I just set up phpBB on my school’s Theatre website - supposedly the Theatre classes will be using them to continue discussions about movies and plays, as well as throw around set design ideas for the upcoming Spring Musical. The theatre teacher, Mr. Small, has even offered extra credit to go and sign up on the board, to encourage people to start using it. Eventually, he’ll be having test grades for their participation in discussions online. It’s rather strange to know that my website is going to be the basis for test grades…

Mr. Small has been very supportive of the website, and has really embraced using this type of online technology to extend the boundaries of the classroom. My 10th grade English was also very accepting of the internet as an educational tool - he had us all create blogs to post our writing assignments on, and our writing groups would post comments and suggestions right there on Blogger. It was a little quirky at first, but it worked really well, and gave us more time to examine each other’s work (since we weren’t restricted to the time in class).

So it’s really nice to see educators outside of Charlottesville utilizing the web to teach (as long as they follow some basic guidelines). As I was checking my referral urls, I noticed someone got to my blog by way of Ms. Angermeier’s Classroom BlogPortal. The people over at Jackson Middle School in Albuquerque have set up a site where students will be creating their own blogs, as well as learning about the different types of blogs other youth around the world are writing (apparently, 540 Mbps is one of the blogs they will be looking at). Sounds like they’re in good hands, too, with an instructor who will teach them “sedition, high treason, and how to ping the teacher.”

May I express how awesome that is? What these teachers are doing is a perfect example of TechEd, and I applaud them.

Today’s the 1 year anniversary of me coming out to my friends at school. I remember it well - I’d told a close friend of mine, then my family, then debated for a few weeks about whether I wanted to come out to everyone or not. And then, after realizing that the school as a whole liked me too much to care whether or not I was gay, I told another one of my friends (who, as predicted, spread the news like wildfire to everyone else that night). I never came out on my blog, though - it even took me a few months before I mentioned it there.

This trip to past really got me thinking about all the records computers hold of our pasts. The first place I looked was iTunes, and the Last Played tag on each song. Sorting by date, I went back and saw a bunch of songs that I played on September 22nd, 2006: “Show Me” (DJ Encore), the Monk theme song, “Welcome to Paradise” (Green Day). It’s weird to think that, the last time I played those songs, almost no one knew that I was gay. Fast forward to today, where most of my teachers know (either through essays or, surprise surprise, this blog). The last time I heard those songs, I was a different person living in a different world.

I actually went through my entire song collection, sorted by the last time I’d listened to each song. Kind of like traveling back in time, to some extent… I found myself remembering events and important dates throughout the past few years, all reflected in what music I decided to listen to on that day. Then I moved on to my Gmail account, and relived my life again vicariously through email headers. I even dropped in on a few emails and read the first few exchanges of words between myself and people I now consider to be good friends. That one page of 50 archived emails Gmail gives you really is a snapshot of the past…

Unfortunately, sometimes reliving the past simply makes you regret it…

My school’s male a cappella group, the Testostetones, finished holding their auditions today, and I helped judge. We actually got a fairly large turnout - I guess the T-Tones have gained some sort of reputation over the past year (for better or for worse…). But our teacher sponsor (my awesome former history teacher, Mr. Kishore) had to warn us about how to handle the auditions. When the female a cappella group held theirs a few weeks ago, several students complained to the administration, charging the group with racial prejudice with regards to selecting new members. You can imagine the ripples that caused…

Mr. Kishore knew we would be fair in the selection process - he knows that all we’re looking for is the best singers, and that’s who we’ll pick. And I was that’s what we’d do.

But then I realized that, out of my top three picks from those who auditioned, there wasn’t one black guy, even though the eight people who auditioned were pretty diverse. I wasn’t worried that I hadn’t been fair to the African American guys that tried out - I just didn’t think any of them were among the top singers of the group. So why did it end up looking like I had been playing favorites against them?

I think it was the song choice. The white guys all sang “white songs”, and the black guys all sang “black songs.” Now, being not only white, but completely out of the loop when it comes to popular music, I don’t listen to many of the songs popular amongst the African American population at my school. In fact, I think it all sounds pretty crappy and that none of the singers are very talented. Thus, when the black guys came in and sang “black songs,” I thought they weren’t as good as the guys that sang “white songs.” I’m more used to the latter, and can better distinguish who sounds good in that genre. By singing a “black song,” I subconsciously ranked certain people down in my mind because I simply can’t think of most of that type of singing as good - though that singer may very well be considered talented by those more familiar with the genre.

