State of alarm?

By the time you read this, you may have heard that the Spanish government has declared a “state of alarm” and is meeting today, Saturday, to decide exactly what that means. If you are interested in more details, check out the English language version of the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

In Madrid, the hardest-hit place in Spain so far, it has meant shutting down everything except grocery stores, butchers, bakeries and the like, as well as pharmacies and newsstands. This is a big blow to Spain’s national pastimes of cafe sitting and tapas eating. There are going to be some serious withdrawal symptoms.

Chris and I did some cafe sitting yesterday just to make sure we got it in before the hammer came down. Today, to celebrate the state of alarm, we are walking one town over, to Orio, to have a nice meal on the beach since that may not be possible for a few weeks. As the kids have explained, there is already no school or sports or band for the next two weeks. We are going to be a very close-knit family by the time this is over– if we don’t kill each other first.

In all seriousness, the general tenor here in Zarautz is fairly relaxed (despite Henry’s comments to the contrary). People are concerned, but there is not a sense of panic, at least not that I have noticed. Spaniards are normally close-talkers and touch each other more than Americans, and we’ve noticed a change in those behaviors, but it is sunny today and this morning the malecón (the concrete boardwalk on the beach) was busy with folks walking and talking, just a little further away from each other than normal.

Given the situation in Spain, we can’t really go anywhere except the US (our idiot president’s so-called travel ban from Europe does not apply to US citizens; it doesn’t even apply to British citizens, which is just weird), and if we go home we’ll have to go into quarantine for two weeks. Frankly, I’d rather just sit tight, enjoy the beach and the mountains, the cheap wine and the fresh seafood, and just wait this out. As long as the Spanish government doesn’t kick us out, that’s what we plan to do.

So, please, don’t be alarmed, not for us at least.

Coronavirus

Here people are freaking out about the Coronavirus. It’s really annoying because now we still have school, but they’re just going to send us the classwork. The only thing that’s fun about school is hanging out with my friends, so know it’s going to suck. Also, pretty much all sports are stopping one by one, in Europe and the U.S. So I have two weeks of boredom, so that’s going to be so fun!

I think people are overreacting. It’s infected fewer people and has a smaller death percentile than the flu. The only people that it kills are old people, little children, and people with health problems already. Everyone else will just have flu-like symptoms, and then they’ll be fine. Schools are shutting down, and everyone is overreacting.

I know it is dangerous but only to old people or people with health problems. I plan on doing the school work I get, read, work on some statistical projects I’m working on, play basketball, and play video games (if I can).

All my sports and band have been cancelled, so that’s annoying. Pretty much all sports have also been cancelled or suspended including the NBA, Spanish soccer, Italian soccer, English soccer, French soccer, MLS, MLB, March Madness, XFL, and many more. The only sport is darts. Who wants to watch that?

I predict that the Coronavirus will end up like the flu. You take vaccines so that it limits the effects, and then just get through it. This craziness probably will be done by the start of the next school year, hopefully for college football’s sake.

I am O.K.

It doesn’t feel like a pandemic

As we’ve all heard on the news, the corona virus is alive and spreading all over the world. Interestingly enough, I am not really left feeling worried about my health. Maybe it’s for the fact that I won’t die if I get it because I don’t have any respiratory illnesses or I just haven’t seen the damage with my own eyes. This is typical for any sort of disaster you hear about on the news. But, in fact, this pandemic has affected my life in a large way.

Today during patio time, I was talking with some of my classmates about the government closing the schools because of the virus. Apparently they thought that if the neighboring province closed down schools, so would Guipuzkoa. I guess I didn’t really think a lot about it; I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I certainly didn’t think this would happen. Just the other day, my family and I were joking about how if we don’t have school we’ll do a lot of cleaning and maybe try and get out of the house, things like that to spend the time.

During the second-to-last hour of the school day today, Thursday, my tutor and Information class teacher told us in Basque that they would most likely be closing schools for the next day and time after that. He said he was 99 percent sure. At one o’clock when we were supposed to get something, we didn’t, and then he started talking, and at first I’m pretty sure I thought we still had school because some people were groaning. But, turns out we didn’t have school for two whole weeks!

