Just Thinking About How Fake and Stupid This Sounds:

Posted on August 29, 2022 by Meg

At our Christmas party in 2019, my then-bosses gave Workbro and me a hard time about nothing. It made me feel really unappreciated at work, so I decided to start looking for a new job. So when I went back to school the first week of January 2020, I had a whole plan about changing jobs, and the first step was to digitize all the worksheets, class activities and lesson plans I’d made, and put them in my own Google Drive, so I could easily take them with me when I left. It took me about 2 months to scan and upload and organize everything I had in my class binders, so by the beginning of March 2020, I just happened to have put all my teaching resources saved and easily accessible online.

Just so I’d be prepared whenever I found a nice new job. Definitely not because I was about to spend the next 3 years of my life teaching online.

If I read that in a novel, I would roll my eyes so hard.

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Beijing Ghost

Posted on August 19, 2022 by Meg

If You Could See The Sun, by Ann Liang, uses a supernatural invisibility power to tell a moving, realistic story about class, money, and adolescence in Beijing.

When teenage “Study Machine” Alice Sun discovers her invisibility power, she immediately puts it to use to earn money to pay her exorbitant school fees.  She’ll do favors and perform secret tasks that only someone invisible could accomplish, anonymously, of course.  Once Alice started getting secrets and requests of secret favors, I thought this was going to turn Gossip Girl, but there’s a uniquely Beijing flavor. No mean girls or gossipy backstabbing here, as much as ambitious high-school students willing to do anything for success.

To get her invisible-favors side hustle going, Alice has to turn to her (handsome) academic rival, Henry Li. Henry agrees to build the app and split the profits, which starts out as BULLSHIT because ALICE is the one doing all the DANGEROUS work! Also Henry doesn’t even need the money! But as their app, Beijing Ghost, takes off, Henry somehow starts doing more decoy work to let Alice work her invisibility magic. Henry creates increasingly goofy and risky distractions as the story goes on, adding humor and also making it clear that he doesn’t think they’re rancorous enemies.  I thought the book’s title should have been Beijing Ghost. I mean, the story’s about the invisible parts of Beijing: the unofficial rules and class divisions and struggles, Alice’s own secrets and then her classmate’s secrets.  I also loved that her plan was an app — you can order anything from Taobao in Beijing, so why not a secret favors app? This is so Beijing and so now, and just a wonderful, obvious next step for Alice’s situation.

I taught in a Beijing high school, although it wasn’t nearly as high-class and prestigious as Alice’s school, so a lot of the school life felt familiar. The extreme exam pressure and the glorification of exhaustion made such a good background for the supernatural storyline, and Alice’s own story. I loved that this book talks about fuerdai students avoiding the gaokao in an IB school, without feeling the need to explain fuerdai or gaokao in detail. It made me feel like If You Could See The Sun was for me.

I want to highlight a scene that stuck with me: Without spoilers, there’s a recounting of a crime in the only Asian-owned business in a town, and the responding police officers say it’s probably not race-related, just random. And there’s no way to prove it was a hate crime.  I filled up with rage, like this was every guy who’d ever said, sure, that particular woman earns less than her coworker, but are you SURE it’s gender-related? I mean, did the boss specifically say he won’t pay women decent money? Can you prove it? Same thing here… a criminal targeted the Asian-owned store and harmed the owners, but did he specifically say he’s racist?  Ugh. This part is infuriating, but also highlights this whole invisible-rules theme in the book.

I’ve read other novels about ambitious social climbing, like Everybody Rise, Snobs, or Social Creature, or just books about characters who aspire to more than they have. Alice is sort of in this mode, with her intense (but still likable) ambitions. The twist really is her invisibility powers — this isn’t a manners novel of a working-class girl carefully imitating the style, speech, and correct designer handbags of the upper classes. Instead, Alice’s superpower comes from being unseen and unnoticed.

Being the Beijing Ghost while getting top grades is exhausting, but Alice can’t give up either one.  Eventually, Alice has to decide how much she’s willing to do to stay in Airington High School and achieve her goals. This section was an absolute pageturner, because I wanted Alice to be able to stay in her school and follow her ambitious and I didn’t want her to do the increasingly sketchy (and increasingly well-paid) ghost missions at the same time. This question of what are you willing to do? where do you draw the line? who are you becoming is such a solid YA center, with a great character and so much Beijing style here.

Don’t let the generic cover fool you. This is not a generic YA.

(Crossposted to my book blog)

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Online Learning, Again

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Meg

Dept of Ed: To improve online teaching quality, we’ve decided that teachers need more paperwork. There’s now a new form for lesson plans and you have to submit then in new places and there are new, required PD sessions where a boomer will tell you about Jamboard again and we have a new evaluation system for teachers on how well you’re incorporating technology and there are new benchmarks and paperwork for this and you’re supposed to evaluate your junior teachers on this and there’s another mandatory meeting about how to do that and of course you won’t be paid extra for any of this.

