Tentative Grading Plan – September 29, 2008 – Andy
We have explored the functions of grading – such as helping colleges sort which students to take, families to have a sense of their student’s progress, a student to have some feedback on her achievement., and extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick) for students to do assigned work.
We also discussed the problems associated with grading – such as deforming the learning process, antagonizing the relationship between learner and teacher, the distraction of “whatdja get” instead of “what did you learn”, the indignity of being stamped.
We have talked about the various aspects of schooling that could be usefully quantified – such as learning, effort, achievement, time spent, contributions, etc.
We can’t just create an “ideal” plan without paying attention to our particular situation. Virtually all students are trying to play the college admissions game and so want grades. Most students are used to prioritizing graded work over non-graded work, so again grades are useful. I have almost 100 students so many measurements of each student aren’t possible.
Given that most of the functions of grading (family, student, and college feedback) have to do with achievement I plan to focus my grading on the quality of the work. Here’s what I propose – I assign a number grade (1-10) to each important assignment – with 10 being the best reachable grade by two or more people. I weight the assignments in terms of their importance/time-commitment. At the end of the quarter (or even before) I share those assigned scores with you. But also at the end of the quarter you prepare a brief analysis of your own effort and learning. I write a quick note agreeing, disagreeing, nuancing, contextualizing, or stating my ignorance. This method allows your family to gain insight into this important aspect of your experience.
Potential Concerns:
1. What if the assigned 1-10 scores seem wrong/unfair/too-rigourous? Can I negotiate my grades with you?
The scores will suffer from human imperfection. I will always state the major aspects to consider as an informal or formal rubric and I will often provide a model of what I’m hoping you’ll make. And I’ll start with the strongest actual work and then grade from there so that I don’t hold you to graduate school standards. But I will not have time to debate whether a work deserved a 9 instead of an 8.
2. Won’t you be wasting your time looking at my work like a judge looks at beauty contestants discussing poverty?
I do worry that it will be a waste of time judging that I could have spent planning curriculum, giving thoughtful feedback, or working with a particular student. It seems factory-like and artificial to me. But it also seems necessary in our particular situation. I do plan to limit the time I devote to grading to enable me to do a good job on the work I value more - actually teaching.
3. How exactly will this “effort and learning” thing work?
At the end of the quarter you will spend time going back over your notebook and your blog. You will identify times you worked at maximum capacity and otherwise. You will assess whether your skills and understanding have increased dramatically, substantially, marginally, or not at all. You will record your results on a single typed sheet of paper (two headings – Effort and Learning) and I will stamp or scrawl a quick note with any thoughts I have on the topics. You will share this with your family at the same time you give them your official progress report.
4. Some people aren’t as good at reading or writing or thinking – is it fair to grade them lower?
This is a valid concern – to some extent achievement grades will simply recognize the people who had existing skills and understandings and also “punish” students who are already at a disadvantage. It is possible that having clean feedback on your achievement might help you learn to make your work better by thinking more before you start it, getting feedback from friends and an adult before revising it, and doing the best you can.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Looking At Other Peoples' Blogs
Video/Writing Project 1 - Assignment 2
The major benefit of putting your work on blogs is to enable you to exchange your work easily with other students. You can learn from them and they can learn from you.
On this blog there is a set of links to each section's blog addresses. Use those links to find four students blogs' in your section, and one student's blog from the other section in the same course (2 & 4, 1 & 3).
Watch their videos and read their description and analysis. For each one you watch, please leave a brief AND SPECIFIC comment. For instance you could write, "I really liked the colors in your video" or "I really enjoyed the scene with your little brother" or "Great point about how your family is the most meaningful aspect in your way of life." After you leave those comments for the other students copy and paste them into a single post on your own blog (don't forget to note who they were for). Now on the same post please write down three insights or analyses you've gained from looking at those other peoples' work.
The insights could be ones that you read in someone else's analytical writing or they could be ones you had as a result of patterns you noticed in the films. For instance you might write, "One insight I had was how common it was for people to make videos of themselves hanging out with their friends - there was scenes like that in 4/5 of the other videos. Obviously that is an aspect of our way of life that people find very meaningful."
Please check out the other blogs, post your comments, and make your comment/insight post by noon Sunday.
The major benefit of putting your work on blogs is to enable you to exchange your work easily with other students. You can learn from them and they can learn from you.
