up early this morning to take austin to basketball practice. it is black friday in america, the day where people go nuts spending their money. how are they nuts? on my way home last night from amelia we passed our best buy in mechanicsville and there were people in tents in front of the store and sacked out on the sidewalk. that is nuts to me, period. there were pictures in the paper today of women with their kids spending the night on the sidewalk. i am thinking "get a babysitter!" traffic, of course, is nuts, and the parking lots are filled up in all the malls as expected. i did go to michaels at virginia center commons and the lines were long there to check out and the shelves looked as if they had been stripped bare of things, but i did manage to buy some stuff i wanted like candles and t-shirts.
we went up to pam and taylor's for thanksgiving dinner. there were over 20 people there, quite a crowd. i stopped by mary beth's house and brought her some flowers and gave her one of the crocheted wreathes that i have that mamama made. she seems to be doing ok handling her mother's death and she has redone her living room. i wish i could do the same thing. just don't have the money, nor the decorating ability either!
i went around this morning taking pictures of the holiday leaves. they are so pretty and i know a picture isn't going to really capture it, but i tried. i probably waited too late though. just in the last 48 hours the leaves have started leaping off the limbs, and some of the yards are just filled up already. i don't have many leaves in my yard, so i don't bother to try and rake them. bebo, however, does, and i am afraid austin is going to be stuck with that odious task.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
fall weather...
i went out on the porch tonight and sat there and talked to aunt grace. the leaves this fall have been somewhat spectacular, something that no one expected. we had been told that the drought would rob the trees of any good color. experts wrong. the leaves have not only been every shade, but they have hung upon the trees way longer than expected.
it is hard to face the end of november with 70 degree weather, but i am starting to get used to it. i keep remembering coming home from tech for the first time, which was at thanksgiving '74. i remember smelling wood smoke and wearing sweaters and cords and it was cold. two of the four thanksgivings when i was in college we drove back in a helicious snow storm. they closed the school. the NEVER close the school for snow. now, we have no snow. global warming? i guess we'll never know, but i miss the fall weather, and i miss the cold winter. i need to go dormant, to hibernate. last winter it never happened. we never had more than 3 days of really cold weather in a row, and a couple of 70 degree days in january. no snow days. no nothing.
here's to the leaves and the geese leaving late at night and honking and the deer who come up for the deer corn. so far, no birds, even though i have put out breadcrumbs on the railing of the deck to lure them here. i need to put seed in the feeders and drag the corn out for the deer. i am doing all the prep for winter. let's hope it makes a difference!
it is hard to face the end of november with 70 degree weather, but i am starting to get used to it. i keep remembering coming home from tech for the first time, which was at thanksgiving '74. i remember smelling wood smoke and wearing sweaters and cords and it was cold. two of the four thanksgivings when i was in college we drove back in a helicious snow storm. they closed the school. the NEVER close the school for snow. now, we have no snow. global warming? i guess we'll never know, but i miss the fall weather, and i miss the cold winter. i need to go dormant, to hibernate. last winter it never happened. we never had more than 3 days of really cold weather in a row, and a couple of 70 degree days in january. no snow days. no nothing.
here's to the leaves and the geese leaving late at night and honking and the deer who come up for the deer corn. so far, no birds, even though i have put out breadcrumbs on the railing of the deck to lure them here. i need to put seed in the feeders and drag the corn out for the deer. i am doing all the prep for winter. let's hope it makes a difference!
Sunday, November 18, 2007
a weary teacher's life...
it would really be nice if the alternate universe really existed. say, for instance, that people who don't know jack shit about what a teacher does suddenly had to do what we do. or maybe, for a week, the teachers could take over the school board offices and the state board of education offices and maybe even have a stint in the hallowed halls of the state capital. what would happen if suddenly teachers could plot out the future of public education?
my recent experience with public education involved a massive waste of money on the part of taxpayers in hanover county. this waste of money was a direct result of people who have great intentions being clueless about the final goal. we recently administered a 9 weeks assessment test to all students in all grades in core curriculum areas (math, science, english and social studies.) the county wanted to get students used to taking an SOL type test. they wanted to see where students were doing poorly via statistics, and thus providing classroom teachers with hard data that they could take back to the classroom for "fine tuning" of student learning.
well, there is a problem with this line of thought, not the least of which is the whole concept of teaching to a test. it has now been determined by the powers that be that the only way to tell if a student is learning is if he/she passes the SOL. that would be fine, if the tests really did determine that, but they don't. what they determine is if a student was able to memorize the material for that day. the tests don't allow for much else, and it is almost impossible for teachers to even accurately aim them in the right directions because teachers are not making up the tests.
