Meetings are a real pain in the....

 
Meetings use to be a part of my life. There seemed to be a meeting everyday about some new problem, task or initiative. In education this is generally not the case. We have a meeting every week, but it is an hour or so compared to about an hour a day. There is always an exception to a rule though, and the first week is our exception. To put it plainly meetings are a real pain in the butt.

 This week we spent going to meetings. We had to sit and listen to stuff for roughly 6 or 7 hours during the day. Brutal, is a good way to describe it. Now this is not the fault of the administration. The state shoulders most of this blame. By the time I am finished with these meetings I never want to sit down again. In fact, sitting here writing this, I am ready to stand up.

  The really hard part is trying to pay attention. Most of the presentations that you attend are about as dry as you can get, and are slowed down as much as possible. These include but are not limited to spotting abuse, what initiatives the administration or the state has put into place. We sit there as things are laid out as simple as possible for us. It becomes harder and harder to listen as the day goes on. It reminds me of the old apple commercial that was done in the 80’s with everyone sitting there watching the screen. You pray for the person to come through and destroy the screen to liberate you from the training.

  I am done now with the training, and to be honest had to give a few of those boring lectures myself this week. It is really hard to balance the need to inform with the need to entertain. I am not completely sure why we have to go through these trainings each week. One of my theories is that the reason that they send us through these trials is to separate the week from the strong. The other is one that says that they cannot trust us to stay at work all week without filling our time up. What do you think?

Next week, school begins again. I will return next week for my first blog of the new school year. The anxiety is beginning to mount in me as the day draws nearer.

Until next week,

“When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.”

 Marcel Achard quotes (French Playwright, 1899-1974)

Welcome back

    Emotions tend to run high for teachers before they start back to work. I have a friend that confessed to having nightmares of the first day of school. I myself have had a few dreams about going back. The last of which had me walking around to classes just like the kids and panicking about how I was not ready for the year.  This takes me back to the dreams that we all have before school starts when we are kids. The dreams where you had left your pants at home, or showed up to school without any supplies. The feeling of panic as you move into the next year is the same that the teacher's feel when they take to the classroom for the first time. This is a really uncertain time for us, and as the first actual day of school approaches we begin our nerotic rituals. My mom use to work in a school and a friend of her's use to say that every year she would stay awake before the start of school and have a little panic attack about the first day of school.
    This is my last post before I go back to work. School may not start until the 22nd of this month for us, but I have to report back for a week of meetings and training. (More on the joy of that next week) The uncertainty for both teachers and students are the same. We both worry about the class and if the students will be a good group, or a group from hell. We also worry about what the year has in store for us. The sense of panic eventually subsides when the semester is over, only to be replaced with the next semester.
  So as the summer winds down, and we work towards a new school year here is to optimism. Here is to a new year that is full of new experiences which will be hopefully more good than bad.  This is a unique feeling, one that captures exactly what we do. I have never had this range of emotions about any other job, and do not think that I will.

"If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers." -Edgar W. How

Next week: The perfect week a school with no children.

Back from the future....

The summer is a time for adventure. Travel is something that I love to do, and something I make time for at the end of every school year. This summer I visited Europe, and traveled to several places in the US, but I got a glimpse of the future. I got to see what things will be like in 15 years. I had just returned from my trip to New Orleans, still realing from all the good food and drink that slowed me down to a crawl. I had intended for the next day to be detox. I had adopted a vegitarian life style for a couple of days to try and account for the wonderful food that New Orleans has. I woke up in the future. I woke up and I hurt all over wonderin.g if it was still just aftereffects of gourging myself on New Orlean's cuisine. I looked around to a different room, and found out that that nothing was how I left it. Panic begin to rise as a voice called out that breakfast was almost ready. The voice that rung out was my wife, and the panic began to settle a bit. Until, I realized that my wife never cooks breakfast.
          At that time the TV switched on, and the much older face of Dwayne "the rock" Johnson peered out into my beadroom. He began to talk and on the bottom of the screen it said president Johnson. I laughed out loud. He stated that the country's debt was out of control and that all 50 Trillion of it would need to be dealt with soon. The Rock then told me about how the debt was going to be fixed by the benefactor of the world and the owner of the moon China. The news spoke of how our education system was getting help from Samalia and India due to our low literacy rate, and the canadian border had been sealed to prevent people from moving into Canada for undocumented work.
   I turned off the news in disbelief, and picked up a thin flexible peice of glass that was by the bed. Amazon Kindle Xtreme raced across it's transparent screen. The date, July 20th 2026, flashed on the screen and then settled itself in the upper corner. As a microphone appeared on the middle of the screen and asked for what kind of news or sports I was interested in. My voice shaky I stated I wanted education news. The education section of the news paper showed that teacher pay had been lowered again due to the fact that it was not acceptable for teachers to make the same as housekeepers and lawn service crews. An article caught my attention that stated that the state had again increased the class size to 40.
   The picture looked fairly bleak. Trash was on the streets. Caesar a monkey had successfully become the first non-human governor of California (they are so progressive). What I found most horrifing was the fact that the national pass time has become NASCAR. Snookie was a senator from California who was fighting for later bar hours for the entire country. The world was indeed a bleak place. After reading that bit of information my heart started to ache and I woke up safe and sound here at my house in good old 2011.
  Now of course all of this is a dream, or a really bad attempt at humor, but there is a point. This summer has seen the debt ceiling being raised, and has also seen the reduction of even more teachers from the classroom. China has really started to play it's hand as a dominant figure, as jobs are outsourced over seas. My point is that education is a founding principal of our nation. Our budget may be set, but the fight for the future continues. Education is a tool to be used to further a society. Without it the society seems to falter and fold. The Ancient empires of the past have all had one thing in common. They were overrun by people that were better adapted to survive and thrive in that world. They allowed complacency to rule them, and in the process were taken over. Our fight is different from theirs. We do not have to worry about armed invaders coming in and taking our homes. Instead we have to worry about us being competitive in the job market. Our economy continuing to grow as it has since the end of World War II. We stand at a crossroads for our country. We have multiple problems to face, but how we tackle them will be our legacy.

