The Lovers, the Dreamers and a German in a Funny Hat

You may be under the impression that today's big headline is "Obama rocks it out at Invesco" or something to that effect. You are wrong.

Today's big headline is in fact this: "Crucified frog angers pope".

Furthermore, the frog is apparently holding a beer glass in one hand and an egg in the other. Having often found myself concurrently holding those very same objects, I think I'll have to side with the frog.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I feel compelled to report that during my eighth grade science class' frog dissection, my lab partner disregarded the teacher's instructions to pin the frog's legs in a spread-eagle fashion and in fact crucified our frog with T-pins. Our teacher then unwittingly held our frog up as an example of a well-pinned subject. No beer or eggs were involved.)

Don't Mess with (the Illustrious Educators of) Texas

Any plans I may have had to visit Harold, Texas (What? I'm sure they have a gigantic ball of yarn or something.) are officially canceled pursuant to their decision to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons to work.

What better combination than disgruntled youth, overworked employees, and things that kill people?

You know what would make my job as a teacher easier? Fair compensation for my socially crucial work. A supportive administration. A school district that doesn't hide behind the Governator while firing 900+ teachers.

But I guess pissing us off and then arming us works too.

I'd Like the Conch Now, Please

The thing about malpractice in my profession, it's not like we can accidentally forget to remove a surgical instrument from your abdominal cavity and sew you back up and send you out into the world full of festering metal.

But there are other things we can do:

Teacher Has Students Vote on Whether 5-Year-Old Can Stay in Class

Who Needs Profs When We've Got Podcasts

Today John McCain gave a speech in which he described what the world will look like in 2013, at the end of his first term. While you'll be pleased to know that we won't have been attacked by terrorists (but only if we vote for him and not that Hammas-loving Nazi appeaser), I'd like to focus on McCain's comments on education. Remember, he's speaking in the present-tense about things that haven't happened yet:

"Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools; the increase of quality teachers through incentives like merit pay and terrific programs that attract to the classroom enthusiastic and innovative teachers from many disciplines, like Teach for America and Troops to Teachers. Educational software and online teaching programs endorsed by qualified non profits are much more widely in use, bringing to the smallest classrooms in America some of the greatest math, English, and science teachers in the country. This revolution in teaching methods has especially benefited rural America. Test scores and graduation rates are rising everywhere in the country."

Allow me to repeat for emphasis:

"Public education in the United States is much improved thanks to the competition provided by charter and private schools."

You'll notice there is no mention whatsoever about increasing funding for education, nor is there any mention of eliminating underfunded federal mandates (*cough*No Child Left Behind*cough*). Just a promise that good old Adam Smith capitalism will solve all of our problems, because clearly the only reason that our schools are so rotten (which, point of order, they are not) is because we're just not scared enough about the competition. We're being lazy, see, because we're the only gig in town, so you can take your crappy teachers and you can like it or lump it!

Problem: As federal mandates increase and state economies tank, education nationwide is becoming increasingly underfunded. In California this is presently resulting in a tens of thousands of teachers being laid off; predictably, as teacher layoffs become the norm, enrollment in teacher credentialing programs is declining. Just last week one of my students who has wanted to be a teacher for the three years I've known her told me she's going to be majoring in business in the fall because she figures if she becomes a teacher she'll just get fired. Now, I don't know if John McCain knows this or not, but private school teachers? Charter school teachers? They get recruited from those same teaching programs where enrollment is rapidly dropping off.

No, Senator Nostradamus McCain, the problem with education isn't that we need to be kept even further on our toes — we're already damn ballerinas — the problem is that we need stable, adequate funding and a confident, well-qualified recruitment pool.

Private or not, administrators are going to be facing increasing difficulty in staffing schools with qualified teachers. And I'm sorry, but using "online teaching programs endorsed by qualified non profits" to beam in "some of the greatest math, English, and science teachers in the country" is simply not going to serve as an adequate replacement for an actual human being in the classroom. Anyone with a teaching credential (read: not McCain) knows that no eight-year-old is going to learn math from watching some guy lecture about it. The notion would be laughable, except McCain's not kidding.

I suspect even Adam Smith would be put off. In his seminal The Wealth of Nations he wrote, "The education of common people requires, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the state."

Fighting Fire with Fustian

Today I spent four hours in a sauna-like auditorium shoved into a tiny wooden chair that literally left bruises on the backs of my legs, all for the privilege of unloading on the school board that sent me a layoff notice two months ago. I'm not entirely sure what I said (there may have been some podium-fist-pounding and a poker metaphor), but people clapped when I was done and I felt a hell of a lot better.

Weirdly, I'm actually not sure if I'm fired or not. There were amendments to amendments of recisions of incisions, and in the end it was all very Byzantine.** I'll find out Thursday.

