As far as routines go, everything is running smooth and getting better!

I might be getting overly ambitious with coming up with a title for every one of these posts, but posting to WordPress makes me want to do it. Also, looking at how the posts show up with emojis on my main page makes me want to keep them there! I complained about the post slug (the bit that comes after dot com), but realized I HAVE THE POWER to change those. Duh! Guess my blogging game has gotten rusty.

The title comes from a combination of my (actually) genius student and finishing the book “Decolonizing Wealth: indigenous wisdom to heal divides and restore balance” by edgar villanueva.

There’s an oral test coming up and everyone needs to answer a series of questions on camera. It’s something to show the parents. I have them write the questions and answers down in preparation for the test. Most kids write the bare minimum. Some kids get a little creative and then there’s Tiger (I suppose I just came up with a naming convention for kids I teach when talking about them online. While their identities are already very hidden with their unofficial English names, I’ll add another layer by picking a another for them).

See the image abive for Tiger’s response to “What languages can you speak?” (I just noticed a small error in the question and a missing comma that I needed to consult Gemini to see if and where it was needed 😂). Tiger rarely makes mistakes so I can get sloppy when correcting his stuff. He wrote all of those languages on his own except for Belarusian. He knew the Chinese, but not the English. I believe he has some level of proficiency in all of them because I’ve seen him use them in class. He was even able to write in Mongolian because he saw it in one of the books at school. It was very complex and I think he must have only looked at it once.

Actually… I’ll pull from the archives and show you some of the math he’s had me run through ChatGPT to see if it’s “true”. He’ll go “Teacher, is this true?” we run it through ChatGPT, I say “Yes,” and he goes “Oh.” It’s a dance we do. 😂

Tiger’s ridiculous oral test question response mixed with finishing the book on the same day got me thinking about how school TOTALLY fails kids like Thompson. There’s no real path for him to take to TRULY allow him to grow and develop at a speed he’s capable of (although this is something to be excited about with AI).

I don’t know the whole history of “colonized” education other than what I personally experienced, but there isn’t any room for fast growth. I have a lot of other smart kids in class (not Tiger smart!) and they get bored, are always moving around, and “can’t” focus (that’s a lie, give them something they’re interested in and they’re supremely focused). Anyhow, the whole system is designed to create cogs for the colonialist capitalist machine. If you’re lucky, through birth or good fortune, to be able to function in this machine at a high level, a level that allows you to put all of your talents to work in a fulfilling and passionate way… Great! Or you’re able to create meaning from the meaningless… Great! I don’t think that’s most people though. I think school passes on what edgar calls the “colonizer virus” and many people spend their lives trying to cure an illness they don’t know they have…

I feel like I’m losing the plot on this update… 😂

Anyhow, something that really comes to mind when I think of “Decolonizing Education” is the loss of medicine (wo)men/shaman. Potential shaman are identified early and are then matched with someone who can guide them through the process (from what I understand). Many mental illnesses are a result of a sick society but some, like mine, were (I believe) the result of lacking a shaman to guide me through my experiences and how I process the world. Colonizers having truly lost something integral to the human experience by trying (and failing) to totally wipe out indigenous wisdom.

Anyhow, I’m ready to pass the book on to whomever, in Taiwan, might want it.