<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/atom10full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" xml:lang="en"><title type="text">The Jose Vilson</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://thejosevilson.com" /><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheJoseVilson" /><subtitle type="html">It's not about a salary; it's all about reality.</subtitle><updated>2012-05-28T01:34:23+00:00</updated><generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2</generator><sy:updatePeriod xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/">hourly</sy:updatePeriod><sy:updateFrequency xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/">1</sy:updateFrequency><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheJoseVilson" /><feedburner:info uri="thejosevilson" /><thespringbox:skin xmlns:thespringbox="http://www.thespringbox.com/dtds/thespringbox-1.0.dtd">http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheJoseVilson?format=skin</thespringbox:skin><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/" /><link rel="license" type="text/html" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" /><logo>http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif</logo><feedburner:emailServiceId>TheJoseVilson</feedburner:emailServiceId><feedburner:feedburnerHostname>http://feedburner.google.com</feedburner:feedburnerHostname><entry><title type="text">A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/kKfxv5S4FxM/" /><category term="life" /><category term="education" /><category term="reflection" /><category term="students" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-27T18:34:23-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=5470</id><summary type="html">&amp;#8220;You&amp;#8217;re going to miss us!&amp;#8221; &amp;#8220;Yes, I&amp;#8217;m going to miss bothering the heck out of you!&amp;#8221; I mean, why do students think we&amp;#8217;re actually going to spend our off time thinking about them? Except when we do. Like now. There&amp;#8217;s only a month left before we usher them on to their next stations in life [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/may-calendar.jpg" rel="lightbox[5470]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5471" title="may-calendar" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/may-calendar-585x390.jpg" alt="" width="585" height="390" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;You&amp;#8217;re going to miss us!&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Yes, I&amp;#8217;m going to miss bothering the heck out of you!&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I mean, why do students think we&amp;#8217;re actually going to spend our off time thinking about them? Except when we do. Like now.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#8217;s only a month left before we usher them on to their next stations in life (most of them anyways). They&amp;#8217;re going to take new trips to school, new friends, different uniforms (if at all), and new teachers. The last one is probably of most concern to me because I at least like to know that the math teacher after me is actually &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; than me. Maybe he or she will have a little more rigor with collecting work, better feedback, more quiet in the classroom, and their own room for children to really explore math. They&amp;#8217;ll have the time to do integrated projects without the compromise of other duties in and out of school. They&amp;#8217;ll be patient where I should have been, vociferous where I wasn&amp;#8217;t, and kind earlier than I was.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Maybe their home situations will settle down more, and a different environment will help rattle them out of some of their wayward routines, like eating in class and tossing things at each other when they think I&amp;#8217;m not looking. Maybe they&amp;#8217;ll actually get to school on time and come prepared with all necessary materials, well-clothed, fresh, and mature enough to understand the urgency of a high school environment. They&amp;#8217;d eat a few more fruits, drink a multivitamin on occasion, and get better sleep so they feel better in school. Their parents might work things out, and, if they don&amp;#8217;t, they at least come to some peaceful resolution that helps the child get by.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;ll have a settled roof over their heads, and enough strength to bear the ball and chains of their own histories.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;All the while, I too hope that I get a chance to reflect harder on my own practice, as I always have, but reflect and act upon it. The time is now to consider all the things that happened since September, yearning for the end of the year. I&amp;#8217;ll hate to see them go, but I&amp;#8217;d be glad to get another chance to prove myself worthy of missing, and being missed by children who would otherwise be perfect strangers. I&amp;#8217;d prefer to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be their greatest math teacher ever, because that&amp;#8217;s the freshman year math teacher&amp;#8217;s job, followed by the sophomore year math teacher&amp;#8217;s &amp;#8230;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mr. Vilson, who has 31 days to &amp;#8220;miss&amp;#8221; them, so I don&amp;#8217;t &amp;#8230; yet &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/education' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/reflection' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;reflection&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/students' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;students&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/11/29/on-getting-better-at-your-craft/" title="On Getting Better At Your Craft"&gt;On Getting Better At Your Craft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/09/12/the-honeymooners/" title="The Honeymooners"&gt;The Honeymooners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/09/06/if-you-dont-give-me-heaven-i-raise-hell/" title="If You Don&amp;#8217;t Give Me Heaven, I Raise Hell"&gt;If You Don&amp;#8217;t Give Me Heaven, I Raise Hell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/04/05/the-kids-will-tell-you/" title="The Kids Will Tell You"&gt;The Kids Will Tell You&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/02/10/learn-when-to-treat-them-as-students-and-then-as-people/" title="Learn When To Treat Them As Students And Then As People"&gt;Learn When To Treat Them As Students And Then As People&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=kKfxv5S4FxM:Xq8Na3ttAhM:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/kKfxv5S4FxM" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Don’t Grade The MTA</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/c7tKKudofug/" /><category term="life" /><category term="education" /><category term="grading" /><category term="mta" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-24T18:40:40-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=5267</id><summary type="html">Dear members of the NYC City Councilmembers, I get it. You want to hold the MTA accountable somehow for their abhorrent misuse of funds, consistently delayed projects, and general failure to produce a good service for the amount of money the average New Yorker pays.  It&amp;#8217;s hard to blame the average service worker, but the [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/42mta.jpg" rel="lightbox[5267]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5269" title="42mta" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/42mta.jpg" alt="" width="560" height="373" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Dear members of the NYC City Councilmembers,&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I get it. You want to hold the MTA accountable somehow for their abhorrent misuse of funds, consistently delayed projects, and general failure to produce a good service for the amount of money the average New Yorker pays.  It&amp;#8217;s hard to blame the average service worker, but the guys at the top need to hear that we as a city aren&amp;#8217;t happy with the mess that often is our daily commute. The smells we endure coupled with the delays and detours only exacerbate what we feel is an inefficient system.