One of the cool parts of being a generalist (a job which isn’t available in most school systems) is being able to teach a wide variety of subjects. This quarter, I’m teaching in five.
Advisory
First, and with the direct support of two of my colleagues, I participate in an Advisory of seven students. For those who haven’t paid attention to the changes in pedagogical theory these past twenty years, “Advisory” is kind of like a mix between home room, study hall, and a workshop focused on the development of both personal character and intrapersonal skills.
Sometimes it looks like a bunch of people just hanging around a conference table. Sometimes it looks like a lecture by a teacher or an exhibition by a student. Sometimes it looks like a staff-supported homework club. Regardless of how it looks, it attempts to be an experiential practicum in community building: this is how you maintain a relationship in a healthy community.
Human Rights
The second class I teach focuses on human rights. I want the students to produce a video or audio-recording that connects at least one of the rights listed in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the biography of an individual or group of individuals who fought to declare or protect that right — but I’m still working on the best way to help them do that.
My ultimate goal is to teach them how to research the progression of a topic through time by analyzing the actions of real-life individuals who were crucial to the topic’s current status. I also want them to understand the ways in which the actions of individuals can influence the actions of an empire, which will hopefully strengthen their conception of what’s possible in their own lives.
I just need to figure out how to get them from point A to point Z.
I also have to teach this subject to two different sections, one of which meets for 90 minutes a week, the other of which meets for 45. Obviously, the latter section will need to go from point A to point Z while skipping over points such as E, F, and G.
Dungeons & Dragons
My third class is, once again, Dungeons & Dragons. This quarter, I am the Dungeon Master for a party of six students, five of whom have significant experience playing the game.
I’ve written previously about using Dungeons & Dragons in the classroom, so I’ll just say the difference this time is that I’m trying to create a campaign that requires the students to investigate, analyze, and report back on a series of diverse cultures. The students won’t be “adventurers” as much they’ll be “scouts.” There will be fights with monsters and magic and perhaps, if I get particularly inspired, the tracking down of a conspiracy, but the goal — the academic goal — is give them the experience of thinking critically and in an anthropological way about the concept of “culture.”
Basketball
The fourth class is Basketball. A colleague and I are trying to develop close to a dozen rebellious and poorly coordinated teenagers who don’t understand the rules of the game into a servicable (and fun-having) basketball team capable of playing in some kind of official capacity on behalf of our school.
We run two 90-minute practices per week; so far, we’ve had one. I have my work cut out for me, but I love basketball, and while I doubt my coaching skills, I don’t doubt my knowledge and passion for the game.
I’m hoping to get a whistle.
Military Tactics
The last class I have to teach (also with a colleague) is Military Tactics. The name wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to call it “Jedi Training,” but my colleagues convinced me otherwise, since “Jedi Training” would make the students think it was a Star Wars thing, and it most definitely is not.
Instead, it’s a The Men Who Stare At Goats thing.
If you haven’t seen the movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats is a fictional representation of a nonfictional account of true-to-life programs sponsored by various agencies in the United States military-industrial complex. It explores the nation’s real-life effort to create a team of super soldiers trained in the art of extra-sensory perception and capable of “remote viewing” and even “remote assasination.”
I haven’t read the nonfiction book that the movie is based on, so I don’t know which parts originate in reality and which parts are wholly fiction. With that being said, the movie presents one of the initiatives as the brainchild of a soldier played by Jeff Bridges, aka, “the Dude,” and based on a real-life lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who, among other things, was part of the team that came up with the slogan, “Be All You Can Be.”
In the movie, the lieutenant colonel was given a mission in the early 1970s to explore the ways in which the wisdoms of the counterculture might inform the military’s ability to successfully complete a strategic and tactical mission. Eight years later (in the movie), the soldier returned with an operations manual and the intention to produce — with military funds — a battalion of warrior monks to be armed with countercultural principles, paranormal abilities, and the ability to generate peace when possible and deadly violence when necessary.
There’s a lot to be doubted about some of the claims of the First Earth Battalion, but its existence is not one of them.
My colleague and I have both reviewed real-life documents produced for the First Earth Battalion, and I’ve done several hours of research into its history. My colleague and I also possess many years of knowledge and experience informed by the principles of the counterculture, most extensively in terms of the music of the Grateful Dead but also in more academically inclined ways.
Our general goal is to produce in our six or seven students not only a fascination with what our government is willing to pay for when it comes to achieving a military victory, but also a rudimentary experience of going through the training, an experience that will be one part intellectual, two parts physical, and three parts spiritual.
I am least prepared for this last class, but one becoming a Jedi warrior requires you to sometimes close your eyes and trust in the Force.
The Other Classes
I have more than those five classes on my schedule. Most of the others are one-on-one, where I’m either serving the student in a project-manager capacity or the student is serving me in an internship capacity (with tasks related to the school’s marketing needs and benefits related to the student’s communication skills).
Finally, for the last block of the week, I have a class where I join four musicians in the school’s music studio for a forty-five minute exploration of the realm of improvisational sound. It’s ideally suited to cleanse the soul after a hard week of school.
Looking over my classes for the quarter, I thank whatever experiences and people led me to become a generalist. It really does make teaching a hell of a lot more fun.