“Let the boy die, and the man be born”
I’m going to steal/butcher this quote from George RR Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, even disenchanted as I am with the series as a whole, because his writing is eminently quoteworthy. Shame there’s so much dross surrounding the quality stuff these days…but anyway, moving on.
I learned some very harsh lessons about life, about relationships, and about myself this past year. I didn’t like learning them; then again, who does? It’s part and parcel of becoming an adult, I guess, especially now that I’m out of college.
It was hard, realizing that some people just aren’t worth being friends with, especially when they’re your co-workers and have a lot in common with you. But I think you can take the measure of a man (or a woman, etc) by their friends, and they weren’t the type of person I wanted to emulate. Of course, I’m not a paragon of saintly virtue by any means, or even a particularly good person. I have, however, always tried to become a better person in order to do good things, to be wiser, more responsible, more empathetic. And the people I respect, the ones I call my friends, help me do that, through their kindness or by example.
I hope one day to be somebody truly worthy of their respect as well.
Self-motivation
Well, it’s been a fairly busy December. Two new team members who are working with 7th graders have arrived, and we’ve gotten our afterschool program under way. It’s a bit unfortunate that we got that started right before winter break, but at least we’ll have that structure in place going into the next semester. However, our site coordinator is transferring to a new job, which is a huge blow, because she was one of our best and most helpful supports at the school.
Anyway, I’ve made progress with my students, but still am not where I’d like to be at in terms of effectively pushing them to do better academically. I’ll probably do a self-evaluation over winter break, and come up with ideas on how to improve my approach to things.
One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the question of how to motivate my students to take school seriously. I was never an especially motivated student, maybe because there weren’t really significant consequences for my poor performance, parental or otherwise.
I did, however, take pride in my ability to speed-read advanced books and learn things from them. I liked feeling smarter than my classmates, even if my grades told a different story. That, and my high test scores, pretty much got me through K-12. It’s not exactly a model my students can (or should) emulate though. Ideally, I’d still like to instill that desire to acquire new knowledge, while also getting them to understand the necessity of doing their work consistently.
Work update
So I’ve gotten all of my students assigned, and have been busy introducing myself and starting to work with them over the past few weeks. (which is why I haven’t been writing new posts) I’m working with five 8th graders in their respective classes, in addition to pulling them out at certain times to work with them one-on-one. Afterschool assistance will start after Thanksgiving break. I’ll post more on specific experiences and challenges in future posts.
Americorps service pledge
My fellow Safe Passages volunteers and I were sworn in as a group yesterday at Oakland City Hall by Alberto Retana, the U.S. Department of Education’s director of community outreach. Councilwoman Jean Quan was there and gave a short speech about the importance of education and service; apparently she’s running for mayor of Oakland, but I don’t really know anything about her campaign. Didn’t have a chance to take pictures, unfortunately. Here’s the text of the pledge:
I will get things done for America -
to make our people safer,
smarter, and healthier.
I will bring Americans together
to strengthen our communities.
Faced with apathy,
I will take action.
Faced with conflict,
I will seek common ground.
Faced with adversity,
I will persevere.
I will carry this commitment
with me this year and beyond.
I am an AmeriCorps member,
and I will get things done.
Actually, now that I think about it, with some modification, this might be better for U.S. citizens than the Pledge of Allegiance. It describes a commitment to service, self-improvement, and the well-being of the nation without some of the disturbing connotations of blind obedience.
Concluding my first week
So my first week at Edna Brewer is over. We still haven’t sorted out which kids we’ll be working with, unfortunately. In the meantime, my fellow team members and I have been going to more classrooms to meet teachers and observe students in action. With any luck, we”ll get the bureaucratic stuff out of the way soon and start actually working with them next week.
Front entrance of Edna Brewer; yes, the mascot is a panther. Panther Pride!
First day of Americorps job
I’m going to be working part-time for Americorps, mentoring a caseload of five youth at Edna Brewer Middle School: 
(I’ll probably take some better pictures over the course of this week)
My fellow Americorps team members and I still don’t know what kids we’re assigned to mentor/tutor yet, so we just took a tour of the campus, met some of the staff and faculty, and then split up to observe the afterschool programs.
Well, I say observed, but the afterschool instructor whose classroom I was in asked me to help some of the kids with their homework. I went over some math problems with two girls and tested two boys on their spelling in preparation for an upcoming test. Reminded me a little of my time as a writing tutor at UCSC. 
I’m a little uncertain about how things are going to go in the future, because the kids we’ll be working with closely will have 1.0 GPAs or lower, and obviously have serious issues, but the school seems to have an overall positive vibe that should help immensely. For example, I noticed some Chinese writing in the notebook of one of the girls I’d helped, and asked her about it. She said she was learning it from her Chinese friend because she wants to be mayor of Oakland one day and needs to be able to get the Asian vote. 
