Updated version of this post here..
Adulting includes learning which languages work to help you learn best, such as the language of music: musical learning for facts vegetable, mineral, and mathematical, especially quadratical, and maybe even songs for finding out where your law-makers stand. 🙂 How, by the way, would you find out where your Congressmen and State Assembly/State Senate representatives stand on various issues of concern to you?
Start of week 11/18
| Day 40, Week 11 |
| Grammar: Frequently confused words: affect/effect and here/hear |
| Math: Pythagorean Theorem!!! |
| Day 40 Exit Ticket |
| (Extra points for online sources on “biogeochemical cycles” that do not come from ‘pedia! 🙂 |
Action Items:
1.) Where does this quote “…cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse…” come from, and do you like it?
2.) Please explain how it may (or may not) help learners…
3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses those thoughts, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.
4.) Feel free to answer the exit ticket questions in the comments, or pose any other questions you may have about the lesson, if you wish.
Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?
Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GR button:
Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better 
Did any of your students know where that quote came from?
(Gilbert and Sullivan.)
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I don’t know: unfortunately, I only thought of adding that title after I stopped giving classes!
Since many of my students told me, back when I was giving these classes, that they found the ability to download the lessons helpful, I thought maybe other folks would also benefit from them, and so began putting them up here just in case, but I’ve not had any feedback on this particular lesson from anyone who appears to be studying for a High School diploma or equivalency.
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I once used this song here in Germany in a very advanced English class (Cambridge Proficiency preparation) to give them some challenging listening comprehension activities.
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LOL!
That’s a challenge for many native speakers! 🙂
How did they like it?
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They liked it. They really were an advanced class, and I helped by using some of the vocabulary in my comprehension questions on the overhead projector.
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Cool, that makes sense!
When I taught in Turkey, my students all loved “Istanbul, not Constantinople” -even the low level students!
(just don’t tell my Greek friends!)
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Reporting another two likes from the outer rim of the galaxy.
Ranger Mayann
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Thank you, Ranger Mayann,
Valen Go With You,
-Shira
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And with you, Ranger Mayann
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🙂
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A few times I tried to read the party platform of a few (once succeeded in fully reading 2 before the election). Outside of that, I’d rely on the media. What the parties put out themselves, the news, talk shows, social media. Sometimes I have the computer search party platforms for keywords of policies I find important. I also frequently do a quiz to find out which party is closest to my point of view.
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Cool!
Thank you!!
“How, by the way, would you find out where your Congressmen and State Assembly/State Senate representatives stand on various issues of concern to you?”
Someone finally answered my lesson plan question! 🙂
Coolness!
And, yes, excellent, might I agree, ways to see where their affiliated party may stand, but how about the individual members of your city council, apart from their party platforms? Many members take issue with, or line up closely or less closely with many of the planks in their official party platforms, no?
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In the Netherlands we have strict party discipline. If someone votes differently from the party, it’s usually a scandal or a controversial motion not covered by the party platform. However we have a lot more parties, so both voters and politicians can usually pick one that’s very close to them politically.
There are probably quite some politicians who aren’t in 100% agreement with the party platform, but the fight over the party platform usually happens in party commissions and conventions where the platform is amended and voted on.
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In local elections, the local chapters of the national parties and some local parties also have their own platform you can look up.
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Ah, cool: so there are local nuanced variations of the larger party platforms? Nice.
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The national party doesn’t have a platform on local issues, so there the local branches come in.
The people elected to local positions also usually have more freedom to criticise the national party since it doesn’t break voting discipline for them to do so. When one of the parties fucks up you usually hear politicians from the local branches talk about critically before the members of the national fraction (the word we use to describe everyone from one party in a certain “room” of parliament).
We also vote more for a party than an individual member. The seats get distributed among parties proportionally to the votes they get and the votes for individual members can move them up or down the ranking of when they’ll receive a seat. These preference votes are on rare occasions also used as leverage when there is a disagreement between the party leader and a very popular member of the party.
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That sounds like a very interesting system, with a more devolved level of governance. Pretty cool: I’ll have to look it up in detail.
Thank you!
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I think what makes it work is more than the just the formal system of course. I think we have a fairly high participation in social organizations like environmental groups, labour unions (though here it’s membership declined a lot too) and on the flip side orgs defending (small) unsustainable farming and corporate groups. We had a period with a lot of growth when both corporate groups and labour unions reached a accord together with the government, so there’s also often an attempt to get a lot of groups involved in the decision making process.
