A Generative Metaphor for Student Success: Rethinking the City College of San Francisco’s Student Success Task Force Recommendations

The CCSF Student Task Force is a group of board members, administrators, professors and students that was put together in 2010 by Chancellor Donald Griffin to analyze and respond to the findings of the college’s 2009 equity report, which found that larger percentages of black, Filipino, Latino, Pacific Islander
and Southeast Asian students wanted four-year degrees than did their
Asian and white counterparts. Yet, according to the report, those same
groups — except for Southeast Asians — transfer to four-year schools at
significantly lower rates than Asians and whites. The graduation or
transfer rate for blacks is 24 percent; for Latinos it is 23 percent. For white
non-Hispanics, it is 31 percent” (Pogash 2010).

The CCSF Task Force was also a response to the State’s Student Task Force, which was put together in order to gain insight into the state colleges’ inequities and needs. According to the CCSF Chancellor’s Task Report released in 2011, “The [CCSF] Taskforce was organized in May 2010 to strategically work on the planning and assessment of City College’s intervention efforts to address the student achievement gap.” In a December 2010 article in City Currents: A Newsletter for the City College Community, CCSF Academic President Karen Saginor pointed out that the Task Force was focused on defining student success, in all of its manifestations, including successful transfer to a four-year college, an AA degree, a certificate, or employment. She elaborated on her blog: “The concerns expressed by most of the students were getting into classes AND getting the resources (whether jobs, books, loans, scholarships, etc.), and support learning, followed my requests for more dedicated space and dedicated support from counselors and others for affinity groups (International students, AB540 students and veterans)” (Saginor 2011).

Serving around 100,000 students across San Francisco, CCSF is to my knowledge the largest community college in the nation and contains an extremely diverse student body, in terms of student age, nationality, socio-economic status, family status, and employment status. Compounding these challenges, multiple budget cuts issued from Sacramento have hit California education with a sledgehammer. According to Joe Fitzgerald in a 2011 article in The Guardsman, a CCSF student publication, “The City College Board of Trustees voted to approve a budget of $191 million for the remainder of the college’s 2011-2012 fiscal year. This budget includes cutting a whopping $1.9 million in funding for classes, a sacrifice made in the face of an ongoing statewide fiscal crisis meaning that thousands of students are in danger of not getting into classes” (2011). According to Board President John Rizzo, “Last fall 15,000 students could not get into classes due to budget cuts” (Akinyemi 2011). On Monday, January 9th, 2012, the Community College Board voted to approve the Task Force recommendations, which, in the words of San Francisco Chronicle writer Nanette Asimov, “support a systemwide overhaul that could end many free classes for older adults and squeeze out students who fail to move quickly through the system” (2012).
CCSF’s English Department, in which I teach, was asked to cut its curriculum roughly in half in order to increase student retention by eliminating some of the potential leak points in the educational pipeline, and has managed to create and assess an accelerated pathway for students who can afford the time to take 6-credit classes that cover two sections in one semester. After piloting these new courses in 2011, the English Department Chair, Jessica Brown, indicated, “close to two times as many students will complete their English sequence through this accelerated pathway.” Still according to data that Brown presented, “49% (over 5,000) students who attempted to get into English classes were unable to enroll; due to budget cuts, many sections of English have been cut for Spring 2012” (Griffin 2011).

The Task Force recommendations, according to a Press Release available on the CCSF Educational Access TV webpage, “are meant to radically defund the community college system,” and “shrink government sponsored education” (Kappra). Furthermore, they would place the assessment of student placement and success in the hands of state legislature instead of the academic departments, prioritize registration for students that are declared as transfer students, and prioritize funding for students based on defining academic “success” on very narrow, state-mandated standards. There has been strong opposition to the CCSF Task Force recommendations by teachers and administrators, including the CCSF Board of Trustees itself. As Academic Senate President Karen Saginor (2011) stresses:

No single definition would cover the diversity of student educational needs at City College. We want definitions of success that reflect all of our students and not just some of them. We reject criteria that will narrow our focus from multidimensional learning to superficial credentials. And we want measurements of progress that will apparently value those students whose rates of achievement are slowed by the need to work full-time to support a family, by the absence of role models or technological tools, or other socio-economic obstacles that the college lacks sufficient resources to ameliorate.

Partially sponsored by the Lumina Foundation, with input from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC), the State Task Force recommendations envision student success as applying only to transfer students, by and large to US citizens, and primarily to students who succeed at a state-mandated rate. The CCSF Task Force recommendations mirror state and national visions of student success as a race-to-the-top, as a motivational issue to be handled by punishing student failure, in this case not meeting the state’s arbitrary timeline, rather than interpreting the stories of the students and providing support wherever needed.