On this blog there is a set of links to each section's blog addresses. Use those links to find four students blogs' in your section, and one student's blog from the other section in the same course (2 & 4, 1 & 3).
Watch their videos and read their description and analysis. For each one you watch, please leave a brief AND SPECIFIC comment. For instance you could write, "I really liked the colors in your video" or "I really enjoyed the scene with your little brother" or "Great point about how your family is the most meaningful aspect in your way of life." After you leave those comments for the other students copy and paste them into a single post on your own blog (don't forget to note who they were for). Now on the same post please write down three insights or analyses you've gained from looking at those other peoples' work.
The insights could be ones that you read in someone else's analytical writing or they could be ones you had as a result of patterns you noticed in the films. For instance you might write, "One insight I had was how common it was for people to make videos of themselves hanging out with their friends - there was scenes like that in 4/5 of the other videos. Obviously that is an aspect of our way of life that people find very meaningful."
Please check out the other blogs, post your comments, and make your comment/insight post by noon Sunday.
AWOL Video/Writing Project - Andy
AWOL
DESCRIPTION:
1. What have you included in this video?
This video has footage of four aspects of my life. You see me in my sun and jellyfish protective swimming gear at Brighton Beach. There is video of my friend Heather and her mom Carole and I talking at my apartment. There is the kind of strange looking footage of me reading student work on the computer in my classroom. And finally there is a brief excerpt of a lesson on revelation that I offered to some of my favorite students in last year’s Revelation course.
2. Explain how different parts of the video relate to your way of life.
All four parts of the video related to meaningful aspects of my life.
Swimming has been a big part of my life for the past year. I’ve been learning to swim well using an approach called “Total Immersion”. And for me swimming in the ocean is particularly meaningful. The ocean has been big for me my whole life – growing up in SW Florida and now living in NYC. It makes me smile when a seagull flies over me when I’m swimming backstroke.
I have lived together with Heather for more than 10 years. My chance to be friends with her and enjoy her is one of the most meaningful aspects of my life. Her mom Carole, who I also care a lot about, has recently moved to the apartment downstairs of us in Brooklyn so we have been able to share more family experiences here.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse for my life. The video shows me reading student work – this has made it possible for me to evolve a new kind of teaching in which work continues to belong to the student rather than be “handed in” to the teacher and for students to learn from each other more easily. And in general I’ve learned a lot from the internet. But the internet also represents one of the biggest pits of relative meaninglessness in my life – thousands of hours wasted on endless games of chess & go, stupid staring at the New York Times, reading forums about folding bikes, etc. I’ve tried repeatedly to reorient myself back away from the virtual and to the real, but success has been limited and intermittent.
My teaching has been one of the aspects of my life that I’ve devoted the most time, thought, and energy towards. I feel a sense of pleasure and meaningfulness in helping students to reach deeper insights about the world and themselves and the relationship between the world and themselves. I feel that I’ve been given some important gifts that teaching helps me to share. On the other hand sometimes it feels like my energy is being wasted in a factory system in which most people are just pretending, just going through the motions.
3. What’s seems good about your way of life? What’s bad? What’s neutral?
My way of life is centered around trying to create meaningful situations. Right now the main meaningful situations I’ve been able to create are my life at home, my work at SOF, and my enjoyment of nature and physicality. That’s all good.
What seems bad about my way of life is how our destructive culture has paved and pounded the world and poured delusions into people. So I have to live my life surrounded by pavement and by people who yell at each other or get caught up in stupid fads and identities. I don’t get to be connected with birds and bears and dolphins.
What’s neutral – on the one hand I really appreciate that I don’t have to drive a car in NYC but on the other hand I don’t really enjoy riding the subway. I look forward to the few years between when the cars stop because of oil prices and the streets haven’t yet become unbicyclable. My relationship with food is also good & bad. I’m glad to be a member of the food coop and to be growing tomatos and peppers and arugula at the community garden. But I would prefer to be growing more of my food and knowing more of the people who grew the rest and drinking really clean water from clean rivers and streams.
4. What would you have liked to have included, that is important to your way of life, but weren’t able to?
I would have liked to include footage of our plots in the Brooklyn College Community Garden since that would highlight another aspect of what I find meaningful – working with the Earth, learning how to feed ourselves, understanding our physical reality more deeply.
aspects of a life - andy from juggleandhope on Vimeo.
