“Why you talkin’ shit?”
That’s what one of my students said to me when I reprimanded him for throwing paper at another student. It’s not the worst thing ever said to me in school. It’s not even close. That would be, “Get your goddamned hands off me before I break your fucking glasses.” I had told that particular student to report to the office and he walked the other way. I had audaciously placed my hand on his arm to gently guide him in the right direction. Before I tell you what was done to these students, I want to you think carefully about what would have happened to you when you were in 8th grade if you had spoken to a teacher in that way. Do you have it in mind? Good. The paper thrower was suspended for one day. The would-be glasses breaker was sent to class (not mine) without punishment.
This isn’t a recent development. In my career I have seen things that would make the average person cry. Once, in my first three years of teaching, my colleagues and I were coming back to school from lunch. We were walking from our cars to the front door, when we found a student lying between cars, bleeding profusely from his mouth, his nose, his ears, and his eyes. He had been “beaten into” a gang. At that same school, I often encountered evidence that students had defecated in the stairwell. Students would have to walk through puddles of urine to get to class because someone had relieved themselves in the hallway. I remember a mother coming in to my classroom to find out where her daughter had been after school every day. When she found out that the daughter was taking an after school class to get an extra math credit, the mother punched her daughter in the face. Two students, both innocent bystanders, were shot at graduation because they happened to be seated between two thugs who started shooting at each other on sight. There was one time when an assistant principal’s voice came over the intercom, calling for a student who had been shot to death earlier in the school year to report to the main office. I sometimes joke that I called security once in 1989 to come get an unruly student who refused to leave the classroom. When I left that school in 1997, I was still waiting for the security guard to show up.
This is an example of what teachers face today. These are our clientele. Sure, we have good kids. Sure, we have students who are going to be doctors in our classes. Those kids do well under our tutelage. But some days, we face an uphill battle maintaining discipline and motivating students to take a more active part in their learning. How do you appeal to the hard core banger, the kid with 13’s drawn all over their notebooks? What’s that? You don’t know what that is? Google “Sur 13” and come on back. Aren’t you glad you looked? What can a teacher do to change that kid’s mind about the horrible situation that is his or her life? What can I, an individual who has clearly won the education game, offer this kid when ALL of his peers pressure him to not do well in school? Oh, yes, the pressure is there. It is a violation of protocol to do well—heck, to do anything in class. And yet, I keep hearing about how 51% of my evaluation is going to be based on my students’ test scores. If I lose my job over that, good luck finding someone who wants to replace me. This isn’t a picnic.
In 23 years, I have broken up at least 100 fights. I have been personally attacked and have had to defend myself. I have had my property destroyed, stolen, marked with graffiti, and my car has been vandalized in the school parking lot. Despite this, I have put thousands of dollars of my own money into my classroom, with the purchases of dry-erase boards, markers, computers, document cameras, VCRs, DVD players, LCD projectors, and last but not least, batteries for an insulin pump. No, I do not have diabetes. One of my students did and I didn’t want her to have to report to the nurse and miss class just because her pump needed a new battery, which happened frequently. I have given out my home phone number so that students could call for help if their parents were not able to help them. I have volunteered my time in innumerable committees, such as the school improvement team, the homework committee, the climate committee, the PL221 (look it up) committee. I have coached sports, sponsored events, hosted talent shows. You name it, and I’ve done it to help my students learn and to help my school improve. And I, by the way, am far from unique in my building.
I am sick and tired of the constant teacher bashing I see in the press and on television. You want to assign blame for the failure of students in today’s public schools? Look somewhere else. I’m not having any. Not today and not ever.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
More Education Fun from the Indianapolis Star
Another great article with supportive comments on education in the Indianapolis Star. I love my job! Here are some of the highlights from the comments section with my commentary following. I don't have a large platform, but at least I have one from which to pontificate:
"Tell me why class sizes can't be increased. We should start by quadrupling the size of history, geography, and English literature classes. Not only would that save money, it would make them more "college prep"."
"increasing class size is what the teachers already did to damage the kids. we need to disban this evil teachers union and allow the thousands of great school teachers to get jobs who now can't. cut teaching pay to be market rates, which would be 50% of their current costs. subs today are paid 75 bucks a day and they are thrilled with it. union teachers doing the same days work get 400 a day in pay INCLUDING BENIFITS !! the benifit package for a union teacher, is more per day than the wage cost of a sub teacher !!!! this is a horriable waste of our kids resources. teachers have driven the cost up to 10,400 bucks for a 180 days of teaching. end the union and help the kids, our kids suffer because of these teachers."
Let's see, $75 x 180 = $13,500 per year with no health insurance. With health insurance and taxes withdrawn, I would make about -$2,500 per year. Bonus!
"Tell me why class sizes can't be increased. We should start by quadrupling the size of history, geography, and English literature classes. Not only would that save money, it would make them more "college prep"."
Because studies link class size with student performance. College students are assumed to be well-motivated already.
“What the 'educators' really meant by what they said- ‘If you force us to make more cuts, we (the Educators) will hurt the kids’.I think their threat is serious, and disgusting.”
No, what they meant was that when you cut payroll and jobs, class sizes go up. It's really not that complicated, but if the malicious teacher conspiracy theory works for you, go for it. Why is "educators" in quotes, anyway? Are you quoting from somewhere?
"We set up a system such that 'educators' are created by sending them to school to learn the process of teaching (we're still banning people from teaching who focus on the subject matter)."
No one has banned anyone from teaching anymore than I've been banned from practicing medicine. There is a necessary component of education courses that goes with practicing the profession. This comment will also come in handy further down.*
"Spoken like a true union socialist! Like out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.....spread fear to the populus! ALL OF US MUST MAKE REDUCTIONS IN SPENDING FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO THE PUBLIC CORRUPTOCRATS!!!!! They have liked hgh on the hog from the public trough! They can make the cuts but would rather scare the parents. This is evil! These union thugs want to keep their golden egg and not reveal all of the excessess in the budget like the travel to vacation oops...education conferences (what a joke)."
Yes, because we teachers are all about the travel to education conferences. In 23 years of teaching I've been to one. It was in Indianapolis and I had to provide my own transportation without reimbursement. They're onto us. Bwahahahahaha!
"(Governor Mitch) Daniels went to North Central High School in Indianapolis which is a public school. He knows the quality of education found in many of our public schools."
Governor Daniels graduated from high school in 1967. Things have changed a little bit since then.
"Everybody wants to nip here, and tuck there, but nobody is talking about the ultimate, and only real workable solution to a failed public school model. Like the politicians in Indianapolis and DC, THEY ALL GOTTA GO! Parents are responsible for the education of their children, always have been, always will be. But the EDUCATION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (EIC) has co-opted that parental responsibility over the past one hundred years, one small step at a time, so that it's now the mantra of the EIC "Only WE, the professional educators, possess the knowledge and skills necessary to educate children. Parents are incompetent buffoons who do not deserve this "highest" of callings." Besides hi-jacking parental authority, they (EIC) have also hi-jacked the curricula at all levels. Our kids have become goons to the progressive ideas of the past 100 years. Got a kid in school? Organize with other parents at your school and sue the corporation for funding to be paid directly to you."
Time to change the tin foil in which your head is wrapped.
"Make parents more responsible for their children by making them drive their children to school in the morning and picking them up when school is over. Just think if IPS got rid of the busing how much money would be saved. No more need for bus drivers, pensions and benefits; and no need to purchase buses, insurance, fuel charges, maintenance, parking lot facilities, and other sundry expenses with owning and operating the current system. How do the private school kids get to school? They do not have buses!"
They generally have two parents at home, one of which can drive them to school.
"There were 36 in my 6th grade class, and the teacher was 75 and wore a leg brace because of a childhood bout with polio. Somehow she managed to keep up with us, and we even learned, because there was nobody standing around telling us we couldn't possibly.Typical Ed Professional move here, hold the knife to the kids' throats till they get what they want."
And I walked to school in the snow, uphill... both ways!
"Just one real quick way for the State to raise MILLIONS of dollars each month is to outlaw the Teachers Union and take the money they are stelaing and put it ot good use. It's that simple!"
Um, I give my money freely to the teachers' union. They provide me with liability insurance in case I get sued for breaking up a fight. I think that's a pretty good use.
"I getting a little tired of the "hurt kids" angle from the educators. And educator I know pays 7 bucks a month for COMPLETE health insurance. I understand they don't want to lose cash, but the hurting kids angle is getting a little old."
Wow. I pay $5,000 a year in premiums and my school system kicks in another $8,000 for a policy with a $4,000 deductible. I want that guy's health insurance!
"A 10% across the board cut in teacher and administrator salaries and benefits would easily take of the problem with no impact on students."
Well, except for the people you will drive out of the profession because it's no longer feasible for them to work for such a pittance. Good luck finding those highly qualified people to replace them.
"Unfortunately, some teachers will suffer by any budget cuts, but that blame lays squarely on the shoulders of the Friggin union."
Because...why?
"Wish I could make $50,000 a year with summers off, Christmas break, Spring break, Fall break and every holiday off..."
Me, too. After 23 years, I finally make $50,000 but I have to work summers to do it.
After that, it started getting political:
"If we cut more funding for these libs, they will,,,well maybe possibly have a real job like most of us. I say we cut another 25% from school budget and give it to small business to help create local Indiana jobs. How's that?"
Sounds perfect. Who's going to teach your kids?