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#8217;re right: the bastards need to pay. Just, whatever you do, don&amp;#8217;t follow the public school model.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For now, I&amp;#8217;ll ignore that you&amp;#8217;re about to give F&amp;#8217;s to the A train and C&amp;#8217;s to the D train, leaving native New Yorkers and tourists alike confused as is. (Will we have to resort to calling them by their color and express / local? Chill!) If you&amp;#8217;re going to grade the trains, please don&amp;#8217;t grade them the way your friends at the NYC Department of Education do.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Let me expound.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;If you use their system, you&amp;#8217;d have to give them a standardized test every three months, usually in an isolated area with only a few trains. You&amp;#8217;d start them off somewhere in Park Slope where the hipsters hang because they rarely give the train issues. As you&amp;#8217;re riding the train, you&amp;#8217;d ask the conductors to punch in an answer to a question at every stop until they got to the Bronx. As they make their way through the Bronx, they get the same bad customers asking the conductors questions they&amp;#8217;ve already heard, presumably in the voices of Danny Devito, Fran Drescher, and Gilbert Gottfried. Once they&amp;#8217;ve gotten past the former AFLAC guy, you&amp;#8217;d tell them the test was over and get back to them over the summer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Please don&amp;#8217;t grade the MTA like this.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The conductors would just keep driving the train with the manager nervously tapping the light switches wanting to know how the hell the conductors did. If they pass, all the trains get a green light. I mean, it&amp;#8217;s not the &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; system that&amp;#8217;s failing. It&amp;#8217;s just a few of the overcrowded ones in certain neighborhoods. If they fail, then you go to the press and blame their union. If you can find a scandal about their affairs under the Columbus Circle Station, more power to you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;When that doesn&amp;#8217;t work, you shut down the whole line. It doesn&amp;#8217;t matter what the customers think. You reroute them, make them take a bus, or tell them you&amp;#8217;re preparing for a special new line. You put these conductors in a pool where they keep getting evaluated until they leave or meet your ambiguous standard every few years, shut the train line down and replace it with the same train with a few more ads. However, you&amp;#8217;ll have a lot more frustrated and exhausted ones who struggle to stay energized through an entire shift, and eventually, less conductors as a whole. When they leave, so do the conductors, the management, and a few other key people tired of doing the work of three different people at once.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Same customers. Same tunnels. Same groundwork. Maybe fresher paint. Sometimes a new train with Wi-Fi will come through, but you have to be really lucky or really early to catch that specific train. It&amp;#8217;ll work, I swear.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;All the while, we can make this public institution better by setting better guidelines and standards for how it should work, make sure everyone involved from the management to the person cleaning up has the experience and professionalism to serve the customers properly, invest fully in the system to make it more customer-friendly, and have checks and balances so the system functions well.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you&amp;#8217;re headed down an ugly path. And trains have nowhere to race.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Signed, a teacher &amp;#8230;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, a native New Yorker of three decades, his soul much longer &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/education' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/grading' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;grading&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/mta' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;mta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/" title="A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)"&gt;A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/23/dont-talk-to-me-about-personal-responsibility-if/" title="Don&amp;#8217;t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If &amp;#8230;"&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If &amp;#8230;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/22/the-normalcy-of-school-segregation-it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white/" title="The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]"&gt;The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/13/on-leaked-e-mails-and-the-eventual-uproar-where-i-call-joel-klein-a-pirate/" title="On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]"&gt;On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/07/now-that-youre-done-youre-still-wrong-iknowateacher-series-part-1/" title="Now That You&amp;#8217;re Done, You&amp;#8217;re Still Wrong [#IKnowATeacher Series, part 1]"&gt;Now That You&amp;#8217;re Done, You&amp;#8217;re Still Wrong [#IKnowATeacher Series, part 1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=c7tKKudofug:aG8hKEYkocE:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/c7tKKudofug" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/24/dont-grade-the-mta/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/24/dont-grade-the-mta/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Don’t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If …</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/aMC-z56qRNc/" /><category term="life" /><category term="education" /><category term="responsibility" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-23T18:54:17-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=5184</id><summary type="html">No, not this again. &amp;#8220;This kid never takes personal responsibility for anything that they ever do. I&amp;#8217;m standing there wondering why this kid is literally sleeping in my class, so I walk up to him and tell him to get out of my classroom! The nerve of him to try to get one over on [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/responsibility.jpg" rel="lightbox[5184]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5188" title="responsibility" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/responsibility.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="508" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;No, not this again.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;This kid never takes personal responsibility for anything that they ever do. I&amp;#8217;m standing there wondering why this kid is literally sleeping in my class, so I walk up to him and tell him to get out of my classroom! The nerve of him to try to get one over on me. I get paid whether or not they do well, but for them to sit there and do nothing? Get out!&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Does she even wonder why &amp;#8230; nevermind. I inquire a bit more. She replies,&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Well, he comes in with those stupid cream cheese sandwiches from next door and he thinks he&amp;#8217;s going to eat in my classroom and get his grubby little hands on my stuff, he&amp;#8217;s got another thing coming. And then, he&amp;#8217;s getting pissy because I tell him he needs to get ready for class and puts his head down. I can&amp;#8217;t stand him!&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This conversation hasn&amp;#8217;t happened in the last few months for me, mainly because I don&amp;#8217;t eat in the teachers&amp;#8217; lounge anymore (more on that later), but I&amp;#8217;ve heard this said so many times, I almost started to believe the hype. I could continue from here saying how my mom, unlike others&amp;#8217; parents, prioritized education. I, unlike other kids, paid attention to everything my teacher said and gave all my teachers demi-god status. Most of my professional, formerly low-income friends of color might say the same things about beating the odds and focusing on their intellectual pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;m also privileged to have talents in academics, too. Others might never realize their own privilege when walking into situations with kids.