"They're Out There"

The phone call I made to the ranger station at the South Platte District in the Pike and San Isabel National Forest was going rather well. She was very knowledgeable with regard to my questions about driving directions, trails and campsites. Then finally, the clencher. I asked about bears.

"They're out there."

Pause.

She was quite nonchalant about my question as if there was a black bear pouring a cup of coffee in the office and filling her in on local the local weather reports.

I would say that in the outdoorsy-ness meter I am above Chevy Chase in The Great Outdoors but below Grizzly Adams and Daniel Boone. I have some good backpacking equipment that I've acquired. I would consider myself a green person. I love the outdoors. I'm excited about this backpacking trip and if necessary, will kill zombies (see last post). But my uneasiness about bears started to creep in while reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods his account of hiking the Appalachian Trail. The thought of coming across a black bear in Colorado hadn't even crossed my mind. But as Bryson rattled off statistics (from the mid-1990s) I began to wonder if this was something I should be concerned about.

There are several cardinal bear survival rules I think every North American is aware of. One, you cannot outrun a bear so don't even try. This counteracts everything in my fight or flight response. Clearly fighting is out (although on a trailhead marker near Boulder this was given as a last resort) Two, bears can climb trees, at least black ones can so that is out. And three, never come between a mama bear and her cubs. But is that it? Are there others? "Make myself look bigger than I already am"? "Bang pots and pans"? Let's stop right here.

If I am a bear and you start banging pots and pans at me you've already shown you do not have a worthy weapon, I will now charge you. Second, your empty pots and pans show me you've already eaten and are therefore fatter and heartier as a human meal.

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Bear attacks are extremely rare and there are certain things one may do to reduce the risk of encounter. Obviously steaks and barbecue are not on the menu. I do not suppose a black bear will risk exposure for some Easy Mac and leftover trail mix. And bears also are aware of human presence before humans are aware of them. According to artofmanliness.com, bears often bluff when confronting humans and making a lot of noise DOES cause them to lose interest. According to the same website, fighting back is also a legitimate reponse, albeit a last-ditch effort to save one's life:

"Aim your blows on the bears face- particularly the eyes and snout. When a black bear sees that their victim is willing to fight to the death, they’ll usually just give up."

"Once the bear is done tossing (emphasis and large font mine) you around and leaves, continue to play dead."

The most outrageous bit of information I've heard about bear attacks is to not just play dead, but LET the bear drag you back to it's den (most likely the scruff or your NECK) then wait for the bear to leave and calmly dust yourself off and make your escape.

Finally, consider this: you are more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a bear. Unless your name is Rick Oliver. Oliver, a North Carolina man, was struck by lightning in 2006 AND mauled by a bear just this week. He survived the ordeal.

Luckily the forecast for this weekend calls for clear skies.

Mountain Time

I used to hate on REI all the time. I mean seriously, I don't remember Lewis and Clark needing $400 Gore-tex to cross the Continental Divide. It was 1805 and I'm sure they found a few bear skins or beaver hides to keep themselves warm (check that historical fact). I used to see REI as an over-priced warehouse of outdoor goods that were in excess of what an outdoors person would actually need.

I love the outdoors. But ultimately you're just going outside. Do I really need saddle bags for my Shih Tzu on the trail? (He would make it only a few feet.) But that's when I visited the REI "mothership" in Denver and saw the outdoor experience through fresh eyes. As you can see from the pic above, the store is inside a MASSIVE (warehouse?) that is actually a national historic landmark. This thing is massive. There's an indoor rock-climbing apparatus to my left.

I have been backpacking and spent much more time outdoors since I first started my REI smear campaign. And I will admit right here that I was wrong. So why the change in attitude?

Zombies.

I saw REI as a training ground and equipment warehouse should a war with zombies ever break out. One, I'm already at an altitude of over a mile above sea level. And as my best friend Bill will tell you, the best place to find refuge during a zombie attack/war is the mountains. Zombies are less tolerant of the cold and the mountains are the safest place to find refuge. So the geography is already taken care of. So then I saw the REI warehouse as my first stop in the event of a worldwide zombie war.

There's all kinds of indispensable equipment that might seem over-the-top for your everyday mountain and climbing needs. But in the event of a zombie invasion they would be absolute necessities; sleeping bags that can sustain a person well below freezing thus enabling the fleeing human to climb to higher altitudes. Top-of-the-line alpine skis for an emergency evacuation during a surprise zombie attack.

Now for weapons. There are no firearms at REI. I mean come on, this is a place that prides itself on the conservation of our natural world. But there are plenty of other suitable weapons beyond shells and gunpowder that would prove effective in the upcoming zombie war. And as Bill would point out, blades don't need to be reloaded. I didn't find any machetes at REI. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places. But I did start to look at typical outdoor equipment in a new light. For example, take the ice pick. At first glance you might think this the top pick to mount an offensive against zombies.

You would be wrong.

Your zombie opponent would simply pull you closer in as you struggled to free your ice pick from his zombie guts. Now take the wooden paddles in the kayaking department. Lightweight and smooth coming in at around $90, this blunt weapon would prove itself indispensable during a close-quarter melee attack.

My outlook on outdoor equipment has changed. I was wrong several years ago when I chided friends about buying such high-tech expensive outdoor equipment. They were simply a few steps ahead of the rest of us.

How to Not Go (Completely) Insane This Summer

This post is for my teacher colleagues out there trying to figure out what to during their first full week of summer vacation. Usually in casual conversation we educators have about five minutes of "teacher talk" before our friends shutdown and get bored. But this post is written directly to my fellow soldiers who spend nine months out of the year in the trenches pouring themselves out and then have a brief two-and-a-half months (if that) to regroup.

