Thoughts on O'Bama's Speech In School

Okay . . . I'm not quite as a-political as others, so I don't always grasp why people get so hot under the collar. The AP summary of O'Bama's speech today seemed objective. And I liked what I read, especially the last two paragraphs:

"Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it," Obama said. "The truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject that you study. You won't click with every teacher that you have."

"At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world, and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities," the president said.

I am not intentionally taking this out of context--at least NOT on a conscious level. I "get" that Duncan screwed up in the way it was presented, but I cannot fathom why anyone would want to prevents students from reading or hearing this. I just don't see any other agenda here; in fact, I feel like it's high time someone in his position told kids that. If I were still teaching in high school, I'd probably put that last quote on my board and ask students to write an essay explaining what they were doing to fulfill their responsibilities.

I don't care a bit for politics--one side is just as "bad" or "good" as the other, but I am still an educator, and I liked this.

On Flip-Flops, Weddings, and Merry-go-Rounds

The subject of weddings—and the bridal accoutrements came up recently in conversation with a friend. She described the footwear worn by bridesmaids at a recent wedding attended by her mother. Neither she nor her mother was impressed, for the women of the wedding party had all worn flip-flops. My friend did not smile; her brow furrowed slightly; her mouth formed a straight line. Surely I must agree, else she would not have shared her view. Ummmm.

You know . . . I kind of think flip-flops are fine for a summer wedding. I knew one bride who wore fuzzy white flip-flops so she wouldn’t appear taller than the groom. Perhaps they don’t go with a formal dress, but then, none of the females in the either processional or recessional had fear of falling. Perhaps they were nervous; in a serious ceremony, in a locally famous chapel perhaps wearing flip-flop was a fun, silly way to take the edge of the tension. No doubt they had their toes “done.” That would have made a unique photo-op and give the bride and her “maids” something to smile about in years to come—whether the marriage lasts or not. I can think of many reasons the flip-flops could be appropriate.

As for the bride and groom’s reception, they planned to stay up and party until they left on their honeymoon—why not? No doubt they have had a connubial relationship that has culminated in their wedding—that seems the going trend these days (not a bad way to reduce the number of future divorces, one hopes). More often these days the honeymoon is just a vacation that gives the newlyweds an opportunity to enjoy the glorious, hedonistic release of hormones. Not only that, but many newlyweds find themselves so happy and excited after becoming “Mr. and Mrs.” that it’s impossible for them to be calm at a decorous and formal reception, followed by an equally ceremonious escape. Why not stay up, celebrate with family and friends, and leave later for their happily ever after?

The choices of the couple at the wedding I attended Saturday were much more in line with tradition, and I have never seen a bride wear a dress more beautiful, that was more perfectly suited to her slender frame. Colors and trends being what they are, the bridesmaids wore brown gowns, that flattered each of them; they wore modest, heeled sandals, appropriate and dressy. The music during the ceremony was a pleasant blend. The song “I Loved Her First” that was sung by a would-be Garth Brooks as the bride stood between her father and the groom, brought tears to many eyes—not just my own. The best thing, though, was the look on the faces of bride and groom. Her eyes were on the man she loved the moment the back doors opened and she walked down the aisle, and his were on her.

In the aftermath, who can say which couple will be happier? Weddings are one-day wonders that take months to plan, sometimes cost a ridiculous amount, can be exhausting, and, for better or worse, change two lives forever. It is the way of our society; it is the yin-yang that pretends to assure stability to procreation and proliferation of the human species, and some marriages I’ve seen really and truly do end “happily ever after.” So do flip-flops, parties, and tradition matter as much as the rest of their lives? The point in life is to live, to take a chance, to grab the gold ring while it’s offered. The carousel doesn’t go on forever.

Be Careful What You Ask For . . .

. . . you just might get it.



That's a familiar warning and a true statement that led to this discovery: I DIDN'T REALIZE THAT CHANGING THE TEMPLATE WOULD ELIMINATE MY WIDGETS!!! ARRRGH!!