"But then techers would have to work hard and teach because the money would not flow as freely for them to spend and waste. Schools and Obama have the same liberal/Progressive agends, 'make others pay for me'Any one refuting my feelings can just go pound sand."
Well, I can't argue with that logic, except for the part where I spend and waste money. As a teacher I have no control over what money is spent or wasted. I guess I need to go pound sand.
"My kids are grown up now, but I remember the ridiculous mindsets of most of the educators. The teachers somehow believed that all parents held jobs like theirs----you know, where you get off work well before 5p.m. and get three months of paid time to get refreshed over the summer months. I'm not sure teachers are in touch with the real world of work. I wish they'd just quit pretending to know what it's like to have professional work demands."
Yes, I get off work well before 5 p.m. I also get to work before you even wake up to go to your 9-to-5 job, you pompous idiot. Three months of paid time in the summer? In what universe do you live?
"Simple solution to education costs. Treat teachers like sales reps.Base pay $10,000 per year. Maximum bonus to $40,000 per year.To achieve bonus to get to $50,000 per year, teachers must graduate a certain number of students to the next grade level or from school at graduation.So many kids equals so much bonus etc etc The state ( only Republican/Conservatives in power) assigns monitors to judge testing of the kids to assure that they were given an education.If the teacher graduates 85% of kids, they get a small portion of the $40,000 bonus. The maximum bonus of $40,000 kicks in when 100% of kirs are graduated to the next level.I bet there would be a MASS EXODUS of teachers who are lazy and Liberal because they can't teach,(like it is now). Easy solution, budget cut is effective and Indiana saves money and property taxes go down. How's that?"
Well, as long as it's only us lazy liberals leaving, that's okay then.
"WITH NO TEACHERS LEFT, WE COULD DO AWAY WITH THE NEA AND START OVER WITH qualified new teachers YAYYYYY"
Can't argue with that and wouldn't try to.
"All Children, no matter what their Religion should be taught the truth, the Bible, Sara Palin understands this and will be our next president. We need more Conservatives in the school system!"
I agree. There are too many of us liberals who think that poor people should have the same access to education as the wealthy.
"I think pro-creation by anyone Liberal should not be tolerated. They have mucked up our government, mucked up our schools and mucked up out Constitution. I declare open season HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA"
I feel safer already.
"So? Who cares WHAT fund it comes from?If you don't have to budget $50 million to build a football field that's $50 million you can allocate to a different fund, or $50 million YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND IN THE 1ST PLACE.Saying it comes from a different fund is just an attempt to muddy the water."
No, the law says that the money in the general fund and the money in a capital projects fund cannot be mixed. *Sorry, that's just those unnecessary education courses I mentioned above kicking in.
This is just a sample of the backlash we educators are facing every time an article on education is published in the newspaper. Yikes.
UPDATE: Here's a new one this morning:
"increasing class size is what the teachers already did to damage the kids. we need to disban this evil teachers union and allow the thousands of great school teachers to get jobs who now can't. cut teaching pay to be market rates, which would be 50% of their current costs. subs today are paid 75 bucks a day and they are thrilled with it. union teachers doing the same days work get 400 a day in pay INCLUDING BENIFITS !! the benifit package for a union teacher, is more per day than the wage cost of a sub teacher !!!! this is a horriable waste of our kids resources. teachers have driven the cost up to 10,400 bucks for a 180 days of teaching. end the union and help the kids, our kids suffer because of these teachers."
Let's see, $75 x 180 = $13,500 per year with no health insurance. With health insurance and taxes withdrawn, I would make about -$2,500 per year. Bonus!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Fly, Fatass, Fly!--Updated
Go, Kevin!
Kevin Smith is one of my favorite filmmakers, so I am clearly biased. If you haven't heard about his situation this weekend, he was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight because of his size. He claims that he fit between the armrests and was buckled in without a seat belt extender. Southwest claims that he has purchased two seats in the past, but on this standby flight, with only one seat available, he was a safety risk. He took the next flight and flew in one seat, even though he had purchased two.
I know how I think the situation probably worked, but I wasn't there. I can't honestly say that I know for certain who's right. But the comments section of every single website I have seen covering this story has innumerable comments insulting fat people, saying things like they all smell because they can't wipe themselves, they're rude and inconsiderate, and that they should just eat less and exercise.
Well, I'm here to tell you that's a load of nonsense. After I lost a lot of weight last year, I hit a dead end. In the past year, I have worked out hard at least 300 out of 365 days, and have been very careful about what I eat and haven't lost any weight since May. I simply don't have the time to do more than my 30-minute workout each day, because then it's followed by a15-minute cooldown and a five minute shower. After getting dressed again, the better part of an hour is gone. I simply don't have more time than an hour in a single weekday.
There are also people who have medical conditions that prevent them from losing weight. But it doesn't matter to some of these people making comments. We're all just fatties. One of the reasons I stopped watching "Real Time with Bill Maher" last year was because of his constant ranting about overweight people. He's a pot smoking womanizer, but that's apparently okay with him. The real offenders are people who are overweight. I'd like to meet him so I could challenge him to a 10-mile bike race. I guarantee I would literally beat him by a mile.
The simple fact of the matter is that some of us are going to be built like this no matter what we do. Being overweight, I seem to belong to the last class against whom it is acceptable to discriminate. It'll be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Now THIS is an Education Blog!
Here is one of the cleverest ideas for an education blog I've ever seen. This teacher eats the school lunch every day for a year and writes about it. Bon appetit!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Snow Days
I officially hate snow days. I used to look forward to them when I was a kid, but that was back in the day when schools didn't have to make them up. We have to make up any days that we miss in our school system, but fortunately we have three days built into our calendar in the spring to use as makeup days. If we don't need to use them, we have those days off. Those are days off without pay, by the way. I'm not saying that to try to get sympathy where none is deserved, it's just that I always feel the need to correct public perception that teachers have all these days off and still get paid for them. The snow makeup days are typically Fridays and Mondays and this year, they are April 2, May 7, and May 17. They make for nice three-day weekends when the weather is warm, but I was really looking forward to having April 2 off so that we could extend our spring break by a day. I was thinking last year when I was lying on the beach in Gulf Shores how much I would have liked that extra day in the Alabama sun rather than having an unscheduled day off in the middle of a snowstorm.
This morning, school was called off, but not before Magi was already showered and dressed and I was in the bathroom getting ready to shower. It's always remarkable to me that the decision to close school is made so late. Were road conditions significantly better 30 minutes before it was called off?
It's also amusing to watch the game unfold on the bottom of the screen on the morning news. Little schools in the area close all the time but the Big Three, as we call them, check to see who will blink first. Elkhart, Penn, and South Bend are the major school systems in the television viewing area, with thousands and thousands of students each. And each morning following a snowstorm, we watch to see who's going to call it off. This morning, Elkhart went first. After we went back to bed, we watched for a while, and our local school system (Penn) called off at 6:45. I did not envy those poor teachers. We would have already been dropping Sera off at daycare by that time!
So, I guess we'll make the best of it. Magi and Sera are going to bake a King Cake today to celebrate Mardi Gras. I'll shovel the driveway (again) and maybe do some drawing. I haven't had the chance to do that in a while!
This morning, school was called off, but not before Magi was already showered and dressed and I was in the bathroom getting ready to shower. It's always remarkable to me that the decision to close school is made so late. Were road conditions significantly better 30 minutes before it was called off?
It's also amusing to watch the game unfold on the bottom of the screen on the morning news. Little schools in the area close all the time but the Big Three, as we call them, check to see who will blink first. Elkhart, Penn, and South Bend are the major school systems in the television viewing area, with thousands and thousands of students each. And each morning following a snowstorm, we watch to see who's going to call it off. This morning, Elkhart went first. After we went back to bed, we watched for a while, and our local school system (Penn) called off at 6:45. I did not envy those poor teachers. We would have already been dropping Sera off at daycare by that time!
So, I guess we'll make the best of it. Magi and Sera are going to bake a King Cake today to celebrate Mardi Gras. I'll shovel the driveway (again) and maybe do some drawing. I haven't had the chance to do that in a while!
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
We Have a Winner!
La Porte's Michael Beach gets it. Most of the commenters at the bottom of the section clearly do not:
"U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Indiana Superintendent of Public
Instruction Tony Bennett's visionary plans for improvement and accountability in
education have far-reaching possibilities for effecting positive change in other
areas.
Although the education of our children is of utmost importance,
what could be a greater priority than our own health? It's a life and death
issue. I propose a Race to the Top for health care.
National standards already exist for individuals' weight, blood sugar,
cholesterol and blood pressure.
Physicians would be evaluated every year, with
more than half their annual review based on how well their patients met their
health goals. Physicians would be sorted into four categories, from highly
efficient to inefficient, with bonuses for the best performers.
Physicians in the lowest categories could be targeted for dismissal. New
physicians who are still rated inefficient after six years would lose their
medical licenses. The plan would allow Indiana to take over the lowest
performing physician groups, give them to a private management company and
eventually offer them the chance to return to their original medical groups or
become a charter group.
Under the plan, medical schools could risk
losing their accreditation if their graduates don't perform well.
The same process of measured performance and accountability through consequences could be applied to other vital areas as well, such as social services."
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Paranoia
I know, I know. I'm going on and on about this. But wow, from things I'm seeing around the state, it needs to be said.
