It’s amazing the things you learn about your students through their writing. This also reminds me that I have not done nearly enough writing with them. But now it’s too late. I worried about that when we were designing our new curriculum. Since we were combining literature with composition, which one would lose out? Well, it has definitely been composition this year. Maybe next year I’ll go heavy on the writing instead of the literature. I did expect to take a couple years to get a balance.
However, I had students select from several topics for their final essays.
One prompt focused on writing about a time someone forced (or talked) a student into doing something against their will or something they wouldn’t normally do. They were encouraged to explore the consequences and narrate how things turned out.
The second prompt called for them to describe a time when they either had to break some bad news to someone or describe a time when they had to talk about a difficult subject with someone. They were encouraged to analyze the strategies they used to deal with the bad news or difficult subject and to narrate how things turned out.
The third prompt asked for them to write about the most difficult or unpleasant thing they ever had to do. Then they were asked to explain how it changed them and what they learned from it.
The next prompt was devoted to exploring how a relationship they were involved in came to an end and explaining the reasons for its demise.
The fifth topic asked them to write about a difficult choice they had to make or will have to make. What are/will be the effects?
The final prompt asked them to write about a time they made a seemingly innocent choice only to find out that it had major consequences that they didn’t expect.
I assigned this hoping to get them to generate some narratives and ideas that they could use to relate to the couple in the final Hemingway story we would be reading, “Hills Like White Elephants.”
The essays that came in are great cross section of the vast range of talents students have and circumstances from which they arrive every day.
The first essay was written by one of my former football players – who happens to be a good kid who is bright but needs more guidance and prodding. He wrote about an important decision he is facing. His dream has always been to attend college for sports (which got me fired up right away). Of course, I was trying to let him down gently – not wanting to squash his dreams but also wanting to encourage him to work hard at the academics he will need to get into college.
What is compounding matters for this student is that he just received a letter from some MN all-star type hockey team that wants him to try out for them. This, unfortunately, has given him delusions of grandeur.
Now he believes that he can play division one hockey (never mind we can count on both hands – if we’re lucky – how many athletes have played D1 hockey from our school). Again, I was trying gently to remind him of this – while not wanting to wreck his dream but also wanting him to see the big picture, which means gaining academic skills that will serve him not only in college but also the work force, which hockey most certainly will not.
Now the student is considering trying to play football in the fall while devoting his weekend to traveling with this all star hockey team (if he makes the hockey team). Where does that leave time for his personal life? Or, for that matter, school? But never mind that he wants to play hockey in college – again – as opposed to earning a degree and finding a job that will sustain him in the future.
So I am asked to prepare this kid for a world that he can’t even comprehend yet and all he is focused on is playing D I hockey.
Now that is a daunting task.
The very next essay I read was quite the contrast.
A student wrote about the most unpleasant thing she ever had to: testify in court against her parents. Can you imagine? She described sitting on the stand and listening to the judge and the county attorney and the social workers ask her questions about her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s physical abuse.
That essay put the previous paper in perspective.
The paper I read after that was about a difficult decision a student’s father was forced to deal make. When the student lived in Paris, his father came home with the news that one of the planes that his company owned had crashed and he had to call all the families of the deceased. Wow!
Another student wrote about how her father is an alcoholic and would put his drinking before her lunch money (that is how she put it).
She recounted how last year, her father was home drinking and decided to drive somewhere.
Of course, this scared the hell of out the student. She argued with her father, who rebuffed her and stormed out toward his truck with the keys in one hand and his drink in the other. Then he tore off into the night.
Not knowing what else to do, the student called her father’s girlfriend. (and as I’m reading this I’m thinking that no sophomore should even be in this situation).
Her father’s girlfriend suggested that she follow him.
And so she did, following his tracks in the snow. In the essay there is a powerful scene where she spots his tracks swerving from one lane to the other. But the snow is coming down – and try as she might – she still can’t see the tail lights (and in my mind I’m waiting for her to find him in the ditch, or worse, come across his vehicle crumpled with another vehicle). While she sees the tracks almost veer into the ditch, she finally sees them turn into a driveway.
