Christmas blog II

Merry Christmas. Have a safe and joyful holiday.

MNPS picks Register

Metro Nashville Public Schools picked a new director on Satruday and from the reports, it's not a great start. According to reports it took five hours of deliberation and three attempts to scuttle the search all together before the board chose Register.

Contract specifics, including Register's $285,000 salary and benefits request, must be negotiated before the deal is final.

The selection almost didn't happen because of disputes over the candidates and concerns about the search process.
Three attempts to abandon the vote and start a new search were defeated Saturday. Freshman board member Alan Coverstone and veteran board member Ed Kindall were the primary opponents of hiring a new director.
After it became obvious there wasn't enough support to abandon the vote, board members settled on Register, who is a consultant and part-time professor.
The shaky support didn't deter Register, who said he's confident he can win the board's full support.

At one point in the deliberations, one of the school board members expressed concern over Register because he's a white male. Huh? No one had concerns about other candidates because of skin color, they brought up traits that would effect how they would do the job. Ridiculous.

With leadership like that what could go wrong?

Christmas break baby!

Two weeks off and then back at to get ready for testing, yes the true measure of a child's intelligence and abilities is measured by many hours of standardized testing.

More white parents choose public schools

So said the headline in the local paper of an article meant to make people feel good that a few white families are choosing to send their children to public schools. But not just any public schools, but public schools in predominately African-American neighborhoods no less.
Wow, that must make our African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Arabic and African families feel really good about the schools they send their kids to if white parents are sending their kids.

Ignoring the obvious racial overtones of the headline, the article tells the warm and fuzzy story of one set of white parents who are sending their daughter to a magnet school elementary school. The school they send their daughter to is; Lockeland Elementary School. It became a Design Center in 2004 with an emphasis on literature and daily Spanish instruction. The school which was built in 1939, is a lottery school, which draws students from all over Davidson County. It does give priority to its neighborhood residents but is not considered a zoned school. It's 60% white, 35% African-American and 5% Asian and Hispanic, the removal of two pre-K classes, which were 90% African-American, helped drastically change the racial makeup of the school.

Translation, it gets kids whose parents want them to go to the school because they have to apply to attend, the school chooses which kids can attend, it doesn't take whichever kid is supposed to attend. The parents must also provide transportation for their child to attend the school unless they live within walking distance.
Are those the traits of a typical public school or does it sound almost exactly like a private school?

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081219/NEWS04/812190378&s=d&page=1

Christmas spirit from a moron

The last person kids need to hear that Santa doesn't exist is from a substitite teacher but that's exactly what hapenned at Blackshaw Lane Primary School in Royton, Greater Manchester England. The class of 25 allegedly became rowdy talking about Santa Claus and the teacher blurted out that he did not exist in an effort to calm them down. Merry Christmas...

Calm them down by telling them Santa doesn't exist?!

It's the same as calming pirahanas down by throwing fresh meat into the water, telling people at Wal-Mart that even more sh-- is on sale or that there are only 4000 Hannah Montana tickets available.

The sub has been disciplined according to a letter sent to parents.

Two good things about this story:

1. it didn't happen in the US,

2. it didn't involve a teacher sleeping with students

Why teach...

Our principal sent the following e-mail to all of us today:

Teachers,
Please send me by email or leave it on my desk, the name of address of someone who has had a great influence in your life. Someone who may even have helped you as you made your decision to become a teacher. It might be a parent, grandparent, spouse, sibling, or friend. Please try to have the name of that person and their address to me by Tuesday.
Thanks,

When I first saw this I thought, okay who is one person who influenced me to take this sometimes unbelievably frustrating but often just as unbelieveably inspiring job. I began thinking back to college professors, not much there, I was a history major convinced that I destined to find more info about Civil War battlesites and then to move onto saving them and the countless lost Revolutionary War battle sites. This revelation happened my freshman year when I was one of the lucky few at my small liberal arts college to take a Civil War history course from Shelby Foote. Foote wrote a large three-volume about the war, we got to read his book and ask him questions about his research and his writing for 4 hours every week. As a freshman in college, it's easy to be intimidated in this setting but Foote was a master at making everyone feel important and to assure them that they needed to be part of the discussion because he wasn't going to be the "sage on the stage" it wasn's his style. If you don't know who he is, watch Ken Burns' fabulous Civil War series, he's the older gentleman who Burns uses as his expert. Foote wasn't the only one but he is the only one with the stunning southern accent.

