What 2 Watch 4” said it was going to be lefty duel on the South Side between Mark Buehrle and Scott Kazmir of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The forecast called for a beautiful day, I wanted to show off my grey Sox Griffey jersey and I had nothing planned. Then I thought of how I had needed to finish shrink-wrapping the computer equipment for the Apple Recycling program. The Sox game or m...

It started with Phillis Wheatley. Then came Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni who ushered the way for Saul Williams who inspired all of the children of Hiphop and now, the poets of the 21st Century have a venue thanks to Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam and Brave New Voices . Excuse me if I missed a few , but I wanted to get to this point as quickly as possible: when the revolution is televised, it is hard to ignore. People who are calling this the resurgence of the Renaissance are not listening close enough. This poetry thing was big well before I started frequenting the U Street Corridor in 2000. It is now in high demand because people have decided they needed something with more substance, not that elementary rap on the radiowaves. Youth Speaks is giving people their fill and slamming (the Present Continuous of the word poetry slam ) since ’96. Though I no longer consider myself a poet – it is rare to see poets retire, so call it a promotion as I ...

There are 79 full days of summer. 79 days for my students to do something constructive, educational, eventful or completely unproductive. The choice was theirs. Good thing the middle school teachers compiled a list of books to assist them in their quest of finding summer activities. Me, I am not much of a reader. It does seem very contradictory seeing as how I am a writer, but let me explain. I do not enjoy reading because I am a visual/tactile learner. As such, I read slow trying to a recreate the images the author wrote about. In doing this I tend to read the same page twice to get anything I might have missed while imagining. So fiction is out of the question. Instead I focus my reading efforts on nonfiction books. It took me a few weeks of breaking it down and understanding Toxic Faith , but I finished it a few months before I graduated. I read The Da Vinci Code in three days while on a Thailand beach in the summer of ’06. All the notes I was taking in the margins of Forty Millio...

How does the saying go? “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” I beg to differ. Sticks and stones do indeed hurt, but words can kill. Let me explain. Since it was such a historic weekend, it is only reasonable that this topic be addressed. I spent my Fourth of July in Walkerville, Michigan at Camp Tall Turf safely shooting fireworks from Lake Campbell for all the 8-13-year-old campers of 2nd Session. Today, I returned home to watch a few of my DVR’d shows. The first on my list was the HBO Documentary Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech . It is a must see, but seeing as how It’s Not TV, It’s HBO, I recommend you watch it with your parents. I only want to say a few things about the Free Speech because I have already talked enough about it (until the next incident) here and here. Here is the foundation I am working from: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging t...