The result: were I to form a singing group myself, we’d almost all be white.

Is this racism? Not directly; but it certainly has the same effects - I’m treating the applicants differently as a result of interests (in this case, music choice) they were pre-disposed to have based on their racial background.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter how I try to justify it in my head - I’m still guilty of it. And it just goes to show how prejudice can exist for the reasons you least expect.

This has been a crazy week…

This weekend, I drove up to New York for NYU’s open house. Holy crap, I want to go there even more now… Unfortunately, the Film & Television program is pretty much the most popular major Tisch has to offer. Which means out of the few hundred people at the open house, fully 80% of them were there for the Kanbar Institute of Film & Television. Keep in mind that only 240 total get accepted.

Monday, I had tests, meetings, rehearsals… But somehow I did manage to get a haircut in the middle of the school day. See, that’s what I love about having two free periods - you can get a haircut after lunch and still make it back in time for 7th period! I saw a former senior while I was getting my hair cut, though. He probably thought I was skipping, but I ask you, Who skips to get their hair cut?

That night, I also had a video shoot for a commercial about auditions for CHS’s male a cappella group, the Testostetones (and by the way, Yes, it’s supposed to be cheesy…):

And I’ve spent all of today getting teacher recommendation forms for college ready. Just four more months, Michael… Just four more months….

“First I should say that I hope I don’t get in trouble for this. My teachers have been known to stumble upon my blog every now and again…”

That’s how I started off a post I made on Sunday. Is it too terribly ironic that within hours of my posting “Educational Complaint No. 839,” the very teacher whom the post concerned found my blog and read that post? It’s ironic in a very grim, depressingly perfect sort of way. I should have realized he’d read it when our assignment the next day was listed as “Assignment No. 839,” but I missed that little hint. It took until today, when that teacher held me after class and spoke to me about being disrespectful for me to have that classic “Oh, crap…” moment.

My teacher was offended that I did not come to him with my concerns first. Unfortunately, he must have missed the “Rant” category I placed the post in. Rant is defined as “extravagant speech,” and I use it as a way of venting emotions that are building up inside of me - regardless of whether the resulting thoughts are coherent, my rants are not meant to be scholarly pieces of social criticism. Likewise, a rant criticizing an educational policy should not then suggest that I see no merit in that policy, nor should it be taken entirely seriously. It is an emotional piece of writing, not an essay. Thus, there was never any need to approach my teacher about my concerns - I knew very well that, given a week or two, I would adjust to the grading system I had been criticizing.

I do however find it inappropriate for a teacher to approach me about what I’ve written on my personal blog. Admittedly, whatever you post on the internet is susceptible to be read by anyone, anywhere, at any time - but the dynamic between a teacher and a student has some guidelines about personal boundaries that should not be crossed. My theatre teacher, for example, created a Facebook profile a few months ago, “Just to see what it was all about.” When we were talking about it, he specifically mentioned that he wouldn’t attempt to friend any of his students - not only would he not want to see some of the things his students were putting online, he knew that it would make many students uncomfortable to feel as though teachers were invading and watching over every aspect of their lives. That’s what I’m beginning to feel online after this incident. I shouldn’t feel like I have to censor myself online because a teacher could see it at any time (this is actually similar to people being nervous about employers checking myspace pages for incriminating photos, except that I’m not doing anything illegal or indecent here).

This brings up the question of how exactly my teacher found this site (it is, after all, quite a coincidence that he stumbled upon it within hours of my post). I know some teachers have found me by a simple Google search for “Michael Strickland” - though specifically searching for your students online is rather creepy. The rest probably found it through either my Poverty Diet podcast or my piece on Tracking (the latter of which has apparently become very popular amongst the CHS administration…). That’s all well and good - but to keep visiting it? That’s just as creepy as those who searched for me by name. There’s a fine line between “teacher” and “friend” - and certain things that go with those two types of relationships just can’t apply to both.

So I refuse to censor myself. This blog is written from the perspective of a seventeen-year-old gay high school student who likes Photoshop and writing. And as Marijean Jaggers once wrote in a comment on this blog, “There’s no room for blogging as anybody but you.”

By the way, I’m labeling this one as an essay, not a rant. Just so things are clear.