In the meantime, I'm pretty sure there are now five people on the planet who would turn tail and run if they saw me in a grocery store. As well they should — I throw a mean cabbage.

** And now your Moment of Zen: According to my union president's address to the board, the last time my district laid of teachers was in 1918 in response to those teachers' refusal to take loyalty oaths.

Blur Had the Right of It

I somehow found myself sucked into a looking glass conversation about gender-separated public education. Here's what I had to say:

I teach in an urban high school in Southern California. In my classes of 40 or more human beings, I have teens who are Latino, white, black, Asian, English learners, recently declassified English learners, students with learning disabilities, students from military families, students from single parent households, Catholic students, Jewish students, secular humanist students, gay students, straight students, students with physical disabilities, and yes, students who are male and female.

The notion that simply separating males and females would remove the need for me, as a teacher, to employ every education technique (sensory, social, or otherwise) in my extensive arsenal is patently absurd. Nor would such a separation create an environment wherein students' most fundamental needs are being met; I find that the education needs of many of my students are far less defined by their gender than by any number of other factors comprising their unique situations and identities.

There are any number of ways we could divvy those students up "for their own good." But as I teach them world history, I think it's ever so valuable to have all of their wonderful voices and perspectives in our conversations — and make no mistake, a good teacher makes sure all of those voices are included. Period.

In earning my MAE, my coursework included extensive study of neurology as it pertains to adolescent learning, and I am more than familiar with the bio-essentialist arguments. They have many grandfathers, all equally well-intentioned, and all equally specious. I fundamentally object to the notion of pedagogical biodeterminism based on "the latest research" (which is always inevitably revised by even latest-er research). I do not object to the usefulness of science in honing education; I do object to rendering it as the only criterion.

Being a teacher means teaching every mind in the room, regardless of which of the myriad subgroups of humans each student happens to fall into. It is a noble task which can — and ought — to be done.

Retrieved a Nothing

In what I consider to be an unqualified success of a day, I spent the afternoon consuming, cover-to-cover, a full four of the 25 heretofore unread magazines decorating my coffee table. I read one each of Harper's, The Nation, NEA Today and California Educator.

Of the many excellent paragraphs I read today, the most fabulous by far was located in the "Findings" section of Harper's:

"A sex hormone was found in the drinking water of San Francisco, and anti-anxiety medications were found in the drinking water of Southern California. Prozac was revealed not to work, researchers demonstrated that placebos are more effective if the drugs for which they stand in are said to be more expensive, and a Scottish study determined that roughly half of a person's happiness is due to genetics. Physicists stored and retrieved a nothing."

Accuracy Schmaccuracy

Today I learned a fun fact from John Kerry: Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he "penned those words, we hold these truths to be self evident, into the Constitution." Now, I take his point — if I've written something that quotable by the time I'm 33, I'll feel like I have a laurel or two to fluff up my pillow. But as a history teacher, I feel duty-bound to point out that Jefferson didn't so much "pen those words into the Constitution" as pen them into the Declaration of Independence.

It's okay, Senator Kerry. Bill O'Reilly made the exact same mistake just a couple of months back. The only difference is that he got called on it on his own show by an elementary school student.

This is why I get my news from the BBC**.

** And now your Moment of Zen: According to a recent study, more than half of British teens believe that Sherlock Holmes actually existed. Moreover, roughly a quarter believe that Winston Churchill was fictional.

Maybe they thought they were being asked if he was fissional? Like, with the atomic — yeah, no.

Pundits in Waiting

Advising a high school newspaper has its downsides: Ridiculously late nights battling antiquated computers, reading and re-reading embarrassingly pubescent articles about the ideal Valentine's date, and the bleak and certain knowledge that comma usage is in no way, shape or form taught in the Californian school system anymore.

But there are bright spots, too. My newspaper staff decided, with no input from me, to use this month's staff editorial to endorse a presidential candidate. A group of them worked together to craft a compelling narrative of their A.P. Government course's propulsion of an apathetic senior class into political consciousness. They described seniors proudly registering to vote, reading campaign literature, and advocating for their positions. They described the devastation of a student whose birthday falls on February seventh, and how she decided to participate regardless by volunteering as a poll worker. And they wrote about the candidate who had sparked their collective imagination. I'll let you guess who that was.

I've never heard a debate in my newbie newsroom as vigorous as the one that took place over this editorial. It made me proud.

I have to say, though, that I don't know how proud I would have been had they endorsed Mike Huckabee...

New in Newspeak

I have a new favorite businessism (see, I can do it too) in the realm of education — "clientele." No, I'm not talking about people who buy cupcakes at the marching band's bake sale, or even the local businesses who purchase ad space in the yearbook. Our so-called clientele are, apparently, our students! And all this time I should have been charging at the door!