Recently, Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White decided to start school on the Monday following the Super Bowl on a two-hour delay schedule. Why, you ask? Because in 2007 when the Colts were last in the Super Bowl, so many bus drivers called in sick the following day, classes had to be canceled. Kids couldn't get to school. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett thought that it was a bad idea to use the two-hour delay in such a manner, so he instructed Dr. White not to do it. The compromise reached was to begin school one hour later, followed by a dismissal half an hour later than usual.
I thought that Dr. White's idea had merit. 75% of the bus drivers for Indianapolis are employed by a contractor. It's not like he can fire them directly if they don't show up for work. But the backlash in the Indianapolis Star's comments section made my jaw drop:
"I am not sure I would want my kids being taught and opinionated by educators that cannot get out of bed and get to work after a football game. Simple, fire them and get teachers that have their priorities where they should be. This is not brain surgery. The right thing is for the kids to be in school....no excuses."
"It's time to get rid of the UNIONS-they are the ones destroying the educational process."
Wait. What? The whole situation is created by bus drivers not reporting to work, and it's the teachers and our union at fault? Wow. We have more power than I thought. I find it interesting, too, that the Indianapolis Catholic schools just gave their kids the whole day off. No mention there in the comments section about that.
In an article from yesterday's local newspaper, it was reported that the governor is okay with pushing the start of school into September, no earlier than the day after Labor Day.
Um, okay. Why? To preserve summer vacation for families and to reduce cooling costs. Okay, I've taught in mid-June and I've taught in mid-August, and I have to say, there's no significant temperature difference that is going to save any appreciable amount of money. And as far as preserving summer vacation, are two weeks in August more desirable than two weeks in June? I would think if there really was that much of a temperature difference as they claim, they'd want to take vacation in early June rather than late August. But that's just me, thinking again. Oh, yes, and then there was the backlash against teachers in the comments section:
"Personally, I think they should add a week or two to the school year to give the kids more time to master skills or at least make the school day longer. If there is a budget issue to cover the longer school year or hours than maybe the schools should cut costs like they do in private industry--cut the educators' health benefits--make them pay higher premiums, higher copays and less benefits."
Okay, really? Did someone give me a "gold-plated Cadillac" health insurance plan when I wasn't looking? I am currently paying $5,000 per year in premiums with a $4,000 deductible for a family health insurance plan. That means I will pay $9,000 per year (nearly 20% of my gross salary) for my family's health care out of pocket before insurance covers a single penny. My insurance right now is only there to cover a catastrophic health crisis. Seriously, what the heck?
It's also interesting that when we had ISTEP+ in the fall, the calendar got pushed back, back, back into August to give students more time in class to prepare. Now that the test has been moved to the spring, do we really want to push the beginning of school forward so that students have fewer days of instruction before the high-stakes test? Why would the governor be interested in doing that? Shouldn't we try to actually control the variables that affect our students' test scores? You know, the ones that we can control?
Something smells here. Cut the education budget by $300 million when you have a $1 billion surplus. Try to pass legislation which would include a $49 million unfunded mandate to retain third graders who are not at reading level. Change the school calendars across the state unilaterally so that kids have two fewer weeks of instruction before the high-stakes test that determines whether public schools are passing or failing.
Are you still paranoid if they're really out to get you?
Recently, Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White decided to start school on the Monday following the Super Bowl on a two-hour delay schedule. Why, you ask? Because in 2007 when the Colts were last in the Super Bowl, so many bus drivers called in sick the following day, classes had to be canceled. Kids couldn't get to school. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett thought that it was a bad idea to use the two-hour delay in such a manner, so he instructed Dr. White not to do it. The compromise reached was to begin school one hour later, followed by a dismissal half an hour later than usual.
I thought that Dr. White's idea had merit. 75% of the bus drivers for Indianapolis are employed by a contractor. It's not like he can fire them directly if they don't show up for work. But the backlash in the Indianapolis Star's comments section made my jaw drop:
"I am not sure I would want my kids being taught and opinionated by educators that cannot get out of bed and get to work after a football game. Simple, fire them and get teachers that have their priorities where they should be. This is not brain surgery. The right thing is for the kids to be in school....no excuses."
"It's time to get rid of the UNIONS-they are the ones destroying the educational process."
Wait. What? The whole situation is created by bus drivers not reporting to work, and it's the teachers and our union at fault? Wow. We have more power than I thought. I find it interesting, too, that the Indianapolis Catholic schools just gave their kids the whole day off. No mention there in the comments section about that.
In an article from yesterday's local newspaper, it was reported that the governor is okay with pushing the start of school into September, no earlier than the day after Labor Day.
Um, okay. Why? To preserve summer vacation for families and to reduce cooling costs. Okay, I've taught in mid-June and I've taught in mid-August, and I have to say, there's no significant temperature difference that is going to save any appreciable amount of money. And as far as preserving summer vacation, are two weeks in August more desirable than two weeks in June? I would think if there really was that much of a temperature difference as they claim, they'd want to take vacation in early June rather than late August. But that's just me, thinking again. Oh, yes, and then there was the backlash against teachers in the comments section:
"Personally, I think they should add a week or two to the school year to give the kids more time to master skills or at least make the school day longer. If there is a budget issue to cover the longer school year or hours than maybe the schools should cut costs like they do in private industry--cut the educators' health benefits--make them pay higher premiums, higher copays and less benefits."
Okay, really? Did someone give me a "gold-plated Cadillac" health insurance plan when I wasn't looking? I am currently paying $5,000 per year in premiums with a $4,000 deductible for a family health insurance plan. That means I will pay $9,000 per year (nearly 20% of my gross salary) for my family's health care out of pocket before insurance covers a single penny. My insurance right now is only there to cover a catastrophic health crisis. Seriously, what the heck?
It's also interesting that when we had ISTEP+ in the fall, the calendar got pushed back, back, back into August to give students more time in class to prepare. Now that the test has been moved to the spring, do we really want to push the beginning of school forward so that students have fewer days of instruction before the high-stakes test? Why would the governor be interested in doing that? Shouldn't we try to actually control the variables that affect our students' test scores? You know, the ones that we can control?
Something smells here. Cut the education budget by $300 million when you have a $1 billion surplus. Try to pass legislation which would include a $49 million unfunded mandate to retain third graders who are not at reading level. Change the school calendars across the state unilaterally so that kids have two fewer weeks of instruction before the high-stakes test that determines whether public schools are passing or failing.
Are you still paranoid if they're really out to get you?
Friday, February 05, 2010
Someone's Never Shot a Bow
Yeah, the arrowhead should be on the other side of the bow, Hawkeye. The arrow will kind of fall to the ground if you hold it that way. I knew that archery class I took for a cheap credit in college would come in handy someday.
Make Mine Marvelaaaaugh!
Just like the Marvel Comics I grew up with:
From Siege #2, available at your favorite abattoir.
I once ran a roleplaying campaign that had this level of violence. It was a superhero-style campaign with adult themes. In the world that I created, there were no pre-existing superheroes. The meta-theme that I used for the heroes was that they wore the same costumes as comic book heroes so that the public would not be as frightened of them as they should be. After all, comic books were just for kids, right? The characters were mature, but very pragmatic in the treatment of their enemies. There was no superprison available to contain the extremely powerful criminals and some of them were quite horrible. Imagine a Hannibal Lecter-type serial killer, only with powers that make a straitjacket as effective as wearing tissue paper. In a setting such as that, it would be understandable to see someone in tights and a cape tearing someone in half.
In the Marvel Universe, it just seems incongruous to me to see someone clad in what is more or less a variation of Superman's costume, bathed in the blood of another humanoid being, while his victim's intestines literally spill out on-panel. At this point, let's abandon the costumes. They're not superheroes. There's no reason they should dress as superheroes. In a setting like this, there's certainly no purpose for them to wear the costumes. Masks to hide their identities would be appropriate, because I wouldn't want to show my face if I behaved that way.
From Siege #2, available at your favorite abattoir.
I once ran a roleplaying campaign that had this level of violence. It was a superhero-style campaign with adult themes. In the world that I created, there were no pre-existing superheroes. The meta-theme that I used for the heroes was that they wore the same costumes as comic book heroes so that the public would not be as frightened of them as they should be. After all, comic books were just for kids, right? The characters were mature, but very pragmatic in the treatment of their enemies. There was no superprison available to contain the extremely powerful criminals and some of them were quite horrible. Imagine a Hannibal Lecter-type serial killer, only with powers that make a straitjacket as effective as wearing tissue paper. In a setting such as that, it would be understandable to see someone in tights and a cape tearing someone in half.
In the Marvel Universe, it just seems incongruous to me to see someone clad in what is more or less a variation of Superman's costume, bathed in the blood of another humanoid being, while his victim's intestines literally spill out on-panel. At this point, let's abandon the costumes. They're not superheroes. There's no reason they should dress as superheroes. In a setting like this, there's certainly no purpose for them to wear the costumes. Masks to hide their identities would be appropriate, because I wouldn't want to show my face if I behaved that way.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
The "LOST" Premiere is Finally Here!
Was it really that far back that I posted this? "Lost" gives me a reason to make it through the day!
Monday, February 01, 2010
Just When You Thought it was Safe to Go Back into Education...
The Obama administration announced proposed changes to No Child Left Behind today. Gone would be the idiotic--sorry, "utopian"--idea that all children would be proficient in all subjects by 2014.
According to Bloomberg News, "The Obama administration wants to revamp the law to 'support dramatic improvements in the quality of assessments to measure complex skills and help teachers identify and respond to students’ strengths and needs.'
