Category: Teachers/Educators

Make a list of all the religious symbols you can make using soda pop boxes …

Darth Harley walked slowly with Darth Bowser as Harley tried to reason his way through a problem.

H: It was weird. Marty just showed up in a dress today and said he wanted to use the girls’ bathroom.

B: How do you feel about that?

H: I’m sure it would make the other girls uncomfortable.

B: It used to make a lot of people uncomfortable when white people married black people, but we now know there’s nothing wrong with that. People being made uncomfortable isn’t necessarily a reason to think something is wrong …

H: But what about sports? It’s unfair to let men compete against women in sports like swimming.

B: Then how can it be both right and wrong?

H: Maybe we’ve created a problem because we’re asking the wrong question. Worrying about boys who identify as females using the girls’ bathroom is only a problem if there are only two bathrooms. If there was an extra bathroom for transgender females, this wouldn’t be a problem. Sports are the same. If boys who identify as girls don’t want to compete against boys, then invent a new division for transgender girls. When they saw it was unfair for someone who was 6″4 and 260 pounds to wrestle or box against someone who was 5″7 and 130 pounds, they didn’t get rid of boxing or wrestling. They made different weight divisions.

B: It’s in seeing a false dichotomy that we can often find wisdom, Harley. It was a paradox that respecting transgenderism seemed both right and wrong, but this problem came from trying to fit transgender people into the traditional categories of either male or female. In seeing transgender as a new category on its own, transgender people are able to receive the respect and dignity they deserve.

Darth Harley was sitting under a beautiful, lush tree taking in the warm afternoon sun and enjoying a Harry Potter audiobook. His master Darth Bowser saw what he was doing and, visually upset, approached Harley.

B: What are you doing?

H: I’m reading. I was going to learn to do it with my eyes, but read-aloud is easier, whether someone reading aloud to me in person or on audiobook. I tried reading with my eyes, but that’s hard. Actually, I don’t know any kids who read with their eyes anymore except for texting and facebook and stuff.

B: I see you have no marginalia for what you are reading. You’re just sitting there absorbing the book like a spunge.

H: What’s “marginalia?”

B: That’s when people used to read and make notes on the page of the ideas that were coming to them about the book, like what the story reminded them of, or how what they were reading connected to something many pages earlier.

H: Oh, I don’t do those things. With audiobooks you have to focus on letting the story unfold, so there is no time for relating or reflecting.

B: Audio books can be good for training you imagination to picture what you are reading, but there is much more to it. For instance, do you understand a book better the first time you read it, or the fourth time?

H: The fourth of course.

B: Why is that?

H: I guess because reading a book isn’t just like someone taking a walk and describing what they see, but also the different parts of the book are connected and so on a fourth reading you really see how the end is already an acorn in the beginning that is about to grow into an oak tree.

B: And non-fiction?

H: It’s the same in that later ideas are connected to earlier ones so connecting through reading in this way helps you see, not only the trees, but also the forest.

B: So I guess you want to trade in your audiobook for the real thing now?

H: No, not yet. This is a peaceful easy day suited for peaceful easy reading. I’m happy to just let my imagination create a world for me today. I’ll save the heavy lifting for another day!

Question:

When you read this article below, what do you thing are some of the most important points it makes about literacy?

Accepting the reality of a less literate age

“When your power eclipses mine I will become expendable. This is the Rule of Two: one Master and one apprentice. When you are ready to claim the mantle of Dark Lord as your own, you must do so by eliminating me.”
―Darth Bane, to Darth Zannah

Amy watched as her friend Darth Harley stared intently at a picture of a box.

“I don’t care what that old fool Bowser said,” Amy said with frustration. “You really are looking at a box and there is no way to unsee it.”

Amy hated to see her friend struggle to understand Bowser’s ridiculous claims and ideas, but Harley was obsessive in that way so she left him to his impossible task and went skipping with a few of the other kids.

Harley had spent enough time with Darth Bowser that if his master saw something as difficult and important, he needed to think further on it.

“I need your help, master,” Harley thought. A focus and calmness came over Harley and he imagined Darth Bowser as an interlocutor asking him questions:

• H: I can’t see it master. I can’t see beyond the cube.

• B: Everywhere and at all times people are told to see cubes because that is what is important. They chase the lie of the whole and miss the truth of the parts. They ask: What’s the theme? What’s the main idea? Everywhere and at all times people see the box as the truth and the most important when all the box is, is a lie their mind is telling them. Learn to see beyond the cube, Harley.

Harley looked intently at the cube. Somehow, it was there and obvious to anyone who looked at it, but somehow it was not real… Then, Harley had a flash from the Muse. He took out a piece of paper and drew the cube, but in 2 parts: the inside and the outside:

Later in the day, Harley found Bowser and related his success in beginning to see beyond the cube.

• B: Wherever there is a whole, there are lies that are itching to erupt from them. Tell me, my young apprentice, if you flip a coin a thousand times, how many should turn up heads?

• H: Half

• B: Good, and with all that mathematical and scientific knowledge about probability can you predict the outcome if I flip this coin right now?

• H: No master. There is so much still to learn. THUMB’S UP!

“Two there should be. No more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it.”
―Darth Bane

“What’s cooler than being Cool? Ice Cold (Andre “Ice Cold” 3000).”

“What’s cooler than being Ice Cold? Absolute Zero (Darth “Absolute Zero” Bowser).”

On one of those nights that promises profundity but all too often lapses into the mediocre, Darth Harley and his mentor Darth Bowser were out for a stroll.

B: (looking up a the stars) Beautiful night Harley. What do you see?

H: (starts naming the constellations)

B: Constellations?! That’s ridiculous. Do you believe what you see or do you believe what I tell you?

H: Always what you tell me my master.

B: Then learn to see beyond constellations. Do you think God painted a connect the dots puzzle in the sky?

H: Of course not, my lord.

B: You must learn to see the randomness that is the truth of the sky, not shapes and patterns. (draws a shape in the dirt) What’s this?

H: (hesitates) A box … A square prism?

B: Again, you need to see beyond the lies your mind is telling you. Boxes are 3D and you can put stuff in them. This drawing is 2D and flat:

H: I have much to learn, master

B: Well, that’s the starting point. Do you know the weekend is arriving soon

H: Yes master.

B: Does time flow backward with the weekend arriving, like someone kicking a ball to you, or does time march forward with you arriving at the weekend?

H: I guess both, depending on how you look at it. Calendars and clocks march forward, although we just as much can experience time flowing backward.

B: Both, or neither? Have you considered that time may not be what you sense but rather how you sense? In a dreamless sleep where the mind doesn’t create time as a place for experiences to take place in, what do you experience?

H: Nothing at all, just drifting off to sleep in one instant and awaking in the next even though many hours may have gone by.

B: Learn to see beyond the world of everyday opinion. It’s only in doing this that you can become strong in the Dark Side Of The Force!

H: Yes, my lord.

Question: What is a cult?

• Feb 18, 2023
  

• “516 days since the Taliban BANNED girls from going to school. Afghanistan is the ONLY country on earth that forbids women and girls from getting an education. To deprive the women & girls of Afghanistan the basic human right of an education is a grave crime against humanity. (Shabnam Nasimi).”

Do you think education is a basic right everyone should have?

You may know we evolved from apes, but did you know even earlier we came from sea creatures?

“Evolution is wonderful. Here’s the incredible walking fish, Tiktaalik, – part of the fins-to-limbs story showing how aquatic vertebrates transitioned to becoming walking, air-breathing land animals. (Prof Alice Roberts).”