Where Have You Been?

I haven't updated my blog in a while. And now I am back again. So, where have you been, Peter-o?

For the past few years, I was a busy, busy boy working full-time, followed by a somewhat lazy-boy.

From 2008-2011, I worked as a tutor and then a teacher's assistant at John Muir Charter School, on the site of San Jose Job Corps Center (SJJC). It was a great job! I worked mostly teaching Algebra I, and preparing the students to pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). I also worked with the staff of the Nevada County Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) to ensure that the necessary subset of our students had their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or Section 504 plans up-to-date and reviewed, ensuring they qualified for the new exemption to the CAHSEE under California law. It was the kind of work that made a profound difference in the lives of many at-risk young men and women.
 
However, in June 2011, I was let go due to a decision made by Muir to ensure all their teachers at the site had K-12 Single Subject Secondary Education credentials. Since my credential is in Adult Education (not K-12), it meant the end of the line for me. Now, almost a year later, I look back at it as a wonderful experience that I dearly miss. I hope that everyone at the Muir site, indeed, the whole the Job Corps Center are doing great this year! I miss all the teachers and students there.

Since then, I have been doing personal tutoring. I had a wonderful opportunity over the summer to act as a docent and English tutor for a visiting foreign exchange student from France. More recently, I have been doing tutoring in AP US History, English, and Geometry for Los Gatos high school students through TeamUp! Tutors. And I've also snuck in some private consulting for a creative principal in the movie/animation industry.

For those familiar with my work and efforts of recent years, most of those initiatives are on hold: Flowers in the Cracks, the Global Understanding Institute, and many other wonderful ideas just tailed away into silence, or were shelved due to circumstances. I reserve the right to revive them at any time, but for now, they are sleeping dreams. There are other ideas I have percolating, but it is not yet time to mention them.

But one thing I can talk about is my new web site: petercorless.com. I've just begun to flesh it out. With the recent changes in policy now allowing Californians to again be part of the program, I've rejoined as an Amazon.com affiliate. So I started putting links back to the old Green Knight Publishing products. Expect that to flesh out over time. And also expect to see more links from me under an Arthuriana topic, and eventually a section for history, etc.

Films of Note for 2008 - With Corless Content!

For this holiday season, check out these two movies that feature yours truly:

• Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding won 2nd place in the Mountain View Reads contest. This 10 minute film explains how the Global Understanding Institute was a directly causal result of reading Three Cups of Tea, the New York Times bestseller by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. My thanks for all our viewers and supporters! This film will be shown on Mountain View Cable (KMVT15).
  


• The Rehearsal, was a finalist for the Campus MovieFest (CMF) Western Regional Finals, under the category for the Elfenworks Social Justice award. We attended the screening at the Sundance Kibuki and the Grand Finale this past Sunday, and were able to speak for a few minutes about how and why we made the film, and what will come next. Congratulations and thank you to Franklin Pham, Harshi Lanjewar, Zaur Hasanov, all the narrators, artists of sound and visual images, and to everyone who, in five minutes, made the impossible possible!

While neither picture won top prize in its category, both were well-received and made it part-way up the hill of public recognition. These were the first formal films for both of us. While I had made a student video back in Beach Channel High School, shot a short movie at Carnegie Mellon as an undergrad, and did a podcast before for the Global Understanding Institute, this was the first time we had both entered a film contest for the public consideration of our work as an inspiration to social movement.

Both Franklin and I are now strategizing about the next films to lens and prizes to shoot for. How many frames per how many minutes and seconds, targeting our messages and our memes, our scripts and our themes.

Franklin is still working on a longer 20-30 minute interview-style movie, The American Dream. I am cooking up plans to do some documentary-style works on Armistice Day and the backgrounder video for the Global Understanding Movement and the Global Understanding Institute. There's also some video I'd like to do for 10 December 2008, the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).


Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

60th Anniversary Celebration - 10 December 2008 (United Nations)

For now, to get involved with celebrating the 60th Anniversary UDHR, see the United Nations’ own site for the event, join the Every Human Has Rights campaign and check out the Small Places Tour for Amnesty International.