We need new metaphors for City College student success. Donald Schön states, “a ‘metaphor’ refers to a certain product – a perspective or frame, a way of looking at things – and a certain kind of process – a process by which new perspectives on the world come into existence” (1996: 137). We need to remember the community in the very idea of the community college. As City College instructor Ed Murray in last week’s SF Chronicle article, “Don’t cut the poorest of our society. Where are they going to go if they can’t go to community college? To prison?” That is apparently what the state and the community college board are telling us, that the community college is now a junior college, a gateway through which the fortunate can move briskly into four-year colleges. Schön defines a generative metaphor as “a particular kind of SEEING-AS, a meta-pherein’ or ‘carrying over’ of frames or perspectives from one domain of experience to another” (1996: 137). We need to carry over the original vision of Archibald Cloud, the founder of San Francisco City College, who as Chief Deputy Superintendant of the San Francisco Unified School District in 1930, saw a need for an educational system that served the many in the community whose educational paths had been sidelined by the Great Depression: as City College biographer Austin White defines the students that Cloud intended to serve, “students without adequate monetary resources who want to obtain a college education; students who had to make up academic deficiencies in order to gain access to college education; students who wanted to enroll in semi-professional training so they could enter vocational fields” (2005: 4). This was and should still be the original intent of San Francisco City College as well as the community college as a whole, as should serve as a metaphorical frame that is “carr[ied] over” into each new year at City College, and in the California community college system as a whole.

President Obama has repeatedly stressed the crucial role that the community college is to play in getting Americans back to work and restoring this nation’s middle class. “Calling them the ‘unsung heroes of the American educational system,’ Obama said community colleges ‘may not get the credit they deserve, they may not get the same resources as other schools, but they provide a gateway for millions of Americans to good jobs and a better life’” (Superville, Gorski, and Turner 2010).

Casey Davin recounted his story from motorcycle wreck to drug addiction to homelessness, to rehabilitation and to City College, in Etc. Magazine, a student-run periodical. “I can tell you that since I started here at City College of San Francisco, I’ve never felt better. I have a sense of accomplishment, just simply going to school.” We need a metaphor for City College student success that includes students like Casey, students whose lives interfere with a seamless transition into a four-year institution, students who need individual support and resources. As Saginor says in regard’s to Casey’s story, “I opine, every week that he showed up for classes and added something to his skill sets instead of taking drugs marked a success, not a failure” (2011). Since the mid-nineteenth century, the community college has been centered on serving the community’s needs. This requires placing principle before policy, by interpreting the diverse needs of our community, and framing the plight in a generative metaphor that includes its diverse range of needs. While social policy is commonly thought of as problem-solving, Schön asserts, “Problems are not given. They are constructed by human beings in their attempts to make sense of complex and troubling situations” (1996: 143). California sees the time it takes for students like Casey to fulfill their educational dreams a problem and needs to pan out and consider the issue through a larger lens. Perhaps the problem isn’t Casey, but our state’s prison system, which has grown into a financial burden that overshadows education, and our extremely underfunded K-12 system, which ranks among the lowest in per-student funding in the nation.

In my six years of teaching at City College, one of my former students, Lerone Matthis, comes to mind as a model student in the community college, and serves as a generative metaphor for community college success. Entering my English 93 class, a developmental – what the state would call remedial – composition course designed to prepare students for English 1A, the university-level freshman composition course. Like Casey’s, Lerone’s experience in public high school, in his case in Richmond and Vallejo, “was a joke,” a cruel one at that, that, instead of inspiring him and teaching him valuable skills for adulthood, sent him into petty crime, juvenile detention, and homelessness. When he entered my 93 class, just out of homelessness, struggling to support two children, and recently having passed his GED exam, he was extremely nervous, stuttered incessantly, but had a warm smile and a relentless drive to improve his life.

Over the last four years, Lerone has completed the English sequence – he took 1A and 1C with me and completed an honor’s paper on black social responsibility – and has been accepted into the UC system for the fall of 2012. He is active on campus, is a coordinator of the Student Activity Office, and was a student member or the Task Force. While he appreciates the option to take accelerated courses, he also appreciates the opportunity to move through the curriculum at his pace, taking advantage of as many opportunities as possible along the way. In a recent conversation with him, he shared a touching anecdote:
I recently explained my idea of the problem of patting down black 12-
year-olds at a dance. I related it to my whole idea from the essay I am
writing and once I was done I almost cried. I fully explained my idea to
the people listening and answered rebuttals without a problem. Now, I
think back to the beginning when I began your class, I could never
articulate my thoughts as well or make my argument stick as well as it
just did. I can really accredit you because if I never took your class in the
summer of 2008 I would have never realized any of this. Thank You.
(2012)

Under the “overhauled” system that was put into effect two Mondays ago, Lerone’s story will not be considered a success, at least not a success enough. For many students like Casey and Lerone, community college is literally a way off the streets, out of prison, and onto a better future. We need an inclusive metaphor for student success that includes students Like Lerone, who needed a bit of time to transition into college, but who excelled in academics, wrote research papers for honor’s contracts, become a student leader, and will transfer this year into the University of California.