I would love to say that things are going to be better now, but I have exactly no confidence in that. Our state has cut the education budget by $300 million, and our school system now faces a shortfall of almost $4 million. Since 90% of our budget is payroll, guess what? Jobs are going to be lost, class sizes are going to skyrocket and the financial outcome looks bleak for the next few years. We're looking at renegotiating the labor agreement now, and that means pay cuts. We already took a hit this year, switching to a set of health insurance plans that feature a minimum $4,000 deductible for a family plan, but try explaining that to people who don't have jobs.
If you had ever considered education as a career, reconsider. It's not safe in these waters.
I guess things are tough all over.
According to Bloomberg News, "The Obama administration wants to revamp the law to 'support dramatic improvements in the quality of assessments to measure complex skills and help teachers identify and respond to students’ strengths and needs.'
I would love to say that things are going to be better now, but I have exactly no confidence in that. Our state has cut the education budget by $300 million, and our school system now faces a shortfall of almost $4 million. Since 90% of our budget is payroll, guess what? Jobs are going to be lost, class sizes are going to skyrocket and the financial outcome looks bleak for the next few years. We're looking at renegotiating the labor agreement now, and that means pay cuts. We already took a hit this year, switching to a set of health insurance plans that feature a minimum $4,000 deductible for a family plan, but try explaining that to people who don't have jobs.
If you had ever considered education as a career, reconsider. It's not safe in these waters.
I guess things are tough all over.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
The Gift that Keeps on Giving
I was going to do a long post today about my Grandpa McClain, who would have been 100 years old today. I was going to post pictures of Grandpa, but whenever I start going through the family photographs I got from my late father, I end up seeing pictures of myself as a child, and it's a child I don't know. There are hundreds of pictures of me in these boxes, and 99% of them are from before my parents divorced and the abuse began.
One of the least pleasant things about suffering abuse as a child is that it features lingering effects. My brother and I call it the gift that keeps on giving. There are times when I still hear the voice of my stepfather calling me worthless, stupid, and lazy. The bad part is when I hear it coming out of my own mouth when I do something wrong. I know it's bad when my own daughter chastises me for calling myself "Stupid," when I didn't even realize that I had said it out loud. You want to know how lazy I am? I've worked 23 years in a profession where working in the summer is optional and I've taken exactly two summers off without working summer school; the first year I worked full time, and the fifth. So when I hear the word "lazy" in my head, I know it isn't coming from me. This is one of the reasons I was hesitant to even consider becoming a parent. I had serious second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts about adoption when my wife suggested it. The thought that I might terrorize a child in any way like what had been done to me frightened me to my core.
Today is one of those rare bad days when I really do feel worthless, lazy, and stupid. It's an almost paralyzing feeling that I can't get anything done. Ordinarily, I am confident to the point of severe arrogance. Just ask any of my friends--the few who can stand to be around me for any length of time. I know I am intelligent, artistically talented, and I was physically gifted at sports, at least at an earlier time in my life. But there are days like today when I can look at all the award certificates I won in school for math competitions (and I didn't even like math), all-conference sports awards, competitive scholarships, etc. and still think of myself as a complete loser. It seems like all the stuff I have accomplished was just part of fighting a losing battle for self-esteem. Things will likely look up for me tomorrow, because this feeling never lasts for long, fortunately. But I can say definitively that I know firsthand what depression is, and I have to say that I could really live without it.
I'm not sure how long it will take for me to sort through these family photos, but at this point, I'm not sure how much that really needs to be done. They reminded my dad of better days, but for the most part they just remind me of what could have been, and innocence lost.
One of the least pleasant things about suffering abuse as a child is that it features lingering effects. My brother and I call it the gift that keeps on giving. There are times when I still hear the voice of my stepfather calling me worthless, stupid, and lazy. The bad part is when I hear it coming out of my own mouth when I do something wrong. I know it's bad when my own daughter chastises me for calling myself "Stupid," when I didn't even realize that I had said it out loud. You want to know how lazy I am? I've worked 23 years in a profession where working in the summer is optional and I've taken exactly two summers off without working summer school; the first year I worked full time, and the fifth. So when I hear the word "lazy" in my head, I know it isn't coming from me. This is one of the reasons I was hesitant to even consider becoming a parent. I had serious second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts about adoption when my wife suggested it. The thought that I might terrorize a child in any way like what had been done to me frightened me to my core.
Today is one of those rare bad days when I really do feel worthless, lazy, and stupid. It's an almost paralyzing feeling that I can't get anything done. Ordinarily, I am confident to the point of severe arrogance. Just ask any of my friends--the few who can stand to be around me for any length of time. I know I am intelligent, artistically talented, and I was physically gifted at sports, at least at an earlier time in my life. But there are days like today when I can look at all the award certificates I won in school for math competitions (and I didn't even like math), all-conference sports awards, competitive scholarships, etc. and still think of myself as a complete loser. It seems like all the stuff I have accomplished was just part of fighting a losing battle for self-esteem. Things will likely look up for me tomorrow, because this feeling never lasts for long, fortunately. But I can say definitively that I know firsthand what depression is, and I have to say that I could really live without it.
I'm not sure how long it will take for me to sort through these family photos, but at this point, I'm not sure how much that really needs to be done. They reminded my dad of better days, but for the most part they just remind me of what could have been, and innocence lost.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Heroic Age
According to Joe Quesada in USA Today, Marvel 's "heroes will be heroes again."One might wonder why they weren't heroes in the first place.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Twist My Arm
Rock Band 2 has to be the greatest game in the world. When we picked up Sera from daycare on Friday, she said, "Daddy, when we get home you should play Rock Band."
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Et Tu, Roger Ebert?
In Roger Ebert's new blog post, he blasts public education, tenure, and teachers' unions all in one breath:
Here we go again. If Roger had bothered to do a five-second Google search, as I did, he would have found a dozen articles refuting this particular claim. I have been a teacher for 23 years and I can be fired for a thousand reasons as easily, or more easily than anyone else I know. He goes on to say that his eighth grade knowledge from St. Mary's Grade School surpasses that of most high school students. To that I say, hogwash. Roger was in 8th grade in about 1956. We do stuff in 8th grade math now that would have curled his toes like the Wicked Witch of the West. This is just another example of someone speaking out of complete ignorance about public education. I think it should be a requirement for someone writing on public education to at least go to a public school and see what the teachers face as everyday challenges. Better still, I think that a person writing on public education should have to be a substitute teacher for a day. Just one day is all it would take to at least give them a hint of understanding, which would be far more than they present right now.
"Tenure is a sacred concept in higher education, attained after years and
rigorous peer review. In primary and high schools, it comes automatically after
as few as two years. Tenured teachers have a job for life. They cannot be fired
for proven incompetence. The American Federation of Teachers and other unions
fiercely protect their jobs."
Here we go again. If Roger had bothered to do a five-second Google search, as I did, he would have found a dozen articles refuting this particular claim. I have been a teacher for 23 years and I can be fired for a thousand reasons as easily, or more easily than anyone else I know. He goes on to say that his eighth grade knowledge from St. Mary's Grade School surpasses that of most high school students. To that I say, hogwash. Roger was in 8th grade in about 1956. We do stuff in 8th grade math now that would have curled his toes like the Wicked Witch of the West. This is just another example of someone speaking out of complete ignorance about public education. I think it should be a requirement for someone writing on public education to at least go to a public school and see what the teachers face as everyday challenges. Better still, I think that a person writing on public education should have to be a substitute teacher for a day. Just one day is all it would take to at least give them a hint of understanding, which would be far more than they present right now.
Friday, January 22, 2010
My Man Mitch
The governor of my state is Mitch Daniels. I love Mitch. He's always good for a laugh. He recently said in his State of the State address that he wants an end to social promotion for third graders who can't read: "Sending an illiterate child on to higher grades is unfair to the next teacher, damaging to our state's future, but cruelest of all, disastrous to the life being blighted by that failure." If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that our governor is not concerned with what is fair to teachers.
But when confronted with the reason that it happens, the governor was stunned:
That's right, Mr. Daniels. We've only been passing them along because we're flush with the funds to give them the extra time outside the normal schedule to get them to where their parents should have had them before they ever started school. That was before you cut our budget by $300 million. In virtually the same breath, Daniels has asked teachers to take a pay cut and take an increase in class sizes and then to do more with less. Make that a lot more with a lot less. How are we supposed to accomplish this?
In the same article, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett "suggested schools could provide that 90 minutes (for extra help with reading) during the existing school day by having students skip recess or fine arts classes or by making other arrangements. He said parents, volunteers or community mentors could help teachers working with retained students and that local principals and superintendents could find creative solutions."
If we had sufficient numbers of "parents, volunteers, or community mentors" to pull this off, the kids wouldn't be illiterate in the first place! And cutting recess has already been done in several elementary schools, and guess what? Studies show that kids do better with recess.
The thing that really burns me about this is that I read to my daughter every night. She loves reading with Daddy. She is motivated to identify words and is already sounding them out (reading phonetically). She will be reading when she is four years old at this rate, long before she starts school. Why does it fall solely on teachers to motivate students to read? Because we can be legislated and parents can't. What happened to that personal responsibility that we're always hearing about? Do you really think that it's teachers who are sending their kids to school unable to read?