it is a curious thing about the education business. those in charge rarely were teachers, yet they make the determinations for the futures of young people from the state capitals. they rely on the opinions and numbers of "experts" and go with that, not considering the fact the so called experts aren't in a classroom. teachers are. so why aren't they consulting us?
we know what we do everyday, and what it takes to try and educate a child. we deal with all of the social/economic/psychological issues that children bring with to school each day. we deal with what prevents students from wanting to learn. we are the ones trying to teach the material. we are the ones teaching to the test because our jobs and public perception depend upon it. who cares about what is being learned? as long as those statistics are up there, the inhabitants of the various school board and legislative ivory towers can pat themselves on the back and say they have been successful.
the numbers prove only that we have crammed a lot of information into kids to memorize. we are now seeing the first generation of SOL tested kids reach high school, and what we are seeing is alarming.
for the most part, the kids don't have a whole lot of imagination. they don't know how to functionally think without someone pointing them in the right direction. learning for them has become rote and tired and static. the dynamics of learning, the thinking out of the box and application of lessons, well, there is no time to do that now. we have to cover the material and drill, drill, drill. no child is to be left behind, yet some of them need to be left behind.
the irony of this is that we have said that all children learn differently, perceive differently and learn at their own pace. yet we wipe out the possibility of all these things by teaching them to all take the same tests.
i lost faith in the system years ago when i discovered that the head of the state board of education, the man who pushed for the SOL test had never been a teacher. he was an entertainment lawyer. i attended a county convocation in which he was the guest speaker. it was in this convocation that he revealed his educational status, and his reasoning for being in the educational wing of the state. that reason: he loved his elementary teacher, and she made a great impression upon him. sorry to tell you this, but love and respect for teachers does not exactly qualify as a good enough reason for people such as he to be the ones dictating policy in the area of education. what if i suddenly decided that i would run the state bar association because i had watch Law & Order and loved the actors and the show? that doesn't mean i am qualified.
the list goes on and on. in the school board offices are former teachers, many having been out of the classroom for so long that they have no clue what goes on in there anymore. certainly we are better off having people in these positions who have at least been a teacher at some point. but that still does not excuse away the fact that they are woefully out of touch with those of us down in the trenches.
in their zeal to prove to the world that we are creating more and more educated children, they keep coming up with more and more ways to keep us from really teaching. now, instead of teaching to a test at the end of the school year, we are teaching to a test every 9 weeks. i guess i should be happy i am not in henrico, where they herd the lemmings over the test cliff every 3 weeks.
the facts: first, the test was hugely flawed. the county took the statistics from flawed tests and who knows what they are going to use the data for. they went to the expense of running off a personal scantron test for each child, as well as providing them each with their own personal copy of a bound test. money certainly could have been saved if they had made a classroom set of tests to use, vs. the thousands they printed and will end up in a landfill somewhere. they had to buy a special scantron machine to run these all through to get the stats. but then they gave the tests back to the teachers so that we could tweak the test grades. oh, did i mention that it was dictated that all students would get a test grade for this test. i ended up throwing out 7 questions out of 50, and that meant a 14 point curve. many teachers had not covered materials, so they had to eliminate those questions as well. so what was gained by this huge waste of money, time (2 days to give the tests) and paper? nothing. when our department chair went up to the school board office to meet with the head of english, the only explanation was that this was a "work in progress" and that they knew there were problems. yes, there are. the problem is constantly measuring everyone on a statistical yardstick.
money would be better spent in the countys if they stopped with the ridculous drive towards numbers. that smacks simply of public relations and the need to "prove" via numbers that we are "doing our job." what no one knows is exactly what our jobs are, and they don't welcome our opinions or suggestions. they figuratively pat us on the heads as if we were just overactive children who need to be placated for a moment.
another solution would be to stop ignoring social issues as causes for poor classroom performance. no one knows what it is like to have one or two totally disruptive kids in a classroom ruin the learning atmosphere. there is little we can do anymore, as most administrators do not want to deal with this issue the way that it should be dealt with. that would be that these kinds of kids need to be in a specialized school, such as the Georgetown School in Hanover, where hopefully they can be successful in a small, contained learning environment. yet, year after year, these kids stay in the classroom with their myriad of problems, and ruin the learning for the other kids who might be motivated if they weren't so entirely distracted by the behavior of the bad apples. unfortunately, the "no child left behind" concept seems to ignore the fact that for the betterment of the whole as a group, some of them should be left behind. the tail should not wag the dog in a public classroom.
