​A friend of mine suggested that I watch the trailer for the 60th anniversary special for Doctor Who. I've really enjoyed the Dr. Who series since it restarted with Eccleston, but we haven't watched anything since Capaldi. This isn't due to the poor reviews that the show has received since Whittaker took on the mantel as the first female Doctor, but because it hasn't been easily accessible. Even with Capaldi, we waited until the entire series with him in it was available on DVD before buying, watching, and enjoying those seasons.

This might be different when it comes to this anniversary special as it reunites my favorite Doctor (Tennant) and companion (Donna Noble, played by Tate). They were fantastic together as Donna humanized the Doctor in ways that few companions have while the best friend chemistry between the actors was undeniable. Their story ended on a tremendously sad note with Donna losing all memory of the Doctor. It looks like this special will somehow revisit that storyline, and I cannot be more excited--which is, after all, what I suppose that the showrunners want. I just hope that it will be streaming on a service that I have.

Yesterday, I asked Rowen to choose one of the movies from our as-yet-unwatched pile. I really thought that he was going to choose Shazam! 2, but he went for the most recent addition to the Fast and Furious series. I have to say that I kind of liked it.

Make no mistake, the movie was one overblown and ridiculous set piece after another with plot holes large enough to drive the Vatican through. Still, there was an undeniable charm to it as well. In fact, I think that I liked this movie better than the last couple that have come from the series--certainly better than F9 (which couldn't even be bothered to have a word in its title). 

Granted, I might have liked this movie just because it had not one, but two Aquamen (Aquamans?) running around in it. Of the two, Jason Momoa definitely stole the show in his Heath Ledger's Joker meets Jim Carrey's Riddler sort of over-the-top villain. Still, I knew that I knew Alan Ritchson (who played the Agency leading Aimes) when I saw him, only to discover that he played Arthur Curry (aka Aquaman) in the Smallville series.

This is a movie that I went into with low expectations, and it met all of them. In doing so, it also presented just a fun, ridiculous time that makes me want to see the next one. I'm glad that I didn't see it in the theater, but I'm also glad that I saw it.

Today's Gospel includes the parable where a king gives a wedding feast for his son but none of the invited guests show up. Instead, they focus on their daily desires; some go so far as to beat the servants who were sent with the invitations. The king then sends out his servants to pick up anyone from anywhere who were willing to come. This fills his hall.

However, he notices that one of these new guests is not wearing his wedding garment. Our pastor explained that wedding garments were traditionally given to the guests for these sorts of occasions; this means that this particular guest came for the party but intentionally refused to honor his host. After questioning the guest and receiving no response, the king has the rude guest bound hand and foot and tossed into the darkness.

In past posts, I have focused on the rude guest or even the original invitees who all ultimately miss out on the king's celebration. Clearly, they refer to those who ignore God's message or those who claim to want heaven but who disparage God and His teachings. However, I found myself today wondering more at the those who were able to attend the party. While Jesus ends His parable with the saying, "Many are invited, but few are chosen," He earlier said, "the hall was filled with guests." These guests came from the streets and were made of "bad and good alike," yet only one refused to wear the wedding garment.

It's easy to focus on the one, but Jesus makes it clear many times that often those who seem to be the least deserving are the ones who make it to heaven. I recently was in an online argument with someone who is fed up with those who receive welfare, yet this person had no problem with those who inherit (let alone "earn") billions of dollars. I believe that Jesus clearly states that it is the former and not the latter who are more likely to attain heaven.

I imagine that their gratitude will make that quite the party.

I got up earlier than I would normally like because I agreed to sing a funeral today, which meant that I needed to be more presentable at an early time. Also, I had chosen today as my hair and beard trim day as I was getting a bit scruffier than I like. Thus, cleaned up, I headed out, sang with the rest of the choir, and returned home. I should note that "10,000 Reasons" has become another song that I would like sung during my own funeral.