But, as with most people, what I thought I was going to be my life's work got slapped down by the reality of having to get a job and pay bills.

Then I thought about my high school teachers, nothing there. High school was four years of reminding myself how much I wanted to escape my hometown and to never look back.

Grad school professors? Please, giving us teaching ideas and theories that themselves wouldn't use. I learned more from spending two years counseling at-risk kids.

In the end, it came down to my parents, namely my father. He wanted my brother and I to find jobs that weren't blue collar and had both a future in them and an end. A career where you could retire while still a relatively young man, and could enjoy life.

Although there are parts of the job that are easy to hate, there is more of it to love and it's better than what my folks had.

No school today too much snow

Today is one of the great benefits of teaching; snow days. As you can see by the pictures we are inundated with snow here in NashVegas. Yes, I plan to enjoy the day doing stuff like Christmas shopping, watching tv, drinking hot tea, all the stuff you do when the weather is bad.

The "doghouse" for the holidays

Listen up men, if you give your wife/girlfriend a lousy gift for Christmas they can now tell the entire world about it. The website, http://bewareofthedoghouse.com/Default.aspx, let's people put others in the doghouse for a variety of sins. Some of the reasons include:

"He said I'm just like my mother" Ouch.

"Told his wife she needed to lose some weight off her waistline" Damn, that was just stupid

"Said I just warm the food, I don't really cook anything" Another moron

"Leaving the toilet seat up"

"You let our MacBook go"

"You haven't bought us a fish yet"

"My birthday is next week, but the necklace, get out"

"Because you suck and your an asshole"

"Because you eat too many things"

"Lookin at other women in Dunkin' Donuts"

"Not doing the laundry when told to"

"Because I'm sure there is a reason, I just haven't thought of it yet"

"He doesn't respect his darling mother who loves him more than life itself"

"She gave me Pledge as a gift"

"Thinks dental floss is a great gift"

"Was talking on cell too long and forgot to pick up dinner"

"Dental implants for Christmas gift"

No punishment will be enough for these two

This story was in the our daily paper this morning. I had to read it twice to make sure I had read it right.

According to the police report; Cookeville police arrested a Cookeville woman and her boyfriend in the rape of her three-month-old baby boy. Police said on Nov. 15 the couple reported the baby was not breathing. The baby was transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center with injuries and remained there for several weeks.Police said the baby is recovering and has been placed in the custody of his biological father.Amish and Holman were booked into the Putnam County jail, where bond was set at $200,000.

I cannot describe how sick and disgusted this story makes me.

http://www.tennessean.com/

"Age Management: or how to have a great bod after 40

If you want to keep your 30 year-old body well into your 40s, 50s and even 60s, then Dr. Jeffery Life is the man for you. His face is that of a distinguished-looking grandpa; his head is balding, and what hair there is is white. But his 69-year-old body looks like it belongs to a muscle-bound 30-year-old.
The photo regularly runs in ads for the Cenegenics Medical Institute, a Las Vegas-based clinic that specializes in "age management," a growing field in a society obsessed with staying young. Life, who swears that's his real last name, also keeps a framed copy of the photo on his office wall at Cenegenics.

While athletes have been using HGH and steroids for years to improve performance, the drugs are now being used much more by people who want to look younger and healthier and who claim that diet and exercise aren't enough.

Says Ed Detwiler, one of Dr.Life's patients; "He's the man!" Detwiler, 47, has been Life's patient for more than three years. In that time, he has adopted the regimen that his doctor also follows — drastically changing his exercise and eating habits and injecting himself each day with human growth hormone. He also receives weekly testosterone injections.
He does it because it makes him feel better, more energetic, clear-minded.
He does it because he wants to live a long, healthy life.
"If I were stooped over and bedridden, what kind of quality of life is that?" asks Detwiler, a real estate developer in suburban Las Vegas who says he's doing this, in part, for his wife, who is nine years younger. "If I can get out and be active and travel and see the world and be able to make a difference in other people's lives, then yes, I would want to have as long an existence as possible."