Relieved that he made it, yet horrified at being in the situation, she runs up to the door and wrenches it open. She screams at him and begins hitting him, only to hear her father yell, “Don’t spill my drink!”
After reading those four essays, I was wiped out.
Had I not dreamed up that assignment, I would have missed out on so much!
That is the power of writing. That is why it should be used in every class.
****
Am I blessed or what?
The day after reading the essays I just wrote about, I read my way through some stories my Sci Fi class came up with.
The two samples below are from a creative option I assigned for the story “Valhalla,” which is a time travel story in which a future society, totally dedicated to justice, sends a time traveler hundreds of years into the past to capture Adolph Hitler. The time traveler is really a clone of Hitler himself. He is going to convince Hitler that he has arrived from the future to bring him to Valhalla, a reward for his grand deeds in Nazi Germany. Of course, this plays right into Hitler’s ego and he steps into the portal and is zapped into the future (where he will be brought to justice and tortured, though the story remains vague concerning these details). When Hitler is gone, the protagonist shoots himself in the head (he has to leave his body, again which is a perfect clone of Hitler, in the bunker, for if the Allied troops were not to find Hitler’s body, it might offer the dwindling Nazis hope that their fuehrer survived somehow and that might drastically alter history, and thereby alter the future that is dedicated to supreme justice).
Students were asked to either write their own original resolutions to the story or to write about other historical figures they would travel back in time to either meet or bring to justice.
This example is from a student who chose to envision what Hitler faced when he arrived hundreds of years in the future . . . in the clutches of those who wish to make him pay for his war crimes –
. . . Hitler recognized these as being the millions of Jews he brutally murdered. Even though he committed these crimes with no remorse, he couldn’t help feel the hint of sadness. The screen before him finally went black after Hitler saw every thing.
“I’m sorry. No, please don’t!” he cried as one of the men came toward him.
The man rechecked the straps to make sure they were tight. Then, he leaned forward and put his hand on a switch. As he leaned forward, Hitler caught a strange but familiar golden glimmer hanging down from the man’s neck.
“No, don’t d—“
The man flipped the switch sending deadly volts of electricity throughout Hitler’s body, leaving him with a last image of The Star of David.
This example is from a student who choose to write his own short story, “Dark Renaissance,” in which a time traveler works for a corporation that sends him back in time to stomp out the Renaissance. They don’t want the Italian artisans to help bring about an end to the dark ages. The corporation is comprised of religious fanatics who want to keep people simple and obedient, as they were in the dark ages.
In this passage, the narrator locates a famous Italian artist and eliminates him – and his effect on the future . . .
My hands clutched his hair as I pulled his head back, shooting him under the chin with a silenced pistol. The top of his head resembled a whale’s blowhole, though it spat more than just water. I could feel his weight lean into me. It was a dead weight. A perfect weight. I tipped my torso over, and the lifeless body of the polymath fell onto the stone floor.
Next up for the narrator . . . Da Vinci!
While reading these, I had to remind myself that I actually get paid for this!
****
See, I wrote way too soon.
Now I am reminded why I am paid for this week. My poor College Comp students and their final research papers!
Some are really getting it handed to them on their final papers. For some, this experience was just too much for them. They get an excellent introduction to a research paper in 10th grade. But these students were nowhere near handling the type of analysis expected of them in their final paper (where they had to examine similar themes in two novels).
To be honest, quite a few just didn’t get their novels. That is quite clear.
Others didn’t put in the time necessary to do well. That is also quite clear.
It didn’t help that the spring choir concert hogged a bunch of my students’ time. It really showed on some papers.
Others just couldn’t handle the research process. Others couldn’t handle the MLA formatting. Others had not clue.
It didn’t help matters that I started off with a very good paper. It has been all downhill from there. Plenty of low Cs.
