Musing of the end of 2013's school year

The Kansas City Costco is the most empty I've ever seen a Costco. Ever. And it has a funky self check-out line that is just as shitty as those at the supermarkets in Ukiah, only the people that help you out are usually a lot nicer.

So I'm in Kansas City conducting Year 3 of grading AP Comparative Government exams. The Costco visit was a wine run, and a place were I could buy over 70 oz of Jack Stack BBQ sauce for the price of a shot glass of the stuff at the restaurant. That's some yummy pulled pork when I get home. The Costco wine was worth the twenty minute walk since there is no Safeway locally, and the nearest Trader Joe's is almost an hour by bus. Now I'm stocked for the week and I'm ready to go.

The Class of 2013 didn't end with controversy, with students, at all. I loved many of them to death and they are now off with the wind and a sniff of optimism of what is to come.

*****

I kinda love some of my students. Yes, I said love. I worry about them. Share in there pain and joy. I'm said to see them off while happy to see them moving on. I think that classifies as love. I'm not having children, by choice, and thus I share much of that caring on with my students. Many of them are basketball players because I'm with them so much more than my regular students, and those people on an athletic team will understand that the relationships are different. Stronger. This year I had a collection of students that I just love to death. It pains me to see them go. It makes me happy to see them succeeding.

*****

Rules for going to grad parties. First, realize that there will be more of your students than you expected. I only got gifts for two, and there were many more in attendance. Awkward. Second, prepare to get asked embarrassing questions by people that may have been drinking. This isn't a parent-teacher conference. There may be booze around. Third, lighten up. If you are at a grad party chances are that the kids want you there. Finally, take your medicine if you practice the art of snarkiness. When I saw a pool in the backyard I calmly pulled out my electronics and prepared for the inevitable. Sure enough, four Senior boys picked me up and physically threw me in the pool. I had it coming and it was all in good fun. It meant that I needed to stick around longer to dry off and enjoy my last moments with these kids. Oh, and it was 111 degrees at the time.

*****

The school year did end with a tad bit of controversey that had nothing to do with students. Since I am sick to death with totally unprofessional conduct, I decided to act. I'll leave it at that.

Let the summer commence!

 

Posted with Blogsy

There has got to be a joke in the phrase “Mixed Race Cheerios.”

I'm trying to find the tragedy and the drama behind this ad for Cheerios.  

For the record this commercial does not make me want to buy Cheerios.  This commercial makes me want to feed that little brat that dumped a box of Cheerios on her father to my cats.  But apparently the video caused quite the stir on Youtube among the mentally unbalanced when the black child had the audacity to talk to her white nanny in such a condescending tone.  Then it was really bad when the camera actually panned over to the father, a black man of course, covered in Cheerios; a clear sign that the nanny had not done her job in controlling the little wiccan from casting a polymorphic Cheerio spell on her Dad.  Heads surely rolled.

Unless the argument that is being had over this video is totally idiotic and something out of 1960's Alabama.  When I heard the video was controversial I figured that Mom was doing coke or something, and that the kid walked in on Mom and Dad getting it on on top of the kitchen table, and the child having a flash-forward to a Paris Jackson episode later in life.  Alas, the controversy is a mixed race issue.  Which means that it really isn't an issue and the media is really trolling this controversy because any asshole can comment on Youtube, and that includes the REALLY stupid assholes too.  This isn't a controversy.  This is boring.

Want real controversy?  Make a Lucky Charms commercial with a couple of drunk Irish guys, Peter Dinklidge, and Michelle Obama.  Now THAT would be be magically delicious.             

Blissful

Jeff Bliss dropped out of school early in his career and returned as an 18 year old sophomore.  To many teachers that would be a klaxon going off in your head.  A warning that the torpedo is in the water and your sub is about to get nailed.  

Then this happened.

This is an insanely good rant by a student, and I mean rant in the most positive way you can put it.  I don't care who you are, where you are, and under which political faction you attach yourself;  the dude is right.  Period.  Sounds like he's in a situation where he's mature enough to realize that he fucked up earlier in life and wants to make up for the mistake but is damn well not going to waste time with belittling teachers and piles and piles of worksheets.  Good for Jeff Bliss.

