On the Passing of a Friend and Mentor: Frank Levy, Storyteller

Francis Xavier Levy, Jr. passed away on Tuesday morning - Frank was a friend and a mentor to me. I’ll miss him terribly. I met him and his wife Bonnie when I was a volunteer page at the Mandeville branch of the Saint Tammany Parish Library. I was a teenager. I shelved books. But when Frank would visit the library, he and Bonnie enlisted me in their Stories in Motion program - I’ll never forget Flutterby the Butterfly (played fabulously by Bonnie Bess Wood). We even made the pages of the Saint Tammany edition of the New Orleans newspaper The Times-Picayune (My mom saved the clipping). I was the lepidopterist. That was about twenty-seven years ago (if I did the math correctly). I'll never forget Frank. He was (and is) a tour de force. Here are several things I learned from Frank Levy: 

1. A great movie is a work of literature.
2. Wal-Mart is better at 3 AM.
3. Calculate the seconds it takes your local traffic light to turn red (and use this knowledge to help you know when to leave your house during rush hours).
4. Sappho is awesome.
5. Every kid can have a starring role.
6. Back in 1992, Frank was already using the World Wide Web - and he taught himself HTML. I’ll never forget learning how to browse the web from him.
7. Read. READ. Read.
8. Stay quiet backstage.
9. But own your lines on stage.
10. Stage combat!
11. Homemade beef jerky (DM me for the recipe).
12. Talk to strangers. If they appear friendly. And invite them to dinner.
13. Ask, and people might give you what you want.
14. Frank was the lonely kid growing up. But as an adult, he dedicated his life to making kids happy.
15. Your past doesn’t define you.

I’m sure I’ll think of more after I click “share now.” If you knew Frank Levy, please add to my list.

Frank and his wife Bonnie

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Video: What You Ought To Think When You See a Person Wearing a Surgical Mask

In this post, I share a video I made about putting a stop to micro-aggressions against people - especially Asians - who wear surgical masks in public.

A mask is not an invitation to hate. A mask protects. So should you. 

The Recent Human Coronavirus Outbreak

I teach Mandarin-speaking high school students. Conversation about the recent spread of the human coronavirus has sparked meaningful conversation in class. One question that keeps popping up is “Why are folks hating on Asians”? While understanding that any virus’s outbreak is a source of concern, we ought to learn from history that fear of illness is often used to cover up deep-seated xenophobia and fear of others (especially when the “other” does not think, talk, look, or act like “me”.

Latitude for Micro-Aggression? Often. And in many cases. Yes.

My friends, one co-worker, and an acquaintance have reported to me micro-aggressions levied against them for wearing a face mask in public. Some people might see a mask and think fear. Wanna know what I think? I made the following video as my answer.

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On What College-Bound Kids Should Do In High School

After a student asked me one day what he should be doing to "get into a good college," I gave him a few suggestions.

Getting Into a Good College — My Students Are Worried

     Let’s first say that getting into a good college, paying for it, and ending up as a successful individual is equal parts chance and merit, with a dash of injustice and absurdity to throw the entire process off-kilter. I use the word "injustice" on purpose. Not everyone who gets into a good school deserves it — a few high-powered celebrities have tried to secure a spot for their children by paying third parties to do the work for them. And I use the word absurdity on purpose as well. It's absurd to think one's future can be set by a standardized test score or to become frazzled by one's prospect of getting into school because one made a B+ in AP Calculus.

I took this photograph in Madame Dietrich's French class on the last day of high school.

     But let’s say, for the sake of argument, you’re a kid in a high school in the United States, and you want to get into a good school. For the sake of argument, let's say you’re in a relatively good school — namely, you’re learning something, and your parents and teachers are more or less good role models. You were read to as a child, and you’ve frequented a library, a museum, an after-school program, or something. You’re already two or more steps in the door. Parents who introduce their children to reading at an early age typically have kids likelier to do well in school. 

How Much Does Environment Play Into Future Success

     Environment plays a defining role in determining your chances of becoming a successful, let’s say, happy, adult. Sans being an athlete — that’s one way into college - or acquiring some kind of skill as leverage - getting into the school of your choice is a crapshoot. Just the other day (I’m a high school English teacher), one of my students asked me if he took an online course on Coursera or Edx - would that improve his chances of getting into a good school. I said, “yes, of course.” But then I thought about it. Yes — taking a course on computer programming from Harvard is not a bad idea - but you must be a person who is committed to learning programming. Adding extras solely for the sake of extras can have the opposite effect. Schools want candidates excited about learning and have shown proof that they have put themselves out there and taken on challenges. Make your passions come through in your college application, and anything you do outside of school can complement the person you are (and the person you want to be).

Has Applying to College Changed A lot Since the 1990s?
     A lot has changed since I applied to college. I went to a public high school in South Louisiana where most of my classmates graduated and went to the State University - or the military - or they stayed in my hometown. I applied to Saint Joseph Seminary College and Centenary College - both small schools in Louisiana - one Methodist and the other a Catholic seminary. My mother wanted me to go to the Methodist school — and we drove up there to speak to the head of the philosophy department. That's what I wanted to study. I ended up going to the seminary college.
     I took the ACT (and I made a mediocre score). I also took the ASVAB. It’s the military job placement exam. Both my brothers joined the army after high school (I’m the only one who didn’t). Taking the ASVAB is how I learned the difference between a Phillips and a standard screwdriver. Our high school had college counselors - but no one ever visited their office — it was on the edge of campus next to the shop building. Their main job was to organize random statewide testing administered during the year. In Louisiana, one had to pass the LEAP test to graduate from high school. Rumors spread about the few who didn't pass and had to repeat the twelfth grade. 