It has its downsides probably. Our last government also wanted to scrap our dividend tax, likely due to corporate lobbying (this didn’t happen due to public pressure). There’s recently also been some talk about the lack of transparency in the government due to a few scandals so maybe we’ll get some more accountability wrt lobbying soon (or we’ll just forget about it).
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Don’t forget about it!!
Transparency is the key to accountability, and those two are half of Good Governance!
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Might almost be too late. A plurality of people voted for the party most responsible for the scandals and lack of transparency, despite some of the scandals already being out there. During an online party meeting about the formation process (the process which determines which parties form a governing coalition together), I did ask about transparency and the people in my party do still hold it as somewhat important. So, maybe something will still happen since it seems either the Green party or Labour party are needed to form a coalition because enough other parties have either opted out or are being excluded. The Green and Labour party have also agreed to only participate in a coalition if both of them get included.
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1. It is never too late for Transparency, and for improvement.
2. Cooperation!! Excellent! It seems that these two parties should be natural allies.
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1. It’s almost certain we’ll end up with the same prime minister (the same one who led the government who wanted to keep a lot of things off the record). However, coalition instability might bring down the government pre-maturely.
2. They are, they also have a vote sharing system, to give them an edge at any residual seats in parliament (the system to deal with rounding errors in seat allocation).
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Interesting!
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Ah, ok, sorry, I hadn’t realized that.
Here in the US, with effectively only two parties (we do have others, but none with enough clout to be taken seriously), voters need to look at individual candidate information to see what the person actually believes, as they often break with their parties on votes, unless ‘whipped’ into line by funding threats.
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We’re closer to the Israeli system than the US system I think. Though I believe we in the Netherlands have usually more democracy within our parties, with some differences between parties on how much inner democracy they allow. We have one far-right party with no democracy within the party (at least last time I checked).
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Yes, you are, and I love that you look at the internal decision making processes within the parties. Here, in the US, that is often overlooked (perhaps deliberately), it seems to me. Probably another reason we have so many ‘independents’ who never get anywhere due to our 2-party system.
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In the Netherlands, it doesn’t even matter that much what any given party stands for since we have enough of them, so when one party becomes bad there’s still one that’s good enough (or one will rise up since it’s quite easy for new parties to enter politics). Do you in the US have a process to get input into the party platform, besides voting in the primary?
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Not really, unless a person has time to volunteer *alot* for a party and work up through the ranks to become a delegate.
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That’s too bad… Here we can vote on amendments to the party platform when we become a member of a party. You can even be a member of multiple parties. There is usually a small fee for each party set, I think, by the party. Kinda like a club.
There are also semi regular meetings any member can attend and you can become part of the commissions which have more influence over party policy than most members (don’t know how easy that is). I also fairly frequently see emails asking people to apply for positions in my party (the Green party). At the moment I just think I’d be bad at them, otherwise I’d probably stand a chance since, most of them don’t ask for any specific qualifications.
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Wow, that is much more open than here.
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Yeah, I really like our political system. Not so much the right wing governments it produces lately, but that’s not the fault of the system.
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This is also why I work so hard to educate my fellow Americans.
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Unfortunately it seems like in your system it’s both more important, but also harder to have a say in the inner workings of political parties.
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I think you’re right, which is why many of us are working to educate people on the need to change our system.
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I hope you succeed.
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Not I, us.
I have started The Educational Collaborative blog, and am writing my book on Wondering Wednesdays with community input so that this work can be done together.
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I read one of the draft versions, hadn’t noticed the page at the top of your blog yet. A long time ago I wanted to do something similar, to do/put the worldbuilding I was doing for a fantasy novel on my blog. I semi-abandoned the idea when my mental health problems began.
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Draft versions? You mean a section of the rough draft of Baby Acres, on Wondering Wednesdays? I’m still posting sections of chapter 1, while I finish chapter 4 offline. I’d love see you get back to your novel. Baby Acres is not a novel, although I’m sure that there are plenty of people who’d say it is pure fantasy. It is meant to be a Vision of what our real world could and can be, if we work at it together for about 60-80 years. As I draft the ‘Getting There from Here’ outline for chapter 6, I am starting to see that a bit more flexibility in the project timeline may be in order…
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Yeah, I meant I read a section of the rough draft. I also just read the page at the top dedicated to Baby Acres. I think it gives a good overview of the four freedoms and your take on them, but I also think it could use something similar to this post by you ( https://shiradest.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/moody-mondays-idea-fully-inclusive-equality-via-the-four-freedoms-movement/ ). A brief outline of the four phases, just to give a preview.
