Can I really post from my smart phone?
Cool. Technology can be fun (once you allow for the monthly service charge).
Friday, October 31, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
New Math
From the best information I can gather, the new building will house fourteen classrooms. It will sit on dirt that now supports ten classrooms. (I counted). So we will have a net increase of four classrooms. Yay!
We have nine homeless teachers on this campus.
The room that currently serves as the high school office is said to be slated to be converted into a classroom, but I'll believe it when I see it.
It's not as if in an industry like ours we don't have hard demographic data to use to predict future trends. It's not as if we couldn't find something to do with a couple of extra rooms, like move the copiers into one to un-convert the (ahem) freaking teacher's lounge back from a workroom. I can't concentrate to grade papers there because of the clickety-clack, jam-and-smack of Xerox hell: it's a din matched only by the hammers of Vulcan: today I had to leave the room to continue a phone conversation with a parent, (and let's put the butcher paper trolley and other work equipment in there too: I can't even walk to the sink half the time without pushing crap out of the way, and taking care lest I burn myself on the laminating machine) or use one as a meeting room for Student Study Teams that have to meet in storage rooms right now (I've attended several in the middle school office, next to the sink, coffee-maker, and the Giant Ladder of Exposed Computer Network Cables. There's a folding table in there that takes up so much space it's literally impossible to pull a chair all the way out from under the table, let alone walk around when people are seated. It's a coffee room/storage room, and it's embarrassing to have to invite parents in there and try to posture ourselves as professionals with boxes of toilet paper and what-not shoved into the shelves overhead). So any fear of "over-building unnecessary rooms" is ridiculous on its face: we need the conference rooms, we need the classrooms, we need the work room: we've already converted every conceivable space into ad hoc meeting rooms, to an absurd degree.
No, we're so far behind our needs here, it would take two buildings like the coming edifice ex machina that is said to be on plan to float down from heaven as a godsend, to cure all our accommodatory ills. Can a few more portables be asking too much?
Meanwhile, students continue to trash my room while I'm not there, adding insult to injury. I've already asked those kids not to leave their mess in the room. What am I going to have to do, sit in there to watch them?
We have nine homeless teachers on this campus.
The room that currently serves as the high school office is said to be slated to be converted into a classroom, but I'll believe it when I see it.
It's not as if in an industry like ours we don't have hard demographic data to use to predict future trends. It's not as if we couldn't find something to do with a couple of extra rooms, like move the copiers into one to un-convert the (ahem) freaking teacher's lounge back from a workroom. I can't concentrate to grade papers there because of the clickety-clack, jam-and-smack of Xerox hell: it's a din matched only by the hammers of Vulcan: today I had to leave the room to continue a phone conversation with a parent, (and let's put the butcher paper trolley and other work equipment in there too: I can't even walk to the sink half the time without pushing crap out of the way, and taking care lest I burn myself on the laminating machine) or use one as a meeting room for Student Study Teams that have to meet in storage rooms right now (I've attended several in the middle school office, next to the sink, coffee-maker, and the Giant Ladder of Exposed Computer Network Cables. There's a folding table in there that takes up so much space it's literally impossible to pull a chair all the way out from under the table, let alone walk around when people are seated. It's a coffee room/storage room, and it's embarrassing to have to invite parents in there and try to posture ourselves as professionals with boxes of toilet paper and what-not shoved into the shelves overhead). So any fear of "over-building unnecessary rooms" is ridiculous on its face: we need the conference rooms, we need the classrooms, we need the work room: we've already converted every conceivable space into ad hoc meeting rooms, to an absurd degree.
No, we're so far behind our needs here, it would take two buildings like the coming edifice ex machina that is said to be on plan to float down from heaven as a godsend, to cure all our accommodatory ills. Can a few more portables be asking too much?
Meanwhile, students continue to trash my room while I'm not there, adding insult to injury. I've already asked those kids not to leave their mess in the room. What am I going to have to do, sit in there to watch them?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
In Response to my Commenters
I considered taking an extra period, but I concluded that it's too much like gnawing my own paw off to get out of the trap. All that does is reclaim the physical space, but doesn't create a conference period. And the price for possessing my own eighth-acre of carpet is high: more students, more work, poor pay, and still no office hour. It's going backward.