I had a packet work and Economics USA teacher.  It was pretty much one of the more awful classes in that nearly everything was video-packet, video-packet.  And the videos were your typical 80's Economics videos.  In fact, here they are with updates. Wade into them.  Attempt to spill their blood, shoot them in the belly.  Except that it won't work because the videos are stronger than the Nazi's.  They are crazed Economics space aliens that are hell bent on killing everything.  One episode can be tamed.  All of them over a semester create a retched hive of scum and villainy.  Good luck. 

The one time I had the audacity to say "oh yay, another packet", my Economics teacher threw the entire stack at me while I was sitting at my desk and yelled "FINE, YOU TEACH IT!"  I was meek then.  Now.....FINE, I WILL!  Jeff Bliss made a more eloquent statement about teaching and it was right that the admin told the teacher to get out and let the student continue with his work.  Good for him for demanding the best possible education he could get.  

And screw the teacher for making us look bad.      

Hello there, End of Year

 

I’m sure there is some kind of message with this picture regarding the end of my school year.  Unless there really isn’t and that’s actually a fire at my school.

Yep, that’s actually a fire at my school.

It happened about two weeks ago when some sparks from a grinder caught dry brush on fire and the flames sped into the hills.  Luckily the only thing that got damaged was the brush and a few acres of plants.  The Low Gap Express (the afternoon winds that blast west-to-east through Low Gap Canyon) didn’t show up until later into the fire so the flames caught away from the school structures, and the buildings weren’t ever really threatened.  And yes the students evacuated and yes everything seemed to go pretty ok.  All in all it was actually interesting to watch but no real damage. 

Well screw you then, Mr. Rattler.  Damn snakes don’t really like fire and apparently they’ve been wandering around our little campus out back.  Believe it or not nobodies been really bothered by snakes at the school (we are nestled in the hills), although occasionally (like now) we get rattlesnake warnings, which means people have been seeing them here or across the street in Low Gap Park with some regularity.  Hopefully they continue to stay away. 

Otherwise it’s the normal end-of-year stuff on this end.   

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Hey look, this is one of those posts where I can officially welcome my new boss to the blog because we have a new boss at our high school and I know that he has read my blog.

It’s also one of those awkward posts where you wonder what you are supposed to say that doesn’t make you sound like a total kiss ass, or a complete rebel against the oppression of the fascist regime of administrative authority. Bah, I’ll just blog as usual. Yeah, so the unusual aspect of our new principal is the fact that he’s my wife’s old principal for the last few years.  So when I mean “fascist regime of administrative authority”, I mean it in the most benevolent of ways. 

Student is correct, and stupid. Now back to the test…..

So Kyron Birdine was taking one of those idiotic standardized tests that we all love so much.  Of ample intelligence and work ethic, Birdine decided that the test wasn’t worth his time and defaced his test booklet with the phrase “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) and took a picture of said transgression.  Then he Tweeted it.

The answer didn’t get him suspended.  The picture of the test did.  It nailed Birdine a four day suspension.  Excessive?

Yes and no.  Obviously the picture was not taken because he was trying to Instagram the answers around the world for people to see.  Not unless the prompt is something like “Write down a four letter word that would best explain how stupid people describe Carpe Diem.”  Yet the rules are pretty clear that you don’t take and publish photos of a fairly important test.  Especially when the high stakes aspect of the test put the schools ass in jeopardy.  Now the school will get increased scrutiny, have to write gobs of paperwork, and risk worse sanctions because a student was bored. 

Which also makes this a classroom management issue.  How in the hell does a student manage to click off a picture on his iPad?  If this was my class during STAR tests and I saw an iPad come out a pack of Velociraptors would drop from the ceiling and eat the iPad while the Grim Reaper came through the door and threaten the very existence of the student.  This is another example of “we are part of the problem” and while the student needs to pull his head out of his ass, so does the teacher.

But don’t worry because testing will now be on computers and that is so much more secure.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

U.S. News and World Report rankings show, well, some stuff.

The U.S. News and World Report rankings are out and the information is as irrelevant as ever, although that hardly stops the media from grabbing the magazine and rubbing all over their bodies to produce some kind of Axe Effect. 

But on this blog we take any information that we can get and start to make educated deductions.  So I decided to take the information from my high school (Ukiah High) and the biggest local charter school (Redwood Academy) and do a little comparison examination.  This isn’t a knock on the local charter at all.  But I think some information and analysis should be scrutinized if we are looking to change course in education.

