It’s not often that I post on back to back days, but I fear my days as an educator in constant contact with students may be numbered so I want to get as much discussion out of my system as I can before I return to being a cog in some Man’s machine.

One thing I’ve always noticed about educators is most of us seem to have a two year old’s desire for things to be “fair.” That’s fine, as long as we all realize one thing my daddy taught me long ago. “Son,” he said, “fair is where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy, and step in donkey poop at the petting zoo.” That was immediately followed up with the sage declaration, “Son, get it through your head right now — life never has been, is not now, nor ever will be FAIR.”

So, let’s explore this idea of educational fairness. First comes the sainted desire for “everyone to have an equal opportunity to succeed.” Okay, that’s great as far as it goes, but it’s never going to happen. Call it Original Sin or negative karma or just plain old bad luck of the draw but, Jeffersonian assertions and American Dream drivel to the contrary, all people are not created equal.

A child born to a wealthy Manhattan banker has it made for life cradle to grave as long as he or she doesn’t do something colossally stupid and even then, a tall enough stack of Benjamins can cover a great deal of stupidity. By the same token, an AIDS orphan in sub-Saharan Africa or a dumpster diving child gang member in Guatemala City doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of anything much more than a short, painful and nasty life. The banker’s child will be educated beyond his ability and the poor children will die of disease or starvation having never learned how to write their own name. Sadly, neither will ever likely stop to think, “Gee, this isn’t very fair, is it?”

Now, lest anyone be decieved, not only is that the way it is, but when it comes right down to where the rubber meets the road, it’s that way because we tolerate it. You see, people don’t REALLY want fairness and equality. Educators are no different. What people, including educators, want is for the world to be fair TO THEM. For instance, I know a tremendous teacher at another school whom I had the opportunity to speak with at some length. This teacher waxed eloquent about the perils and perditions of the children along the I-95 Corridor here in South Carolina who go to school in abject poverty in schools that were built, at best, during the Wilson Administration. So, I took the teacher to task and asked, “If you are so passionate about the cause of these children, why don’t you leave the Upstate and go down there to Williamsburg or Lee county and teach in those schools. They could really use you!” The reply? “I couldn’t ever live somewhere like that!” Hypocrisy? Not really, more like plain old honesty.

The way this “fairness” thing works is for the underadvantaged to have more, the overadvantaged have to have less. That thinking runs completely opposite from the way we good American Capitalists have been brought up to believe. Here’s another example. In Greenville County, raising property taxes one mille will net the county and by extension the schools over a million dollars. That’s one mille. The same one mille increase in a county like Jasper will barely bring in five thousand dollars to the educational coffers. Now, a few years ago, the idea was floated around about making things “more fair” by taking ALL the property tax money earmarked for education and dropping it all in the same pot then doling it out according to need. People came UNGLUED at the very idea! Anyone who supported the idea was practically branded a Communist. The reaction I heard most often was “how dare they take money from MY CHILD’S school and send it to THOSE SCHOOLS.”

Now, is that fair? Needless to say, the plan didn’t get far so for now, if you have the unmitigated bad luck to be born in Allendale County instead of Anderson County, you are, as my student patrons like to say, S.O.L. Of course, I hear these people say, “Well, if a parent wants what’s best for his or her children, they will be willing to sacrifice and move to a better school.” So, if you have the unmitigated bad luck to be born to a crack addicted mother or an uneducated teen mother or just a poor family in general you are, once again, S.O.L.

As long as we are a state and, farther up, a nation, and farther up still, a world where some people unthinkingly eat caviar costing $1K an ounce while others scrounge around in a garbage heap  to find lightly rotten fruit to stave off hunger, equal educational opportunity will be a pipe dream of the first magnitude.

So what does all this have to do with NCLB? Well, is it “fair” for a child born in poverty and neglect to be held to the same standard as the child born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth? Is it “fair” for the teacher teaching the first child to be held to the same standard as the teacher teaching the second? Is it “fair” for the school that the first child attends to be held to the same standard as the school educating the second? Well?

The saddest part of the whole equation is the fact that it doesn’t have to be this way. Enough resources are available to ensure every child has an equal opportunity, but those resources are not distributed equitably or, as some would say it, “fairly.”

To put it bluntly, No Child Left Behind is a farce and a joke. As long as one child goes to a palatial new school brimming with newest technology to be taught by the best and brightest who were attracted by the highest pay while another child goes to an ancient brick monolith where a dry erase board would be considered bleeding edge technology and be taught by a brand new teacher trying to pay off a student loan or a burned out teacher too tired to be effective and too close to retirement to quit, as long as that situation exists, the very idea of “educational equal opportunity” will continue to be a laughingstock in every teachers’ lounge in this country.

I said a paragraph ago that the saddest part is the “unfairness” behind the distribution of resources; I was wrong. The gravest and saddest part of the equation is that people who could initiate change are too wrapped up in their own agendas to try to change things or too unwilling to risk a little hardship to care if things change or not.

So, I’m going to have a candied apple and ride the Tilt-a-Whirl then I’ll wash the donkey poo off my feet and go home safe in the knowledge that I was treated as “fairly” as I’m ever likely to be.