another solution would be to get rid of block classes. for once, it would be nice if those in charge actually looked at the numbers on SOL tests for kids in everyday classes. what they would find is that they are higher and the kids apparently learn the material better. why? because the average teenager has about an hour of attention and then he is gone. i have never understood the reason that we dropped the everyday classes across the board. the system wasn't broken, so why "fix" it? apparently, block classes are good for science labs. however, there aren't all that many labs compared to the english classes, world language classes and others who will tell you that everyday classes would be a blessing. an hour is just enough to do one good lesson. plus, students will have a little homework each night and they will not have to worry about what day it is and what books to haul back and forth. better focus and the ability to pay attention does lead to better abilities to retain information.
teachers cannot be on school boards. they are called up in a more or less profunctory way to meetings and task forces examining things for those in charge. translation: we serve on committees, research, write tests, eduate and present our findings and suggestions to the talking heads...and then it is never acted upon. they just do whatever they think is right, while having the ability to say that teachers contributed. sorry, that isn't what really happens. we contribute, but we are edited, severely in most cases.
the results are staggering. most of my colleagues who are reaching retirement age are going to retire. they might have stayed on if they had been given the opportunity to teach. but we don't have much time for that now, considering all the paperwork and useless inservices and meetings and emails that we have to attend to. we spend so much time trying to prove what we are doing that we don't have much time to do it. how ironic is that? the students are in constant need of some sort of stimulus, which is really confusing to a generation of teachers who read instead of listening to an ipod or watching a tv. we don't IM, nor do we play video games 24/7. we took walks and talked on the telephone and read for pleasure and were able to sit still and concentrate. our kids don't do that. too much technology, too big a buffet table of things to do. yet we are charged with the task of making sure this generation learns. what does that mean anymore?
my recent experience with public education involved a massive waste of money on the part of taxpayers in hanover county. this waste of money was a direct result of people who have great intentions being clueless about the final goal. we recently administered a 9 weeks assessment test to all students in all grades in core curriculum areas (math, science, english and social studies.) the county wanted to get students used to taking an SOL type test. they wanted to see where students were doing poorly via statistics, and thus providing classroom teachers with hard data that they could take back to the classroom for "fine tuning" of student learning.
well, there is a problem with this line of thought, not the least of which is the whole concept of teaching to a test. it has now been determined by the powers that be that the only way to tell if a student is learning is if he/she passes the SOL. that would be fine, if the tests really did determine that, but they don't. what they determine is if a student was able to memorize the material for that day. the tests don't allow for much else, and it is almost impossible for teachers to even accurately aim them in the right directions because teachers are not making up the tests.
it is a curious thing about the education business. those in charge rarely were teachers, yet they make the determinations for the futures of young people from the state capitals. they rely on the opinions and numbers of "experts" and go with that, not considering the fact the so called experts aren't in a classroom. teachers are. so why aren't they consulting us?
we know what we do everyday, and what it takes to try and educate a child. we deal with all of the social/economic/psychological issues that children bring with to school each day. we deal with what prevents students from wanting to learn. we are the ones trying to teach the material. we are the ones teaching to the test because our jobs and public perception depend upon it. who cares about what is being learned? as long as those statistics are up there, the inhabitants of the various school board and legislative ivory towers can pat themselves on the back and say they have been successful.
the numbers prove only that we have crammed a lot of information into kids to memorize. we are now seeing the first generation of SOL tested kids reach high school, and what we are seeing is alarming.
for the most part, the kids don't have a whole lot of imagination. they don't know how to functionally think without someone pointing them in the right direction. learning for them has become rote and tired and static. the dynamics of learning, the thinking out of the box and application of lessons, well, there is no time to do that now. we have to cover the material and drill, drill, drill. no child is to be left behind, yet some of them need to be left behind.
the irony of this is that we have said that all children learn differently, perceive differently and learn at their own pace. yet we wipe out the possibility of all these things by teaching them to all take the same tests.
i lost faith in the system years ago when i discovered that the head of the state board of education, the man who pushed for the SOL test had never been a teacher. he was an entertainment lawyer. i attended a county convocation in which he was the guest speaker. it was in this convocation that he revealed his educational status, and his reasoning for being in the educational wing of the state. that reason: he loved his elementary teacher, and she made a great impression upon him. sorry to tell you this, but love and respect for teachers does not exactly qualify as a good enough reason for people such as he to be the ones dictating policy in the area of education. what if i suddenly decided that i would run the state bar association because i had watch Law & Order and loved the actors and the show? that doesn't mean i am qualified.