Janelle spent the day filling the house with the smell of freshly-baked bread. Rowen had a nearby friend come over to play. Connor spent the day working on his video-game/project for his chemistry class. Trevor was called in early to work. Meanwhile, I spent most of the day planning my language arts classes and uploading their assignments into Canvas. I finished just before I started writing this post. I still have my AP classes to plan and set up for this coming week.

Janelle and I did not go to the Octoberfest dinner at the church this year. We likely would have if there had not been a problem getting tickets at church earlier in the week, but the deciding factor was that Trevor needed to be picked up from work at 7PM and was not able to use his normal ride because he had been called in early. In truth, it was probably for the best as I did need the time to get work done. As was, I only took breaks to eat (where we watched an episode of Taskmaster at lunch and an episode of The Great British Baking Show at dinner) and to pick up Trevor. I didn't even work on cleaning up the yard at all as everything was still wet.

Still, I feel good about today--accomplished even. 

Every time that grades come due, there is a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth. There is also a large amount of begging and pleading as well. The students do their share of this, too.

For me, it's time to get my "house" in order. Not only did I have a large pile (physical and electronic) of student work to grade (which I just finished), I still need to make certain that I have my classes set for the next quarter. This means advance planning and getting assignments loaded onto Canvas, ready for Monday.

Due to some scheduling shenanigans, I've needed to rework the schedules for both of my AP classes. I was dealt another blow today that means reworking the end of the semester in all of my classes, but this is always an issue when I manage to plan and work ahead. Thankfully, I can put off making those sections live for a while as compared to the scrambling that I've been doing this week. 

In a way, I like moving into the second quarter of a school year. It usually moves faster than any of the other ones due to having parent/teacher conferences and Thanksgiving taking large chunks out of it. The students are more used to the routines of my classes, making my reminders more meaningful and also giving me the chance to add in new elements. For some reason, the content is also really enjoyable for me at this point too. 

Add to all of that the three major American holidays of Halloween, Veterans' Day, and Thanksgiving in the midst of the quarter with Christmas and other winter holidays coming up at the quarter's end, and there just seems to be a great deal to celebrate.

It came a little later than it has in previous years, but the snow continued to fall throughout most of the day despite the forecast suggesting that it would turn to rain much earlier. Nearly every time that I looked out my classroom window, big fluffy flakes were steadily falling, continually bringing a smile to my face. Considering that we received at least an inch of snow, I was surprised that the pavement remained clear of ice and slush.

I know--not everyone has the same joy at seeing snow as I do. Certainly, seeing the snow on the ground this morning reminded me that I posted just yesterday about needing to pack up my lawn mower. Thus, there are still things that I need to do before we see a more substantial snowfall.

Still, my love of snow is one of the reasons that I was drawn to Alaska in the first place. It's also nice to live in a place where many people share my appreciation. Sure, there was some grumbling and complaining about the snow today, but there was also cheering and excitement. Like many in the latter category, I'm hoping that this is a sign of more snow to come.

Edit: I just remembered that when we showed Alistair on a video call that it was snowing here, he said something like, "It's Christmas there already?!"

I wrote at least a paragraph each on two separate topics that I decided to erase. In fact, I just erased another sentence that was headed in a similar direction. And now, two more. Let's just put some topics down. 

• Holding the stop sign for the busses at the end of the school day has not been good for my blood pressure. To cheer myself up, I've been daydreaming about laying down spike strips.
• I would like the House of Representatives to get in order. It would be so nice if a Centrist would stand and try to get the support of Republicans and Democrats on the platform of bringing bills up to vote rather than hiding them in committee.
• I'm not going to stop my son from watching some right-wing fear-mongering "documentary" offered by his youth leaders, but I'm not going to encourage it either. However, I don't believe that our church should support anything that promotes fear and hatred with falsehoods and misleading "truths."
• I have a lot of movies that I'd like to watch, but only Rowen seems to want to watch them too. Meanwhile, the list continues to grow.
• Time slips by all too quickly. How are we a third of the way through October already?
• I should just put the lawnmower away. I've been kidding myself, thinking that I would mow again before we have a substantial snowfall.
• I want to see some snowflakes soon.

