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Entries in education (378)

Saturday
Jan072023

South of Mandalay Part 3

An eight-car train from Yangon to Mandalay rumbles past. Lonely whistles blow. Ain’t nothing but the blues sweet thing.

Horse cart traps jingle jangle hoof tarmac music, prancing and dancing along dirt paths - On Comet, On Cupid, Dasher and Dancer.

The peripatetic facilitator of English, Courage, Creativity and Fun is here until 12 February on a three teacher team from Mandalay. 

He arrived in early December to prepare the English program for 365 G 10 students. Two additional teachers will arrive for one month. He’s here for the duration.

His sleeping room is spacious, light, leaf shadows. He salutes the sun and burning stars every morning through leaves of time.

Food in the family kitchen prepared by a smiling auntie is delicious; spicy curries, chicken, fish, pork, fresh veggies, soup, rice, fruit. Everyone is soft and attentive.


Native barbarian speaker focus is English exposure; Writing, Reading, Listening and Speaking with respect enabling Courage. 

In addition to text stuff  - artists, writers and dreamers explore and discover their infinite beauty and potential with Creative Notebooks. SOP. Mind map yourself. How to be more human.

How did I grow?

Chess lessons, strategies, and tactics improves their critical thinking skills, planning, logic, accepting responsibility for their actions, visualization, time management, and teamwork.

Learn. Play. Share. 

Students live in separate dorms at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.

The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.

Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions.

Zero gadgets.

They study Burmese, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m.  Sonorous voices echo daily.

They leave school one day a month with parents. Freedom.

Saturday
Jan072023

South of Mandalay Part 3

An eight-car train from Yangon to Mandalay rumbles past. Lonely whistles blow. Ain’t nothing but the blues sweet thing.

Horse cart traps jingle jangle hoof tarmac music, prancing and dancing along dirt paths - On Comet, On Cupid, Dasher and Dancer.

The peripatetic facilitator of English, Courage, Creativity and Fun is here until 12 February on a three teacher team from Mandalay. 

He arrived in early December to prepare the English program for 365 G 10 students. Two additional teachers will arrive for one month. He’s here for the duration.

His sleeping room is spacious, light, leaf shadows. He salutes the sun and burning stars every morning through leaves of time.

Food in the family kitchen prepared by a smiling auntie is delicious; spicy curries, chicken, fish, pork, fresh veggies, soup, rice, fruit. Everyone is soft and attentive.


Native barbarian speaker focus is English exposure; Writing, Reading, Listening and Speaking with respect enabling Courage. 

In addition to text stuff  - artists, writers and dreamers explore and discover their infinite beauty and potential with Creative Notebooks. SOP. Mind map yourself. How to be more human.

How did I grow?

Chess lessons, strategies, and tactics improves their critical thinking skills, planning, logic, accepting responsibility for their actions, visualization, time management, and teamwork.

Learn. Play. Share. 

Students live in sepearet dorms at the school. They’ve come from distant Shan state villages and Myanmar areas. They are their parents’ social security.

The school has an excellent reputation for matriculation results.

Segregated classes. Walking on campus, girls shield their faces from distant boys. No social testosterone distractions.

Zero gadgets.

They study Burmese, math, history, physics, chemistry, science, biology and Magic and Potions from 6-11, 1:30-6, 7:30-11 p.m.  Sonorous voices echo daily.

They leave school one day a month with parents. Freedom.

Sunday
Jan012023

South of Mandalay Part 2

A thin stick broom sweeping world dust cleans perception.

Two doctor brothers own the fifteen-year old school. They speak good English. Friendly, resourceful and gentle. Their parents are also doctors.

Zones are under construction - new rooms and a kitchen for foreign teachers near the dining room. A gym and library are being built between long two-story buildings with eight classrooms per level. Old trees prosper. Crows and dogs scavenge garbage.


Men and boys hammer, saw, dig, carry lumber, bricks, rebar iron and mix cement.

Boys shovel dirt from trenches.

Women shoulder excavated dirt in bamboo baskets.

In the shade of 300-year old trees girls sort piles of plastic water bottles and Styrofoam containers.

Crows watch with disinterest.

Kitchen women sitting in a sacred circle talk about life,

love and their emotional well being while peeling onions.

They live longer.

Uprooted bamboo are planted against cinder block walls decorated

with brown and green broken glass shards to prevent education from escaping.

Tree branches hacked into rough art forms pierce blue sky.

Fear & Curiosity converse with gestures. Do something you’ve never done before.

Trust, love, friendship.
Communicate. Learn. Imagine.
I am a rainbow.

This school reminds a ghost-self of rural schools in Sichuan, China.

Broken windows, trash, rough cement passages where sewage smells like success.

Painted platitudes and Odes sing on the roof.

Learning in Paradise !

Cement shells, paper exams plastered on windows.

Faded green paint. Wooden benches.

Worn wooden floors. Blackboards. Chalk n' talk.

Cover your mouth when you erase the past.

Ghost-self meditates with sleeping tigers.  

Monday
Dec262022

South of Mandalay Part 1

Fog shrouds trees before dawn on a chilly December morning.

Mornings are fraught with mist as an orange burning orb rises over forests and rice paddies.

Crows caw sing wing wind songs above monks chanting sutras at a pagoda. A bell reverberates.

Leaves dance free from The Tree of Life.

This raw, direct immediate experience reminds a traveler of Phonsavan, Laos near the Plain of Jars, long ago and far away in the winter of 2013. A Little BS came of it.