There are only two paths: change my conference period (too late now for this year, but I'll be damned if I'm getting stuck for a sixth year) to share the love with other teachers for a change, or more classrooms, which of course is the ultimate solution.
We are putting in a new permanent building to replace those ancient 600 wing portable (one blushes with shame to attempt the word "temporary") rooms, the oldest on campus. What I hear is that two years from now a two-story cathedral of glass and stucco will descend from the clouds, and the rooms of it shall be fourteen, and lo, the high school office will find its home there. Much of the lawn on Woodruff Ave., at the end of the south parking lot and where the 800 wing ends, will be cut away to create a new driveway to handle the increased traffic (the whole parking lot gets reconfigured, too). I guess Color Guard will have to find a new place to practice…
I'm sure the newer portables behind the "raft" of currently raised classrooms will have to go to make room for the new building, so those teachers (Tressalyn King and some other RSP people are back there, and I don't know who else, or how many) will occupy much of it: six from the raft, and let's say six more from those other rooms. That leaves only two new rooms, and we have nine vagrant teachers this year. Not much relief there.
I may be wrong: Tressalyn et. al. may not be displaced, in which case eight shiny new rooms will welcome the lion's share of our current credentialed homeless. That will qualify as a bona-fide solution in my book, if that ninth wanderer can be given a room somewhere as well.
The building that is now the high school office? Who knows to what use that will be put. When I started shaving, it was for the use of ASB: a large central room with a conference table and chairs, one office on one side (where Lane's and Kameoka's two closet-offices are now) and the reason Burford has those sliding windows in her office is because that used to be the student store. Yes, you're right, there was no wall: it incorporated what is now Mr. Eeles' office. I wonder what Amanda would do the those kind of facilities at her fingertips?
Decades ago, when we had a sane situation, Rms. 100 & 102 was an undivided "counseling center." All the counselors (one for each grade level: what a revolutionary idea!) and a vice principal had offices in the back, with secretaries up front, and a service counter just inside the door running the entire width of the double-wide room (okay, there were a couple of cut-outs to walk through). All very Ferris Bueller.
The history lesson is not just an exercise in nostalgia: the situation has changed incrementally over time (with the absorption of the junior high school onto the Mayfair campus in the early 80s being a notable exception). Administrators have come and gone, teachers have folded up their careers to be replaced by fresher faces who don't remember how it used to be, and the current situation begins to become normalized. What's at the end of that process? Nine homeless teachers and James Flemming in an embarrassment of an "office" that three people can't sit in. What we have now is not normal, and cannot be accepted as normal, or we've already lost.
I'm not trying to return to the past (even though the accommodations were much more, well, accommodating); I'm trying to get back to the audacious "normal" of a room for every teacher, a conference period in every pot, and office space that has some. Space, that is.
There are only two paths: change my conference period (too late now for this year, but I'll be damned if I'm getting stuck for a sixth year) to share the love with other teachers for a change, or more classrooms, which of course is the ultimate solution.
We are putting in a new permanent building to replace those ancient 600 wing portable (one blushes with shame to attempt the word "temporary") rooms, the oldest on campus. What I hear is that two years from now a two-story cathedral of glass and stucco will descend from the clouds, and the rooms of it shall be fourteen, and lo, the high school office will find its home there. Much of the lawn on Woodruff Ave., at the end of the south parking lot and where the 800 wing ends, will be cut away to create a new driveway to handle the increased traffic (the whole parking lot gets reconfigured, too). I guess Color Guard will have to find a new place to practice…
I'm sure the newer portables behind the "raft" of currently raised classrooms will have to go to make room for the new building, so those teachers (Tressalyn King and some other RSP people are back there, and I don't know who else, or how many) will occupy much of it: six from the raft, and let's say six more from those other rooms. That leaves only two new rooms, and we have nine vagrant teachers this year. Not much relief there.
I may be wrong: Tressalyn et. al. may not be displaced, in which case eight shiny new rooms will welcome the lion's share of our current credentialed homeless. That will qualify as a bona-fide solution in my book, if that ninth wanderer can be given a room somewhere as well.