Grrr ... I spent over 50 minutes on this lackluster post.

I really liked the recent Ahsoka series even though many people on the Internet are unhappy with how it turned out or were left dazed and confused by it. For me, it was near-perfect Star Wars, and it brought me joy. It brought to life characters that had been only in cartoon or book form before and did them justice. It also introduced new elements to the Star Wars universe while tying in bits from books, comics, and video games.

Most importantly, for me, it redeemed Hayden Christensen as Anakin, something that this show and the Obi-Wan Kenobi series worked together to do. The character of Anakin was already mostly redeemed through the Clone Wars series where his character was given the time to slowly establish the problems with the Jedi Order and Anakin's need for more than the Jedi could provide. However, that still left the live-action Anakin lacking, perhaps even more in comparison. These two series have really changed that.

I love the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Having watched it again this summer, I feel that the story holds up well (especially with my head canon that young Leia was already able to unwittingly tap the Force for subtle mind-tricks), and it fills some of the plot holes that were missing between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy (specifically, why Obi-Wan was so convinced that Vader had "killed" Anakin, why Vader said that "Obi-Wan once thought as you do" to Luke, and why Obi-Wan knew that Vader and Anakin were the same person in the first place). However, for me, the greatest part was having Christensen step back into the roles of Anakin and Vader and do so quite convincingly. 

This performance led to his role in Ahsoka, where Christensen gets to be Anakin at multiple points in Anakin's life. He shows up as an Anakin in the early Clone Wars, an Anakin just before he becomes Darth Vader, and an Anakin after the events of Return of the Jedi. Each time, his performance was amazing! Considering the hate (which comes from the Dark Side) that some fans (sadly, including myself) had for Christensen's performances in the prequel trilogy, I am so glad that he was willing to come back and reprise his role--improving the entire story. For my part, I regret the time I wasted not liking what he did before. Sure, parts still make me cringe, but some of that was jealousy (also from the Dark Side), and some of that jealousy was from having written (with help) a script for Episode II. It was a version of the story that I really liked (and still do), but I had to "learn to let go of the things that you fear to lose."

I'm glad that these new Star Wars shows have helped me do exactly that.

Considering that some people celebrated Columbus Day today [Alaska recognizes Indigenous Peoples Day instead], I thought that I would address at least part of the reason why I am not a (full) member of the Catholic charitable organization: The Knights of Columbus. Before I continue, I want to say that I feel that the Knights do may great things in the communities that they serve, and I have a great deal of respect for the men who donate their time and energy to improve those communities. I also remember being dazzled as a young boy by their swords and uniforms on the days when they paraded down the central aisle of the church. As a young man, I was even convinced to join the Knights. However, the very first meeting threw me off, and I left the order. I will not rejoin, and there are two main reasons why.

First, even though there's nothing nefarious about the Knights, they are more of a "secret" society than I care to discuss. That sort of thing appealed to me as a boy, but I have come to prefer transparency in organizations that I join--especially when tied to my faith. I'm reminded of that child's song "This Little Light of Mine" and its lines "Hide it under a bush? Oh no! I'm going to let it shine!" I understand that the Knights were a Catholic response to the Free Masons, but they can both keep me out of their secrets.

Second, (and I feel a little foolish admitting this) it wasn't until that first meeting that I realized that the "Columbus" that I was supposed to be a "Knight of" was Christopher Columbus. Up until that moment, I had thought of knight titles as referring to a location, and I believed that Columbus was another name for America. I thought that they used Columbus rather than Columbia (or Colombia) so there wouldn't be confusion about which country they are from. I did not, and do not, feel that I could be part of an organization named after a man who (as much of a lynchpin as he was to history) promoted rape, murder, and slavery (seriously, in his own handwriting)--and was the ultimate (if unwitting) source of so much suffering and death across the continents to the indigenous people. 

