In celebration of a kid who never quits

I have a student who has a serious medical condition. He will not ever get better-- his condition is degenerative.

But he moves on.

He will not be defined by anything but who he is rather than what has happened to him.

He is the most interesting kid. Even though his condition makes it difficult for him to express himself, he still makes the attempt, each and every day, to express his very deep thoughts. He is always paying attention, even if he is pain, even if he is uncomfortable, even if this has not been a good day thus far.

I love how the other kids all accept him for who he is. I love how they all help him get ready as he comes in every day. I love how none of them get impatient when he struggles to get the words out. I love how he was listening to one of the princesses go on and on about some silliness, and he got the perfect wisecrack out, and everybody laughed-- even the princess. When he laughs, his entire body curves up into a smile, and he crows with joy.

I love how he sees connections that no one else does. I love how he never ever gives up-- he is the living embodiment of Winston Churchill: "Never ever ever ever...."

I love how nothing ever seems to get him down, even though he has been abandoned by everyone who should have stood by him, and now each new day is a challenge of just seeing if he can get through the day without falling or choking or getting stuck somewhere.

I love the fact that he reminds of why I entered this profession so many years ago, and I wish with every fiber of my being that he would go on forever.

Each day is a blessing. I try not to worry about his tomorrows. That's what he teaches me, every day. He absorbs each second with a verve and a strength that I wish we could all tap into.

Thank you, Bud. It's your day, today.

Hunger strikes at LAUSD

The California meltdown continues to pile up its casualty lists. And some teachers have gone on hunger strike:

Sean Leys sat huddled and still in a tent on a sidewalk outside of a Los Angeles middle school, fatigued by an ongoing hunger strike but resolved to protest looming teacher layoffs. The longtime English teacher, holding a biography of labor-rights leader Cesar Chavez in his lap, was camped outside John H. Liechty Middle School with about 20 colleagues, an occasional motorist honking a horn in support of their cause.

While he may avoid a pink slip, thousands of his teacher colleagues in Los Angeles will not. By next school year, 2,100 city teachers are slated to lose their jobs — a 5 percent hit to the nation's second-largest school district. Worse still, Leys said, is that the layoffs are concentrated in some of the city's grittiest neighborhoods. Los Angeles Unified's inner-city schools have higher turnover and tend to hire more new teachers, and state education code mandates that layoffs be issued based on seniority. "This is about civil rights and education for inner-city children," Leys said.

School districts across the nation are facing similar financial crunches, but many have avoided painful layoffs with the help of federal stimulus funds. California, however, is mired in a budget crisis and, despite the influx of federal money, is still moving to lay off thousands. The National Education Association estimates that some 34,000 teaching jobs will be eliminated this year. California — with Los Angeles Unified in the lead — faces the largest loss of nearly 18,000 teachers. The city's schools have roughly 40,000 teachers. Some inner-city middle and high schools could lose up to 40 percent of their teachers, according to an analysis by the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.

By contrast, many schools in the district's more affluent areas, such as the San Fernando Valley suburbs, will be less affected because only up to 10 percent of their teachers are new, the analysis found. At schools such as Liechty, located in gang-riddled central Los Angeles, more than half the teachers are losing their jobs. Their classrooms will be filled by transferred senior teachers and administrators whose positions were eliminated. Administrators say layoffs are spread throughout the district, but Liechty has a large number because it opened in 2007 and was filled with new hires. District officials acknowledge staff turnover is a problem at certain schools and that layoffs will cut into the hires — including those who request to work in urban areas — that the district has worked hard to recruit in recent years.

Teachers who lose their jobs can join the substitute pool and are placed on the re-employment list, officials said. "Our hope is to keep them involved in the system," said Vivian Ekchian, the district's chief human resources officer. Until the district finds the money to rehire the teachers, students will find themselves in bigger classes this fall. Critics of the layoffs say the district's newer teachers bring sorely needed enthusiasm to the problem-plagued campuses, as well as new teaching methods and ideas.

Many of the district's newer hires are also minorities who can relate to the majority of the district's 650,000 students. "I share a lot of my life with my students," said Christian Aguilar, a Liechty seventh-grade math and science teacher who's facing layoff. "I tell them there's an opportunity for you to grow up and get out of here. I tell parents I want their kids to get out of here. I can only hope I made an impact on some of them." Aguilar grew up blocks from the school and shows students the scar on his neck, where he was slashed by a drug dealer, to underscore that he knows firsthand what their lives are like.