That said, I'm back to blogging, folks. With a little help I have a new wallpaper for this and my other blog, so . . . by all means, tell me what you think. I agree with Nancee that the previous one that was here made reading very difficult. This one may be difficult as well, until I go in and change the font format, etc. I tried to find a wallpaper that seemed more in line with the title of the blog; I'm happier with this one than the other . . . for now. But as you all know, I just can't stay still very long.

I promise I'll be back again, SOON. In the meantime . . . I'll be grading essays.

Food, Glorious Food!!

This came from one of the best blogs out there, www.danandsally.com, written by one of my former students, soon to be a real, honest-to-goodness-writer, Sally Parrott Ashbrook.

Here’s what to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. I wasn't able to cross it out -- but you'll figure it out!

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea (mmmmm Chinese medicine) Never heard of it
3. Huevos rancheros -- know what it is, never tried it, but would like to
4. Steak tartare -- no, no, no
5. Crocodile -- ate gator, but no crocs -- note I spelled that properly
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp - gag!!
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho ??? That's food???
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle ??? bet that's not chocolate . . .
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (these, and other delicacies of dim sum, are among the top foods i miss)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche -- want to
28. Oysters
29. Baklava30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Sourdough Bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (BLECH!!! no,no,no)
37. Clotted Cream Tea (Clotted cream is a food of the gods, truly, but I have never had it in tea -- agree!!)38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat -- curried? why would you eat a combed goat?
42. Whole insects (no, no, no)
43. Phaal (waht the hell???)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whiskey from a bottle worth $120 or more (NO drink is worth that!)
46. Fugu (well, fugu you, too!)
47. Chicken tikka masala (Take out the middle word and it's wonderful)
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (I am from Georgia, after all)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads (no, thank you very much, no)
63. kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill (even though it may be tenderized -- NO)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse (NO!!)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

To Coordinate--or NOT Coordinate: That is The Question

A friend called this week-end, asking me what I thought of the position of English Coordinator that she may or may not be considering. woo-hoo. Here we go! An opportunity to rant about education!

First, let me explain that one of the FINEST administrators I ever worked for was not a principal; she was a Curriculum Director. She worked herself to exhaustion and worked us to exhaustion to benefit the students of Jasper County. I don't know that we appreciated her as she should have for as long as we should have, but I do know that when it was time for her to retire we all hung our heads and wept. There would be no one like her again. In larger counties, I understand that there are such things as English Coordinators; I'm glad. I wasn't sure what I thought of it at first, but . . . in recommending someone to talk to the would be Eng. C. in a nearby county, it is to our former Curriculum Director she had been directed--not only by me, but others who know both women.

Our former Curriculum Director may not know SPECIFICALLY about the role of English Coordinator for a county, because in Jasper, her title was Curriculum Director, but I have no doubt she would be able to give history, background, etc. for the Engl. position, as I'm sure he role as Cur. D. overlapped and supported Engl. I won't beat a dead horse, but . . .I'm all for such a person who knows what is going on at all levels of Engl. For YEARS and YEARS, we at the high school level were encouraged to get students to think, especially out of the box, as well as prepare them for the standardized tests. Looking back NOW, it seems that we were simply getting students to write for a variety of occasions/purposes. That's educationese speaking today--but I think , too, that MLJ's heart was in the right place. I don't think she wanted us to make writing so much of a specified duty or chore that the pleasure was taken from it. She knew the value writing could have. When she began our writing program, again MANY years ago, she forbade us -- not just Engl. teachers, ALL teachers -- to use writing as a form of punishment and deplored it as busy work. I was with her 100% on that. We worked, struggled, still struggle with grading so much writing [I do], but we worked and the writing program flourished. She tried guest speakers on writing, the Ga. Poetry Circuit, I think, poets, etc. to inspire and help us. She -- and we -- were proud of the steps we had made. Then, when Drew was in 5th grade, he had a teacher to set us back as many years as MLJ had brought us. I tried SOOOO hard not to complain, to keep my mouth shut--and when I exploded, I exploded all over her, her principal, and MLJ. Sitting here, typing, I still feel the anger and would cheerfully snatch that woman bald-headed. At one point after I emailed MLJ, I had a moment to speak to her, and then I found out she was holding a mandatory workshop for the Washington Park teachers. [It wasn't just Drew's teacher alone, apparently.] Bottom line: for once, it was not the high school teachers who had dropped the ball; this time, the fault was in the lower grades and it was shamefully apparent. THAT is the sort of problem I would like to see erased and that I think an English coordinator should be able to rectify.