Lerone feels that, though the Student Task Force at City College did create a successful accelerated sequence in the English Department, it favors students with no special needs, who are full-time students, who of course should be served as well. What we have found to be a success is giving students the opportunity to achieve their academic goals as quickly or as timely as possible. Speaking of the results of the Student Task Force and the current State budget for education, Lerone stated, “We have made gains in some aspects of the CCSF Task Force, but there is a long way to go to get the underrepresented student to consistent academic success. Unfortunately, we are now having our hand forced by the State’s Student Success Task Force, so we will now have to tailor our new, innovative ideas around.” Realizing that the outcomes of CCSF’s Student Task Force is in response to larger state budgetary restrains, and that in many ways the college’s hands are tied, Lerone still feels that the changes will affect students like himself, students that the community college was originally established to serve. “The Student Success Task Force defines success as more restrictions and less money. However, every economist knows that the best natural resource is the knowledge or education of the people who inhabit that country.”

Elizabeth Noyola arrived in California from San Salvador in 1986. Though she had not suffered personal danger from the war, her family was affected greatly by its presence, her brother was killed in prison after he was falsely accused of being a traitor, and her family was in many ways torn apart by the economic and social implications of the war. For a number of years she supported herself, learned English at City College, earned a bachelor’s degree in counseling, and secured a good position in a language lab at the Mission campus of the City College of San Francisco, all while making various attempts to apply attain residency, knowing that, because Salvadorians were not offered amnesty, and, because she was not directly persecuted politically, she would not have a good chance of passing the interviews at the INS. She spoke to me about sleeping three hours a night for over a decade in order to learn English, complete her transfer requirements, and completing the undergraduate program at San Francisco State University. “Education really helped me; that was my medication. Education was my medication. And that’s what gave me the path to be what I am now. Elizabeth’s story is a model for community college student success and, like Casey and Lerone’s should play an integral part in formulating how we metaphorically imagine student success at City College.

Just social policy needs to be formed around principals that are formed through the imaginative and loving interpretation of the stories of those who are affected by it. We need to hear student stories and take a narrative approach to organizational development and social policy. The Task Force recommendations seem to ironically ignore the very students that the 2009 Equity Report argued were the most in need. Nowhere is student equity more important than in the community college system, in which people like Casey, Lerone and Elizabeth find alternatives to the streets, to homelessness, and to the vicious cycle of poverty. New metaphors for community college student success require “a normative leap from data to recommendations, from facts to values, from ‘is’ to ‘ought’” (Schön 1996: 147). We need a new model for student success at City College as serving the community, as a saving grace for those left out of the race, a bottom-up institution in a neo-liberal system that by in large misunderstands those who cannot keep up with the race to the top.

Bibliography

Akinyemi, Yomi
2011 “400 City College Classes Saved from Cuts, 350-400 Still Plan to
Be Cut Next Year. The Guardsman. June 12th, 2011.

Asimov, Annette
2012 “California Community Colleges Approve Overhaul.” San
Francisco Chronicle. January 10th, 2012.

Davin, Casey “Street Student: The Challenges of Doing Homework without a
2010 Home.” Etc. Magazine. City College of San Francisco, Fall 2010.

Fitzgerald, Joe
2011 “Final Budget for 2011-2012 Approved.” The Guardsman. June
12th, 2011. October 11th, 2012.

Griffin, Donald
2011 “Chancellor’s Taskforce Report on Student Equity and the
Achievement Gap.” City College of San Francisco.

Kappra, Rick
2011 “Press Release: Fact Sheet: Recommendations for Student
Failure.” No SSTF. .

Pogash, Carol
2010 “At City College, a Battle over Remedial Classes for English and
Math.” New York Times. June 24th, 2010.

Saginor, Karen
2011 “Student Task Force Recommendations Continue to Trouble
CCSF.” City Currents: A Newsletter for the City College. Vol. 27.
No. 14.

Schön, Donald and C. Argyris
1996 Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method and Practice.
Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1996

Superville, Darlene, Eric Gorski, and Dorie Turner
2010 “Obama Addresses White House Summit on Community
Colleges.” Huffington Host. 10/5/10.

