Research

My chosen path in life being the teaching of young children, some people might wonder: why did I spend so much time in academia? After all, I could have done fine with two years of community college and then a multiple-subject credential program. Specifically, why did I get a PhD and then do a one-year post-doc? I am tired of thinking of such questions. A much better question to ask is – what kind of scientific research do I see as supporting my professional activities and what sort of research can my professional activities contribute to?

In answer to the latter question, I am going to plug the research done by my friend Dr. Gary Lupyan at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Gary does research into the connection between language and thought – which in many ways is fundamental to the way young children learn about the world around them. See, for example, his article on how talking to oneself helps one with cognitive tasks. This reminds me, for example, of how useful it is to call on the children in my classroom to call out a new and important concept we may be learning about (“Everybody, say ‘Phenomenon’.” -”Phenomenon” …and so on and so forth).

Looking ahead in my teaching career – in addition to getting 12 units worth of classes at the Childhood Development program at Foothill College, I anticipate needing to get a multiple-subject teaching credential needed for Elementary School Teaching at San Jose State University.

Tarzan

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Today I am blogging about the first book I found on the Gutenberg Project. For those of you who do not know, the latter is a website that publishes books that are free of copyright in electronic form. Sometimes books are free of copyright because their authors and publishers choose to make them so. Sometimes the copyright simply expires, as it has for the original Tarzan novel – which was first published as a book in 1914. I finished reading “Tarzan of the Apes” for the first time in the January of this year. I enjoyed it a lot. What’s most amazing is how popular this classic adventure book has been with the American public over the years. The success of the first book inspired its author to write sequels all the way into the 1940s, and the resulting stories have become basis for a number of film and comic book adaptations.

All the components of my budding teaching career are going well: I’m greatly enjoying my class on teaching methodologies, the Mad Science after-school enrichment program is a lot of fun, I’ve got lots of tutoring students and from time to time I get to substitute in the mornings.

In accepting the new duties and responsibilities above, I must pass the previous ones I had onwards to someone else. Specifically, I am now looking for people to take up the computer programming project I received some time ago. I’ve gotten nothing out of it in the past two years, and now it’s time to move through it and let it go.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I was reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I was enjoying it so much, that the prospect of the day when I’d finish reading it filled me with dread. I rarely get to read a book by someone with as much heart as Mark Haddon. Haddon’s story is incredibly smart and terrifyingly real. This is the kind of a book I am not afraid to fall in love with.

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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A beautiful, tragic novel. I loved it. I can’t believe I hadn’t found it before. Hailed as the classic of feminist science fiction, this novel was written by a female, American writer back in 1969, around the time when many of the male science fiction greats were also making their marks in our collective consciousness. Le Guin’s male protagonist learns from his friend and his friend’s society, human beings that are neither male nor female, whose genders are only defined when they go through estrus once every 26 days. From them he learns to find inside himself a sort of toughness that is too often thought of as belonging strictly to the female gender. This toughness does not rely on any sort of machismo, but rather rises directly out of the love for life itself and the recognition of the brotherhood of Mankind.

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For those of my readers who are interested in my professional development: continuing education being of utmost importance to me, I have signed up for a class on the Principles and Practices of Early Childhood Education at Foothill Community College. The class starts on April 8th and goes on until June 28th. Here is a link to the bicycle route from my house to the Palo Alto campus of Foothill College: http://goo.gl/maps/FEAIe.

Thank you, Spread Information for awarding me the Versatile Blogger Award, which all my readers can now view towards the bottom of the blog.

Rules of the Versatile Blogger Award:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Thank and Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. State 7 things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 bloggers for this award.
5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination by linking to one of their specific posts so that they get notified by ping back.