I did start a new project around the time I abandoned the old one. One slightly more autobiographical, but still fiction. I felt like some of my struggle with mental health at the time did feel a bit like being in a novel. Unfortunately, it seems my kind of mental health problems are ones that seem to get worse when I write about them (at least for now). So, I have abandoned it too (until I get well enough to write about my mental health without having a relapse). However, I think what I wrote so far, in my second project, is far better than what I wrote in my first one. Seems like writing about my own life is a lot easier than having to come up with a whole world and a good story.
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Interesting, and I hope that you are able to get and feel better soon. Personally, my emotional health issues have always sent me running for refuge in other worlds, and I’ve had to work hard to stay here, as writing about my own life is more difficult, for me, unless I wrap it in metaphors inside a novel. I find for my own mental health problems that working on a large project that is meant to help others helps me the most. At least gives me the hope that I can contribute something that may prevent it from happening to others.
Wrt your overview suggestion: I have done exactly that, already, posted as the Preface, and also an Introductory chapter (the working title was ‘Chapter 0’) back in April. Chapter 1 gives a longer outline of each phase vis a vis every other phase, and the project as a whole. I believe you should be able to follow the links back to each previous chapter section (though there was one link I think I needed to verify), and all of them should also be posted on the page with all of the sections (links to), but I need to verify those, as well, as I think I am behind on updating that page. Not sure.
Thank you, Nerias (is your username from the French, as in, selon moi, selon toi, selon Nerias???), for your engagement with these posts. I really appreciate the time you are taking to read and comment on my work, and I hope that you also find it useful, and worthwhile.
In Service,
-Shira
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Interesting to hear how you deal with your mental health. I think I avoided my mental health problems too till I was almost 21. Mainly by focusing on school. A few months before I turned 21 that approach severely failed me, so for a short while I tried the mental healthcare route, but I soon grew tired of it and tried the route of working more on school again. To disastrous effect. Ever since I realized this was a big mistake (when I was 25) I try to deal with my mental health problems more head-on.
Seems like you didn’t need the feedback wrt the phases. Good that it is already incorporated in chapter 0&1.
My username, perhaps unfortunately, doesn’t go as deep. It was just a username I came up with when I was a teen which somehow stuck.
Glad to interact with you. I love the conversations we’re having in the comment section.
Kind regards,
Selon
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Coolness, I appreciate your time and I also enjoy these conversations!
And feedback is always needed, since you have confirmed for me that I did indeed need to write those chapter sections you mentioned! 🙂
I imagine it is not easy to read these in serial the way I am posting them, sorry, but I do appreciate your participation in the rough draft!
🙂
And yes, I have been accused, rather often, of being a workaholic in order to avoid dealing with my childhood traumas, but I find that work, Tai Chi, and a good dose of running, help, in general. But it has taken me a very long time to get to this point: in my 20s I was constantly having panic attacks, nearly hospitalized, and changed jobs several times before Kung Fu and therapy began to help. Anti-depressants, in my case, made me physically ill, but forced me to start eating again, so that was a good thing. It really took me deciding to go do some difficult work that I will spare you unless you wish to know more, which helped some, but at 50yr old, I still have the occasional panic attack if the wrong smell or noise takes me by surprise.
I hope that this is helpful, rather than just over-sharing. Please accept my apologies if it has been, and I won’t mention any more without your request. I’m just hoping that some of what helped me can be of use…
Many thanks, Selon, and the very warmest of kind regards,
-Shira
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Glad to have helped a tiny bit with the draft version of the book. I think with the page linking to the chapters it’s probably going to be more readable (but that’s not how I originally found the project).
To me, it wasn’t oversharing. I’m glad you found some things which worked for you, I’m not there yet, though I think my issues stem more from a genetic tendency towards bad mental health than actual trauma. It made it hard to accept for a while, I’d think, nothing actually happened to me yet my mental health is really bad. That the problems were caused by something inside me made it seem like more my fault and there’s maybe some truth to that (though you can’t choose your genes).
Sucks that it still affects you… Not sure how much of it I’m going to keep with me. At the very least my life path is irrevocably altered.