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As most of you know, personal responsibility is often used as a euphemism for ignoring the environmental effects of poverty, race, class, gender, and a host of other isms we all ought to embody if we consider ourselves change agents. Even men of color who came from these tough backgrounds tap into the personal responsibility argument to get into the good graces of people who might not otherwise hear their messages. Some teachers use the personal responsibility argument on its face because it&amp;#8217;s a lot easier than navigating through their own frustrations with a system seemingly meant to fail them. Principals and district leaders hawk it sometimes when scores go down more often than not.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The whole spectacle reeks of tree pissing.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t talk to me about personal responsibility unless you balance it out with a good, rich discussion of socio-emotional foci and a keen sense of relationship building between yourself as the adult / teacher and the child / student. For instance, in the midst of discussion, you might hear me say, &amp;#8220;Well, he doesn&amp;#8217;t work hard enough on this&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;He needs to come prepared for class,&amp;#8221; but best believe they know how much I care about their well being. I&amp;#8217;ve only sent kids to the principals&amp;#8217; office three times, and I still have a goal of zero. I let them eat breakfast and talk while working, but in exchange, my expectations for their work increase.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t walk around the room with a sense of entitlement, nor do I ever say I&amp;#8217;ll get paid for this job anyways because my kids (yes, my KIDS) need to know that there&amp;#8217;s someone who simultaneously holds them accountable and tries to work with them as people. Because they are people. That&amp;#8217;s my personal responsibility to them.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, who has a conversation with himself tomorrow &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/education' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/responsibility' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;responsibility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2007/09/17/do-your-fckn-job/" title="Do Your F*ck!n Job"&gt;Do Your F*ck!n Job&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/" title="A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)"&gt;A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/24/dont-grade-the-mta/" title="Don&amp;#8217;t Grade The MTA"&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t Grade The MTA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/22/the-normalcy-of-school-segregation-it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white/" title="The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]"&gt;The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/13/on-leaked-e-mails-and-the-eventual-uproar-where-i-call-joel-klein-a-pirate/" title="On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]"&gt;On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=aMC-z56qRNc:rj5NAA8oSFk:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/aMC-z56qRNc" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/23/dont-talk-to-me-about-personal-responsibility-if/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">17</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/23/dont-talk-to-me-about-personal-responsibility-if/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/VYAn24-jWeY/" /><category term="life" /><category term="education" /><category term="integration" /><category term="redlining" /><category term="segregation" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-22T19:39:56-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=5112</id><summary type="html">You&amp;#8217;re a firm believer that we as a country has made tremendous progress since the Jim Crow laws. We have a Black president whose education policy advances the last white one&amp;#8217;s education&amp;#8217;s policy. Black people are all over TV, and Black man can kiss White women on TV without much ado. This country gets closer [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/separation.jpg" rel="lightbox[5112]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter  wp-image-5117" title="separation" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/separation.jpg" alt="" width="671" height="536" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#8217;re a firm believer that we as a country has made tremendous progress since the Jim Crow laws. We have a Black president whose education policy advances the last white one&amp;#8217;s education&amp;#8217;s policy. Black people are all over TV, and Black man can kiss White women on TV without much ado. This country gets closer to a tipping point where people of color as a whole eclipse the dominant culture in population. Oh yeah, and the &lt;em&gt;Brown vs. Board of Education&lt;/em&gt; decision of 1954 desegregated schools and our public schools only have divisions in class, not race.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Except it does, and anyone with a finger on the pulse of these schools sees &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/integration-worked-why-have-we-rejected-it.html?_r=3"&gt;the segregation loud and clear.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;A combination of school defunding for busing and magnet programs and redlining, a practice that limits certain services from reaching specific areas of a district, have made our schools more segregated than pre-&lt;em&gt;Brown&lt;/em&gt;, but you didn&amp;#8217;t have to tell me that. Most of my friends understood that, and have lived with the separate and unequal schema of schools for some time. Thus, when we teach at schools, we come in having seen the &amp;#8220;other side&amp;#8221; and knowing that experience as the antithesis of what we experience in low-income schools.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Yet, people from middle- to upper-income schools come with mouths agape when entering into these schools. These people come into environments where they don&amp;#8217;t get to hang out in the hallways too often. The students in these environments can&amp;#8217;t just jump into song in the lunchrooms and hallways, or talk to adults a certain way without a hostile response even if it&amp;#8217;s an honest question. They can&amp;#8217;t always afford cheerleading or soccer, and they don&amp;#8217;t always prioritize classical just because the teacher says that&amp;#8217;s cool.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;They have a different culture, and for that, they either have two options: they either get induced into a whitewashing process or they have adults tell them, &amp;#8220;Well, that&amp;#8217;s just the way it is.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I should know. As someone who&amp;#8217;s been through public and private (Catholic) schooling, I saw firsthand the difference when parents have different incomes. Phrases like &amp;#8220;My Dad got it,&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;It&amp;#8217;s OK, we can get another one&amp;#8221; doesn&amp;#8217;t come easily to a person who knows they&amp;#8217;re poor. The students who goofed around in the back of the classroom in my low-incoming school did so because they had already given up on the process of schooling. By contrast, the students who goofed around in the back of the classroom in my mid-to-high-incoming school did so because they felt &lt;em&gt;safe&lt;/em&gt;, and by safe, I mean privileged.