Students said they like the empathetic ear that the younger teachers can provide. "They're easy to talk to," said Marilyn Ann Flores, an eighth-grader at Liechty. "They understand you. It wasn't that long ago that they were teenagers. They tell us their background. Some teachers went through the same things we're going through. We see if that person made it, we can, too."

School board member Marlene Canter said the experienced teachers and administrators who will fill the gaps after the layoffs are also capable of motivating children. What's really needed, she said, is a way to reward higher-performing teachers and a simpler process to weed out poor ones. "Just because you're a senior teacher doesn't mean you're a bad teacher, or if you're a younger teacher, you're automatically good," she said.

Leys, a 10-year teaching veteran at Lincoln High School near Liechty, said the hunger strike, which started May 27, has cost him a pound a day from his already thin frame. But he appeared determined to continue his protest.
"In these neighborhoods, schools are life or death for a lot of these kids," he said. "It's the inequity of how these layoffs are being done. It's frustrating."

I heard that Lays recently relented on his hunger strike. I hope no one makes the sarcastic assumption that this means they should expect teachers to live on starvation wages.

I really don't think the issue is new teachers versus old teachers. I've seen some pretty bitter newbies, and I've seen some pretty enthusiastic veterans. I think the issue is a flat refusal to understand that -- listen up, voters-- there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, which my favorite author Robert Heinlein referred to as TANSTAAFL. Until people realize that taxes actually buy good things like good schools and good roads, this kind of problem will continue, but especially in La-La Land, brought to you thanks to Proposition 13.

With the best of intentions

Dear New Principal:

It's me, the Wizened Old Veteran of the Classroom here, trying once again to help you out, and I'll have to say it here, where maybe someone else can profit from your struggles:

Never judge a teacher based on ten seconds of walking past their class at the end of the day-- a day with a completely bizarre schedule that I know you had foisted upon you by Assistant Principal Mata Hari, who has his eye on getting a cushy central office job just as soon as he can possibly kiss the hindquarters of anyone with the letters Ed.D after his or her name manage it.

You need to get your assistants in line. One of them is actively trying to stab you in the back. One of them never shows up for supervision, and also ignores the behavior guide. I often watch this one leave her office, walk twenty feet, see a staff member, and then pirouette back toward her office, and then repeat this cycle five minutes later. One of them is getting fed up with being the go-to principal since she actually is consistent. One of them is busy trying to be "real" and trying to be friends with the students.

Stop talking to the kids as if they are actually little kids.

Stop talking to the adults as if they were little kids.

Give teachers more than one hour's warning before you demand some project or lesson or bunch of paperwork. We are also expected to spend our time teaching from bell to bell, and these two expectations do not go together.

We all want to see academic standards improve. But if you enrage 90% of the faculty through capricious little decisions that really don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, well, I'm afraid we'll be looking at you, kid. As you ooze right out the door, tired and defeated. And you're a nice person. I feel for you.

You are also making me consider leaving teaching.

I can't believe those words just left my fingertips.

This space for rent

Note: This is my 1,000th post! Whoa!

Here's the situation: You're a classroom teacher, and you do not have enough supplies provided to you for your classroom. In particular, you don't have enough paper. So what do you do?

Many of us face this situation every day. I remember when I taught in the parochial school, and we were all given one box of paper to use all year long. A teacher resigned in midyear. Before her car had even pulled out of the parking lot, I slunk into her room and nabbed the three-quarters of a ream of paper she had neglected to use. Score!

But there's another reality that needs to be acknowledged. Sadly, many of us dip into our own meager, threadbare pockets and buy the paper ourselves, recompense being a starry-eyed dream that died with belief in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the fantasy that Viggo Mortensen would someday see you across a crowded room and realize you were the realization of his every dream and the woman for whom he's been looking all of his life.

Or, there's another option some teachers have decided to try. How about selling ad space on tests, quizzes, and handouts?

In a cash-strapped Idaho high school where signs taped near every light switch remind the staff to save electricity, an enterprising teacher has struck a sponsorship deal with a local pizza shop: Every test, handout and worksheet he passes out to his students reads MOLTO'S PIZZA 14" 1 TOPPING JUST $5 in bright red, inch-high letters printed along the bottom of every page.

