Announcing my new blog on Anime and Manga culture

http://kinosei.wordpress.com/

I decided to make a separate, more "edited" (ie: censored) blog for the nitty gritty stuff and the stuff I want to show to people who... don't know me that well...

The working title is "The Animator"

Please take a look around - please also forgive the haphazard and the absurd in it. Definitely a work-in-progress. I hope you find it useful to your work in any way, and that you will share with anyone else interested in education and this particular manifestation of contemporary pop-culture.

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Japanese Class Downtown (Week of 10/23)

This week, we got around to talking about the indigenous peoples of Japan. Concepts that we touched on: - “Assimilation” - “History is written by the winners,” and therefore - “Losers are depicted by the winners.” - “ethnic groups” - “minorities” In the first half of the class, we watched a movie – 『もののけ姫』(Princess Mononoke) – which was the most popular movie in Japan until Titanic came out afterwards. It was also the most expensive animated movie to make, up until its release date (2004), at a production cost of about $20 million. I introduced the movie by talking about the setting – Muromachi Period (1336-1573), roughly contemporary with the Ming Dynasty and the arrival of C. Columbus in what is now known as the Caribbean. The main character of the movie is an Emishi prince, from a clan of natives who have continued to resist the Japanese Shogunal government. (Historians say that the Emishi natives were all assimilated by 1300.) The main character of the movie is based on a historica...

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t...

lesson outline: Racial Profiling aka "BWB, Biking While Black/Brown"

RACIAL PROFILING – Bike Safety & Repair Program, Free Minds Collective Summer Enrichment Camp @ William Wirt Middle School & Center for Educational Partnership Riverdale, MD (Prince George’s County) July 2007 1. ASK: what is racial profiling? (See definition below) Have you ever heard of the phrase “DWB”? Driving While Black/Brown definition: (From an education website: http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/02/lp252-05.shtml ) racial profiling is the practice of targeting a person for criminal investigation based on his or her racial characteristics. Profiling can also be based on other characteristics, such as age (YOUTH) or gender (MALE). Discuss the following statement from ACLU: “A July 2001 Gallup poll reported that 55 percent of whites and 83 percent of blacks believe racial profiling is widespread.” 2. How is this related to bike-riding? (BWB – Biking While Brown???) 3. ASK questions below – how would you feel etc.? Ask students: Have you ever been stopped by police a...

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