Iowa is like a reef, and ships just keep crashing into it.

Wow, looking at the preliminary results from the Republican caucuses tonight, and I gotta say: Really?

Santorum and Romney in a virtual tie, with Ron Paul chasing third.

I have to admit that the voters in Iowa are just completely incomprehensible to me. Well, no that's not true. I mean, have you ever been to a caucus?

I have.

There you are shut up with a bunch of strangers for hours. The set-up is meant to draw only the most dedicated (or the morbidly curious-- it WAS kind of like watching an overripe pumpkin get hit by an aluminum bat in sheer messiness), which of course, skews the reliability of the results.

And then there's the demographics of Iowa itself, courtesy of the US Census Bureau. It's got a little less than one percent of the US population, and its population has grown at less than half the rate of the country as a whole over the last decade. It's 91% white. Just under 3% of its population is African American, and 1.7% of its population is Asian. Its Hispanic population in 5%. Less than 4% of its population is foreign born. Its percentage of people who report speaking a language other than English in the home is one-third that of the United States as a whole. Its high school graduation rate is slightly higher than the national average (good for y'all!) but its percentage of those holding a bachelor's degree is slightly lower (aww).

I am sure it's a lovely state. But it certainly is not representative of the US as a whole. Is that why the national parties cater to it by allowing it to seize the hopes and dreams of politicians every four years far out of proportion to its actual relevance as a testing ground? I mean, this place is so bland it makes mayonnaise look like a spice.

And now, we see Rick Santorum tied with Mitt Romney (speaking of mayonnaise) as the preferred candidates out of the field, although by what appears to be the lowest percentages and the lowest turnout in quite some time, even by Iowa standards. And then libertarian Ron Paul, the guy who redefines the phrase "rope-a-dope" in my mind, follows the Yin and Yang Brothers.

I am... bemused? concerned? confused? by not only the field of candidates the Republicans have managed to cobble together, sure, but also by this refusal to consider anyone with any interest (not talking experience, but just interest, here) in foreign policy while we've got some pretty serious stuff going on in the world. Now of course the economy is a vital concern, and it should be. But I don't see Santorum or Paul having a dog in that hunt either. Santorum's thinly veiled social and racial warfare just has to be on the verge of collapse. Ron Paul's naked gospel of anti-social selfishness and self-centeredness makes the 1970s seem like a Salvation Army campaign. And Romney, poor Romney, if only we didn't feel like this guy will say or believe anything (and therefore nothing) in order to get elected (Sound familiar? You could say this about Barack Obama, the winner of the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses, with some credence, as well). So I have a question directed to Iowa:

WHAT IN TARNATION ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING???

Thank you. That is all. I must go lie down now.

What can you deduce from these clues?

1. Kid asks if she can start staying after school with me every day of the week so I can personally fix all of her test-taking problems.

2. Work from absences three months ago is just randomly left on my keyboard-- sometimes, along with bribes of my favorite candy.

3. Parents suddenly start checking Precious's grades online every five minutes.

4. Parents have placed a call block on all numbers from the school district.

5. Parents unleash avalanches of emails questioning all 43 grades in the gradebook.

6. Parents and kids claim that they cannot comprehend my classroom website, particularly, that they can't find the list of deadlines ANYWHERE (it is under the tab called, strangely enough, DEADLINES).

7. Parents and kids start asking if kids can retake tests.

8. I start getting emails from aunts and grandmas.



Well? Have you guessed????


It's the end of the semester fast approaching!!!!

Testify!

Hooray! Evaluation time again! This time my administrator came in on the day I had a raging sinus infection, but c'est la vie. I really didn't care because frankly, the Cornelius door is ALWAYS open.

Anyway, the kids tried their very best to make me look good (bless their little hearts!), we had a great discussion, and I showed up the next day for my post-observation conference.

She was very complementary. Very. She actually said that she believed I was the best teacher in the department (which isn't true, but is still very nice to hear). But she was pretty insistent about it and cited numerous examples. For well over half an hour, and I was pretty embarrassed, let me tell you. She said she actually stopped scripting because she got lost in the lesson and was actually learning.