Then I learned we didn’t have school the next day, and we had our last class. In that class, we didn’t really do much, but we never really do. Everyone packed up their pounds of textbooks, and I couldn’t even fit all of mine in my tiny backpack. People started leaving early and everyone was talking in the hallways. It truly was crazy. We still had after school that day, and after the bell rang, it was like last-day-of-school chaos. It was essentially crazy because to most people this is just a super-long vacation with homework to do.

But, I think that some people were a little worried about what was going to happen. I personally wonder if the Basque Country will end up being quarantined. As well, I am a little worried about my older relatives, so keep washing your hands! I’m sure you can find lots of different songs to sing while you do so.

I’m looking at two weeks without school. When I say that, I mean online work on my computer every school day, normal chores, no volleyball practice or games, and possibly no band practice. So virtually nothing to do. I honestly think I will be very bored, but I plan on opening up my creative mind and cleaning my room. I can also practice volleyball out in the yard. It’s really crazy for this to happen, especially since I’m not in the U.S., but I am positive we’ll get through this.

Meanwhile, when I get back to school I will truly appreciate it.

Strike!

It’s Thursday, January 30, and all of País Vasco is on strike. Well, sort of. It’s a general strike, which means labor unions have encouraged workers to strike today, including teachers, medical professionals, and transportation workers among others. There will be demonstrations in major cities like Bilbao, Donostia, and Gasteiz, and perhaps here in Zarautz (but since all of the posters are in Basque, it’s hard to know). From what I can figure out, the strike is being held to highlight issues with defending workers’ pensions, improving working and living conditions, and increasing job opportunities. Like I said, it’s a general strike.

However, the government has decreed that minimum public service (30%) must be provided within the region during the strike. In other words, some trains will run, hospitals will function like it’s a holiday, and at least three out of ten teachers must show up at school. And in my case, the three cooperating teachers that I usually teach with on Thursdays are striking, so I’ve been told to stay home today. It’s not clear to me how schools figure out who strikes and who doesn’t, but I’m glad that I’m not expected to be a part of the 30% who will make the school function with so few teachers. Given that schools will not function like normal, Frankie and Henry have also elected to STRIKE and stay home today. Instead, they have a list of demands from their mother!

More sabbatical stuff

So, one of my very close friends, who also happens to be a work colleague, and I have been dancing around an idea to create an English writing class set in a future dystopian world in which Minnesota is even colder than it is now and the students are marooned inside the buildings of Minneapolis Community and Technical College and essentially have to write their way out. He’s a novelist as well as a teacher, and he gets the credit for the cool world-building and character ideas.

I’ve already shared one interaction influenced by this world, Saved by Simple Sentences, where the students have to create simple sentences in order to protect the college buildings from intruders.

Now, here is another little puzzle I’ve built that takes place in the same imaginary space. This one doesn’t correspond to any particular learning objects for students, but it was a great learning experience for me. I became much more comfortable using variables and if/else statements, and I even experimented with using radio buttons to assign variables, which was new for me. The scripting language is called Twine, the same as The Coffee Maker Mystery.

It’s still rough around the edges, but I must thank my usual play testers (Frankie and Henry) for making it better than it was when I first showed it to them. The wildest thing to me about these types of interactions is how much writing is involved on the back end. Though the “player” only sees a fraction of it during any given play-through, this sucker is over 15,000 words long. I wrote all those words, and even I was surprised to see that statistic. Now, I’m thinking about having my students write games. If I could get them to write 15,000 words, that would be an absolute win.

As always, you play the game by clicking on the links and sometimes you make choices by clicking the round, white radio buttons. I don’t have a good title for this one. For now, I just call it the Door Puzzle.

What are they learning anyway?

The Basque school system is still somewhat a mystery to me. Granted, I’m teaching in the elementary system and I prepare lessons for my students based on what my cooperating teachers suggest, yet I haven’t seen any goals or objectives or standards to guide student learning.

Same goes for my own children in middle school. We met with their “tutor” (similar to a homeroom teacher) just before winter break and were given their “notes” (report cards). Each child is given a number (ranging from one to ten) for each class they attend, and a score of four or below is considered failing. I’m happy to report that both Frankie & Henry passed all of their classes, except Basque, which they’ve been exempted from anyway. However, there wasn’t any other information regarding what they were learning or how or why the numbers were given. Nada. Nothing. We have no idea about what is measured or how outcomes are measured, and often our kids can’t tell us why they are doing an assignment.