White, Austin
2005 From Dream To Reality: City College of San Francisco: A Short
History. City College of San Francisco.

I Amsterdam

It has been a refreshing and exiting week in Amsterdam, seeing this charmed city for the first time, Jen’s home for twelve years, and having a sort of pre-honeymoon after our May engagement. With my new tenure-track position at City College, the world literature course that I taught for the first time, and my dissertation in full swing, it has been an incredible semester and I kept saying that I was overwhelmed with goodness. Here are the photos of the trip. http://classic.kodakgallery.com/mayerssteve/main/amsterdam?

I’ve been reading Han Van Der Host’s 1996 history The Low Sky: Understanding the Dutch, which Jen loaned me. From the Calvinist influence to Erasmus (I’ve also been reading his In Praise of Folly) to Wilhelm of Orange to the Union of Utrecht, it is interesting to learn about the changes in church and government in the 16th and 17th centuries and its influences on the national character, its tolerance and love of consensus, its sober skepticism of hauteur, its dedication to fighting repression and tyranny, its ontological frugality, its history of trade and internationalism, and its connection to water. Speaking of the sky, he says; “Too often, grey clouds hang above the land, filtering the sunlight so that the colours below become pallid and dull. My own plans all too often lost their way in a maze of endless consultations and meetings. When they did finally emerge from the mist, they had been trimmed down, thinned out and cut to size.” After two days of bright sun, the clouds have come in today (Monday), and I am thinking about the hugeness of the California sky and how every place has such a different sky, which defines the national pallet. I always thought the clouds in Botticelli’s paintings seemed too cartoonish and unreal in their fluffiness until I traveled in Italy.

Holland is flat. Taking the train from Schiphol, you will notice this flatness of the land, as you will in Nebraska or Iowa. “In the Netherlands, Dirceu [Borges] observed a kind of ‘flatness’, a tendency to mistrust the unconventional, a fear of surprises. There was no place for adventures.” Along with the low sky and the flatness of the land, water has a special place in Dutch consciousness. Jen took me to a water research center that has three glass tubes, about a foot in diameter each, one that shows the current water level in Amsterdam, one that shows the water level during the 1956 flood, and another one I can’t remember. In the Xenophobe’s Guide to the Dutch, a funny little handbook that Jen loaned me, they point out many Dutch phrases that point to this connection to controlling water, keeping it in, keeping it from overflowing beyond its boundaries, as a way of looking at life. This is seen in creating phrases: “They describe excess in terms of overload, a ‘flooding over’ – as if the waters had burst the dykes. In the Netherlands, extravagant people don’t waste money, they ‘spill’ it.”

Arriving at Schiphol Airport on Thursday morning at around nine, Jen met me with a big smile and a little Dutch flag, and we took the metro through city center to the Oud Ouest district, checked in at Jen’s friends’ Megan and Shayna’s. After meeting Megan and Shayna and having some coffee we walked around for a bit, met her friends Theo and Amy, and then brought a picnic to Vondelpark, a gorgeous leafy green park with a circular canal and little ponds with geese, swans, ducks, a stork. It was nice to lie on the grass and sleep for about an hour since I pretty much didn’t sleep on the plane at all. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, a bit warmer than San Francisco in June as they get their warmest period this early in the summer. We had a beer on the outdoor deck of the Blue Tea House, a round white, two story café in the park where people sit and drink White Beer and coffee.

We stayed Thursday night at Megan and Shayna’s and then checked into a studio apartment closer to city center that we are subletting for the rest of the stay. It’s a small but really attractive and comfortable place on a small canal with a nice little terrace off of the kitchen. We wandered the canal-lined streets and allies, through a corner of the red light district, the Nieuwmarkt past the De Waag, and ended up at the Friday night at the Van Gogh Museum, where a band was playing inn the lobby and saw the incredible permanent collection that included works by Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin, Maurice Denis, Manet, Monet, Cézanne and Pissarro. Among the Van Gogh paintings that I loved were “The Yellow House,” “Two Women in the Moon,” “The Hut, Peasants’ Church Yard,” “The Sowers,” and “’The Sunflower.” We had a beautiful dinner of duck salad, scallops and turbot on the sidewalk wine bar called, well, The Wijn Bar.

http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp

On Saturday, we met Jen’s friend Jan and visited the huge new public library. While they were catching up at the museum café, I walked to the maritime museum, which was unfortunately closed for renovations. In the evening, we visited English Bookshop and had wine at a bar on a canal with some members of Jen’s poetry group, Kate, Abra, Robin, Charlie. We then went to dinner at a spectacular Italian restaurant with Jules and Rini. On Sunday, we slept in and had a lazy day, which was really nice after so much socializing. It was a bit cloudy and cool, and we went out shopping and cooked a chicken with potatoes at our apartment with Angelique and Misha, who live in Utrecht.

