Anna Mills a Mama!

Welcome, Ari Harlow Mireles, born at 10:55 on the morning of December 29th!  He weighs 6 pounds 5 ounces and is 20 inches long.  Anna and baby are both doing well.

Happy Holidays!
Anna and Sam

Happy Holidays from Randy and the entire Cyberia family

Darlene Love will be on Letterman again tonight!  May you have a healthy and happy Festivus.  Here's a retro-post from 2008:

This Saturday: Last SF reading from YOUNG JUNIUS (for a while)

Colleagues, friends, neighbors...

As the YOUNG JUNIUS tour winds down, I'd like to bend your ear and invite you out for one last hurrah this Saturday afternoon at Borderlands Books in the Mission at 3PM. (866 Valencia @20th)

I mean sure, I'll be at the Lit Club afternoon session next Friday, the 19th, but for a full-on bookstore setting, this is your last chance. Hope to see you there! Also, please spread the word to your students who may be interested. You can download a flyer to print here.

Also, if you'd like to read excerpts (*special chapters*) of the novel for free, come over to my profile at Scribd.com where you can see the new partnership we've established and the great-looking page they set up. We're serializing chapters there all week and launching the Full PDF of the novel for free on Thursday! I'm happy to give it to you guys here, now.

CC Dropout Rates

Bryan Guillermo stared at his dismal grade report and considered dropping the math class he had just begun at City College of San Francisco.

It was fall 2004. Two months into his first semester, Guillermo already felt overwhelmed by the basic algebra, quadratic equations and polynomials covered in class.

"I'm really bad at math," he admitted, remembering that he also considered dropping chemistry, nutrition and astronomy. "It was a challenge to understand what they were talking about."

Guillermo's academic struggles are the norm in California community colleges - and the vast majority of students hoping to earn an associate degree or a vocational certificate drop out instead, according to a new study that points to an alarming trend at California community colleges.

Read more . . .

Sir Ken Robinson: "Changing Educational Paradigms" Animated

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

www.youtube.com

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.

I don't think Robinson's material will prove surprising, but I hope it proves engaging and even fun in this animated format. (Fun being a very serious topic; animation, in the fullest sense, being the object of our enterprise as teachers, yes?) And, if you disagree or find the models insufficient or simplistic, the play of mind may prove worthwhile anyway and should set up meaningful discussions.

I am finding this illustrated presentation on educational paradigms and divergent thinking useful in considering how I want to plan my next semester's classes. I like the emphasis on the arts, but I also like that Robinson named mathematics and science as well. As many instructors in our department have, I've been quietly working with my own students on being academically energized through the popular science texts we're using--Flotsametrics and the Floating World, The Outlaw Sea, The Devil's Teeth--and through Barry Lopez's essays in About This Life, among others. Playful curiosity and comprehensive watchfulness seem useful, fruitful qualities to foster in ourselves and in our students, one reminder that I find in the above animated lecture.

How (and how well) have our own "divergent thinking" skills survived in the face of the "educational system" that we have experienced, surmounted, and served these past years? Luck? Childlike play? Engaging that playful curiosity on behalf of research and teaching tasks? And so forth?

Human Tutoring

In Higher Education, a Focus on Technology

By STEVE LOHR

The education gap facing the nation’s work force is evident in the numbers. Most new jobs will require more than a high school education, yet fewer than half of Americans under 30 have a postsecondary degree of any kind. Recent state budget cuts, education experts agree, promise to make closing that gap even more difficult.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and four nonprofit education organizations are beginning an ambitious initiative to address that challenge by accelerating the development and use of online learning tools.

An initial $20 million round of money, from the Gates Foundation, will be for postsecondary online courses, particularly ones tailored for community colleges and low-income young people. Another round of grants, for high school programs, is scheduled for next year.

Just how effective technology can be in improving education — by making students more effective, more engaged learners — is a subject of debate. To date, education research shows that good teachers matter a lot, class size may be less important than once thought and nothing improves student performance as much as one-on-one human tutoring.

Read more . . .

Ben Bac Sierra: Lecture TOMORROW

Literature Club Lecture Series

Join the Literature Club in the official

Friday Lecture Series

TOMORROW

we will be presenting

. . .

