Rocco Maiolo's Ramblings and Musings

Here are some things I've learned after 22 years of teaching: It's a vocation, a calling, not a job. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work, commitment and a sense of humour to do it well. If you want to find excuses as to why you can't do better there are a lot to choose from. It's not in the budget, my admin doesn't support me, they're always changing things and on and on. If you want to find reasons to do better there are lots of those to choose from too. Right now I have 78 -- Tracey, Joel, Brooke, Rachel, Brandon, Julie, Jeff, Luke, Jordan, Cassie, Kasey, Kyle, and Joshua but to mention a few... I think you get the picture. No student wants to do badly, neither does any teacher or principal. If any of the above do do badly there's usually a reason. Unpack that reason and you can fix the problem; focus on the reason and you compound the problem. Or, like the Japanese proverb reads: It's better to fix a problem than to fix blame. People don't c...

So why the Western fixation with professional sports by a certain demographic (namely, 40 - 72-yr-old males) to which I belong? Let's state the obvious; that being that since we're in a first world country, we have the means -- the money and the leisure time to indulge ourselves. That would explain a lot of other things too: addictions, consumerism, dysfunction and obesity. But back to the fixation with pro sports: in my case, NHL hockey. I've never played ice hockey. I've played all other sorts of hockey: Cosom hockey, floor hockey, ball hockey, table hockey, EA Sports hockey, arcade hockey, sock hockey, basement hockey, and even once barn hockey! So I'm guessing part of the fixation would be involvement with the sport. But I'm guessing it has to go a lot deeper than that. Does it play into some sort of hero fantasy? Is it a vicarious thing? Is it the grown up equivalent to why adolescent boys are fascinated with super heroes? Does it compensate for u...

I and my grade 10's are watching Pacino's Merchant of Venice . Wow, what a tough film to do well (as a comedy?!). The court scene is so riveting/emotional and then you have to follow that up with this light comic banter about the rings. But the bard knew what he was up to, I guess. Jessica is conspicuously silent during Act 5. I'd love to know how Shakespeare would have directed his actor to play the Jessica character during Act 5... A Stratford production I saw once had Antonio and Jessica left alone on opposite sides of the stage with their letters. They look up from their reading, glare at each other and exit. .. In the Pacino version... I forget... but I'm watching it now... Okay, here it comes: very brief few seconds with Jessica and Lancelot looking at each other uncomfortably/almost guiltily. And -- tellingly -- the last 2 scenes are (1) Shylock being literally shut out of his synagogue and (2) Jessica fingering her turquoise which, rumour had it, she had traded ...

Yesterday I went to an educational workship hosted by the DSBN. The speaker was Will Richardson from New Jersey. He said that the current education system is failing our children because we're not learnin' 'em about wiki's and twitter and netiquette and stuff. He said they're using it all, but they're using it badly and we're clueless. He made a strong case that our future (our present, really) will look very different than our not too distant past. He kept using the word "transparency" w.r.t. privacy. Ie. our concept of privacy will be radically different than what it once was. My head is still spinning as to why I should use twitter and delicious.com and wiki's and ustream.tv and on and on...

I've never seen the same movie twice at the theatre because I'm too cheap. But two nights ago I watched Star Trek for the second time in one week (the first time was last week at an IMAX). Okay, maybe I'm not objective because I grew up watching Star Trek TOS in reruns on channel 29 out of Buffalo (rotary antenna reception, Zenith TV, 1972). Everyday from 4 - 5 pm. I've seen all the movies and all the shows. And I've read a lot of the books. Apart from the fact that I've never been to a convention and I don't speak Klingon, I'm pretty much a ST geek. Anyhow, this movie was great. J.J. Abraams took some risks (I'm guessing he had the cannon people over a barrel... I'm thinking it was J.J.'s way or no way) and man did they pay off. The casting was great, special effects were spectacular, script was good, and it's got sequels written all over it. Go watch it; you won't be disappointed.