On Monday we met Theo at the Rijksmuseum and wandered through the permanent collection, which features Rembrandt’s “Night Watch,” a large painting that portrays a militia company setting out on a search. While other paintings have featured militia companies, like Bartolomous Van Der Helst’s “Banquet of the Celebration,” which we had seen earlier, this was the first that portrayed one in action, setting out on a search, the captain’s hand emanating authoritatively out of the work’s center, and an angelic little blonde girl, the company’s mascot, illuminated among the bearded men austerely loading their rifles. The Rijksmuseum likes to bring in contemporary works that use “Night Watch” as a point of departure, and they contacted the contemporary German painter Anselm Keefer to create a work that was the opposite of the piece. The result is a three-dimensional triptych set in tall glass cases, the outer two with upside-down dangling sunflowers with long stalks, ten feet long perhaps, and covered in some sort of a metallic paint pr stain, and dangling above a floor that resembled the cracked surface of the moon like disembodied tentacles fixed in a frozen state of decay. In the middle cases a rusty and worn folding chair hangs hauntingly in violet moonlight.

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/

Theo pointed out two of his favorite paintings, which in his mind should be juxtaposed, both portraying Johan de Witt, a statesman who defended Netherlands from invaders, first as a gigantic swan beating its magnificent wings triumphantly over the nation in Jan Asselijit’s “The Threatened Swan,’ and then as a corpse hanging unceremoniously along side that of his brother in Jan da Baen’s “Bodies of the De Witt Brothers.” Adrien Pietersz Van de Venne’s “Fishing For Souls” juxtaposes the Catholic north of Holland on the left with Prince Maurice, Wilhelm of Orange’s brother, and the Protestant south on the right with Archduke Albert and Isabella, with a huge river separating them in which priests and reverends in boats fish for the souls. In the 16th century, following the 80-Years-War with Belgium, the paintings became smaller and focused for the first time on the simple beauty of the Dutch land. This was around the time that the Protestants were destroying the artwork in churches that became symbols of the blasphemous excess of the Golden Age. I also liked Hans Bollinger’s tulips, Johannos Torrentius, Hendrin Auercamp, Gerald Pos’ nocturnal paintings, and Johannes Vermeer’s famous “The Kitchen Maid,” as well as his “View of Houses in Delft.”

In the afternoon we popped into Wynand Fockink, an old schnapps and jenever (Dutch gin) bar, in a small alley behind Dan Square, and had some fois gras and duck rillet at Wine and Bubbles.

http://www.wynand-fockink.nl/index.php?page=proeflokaal&hl=eng

On Tuesday, I took the train to The Hague. The metro workers were striking in Amsterdam, so I walked across town to the central Station and took a train for 45minutes to The Hague (Den Haag). Not arriving at central station, I walked through the Chinese neighborhood, and soon arrived in the parliament buildings reflected on the still Hofvijer. It’s interesting to think that Ratko Mladic was transported here last week to face charges of genocide including charges for the massacres he organized in Srebrenica. I visited The Hague Historic Museum and the Mauritshuis, an ornate museum of Dutch masters that features Vermeer’s “The Girl With The Pearl Earing.” That night we had dinner at Smart Space, a cool art warehouse space, with Jen’s friend Laureen. On Wednesday we ran errands, starting the day off at a herring stand, one of many celebrating the first day of herring season with people lining up to eat raw haring with chopped raw onions.

On Thursday, I visited Anne Frank’s house, , which we had walked by a couple of times. There it is, just like we’ve read about, right in the middle of town, in the shadow of the Westerkerk, its little steeple rising up among the narrow Dutch buildings. The exhibit startes on the ground floor of the building and makes its way up four or five floors in which photographs, documents, and memorobelia of the Frank family are displayed. Along the way you are guided by bits of narration from the diary on the wall, and every few rooms, there is a short video. By the timne you reach the apartment, you have a sense of the distance between the street and their clandestine flat, and you enter the way they did, from behind a bookcase that swings open and up a steep set of wooden stairs. To stand in Anne Frank’s room, see the clippings from magazines, mostly pictures of women from fashion magazines scattered around with an ocasional bearded philosopher, peer through her window, touch the walls, and see the attick, her secret refuge, propells one back to the moment in which they lived, the quotidian simplicity of it, and the humanity. There has been an argument brewing over the death and removal of the famous tree that Anne Frank lookd at and hoped.

http://www.annefrank.org/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/world/europe/09tree.html?_r=1&hp