About eight years ago, my school system made a new policy that any middle schooler who didn't pass all of their four core subjects (math, language arts, social studies, and science) would be held back unless they passed their failed subject in summer school. Those were the two best years of my entire professional career. Everyone tried to pass and additional help was given to the few who just couldn't manage it with reasonable class sizes in summer school. Why didn't we keep that policy? Was it because it wasn't working? No, because it cost too much. We really need to take a good look at how much that program cost now, and see if we're going to be paying more by losing students to transportation costs, moving them to "successful" schools, while penalizing the schools that need the funding the most.
This constant attack on teachers and public education in the media lately is going to drive a lot of good people out of the profession. It's going to drive out the very people whom the profession needs desperately. It's going to drive out the innovators, the people who go above and beyond the call of duty to inspire their students to learn. Quite honestly, I would be making plans to leave right now if I didn't have so many years invested in my retirement plan. My only question is who in their right mind is going to be lining up for these teaching jobs that are going to be vacated? I'll tell you who. The positions will be filled by people who want to follow cookie cutter guidelines and recipes. The profession is going to be filled with line cooks who love to follow unimaginative instructions to the letter. It will be filled by people who have not one creative thought in their heads. It will be populated by people who don't push the envelope and don't try to use the most current technology. It will be loaded with folks who don't rock the boat. Well, I'm done with waiting for the boat to sink. It needs to be rocked. Something needs to be said, and I'm going to say it.
But when confronted with the reason that it happens, the governor was stunned:
"Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was stunned that his proposal to hold back third-grade students who can't read well came with such a large price tag that a key lawmaker said it shouldn't pass this year. Daniels told reporters Thursday that his proposal to end so-called social promotion shouldn't cost a cent. He and state Superintendent Tony Bennett, a fellow Republican, say schools are already getting paid to teach students how to read, so the plan shouldn't require more cash. 'The fiscal (impact) of that bill is zero dollars and zero cents,' Daniels said. "
That's right, Mr. Daniels. We've only been passing them along because we're flush with the funds to give them the extra time outside the normal schedule to get them to where their parents should have had them before they ever started school. That was before you cut our budget by $300 million. In virtually the same breath, Daniels has asked teachers to take a pay cut and take an increase in class sizes and then to do more with less. Make that a lot more with a lot less. How are we supposed to accomplish this?
In the same article, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett "suggested schools could provide that 90 minutes (for extra help with reading) during the existing school day by having students skip recess or fine arts classes or by making other arrangements. He said parents, volunteers or community mentors could help teachers working with retained students and that local principals and superintendents could find creative solutions."
If we had sufficient numbers of "parents, volunteers, or community mentors" to pull this off, the kids wouldn't be illiterate in the first place! And cutting recess has already been done in several elementary schools, and guess what? Studies show that kids do better with recess.
The thing that really burns me about this is that I read to my daughter every night. She loves reading with Daddy. She is motivated to identify words and is already sounding them out (reading phonetically). She will be reading when she is four years old at this rate, long before she starts school. Why does it fall solely on teachers to motivate students to read? Because we can be legislated and parents can't. What happened to that personal responsibility that we're always hearing about? Do you really think that it's teachers who are sending their kids to school unable to read?
About eight years ago, my school system made a new policy that any middle schooler who didn't pass all of their four core subjects (math, language arts, social studies, and science) would be held back unless they passed their failed subject in summer school. Those were the two best years of my entire professional career. Everyone tried to pass and additional help was given to the few who just couldn't manage it with reasonable class sizes in summer school. Why didn't we keep that policy? Was it because it wasn't working? No, because it cost too much. We really need to take a good look at how much that program cost now, and see if we're going to be paying more by losing students to transportation costs, moving them to "successful" schools, while penalizing the schools that need the funding the most.
This constant attack on teachers and public education in the media lately is going to drive a lot of good people out of the profession. It's going to drive out the very people whom the profession needs desperately. It's going to drive out the innovators, the people who go above and beyond the call of duty to inspire their students to learn. Quite honestly, I would be making plans to leave right now if I didn't have so many years invested in my retirement plan. My only question is who in their right mind is going to be lining up for these teaching jobs that are going to be vacated? I'll tell you who. The positions will be filled by people who want to follow cookie cutter guidelines and recipes. The profession is going to be filled with line cooks who love to follow unimaginative instructions to the letter. It will be filled by people who have not one creative thought in their heads. It will be populated by people who don't push the envelope and don't try to use the most current technology. It will be loaded with folks who don't rock the boat. Well, I'm done with waiting for the boat to sink. It needs to be rocked. Something needs to be said, and I'm going to say it.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The New Batting Practice Caps are Here!
Very exciting news in my e-mailbox today, as the new MLB batting practice caps (left) are here! For those of you who don't know, batting practice caps are made of a moisture-wicking material that keeps the wearer's head cool. I really love the feel of the BP cap, especially when I'm active outdoors, but did not like the Tigers' design for the past three years (right). It featured a half-moon gusset that became discolored very quickly after just a few wearings. Looks like we have a winner here!Avatar
I usually don’t like to write reviews of a movie until after a second viewing, but in the case of Avatar, I think I should have written one immediately afterward. I don’t have any unique insights to add about the plot of the film or the perceived weakness of the storyline. Yes, it’s the story of Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves. There really aren’t that many new plot ideas under the sun. But what I do want to talk about is something that I have never seen done so well before and was the highlight of the film for me. Never before have I been so thoroughly convinced that I was seeing an alien world.
The weakness of creating good science fiction has always been that budgets and technology limit how alien a setting can be. The original Star Wars trilogy featured desert-like Tattooine, shot on location in Tunisia; Hoth, an ice planet that could have been at our own poles; Dagobah, a swamp; the cloud city of Bespin; and the forest moon of Endor, which has the same redwoods I’ve seen near San Francisco. Even the new trilogy gave us but glances at truly alien landscapes, and most of them had entirely earthlike appearances. A few of them, only seen in glimpses, looked truly alien, and they looked like the setting in Willy Wonka. But in Avatar, we see a truly alien environment and it’s entirely believable.
Upon arrival on Pandora our anchor, Jake Sully, sees a vast jungle that looks entirely earthly. But when his avatar starts exploring the place, we are introduced quickly to the unique plant life, as well as a few of the predators that roam freely. The dangers of the planet become all too clear. Everything is different. The trees have a bioelectrical network that rivals the human brain. The tendrils that come out of the Na’vi’s hair interact with the tendrils of the animals they use for travel and hunting. They live with a spiritual connection to their environment that is (I loved this line) “measurable.”
I think that no matter the weakness in the story, the setting gives us a sense of immersion that gives the story more credibility. The viewer more easily identifies with the Na’vi because the nine-foot tall blue people seem to really belong to the world that they defend. It’s not just another Earthlike environment that harkens back to Civil War-era America with Native American allegories. There’s only so much suspension of disbelief I can muster when I see a famous actor like Kevin Costner running around with Graham Greene. I know their faces too well and know that they don’t belong in the 19th century old west. But in Avatar, Pandora really feels like it belongs to the Na’vi. And so it does.
The weakness of creating good science fiction has always been that budgets and technology limit how alien a setting can be. The original Star Wars trilogy featured desert-like Tattooine, shot on location in Tunisia; Hoth, an ice planet that could have been at our own poles; Dagobah, a swamp; the cloud city of Bespin; and the forest moon of Endor, which has the same redwoods I’ve seen near San Francisco. Even the new trilogy gave us but glances at truly alien landscapes, and most of them had entirely earthlike appearances. A few of them, only seen in glimpses, looked truly alien, and they looked like the setting in Willy Wonka. But in Avatar, we see a truly alien environment and it’s entirely believable.
Upon arrival on Pandora our anchor, Jake Sully, sees a vast jungle that looks entirely earthly. But when his avatar starts exploring the place, we are introduced quickly to the unique plant life, as well as a few of the predators that roam freely. The dangers of the planet become all too clear. Everything is different. The trees have a bioelectrical network that rivals the human brain. The tendrils that come out of the Na’vi’s hair interact with the tendrils of the animals they use for travel and hunting. They live with a spiritual connection to their environment that is (I loved this line) “measurable.”
I think that no matter the weakness in the story, the setting gives us a sense of immersion that gives the story more credibility. The viewer more easily identifies with the Na’vi because the nine-foot tall blue people seem to really belong to the world that they defend. It’s not just another Earthlike environment that harkens back to Civil War-era America with Native American allegories. There’s only so much suspension of disbelief I can muster when I see a famous actor like Kevin Costner running around with Graham Greene. I know their faces too well and know that they don’t belong in the 19th century old west. But in Avatar, Pandora really feels like it belongs to the Na’vi. And so it does.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Curmudgeon?
As I grow older, I fear becoming the curmudgeon my dad was later in life. Heck, what am I saying? All the time I knew him he was a curmudgeon. When we went to see what I still consider the finest superhero movie of all time, Superman the Movie, he left the theater grumbling, "Well I still don't believe a man can fly." This, from a guy who thought that George Reeves hanging on wires was perfectly fine in the 1950s!
At this stage in my life, I begin to question whether my age is beginning to make me equally grumpy. There are many comic books I've given up on, including my favorite character, Batman. I was watching a History Channel show on comic book superheroes today, and when Frank Miller was describing how former Batman writers claimed that for them, he had ruined their character with his popular work, The Dark Knight, I literally shouted at the screen, "They were right, Frank!" Maybe it's that Batman has evolved past the point where I really liked the character or maybe I consider my childhood memories of the character sacred. But whatever Batman is now, he ain't my Batman. People who know that I love the Batman character can't help but ask me about what I think about Batman movies when they come out. I always have to say that I don't care for them. When they make the mistake of asking why, I trot out a laundry list. I don't think that makes me a curmudgeon, but someone who has a strong idea of what a hero is, and knows that the character as portrayed in the movies is not that guy.
