The Reason I Get Up In The Morning and I had a great morning and early afternoon out together today and one of our stops was getting her faithful steed washed (not that it does much good with all the falling pollen, but I digress). As I watched the Santa Fe disappear into the maw of the wash bay, I thought about when I was little and how I used to ride the car through the bay and marvel at the water slapping against the windshield. Alas, those days are no more. Our litigation-happy culture has rendered many things once quite fun to a child, or at least interesting, completely off limits as business owners try to protect themselves from business ending lawsuits.

So I got to thinking some more about bygone past times that are off-limits today, but at one time were quite common. I’m going to list my few rememberences and tag three of you to do the same 🙂

#1) Sneaking a carload of people into the drive-in movies by riding in the trunk.

Actually, this one wasn’t just litigious, it was illegal, but in that “pesky teenagers” realm of illegality. Today, though, no one is sneaking into drive-in anymore, mainly because drive-ins have gone the way of the Great Auk and the Tasmanian Tiger. That’s a real shame, too. I still remember summer of 1977 being six and a half (remember when being “and a half” was REALLY important!) and sitting on the vinyl roof of Mama’s 1976 Gran Prix watching a cheap flick that no one expected much of. I can still see “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . ” crawling in fuzzy blue letters up the screen at the old Augusta Road Drive-In. The movie turned out to be fairly successful. Unfortunately, that drive in is now paved and buried underneath the Augusta Road on / off ramp of I-85.

#2) Going up on the repair shop hydraulic lift while inside the car.

So maybe I’m the only one who ever did this, but I used to LOVE going with Papa (either Papa) to get the oil changed or the tires rotated on one of their cars. If I asked nicely and remembered my manners (and promised not to tell Granny or Mama) I could stay in the car while it went up on the lift. The view was pretty good for a short kid. I know the repair shops have pretty good reasons not to allow this “ride” anymore, but it was fun. You have to remember, I was from a dinky town. We had to have fun where we could.

#3) Riding on the “back shelf” in the rear car window.

Okay, this is another one of those things we can chalk up to “not being around anymore.” After all, a 1969 Buick Electra 225 (“Deuce and a Quarter” for those “in the know”) had enough room to lay down in. Shoot, Mrs. Catherine’s gold 225 had more room in the rear window than some single beds I’ve slept in. A 2005 Toyota Camry? Not so much. Add to the lack of room a seat-belt law attaching a $50 fine for the pleasure and, well, it’s just not as much fun as it used to be.

#4) Jumping off the High Dive at public swimming pools.

Now I never did this one, but I had the option. The neighborhood pool where my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Larry lived for the first 20 years of their marriage had like a 20′ deep section with a 15′ diving board. It was a test of mettle to climb up the ladder and just jump, much less attempt any sort of real dive. Since, as I’ve stated before, I swim as well as a ’59 Cadillac, I never even attempted to go over there, but I had a lot of fun when I was eight and nine watching the teenage boys try to impress the teenage girl lifeguards. Now though, I can’t recall the last time I saw any diving board at a public pool, much less a real high dive. I blame the lawyers.

And finally #5) BB Gun Wars

Anyone who’s ever watched “A Christmas Story” for 24 hours on TNT on Christmas Eve knows what a genuine “Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-Shot, Range Model Air Rifle with this thingy that tells time and a compass in the stock” is. Now, we used to take those BB guns, put on motorcycle helmets with face guards, and shoot at each other in what can only be described as pre-pubescent chaos. Now, getting shot at close range with a BB gun doesn’t feel very good, but it isn’t fatal either. As the largest target in the kill zone, I can attest to both statements. Yes, when I was around nine or ten and got my first BB gun, my buddies and I used to try to shoot each other. Our mothers thought us insane and our fathers thought it was hilarious. Just as the story goes, it really all was great fun until a new guy moved in and busted up the game with a real pump up air rifle that would shoot right through a face shield, as a friend of mine found out one summer day. We call him “One Eye” Johnny now. Looking back, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Now, though, between gun control and sue-happy people, it’s hard to even get BB guns in some places, much less shoot them at each other.

So there you have it, five memories from my childhood that can’t be relieved by today’s youth. Now, what can y’all add to the pot? To get things rolling I tag my buddy Cathy-Jo Nelson, my other buddy Doug Johnson, and finally, that Georgia Peach, the Unquiet Librarian.

