Some Thoughts on Writing, Employment, and Mr. Hoefle's English Class

Awhile back, I was looking up my Honours English teacher from high school, Harold Hoefle, to see if he'd finally published a book (The Mountain Clinic--haven't read it yet, but it sounds autobiographical, and therefore, awesome). I remember he used to write for a Canadian literary magazine--the now defunct Danforth Review--so it made sense that my Google search turned up the site. What I didn't expect to find was a piece he wrote including reviews written by his Honours English students--this Honours English student! What?! You mean to tell me I was published in a literary review in high school, and I didn't find out about it till years after the fact?! I dunno, maybe I was absent the day he announced this to the class or something. And granted, my first sentence is a freakin' run-on! Still, it's interesting to read the thoughts of 17-year old Ben--like a 300-word time capsule. And I'll be tagging all of my peers from that class on Facebook, so they can share in the nostalgia/animosity (Hey, Mr. Hoefle wasn't for everyone.).

Recently, I've been seriously thinking about what I'm going to do for a living in about a year's time. My wife will be finishing up her BFA, preparing for her MFA, and we'll be moving to Georgia for her to do so (note my confidence, V). Up till now, I've had it real cushy in the employment department. Most universities only hire composition teachers like me part-time or per-course. And with the major cuts to education around the country, it looks like a difficult proposition.

My original major was journalism; I loved writing in high school, and I ran the school paper for a couple of years (though admittedly, it wasn't much of a paper). It's a prospect I've always kept in the back of my mind, and it looks more appealing all the time, and my recent success over at the gaming website BitMob has really inspired me (just three stories in one month, and already I've had more hits over there than here or at my IGN counterpart). Unfortunately, getting into any field of journalism is really difficult.

Still I've been writing, a lot (for me)--anything that'll help me put a line on my CV. I wonder if I should put this on there, or if it would make a difference. Couldn't hurt, right? All in all, I'm really not worried, and all of this is a year away, giving me lots of time to figure it out. Just some random thoughts on a rainy Saturday morning--stupid rain canceled my soccer game...

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies? (I stole this from Mr. Hoefle.)

Gamers in the Hands of an Angry God

As the Easter/Passover Holiday weekend came to a close, I was reminded of the take on religion that's begun to permeate our popular culture--film to be sure, but video games, too. See, every so often, video game trends give us new enemies to face without feeling too guilty about destroying their throngs of followers: Nazis, zombies, Nazi-zombies, etc. But it seems as if the new final boss of choice is God. I first noticed it playing through Demon's Souls. For my character in this epic to save the kingdom of Boletaria from The Old One and his demons loosed upon the power greedy people, I chose a Temple Knight--a guard of the old temples of god. After all, what could be a better choice for saving the world from demons than a soldier of god? But as the game progressed, I slowly realized through the exploratory narrative of the game that the god from whom my character received his holy strength was, in fact, The Old One! The game gives you the choice, in the end, to either join The Old One as one of his demons or to kill him! Kill God?! Perhaps this hit home more for me because of how much I had vested in my character when the time came to make that choice, but the concept of a devout follower of a religion killing his own god blew my mind!

Last year, I gave a presentation at an academic conference about the American-cinema version of a genre of 19th Century British Literature--the Invasion-Scare Story. Basically, the Empire became so confident in its dominion of the world, its fiction began to portray threats to Queen and Country, such as Dracula and HG Wells' War of the Worlds. My presentation suggested that America was facing a similar consciousness, as evidenced by movies like Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. I also suggested that this trend was already on the outs, and nature was becoming the threat of choice (see The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Happening, Wall-E, etc.). I would now argue that this trend continues to evolve, with these films taking on God and religion as the ultimate threat to man, like in The Book of Eli, Legion, and The Clash of the Titans.

And it's begun to permeate our games too. While a god or religion as the enemy in video games is not entirely a new plot device--even the relatively "new" God of War series is already 5 years old--the sheer number of games to employ this in the past year is indicative of the times. The God of War trilogy has come to a close with the death of Zeus; Final Fantasy XIII pits its cadre of heroes against a theocratic government; Dante refuses to accept his death and a one way trip to Hell for his sins, and instead journeys through the nine circles to rescue his fiancee, killing the overseers, and deciding for himself who should be absolved and damned; Bayonetta faces off against angels; Darksiders sees one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse trying to clear his name for "accidentally" ending the world; Momohime travels from Hell to Heaven, battling gods and demons alike, just to try out the unstoppable sword style of her possessor with her Muramasa blades. The list, I'm sure, could go on. But I'm hard pressed to think of many games from previous generations to so feature religion and/or god as the final boss.