This hits me especially hard at the comic book store, too. I see my childhood heroes acting completely out of character from how I know them. I understand that the target audience is much older than it was when I really enjoyed comics, but I would argue that sophisticated stories don't necessarily have to include rape, on-panel eviscerations, and psychotic, amoral behavior. I can accept those things more easily from creator-owned characters, but not from characters whose moral standards I looked up to as a kid.
Besides the Batman movies, I have lately had difficulty accepting some other film adapations. The Spirit was absolutely offensive to me. Director Frank Miller put some elements from Will Eisner's seminal work in his film, but trampled over the entire story with what we could call Millerisms. There was Nazi fetishism that he previously used in the Dark Knight, and he even stole one of his own lines from Daredevil. The style of cinematography was straight off the pages of Sin City, which he created. The Millerisms overpowered the classic and original storytelling techniques that made Will Eisner a true master of the visual form.
Last year's Star Trek movie had lots of stuff I liked and even some stuff I loved (Michael Giacchino's score, for example) but I still have a lot of problems with it. Does that make me a curmudgeon or just someone who loves the original Star Trek series so much that nothing would have been good enough?
When I start to think that I just hate everything, I have to remind myself that I absolutely adored the Watchmen movie. I didn't expect to, but I thought the makers of that film not only did the graphic novel justice, but improved the ending considerably by not teleporting a giant, telepathic squid into New York City.
So what is it that is making me fear being a curmudgeon? I sure don't want to be. I really wanted to love the Dark Knight, especially when I saw the reviews, but I thought it was horrible. I even bought it on Blu-Ray (on sale) and gave it another chance today. I got to the first scene where Batman drives the tank--sorry, Batmobile through the parking garage barrier, then explodes the corner stairwell, which one would assume is next to the elevator, and causes more property damage than he needs to, and I just have to think that if this is our hero, we deserve better.
I guess what I'm going to have to do is start writing something of my own, and see if I can do better. I'll have to see if I can make a story with internal consistency. I want a story that would appeal to my students and give those who are like I was at that age something to look up to, and ideals that they can respect. If I can do something like that, then I will feel justified in being a little cranky when I see Superman leaving thugs to die in Superman Returns.
We can only hope.
At this stage in my life, I begin to question whether my age is beginning to make me equally grumpy. There are many comic books I've given up on, including my favorite character, Batman. I was watching a History Channel show on comic book superheroes today, and when Frank Miller was describing how former Batman writers claimed that for them, he had ruined their character with his popular work, The Dark Knight, I literally shouted at the screen, "They were right, Frank!" Maybe it's that Batman has evolved past the point where I really liked the character or maybe I consider my childhood memories of the character sacred. But whatever Batman is now, he ain't my Batman. People who know that I love the Batman character can't help but ask me about what I think about Batman movies when they come out. I always have to say that I don't care for them. When they make the mistake of asking why, I trot out a laundry list. I don't think that makes me a curmudgeon, but someone who has a strong idea of what a hero is, and knows that the character as portrayed in the movies is not that guy.
This hits me especially hard at the comic book store, too. I see my childhood heroes acting completely out of character from how I know them. I understand that the target audience is much older than it was when I really enjoyed comics, but I would argue that sophisticated stories don't necessarily have to include rape, on-panel eviscerations, and psychotic, amoral behavior. I can accept those things more easily from creator-owned characters, but not from characters whose moral standards I looked up to as a kid.
Besides the Batman movies, I have lately had difficulty accepting some other film adapations. The Spirit was absolutely offensive to me. Director Frank Miller put some elements from Will Eisner's seminal work in his film, but trampled over the entire story with what we could call Millerisms. There was Nazi fetishism that he previously used in the Dark Knight, and he even stole one of his own lines from Daredevil. The style of cinematography was straight off the pages of Sin City, which he created. The Millerisms overpowered the classic and original storytelling techniques that made Will Eisner a true master of the visual form.
Last year's Star Trek movie had lots of stuff I liked and even some stuff I loved (Michael Giacchino's score, for example) but I still have a lot of problems with it. Does that make me a curmudgeon or just someone who loves the original Star Trek series so much that nothing would have been good enough?
When I start to think that I just hate everything, I have to remind myself that I absolutely adored the Watchmen movie. I didn't expect to, but I thought the makers of that film not only did the graphic novel justice, but improved the ending considerably by not teleporting a giant, telepathic squid into New York City.
So what is it that is making me fear being a curmudgeon? I sure don't want to be. I really wanted to love the Dark Knight, especially when I saw the reviews, but I thought it was horrible. I even bought it on Blu-Ray (on sale) and gave it another chance today. I got to the first scene where Batman drives the tank--sorry, Batmobile through the parking garage barrier, then explodes the corner stairwell, which one would assume is next to the elevator, and causes more property damage than he needs to, and I just have to think that if this is our hero, we deserve better.
I guess what I'm going to have to do is start writing something of my own, and see if I can do better. I'll have to see if I can make a story with internal consistency. I want a story that would appeal to my students and give those who are like I was at that age something to look up to, and ideals that they can respect. If I can do something like that, then I will feel justified in being a little cranky when I see Superman leaving thugs to die in Superman Returns.
We can only hope.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The 300
All my adult life I have struggled trying to control my weight. It seems like when I turned 18, my metabolism came to a screeching halt. When I played sports in high school, and that was all the time, I never even gave a second thought to staying in shape. We did a calorie counting actvity in one of my classes, and with all the sports and work at home (cleaning the barn, splitting wood, etc.) I was burning 4500 calories per day. All that changed when I went to college. My one PE class that I was taking twice a week was nowhere close to enough activity to keep me in shape and I really didn't have time to do anything else. Between classes, studying, and work, I didn't even take the time to learn what I could do to exercise without organized sports.
Gaining weight was a slow process, and I wasn't really aware of the problem until my 10-year class reunion, when I weighed in at 307 pounds. I was the only one in my entire class who had "let themselves go," so to speak. When I returned home, I started looking for something I could do to exercise. As an avid comic book reader I had always been interested in martial arts, so I looked into taking Karate. I threw myself into Karate, going to classes four days a week and traveling to tournaments on weekends. I actually won a couple of trophies for forms and sparring. I enjoyed the competition and the discipline. I won the most dedicated student award in 1994, having not missed a class for an entire year. I even went to the kids' classes to help out with them. That appealed to the teacher in me. When one of the school's black belt participants returned after a long absense, I was the one who gave him his refresher course on the required kata (memorized techniques in sequence) so he could participate in class. All told, I did karate for two and a half years, until I moved away from Michigan City, where I lived at the time. I ended up at sankyu, or the lowest of the three degrees of brown belt in my school's system. I would have been a black belt in about one more year had I stayed. At the end of my Karate experience I was down to about 250 pounds, and felt great. But after that, the weight came back, and then some.
Now, years later, I am bicycling. I don't have time (or the cartilege in my knees) to do Karate. With a lot of work last year, I dropped from 340 pounds down to a low of 282. I love biking. I really do. I love how the wind cools me no matter how hot it is and that I actually go somewhere as a result of the exercise. I will ride for miles outside and shoot for an average speed as a goal. I typically aim for 16 mph and try to maintain that speed for at least 30 minutes. I ride around the neighborhoods and subdivisions around us where there is little traffic. It's what I look forward to when I'm sitting in my summer school classroom.
But now that it's winter and there's snow on the ground, I'm stuck on a trainer that elevates my rear wheel and resists it magnetically. I can watch TV while I pedal, but I don't get the same level of workout. My speedometer is on my front wheel, which is fixed, so I have no idea how fast I'm going.
The holidays are fun, and I take an occasional break from dieting so I don't just quit altogether. This year, Christmas, combined with vacation and enjoying the food and drink took its toll. Chocolate Mint Truffle coffee creamer really got me at 45 calories per tablespoon! I slipped back up to 299.6 despite still working out 3-5 times a week on break and was not happy. I swore to myself that when I lost that weight, I would never be 300 pounds again. So now, I'm working out even harder while watching action movies on DVD, so I get caught up in the excitement and work harder. My only measure of how hard I work is how much I sweat. I may have to get a pulse monitor so I can have numbers to work with. The good thing about numbers is that they don't lie, and they keep me honest as well.
Wish me luck in my battle against the 300.
Gaining weight was a slow process, and I wasn't really aware of the problem until my 10-year class reunion, when I weighed in at 307 pounds. I was the only one in my entire class who had "let themselves go," so to speak. When I returned home, I started looking for something I could do to exercise. As an avid comic book reader I had always been interested in martial arts, so I looked into taking Karate. I threw myself into Karate, going to classes four days a week and traveling to tournaments on weekends. I actually won a couple of trophies for forms and sparring. I enjoyed the competition and the discipline. I won the most dedicated student award in 1994, having not missed a class for an entire year. I even went to the kids' classes to help out with them. That appealed to the teacher in me. When one of the school's black belt participants returned after a long absense, I was the one who gave him his refresher course on the required kata (memorized techniques in sequence) so he could participate in class. All told, I did karate for two and a half years, until I moved away from Michigan City, where I lived at the time. I ended up at sankyu, or the lowest of the three degrees of brown belt in my school's system. I would have been a black belt in about one more year had I stayed. At the end of my Karate experience I was down to about 250 pounds, and felt great. But after that, the weight came back, and then some.