Once again, I love y’all, but I sure wish things could be different. Unfortunately, as Daddy always said, “If wishes and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” Or at least a “fair chance.”

I’m not going to break any new ground in this post, but ever since spring break, I’ve had something I’ve wanted to get off my chest and it’s not going away. I’ve fought back the urge to write this post because I didn’t want to insult anyone or get anyone’s knickers in a knot. But, it’s in my nature to make people mad, so I’m taking Admiral Farragut’s advice and steaming on ahead.

Simply put, the greatest argument against the wrongheaded thinking that is No Child Left Behind and all its accompanying legislation can be summed up in two words — Waffle House. Okay, so maybe in your neck of the woods it’s Huddle House or Pancake House or even Falafel House, but you know the place I’m talking about. If everyone has to be, as the pundits would have us believe, a rocket scientist, who is going to work at Waffle House? Who is going to write down my order for two waffles, dark and a large order of hash-browns scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, capped, and peppered — with a vanilla Diet Coke? Who is going to ladle the Batter of Life onto that Heavenly waffle iron at 3:00 AM so I can bring my inevitable meeting with the cardiac surgeon just a bit closer?

Now, let me, as the cowboys say, “Whoa up,” right here a minute and get one thing straight with everyone who has gotten all red in the face at my perceived elitism. Those of you who know me are aware that I was raised from pillar to post following Mama after we lost our home when my daddy left. When we finally got to settle down the summer before I started 8th grade, it was to live in a 15’X50′ 1965ish single wide trailer with no heat in the winter and one room of A/C in the summer. Mama dropped out of school in 10th grade and still kept a roof over my head and enough food on the table to make me fat a freaking mud. Mama worked in a textile mill. Long as you are earning your money and not hurting anyone, you work where you can or where you want to. If slinging burgers at the Golden Arches is the best a person can do then sling on, my brother, and as a matter of fact I will have fries with that. I’ve got NO PROBLEM with a man, woman, boy, or girl earning an honest dime as best as he or she can.

Believe me, I’ve worked some crappy jobs. I’ve also worked some nasty jobs that, if I’d stayed with them and the job had kept going, would have netted me a whole lot more than I make now. I personally knew (as friends only, not in the Biblical sense of “and Cain knew his wife and they begat . . . “) more than one young lady of unimpeachable morals and inadequate resources who put herself through a certain university in the Upstate of South Carolina by um, . . . “dancing” at a “gentlemen’s” establishment called CatTails. One is a doctor now. One is a lawyer . . . and one, well, one got used to $1000 a week for three nights’ of work and never bother to get out of the trade and last I heard she’s down in Atlanta at one of those high dollar clubs the Atlanta Falcons, Braves, and Hawks visit after practice.

Bottom line, I’m not pointing fingers at what anyone does to get by because in the end, that’s all any of us are trying to do — get us and ours by and make ends meet hopefully with a little left over to have some fun every now and then.

A brief digression if you will permit me. Waffle House now and forever holds a special place in my heart because in my Papa John’s last years after many strokes and heart attacks took his vitality but left him insomnia, he would get up at all hours of the night and drive 25 mph all 14 miles on back roads to the Waffle House near our hometown and he’d sit for hours drinking coffee and eating fried egg sandwiches that a precious cook named Mr. Willie and a loving waitress named Ms. Maggie would fix for him. Then they’d call me or Mama and let us know where he was and that he was safe. That might not seem like much you, but to a man like my Papa John, full of pride but past his prime, it meant the world.

Mr. Willie didn’t need a master’s degree in culinary arts from Johnson and Wales to cook bacon and eggs at Waffle House! Ms. Maggie didn’t even need a high school diploma. For that matter, observing the usual third shift crew at our local store, you don’t even need all your teeth, but a tattoo or four does seem to be mandatory. Waffle House employs a tandem axle dump-truck load (that’s a whole bunch for the yankees in the audience) of people as waitresses and cooks and a good chunk of them have never walked across ANY stage to pick up a piece of paper.

Our homes are built by day laborers and equipment operators and carpenters and plumbers who dropped out of school but got a degree in LIFE and now are productive and motivated in a way that every standardized test in America will never measure. My Papa Frank used to always tell me the world would make a place for a man with a quick mind and a strong back. Jobs are available all over this country that, contrary to what our guidance counselors and career specialists say, don’t require any formal training at all. Some of those jobs pay very, very well. If you don’t believe it, get in the phone book and get some quotes on having your driveway paved by a good crew. The job ain’t cheap folks, but asphalt is, so somebody is getting money somewhere and that redneck looking fellow in the cab of the steamroller might look scary, but — assuming he’s worth the powder it would take to blow his brains out — his bills are paid and his family is fed and he isn’t holding up a liquor store.