But...

(There always is one, isn't there?)

The reason I mention the complements is to discuss what was written down.

Nothing.

Boilerplate language: "Ms. Cornelius is competent in her knowledge of subject matter." "Ms. Cornelius works with other staff members."

If she really thought that my teaching was that awesome, it would be nice to see her testify to that. And you know the etymology of the word, "testify," don't you?


( In the ancient world, men swore the truth about something by putting their hand on their testicles. Thus, they were "testes- fying.")

Our administrators have apparently been completely warned against saying anything complementary NO MATTER HOW STRONGLY the administrator believes that complements are in order). The top ranking on our evaluation forms is "meets expectations."

So, in other words, our evaluations are NOT actually supposed to indicate any real evaluation.

Yes, and Arne Duncan wants me to roll the dice on merit pay, right? I can already tell you what would happen if that were instituted in my district. Either NO ONE would get merit pay and raises would actually disappear except for the superintendent and his staff, OR the nattering nabobs of nepotism that haunt the office and the eight-legged administrators (those with a staff member so far up their administraors' keisters that they look like they have eight legs).

I know I am a good teacher. But I would like my written evaluations to honestly reflect my strengths. The administration has been instructed to write these non-evaluations so that they can later fire us at will with no evidence that we were ever anything but "adequate."

It's actually insulting.

The (Mis)adventures of Yo-yo Boy

One of the things the Petty Bureaucrats Who Think They Know All don't get about teaching-- among many, many, many, MANY things!-- is the emotional care and guidance teachers expend upon their students. This part of the student-teacher relationship has very little to do (in an obvious way) about test scores and yet it cannot be ignored.

One of my students is Yo-yo Boy. Yo-yo Boy's dad and mom are not in the picture, but YYB does have a cousin and her husband. YYB has some issues: he will lie absolutely to your face, he will steal anything not nailed down, he has a trillion excuses and a healthy self-pitying martyr complex for any failures on his part, he is absolutely mesmerized by the presence of female persons without having the minutest idea of how to appropriately interact with them. Worse, he is a victim of the rankest social promotion on the part of a neighboring school district that I have ever seen-- to the extent that he was (non)functionally illiterate when we first got him in our high school. Yo-yo Boy has bounced around from home to home, school to school, suspension to suspension.

It is my happy duty to teach this young fella. It is also my happy duty to impart the following wisdom, in the order in which it occurred:
1) Ms. Cornelius does NOT want to know the color of your underwear, and neither does anyone else.
2) Grabbing the derriere of a young lady you do not know does NOT enamor her of you and will indeed get you suspended.
3) The secret to passing a class is to... get this!-- do the assignments, study for tests and quizzes, and pay attention in class.
4) The preliminary secret to #3 is to bring a pencil, your assignments, and a book to class every day. Without fail.
5) Dudes do not carry purses in our neck of the woods, so having one in your possession will cause you to get jugged for stealing.
6) Do not mouth off to the people providing you with shelter or fight with their own children, or you will get thrown out of the house, even if they love you.
7) You are not a bad enough mamma- jamma to make it on the streets for even five seconds, so pay attention to #6.
8) You will get fired from your job if you do not show up on time, so yes, Ms. Cornelius counts tardies. Plus, you do not be engaging in #2 or #5 so that you then violate #8.
9) Ms. Cornelius will cross-check every single thing you tell her, so don't even bother to lie.
10) If you do not understand, ask.

Sadly, Yo-yo Boy violated #6 one too many times. I do not know if I will see him again.

Or he could turn up tomorrow.

That's just part of the teaching life in a real public school, where testing is sometimes the least measure of our worth.

This is amazing.

How would you like to be a teacher for 55 years?

How would you like to be a principal of a middle school for 48 years?

Madeleine P. Brennan maintains Dyker Heights Intermediate School 201 in Brooklyn as something of a time capsule.

