Tag: education

School’s out … Forever?

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No It just kinda feels that way. Lots of folks complaining about how it’s not warming up fast enough. When I remind them that just because kids have been out of school for two months doesn’t mean it’s mid-summer. It’s still mid-spring. They do a V-8 head slap.

One of my biggest gripes when teaching at certain schools is: why is MY speech restricted but that student’s speech is not. Race-Based Speech Restrictions

When folks complain about me being a grammar Nazi: Babb v. Wilkie Shows the Grammar of Free Self-Government

Free college for everyone? ‘Liberal Arts Degrees’ Renamed ‘Non-Essential Worker Degrees’

Math in the time of

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…no …. just no. Probably wasn’t appropriate LAST time so we’ll just end it now. But a little aggregating from the maths department.

Seattle To Make Math Instruction All About Race, Downplay Right And Wrong

WHY CAN’T LIBERALS DO ARITHMETIC?:  And why don’t they know how many people live in the United States?  Power Line points out that Bernie Sander’s press secretary asserted on Twitter that 500 million Americans “go bankrupt from medical debt every year.”  Good grief.  That is far more bankruptcies than there are Americans.  Power Line points out that only about 750,000 personal bankruptcies occur annually from any cause.

and if you only follow ONE link, it should be THIS one: The Dreaded Red Squamish.

School Spirit

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I’ve limited my substitute teaching to five school districts this year. ONE of them is a magnet school which excuses it form this discussion. One is a mirror of the small exurban school I attended fifty years ago. The second WAS a mirror of that school until about twenty years ago when Franklin County development bled over into the district and the population boomed. The third was ALWAYS a big land-locked suburban district. And the fourth. Twenty five years ago it was only slightly larger than the my old school and the prior two mentioned. Then THEY had a boom similar to that mentioned above. But the boom was an immigration bomb. They have one of the largest Somali enrollments in the midwest.

What’s that have to do with school spirit? I’ve been subbing there for five years. Have seen a LOT of changes there, none of them good. Discipline problems. Lax attitudes. Bells are merely suggestions. Not a good place to be on the whole. And then last month I noticed something. I had classes of 25+ all day. In NO class did I have more than two students wearing school colors (varsity jacket, team shirt, band, theater – ANYTHING.) At the other three schools this number is virtually ALWAYS over 10% and closer to 20%. There is a COMMUNITY. A feeling of belonging to SOMETHING even if it’s the chess club. (No negs on this. I was ON the chess team in HS! Third board.) This other school doesn’t have that and they aren’t building it. Dad didn’t go there. Big sister didn’t go there. Not on a team. Not a member of a club. It’s simply a big government-provided building they’re required to go to five days a week, seven hours a day, over a ten month period each year.

And that’s destroying it.

School Discipline

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This one’s short and rambling but wanted to get something up.

What am I missing? If I’m a HS student with a sub showing a movie I essentially have three options. 1) watch the movie, answer the assigned questions , no problem. 2) Sleep, listen to music or play on my computer quietly. Self time. No problem. Or 3) Cause trouble by disrupting the entire class. Why on EARTH would a student, or group of students, choose #3?

Under an Obama era directive from the DOE school discipline is supposed to be meted out based on the racial makeup of the student body, NOT the race of the miscreants. Second period today I had 25 students: Ten Caucasian, ten AA, three Hispanic and two Asian. The TROUBLE was caused by four AA students and ONE Caucasian. In order to properly discipline them I need to implicate three more white kids and at least one Hispanic or Asian.

And so nothing happens.

And then there are the “quiet rooms. The media is fomenting some outrage over these spaces where problem students are sometimes segregated. Except at SOME schools. This week, for example, I sent three kids who wanted to get WORK done to te quiet room. Kept the trouble makers together in the classroom. Can’t send them ALL to the office, now CAN I?

You have to be carefully taught.

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Always a little surprised at what schools filer and what they don’t, so I thought I’d share a few as I encounter them.

Visited GLHS today and discovered the following: Bing and Google are both viewed as security threats.  So is my Yahoo mail, but not GMail of Myemail.com. In a REAL surprise the Babylon Bee is OK but The Onion isn’t.  Ricochet is OK but the National Review isn’t.  Drudge and RealClearPolitics are both blocked.  NFL.com isn’t.

More schools to follow.

Winding down

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The seniors are gone. They’ve BEEN gone for most of the month but now they’re no longer required to attend so their checked-out attitude is no longer permeating the building. The Freshman are relieved. They’ve survived (for the most part) their first year in the Big Building and move on to the anonymity of Sophomoredom. The Sophomores move into the Juniors shoes with visions of Seniority dancing in their heads. The Juniors are beginning to face the gravity of being seniors. Nobody above looking down. The gaping maw of adult-hood just down that looming corridor of “lasts.”