So I present in no particular order a list of my Seven Ways to Not Go (Completely) Insane as a Teacher This Summer:

1. Find a routine. The most important thing I've learned these past three summers is routine. You must have a routine as a teacher in the summer. Shower and shave before 9:00. At least get out of bed before 8:00. Keep a cup of coffee brewing at all times. For me I wear khaki pants during the off months. It makes me feel somewhat professional at the house. Which leads me to number two:

2. Leave the house. It is crucial to leave your house or apartment at some point during the day. It could be to the library (my personal favorite), the bookstore, coffee shop. Whatever. Just get out of the house before 11:00. It tells yourself you're important, that you have somewhere to be. Even if it's just to pick up the mail or pay rent.

3. Read. This probably should be number one. It's the only surefire way of not mentally atrophying during the summer. Keep reading during the summer. Or for me it's starting TO read. This past year I had absolutely no time to read outside of school. Now that summer has started I have no idea where to begin. There are so many history books I want to pick up. I started with The Mental Floss History of the World.

I think it's also important to pick up a book about teaching. And I don't mean those dense professional development books you were supposed to read during the year. Ones that tackled vague concepts like "school culture" and "understanding poverty." No doubt important, but you want to read material with actual techniques to improve your teaching for the next year. I'm currently reading Teach Like a Champion 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. This is a great read. It's full of useful "do this, don't do this" techniques with minimal fluff. I've learned more in the first three chapters than all the trainings I've been to combined.

4. Kill Facebook. This one may not be as important as the rest but I know that Facebook can be as addicting as meth. Okay maybe not meth but it certainly can eat up a lot of your precious summer hours. I think Twitter is the way to go. You can follow all sorts of teachers and educating professionals to get ideas in the summer. I once read that Facebook is all the people you went to high school with and Twitter is all the people you WISH you went to high school with.

5. Avoid summer trainings like the Bubonic Plague. At least until the second week of August. If one of my colleagues is reading this, and you know who you are, you need to take a break.

We're being PAID for the next two months to take a pause from this past year. I'm all for advancing my professional career but when you shorten your break from two months to two weeks you're in danger of burnout.

6. Don't check your school e-mail account (too often). I think a good rule of thumb is to check your school e-mail about as often as you fill up your car. Administrators pretty much work all year-round. They do want to keep us informed about what's going on at school or within the district. But unless my classroom's burning down or everyone scored fives on their AP U.S. History exam, it can afford to wait a few days.

7. Write. I used to think that if I wasn't signing books at Barnes and Noble I wasn't a writer. That is completely bogus. If Sarah Palin can "go rogue" then I'm Bill Shakespeare. Writing is the best way I know to process and decompress after a tough school year. And for me it's this blog that I've managed to somehow periodically update once an election cycle. But even if I'm the only one who ever reads this, I still say "write on."

Readicide

I wish I had coined the term for this entry. Sadly I did not. But it's a very poignant word. There are many types of "cides." Genocide, the killing of a people. Homocide, the killing of another person and even regicide, the killing of a king (I only know that from Age of Empires II). Readicide, by all accounts, must be the killing of reading or books. As high school teachers we have a pretty good record of this. For the most part we tout the classics in literature as great reads but secretly haven't read them ourselves. I know that I've assigned hundreds of pages out of The American Pageant for my AP U.S. History kids, the very same book I skipped through some ten years ago in the very same class. Lots of students get burned out on The Iliad and Moby Dick before their reading palettes ever become fully developed.

This became clear to me this past week during TAKS testing. I was assigned to a room of sophomores, many of whom I don't teach. One of them asked me where I taught English in the building. I responded with, well I actually teach history. She turned her head and replied, "Then how come you like books?"

Wow.

I said some of my favorite reads are history books. "Textbooks?" she asked me. "Of course not", I replied. "Textbooks are dry, boring and sterile." I think this prompted a look of great confusion on her face. Like I had just violated some covenant made among high school teachers. That the books we teach from are sacred texts never to be openly criticized. I defended my textbook during the early part of this year. It was my first go at teaching AP U.S. History. The last time I cracked that brick was January. I don't want to assign my kids things they can't highlight and make notes on or draw on.

On some level I'm guilty of readicide. Sometimes I assign long passages of text just because that's all I know what to do. I've already begun planning for next year. Shorter passages. More primary sources.

I think as long as kids are reading SOMETHING I'll be happy. Perhaps it's John Grisham and not John Steinback. Or Percy Jackson instead of Andrew Jackson. Either way there's a book in their hands.

Cesar Packs a Punch!

I haven't updated this blog since last fall but I thought this would be a good post to kick it off with again.

Last week one of my hardest working students earned the right to pie me in the face. Students (actually my boss) had been putting money in my jar to raise money for Haiti. After the "pot was pumped" I was in third place and therefore the video below was my fate:

This blog sucks

Ten Things I Hate About Reading

Teachers assign us books that are boring and long
Instead of novels about wizards named Harry, Hermoine and Ron

Textbooks are heavy, they're dry and outdated
When the best history comes from movies, R-rated

Most authors can't write as you'll see by page ten
Only to find their home back on the shelf again

I never finish my books from August to May
'Cause I am grading your papers every freaking day

The library by my house smells like old people and cheese
And they never have my book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Books are too long and movies are better
'Cause actors follow the text down to the letter

Reading takes work, dedication and most of all time
Which is totally the opposite of Call of Duty Five

Books make you think and question your rights
But CNN and Fox will tell me what's right

Internet is faster more than anything I could ever read
And Wikipedia can supply me with everything I could need

And finally the last reason I'm done with the book:
My cursor is stuck, eternally on Facebook