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In theory, I should have felt safe, too, and to a certain extent, I did. However, I couldn&amp;#8217;t help but feel odd when codewords like &amp;#8220;urban&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;rap&amp;#8221; became indicators for people to stare directly at me in college classes, or when I sat in an honors class as one of two children of color knowing I had to make the grade only to find out my &amp;#8220;English&amp;#8221; wasn&amp;#8217;t good enough to get that 90. Ever. Or when I&amp;#8217;m in the middle of a professional development conference or other education conversation, and people gawk when I speak about pedagogy from a nuanced perspective &amp;#8230; because they assumed that the pedagogy for teaching children of color doesn&amp;#8217;t matter.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But I know what you&amp;#8217;re thinking: what does any of this have to do with school integration? Simple. Because integration isn&amp;#8217;t just a school of education, but a school of thought, a belief system in which we need to invest. If we don&amp;#8217;t believe children of color can have an education that gives them as many options as the next child, then we ought to rip up the one little lesson plan on Martin Luther King Jr. for Black History Month and toss it in the recycle bin. We as a country have to care enough to integrate our schools, and thus, our collective consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, who just got to thinking &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/education' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/integration' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;integration&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/redlining' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;redlining&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/segregation' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;segregation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/" title="A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)"&gt;A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/24/dont-grade-the-mta/" title="Don&amp;#8217;t Grade The MTA"&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t Grade The MTA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/23/dont-talk-to-me-about-personal-responsibility-if/" title="Don&amp;#8217;t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If &amp;#8230;"&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If &amp;#8230;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/13/on-leaked-e-mails-and-the-eventual-uproar-where-i-call-joel-klein-a-pirate/" title="On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]"&gt;On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/07/now-that-youre-done-youre-still-wrong-iknowateacher-series-part-1/" title="Now That You&amp;#8217;re Done, You&amp;#8217;re Still Wrong [#IKnowATeacher Series, part 1]"&gt;Now That You&amp;#8217;re Done, You&amp;#8217;re Still Wrong [#IKnowATeacher Series, part 1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=VYAn24-jWeY:Z1aLV1aA-Y4:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/VYAn24-jWeY" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/22/the-normalcy-of-school-segregation-it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">4</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/22/the-normalcy-of-school-segregation-it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">I Don’t Write For Your F**king Approval [Channeling Kobe Bryant]</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/eZyprmXCx_c/" /><category term="life" /><category term="interview" /><category term="kobe bryant" /><category term="satire" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-21T18:06:14-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=5013</id><summary type="html">Here is another recent interview with Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski and yours truly. The piece never made it into Yahoo!, but he e-mailed it to me anyways. The scene here is the usual: arguments abound about the future of education, the rank and file teachers jump into their political slots for the election year, millionaires [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/kobe-bryant-free-throw.jpg" rel="lightbox[5013]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5018" title="kobe-bryant-free-throw" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/kobe-bryant-free-throw.jpg" alt="" width="590" height="354" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Here is another recent interview with Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski and yours truly. The piece never made it into Yahoo!, but he e-mailed it to me anyways.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The scene here is the usual: arguments abound about the future of education, the rank and file teachers jump into their political slots for the election year, millionaires and billionaires covertly endorse the candidates malleable enough to shift their well intentioned opinions to right of center ones, and the apolitical stand to the side nesting into educational technology and other cursory vernacular. With so few that voice their opinions at this high level of frankness and transparency, Vilson can live with the snippy comebacks, the tokenism of inclusion (or the ignorance of exclusion) from top lists and acknowledgments, the general lack of positivity amongst colleagues, and the covert hate thrown in his direction by colleagues who don&amp;#8217;t get it. Amongst friends, he rarely mentions these things. Just don&amp;#8217;t remind him of what I just reminded you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;I don&amp;#8217;t give a [expletive] what you say,&amp;#8221; Vilson told me yesterday. &amp;#8220;If I go out there and write a nice story where no one shares it or comments, people say, &amp;#8216;Vilson choked, or Vilson is x for whatever the [expletive] in critical situations.&amp;#8217; Well, [expletive] you!&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Because I don&amp;#8217;t write for your f**king approval. I write for my own love and enjoyment of the blog. And to tell the story that no one else has the cojones to tell. Most of the time, when people feel the pressure, they&amp;#8217;re worried about what others might say about them, or do to them. I don&amp;#8217;t have that fear, and it enables me to forget bad pieces and write harder and write about my life so candidly.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Deep down, Vilson does recognize it. Not because the side commentary weighs him down, but because it&amp;#8217;s the heat under his palms. Compared to his contemporaries, he doesn&amp;#8217;t write as much in his eponymous blog as others do, but he averages enough words in a post to compensate and then some. Seven years he&amp;#8217;s been asked to do his job at a high level, and seven years he&amp;#8217;s grown into the professional we know today, out of sheer hard work, listening more than he&amp;#8217;s said, and enough resolve to fight through the toughest moments in his career. He doesn&amp;#8217;t think he&amp;#8217;s above reproach, but nine times out of ten, he&amp;#8217;s able to brush the dirt off his proverbial shoulder.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“And maybe that’s what separates me from a lot of people: I can laugh at myself when people think I&amp;#8217;m doing nothing, whereas most people might feel really insecure or nervous about the next one, or pissed off and hold that anger for the next list or whatever have you. I can find the entertainment and humor in it.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Let me write, Vilson seems to say. Piss me off, don&amp;#8217;t include people of color in your circles. Speak ill of kids you&amp;#8217;re supposed to care about, and he jumps right into the melee. Tell him he&amp;#8217;s not a classroom teacher and the next rhyme he writes might be about you. He prefers discussions that get fiery without getting personal, factual without getting tedious, rhythmic without getting argumentative. He says he laughs when he lets others have the last word because he&amp;#8217;ll wait long enough for the truth to reveal itself.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“The fallout from disagreement is always something that makes some writers hesitant,” Vilson said. “They’re thinking about their legacies, their reputations, their connections  to high-profile people, and often, their agendas.”