Until Next Week (I will be back for one more pre-school blog and then we are back to our regularly scheduled program),

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats

Drought Conditions

  The sun is shinning and it is hot out there. Texas has been suffering from a drought for months now. Signs all across the state say that there is an "Extreme Wildfire Danger." While this physical predicament is tough on our lawns and causes fire crews to be on high alert, I think that it is a good metaphor for the education drought that has consumed Texas over the course of the year. Fires are spreading rapidly only to be put out one at a time. Congress thinks that these smaller fires can be contained by trying to soften the education budget deficit, but the solution to the problem is rain. Rain and a lot of it solves both problems. I am not a parent, but I do teach kids and have a vested interest in helping to create a better life for kids that come through my classroom. There are two types of kids that come through the door. One is motivated, and the other is not. The motivated ones want to learn, the non motivated ones do not. In my experience the motivated ones have been pushed by their parents and teachers to be better, while the unmotivated ones were left behind and forgotten. This may be just science, it might be just math related, or it might be school in general. This last week the senate passed the bill to allow an increase in class sizes. I am not going to quote research, but instead quote my experience as a teacher. My first year I taught 9th grade. I had two very similar level classes, and one was a larger 22, while the other topped out at 14. When I see kids from the 22 there are fewer of them that have pushed themselves to be better, while the class of 14 has really pushed themselves to take harder classes and do better in school. Smaller class sizes matter. Teachers can spend more one on one time with students and gain a better relationship with their classes. The more children that we have in classes the more kids get left behind. We are creating an education deficit. An entire generation of kids that are not prepared for the future. By missing the mark on education and lowering our standards even further we have created an environment that has increased the competitiveness of China and India and pushed us even farther behind. This drought started with money, but it will end in knowledge if we do not take the proper steps. Some of this comes from the News media. They are more worried about rating then informing the population of the state about the real troubles that are out there. The news media loves to do the scary tease. They will tell you to check back at 10 for a story that could effect your child or even kill you. 10 kids die from using a diaper pad wrong and the world is in an uproar. 10 kids get left behind in schools and the media just passes on by. Where is the coverage of this story? This affects children from all over the state, and creates an even tougher obstacle to reach success. It jeopardizes the dream that we all share. People stop using cribs that are bad for their babies, but fail to speak out for their child's education? This to me seems to be something that cannot possibly be true. The solution is written in the Texas Constitution. The Constitution has a complete section on education that opens as such "A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools." My question to the people with the power is are you fulfilling this simple mandate? The drought is here. This drought is seen first hand in the drop in funding that all schools are receiving, and the lines of teachers looking for employment. Legislature make it rain. Give the state the proper education that it needs so this drought of money does not become a drought of knowledge.

  Well everyone that is it for this month. I apologize as I said I would try to do one once a week, but with school functions and tutoring I have not been able to keep it up. I will see everyone in July with hopefully a good report on the state of education.

Until then,
Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use?  It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that.  All we need to do is start the war on education.  If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics.  ~Leighann Lord

It's the end of the world.....

So we have reached the end of another school year. The sound of text book pages turning has been traded in for the sounds of the pool, and classrooms all across the state are going dark. I have come up with several things that encompass what has happened in education. These all have good and bad points to them, so in honor of the start of another summer here are my wins and losses for the 2010 to 2011 school year. Take a look and be sure to comment below if you think I missed one.

Budgets:
THE WIN: Teachers all across the state united for the benefit of education. Save Texas Schools and other groups rallied together to try and bring about Positive change.
THE LOSS: The reason they were coming together was the state wanted to cut our budget by almost 8 billion dollars. The positive part is that we only got the education budget cut by 4 billion.

District rules to help passing rates
THE WIN: Districts all across the states improved passing rates and helped more kids to graduate
THE LOSS: Districts like mine passed rules that helped reduce college readiness by allowing make-up tests and credit recovery for seniors. This helped to loosen already lacks guidelines on credit and push kids through  instead of helping to prepare kids for the real world.

The education profession began to look like the private sector.
THE WIN: Teachers lost that smugness that said "I can work in a profession that is set for life." They for once had to sweat it like all the big wigs of banks that needed federal funding did. Districts all over the state lightened the bad teacher load they had on them.
THE LOSS: Oh yeah, lost good teachers too. A profession that was gaining teachers that had engineering degrees and wanted to make a difference were lost in the shuffle.

Rick Perry gets rid of excess administrators and staff that school is heavy on.
THE WIN: Say goodbye to the three administrators that you have in your classroom every day because the ratio of administrators is so high we are bursting at the seams. Luckily we have superman Perry to come and clean it up, and then blame it on the local districts for causing the problems
The Loss: Oh wait, you do not have 3 to 4 administrators that look over your shoulder every second, well then here is your pink slip, sorry Perry's bad.

Next year, EOC's
THE WIN: We get a test that is specific for our course. This test will help identify the good and the bad teachers and help to increase the overall level of our kids.
THE LOSS: We get a new test to administer that will cost the district money. Did I mention that the districts are a little short on cash?

Education became leaner overall this year
THE WIN: Education frivolous spending will be reduced in the next year, and much of it was reduced over the course of the year.
THE LOSS: Fine arts got the shaft. District funds all over were cut toward the end of the year and we started to feel the pinch early on.
(For those of you that don't know 'lean' is a buzz term in industry. Corporations love it. This refers to a company that keeps its personnel numbers low to allow for better utilization of capitol. Translation: Less people, more work for everyone, no more pay)

Teachers were there for kids and reached them when others could not
THE WIN: We mattered. The future of some of these kids has been laid out for them, while others are just left to float along. Teachers worked with kids to push them to be their best. We got out there and really turned some kids around, and made a better year for them.
THE LOSS: None!

Overall this was an eye opening year for me. I learned a lot about the differences between seniors and freshman. It was a good year. The thing that I really learned was how much work we have to do as educators to get future generations ready for the real world. Senators and Congressmen are out of touch. They have spent their lives in private institutions or in the wealthy public schools. We as a society have to emphasize education if we want to move ahead. The other option is for our country to move closer to obscurity.

  So thus ends my year. It has been a good one, but now as a teacher I look towards the next one. Ideas pop into my head, and I will begin planing in July for the next school year. I take the lessons that I learned at the end of this year and apply them with a little time to decompress to next year's plan. As for the blog, I mentioned last week that it will become a weekly thing in the summer. I will try to keep everyone up to date on what the legislature is doing, as well as what else is out there looming on the horizon. Have a great week and enjoy the summer!

Until Next Week!

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) English statesman and author.

The Ladder Climber

When you start out in the business world if you are lucky you are taken aside by a mentor and told who you should watch out for. Most people, including yours truly, do not get this benefit and have been thrown to the wolves a couple of times in their career by people looking out only for themselves. I had several run ins with people that would be nice to you one minute and throw you under the bus the next. I even worked for a vice president of a company that got his position because of just that. These people are ladder climbers. They do whatever they can to reach the next level without regard for the people that they step on. Hollywood has done a great job showing them off as villains, and you can bet that there were some of these on the Titanic pushing people aside as they boarded the life boats. I thought that education would be different. Because a teacher is dedicated to the student, and to education, I felt that this profession would be devoid of those that are blinded by their own ambition. This sadly was not the case.