Transforming the Ugly

into the Sublime:

A

Lecture by

Benjamin Bac Sierra,

author

of

Barrio Bushido

Friday October 15 1:15-2:30

Batmale Hall Room 349

If these lectures don’t satisfy your thirst for Literature, join the

Literature Club every Friday 1:15-2:30 in

Batmale Hall Room 349

Contact the Literature Club at Litclubccsf@gmail.com for more

information or to get involved

_Barrio Bushido_--Ben Bacsierra's New Novel

Jump to Ben's blog!

The son of Guatemalan immigrants, Benjamin Bac Sierra was born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission district, at one time the heart of Latino culture in Northern California. Living the brutal “homeboy” lifestyle, at seventeen he joined the United States Marine Corps and participated in front line combat during the first Gulf War. After his honorable discharge, he completed his Bachelor’s degree at U.C. Berkeley, a teaching credential program and a Master’s in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Currently, he is a professor at City College of San Francisco.

Interview, Readings and New Book Almost Here!

Hey all! My new novel, Young Junius, is almost here!

Last night KRCB (Sonoma's NPR) aired this interview on their "Word by Word" show with host Gil Mansergh. Give a listen if you'd like to know more about YOUNG JUNIUS or hear me read parts of the book. Click here to hear.

I'm also happy to announce the following events. Hope to see some of you (and/or your students) out!

• Friday night 10/8 at A Great Good Place for Books - 7PM - 6120 LaSalle Ave., Oakland (Montclair)
• Saturday night 10/9 as part of Litcrawl at the Mission District Police Station (in the community room, NOT a cell) at 7:15 to 8:15. 630 Valencia St.
  
• Tuesday 10/12 at Books Inc. in Opera Plaza - 7PM - 601 Van Ness, SF

I know we're all hitting that crazy-busy point in the semester, but we shall carry on! More info and events at my website and my readings/events page. THANKS!

Lois Silverstein's new book

“Here we have ‘poems with imagery chiseled as precise as haiku’
to those with ‘condensations of allusions and a wide gamut of feeling’;
poems that celebrate ‘childhood wonder to the intimacy of love,
its ritual bonds and mystical eroticism;’ and pay
‘eloquent tribute to death, with choking feelings of grief’.
Here are poems that matter.”
-Abdul Jabbar, Ph.D., San Francisco

“These poems sparkle.

Here is daily life...their light clear and already refracted,
the ordinary writ large. What wonderful poems.... I’m full of admiration for them --- those flitting moments of our lives --
the watching of a child in discovery, a cat, a tree, a love and a deep loss. These are poems that speak of our own discoveries and some of the deepest dimensions of reality.”
-Ellen Spolsky, Ph.D. ,Jerusalem

You can order a copy from X-Libris at www.xlibris.com/LovingisListeningTothe....html or www.xlibris.com/Silverstein.html. You can also order toll-free at 1-888-795-4274, using the book’s ISBN: 978-1-4535-3739-8. You can also order from my website, www.LoisSilverstein.com, or from Amazon.com.

Also, if you haven’t read my other novels – DAUGHTER, DOL, and CURTAIN RISING – I do hope you’ll get a copy and enjoy them.

I will be reading from Loving Is Listening this Autumn, in several venues around the Bay Area. If you’re interested in joining the festivities, please let me know and I will send you the details.

Meanwhile, enjoy the early days of Fall!
Lois

October 5 Poetry Reading

Multiple points of view

Katrina . . . 5 years ago . . .

--from Greg Palast (from Bill McGuire)

A forensic analysis by Dr. John W. Day calculated that if the Corps had left just 6 miles of wetlands in place of the open canal, the surge caused by Katrina's wind would have been reduced by 4.5 feet and a lot of New Orleaneans would be alive today.

The Corps plugging its ears to the warnings was nothing less than "negligence, insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness."

Have you tried Dropbox to share English Dept. docs?

Watch a Video

Publisher's Weekly Weighs In on YOUNG JUNIUS

Last week Publishers Weekly reviewed Young Junius, my new novel out in October from Tyrus Books.

Here's what they had to say:

"Searing . . . a vicious black comedy of murderous errors. Harwood pulls no punches, revealing not only the white death of crack cocaine but the ineffectuality of black liberals who believe their Harvard Law books can cure the malignancy inherent in “forgotten civic ideas” like the Towers and the desire of the Towers’ inhabitants to destroy anyone trying to escape. In the end, Junius’s fate is as old as Aeschylus, the endless cycle of killing “just a snake eating itself."

