An incident at work

Yesterday was the first day back at school for teachers, a day of welcomes and workshops. It was great to be back and see everyone. It was the usual stuff that teachers hear every year, and work very hard not to zone out during every year. ;) Went to lunch had a good time, though the restaurant really messed up, and we were all late getting back. The boss was very understanding.

At the end of the day we were all released to work in our rooms, as I worked I heard a co-worker make a comment I found a bit upsetting. If you are from Texas you know, that the legislature just passed a law adding "under God" to the Texas pledge. My co-worker said "I'm happy about the change in the pledge". That I don't have a problem with, though I did find it mildly disturbing. What really bothered me was what she said next, "It serves the jerks right for trying to take God out of everything." I was a bit shocked and a bit offended. I very much wanted to confront her, but bit my tongue, she wasn't addressing me and I knew my temper was too high.

Our government is suppose to be a secular government, no state or federal religion so that all religions and cultures feel welcome and included. I very much want to ask how she would feel if the city, state, or federal government added a line asking people to swear on Buddha, Vishnu, or Allah. Most likely she would be deeply offended. It saddens me that so many can not put themselves in other people's shoes and understand where other people are coming from.

I've heard some people say that the God in the pledge is a general god idea. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that outside of the Christian faith the capital "G" god refers specifically to the Christian/Jewish god. Other religions use the specific name of the god they are referring to. I've tried to explain it this way. If you are talking about your own mom, you say or write "Mom", when you talk about all moms it is a lowercase m.

First Time Camping

Well, summer time is almost over. The family is in need of some adventure. My husband had been wanting to go camping for years, but I had never done it and the prospect of going camping in the Texas heat never held any appeal for me. This year I said, lets go for it. At first we talked about going to a little camp site one town over that he use to go to when he was a kid. Then I remembered stopping to go horseback riding through a canyon in Texas as a break on a road trip to Colorado. We looked online and the scenery was inspiring, so we decided to go 11 hours away to go camping in Palo Duro Canyon.

We left very early in the morning, so we could get there in time for check in and so we could get our new tent set up before dark. We found a site with a good amount of shade. It was hot, but breezy. As long as the breeze was moving it was pretty comfortable. There was supposed to be no rain for the entire time we were there, so of course the second afternoon there was a thunderstorm. We got soaked, the river flooded, the water came within 10 feet of our tent. We had to spend a couple of hours in our tent, but the skies cleared by the evening. It was a good thing we didn't have a camp site deeper in the canyon, because the water crossings flooded. The water was 5 feet over the road. There was a family that had the teenagers at camp and the adults in town, the adults were trapped on the opposite side of the water from the teens for the night. By the next afternoon, you could barely tell that it had rained.

We saw all manner of wildlife, a groundhog, deer and turkey (they walked right into camp many times), cardinals, hawks, spiders, butterflies, etc. And in Don's case, a giant tarantula. I've decided that I can't wait to go camping again. I will post some pictures when I get them uploaded on this computer.

Concern for Our Children's Education

As a teacher and a parent, I am concerned about the condition of the United States' public education system. I have substituted all grade levels and taught Pre-K and 8th grade for three years each. I remember sitting in my education classes and hearing all about developmentally-appropriate education and child-centered activities, part of me thought this was great, but I also felt that it had been taken too far. The idea that each child is different is nothing new, anyone with more than one child or anyone that grew up with a sibling can tell you that. The idea of letting kids "go at their own pace" bothered me. It probably came from my middle class upbringing, in which my parents instilled a strong work ethic in myself and my sister. We were raised that you had to work for things you wanted, materially or educationally. I could never understand what was wrong with pushing kids to their fullest potential, yet that it what it constantly seemed like I was being told in education courses, that it was bad for them to have to work to learn or to push them mentally. (Now the professors never said this outright, and probably weren't even aware they were advocating it. I think I even asked the question once and got an answer about their self-esteem.) Having worked outside of education, mostly to get through school, I have observed that no where outside of the school environment will a boss make the job "employee(child)-centered" or let you go at your "own pace". There are deadlines in the real world and to teach kids otherwise is a disservice to them.

I spent some time this summer looking for a teaching job in Minnesota and I came across this charter school which utilized "Classical Liberal Arts" education. Basically it means that they believe in giving students a wide variety of knowledge about all subjects and that students should be taught specific facts rather than how to learn or the steps to being a critical thinker. This was how the founding fathers of our nation were taught. I started researching CLAE (Classical Liberal Arts Education) and found that it addressed many of my concerns, and concerns I've heard from other teachers, about what I see in public school. Sadly, I did not get hired on by any of the schools that I applied to. I'm not sad to still be at my current job, but the ideas got me passionate about education again.

In my reading up on the topic, I came across a book by one of the proponents of CLAE. I have lifted part of the conclusion here, because he says the things I've been noticing for years so well. The Romantic movement, in a nutshell, is that we are all wonderful the way God made us and should be allowed to do everything "naturally".