 I decided to write this due to a good friend of mine that learned this the hard way. She is in her second year of teaching, much like me, but without the benefit of working in the corporate sector. She has been sheltered for a while from the unpleasantness of people like that. The administration has been asking questions this whole about why teachers in my section were negative. They were citing things that had been said to a group of people, supposedly in confidence. It seemed to the group like there was a mole turning innocent venting into a anti-administration stance. This was brought several times and at several people's evaluations as well. The result of this cast suspicions on everyone and really caused people to feel as if they had been sold out.  The result of this has been an even lower morale at school, and the feeling that the group of people that sit in the lounge are being sold out for gain. What really compounds the issue, and where my friend comes into the story is recently. She has been a voice of positivity for the group, and has gone out of her way to make things better. Another person in the group has taken several of us aside, and told us not to associate with others as they are "sketchy individuals." This person then goes on to tell my friend that she has been the reason for the negativity and for the clique nature of the group. She has been in several meetings and told others personal things about close friends of hers. This person has helped to fracture a group and used it to her own gain. The thing that kills me is that she gets mad, or get upset when she is not included in activities that the group does. She is by definition a ladder climber. She has thrown people under the bus, and has even gone so far as to tell others in the building little lies about activities to try and gain for herself a better position as a teacher. It is stuff like this that infuriates me. I really try to make sure that I further myself in my career, but not at the expense of others. This is a lesson that I feel teachers should exemplify, and in some ways we have fallen short of. As we close this year out, I see that the corporate world and that of the teaching profession are closer than I thought.

  Sorry to be on the soap box today, but it is important that we really look at how the corporate world and the teaching profession is different. This one example of where they are the same, but tomorrow we will take a look back at the year, and then Thursday for my final article of the school year we will look at some news that effects education and how people will be educated in the year to come. As a side not after Thursday the Blog is going to change formats just a little. I am going to write once a week instead of every day. These first few weeks of summer will be really busy for me.  Look for the blog to be updated every Monday with my take on enws and I will post links throughout the week on interesting stuff happening in education.

Until Tomorrow,
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?  ~Erich Fromm

Prelude to the end.....

  The end for me looms in the distance, calling my name. On Monday, I spoke of exemptions, but today we started finals. Soon we will mark the end of another year, which I will do a little look back next week. Today, I spent telling kids whether they were on track to pass or not and gave two finals. We are gearing up for graduation, and for next year. They have already sent out the schedule for the next year's back to school activities. The fatigue radiates from everyone down the halls. Kids are tired, teachers are tired, and anticipation is so thick you can cut it with a knife. For me it has been hit or miss this week, as I suffered from a massive migraine on Tuesday, and a headache yesterday. This stress catches up to you in the most peculiar ways. One of the main goals of starting this blog was to show what it was like to be a teacher. This last bit of school is probably the hardest part. I first thought that it would be easy, that giving finals was the easiest part of the year. The reality is really much different. You are so tired by this point, and they give you too much time with classes, that by the end even the most seasoned and well respected teacher is showing movies. It is tough to deal with the smallest annoyances due to the fatigue, and you feel and the burden of grades that rests on your shoulders. This experience is unlike any time that I can recall in the corporate world. Mostly, the corporate environment is a repetitive place. Occasionally there is a deadline that you have to put some long hours into, but overall the day to day stuff is the same. That makes most jobs fairly manageable. It separates the teaching environment from the rest because at this end while there is an end in site, this deadline is the ultimate one. It has been a long ride, and while it is almost over for us the beginning of the next cycle is really not that far away.

Tomorrow I am going to look at a personality type that exists in all jobs, and why the teaching profession caters to the ladder climber.

Until Tomorrow,

Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.

John Mason Brown (1900–1969) American drama critic and author.

To Exempt or not to Exempt

  So today my goal is to pull back the veil a little, discuss something that most high school teacher grapple with at some point. The exams that go on at the end of the semester and whether we should push for more kids to exempt or less to. Each school takes these exams a little different. Some view them as a way to get information on what is actually learned during the course of a year, while others view them as a way to close out a semester. In my district they are on the fence. We give them as a way to get data, but allow multiple reasons to get out of them including perfect attendance and passing the TAKS test. Teachers also really have conflicting views. I have a friend that exempts as many people as he can, while another friend exempts almost no one. It is one of those things that is truly a teacher preference. I am then left with a conundrum. What is the right way to go? The data that we could gain from a true end of the year assessment is invaluable. We can really gauge what our kids have learned. The data we do get is skewed. It shows only what those kids that have either missed too many days or have a low grade in the class. These kids are important to gauge their learning and really reflect on the way we are presenting difficult topics, but it does not capture the full amount of information that a true final would give. This is tough for teachers that are data driven. Some would argue that they need to give a comprehensive test anyway. I would love to do this, but do not know if I have the time. It is actually easier to adopt the priorities of your district and school. I will have to take data on the lower level kids from now and learn from it. The problem that these exemptions give is that when a kid enters college there is never an exemption granted. No matter what, at the end of the semester you have to show that you know the material. I think the better thing for districts to ask themselves is whether we are doing college bound kids any good by giving them an out from a test? We should also look at why we give these tests in the first place. Is the real point to ready them for college, or is it to gauge their understanding? How do exemptions fit into that new found purpose?

Until Tomorrow,
"Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding."
-- Ambrose Bierce 

Field Day

  Incentives are big in education. We are always looking for that magic incentive to get kids to pass our class, a state test, or care about their education. The incentives for TAKS are quite large. Today was one of those days that we give them to reward them for getting good marks on TAKS. Granted, we do not have the scores back yet, but those are just pesky details. I spent this day giving kids hot dogs and sodas. I basically got to be a carnival worker for the day. This day was spent by our administration stopping fights and catching kids that were smoking pot. I am all for incentives, but my 6th period class today complained about the day not being fun. Other teachers said there kids complained, and every one of my students I asked during the day said they would rather be in class. I think that it is a bad idea to tell them academics are important, and then give them a day where we can slack off on academics. Kids are very concrete, and sending messages that conflict with earlier statements are not good in general life much less with students. The students this year complained about the lack of fun they had, so why should we spend the money? I think that the day would have been better served as a bonus early release day for TAKS scores without the cost to the school. What other incentives are there out there they would be better serving of the student population?

On a side note, I would like to say that I am going to return with a new post on Monday. My mom is graduating from UT, and I need to be there to be supportive of her effort over the past few years. She has worked her butt off, and the family could not be prouder of her. So kudos to all of the graduates that are ending one phase of their life this weekend, and may your next chapter be as fulfilling as the this one. Enjoy your weekend.

Until Monday,
' I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could tolerated anything so primitive.' John W Gardner

An Ode to the fallen....

