Because my wife cares about my daughter's grades and is willing to enforce consequences if she doesn't bring them up.

Current Mood: amused

You know how you're supposed to be essentially paralyzed while you're dreaming? Well, it turns out that sometimes the paralysis fails, which explains sleepwalking and related behaviors.

This hasn't been an issue for me until last night, when I had to punch someone* for shooting me with Nerf dart guns. Unfortunately, for some reason my paralysis failed and I hit the headboard of the bed full-strength. I'm left with a rather surreal memory and a couple scrapes and a little bit of swelling on my right hand, and I'm glad I didn't have any leverage, as I almost dislocated my index finger.


*A current student of mine, who was inexplicably wearing Big Bird's head.

Current Location: living room
Current Mood: embarrassed

I am currently suffering from near-terminal boredom. That is all.

Current Mood: bored
Current Music: O.A.R., "Black Rock," Any Time Now

I waited until the "stimulus bill" passed to post this, but our superintendent announced a couple weeks ago that the federal aid to our district will closed the budget gap for this and the next school year, so he's not going to try to consolidate the high schools, at least not immediately.

I've kept quiet about this, because I believe that consolidation is inevitable in the next few years, and will probably be good for students in the long run.

The Peoria Journal Star is reporting today the district administrators are proposing to the shcool board that Woodruff High School be closed effective the 2009-2010 school year.

Now, I'm not at all worried about whether or not I'll have a job - I have suffient seniority for that to not be an issue for me - but I am concerned about our students, especially over the next few months. I'm sure many alums will be hurt by this, and more if it actually happens, but the next few weeks and months will be really tough on our current students.

In typical district fashion, even my principal heard it on the news; even she didn't get the basic courtesy of a heads-up over the phone, let alone a personal meeting. Typically evil behaivor on the part of our district administration and political leadership.

For my sake, people, look both ways before driving through an intersection.

My poor car.

Current Mood: shaken, not stirred

Imagine yourself in late October, 1908, and bet on which would happen first:

1. The Cubs win another World Series, or

2. A black guy will be elected President of the United States.

And then recall that Teddy Rooseveldt was the first President to have a black dinner guest - in 1901.

First, thanks for the reassurances, they mean a lot to me.

What I'm giving up on is "the system," the attempts to "improve" our school to raise test scores and our graduation rates. The test scores just aren't going to go up anytime soon except by random chance (it's hard to get much worse, but we managed it last year) and the phenomenon of "regression to the mean."

I'm just going to smile and nod and ignore everything they tell me to do, and I'm just going to teach my heart out to the kids who show up. I'll grade as fairly as I can and if the "Powers That Be" have a problem with the grades my students earn they can change them to whatever they want.

I refuse to care about what "the system" wants or does. I've decided that I'm better at what I do than they are, and I'm going live that way.

Current Mood: determined

A student - a junior in Enriched Physics - asked me for help today. OK, fine. We're analyzing graphs, and this student needed to find the slope, for you English types out there the slope of a line is the "rise," the change in the vertical axis, divided by the "run," the change in the horizontal axis.

Looking at the graph together with the student, I got the student to the point that the rise equals five, and the run equals two.

"So," I asked, "What's five over two?"

The kid gave me a blank look.

I arched an eyebrow.

"One?"

I blinked. Looked disbelievingly at this fine young person. "What's five divided by two?"

"One?"

I had a horrible, nasty, sinking feeling in my gut.

"What's five divided by two?" I asked, hoping I was stuck in some Through-the-Looking-Glass distorted reality.

"Four?"

Now I should make it clear that I wasn't being mean to this poor kid, not making faces, not hitting my head on my desk or even reaching for the scissors, sharp enough to open an artery and end the misery of one of our existences. No, I was professionally calm, the kind of calm that comes from a decade-and-a-half of getting called a cocksucker by illiterate fifteen year old gangbangers or watching kids who can't count to twenty get handed a diploma.

I tried again. "What's five divided by two?"

"Four?"

Looking back at it now, from a few hours' distance, I know that in ten, twenty, thirty, or one hundred years I will be able to point to that moment, when this really nice kid first told me that five divided by two is one, that I realized that the people with whom I work and the profession that until that moment adored, are an utter and complete waste of public trust, taxpayer money, and my soul.

Current Mood: discontent

I just made the best mashed potatoes I've ever done. The trick, from Alton Brown's Good Eats show, is to use buttermilk instead of regular milk. Seriously amaziing.

Tags: food
Current Location: home