Detwiler, Life's patient at Cenegenics, is not looking for the appearance of youth. He's looking to extend his youthfulness, and his life.
He knows about human growth hormone and its controversies in sports. But this, he and his doctor insist, is different. While it is illegal for these kinds of hormones to be dispensed for anti-aging purposes, he takes relatively low doses prescribed for "hormone deficiency." The idea is to bring his levels back up to those of a young man in his 20s.
"My friends say, 'Oh, Ed's on steroids,'" says Detwiler, who has watched as muscle has replaced fat on his belly and elsewhere. "No, I'm not. Look at me. Do I look like I'm on steroids?"
He holds out his arms to indicate that his body is fit-looking, but not monstrous. "I'm not. I'm on hormone therapy," he says of a regimen that costs him more than $1,000 a month.
Besides human growth hormone, testosterone, and an adrenal hormone known as DHEA, his diet now largely consists of things like hard-boiled eggs, fruits, nuts, Greek yogurt, salads and palm-sized pieces of fish, chicken or low-fat beef. He also exercises regularly, alternating between intense cardio workouts and weight-resistance training.
"I can't tell you in words how great I feel," says the man who used to crack open a Pepsi to get him through the day.

Of course all this isn't cheap,in addition to the $1000 a month Detwiler claims to spend there are up front costs that run in the thousands of dollars. The initial one-day $2,995 evaluation at the Cenegenics, has already attracted a handful of unnamed Britons.

After the initial evaluation, clients spend up to $13,000 on exercise and diet regimes, supplemented by vitamins and, in most cases, hormone replenishment such as testosterone.
Approximately 20 per cent are also prescribed injections of human growth hormones if they are diagnosed as demonstrating adult growth hormone deficiency (AGHD).

Most who get the "treatments do so because they feel societal pressure to look younger than they are. Wow, what a shock it's society's fault that I'm putting this into my body, I'm just a innocent guy or gal who can't make my own decisions, society makes them for me. What a crock...

Quotes from the AP and from Steroid Nation

http://grg51.typepad.com/steroid_nation/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gtaHtJdjPXQHQiV6JFq2F610uBsAD94TSEMO0

Creativity can still be found in school

One of the things I do with 4th graders is make them read to each other, to me and to Kindergarteners. Every Friday we go to both of the kindergarten ESL or ELL rooms and read a story to them and ask them questions about whatever book we are reading that week. Some weeks the students pick the books they are going to read to them and some weeks everyone reads the same book. As can be expected not every 4th grader likes to read, especially if they have spent the past 3-4 years failing at reading as many ELL students have. To make the job of reading easier for my students we often use art to help express what the theme and or lessons of the story.

The pictures above were relating to The Season's of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons.

It's a story that follows Arnold who's about 10-12 and the changes his apple undergoes during the four seasons.

Each group of four students took one of the seasons, created a picture of the tree from that season adn then wrote a description of the tree during that season.

After doing similar activities on the book for the past three years I am continually surprised and astounded by the artwork and the writing these students produce.

Ya gotta love Willie Nelson

I was one of those lucky kids who grew up listening to great country music; Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard. Among those it was Cash and Nelson who I follow to this day.

I have always had a lot of respect for what Willie has tried to do with his FarmAid concerts and now with his BioDiesel product he's promoting to try to cut our dependance on foreign sources of oil.

Now Nelson is at it again, writing an open letter to Obama asking him to reorganize food and farm policies to help American farmers. Here are some of the highlights:

He wants his his FarmAid Organization as a resource to help the new administration develop a food and farming policy that supports sustainable family farms. He also wants to wants the federal government to provide support for his Good Food Movement that supports local farmers and their efforts to get their products to markets both local and nationwide.

I don't know if president-elect Obama will listen to him, I hope he does. Nelson truly cares about a forgotten part of our country's wealth and incidently, the only ones not in Washington asking for billions to help bail them out. That in itself should be worth Mr. Obama's attention.