The building that is now the high school office? Who knows to what use that will be put. When I started shaving, it was for the use of ASB: a large central room with a conference table and chairs, one office on one side (where Lane's and Kameoka's two closet-offices are now) and the reason Burford has those sliding windows in her office is because that used to be the student store. Yes, you're right, there was no wall: it incorporated what is now Mr. Eeles' office. I wonder what Amanda would do the those kind of facilities at her fingertips?
Decades ago, when we had a sane situation, Rms. 100 & 102 was an undivided "counseling center." All the counselors (one for each grade level: what a revolutionary idea!) and a vice principal had offices in the back, with secretaries up front, and a service counter just inside the door running the entire width of the double-wide room (okay, there were a couple of cut-outs to walk through). All very Ferris Bueller.
The history lesson is not just an exercise in nostalgia: the situation has changed incrementally over time (with the absorption of the junior high school onto the Mayfair campus in the early 80s being a notable exception). Administrators have come and gone, teachers have folded up their careers to be replaced by fresher faces who don't remember how it used to be, and the current situation begins to become normalized. What's at the end of that process? Nine homeless teachers and James Flemming in an embarrassment of an "office" that three people can't sit in. What we have now is not normal, and cannot be accepted as normal, or we've already lost.
I'm not trying to return to the past (even though the accommodations were much more, well, accommodating); I'm trying to get back to the audacious "normal" of a room for every teacher, a conference period in every pot, and office space that has some. Space, that is.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
The Squeaky Wheel
There has been a traveling teacher using my classroom on my conference period every year for the past four years. This means I cannot use my desk, pick up my phone, access my file cabinets, or use any other resource in the room to review, plan, prepare, write, or anything else one might do with an office hour. I usually sit in the "teachers lounge," with slapping copy machines, rumbling soda vending machines, and the conversations that have to be loud enough to rise above that din. Not much of a lounge; visions of sofas and coffee pots must be left at the theater.
I've asked to be rotated out of the traveling teacher parade (poor homeless wretches that they are) and have a real conference period this year. After all, isn't four years enough? But we're over-crowded, and there isn't much physical space to put teachers and students. This situation has not changed in the fifteen years I've worked here.
Yesterday my room was given to the Special Ed. department to conduct an in-service. I understood they were to be there from 10:30 until noon. Fine, I'll go have lunch. But when I walk in, the instructor told me she was setting up camp until 3:30. On the day before classes begin, I'm displaced from my room. With a new subject to prepare for.
Well, this is just too much. I've been nothing but sympathetic and accommodating, but now I'm exiled from my room on the day before school starts. I'm done being nice about this, and if it's the squeaky wheel what gets the greasing, that's just what I'm going to have to do.
I've tried to be nice, and sympathetic, and understanding, and patient. But this was the straw that has broken the camel's back. I've spent my patience. I've gone from team player to irritant. Something has to change, and I don't care if it's my conference period, or if someone else takes a turn at being inconvenienced.
I'm going to raise the awareness of the larger issue, our need for more physical classrooms to accommodate the greater number of physical teachers and physical students. This problem needs to be addressed, and plans need to be drawn up and implemented for a final resolution. I'm afraid there are going to be people who are not going to like me, because there may be some toes that need to be stepped on. Well, a lot of change will only happen when enough discomfort is felt with the way things are, so I'm going to start wearing my boots to work.
I've asked to be rotated out of the traveling teacher parade (poor homeless wretches that they are) and have a real conference period this year. After all, isn't four years enough? But we're over-crowded, and there isn't much physical space to put teachers and students. This situation has not changed in the fifteen years I've worked here.
Yesterday my room was given to the Special Ed. department to conduct an in-service. I understood they were to be there from 10:30 until noon. Fine, I'll go have lunch. But when I walk in, the instructor told me she was setting up camp until 3:30. On the day before classes begin, I'm displaced from my room. With a new subject to prepare for.
Well, this is just too much. I've been nothing but sympathetic and accommodating, but now I'm exiled from my room on the day before school starts. I'm done being nice about this, and if it's the squeaky wheel what gets the greasing, that's just what I'm going to have to do.
I've tried to be nice, and sympathetic, and understanding, and patient. But this was the straw that has broken the camel's back. I've spent my patience. I've gone from team player to irritant. Something has to change, and I don't care if it's my conference period, or if someone else takes a turn at being inconvenienced.