Click here to read the full review.

I've already lined up a few reading dates, including

Oct 8: Great Good Place for Books, Montclair--for any East Bay types. 7PM.
Oct 9: Mission Police Station Community Room as part of Litquake's Litcrawl. 7PM
Oct 12: Books Inc, Opera Plaza, 7PM

Oct 20: M for Mystery in San Mateo, 7PM
Nov 13: Borderlands Books, 3PM (Saturday)

Hope I'll see you out!

August 15, 2010

Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in City Schools

By SHARON OTTERMAN and ROBERT GEBELOFF

Two years ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, testified before Congress about the city’s impressive progress in closing the gulf in performance between minority and white children. The gains were historic, all but unheard of in recent decades.

“Over the past six years, we’ve done everything possible to narrow the achievement gap — and we have,” Mr. Bloomberg testified. “In some cases, we’ve reduced it by half.”

“We are closing the shameful achievement gap faster than ever,” the mayor said again in 2009, as city reading scores — now acknowledged as the height of a test score bubble — showed nearly 70 percent of children had met state standards.

When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor, as passing rates dropped by more than 25 percentage points on most tests. But the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap.

Among the students in the city’s third through eighth grades, 40 percent of black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students met state standards in math, compared with 75 percent of white students and 82 percent of Asian students. In English, 33 percent of black students and 34 percent of Hispanic students are now proficient, compared with 64 percent among whites and Asians.

“The claims were based on some bad information,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group that studies education policy. “On achievement, the story in New York City is of some modest progress, but not the miracle that the mayor and the chancellor would like to claim.”

Reducing racial gaps in educational performance has been a national preoccupation for decades. But after substantial progress in the 1970s and ’80s, the effort has largely stalled, except for a brief period from 1999 to 2004, where there were some gains, particularly in reading, according to a report released this month by the Educational Testing Service, which develops standardized tests used across the country.

The achievement gap was also the main thrust of the No Child Left Behind law, which mandated annual testing for all students in grades three through eight and required school systems to track the performance of each racial and ethnic group, with the goal of bringing all children to proficiency by 2014.

New York City’s progress in closing its achievement gap on those tests drew national attention as a possible model for other urban school districts. It won praise from President George W. Bush as evidence that No Child Left Behind was working. In 2007, the city won a prestigious urban education prize from the Broad Foundation, which cited the city’s progress in narrowing the racial achievement gap.

But the latest state math and English tests show that the proficiency gap between minority and white students has returned to about the same level as when the mayor arrived. In 2002, 31 percent of black students were considered proficient in math, for example, while 65 percent of white students met that standard.

Experts have many theories, but no clear answers, about why national progress on closing the gap has slowed. They included worsening economic conditions for poor families and an increase in fatherless black households, social factors that interfere with students’ educational progress.

Mr. Klein said in an interview that he was not discouraged by New York City’s performance on the 2010 state tests, and that he still felt “awfully good” about improvements for black and Hispanic students, noting their rising graduation rates and college enrollments.

“I don’t think we claimed it was a miracle; certainly I don’t believe it was a miracle,” he said. “I think there are sustained steady gains here, and I think that’s important.”

Unbowed, Mr. Klein said the new test results reinforced some of his beliefs and policies: he said he would continue to close low-performing schools, for example, and would keep pushing to pay more to teachers who work in hard-to-staff neighborhoods or subjects, which the teachers’ union has resisted.

The bulk of Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein’s effort to overhaul the education system has been focused on the lowest-performing students. The city has closed 91 poorly performing schools, established about 100 charter schools and sent waves of new young teachers and principals into schools in poor neighborhoods.

Mr. Klein began to use test scores to measure schools’ performance, and joined with the Rev. Al Sharpton in forming the Education Equality Project in 2008 to promote good instruction and education reform for minority and poor children. “It is certainly what makes Joel Klein tick,” said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, which advocates for progress on the issue. “And you can’t say that for everyone.”

The city has even tried to attack the deeper issue of how children are reared at home, by offering some families monetary incentives to go to the dentist for checkups, for example, or to maintain good school attendance. The three-year-old pilot project was ended in March after it showed only modest results.