While they may not like their grades (remember most of these kids are honor students), but there’s zero grade inflation in here – only ego deflation (I think I’ll put that on next year’s syllabus), I’m doing them the favor of giving them college level preparation and feedback. They are fortunate they got this now.
****
In The Matrix, the oracle tells Neo, “I hate giving good people bad news.”
I know exactly how she feels. I should make a copy of that phrase and put in either on my desk or above my door. For that is precisely how I feel when I see the looks on my College Comp students’ faces when they see their scores on their research papers.
I warned them. I offered to edit and proofread.
But many just weren’t prepared for this level of college writing.
It doesn’t matter that there are few students in here who are really college level writers in the first place. In fact, only a fraction of the class is taking the class for college credit. They end up taking it as a college prep class (well, they certainly should consider themselves prepped!).
And I have to remind myself that this is much harder than if they were to take it out at the local community college. Students write a research paper on one single topic. In my class they read two serious novels (something many of them aren’t prepared for in the first place) and then analyze them for themes or character traits. They have never done that level of analysis before. And it’s showing.
It also really hurt some of my students that they were in choir and the bulk of the work time coincided with the rehearsals for their spring concert. I bet the average grade for choir kids was a C-. No joke.
I know they put on a hell of a show, but that’s because they poured hours of practice into it. Had they put hours into their research paper, they wouldn’t have had those long faces when they saw their papers.
Actually, most knew it was coming. They didn’t think they had A’s and were shocked with C’s and D’s. I guess that’s a relief.
So how do I combat this next year?
I don’t know that I have to. This class, unlike any other one, just ran out of steam. I think they are one of the weaker classes I’ve had (of the four I’ve taught so far). There are a couple intellectuals and some gifted writers, but every single student began to fade or wilt under the workload. It only compounds things when spring quarter is hell for outside commitments too.
Again, I have to remind myself that they are prepped now for college. And I know in my heart that they would receive the same grades had they turned these papers in at BSU, NDSU, MSUS, or UND.
If anything, I was kind.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Phenomenal
Here is a clip from last week's recognition assembly. It is of the phenomenal drum performance our choir director put together with some challenged students. Prepare to be amazed. The camera work isn't the best, but it's worth it just to witness what a teacher is able to accomplish with her students.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Memorial Weekend pictures
Kristie's neice, Chelsey, graduated. Her father, Kristie's brother Brian, made the trip up for the ceremony from Colorado. He brought his wife, Sunday, and their son, Austin. Eddie, Kristie's other brother, decided to fly up from Colorado. Kristie's father, Ed, and his wife, Lorie, also drove up from South Dakota. It was great having everyone together again.
Below are the pictures take over Memorial Weekend.
Our family at the graduation part (King's Walk in GF).
Kristie and her father.
The guest of honor, Chelsey
Chelsey and the blanket Lorie made for her.
Tricia and her daughters (Faith on the left and Ashley on the right)
What a couple!
Ed goofing around.
Below are the pictures take over Memorial Weekend.
Our family at the graduation part (King's Walk in GF).
Kristie and her father.
The guest of honor, Chelsey
Chelsey and the blanket Lorie made for her.
Tricia and her daughters (Faith on the left and Ashley on the right)
What a couple!
Ed goofing around.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Friday, part II
I’m ready for the end of the year now.
Our seniors graduate today. But the rest of the student body has three more days left.
Ugh.
We had our recognition assembly/senior tribute prior to lunch.
It was excellent.
A couple highlights –
Two freshmen boys were recognized for rescuing a teacher’s golden retriever from the river. Apparently, the dog was supposed to be in the garage, but as the boys were walking by the river, they say the dog out on the ice.
They called her to them, but just as she neared shore, the ice broke and she plunged in.
Her collar caught on an ice chunk and she could rest one paw on the ledge to keep her afloat.
Without thinking one boy crawled out to her to try and rescue her, but the ice he was on crumbled and he plunged in!
Quickly, his friend was able to get to him and pull them both out of the freezing water.
