Making a Life in Education - A Self-Profile

Tulane student aspires to create a new education model that teaches students valuable life-lessons

“Beer?”

Alex Lipoff popped the cap off of an Anchor Steam Lager bottle with the butt of his lighter, offering it in my direction, and leaned back on his corduroy couch, crossing his leg. How could this possibly be the person who wants to fix the American public school system?

“I learned that at camp. There’s more to a plastic lighter than just cigarettes.” I looked at Lipoff, puzzled. He was smiling, half-listening to the Telemundo 6 PM news, and from the number of bottles on his coffee table, was already a few beers ahead of me. Everything about his demeanor said “skateboarder,” not “Future Chancellor of Education.”

He was wearing a red flannel shirt over a white v-neck, jeans, and a pair of weathered vans. Stubble was beginning to show around the perimeter of his face, but at 22, circles on each of his cheeks are still bare. In his left ear he wears a 5mm black gauge earring, but he reminded me, “Its probably time for [the earring] to go. I’ll have to start looking professional one of these days.”

Alex Lipoff’s dream is to found a school with a distinct model that rewards students’ talents rather than penalizing their deficits. Based on the psychological theory of multiple intelligences, Lipoff’s hope is to design an open-ended learning community that allows students to thrive in ways that traditional schools have forgotten. “There are people who can barely read or write, but whose interpersonal or artistic skills or their senses of humor are off the charts. How can schools still benefit these kinds of students?”

Lipoff, a Pennsylvania native, spent a year travelling in Latin America and Spain in 2009; his fluency in Spanish is not from the classroom, though. “You have my Chilean girlfriend to thank for that,” he says with a grin. As a senior at Tulane University, Lipoff studies Creative Writing and plans to work toward his MA in English next year. After that, though, he has big plans.

“I want to teach,” Lipoff says. “I really think that is the base motivation of my real aspirations. There is something about being able to help someone learn something about themselves that excites me. Think about how powerful it can be if we are able to go beyond what it says in our children’s textbooks, and instead craft lesson plans that take that same information and are able to tell our children something about themselves and the world they live in.”

During his sophomore year at Tulane, Lipoff designed an after -school curriculum for enrichment in Math and Science that is now being implemented at Benjamin Franklin Elementary on Jefferson Avenue. “It’s called Science Club,” Lipoff says. “The whole point is that it’s fun. We don’t call it ‘Algebra’ or ‘Research Methods,’ even though we talk about all of the same concepts.” Enrollment in Benjamin Franklin’s Science Club has exceeded the limit of 30 students for three consecutive years.  

Lipoff’s mission statement is simple: “I want to create a system in which the information we are giving to kids fundamentally changes the way in which they see themselves.” In his model, the real goal behind learning to write a five paragraph essay is not simply to put it down on paper, but for students to learn that they’re allowed to try things that challenge them, to value work, to learn the importance of clearly conveying an idea. “Wow. If they then leave the classroom and take those same lessons into their life outside of school? That is when we’re succeeding as educators.”

“I’ve met plenty of students who, for whatever reason, are simply not wired to be able to put down five coherent paragraphs with an introduction, body, and conclusion. But that very same kid has amazing interpersonal skills and is able to convey his idea orally – what would be wrong with him or her presenting a paper to the class, persuasively elaborating his or her points in the same format as the essay?”

Lipoff believes that it is students like these who are lost in our current education system. “Learning to reward people for their strengths may create our country’s new generation of great orators, pastors, and motivational speakers.”

To Lipoff, its no surprise that so many students are unable to sit still or behave in our nation’s public schools. “What would you do if everything about your education told you that who you are is not the model of what a student should be? How could you possibly love to learn, let alone pay attention?”

He knows it will be a tough road, though. “No one will want to hire me,” he says, laughing. “What I’m proposing is threatening to the status quo of standardized education. There are plenty of teachers’ unions and political lobbies who are just fine with the way things are. The problem is that we’ve created a system that looks out for adults more than children. Where are the lobbyists campaigning that not just any education, but a quality education, is an uninalienable right?”

Lipoff is just fine with those consequences, though. “I know my path is a terrible way to make a living. But it’s a fantastic way to make a life.”

Falling Down to Earth, CH. 1

First two pages of Chapter 1 from my recently-written memior about parent/child relationships, Falling Down to Earth. I'd love to hear what people think, and contact me if you'd like to read on:

I.