For several years, data suggested that the city had seen improvements among all ethnic groups, including in graduation rates, which have risen about 14 percentage points for black and Hispanic students since 2005, and a national standardized test given every other year to a sampling of fourth and eighth graders.

Even so, the scores on the national test, considered tougher than the state tests, did not exactly show a mastery of material. Forty-nine percent of white students and 17 percent of black students showed proficiency on the fourth-grade English test in 2009, for example, up from 45 percent of white students and 13 percent of black students in 2003.

The city made no statistically significant progress in closing the racial achievement gap in that time, said Arnold Goldstein, a statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the national test. With few exceptions, including Charlotte, N.C., and Washington, D.C., the achievement gap on the national tests has remained constant in all major cities.

But the test scores that the mayor and the chancellor chose to highlight were the state standardized tests, and they built their entire system around it, with schools’ A-through-F grades, teachers’ bonuses and now tenure decisions dependent on how well their students performed on the tests.

By 2009, the passing rates of black students on English exams had narrowed to within 22 percentage points of white students’, and within 17 points on the math exams. And charter schools, which predominantly serve black students, were doing so well that one Stanford University researcher proclaimed that they had practically eliminated the “Harlem-Scarsdale” gap in math.

But skeptics argued that comparing passing rates was flawed because they did not account for whether a student passed by a little or a lot. In New York City, black and Hispanic students were far more likely to pass with scores barely above the minimum requirement, thereby masking the real difference in performance among groups.

The State Education Department recalibrated the scoring of the tests this year, raising the number of correct answers needed to pass and saying that the previous standards were not accurate measures of what students needed to know at each grade level. When that happened, the passing rates of white and Asian students dropped a little, but those of black and Hispanic students plummeted.

Asian students have generally performed better than white students on state math tests in the city, and about the same on English tests. Those gaps have remained fairly consistent over the years.

While the slow improvement of all groups is “still a success story,” Mr. Petrilli said, the achievement gap, which shows how different groups perform relative to one another, still means that most black and Hispanic students will be at a sharp disadvantage when they have to compete against white and Asian peers as they move through schools and into the workplace.

While the gap is not closing, Mr. Klein said he was encouraged that the scores for black and Hispanic students were rising nonetheless.

“Do I wish that we had eliminated the entire achievement gap?” he said. “Sure.”

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

Giants v. Brewers--9/17! Who's going?

BRING BACK THE CRAB!

Excitement is building around the 1^st City College Night with the San Francisco Giants sponsored by the Foundation of City College, now scheduled for Friday, September 17, 2010. Game time is 7:15 p.m. Please note the change of date.

This is a fantastic opportunity for our College community to enjoy an evening at AT&T Park while cheering on the Giants at one of their final home games of the 2010 season. A major benefit of attending this game is that a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will be donated from the Giants to help reinstate classes.

The Foundation and the College have many plans in the works to make this event a success and enjoy a fun-filled evening at the ballpark. Bring your friends, family, colleagues and join us as we raise money to keep classes open at CCSF and cheer the Giants to another exciting victory.

Tickets will go on sale the week of August 16. Ticket price is $21.00 plus fees, and you will be able to buy your tickets directly from the Giants, or via their website. We will notify you when tickets are available, so do not order them yet. More details will follow in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Dr. Don Q. Griffin

Chancellor

A New Word!

Palin invents word 'refudiate,' compares herself to Shakespeare

By Matt DeLong
The Twittersphere erupted Sunday when former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tweeted that "peaceful Muslims" should "refudiate" the mosque being built in New York City near where the Twin Towers once stood. Palin found herself the butt of many tweets, as refudiate, of course, is not a word in the English language.

After deleting the offending tweet, Palin replaced it with another calling on "peaceful New Yorkers" to "refute the Ground Zero mosque plan," which only added to the confusion because it would appear the word she was looking for was "repudiate." Then came the kicker: To quell the vicious Twitter-ribbing she was receiving, Palin unleashed yet another tweet comparing herself to no less than the Bard of Avon.

Naturally, this led to a very entertaining Twitter meme, #ShakesPalin, in which participants revamped classic Shakespeare quotes, Palin-style (and of which Reason's The Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez was arguably the champion).

A good time had by all.

As a postscript, Mediaite points out that this is not the first time Palin has used the word "refudiate." (Watch at the 1:05 mark).