     Something was alien to me about taking a  standardized test — as if my answers were being sent into a ceaseless void every time I bubbled in a response. I still don't trust tests even more than twenty years after graduating high school. I like tests as a procedure — an activity for the general assessment but not for understanding a kid through and through.

Shifting Focus From Where I Want to Go to What Skills I Want to Master

Will you need to know this? Probably.

Most high school students don’t really know what they want to do anyway. At least it’s not quite solidified yet. The most effective task any high school student should accomplish is progressively improving their ability to get things done. Show up to class. Learn new skills. Perhaps you’ll never use the quadratic equation ever again in your life. But if you shrug it off as unimportant, you’re missing out on a skill - how to solve a problem given limited information. I was a humanities geek in school (and truth be told, I took very few hard science and math classes in college), but I learned to follow through on a problem. Solving a quadratic equation requires following directions, staying on task, and not making tiny mistakes — and you can use it to chart the trajectory of a moving object (and check out how a mathematician rediscovered an ancient Babylonian method used for solving quadratics).
     I still have a papier-mâché vase I made in art class. I’ve never made a vase like that since — but my mom has the vase in her living room. Did making this vase help me get into college? No. But it was something I did that pulled me out of what I was used to. We don’t know what skills we’ll need to know in the future. Technology is rapidly changing, but we need people who can adapt and apply themselves in novel ways.

One More Question:

     What are some things high school students can do to improve their chances of getting into a good college? Let us know in the comments (see below this post).

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Video Lesson #1: How to Gain Fluency in a Language

In this video post, Greig Roselli writes about language fluency and some simple steps you can do to improve language skills.

Fluency Occurs Across a Lifetime

Language learning is a long journey to fluency. In fact, there is no absolute fluency in language learning. Learning is on a continuum. What this means is that we learn at different levels and in different contexts across different aspects of our daily lives. Language is forever warping, shedding, building muscle — expanding and contracting. 

Things You Can Do Today to Improve Fluency

Experts say one has to encounter a word ten times in ten different ways to know it. The best way to improve one's fluency is to encounter the language you want to learn in different modes every day. Read an article. Take a quiz. Listen to a conversation. Ask questions. Make a list of interesting, new words. Take notes on what you read and hear. Write responses to interesting topics. Take a class. Listen to a podcast. Identify words that are similar (but may have different meanings) to one's target language.

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Photography: The Homes of Queens Attract the Night

East Elmhurst
The homes of Queens attract the night. Walking 🚶‍♀️ at night, certain nooks and crannies catch my attention. Notice the side alley - it cuts along the building, connecting streets. This part of Queens - dubbed East Elmhurst, is dotted with alleys like this one.
Elmhurst
Walking from the Elmhurst Avenue station last night, I stumbled onto Ithaca Street — a quiet thruway in the Elmhurst neighborhood (not to be confused with East Elmhurst, above) of Queens. Do you like the architecture of this detached house? 

A home in Queens on Ithaca Street
originally posted on my Instagram

A colleague saw my photograph on Instagram and she said, "My mom grew up in Elmhurst and my sister and I recently drove by her childhood home on St. James Avenue. Part of my childhood was spent visiting my grandmother. There were some amazing homes back in the day." She also said she loved "my love for her Queens." 
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#nychomes #newyorklife #iloveny #autumnnights #queens #lovenyc #nyc #queensny #queen #newyork #newyorkcity #nycphotographer #night #newyorker #newyorklike #goals #newyorkstateofmind

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Self-Portrait in a Instagram-Laced Painterly Palette

In this post, I took a ton of painterly-style Instagram selfies and I talk about how we never understand each other well - in most circumstances. Understanding others is hard. But worth it.

     There is a moment in the new HBO comedy series "Mrs. Fletcher" where a young, white college kid sits at the lunch table with several guys he assumes are "just like him". The guys are talking about climate change in a thoughtful, meaningful way and the young, white college kid makes a joke about riding a surfboard on a tsunami wave. He's looking for laughs but he misses the cue. He assumes that people who look like him and dress like him will, in turn, have the same mindset as him. 

      I have come to find out that the biggest mistake one can make is to assume that another person thinks the same way that you do. And even if another person thinks similarly to you, or dresses similarly to you, it is the worst mistake possible, to consider that other person you. It is harder to make yourself known to another person, to a friend, a lover, or whatever. It is hard because it means you have to begin to understand the other person first and they have to begin to understand you.  

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Book Face: Pharaoh Amasis of Two Egypts Holding Court in Memphis on the Nile River

I’m a high school English and Ethics teacher. Sometimes I’m tired of being a grownup so I play with the book faces in my school’s modest library. Today, I’m covering an ancient pharaoh from ancient Egypt. Also, today is National Shelfie Day.

I'm Amasis, a pharaoh of Egypt.

Standing in the @gardenschoolnyc library serving up some Egyptian Pharaoh realness as Amasis, ruler of Two Egypts - where I’m holding court in Memphis on the River Nile. Who or what am I pointing to? The god Horus has sent me a sign - a golden slipper so bright that every maiden in Egypt must try it on. P.S. Thanks @joellegarcia__  for snapping the photo for this epic Book Face photo.

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