I'm going to raise the awareness of the larger issue, our need for more physical classrooms to accommodate the greater number of physical teachers and physical students. This problem needs to be addressed, and plans need to be drawn up and implemented for a final resolution. I'm afraid there are going to be people who are not going to like me, because there may be some toes that need to be stepped on. Well, a lot of change will only happen when enough discomfort is felt with the way things are, so I'm going to start wearing my boots to work.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Every Good Thing Must Come to an End
It's Labor Day, the last day of summer vacation. I sense an underlying urgency to either get out and accomplish a ton of stuff, to make my last day "count," or just lie around, in complete denial, to "make the last hours of summer last." That's just a type of denial, as any student with homework due on Monday knows.
So I'm going to cut a middle path: just get some low-level errands done, putter around the house, getting things done in a low-level way. Works for me.
Been on campus all last week and much of the week before, getting all my new Driver Ed. material sorted out and planning the first week. Lots of drill & kill. but it will take going through it once or twice to get a lay of the land and begin to see where I want to make changes.
Uh-oh: tea kettle is whistling…
So I'm going to cut a middle path: just get some low-level errands done, putter around the house, getting things done in a low-level way. Works for me.
Been on campus all last week and much of the week before, getting all my new Driver Ed. material sorted out and planning the first week. Lots of drill & kill. but it will take going through it once or twice to get a lay of the land and begin to see where I want to make changes.
Uh-oh: tea kettle is whistling…
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Familiarity Breeds Contempt
Is it just me?
I grew up in an era where service personnel wouldn't think of addressing a customer by his first name. The correct form of address to use with a customer is the title "Sir" or "Ma'am", unless I'm a regular and invite the clerk to address me by my first name. But that perogative belongs to me, and until the invitation is given, it's presumptuous to be so familiar.
So today when I walk into It's A Grind and order my regular ice-blended mocha, no whip, I hesitated when the kid behind the counter asks me for my name. I looked around the virtually vacant store, and gave it to him, laughing that he wouldn't be likely to forget what I look like in the next three minutes. I was, at that moment, one of three customers in the store.
He's a nice kid, and bright. He recognized my discomfort, and laughed along with me. I don't blame him: he is only asking my my name because someone trained him to ask, but it just doesn't play well with people in my generation. This kid is not on a first name basis with me: he doesn't need to know my name in order to throw some milk, ice and cocoa powder in a blender and then bring it to me.
Same interaction when I use my debit card at the supermarket. The clerk looks at the readout, then thanks me, using my first name. I bristle. Once the clerk addressed me as "Mr. Coulter," and I was so pleasantly surprised, I smiled, even though he had no need to know my name either. At least after gaining the knowledge, he addressed me properly. I use cash more and more, for this very reason. I'm not in anyone's database, and the clerk just thanks me and hands me my purchases. Anonymous, as the Good Lord intended.
The whole idea of gradations of social status is being blurred. And when I am addressed by my first name by service providers, I lose status in the social interaction. That's why the policeman who pulls you over invariably addresses you by your first name once you hand him your license: he calls you by your first name, but all you can do is look at his name tag, and reply with "Officer Snodgrass". That is how these power relationships are played, and in my opinion, they're valid distinctions. When I'm addressed by my first name by people I don't know, that distinction is blurred, and I lose power in that interaction with that company. Using my title forces the company to treat me with respect. The vanishing of that social barrier may lead to the company taking other license in our interaction that may work to my disadvantage.
Besides, I'm forty-seven years old. The twenty-something behind the counter shouldn't be taking such liberties.
Do you you really want to be treated casually by companies that are supposed to be there to meet your needs? Your auto insurance agent? Your car salesman? Your plumber? Your car detailer? Go back through that list again, and play it both ways in your mind.
You may chalk this little rant up to someone who grew up in a blue collar household who is desperately trying to put on the airs of the middle-class by demanding the social courtesies, and you have that right. Or that I enjoy the superiority in my job with my students, and so now I want to experience it out in public. But I see it as a general loss of civility in our culture, so if you are over thirty, you can have an opinion based on actual experience.
