When my son was little, we once discussed superhero-origin stories and of they all seemed to fit into a surprisingly few buckets.
Years later (ie, a few weeks ago), I thought about this taxonomy again and came up with some additional examples and have included them all in this post.
As time goes on, I’ll add examples of the heroes from each category to this post and I’m sure that I’ll learn of other types of origin stories.
Content strategists, librarians, taxonomists, fellow recovering comic book geeks anybody else, what have I missed?
If you are a superhero, which of the following are true?
You are member of an alien race.
You are a descendantof Amazonions or Atlantians.
Your filthy rich parents left you their company and you built crazy-good tactical gear.
You studied magic or witchcraft.
You were subjected to a secret experiment in the military or a prison (you were wrongly convicted, of course).
You got a snoot full of radiation (from direct exposure or you were bitten by an irradiated spider).
You are a Norse, Greek or Roman god.
Your powers are derived from a magical potion, or secret-formula pill.
You have been granted superpowers by a wizard.
You were given an emerald energy ring by a mortally wounded alien.
You were in an industrial accident (which of course was triggered by a lightning strike).
You are good at math, and for some reason a mathematical formula gave you super-speed.
One or more of the above is true for one, or both, of your parents.
You were assembled from Vibranium parts.
You inhaled hard water vapor after you spilled chemicals in your lab while you were distracted….because you were smoking a cigarette.
Your doctor father treated your cobra bite with a blood transfusion from a….mongoose.
You are a descendant ofNorse, Greek, or Roman god.
You teamed up with on the hereos from category Number 3.
You are the offspring of a demonic being.
You are a time traveler with common tech from YOUR era.
You are a sentient computer.
You are the clone of a super being.
You have mutant genes because you have a parent with superpowers, or one of your genes mutated on its own…..because DNA.
Example 16 was provided by taxonomist, beer expert, archeologist, etc., Lisa Grimm. Examples 17-23 were provided by my Dot-Com Era colleague Todd Hill.
(I’m still researching true origin story of Arm Fall Off Boy though my current theory is that it begins with members of the creative team saying, “I’m so tired of working weekends. I really hate this job and I’m going to submit this POS concept just to beat my deadline.” )
It seems that everybodyelse has pushed out theiropinion about schools, learning loss, and the (hypothetical) post-pandemic way forward.
Thus, I’ll provide mine: the best thing that governments, schools, parents, communities…can do for children is to quit fixatingabout kids ”falling behind” in reading, writing….geometry, etc.
Instead, we should obsess about how we can help them recapture lost joy and recover bits of their stolen youth.
Academic learning loss is a real (though sometimes overblown) thing, but it is subordinate to joy loss.
Yes, remediation needs to part of schools’ planning. Though much of the buzz is about mandatory summer school, and longer school days, that I think will prove to be counter-productive.
With all that students have been through in the past year, should we really be so focused on multiplication tables, vocabulary words, or whether they can explain the role of Adenosine Triphosphate?
In order to better serve children, now and in the future,I think, that, to paraphrase Chief Brody in Jaws, we’re going need a bigger acronym.
STEM to STEAM
The term STEM, representing education in science, technology, engineering and mathematicshas been around for quite some time.
Ten, or so years ago, I first noticed extension of the STEM education acronym, to STEAM, to include emphasis on education in the arts (I’m all for that). Though many proponents of STEM, or STEAM refer to “education” or “teaching” rather than “learning.”
About the same time, my son was inkindergarten, and I was surprised by how few recreational opportunities there where for the students. This was during the early years of the No Child Left Behind threats and it seemed that even at age 5, kids were being prepped for standardized tests.
That same year, I read several articles about the importance of recess, and that it should be considered as part of the part of the curriculum, and an opportunity to learn rather than a brief respite from the curriculum.
Thus, almost as soon as I started reading about STEAM, I began using the term STREAM.
Admittedly, I don’t know that what the rules are for extending an acronym that has already been extended. Do I need to get approval from an international standards organization?
STREAMing Out of the Gate
I think that with all students have gone through in the past 18 months, it’s even more important to add recreation to schools’ curricula. We (parents, teachers, elected leaders, taxpayers)need to adjust our focus to STREAM education, where recreation is an integral part of the curriculum.
While I have many (many) thoughts on this topic, I’ll limit myself to a few things here, focusing on things that can be applied universally.
First, I think that every school that reduced, or eliminated recess, due to the threatof No Child Left Behind-type punishments, should restore recess to pre-NCLB levels.
The next step: make recess periods longer and/or more frequent.
If your (or your community’s) high school or middle school never had recess, fix that. My high school didn’t have recess per se (because, you know that’s for kids, right?), but had a 1-hour lunch period.
There was more than enough time to eat, play frisbee, or chatter in the hallways. When I compare my experience to my 11th grade son’s 20-minute lunch break, it seems like I’m reminiscing about “the good old days.” In that respect, they truly were better.
We need to rethink gym class (again).Does everybody in the class NEED to be participatingin the same activity, every single class period, to achieve physical education goals?
Really?
In real life, not everybody is going to enjoy team sports as much as the gym teacher does.People enjoy coerced team sports even less.
