The Curious Tale of the Gorilla and Her Hat

There once lived an eccentric and exuberant gorilla in the jungles of the South Africa. She had everything she needed: food, water, shelter, peace, etc. But the one thing she lacked was a ragingly modern, shabby/chic, quintessential hat. The other gorillas mocked her for her insatiable desire to appear lovely, to be noticed, and to feel wanted. After quite some time of sitting still, picking the fleas off her roommate, and pondering deeply, she decided that the answer to her problems could not be found in the jungle.

            Early one morning, she bid her ape friends goodbye, and started off toward the nearest shopping mall. Once on the outskirts of Johannesburg, she began scouring a map for the greatest concentration of retail opportunities. Upon locating her target, she started off at once. “That was easier than I expected,” she mused to herself. What she didn’t expect was the reaction of the people, the culture shock, and the language barrier. Go figure that a simple haggle-deal at a cute Mom and Pop would lead to the owner calling security. Of course, being a gorilla, escape was as easy as the playtimes of her youth. While disgruntled, her mind was set and her goal was in sight. She continued. Though, after the same game of shopping, haggling, and fleeing for days on end, she was tired, frustrated, and supremely self-conscious, knowing that all these dirty, smelly humans had all been seeing her without her ragingly modern, shabby/chic, quintessential hat. THAT disgusted her more than being thrown out of nearly a dozen retail havens.

Then, all of a sudden, at the end of her vine, ready to throw in the banana leaf and quit, she saw it. Her perfectly delightful, ragingly modern, shabby/chic, quintessential hat practically dropped in her lap. The only problem was, it was still situated on the dome of a 5’11” blonde floozy who, by her jovial, bouncing gait and awfully off-setting pencil skirt and linen blouse, was just begging her to snatch it! The gorilla has never been one for capricious or mercurial behavior, but something overwhelmed her and she bounded for the unsuspecting animated mannequin. Just as our furry, black friend’s feet left the ground on a mighty leap, she blacked out.

She awoke in a dank, dingy, dirty, dark dungeon, chained to the floor. The dried, maroon blood covering her hands and matting her hair made her feel sticky. Recalling the last moments before her blackout, she looked around for the hat. It was nowhere to be found. The large, red block letters on her cell wall read, “Animals TBT.” She could only guess what “TBT” meant, but the sound of many stomping feet straight toward her cell confirmed her fears. A rather large man appeared with half a dozen others in tow. As she was incapacitated by the chains, it didn’t matter that he opened to the door and walked right in. The scowl on his face had her assuming that he was not going to regret what he was about to do. He pulled a syringe the size of a submarine sandwich out of a box one of his minions was holding. He jammed the straw-sized needle it into her neck, and before she could black out again, she made out the words, “This is for my wife, you dang, dirty ape.”

The world was so enraged by the savage killing of that South African supermodel, that millions of stuffed effigies of the gorilla were produced and displayed in homes, schools, and offices. Only a rare few can be seen wearing a replica of the ragingly modern, shabby/chic, and quintessential hat for which she so longed during her expedition. Anywhere the effigy can be found, it is to be mocked, chastised, and shunned. Genuine articles come with an official, stabbing eulogy, which reads:

Let it be known:

The gorilla you see here

was greatly troubled by

an inordinate amount of fashion

sense. Please, do not fall victim

to self-consciousness, the swagger

of tall, blonde women, and the

power with which some articles of

clothing may enchant you. Good day.

P.S. Beware of gorillas wearing hats, 

lest they all decide to wear hats and

take over the planet.

Blind as Bat

Bruce Long, a highly appreciated and revered staff member of Dallas Christian College has probably the worst vision I've ever heard. I don't mean he doesn't want to move his department forward in the future, I mean his eyesight is astoundingly bad. Bruce came in on Friday morning and freely shared with the ACCESS students some of his struggles and stories as a student with a learning disability. Bruce's eyesight at its worst was 20/1200. He has since had corrective surgeries and has many devices that help him drive, read, and carry on with normal life. The best he can hope for is 20/80, give or take. However, this was not always the case.

Bruce's poor eyesight is congenital, and it reached its peak (or valley) in the early elementary grades; which also happened to be the time when students were learning to read. Bruce not only struggled with observing and noting what was on the board, but had trouble seeing what was on the pages of a book in his hands only a few inches from his face. He was eventually able to receive corrective lenses later in elementary school, but seeing or reading what we take for granted was still an uphill battle.

What does this mean for me, or for us as teachers? Well, perhaps the biggest kink in the chain is that Bruce KNEW something was "wrong" or "different" about him, and he would risk not being able to see or read well if it meant fitting in. He did all that fitting in required, which, ironically, meant doing very little. A teacher, if checking for understanding, asking about questions the class had, or grading papers COULD have noticed Bruce's condition. It is difficult that Bruce never admitted he needed help, and, even further, made efforts to hide it. However, based on what we heard that day, it's amazing that NONE of his teachers realized his condition and the huge impact it was having on his ability to learn. Perhaps Bruce, an intelligent, driven person could have gone farther with his education, done better in school, or simply had an easier time growing up if only a teacher would have noticed and helped.

Bruce may have terrible eyesight, but it was the people on whom he depended the most for help who seem to be blind as a bat.

The Indispensable Dr. Rife

"My Lord knows the way through the wilderness. All I have to do is follow."