ANALYSIS & INSIGHT
5. What’s going on with your way of life? What seems to be the general pattern or direction or point or situation?
A general pattern in my way of life is someone who is trying to experience meaningful situations. Someone who is able to focus on teaching and someone else will feed him and give him health care and housing. Someone who has time to enjoy loved ones.
6. How do the good, bad, and neutral in your way of life fit together?
The good aspects of teaching and living in NYC – flavorful and generous city-dwellers, interesting students, being able to teach a self-made and meaningful curriculum, no car, access to meaningful culture are also related to the bad parts of living and teaching in NYC – mass media, pavement, too many people.
7. Does your way of life seem like a “typical American Way of Life”? Why or why not?
My way of life seems in some ways typical. I have a job in “the City” and an apartment in Brooklyn so I have to commute everyday. I spend recreational time in typical places (Brighton Beach, the Botanic Garden, Prospect Park), spend a lot of time on the internet, and “exercise” regularly and eat food other people grew, often at restaurants. You don’t see me doing physical work to bring food or mine metals or fix roads.
But in some ways my life seems pretty different than most peoples’ lives in this culture. You don’t see me watching TV, driving a car, or buying fast food – three of the activities that I associate most with the AWOL. We don’t have an air-conditioner, we don’t try to distract ourselves with celebrity magazines, we don’t get stoned or drunk. We don’t go listen to preachers tell us Official Stories of Politics and Life. We aren’t struggling to get as rich as possible. We try to garden and enjoy reality as much as possible.
8. What aspects of your way of life seem really interesting to you – you’d like to think about them more deeply, figure out how this sort of thing developed historically, what’s going to happen to this aspect of your way of life within your lifetime? What questions do you have about these really interesting aspects of your way of life?
How did it happen that I can not do any “real” work and still live so easily? Who is doing the real work for me? In what ways is my life now reliant on complicated and ultimately fragile social arrangements?
DESCRIPTION:
1. What have you included in this video?
This video has footage of four aspects of my life. You see me in my sun and jellyfish protective swimming gear at Brighton Beach. There is video of my friend Heather and her mom Carole and I talking at my apartment. There is the kind of strange looking footage of me reading student work on the computer in my classroom. And finally there is a brief excerpt of a lesson on revelation that I offered to some of my favorite students in last year’s Revelation course.
2. Explain how different parts of the video relate to your way of life.
All four parts of the video related to meaningful aspects of my life.
Swimming has been a big part of my life for the past year. I’ve been learning to swim well using an approach called “Total Immersion”. And for me swimming in the ocean is particularly meaningful. The ocean has been big for me my whole life – growing up in SW Florida and now living in NYC. It makes me smile when a seagull flies over me when I’m swimming backstroke.
I have lived together with Heather for more than 10 years. My chance to be friends with her and enjoy her is one of the most meaningful aspects of my life. Her mom Carole, who I also care a lot about, has recently moved to the apartment downstairs of us in Brooklyn so we have been able to share more family experiences here.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse for my life. The video shows me reading student work – this has made it possible for me to evolve a new kind of teaching in which work continues to belong to the student rather than be “handed in” to the teacher and for students to learn from each other more easily. And in general I’ve learned a lot from the internet. But the internet also represents one of the biggest pits of relative meaninglessness in my life – thousands of hours wasted on endless games of chess & go, stupid staring at the New York Times, reading forums about folding bikes, etc. I’ve tried repeatedly to reorient myself back away from the virtual and to the real, but success has been limited and intermittent.
My teaching has been one of the aspects of my life that I’ve devoted the most time, thought, and energy towards. I feel a sense of pleasure and meaningfulness in helping students to reach deeper insights about the world and themselves and the relationship between the world and themselves. I feel that I’ve been given some important gifts that teaching helps me to share. On the other hand sometimes it feels like my energy is being wasted in a factory system in which most people are just pretending, just going through the motions.
3. What’s seems good about your way of life? What’s bad? What’s neutral?
My way of life is centered around trying to create meaningful situations. Right now the main meaningful situations I’ve been able to create are my life at home, my work at SOF, and my enjoyment of nature and physicality. That’s all good.
What seems bad about my way of life is how our destructive culture has paved and pounded the world and poured delusions into people. So I have to live my life surrounded by pavement and by people who yell at each other or get caught up in stupid fads and identities. I don’t get to be connected with birds and bears and dolphins.