My son, my executioner

I take you in my arms

Quiet and small and just astir

and whom my body warms

Sweet death, small son,

our instrument of immortality,

your cries and hunger document

our bodily decay.

We twenty two and twenty five,

who seemed to live forever,

observe enduring life in you

and start to die together.

Donald Hall, 1955

M

om leaned on the horn of her dust-caked ’98 Land Rover with all of her hundred and few pounds. To the right side of the street, some construction workers were watching the street parade that had traffic backed up for nearly six miles. Their blatant laughter at her misfortune caught her attention, and the attention of her two children in the backseat.

            “You think that’s funny?” she screamed. Tears welled beneath her eyes and flooded her cheeks. She pounded her fists against the horn again and again, until the undersides of her hands and her knuckles were red as raw ground beef.

“Fucking limp-dick assholes!” Through sobs, she made raspy gasps for air. “I’m visiting someone in the hospital!” she lied.

There was nowhere to go. We were trapped in the transparency of the car, surrounded by flashing lights and the rhythmic snares of the passing parade. Mom put her head down on the wheel. After a moment, she raised her head, checking the status of my younger sister, strapped in the car-seat behind her. I caught her harsh glimpse in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were caked with running mascara, which now had reached her cheekbones and the side of her nose, making her look like a horrifying clown.

            I began to feel a warm tingle in my face. I clenched my fists to stop it. As much as I fought, I began to cry too. I cried because of the traffic, and because I was scared, and because my mother was crying. I cried because she cursed and because she lied. I cried mostly, though, because my father told me to take care of my mother and sister. He told me to be the man of the house. Since I was crying, there was no way I was doing what he asked.

The parade itself was a spectacle. The Radnor High School marching band led the way, dressed in maroon jackets with gold buttons and trim. Their drum major wore a white shako with a tall red plume, and a white cape and gloves. I imagined for a moment that I was there to watch and cheer them on, and quietly inched forward in my seat, sniffling and wiping my face, to keep my gaze fixed upon their leader. He had an angular jaw, jutting out from beneath his tall hat, making him look regal.  As quickly as the tears began, they were over. That’s the way my family has always been, though. We laugh and cry quickly. Then, forget. We feel in real-time, and then move on. How else can you keep moving forward? Maybe it was that I wasn’t used to seeing parades, but something about it that morning still felt special and ironic, before I even knew what irony was.

After an hour or more of watching and waiting, inching closer and closer to the intersection, a burly and fiercely mustached traffic cop waved us through. Mom accelerated sharply, screeching her way onto the entrance ramp for Interstate 76, westbound, toward central-Pennsylvania.

The drama of city blocks became a film-reel of trees, and then just highway. Makeshift vegetable stands and broken-down cars in front yards were the attractions. Every thirty or forty miles we’d pass an old gas station, still wood and with unkempt sprouts of grass around the perimeter, as though a divine finger had touched the earth in random spots and declared, “Life will be!” There were old brass pumps out front and sometimes an overweight attendant sitting out in a lawn chair, smoking a cigarette or drinking coffee. 

Writing Again

I write...because.

And four months is a long time not to write.

It's been becoming increasingly harder to tell people, or at least listen to myself tell people, that I major in Creative Writing when I haven't been, well, creatively writing. It crosses my mind every few days -  something to put down on a "to-do" list, only to discard soon thereafter in favor of distraction: a few hours of Spanish tapas, an afternoon walk, online procrastination.

It's not that I haven't wanted to - it's the blank, pale white, useless nothing that's had me tongue-tied.  How could I ever explain the colors of a Patagonian 3:18 AM sunset, other than to ask you to imagine that you'd been out in the middle of the horizon, standing beneath the retreating light, in the middle of the deep red that you've seen so many times from the shore? Never before had the sun set around me, and yet I had nothing to say about it.

How do I tell you about Machu Picchu? How can I remember exactly how it sounded when the two alpacas darted through frightened crowds of tourists until, in the center of one of the wonders of the world, one mounted the other and commenced to fucking?

Maybe its better I can't...

The final moments of writer's block is so often depicted as a moment of realization - where all of a sudden it all comes into focus, and the words flow through your fingers once again, that everywhere you look you see your writing, your words, hanging on fenceposts and in the wrinkles of your bed, waiting to be thrust into the perfect sentence. Well, I've never written a perfect sentence; I never will. And I'll never find words waiting for me. Just sitting down to type has been more attricious than anything else, a sort of guilty emptiness. If i'm not writing, what do I actually do?

