Category Archives: Education

Day 70: 9/3/13: Back to School

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First shark-themed class. Babbled about my project. Showed a seal hunt from “Air Jaws”–trying to exploit/explore that weird human position: thrilled by the predator, empathetic  to the prey. Human beings as part of nature & observers of nature.

Trying to judge the silence of the audience. Were they bored? Enraptured?  Too soon to tell what the chemistry of the group will be. Some classes feel like interminably dull parties in which people with little in common engage in 16-week  conversations. Prattled on about how conservation being fun.  Offered extra credit for seeing Blackfish at the Laemmle in Pasadena.

“Can we watch it online?”

“Buy a ticket,” I snapped.

My God. Sometimes they’re just so lazy.

Talked about shark stereotypes. Of Megalodon. Of Mindless Eating Machines. Made a series of self-deprecating jokes. Realized how hard teaching is. Got a few laughs. Tried to scare away the slackers by telling them they’d be forced to memorize and recite a poem about the sea, remembering when I had to memorize and recite poem about the sea in a 7th grade science class. “I must go down to the sea again to the lonely sea and the sky….” Was I mindlessly repeating the lessons inculcated into me when I was 12? I flashed on my science teacher, Mrs. McClure, staring moodily through her goggles into the quick flame of the bunsen burner.

“Memorization is a lost art,”  I said, fondling my inflatable shark head. Gave my standard, if-you-think-you-might-drop-this-class-hand-in-your-syllabus-on-the-way-out spiel.

A sweet boy with Buddy Holly glasses stopped by my desk. “I have to admit,” he said. “Sharks might be….too overwhelming. I’m was hoping for….you know….Modernism?”

Day 69: 9/2/13: A Woman of Letters

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Shark fin soup

Shark fin soup (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had this bright idea to try to send a letter to every restaurant in the U.S. that serves shark fin soup. So far I’m half way through Massachusetts with a few scattered throughout the South and West.

While a restaurant manager will probably just toss a single, random but polite request in the garbage, if I enlist my student army to help me, maybe we can start making an impact. I imagine truckloads of letters being delivered into steaming kitchens all over the map. Letters are becoming rare things–they have a material weight that e-mails with their digital ephemerality (is that a word?) lack.

Perhaps this accounts for the lack of drudgery I feel stuffing envelopes, buying stamps, depositing messages into the dark unknown of the mailbox.

To access Sharksavers’ resources for restaurant letter writing, click here.

Day 66: 8/30/13: Walking Sharks & Dolphin Saviors

by in Animal Welfare, Education, Shark Attack, Shark Finning, Shark Trivia and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Fascinating stories about everyone’s favorite marine predators:

1. Is Shark fin soup losing popularity in China?

2. Meet the Walking Shark of Indonesia

3. Dolphins Rescue Surfer from Great White

4. 8 Cool and Bizarre Shark Stories from Treehugger

5. Man’s shark attack story is the most boring thing about him

Day 54: 8/18/13: Everyone Should Read This (and I don’t mean that as arrogantly as it sounds)

by in Activism, Education, God, Humor, Inner Turmoil, Marine Conservation and tagged , , , , | 6 Comments
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles and their c...

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles and their companions posed on a dais, image by Paul Saltzman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thom Knoles is a funny, grounded and warm meditation teacher who studied with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1960s, I think he may have overlapped with the Beatles’ tenure in Rishikesh. I felt like too much of a Beatles nerd to ask when I learned Vedic meditation from him last year.

Learning to meditate  was one of the greatest decisions I ever made.

Thom opened the lecture with this anecdote about speaking at the G8 summit. “I was the only one there wearing beads,” he laughed.  “Everyone here is suffering from chronic brain failure,” he said to the assembled leaders of the world. “Nothing’s going to come of this summit. Any questions?”

I don’t know how the G8 leaders reacted to that, but the crowd at the Santa Monica Marriott really dug it.

In a metaphor I remembered from the meditation class, Thom compared the human brain to an overloaded iphone that can barely process any new information. Decisions made using 2% of the stressed out overtaxed human brain are never going to solve terrorism, global warming, etc.

That’s where meditation comes in. And dharma. And karma.

Dharma is our personal role in the evolution of the universe. When we are living in dharma, doing what we’re meant to be doing at any particular moment, living is effortless and expansive.

To understand what we need to do, to know our dharma, Thom says we must learn to recognize and be receptive “in our least excited state”(meditative) to what “charms us” and to recognize what we have an aversion to.

Karma, on the other hand, is not the word plastered on tip jars in coffee shops. Karma is, according to Thom, “an action that binds.”

“The universe is not angry with us,” he explained. “It’s not punitive. It’s just hoping we figure things out.”

Unlike dharma, karma is restrictive. It is what we experience when we base our decisions purely on intellect and inaccurate assumptions. For example, “If I just keep doing this work (that I don’t really love) it will become something I love.” Or “I will repeat  the familiar even though the familiar makes me unhappy.” Karma is that corrective suffering that happens when we refuse to take risks, when we cling to the known world, when we are not courageous.

And like Thom’s brief address at the G8 summit, today’s talk at the Marriott was ultimately about courage:

“Find out what you should be doing. Embrace potential. Is it enough for you to continue eating, sleeping, pooping, taking up space on the earth? We must make our existence relevant. Urgently examine what you’re capable of giving to the world. Be courageous.”

