Birthday

Advantages of teaching in a small school, coaching and Podcasts

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Next year will be my professional Platinum anniversary, my 20th year teaching. During that time, I have instructed little kids from 7- to 10-year-olds -exhausting- to university. Basically, I have taught 10 years in secondary (high school) and 10 in university (those little kids were my boss’ and she asked me to go to their school to teach the Spanish classes, it was an amazing experience but I don’t have the patience). Each type of school has different pros and cons.

St. Vincent de Paul is a small school and I love many the advantages that brings:

Something I would never be able to do at a bigger school would be to teach and coach at the same time (other than at secondary schools, where many times you are required to coach), but I have already written about this (for example: here)

Every month we have a special birthday lunch when everyone that has a birthday that month, students, faculty, staff, is celebrated. The kitchen staff prepares a great lunch, and the Student Council prepares a video. I was recently cast in the birthday video, the last of the year, where the theme has been fighting the many iguanas we have on campus. (if you want to skip to my Oscar winning performance, go to minute 4:24 but you would miss a hilarious film and a great tour of school)

Another thing going on is that the students have started a podcast, and they recently invited me to participate. It is called In-Formation, and while it is an easy pun, it is very informative. You can listen to it here. It is an honor to follow an illustrious list of guests including the rector, a couple of students about to graduate, a bishop, etc. To listen to the podcast click below:

https://www.svdp.edu/information-podcast

So, while there are drawbacks to working in small schools such as lack of diversity of students, fewer courses to teach, etc. I really enjoy the benefits of teaching at such a special small school.

Happy birthday Film Club!

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The (mostly) honorable members of Film Club

Time flies when you are having fun! Our first year of Film Club has indeed flown by.

I have mentioned Film Club before (here), and it obviously merits a birthday post.

The club was started by one of my old students who then recruited three other guys: a genius film savant in Australia, another old student and exquisitely insightful film critic, and myself. The main component I bring to the table is my old age, which brings a lot of these films to life for these guys. Keep in mind that this is a totally amateur club, so while the guys are brilliant, none of us has formal training other than maybe a college course in film. So our approach is fairly naïf, even when we might do some homework researching the films we have seen.

The mechanics of the Club are fairly straightforward: we decide on a theme or genre for the month, the films are uploaded to our Discord platform and then we have an Internet meeting and talk about the films.

We have watched a total of forty-eight films, some have blown my mind like The Proposition and La Grande Bellezza which both merited their own blog posts. Many I have already seen, but I do not mind re-visiting. Some have been hilarious like The Castle, and some I frankly did not care for like Mr. Nobody, or Upstream Color, and that is ok, there is something wrong if you like every film you watch.

Here is the list. What do you think of these films? What themes of genres do you recommend we watch? Let me know your thoughts below!

Non-Linear Narratives

  1. Citizen Kane (1941)
  2. Annie Hall (1977)
  3. Mr. Nobody (2009)
  4. Biutiful (2010)
  5. Enemy (2013)

Light & Color

  • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
  • Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
  • Volver (2006)
  • Midsommar (2019)

Film Noir

  1. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
  2. Chinatown (1974)
  3. LA Confidential (1997)
  4. Nightcrawler (2014)

Western

  1. Fort Apache (1948)
  2. The Wild Bunch (1969)
  3. The Proposition (2005)
  4. 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

The city as protagonist

  1. Wings of Desire (1987)
  2. Do the Right Thing (1989)
  3. City of God (2002)
  4. La Grande Bellezza (2013)

Scandinavian +

  • Tangerines (2013)
  • The Square (2017)
  • Another Round (2020)

Family

  • Tokyo Story (1953)
  • Belle Époque (1992)
  • The Squid and the Whale (2005)
  • Farewell Amor (2020)

Horror

  • The Birds (1963)
  • The Witch (2015)
  • Under the Shadow (2016)
  • Get Out (2017)

Light-Hearted

  • Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
  • Cinema Paradiso (1988)
  • The Castle (1997)
  • The Dinner Game (1998)

Christmas Time

  • Day of the Beast (1995)
  • Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
  • In Bruges (2008)
  • Carol (2015)

Sound Design

  • Eraserhead (1977)
  • No Country for Old Men (2007)
  • Upstream Color (2013)
  • Sound of Metal (2021)

Is there a film canon?

  • Duck Soup (1933)
  • Casablanca (1942)
  • 8 1/2 (1963)
  • Taxi Driver (1976)

À propos, next month we are going to explore war in film…

Rocinante’s 10th birthday

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Despite being Rocinante’s 10th birthday, it has not been her best year. We can blame my PhD for that. For the last four years I basically only had time to ride to Trader Joe’s for some groceries, or for a quick ride (about half an hour each way) to lunch in beautiful Hillsborough or Saxapahaw, although mostly we would just ride to Five Guys just outside Chapel Hill. The only trip we made was to explore the North Carolina seashore, at the end of my first year at UNC in the spring of 2013. After that, between my dad getting sick and the pressure of my studies, there were no more long rides.

Although we would have loved to ride down to our new home in Naples, Florida, there was no money for the logistics, nor the time, if I was to make it to my nephew’s first communion in Madrid. Rocinante just rode inside a truck with the rest of my few belongings.

But we have great plans for our new life in Florida. Starting with a leisurely exploration of the Keys, a trip I have wanted to take for years, ending in Hemingway’s home in Key West. Then there is the West Coast and the East Coast, even “the panhandle” to explore. All very exciting.

The winter of 2006 was a tough one for me: I was still dealing with having closed my company in Madrid, with moving to the US, with not making friends. I was struggling with my first year teaching at a public school, and I was looking forward to Tracy getting well after her long sickness. I have been riding since I was 14, so getting a motorbike seemed like a worthwhile hobby to get me out of that slump

. I did a lot of research, made a few visits to Boston Harley Davidson, and had a massive tiff with Tracy. Ten years later I can safely say Rocinante saved my life.

So hopefully Rocinante will forgive me for my neglect over the last four years.

A rare lunch break at Saxapahaw
Rocinante travelling to Florida
Rocinante finally hanging out with some UNC buddies