I write this knowing that the person that I write it to will probably not see it. Today one of our own got the call that she is "excess staff" at our school. This does not mean that she is fired just yet, but it does mean that she does not have a teaching position next year at our school. She could land at another school or be forced to be a long term substitute. This could very well spell the end of her career. The worst part about it was that she was a good teacher. Her ideas were good, she refused to lower the bar despite pressure to do so, and she cared. What we are left with is a large hole in the school. Anytime you loose a good teacher on the campus, you loose a good part of your school. It is unlikely that the department will be the same again. A voice is lost that spoke of reason, and that I am sad for. What angers me is the fact that the true last hire at our school was a coach. This coach has gotten in trouble multiple times for not showing up on time and received a luke warm review. Why was she not on the list? The simple answer is because she was a coach. That extra little bit offered more than a good teacher that focused on her discipline and had a good review. This is the problem that I feared as soon as layoffs and excess teacher lines started to be formed. In General, teachers that are on the table are not the ones that deserve to be there. Instead they are the teachers that have put their life into it. I would say that when we take a teacher like this off of our campus that we lessen the overall standard of learning. I think that we are kidding ourselves when we say that academics are important. I would also say that we are kidding ourselves when we are told that coaches receive no special treatment. See without state oversight these are the casualties of the war on education. Teachers that are good at what they do are falling fast, while those that are found wanting get to stay around. Which one do you want for your kids? For me, I would want the best teacher. I do not care if they coach or not. I want the best, as would most parents. The answer that we are getting out of the state is to get rid of teachers, districts are indiscriminately "firing" teachers regardless of ability. Where can we go if we remove the talent? What can we do if the good teachers are picked off, and those that deserve to be gone are welcomed with open arms?

Until Tomorrow,
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.  ~Ezra Pound

The Future!

   With all of the talk about Education and funding, I felt it would be good to talk about a plan that could help to solve some of the budgetary issues. In Baytown,Texas the school district set up a brand new school that might be the future of college preparation for the standard student. This school is called the Early College high school. The goal of this high school is to help kids that would probably not graduate from a college, graduate with a 2 year associates degree. The student spends the first two years in the high school setting. After this first two years is up the students take classes at the local college. This second two years the kids take college classes right next to college kids. This gives them a level up and allows them to transfer after there two years are up to somewhere else to finish their bachelor's degree. The staffing of this high school is actually very low. The only high school teachers that work there are 9 teachers that teach the lower levels (sophomore and freshman classes.) This reduces the number of teachers that the high school has to hire. Even if you have a school that offers this program to 400 or 600 people you still have to have less staff cover the kids. This represents a cost to the community college, but the beauty of this is that the community college has paying students to offset some of the costs of the high school students. For college prep this is actually what I think the future looks like.
  In a regular high school you have to pay teachers for AP classes and Dual credit. These classes require a lot of man power and really a lot of time too plan out not to mention training costs. I am an AP teacher, and know that this is putting me out of a job eventually, but we have to look at what is better for the kids. Integration of our high school program with that of a community college makes sense to prepare kids for a university setting. While this program would be great for most kids, to me this really only solves half the problem. What do we do for the lower performing kids that are not going to make it in a rigorous program like this? The answer comes in vocational programs.
  Vocational programs are really things that prepare kids for a job outside in the real world. In the medical field pharmacy technicians and nurses aides are just a few that can be obtained through programs in high school. There are also other programs like welding, auto repair, and ATV repair. These are offered in the high school now, the problem is that the other classes are not aligned for vocational classes. Kids that take these actually still have to take classes like physics and pre-cal.
  The End of Course exams that are replacing the TAKS test are not easier, in fact they are harder. I spoke of a vocational program in one of my earlier posts about buy-in and the importance of it. These EOC's for Chemistry and Physics require a higher level of math, and an increase in the level of science knowledge that the kid has when they come in. The problem with this is the rift that has occurred between the Pre-AP and the regular classes. It has been up to this pint that the regular classes were not capable of doing more advanced math. This creates a huge problem for kids on the vocational path. The problem with the state is that they refuse to look at things like this. We could provide a much better plan for kids if we were allowed to think outside the box. The state sees the fact that kids need to be more ready for college, so they decide to make a harder test that everyone has to take and then have the schools fill in the details. What the state needs to do is to create a panel of teachers that look into ideas and come up with a progressive plan, or release districts from some of their obligations and let them fix their own problems. We have two many hands in the pot. I look at the future of education, and the only thing that can save us is to think outside the box.
  My plan is one of many that is floating out there. I just think for a plan to be successful it needs to incorporate programs that are in place now. If money or time was no object then I would remake the system. As the Nation at Risk report stated we have to utilize some of what we have, but we can use those programs in different ways and be innovative. Teachers are professionals, and if you give them the chance they can come up with something that solves the problem.

Until Tomorrow,

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American author, editor and printer.

The Return!

I am back now after blogger.com experienced some down time last Thursday and Friday. This past week has been a news filled but undecicive week for education.. So let's get started with some of the news and the legislature bills that are on the table for this week.

In encouraging news, it looks like over the state bond referendums were passed showing that voters do care about education overall. A texasisd.com article written by Joe Smith states that the passage rates for referendums are at 70% passed over the state compared to 60% last year. This is encouraging news for teachers in that it shows that people are willing to spend higher taxes on their children's education.

The bad news lies in the fact that the legislature has still not had a successful budget. This is forcing some districts hands. The district that I work in has said there is currently not a plan to lay people off, but has started to assess staff needs, and is using terms like "staff excess" now in meetings. Without a budget districts have a hard time focusing on what the future will bring. It is really important that they know where at least 25% of their money comes from and for some districts up to half of their money comes from state funds. Relief is coming in part from federal money that is helping districts ease the pain, as federal money is now trickling into schools and districts around the state.

   A bit of good news is that House bill 400 is dead, but so is the good part of 400. House bill 400 allowed districts to reduce money to teachers down to $27,795, allowed for furlough days, and most notably increased class sizes. There were actually some good parts to house bill 400 that did not get the attention that they really should have. One of the most important things was to help get kids ready for college it would require districts to have an even closer relationship with their community colleges and universities. They would have to create a plan to get kids into community colleges and stay there. House bill 400 may have not been popular, but it did introduce something that districts need, a choice.

  Fox News and others are making a large deal out of the teacher's unions. Here in Texas the Unions do no have near as much power, but what limits the districts options is contractual obligations including tenure. I have said many times that teachers that are let go should be let go for not making the grade. I think most would agree that this is the time to thin out the heard and get rid of those teachers that are ineffective, or have grown complaisant in their duties. If a district is forced to lay off employees they should be able to choose to keep the effective teachers. This differs from corporations who sometimes get rid of the outliers first before they have to cut jobs of people who are effective in their roles.