&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Anyway, f**k them. No hesitancy here. No fear of the miss. It is a liberating feeling, and it’s where he forever wants to live.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, who &lt;a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--kobe-bryant-embraces-moment--saves-lakers--season-with-game-3-win-over-thunder.html;_ylt=ArvFfqQsncZGqHeB97aceta8vLYF"&gt;heavily borrowed from Adrian Wojnarowski&lt;/a&gt; for this satirical piece &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/interview' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/kobe+bryant' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;kobe bryant&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/satire' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;satire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/02/26/have-you-achieved-success-at-success-at-success-a-reflection-on-my-own-tdr/" title="Have You Achieved Success at Success at Success? [A Reflection On My Own TDR]"&gt;Have You Achieved Success at Success at Success? [A Reflection On My Own TDR]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/12/21/2011-unpublished-gq-interview-mr-vilson-vs-jose-part-3/" title="2011 Unpublished GQ Interview for Man of the Year [Mr. Vilson vs. Jose Part 3]"&gt;2011 Unpublished GQ Interview for Man of the Year [Mr. Vilson vs. Jose Part 3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/08/21/my-shifted-learning-interview-2011/" title="My Shifted Learning Interview 2011"&gt;My Shifted Learning Interview 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2009/07/24/jose-vilson-american-latino-take-2/" title="Jose Vilson: American Latino Take 2"&gt;Jose Vilson: American Latino Take 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2008/10/06/about-that-time-out-new-york-interview/" title="About That Time Out New York Interview"&gt;About That Time Out New York Interview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=eZyprmXCx_c:oazEDMzLBIs:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/eZyprmXCx_c" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/21/i-dont-write-for-your-fking-approval-channeling-kobe-bryant/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/21/i-dont-write-for-your-fking-approval-channeling-kobe-bryant/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Amber Cabral Makes Race Palpable</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/cO9xLY3sxtU/" /><category term="life" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-20T14:40:13-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=4933</id><summary type="html">Let her cook: Go read the rest. I had something to say here, but Amber&amp;#8217;s post usurped that. Thank me later. Jose, who will post frequently this week &amp;#8230; Most Commented Posts Book Giveaway: OIL &amp;#8211; Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower Howl If You Hear Me Book Giveaway May [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Let her cook:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;div class="quote"&gt;Most of us who have children, teach them as we were taught: that people are going to hate you because you are Black. People are going to make you prove yourself twice as often. People are going to expect twice as much before they help you or even give you the respect owed to a whole man. People are going to not hold doors for you, gossip about you, doubt your intelligence. People are going to call you nigger. Police are always looking for you. And you must stand tall and peaceful against these things. You must quietly rise above them, and work still to be the you that the world deserves, because you also, because of your skin, have no right to be angry.&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.ambercabral.com/2012/05/us/"&gt;Go read the rest&lt;/a&gt;. I had something to say here, but Amber&amp;#8217;s post usurped that. Thank me later.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, who will post frequently this week &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;Most Commented Posts&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2010/06/16/book-giveaway-oil-money-politics-and-power-in-the-21st-century-by-tom-bower/" title="Book Giveaway: OIL &amp;#8211; Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower"&gt;Book Giveaway: OIL &amp;#8211; Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2008/06/09/howl-if-you-hear-me/" title="Howl If You Hear Me"&gt;Howl If You Hear Me&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2010/04/27/book-giveaway-may-2010-war-by-sebastian-junger/" title="Book Giveaway May 2010: War by Sebastian Junger"&gt;Book Giveaway May 2010: War by Sebastian Junger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2008/05/05/all-i-ever-had-redemption-songs/" title="All I Ever Had: Redemption Songs"&gt;All I Ever Had: Redemption Songs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2009/05/21/tell-your-fucking-mexican-friends-to-get-the-fuck-out-of-shenandoah/" title="Tell Your Fucking Mexican Friends To Get The Fuck Out of Shenandoah"&gt;Tell Your Fucking Mexican Friends To Get The Fuck Out of Shenandoah&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=cO9xLY3sxtU:jpq9eWG2Z6Q:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/cO9xLY3sxtU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/20/amber-cabral-makes-race-palpable/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/20/amber-cabral-makes-race-palpable/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Privilege and My First and Only Meeting with Bobby Seale</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/Ac7YjYbgsKw/" /><category term="life" /><category term="black panther party" /><category term="bobby seale" /><category term="student organizations" /><category term="students" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-14T19:14:00-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=4615</id><summary type="html">Not a year goes by without me hearing &amp;#8220;These kids have no idea what a privilege it is to &amp;#8230;&amp;#8221; Usually because I&amp;#8217;ve been the one saying it until the last year or so. The problem with having a privilege when you&amp;#8217;re so unaccustomed to it is that you outwardly act like it doesn&amp;#8217;t matter [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bobbyseale.jpg" rel="lightbox[4615]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4617" title="bobbyseale" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/bobbyseale.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="314" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
Not a year goes by without me hearing &amp;#8220;These kids have no idea what a privilege it is to &amp;#8230;&amp;#8221; Usually because I&amp;#8217;ve been the one saying it until the last year or so. The problem with having a privilege when you&amp;#8217;re so unaccustomed to it is that you outwardly act like it doesn&amp;#8217;t matter because you&amp;#8217;re inwardly incapable of understanding how to show gratitude without looking subservient.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Let me expound.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;College might have been the first time that I had access to people who I normally &lt;del&gt;wouldn&amp;#8217;t even get a chance to whiff their air&lt;/del&gt; wouldn&amp;#8217;t have access to in other circumstances. People on campus talked about these figures like distant relatives: Angela Davis, Amiri Baraka, Kevin Powell, Elaine Brown. I mean, as the guests on campus kept coming, I started to grasp what a privilege it was to have these figures come to campus and inspire us towards a higher purpose, whether through humor (Dave Chapelle) or poetry (Staceyann Chin), some of the people I now consider major influences sat only a few feet away from me at a given moment in my life.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;But that wasn&amp;#8217;t always the case. Sometimes, I was a complete idiot.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;During my second year of college, I became part of the executive board of the Student African-American Society, the premiere group for people of color on campus. It&amp;#8217;s history has roots in the Civil Rights Movement, and they pushed the university towards color consciousness in a way that idealist integration couldn&amp;#8217;t. SAS birthed so many offshoots including the Black Artist League and the Black Voice, and worked in conjunction with the Greek-based organizations to protest for and support students and faculty of color.