Well, Landen and I got here to New Delhi all right after a relatively calm but exhausting journey through with a week long stopover in Paris. Although we didn’t stop in Iceland, I wish now that we had. Who would not want to visit a country where social justice seems to be a way of life and where 50% of the people believe in elves?
The one big thing that we saw in Paris was at the Place de la Concorde at the very end of the Tour de France (lap 9 of 10 around Concorde up and down the Champs-Elysées for those into biking). Moments before the end, a guy right in front of us dressed in a sheet with his arms outstretched jump in front of the peleton seconds before it got there (before the gendarmes could get to him) with some political statement written on it.
Of course, he wanted to be hit by the bikes going by at that point at up to 40 miles an hour (no exaggeration), but the peleton just seemed to respond to his presence instantly and without effort by dividing up into two halves – one snake became two. To see that happen right in front of one’s eyes was like a magic trick by the peleton/snake, and the gendarmes got the guy while hundreds of Parisians were yelling “Jetez-le dans la Seine!”
Even more amazing was that during that time a vocal group of Colombian flag waving supporters of the great young rider from Columbia, which was standing impossibly on a wide concrete railing that was the only thing separating them from a long fall into the Seine, just kept chanting support through the whole thing for their great new young rider Nairo Quintana, who at the young age of 25 has proven to be a truly great force in cycling, winning second place in this year’s Tour.
Other than that bit of excitement, Paris seemed to me like an aging beauty queen, heavy with dirt and tourists, and waiters who just wouldn’t stop acting like French waiters no matter what restaurant we ate in. Montmartre was so beautiful, the most beautiful part of town in my own opinion, in spite of all the tourists. The area just to the west of the butte, in particular, strongly captured my heart in spite of the tourist swarm.
Landen absorbed it all like he had been there before, blasé fifteen year old that he is. In fact, he traveled better than his old dad, and having been through the first of two weeks of meetings and adjusting (Linda gets here on Wednesday), we are still dealing with a fairly serious case of jet lag. I’ve figured out that sleep is the only cure for it, but alas, my mind is percolating with so many new things I learned at iFLT that I can’t stop taking notes on them.
Over the next week or so I will publish what I hope is a hopefully not too confusing series of articles (merely suggestions) on that all-important first day of class of the year. Of course, it’s too long. I wrote it in response to a recent question here by Mary Beth requesting information about exactly what that first class might look like.
If I can get the cell phone thing going for Landen here soon, I may be able to even take some video footage of myself – before the students get here – modeling the suggestions and add those links into this new “First Day” series. Video can be so useful in situations like this, where I am trying to convey a vast sequence of skills mixed with strategies that, in this case and in my own opinion, can finely tune what we do.
The point needs to be made that what we do and what we don’t do in those first days of class are matters of extreme importance for our success this year. It’s a question of fine tuning. One of the coolest new things of all that I got into in MN was how we use space in our classroom, and how that affects how fast we go, and how laser pointers need not necessarily be used anymore, in my own CI world anyway, because they make me go too fast.
In spite of my best intentions, the writing is so full of pedagogical detail that it might easily quickly overwhelm the novice CI teacher who has not been reading here for awhile. I will, however, do my best to convey these First Day ideas clearly and succinctly, because I think that they have the potential to lay down some very strong train tracks – some tracks made of silver and gold – for CI teachers as they enter this new year with CI. We will see. I’m very optimistic.
We’re all still sinking our teeth only into the very outer layers of the CI onion, but in spite of the initial bitterness of the thicker outer layers, the onion is proving to be quite tasty. From discussion here over the past few years I am quite certain that there are very few of us here in our group who don’t want to sharpen our teeth more and more so we can bite deeper into the onion.
That’s how I feel as we enter our ninth year on the blog together. Let’s sharpen our teeth. Fear and uncertainty can play no part in our teaching anymore, in spite of the fact that we are working in buildings that naturally provoke fear. The American Embassy School, precisely, does not invoke fear. It is a wonderful place chock full of wonderfully supportive people. I am lucky to be here. I am lucky to be in India.