The letter and and more can be found here:

http://www.farmaid.org/site/c.qlI5IhNVJsE/b.2723595/k.EE67/Family_Farmers_Good_Food_A_Better_America.htm

No pets in classrooms

Most people had a classroom at some point in their schooling that had an animal in it. It may have been a hamster or gerbil, maybe even a spider or a snake. As a kid seeing animals at school was pretty cool. I have had two gerbils in my classrooms over the years and let them roll around in their ball on the floor during the day, not the entire day, and the kids loved it. If the gerbils got stuck, the kids just moved the ball so it was free and they went back to work. The kids got to feed it and hold it, for many kids it was the only pet they had ever "had". Despite the benefits of having animals in classrooms, many principals don't like them, some because they don't like animals muchin the first place, others because they feel school is a place where only education occurs and if you can't show in writing how the animalis helping educate children, it has to go.

That is the attitude that one principal in Denver has taken to her teachers having pets in their classrooms.

Principal Patty Geffre of Montbello High School in far northeast Denver has told her teachers to get rid fo the animals they have been keeping their classrooms as pets. Geffre has a simple message for her teachers;" We are here to educate children, not to house animals." "If you are doing an educational experience that's going to enhance student learning, they can be there . . . but we're not their home."

She is concerned about students with allergies, the liability of an injury caused by an animal at school and the comfort level of a teacher forced to share a room with another teacher's animals.
"If you have a reason for them that enhances our curriculum, I'll talk about it," she said, noting she's already approved an embryology project where students will watch fish grow in a tank.

No wonder kids look at school as a job, we're determined to take away all the things that made school a place kids wanted to be.

Hooray...

Science? What is that?

Since 2004, No Child Left Behind has driven both instruction and assessment across the country. Unfortunately it has also minimalized the instruction time spent on both Science and SS in elementary school because these scores did not affect your NCLB standing. As long as an elementary school was worrying about reading and math it could let Science and SS go and let the middle and high schools worry about it.

All that changed in 2007-2008. It marked the first school year that the federal No Child Left Behind law required school districts to test students in science. And while the scores must be released, there aren't any punishments built into the law like for failures in math and reading. If there were, Metro Nashville's nine years of earning a districtwide D in the subject would be drawing attention. More than 65 percent of individual Metro schools earned a D or F based on spring testing.

This is nothing new, for years teachers have talked about how little attention Science and SS got in the elementary grades and how ill-prepared they were for more difficult subjects in middle and high school. The reasons for this are fairly simple; in our district Science and SS standardized tests scores aren't reported and teachers aren't required to give the Science and SS standardized tests. No requirement= almost no teaching of the subject.

To change this science and SS will have to be a priority in elementary but don't hold your breath.

Webicide or Suicide online, very sad

A 19 year old Florida teen live-streamed his own suicide and according to reports was egged on by others on the site. The picture showed the comments of others on Justin.tv an open network of thousands of live streaming channels.

From ABC News;

"People were egging him on and saying things like 'go ahead and do it, faggot,' said Wendy Crane, an investigator at the Broward County Medical Examiner's office.
Abraham Biggs, 19, of Pembroke Pines, Fla., had been blogging on an online body-building message board and had linked to his page on Justin.tv, a live video streaming Web site, where the camera rolled as he overdosed on prescription pills, according to Crane. Biggs, who had reportedly been discussing his suicide on the forums, also posted a suicide note. "

The bloggers said that Biggs had threatened to kill himself before and had faked it, so at first they didn't believe him," said Crane. "Gradually, as you read the blog further into the day the bloggers start commenting on how Biggs isn't moving."
Crane said comments on the thread included an exchange about whether the image of Biggs' motionless body was a still photograph or a video, and eventually resulted in one of the site's visitors calling the police, who tracked down the teen through his computer IP address.