  If you were to walk onto a campus right now you would feel the stress in the air. There is twice as much stress in places where people know they do not have jobs the next year. We are quickly approaching finals, and then the summer. As our class ends there are a lot of people not wanting the halls to go dark. For them that darkness ushers in the end of a career. For them the uncertainty of the legislature has force districts to lay people off. What can we do to help the situation? Well voters are showing up to help raise taxes to help support education, something that most of us thought would not happen. We can also support our teachers and our local schools by donating items like supplies to help soften some of that finacial burden. Most of all, we can take a stand and ask our legislatures to find themselves some common ground. Let's get the good and the bad news to districts so that we can plan for the future.

Until Tomorrow,
"Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions."
-- William Allin

Senior Skip Day

  It is late tonight for me. I look over at the clock and it ticks away. The hours today are flying by so quickly. I spent the last two days talking about prom. Alcohol and kids attitudes outside in the real world made great topics to cover and to explore. On Monday was the day that most senior level teachers hate, the infamous senior skip day. This is the day that the seniors think they can skip with little to no consequence to them. This does not appear on any calendar that I know of, it is not on the calendar for my district, and is one of those things that the Monday after prom results in classes that are half empty or worse. Monday was a ghost town. It sort of reminded me what the news said that school would look like if one of those epidemics took hold. Class after class was devoid of people, and lesson plans for the week had to be scrapped or drastically modified. It is one of these days that a campus that is academically focused versus one that is not shines through.
  In my experience senior skip day is not something that people really participated in. School districts loath it, and most including the one that I graduated from, made it one of those days that you did not want to miss. They would schedule some important test or review on the day we were all suppose to skip. This day was not really any more than something that kids dreamed of doing when I was in school. Today, it has become an artificial holiday. Kids planned to return from prom festivities on Monday because they were ok with missing only one day. Perhaps I am wrong, maybe it is a big deal even in academically focused campuses, but this one glaring example shows all the work we have left to do. Some of the kids that came needed to be there, while some planned for it at the beginning of the year carefully budgeting their time off. How can we focus academics when a school does not make this day a joke? I had kids legitimately tell me that this was a school sanctioned holiday. This sort of misinformation needs to be handled. The only way to eliminate this as being a problem is to change the culture of the school. To emphasize academics and school functions as a higher level than the social lives of the students. The problem with this is that society gets in the way of this thinking. We push kids going to college but loose ourselves in the details. These lost details like work ethic add up to create a monster that stands in the way of our education, not helps it along. We take kids out of school for any excuse that we can and we start to tarnish the importance of education. This problem may not seem like a large one, it is just one day after all, but it represents so much that is wrong with our society. It represents the lack of importance that our kids and our society places on education.

Until Tomorrow,

Education is...

One of the few things a person is willing to pay for and not get.

William Lowe Bryan (1860–1955) 10th president of Indiana University (1902 to 1937).

Alcohol

This last weekend was prom, as I stated in my last post. This last Monday there was a lot of talk of the previous weekend's festivities. One of the topics was drinking. Kid's talk a lot about getting drunk. Of course they say this in groups before class or quietly where they think that I can not hear, but none the less I hear it. The question that I have when I overhear this is how do they get the alcohol? The answer may surprise you. I head from a parent that spends a lot of time at school that this alcohol is obtained from parents that plan these prom beach party weekends. The parents are getting booze for their kids. I asked my wife and others the question about whether they would allow their kids to drink in a weekend of booze filled partying. This of course does not take into account the legal implications of it. My argument is that you give teenagers who think they are invincible anyway do stupid crap without the aid of alcohol. Now take alcohol that does remove all the inhibitions and notions of good sense and give it to those same kids and you spell trouble. Even with supervision, this seems like a bad idea. While it can be argued that drinking is allowed by teenagers in other countries like Mexico, and countries in Europe, I think it is important to keep in mind that it is not illegal here. The other thing that this sends a message is that some laws are flexible, and that we can disregard some of them to suit our purposes. I am not trying to tell parents what they should do as parents, but we should be trying to send a positive message.

Until Tomorrow,
Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.  ~Roger Lewin

Prom

  This last Friday I got the honor of being a chaperon at my school's prom. This is an interesting place to sit around and look at what your kids are like outside of the room. One other insight that this grants you is how well they like you as a teacher. Kids that you may have had trouble with all year come up and are legitimately glad that you are there, while others barely look you in the eye. This can be a rewarding experience, but it can also get to you if you are as tough on yourself as I am. I have had both successes and failures this year like every other year, but it really gets to me when a kid that I think is a good one shows obvious dislike for you. I think that this really makes you reflect on what you have done right and what you have done wrong. For me, what I have done right is show these kids what a challenging class looks like, this is also in some of their opinion what I have done wrong.  Kids can be hard on teachers that do not hand out A's if they are use to receiving those throughout their school life. Also, I have put in another classroom management plan that has not been as successful as I wanted it to be. This plan has resulted in a better overall relationship with the students, but a more lacks atmosphere in the classroom.
   All of these things are irrelevant, as much as you may or may not want to be liked, it is not important. People may not like you in the world and they may not like you in the classroom. What I want them to take away is that working hard even on a tough subject will result in a rewarding experience. I may not hand out a lot of A's in my class, but those that get it deserve it. Those that do not, get a free lesson in what college is like.  Prom is a unique experience for the kids. In a lot of ways it is playing adult for the first time. It works great for kids, and it is a good experience for the teacher to see what kids are like outside the classroom. Overall my first year experience was a good one. This week, I am going to concentrate on several issues that surround the prom season. Tomorrow is the issue of drinking, Wednesday is the imfamous Senior Skip day.

Until Tomorrow,
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.  ~George Santayana

Redemption

The question always comes up with what do you do when you have a senior that is failing. With the movement of a junior to a senior status two things happen. The first is the all important senioritis. This condition affects a lot of our kids on a daily basis. I am thinking about making a PSA, and starting a group to help fund research in this horrible disease. The second is a sense of entitlement. That is the worse one because at lease senioritis eventually goes away on its own. Entitlement likes to stick around. These two conditions are running rampant through the halls of our school. They are moving faster than herpes at a beer pong convention. Despite our pleas to stay with us and our assurances of a failing grade if they do not, kids are moving closer to the line every day. It was this reason that my school set out for a new program. This program allowed kids to earn credit back if they failed a six weeks. The predominant subject that pioneered this program was the English department. They spent long hours and helped kids right and left to prepare.
  The results of this recovery project, or redemption as I call it, were OK. It seemed that this program helped some of the kids to really embrace the chance. Some of them put the same effort into it that they had put into the last semester. The result was a few kids that even with a make up still did not make it. In this project the kids had to write a paper that was roughly two pages, and present their information in a PowerPoint. The presentation was given to a panel of teachers. Their English teacher did not sit on the panel, so their would be no argument for bias. I sat on a panel and listened to three presentations. The good thing was that we had a really good presentation. The bad news is that we had two really bad presentations. The two kids did not put anything effort into the project. They really fell flat in the presentation. This is disappointing because it really shows that even when we put a lot of work into a program to help them, that sometimes we cannot do anything but let them make their own way. That is the point, sometimes we have to let them fail on their own for them to learn. This is unfortunate because those two other kids actual needed the help did not take advantage of their opportunity. My hope for them is that they actually learn something from it at some point in the future. In the end all a teacher can do is give them every opportunity to succeed and hope that some take advantage of that before they fall off the edge.