In resturants, it has been de riguer or twenty years for the server to introduce himself to the table party. I understand this cultural practice originated here in California in the Eighties, but I haven't traveled enough to confirm this. The idea is credible, though.
Let me tell you: I don't care what the hell your name is. Your name is not intregal to my experience. Just bring me my food and keep my coffee cup topped off, and we'll get along just fine, anonymously. I'm not here because I need to initiate new friendships. I'm here to be served. And I don't believe for a second that you care what my name is either, or remember it for 30 seconds after our interaction. I don't expect you to, and I find with whole thing just a bit creepy.
In the Information Age, the first casualty has been our privacy.
And dont' get me started on employees chewing gum and eating food in sight of the customers!
I grew up in an era where service personnel wouldn't think of addressing a customer by his first name. The correct form of address to use with a customer is the title "Sir" or "Ma'am", unless I'm a regular and invite the clerk to address me by my first name. But that perogative belongs to me, and until the invitation is given, it's presumptuous to be so familiar.
So today when I walk into It's A Grind and order my regular ice-blended mocha, no whip, I hesitated when the kid behind the counter asks me for my name. I looked around the virtually vacant store, and gave it to him, laughing that he wouldn't be likely to forget what I look like in the next three minutes. I was, at that moment, one of three customers in the store.
He's a nice kid, and bright. He recognized my discomfort, and laughed along with me. I don't blame him: he is only asking my my name because someone trained him to ask, but it just doesn't play well with people in my generation. This kid is not on a first name basis with me: he doesn't need to know my name in order to throw some milk, ice and cocoa powder in a blender and then bring it to me.
Same interaction when I use my debit card at the supermarket. The clerk looks at the readout, then thanks me, using my first name. I bristle. Once the clerk addressed me as "Mr. Coulter," and I was so pleasantly surprised, I smiled, even though he had no need to know my name either. At least after gaining the knowledge, he addressed me properly. I use cash more and more, for this very reason. I'm not in anyone's database, and the clerk just thanks me and hands me my purchases. Anonymous, as the Good Lord intended.
The whole idea of gradations of social status is being blurred. And when I am addressed by my first name by service providers, I lose status in the social interaction. That's why the policeman who pulls you over invariably addresses you by your first name once you hand him your license: he calls you by your first name, but all you can do is look at his name tag, and reply with "Officer Snodgrass". That is how these power relationships are played, and in my opinion, they're valid distinctions. When I'm addressed by my first name by people I don't know, that distinction is blurred, and I lose power in that interaction with that company. Using my title forces the company to treat me with respect. The vanishing of that social barrier may lead to the company taking other license in our interaction that may work to my disadvantage.
Besides, I'm forty-seven years old. The twenty-something behind the counter shouldn't be taking such liberties.
Do you you really want to be treated casually by companies that are supposed to be there to meet your needs? Your auto insurance agent? Your car salesman? Your plumber? Your car detailer? Go back through that list again, and play it both ways in your mind.
You may chalk this little rant up to someone who grew up in a blue collar household who is desperately trying to put on the airs of the middle-class by demanding the social courtesies, and you have that right. Or that I enjoy the superiority in my job with my students, and so now I want to experience it out in public. But I see it as a general loss of civility in our culture, so if you are over thirty, you can have an opinion based on actual experience.
In resturants, it has been de riguer or twenty years for the server to introduce himself to the table party. I understand this cultural practice originated here in California in the Eighties, but I haven't traveled enough to confirm this. The idea is credible, though.
Let me tell you: I don't care what the hell your name is. Your name is not intregal to my experience. Just bring me my food and keep my coffee cup topped off, and we'll get along just fine, anonymously. I'm not here because I need to initiate new friendships. I'm here to be served. And I don't believe for a second that you care what my name is either, or remember it for 30 seconds after our interaction. I don't expect you to, and I find with whole thing just a bit creepy.
In the Information Age, the first casualty has been our privacy.
And dont' get me started on employees chewing gum and eating food in sight of the customers!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
It's Started
This is the first week of the 4th quarter, and Brother, you can tell.
Students are slow to respond to instruction, easliy distracted, and talkative. I mean, even more than usual.