On our last night in town, after congregating with Theo at our apartment, we had an exquisite dinner at Blauw aan de Waal [Blue on the Wall], an absolutely gorgeous restaurant surprisingly located down a seedy alleyway in the Red Light District, in with Jules and Patricia.

http://www.mycitymate.com/in/nl-amsterdam/1502-Blauw_aan_de_Waal

one eleven eleven, a singular sensation

1/12/11 – It’s been quite a quiet few weeks at home relaxing, walking, hiking, jogging, taking care of loose ends, and preparing for my spring semester, which looks a bit dauntingly crammed. I’ve been given a full-time schedule of four classes to teach in the spring, so, on top of the new English 44B class, which is a survey of world literature from 1650 to the present, I have two 1C advanced composition courses focused on nature, civilization, and multiculturalism, and a 1A class, which is focused on California and the Americas.  On top of that, I’ll be taking two classes at USF, a class on leadership methods, and the dissertation proposal seminar, in which I’ll be writing my propsal to defend at the end of the spring.  With Jen getting back from Bangladesh (scroll down for her blog) on Friday, and school starting the same day, things are firing up.  2011 will be a busy year and by the end of it I should be almost done with my dissertation, working full-time at City College, and just hace a few stray classes to take at USF.  After a few weeks of regenerating in San Rafael, I am ready to start it up and am really going to focus on not burning myself out too much.

We had a nice Christmas at mom and dad’s house with Nana, Grandma, Judy, Jacquie, and Marty over on Christmas day for a turkey feast in the afternoon. We were missing Eric and Laura, who spent little Mags’ first Christmas at home in Portland, and Mags’ first birthday on 1/1/11 on the coast with friends.  Magnolia has gone from crawling to walking and is turning into an amazing little girl!

I also missed Jen, who celebrated at the Bhaga Club in Dhaka, though we had some celebrations with gifts from her family before she left in November, and more celebrating to do when she arrives, so Christmas has been an ongoing affair this year!  I had a mellow new year’s eve eating and drinking with Branko, and attended a big party with Fely at an Ivorian friend’s house in Brentwood with about 100 or so guests, mostly from the Ivory Coast: delicious African food and drink for all, and live music. Lot’s of fun!

I’ve also been playing a new gog the last couple of Sundays at the Revolution Café in the Mission, which has music every night and draws a crowd. It’s a revolving lineup that drummer Michael Smith arranges with some great musicians. Here are some links to an audio recording of one of the gigs with Peter Ild on trumpet, Carl Herder on bass, and Dick Crook on piano.

Set A – Stella; Beatrice; My Little Boat; Silver’s Serenade; Pure Imagination; Saga; In Walked Bud;

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6810054/Rev%20010211%20A.mp3

Set B – Simone; Manha De Carnaval (Gee); A Paz;(Marty – It Cld/ Fried; Cheesecake); Broadway; Outra Vez; Voyage;

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6810054/Rev%20010211%20B.mp3

Set C – (Joe – Blue In Green; Dolphin Dance); Four; Forest Flower; I Wish I Knew (Billy Taylor); Easy To Love; ”will play blues for tips”

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6810054/Rev%20010211%20C.mp3

I was in a couple of scenes in Jen’s brother Peter’s music video for his band, Sonny Pete, which will be released in March. Peter is a great composer, singer, and guitarist, and it was fun to hang out with hime for the day. We did a great early morning shoot of six of us in black suits and hats in really thick fog, walking down the road.

I got in a great hike with dad last week. We started at Lake Lagunitas, walked around Alpine lake, and up to Cateract Falls, which were beautifully full in the winter fog and encircled by lush ferns. I also enjoyed seeing Bhutto, a new documentary, with Mark at the Clay in the city.  We heard the director, who lives in the neighborhood, speak about his experiences filming and also working as a political advisor for Benazir Buttho. It was a great film with interviews with her daughters, and Zardari. Thad, Michiko and I had a huge meal at my place, beef Bourgignon with peppers, and taked by the fire last week, and also visited Branko and our friend Hashim’s new bistro on California and Divisadero called SF Grill Bistro, which serves incredible gourmet burgers made of Kobe beef, veal, lamb, elk, ostrich, and trout. Check it out if you are in the area!

Christmas Boats

Wow, it’s been a busy couple of months with classes and Jen arriving in early November from Amsterdam.  She is a month into a six-week project in   Bangladesh over the holidays so we’ve been making the best of it with intermittent Skype connection and phone cards. It occurs to me that Jen and I have talked to each other from five countries this year! You can follow along with her challenging work and exciting adventures on her blog. http://jen2bangladesh.wordpress.com/

We made the most of November with a beautiful weekend trip down the coast on the last warm weekend of the year, spending the night in Aptos at Seabreeze, and visiting Monterey, Cosanoa, Harley Farms.  Here are some photos of the coast. http://classic.kodakgallery.com/mayerssteve/main/weekend_on_the_coast?