Y’all give me some good ones, okay? Love y’all, and remember to wash your feet 🙂

No, this isn’t a rehash of the famous Christian art work / poem “Footprints in the Sand.”

I was thinking more of how we go through life. Each of us leaves a mark – a trail of footprints – that show our course.

I think of Adolf Hitler. He left a clear trail of deep footprints, but those footprints led to a world in flames and deaths by the millions. Still, even today, many still follow in his crooked, but clear steps. The hatred he left in each tread still points legions towards venom and vitriol and violence. Many who follow in his steps would throw the world into the same chaos as Führer und Reichskanzler did these sixty, nearly seventy years gone.

I think of Marilyn Monroe. She left a trail of glamorous footprints that pointed straight down Hollywood Boulevard’s star-studded Walk of Fame. Her path seems a bright one, as many trails do in the early day’s sunshine, but by the end, night had fallen and her footprints fade into darkness and despair and self-destruction. Unfortunately, Southern California remains flush with the rosy cheeked, the lithely built, the blonde bombshells, who follow Norma Jean’s path. Many have already found the same end as she and many more still tread that uncertain path and who knows how many will yet fall to the same pitfalls that claimed her.

I think of all the celebrities. The famous. The infamous. Those that everyone knows from the movies to politics. The pop culture icons and the movers and shakers of the world. Each of them is blazing a path that will forever tempt others to come behind them and brave the perils of the path they pioneered in an attempt to reap the rare fruits of unqualified success.

I think of the footsteps I am following, stepping into as closely as I can to press the tread pattern down deeper and make it more lasting for those who, for whatever reason, would come behind me. I see my two Papas’ footprints ahead and I try to follow the path of gentleness and kindness and love for others that those two men laid out. I see Mrs. Peden’s faint footprints ahead and try to discern the path she left – the path of a second grade teacher who taught 50 years and three generations and loved my class – her last – as much as she loved her first class and all whom she loved as much as if we were her own.

The paths I follow were not blazed by great men and women as most would consider greatness. In their paths, though, I see something of greatness. I see the odd track of a Martin Luther, a Charles Lindberg, a Billy Graham, a score of others who laid out a path which some of those I follow, now follow. For the most part, those I choose to follow were common people – many teachers, several shopkeepers, a doctor, a county deputy, two coaches, a table full of curmudgeonly old men – who did not write their names large on the world’s canvas, but who tended their corner with diligence and care and love. Some never knew I was coming behind . . . some waited, took me by the hand, and led me a little ways on, personally.

Some leave greater marks than others, but, truthfully, the number of footprints is not nearly so important as the direction in which those footprints lead. Then, I think of us. We are the educators, the guardians of knowledge, the in loco parenti. What sort of path are we leaving? Where do our footsteps point? Who have we inspired to follow us? Who have we shown a clear path to follow? If not us, then someone reliable for a child, a tween, a young adult struggling with who they are and why they are here, to follow? I do not pretend to know all the mysteries of the universe. I have but vague hopes of what lies beyond the grave, but I do know our tracks live on after us, just as the fossilized footprints of the giant lizards that paleontologist treasure to find.

One thing I think most all of us, atheist, agnostic, or true believer alike, can agree on is that we are passing this way only once. We have only one chance to mark out our paths. Like it or not, as educators, parents, people, each of us has someone or some several someones following our footprints. Where are we leading them?

Love y’all, and make sure to wash the trail dust off your feet.

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things and doing some intense soul searching over the last few weeks since finding out my position has been cut at school and I don’t have a job next year. To be honest, I’ve been seriously considering some field other than education just because the endless politics and prurience keep dragging me down. So I’m publishing this article that I originally wrote for my state association’s newsletter. I’ve been rereading it to try and boost my flagging spirits.  I hope y’all like it.

“Of Starfish”

Starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam;

butterscotch clouds, tangerines, side order of ham.

If you set your mind free, baby, maybe you’d understand

Starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam. (Music and lyrics by Prince Rogers Nelson)

Most everyone in education has or has read the poster / cup / screensaver about the young boy throwing starfish back into the ocean as the older gentleman watches him and comments on how useless the boy’s efforts are. Many of us, especially after a hard day when the children (and faculty) have tried our patience, are sustained by the hopeful last line of that free verse that says, “It made a difference to that one.”