As for myself, for some reason I'm energized instead of enervated, so it doesn't bother me that much. School days remaining = 45. That may seems a low number at first read, but it translates into another eight weeks and change, or 2 months and 5 days. Counting all days until the last day of school: 65 days. Now it don't seem just around the corner anymore, do it, Willis?
That's what I'm saying. This is the best of times, this is the worst of times.
I think I'll go in early in the morning and do some planning.
Students are slow to respond to instruction, easliy distracted, and talkative. I mean, even more than usual.
As for myself, for some reason I'm energized instead of enervated, so it doesn't bother me that much. School days remaining = 45. That may seems a low number at first read, but it translates into another eight weeks and change, or 2 months and 5 days. Counting all days until the last day of school: 65 days. Now it don't seem just around the corner anymore, do it, Willis?
That's what I'm saying. This is the best of times, this is the worst of times.
I think I'll go in early in the morning and do some planning.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Quote of the Week
Overheard today somewhere on campus:
Teacher: What is the name of the Mexican president overthrown during the Mexican Revolution in the 1930s?
Student #1: Ceasar Chavez!
Student #2: That's Cuba.
Student #1: At least I got the state right.
Teacher: What is the name of the Mexican president overthrown during the Mexican Revolution in the 1930s?
Student #1: Ceasar Chavez!
Student #2: That's Cuba.
Student #1: At least I got the state right.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Exactly
from Gene Veith's blog
This is what my students come in with: subjective feelings, but no developed aesthetic. Part of that is because they're young, and part is that they haven't been trained to think objectively. That makes it difficult to teach literary concepts, because their first impulse is to filter everything through their subjective tastes. A discussion of humor is met with statements expressing whether or not they think something is funny; they respond to suspense with complaints of boredom conditioned from countless movie car crashes and 22-minute sitcom conflict resolutions; they miss the point time and time again, because they're blind to technique, and sensitive only to (emotionally filtered) effect. I have to deconstruct their non-aesthetic in order to establish a new foundation built in objective universals. I try to give them the "knowledge of the art form" so that "careful attention and reflection" can happen.
It's a mental slugfest. But I usually win, unless the student is so close-minded that new ideas cannot penetrate his protective cocoon of emotional warmth. I've had students literally put their fingers in their ears rather than hear an idea that challenged some cherished, comfortable view of life. Imagine.
Beauty exits not soley in the eye of the beholder: it's a Platonic form. The standard is outside ourselves, and getting teens to venture outside their selves is the challenge.
...[I]t is important to realize that there is a huge difference between saying "that is good" and "I like that." The former is an objective statement. The latter is a subjective response. Most confusions about aesthetic matters come from mixing up the two kinds of judgments. Indeed, ignoring the first one, considering the objective merits, and thinking that LIKING something is that same as recognizing its beauty. We can LIKE all kinds of things— things that make us feel gooey inside, nostalgic associations, easy jolts of hedonism, things we agree with, appeals to our sinful nature (which is why Hollywood goes the way it does)— whereas discerning beauty requires knowledge of the art form and careful attention and reflection. Growing in taste involves learning to subjectively "like" what is objectively 'good. (Emphasis added)
This is what my students come in with: subjective feelings, but no developed aesthetic. Part of that is because they're young, and part is that they haven't been trained to think objectively. That makes it difficult to teach literary concepts, because their first impulse is to filter everything through their subjective tastes. A discussion of humor is met with statements expressing whether or not they think something is funny; they respond to suspense with complaints of boredom conditioned from countless movie car crashes and 22-minute sitcom conflict resolutions; they miss the point time and time again, because they're blind to technique, and sensitive only to (emotionally filtered) effect. I have to deconstruct their non-aesthetic in order to establish a new foundation built in objective universals. I try to give them the "knowledge of the art form" so that "careful attention and reflection" can happen.
It's a mental slugfest. But I usually win, unless the student is so close-minded that new ideas cannot penetrate his protective cocoon of emotional warmth. I've had students literally put their fingers in their ears rather than hear an idea that challenged some cherished, comfortable view of life. Imagine.
