Category Archives: Philosophical reflections

Paz en Watsonville, Peace in Watsonville

2014 was a tough year with far too many gang-related homicides. Here I am with PVFT President and PVUSD educator Francisco Rodriguez, at the Vigil for Peace and Unity, Callaghan Park, 28 December, 2014. Many more pics on Facebook:

ted-francisco-12-2014

Sadly, just a couple hours before the vigil, Watsonville’s 10th homicide of the year occurred not far from Callaghan Park. Police now attribute the murder to “road rage” but it is unclear whether it was also gang-related.

The Hardest Part of Teaching

From Peter Greene at Huff Post (7/6/2014):

They never tell you in teacher school, and it’s rarely discussed elsewhere. It is never, ever portrayed in movies and tv shows about teaching. Teachers rarely bring it up around non-teachers for fear it will make us look weak or inadequate.

Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post once [12/27/2013] put together a series of quotes to answer the question “How hard is teaching?” and asked for more in the comments section. My rant didn’t entirely fit there, so I’m putting it here, because it is on the list of Top Ten Things They Never Tell You in Teacher School.

The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:

There is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

It’s worth reading the rest of his rant.

Yosemite

Some lovely time lapse photography of Yosemite National Park, by Project Yosemite:

Yosemite HD II from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

They introduce themselves (at www.projectyose.com) thusly:

“Project Yosemite is a time-lapse video project set in Yosemite National Park and shot by Colin Delehanty and Sheldon Neill. We started it in January 2012 after meeting through the video sharing website, Vimeo. The idea for the project came to us during our first overnight trip to Half Dome.”

Humankind has not woven the Web of Life

“Humankind has not woven the Web of Life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the Web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things are connected.”

—Chief Seattle

(I’ve not confirmed that this is an actual quote from Chief Seattle… many of his supposed quotes are clearly written in aristocratic 18th century English, hence filtered through the language of the translator… But I like this quote and hope it’s close to what the wise man said…)