It’s all well and good to say “everyone needs to graduate high school.” What we really need to do is look hard at WHY we say that. Who are we making feel good? I’ve got a buddy right now whose mama was my fourth grade reading teacher, his daddy’s an engineer, but he dropped out of college after half a semester to start his own landscaping business and he’s done just fine. He employs about 15 people in 3 crews and is making money hand over fist. So, who is elitist? Who gets to decide that “everyone needs to graduate high school.” Papa Wham always said “This world needs ditch-diggers just as much as it needs doctors.”

What’s the difference other than the fact one has a lot cleaner feet! I can tell I’ll be coming back to this topic later, but for now . . .

Love y’all and, Mr. Cook, if you would, make my bacon crispy, my toast dark, and my feet . . . well, y’all know how I want my feet now, don’t y’all!  Til next time.

🙂

Well, Spring Break is over for me. For an entire week, I put school stuff, specifically my job cut, as far out of my mind as I could. I read three of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and thoroughly enjoyed each of them. I’ve never been a fan of series fiction, but I do believe I’m going to make an exception in this case. The-Reason-I-Get-Up-In-The-Morning and I had a great many plans made to accomplish this week and in true G.S. Feet style, we did nothing. It’s the thought that counts, right? In the spirit of not being totally useless on Spring Break, I did manage to get our rather eccetric riding lawnmower going this afternoon and cut the hayfield that was masquerading as our backyard. I put it off as long as I could because I have such godawful allergies, but when Beau and Jack start disappearing when they lie down, Budge insists that I cut grass. It didn’t help that the neighbors on each side of me cut their yards — naturally making mine look even worse!

But anyway, I’ve spent the last two hours checking out job leads in every school district within an hour’s drive from my house. I’ve even included neighboring states as long as they meet the hour’s drive criteria. I’d be willing to drive even farther, but once I get much past an hour, fuel and car maintenance costs start becoming so prohibitive that I begin to see the point of diminishing returns. I’ve updated my resume’ and I’ve already sent it to a couple of places to get some feelers out. I’ve got to be honest, though — I despise job hunting. I’ve never been very good at it and dumb blind luck has always played a greater than normal hand in most jobs I’ve worked at over the years. For example, I got my first job without even trying when my grandmother went to get groceries at the local Community Cash and the manager told her to send her grandson up to see him for a job.

Well, I started working there as a stockboy and bagger two weeks after I turned sixteen and come to find out about six weeks in, Mr. Caldwell, my manager, had confused my grandmother with another woman who had been actively seeking a job for her ne’er do well grandson. I knew the boy and he thanked me profusely for affording him the opportunity to mooch and laze around for several more months.

My first teaching job wasn’t much more glorious. I still remember that first summer out of college. I didn’t have my own computer then so I TYPED my resume’ on an old portable typewriter with a thermal transfer ribbon. I sent out 92 resumes in that two month span and got ONE interview that puttered out. So, I went to work with Mama at the textile plant as a cloth dyer and general flunky. About three months after school started, I was called to the communal pay phone in the break room to take a call and it was a principal from a nearby school who knew someone who knew me and wanted me to come interview that afternoon before 5:00. I asked her if I could go home and change first and she said, “No, I want to give you this job and I need you here at 5:00 if not sooner.”

Well, as I mentioned, I was dyeing cloth for a living at the time and when she’d called me I was in the middle of switching from one color and fabric type to another color and fabric. As a result, I had been INSIDE the dye tank and washer cleaning all traces of the previous color off the various rollers and surfaces. The color I was cleaning was a rather striking deep royal blue and, since it was very tight quarters in the dye vat and the washer, I had as much dye on me as I had on the cleaning cloths. Basically I looked like a giant mutant Smurf on steroids. I had blue hair, blue clothes, blue work boots, and blue hands. The dye wasn’t indelible on skin and hair, but it didn’t come off after the first washing either. As a side note, I’d always preferred the blue to the burnt orange we dyed some furniture cloth. Whenever I had to clean up after a run of that stuff, I looked like the demented love child of the Clemson Tiger mascot and an Oompah-Loompah from Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

So, I got off work at four and washed up as well as I could and drove out to the school. The principal’s jaw hit the floor when I walked in. I told her right then and there, “I tried to warn you, ma’am.” I had to stand up for the entire interview because the dye WAS indelible on polyester fabric and that’s just what her brand new office chairs were covered in. As luck would have it, the color I was drenched in was almost a perfect match to the school’s main colors. The athletic director thought I’d done it on purpose. The last question of the interview was, “how long will it take that stuff to wear off?” I told her about four days. That was on a Monday and I started to work much the next Monday much closer in hue to UNC than to Duke.

So now I’m back out there looking again. I’ll have to interview, of course, and I truly hate interviewing because I never know what the “right” answer to the question is, and we all know that, no matter how open ended the question seems, there is a right answer and woe unto you if you don’t give it. I just hope I find something before TRIGUITM gets anxious and worried. I hate it when she gets anxious. If she just wasn’t so used to hot meals and a roof over her head, it’d be different.

