I got observed at work again today. Everything went well, but there was an added element of interest this time around.
Yesterday the boss called me into her office during the break for my second class. She told me that she had received a complaint from a group of students, although it was really all led by one student. I was surprised. This had never happened before. Apparently I always asked the same person to read, I didn't have them do any group exercises, the class was boring, I didn't smile enough, and when I did it was sarcastic. But then she clued me in on who had made the complaint, and it all made a little more sense, but was still a little bizarre.
There is a group of four students that tends to be very chatty during class, comes in at least ten minutes late every day, and takes at least fifteen to twenty extra minutes for their break every day. Two of them missed the first week of class and came in late while talking at the beginning of this week. So at one point during class yesterday I was explaining to every one that we were turning to a new page (the next one) and going to do some exercises at the bottom of the page. At this point one of the girls, who had been talking to someone the whole time I was speaking, gave me this completely bewildered look as if to say, "Where are we and how was I supposed to know?" Then she said, "I don't know where we are!" even though we hadn't really begun yet, and we were going to do the first few as a class. I said, "I know you don't because you were talking," and then smiled to show that I found it all funny but also to let her know that she shouldn't be talking. There was a quick laugh from some of the class and then we moved on. So of course, that was the person leading the complaints against me. In fact, the boss told me that one of the students was shaking his head and putting his head in his hands to try to stop her from levying all of these false charges against me, especially the "only calling on one student to read" part, which is more than a few steps away from reality, as he's always raising his hand to read first, and I let him read but then have to ignore him the next eight times because other people want to read.
Luckily my boss was on to them already, and was aware they were chatty instigators based on the last class they were in. Even so, she said she had to observe my class.
She didn't come during the first hour today, so I figured she might have meant next week, and I just ran the class as usual. It had been a while since we had done a group exercise, but that's mostly because--as I mentioned in a previous post--the school has assigned a text book with material that is a little too advanced for this group, and the exercises are beyond their understanding. So I came up with a simple exercise for them to practice the grammar with a partner, and had them all write down things they "used to" do. I told them that they would be working in pairs to interview each other after the break. Of course, once the exercise was already under way, my boss came in to observe the class. Better yet, the complaining students were over fifteen minutes late coming back from break. They were talking a little when they came in, and my boss couldn't help but shush them. Then the rest of the class went perfectly and I found out later that I was great and they were the problem. Even so, it's always good to have a challenge to step up your game.
After a long week of work (I had to catch up the second class at high speed this week because of all the holidays) I was very happy to go home, but I didn't want to waste the evening. I remembered that when I used to live in New York they had these free Friday nights at the Museum of Modern Art, so I checked the web site and sure enough they still do.
It's absolutely beautiful that anyone can just walk in and see the genius of Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Seurat, Miro, Dali, Rousseau, Cezanne, Munch, Gauguin, Duchamp, Ernst, Mondrian, Warhol, de Kooning, Rothko, Pollock and Jasper Johns completely for free. Even better, because the free admission draws such a crowd, you can listen to your favorite music without fear of bothering people or being shushed by guards in what would normally be a mostly vacant and quiet room.
When I entered the exhibits the first one to greet me was the face of what must have been a gigantic clock. Its hands were at the time 5:24. 5/24 is Bob Dylan's birthday. When I began my big road trip West in 2012, I stayed at my friend's in Ithaca and flipped open his memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1 to this very page, I kid you not (I never kid about these things):
I was lucky I had places to stay--even people who lived in New York sometimes didn't have one. There's a lot of things I didn't have, didn't have too much of a concrete identity either. "I'm a rambler -- I'm a gambler. I'm a long way from home." That pretty much summed it up.
In the world news, Picasso at 79 had just married his 35 year old model. Wow. Picasso wasn't just loafing about on crowded sidewalks. Life hadn't flowed past him yet. Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open. He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that." (Dylan 55)
I was listening to a playlist of my favorite "artsy" music at the time, and The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" was on as I climbed the escalators to the fifth floor, where all of the familiar greats would be. I took introduction to Modern Art History in college, and I got a kick out of the fact that I still recognized many of the paintings. Right when that song hit its fantastic crescendo finale, I found myself standing in front of a Joan Miro painting painted in 1933-34. I was immediately reminded of the only quote I know from Joan Miro:
"The works must be conceived with fire in the soul, but executed with clinical coolness."
I had taken my time getting there, so I only had a little over an hour to spare before they closed. As soon as I arrived I promised myself to come back soon and arrive at 4 pm, when the free evening starts. Even so, I was able to see the famous canvases which were actually touched by these divine imaginations: Picasso's "Three Musicians," "Card Player," "Les demoiselles de'Avignon," and "Girl With Mandolin," Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Dali's "The Persistence of Memory," and the Rousseau where the gypsy is sleeping in the desert but the lion doesn't eat her.
The guards were already shooing us out the door when I realized I hadn't seen any Jasper Johns yet. At the last minute I noticed his American flag on a wall in a room without a cranky guard, so I quickly walked over listening to Hiromi's "Place to Be." After all of these years of wandering the globe, my current place to be is in New York City, amongst the stars and the stripes.
Jasper's painting brought back warm memories of my last viewing of his work, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, during last year's Super Bowl. I learned then that he thought numbers can be used to 'awaken the viewer's eye and mind to experience the familiar in a new way.' Also, he liked 'reconfiguring of familiar subjects in different media and different dates as a means of providing new ways to read the signs.'
As I walked through the lobby of NYC's MoMA, eleven months after my last encounter with that particular artist's work, I saw another familiar work of art. It was Mike Kelley's teddy bear, which was on the subway for my first few months after moving back to the city.