Now, years later, I am bicycling. I don't have time (or the cartilege in my knees) to do Karate. With a lot of work last year, I dropped from 340 pounds down to a low of 282. I love biking. I really do. I love how the wind cools me no matter how hot it is and that I actually go somewhere as a result of the exercise. I will ride for miles outside and shoot for an average speed as a goal. I typically aim for 16 mph and try to maintain that speed for at least 30 minutes. I ride around the neighborhoods and subdivisions around us where there is little traffic. It's what I look forward to when I'm sitting in my summer school classroom.
But now that it's winter and there's snow on the ground, I'm stuck on a trainer that elevates my rear wheel and resists it magnetically. I can watch TV while I pedal, but I don't get the same level of workout. My speedometer is on my front wheel, which is fixed, so I have no idea how fast I'm going.
The holidays are fun, and I take an occasional break from dieting so I don't just quit altogether. This year, Christmas, combined with vacation and enjoying the food and drink took its toll. Chocolate Mint Truffle coffee creamer really got me at 45 calories per tablespoon! I slipped back up to 299.6 despite still working out 3-5 times a week on break and was not happy. I swore to myself that when I lost that weight, I would never be 300 pounds again. So now, I'm working out even harder while watching action movies on DVD, so I get caught up in the excitement and work harder. My only measure of how hard I work is how much I sweat. I may have to get a pulse monitor so I can have numbers to work with. The good thing about numbers is that they don't lie, and they keep me honest as well.
Wish me luck in my battle against the 300.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Good Day for Comics
I saw a couple of good items today in comic book news. First, the Marvel Adventures titles are being rebranded and relaunched. There is a definite call in my household for all-ages comics that aren't just based on cartoon shows and these will fit the bill nicely.
Second, Gail Simone will be writing a new Birds of Prey series, with Ed Benes doing the art. I really like Gail Simone as a writer, especially of female characters, so this is even more good news. It's another monthly book I can read, which brings my current total to something like five.
I hope that this trend continues and the big two companies figure out that grim and gritty titles with multiple rapes and eviscerations only takes a company so far before long-suffering potential readers simply give up and walk away.
On the other hand, I've read that in the Titans book from DC, the team will be led by Deathstroke, the Terminator. That's sort of like George Lucas saying that in the new Star Wars television show, the rebellion will now be led by Boba Fett. I'll be quiet now. I wouldn't want to give him any ideas.
The Late Night Controversy
I could not possibly care less about who goes on at what time. Virtually every show I watch has been recorded and I watch it when I want to. That's why people invented DVRs, Hulu, and Netflix.
Also, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" is consistently funnier and smarter than Leno, O'Brien, Letterman, and Fallon combined.
Also, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" is consistently funnier and smarter than Leno, O'Brien, Letterman, and Fallon combined.
You Know it's Love...
...When your daughter leans over to give you a hug and say, "I love you, Daddy" while she's sitting on the toilet going #2 while you get her bath ready.
Technical Difficulties
Please excuse the technical difficulties I experienced starting yesterday. I posted my math class blog post to this blog. I didn't realize my mistake until I did the same thing this morning and hit "View Post."
Please stand by.
Please stand by.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Teacher Evaluation and Test Scores
Bob Herbert talks in his column today about what is becoming more and more common: "The president of the American Federation of Teachers says she will urge her members to accept a form of teacher evaluation that takes student achievement into account and that the union has commissioned an independent effort to streamline disciplinary processes and make it easier to fire teachers who are guilty of misconduct."
I don't have a problem with firing teachers who are guilty of misconduct. It's the other part that is not going to work.
I'll accept my evaluation and pay being based on standardized test scores when dentists are compensated based on the collective health of their patients' teeth. Dentists can clean their patients' teeth regularly, repair faulty teeth, send them home with a free toothbrush, and when the patient fails to do their part, their teeth are going to rot no matter what steps the dentist takes.
It's pretty much the same for teachers.
I don't have a problem with firing teachers who are guilty of misconduct. It's the other part that is not going to work.
I'll accept my evaluation and pay being based on standardized test scores when dentists are compensated based on the collective health of their patients' teeth. Dentists can clean their patients' teeth regularly, repair faulty teeth, send them home with a free toothbrush, and when the patient fails to do their part, their teeth are going to rot no matter what steps the dentist takes.
It's pretty much the same for teachers.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Green Lantern Oath FAIL
It's a nice marketing strategy for their big news today, but someone needs to remind DC how the Green Lantern oath goes:
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Ken Burns to Update "Baseball"
Best news I've read all year.The week before spring training begins, I'll start my annual viewing of Ken Burns's documentary on the greatest game ever invented. It's ten volumes of pure poetry and history about baseball. This is welcome news and I'm very excited about it.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
I See You
My 20-year old niece, Theresa, is an amazing artist. She is living a life I can only enjoy vicariously, but it sure is fun watching her work and grow. We saw "Avatar" a few weeks ago, and I think it had an impact on her. The picture to the left is done from a photograph of her, modified with Photoshop. Just to show you what she worked with, I am including the side-by-side picture from her deviantart site. All I can say is, wow.
And go to her site to see more!
And go to her site to see more!Statistically Speaking...
"Well I hope this experience hasn't put you off flying. Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel."--Superman
I get tired of hyperbole. When President Obama started sternly lecturing our intelligence agencies for a "systemic failure" in Detroit on Christmas day, I just rolled my eyes. Another politician takes advantage of bad math to make political hay.
This may not be politically correct, but I thought that the Columbine incident was pretty much overhyped, too. This is not to say that the loss of life was not tragic; of course it was. What I'm saying is that we pay far too much attention to tragedies where the loss of life is high because it all happens at the same time. I worked in a school back in the 90s where at least as many students died from gunfire on the way to, from, and even at school, but nothing was ever done or said about it. No national news media covered the violence. No crisis plan was initiated nationwide to prevent the deaths. It wasn't until a lot of people died all at the same time in a school did the idea of bullying or student violence even make the headlines.
Why are plane crashes covered in the news? Because the loss of life all happens at the same time. Superman was right. Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel. It's just that you don't see 300 lives lost all at the same time on highways that makes those kind of accidents not as newsworthy. It's far more dangerous to drive on the highways than to fly, so where is the outrage? Where is the president, sternly lecturing about impaired driving? There are 13,000-14,000 alcohol-related driving deaths per year in the U.S. alone. Someone would have to blow up a whole lot of planes to compare to that, and once again, no I am not saying that those types of deaths are any less tragic. I'm saying that the tragedy of terrorism in the air is a relatively small problem.
I've got a great idea. Why don't we stop spending billions while nickeling and diming air traffic threats and start taking equally bold steps to save as many lives as possible. That would be worth a headline or two.
I get tired of hyperbole. When President Obama started sternly lecturing our intelligence agencies for a "systemic failure" in Detroit on Christmas day, I just rolled my eyes. Another politician takes advantage of bad math to make political hay.
This may not be politically correct, but I thought that the Columbine incident was pretty much overhyped, too. This is not to say that the loss of life was not tragic; of course it was. What I'm saying is that we pay far too much attention to tragedies where the loss of life is high because it all happens at the same time. I worked in a school back in the 90s where at least as many students died from gunfire on the way to, from, and even at school, but nothing was ever done or said about it. No national news media covered the violence. No crisis plan was initiated nationwide to prevent the deaths. It wasn't until a lot of people died all at the same time in a school did the idea of bullying or student violence even make the headlines.
Why are plane crashes covered in the news? Because the loss of life all happens at the same time. Superman was right. Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel. It's just that you don't see 300 lives lost all at the same time on highways that makes those kind of accidents not as newsworthy. It's far more dangerous to drive on the highways than to fly, so where is the outrage? Where is the president, sternly lecturing about impaired driving? There are 13,000-14,000 alcohol-related driving deaths per year in the U.S. alone. Someone would have to blow up a whole lot of planes to compare to that, and once again, no I am not saying that those types of deaths are any less tragic. I'm saying that the tragedy of terrorism in the air is a relatively small problem.
I've got a great idea. Why don't we stop spending billions while nickeling and diming air traffic threats and start taking equally bold steps to save as many lives as possible. That would be worth a headline or two.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Gosh, I'm Old
I was playing "Rhiannon," by Fleetwood Mac on my iPod while the kids were coming into class. One of my students looks straight at me and says, "Is this Creed?"
Monday, January 04, 2010
"What"
That was the first word my little girl sounded out for herself. We were working on sounding out words from Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear and she worked out "what" when I made the "wh" sound. I could hear her whispering the "a" and the "t." And then it happened. She may have had help from the context of a book she's heard 10,000 times, but I heard the letters one at a time. Not bad for three years, eight months old!
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Wonderfulness
“Daddy, what’s that?” my daughter asked, as I held the round, black vinyl disc by the edges.“A record,” I replied.
“What’s it for?”
I laughed first, then reminiscing about my own childhood with records, I said in my best Bill Cosby voice: “Riiiiight.”