As it is, I guess I’m going to have to really scrub my feet because I don’t think many interviewers will take kindly to a real live set of G.S. Feet, do y’all? I just hope I don’t have to break out the Clorox! 🙂

The Reason I Get Up in the Morning had a full girls’ day planned this past Saturday so she left the house around 9:00 to pick up one of her friends who is getting married this coming Saturday. They were going to pick out altar flowers and some other mystical stuff that guys never understand about their own weddings, much less anyone elses. Then they had a bridal luncheon planned. Well, all that meant to me was six hours of “me time” to do whatever I wanted . . . as long as the laundry got done.

My first order of business was breakfast. I have a serious weakness for McDonald’s hotcakes, so I ventured out into the torrential downpour to visit the local Golden Arches for my usual: three orders of hotcakes (total of nine circles of golden goodness), two hashbrown patties, a hot fudge sundae, a cinamon bun with icing, and a large Diet Coke.

When I got out of my Element — seems I’m always getting out of my element — I noticed a very bedraggled looking young robin huddled on the sidewalk. He looked like a yearling just mastering the art of flying and apparently, this was his first run-in with what human pilots call “instrument only” flying. He just sat there looking cold and miserable and defeated. I eased him over to the cover of an equally bedraggled bush so someone wouldn’t tread on him accidentally — or more likely, stomp him on purpose (we live in that kind of world) — and went inside to work on my heart attack.

When I came out twenty minutes later, I checked on the little guy. He was still where I’d left him and he looked like ten miles of bad dirt and gravel road. I reached down figuring he’d fly away, but instead, he just looked up at me with a sort of resigned sigh of a gaze that said, “so this is how it ends; life was so short.” I couldn’t help smiling because I’ve seen that look in the mirror on many a Monday morning (and many a Sunday morning back in college, but I digress).

I scooped him up in my hand and he gave a half-hearted peck at my finger and sort of ruffled his feathers, more to keep up appearances in case any of the relatives were watching than any real attempt to get away. I unlocked the Element and sat him on the passenger side floor where he dissolved into a head down blob of soaked feathers and misery. Once I got the VTEC rolling, I cut the heat on full blast. I could see the draft of warm air move his tail feathers.

It didn’t take long for the little fellow to locate the source of this wonderful artificial Santa Ana and he hopped right up next to the vent duct. I was a little worried at first that he might try to climb inside, but he was content to hunker down at the mouth of the vent. As I backed out of my parking space, he shot me a look that said, “I just may survive after all.”

I went to get gas and left the engine and heater running. By the time I’d filled up and pulled away from the pumps, he had almost completely dried out and spread his wings to get the dampness from the undersides. I could tell then that my suspicions had be correct . . . he was wet and cold, but otherwise unharmed; no broken wings or missing feathers.

In that mode, we wended our way towards home. About half way back to the house, he actually fluttered up to my shoulder and looked me in the eye. I told him that I understood his concern, but that I wouldn’t make any comments about how he flew if he didn’t make any snide whistles and chirps about how I drove. He hopped down from my shoulder and explored the rest of the vehicle for the duration of the trip home.

Once we reached the Feet hacienda, I reached under the back seat and plucked him from his new found hiding spot. Again, he put up a bit of a token resistence, but mostly sat quietly in the relaxed grip of my left hand. I set him in an old nest we had on the porch then seated myself in the porch glider and waited to see what he’d do. After taking the measure of his surroundings, he flew from one end of the porch to the other then alighted on the rail, and, giving me a head bob of what I took to be avian appreciation, fluttered off into my boxwoods where I’m sure he received a warm welcome from the rest of the resident fowl.

The moral of the story? I don’t suppose there is one, but if I had to make one up, this is what it would be. The economy is in the tank. A lot of us, including yours truly, are going to lose their jobs. It’s a stressful time for just about everyone. Blame is flying around. People and companies are going bankrupt. In general, it’s a cold, wet, and figuratively miserable day and a whole bunch of us are on the wet tile sidewalk of life just waiting to get stomped on.

And what can I do about it? Not a dead blessed thing. I can’t change the economics; I can’t “dry the world off” so to speak. I’m in a mess myself. But, I can take the time to help out a creature less able to meet the demands of the moment than I am. That’s the only way we are going to make it through these times ahead — together. So, if you see one of your sisters or brothers — one of your fellow travelers on our Pale Blue Dot — and he or she is lying soaked and miserable on the sidewalk of life, take a moment to lend a hand. Sometimes, all they need is a little time in some warmth just to get some strength back to flutter on a little further. That’s the best any of us can hope to do, y’all — just flutter along and try our best to keep our feet clean. Love you all.

Okay, my best buddy and I work at the same school. We have a forty minute commute, one way. Eighty minutes is a long time to spend in the car with one person on a daily basis, so we have pretty much solved every crisis including the economy, global warming, and nuclear proliferation. However, we have discovered a new menace on the horizon that we have no idea how to solve. It’s called “The Watchmen.”

I don’t know if you’ve read Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel, but it’s a pretty mindblowing read. Thinking back to the Eighties when it was first published, I can only think the guy had guts to write it and DC pushed the envelope to publish it. It was pretty groundbreaking stuff. I have to admit though, I hadn’t thought of Watchmen in years. I always have preferred Moore’s sophomore effort, “V for Vendetta” about the guy in the Guy Fawkes mask who blows up things to protest authority he doesn’t respect. Hmmm, wonder why?