We all have starfish in our careers. They are our life’s blood and they keep us going; their very existence validating our best efforts and giving us the desire to come back in August even if we left in May or June swearing we’ll “never come back again.” Our starfish, our precious students and even teachers, in whose lives we have made a noted, tangible difference, are the most valuable revitalizing resources we possess.

I got to pondering starfish last Saturday after eating with my wife at one of the nicer Italian restaurants in town. Our regular waiter at that particular eatery happens to be one of my first, and still one of my most beloved, starfish. Jason (not his real name) was a sensitive, broody young man in my honors English class during a particularly bad year for me professionally. He thought deeply of subjects far beyond the purview of many of his classmates. He pondered much more than proms, power, and the popular crowd, of which he was an abject outcast. Jason had problems at home where a burly stepfather insisted he play football even though Jason had precious little athletic aptitude and even less interest. To make his life even more stressful at the time, Jason was also extremely confused about his sexual orientation. For some reason, he chose to confide in me. In all honesty, it wasn’t a subject I liked, was comfortable with, knew much about, or wanted to discuss, but something in me knew that Jason wasn’t going to go to anyone else, at school or out.

So, I listened before school, after classes and at the end of the day as he talked through what he was feeling. I felt terrible because I didn’t think I was being much help other than as a sounding board. Then one day, whether by luck, intuition, or some latent librarian skill, I gave him a copy of a book that had come to me in a box of classroom library donations. The title character was a teenaged boy with an emotionally abusive stepfather and confusion about what sexual orientation he had. It wasn’t a famous book; if someone put a gun to my head and demanded I tell him the title, I’d be shot dead.

Be all that as it may, the book seemed to be a key for Jason. He took solace that someone, even a fictional someone, had similar thoughts to his own. I don’t know why, but whatever the reason, he seemed to regain a little more life and a bit of zest. I remained his unofficial father confessor through his senior year and he stopped by quite often during his first year of junior college. We lost touch for about two years until he walked up in his spiffy waiter’s uniform and apron to be our waiter one night about two years ago. Between the breadbaskets and the ice cream desserts, he told Budge and me that he’d dropped out of college, gone back, dropped out again, started waiting tables in good restaurants and got certification as a physical therapy masseur. He now has a wonderful live-in girlfriend, whom I have met, so apparently, as I’ve kidded him, he has a handle on his orientation. We see each other about once a month, either at the restaurant or at a bookstore or ice creamery. He mentions those bad times every now and then, but no matter how many times he says it, I still get shivers and Budge says my face lights up when Jason says, “Coach, you listened when no one else did . . . I appreciated it so much.”

Jason was my first memorable starfish, but I’m glad to say, not my last. I hardly have space to talk about the wonderful parade of miscreants and misfits, talkative and taciturn, popular and pauper who have made my career as a teacher and now as a librarian incredibly interesting and unbelievably fulfilling, like the five boys who demanded I sign their diplomas because they felt I was the only reason they got them or the young lady and her beau who asked that I perform their wedding after graduation. Then I had the two tough middle school football players who say I’m the only one who could ever get them to read a book, the list could easily go on. They are all my starfish.

I suppose my reasons for focusing so much on starfish have a lot to do with one particular young student I knew well once upon a time. He was very overweight and had pasty white-pink skin. His middle school playground nickname was “The Great White Marshmallow.” Overly smart for his age, non-athletic to the extreme, bookish, he was simply not a success in the shark tank of middle school. I can see him now in sixth grade huddled in the back of the small library poring over a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, hoping earnestly that the large eighth grade jocks wouldn’t come inhere after him.

The young man’s best ally was the school’s librarian. She was the picture of kindness to him, even lending him her personal first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring because the school’s library didn’t have one. Looking back, he can understand how incredibly busy she was at the time and he knows now that she was going through tough times of her own, but she always took as much time he needed to talk about elves and dwarves and hobbits.

Because of the love of books and learning she imparted to one lonely starfish, that starfish had the desire to go on to college, then to library school and become a librarian himself. The librarian is now at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as a psychometrician on the venerated faculty of Harvard University, but the boy starfish is now a middle school librarian and he’s never forgotten what it felt like to be burning up on life’s beach only to have a caring set of hands take him back to the cool ocean.

In closing, my esteemed colleagues, remember your starfish. Some of them may drive you crazy while some may make you smile and laugh, but either way, remember you never know the difference you make in someone’s, some starfish’s, life.

Love y’all and don’t forget to wash your feet.

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! 🙂