Me: I’m not doing any of that bullshit. Make me.

My student: Hi teacher, I’m doing class in my car parked outside Starbucks because the wifi’s out in my building, but don’t worry, I brought a pencil and my homework packet.

Me: Ok, yes, I’ll work very hard to make our online classes work for you guys.

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Sad Zoom Graduation

Posted on June 30, 2022 by Meg

Zoon Graduation Background

My year teaching of ESOL 3 at my new job, back in adult ed, ended today, with Sad Zoom Graduation. I was kind of dreading this morning because I’m so completely burned out on Sad Zoom versions of all our milestones, forever.

After I read my students’ names and congratulated everyone on completing Level 3 English, one of my students said “Teacher, may I say something?” and then she READ AN ENTIRE SPEECH that she had WRITTEN IN ENGLISH thanking me for the class and listing all the reasons she liked the class. And I cried.

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Posted on May 2, 2022 by Meg

I accidentally read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, over a game convention weekend, while I spent the rest of my time demoing my games, playtesting a new game, and talking about game design. We also did a panel where my husband/co-creator explained his workflow as a wind-up robot, that gets keeps going and going, and I had to say that I have 10,000 ideas in all directions, but not every idea is a great game. Then I came home and read this story about gamemaking creativity and relationships.

In Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, childhood friends (and sometimes frenemies) Sadie Green and Sam Masur agree to spend a college summer making a game together.  With Sam’s college roommate, Marx, as their producer, their first game, Ichigo, becomes a massive hit. This is the goal for all of us making indie games, but the novel is actually about long-term creative collaboration, not about the magic of a success.

Their game creativity is a special kind of work, there’s a lot of time between Cool Idea and Finished Game, and that’s when we see our characters grow and change, fall in and out of love, struggle to understand and be understood. I particularly loved how Marx, the producer, was described as doing all the invisible work that let Sam and Sadie do their work better. There’s a lot about inspiration and accidental inspiration, with game journalists making connections the developers didn’t see.  The book has a couple experimental sections, and they’re not all quite as engaging as the main narrative, but I think in any book about game dev, a chapter set inside the game world is basically obligatory.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is not just about games, it’s also a story about disability and trauma and overcoming the past. Mazer’s injury, and the way he feels about his body play a major role in his personality.  (It’s not exactly pleasant to read about his injury and amputation, but it’s not too gross, either.) We can see him developing and changing over the years. Overall, I think seeing our characters develop over time was one of my favorite parts.

You needn’t know a lot about games to follow the story, but some gamer moments resonated for me, and maybe they will for other gamemakers, too.  Sadie starts out making Solution, which is not exactly Train, but has a similar feeling (Weirdly, this same weekend I directed some younger game designers to this talk from Brenda Braithwaite). and EmilyBlaster, which is not exactly Stride and Prejudice, but has the same feeling. For me, this made the whole story feel like it was grounded in real games.

Those of us in the Oregon Trail generation often joke about how the best part of playing games these days is a character waking up fully rested or facing only solvable puzzles, so I enjoyed the novel’s comments on the achievable goals and restarts of gaming. The characters are the right age for Oregon Trail memories too, and there’s a running joke about the classic you have died of dysentery line.  But this is about friends riffing on a shared experience, this isn’t a book about getting the gamer jokes. I mean, I liked Ready Player One, but ultimately found the barrage of pop culture references exhausting. It started to feel less like fandom and more like a fandom test — did I like the correct cool things? was I the right kind of player? had the correct lines and bits of trivia made the correct impact on me? Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow uses games to tell a story about love and creativity, it’s not a story about liking the correct games.

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adulthood

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Meg

Me: Why? You ask me why? For personal joy and artistic expression, for lifelong learning, for intellectual curiosity, for connection to the human experience, for —

My accountant: Let me clarify. Was this class in game design so you can claim your tuition as a company expense?

Me: Oh. No, not really.

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So I Read “The Bride Test” and Quit My Job

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Meg

 

Last June, while I was teaching at the university, I read The Bride Test. This is a sweet romance full of misunderstandings and loads of chemistry. Khai’s mother is afraid her son will never get a girlfriend, never fall in love, never get married and never have children, so she pays Esme Tran, a hardworking young woman from a poor neighborhood in Vietnam, to come to the US and try to be Khai’s fiancé for one summer. She hopes that a little fake dating will lead to real romance. Khai, an accountant with autistic patterns in his every day life, doesn’t fight his mom’s plan, but makes it clear he’s never gotten close to anyone and doesn’t plan to start. Esme wants the money for her family back home, and maybe a green card, too, so she’s willing to give it a try.