By Matt DeLong | July 19, 2010; 10:53 AM ET
Categories: 44 The Obama Presidency

The Life and Death of Harvey Pekar . . .

--a video of his spring lecture/discussion--one of his last--with Israeli artist Etgar Keret at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum

--from The Cleveland Plain Dealer

--NY Times obituary

SHORT Story Contest

Published in paperback & Kindle :)

Hello colleagues,

May you all be deliriously relaxed right now.

I'm writing to share the glorious news that my novel, GLITTER GIRL, has now been published in paperback and is also available on Kindle (Amazon's e-reader). The link is here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984581308 if you'd like to see it.

I'm planning some local readings in August and September and will keep you posted.

Thank you for all your encouragement and support in this rather long process!

Now, back to the sofa.

Erin

KGO Broadcast featuring Jim Sauve (6/29/10)

Gil Gross June 29, 2010 Hour #1

Download or Listen

A battle is brewing at City College of San Francisco over remedial classes. Gil speaks with Professor James Sauve and Steve Ngo, former student and attorney who discussed what they think the problem is and how to fix it.

Bring it. CCSF in the NY TIMES . . .

At City College, a Battle

Over Remedial Classes

for English and Math

Don Q. Griffin, the chancellor of City College of San Francisco, presides over a campus split by a furor over remedial classes.

By CAROL POGASH

Published: June 24, 2010

At City College of San Francisco, one of the country’s largest public universities, thousands of struggling students pour into remedial English and math classes — and then the vast majority disappear, never to receive a college degree.

Jump to the article and look for familiar names . . .

Learning by Degrees, by Rebecca Mead

A member of the Class of 2010—who this season dons synthetic cap and gown, listens to the inspirational words of David Souter (Harvard), Anderson Cooper (Tulane), or Lisa Kudrow (Vassar), and collects a diploma—need not be a statistics major to know that the odds of stepping into a satisfying job, or, indeed, any job, are lower now than might have been imagined four long years ago, when the first posters were hung on a dorm-room wall, and having a .edu e-mail address was still a novelty. Statistically speaking, however, having an expertise in statistics may help in getting a job: according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, graduates with math skills are more likely than their peers in other majors to find themselves promptly and gainfully employed. The safest of all degrees to be acquiring this year is in accounting: forty-six per cent of graduates in that discipline have already been offered jobs. . . . Read more in The New Yorker . . .

Jazz for Education in Honduras

Café La Boheme Presents:

The Steve Mayers Quartet

featuring Steve on guitar, Craig Kleinman on bass, Glen Iwaoka on drums and Bill Carey on tenor saxophone

Saturday, 6/5, 2010, 7-10pm

Live Jazz in support of Olancho Aid, a foundation dedicated to education in Olancho, Honduras

3318 24th St. (between Mission and Valencia) in San Francisco

Across the street from the 24th St. Bart Station

All proceeds for this performance go to Engineers Without Borders, who are raising money to install computer labs and two internet towers in a school system eastern Honduras. They have gathered a team of ten Spanish-speaking educators to lead workshops at some point next year with Honduran teachers on how to best utilize this technology in the classrooms.

We are planning to return to Juticalpa in September or October 2010. During this trip we plan to integrate the new technology into their school curriculum through professional development workshops.


Here is the website for the project (Olancho Aid): http://www.olanchoaid.org/en/

Engineers Without Borders: http://www.ewb-usa.org/ Thank you in advance for any donation in these challenging economic times!

They have a couple options for fund delivery:
1) Send it through the website at, https://www.ewb-usa.org/donate.php?fund=3&project=179, which connects them to ewb-usa's donation page

2) Send it via mail given the following instructions http://ewb-oc.org/give.html Whatever the way, just make sure the following is specified somehow to make sure the money goes to the right place. Engineers Without Borders Orange County Professionals Honduras Project

Some photos from our last fundraiser:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=142720&id=97997116568

How much oil has leaked?

Remembered/Reasons/Mission(s)

Did you see the New Mission Theater in that film?

Werner Herzogs reads MADELINE and more!

Brilliant! For adults . . .






More on storytelling

Seth in the DATEBOOK

These are just three examples of alternative strategies that aspiring authors, aided by Internet technology, are devising to get their work to the public. In the process, they are creating publishing models to circumvent the traditional - some say broken - one.