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Peter and Maurene’s place in the Mission. Peter and Maurene cooked a delicious turkey, and Jen made the best stuffing with porcini mushrooms ever! I made some popovers a la Laura.  Here are some photos. http://classic.kodakgallery.com/mayerssteve/main/thanksgiving?

Jen bought a bicycle and spent a lot of time getting to know San Rafael while I was at work.

We caught the Post Impressionists exhibit at the De Young and really enjoyed the Van Goughs and the Gaugins.

http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/exhibitions/van-gogh-gauguin-cezanne

It’s been quite a couple of months for California with the Giants taking the World Series and Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer beating Whitman and Fiorino in the elections, thank god!

Father Richard, the priest from Boston who founded Olancho Aid, featured us in his blog after our second trip to Honduras in October. http://padredonahueblog.org/?p=612

We celebrated Paco’s 7^th b-day on Dia de los Muertos with the usual fresh fish, but Paco had eaten all of Audrey’s food and was too stuffed to eat his Ahi tuna! That was a first!

I’ve been practicing guitar with Andy Dudnick and we played a fun trio gig at Leland Tea Company for a fundraised for the Windhorse Foundation that Patricia put together. http://www.lelandtea.com/

I’m sad to say that my dear friend “Bishop” Norman Williams passed away in a nursing home in his hometown of Kansas City with his family there. He was a legendary San Francisco saxophonist and a great teacher and friend to many.  RIP Bishop – 4/2/38 to 12/8/10. Here is a biography and interview I did with him in 2009. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=28491

Christmas is upon is and with Jen in Bangladesh and Eric, Laura and Magnoia in Portland celebrating Mags’ first Christmas and birthday, it will be quiet here but nice. Mom and Dad and I are driving up to have a Christmas eve day lunch with David, Sharon and Jordan, where we’ll pick up Nana, and having a Christmas at Mom and Dad’s with Grandma, Judy, Jacquies, Marty, and Nana. Here are some boats lit up for Christmas on the San Rafael Canal.

Back From a Week in Honduras – Part 2

After an all-night flight with a momentary layover in San Salvador, we arrived in Tegucigalpa on Saturday morning. I flew down with James and Patricia, an engineer and educational consultant from the Bay Area, and Kyle and Carol, an engineer and a librarian and teacher from Washington, and we met Michael, Patricia’s brother-in-law in Tegucigalpa, and Jenifer, a special-needs teacher from Washington flew in the next day. Photos

Carlos, the administrative director of the school system in Jutigalpa and our main contact met us with his wife, Reina, and two of his three sons, Mario and Andres, and Victor, the driver and security guard.  We had arrived at SFO a few hours early to with extra baggage in order to figure out how to divvy up the $8,000 worth of equipment that we brought down, including two projectors and five new laptops, and a bunch of books and teaching materials.

We piled into the mini-bus and stopped at an office supply store in order to purchase about $1,000 worth of materials for Escuela Santa Clara, the elementary/middle school, and 15^th de Septiembre, an impoverished public school that had given us a list of supplies they needed in the spring.  Embarking on the three-hour trip east to Jutigalpa, we found that the winter (our summer) rains had turned what had been dry, golden hills into lush green hills, and turned what had been extremely bumpy dirt roads into even bumpier dirt roads with huge pot holes, some a few feet deep.  Arriving Jutigalpa at about 10pm, we dropped James, Kyle, and most of the supplies off at Escuelita Nazareth, the special-needs school, and then checked into the Hotel Boqueron. After checking in and dropping off our stuff, we all went out to El Pollo Loco, a rotisserie chicken place with really good chicken cooked over a real fire. The restaurant has picnic tables outside nest to sort of a fenced in cement courtyard where teenagers play soccer with some kind of a league. I had a Salva Vida, the common beer of Honduras, back at the hotel bar and had a long conversation with Ariel, the bartender, who is probably 23 or so, about the economic situation in Honduras, and the fact that many people, many of whom survive on less than a dollar a day, turn to the thriving drug trade, or end up heading up to El Norte, where they either disappear, or get killed along the way.

The next morning, we woke up early and went to a small church in Jutiquile, a tiny town outside of Jutigalpa, where Father Richard, the priest from Boston, who started Olancho Aid and the whole school system that we are working in, gives a sermon. As I am not catholic, I don’t participate in the service and communion, but I really enjoyed being with all these warm and thankful people.  As I looked around, I noticed that about 90% of the people there were women, and I thought about what Ariel and I had talked about last night.  Just as we did in March, we went to a family’s home with Richard for cold drinks and conversation.