It’s a fun story, with engaging characters and new twists on the usual romance plot. The end of Esme’s visa puts a dramatic timeline on this story. Khai’s autistic worldview makes him more sympathetic, even when he’s pushing everyone away, and presents unusual problems.  Esme’s got her own secrets. (But would all of their romantic problems have been solved with an honest three-minute conversation? Also yes.)

In this book, there’s a fairly minor character who’s an adult ESL teacher and there’s a fairly minor scene where the international students have bubble tea together. It’s barely a page or two, but it reminded me so strongly of those times with my former students when I taught adult ESL. It’s just one of the experiences Esme has in the US, but long after I read the book, I kept thinking of that scene.

I’d been pretty excited to get my uni job. After 5 years of teaching adult ESL, I was starting to feel like I’d taught the same lessons 10,000 times, and I was ready to move on.  I should be more ambitious. New challenges! New opportunities! And money. I know teaching’s supposed to be a calling or whatever, but I quite like having money.

It was just fine teaching college students instead of adult learners. I did not love teenagers submitting blank documents as assignments and pretending there was a mysterious technical glitch, but no job is perfect.

But reading this fairly minor scene in The Bride Test about international ESL students and their adult-ed teacher almost made me feel sick. Thinking about those memories in my own life, and how they’re not my every day any more. A lot of what I missed was just pre-pandemic teaching, in person, with groups, changing partners and moving around the classroom, with Kahoot games and roleplays, with matching and card games, and sometime a coffee or tea with students after class. A lot of that’s just not pandemic-possible, of course, but I realize I still miss teaching adult students.

Adult ed doesn’t get a lot of respect, and I often feel like I’m not ambitious enough, that I should be striving for a job at a name college.  And ESL teaching gets even less respect.  Many people think because they can speak English, they could teach grammar, design activities for student practice, plan lessons, and manage a multi-cultural classroom too.

I thought about this for the rest of the summer, and in August, I saw an ad looking for an adult ESL teacher.  (See how I said that? Like I was just reading the paper one day and not actively searching for a local adult ESL job.) I like my new job just as much as I could possibly like Zoom teaching and my students are learning just as much as they could possibly learn with Zoom classes.

Anyway, I read The Bride Test and then I quit my job.

Posted in Boston, ESL, milestones, Teaching | 1 Comment

Mystery Communication

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Meg

When I came out of classes and saw a paper on my windshield, I expected it to be a nasty note telling me that I’d managed to park incorrectly because the left side of parking lot is closed on the third Wednesday of the month or on the full moon or whatever. I hardly ever drive, plus there have been a lot of, uh, let’s call them location surprises and procedure changes that happen while teaching in a summer of  covid/heatwave/wildfire smoke/school construction/street construction.

But it was really the best note! a Star Trek communicator! It matches the sticker on the back of the car! And there was no name!

It is a freaking joy because I miss my ASC work pranks so badly and now I keep looking at my summer coworkers and thinking “Is it you? Are you the secret nerd?”

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Wartime Farm, etc.

Posted on August 15, 2021 by Meg

I rarely watch TV. I know this sounds like I live in a cave or like a weird humblebrag (Oh, I don’t watch frivolous Netflix! I’m much too busy with my hours of regular exercise, making all-organic meals from scratch, and volunteering for worthy causes!) but I just don’t fall into TV shows very much. I usually drift off to sleep or reach for my phone, so it’s always a nice surprise when I find I do really like a TV show.

I recently stumbled into these shows that are basically just these happy history nerds trying out regular life in different historical periods: Tudor Monastery Farm, Edwardian Farm, Victorian Farm, and Wartime Farm. After researching daily life in that time period, Ruth and the boys set out to farm, cook, and just generally live using historical methods, and they have have such a good time making old crafts and recipes. 

There are usually three recreators, Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Alex Langlands, with Tom Pinfold instead of Alex a couple times. As Ruth and the boys try out these historical activities, they’re pretty blunt about how they’re doing — whether the work is frustrating or a historical recipe is nice. This is great, because I feel like a lot of popular history is either by someone who dreamily wishes they were born in the  glorious past, or it’s all about how dirty / smelly / sickly / backwards everyone was back in the dark ages. Instead, the history nerds gamely try out historical ways of  life, and describe how it’s going.

I should warn you that these shows have some really gruesome moments. There aren’t any jumpscares or any scenes intended to frighten, but when they say it’s time to butcher the pig, skip ahead a few scenes because, well, they’re going to butcher the pig.

The first one I found is the Tudor Monastery Farm. We typically think of Henry VIII when we hear “Tudor” but this is under Henry VII, in 1500.  The year is actually not terribly important, since farm life in 1490 or whatever wouldn’t have been too different from 1460 or 1500, right? But it’s definitely pre-reformation Tudor times, you can see that in the role of the monastery. They also talk about the upcoming changes in the reformation, but mostly they try to live like Tudor tenant-farmers.  I loved this show, so I was delighted to find the book version, How To Be A Tudor, which was so interesting, and much more detailed.