Anyway, hadn’t thought of Watchmen, but the movie came out. My little buddy / right hand man Chris went to see it and told me his opinion. My wife’s friend from work went to see it and she shared Chris’ opinion. Well, my boy Beau Geste went to see it this past Saturday so I was looking forward to his opinion on the drive down on Monday. Unfortunately, I didn’t get his opinion on Monday . . . or Tuesday for that matter . . . because my main dude was laid low by a case of the green apple trots. Yep. The old stomach flu bug. You know the kind. Sitting on the throne with a bucket in your lap because, as a sportswriter once said about some game or other, “It could go either way.”

Well, Bo was back yesterday, still a little green around the gills, but ready to tell me about Watchmen. He’d asked me to go, but once I found out the movie was around three hours and fifteen minutes, I knew that this little grey duck wouldn’t be going. The last movie (other than the three Lord of the Rings masterpieces) that I endured was Titanic and I’m sorry to all the 25 to 35 year old women out there who LOVED that movie, it didn’t take the blasted boat THREE HOURS to sink!! All I could think about through the whole movie was “hit the iceberg already!!” Of course the last scene was stupid as well. Leo is in the freezing water clinging to the door that Kate is floating on. Does she scootch over to let him on? Heck no. She sits there and lets him freeze to death all the while talking about how she’ll never let him go. The door was the size of a double garage for crying out loud!!! Half the blasted boat could have fit on it and she couldn’t move her skinny butt over enough to let “her Jack” on?

But I digress. So, I asked Bo about Watchmen and he shared the same opinion as Chris and Erica. He described it as “three hours of soft porn starring a shiny naked blue guy with some obvious special effects in his nether regions.” I knew right then that I wouldn’t be seeing the movie. Three people confirmed it for me. The book didn’t seem so risque’ back when. I even dug out my copy to check my memory. Sure enough, ol’ Dr. Manhattan always seemed to be standing in the back of the panel or, if he was drawn full frontal, his, um, “reactor” was much more tastefully muted than the movie.

Now, I’m not a prude by any means, but one must draw the line somewhere. I had an acquaintance who fancies himself a movie critic and an “artiste” tell me that Dr. Manhattan was a classical representation of  the human form much like Michealangelo’s “David”. I politely told him he was drunk AND an idiot who didn’t know art or movies because “David” was classical sculptural marble and Dr. Manhattan was a naked glowing porn Smurf. He sniffed and said I didn’t know a thing about art. I said that I might not know art but I knew what I liked and I pretty much didn’t like a three hour Enzyte commercial with a seven foot tall glowing blue version of Smiling Bob!!

Well, I love the graphic novel, “The Watchmen”, but I suppose I’ll give the movie a pass. I can’t sit still for three hours anymore and besides, I prefer my main characters to be a little less “in your face” if you know what I mean. So, I’ll be anxiously awaiting the release of Star Trek in May just to see if they butcher it like they did “The Golden Compass.”

Until then, may the Force be with y’all and be sure to wash your feet . . . and every other sparkly blue part too! 🙂

W.B. Yeats once described education as “not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” These days, that dear voice of Ireland would probably say something like “education is not the celebration of understanding, but the taking of test after test after test.” American education is in a sad state of affairs because all that matters is (cue the ominous music) The Test. Well, I say . . .

BALONEY!

Tuesday past, our faculty had our annual testing inservice in preparation for next week’s two day writing portion of our state’s NCLB qualifying High Stakes Test. The theory behind this latest retooled monstrosity is that by giving the writing piece of the test this early in March, we will have “useable” results earlier than halfway through second quarter next year.

BALONEY!

This test isn’t even normed yet, so how do they expect to give us any meaningful results early enough to be of any “diagnostic” use? Bottom line is, they don’t. This test is just the latest in a line stretching back nearly twenty years now of ways that politicians try to reduce something as complex as a young human being with hopes, dreams, issues, baggage and aspirations to nothing more than a raw test score so someone somewhere who also has no clue about education or children can “compare” two students, schools, or states.

MORE BALONEY!!

If you are reading this and you are not an educator, you have no CLUE what sitting in a testing inservice is like. It’s not the boredom or the endless procedures. Oh no, it is something much more palpable and terrifying than that. It’s the gut wrenching fear of knowing that every single thing you’ve done in your classroom this year is about to be judged by one blunt instrument . . . The Test. We pour an academic year into cramming standards into our pupils’ heads and it all comes down to this. One week of testing that is a minor aggravation to the students, but is of unsurpassed major importance to the teachers. Your career, your livelihood, and (if we educators will admit it) a big chunk of our self esteem is on the line every spring just because some politicians think we aren’t doing our jobs so we must be “held accountable.”

EVEN SMELLIER BALONEY!!!

Hold US accountable? Who, may I ask, is holding the PARENTS accountable or the politicians accountable who make these ridiculous policies that are enforced with draconian measures but funded with penny mandates? Worse, how can any reasonable person believe that any two states in this Union or any two children in the world can be compared based on the results of ONE TEST? What is more, what sane, reasonable person with any understanding of children would WANT to?