My friends Rob and Eric bought me a USB turntable for Christmas. This is a wonderful gift, because I have a number of records on vinyl that will likely never see the light of day on CD or even as downloadable files on iTunes. I have some commonly known comedians like the aforementioned Bill Cosby, who has CD’s of his classic comedy, but I also have Homer & Jethro. I have Steve Martin, but I also have Jonathan Winters. Among the otherwise unreleased records I have are the soundtrack for “Song of the South,” several PowerRecords, including one from the Six Million Dollar Man, as well as one of famous monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman (with Neal Adams art, no less). But my favorite old record is probably Buckingham Nicks, the album that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham did before they joined Fleetwood Mac.
I think, though, that digging through that treasure trove of comedy is going to be a blast. It’s easily what influenced my own sense of humor more than anything else. Bill Cosby was a heck of a lot funnier as a standup comic than he ever was on television. My brother and I used to listen for hours at our grandparents’ house to his recollections of growing up in Philadelphia. That’s where I first heard of Fat Albert and Bill’s brother Russell. It wasn’t from any kind of cartoon.
The Smothers Brothers were well ahead of their time when they recorded “The Golden Hits of the Smothers Brothers, Volume 2 (there is no Volume 1, reads the blurb on the record cover).” Combining their brand of folk music with constant interruptions of fraternal bickering was always good for a laugh. I still remember my grandfather saying, “I’d like them a lot better if they just kept playing their damn music!”
It’s going to be fun listening to records I haven’t heard since about 1995, which was the last time I owned a working record player!
Saturday, January 02, 2010
New Font
Oh, and here's the new font I bought this year from Comicraft's annual font sale. It's called Long Underwear, but it's clearly adapted from the lettering style that was used to create the Superboy logo. I was hoping this one would eventually see the light of day. I was always a big fan of Superboy. I was quite delighted to find that in the new origin of Superman, Clark Kent was Superboy again, though only when he was interacting in the future with the Legion of 
Super-Heroes.
Super-Heroes.
Sketchy Saturdays
Some of the blogs I read are by comic book artists who try to include a daily sketch. Mike Wieringo used to post his daily warmup sketches as blog posts, and I followed them every day.I know I simply don't have the time to do one every day, but I think I'm going to try to do one per week. I haven't drawn in I don't know how long, and this will at least force me to keep track of my pencil box better. It took 10 minutes to even find it. That's how long it's been since I drew something.
So, here's Dr. Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory," one of my favorite TV shows. It's about geeks and I get every joke, so I feel like the show was written just for me.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Happy (Yawn) New Year
You know, I really don't care about New Year's Day. It's just a Hallmark holiday as far as I'm concerned. It's about as exciting as watching my odometer turn over every 10,000 miles and I don't go out and party when that happens, either. Last night, my wife and I were reminiscing about New Year's in 2000 and how I was a grump when everyone around me was celebrating the new millennium. I said then, as I say now, was it really the new millennium? When you learn to count to 10, do you stop at 9 and say you're done? Do you stop at 99 and go, "Whoopie! I counted to 100?" Seems to me a millennium should be complete when the 1000th year in it is complete, not when the 999th year is at its close. Do people realize that the Gregorian calendar was adopted in different parts of the world at different times? Do they know that to change over from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, 10 days had to be skipped to make it consistent? That's right, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted, the four countries who adopted it first jumped from October 4 to October 15, 1582. This transfer wasn't adopted across the board, though. As each country adopted the new calendar, they had to skip days to catch up with the rest of the world. When Alaska was purchased from Russia by the US in 1867, they had to jump 11 days, repeating one of the days of the week because the International Date Line was moved. Holy Groundhog Day!
I guess my point is that it's not that big a deal to celebrate a new year for me, because it's really a contrived holiday based on math corrections. That said, I think it's kind of fun to whip out old calendars and post them in my classroom. Kids will start freaking out on Monday at school, wondering why the calendar says 1993. That's because 2010's calendar is identical to 1993's. There's even a cool little website, http://whencanireusethiscalendar.com/ that can help you determine when your old calendars can be used again. Just hang on to them. The new year is so unexciting that identical years come back pretty often. I think it's more important to celebrate every day instead of picking some arbitrary point in the Earth's trip around the sun to have fun.
Now, I wonder what they'll think of my Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog calendar in 2021 when I can reuse it?
Thursday, December 31, 2009
2009 Year in Review
On January 1, I set goals instead of making resolutions, and although my goal of blogging every day didn't pan out, it's understandable why. This year has been painful, one of the most painful I've experienced. The death of my father is something I never quite overcame. It hit me far harder than I would have ever thought possible.
But through it all, I've had my family. My wife and my daughter are always there for me. They are the ones I rely on, the ones for whom I live and work. Watching my daughter grow daily is a thrill for me beyond anything else I can imagine. Seeing her change before my very eyes is more than I could ever have hoped for in becoming a father. My wife is fulfilling her life's dream of being a mother and it is a role for which she is perfectly suited. Every day that I am with them is a day of joy and a reason to celebrate.
Happy New Year!
But through it all, I've had my family. My wife and my daughter are always there for me. They are the ones I rely on, the ones for whom I live and work. Watching my daughter grow daily is a thrill for me beyond anything else I can imagine. Seeing her change before my very eyes is more than I could ever have hoped for in becoming a father. My wife is fulfilling her life's dream of being a mother and it is a role for which she is perfectly suited. Every day that I am with them is a day of joy and a reason to celebrate.
Happy New Year!
Monday, December 28, 2009
PlayStation 3
"You bought a PS3?" Those were the words that my niece said to me when I told her what I thought of my birthday purchase. My in-laws sent me money as they always generously do, and I thought the best use of it would be something for our family. Now, don't be snide. When I say that it's for the family, know that it resides in the living room where we can all enjoy it. That said, I can honestly say that I want another one!
The PlayStation 3 is a complete entertainment machine. Those who think of it as simply a videogame console are seriously underestimating its value. The PlayStation 3 is a Blu-Ray player and an upconverting DVD player. That means that it not only plays high definition Blu-Ray discs, but also takes normal DVD's and converts them into a format more easily viewable on high definition televisions, making them look even better than they do on normal TV's. I didn't buy a hard copy of "Watchmen" until we had the PS3, and I was right to wait. The Blu-Ray is as close to watching it at the IMAX theater as one can get and still get up to go to the bathroom whenever one needs to. We've rented a number of Blu-Ray movies from Netflix and wow, does it ever make a difference. When we are able to get a bigger HDTV, I doubt we'll ever go to the movies again. You can't beat the seats of our living room sofa, and when you add the open-flame oil popcorn popper that my wife bought me for Christmas, we won't be missing a thing by staying home. Plus, no one talks during the movie! Heck, we'll be saving a load of money even if we buy the Blu-Ray of every movie that we would normally go out to see.
The PS3 also connects wirelessly to your home computer network and herein lay one of its greatest values to us: As Netflix subscribers we can use our existing Netflix account at no additional charge to instantly view several thousand Netflix programs, some in high definition. They have movies, and best yet, episodes of many of our favorite television shows in HD, like "Lost" and "Star Trek." We can watch any episode of those shows in seconds on our television in HD just by clicking a few times. We've been using that to watch the fifth season of "Lost" on Tuesday nights and we have it timed so that if we now watch two episodes every Tuesday night, we'll be ready for the new season on February 2.
We also use the PS3 as a videogame system, though not to play the typical fare that most people would expect. As a family Christmas gift, we bought Rock Band 2 and for the past two days, we have been playing the heck out of it. Sera sings into the microphone (though we don't plug it in) while Magi plays bass, my niece Theresa plays drums, and I play guitar. We're not great, but it sure is fun!
I don't know what the future holds for home entertainment, but I bet it looks a lot like Sony's PlayStation 3.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Logan's Run
Great article about one of my favorite novels, Logan's Run, over here. Lots of information about the movie, TV show and comic book, too.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Four Days
I'm about to have four days off and I need it. After a week of graphing on the coordinate plane, using myriad examples of how two things relate at the same time, my students bombed a quiz last Friday. I had used Black Friday sales to illustrate the rising costs of a single DVD player and multiple DVD's purchased as an example. I used purchasing two differently-priced kinds of meat for a barbecue to show the ways that increasing the amount puchased of one necessarily leads to a decrease in the amount purchased of the other given a set budget. I had them each plot their own points in the relationships on the dry-erase board with magnets to ensure that no one was just sitting back not paying attention.
After the quiz I spent two more days talking about it and most did exactly the same today if not worse. I reached a few who doubled their scores, but for the most part, my extra effort went for nothing. When I reprinted the quiz, I changed the numbers and that was all the modifications I made. A kid turned his in and said, "When can I re-take that first quiz?"
And the next time I point to a horizontal or vertical line and ask what kind of line it is, and I get the answer, "Straight," I'm going nuclear. No Child Left Behind can kiss mine. That isn't my fault. How in blazes can 13- and 14-year olds not know what vertical and horizontal mean, especially after a week of instruction???
After the quiz I spent two more days talking about it and most did exactly the same today if not worse. I reached a few who doubled their scores, but for the most part, my extra effort went for nothing. When I reprinted the quiz, I changed the numbers and that was all the modifications I made. A kid turned his in and said, "When can I re-take that first quiz?"
And the next time I point to a horizontal or vertical line and ask what kind of line it is, and I get the answer, "Straight," I'm going nuclear. No Child Left Behind can kiss mine. That isn't my fault. How in blazes can 13- and 14-year olds not know what vertical and horizontal mean, especially after a week of instruction???
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