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I got all that, but &amp;#8230; I didn&amp;#8217;t.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#8217;t understand much of the impact that the Civil Rights Movement had on any palpable level. I understood there was slavery, emancipation, a bus boycott, and a march on Washington. Because of these pieces, we get a day off every year in January and we get to hum &amp;#8220;We Shall Overcome.&amp;#8221; I watched &lt;em&gt;Eye on the Prize&lt;/em&gt;, but at 11 years old, I needed a little more than a film. I needed experiences, and I got none of it. No disrespect to the people who taught me since Pre-K, but I never ever got schooled in the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; history of this country.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So first, I&amp;#8217;m already late to this dinner with the SAS E-Board and Black Panther Co-Founder Bobby Seale. In retrospect, it&amp;#8217;s a big fucking deal &amp;lt;/biden&amp;gt;. Not only did this moment not hit me, I think I gave a quiet smile, a nod, and sat down quietly. He looked at me like, &amp;#8220;Look at this non-enthusiastic mofo.&amp;#8221; Whoops. As he&amp;#8217;s telling the stories of what went on through the 60s and 70s for the BPP, I just listened, zoning in on the intent, and wondering why the hell I never heard any of this growing up.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The African-Americans in the table looked like distant cousins, comfortable enough to pursue deeper questions about the man. I, on the other hand, felt like the prodigal son.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Luz and I had this conversation on Saturday, and she said something profound enough to make me wonder why her students couldn&amp;#8217;t grasp it. I wasn&amp;#8217;t prepared for these moments at 19. I didn&amp;#8217;t know what to know, how to know, what to ask, who to sit next to, or anything that would get me past the velvet rope of equal footing with Bobby Seale. Not to excuse many of my students (or the plethora of students my students represent), but, when they get into a situation we deem privileged, they go about their business as they normally would, not because they intend to be disrespectful. Rather, it&amp;#8217;s because understanding privilege is a matter of preparation and the moment.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He addressed me like, &amp;#8220;Are you hearing anything I&amp;#8217;m telling you?&amp;#8221; I&amp;#8217;m like, &amp;#8220;Yes, but I&amp;#8217;m not going to get any of this until a couple of years from now, OG.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, who eventually got Bobby Seale&amp;#8217;s autograph to his book &lt;em&gt;Seize The Time&lt;/em&gt; &amp;#8230; that I read for the rest of the semester.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/black+panther+party' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;black panther party&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/bobby+seale' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;bobby seale&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/student+organizations' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;student organizations&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/students' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;students&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/" title="A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)"&gt;A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/09/25/where-my-bread-is-buttered/" title="Where My Bread Is Buttered"&gt;Where My Bread Is Buttered&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/04/05/the-kids-will-tell-you/" title="The Kids Will Tell You"&gt;The Kids Will Tell You&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/02/10/learn-when-to-treat-them-as-students-and-then-as-people/" title="Learn When To Treat Them As Students And Then As People"&gt;Learn When To Treat Them As Students And Then As People&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2010/12/14/yes-i-do-want-you-to-explain-it-to-them/" title="Yes, I Do Want You To Explain It To Them"&gt;Yes, I Do Want You To Explain It To Them&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=Ac7YjYbgsKw:Pqa1_h7wSRM:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/Ac7YjYbgsKw" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/14/privilege-and-my-first-and-only-meeting-with-bobby-seale/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">3</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/14/privilege-and-my-first-and-only-meeting-with-bobby-seale/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">On Leaked E-Mails and The Eventual Uproar [Where I Call Joel Klein a Pirate]</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/dBKToZ7WvNo/" /><category term="life" /><category term="education" /><category term="joel klein" /><category term="uft" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-13T19:50:09-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=4585</id><summary type="html">First, let me tell you how excited I was that the United Federation of Teachers FOILed Joel Klein&amp;#8217;s e-mails from DOE. I&amp;#8217;m much happier knowing that I wasn&amp;#8217;t misjudging anything about him or his co-conspirators on any level. They really do come off like jerks, they really do spend ALL day on their Blackberries for [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/homework-class-test-be-careful-what-curse-words-you-use1.png" rel="lightbox[4585]"&gt;&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-4588" title="homework-class-test-be-careful-what-curse-words-you-use1" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/homework-class-test-be-careful-what-curse-words-you-use1.png" alt="" width="500" height="347" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;First, let me tell you how excited I was&lt;a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1Ghj5xYLG5KcjZTem95WjZnUUU/edit?pli=1"&gt; that the United Federation of Teachers FOILed Joel Klein&amp;#8217;s e-mails from DOE&lt;/a&gt;. I&amp;#8217;m much happier knowing that I wasn&amp;#8217;t misjudging anything about him or his co-conspirators on any level. They really do come off like jerks, they really do spend ALL day on their Blackberries for no apparent reason, and they really do want to push the idea of charter schools to the detriment of actual public schools. I don&amp;#8217;t mind a few charters here and there, but the corporatists crossed the line by making it &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; solution to the education&amp;#8217;s ills (when they know it&amp;#8217;s not).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Plus, if I can&amp;#8217;t get the Pearson-created math statewide tests released, I should at least get a few uncomfortable giggles from Klein&amp;#8217;s exchanges.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I&amp;#8217;m also surprised that some of my colleagues are shocked (SHOCKED) by the content of the e-mails. We knew that even the most professional of us exchange a few &amp;#8220;motherfuckers&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;shits&amp;#8221; when in the midst of trusted company, especially about Klein, Cathie Black, and Bloomberg. Too many of you (yes, you) want to get angry because they clearly don&amp;#8217;t like people who tell them something different from what they want to hear? Madness. I almost want to blurt out &amp;#8220;There are starving people in _____ and you STILL think this is worth raging over?&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Also, have you taken a look at Joel Klein? Does it LOOK like he cares whether or not he cares what you think? He probably swears like a pirate; he already looks like one, and &lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/01/bskyb-itv-ondigital-hacking-nds"&gt;works for one&lt;/a&gt;. I&amp;#8217;m not sure I knew anyone who called him &amp;#8220;nice,&amp;#8221; &amp;#8220;pleasant,&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;gracious.