Lets start with a basic overview of Redwood Academy.

Impressive!  Ukiah gets some recognition from a survey that primarily looks at Advanced Placement participation and test scores, and it looks like Redwood is getting the job done! 

Now Ukiah High.

Back to the drawing board.  Like most schools in the U.S., especially public non-charters, we don’t seem to be getting the job done. 

Ok, then let’s look at who we-the-teachers are serving.  After all, it’s about them, all of them, in the end. 

Ukiah High

Sounds about right.  Half the school is a minority population, although that  is no excuse for not getting kids better prepared.  Over 50% of that population is Economically Disadvantaged; again not an excuse for not doing better.  But hey, want to hear a frightening statistic?  We have four counselors trying to meet the need of all those kids.  Because, you know, money doesn’t really matter in education or something.

Ok, enough of that.  Redwood Academy? 

That’s not quite as much as Ukiah High.  And the 9th grade rise could mean a couple of things; either a rise in overall enrollment or a sharp decline after they start high school.  I looked at enrollment in middle school grades and they are all around 30.  At least Redwood is serving a significant diversity of population; what with two kids designated Special Education and two kids designated Migrant Ed.  Wow.

But the real proof is in the pudding, so on to Advanced Placement information!  Ukiah High.

Two things stand out here.  First, not enough students are taking the tests.  Even though we have more tests being taken this year than every before, not enough students are taking them.  There are plenty of reasons for that with money on the top of the list.  Hell, over half my Seniors are taking the AP Test and some that I KNOW would get high scores won’t take it because it doesn’t impact their college credits.  That’s fine by me.  But a large and healthy public institution should have twice that amount taking the tests.  The second thing that stands out is that the students that are motivated to take AP tests do very well.

Redwood Academy?

Huh.

So it looks like a higher percentage of students at the school take AP tests, and by higher percentage it means that the number of students taking AP tests in the Junior class is going to be less than the number of students taking the test in my AP U.S. History class.  And they don’t do as well on the exams.  Well, there goes the theory of class sizes. 

So what can we take out of this whole report? 

Well, I don’t have loathing for Redwood Academy if that’s what you think.  But this fawning all over the U.S. News high school report card really needs to stop because all it does to hump an inequity that exists in education; charters teach who they want and public schools don’t have that choice.  It’s simple to point to schools that have different rules and exempt significant portions of the population, and then call them “wonderful” and give them “silver medals”, and so on and so forth.

I’ll say this again; either let public schools follow the same rules as charters (thus creating a permanent under-class in society and creating a caste system), or make charters serve under the same public mandate (this creating a smaller public school).  Otherwise we are just avoiding the problem of educating the entire population of kids. 

Hello? This is Prom speaking. I want your money.

This weekend is Prom at Ukiah High School and being the ever present Economics teacher, I get to be the buzz kill. 

Spending on the annual high school ritual of the prom continues to outpace inflation and grew for the second straight year, hitting an average of $1,139 per family in 2013.

Think this is too high?  Incorporate the car, the dinner, the dress, the tux rental, the limo, the tips, the shoes, the nails, the hair, the make-up, the pre-game booze, the post-Prom party at a friends that will probably involve more expensive booze, and the final 3:30 in the morning meal at Denny’s.  Actually that number might be a little low. 

The last thing I tell my kids before they leave class on Friday before Prom is to be careful, and to consider the real cost of Prom.  Those that understand (which is most) all-of-the-sudden stop, and some will actually utter a very audible “shit.”  This economists in the room will realize that the actual cost of Prom would not be the $1,139.  Nope.  The actual cost is what you COULD be doing with $1,139.  And better yet, those same students start spouting off that the opportunity cost (what they WOULD be doing with the $1,139) is incredible.  Vacations, tuition money, rent for a month or two.  Of course, those that didn’t spend an enormous amount of money don’t have the “buyer’s remorse” because they didn’t have a high cost.  Go figure.

Yep, another message that we are sending to kids; that a fairly useless dance deserves weeks of attention and money because that’s really important.  We continue to shower our children with totally confusing messages; enabling them to death, not holding them accountable for their actions, while still managing to blame everyone else for the insanely high youth unemployment rates, the problems of academic progress, and the proliferation of teenage angst that turns into violence.  When are we going to figure it out.