Headlining in the 400 Building: World War Two! Opening Act: Nationalism!

No.

Even more offensive is the context in which "clientele" is routinely used. Our principal regularly tells us that if we want to serve a "better clientele" we need to offer a "better product." Allow me translate from Cretin into English... if we want to serve more "upper middle class white kids" we need to "raise standardized test scores."

I'm not sure which I find more offensive — the increasingly moronic incursion of corporate jargon into my cream-colored tower, or the barely masked racism and classism masked by said jargon.

Okay, that's not true; I know which is more offensive. Funny how that doesn't make it any better. So much for "Knowing is Half the Battle." Maybe we should switch to "1,245,987 Served."

Praise the Lord and Pass the Beaker

I taught the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment today (which begs for a post some other day about the insanity of the AP World History curriculum), necessitating a brief conversation about the deists — you know, those guys who wore white wigs and talked a lot about "the Watchmaker."

I almost cried in relief when one of the most avowedly Christian students in class raised his hand and said, "So basically, these guys were saying that, like, God could have made evolution or whatever happen? So it doesn't have to be either/or?"

I answered in a vague affirmative (this is public school after all), prompting a contemplative "huh" and a light bulb above his head that was nearly palpable.

Attn: Eleventh Grade Biology Teachers — in lieu of thank you notes, send cash.

Nails, Meet Chalkboard

The only thing better than an all-day training workshop is an all-day training workshop hosted by someone who likes to use words that aren't. I feel quite comfortable asserting that motivational speakers and their ilk are culpable for some of the most irreverent massacring of the English language since the colonists decided to start calling their knickers underwear. We can thank these would-be wordsmiths for contributions including deliverable as a noun and synergy as, well, a word.

Perhaps you or someone you love is a fan of this sort of guerilla linguistics. If so, I pose a question to you: What in the world is the difference between competence and competency? As near as I can tell they're synonymous, rendering competency unnecessarily redundant, but what the hell do I know? So like any committed researcher, I decided to ask Google.

According to WordNet, competence is defined as "the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually." Conversely, competency is defined as, well, "the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually."

Huh. Well, whatever - that's not a real dictionary anyway. Surely a more reliable source will clear things right up.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, competence is "the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified; ability." Per Merriam-Webster, it's "the quality or state of being functionally adequate." As for competency? Why, how odd! Each dictionary refers back to its entry for competence.

I guess competence just doesn't sound as... refined? Sophisticated? Word-like? Perhaps I judge too harshly. Maybe if I were getting paid the money that these people make for the swill they shovel, I'd feel compelled to engage in these sorts of parlance parlor tricks too.

Or, you know, not.

I move that people who use "words" like competency spend less time figuring out how to add y onto the ends of perfectly good words and more time figuring out why I have to spend two eight-hour days listening to two hours worth of actual information.

Alms for the Prof

I just read an interesting article debunking myths about teacher pay. (In case it's not clear, the myth is that we're paid enough. Cause, you know, we're not.)

I think the article raised several good points. To wit:

- We are vastly under-compensated for our education level, particularly when one takes into account the ludicrous number of hours spent planning and grading outside of the students' school day.

- Unlike wages in similar fields, teachers' wages have not kept up with inflation since 1996, and the gap between our pay and that of comparably educated professionals has been increasing since 1979.

- Many argue that our fabulous health benefits make up for our low wages (a position that acknowledges the paltriness of the wages to begin with); however, this is less and less true. I work for the only district in the county that still fully covers health benefits. Most districts no longer do so, a fact I attribute evenly between the unjustifiably rising costs charged by the health industry and the successful war being waged on unions by corporate crooks. But I digress.

Anyway, there are a litany of other interesting facts, but I'll let you read the article. However, there was one point omitted which I'd like to add. Contrary to popular belief, teachers do not receive paid holidays or vacations. We are paid for exactly the number of days we work - no more, and no less. Sure, I didn't have to go to work all last week... but I wasn't paid for those days either. I show up to work for 184 days, and I am paid for 184 days. On the one hand, that means a lower denominator for my overall wages, partially accounting for the discrepancy between my pay and, say, a financial analyst's. On the other hand, even looking at my daily wage using the number 184, my pay is still egregiously low.

Also, unlike, say, a financial analyst, I'm not actively trying to swindle my clients out of anything but their youth and freedom. Bully for me.

And now your moment of Zen:

"The rewards of working with children make up for low pay." — Hypothetical Critic of Teacher Salary Increases, per the aforementioned article

Um, has this (hypothetical) person ever met a teenager? Because, you know, having a 15-year-old tell you to go to hell - not so much with the making up for crappy wages.