And therein exists my fundamental problem. My question of existence, of essence. If I'm not writing, what am I doing? Well, I've watched a few movies, got my hair cut three times, slept a little. Bought a guitar, did a lot of talking, only a little listening, and did some thinking. I changed continents, twice. Saw some family and friends, only to move on again. I felt increasingly smaller in a bigger world.

Only now does it all come together again, though, slowly and smokily, where mists of ideas float by, and unless you want to inhale, you fan your face. No one forces me to write, to spend an hour plus blogging, putting in and taking out commas, as though somehow I'm preventing the bastardization of the English language. I'm actually contributing - "blogging" is a really shitty word.

I'd never thought about why I'd been writing until I wasn't. There's an inherent vulnerability that exists - you get to judge me and my thoughts without my even knowing you can read. Yet, I like you. I'm more honest with you than with most people. You don't ask too many questions, and no small-talk is necessary. We've got a good thing going, you and me.

Yet I'd never asked you any questions, until recently. All I asked was, "Why?" And it took you four months to answer, "Because."

All in all, its nice to be back.

San Pedro de Atacama

All of the power in town was out - hotels and restaurant kitchens had gone to backup generators usually kept hidden and dusty, reserved for only this situation. I had arrived finally after a full day's travel and had only took my backpack from my shoulders, leaning against the hollow metal of my hostal's bunk-bed, and placing the already dirty bag on a dusty, adobe floor. What does a tourist, traveling alone, and instantly without power, do in such a situation? Beer, I thought. Beer.


I walked down the street only a half-block before finding a small, candle-lit eatery with uneven wooden tables, a dusty floor, and a full refrigerator. 


"Do you want to eat something with that? Or anything?" 
"No, thanks, I'll just be drinking." 


And with that, pulled out a pad of paper and a pen from my  backpack, and in the dimly-lit bar, tried to look around and observe as much as I could.  I felt old-fashioned and lonesome, like a tragic character from a 19th-century set novel; There I sat, at a table, the wood smooth yet unfinished, enough so to run a finger along but still coarse like teeth on a popsicle stick, creaking and rocking beneath the shifting weight of my writing hand, with a small, flickering water-candle dancing in my beer's reflection. 


And yes, I was in the middle of the Atacama Desert, one of the largest, most vast, and driest places on Earth. I found myself, sitting at that table, writing about silence. A kind of silence so powerful it is listened for, almost giving it the fundamental properties of sound. The silence of desert, the emptiness, has a specific effect on a writer - the tone of my words was stoic, static, small lonely pictures I tried to draw - the scene of an empty, dark street. The scene of the bar. The scene of the sky, tattooed by constellations and freckled by countless stars. 

My trip to the Atacama Desert was an examination of size, I found. I continually saw geographic structures - volcanoes, high-altitude lakes, salt flats, geyser fields, geothermic pools - yet, I kept coming back to the sky. I had looked, but until then, I had never really seen the Southern Sky. How big it felt. How small I felt. Observing the size of the natural world, something that has become vacant from Northeastern suburban life, was in a word, humbling. What are we to make of the natural power, the natural beauty of the Earth? 

For me, I think the Atacamians have figured it out - and its something intuitively that I had done. We just sit, or stand, and watch, in silence. 


All in all, shh - just listen.

Chile con Ecuador

I wasn't even sure if I was understanding correctly. 


There are times my abilities (or, lack-there-of) in Spanish lead me to believe I am being asked inane and meaningless questions, only to come to the realization moments later that these are usually normal questions that I have been unable to follow. 


"Would you rather be on the normal bus or the singing bus?" 


Right? Initially confusing, especially for someone coming from a country whose best chant is simply repeating tirelessly, or rather, pretty tiredly, "USA-USA-USA!" (I've never heard a "USA" chant lasting more than 30 syllables). 


I opted for the singing bus. How else would I rather spend my first live professional soccer game - especially one of international magnitude, where Chile would be taking on Ecuador? For Chile, it was a game for mainly jockeying for positioning in the South American continental standings, having already qualified a week earlier for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with a win over Columbia. For Ecuador, a win and an Argentine loss would mean qualifying for "los mundiales." 