Take the assignment below, as an example. I think both kids did a phenomenal job drawing tools to scale, each with a unique style. Yet, neither could tell me what the tools are used for in real life, nor could they tell me why they had to categorize them and draw them. To this day it remains a mystery.

That said, I know my kids are learning. TONS. They are not just learning the stuff that is seemingly randomly assigned and graded by their teachers, but they are learning about life and how to function outside of their comfort zones. And that counts for a lot, and it makes Gill and me very proud of both of them.

Boleibola

I had the pleasure of watching Frankie play volleyball (or boleibola in Basque) on Saturday morning, and I was not disappointed. Though Lizardi (her school team) did not walk away with a victory, Frankie played hard and helped score many points by serving well and bumping with control. And I think she even had fun. Go sports!

Hurry Christmas don’t be late

I was asked by my colleagues to prepare a lesson for students that involved a Christmas song, one that students could sing and dance to (and not just dance, but dance with interpretive movements to help with comprehension). Interpretive dance seemed a bit over the top, and not exactly something I’m comfortable with, but this was a unique opportunity for me because in the US we don’t acknowledge Christmas in public schools because of the range of religious practices represented in our students and that infamous document called the U.S. Constitution.

So I thought back to my childhood and remembered one of my childhood Christmas favorites (though I hesitate to admit this): “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” by Alvin and the Chipmunks. When I was about eight years old, I remember spending hours lying on the pea-green carpet in the living room of my parents’ house in Eden Prairie listening to The Chipmunks’ Greatest Christmas Hits album. Over and over and over again…

Fast forward forty years.

If you are familiar with the song, you may be wondering why I thought that this song, out of hundreds of catchy Christmas tunes, would be a good song to teach my students. As I’ve told you, I loved it as a kid, plus the lyrics are simple and repetitive. Yes, repetitive. Bonus for an eight-year-old; not such a bonus for me now.

After presenting the lesson nearly 12 times, I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to listen to the song again. But you should give it a listen, and maybe even sing and dance along while imagining 25 (more or less) students with thick Basque accents singing and dancing with the Chipmunks.

So hurry Christmas, don’t be late!

Food, music, and stuff

The food here and in the U.S. is very different. In the U.S. it’s manly burgers, pizza, ice cream, fried chicken, and all that good stuff. In the BASQUE country, they eat those foods, but it doesn’t really taste the same. They also have a croquette which is like fried cheese and potatoes. and it’s good. They also eat a lot of traditional food like tortilla (which is Spanish), fish and meats, and soups.

On the candy side its mostly just sugar, which I don’t really like, as I prefer chocolates over just sugar. They don’t have Reese’s peanut butter cups, which is a sin. What is not to like about peanut butter and chocolate? They mostly just eat plain sugar which I don’t approve of. They do eat these weird cookies that are dry and shaped like doughnuts, and of course, don’t beat a good doughnut. They do have off-brand twinkies that are good, but the only chocolate bars are Twix, Snickers, and some European brands.

On the music side of things, they listen to rock-pop singers that sing in Basque about how Spain sucks and that they want independence, which is a common theme here. They also listen to bad Spanish rap which is really, really, autotuned and bad. The BASQUE don’t really have good music taste, but they probably don’t like my music either.

Spanish TV is just a bunch of American shows with weird voice actors over the movie or show, and it really sucks. They always are way too high or just plain weird. I watched Spongebob one day, and SpongeBob sounded like a grown man that had a child’s voice. It was a bit scary. The Disney empire has reached here. I see Marvel and other big-name Disney stuff. Also some of the kids like anime. The worst thing from the U.S. that has infected the Spanish population is Fortnite or Fort-neet-e as they call it. Most of the kids in my grade play it on there “Play” which is Basque I guess for PS4. Sony really owns Spain in that department. I was at a department store called Corte Ingles because Frankie wanted to look inside, and where the video games were they didn’t even have a sign for Xbox One. It was just sitting behind the last section of other companies like the WiiU… eww.

The worst things from the U.S. and some decent things have infected the BASQUE, and probably most of Spain so I don’t really feel culture shocked.