"The model of agents and publishers as gatekeepers just isn't working anymore," says Harwood, who with fellow podcasting author Scott Sigler has taught Author Boot Camp seminars at Stanford, in which they show writers how to create a publishing platform the way they did.

"I had to do something because just writing letters to agents wasn't working. So I give people my work for free. After they've listened to my book, they know they'll like it. I've given away six books in audio form."

Harwood posted serialized podcasts of his second book, "Young Junius," which will be released in autumn by independent crime fiction publisher Tyrus Books. He devised an innovative marketing scheme for this title as well. In the first week of May, he announced on his Web site that he was offering a $35 special edition, and he says the orders came flooding in. A week later, he had earned enough to cover a third of the cost of the print run for the hardcover, paperback and special editions.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/25/DDTJ1DIJ95.DTL#ixzz0p9rYOQIx

It's Portfolio Time! (4/26/10 NEW YORKER)

Any gold in your students' portfolios?

CCSF Transfer Student Josh Biddle and the University Medal

Speak out
University Medalist Josh Biddle's commencement address

17 May 2010

BERKELEY — This speech is for Bill Sell who changed my life by teaching me that it's more fruitful to lean into my emotions than to retreat into my fear.

Josh Biddle speaks at Commencement Convocation at UC Berkeley's Haas Pavilion on May 16
Josh Biddle speaks at Commencement Convocation at UC Berkeley's Haas Pavilion on May 16. (Steve McConnell/NewsCenter photo)
Main story: A call for 'moxie' and compassion marks Commencement
Good afternoon. I'd like to begin by thanking Chancellor Birgeneau, the distinguished faculty, my fellow graduates, and their families I'd like to thank my friends at the Biology Scholars Program for helping me realize my dream of going to medical school. Thank you to the lab of Dr. Darlene Francis for teaching me how to do science. I'd like to give a special welcome to my friends and family. Mom, Dad….if it weren't for you I wouldn't be here today…so thank you for getting it on all those years ago. My good friends and community college colleagues Matt and Martha. My best friend Jeremy. My grandfather Tom Erhard who served this country in World War II and my grandmother Peg who serves the best almond butter crunch you've ever tasted. I'd like to thank my great Aunt Velma who will turn 101 on August 8th. You know when Velma heard that I might be speaking today she said she would explode. So if an old lady blows up in the next few minutes, I apologize, but I think she washes out. You don't stain do you Velma? And finally I'd like to thank my younger brother Justin who shows me everyday what it means to be diligent, honest, and full of integrity. Thank you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "the way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent." So I ask that you forgive me in advance if I hurl my words at you with too much desperation, but this is my last day on campus and I'm going to do my best to leave it all on this stage. I've spent a lot of my life hiding. I hope that this is not one of those times. But even if I fail, don't worry, the truth is that this speech isn't for you….it's to remind me of the person I want to be.

I enrolled at City College of San Francisco in the spring of 2005 and transferred to UC Berkeley in the fall of 2008. During that time, I volunteered at San Francisco General, studied drug-resistant cancer at UCSF, and was a medical assistant at the Glide Health Clinic. At Berkeley, I've been a member of the Biology Scholars Program, investigated how experience becomes biologically embedded, and spent two semesters as part of the Teach in Prison program at San Quentin. I'm starting UCSF medical school in the fall and now I've won the University Medal.

But I assure you it hasn't always been this good. It certainly wasn't like this at San Rafael High where I spent three years using all my energy to keep the world at arms length. It wasn't like this when I went to the University of Wisconsin thinking I could run away from my confusion, and then dropping out after only one semester. It wasn't like this when I came home and enrolled at the College of Marin only to find my old habits waiting for me. And it certainly wasn't like this when 9 years ago I enrolled in a therapeutic boarding program in Boulder, Colorado.

I spent a total of two years at AIM House. I learned that few things are ever solved, but that a commitment to working through my struggles allowed me to address entrenched, cyclical challenges like addiction and depression. As a mentor, I tried to help other young men bring meaning to their own hardships. I learned that recovery isn't easy, that failures are inevitable, but that understanding and healing come from being patient and gentle. In the end, I learned that compassion is perhaps the highest human virtue.