Female secretaries, guidance counselors and assistant principals are asked to wear dresses or skirts; teachers may wear slacks, but not dungarees; men all wear ties. The marble staircase shines; the hallways are painted a classic pale blue. Each year before Christmas, there is Rhinestone Week, in which Mrs. Brennan encourages staff members to rummage through their grandmothers’ things for old costume jewelry to wear.

But the prize artifact of the past is Mrs. Brennan herself, who has been principal of the school for 48 years, longer than most of her teachers have been alive — longer, experts believe, than any other principal in the country. When she first arrived to work at this imposing brick building in March 1963, John F. Kennedy was president, ZIP codes were not yet in use, and the nearby Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was still under construction.

She has outlasted more than a dozen schools chancellors, who made what she described as “little changes here and there,” and watched a student body dominated by the children of Italian immigrants transform into one that is 45 percent Asian-American and 18 percent Hispanic.

But as the city embarks on an overhaul of its middle schools, Mrs. Brennan believes that what works remains the same. Consistent rules and consequences. A dedicated, hard-working staff. A calendar stuffed with activities like a Shakespeare fair and an annual musical. Sincere care for your charges.

“Teenagers fascinate me,” Mrs. Brennan said in an interview in her pin-straight office. “They are peculiar ducks, neither fish nor fowl. And you have to love them to really work with them. If you don’t love them, you are up a tree.”

Read the whole thing.

The Herritage Foundation thinks I'm overpaid.

According to this report, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, et al., teachers are overpaid.

Here is an analysis from Time magazine via Yahoo News that summarizes the report. The claim that teachers are overpaid is based upon the following assumptions:
1) Teachers have lower cognitive ability-- or to put it another way, IQs.
Really? I'll put my IQ up against that of Joseph Coors (one of the original founders of the Heritage Foundation) any day. And I know plenty of mentally negligible people who work in the brewing industry.

2) Public school teachers get paid more than private school teachers.
Right, and private school teachers also are often not certified, or many of them would teach in the public schools.

3) People entering teaching from other fields get an average 9% raise over the pay from their previous job.
How does this prove anything other than the fact that people indeed usually try to move into a new profession in order to make more money than in the profession they are leaving behind?

Apparently, they also calculated "vacation" into the benefits that makes teachers over paid. There's always that misconception hanging out there. So let me try to explain this simply: Teachers get NO paid vacation. Part-time UPS drivers get more paid vacation than we do. We have unpaid summer breaks, during which times many teachers work second jobs or work for free on planning and preparation for the upcoming school year.

The whole thing is laughable.

The soundtrack of my life, after Steve

Transitions playlist

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs. You helped me fill my life with music. All Things Must Pass.

Greg Laswell, How the Day Sounds
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass
John Martyn, May You Never
Gillian Welch, Dark Turn of Mind
Imogen Heap, Wait It Out
Iron & Wine, The Boy With a Coin
The Civil Wars, 20 Years
Joni Mitchell, A Case of You
Jude Cole, Right There Now
Fountains of Wayne, All Kinds of Time
Ingrid Michaelson, All Love
Madeleine Peyroux, Dance Me To The End of Love
The Jayhawks, Tampa to Tulsa
J. D. Souther, Faithless Love
Jackson Browne, Fountain of Sorrow
Jonatha Brooke, No Net Below
Jennifer Warnes, It Goes Like It Goes
Jane Siberry, The Life is The Red Wagon
Kate Bush, This Woman's Work
Joan Baez, Simple Twist of Fate
Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal
k. d. lang, Simple
The Antlers, Shiva
The Wailin' Jennys, Calling All Angels
Jane Monheit, Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Add this to the list of things that bureaucrats don't understand about teachers' lives.

So here's a situation.

A parent requested a conference with a teacher I know during conference time. This parent began yelling and gesticulating wildly during the conference, until the teacher asked the parent to leave. By the way, the teacher in question is so calm, he's practically a reincarnation of the Buddha. Parent stormed off and went to an administrator and made a bunch of wild claims about the teacher and then stormed out of the administrator's office.