What’s neutral – on the one hand I really appreciate that I don’t have to drive a car in NYC but on the other hand I don’t really enjoy riding the subway. I look forward to the few years between when the cars stop because of oil prices and the streets haven’t yet become unbicyclable. My relationship with food is also good & bad. I’m glad to be a member of the food coop and to be growing tomatos and peppers and arugula at the community garden. But I would prefer to be growing more of my food and knowing more of the people who grew the rest and drinking really clean water from clean rivers and streams.
4. What would you have liked to have included, that is important to your way of life, but weren’t able to?
I would have liked to include footage of our plots in the Brooklyn College Community Garden since that would highlight another aspect of what I find meaningful – working with the Earth, learning how to feed ourselves, understanding our physical reality more deeply.
aspects of a life - andy from juggleandhope on Vimeo.
ANALYSIS & INSIGHT
5. What’s going on with your way of life? What seems to be the general pattern or direction or point or situation?
A general pattern in my way of life is someone who is trying to experience meaningful situations. Someone who is able to focus on teaching and someone else will feed him and give him health care and housing. Someone who has time to enjoy loved ones.
6. How do the good, bad, and neutral in your way of life fit together?
The good aspects of teaching and living in NYC – flavorful and generous city-dwellers, interesting students, being able to teach a self-made and meaningful curriculum, no car, access to meaningful culture are also related to the bad parts of living and teaching in NYC – mass media, pavement, too many people.
7. Does your way of life seem like a “typical American Way of Life”? Why or why not?
My way of life seems in some ways typical. I have a job in “the City” and an apartment in Brooklyn so I have to commute everyday. I spend recreational time in typical places (Brighton Beach, the Botanic Garden, Prospect Park), spend a lot of time on the internet, and “exercise” regularly and eat food other people grew, often at restaurants. You don’t see me doing physical work to bring food or mine metals or fix roads.
But in some ways my life seems pretty different than most peoples’ lives in this culture. You don’t see me watching TV, driving a car, or buying fast food – three of the activities that I associate most with the AWOL. We don’t have an air-conditioner, we don’t try to distract ourselves with celebrity magazines, we don’t get stoned or drunk. We don’t go listen to preachers tell us Official Stories of Politics and Life. We aren’t struggling to get as rich as possible. We try to garden and enjoy reality as much as possible.
8. What aspects of your way of life seem really interesting to you – you’d like to think about them more deeply, figure out how this sort of thing developed historically, what’s going to happen to this aspect of your way of life within your lifetime? What questions do you have about these really interesting aspects of your way of life?
How did it happen that I can not do any “real” work and still live so easily? Who is doing the real work for me? In what ways is my life now reliant on complicated and ultimately fragile social arrangements?
Guiding Questions for Video/Writing Project 1 - Self
Guiding Questions for Analytical Writing Around Video Project 1
Meaningless:
Under the heading “DESCRIPTIVE” please write 300-600 words on the following 3 descriptive questions. Under the heading “ANALYSIS & INSIGHT” please write another 300-1000 words addressing the following 5 analysis questions.
I encourage you to add in other thoughts that seem relevant as well as answering the questions – and also if you’ve thought about a question 3x and it still seems boring or repetitive, skip it or twist it..I suggest that you write a first draft in word, print it out, revise it, give it to a friend to make suggestions, revise it again, and then post it up. This writing should be in the same post as your video – the video should be embedded in the writing.
GUIDING QUESTIONS - DESCRIPTION:
1. What have you included in this video?
2. Which parts of the video related to relatively meaningful aspects of your life? Which parts related to relatively meaningless aspects of your life?
3. What would you have liked to have included but weren’t able to?
GUIDING QUESTIONS - ANALYSIS & INSIGHT:
4. What seem to be some of the main criteria you use (emotionally +/or mentally) to assess how meaningful an aspect of your life is?
5. Is there a pattern in what you find meaningful or meaningless? What are some of the elements in that pattern?
6. Looking at the video as a whole – is it a fairly honest/accurate depiction of your life? Does it make you seem interesting/special/exciting?
7. Does your life seem meaningful from an outside perspective? Is it from an inside perspective? Why?
8. What questions do you have about living a meaningful life at this point?
AWOL:
Under the heading “DESCRIPTIVE” please write 300-600 words on the following 4 descriptive questions. Under the heading “ANALYSIS & INSIGHT” please write another 300-1000 words addressing the following 4 analysis questions.