What a story.
The teacher wanted to recognize the boys for what they did and also to warn them.
å
“A dog can be replaced,” she said, “but you can’t be.”
Then when the friend who saved the day got to speak, he turned to his friend and said simply, “You owe me!”
Then our choir director and three of her LD students performed their annual instrumental. This has always been moving. But this performance once pheonemanal.
The two boys with whom the choir director works really got into it, banging away on their tribal drums. Her third student, a severally handicapped young lady in a wheelchair, kept the beat with a tamborine. The director played a set of bongos.
It was great.
Their second piece was even better. The boys wrote it, in fact. They donned gangster gear. Then they brought out trash cans and plopped themselves into chairs. They slouched and began tapping on the legs of their chairs. This soon led them to banging on their garbage cans. Then it really kicked into gear. It was so cool that I can hardly explain it. I only hope someone taped it and it’s on youtube. It was that good.
Then during the senior movie tribute, the channel half group (it’s part of a class where for the final 9 weeks of the school year, the kids shoot their own news show that airs once a week) had interviewed several seniors about where they’d be in ten years. We got the usual answers “married to a rich man,” “in jail,” and “dead.” However, they also interviewed a senior who has autism. He ended up giving a heart felt response to the question that went on and on and on. It is a credit to this class that they all took him seriously and no one laughed. That was classy. It was a great way to end that episode.
Prior to the recognition assembly/senior tribute, I was about to walk out of my classroom when a parent of several former students (her final one is graduating this year) popped her head in. She said that she and her children were sitting down a while ago and talking about their favorite teachers and ones who made an impact on them. She said, with tears in her eyes, that I was one of the names that came up the most often. By then I had tears in my eyes.
She paid me several excellent comments. I tried to return those compliments by telling her how she did a phenomenal job raising such excellent kids. We hugged and tried to get the tears out of our eyes.
Then she saw the principal, who was opening the door to the balcony section of the auditorium, and began to tell him all about me and my affect on her kids.
She was swept up in the moment.
That would normally be the highlight, not just of my day, but my year here.
However, the day got even better.
I received around 20 invitations to graduations this year. For each of them I typed up personal letters wishing the students well and giving them advice and stating what I will always remember about them.
While I doubt that I’ll make many graduations this year, Chelsea, Kristie’s neice, graduates this weekend and her family is up, I would really like to make it to one graduation in particular. It is for a student and former player of mine who is actually finishing up at the ALC.
While he is not a model citizen, I always enjoyed him in class because we hit it off very well. He is a straight shooter. He doesn’t play the school game and will tell it like it is. Plus, he was a hell of a writer (he is the one who wrote the essay on what he does best in which he wrote about how his father taught him how to work construction and that when he gets old he is going to live in a cement house, eat of cement plates, and have cement kids. Now that is voice!).
I waited after the senior tribute to hand out the letters. I couldn’t find Jack, but he found me. He was happy to see me and asked if I was coming to his party on Saturday. I told him that I’d try to make it, but it might not happen. Then I handed him the letter, told him that I enjoyed having him as a student, and shook his hand.
He thanked me for the letter. Then I was off to find other seniors and he was off to sign a card for a fellow graduate who is in the hospital with a broken leg.
After handing out the letters, I ran to the lunch room for a pop. As I was heading to the teachers’ lounge, I saw Jack leaning against the wall . . . reading my letter with the biggest grin on his face.
That was my highlight of the year.
Our seniors graduate today. But the rest of the student body has three more days left.
Ugh.
We had our recognition assembly/senior tribute prior to lunch.
It was excellent.
A couple highlights –
Two freshmen boys were recognized for rescuing a teacher’s golden retriever from the river. Apparently, the dog was supposed to be in the garage, but as the boys were walking by the river, they say the dog out on the ice.
They called her to them, but just as she neared shore, the ice broke and she plunged in.
Her collar caught on an ice chunk and she could rest one paw on the ledge to keep her afloat.