So far, not all that unusual, right?

Here's where it gets interesting: the parent's kid approached the teacher a few days later, accused him of threatening the mother, and then threatened to attack the teacher. This was done IN FRONT OF WITNESSES.

Wow. Makes Race to the Top seem kind of insignificant and out-of-touch, doesn't it?

The assumption that students are all here to learn, that students are all cooperative, sane, and non-violent, is just not a part of the reality of teaching in a public school. That goes for parents, too.

And it's certainly true that the majority of students and parents do not behave this way. But this kind of family is becoming ever more common. There have been more assaults or threatened assaults on teachers of my acquaintance this year that any year that I can remember since I started teaching school back in the 1980s.

Now, luckily, the student has been suspended from school for the maximum allowed time, which is good, since it is known that the family has guns in the house. It is good to know that the administrators took this seriously.

So maybe Arne Duncan has some advice about this situation from his vast well of educational experience? If so, I'd like to hear it.

Open thread: the late great assignment

Query submitted for your approval: Do you accept late work from students? If so, how much, how often, and at what consequence?

What is your district policy on this?

Inquiring minds want to know....

Selling ad space in the classroom

Does this cross a line?

Last month, New Jersey became the first state in the northeast to allow districts to display advertisements on their school buses, noting that districts could earn up to $1,000 per bus by selling ads, The Star-Ledger reported. Other states like Ohio, Utah and Washington had also considered a similar move.

Two years ago, Idaho high school teacher Jeb Harrison started selling ad space on his tests and handouts -- by striking a deal with a local pizza shop.

Florida's Orange County Public Schools have adopted an advertising program that allows marketing in areas including online, on lunch menus, play sponsorships and a parking garage billboard. In about 18 months, the district had made about $270,000, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

While these districts have implemented programs, others are still venturing into the field. Late last month, North Carolina's Guilford County schools discussed at its school board meeting proposals to permit marketing, ranging from ads inside schools to selling naming rights for school stadiums and buildings, WGHP-TV reported.

And there's more to read at the link.

What bothers me is that school district residents who refuse tax increases seem to want something for nothing. They may think that they may never have to support their schools again if schools can just sell ads. On the other hand, I wonder about how much my students really pay attention to ads every where else in their lives they encounter them. I have gotten pretty good at not noticing ads online just because they are so ubiquitous. I guess this also touches upon my earlier rant about PTA/PTO fundraisers.

Have schools ever really been ad-free zones, at least in the last twenty years? Shouldn't they be?

A while back, one of the neighboring school districts cut back on transportation for after school activities. Perhaps, during the last weeks they ran the service, they could have painted along the sides of each bus, "This bus's cancellation provided by the taxpayers of District X." But I guess that would be too bitter, even if true.

What do you think? Are ads in the classroom a harmless way to raise funding?

Unrestrained greed sows class warfare and unrest

So Representative Ryan is criticizing those who are protesting the excesses of Wall Street?

Not nearly as surprising as Sarah Palin criticizing "crony capitalism." In the words of Inigo Montoya in one of my favorite movies of all time, "I dunna think that word means what you THINK it means."

But back to the criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Rep. Ryan stated in the link above, "We shouldn’t be picking winners and losers in Washington either through spending or the tax code."

Amazing. What does he think happens under the unrestrained, excessive business atmosphere of which he is such a fervent acolyte? With no regulation, with government geared to protect the wealthy against the needs of the many, with democracy subverted in the name of wealthy oligarchs who graciously invest in campaign coffers as a easy means to secure their privilege at the expense of the wellbeing of the great mass of citizenry, Rep. Ryan, you policies promote nothing BUT class warfare. When you decry the protesters as "pitting American against American," well, that what your vision of capitalism is, after all.

In unrestrained capitalism, there must always be winners and losers. When are politicians are enlisted in promoting the good of the wealthy rather than the good of the country, there will be millions of "losers" in the name of protecting the handful of "winners."