In the Web stream, Crane said viewers saw a piece of a door frame -- which had splintered from the police kicking in the teen's bedroom door -- hit Biggs, who is curled up on his bed and facing away from the camera.
"Then you see a police officer go in and check on him, and then the EMS pronounced him dead," said Crane.
Biggs was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 19 -- about 12 hours after he had begun blogging about his suicide.
The official cause of death was suicide combined with drug toxicity. Crane said that benzodiazepines and opiates were found near the body, but a blood toxicology to quantify just how much Biggs consumed is still under way.
Crane said that at least one of the prescription drugs was in Biggs' name."

Kindergarteners talk turkey

Every year one of our kindergarten teachers asks her children how to cook a turkey and writes down their answers for the rest of the staff to read. Here are some of this year's recipes.

Get a 10 pound turkey. Cut the turkey in half and put 5 salts inside. Put 4 regular chickens in the pot. Pour a little bit of soda juice on the chicken. Stir up the chicken. Cut the turkey up and put it with the chicken to cook. Eat the turkey with rice and macaroni&cheese.

Get a 5-ounce turkey. Use water to wash the the crusty stuff off from the zoo. Put number one sauce on it to make it sweet. Cook the turkey for 6 minutes in the oven on 7%. Eat the turkey with corn, beans and a little bit of pork chop and some potatoes.

Get a turkey as big as an egg. Put 7 salts on it. Put it in the oven for 8 minutes on 6 degrees. Wash it with a sponge. Eat the turkey with chicken.

Get a turkey as big as a brick. Put 1 ounces of salt and pepper on it. Put it in the oven for 10 minutes on 7 degrees. Put a tablecloth on the table. Put the plates and cups out. Put chairs at the table. Buy a Hannah Montana cake and some cookies. Eat the dessert with the turkey.

Buy a one gobble turkey. Kill the head. Put 5 chickens on it. Put another turkey with it. Pour 2 brown sauces on it. Put a Ninja Turtle on it. Put it on a plate. Cook the turkey in the oven for 5 minutes on "too hot". Eat the turkey with chicken and different colors of lollipops. Also eat a Mickey Mouse lollipop.

Buy a giant turkey. Crack 4 eggs and put them in the turkey nest to save them. Put the turkey in the fridge for 6 minutes. Take it out and cook it on the stove for one minute on hot. Take it out and eat the turkey with chicken, broccoli with noodles and drink a tea.

Get a number 5 turkey. Put one red sauce on it. Cook the turkey in the oven on 3 degrees for 5 times. Put 1 catsup on it. Wait for it to get done& then put a little bit of mustard on it. Eat the turkey with green beans, peas and corn.

Get a turkey with a tail and a head. Put a beak on it. Put eyes on it. Put some purple sprinkles on it. Put 3 strawberries on it. Drop 4 oranges on the turkey. Cook the turkey in the oven for 2 minutes on a little bit hot. Take the turkey out & eat it with grapes.

You can't read TTYL in Round Rock, TX.

Round Rock, TX is a lovely town just north of Austin and home of Dell. Unfortunately, they too are under the watch of parents who are scared of what their children will or might read but will allow them to watch anything on TV, DVD or play any video game. Thank goodness one parent complaint can determine what other children read.
From the Austin American Statesman:

" A teen novel that stirred controversy when the parent of a Round Rock student complained that it is obscene was removed from the district’s middle school libraries today.
The novel entitled “TTYL” by Lauren Myracle is a narrative in the format of instant messages exchanged among a group of teenage girls.

Round Rock Superintendent Jesus Chavez sent a letter to Wes and Sherry Jennings on Tuesday saying he had determined that “while the book may be appropriate for some students, it is not appropriate for all of our students in the middle school and should not be made generally available in a middle school library open to all middle school students.”
“If parents wish their individual students to have access to the book, there are ample alternatives for the book to be made available to students at parent discretion,” the superintendent said in his letter.
Sherry Jennings, mother of a Ridgeview Middle School student, filed a complaint at the beginning of this school year after her daughter checked the novel out of the Ridgeview library.
Jennings said Tuesday, “We are extremely pleased that the superintendent is interested in quality education for our children and that he realizes that maturity-wise they are not ready for these types of books.”
Jennings said she objected not only to vulgar language in the book “but also to the sexual content of the entire book.”
Jennings said she and her husband are satisfied with Chavez’s response and plan no further action. She added that she appreciated the help of parents and others who supported her complaint about TTYL.
“We had 1,600 people sign a petition backing us, and about 10 people were very helpful in supporting us through this situation,” Jennings said."