And no. This is not some sort of new "woke" thing that I've hopped on. My frustration with Columbus goes back to my high school days when I first researched him, thinking of him as a great hero only to be greatly disappointed by the reality. In fact, my view of him has actually softened over the years--at least in small part due to Orson Scott Card's novel The Redemption of Christopher Columbus which a friend in Colon had me read.

I get that the order was formed before much of Columbus' true history was revealed to the larger population. In fact, Columbus was a hero to Italian and other Catholic immigrants during a time when they were being discriminated against in the United States. However, I did know better then, and we do know better now. I still believe that Columbus and his role in the history of our world is undeniable; I just don't want to be one of his Knights--especially after knowing what he and some of his original knights did in America.

Our readings and psalm today deal with the metaphor of the vineyard. Traditionally, I have thought about the fruit of the vineyard representing the faithful people who follow God's Word. However, our deacon today also suggested that vineyard could represent our entire lives, making the good grapes represent the positive things that we do in our lives and the wild grapes a representation of the less productive and more selfish activities in our lives. 

I don't want to push this metaphor too much, but the idea made me consider the way that I spend my time and energy. Am I working to provide "good fruits" for my community and world? If I am honest with myself, I spend a great deal of my time distracted, allowing wild vines to fill my vineyard and limiting the space for good fruits to come forth. 

I have thought of this in terms of my level of creation compared to my level of consumption. I spend much more of my time consuming the fruits provided by others rather than creating for the enjoyment or enlightenment of others. Still, I try not to beat myself up too much over this as I do spend time, treasure, and talent to help others in a variety of ways. I just hope that my own wild vines are not choking out the fruits in other people's vineyards, and that the good fruits that I produce help others to produce good fruits of their own.

I spent more than a little while today looking through electronic folders for items that I am certain that I created at some point in time. In short, it was a mess. Using search bars gave me moderate success and even brought up a couple of files that I had forgot existed. However, even that indicated what an absolute mess my documents currently are.

For example, as I'm currently writing about The Game that I use in my AP history classes, I wanted to see what else I might have written about them. I came up with no fewer than four separate attempts that I have made to describe The Game and multiple spreadsheets that I used to keep track of The Game when I used it back at Lincoln High School. I still didn't find the write up that I did about The Game for one of my blog posts--which was the document that I hoped to find.

This, of course, reminded me that I still haven't organized any of my blog posts since May of 2019. This has been an ongoing to-do item on my annual resolutions for a couple of years now. Getting them transferred into documents would go a long way in making it easier to search for past posts. Still, they aren't nearly as much of a mess as my documents.

I try to be organized in my document folders and have been fairly successful since the creation of Google Drive as I no longer have to worry about which physical computer or flashdrive is holding which document folder. Instead, I just need to remember which Google account I used when making a document. Unfortunately, finding anything from before Google Drive existed is quite a bit of a challenge. I tried to always upload my documents to any new home computer that I purchased, but I rarely took the time to organize them in any meaningful way. Thus, I have document folders imbedded within document folders that are imbedded within document folders.

Like my office itself, I keep thinking that I should spend some time rearranging and reorganizing my files so that they could be more useful. I don't know if this is a project that I will ever get around to doing. Like my physical files, they will likely only get more cluttered the next time that I'm forced to move to another computer.

​I'm intentionally writing this post before I spend any time writing on my book so that I don't have three straight posts worth of excerpts from the book. The problem is that all I'm thinking about is what I want to write in the book which is making this post be about the book without actually containing an content or insight from it. It almost feels like this is worse. I deeply apologize. 

I suppose the good news is that I'm keeping this post short.

I'm not going to cut and paste what four (mostly single-spaced) pages that I've spent the last couple of hours writing, but will instead provide the link to what I have written so far here for those who are interested. I'm dealing with two projects in one with this particular section which is focused on The Game that I use to organize and motivate students in my AP history classes. Students have asked for me to write down the rules for years, but I've never had the time to do it justice--which did cause me trouble when I started it up again after not having taught the class for four years. 