I encourage you to add in other thoughts that seem relevant as well as answering the questions – and also if you’ve thought about a question 3x and it still seems boring or repetitive, skip it or twist it. I suggest that you write a first draft in word, print it out, revise it, give it to a friend to make suggestions, revise it again, and then post it up. This writing should be in the same post as your video – the video should be embedded in the writing.
GUIDING QUESTIONS - DESCRIPTION:
1. What have you included in this video?
2. Explain how different parts of the video relate to your way of life.
3. What’s seems good about your way of life? What’s bad? What’s neutral?
4. What would you have liked to have included, that is important to your way of life, but weren’t able to?
GUIDING QUESTIONS – ANALYSIS & INSIGHT
5. What’s going on with your way of life? What seems to be the general pattern or direction or point or situation?
6. How do the good, bad, and neutral in your way of life fit together?
7. Does your way of life seem like a “typical American Way of Life”? Why or why not?
8. What aspects of your way of life seem really interesting to you – you’d like to think about them more deeply, figure out how this sort of thing developed historically, what’s going to happen to this aspect of your way of life within your lifetime? What questions do you have about these really interesting aspects of your way of life?
Meaningless:
Under the heading “DESCRIPTIVE” please write 300-600 words on the following 3 descriptive questions. Under the heading “ANALYSIS & INSIGHT” please write another 300-1000 words addressing the following 5 analysis questions.
I encourage you to add in other thoughts that seem relevant as well as answering the questions – and also if you’ve thought about a question 3x and it still seems boring or repetitive, skip it or twist it..I suggest that you write a first draft in word, print it out, revise it, give it to a friend to make suggestions, revise it again, and then post it up. This writing should be in the same post as your video – the video should be embedded in the writing.
GUIDING QUESTIONS - DESCRIPTION:
1. What have you included in this video?
2. Which parts of the video related to relatively meaningful aspects of your life? Which parts related to relatively meaningless aspects of your life?
3. What would you have liked to have included but weren’t able to?
GUIDING QUESTIONS - ANALYSIS & INSIGHT:
4. What seem to be some of the main criteria you use (emotionally +/or mentally) to assess how meaningful an aspect of your life is?
5. Is there a pattern in what you find meaningful or meaningless? What are some of the elements in that pattern?
6. Looking at the video as a whole – is it a fairly honest/accurate depiction of your life? Does it make you seem interesting/special/exciting?
7. Does your life seem meaningful from an outside perspective? Is it from an inside perspective? Why?
8. What questions do you have about living a meaningful life at this point?
AWOL:
Under the heading “DESCRIPTIVE” please write 300-600 words on the following 4 descriptive questions. Under the heading “ANALYSIS & INSIGHT” please write another 300-1000 words addressing the following 4 analysis questions.
I encourage you to add in other thoughts that seem relevant as well as answering the questions – and also if you’ve thought about a question 3x and it still seems boring or repetitive, skip it or twist it. I suggest that you write a first draft in word, print it out, revise it, give it to a friend to make suggestions, revise it again, and then post it up. This writing should be in the same post as your video – the video should be embedded in the writing.
GUIDING QUESTIONS - DESCRIPTION:
1. What have you included in this video?
2. Explain how different parts of the video relate to your way of life.
3. What’s seems good about your way of life? What’s bad? What’s neutral?
4. What would you have liked to have included, that is important to your way of life, but weren’t able to?
GUIDING QUESTIONS – ANALYSIS & INSIGHT
5. What’s going on with your way of life? What seems to be the general pattern or direction or point or situation?
6. How do the good, bad, and neutral in your way of life fit together?
7. Does your way of life seem like a “typical American Way of Life”? Why or why not?
8. What aspects of your way of life seem really interesting to you – you’d like to think about them more deeply, figure out how this sort of thing developed historically, what’s going to happen to this aspect of your way of life within your lifetime? What questions do you have about these really interesting aspects of your way of life?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Video/Writing Project 1 - Meaningless - Andy's Version
1. What have you included in this video?
This video has footage of four aspects of my life. You see me in my sun and jellyfish protective swimming gear at Brighton Beach. There is video of my friend Heather and her mom Carole and I talking at my apartment. There is the kind of strange looking footage of me reading student work on the computer in my classroom. And finally there is a brief excerpt of a lesson on revelation that I offered to some of my favorite students in last year’s Revelation course.
2. Which parts of the video related to relatively meaningful aspects of your life? Which parts related to relatively meaningless aspects of your life?
All four parts of the video related to meaningful aspects of my life.