But look, if I really knew what I was doing I wouldn't be a 28 year-old undergrad. I wouldn't go to therapy every week to find out why I can't make a relationship last more than 8 months and I wouldn't break nearly as many promises as I do. I'm wrong more often than I'm right and I've got about a billion more questions than answers. I spend most of my time making my life harder than it needs to be and I forget to do a lot of important things. About the only thing I do know is that I don't know much. I'll tell you some of the things I think about before I go to sleep but most of the time I just make it up as I go along.

I know that the real University Medalists are the students who have to sleep on couches because they can't afford rent, or the ones taking a full course load while they raise their children and work a half or even full time job. I know that before I save the world I should probably learn the name of the man who drives my bus. I know that it's easy to love poor people in Africa, but I also know that there are poor people in my backyard who need help and that the hardest person to love is myself. I know that I'm not supposed to be afraid of my pain, that it's the clearest window I have into the experience of others, but most of the time I run away from that too. I know that the moments when I'm most sure of myself are the ones of which I should be most leery. I try to treat the self-doubt that greets me every morning as motivation to do better. I honor the homeless men and woman trapped in the dungeons of their addictions who explore the truly dark places of this world so I don't have to. I remind myself to think of this diploma not as a symbol of my accomplishment but as a reminder to return to the communities who don't have Berkeley graduates to fight on their behalf. I know that the things I used to be most ashamed of are the ones that have brought me the most insight, and I'm starting to understand that forgiveness means giving up all hope that the past could have been any better than it was. But the most important thing I know is this, just tell your story. Share yourself with those around you, the good parts and bad. I know it isn't easy, but it helps. I promise. And anyway, you're too beautiful to keep it to yourself.

I appreciate this award. I really do. I'm honored to be the first community college transfer to be awarded the University Medal and I take that responsibility seriously. I want to accept this award on behalf of the late bloomers and the second-chancers. I want to champion the nontraditional path and represent the wisdom of following one's own internal directives no matter how foolish they initially appear. And if my winning helps inspire other young people who struggle to bring meaning to their lives not to be embarrassed by their confusion then I'm happy. But for me, the true reward is being able to share space with my parents without precipitating a fight, to know that when I smile it's genuine, and to be comfortable with where I've been, confident in who I am, and excited about the doctor I'm going to be. I get more love and support than one person deserves and it feels good to finally be able to accept it.

I'm going to end with the only piece of advice I'd like to give my fellow graduates. It's something I wrote for my friends at Glide after a man told me to stop being an observer and start being a participant. Magnolia, Angela, Charles, and Greg, this poem is for you.

Speak out
Because words are the foundation of family

Speak out
Because you never speak only for yourself

Speak out
For the watchers, the doers, the dreamers, the hurt, the addicted, the ignorant, the fighters, the angry, the meek, and the chained

Speak out
For us

Speak out
Because there is more value in one true statement spoken from the heart than there is in all the wealth Wall Street can lose

Speak out
Because every word you speak plants a seed of bravery in the belly of a person trying to decide if their time has come to stand up

Speak out
Because abuse is never earned

Speak out
Because justice for all is more important than the peace of a few

Speak out
Because we learn as children that you can't fit a square peg in a round hole, and then think as adults that we can somehow put a round soul in a square cage

Speak out
Because poverty is a systemic failure, not an individual fault

Speak Out
Because the education of our children is more important that the taxes on our property

Speak out
Because you don't have to suffer alone

Speak out
Because heterosexuals do not have a monopoly on love

Speak out
Because there are more important things in this world than your fear

Speak out
For love over loneliness, the strength to know when it's time to leave one for the other and the wisdom to recognize when we found the one we need

Speak out
Because we sing as individuals but we make music as community

Speak out
Like the fate of the world depends on what you say because it does

Speak out
So that the wisdom of your struggle is not lost to the graveyard of silence

Speak out
So that the youth can use your story like a blueprint to stay out of trouble

Speak out
And share the symphony of yourself with a room full of tone-deaf friends who don't care much what you sound like and who value the effort over the achievement

Speak out
To tell those you love that you do and to tell those you don't that you're working on it

Speak out
Because your voice is the sound of God's breadth pressed through the bellows of your being

Speak out for any of those reasons
But really
Speak out for me
Because I'm selfish
And I just want to hear what you have to say.