&amp;#8221; You might hear the word professional thrown about his aura, but a suit and a tie do a lot for a man. I mean, assassins and consiglieres are professionals, too, right? Right?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;My only disappointment is that he didn&amp;#8217;t do any drunk texting or get HotOrNot requests at random. Otherwise, any of the name-calling or charter school promotion didn&amp;#8217;t bother me at all. If, in the words of Klein, this is all becoming very fluid, then our task is to bring things to a boil. He was supposed to work for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; children in NYC, not just the ones he preferred.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words &amp;#8230; I got a few choice words for this, too.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/education' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/joel+klein' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;joel klein&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/uft' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;uft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2010/06/29/if-you-smelt-it-you-probably-dealt-it/" title="If You Smelt It, You Probably Dealt It"&gt;If You Smelt It, You Probably Dealt It&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/11/07/thats-21-of-your-validators-ate-up-at-the-same-time/" title="That&amp;#8217;s 21 of Your Validators Ate Up At The Same Time"&gt;That&amp;#8217;s 21 of Your Validators Ate Up At The Same Time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/07/17/why-im-marching-forward-its-the-only-direction/" title="Why I&amp;#8217;m Marching Forward [It's The Only Direction]"&gt;Why I&amp;#8217;m Marching Forward [It's The Only Direction]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2010/11/09/the-less-experience-the-better/" title="The Less Experience, The Better"&gt;The Less Experience, The Better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2010/09/21/how-much-superman-knows-about-pedagogy/" title="How Much Superman Knows About Pedagogy"&gt;How Much Superman Knows About Pedagogy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=dBKToZ7WvNo:MjNDsIadGqM:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/dBKToZ7WvNo" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/13/on-leaked-e-mails-and-the-eventual-uproar-where-i-call-joel-klein-a-pirate/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">2</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/13/on-leaked-e-mails-and-the-eventual-uproar-where-i-call-joel-klein-a-pirate/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Four Months of Awesome [On Alejandro]</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/bNxntmm2hNk/" /><category term="life" /><category term="alejandro" /><category term="fatherhood" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-09T13:07:48-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=4418</id><summary type="html">Alejandro was staring at the door at 9 pm. I just got back from a long day and a vibrant discussion and dinner at SoHo with some colleagues who I hadn&amp;#8217;t seen in months. When I got to my floor in my apartment building, I tiptoed from the elevator to my door, turning the key [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;div id="attachment_4421" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 622px"&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/aleblurry.jpg" rel="lightbox[4418]"&gt;&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-4421" title="aleblurry" src="http://thejosevilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/aleblurry.jpg" alt="" width="612" height="612" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;p class="wp-caption-text"&gt;Alejandro&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Alejandro was staring at the door at 9 pm.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I just got back from a long day and a vibrant discussion and dinner at SoHo with some colleagues who I hadn&amp;#8217;t seen in months. When I got to my floor in my apartment building, I tiptoed from the elevator to my door, turning the key slowly so as not to wake the baby. As the door creaked open, I noticed his eyes honed in on me. Luz had been trying to put him to sleep for the better part of the afternoon, but with little success. Her magic usually works on the little cherub, but tonight felt different.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He stopped, turned around to meet my eyes, and smiled, all gums.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I offered to pick him up and say hello. I had missed him so much, and often as I do. In the midst of my joy, I realize just how privileged I am to have this child as my child.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Hi, Alé. Hi, Alé. Hi, Alé.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He wiggles to and fro until he finds a nice spot to land on my wool sweater. After rocking him a bit, he burps. Nothing from the norm, except that now my sweater was covered in baby rice and formula. No way this goes on Instagram. Luz changes him, and I change out of everything. He pounds on his mouth because the teething process annoys him so. I try to rock him to no avail. He finally calms down after playing with his teething ring and a bit of Baby Orajel. He yawns and puts his arms up like his mother is wont to do. I yawn even more than he does. His eyes bulge. I smile. He drags his eyes. I pick him up.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He fights sleep. Luz says it&amp;#8217;s because he doesn&amp;#8217;t want to miss out on the party. I assure both of them I never got an invitation to said party. He rubs my newly-shortened goatee. I tuck his arms into my cradle motion. He follows one of the hallway lights. I turn it off. He then follows the green light on our smoke detector. I spin him around some. He fusses. I tap his back as if to burp him. He burps loudly. I smell a hint of pungent formula pass my nose. He yawns some more. I keep rocking. He wavers in his commitment to stay awake. I keep rocking. He&amp;#8217;s almost there. I keep rocking.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I keep rocking. Then, I shushed in rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Blink. Shush. Blink blink. Shush. Blink blink blink. Shush. Big blink. Shush. Eyes barely open. Shush. Eyes open to a slit. Shush. Eyes close. Thank God.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I swiftly put him to sleep and turn on the giraffe, our shushing machine du jour. I pat his back a few times. He wiggles some. I pat his back some more. He wiggles some more. I shush him again. He squeaks. I shush and pat in successive patterns. He grunts, squeaks, and wiggles. I pick him up and &lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/Go-F-Sleep-Adam-Mansbach/dp/1617750255"&gt;almost tell him a few choice words&lt;/a&gt; before I calm myself down.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Privilege. Privilege.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He scrunches his face, making rubbing motions with his eyes. I rock him for another minute. He feels ready. I set him down. He gets adjusted. I almost said, &amp;#8220;Not again.&amp;#8221; He settles in with left arm in a right angle and his right outstretched, like a horizontal Heisman trophy. I step out quietly.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Jose, he&amp;#8217;s been looking at the door all afternoon. I think he was missing you.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Really?&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Yeah. At one point, he looked at the door, got really sad, and napped that way.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I went back to the room to get ready for my bed. He turns his head slightly. I whisper, &amp;#8220;You&amp;#8217;re so small. I know you need us. I will always be there for you. You are loved.