Without thinking one boy crawled out to her to try and rescue her, but the ice he was on crumbled and he plunged in!
Quickly, his friend was able to get to him and pull them both out of the freezing water.
What a story.
The teacher wanted to recognize the boys for what they did and also to warn them.
å
“A dog can be replaced,” she said, “but you can’t be.”
Then when the friend who saved the day got to speak, he turned to his friend and said simply, “You owe me!”
Then our choir director and three of her LD students performed their annual instrumental. This has always been moving. But this performance once pheonemanal.
The two boys with whom the choir director works really got into it, banging away on their tribal drums. Her third student, a severally handicapped young lady in a wheelchair, kept the beat with a tamborine. The director played a set of bongos.
It was great.
Their second piece was even better. The boys wrote it, in fact. They donned gangster gear. Then they brought out trash cans and plopped themselves into chairs. They slouched and began tapping on the legs of their chairs. This soon led them to banging on their garbage cans. Then it really kicked into gear. It was so cool that I can hardly explain it. I only hope someone taped it and it’s on youtube. It was that good.
Then during the senior movie tribute, the channel half group (it’s part of a class where for the final 9 weeks of the school year, the kids shoot their own news show that airs once a week) had interviewed several seniors about where they’d be in ten years. We got the usual answers “married to a rich man,” “in jail,” and “dead.” However, they also interviewed a senior who has autism. He ended up giving a heart felt response to the question that went on and on and on. It is a credit to this class that they all took him seriously and no one laughed. That was classy. It was a great way to end that episode.
Prior to the recognition assembly/senior tribute, I was about to walk out of my classroom when a parent of several former students (her final one is graduating this year) popped her head in. She said that she and her children were sitting down a while ago and talking about their favorite teachers and ones who made an impact on them. She said, with tears in her eyes, that I was one of the names that came up the most often. By then I had tears in my eyes.
She paid me several excellent comments. I tried to return those compliments by telling her how she did a phenomenal job raising such excellent kids. We hugged and tried to get the tears out of our eyes.
Then she saw the principal, who was opening the door to the balcony section of the auditorium, and began to tell him all about me and my affect on her kids.
She was swept up in the moment.
That would normally be the highlight, not just of my day, but my year here.
However, the day got even better.
I received around 20 invitations to graduations this year. For each of them I typed up personal letters wishing the students well and giving them advice and stating what I will always remember about them.
While I doubt that I’ll make many graduations this year, Chelsea, Kristie’s neice, graduates this weekend and her family is up, I would really like to make it to one graduation in particular. It is for a student and former player of mine who is actually finishing up at the ALC.
While he is not a model citizen, I always enjoyed him in class because we hit it off very well. He is a straight shooter. He doesn’t play the school game and will tell it like it is. Plus, he was a hell of a writer (he is the one who wrote the essay on what he does best in which he wrote about how his father taught him how to work construction and that when he gets old he is going to live in a cement house, eat of cement plates, and have cement kids. Now that is voice!).
I waited after the senior tribute to hand out the letters. I couldn’t find Jack, but he found me. He was happy to see me and asked if I was coming to his party on Saturday. I told him that I’d try to make it, but it might not happen. Then I handed him the letter, told him that I enjoyed having him as a student, and shook his hand.
He thanked me for the letter. Then I was off to find other seniors and he was off to sign a card for a fellow graduate who is in the hospital with a broken leg.
After handing out the letters, I ran to the lunch room for a pop. As I was heading to the teachers’ lounge, I saw Jack leaning against the wall . . . reading my letter with the biggest grin on his face.
That was my highlight of the year.
Friday
With my Hemmingway unit at an end, I’m scrambling to find things to keep my juniors interested. But I’m losing them.
My Science Fiction class would meet all summer long if we could.
My College Comp class has just finished their research papers and deserve the final three days off.
But these juniors are testing my skills.
Instead of reading another story, I decided to see how they do with a little creative writing.