BIG LOAD OF BALONEY!!!!

Tests, by their very nature and definition, are designed to show what someone has “learned” or “retained” or “knows”. Unfortunately, this kind of instrument is patently USELESS in this 2009th year since the stable in Bethlehem. We are no longer in a paradigm where what you know matters. What you “know” is USELESS in many more cases than people want to believe. What you “know” will be outdated tomorrow. In this modern paradigm, the important thing isn’t what you “know;” it’s what you can FIND OUT and how you can use what you find. It’s the Information Age, but we are forced to evaluate our digital natives using hopelessly analog anthropology. It’s the equivalent of trying to tune a Ferrari’s engine with a wainwright’s tools.

IT’S SUCH COMPLETE, UTTER BALONEY!!!!!

We mourn the fact that so few students care about school or education. I’ll be honest; if I’d had to sit through a day, week, year of classes that drilled me for one big test that carried no relevance to me or my life, I probably wouldn’t care much about school either. I don’t work with poorly trained teachers. I don’t work with hard hearted, slave driving administrators. No, I work with and for some of the brightest, most caring, most student centered people you will ever meet, but their hands are tied. I cannot tell you how many wonderful units of learning or how many great teachable moments have to pass by unfulfilled because it would take time from what is essentially TEST PREPARATION AD NAUSEUM. Teachers and administrators have no choice. School funding, the lifeblood of any facility, lives and dies — rises and falls — on test performance so we have no recourse to, as much as possible, TEACH THE BLOODY TEST.

And meanwhile, a generation of students who could otherwise be engaged learners become passive vessels whom we hope can spill their contents successfully and accurately onto a page full of bubbles and thereby validate our existence as educators for one more year.

It’s a load of baloney; it is crippling our educational system; it is robbing our teachers of their joy; it is destroying our students’ desire to learn.

It. Is. Awful.

If we don’t find someway to take a stand and get politicians in office who can change this “high stakes, win or lose, testing as the be all and end all” mentality, our public education is doomed.

Then where will we be? Where will we wash our feet, y’all? 😦 ?

Sorry, Micky J. , couldn’t help meself 🙂

So, what’s the buzz with Interactive Whiteboards? Our district is in the middle of a push to put them in every classroom. We use SMARTboards. My wife’s district is in the middle of a push to put them in every classroom. They use Promethean. Now, I will say this . . . I like SMART better than Promethean for one simple reason: Promethean has a godawful pen. Board costs over a thousand dollars set up and ready to go; pen costs around $19.95 and looks and feels like it should be less. I mean, come on, Promethean people, get a new pen design! Yes, I’ve seen the wand. It looks useless as well. The Promethean boards seem much sturdier, but I gotta go with the board that lets me use my finger to write on it. But design flaws aside, what’s the point of a IW?

Okay, when I was in kindergarten, Miss Collins and Mrs. Batette wrote on a blackboard with chalk while we sat and got. Then, when I was in high school, Mr. Miller wrote notes on an overhead projector and we sat and got. College? Lecture theater and REALLY BIG overhead projector. Us? Sitting and getting. When I started teaching, I noticed someone had come up with the brilliant idea of hanging white showerboard on the old chalkboard and writing on it with Expo dry erase markers. I went to Lowe’s and bought three 8′ sheets of the stuff with some sheetrock screws and I had a “whiteboard” instead of a chalkboard. My allergies thanked me; my students, not so much BECAUSE, I wrote on the whiteboard with my dry erase markers and they . . . sat and got. Anyone see a pattern here?

Okay, so now I walk through my school, I see teachers on the internet, I see other teachers in other places and they’ve all got IWs. New buzz . . . we’ve all got to have IWs. So teachers all have IWs. I see these IWs in use and what is happening? Well, in 9 cases out of 10, the teacher is writing on the IW with something, maybe her finger, and the students are? Yep, you guessed it, sitting and getting.

Oh yes, and while I’m on the subject, if your “getting” isn’t rhyming with your “sitting” in your head, you aren’t saying it right because you have had the misfortune of being born outside the glorious Elysian Fields that is the American South. Yes, we are backwards in a lot of ways and yes, things are a might strange at times here in Dixie, but no one can deny that we have one awesome accent. I know my gumbo delta mud speech patterns kept me in liquid refreshment all through college courtesy of a group of wild eyed New Jersey boys who would buy all night as long as I kept talking.

But I digress, as usual.

So what I’m asking is why are we investing so much into a technology that costs a ginormous amount of money and yet, as most of the teachers I’ve seen use it, performs the same function as an $8 dollar sheet of showerboard and a pack of four Expo markers? Personally, I think the problem lies in the difference between knowing how to “work” something and knowing how to “use” something. Lots and lots of teachers today can “work” an IW. They can write on it with their fingers and pull things around and click on the Web without going to their computers. But that’s all.

So, what’s the problem? Fear. This piece of equipment costs tons of money. God forbid we should let the children near it! They might mess it up! They might puncture it, dirty it, ruin it!