"I just wanted to find a way to save money," said Jeb Harrison, who teaches history and economics. "We have to sell ads for our yearbook, for our school newspaper. I don't think this small amount of advertising will change my classroom."

School officials were not wild about the idea, but Pocatello High School Principal Don Cotant relented after Harrison explained the advertisements could help illuminate such topics as the Great Depression.

"I had concerns. I didn't know what this would open up for us," Cotant said. "But we've let this happen because it makes a point about what economic hard times can force people to do."

As school districts across the country face the worst economic outlook in decades, educators who have long reached into their own pockets to buy classroom supplies are finding creative ways to cover expenses. But selling ads on schoolwork is practically unheard of.

The 12,000-student school district in and around Pocatello — an old railroad town of about 55,000, where Idaho State University and a semiconductor plant are among the biggest employers — is looking at a shortfall of up to $10 million next year because of expected cuts in state aid. A tax increase was voted down last month, and school officials have frozen spending on field trips, teacher training and basic supplies such as paper.

Molto Caldo Pizzeria, about a mile from the high school, agreed to supply paper for Harrison's five classes — 10,000 sheets, valued at $315, and imprinted with a pizza ad. That should be enough paper for the rest of this school year and all of the next one.
On a recent day, Harrison handed out photocopies of Dust Bowl images, emblazoned with the pizza ad. The ad also appeared on an economics test he gave last week on the Depression.

"I thought it was a great idea. I mean, the levy didn't pass. We can't get enough money from the state. We've got to find some way to get it," said one of Harrison's students, 17-year-old Benjamin Simms.

Marianne Donnelly, chairwoman of the school board, said the ad apparently violates a district policy barring schools from directly promoting businesses. But she said the board considers the ad harmless and is not making an issue out of it.
"Give the teacher credit for creativity," Donnelly said. "There's no question we're in desperate financial straits."

Elsewhere, nonprofit organizations are helping teachers obtain free or discounted classroom supplies, and Web sites match educators with benefactors willing to buy materials. But Harrison's approach has at least one critic worried the idea will spread.
"It crosses a line," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "When teachers start becoming pitchmen for products, children suffer and their education suffers as well."

Earlier this school year in San Diego, Rancho Bernardo High School math instructor Tom Farber allowed students' parents and local businesses to pay $10 to print messages on quizzes, $20 for space on tests and $30 for final exams. Most parents printed inspirational messages, some started plugging their businesses. He raised $625 in one semester.

District administrators expressed concern that the practice could lead to legal problems if an ad were ever rejected, but Farber ended the practice before they could intervene. He sold his last ad in January, after making enough to get through the rest of the year.
"If the district says I can't do it, then they need to provide the money necessary for me to do my job," Farber said.

So how about it? Good old' American ingenuity always finding a way? Or just another slip down the slope to renting out the inside of your eyelids?

On the one hand, school districts are already far from ad-free zones. There are Coke machines, and ads in the school paper, and ads in the yearbook, and ads in the stadium and in the sports programs. Some years ago there was Channel One, which provided free equipment and news programs in exchange for allowing students to watch a couple of minutes of ads.

But on the other hand, why is it acceptable to expect teachers to pay for supplies out of their own pockets? We are already grossly undercompensated in most parts of the world. My husband doesn't buy dozens of pens, staplers, reams of papers, dry-erase markers, or spirals to take to his job at Mega-Defense Corporation, but every year I have to make far less than $100 buy all the supplies, including scantrons, that I will need through the school year. Is selling ad space any more morally appalling than refusing to provide supplies?

What do you think?

Making Homecoming Meaningful

Warning: have kleenex handy before proceeding.

This is an absolutely beautiful story fromABC News.

The title of homecoming queen is typically reserved for the head cheerleader or student class president, but not so at one Texas high school where this year's queen saw hundreds of onlookers moved to tears as she was crowned.

"There wasn't a dry eye to be seen," said Carolyn Pass, the mother of newly crowned queen Kristin Pass, who was born with Down syndrome 18 years ago.

Go read the whole thing.

Hooray for Aledo High School. There are a lot of beautiful people there.

Teachers as nurses. This is scary.

How would you like to be responsible for carrying out medical procedures on your students?