Reviews of the book from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/ttyl-Talk-You-Later-Internet-Girls/dp/0810987880/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227111086&sr=1-1

Pre-K in Tennessee may get cut

Tennessee is facing a budget shortfall of over 780 million dollars and Governor Phil Bredesen has told all state agencies to expect at least a 10% budget cut. One of the programs that will probably be cut will be Tennessee's well-regarded Pre-K program. Tennessee is one of a handful of states that require all Pre-K teachers hold a bachelor's degree in early childhood education, the state has standards for Pre-K and that class sizes be limited to 20 students for each teacher and assisstant.
The demand for pre-K statewide has been growing year over year. This spring alone, school districts across the state requested more than 300 additional classrooms for the 2008-09 school year.
Bredesen's plan to funnel $25 million to create 250 new classrooms was put on hold months ago. Scores of disappointed parents, who were initially told that their kids had gotten into the program, were turned away. Sharika Watson, whose son goes to state-funded pre-K Ross Elementary, was among the lucky ones.
"It helps him get the school experience started at an early age," she said. "He comes home, he remembers the colors and everything else verbatim. He's just excited. I'd recommend it to anyone."
The research on the effectiveness of Pre-K education is mixed, some claim little or no gain is made for students who attend Pre-K classes while others view the experience of Pre-K as beneficial as students enter elementary school. Studies have shown that two groups that benefit greatly from Pre-K are ESL students and free and reduced lunch students. Studies have shown these students make considerable gains in language and cognitive ability.

Obama checking private schools in DC

President-elect and his wife are doing what all good politicians and their families do, send their children to private school. Race and party affiliation are irrelevant, all that matters is their children do not attend the same kind of school as the majority of people who voted for them. They can use any excuse they want but the bottom line is the same, the schools that we work in and send our children to are not good enough for their children to attend. They want to fix the schools but what do they know about them except what they hear from others, there is no way to know what is going on in public schools unless you are involved in them.

From the AP:
"Michelle Obama visited at least two well-known private schools in Washington on Monday as she and President-elect Obama prepare to move their two young daughters to the White House in January.
The soon-to-be first lady toured Georgetown Day School in the morning and Sidwell Friends School, which Chelsea Clinton attended, in the afternoon. In between, she spent about two hours visiting the residential portion of the White House with first lady Laura Bush. Their husbands met privately in the Oval Office.
Michelle Obama flew from Chicago to Washington and back separately from her husband, who did not visit the schools. It was not clear whether the Obamas will look at other schools, and their staff provided no details.
The Obamas' children, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha, now attend a private school in Chicago. There are some public schools in the District of Columbia that the Obamas could consider, including a few in affluent northwest Washington that have been recognized nationally as Blue Ribbon Schools. "

Change indeed...

A true athlete and scholar

Florida State's Myron Rolle may have to miss FSU November 22nd game with Maryland; for an interview. No not an interview at the Tallahassee police department like so many Seminoles before him but rather an interview for one of 32 spots as a Rhodes Scholar.

Rolle, a 3.75 pre-med student who finished his undergrad degree in two-and-a-half years, received an e-mail notifying him that he'd been named a Rhodes finalist. Finishing pre-med in 2 and half years is impressive enough but the fact that he is also one of FSU's best players is incredible.

Quotes from SI.com:
"I was disappointed about losing the [Georgia Tech] game," said Rolle, "but the news about the Rhodes Scholarship lifted my spirits."

Rolle, who had not yet been made aware of the conflict, said at the time: "I definitely couldn't miss that game. I wouldn't do that to my teammates."
"I'm definitely going to Birmingham.
"The more I do mock interviews here at school and think about what I want to say [to the committee], I have grown to really want to be a Rhodes Scholar," said Rolle. "If it takes missing a game, that's what it takes."