Yes. They might. Or they might get engaged by the technology and, be still my beating heart, actually get interested in the lesson content. They may even, and now we’re stretching it, but we can dream, they may even stay awake in class because something they can relate to is going on using a tool they WANT to use. Make no mistake, students are fascinated by IWs. They enjoy them. I’ve even had one lad perform a genuine scientific experiment with one while I was in the room working on his teacher’s second computer. He hurled a pencil at the board as hard as he could. Once the teacher calmed down enough to speak in coherent sentences, she asked him why he’d done that. His reply? He wanted to see if he could make the screensaver go away. Experimentation and scientific method if you ask me. Crude, but scientific.

So, today’s take home point. We are wasting money on IWs if we don’t find some way to get teachers to allow students to I with the W. Sitting and getting has very little place in a 21st century classroom or at a 21st century conference for that matter. The students love the tools ONLY as long as they get to use them. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive toy that will eventually turn them off because they don’t have a stake in it’s use.

So . . . I see a line of boards and they’re all painted white . . . and have electronics in them and computers hooked to them and kids are USING THEM and not setting and getting!!!

Have a good weekend y’all, and don’t forget to . . . well, you know! 🙂

Sorry I’ve been away for awhile folks. To be honest, I’ve been in a good old fashioned funk. Thanks to “The Great Recession”, I’m probably going to be job hunting again (anyone need a slightly used, fully trained and housebroken male librarian?)  and I hate that with a purple passion, but, as the Spanish say so eloquently que sera, sera. Anyway, just as I was on the verge on swearing off blogging (and most of the rest of the real world), throwing my laptop into the creek, and taking to my bed in the fetal position complete with thumb in mouth, one of my two readers besides Mama and Budge asked me to post again and I can’t disappoint someone who thinks what I have to say is important. So, with no further ado.

I was listening to NPR’s “Whad Ya Know” with Michael Feldman and he was interviewing the curator of Rowan Oak House in Oxford, MS. Of course, as every good grit eating Southern boy and every burger flipping English major knows, Rowan Oak is the former home of one William “I can’t write a short sentence if my soul depends on it” Faulkner. The curator was describing the tour he’d recently given a group of fifth graders. He related that they seemed sufficently awed by the experience so he took them into Faulkner’s bedroom / study / studio where he’d done most of his writing. On the antique hardwood desk sat the very Underwood manual typewriter that had tapped out The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses and my personal favorite, the deliciously macabre “A Rose for Emily” among others. The curator noted he was quite pleased with the hushed restraint that the youngsters showed. It was the hush in the room that allowed him to hear one young lad lean over and whisper to his comrade, “Dude, check out Faulkner’s laptop! Where’s the screen?”

Predictably, the audience laughed, but when you stop to think about it, the young boy was simply using what he knew to apply to the situation. He saw a keyboard and assumed “laptop”. Why shouldn’t he? When was the last time anyone of us seriously used a typewriter? I remember well writing my last theme in Senior English for Ms. Howell with a Brother portable correcting typewriter that had a newfangled ribbon that “melted” type onto the paper. All through college, I used a series of brand new Apple IIes and Macs and when a new product called Windows 3.1 hit the big time, we started using PCs.

What technology we now take for granted will be unrecognizable to the next generation or at least the one that follows it?

Being a huge music lover, I thought back over my four decades at the dizzying advance of audio technology. When I was born, it was no Baby Einstein for me. I listened to Janis Joplin LPs played on Mama’s console stereo. AM radio was king of the hill. I could lay awake at night and listen to stations in another STATE on our AM receiver Daddy had attached to the TV antenna. By the time I was six, Daddy had put an 8-Track with bass boost in his Camaro. Now that was a useless piece of equipment. Anyone who ever complained about programming a vcr should have had to try to “fast forward” to a chosen song on an 8-Track. It was an exercise in futility.

Cassettes were king of the Eighties as I started riding around in my ’79 Mustang and then Marilyn, my ’69 SS Chevelle. I had a cassette case full of Southern Rock and Metal. I must have had 300 cassettes in that thing. It stayed in the car because it would have necessitated a forklift to transport it to the house. I remember clearly the night at American Legion Boys’ State when I heard “The Ballad of Curtis Lowe” by Lynard Skynard in the clearest register I’d ever heard. I followed the sound to a counselor’s truck and a new format called the Compact Disc. He had one of the first car mounted CD players in the state. Of course, he still depended on the radio for music while driving because 2X oversampling didn’t go well with the local roads. Skipping was a nightmare and no one wanted to risk ruining a $50 dollar CD!!

Now, we have iPods. I’ve got a little black iPod Classic that fits in the palm of my hand with room left over and that little device can hold every song on every one of those 300 cassettes that used to accompany me on my midnight rambles and still have memory left for a season of my favorite TV show . . . if I watched that much TV. We also have satellite radio, if it survives the current economic downturn. I can lay awake at night now and listen to music from another COAST, forget the next state over. No more long rides through places like the Plains with no station to listen to. Just tune in the old XM and let it rock.