You keep talking about "job creation," yet under the policies of you and your ilk we have seen job LOSS even with the financially irresponsible promotion of insanely low tax rates which were supposed to produce job growth. You cannot reasonably make a case that all the corporate welfare you and your cronies have promoted has "promoted the general welfare."

Apparently, it's completely acceptable for corporations, who may be persons but are in no way CITIZENS, to exercise free speech, but completely unpatriotic and dangerous for CITIZENS, who are not corporations, to do likewise in the dusty corners of your mind, Representative Ryan.

Interesting. And Orwellian.

National Punctuation Day!

Now we need to invent National Spelling Day....

In honor of this day, a small poem I found:


The period is a busy man.
A small round traffic cop.
He blocks the helter-skelter words
And brings them to a stop.

The question mark's a tiny girl,
She's small but very wise;
She asks too many questions
For a person of her size.

Of all the punctuation folk,
I like the comma best.
For when I'm getting out of breath
He lets me take a rest.

Quotation marks are curious.
When friendly talk begins
You'll always find these little marks
Are busy listening in.

The exclamation mark's an elf,
Who is easily excited.
When children laugh or cry or scream
It's then he's most delighted.

Whenever you come to the end of a thought,
You sign it off with a polka dot.

Beatrice Schenkde Regniers

I'm your teacher, not your friend, but this law is still pointless.

As you may have heard, Missouri passed a law known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, a few weeks ago making it illegal for teachers to have contact with their students via social networking sites. This law immediately faced challenges about its lack of common sense as well as its constitutionality, so much so that a right-leaning teacher group in Missouri (the MSTA) won the race to challenge it in court.

Little more than two weeks after its UNANIMOUS passage in the Missouri legislature (the Missouri legislature being basically as much an embarrassment as most state legislatures are), the law's implementation was stayed by court order.

So, on Friday, September 15, the law was revised by the Missouri Senate, although it has not been passed by the House nor signed by the governor, so the lawsuit continues.

Here's the question: would this law have prevented some horrible people from using their positions of trust and authority as teachers from contact their students for illicit purposes?

No.

I am adamant about NOT friending my students on Facebook until they are out of college, which in my book means they have to be 24 years old. Then, and only then, if they really want to read about Ms. Cornelius' battles with the neighbors' Satanic dogs or my weird snippets of 70s rock songs, then be my guest. They must really have liked me to want to connect after all those years. Hopefully, also, by then, I will not be treated to pictures of their inebriated selves at some fraternity kegger showing off their new nipple ring, which would be deeply traumatic for me (and one would also think for them, but, y'know, c'est la vie).

I also do not give out my phone number, nor do I have a Twitter account, nor do I stay in my room alone with a student without the door open and at least fifteen feet between us.

BUT, disgusting creeps will be disgusting creeps, no matter what. This law would could easily have been read to make my classroom blog illegal, since it was not created under the aegis of our school district's creaky, misbegotten, twitchy, unreliable technology department, of whom I have previously written. If someone in state government REALLY wants to make a difference on this issue, how about making it illegal for districts to cut deals with miscreants who have crossed the line-- for instance, in exchange for a resignation, the district writes a neutral recommendation, merely pawning off creeps onto the next unsuspecting school district faster than you can say "pedophile." At the very least.

But this law? Unconstitutional as written, and also unproductive.

That'll be two boxes of kleenex, please.

The Big Giant Head, the name I assign to whoever it is who sets our department budget, has spread the word that we have fifty bucks apiece to spend on school supplies for the year. We can only spend it on materials ordered through This Special Catalogue.

This Special Catalogue has prices about 150-200% the prices at Office Max.

Who is getting the kickbacks in this situation? That's what I want to know. We are not allow to turn in receipts from an outside store for the school supplies we purchase-- much more cheaply-- ourselves.

Oh, and back when I worked in my first teaching job in a school formerly staffed by nuns, some thirty years ago, guess how much I was allowed to spend on school supplies?

Yep. Fifty bucks.

But those bucks went further, back then. After all, they were in doubloons, because paper money had not been invented yet.