Beauty exits not soley in the eye of the beholder: it's a Platonic form. The standard is outside ourselves, and getting teens to venture outside their selves is the challenge.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Jekyll and Hyde
The student fought me at every turn. Off-task. No homeowrk turned in. Little classwork done. Had to listen to me tell him every day to pull his pants up to cover his butt, to turn around and face the front of the room, to stop talking to other students: basically, I was on his back the entire term, trying to get something worthwhile out of him.
And he didn't like it. "Why are you always picking on me?" he asked. He was even belligerent at times; earned a couple of detentions. I may have even taken him outside for a "counseling with student" in the hallway, when the whole class knows he's being chewed out by the teacher for something.
He barely passed, and only because I cared more than he. That 62% was hard-fought.
This year, he calls my name across the quad whenever he sees me, and waves & smiles. He stops off in my room to tell me news about his life: driver's license, car, whatever.
Those are the rules of the game.
And he didn't like it. "Why are you always picking on me?" he asked. He was even belligerent at times; earned a couple of detentions. I may have even taken him outside for a "counseling with student" in the hallway, when the whole class knows he's being chewed out by the teacher for something.
He barely passed, and only because I cared more than he. That 62% was hard-fought.
This year, he calls my name across the quad whenever he sees me, and waves & smiles. He stops off in my room to tell me news about his life: driver's license, car, whatever.
Those are the rules of the game.
Friday, February 01, 2008
How Not to Spend $140
My frigid morning commute is not due to faulty vacuum switches, but to a clogged heater core. I had the whole cooling system flushed out this last weekend, and now that some of the grit and hard pieces are gone, the core is clogged slightly less: I can almost feel heat coming from the vents when the car is fully warmed-up, which happens about halfway to school. Not enough to make the slightest difference in my comfort, though the windshield does defrost slightly more quickly.
It's time to think about dumping this car.
It's time to think about dumping this car.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
All We Need is Janet Leigh
It's like a Hitchcock movie. Try to walk across campus in the middle of the school day, and they're there: the birds.
Seagulls. Even though we're ten miles from the ocean, every day hundreds of seagulls descend on the campus at a pre-determined time, ready to scavenge through hundreds upon hundreds of food wrappers, looking for the half-eaten pizza crusts, untouched fruit, and scattered french fries that are to be found in abundance; the flotsam and jetsam left in the wake of uncaring, under-socialized, irresponsible, self-centered students. I've never seen a seagull dig into one of the many, many trash cans placed about every twenty paces around the campus; they don't need to. They can remain fat and happy on what has been thrown away (dropped is a better word) in enough abundance that even flying ten miles one way to get here every day is well worth the smorgasbord that awaits them. There is enough half-eaten, untouched and undiscarded food lying around campus to force our custodial staff to have to come and clean up behind them twice a day to prevent the school from looking like Woodstock the morning after. If the custiodians were to skip just one day, there would certainly be a outcry from the students, who expect to walk through a pristine campus, but who feel no obligation to lift a finger to help create one.
Ironically, the very same students who throw their french fries at each other will shriek and run under the flapping cloud of seagulls over their heads, hoping not to be shat upon with yesterday's french fries. Poetic justice.
The recent edition of the school newspaper had an article noting the rearrangment of the custodial schedule in order to provide more cleaning of the restrooms, an action that was the result of student complaints about their condition. Most students consider this a grass-roots political victory: the populace applying pressure to their leaders to improve living conditions. If students would only throw away their own garbage out on the quad, the bathrooms may have had adequate attention all along, and the host of seagulls that the students have trained to fly in and crap on their heads every day wouldn't exist.
So what lesson have we learned? Be self-centered and blind, and refuse to make a connection between your actions and the results you have created. Be irresponsible, complain, and let the government wipe you.
And they'll be voting in a couple of years.
Seagulls. Even though we're ten miles from the ocean, every day hundreds of seagulls descend on the campus at a pre-determined time, ready to scavenge through hundreds upon hundreds of food wrappers, looking for the half-eaten pizza crusts, untouched fruit, and scattered french fries that are to be found in abundance; the flotsam and jetsam left in the wake of uncaring, under-socialized, irresponsible, self-centered students. I've never seen a seagull dig into one of the many, many trash cans placed about every twenty paces around the campus; they don't need to. They can remain fat and happy on what has been thrown away (dropped is a better word) in enough abundance that even flying ten miles one way to get here every day is well worth the smorgasbord that awaits them. There is enough half-eaten, untouched and undiscarded food lying around campus to force our custodial staff to have to come and clean up behind them twice a day to prevent the school from looking like Woodstock the morning after. If the custiodians were to skip just one day, there would certainly be a outcry from the students, who expect to walk through a pristine campus, but who feel no obligation to lift a finger to help create one.