Rolle, the youngest of five brothers from Galloway, N.J., and the son of two academic-minded Bahamian immigrants, has had his sights set on a career in medicine since middle school.
Were he fortunate enough to attend Oxford, his goal is to "study medical anthropology with some of the greatest minds in the world." The knowledge he'd gain from that field, which examines the social and cultural aspects of medicine, would go a long way toward his ultimate goal of building clinics in the Bahamas and around the world.
Again, this is a football player we're talking about.
"I always talked about being a Rhodes Scholar, but it was just so distant at the time. I didn't think of the magnitude of the award," said Rolle. "Now that it's possibly three weeks away, it has hit me."

Will the NCAA promote this student as much as they can? No, fans aren't real interested in stories about athletes who achieve something with their opportunity at a free education. If he has been arrested it would been on ESPN as soon as it was confiremed but this, not a word.

Reading, Writing and Curious George

I have taught either 3rd or 4th grade ESL or ELL for the past several years and every year we have gotten a new way to teach reading. Wait, it's not a brand new way every year, but it's a revision of the way we did it the year before. I have tried to implement the new method every year, some years I don't try very hard but I always end up back where I started, using real literature instead of textbooks or leveled readers or whatever else they have for us.

Why?

It's certainly not easier than using the reading textbook, I don't have the lessons laid out and I don't have worksheets to evaluate what they know and don't know. Not every child can effectively read the story so we spend time reading and rereading the book to practice vocabulary. Despite the trouble and the extra time needed to prepare lessons reading real literature is the best way to teach to children to read and more importantly to help them to like to read.

"Curous George ...this George he lived in Africa he is a little monkey and he likes to eat bananas one day there is a man had a big yellow hat he saw George and he put his hat under then George see it he likes it he put it on his head but the hat is very big than George head. When he put his it in his head he couldn't and go quickly to catch him after that the man who has a big yellow hat.

The only editing he did was to read what he wrote to one of his peers and they decided if it sounded like something you would like to read. His classmate helped him with his grammer and sentince structure. Is it a great piece of writing, probably not but it's a great piece of writing for someone who has been in the US less than 6 months.

kids and medication

Some scary numbers from McPaper (USA Today) about children being prescribed medications for all kinds of illnessess and diseases. Want to see how many kids take meds, go to the school office at lunchtime, you'll see a steady stream of kids coming to the office or to the clinic taking medication.

The most interesting point of the article is in the last paragraph, "Most of the increase in drugs for diabetes, attention deficit/hyperactivity and depression was seen in girls. The gender gap was most striking in diabetes: While the number of boys taking medication grew by 39%, the number of girls using them climbed by 147%"

Scary.

The number of children who take medication for chronic diseases has jumped dramatically, another troubling sign that many of the youngest Americans are struggling with obesity, doctors say.
The number of children who take pills for type 2 diabetes — the kind that's closely linked to obesity — more than doubled from 2002 to 2005, to a rate of six out of 10,000 children. That suggests that at least 23,000 privately insured children in the USA are now taking diabetes medications, according to authors of the new study in today's Pediatrics.
Doctors also saw big increases in prescriptions for high cholesterol, asthma and attention deficit and hyperactivity. There was smaller growth for drugs for depression and high blood pressure.
"We've got a lot of sick children," says author Emily Cox, senior director of research with Express Scripts, which administers drug benefit programs for private insurance plans. "What we've been seeing in adults, we're also now seeing in kids."
Type 2 diabetes was once known as adult-onset. But Cox says her records show kids as young as 5 being treated with prescription diabetes drugs.

Cox based her study on prescription records of nearly 4 million children a year, ages 5 to 19, covered by Express Scripts. She says her findings may not apply to the 40% of children who are uninsured or covered by government health plans.
Unless these children make major changes — such as eating healthier and exercising more — they could be facing a lifetime of illness, Cox says.
"These are not antibiotics that they take for seven to 10 days," Cox says. "These are drugs that many are taking for the rest of their lives."

Life without Halloween parties

One of my fondest memories from elementary school was the Halloween Party, we got to dress up and get candy, at school. We didn't have to do something good to get the candy, we didn't have to turn in all our work, or be quiet in the halls; we just had to show up.