All the Farm shows also hit the right difficulty of explanation, where I wasn’t confused about new terms and I didn’t feel condescended to.  I think some of it is because the three history nerds seem to be excited and genuinely interested when they ask experts to show their crafts, or demonstrate something they’re making. Sometimes they have Prof. Ronald Hutton turn up to tell then about old ceremonies and customs, and he’s just as excited to recreate the ceremonial cutting of the last sheaf of wheat as they are.

My favorite is Wartime Farm (unfortunately, my favorite is the only one that’s not on Amazon Prime), which covers British countryside life in WWII. This one doesn’t follow the usual full-calendar-year format of the other ones, instead it looks at the increases in rationing and local food production over the course of the entire war. They still wear historical clothes and do all the historical activities, like covering the windows with blackout curtains or canning with the WI. Also, the historians talk to people about their experiences, or their parents’ experiences, in the war.

Wartime Farm is weirdly perfect pandemic viewing. In a year when our shops had empty shelves and we were seriously limiting shopping trips, I enjoyed watching Ruth cook with canned goods and ingredient substitutions. And after watching people hoard TP and hand sanitizer last year, and gasoline last month, I really understood the fairness of the rationing books. (Yes, of course some people cheated, but the whole idea of rationed goods is that everyone gets something, instead of one guys buys up everything and everyone else is screwed.) A lot of the war effort, like blackout curtains against night air raids, only work because everyone is participating.

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Games in Pandemic Life

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Meg

For the game version of all the wild things we’ve experienced in pandemic life, try the browser runner game 2020 Game. Well, it’s mostly a runner, but as the year gets stranger, there are more platformer challenges, more objects to dodge and everything just gets harder and harder, from all directions. 

 

For a cheery, cuter game around pandemic life, Plays.org has a new Fight Virus hospital game.  In this one, just click the cute little corona germs to clear them away, keeping your adorable little hospital clear. Click the patients to help them check in and then help them recover and keep your ward clear for incoming patients. 

This game uses the usual increasing mechanics of a time-management sim, so eventually you’re in a race against time and covid, clicking to clean and care for patients as fast as possible. The game ends, distressingly, when there are just too many patients and too much covid in the hospital to keep the game going. But it’s a cute browser game, so players can just try again to play for longer next time.

There are also other cute  simulation games, when you’re just looking for a fun, light time-management distraction without a reminder of covid cleaning.

For a mood game of pandemic isolation and confusion, I liked Doublespeak Games’ A Dark Room. This is a simple, text-based resource game set in an eerie woods, with exploration as one of the key themes. A lot of this game relies on countdown meters and clicking for more resources, which is often one of my least favorite mechanics, but it helps give a sense of time passing. I enjoyed discovering both the creepy, dark forest and the survival improvements my builder could make.  Still, there’s a certain amount of clicking and waiting involved in discovering this gameworld, at least until I’d drawn enough villagers to my settlement. The click, wait, discover cycle in the browser version of this game also works really well if you’re doing a boring WFH task in another window, I’m just saying… 

There’s a lot to discover in this deceptively simple game. All the slightly-off bits of descriptive text add up to a surprising storyline. 

For the opposite feeling, try the sweet puzzle game from eyezmaze, Grow Recovery. If you’ve played any of the cute Grow games, you’re familiar with the basic rules: players have a collection of items to add to the scene. Each item interacts with the existing items in interesting ways, and you’ll need to find the best order so that each item is used well to solve the challenge. Of course, many of  the “wrong” interactions are great fun to watch, too. 

Grow Recovery adds a comforting little narrative to the Grow game formula, showing an exhausted little figure in need of healing. Each of the items available will make him feel better in a different way: Choose a blanket for him, and he’ll wrap himself up. Choose a friend to cheer him up, and the friend will help heal him. The blanket levels up into a pillow and a bed, making him extra comfy, and with some food, the friend will cook a nourishing meal for your exhausted little guy. (Spoiler: None of the healing actions involve shopping online for self-care products) All the interactions make an adorable mini-sim for your phone, creating a quick mobile game that will leave you feeling comforted and recovered.

Finally, in the eleventymillionth month of isolation, the multiplayer Among Us is perfect for playing with friends. Rounds are quick, as you rush around doing goofy space tasks, and trying to find the murderous imposter. At least one crewmate is an imposter, determined to kill the rest of the crewmates without getting caught. After each death, the remaining players can vote on who the imposter could be, a bit like playing Mafia, but with a Spaceteam kind of aesthetic. I’ve written before about how much ridiculous fun this game is. Even if you lose, you get to scream at friends (or strangers!) and call them imposters. 

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