I clapped and said, "Hey Bear!" The universe loves when you applaud.
Yesterday the boss called me into her office during the break for my second class. She told me that she had received a complaint from a group of students, although it was really all led by one student. I was surprised. This had never happened before. Apparently I always asked the same person to read, I didn't have them do any group exercises, the class was boring, I didn't smile enough, and when I did it was sarcastic. But then she clued me in on who had made the complaint, and it all made a little more sense, but was still a little bizarre.
There is a group of four students that tends to be very chatty during class, comes in at least ten minutes late every day, and takes at least fifteen to twenty extra minutes for their break every day. Two of them missed the first week of class and came in late while talking at the beginning of this week. So at one point during class yesterday I was explaining to every one that we were turning to a new page (the next one) and going to do some exercises at the bottom of the page. At this point one of the girls, who had been talking to someone the whole time I was speaking, gave me this completely bewildered look as if to say, "Where are we and how was I supposed to know?" Then she said, "I don't know where we are!" even though we hadn't really begun yet, and we were going to do the first few as a class. I said, "I know you don't because you were talking," and then smiled to show that I found it all funny but also to let her know that she shouldn't be talking. There was a quick laugh from some of the class and then we moved on. So of course, that was the person leading the complaints against me. In fact, the boss told me that one of the students was shaking his head and putting his head in his hands to try to stop her from levying all of these false charges against me, especially the "only calling on one student to read" part, which is more than a few steps away from reality, as he's always raising his hand to read first, and I let him read but then have to ignore him the next eight times because other people want to read.
Luckily my boss was on to them already, and was aware they were chatty instigators based on the last class they were in. Even so, she said she had to observe my class.
She didn't come during the first hour today, so I figured she might have meant next week, and I just ran the class as usual. It had been a while since we had done a group exercise, but that's mostly because--as I mentioned in a previous post--the school has assigned a text book with material that is a little too advanced for this group, and the exercises are beyond their understanding. So I came up with a simple exercise for them to practice the grammar with a partner, and had them all write down things they "used to" do. I told them that they would be working in pairs to interview each other after the break. Of course, once the exercise was already under way, my boss came in to observe the class. Better yet, the complaining students were over fifteen minutes late coming back from break. They were talking a little when they came in, and my boss couldn't help but shush them. Then the rest of the class went perfectly and I found out later that I was great and they were the problem. Even so, it's always good to have a challenge to step up your game.
After a long week of work (I had to catch up the second class at high speed this week because of all the holidays) I was very happy to go home, but I didn't want to waste the evening. I remembered that when I used to live in New York they had these free Friday nights at the Museum of Modern Art, so I checked the web site and sure enough they still do.
It's absolutely beautiful that anyone can just walk in and see the genius of Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Seurat, Miro, Dali, Rousseau, Cezanne, Munch, Gauguin, Duchamp, Ernst, Mondrian, Warhol, de Kooning, Rothko, Pollock and Jasper Johns completely for free. Even better, because the free admission draws such a crowd, you can listen to your favorite music without fear of bothering people or being shushed by guards in what would normally be a mostly vacant and quiet room.
When I entered the exhibits the first one to greet me was the face of what must have been a gigantic clock. Its hands were at the time 5:24. 5/24 is Bob Dylan's birthday. When I began my big road trip West in 2012, I stayed at my friend's in Ithaca and flipped open his memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1 to this very page, I kid you not (I never kid about these things):
I was lucky I had places to stay--even people who lived in New York sometimes didn't have one. There's a lot of things I didn't have, didn't have too much of a concrete identity either. "I'm a rambler -- I'm a gambler. I'm a long way from home." That pretty much summed it up.
In the world news, Picasso at 79 had just married his 35 year old model. Wow. Picasso wasn't just loafing about on crowded sidewalks. Life hadn't flowed past him yet. Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open. He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that." (Dylan 55)
I was listening to a playlist of my favorite "artsy" music at the time, and The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" was on as I climbed the escalators to the fifth floor, where all of the familiar greats would be. I took introduction to Modern Art History in college, and I got a kick out of the fact that I still recognized many of the paintings. Right when that song hit its fantastic crescendo finale, I found myself standing in front of a Joan Miro painting painted in 1933-34. I was immediately reminded of the only quote I know from Joan Miro:
"The works must be conceived with fire in the soul, but executed with clinical coolness."
I had taken my time getting there, so I only had a little over an hour to spare before they closed. As soon as I arrived I promised myself to come back soon and arrive at 4 pm, when the free evening starts. Even so, I was able to see the famous canvases which were actually touched by these divine imaginations: Picasso's "Three Musicians," "Card Player," "Les demoiselles de'Avignon," and "Girl With Mandolin," Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Dali's "The Persistence of Memory," and the Rousseau where the gypsy is sleeping in the desert but the lion doesn't eat her.
The guards were already shooing us out the door when I realized I hadn't seen any Jasper Johns yet. At the last minute I noticed his American flag on a wall in a room without a cranky guard, so I quickly walked over listening to Hiromi's "Place to Be." After all of these years of wandering the globe, my current place to be is in New York City, amongst the stars and the stripes.
Jasper's painting brought back warm memories of my last viewing of his work, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, during last year's Super Bowl. I learned then that he thought numbers can be used to 'awaken the viewer's eye and mind to experience the familiar in a new way.' Also, he liked 'reconfiguring of familiar subjects in different media and different dates as a means of providing new ways to read the signs.'
As I walked through the lobby of NYC's MoMA, eleven months after my last encounter with that particular artist's work, I saw another familiar work of art. It was Mike Kelley's teddy bear, which was on the subway for my first few months after moving back to the city.
I clapped and said, "Hey Bear!" The universe loves when you applaud.
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