Until Tomorrow,

Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.

John Mason Brown (1900–1969) American drama critic and author.

Evaluation Day

So today was my evaluation conference. This is the time when you go into a room with your appraiser and have a talk with them about what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. Overall this process has gone great for me over the past few years. I would like to share with you how I am evaluated and how that compares to my corporate evaluations that I received.

  Educational evaluations all come down to classroom time. The more time that an evaluator is in the classroom with you the better idea that they have of how well you do. The minimum time that they can be in your room is 45 minutes, and mostly this is what you get. Every evaluators goal that is serious about the process promises quite a few walk throughs. Your evaluator is an administrator. This is the only thing that I find weird as I would like an experienced teacher to come evaluate me and tell me what I can do to improve myself. In as evaluation, you are rated as unacceptable, below expectations, proficient, and exceeds expectations in many categories. The main point is how well do your kids respond to you, and do you enable them to learn or are you a talker that moves right past them. I scored well in every different category, and was told that a criticisms was that I was to intellectual and sometimes went over the kids head with what I knew. This I took as a compliment. The process is completed on paper and then we have a meeting where things can be addressed before everyone signs on the dotted line. This entire process is very similar to my last job. The difference is that instead of a complete jerk evaluating me that had no idea about what I did, or did not do. I have an administrator that has actually sat in with me on my job. This works great if your administrator is good with the process. However, it falls apart if the person just does not take it seriously.

I can think of several different administrators at my school alone that look at it as a menace. This is something that they have to do to get their paycheck. Some teachers also view it this way, so a lot of imaginary evaluating goes on. As a professional I am really irritated by that, and work really hard to make sure that I have done my job, so I ask for people to do theirs and help me to be better. Perhaps that is a new teacher that is naive in the ways of the world, but for me as a professional it is nice to have an evaluator that actually cares. I think part of what is going to help save education is a focus on professionalism. A focus on trying to make ourselves better at our jobs. Whether that is in content knowledge, or classroom strategies we all can benefit in a little criticism. I say this as a person that does not take criticism well. I understand the need for it, and really think that if we are going to be successful as educators we have to look at this process as a way to better ourselves. Administrators have a part in this as well. If they are not serious we run the risk of having serious problems in the classroom, while on paper our teachers look great.

Until Tomorrow,

Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) English critic

An Idiots Guide to School Finance.

Across Texas new stadiums are getting built, and the obvious question is why are they building new stadiums when they are laying off teachers? Why are they building new schools and academies when there are teachers that are in the unemployment lines? These questions were asked this weekend when I had a heated conversation with my father in law.

  The answer to both questions is actually quite complicated. It starts with the school taxes that you pay on your property. Local property taxes account for 54% of the funding of Texas Schools. I have included a pretty good website that discusses how funding breaks down. So the other funding comes from several different sources. The first is state funding. This accounts for quite a chunk of the funding, but depends on the district and whether it can meet the minimum per student requirement. The second source is federal funds, which typically is for special programs only like disadvantages schools or special education. The final place is an ominous category called other. This money comes from private companies and individuals who donate money.

  While this may seem simple, the real problem comes down to the rules set aside for who can spend the money and how the district can spend it. The district is only allowed by the state of Texas a certain amount of money for each student. This amount is capped and has not been changed in several years. Also, local districts are not allowed to control their property taxes to increase revenue. This is only allowed at the state level. The last regulation that has been placed is the bond issue. Bonds are one of the many ways that a district can use the money it has in property taxes. Basically, bonds are money that is borrowed  against the property taxes for a certain number of years. The local government pays itself back after 30 years just like a morgage, and it allows itself to build buildings. The problem is that this is for capital improvement, and does not include teachers jobs. Districts often need a new facility but then run into the problem of not having enough people to man it.

The school finance game is tricky. It really equates to to many hands in the cookie jar. This does not even take into account that most districts are administration heavy and do not put enough money into the classroom due to high overhead. To fix a problem like this it is imperative that the government fix the complexity of this system first. What good does it do to throw money at a situation that cannot support itself. We really need to look at how districts raise and utilize the money that they get and then look at how we can better utilize it. One way to help ease the burden is to allow bonds to be used for district personnel for start up costs on new projects. What good does a building do if there is no one to use it.

Check the following links out for a breakdown on school finance:
http://www.texasbudgetsource.com/school-districts/where-the-money-comes-from/
http://www.putourkidsfirst.com/kidsfirst/nat_science.asp

Until Tomorrow,
Education is the transmission of civilization.  ~Ariel and Will Durant

A day and a half

As with the corporate world, teachers get extra days off that we can take for personal time. I really try to minimize these days unless it is something important. I feel that it is a good thing for me to be there versus leaving the kids with a sub. However certain things come up where you need to take the time off. This weekend is one of those times. This weekend I will ride 154 miles for MS research in Texas. I usually participate in a ride from Houston to Austin, but this year my wife and I are taking our bicycles to Dallas this year for a tour of North Texas and a sore butt. I share this with the kids because there are so many people that are impacted by this disease. So, I will ride this weekend to help raise money. This has given me an idea. Why not raise money for Education by holding rides for people that are preparing for this ride or others? There are a lot of charities including the Ronald McDonald house that raise money this way, and really it would be a good idea to try and raise some money for education this way. I think as we approach the end of the school year and the beginning financial woes of the school system that we have to make money any way that we can. Post your ideas in the comment section. How could we help alleviate this financial crunch if the Texas Legislature will not?

Until next Tuesday, have a great weekend and wish me luck.