We SHOULD NOT condemn teachers who have come before us, who have tried valiantly to teach students, not unless we have some sort of verifiable evidence. We defeat ourselves when we condemn those who are just as hard working as we are. There are inevitably some years that will be better than others, and some teachers will out-shine others, BUT . . . [heaven help me on this! I never thought to say it!!] the state's GPS is designed so that there is a definite, defined, designated curriculum at every grade level. It's specific. It's minimum. It's basic. If ALL English teachers in a system [county, perhaps] were aware of those basics of what was to come before and what was to after his or her classroom, it would be an enormous step. How hard could it be to devise a table/chart to indicate . . .?

In what grade are students supposed to learn subject-verb agreement? How often -- that is, what grades -- is that reinforced? Are we all using the same terminology, at least within the system? If nothing else, the GPS has given us a standard terminology as well--we may not like it, but if we use it, and if someone . . . that would be the English coordinator . . . makes sure we are familiar with it, we can speak on the same level. It would be better than making fun of, "Look, look! It's more teachers, more teachers in first grade. First grade. See, Spot?" At the secondary level, we get on our high-horses sometimes and forget just how hard it is to use those building blocks at the elementary level.

An English Coordinator is an excellent idea. It would be a truly important position to impact the entire county. As a certain science teacher told me once, the reason they failed the science part of the graduation test was because of the English department. "Students can't read. It's not our fault they fail science." I was too stunned to say anything. I couldn't even get mad; I was too . . . too into the logic of the statement. So . . . rather than slap her, outright, which I desperately wanted to do, I went back and tried to make sense of that part of her brain that said that. And I decided there was logic in the statement. What she meant was that students didn't know the terminology, vocabulary, formal English that the standardized tests presented. Science, however, had not focused so much on the reading; they focused on the content. I don't know if they ever understood how important teaching students how to read scientific articles could help. After a great deal of time mulling over what she said, I sent an email to my principal, telling him why I thought Engl. was doing so much better than Science and even made suggestions on what might help. I tried to make clear that I never wanted my name mentioned; if some of the strategies seemed viable, fine. Send them, suggest them, without mention of me. We dont' do enough of that--we don't do enough of anonymous teaching tips. Everyone wants to be the best or better than . . . so no one wants anyone to know what his/her "secret" is. Heaven forbid WE make a suggestion or accept one. If we could put egos behind, it might help.

Even in GPS. If secondary teachers could/would listen to some good elementary teachers and their ideas for projects, etc. they might find a way to adapt them. The projects MAY, indeed, be elementary, but the CONTENT is what the secondary teachers can fuel them with and make them . . . amazing. IF they are not so caught up in the "performance item" mentality and not fed on the belief that one must have projects going from the beginning of a unit to the end.

Looking back, which is so easy for me NOW, lol, the whole notion of a literary magazine was nothing more than a writing project. It was performance based. It was HUGE--well, it was to me; I loved every minute of it. But more than that, I think it had meaning--and I think it was worth something. We're seeing too many projects now that are meaningless and that had not fostered critical thinking, just elmer and crayola. I would rather see two minor projects in a semester, with a kick-butt "performance item" in addition to an exam, than a mathematician's face on a McDonalds' happy meal box, with stats around it. It was cute; we even took the proportions and tried to make the box come out as directed. It looked like something put together by the makers of Quasimodo, which was all the more evident when placed beside those happy meal boxes that had been traced out from the original. {duh . . . oh, yeah . . . all students can learn.} Know what my son learned from this project? That next time, instead of learning to double 3.25 inches, it would be better to just copy a template. No thinking required. ARGHH!

I know . . . I know . . . I digress. Still . . . I think the position of English Coordinator could be a huge benefit . . . especially to the kids--and maybe teachers, if they're not afraid to learn.

