mbperrin
mbperrin's JournalThree years of experience. Just about enough time to start calling on about equal numbers
of boys and girls automatically, instead of having to remember not to reward boys for their scene-stealing behavior.
Just about enough time to start automatically allowing wait time for student responses - 15 seconds at the minimum.
Just about enough time to figure out different cohorts of students require different classroom layouts.
Just about enough time to realize that real lesson plans are important, rather than just "winging it" or reading a script.
Just about enough time to realize that some kids have no one at all in their corner, ever, and just the tiniest support will make that rock bloom.
Enough time to open and run a school? Nope.
Totally developmentally inappropriate to imagine that elementary kids have enough agency to work for an hour unsupervised on a computer.
No art or music? Heck, cut out lunch, too - everyone knows that digestion makes you sleepy, and sleepy kids can't learn; also by no means allow them any time out in the open to run and play and learn social interaction.
Majority of teachers have 2 years or less on the job? Wow. Let's completely reinvent the wheel - after all, those oldtimers never learned anything worth knowing after 30 years, right?
Yes, four years of college should be included in free and appropriate education
for every student. And I'm including trade schools and so under that broad umbrella.
I was the first person in my family to graduate high school. I was offered a full ride scholarship to Texas A&M, which I took. I married during my sophomore year, but my spouse did not have a scholarship, so we both worked.
At the end of 4 years, I was 12 hours short of a degree, and I needed $525 for another semester of school, an impossible sum. My parents couldn't help - they were 8th grade dropouts, scraping by.
I did not know that student loans existed. I could have borrowed it from the school loan fund, but I had no schema for that. I dropped out. 20 years later, my local university did an outreach to those with incomplete degrees from anywhere. These specialists arranged my schedule, did the transfer of credit, arranged a student loan, and I finished my degree that spring and began teaching.
Since then, I have earned a Master's in education, and I teach in a large high school where 50% of the population has parents who never finished high school and where 85% qualify for free and reduced lunch. I still work with the community outreach for UT-Permian Basin, the folks who helped me, to help my own students.
Great program, and for those with no background, like me, an absolute godsend. My experience is that it's never the coursework that keeps students from finishing college, it's the lack of funding, time management, prioritizing, and just not taking one step at a time that kills.
Hmmm, all they paid was a fine of puny proportions? They weren't forced to fight to the death
for their cars? Or to get out of jail? I don't know why not. I'd WAYYYYY rather pay to see a bunch of animal killers and blood sports enthusiasts injure and kill each other than get innocent animals involved.
And to the stupid guy who thought that those who were "only" watching should not be punished? Well, that sort of language is inappropriate in this forum. But it involves a short length of 1" gas pipe, a towel, bucket of water, a battery with cables and someone like me to preside.
Blood sports brings out the populist in me rather than the progressive.
Thank you. Correct. The fuckers on the payroll keep anything from happening.
Toxic country.
Mom buys multiple guns, including a semiautomatic, and takes her son target shooting frequently.
Kids spend endless hours playing video games, of which a huge percent are first person shooter games.
Movies and TV shows endlessly glorify violence.
We celebrate when we kill foreigners overseas.
So immersing people in a culture of killing is good, fun, and a game
and combining with real practice with real death-dealing weapons not remotely suited for anything but killing people.
Why would we think we'd get anything else? Two this week. I'll be amazed if it's not one a day in the very near future.
We've baked a cake, and it's ready to serve.
Thank you. Very well said. My dad and granddad were both veterans as well,
and neither owned any guns nor thought that they needed to.
People are what they do. If they buy guns and bullet resistant clothing and thousands of rounds of ammunition and spend hours and hours shooting, that is what they become - people who shoot.
Why some of that energy can't be put into volunteering for Christmas in April, repairing houses for the elderly who own but cannot afford major repairs to their houses, which is what my dad and granddad did, or some other useful activity, I don't know.