Hemmingway is known to have written (maybe) the shortest short story ever written (and if you know me, you know how fascinated I am by this particular story) – just six words
For Sale:
Baby shoes;
Never worn.
Now that is brilliant. Why would they be for sale? Why were they never worn? How much could one get for a pair of baby shoes anyway?
The story itself is just the tip of the iceberg of course, but that is Hemingway’s genious.
Students have all kinds of theories. Some see it as a Romeo and Juliet kind of trajedy where a young girl falls for a young man with a bad name and her parents force her to either have an abortion or give the baby up for adoption and they don’t want any reminder of the child so they force her to sell the shoes? Some see it as a comedy: the father just bought the wrong shoes. Some see it was a science fiction tale: the baby is a mutant and was born without legs.
I had the students create a short monologue describing the events that either led up to this or the events that followed as a result.
While thinking about this I decided to see what other short, short stories I could find.
Turns out there are many out there – some maybe better than Hemingway’s. Here are some of my favorites that come from a magazine that asked several sci fi and fantasy writers to come up with a short story under ten words.
“With bloody, hand, I say good-bye.” Frank Miller
“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.” Margaret Atwood.
“From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.” Gregory Maquire – that might be my favorite.
“It’s behind you! Hurry before it . . .” Rocken S O’Bannon.
“He read his obituary with confusion.” Steve Meretzky.
“K.I.A. Baghdad, Aged 18. – Closed Casket.” Richard K. Morgant – How powerful is that?
After reading these I decided to see what my students could come up with. So after they read the Hemingway short story and created their own little monologes, I asked them to write their own short, short stories (under ten words).
Here are some of the better ones –
“Stock market crash. Open window. ‘Where’s Dad?’”
“Son: Mom, I’m home.
Mom: Got your report card!
Son: Um . . .”
“She was too young. This was not supposed to happen.”
“With a cold star I start to say . . .”
“It’s cancer . . . wife’s tears . . . funeral procession.”
“First hunt. Family tradition. Early morning. Large buck. Gun shot. Father screaming.”
My Science Fiction class would meet all summer long if we could.
My College Comp class has just finished their research papers and deserve the final three days off.
But these juniors are testing my skills.
Instead of reading another story, I decided to see how they do with a little creative writing.
Hemmingway is known to have written (maybe) the shortest short story ever written (and if you know me, you know how fascinated I am by this particular story) – just six words
For Sale:
Baby shoes;
Never worn.
Now that is brilliant. Why would they be for sale? Why were they never worn? How much could one get for a pair of baby shoes anyway?
The story itself is just the tip of the iceberg of course, but that is Hemingway’s genious.
Students have all kinds of theories. Some see it as a Romeo and Juliet kind of trajedy where a young girl falls for a young man with a bad name and her parents force her to either have an abortion or give the baby up for adoption and they don’t want any reminder of the child so they force her to sell the shoes? Some see it as a comedy: the father just bought the wrong shoes. Some see it was a science fiction tale: the baby is a mutant and was born without legs.
I had the students create a short monologue describing the events that either led up to this or the events that followed as a result.
While thinking about this I decided to see what other short, short stories I could find.
Turns out there are many out there – some maybe better than Hemingway’s. Here are some of my favorites that come from a magazine that asked several sci fi and fantasy writers to come up with a short story under ten words.
“With bloody, hand, I say good-bye.” Frank Miller
“Longed for him. Got him. Shit.” Margaret Atwood.
“From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.” Gregory Maquire – that might be my favorite.
“It’s behind you! Hurry before it . . .” Rocken S O’Bannon.
“He read his obituary with confusion.” Steve Meretzky.
“K.I.A. Baghdad, Aged 18. – Closed Casket.” Richard K. Morgant – How powerful is that?
After reading these I decided to see what my students could come up with. So after they read the Hemingway short story and created their own little monologes, I asked them to write their own short, short stories (under ten words).
Here are some of the better ones –
“Stock market crash. Open window. ‘Where’s Dad?’”
“Son: Mom, I’m home.