I’m sometimes a bit hesitant going into detail on my mental health struggles online because my dad had a harder time finding a job because of his mental health struggles. He’d get to a point where it really seemed they’d hire him then he told them about his mental health struggles and suddenly they weren’t interested at all anymore. At least we live in a different time, and this is a pseudo-anonymous account, so maybe I don’t need to worry about that.
Thank you too!
kind regards,
-Selon
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Makes sense, sorry I am so tired today that I’ll have to come back for a proper reply to your comments, but I want you to know that I appreciate your sharing.
Kind regards,
-Shira
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Totally ok. I think my replies sometimes (or often) take longer than a day too.
-Selon
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Thank you, I appreciate that.
Hope you’re having a good start to your weekend, there,
Stay safe,
-Shira
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You’re welcome 🙂 The weekend’s going ok. A bit tired, but maybe that’s good. How’s your weekend going?
Greetings,
-Selon
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Greetings,
Tired, trying to catch up on blog posts while outlining, cleaning up behind my roommate who drips grease and honey on common surfaces, and playing cat and mouse with pot smokers who think that we who are allergic to pot merely want to spoil their fun, so I can never open the balcony door to air out the burnt smell from roommate’s cooking without worrying about getting a lung full of foul smelling air that they claim is some strange plant that grows here in California, and only smells at odd intervals of the day.
Right.
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Hi, Sorry you have, what seems like, a lot of nuisance in your life. I’m quite lucky I don’t have much to deal with in that regard (though I’m moving soon, so that might change). In the Netherlands pot is decriminalised, but smoking it in public is illegal, so I think we don’t have a lot of pot related nuisances in the country. I imagine that’d be harder in the US since it’s illegal on a federal level it might be harder to make sensible laws on local levels, but I might be wrong on this.
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No, you are quite right: we are experiencing a time when federal and state policy are conflicting in ways that have not been quite so incendiary possibly since our Civil War, and it is difficult for many to keep up with those contradictions. Here in California, in theory, smoking it out in public is still illegal, or so I thought, that may have changed very recently.
sorry; must run!
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I imagined the tension between state and federal policy could make public smoking bans harder to do or perhaps enforce, but I could be very off on this.
Have a good day!
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Well, most states, I believe, also ban public smoking of both pot and tobacco, but the problem is that many smokers even in “blue” states, where one is led to imagine that empathy would be greater, still seem to find it a personal affront that they are told not to smoke in their own homes. So, they “cheat” and treat it as a joke when a person allergic to that smoke confronts them about it.
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I don’t smoke, but I can imagine it’d be quite annoying to be told not to do something you want to do, in this case smoking, in your own home. Still no reason to disregard other people.
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Well, when that something you want to do spreads and stays in the walls, carpets, goes up through cracks in floors/cabinets and vents into other people’s space, who then have coughing fits or sinus or allergy attacks, then doing what you want is swinging your fist into my nose, as we say (actually we say ‘my freedom ends where your nose begins’ -but I’ve not heard anyone say that in quite a while…).
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I imagine it’d be pretty hard for them then. When you shouldn’t smoke outside, because that’s illegal and you shouldn’t smoke inside because you’re harming someone else with it. That’s a hard one.
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Taking up an expensive habit that kills people is not one I can sympathize with. It is a behavioral choice, and a bad one. They c/should stop smoking. And there are patches, edibles, oils, etc, so there are plenty of other ways to get their nicotine or THC that do not involve spreading it to those of us who will have asthma attacks from it.
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Sure it might be better for them and you if they quit, but that’s pretty hard, maybe less so for weed, but you always hear about how hard it is to quit smoking.
It sucks for you though… that they cause you harm, but not everyone is disciplined enough or in the right mindset to quit smoking. The way I am now, I’m not sure I’d be able to quit smoking if I was a smoker. I can’t seem to fix my sleep and I’m not sure that’s harder to do. I don’t know who the smokers near you are and I might just be wrong about them.
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It’s an expensive habit, so why not just not take up smoking in the first place? There also many stop smoking programs and medications available, as well as alot of free clinics, so it there is no good reason to harm others as well as oneself by smoking.
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Might be? I have coughing attacks as soon as I smell the stuff: it’s not just annoying, it is more like an asthma attack, for me.
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You’re right they are out of line, especially since you said it’s not allowed, and they have their area for it, and you’re allergic to it. So I was lending them too much sympathy. Sorry, it must be infuriating and that’s a good enough reason not to sympathise with them.
