Back Home [August 2023, Days 7-9]

I’ve only been an uncle for under 1.5 years now. It’s an acquired identity

"Come on Mimi. It's too hot outside."
*slow wallet aftermath*

 At the time of writing, it’s past midnight here in Louisiana, but it’s a different day in Washington. I scheduled a few emails and deliveries ahead of time. I still have to hear back whether my conference presentation moved to a later timeslot to avoid a schedule conflict with my Saturday teaching.

At the risk of misapplying some philosophical idea, I’m supposed to always already be a teacher, learner, and lover of wisdom. That’s what the PhD, doctor of philosophy, means.

This reflection fits more of a pre-sleep, pre-travel collection of connecting thoughts situated within the last few days. I’m also on a streak that I will allow myself to break tomorrow in order to get some sleep over in Seattle. I will also edit this by adding to it. I think this one will act as one of those hub posts.This trip has been fun, and it was good to witness my nephew growing up, live, instead of via text.

 

Choosing

Before he was even born, my first gift to my nephew was a choice between Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. In the end, he’ll always wind up with all three, like Ash from the anime or Yellow from the games, but his initial preference is probably contextual. The predictions I heard were Charmander because he’s orange, or Squirtle because he vaguely looks like a baby. I didn’t really hear anyone predict Bulbasaur, reasoning something like “Bulbasaur looks the most edible of the three.”

"That one."

Bulba-bulba.

Bulba-saur!

 

Your turn.

By the way, my first starter Pokémon was Pikachu, since I played Yellow Version first.

 

Learning Theory

Na’ilah Saud Nasir, a top scholar in my field, former AERA president and current Spencer Foundation president, describes three kinds of resources for becoming or practicing an identity:

• ideational resources – self-concept of relationship to a practice and what is good in the world
• relational resources – relations which reinforce becoming part of a practice
• material resources – ways in which the physical world shape our relationships

Learning is a part of sociocultural practices, or being part of a group, organization, or community. Onto-epistemic heterogeneity (see Chapter 16 in The Handbook of Cultural Foundations of Learning), a fun term, really has me thinking about what the atoms of an education would be, in the Deweyan sense of “Education is life itself.”

I looked at the mouse flashcards, a pack of A to Z and 1 to 10. This is a material resource to be used by a teacher. I doubt my nephew, as smart as he is, couldn’t learn the alphabet or counting through the resource alone. It would require mama, dada, mimi, or papa, or someone at his daycare, or someone else with prior knowledge of the canon order of the alphabet, or the counting relationship between these positive integers. That relational resource pairs with the judgment that the learning of the content was worth it for my nephew at a time when he’s younger than 18 months old. The pack says pre-K.

A very important question:
Why does that mouse have pecs?

I will call it now that if Common Core State Standards still exist when he reaches kindergarten, homework sessions between my nephew and brother would be worth watching. That prediction is based on the fact my brother shares math memes that usually have ambiguous order of operations or some other gimmick, with the accompanying text to ‘splain.

When evaluating the educational value of the flashcards, the cartoon mouse on the box was kinda random considering all the other products of the same brand. Was it just to differentiate the packs? Were the drawings on the cards supposed to be a form of associative learning? The flashcards cost $1, so there really wasn’t too much of a downside to picking them up.

 

Collecting

My brother has a lot of stuff. Someday, the collection will have to pass on, right?

That's just the half of the room that fits in the picture.

He also has a lot of toys.

I did zero cleaning or de-cluttering in my ten days here. Before I get back to Seattle, I have an air fryer, a Sodastream, and a long comic box headed for my apartment. My thoughts on those purchases were they’ll make it so I’ll keep more organized.

On the plane ride back, I plan on reading Nimona. I have a backlog of low-commitment reads on my shelf back in Seattle, but I think I’ll get through it.

 

Cooking

My studio apartment doesn’t have a dishwasher, and the convection oven seems inefficient; I cook a lot of food on the stove, so I hope the air fryer expands the ways I heat food and make meals. The Sodastream is an experiment to see if I can get personal value. I could just drink water, but this seems to make some economic sense for me, assuming I use it and spend less on getting soft drinks. It's a way to better titrate my caffeine intake instead of coffee and tea, assuming I'd drink them ad libitum.

 

Whipped cream into Shaq face.

Louisiana does have great food. I’m going to miss the “slow wallet” phenomenon of getting my mom to pay for some meals. It’s when you hesitate or pretend to get the check, fulling to be too slow for the other person to get it first. I did cook more than usual on this trip though.

General Tso's Bean Curd (GTBC) with
air fried mushrooms and quick pickled onions.

Discussion

Overall, I do feel recharged after this trip. It was a good break after my summer teaching and before my fall dissertating.

Other Parts of This Trip [August 2023]

• Visit Days 1-3.
• Visit Days 4-6.
• Visit Days 10-11.
  
• View a Stylized Reimagining of this trip back home using DALL-E.