We got to wear our costumes more than once and it didn't matter if Halloween fell on a Monday we had our party at school that day and went trick-or-treating that night, not another night that wasn't a school night. I also enjoyed the fact that most of the teachers also dressed up, it was great to see them as someone besides themselves. The funniest costume I remember was one of my teachers dressed in a navy suit with Monopoly money pinned all over him. When asked what he was; a Republican of course. The next year he went as a Democrat and spent the day giving out Monopoly money, the worse your grade the more you got. But those days are gone.

We teachers now are not allowed to dress up for Halloween, we can't have the kids dress up and no Halloween parties. We can vote as a faculty to have two of the following; a Fall Celebration, Winter Celebration or Spring Celebration, or what used to be called Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day. We inevitably vote for the Winter and Spring Celebrations leaving Halloween as an after thought.

School isn't a place for anything but learning standards anymore and that's a damn shame.

pictures are from: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/pix/hw06/index.html

Finally, watching videos at work is easy

MTV has finally done what YouTube can't, let you watch videos at work.

For your enjoyment: Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down

Johnny Cash |MTV Music

School fund-raisers...

Are school fundraisers necessary?

Every year schools across the country find ways to raise money. Our school has sold the Entertaniment books, SmartCards and we are having a Fall Festival. That's three in 10 weeks and we aren't done yet. We'll be selling M&Ms, cookie dough and a fun run in the spring. What's it for? Most goes to expenses associated with running copies. Things like paper, machine maintenance, ink, toner a whole laundry list of things. The money also goes to send teachers to various conferences and trainings during the school year.

I understand that the school needs to raise more money to afford the things we need to do an effective job of teaching, I'm just tired of the paperwork, the crappy prizes and feeling like I'm screwing people when I ask my 4th graders to sell cookie dough for 2-3 times more than it costs at any grocery store.
When the headline on fundraising websites trumpets the amount of profit you are guaranteed, it's hard to feel good about asking parents who aren't doing all that well themselves right now to give more.

I know they won't go away, but I don't have to push my kids to sell anything or remind them if they sell 10 buckets of cookie dough they'll get a stuffed animal.

http://www.school-fundraisers.com/

http://topschoolfundraisers.com/

http://www.easy-fundraising-ideas.com/

The joys of a state takeover

The school district that employs me has been taken over by the state because we continue to fall below the benchmarks set by NCLB. (no this will not be another NCLB bashing, the more we bitch, the more the general public is convinced NCLB is a good thing) The groups that fall below benchmark nationally, African-Americans and Latinos, fall below the mark here as well. The state has repeatedly told the district to direct more state and federal funds to these two groups but...the district decided that the money was better spent on conferences for administrators, more administrative staff, and remodeling central office.
It wasn't that the state didn't give the district several years to correct this problem, they gave us 5 in fact, but the superintendant and school board ignored the threats. The superintendant continued to give everyone, including the local media, the Baghdad Bob, everything is fine, test scores continue to rise and we are reading better, math isn't a problem...Social Studies and Science?...who needs them and besides those scores don't count on NCLB. We'll be fine, nothing to worry about. Those who have friends who are teachers, ignore what they are saying, they don't know anything, they're just teachers, they bitch about everything. (the last part is true, damn people crack a smile)

Fast forward to 2008-2009, the state controls everything. We have to get state approval to buy textbooks, we have to change our reading testing system to one the state approved (DIBELS), and we have more meetings to learn how to document everything. The state continues to assure us that they are going to let us run the district once we meet NCLB benchmarks, and...some in the profession belive them. Come on people, once the state takes over they don't let you have control back. We're in for a long ride and it won't get better.

A break from sports

I have a blog that is almost exclusively sports and now I have decided to write about things other than sports. I have found that many people, some of them are even my friends, don't love sports as much as I do and so to placate them I am going to do what most other bloggers do, write random thoughts about the world. Not another Deadspin or anything like that, I have another job that gets in the way of hardcore blogging but rather a way for me to write my thoughts and keep the last pieces of sanity I have left.