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No worries. It is not just that it is infuriating, but for me, the problem is that it hits me right in that existential spot that says ‘why keep bothering to try, no one is worth it’ and just give up on living. Obviously I am not going to tell them that their smoking is aggravating my suicidality, but that is the actual problem: it is. I already have a hard enough time finding reasons to keep living, so when I have to work even harder just to get a good night’s sleep in order to get 1000 words written, it makes me feel so tired that I just want to give up on everything. I’ve been looking for a new place to live, but the problem is that there are always people who like to break the rules because they think it is fun, regardless of the real harm it does to others. That makes me feel like the human race is simply hopeless.
But, I know that this is not the case.
I just need to live in a place where people actually value one another. Unfortunately, I have not yet found such a place.
I imagine that it must exist, so I keep trying.
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I’m really sorry, I didn’t realize I was being an ass. I shouldn’t have taken their side to begin with, that wasn’t appropriate. I hope you find a place where people actually care about one another. I hope it exists and you find it.
I wonder what characteristics people have who do really care about each other deeply (besides empathy).
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No, you were not being an ass, I apologize if I overreacted, I am just exhausted.
I’ve been trying to figure out those other characteristics, but right now I’m too tired to articulate much.
I just hope that my rough draft is making sense at the moment.
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Maybe I overreacted too. Shortly after one of my replies, I talked to someone (well actually an AI bot) where it was very obvious they just needed a sympathetic ear, that made me realize you were probably better served by me just listening to your side instead of whatever I was doing in my earlier replies.
Your rough drafts do make sense, they’re probably better than my replies.
On the characteristics of people who really care, I really wouldn’t know. Perhaps it’s the wrong question since environment/context seems almost more important sometimes (at least from the little I read on it).
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No, normally I do prefer solutions, it’s just that there are no good solutions except to move, in this case, and I am so tired, and have no idea where I’d like to move, that I feel just able to hang on while I get my book written.
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I hope you get the break you need. Maybe you get a few nights good rest and either find a good place to move to or the right thing to say to the smokers or maybe a friend can talk to them.
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Thank you: I’m looking for all three.
Going to bed early.
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Thank you, Selon, for your kind thoughts, by the way: I do appreciate them, and I do hope that it exists and that we both (if you don’t already have it) find it.
Take good care of yourself,
-S.
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Thanks, I hope so too, though I’m more focused on trying to make the best out of the location I got. It’s far from perfect, but I think probably good enough (at least for now).
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Pretty much likewise, but it is stressing me out trying to figure out where I can go, once I finish my rough draft, at least. California is far from what I’d thought it was, even after months of research. Intentional communities are far from what they claim to be, and the cohousing places I’d like to live in still require income that I no longer make, and no longer find ethical or even possible at this age to make again, anyway. I’d love to live in Denmark, The Netherlands, or Montreal, but I just don’t have the energy to get the residence visa done.
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I get that. I’m moving internally right now and it is really hard on me, even though the distance is quite small. Can’t imagine the hassle of moving internationally.
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It was easier when I was younger because I always had both a job, and the hope of finding out that people would be different in a new country, but teaching in various different places has shown me that we human beings really are all the same.
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I’d guess culture & education only changes people that much. I don’t think you can expect it to eliminate a type of person, and maybe… I wouldn’t want it to do so either… Sorry, this seems to be a difficult topic for me at the moment.
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No worries, I think you are right, culture and ed can only do so much, but for most people, that is already a very strong influence, and most cultures in our world today encourage primary loyalty toward the family first, and outsiders a distant second.
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I agree, it seems most cultures encourage more loyalty to people closer to us. Maybe to an extent that is necessary, but I too wish we treated outsiders better.
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Likewise: which is why I’m working so hard on Wondering Wednesdays…
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Trying to do your part, good for you.
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Keeps me out of more trouble…
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You are right it can be very annoying, I just feel like they probably need a place to smoke where they only harm themselves with their smoking habit. Sorry, for taking their side a bit too much before.
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No worries. They do have designated smoking areas, so there is no excuse.
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Also, since I was told by the landlady that this was a non-smoking complex, and that no one smoked here, you can imagine my anger at the smoke coming into the window of my rather small room, which is both my office and my bedroom.
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I did specify that I was allergic to both kinds of smoke before taking the room I live in, so once it was too late to move, you can understand my frustration, no?
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