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jose, who will just keep loving &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/alejandro' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;alejandro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/fatherhood' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;fatherhood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/01/10/but-first-him-always-him/" title="But First Him, Always Him"&gt;But First Him, Always Him&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/03/12/the-lion-sleeps-tonight/" title="The Lion Sleeps Tonight"&gt;The Lion Sleeps Tonight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/03/11/be-like-me-just-write-five-different-blog-starters-and-dont-hit-publish/" title="Be Like Me: Just Write Five Different Blog Starters and Don&amp;#8217;t Hit Publish"&gt;Be Like Me: Just Write Five Different Blog Starters and Don&amp;#8217;t Hit Publish&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/01/23/a-dozen-of-one-a-half-dozen-of-the-other-on-parenting-and-teaching/" title="A Dozen of One, a Half Dozen of the Other [On Parenting and Teaching]"&gt;A Dozen of One, a Half Dozen of the Other [On Parenting and Teaching]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/12/04/fatherhood-in-patterns/" title="Fatherhood In Patterns"&gt;Fatherhood In Patterns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=bNxntmm2hNk:gXAIZ3GKJQk:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/bNxntmm2hNk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/09/four-months-of-awesome-on-alejandro/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">5</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/09/four-months-of-awesome-on-alejandro/</feedburner:origLink></entry><entry><title type="text">Now That You’re Done, You’re Still Wrong [#IKnowATeacher Series, part 1]</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~3/FwP5lxMxmUM/" /><category term="life" /><category term="#iknowateacher" /><category term="education" /><category term="math coach" /><author><name>Jose</name></author><updated>2012-05-07T19:17:18-07:00</updated><id>http://thejosevilson.com/?p=4358</id><summary type="html">The whole premise of some meetings is to listen to the person speak ad nauseam about the topic of their choice with little regard for others&amp;#8217; opinions. It happens all across America in offices where voice only matters insofar as the first one has first, second, and third say. Words to some serve as a [...]</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The whole premise of some meetings is to listen to the person speak ad nauseam about the topic of their choice with little regard for others&amp;#8217; opinions. It happens all across America in offices where voice only matters insofar as the first one has first, second, and third say. Words to some serve as a beat down into acquiescence rather than inspiration to act onward. In such meetings, the most powerful person is always the one who puts his index fingers on his lips, takes a deep breath, waits until the speaker is done, and says, &amp;#8220;Yea, I get that, but you&amp;#8217;re wrong, and here&amp;#8217;s why.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s why I admire my former math coach. All praise is due to my first math assistant principal and first math coach, but, during his years at my school, I learned lots about how to handle the malcontents of the world. Some people have this belief that they don&amp;#8217;t have time to waste, so they grow impatient and frustrated with those who they believe take up too much of their time. They cut people off, don&amp;#8217;t want to deal with people, and take too many comments at face value. Others don&amp;#8217;t really care for how much time they waste because they get to occupy whatever time they have selfishly, as if the person listening doesn&amp;#8217;t have anything else to do but listen to the madness.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;This math coach thought different.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I met him as an F-status staff member, meaning he was considered retired but wanted to work to fill in a void or need. He enjoyed math so much, he took up every opportunity to prove why numbers worked or why the tasks in front of him weren&amp;#8217;t rigorous enough. His intellect was often superior to the rest of us, though he didn&amp;#8217;t let many of us on until he got into heated discussions. Best of all, he let out a few curse words just for emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Like bullshit.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;He imparted a few lessons about leading that I didn&amp;#8217;t understand until he left with little fanfare. While he knew his role within the school, he always asked us to push our thinking so the kids could, too. We&amp;#8217;d say it&amp;#8217;s too hard for them; he said, &amp;#8220;Well, this is math.&amp;#8221; We&amp;#8217;d say this is going to take a lot of differentiation; he said, &amp;#8220;So?&amp;#8221; We&amp;#8217;d say &amp;#8220;How does that even work?&amp;#8221;; he&amp;#8217;d pause for a split second then say, &amp;#8220;I don&amp;#8217;t know, you tell me.&amp;#8221; He&amp;#8217;d smirk, wondering about the wide range of mathematical knowledge in the room.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s not that he didn&amp;#8217;t care; it&amp;#8217;s that he cared enough to ask us to step it up. He didn&amp;#8217;t consider anyone his superior until his checks got signed, and was always up for a good discussion. I know a teacher who became my teacher without having ever realizing it. Now that he&amp;#8217;s officially retired for good, he&amp;#8217;s right, and here&amp;#8217;s why.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mr. Vilson, who knows a teacher who was far too honest with fellow staff members at his school today &amp;#8230;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;!-- start wp-tags-to-technorati 1.02 --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class='technorati-tags'&gt;Technorati Tags: &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/%23iknowateacher' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;#iknowateacher&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/education' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;education&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a class='technorati-link' href='http://technorati.com/tag/math+coach' rel='tag' target='_self'&gt;math coach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;!-- end wp-tags-to-technorati --&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3  class="related_post_title"&gt;You May Also Be Interested In&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;ul class="related_post"&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2011/05/05/iknowateacher-who-made-me-want-to-be-better/" title="#IKnowATeacher Who Made Me Want To Be Better"&gt;#IKnowATeacher Who Made Me Want To Be Better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/27/a-whole-month-left-a-freewrite/" title="A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)"&gt;A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/24/dont-grade-the-mta/" title="Don&amp;#8217;t Grade The MTA"&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t Grade The MTA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/23/dont-talk-to-me-about-personal-responsibility-if/" title="Don&amp;#8217;t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If &amp;#8230;"&gt;Don&amp;#8217;t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If &amp;#8230;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/22/the-normalcy-of-school-segregation-it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white/" title="The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]"&gt;The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:dnMXMwOfBR0"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:V_sGLiPBpWU"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?i=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?a=FwP5lxMxmUM:IXpK0cGeXFU:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheJoseVilson?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheJoseVilson/~4/FwP5lxMxmUM" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content><wfw:commentRss xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/07/now-that-youre-done-youre-still-wrong-iknowateacher-series-part-1/feed/</wfw:commentRss><slash:comments xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/">0</slash:comments><feedburner:origLink>http://thejosevilson.com/2012/05/07/now-that-youre-done-youre-still-wrong-iknowateacher-series-part-1/</feedburner:origLink></entry></feed>