It's the simplest complicated thing we'll ever and never learn. I work with a lot of students in ministry, many of whom are nearing their college years. I get a lot of questions about how I knew DCC was the place, how I knew Lauren was the one for me, how I came to be at Compass. I tend to stray away from the "I hear a voice" conversations, because it does nothing for the student who has yet to hear that voice. If all they have to look forward to is a voice that may or may not come, waiting turns to idleness, turns to laziness, turns to waste, turns to regret, turns to anger, and turns away from the very thing for which they were waiting.

Dr. Rife encouraged us to be open to what God has for us. He didn't tell us to go to Africa. He didn't tell us to become preachers. He told us to be open. I tell students, "Wherever you go, make disciples." God can use someone who loves him in the inner city of Dallas, in the African bush, in the Siberian wilderness, and in the riches of upper-class suburbia. I'm ready to go where God leads me, and wherever that ends up being, I'll make disciples.

God's Colored Pencils

Mother Teresa, the mother to us all, is quoted as saying, "We are but a pencil in the hand of God." On its most basic level, this simply means we are instruments of God, called, chosen and used according to his purposes. I think it's important to remember, however, that we are not all the same pencil. I'll put it this way: there are billions of possible colors in the visible light spectrum. Many of them may look the same, and even be indistinguishable from others. A complex set of Crayola or Blick or Prismacolor may contain a beautiful display of chromatic colors, but they do not compare to the spectrum, range, and number of colors our Creator has provided. One talented artist can take a No. 2 pencil and create an impressive image. Imagine the same image with billions of colors instead of shades of gray! This is the mosaic of God, only possible by his design and his hand. When God uses each of us, no single one of us can make the same mark as another. We may all be pencils, but we are each separate and distinct.

God contains within himself endless possibilities of creativity, and He graciously imparts a fraction of that to us. Whatever we think we are capable of doing with a pencil, God is capable of infinitely more. We cannot associate our ability to create with a pencil as he may create. The difference is too vast. Therefore, I trust in the Lord, that I am the clay and He is the Potter; that I am the pencil, and He is the artist. Imagine the possibilities.

The Assessment Tree: The Tree of Knowledge?

The Assessment Tree is displayed in our classroom as a relic or monument of an allegedly over-tested young woman. Its long, draping arms nearly resemble a creeping ghost, a symbol of death, torture, and end. It appears disheveled, mangled, ravaged, and malnourished. We have glimpses of diagrams, text, questions and answers; yet only glimpses. Could this be a symbol of the heavy hand of assessment over this girl's life? Could this represent not only her attitude toward oppressive testing, but also the standing state of her psyche? Have assessments done more damage to her than helped her? Would she know either way?

Maybe America liberated Iraq. Maybe. But maybe the country's cities, towns, and structures are in complete disarray and rubble. Are they better off? Should we offer to repair? Maybe.

Either way, I have decided not to eat of this tree.

Read, Write and Talk

Today we watched a video on a method of teaching reading called Read, Write, and Talk. This design is not supposed to be another to add to the plethora of teaching methods, because there are already so many, rather it is effective enough to replace many other methods.

The concept is group oriented with teacher modeling, guided practice, and independent practice all mixed together. The class was presented with an article that, very importantly, was relevant to them: watching television. It would probably do more harm than good to hand them a Wall Street Journal article concerning the ramifications of failing to balance the federal budget and voting on raising the debt ceiling. This was something in which they were already interested and immersed, so it was not difficult to elicit interest or sell it.

The teacher facilitated the overlying instructional method and theme of "inner voice" and how to communicate what the student read and thought about during the reading. I use "facilitated" because a student actually developed and expressed the vocabulary of "inner voice" that they were to use the rest of the day. That student probably felt accomplished that the teacher used HIS concept ALL DAY! So, the students read the article, discussed it with each other, wrote down thoughts, and discussed the thoughts. However, this happened in small chunks of information, not the entire extent of the article because that can be overwhelming. A large majority of the lesson was taught before the main text was even read. The students were drawn to the inset pictures, captions and designs that contained information before they were drawn to the drab, linear text, which created a more conducive starting point.

After the teacher guided the students through the process, stopping often to recap, check for understanding, bring up new ideas, survey the class, and aid in discussion, she gave them the opportunity for independent practice in which they were able to choose from three articles. She presented (literally) the genuine article because it's more aesthetically pleasing and legitimate as opposed to an arbitrary, black and white copy. There are fewer interesting or trustworthy components of the latter that would provoke or interest a student in choosing this or that one. After the IP, the students gathered in a circle and THEY led the discussion by offering a thought then politely and properly inviting another student if they cared to share.

What was most intriguing about observing this is how the students probably knew they were learning reading and reading concepts, but that's with what they walked away intrinsically, not consciously. In other words, if a parent were to ask the student what they learned about, the student may respond with information about watching TV, the FLU or tigers, when, in reality, they walked away with deeper reading comprehension skills. Telling a student that they are going to spend the day learning how to read is like giving them a tranquilizer. Telling a student they are learning about TV habits, the FLU, or tigers is MUCH more interesting.

Moral of the story: Teach them to read without them knowing it.

Phonetic Phonemic Phonics

It's very interesting to watch children learn and watch the brain build on itself, like scaffolding or a skyscraper skeleton. The students all use minutely different processes and concepts to accept, store, and recover new information and ideas. It's a truism that everyone learns differently, but often times we can't see how it's different, we just know that it is.

On the video we just saw, some students were taking the sheer cognitive information and reproducing it according to the teacher model. Other students completed the same assignment, but the result was different because the learning process was different. Some students used more a phonic approach and learned quicker than even the teacher demonstration provided.

It just helps to show that different approaches besides raw information HELP, but the learning style of each student changes how that information is received.