Joe Bishara: Reader's Digest education hero 2007

My profile of Joe Bishara, selected by Reader's Digest Canada as their education hero for 2007, is online here.

In order to write the article, I spent a day with Joe, and it's hard to imagine a nicer guy. What he says in the story about the kid throwing a poppy in the mud in 1984 resonated with me. I could imagine myself having done that at the kid's age, in that era.

Joe personalizes the struggles kids face and gives them some perspective. And it's truly amazing to see a teacher who seems completely committed and enthusiastic, even after almost 30 years.

Is there an editor in the house?

Today's Globe and Mail offers a "Video Pick" saying fans of Tintin are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tintin creator Hergé's birth. (The copy calls him Herge -- because apparently there are no accents available to G&M Web editors.)

I almost never click on these things, but today I did.

And I got to see a report on how the Tintin books no longer have an Arabic publisher, so fans in Egypt, where the books are popular, have to read them in French. There was also the usual discussion of whether or not the books are racist. (Conclusion: maybe.)

Google doesn't know when to be offended

Looking for the number of a researcher I want to interview at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, I Googled these words: Jewish General Montreal.

The Google ads on the side of the search page were topped by one from Google itself, linking to this page, where I found the following text:

An explanation of our search results.

If you recently used Google to search for the word "Jew," you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We'd like to explain why you're seeing these results when you conduct this search.

A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for "Jew" brings up one such unexpected result...

We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.

Two problems. 1) I did not search for the word "Jew." 2) These are the first-page search results Google came up with:

• Jewish General Hospital
• Segal Cancer Centre
• Dr. Clown -- Jewish General Hospital (an outfit that sends clowns to hospitals to entertain)
• Department of Otolaryngology -- Staff
• Two Nurses at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital Have Lost Their Licences
• Example: Jewish General Hospital, Montreal,QC (a page from Cancer Care Ontario)
• Sir Mortimer B Davis Jewish General Hospital (search results from a site reselling papers)

You get the idea. A whole cornucopia of offensiveness.

The Wikipedia birthday meme

Here, via Haiku Boxer, are the rules:

1. Go to Wikipedia
2. In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one death.
5. One holiday or observance (if any).

My results:

Events

1. Athenians defeat Persians at the Battle of Marathon (leading countless people a couple of thousand years later to run 26 miles).
   
2. Hitler demands autonomy for Germans in the Sudetenland.
3. US Screen Actors Guild imposes anti-Communist oath
   

Births and deaths

1. H.L. Mencken (b)
   
2. Adrian Adonis (b)
   
3. Johnny Cash (d)
   

Holiday

National Revolution Day in Ethiopia

Santa probably trains his staff better

Empire Theatres in Halifax have a great idea to bring more people into a downtown cinema on Sunday afternoon. It goes by the cloying name of Santa Cinema: a different Christmas-themed movie every Sunday at 3PM.

So we head down to the cinema to see Miracle on 34th Street. We hoped it would be the original, but it turned out to be the remake.

There's a poster at the theatre entrance stating the adult and child prices of tickets to the Christmas movies. It also says admission includes popcorn and a drink.

There's nobody at the box office when we arrive -- promising -- but a kid turns up soon after. We ask for two adult, one youth, and two child tickets. There are no youth tickets anymore he says. I ask what age child covers. He says there are no child tickets any more, just adult tickets (Merry Christmas kiddies!). I point out that the poster at the front of the theatre gives a price for child tickets. He says OK. I ask what age child goes up to (we have a 13-year-old -- will he be a child or an adult?). He says, "three to seven, I guess."

He then sells us our tickets. I ask about the included concessions. He doesn't know anything about that and calls off-screen (I was starting to feel like I was in a bad movie myself" to Ian, the manager. He turns up, says, "Do you know how to sell Santa Cinema tickets?" The kid and I both say "No" at the same time, and the manager proceeds to train him on the spot, as the line behind us gets longer.

"Three to seven I guess." I loved that. If you don't know the answer, make it up, in as unconvincing a way as possible.

After the show was over -- yes, it was the remake, but it was fun -- the kids decide to hit the arcade. The change machine would not accept the paper money it was supposed to. The "In the Groove" dance game was broken. The claw ate the tokens put into it. The air hockey jets were so weak that the puck kept getting stuck mid-table.

All this to the soundtrack of a broken machine, endlessly repeating (in a sing-song): "Prize error, prize error, please call attendant.... Prize error, prize error, please call attendant..."

To the hospital!

Hospital staff in Halifax are complaining about students from nearby Citadel High invading their cafeteria at lunch time.

School cafeteria food has a terrible reputation -- but who knew it was so bad that kids would rather sample the epicurean delights of a hospital instead?

Fast food photos

Even in my vegetarian days, those fast-food billboards of Big Macs and other, er, tasty treats occasionally looked appealing. I guess it had been so long since I'd eaten one that I'd forgotten how inevitably disappointing they are.

Here's a handy corrective: A page showing advertising photos versus real photos of a wide array of fast food delights. Yuck.

Fundraising

Last year, we bought some kind of shower gel to support a local school. You paid $15 and got yourself a tiny bottle of nasty stuff. Half the money went to the school. It was ridiculous.

I find it's that way with most fundraisers -- stuff you don't want to buy, but that you shell out for anyway, just because it's for something connected to your kids or their friends.

Occasionally, though, you find fundraisers that make sense. For instance, we live in a community in which lots of people fish for lobster. So it's reasonable o raffle off some lobsters to raise money for the school.

The best fundraiser I've run across in a while though was for the local Bantam AAA hockey team. The deal? Bundles of kindling for $5 each, or 5 for $20. Why was this such a good idea? Well, the kindling wasn't being trucked in from some giant forestry company. A woman in our community had several trees still down on her property from the storms of the last couple of years. She wanted the trees cleaned up. A couple of guys from the hockey team cut and split the wood and sold it to raise money.

She gets a cleaned-up property, they do some honest work, the team benefits, and those of us with wood-burning stoves (which is probably most of us around here) get great kindling to start our fires with. Everyone wins.

Maybe I should request a few more bundles.

Kids n' Comics

Because I write the Daisy Dreamer comic for Chickadee Magazine, I get invited to visit schools throughout Nova Scotia as part of the Writers in the Schools program.

It's fun. I meet readers, talk about writing comics, answer questions, and learn about the comics kids like to read. I also do my best to encourage them as writers, and to give them some tips on writing their own comics.

I was at a school last Friday, and came home to an email from the principal. In part, it said this:

In talking with the teachers after school, they commented on how children who do not normally become involved in conversation/discussion at school became actively involved in your sessions. This was so good to hear!

We are very appreciative of your visit. Thanks again.

I was thrilled. Why? Because comics provide such a great way for kids to get into reading and to express their own creativity. And also because it is so positive for students who may be seen as the difficult ones in a class to get enthusiastic.  I love walking into a classroom and having no idea who the "good" students are and who the "problem" students are.

I'm not trying to ruin comics by saying they're good for you. Just that kids who may be intimidated by other kinds of reading seem less intimidated by picking up a comic.