Here at 5:45 a.m. below trees with yellow leaves,

100 grade ten female students with dancing flashlights trace a dirt path.

They've escaped the comfort of hostel dreams.

They dance toward classrooms and a cavernous dining hall for rice and vegetables.

Hot soup if they are lucky. Mumbling voices scatter singing birds.

Female student voices reciting scientific lessons at 6:15 a.m. echo from classrooms at the Family Boarding School.

Dystopian wrote memorization. Utilitarian. Repetition. Learning by heart. It’s not about learning. It’s about passing the exam and marks. Vomit the material.

The wisdom of the heart is deeper and truer than knowledge in the head

They drone on huddled, hunched over wooden benches in jackets and yarning caps with swinging tassel balls. A bundled teacher scratches white words on a blackboard

Today is the day of my dreams

A narrow garden of hanging pink, orange, purple, white orchids reflect shadows before scattered light sings. An office girl sprays H20 diamonds on petals and green leaves

A distant solitary bell reverberates
Monks chant sutras at a pagoda

Thursday
Nov032022

Akiko

“The fear of living, observing and experiencing in absurd detail where others lack the self-scrutiny or courage to voice them,” said David Foster Wallace.

*

            Sheep fear watching other people make things happen and not knowing what the fuck is going on, said Z. Sheep and robots fear taking a risk. They know it’s easier to do nothing than take a chance, said Leo.

            I cut useless meaningless vague words blocking the narrative river. I am innocent, happy, empty and brave. I am not afraid to make wise selections when it comes to editing this massive amount of verbiage, said Zeynep.

            Where’s the burn bag, said the janitor.

            I fear Room 101, said Winston Smith in 1984.

            Poor schools makes it easier for SYSTEMS to control ignorant citizens.

            Leo - In Utopia we learn the less we do the fewer mistakes we make. The fewer mistakes we make the less we are criticized. I remain safe and happy. It’s called THE SYSTEM. Brainwashed. You see this in every Asian education system.

             Students shuffle in, remove their brains, soak them in a cleaning solution that is not the solution for fifty tedious minutes and replace said gray matter at the end of class. It’s endemic. Social conditioning.

            A teacher is Parent #2. School is your first dictator.

            Big Brother is watching. Save face. It’s your karma.

            The fear of humiliation is greater than the fear of death, said Death.

            Karma is the universal law.

            Will your characters discuss moral ambiguities? Yes. They will speak with nouns and verbs and use specific adjectives for description, playing with words like Joyce. They will play with ideas, like Borges, said Zeynep.

Attributes of good ideas said Devina.

a.         Simple

b.         Unexpected

c.         Concrete

d.         Credible

e.         Emotional

f.          Story-containing

            Good writing is clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. There are people who talk about things, said Zeynep, People who talk about people and people who talk about ideas. The life of the mind.

            Is a place a character, asked Tran, Sure, said Devina, A place has character like Kroma, Cambodia, a sleepy river town, famous for pepper, Sunflower’s hands, Milling Around and the SIGN ones, said Rita.

            Writers use a specific location in their work, said Omar. Cadiz, Spain worked its way into my morning pages. I traveled with a nomad after 9/11.

             His laughing axe synthesized metaphors of death, sacrifice and letting go. His mirrors became gifts (hello beauty) and gifts multiplied gifts with gratitude. The gift keeps moving. It was imperative to leave the united states of confusion and Morocco behind.

            Exile suited our spirit. It was the irony of ironies, pressed irons with heavy starch in the collar please I told the world’s dry cleaner. Wash and wear. Dry a tear.

            Nothing is true & everything is permitted, Omar told Akiko, a Japanese fashion designer in Cadiz.

            Everything is permitted with fabric and threads, naked in the dark exploring their personal puzzle maps, tracing contours through the Sierras in Andalusia toward beaches woven with linen and silk.

            They were two orange and black butterflies dancing in a courtship ritual. They slept together in a Hokkaido love hotel filled with mirrors.

            At 2 a.m. Cadiz garbage workers in fluorescent yellow tiger stripes collected discarded words along narrow streets.

            Omar wrote the morning down as sky painted orange, pink and cerulean colors. A crescent moon hung in the west. He walked down Benjumeda Street as uniformed school kids gripped parental hands passing veiled grandmothers wearing widow market black at intersections on their daily economic briefing. Roman cobblestones rested in white shadows. Cool clear air dusted lungs.

            The Plaza de Falla Moorish red brick extremities shimmered in soft light. Arches formed prayer hands. Golden, cast iron, bronze, brick, tile, and papier mâché arch models in the world prayed for non-violence, dialogue, a ceasefire and arms control.

            Arms out of control waved goodbye to sanity and millions of orphans.

            Weary serious sad med students gripping texts crossed plazas toward class. Matriculation was a fading dream. Two men grimaced a ladder past a hospital and a fortune teller selling lottery tickets. Gambling was a big deal in Cadiz. Machines in bars with three virgin cherries rotated. ONCE lottery tickets bought the population where 40% were unemployed.

            Pay now pray later. The best is yet to come, said an unemployed Roma fortune teller.

            A nurse in white perfection entered a cafe for coffee. Old people hobbled in and out of a hospital. A woman left the hospital carrying one crutch. Needing Grave Digger she walked past an ambulance. I’m busy, said Digger, See my calloused hands.

            Death stood watch 24/7 in the big leagues.

            Book of Amnesia, V1.

Book of Amnesia Volume 1 by [Timothy Leonard]