Swimming has been a big part of my life for the past year. I’ve been learning to swim well using an approach called “Total Immersion”. And for me swimming in the ocean is particularly meaningful. The ocean has been big for me my whole life – growing up in SW Florida and now living in NYC. It makes me smile when a seagull flies over me when I’m swimming backstroke.
I have lived together with Heather for more than 10 years. My chance to be friends with her and enjoy her is one of the most meaningful aspects of my life. Her mom Carole, who I also care a lot about, has recently moved to the apartment downstairs of us in Brooklyn so we have been able to share more family experiences here.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse for my life. The video shows me reading student work – this has made it possible for me to evolve a new kind of teaching in which work continues to belong to the student rather than be “handed in” to the teacher and for students to learn from each other more easily. And in general I’ve learned a lot from the internet. But the internet also represents one of the biggest pits of relative meaninglessness in my life – thousands of hours wasted on endless games of chess & go, stupid staring at the New York Times, reading forums about folding bikes, etc. I’ve tried repeatedly to reorient myself back away from the virtual and to the real, but success has been limited and intermittent.
My teaching has been one of the aspects of my life that I’ve devoted the most time, thought, and energy towards. I feel a sense of pleasure and meaningfulness in helping students to reach deeper insights about the world and themselves and the relationship between the world and themselves. I feel that I’ve been given some important gifts that teaching helps me to share. On the other hand sometimes it feels like my energy is being wasted in a factory system in which most people are just pretending, just going through the motions.
3. What would you have liked to have included but weren’t able to?
I would have liked to include footage of our plots in the Brooklyn College Community Garden since that would highlight another aspect of what I find meaningful – working with the Earth, learning how to feed ourselves, understanding our physical reality more deeply.
aspects of a life - andy from juggleandhope on Vimeo.
Analytical:
4. What seem to be some of the main criteria you use (emotionally +/or mentally) to assess how meaningful an aspect of your life is?
If something feels meaningful I usually think of it as meaningful. But what makes it feel meaningful? Situations that relate to love and beauty seem meaningful to me. Love can be in the masks of solidarity, passion, belonging, or responsibility. Beauty can be in the masks of excellence, coherence, truth, and virtue.
5. Is there a pattern in what you find meaningful or meaningless? What are some of the elements in that pattern?
I find situations meaningful that engage my senses of beauty and love. These tend to be situations that are exceptions to the mass mediocrity I feel myself to be surrounded with. Situations in which people are honestly and thoughtfully relating to each other or when people are honestly and feelingly relating to the larger world around us – the air we breath, the plants we eat, the water we swim in. Those are the sorts of situations I try to create in my life – either when swimming or living with my friend or doing my Right Livelihood of helping people gain insight.
So it seems the elements in the pattern of what I find meaningful are connection and resistance to mediocrity and both of those elements require the element of truth.
6. Looking at the video as a whole – is it a fairly honest/accurate depiction of your life? Does it make you seem interesting/special/exciting?
This video doesn’t show me irritated or impatient or in many of the other moods that tend to blow across my emotional sky. But other than that, it does seem fairly accurate and honest.
I do think the video depicts me as someone special but more as a counter-cultural type than someone “cool”. To me the feeling that comes from the video is one of relative peacefulness, of someone who makes a point to swim at the beach and doesn’t mind wearing tights to protect against the jellyfish, of someone who makes time for loved ones, and who tries hard to contribute intelligently to the well-being of people I am responsible for. I don’t think I’m very “dashing” in the video – more “thoughtful and a little goofy”.
7. Does your life seem meaningful from an outside perspective? Is it from an inside perspective? Why?
The video does make my life seem meaningful to an outsider – if the outsider has my standards of meaning. I would look at this video, if it were of someone else (and to some extent it is), as showing a person aware of beauty, experiencing nature, practicing excellence, contributing his talents to others, and doing what he finds worthwhile.
And from the inside it feels the same way.
8. What questions do you have about living a meaningful life at this point?
Why don’t we make our whole lives meaningful? Why do we spend more time than we want on situations we find relatively meaningless? Is conscious/loving engagement with nature necessary for a meaningful life?
This video has footage of four aspects of my life. You see me in my sun and jellyfish protective swimming gear at Brighton Beach. There is video of my friend Heather and her mom Carole and I talking at my apartment. There is the kind of strange looking footage of me reading student work on the computer in my classroom. And finally there is a brief excerpt of a lesson on revelation that I offered to some of my favorite students in last year’s Revelation course.