Last Week's Rant

I'm a week behind on rants. Last week I really meant to rant on how much I hate stupidity. I don't mean folks that are uninformed; I mean folks that are just plain stupid--and sometimes I think middle Georgia has an over-abundance of them. They will never be on the endangered species list. I can see it now; someday . . . years from now, after the Singularity*, the only PEOPLE left will be the stupid ones. The intelligent people will have incorporated their minds, their consciousness into computers and they, themselves, will evolve and have their own scientious being. Then someone with a blinking brain cell will come along and unplug the computer. He or she will probably be saying just what a radio caller said last week: "It just ain't like America no more. We wuz more like America back in Roman times. It's done got too commercialized now."

Most of the time I feel that communication is far more important that correct English, but only when communication is combined with COMMON SENSE. That ranks right up there with the student I had last year who liked to sit on the front porch, in a rocking chair and "watch the horizon set." Heaven help us all!

*SINGULARITY -- if you haven't heard of it or don't know what it is, type it into Google and take a look. You might be surprised--possibly thrilled or terrified.

Mark Twain Would Love It!!

Even watching the video on utube, one could almost see the gleam in Matthew Whitton’s eye, with his partner in crime, Rick Dyer, nodding in agreement as Whitton recounted the tale of their discovery of Bigfoot in the north Georgia mountains. (They looked so delighted with themselves, and [to me] they bore an uncanny resemblance to Jeff Foxworthy and “Larry, the Cable Guy.”) Watching those two, it wasn’t hard to imagine them in a deer camp, telling the story to an appreciative, down-home audience. Not that the audience would likely have believed them; chances are that “down-home” folks might have noticed the grin that wanted to spill out of Whitton and Dyer or the overly sincere tone in the 21st century equivalent of Tom and Huck.

Today, we learn that a Las Vegas promoter and Bigfoot aficionado, Tom Biscardi, paid the men $50,000 for the “corpse” only to discover that the rubber suit that was Bigfoot contained all manner of animal remains. Apparently the Rubber Suit Bigfoot was an omnivore. But Biscardi isn’t laughing. According to FOXNew.com:

It's possible that fraud charges could be filed against Dyer and Whitton, as Biscardi seems to want, though it's not clear whether it'd be a criminal or civil case.
"[Biscardi] freely gave them the money," noted Jeffrey Turner, police chief of Clayton County, Ga., who fired Whitton as an officer Tuesday but couldn't locate him to inform him of his termination. "It'd be a civil matter."

The website goes on to say:
It may be difficult for Biscardi to claim he was defrauded, as the "24-Hour Sighting Hotline" number posted on Dyer and Whitton's Web site, BigfootTracker.com, asks for tips related to "leprechauns, unicorns, large cats, dinosaurs," as well as "Jimmy Hoffa or Elvis."

Mark Twain once told a story about a man named Smiley, who raised and trained a jumping frog that could out-jump any other frog in a place called Calaveras County. Smiley would snooker unsuspecting men into betting on a jumping contest, knowing that his frog, named Dan’l Webster, would win every time. One day, a stranger came to town, appeared sincere, down-home, straight-faced and agreed to Smiley’s contest—if Smiley would fetch him a frog. Smiley readily agreed. When he returned with a fresh frog and set him down with Dan’l Webster, he was heart-broken when Dan’l repeatedly gave a heave and landed on back on his haunches. It was after he had lost the bet that Smiley discovered that the stranger had filled Dan'l with buckshot. It is one of the oldest stories, one of the oldest themes: The Trickster Tricked.

Sooner or later the duo of Whitton and Dyer will be found, very likely prosecuted, possibly serve jail time. I would have to agree with Aunt Polly and the Widow Douglas that the boys shouldn’t lie like that, and should be punished, but . . . to be honest, I can’t find it in my heart to condemn two country boys for putting one over on the city slickers.

I suspect that Mark Twain is somewhere in the Great Beyond, clad in his white suit, in his rocking chair, pipe in hand, laughing, hoping Whitton and Dyer have "lit out for the territory."