Mom: Got your report card!
Son: Um . . .”
“She was too young. This was not supposed to happen.”
“With a cold star I start to say . . .”
“It’s cancer . . . wife’s tears . . . funeral procession.”
“First hunt. Family tradition. Early morning. Large buck. Gun shot. Father screaming.”
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Wednesday
This has been the longest week of the year.
I wish I would have thought of this for our handbook committee meeting when we discussed the issue of attendance.
The 24 students in my first block Science Fiction class have missed a combined 106 days. One alone has missed 22 and another has missed 11.
Now this doesn’t take into account activities, unexcused absences, and excused absences. But as you can see plainly there is no real need for mandatory attendance.
Average that out and each student has missed almost one full week (roughly 4.5 days a week). Obviously, there is no need for mandatory attendance.
Of the 106 absences, 71 were excused or activities. So according to school policy, those students will have a total of 142 days to make up their work. Too bad there are only approximately 45 days in a quarter.
I wish I would have thought of this for our handbook committee meeting when we discussed the issue of attendance.
The 24 students in my first block Science Fiction class have missed a combined 106 days. One alone has missed 22 and another has missed 11.
Now this doesn’t take into account activities, unexcused absences, and excused absences. But as you can see plainly there is no real need for mandatory attendance.
Average that out and each student has missed almost one full week (roughly 4.5 days a week). Obviously, there is no need for mandatory attendance.
Of the 106 absences, 71 were excused or activities. So according to school policy, those students will have a total of 142 days to make up their work. Too bad there are only approximately 45 days in a quarter.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Update
Student handbook meeting update –
With the big issue out of the way – cell phones – we covered over issues – after school policy (which means trying to usher students out of the building promptly), the mess created by students who eat outside of the hallways rather than in the cafeteria, and our atrocious attendance.
Listed below are my candid reactions. Read at your own risk.
You’ve been warned.
Sure you don’t want to stop yet?
You’ve been warned.
Nervous about what you might find?
Stop now.
You’ve been warned.
Stop now least your rose colored glasses melt to your face.
You’ve been warned.
Turn away now.
Well, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve got stomach and nerve for the truth. As I see it.
First, there seems to me two types of teachers. Ones who agree or follow along with the rules (or what are perceived as rules) and those who just plain bitch about everything, regardless of steps taken to remedy situations.
Personally, I am a mixture.
I’m trying to be more like two teachers at LHS whom I really look up to. Both are veterans and run very effective classes. One is part of what is undeniably “our good old boy network” (read coach, bullshitter, kiss ass, and not afraid to speak his mind). The other is not part of the good old boy network and never was (read opinionated, ready to rock the boat, honest to the point of brutality, critical of administration and yet the first to get a card for our bosses day).
I fall somewhere in between those two, only I’m behind them by a combined 50 years or so.
My responses will be a mixture of their attitudes.
This is your last chance to turn back.
Are you sure?
Really?
Be prepared.
From my notes of day #2 of the student handbook committee –
Issue #1 after school policy.
Our administration has said that they don’t want a set policy on this.
Does that make sense? To me, no. Why not? I shall elucidate this.
I agree that our school should be a welcoming place to students. That is excellent and very noble.
However, when a couple claims to have had sex in nearly ever stairwell? I’m not sure I feel good about that.
The problem is that kids don’t want to be in class – just school (preferably when it is after 3:30 and 90% of the staff has vacated). Their home lives are shit, so they want to escape to school. I can understand and sympathize with this.
I just fear that our school is not secure. My sister, who inspects our school, has great fears about this. So does the administration. Given we have a school that isn’t secure and kids in the hallways until who knows when, six or seven?
I have heard podcasts on schools being a welcoming place for kids from poor, shattered homes. But the don’t just open the doors and turn a blind eye. Instead, the actually try to get the kids involved in some kind of programs after school to treat the problem rather than offering them a dark stairwell in which to mate.