Ironically, the very same students who throw their french fries at each other will shriek and run under the flapping cloud of seagulls over their heads, hoping not to be shat upon with yesterday's french fries. Poetic justice.
The recent edition of the school newspaper had an article noting the rearrangment of the custodial schedule in order to provide more cleaning of the restrooms, an action that was the result of student complaints about their condition. Most students consider this a grass-roots political victory: the populace applying pressure to their leaders to improve living conditions. If students would only throw away their own garbage out on the quad, the bathrooms may have had adequate attention all along, and the host of seagulls that the students have trained to fly in and crap on their heads every day wouldn't exist.
So what lesson have we learned? Be self-centered and blind, and refuse to make a connection between your actions and the results you have created. Be irresponsible, complain, and let the government wipe you.
And they'll be voting in a couple of years.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
A Drop of Water in the Desert
It's a typical afternoon. I'm teaching John Steinbeck to my juniors, helping them to see the Christian symbolism that is being used early on in Of Mice and Men to set up Lennie as a Christ-figure, an innocent that goes off to be slain. This class is just small enough that we ca all sitting in a big circle, seminar-style.
What I'm doing this day is nothing unusual for my class: Steinbeck employs the same Christian archetypes in most of his writing, and why shouldn't he? He's writing in Western Civilization to readers in Western Civilization. Christianity is almost a sine qua non. That's what makes his writing so powerful: he taps into the symbols in our cultural subconscious, and uses them masterfully.
Well, after I show them Lennie's baptism and immediate approval by the God-figure, Slim, I asked them why they think Steinbeck did that, and what they think will happen next. Some students thought that Lennie would then go on to do great things, and someone brought up the main character in The Green Mile, who is a Lennie type if there ever were one, complete with dead mouse. Others saw a more ominous future for Lennie: no doubt they were more familiar with the Gospel story. I moderated, but didn't let the cat out of the bag.
After a few minutes of this, I told them they'd just had a college-level lesson, and admitted that I never had a teacher in high school who showed any of this stuff to me; I had to wait until I was at the university before we entered this deeply into the text. And then we went on with the rest of the chapter; hopefully, with eyes opened up a bit wider.
Here's the point of my post. After class a student stayed behind, came up to me, thanked me for showing him how to look beyoned the surface, and shook my hand as a sign of gratitude.
Teachers rarely get this kind of feedback from students, so when it happens, it's notable. Student X, you appreciate me? Not as much as I appreciate you. Thank you.
What I'm doing this day is nothing unusual for my class: Steinbeck employs the same Christian archetypes in most of his writing, and why shouldn't he? He's writing in Western Civilization to readers in Western Civilization. Christianity is almost a sine qua non. That's what makes his writing so powerful: he taps into the symbols in our cultural subconscious, and uses them masterfully.
Well, after I show them Lennie's baptism and immediate approval by the God-figure, Slim, I asked them why they think Steinbeck did that, and what they think will happen next. Some students thought that Lennie would then go on to do great things, and someone brought up the main character in The Green Mile, who is a Lennie type if there ever were one, complete with dead mouse. Others saw a more ominous future for Lennie: no doubt they were more familiar with the Gospel story. I moderated, but didn't let the cat out of the bag.
After a few minutes of this, I told them they'd just had a college-level lesson, and admitted that I never had a teacher in high school who showed any of this stuff to me; I had to wait until I was at the university before we entered this deeply into the text. And then we went on with the rest of the chapter; hopefully, with eyes opened up a bit wider.
Here's the point of my post. After class a student stayed behind, came up to me, thanked me for showing him how to look beyoned the surface, and shook my hand as a sign of gratitude.
Teachers rarely get this kind of feedback from students, so when it happens, it's notable. Student X, you appreciate me? Not as much as I appreciate you. Thank you.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
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