Education should be exercise; it has become massage.  ~Martin H. Fischer

The Meeting

   In corporations committees are convened when there is a large task at hand that is bigger than just one person. Schools utilize the same procedures.When you get more than one person in a room, you typically multiply the complexity of solving a single issue. This increased complexity of solving simple problems is to some frustrating and a waste of time. To me it is an opportunity to study the system. I have learned a lot over the past year by being involved in one of these panels. Today I spent my time after school in a panel called the Instructional Leadership Committee. The function of this team is to analyze and look at instructional issues that impact the kids. We look at teacher effectiveness and how well the kids are responding to changes that we make. Our entire purpose is to make the school better.  Everyone in that room is in there to help the school be a better place. However, with that comes the group mentality of not wanting to rock the boat. I sit in there sometimes and disagree with what is being said. I am one of a very few that publicly disagrees with recommendations that are made that are not beneficial to the student body. This is because I really think that discourse is the way to improve circumstances. I try and offer solutions but also try and offer a perspective that is reflective of the teachers and students of the school. In today's meeting we rated how we did over the course of the year. Everyone agreed that we had some work to do, but people felt more comfortable talking about strengths than weaknesses. I would argue that weaknesses are where we learn the most from. If we are going to make things better we have to look introspectively at ourselves, and build on that. We do need to look at what we do well, but we also need to be honest about what we do not. As educators we all have differences in how we approach problems. The differences can be our strength or they can be our weakness. Now this small criticism is not overshadowed by what this panel of teachers has done for our campus. Improvements that we have made have really helped out the students of our school. Our special ed kids are more successful at regular ed classes, and our AP program is growing. I would like us to imagine what we could do if we embraced the critical aspects of the school, and rocked the boat a little. If there is anything that we can learn it is that we gain the most when we rock the boat.

Until tomorrow,
My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.  ~Robert Maynard Hutchins

A coach that teaches versus a teacher that coaches

Life is all about priorities. Do we buy the car, focus on family, or the career? In teaching it is also about priorities. For some teachers those priorities are whether they should put in the extra effort for the next day or not. For others it is whether they should teach at all.

  In every profession there are the people that are just in it for the wrong reasons. In teaching we have a stereotype that coaches are not good teachers. These coaches put in no effort and leave their kids without the skills for the next year. I have met several coaches that these stereotypes do not apply to. They balance both well and teach as well as coach. Part of the problem that we have is that these coaches are overshadowed by the ones that do not. Today was one of those days where the two types of coaches clashed. Both are math teachers. One has just recently stopped coaching to spend more time with his family. The other is a baseball coach. These two were paired together to help administer the TAKS test today. One of the coaches said that they were not going to distribute the test or help at all because his duty was on the baseball field. He then watched movies all day while to other teacher was left to himself. Now I think that we can all agree that the coach sitting and watching the movie was a jerk, but it shows how some of them think. He later went on a rant in front of other teachers about the "academic" people and how they were a problem.This infuriates me. Teachers are being laid off right and left from other districts, and next year when my number is up, it very well might be me before him, as he has over three years under his belt. I am not saying that he should not coach, but someone like that should not be a math teacher. Our system is broken when someone like that keeps his job while others do not. People point the finger at teachers a lot of the time and say that we do not put in the time. Well some of us do and some of us don't. He puts in the time after school on the baseball field. I put in the time in the physics room. The end result is that he gets paid more for being a coach. The system is broken, and it is up to us as the people to fix it.

Until tomorrow,
An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.  ~Author Unknown

The calm before the storm......

Tomorrow starts TAKS testing for my school and countless others around the state. Today at the end of class I showed a motivational speech. To be honest it was 40 different motivational speeches in 2 minutes. This was after the TAKS pep rally that we had this morning in which a lot of teachers, including myself, made a fool out of themselves. It is this time that we move from content specific instruction to motivational techniques to help kids psych themselves up for the test. As we move into this time where we test, teachers are under a lot of stress. This is unlike anything else that I have encountered before. The stress for everyone involved is significant. Administration has to worry about what the school looks like, the teachers look at how it effects their students, and the student worries about if they are going to graduate. The end result is a picture of the the student. We know what they know on that day, but are missing the video of what they learned for the year. This picture could be good or bad, as everyone has good and bad days. It is what we have, and what we will cross our fingers for. I hope everyone has a wonderful TAKS testing week.

Until Tomorrow,

It is today we must create the world of the future.' Eleanor Roosevelt

Hopping Mad

  Sometimes a short week can feel like a long week wrapped in a smaller package. This week was one of those weeks. Despite the fact that we were only at school for four days it was tough to get to the end of the week. By the end of the day today it was tough to get the kids to do anything. I had a moment at the end where I was ready to throw most of my last class of the day through a wall.

  Everyone is tired at the end of the week. The allure of the weekend is calling your name, but as most people know it will come and work has to be done. Today, I had a kid decide instead of working or paying attention she was going to write a comic with her friends the entire time. She has given up on school in April of her senior year. This frustrates me because I really want them to be successful and I am putting in a lot of work to get a program together to get them ready for their AP test that is coming up in May. When I asked her to stay after class she gave me an attitude and refused to even look me in the eye. Basically rolling her eyes at me the entire time, angry that I would ask her to keep it together. I explained that she had to take the test and she should be ready for it. Failure was not an option. She shrugged and refused to look at me, so I told her to just get out. I did not want to deal with the crap that she was wanting to dish out. It is rare in an AP class that we get someone that acts up like that. The unfortunate part is that if she does not take the AP test then she will have to take my final, and my final is an AP test. She is a kid that is on the fringe grade wise. If she messes up now she may not get the credit. She cares about the credit, but is not willing to put in the effort. Everyone has bad days, but kids that think they can skate at the end of the year are in a world of fantasy. The truth is that I do care. I had another teacher tell me that I had been labeled as mean for making the kids work and trying to raise the bar higher at the end of the year. I refuse to lower the bar. Just because we got close to the finish line does not mean that we can just say good enough. As someone that cycles a lot I know that the end of the race is the hardest. I take pride in the fact that I push myself and them to the next level. The easier thing for me to do is to put on a movie or the rest of the year and hand out grades, but that it not what I am going to do. I am so happy for a three day weekend.

Until Monday,

Education seems to be in America the only commodity of which the customer tries to get as little he can for his money.

Max Leon Forman (1909-1990) Jewish-American writer.

What is in the box?