If some of the students want to walk the track and listen to music, and giggle away the class period, or if a student wants to participate in something like the 100-pushup challenge, or train for a road race, let them.
Cross-Pollination
Students will find a way to learn. We should allow for autonomy so that students can find ways to incorporate recreation into their other subjects, and vice-versa.
Some examplesfrom personal experience:
In grade school, I VOLUNTARILY learned decimals, percentages, etc. earlier than most ofmy classmates for one reason:because I wanted to calculate baseball statistics.
I knew I was learning math then, though I didn’trealize that I learned a lot about physicsplaying Little League.
The outfield was quite a lab to learn about trajectory, spin, and velocity. In retrospect,it would have great thing to have some guided instruction in science to go with my practical experience.
One possible option is a semi-structured course in ”Recreational Learning.” Or even better: an opportunity to incorporate recreation into learning across the entire curriculum.
The Cost
Admittedly, there would becosts associated with transition to a STREAM framework.More, longer, recess, more-frequent gym class, etc.. would result in a reduction of time allocated to other areas.
It’s a good time to discuss whether some of the sacred cows that persist in K-12 education are really all that necessary. An example is algebra.
Manypeople use algebra more than they realize. My son once asked his doctor, and a resident how they used algebra. They couldn’t think of any instances.
The fact is that they do use algebra, calculating patient dosage level for example. People use algebra way more than they realize in their personal and professional lives. They just don’t call it Algebra.
Even though algebra is useful for most people, does that warranthaving students attend 540 days of lectures for (pre-algebra, Algebra I and Algebra II)?
Probably not.
There are a few examples of subjects, topics that are taught way past the point of diminishing returns, that come to my mind. You probably have a few of your own.
Regardless of whether, or not there is a consensus over which subjects on which we may be spending too much time, I think we can agree that we haven’t spend enough time on restoring joy.
There is no shortage of blog posts, articles, (and other collections of vowels and consonants) that attempt to tie a current event (celebrity death, or a movie release….) to some sort of business problem as if this random event can solve the problem.
The headline is usually along the lines of this format:
What Star Wars (Yogi Berra, Leonard Nimoy…) Can Teach Us About Commodities Trading (Integrated Marketing, Employee Retention, Student Engagement…)
There are so many articles of this type, with their faint whiff of click bait, that I hesitated to even think about that format. Yet this morning, I was pondering alternative meeting formats when I read of the death of Meadowlark Lemon, who for a generation (and then some) was the face of the Harlem Globetrotters.
I am not going to pretend that my feelings on the death of a basketball/comedic icon somehow has significant relevance in the solution of your organization’s challenges.
However, I think we all agree these two universal truths: everybody likes the Globetrotters, nobody like meetings. This begs the question:, wouldn’t employee meetings be more fun if they began with a Magic Circle?
Don’t forget golden-throated announcer with introductions: “And now……your Chief Executive Officer…..” Even better if your C-level executives had nicknames like “Slingshot” “Spider” and “Buckets.”
And of course, somebody whistling “Sweet Georgia Brown” in the background is a welcome bonus.
In the past few years, there has been a mad-dash to gamify everything. Though these attempts rarely seem fun. How about for 2016, we strive for funnification? It’s what Meadowlark would want.
Happy New Year and may all your hook shots in 2016 be nothing but net.
The title refers to Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider who played centerfield with the Giants, Yankees and Dodgers, respectively. They all played in New York at the same time, at least until the Giants and Dodgers left for California.
The song is a tribute to baseball, and “good old days” in 1950s and the 1980s. It references many baseball starts and other pop culture. I was particularly intrigued that the song had a rhyme for line: “Kluszewski….Campanella.”
I don’t think I’d heard it more a few times in the years that followed but started singing it to my son when he was a baby. I didn’t know many of the lyrics, so I did a lot of humming..
When my son was older we used to watch videos that were made for the song, and I did my best to sign along.
In the early part of the song it characterizes the 1950 with these lyrics:
“Rock and Roll Was Being Born
Marijuana We Did Scorn ”
I didn’t really need him blabbing “My dad makes me listen to a marijuana song,” at pre-school, so, I used do a “La-la-la” over that line.
I realized that we were nearing a time that he was aware enough of the world that he would eventually hear the lyrics in the video. That happened sooner than I expected.
When he was nearing three, he sang the lyrics as this way:
“Rock and Roll Was Being Born
Nobody would eat his corn. ”
Yes!
That deferred his innocence, or mine, since it’s one of those conversation topics that makes a parent squirm. I was relieved that I wouldn’t need to have a slightly uncomfortable talk with him, at least for a little while.
A couple of years later he picked up the word in a radio broadcast while we were en route to school. He asked me, “Dad what is marijuana?”
I sighed. I had vowed that when the time came I would be honest with him when he asked questions like this.
I thought to myself “Remember to be honest!”
“Marijuana was one of the co-founders of Apple Computer,” I said.
With that he recited a line he’d once heard in a documentary, where it described Steve Jobs’ attempt to lure Pepsi CEO, John Scully to Apple.
From the back seat, the little voice started yelling:: “Do you want to sell sugar water all of for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Crisis averted.
And I was honest…kind of honest.
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