As per the rules of receiving the award, I now state seven things about myself:
1. The blog’s name, Pathways Art Project, reflects its idea: pathways of all kinds as art. We aim to make a connection between physical pathways out in the world around us and memory pathways in the neural connections of our brains. In other words, we aim to maintain a correspondence between these two different kinds of pathways – the pathways we travel and the neural pathways in our brains that reflect our memories and knowledge.
2. For me personally, the pathway that is central to this blog is the one I walked from South Bay to North Bay in the December of 2010 (see text and links towards the bottom of the blog, next to the award image).
3. My moniker on this website, “LoCal Russian,” refers to an incident I experienced freshman year of college. In the freshman dining hall, one of the cards that named the dressings available for the salad bar fell on the floor face down. I lifted it to see what the card said. Sure enough, it said: “LoCal Russian.” I then placed the card on the door into my room in the dorm where I lived. There it stayed for some time.
4. One major theme of this blog is book reviews – books being excellent reflections of mental, memory-related pathways that we follow in life.
5. An important tag is google maps, which refers to Google Maps, a website that helps me tell the world about the physical pathways I travel: on foot, on bicycle, on public transportation and in my car.
6. This blog was inspired by our nominators, Spread Information. This does not mean that these folks are to be held responsible for any material that appears on this blog. It just refers to the fact that from these folks we learn about the better practices of blogging, the value of blogging and the great variety of uses a blog can have to its readers, writers and the society at large.
7. Most of this post was written while sitting in a wonderful cafe next to Ohlone College in Fremont, California. Here is the link to the location on Google Maps. The deli offers a variety of hot and cold beverages and many different kinds of wonderful food. The food is affordable, the place is cozy and the owner is a great guy.

As per the rules of the nomination, I am also going to nominate fifteen other bloggers. I will keep the strategy simple, nominating the first fifteen bloggers (other than those at Spread Information) that Liked my posts – having faith that the award will be accepted only by those of these fifteen bloggers who consider themselves to be Versatile:
Zazen Life
Nanxi Liu
Vikram Roy
Deidra Alexander
Jimmie Chew
Lesley Carter
The Drinking Hat
Two Mini Cooks
Looking for Pemberley
Pink Sphinx
Alternate Economy
Enjoy My Adventure
Edouard Stenger
Consciousness Creates Reality
Millenium Conjectures

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I have read or re-read in a long time. I believe I originally read this one as a translation into the Russian language back when I was a kid, too. A story just as beautiful as any of Tolkien’s, told by a female writer. Ursula Le Guin is truly the grand dame of American fantasy. She wrote “The Wizard of Earthsea” back in 1968, in language that I find compassionate, real, powerful and enchanting all at the same time. Her hero is as real as her writing style – neither wholly good nor evil, but wonderfully, heart-achingly human.

View all my reviews

An update for my blog readers: Taking another sure step in my professional journey as a school teacher, I have signed up to be a substitute teacher with the Menlo Park Unified School district (here is a bicycle route to their offices from my place: http://goo.gl/maps/PV7hw), a district with two K-5, one K-3 and one Middle School.

Soviets

Вредные советы by Grigorij Oster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To my readers who don’t read Russian: this book is called “Bad Advice.” It is a book of humorous poems by Grigorij (Gregory) Oster, based on the premise of reverse psychology. The idea is that good children always do what you tell them, so one needs to give them good advice. However, as bad children always do the reverse of what they are told, they need to be given bad advice. In the end, then, it all cancels out and bad children will do good things. I always thought this book was brilliant, and even translated some of this guy’s poems into English in high school, soon after I came to America.

Incidentally, for those who are interested, the word “Soviet,” as in “Soviet Union” means “council” or “advice,” and is a part of this book’s title.

In other news, I just got hired by a company called Mad Science. We teach elementary school kids about science via hands-on demonstrations and experiments. It’s a lot of fun. Here is the driving route from my apartment building to their headquarters and back: http://goo.gl/maps/66YwP

View all my reviews

Green

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a review of “Stranger in a Strange Land” that I posted on December 9th, 2010. I had read the book itself for the first time in October of 2008. The review contains spoilers, so be warned.

This is another story that re-casts biblical themes in a futuristic setting. The clearest sign comes at the very end of the book, where the main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is stoned to death by an angry crowd. Earlier in the book, he brings a new religion to the people of Earth, and earns the envy, hate and admiration of many.

View all my reviews

I have been seeing a job counselor. I met her through the Palo Alto Housing Corporation – the company that supervises the building where I live. She is ubelievably helpful. Here is the bicycle route I take to get there: http://goo.gl/maps/gdt0k

Bread

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I posted the following review for the Catcher in the Rye on Goodreads.com when I finished reading it on October 30th of 2012:

I would give this book six stars if I could. It’s really fantastic, and I cannot believe I hadn’t read it before. I tried reading it for an English-as-a-second language class back in high school, but I didn’t yet know enough American English, nor enough about the American society to appreciate it. Thanks to my dad for recommending it to me, just as his dad had given him a Russian translation of the book back when he was a kid.

View all my reviews

Also, check out this 14-minute bicycle ride from my house to a Starbucks in Menlo Park: http://goo.gl/maps/h1MfJ

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.