That's why I don't understand why so many video games are shooter games, either. I never allowed them in the house, and I don't believe my kids missed a thing by it.
I'll be happy to take him, shoot him, anyone else he's trained, and anyone
who might be carrying his DNA.
I'm a tad bit disgusted that a drunk can waste more money in a night than most people will earn in a lifetime.
We don't hesitate to get rid of mold in the bathroom. Why give more consideration to this more-costly fungus?
Website ban lifted Tuesday (+TSTA EMAIL) Teacher union site blocked, unblocked by district
http://www.oaoa.com/articles/website-87801-ban-ecisd.htmlECISD’s superintendent on Tuesday reversed a ban denying district employees access to a union website following a Texas State Teachers Association email asking employees to take a survey to gauge their morale.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Hector Mendez, superintendent of Ector County Independent School District, told the IT department to remove a controversial filter that had blocked all employees from the Texas State Teachers Association website.
But the almost four day block of the website had already made an impact and left association members disappointed in the district.
“I thought it was juvenile,” Chuck Isner said of the fact that the website was ever banned. Isner, regional president for the TSTA, later added, “Someone apparently wanted to send us a message.”
Lots more at the link. Perfect look at the arrogance and dishonesty of the administration here - they actually blocked a survey on employee morale.
Masterfully said. The first day of school, we know when the last day is going to be.
We know that each class is going to be 49 minutes long, 5 days per week, for 36 weeks, less two weeks for semester exams, less two weeks for semester dead week, less two weeks for state-mandated testing. So 150 days or 7350 minutes or 122.5 days, less attendance, morning announcements, early release for pep rallies, guest speakers from colleges and the military, less fire drills, less disaster drills, less textbook issuance, less textbook pickup, less sick leave days or family emergency days.
There IS no "more" time for differentiation, reteaching, and no facility to accommodate acceleration (it's really just one classroom with 32 desks in it, one teacher, and three computers).
The other idea of 100% mastery is that EVERY DETAIL in the course has been studied, analyzed, weighted, and found to be of critical importance to being able to exhibit mastery of that particular detail.
It also denies that there are alternate methods for doing things, or that the skills involved will be relevant at all in the near future (anybody else take sliderule class in high school in 1971 and find Wang calculators in a lab upon arrival at college?)
The one invaluable skill is critical thinking and problem-solving, along with the desire to use that skill. Unless you really think that I need to know the names of all 50 state capitals without looking them up.
You're right, doing nothing is not an option. MORE resources must be poured into poor schools, not
fewer.
Let me give you an example:
In our district, "regular" students will be following a robotized curriculum called CSCOPE where every teacher of a subject will be on the same page, the same paragraph, the same word, ideally, at the same time each day. No textbooks will be issued, no deviation, no reteaching, no variation at all will be permitted.
AP and IB students will be getting new textbooks, and they will receive wireless notebooks that anyone can check out now, but not next year.
SPED students will still be getting textbooks, and all their modifications as well.
The school is 85% eligible for free/reduced lunch, and the census shows that 50% of the total population in this county does not have so much as a high school diploma.
No raises for two years, a 10% RIF, and a $15,000 raise for the superintendent and chief of staff are other ways they're "improving" the district.
No textbooks, no flexibility, no additional resources for the huge majority of poor students will result in a massive failure rate. Teachers' fault? Don't think so.
Resources are being removed from poor kids, not added. Insane, really. The kids, teachers, and the community all lose.
Start considering "growth" meaning simply bigger, as a cancer.
That's why all empires fall, not to rise again.
Greece, Egypt, Rome, England, France, Holland, all had their moments. No more.
Growth for growth's sake consumes more than it produces, eventually hollowing out everything with it.
Interest and the non-productive spending of war killed all of those empires, as it will the current American one. We'll be better off without all that exceptionalism, anyway, in terms of our souls.
Profile Information
Member since: 2003 before July 6thNumber of posts: 7,672