During the past two school years, teacher Julia Keyse had to enforce an unusual rule in her kindergarten and first-grade classroom: No interrupting while she pricked Caylee's finger to check her blood sugar and adjusted her insulin pump.

"They were so good. They would just sit and wait," Keyse said of her class at Etowah Elementary School in Henderson County, N.C.

It's a task Keyse never imagined when she became a teacher, but medical duties have become a part of the job for educators across the country as schools cut nursing staff or require nurses to work at multiple locations. The change comes at a time when more students are dealing with serious medical conditions, such as severe allergies, asthma and diabetes.

It's a change that's unsettling for teachers, school nurses and parents.

"We don't want to pretend to be doctors or nurses," Keyse said. "I would have gone to school for that."

Federal guidelines recommend that schools employ one nurse for every 750 students, but the national average is one nurse for every 1,151 students, according to Amy Garcia, executive director of the National Association of School Nurses. A quarter of schools in the nation have no school nurse.

Although there is no historical data regarding the number of school nurses nationwide, members of the profession say there are fewer nurses doing more work, while teachers and other school workers pick up the slack. The average nurse splits her time between 2.2 schools, according to the association.

"Teachers deserve a school nurse because their time should be spent teaching," Garcia said.

Meanwhile, the workload of school nurses has increased since 1975, when the federal government mandated that schools accommodate disabled students, clearing the way for children with feeding tubes, catheters and other serious medical conditions to attend school. Today, 16 percent of students have a condition that requires regular attention from the school nurse, Garcia said.

Many parents and school administers don't realize that nurses are handling life-threatening conditions as well as performing vision, health and diabetes screenings, said Barbara Duddy, president of the Tennessee Association of School Nurses in Memphis.

"They think the school nurse is nice little job where you take care of boo-boos," she said. "School nurses work very hard to make sure every child gets exactly what they need."

Garcia blamed shifting priorities, shrinking budgets and a misunderstanding of the school nurse's role for the loss of jobs.

The Southern Humboldt Unified School Board in Garberville, Calif., blamed a reduction in state funding when members voted in June to eliminate one nursing position and reduce the other position to 10 hours a week for the upcoming school year.

"The nurses provide great services for our students, but so do all the other positions that we've cut," said Susie Jennings, associate superintendent for the 800-student district.

Robin Correll, the remaining nurse, worries how she will oversee the district's seven schools. She was already struggling to perform annual health and vision screenings.

"It will be impossible to do all the work," she said. "It breaks my heart. Kids deserve better."

Correll, like many nurses around the country, has already trained teachers and secretaries to dispense medication, give shots of adrenaline and help children use inhalers. So far the district has stopped short of asking nonmedical personnel to administer insulin.

The thought of someone without a medical background managing Brandon Merrell's diabetes makes his mother, Amy Merrell, very uncomfortable. The Gilbert, Ariz., woman wants assurances that her 8-year-old son will be properly cared for while he's at Coronado Elementary School.

"There needs to be somebody in there that knows what they're doing," she said.

She and her husband, Doug, are among the parents speaking out about the issue. After they and other parents objected to a plan to cut the number of school nurses from nine to two, the Higley Unified School District decided in June to maintain five nursing jobs.

In Keyse's North Carolina district, Barb Molton told county commissioners that she worried her diabetic 13-year-old son, Brice, had access to a school nurse for only two mornings a week.

"It can be scary dropping your child off at school wondering if that will be the day they might have a medical emergency and wondering if that is the day you might be lucky to have a school nurse there," she said at the hearing.

The commissioners agreed to fund two additional nurses for the upcoming school year.

School nurses, who have spent the last decade defending their jobs, are happy to see parents take up the cause, said David Schildmeier, spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

"That's how the change happens," he said. "That's how this issue gets solved."

We've all patched up the minor boo-boo or diagnosed strep infections or --gulp--pink-eye and called parents to take kids to the doctor. I am known as having a "Mama hand" that can pretty accurately predict what a kid's temperature is going to be. But handling catheters? Testing blood sugar? Nononononono. Hell, no. I won't dance. You can't make me. That is just too frightening. Think of the liability. Think of how a child could get hurt!

The Passing of a Great Teacher: Randy Pausch, 1960-2008

Carngie Mellon Computer science professor Randy Pausch passed away this morning, from pancreatic cancer.