 My sentiments exactly.

Granted, religious themes and allusions in video games are certainly not new. inFamous' Cole loosely resembles Christ. Bioshock demonstrates man's inability to live without religion when Jack stumbles across boxes of smuggled Bibles. Little King's Story continually pokes fun at religion with its Church of Soup, whose followers end prayers with "Ramen." Even the Legend of Zelda series introduced religion into its equation with its Super Nintendo iteration. But unlike in film, which went through a period of embracing religion (The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, etc.) before destroying it, video games seem to have jumped straight to the end. And I feel like this should bother people. But, as Penny Arcade suggests above, could we have already reached the stage in which deocide (What? It's a word...and a band actually...) has become so commonplace that even media watch groups would rather jump all over God of War's violence instead of its plot of killing gods? Are we too caught up in our uber-realistic graphics and game play innovations to notice what we're up to? Is this trend too subtle to notice? And if it is, what does that say about us and our society?

I don't have the answers, and I'm not going to pretend I do--just as I'm not going to pretend I've played all those games I mentioned. These are just some observations about which I'm curious. Because the original King Koopa fails in comparison as a epic, boss fight when compared to battling the Dragon God in Demon's Souls. And if we can kill God in our games, what does that leave us with afterward?

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

How Jaime Escalante Gave Me the "Ganas" to Teach

Earlier this week, the world of teaching and Latinos lost one of it's greatest champions--Jaime Escalante. As a member of both of these communities, the man meant a lot to me and taught me through his example. Now, I never met the man, but my experience with him was much the same as for most--the film Stand and Deliver.

Stand and Deliver tells the true story of Jaime Escalante's experience quitting the burgeoning world of early 1980s computing to teach at the East Los Angeles Garfield High School (also famous in a previous generation for the "walk outs" staged by Latino students demanding the same civil rights as the upper-middle class, predominantly white city schools). What he finds is a school of Latino students who largely don't care or understand why they're in school. They and their families seem to find more hope in their lives as auto-mechanics, waitresses, and gangs.

What follows is the story of Escalante trying to revamp these students education by starting with the brightest, setting out to teach them advanced mathematics, and aiding them in passing the AP Calculus Exam, giving them a shot at going to college and changing the destiny set out for them by society. What's amazing is that not only did Escalante succeed, he and his students also overcome accusations of cheating, growing the school's advanced mathematics program from 15 to over 400 within a decade. Many of his former students have achieved life goals unprecedented for their social status and expectations. And this became one of Escalante's greatest teaching tools--students will rise to the level of expectations set them by their teacher. In other words, by giving them the "ganas" (desire) to succeed, they will.

As far back as high school, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I had excellent teachers as role models, but really, I didn't have much in common with them or their Canadian upbringing. My parents had grown up in a society where speaking a language other than English was looked down upon, whereas I was now living in a country where it was the norm (most of my friends were at least familiar with three languages--English, French, and the language of whatever ethnicity their family was). I was often unsure if I could even be a teacher. Was there even a place for Latino teachers who taught something other than Spanish? I'd never had one, even growing up on a Texas border town.

Discovering the film Stand and Deliver woke me up to something inexperienced. Here was a Latino man who had not only succeeded as a teacher but had helped hundreds of Latino students to do the same. Not only did Jaime Escalante inspire me to want to teach, but this film about him encouraged me to seek out other teachers like him, such as "Crazy" Joe Clark (Lean on Me) and Lou Ann Johnson (Dangerous Minds). They taught me much and inspired my teaching style--something that while I feel is still developing (and will never stop) has proven fairly successful not only at my largely Latino university but in my early days as a lifeguard instructor for the YMCA.

Naturally, I was greatly saddened by Escalante's passing, but it only solidifies his inspiration to teachers, Latinos, and Latino teachers, like me. I'm grateful for his strength (from Bolivia, he had to first learn English before teaching in the language), his passion (after years of success in his new home, he returned to his old to share his teaching with more even more Latinos), and his sacrifice (years of teaching left him largely unable to pay for the treatments of the cancer which eventually claimed his life). He will be missed but never forgotten.