Day 51 8/15/13: Sharks’ Teeth by John Ciardi

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Action: Looking forward to screening and teaching Rob Stewart’s movie Revolution a follow up to Sharkwater which I just downloaded from iTunes. Until then, this little poem:
The thing about a shark—-is teeth
One row above, one row beneath.
Now take a close look. Do you find
It has another row behind?
Still closer—here, I’ll hold your hat:
Has it a third row behind that?
Now look in and…Look out! Oh my,
I’ll never know now! Well, goodbye.

Day 49: 8/13/13: 7 Recent Wins for Sharks

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New protections. New sanctuaries. Check out these 7 Wins for Sharks! 

Meanwhile, I’m back to my restaurant letter writing campaign with a little help from Sharksavers.

Day 32: 7/27/2013: Musings of a Shark Cult Leader

by in Activism, Education, Jaws and tagged , , , | 2 Comments

I’m truly touched by how many of my colleagues have eagerly volunteered to read sex scenes from “Jaws” in a public setting to help save sharks.

My shark-themed English class is part of a contextualized learning grant program. Today I met with my fellow teachers and we discussed our various hybrid classes. As I defined my pedagogical mission, I realized that I don’t want to simply teach a class this semester. I want to start a shark cult.  I want to engage and enrage students and make them to fall in love with what’s disappearing. Maybe love will move them if anger will not.

Even if I don’t inculcate an army of brainwashed shark worshipping eco-terrorists, perhaps they’ll awaken to the plight of elephants or the senselessness of war or overconsumption.

Is fun the most powerful call to action? Is making shark cupcakes for charity the gateway drug to environmental activism? Should I use “Sharknado” as a sassy introduction to the sobering topic of ocean acidification and climate change? A good cult leader must effortlessly engage multiple strategies.  Perhaps “Air Jaws” is a good place to start.

P.S. Monday I’ll follow up with the rescue places about the turtles.

Day 27: 7/22/2013: Sharkitecture

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Today, I welcomed a new class of International students at Sci-Arc, an architecture school where I teach ESL in the summer. As an icebreaker, I had them ask each other a series of questions including a gem I stole from my own writing teacher:

“If faced with your potential end, would you rather confront a bear or a shark?”

These answers reveal how deeply weird our relationship to other creatures can be. Students who chose death by bear over shark gave these reasons:

1. “The bear is cuter.”

2. “The bear is more like a person.”

3. “Getting killed by a shark is all salty and it hurts.”

A few people had enough confidence in themselves as swimmers to believe:

1. “I might be able to swim faster than a shark.”

Others reasoned that death by shark would be quicker and more merciful than being scalped by a bear:

2. “The shark will just bite my head off and it will be over.”

To make sure the conversation didn’t get too sensational, I informed that students that human beings kill about 100 million sharks a year and sharks kill, oh I don’t know…a half dozen people or something.

I wish I had studied anthrozoology and could compile data like this for a living.

After class, I did get five friends to sign my slowly evolving Shark Defenders petition.

Day 24: 7/19/2013: See BLACKFISH

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English: Tilikum during a ' performance at .

Tilikum during a ‘ performance at . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I loved chatting with Sharksavers about the upcoming JAWS benefit, but what really defined my day was seeing  “Blackfish” the documentary about orcas in captivity.  When I left the Arclight theatre I remembered something an activist once said about elephants in the circus. He’d been detailing the tedium experienced by these intelligent creatures that are chained for 20-some odd hours a day: “I still can’t figure out how they conceive of time.”

What of  Tilikum, the killer whale featured prominently in “Blackfish”, an emotionally damaged animal who has killed three people, but who still performs for the delighted crowds in SeaWorld Orlando?  While my days unfold with routine, but also stimulation, freedom, possibility, Tilikum with his defeated, collapsed dorsal fin performs humiliating tricks, swims in circles in a swimming pool, and listens to the  delighted shrieks of school children through the glass.  I imagine the only pleasurable moment in this whale’s life is when SeaWorld employees collect his sperm  to produce more calves that will also be wrenched from their mothers if the price is right.

Torn from his mother at age three, does Tilikum ever dream of the brief time he knew limitless seas? Beyond frustration and despair, could these murders he committed be a subconscious wish for the ultimate punishment/freedom– his own death?

I feel haunted. And I should. Susan Sontag once said “Let the images of atrocity haunt us.”  Sontag argued that we shouldn’t turn away from pictures of war or death–all the images that remind us of what men do to other men. Nor should we ignore the evidence of what human beings do to non-human creatures. See “Blackfish.”

Day 5 6/30/13: Sharks in the Classroom & Beyond

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23

Today I started thinking about the most effective curriculum for my Fall shark-themed English class at Glendale College. In my pre-coffee haze, I assembled a jumble of potential texts and materials:

1. Opening chapter of the novel “Jaws”: as gateway to talking about shark attacks and shark biology.
2. “Sharkwater” documentary: so they can see what shark finning is
3. Selected readings on prehistoric sharks, all the extinctions they’ve survived
4. Info on the current extinction event that sharks might not survive
5. “Air Jaws” clips
6. “Jaws”: The Movie
7. Shark Gods of the Pacific Mythology & Ritual/Environmentalism essays (Derrick Jensen, etc.)

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