Quoted from "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them" by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

By now it is obvious to everyone that the Romantic-progressive approach to learning has not worked in American public schools. But the dangers remains that Americans will give credence to the continually repeated claims that the "new" ideas have never been properly tired. In the 1990s, that is the only plausible-sounding argument which could be marshaled in defense of these failed Romantic-progressive ideas. The "never-properly-tried" argument is difficult to counter decisively, because any example of failure can instantly be labeled a flawed, inauthentic attempt, while any anecdotal success can instantly be labeled a triumphant vindication of progressivist theory. But the research literature offers not one example of successful implementation of progressivist methods in a carefully controlled longitudinal study. In fact, as I showed in Chapter 4, process-outcome research has consistently shown just the opposite, that the Romantic-progressive approach is always the least effective approach studied. No wonder there is a continual demand by progressivists for new types of assessments that would make these results come out differently! Is is incumbent upon the public and the press to reject this "never-properly-tried" argument. We simply cannot afford more decades of "child-centered" credulity.

I would think that if you been trying an idea for over sixty years, it becomes very difficult to believe that it's not working because of the teachers. I doubt in sixty years that every single person did it wrong.

We cannot afford any more decades dominated by ideas that promote natural, integrated project-learning over focused instruction leading to well-practiced operational skills in reading and mathematics, and well-stocked minds conversant with individual subject matters like history and biology. We need to reject the ill-founded notions that every child learns naturally at his or her own pace and that teaching the child is more important than teaching the subject (whatever that means, beyond failure to teach the subject.) We must not accept the claim that knowing how to learn (which is an abstract skill that does not even exist) is more important than having a broad foundation of factual knowledge that really does enable further learning. We must reject the disparagement of verbal learning and the celebration of "hands-on" learning, based on the false Romantic premise that mere words are inauthentic components of human understanding. We cannot afford still to accept the untrue belief that adequate schooling is natural and painless, and mainly a function of individual talent rather than hard work. We must reject the false claim that delaying learning until the child is "ready" will speed up learning in the long run. We must cease listening to the siren call that learning should be motivated entirely by inward love of the subject and interest in it, without a significant admixture of external incentive. In short, we must cease attending to the Romantic ideas that the reformers of the 1990s, echoing the reformers of the 1902s, '30s, and '40s and all the decades in between, have been pronouncing in chorus. These ideas are emphatically not reforms. They are the long-dominant controlling ideas of our failed schools.

I have discussed similar ideas with many of my colleagues at work, and many of them have seen the damaging effects of making activities pretty all the time, especially in math. Some of you may read this and think that he believes that kids should never do projects or hands-on activities, he says several times in the book that this is not so. I have taken workshops for programs that are suppose to be revolutionary and improve students' scores, and most of the time it is already something we do with a new name and a slight variation. Changing the name of something does not change how it works or improve learning. Changing the title of a program or method is not reform, merely a vocabulary change, it reminds me of the politically correct movement. Altering a title does not change the reality.

I taught Acceleration (a TAKS, standardized test, tutorial class for lack of a better explanation) last year. Previously the kids could get out of the class if they passed a benchmark (practice test), last they could not. This class took the place of an elective and usually they were in math too, which meant they got no elective all year. I can't imagine how fried their brains were at the end of the day. I got to know those kids very well. I encouraged them to work hard with the offer of a individual reward if they improved their score each time and a class party if they all improved. My department head kept saying you have to teach them higher level thinking skills, and I kept telling her, they can think they just don't have the background knowledge. We had two parties that year and after the real test we had another. Out of my 16 students that had never passed the test, or hadn't passed since elementary, 13 passed and everyone scores went up. One of them even got commended, which means he missed less than four problems. I am teaching that class again this year, maybe more than one block, and I will be making my own curriculum.

I have heard people say that teachers don't care anymore, I find this very inaccurate, at least among the teachers I know. I would say they are frequently frustrated with the system in which they work because they are not listened to by the policy makers. I encourage all teachers, board members, and anyone else in education to take a look at this book and studies in psychology and neuro-biology. I plan on giving a copy to my principal and maybe the head of our school board (probably anonymously).

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

Well, I just finished the final installment of Harry Potter, I mean less than five minutes ago. I know that everyone will be talking about it and reviewing the book. I am putting in my two cents, but I promise that I won't include any spoilers.

I love Harry Potter, I have enjoyed the way Rowling has grown the books with her intended audience. I spent the last couple of weeks listening to the audio books of all the previous volumes to refresh myself on the little details. (I remembered all the major plot points, but not all the little stuff, which a portion of played an important role in the latest adventure.)

The first thing that struck me was how much Harry had grown up from the previous books, he is more thoughtful and less rash. I know that he showed that a bit in book six when he broke up with Ginny, to protect her, but at the time I read it as a stereotypical storybook romantic gesture on the part of an over gallant teenage boy. Not blaming Rowling for this but rather how a teenage boy would feel about protecting his girl, even if she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

I have to say, that I'm glad I was right about Snape. If you know me personally you'll already know my theory about Dumbledore and Snape. I won't go into details in case people reading this haven't read the last two books. I hate spoilers and don't want to ruin the experience for others.

It was nice seeing the characters out of their usual element whether it was Hogwarts or the Ministry of Magic. We got to see a little deeper into some of the secondary characters' personalities and relationships. All I'll say is rock on Mrs. Weasley and Neville's grandma! You can kick ass and take names with the best of them.

I strongly recommend that you have tissues handy if the sixth book made you cry, you'll need them here too.

I felt the book was well paced and an excellent wrap up to the whole series. Rowling wrapped up all of the loose ends and answered many fan questions about things hinted at in the other volumes. I felt satisfied with the ending.

I Made This

I made this for a friend's birthday.

I used a picture of her actual pet to make it.