In short, The Game divides a class into teams who compete against one another for points. The team with the most points at the end of a Unit wins and gets to stay together while the other teams are disbanded to various degrees depending on how well they did. New groups are then formed. The goal is to try to have your team win more Units than any other team.

The is a LOT to The Game. I've written four pages and haven't even come to the various adversities that the teams can face (or inflict upon one another). Still, I should get it written down at some point, and this current writing bug that I seem to have is the perfect excuse to do so.

Rather than write a post today, I've spent the past hour and a half (or more) writing some odds and ends for the book on teaching that I recently mentioned. I may have gotten carried away in a couple of places. Oh well, it's a rough draft after all.

If you believe that this book will solve the problems with our educational system, or even your difficulties as a teacher, finish reading this sentence, slowly close this book, and put it gently back where you found it, trying to forget that there is no perfect way to educate human beings.

Also, so we are clear, this is a book from a teacher to other teachers. When I say “I,” I mean me, Dr. Paul Marks, a professional (if weird) teacher. When I say “you,” I am referring to fellow teachers who serve in, have served in, or will serve in the classroom. If there are people reading this who are not fellow teachers, they should put on their hats of imagination and place themselves figuratively into the role of a teacher while they read this book.

Be warned, I am quite passionate about our public education system, as I believe that it is a necessary component of the success of our democratic republic. Hopefully, you are reading this because you feel the same. If you feel otherwise, I ask that you take this book and repeatedly bash it into your clueless head until you find some degree of rationality in the rat’s warren of a brain you are currently pretending to use. This is not a matter for debate–let’s start bashing away then.

Education is weird. What's the best way to teach students?

Teaching is magic. Although there is an underlying science behind it and an artistic flourish within it, there is ultimately no certainty that any method of teaching will work with any particular student in any particular circumstance. The same student can have one methodology work for them at one moment only to be completely at a loss at a different time in the same day with the same methodology in the same subject. The same is true for teachers: what works wonderfully in one class might fail spectacularly in the one after it; the same is true from one year to another and is certainly true from one teacher to the next. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something. 

Thus, as teachers, we need to first work with what works for us. The worst experiences that I have had as a teacher were when I tried to teach like someone else. I’m not saying that collaboration and new ideas are not beneficial, far from it! However, I have been at my most successful as a teacher when I have taken new ideas and combined them with my own ideas in a way that creates my unique educational style.

Our educational style will not work for all students all of the time. As a teacher, you need to be ready to fail and fail often. You need to be ready to be the worst teacher that a student has ever had (or, more often, that a parent has ever dealt with). However, you need to try to reach as many as you can. You also need to adapt as times and students (and you) change. I am not the teacher that I was when I started–for better and for worse, nor will I be the same teacher years from now when they pry the dry erase marker from my cold, dead hands. 

On that note, our current educational system is a zombie. Its lifeless, tortured body has somehow still managed to propel itself forward by some mystical means despite being drained of blood and torn apart by one calamity or another. It is a corpse from another time that gets dragged around with less of it left year after year. In short, it needs a resurrection–the inspiration of virtuous purpose breathed back into its new and vigorous body.

… I may have gotten carried away with my metaphor …

Decades of disrespect and negligence from politicians whose care for education is only a weak façade have left our public education system with greater demands and fewer resources. It is only through the sheer determination of inspired individuals that it has managed any level of success. It needs a full overhaul, but it’s like saying that it’s time to buy a new, high tech automobile when we’re barely given the funds for gasoline.

Our schools should be palaces to knowledge and wisdom, not prisons that our students are just hoping to escape. They should be temples of beauty and contemplation that fill our students’ with nourishment for the mind and body, not mausoleums contracted by the lowest bidder with scant supplies and aging resources. As the cornerstone of our society and the foundation of our future, our schools should be the shining beacon of hope for our coming generations, not the leftover vestiges of previous ages. … I think that I've made my point.

So, what would I do with infinite resources? 

​... That's all that I have so far.