This level of cooperation and motivation appears fairly commonplace at Edna Brewer, so hopefully we’ll be able to help instill the same values in the students who have been struggling.
End of 2008
As usual, I haven’t updated in a while, but this seems as good a time as any to start again. It’s been a pretty eventful year, especially recently with the current economic crisis and Barack Obama getting elected in a landslide.
On a more personal note, I visited China for the first time ever this summer! No, I wasn’t there for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. It was just a summer abroad program through UC Davis, I was taking a cultural anthropology class in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwest China. As a Chinese history major, I didn’t learn much from the class itself, although the professor was OK. Exploring the city and learning about the culture more directly was the best part, obviously. At some point, I’ll probably write about my experience there in greater detail, and upload all of my pictures. I’ve been far too lazy though.
Finally saw Milk yesterday. I had already seen a documentary on him at UCSC, but it was still worth seeing. The acting was great, Sean Penn should definitely be a strong contender for an Oscar. What struck me the most as I was watching, though, was how little some things have changed. Bigots are still using the same tired and unbelievably stupid arguments to deny people basic rights. I donated money to political campaigns for the first time this year, with most of it going to No on Prop. 8. I wish I had done more, but I never really believed it could pass in California, and by then it was too late.
2009’ll be even more interesting for me, I think. I’m graduating, for one thing. Running the Yell-owt publication this year is another; I’ll need to find somebody to take over after I leave, but putting out the second edition takes precedence, I guess.
Time seems to be flying by these days. I’m going to the annual Jujo Jiang Go tournament this Saturday in San Francisco. I’ve been playing Go for six and a half years now, and this was the first tournament I ever went to. Lost every game at the 20 kyu level back then, so hopefully I’ve grown a little since
2008 U.S. Go Congress, Day 6
Well, I found out the necessity of getting a good night’s sleep before competing. I stayed up too late, and my US Open game was a disaster. It was pretty much over before it began; I just wasn’t motivated and played speed Go without thinking. The game got into fighting and I held out for a while, but my opponent just wound up with too much territory and won by 17.5 points.
I took a nap afterwards, and played soccer in the afternoon with a few other Congress attendees. That was fun, although I got sort of dizzy and had to retire early.
Takemiya-sensei did live commentary on the final match of the Ing Cup in the evening. Feng Yun, 9-dan, got an early advantage in the opening because of a slack move by Yilun Yang, 7-dan, and Takemiya said she would probably win. However, she played incredibly aggressive moves, and a complicated fight broke out. Eventually she did win, killing most of Yang’s groups, but Takemiya-sensei said it wasn’t really necessary to play that way. Of course, it was cool seeing what a 9-dan can do when motivated. Yilun Yang hung on for a long time, even after the real fighting was done. That showed real spirit and determination, but it might have been more gracious to resign. Anyway, I guess it’s something only the person who’s playing can decide.
2008 U.S. Go Congress, Day 5
Lost my US Open game today. I was playing black, and the opening got into fighting pretty quickly. My groups were settled fairly quickly, but my attacks didn’t get me enough and I lost by 2.5 points.
In the evening, I played a simul against Xuefen Lin, professional 1-dan, taking four stones. The beginning was OK, but I invaded her side territory because I thought she had too much territory, and my group died.
2008 U.S. Go Congress, Day 4
Went 3-1 in the Die Hard tournament today. My opponent in the first round fell behind in the opening by not using his thickness to attack, but started a complicated fight in the middle game. Somehow I survived and killed his group, which gave me enough points to win.
My second round opponent also didn’t use thickness properly, and ignored my threat to his corner. After I cut his position apart, a large group died and he resigned.
I lost the third round by playing too conservatively. For most of the game, I was on the defensive and wound up letting him get too much territory. Even so, it might have been close enough to count, but I made two large mistakes in the endgame and resigned.
My last game was against Herb Doughty, one of the people who taught me to play in the Berkeley Go Club. I think my playing style resembles his a great deal, since I played more games against him than anyone else. He’s extremely aggressive, which works well against beginners who get intimidated, but it tends to backfire against stronger opponents. Almost all of his groups on the board died in our game.
The tournament as a whole was really fun, although extremely tiring. My reading and fighting ability has gotten a lot better; however, it’s still my weakest area and handicaps me in higher-level games. I tend to rely on my whole-board judgment in the opening to set up a good position and reduce the need for complicated fighting. If I want to win in the next rounds, I’ll need to be able to play strongly even from a disadvantageous opening.