We had a busy and productive workweek at the schools, mostly at the bilingual elementary/middle school, Santa Clara, and on Friday at the Spanish-speaking high school, Cardenal.  We offered professional development workshops all week in the afternoons at Santa Clara: Patricia taught cooperative learning and differentiating the curriculum, Jennifer taught proactive classroom management to some North American volunteers in English, Michael taught various technological workshops from the internet to Office to Excel; and I taught teacher preparation and critical thinking.  Carol was in the library at Santa Clara with Lupita, their librarian, training her on Koha, a library management system that we installed, and James and Kyle were working on the internet towers, improving bandwidth and internet speed, and creating backup system.  Wednesday was my free day to do some work on a paper that I am writing for my USF class next week, and translate my Powerpont into English to teach to the volunteers on Thursday, something I had not expected. On Wednesday, we dropped off some basic supplies at 15^th de Septiembre, an impoverished school that we had visited in the spring that serves about 150 students in two small windowless rooms with about five tables somehow.

There is quite a difference between the rich and poor here; I believe I read that 10% of  the population has 40 or so percent of the money (as opposed to the US, where 10% has 30% or so…).  Francisco, one of the school system’s administrators, told me that the average salary for a Honduran with a college degree is around 15,000 Lempiras, which is under $1,000 per year, while the average government worker makes ten times that, which is still not much my US standards of course. He also told me that in Jutigalpa, everyone knows who the drug traffickers are and that the police have no power and go to their huge houses and hang out with them.  Particia and I were driving to the high school with Francisco when h pulled behind a new Toyota Tacoma, which is a lot nicer than the average car, and he pointed out that the three guys in back with machine guns in broad daylight were well known narcotraficantes.  The police do set up roadblocks in town to harass campesinos for their drivers’ licenses when they make less that a dollar a day.  In fact, six people were gunned down in town on Wednesday night including two police officers and apparently people were celebrating the deaths of the police officers.

On Saturday, we drove to Tegucigalpa, stopping by Valle de Angeles, a beautiful mining town in the mountains outside of the city, stayed at the Plaza de San Martin Hotel in Teguciagalpa, and flew out on Sunday, just like the last the trip in March.  Overall, it was a fun and productive trip.  We will probably return next year and work on some level, perhaps coordinating a book drive, and bringing more ram memory for their computers. . It’s nine pm and I have three hours to go on this TACA flight to get to San Francisco.  I’m excited to see Paco and hope to get six hours of sleep before returning to work tomorrow.

Off to Honduras – part 2

I’m heading down to Juticalpa, in Olancho state in Honduras, for my second trip with engineers Without Borders, this Friday night. After assessing a school system’s needs in the spring, we are providing teacher education in technology and pedagogy, installing a computerized library system and bringing a bunch of laptops. I’ll be gone from Friday to Sunday the 17^th, and will have some stories to tell aftet I return!  Check out my blog postings and photos for the last trip.  For the past couple of months I’ve been teaching two classes at City College, English 93 and 96, and planning a new world literature survey course that I’ll teach in the spring that covers 1650 to the present.  At USF, I’ve been taking Research Methods, and Anthropological Research, both classes that are introducing the dissertation, so I’ve bben writing a lot of the introcuctory chapters.

I’ve been rehearsing with the Andy Dudnick Quartet once a month and played a few  gigs, one at Café Socha with tenor saxophonist Scott Silverburg, one at a private fundraiser for Jerry Brown in the Oakland Hills, and one an annual jam session, barbeque at my friend, bassist Marius Zaugg’s (the videos below are from the jam session).  I got to shake Jerry Brown’s hand after he approached me at the buffet table and he asker, “are those sandwitches cheese or tunafish?” and then, “what’s your name?” He then started to give a toast/speech, as I was standing right next to him!  I will say, Jerry Brown stuck me as a down-to-earth, concerned individual who deeply loves California. Here’s a video of Brown and Whitman on immigration. Check out the other videos as well. We have a lot of issues in California, and this campaign is heating up. They will be debating at Dominican University, just across the higheay from me in San Rafael on the 12^th.

As far as events go, I caught My Morning Jacket at the Ouside Lands Festival in the Golden Gate Park with Branko, and also heard Gogol Bordelo (thanks for the tickets and passes, Eric!). Branko and I also caught The Birth of Impressionism, a collection from the Musée D’Orsay. By the way, check out the latest interview with Eric, which is the most comprehensive yet.

Saturday Jam