It’s been a long and fast ride for us audiophiles, but not everything has been for the best . . . at least in my mind. For one thing, I miss browsing at the local record store. Anyone remember “The Record Bar” chain of stores? iPods have great sound, but where are the liner notes with the band thanking everyone from their nanny on down for the success of this one shot wonder album? Somehow, I don’t forsee an iPod with a recording of “The White Album” by the Beatles going for five figures like an original vinyl LP recently sold for.

Most of all, iPods have taken all the fun out of new music releases. Anyone ever stand in line outside a record store waiting for a midnight release? Guns and Roses Use Your Illusion I and II, baby. Remember it like yesterday . . . rocking out in the parking lot with the local rock station. Man, those were the days. Of course, the ULTIMATE irony is that the real hardcore audio junkies who listen to Classical and such rely not on iPod downloads or even CDs. The REAL DEAL setup? Vinyl LPs played on a turntable worth more than my house. It’s a crazy world. What’s next? Maybe we’ll get direct implants to beam the sound into our brains? Never say never . . . remember, the future is now, and since it’s here I WANT MY FLYING CAR!!! I was promised a flying car and I want it NOW!

Of course, if I had a flying car, it’d be hard to work up a good case of GSF, now wouldn’t it 🙂

Rock on, y’all . . . and don’t forget to wash your feet.

Okay, my mentor and bud Cathy-Jo tagged me for a meme about goals for 2009. Now, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do a little raging against the machine, so here are some of my educational goals for the upcoming year.

#1) Continue fighting “The Test”: I hate Scantrons, bubbles, and stupid acronyms that amount to euphemisms for “pure Hell in the Spring.” Librarians aren’t represented on tests, no matter what anyone tries to make up to the contrary, so we get constantly shafted. What gets tested gets taught and it gets paid for as well.

#2) Fighting the 800 pound gorilla at the Redmond, WA Zoo. I don’t much care for rich people. I like greedy rich people even less. According to legend, a report asked John D. Rockefeller late in the millionaire’s life how much money would it take to satisfy him, especially since he had about a gadzillion dollars. The old Standard Oil man thought a moment before replying, “One more dollar.” Now don’t get me wrong, I know Wild Willy from Redmond City didn’t STEAL any of his money or anything, but it brings to mind a Russian short story called “How Much Land?” In this case, how much money does a man need before he says, “Know what? Education is in bad shape in this country. I think I’ll quit setting up stupid programs that don’t work and give away chunks of my billions AND this godawful software to schools who need it.” How do we fight this fight? Two words: Open Source. OpenOffice 3.0 is sweet. Linux is getting more and more user friendly. Free is good.

#3) Push any book not concerned with VAMPIRES! My RHM Chris P asked me yesterday, “You know what the easiest question I get asked in this library is? ‘Do you have Twilight in?’ Answer: nope, try again tomorrow.” Seriously, put a bloodsucker on the cover and BOOM, bestseller! I am glad they are reading, but, geez, how many copies does a poor rural librarian need? Apparently, one more.

So, it’s not a great and glorious list, but I like it and think they are worthy goals. I don’t know who to tag so if you read this and haven’t been tagged, consider yourself tagged . . . and wash your feet!

I love the movie ConAir. It’s the type of fatalistic gallows humor I can truly appreciate. At one point in the movie, which is set mainly on an airplane, one of the convicts is dancing to that Southern Rock standard “Sweet Home Alabama”. At this point, Steve Buscemi’s character turns to Nicholas Cage’s character and says, “Define irony. Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.”

Now, what makes this particular film reference so very apropo to the situation educationally? Well, define irony. “Bunch of politicians moving educational financing in this state from the relatively stable bedrock of property taxes onto the back of the caveat emptor beast of burden state sales tax . . . right before the largest downturn in the American economy since the Great Depression.” People don’t buy stuff when they are going broke so sales tax revenue plummets, taking school funding with it. Oops, their bad!

My district got an email memo containing the minutes of the latest Teachers’ Advisory Council meeting laying out possiblilities of program, position, and pay cuts. Later that same day, we got a letter from the State Superintendent of Education letting us know that this year’s COLA raise was nixed and, barring a serious uptic in funds, this would be the last year for National Board Certification bonuses. He also mentioned that we might be facing statewide teacher / administrator / librarian pay cuts. If anyone has doubted it up to now, well brothers and sisters, the poo-poo has officially hit the fan.

The SSoE had a very valid point. Teacher salary makes up 85% of a typical district’s budget. Quite simply, we’re running out of room to cut. Much like a body that has burned all the fat off in a starvation process, we are down to consuming muscle.

My daddy always put it this way: “You cannot, no matter how much you try or how fast you move, put ten gallons of water in a five gallon bucket.” Personally, I don’t feel hopeless . . . more like “guarded.” I’m waiting on the other shoe to drop. This is one of those times when being a closet pessimist comes in handy — expectations are low so surprises will be few.

To close, let me cite another great Hollywood flick — All About Eve — with the inimitable Bette Davis when she, as Margot Channing says, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And, if I might add, you may want to wash your feet, y’all. Water’s about all I can afford . . . at least for now.