   It is interesting how you can engage kids without a lot of effort. I have talked this week about dark matter and the fact that it is hard to study something when you cannot see it. To illustrate this point, I put different objects in several cardboard boxes and had the kids go around and try to guess what was in them. The cool thing about this was the amount of participation that I had. Quite a few kids that are usually not interested in most of the things that we do were tripping over themselves to participate. I called this little game "What's in the Box," a reference to the movie Seven. It was this lab that really set the bar for the rest of the day. I have talked a lot about kids being engaged and wanting to learn. Little things like this are beacons of light in a teacher's day. The sad part is that I do not have time to create lessons like this every day. Sometimes that fleeting inspiration comes and helps me to create something good. If this happened more I would be in heaven. This work that I put into this class and into others takes years to perfect. It is imperative that we try and work together to create curriculum that works.  The same old worksheet routine is old and tired. We have to continue to innovate to be successful. This is true in the corporate world. The innovators lead the pack. The Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs of the world have to innovate to survive. Companies that fail to innovate fall into a rut that eventually results in their losing their effectiveness and their place as number one. Google expands and invests in their future while yahoo fell into a rut. I think that this is the reason that our education system has come down so far over the past 50 years. We have created a static system, where that moment of inspiration is fleeting. If there is something that I have learned about this entire process it is that the system really makes innovation hard. I think a solution to this is innovation sessions. The future of education is not worksheets, but instead sharing those moments of inspirations. I would love to work with some of the teachers at school to be something better than what we are. I think that if our system has any chance of surviving, the future will be in the collaboration of teachers sharing ideas and working together for the common good. Programs that embrace this have been successful. The problem is all the extra stuff that we have to do to get to the innovation.

Until Tommorow,
"Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don't know."
-- R. Verdi

The fight begins

  House bill 1 has passed the house and has moved on to the senate. The house bill is considered too harsh by most senators. A new bill is being crafted that is a compromise between the original bill and the senate bill that is a little easier on the cuts. The main problem is social programs. Medicare and medicaid costs have increased to the state, and the house is unwilling to put those programs first. I would like to senate to consider one thing. All the programs have their merit. When we look at it what is important? If we take money away from education then the costs for welfare and medicaid goes up. The burden on the state increases. The means that people cannot afford to retire and the result is more people on the medicare program. That being said, the current programs that the state has in place cannot simply just go away. We have given our word to support all of these programs. Has the state bitten off more than it can chew? The answer is yes, but are there other programs that could be sacrificed instead? I think so.

  I help sponsor a club at school. Today I went with the officers and the other school sponsor to Wal-mart to purchase items for the club. At the end of our shopping trip we stopped off to pick up a sandwich. I covered the cost of one of the kid's sandwiches. He had no money and said that he really had not eaten lunch. I did this because he is a good kid, and because he deserved the chance to eat. The problem with the state is that they view the entire system as an institution. They forget that this system is made up of people. Those people depend on you for services, whether that is education or health care. If we do not honor those commitments, what does that make our society? We like to look at the numbers and make cuts, but what about the kids that need it and the retirees that depend on medicare services. The state needs to buy the education system a sandwich. It needs to take into account that we are all working hard for the betterment of society. If it decides that it is not important than it needs to come up with other options. That is the least that our senate could do. Give us another option in everything, or fix the system that we have.

For those that are interested here is the article that talks about the senate and their views.

Until tomorrow,
"Education costs money, but then so does ignorance."
-- Sir Claus Moser 

The needs of the many....

  Today is the day where all teachers can breath a little easier, at least those in my district. Today grades were due and the fifth grading period came to an end. Thus begins the last grading period of the 2010-2011 school year. This comes as a little bitter sweet for me. I look out across those faces and think that they are not quite ready for the real world. The harsh realities of college and the workplace for all of them are looming closer and they are the gazelle awaiting the lion.

  The requests for us to slack off have increased by quite a bit now that they know the fifth grading period is over. Why do anything? Well the answer is quite simple. AP tests are coming up, and TAKS is right around the corner. For my Astronomy class, who does not have TAKS or AP tests, the answer is even more simple. College and life does not allow you to slack as you near an end. Life does not let up, and neither do I. Perhaps this is an idealistic way of thinking that the kids will never truly appreciate, but none the less I will stay the course.

 I had an idea about how we could kick these kids in the butt. To prepare them for the inevitable. My idea was simple. Get the Seniors to take a day of college level classes and then test them over it. I approached my principal about this, and his response captures the issues that we face. He said that even if we bring someone in to give a lecture that it would have little effect this late. We would be going through an exercise that would not help them if they are having trouble passing their classes. Of our about 400 seniors that are set to walk in May, 68 of them are at risk of failing.

Think back to your senior year. For quite a few people it was a time of enjoyment and low requirements placed on them by school and by their parents. You were to get to college or to your next step. Parents remember the low stress times of their senior year. They tell their kids that this should be a year of fun and exploration. That mentality does not really work anymore. Kids have to take more and more now to graduate. Four credits are required in each core class now, and that means that the former requirement that had seniors take government, economics, and English their senior year is a thing of the past. It has turned into a requirement that sees them take 5 required classes to graduate out of the seven that they have to take. This is the first year that this has been required and it has been a tough transition. The paradigm shift has resulted in one of the highest senior failure rates that we have had in a long time. We have seniors that do not understand these requirements. The represents a problem. We must press on, and prepare them for the future. The end of their senior year is coming, but their adult life is just beginning. My hope is that the kids that are failing understand that there is currently a way out, and that way out is work and determination.

There is not an easy solution to this system. My solution is not a popular one. As Spock said "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." These kids have to learn a hard lesson so those that come after them can learn it. They may have to go to summer school, but better learn the lesson in the safety of high school than be the gazelle in the lions mouth.

Until Tomorrow,
"Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."
-- Sir William Haley

Dazed and Confused

  In the classroom we have to deal with a lot of distractions. External factors affect adults lives and we deal with it, but they can shut down a kid's life. It is why when something big happens at school or outside of school it is the only thing that kids want to talk about. Today marked the end of another week, and with that weekend comes distractions and comes the day that most people love and hate. Friday is the day where we get to leave school for the weekend, but it is also one of the hardest days to get kids to focus. It is a long day, and by the end of it most teachers resort to some form of beverage.
  This week outside of school a group of senior boys had sex with an 8th grade girl. The supposed incident was caught on film. The entire thing had me infuriated. Why would seniors feel the need to do that? I do not have all of the details, and do not have any names, nor would I list them if I did have them, but why would you do that? An 8th grade girl is 14, barely a teenager. When I was a senior I was going after senior girls or juniors, not 8th graders. The kids at the school I went to called you a loser if you were a senior and dated a sophomore, and a pervert if you dated a freshman. It was not done, and if it was you sure did not put it for everyone to see. The administration in the school does not take this lightly, and really should not. They are very serious about making sure that it is handled correctly even though it did not take place on campus. This is just another incident in dealing with kids on a daily basis. Sometimes those very kids that I blog about trying to get a better education destroy any chances that they have for one. Society has a lot to say about this sort of crime. It is definitely something that we have to protect against as a society. Older children can take advantage of younger kids. My hope is that the kids that do this are put away for a long time. Behavior like this is inexcusable, and removal of these kids is a priority of teachers and administration.

Until Tomorrow,
Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.
- Heinrich Heine