the list goes on and on. in the school board offices are former teachers, many having been out of the classroom for so long that they have no clue what goes on in there anymore. certainly we are better off having people in these positions who have at least been a teacher at some point. but that still does not excuse away the fact that they are woefully out of touch with those of us down in the trenches.
in their zeal to prove to the world that we are creating more and more educated children, they keep coming up with more and more ways to keep us from really teaching. now, instead of teaching to a test at the end of the school year, we are teaching to a test every 9 weeks. i guess i should be happy i am not in henrico, where they herd the lemmings over the test cliff every 3 weeks.
the facts: first, the test was hugely flawed. the county took the statistics from flawed tests and who knows what they are going to use the data for. they went to the expense of running off a personal scantron test for each child, as well as providing them each with their own personal copy of a bound test. money certainly could have been saved if they had made a classroom set of tests to use, vs. the thousands they printed and will end up in a landfill somewhere. they had to buy a special scantron machine to run these all through to get the stats. but then they gave the tests back to the teachers so that we could tweak the test grades. oh, did i mention that it was dictated that all students would get a test grade for this test. i ended up throwing out 7 questions out of 50, and that meant a 14 point curve. many teachers had not covered materials, so they had to eliminate those questions as well. so what was gained by this huge waste of money, time (2 days to give the tests) and paper? nothing. when our department chair went up to the school board office to meet with the head of english, the only explanation was that this was a "work in progress" and that they knew there were problems. yes, there are. the problem is constantly measuring everyone on a statistical yardstick.
money would be better spent in the countys if they stopped with the ridculous drive towards numbers. that smacks simply of public relations and the need to "prove" via numbers that we are "doing our job." what no one knows is exactly what our jobs are, and they don't welcome our opinions or suggestions. they figuratively pat us on the heads as if we were just overactive children who need to be placated for a moment.
another solution would be to stop ignoring social issues as causes for poor classroom performance. no one knows what it is like to have one or two totally disruptive kids in a classroom ruin the learning atmosphere. there is little we can do anymore, as most administrators do not want to deal with this issue the way that it should be dealt with. that would be that these kinds of kids need to be in a specialized school, such as the Georgetown School in Hanover, where hopefully they can be successful in a small, contained learning environment. yet, year after year, these kids stay in the classroom with their myriad of problems, and ruin the learning for the other kids who might be motivated if they weren't so entirely distracted by the behavior of the bad apples. unfortunately, the "no child left behind" concept seems to ignore the fact that for the betterment of the whole as a group, some of them should be left behind. the tail should not wag the dog in a public classroom.
another solution would be to get rid of block classes. for once, it would be nice if those in charge actually looked at the numbers on SOL tests for kids in everyday classes. what they would find is that they are higher and the kids apparently learn the material better. why? because the average teenager has about an hour of attention and then he is gone. i have never understood the reason that we dropped the everyday classes across the board. the system wasn't broken, so why "fix" it? apparently, block classes are good for science labs. however, there aren't all that many labs compared to the english classes, world language classes and others who will tell you that everyday classes would be a blessing. an hour is just enough to do one good lesson. plus, students will have a little homework each night and they will not have to worry about what day it is and what books to haul back and forth. better focus and the ability to pay attention does lead to better abilities to retain information.
teachers cannot be on school boards. they are called up in a more or less profunctory way to meetings and task forces examining things for those in charge. translation: we serve on committees, research, write tests, eduate and present our findings and suggestions to the talking heads...and then it is never acted upon. they just do whatever they think is right, while having the ability to say that teachers contributed. sorry, that isn't what really happens. we contribute, but we are edited, severely in most cases.
the results are staggering. most of my colleagues who are reaching retirement age are going to retire. they might have stayed on if they had been given the opportunity to teach. but we don't have much time for that now, considering all the paperwork and useless inservices and meetings and emails that we have to attend to. we spend so much time trying to prove what we are doing that we don't have much time to do it. how ironic is that? the students are in constant need of some sort of stimulus, which is really confusing to a generation of teachers who read instead of listening to an ipod or watching a tv. we don't IM, nor do we play video games 24/7. we took walks and talked on the telephone and read for pleasure and were able to sit still and concentrate. our kids don't do that. too much technology, too big a buffet table of things to do. yet we are charged with the task of making sure this generation learns. what does that mean anymore?
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