The ride by bus to Santiago from Valparaíso is about two hours, and I'd be surprised if we tallied more than 15 minutes of silence. There are roughly eight prominent Chilean soccer songs, only three or four of which I've mastered lyrically. However, just slamming the beat into the seat in front of me, my knuckles red with energy, was enough to show my participation. Anything I could've done would've been drowned out anyway by the two drums, a snare and a bass, brought onto the bus and stationed in the back row. 

The game itself was an incredible experience. I arrived almost 5 hours earlier than game-time to claim my seat in the general admission seating section. It may as well have been standing only - from 2:30 PM until the end of the game at nearly 10:00, I was on my feet, jumping and singing and flailing along with 70,000 other fanatics who would put the best of the Cameron Crazies to shame.

What about this world is so different than mine? Why aren't Philadelphia fans - known as some of the most passionate, and certainly most brutal, in the world of sports - as fanatical, devoted, emotionally invested in their teams like South Americans? Why does an usher in a yellow "STAFF" t-shirt restrain hundreds of fans in each section, while there were literal SWAT teams of Chilean Police in every section, armed with full riot gear, just to keep the peace? Why were there Chileans who snuck flares into the stadium and lit them off during the game, and there are times we don't even stand for the starting lineups?

Do they have less to care about? Less to devote themselves to? Fewer diversions to dilute their passions? I don't think so - They have the same preoccupations about work, family, government, as we do - that I've learned first hand living with a Chilean family. Is there more rivalry between South American countries than between teams in the US? No way - I doubt any rivalry in the world could top Duke/UNC, Yankees/Red Sox, Michigan/Ohio State. 


To me, these passions are passions of Nationality. Simply, South Americans are more concerned about national identity than Americans. Haven't you ever offended a Cuban or a Bolivian by calling him Mexican? The United States of America is the most powerful country in the world - and we're never shy about reminding everyone else about it. If we happen to lose upcoming matches in November to Slovakia or Denmark, the majority of Americans would not be aversely affected - We're still the best, regardless of what the international standings say, right?  That's not a luxury the rest of the soccer-loving world has, though.


For Chileans, and for the rest of the world, really, the standings and outcomes of their national football clubs is a direct reflection of the country itself - its what they cling to, how they define themselves. Ever wondered why the Olympics has rapidly lost popularity in the United States since the 1980's? Since capitalism emerged victorious, who cares who can pole vault highest or hurl the shot put furthest? But remember when it wasn't so clear - when the US Hockey team toppled the U.S.S.R. in 1980? It was entitled a "Miracle on Ice." 


The argument that soccer is less popular in the United States, and that is the only difference, doesn't hold weight with me. The World Baseball Classic made more headlines over the debate of whether players were overextending themselves and doing disservices to their Major League clubs - the fact that Japan shut down the American club in the semi-finals didn't bother too many folks the following day. 


The 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be an incredibly interesting series of events, not only in soccer, but also as an examination of cultural anthropologies. How will American fans, and American players, react to the first international competition since the dramatic deficits experienced by the American economy? How will we defend ourselves? How will we react for the first time in a long time that we may appear not-so-powerful?


All in all, time to write some soccer songs.  

Mi Cumpleaños 21

Just getting straight which Alex was sitting where was enough of a challenge. 


My family had put out the nice linens - the plastic table-covering and paper napkins - which draped like wrinkly skin the rusting ping-pong table, our dining room buffet. I sat on the side closest to the garden - a patch of soil boxed by concrete, spilling ivy up the fence and over the median onto the patio floor. Around the table to my right sat Alex, my 27 year old brother, who had just celebrated his most recent birthday the week beforehand. Across the table sat Axel, my 20 year old brother, who was flanked by Alexis, an older uncle and soccer enthusiast from Santiago. 


More than once, I turned to respond to a question, a request for more potato salad or cucumbers, or to pour another glass of wine, only to realize that I was never the intended party for such requests. I had enough to focus on in front of me though - the conversation revolving around the hazy events of the night before, what was the frat party of my 21st birthday, which ended in one friend being escorted home by the Chilean Police, one friend running down the middle of the boulevard trying to catch a ride to Santiago, and another friend in a fistfight on a local bus. The meal was full of laughter and full of food, so much so that I didn't know by the end which was hurting me more. I found myself gasping for breath in between bites, fearful that I might choke, trying to swallow my laughter and grilled chorizo simultaneously. 