2. Which parts of the video related to relatively meaningful aspects of your life? Which parts related to relatively meaningless aspects of your life?
All four parts of the video related to meaningful aspects of my life.
Swimming has been a big part of my life for the past year. I’ve been learning to swim well using an approach called “Total Immersion”. And for me swimming in the ocean is particularly meaningful. The ocean has been big for me my whole life – growing up in SW Florida and now living in NYC. It makes me smile when a seagull flies over me when I’m swimming backstroke.
I have lived together with Heather for more than 10 years. My chance to be friends with her and enjoy her is one of the most meaningful aspects of my life. Her mom Carole, who I also care a lot about, has recently moved to the apartment downstairs of us in Brooklyn so we have been able to share more family experiences here.
The internet is both a blessing and a curse for my life. The video shows me reading student work – this has made it possible for me to evolve a new kind of teaching in which work continues to belong to the student rather than be “handed in” to the teacher and for students to learn from each other more easily. And in general I’ve learned a lot from the internet. But the internet also represents one of the biggest pits of relative meaninglessness in my life – thousands of hours wasted on endless games of chess & go, stupid staring at the New York Times, reading forums about folding bikes, etc. I’ve tried repeatedly to reorient myself back away from the virtual and to the real, but success has been limited and intermittent.
My teaching has been one of the aspects of my life that I’ve devoted the most time, thought, and energy towards. I feel a sense of pleasure and meaningfulness in helping students to reach deeper insights about the world and themselves and the relationship between the world and themselves. I feel that I’ve been given some important gifts that teaching helps me to share. On the other hand sometimes it feels like my energy is being wasted in a factory system in which most people are just pretending, just going through the motions.
3. What would you have liked to have included but weren’t able to?
I would have liked to include footage of our plots in the Brooklyn College Community Garden since that would highlight another aspect of what I find meaningful – working with the Earth, learning how to feed ourselves, understanding our physical reality more deeply.
aspects of a life - andy from juggleandhope on Vimeo.
Analytical:
4. What seem to be some of the main criteria you use (emotionally +/or mentally) to assess how meaningful an aspect of your life is?
If something feels meaningful I usually think of it as meaningful. But what makes it feel meaningful? Situations that relate to love and beauty seem meaningful to me. Love can be in the masks of solidarity, passion, belonging, or responsibility. Beauty can be in the masks of excellence, coherence, truth, and virtue.
5. Is there a pattern in what you find meaningful or meaningless? What are some of the elements in that pattern?
I find situations meaningful that engage my senses of beauty and love. These tend to be situations that are exceptions to the mass mediocrity I feel myself to be surrounded with. Situations in which people are honestly and thoughtfully relating to each other or when people are honestly and feelingly relating to the larger world around us – the air we breath, the plants we eat, the water we swim in. Those are the sorts of situations I try to create in my life – either when swimming or living with my friend or doing my Right Livelihood of helping people gain insight.
So it seems the elements in the pattern of what I find meaningful are connection and resistance to mediocrity and both of those elements require the element of truth.
6. Looking at the video as a whole – is it a fairly honest/accurate depiction of your life? Does it make you seem interesting/special/exciting?
This video doesn’t show me irritated or impatient or in many of the other moods that tend to blow across my emotional sky. But other than that, it does seem fairly accurate and honest.
I do think the video depicts me as someone special but more as a counter-cultural type than someone “cool”. To me the feeling that comes from the video is one of relative peacefulness, of someone who makes a point to swim at the beach and doesn’t mind wearing tights to protect against the jellyfish, of someone who makes time for loved ones, and who tries hard to contribute intelligently to the well-being of people I am responsible for. I don’t think I’m very “dashing” in the video – more “thoughtful and a little goofy”.
7. Does your life seem meaningful from an outside perspective? Is it from an inside perspective? Why?
The video does make my life seem meaningful to an outsider – if the outsider has my standards of meaning. I would look at this video, if it were of someone else (and to some extent it is), as showing a person aware of beauty, experiencing nature, practicing excellence, contributing his talents to others, and doing what he finds worthwhile.
And from the inside it feels the same way.
8. What questions do you have about living a meaningful life at this point?
Why don’t we make our whole lives meaningful? Why do we spend more time than we want on situations we find relatively meaningless? Is conscious/loving engagement with nature necessary for a meaningful life?
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