Matt Duckworth Underwater: Reprise

Summer is a-coming: that time for creativity outside the classroom.

I hope these shots from my blog prove amusing and even intriguing. Check out the blog for words as well as images.

Thank you,

MD

Art, book reviews, photographs, postcards, quick fiction, quotations, and (usually aquatic) reflections.

http://www.mattduckworthunderwater.blogspot.com/

Party at 6 tonight: Presidio Cafe (near the Arguello Gate)

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YOUNG JUNIUS Special Edition preorders are now live!!

Hey guys,

I'm back to remind you that today is Cinco de Junius! The special edition of my next book YOUNG JUNIUS is available for preorder now at sethharwood.com. Because you're a close colleague, use the code FAMILY to get $5 off the cover price of the book when you order.

I think you guys will really like this book. It goes back to the late 80s and combines a sense of crime/noir with the literary touches of Richard Price. Think The Wire meets The Wonder Years! Gah!

To read more about why this special edition release is breaking new ground in publishing, read my post here. Yes, we got Writers Digest to post about this in their weekly newsletter! Super cool. If you want to help spread the word, go ahead and forward this email to your friends or look here for more ideas.

Thanks for your support! -- Seth Harwood

One Week to Go: YOUNG JUNIUS SPECIAL EDITION Pre-Orders!

Hey, Just a quick post/alert about this...

We are one week away from the launch of the YOUNG JUNIUS edition pre-orders at sethharwood.com!!

My next novel, YOUNG JUNIUS, is coming out this fall. I couldn't be more excited about my new partnership with awesome indie publisher Tyrus Books and the way we're breaking new ground in publishing by combining my online presence with their experience in bringing books to market. For more info about what we're doing and ways for you to help spread the word, have a look over here: http://sethharwood.com/junius and at E-Team

Then get ready to order YOUR COPY on May 5th--Cinco de Junius--at 9AM PDT. This signed, numbered special limited edition won't last long and we're only selling it by pre-order this spring. So get in early and remember to tell me how you'd like me to sign yours!

I'll be back in a week for a final reminder.

Thanks! --Seth

Who has seen THE CLASS?

Accelerate!

The Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) announces

The 2nd Annual Conference on Acceleration

Baltimore, Maryland

June 24-25, 2010

Is anybody teaching this classic?

Video of Panel on Jews and Comics at the Jewish Contemporary Museum (4/1/10)

Lou Schubert, our Poli-Sci colleague at CCSF, organized this panel. I was the moderator/discussnik. Jump to the JCM's video site to watch the panel. It's also linked to the comic artist Miriam Libicki's site, realgonegirl.com.

Around 36 minutes into the video, after each panelist's bit, Lou and I try to push the discussion.

Kleinman

Alex Teague's MORTAL GEOGRAPHY

Learn more and catch the tour at www.alexandrateague.com

Louise Nayer's New Book!

Reading questions in O, The Oprah Magazine

More at louisenayer.com

FORUM Fundraiser

Hello friends,

Join us for performances by multi-talented songstress, Francesca Lee (composer of Paper Hearts), award winning poet Sharon Doubiago (author of Hard Country, South America Mi Hija, My Father's Love and many more), Seth Harwood (author of Jack Wakes Up), Alex Teague (award winning poet) and Louise Nayer (poet and author of Burned: a Memoir).

The show begins on Friday, April 16th at 8 pm at the Hotel Utah on the corner of 4th and Bryant st. in downtown San Francisco. It's 8 dollars at the door and all proceeds contribute to the proliferation of the CCSF Literary magazine, Forum.

The show will also feature local poets and writers.

For driving directions visit http://www.hotelutah.com/

Visit Francesca Lee at http://francescaleemusic.com/
Keep up with the Forum blog

Blue Eyes Brych!

Look at that shana punim!

Can't stop thinking about this story . . .

HARRISON BERGERON
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

--originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine in 1961--

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," said George.

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up."

"Um," said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion."

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."

"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better then I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while."

George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me."

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."

"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around."

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," said Hazel.

"There you are," said George. "The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"

If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel.

"What would?" said George blankly.

"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?"

"Who knows?" said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen."

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

"If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do not-I repeat, do not-try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have-for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood - in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened-I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.

And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying," he said to Hazel.

"Yup," she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

"Gee-I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.

"You can say that again," said George.

"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."