It wasn't until the end of the meal when it happened, though - the food had been cleared, and still remaining on the table, most of a bottle of red wine. My Chilean father pushed it slowly toward me. "¿Tienes 21, no? La mayor edad en los Estados Unidos." And with a smirk, signaled international symbol for "Chug," a thumb to the lips with an extended pinky finger. The entire lunch, a group of 15, all turned their attention to me. "Fuck," I muttered, rubbed the side of my face, prickly of 3 or 4 day's beard, and put the bottle to my lips. Surrounded by chanting Chileans around me, I chugged a half-bottle of red wine at lunch on my 21st birthday. 


I had to admit I had been missing the idea of the customary 21st birthday chug. The night beforehand, as the clock ticked toward midnight, I stood alone, beer in hand, in a bar in Valparaíso. The closer the night stretched toward morning, the more uncertain I became. I was supposed to be meeting friends at 11:30, but they had yet to arrive. Never in my preconceptions of legal alcohol consumption did it cross my mind that for my first legitimate time, I would be spending it by myself. It was a truly lonely feeling. 


What I decided was what could be a better, non-generic introduction to adulthood than to approach random, latin women and introduce myself. At 11:54 I walked over to a table of Chileans and asked if I could join them. After no objections, I began the general formalities of conversation, the small-talk that translates both in English and Spanish. Yes, I was from the United States. Yeah, I'm a Study Abroad student. No, I've just arrived in August. Which bars do you guys like here in Valpo? As midnight approached, I may have casually slipped into conversation that it was about to be my 21st birthday, and that it would probably be condusive to everyone's evenings if we all took a shot at midnight. By the time my friends arrived close to 12:30, I had already befriended 6 new Chileans, and was up on the dance floor learning new steps to the Salsa. 


This is a story about information. After all, everything that happens to us, or around us - my night alone in a bar - is only information. Until I decide how to feel about it, how to interpret that information, and what I want to do with it, nothing about my outlook, nothing about my evening, has been decided. With the same amount of energy, I could have sat by myself, generally observing the rest of the bar, trying not to look conspicuously lonely and certainly feeling awkward, battling insecurities and self-deprecations. 


Instead, I chose to interpret the information that night as an opportunity - to be bold, to be confident, to be extraverted. What I found was that I could make even the worst situations - spending midnight of my 21st birthday alone - into celebrations. Maybe most people already know this. Maybe most people go to bars by themselves with the sole purpose of meeting strangers. For me, it was a first, and it was something new I learned about myself. I had the power to determine how I wanted to feel about the situation, and now, I know I have the Spanish to chat up any hispanic woman I may meet. What better a gift could I have given to myself for my 21st birthday?


All in all, what a birthday weekend. 

Mendoza

I peered over the edge and looked down at the rest of them, throwing rocks, sitting in a circle, bored from the past forty minutes watching one after another group member repel slowly down the 60 meter rock-face. I swallowed, as though to check for a sore throat, a type of distressing action for me - involuntary, yet purposeful.


"¡Tienes miedo!" teased our guide, a short, pretty Argentinian, who, for her, was only spending another day at work belaying nervous and pale tourists. 


"Uh, a...Ya." was all I could muster in response. She was right, I was scared. It's no secret that I'm terrified of heights, and yet there I had been, knowingly agreeing to the activity of mountain repelling in the pre-Andes Mountain range the day beforehand. 


Click. My carabiner was disconnected from the steel line set up for those waiting to repel. Click. My carabiner was connected to the safety line (not much more than a glorified dog leash driven into the side of the rock-wall). Click. I was connected to the belay rope that hung 200 feet to the ground. Click. I was disconnected from the safety line. 


I inhaled, turned to face my smirking guide, and took a backward step. Then another. Then remembered to breathe. 

To be writing now is a clear testament that the rest of the repel went forward as intended, one foot after another, until both were planted together, and I stood again perpendicular to the surface of the earth, not horizontal. And even though the feat was nothing to brag about in most circles (a 60 meter repel is no thrill-seeker's dream activity) I found myself on the ground feeling accomplished, and ready, if necessary, to do it again.

What happens when we decide to and knowingly walk through fear in our lives? In my experiences, not only with rock-climbing, I have found that these situations become me versus myself, rather than me versus the task. The hardest part for me is figuring out when something scares me, when I avoid uncomfortable, challenging situations without consciously taking note. The easy part, I've found, is just doing it. Just walking through the fear. It has become autonomic. Once I've decided I'm scared, what else can I possibly choose? 

All in all, any openings for a window cleaner?