PITTSBURGH (July 25) -- Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose "last lecture" about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, has died. He was 47.

Pausch died early Friday at his home in Virginia, university spokeswoman Anne Watzman said. Pausch and his family moved there last fall to be closer to his wife's relatives.

Pausch was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in September 2006. His popular last lecture at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 garnered international attention and was viewed by millions on the Internet.

In it, Pausch celebrated living the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on impending death.

"The lecture was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful," Pausch wrote on his Web site. "But rest assured; I'm hardly unique."

The book "The Last Lecture," written with Jeffrey Zaslow, leaped to the top of the nonfiction best-seller lists after its publication in April and remains there this week. Pausch said he dictated the book to Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal writer, by cell phone. The book deal was reported to be worth more than $6 million.

At Carnegie Mellon, he was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design, and was recognized as a pioneer of virtual reality research. On campus, he became known for his flamboyance and showmanship as a teacher and mentor.

The speech last fall was part of a series Carnegie Mellon called "The Last Lecture," where professors were asked to think about what matters to them most and give a hypothetical final talk. The name of the lecture series was changed to "Journeys" before Pausch spoke, something he joked about in his lecture.

"I thought, damn, I finally nailed the venue and they renamed it," he said.

He told the packed auditorium he fulfilled almost all his childhood dreams — being in zero gravity, writing an article in the World Book Encyclopedia and working with the Walt Disney Co.

The one that eluded him? Playing in the National Football League.

"If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you," Pausch said.

He then joked about his quirky hobby of winning stuffed animals at amusement parks — another of his childhood dreams — and how his mother introduced him to people to keep him humble: "This is my son, he's a doctor, but not the kind that helps people."

Pausch said he was embarrassed and flattered by the popularity of his message. Millions viewed the complete or abridged version of the lecture, titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," online.

Pausch lobbied Congress for more federal funding for pancreatic cancer research and appeared on "Oprah" and other TV shows. In what he called "a truly magical experience," he was even invited to appear as an extra in the new "Star Trek" movie.
He had one line of dialogue, got to keep his costume and donated his $217.06 paycheck to charity.

Pausch blogged regularly about his medical treatment. On Feb. 15, exactly six months after he was told he had three to six months of healthy living left, Pausch posted a photo of himself to show he was "still alive & healthy."

"I rode my bike today; the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy are hurting my stamina some, but I bet I can still run a quarter mile faster than most Americans," he wrote.

Pausch gave one more lecture after his Carnegie Mellon appearance — in November at the University of Virginia, where he had taught from 1988 to 1997.

Pausch often emphasized the need to have fun.

"I mean I don't know how to not have fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play it," he said in his Carnegie Mellon lecture. "You just have to decide if you're a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I'm clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. Never lose the childlike wonder. It's just too important. It's what drives us."

Born in 1960, Pausch received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon.

He co-founded Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, a master's program for bringing artists and engineers together. The university named a footbridge in his honor. He also created an animation-based teaching program for high school and college students to have fun while learning computer programming.

In February, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in California announced the creation of the Dr. Randy Pausch Scholarship Fund for university students who pursue careers in game design, development and production.
He and his wife, Jai, had three children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe.

A great teacher impacts his or her students in a way that impacts them for a lifetime. Dr. Pausch's "Last Lecture" alone made us all his students. God bless him and his family.

Here's the link for those of you who haven't seen it. It is completely worth the time, (and yet another reason why I am angry that my school district's tech people have completely blocked access to Youtube.)

Misplaced priorities about education goes Dutch

Ha. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry:

Dutch parents sneaking their children off on holiday two days before the official close of school were chided at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport Thursday in a sting by "compulsory education officials."

Ten officials from the municipalities of Amsterdam and Haarlemmermeer "addressed" 80 families at the airport in the morning, said a statement.

From questioning during the "public friendly action," it transpired that half the parents had failed to obtain school permission to leave early.

After a dressing down, they were allowed to continue on their way, and no fines were issued.

"The goal of the action was awareness and information," said the statement.

It stressed that the law allowed children to skip school only for very important reasons. Of the parents questioned Thursday, half said they were motivated by cheaper air tickets.

THAT must have been an interesting sight for the other travelers in the airport.... Although, it seems like the sting had no real "sting" involved, since all they had to endure was an "address."

Makes me despair, it does.