Our assistant principal claimed that he spoke to both our janitors and they had received few complaints about janitors having to deal with students lounging around after school. Yet, I had a colleague who actually spoke to the janitors themselves and they stated several instances.
Issue #2 cafeteria policy
We are in a bind here. As our assistant principal said, “We don’t have enough room for all the kids who eat during first lunch.”
To which I wrote, “What kind of a school are we?” We can’t have colored paper. We can’t order enough supplies since our supply budgets were cut by half. We can’t keep kids out of the building if we want to.
What sense does this make? I know of no solution for this problem other than scrounge up some money for more tables or a larger lunch room or a way to put more students in second lunch. I mean we can get two of the nicest bathrooms in the state, but we can’t get an efficient lunchroom?
Another problem is that just our principal and assistant principal are left to police them and that’s not enough.
Here’s where I come in. I’m heading up a group to look into organizing teachers into groups to help out as part of our duty time. The problem is that I know of at least two teachers who won’t be part of this. They rarely make staff meetings because their programs are more important than the school at large. And they can get away with it.
But most, I hope, will help out with this issue. I’m looking forward to it.
Issue #3 – attendance.
Again we were told from above that we won’t go to mandated attendance. We won’t force a student out of school. That is the opinion and it’s no use fighting it. There is a truancy board in place to try and deal with this.
The bind administration is in – since they won’t go to mandated attendance, which would open a whole other can of worms (but would improve our attendance) – is that parents simply don’t see school (or rather their child being present) as important. They simply excuse their absences, regardless.
Not much you can do about shitty parenting.
Another problem is that the county attorney isn’t going to do anything about students who have missed massive amounts of excused absences.
So I will be more of an asshole in my classes to try and remedy this. I’ll also have to be a more organized asshole.
Here is my policy –
If you have an unexcused absence, you receive a zero, regardless of the assignment. And here is the dilemma. What happens if you miss a massive assignment and will fail – and it’s only the second week? According to the policy, the student should be bumped from the class. But do you think that will really happen?
Not bloody likely.
But I’ll try to cozy up to the good old boy network and maybe that will help my cause next year.
For every excused absence, students will be given two days to make up the work. Now this is a nightmare for me because I will have to be a more organized teacher. But I’ll do it.
To his credit, our assistant principal works hard with me on students who miss a lot of time. But the results our rarely good. Kids who miss class a lot rarely pass.
So that’s my policy – zeros for unexcused absences (I believe their was an uproar awhile ago when our assistant principal said that some kids who get suspended need work, yet some said that being suspended was an unexcused absence and there was no work for them to make up since they’d get a zero on any of it – though I suppose they could still do the work for the good of their education – but what are the odds of a kid doing work that they know they won’t get credit for?) and zero credit for work that is not handed in within two days.
I can live with that.
And that concluded our meeting.
That wasn’t so bad was it?
Didn’t think so.
But you were warned!
With the big issue out of the way – cell phones – we covered over issues – after school policy (which means trying to usher students out of the building promptly), the mess created by students who eat outside of the hallways rather than in the cafeteria, and our atrocious attendance.
Listed below are my candid reactions. Read at your own risk.
You’ve been warned.
Sure you don’t want to stop yet?
You’ve been warned.
Nervous about what you might find?
Stop now.
You’ve been warned.
Stop now least your rose colored glasses melt to your face.
You’ve been warned.
Turn away now.
Well, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve got stomach and nerve for the truth. As I see it.
First, there seems to me two types of teachers. Ones who agree or follow along with the rules (or what are perceived as rules) and those who just plain bitch about everything, regardless of steps taken to remedy situations.
Personally, I am a mixture.
I’m trying to be more like two teachers at LHS whom I really look up to. Both are veterans and run very effective classes. One is part of what is undeniably “our good old boy network” (read coach, bullshitter, kiss ass, and not afraid to speak his mind). The other is not part of the good old boy network and never was (read opinionated, ready to rock the boat, honest to the point of brutality, critical of administration and yet the first to get a card for our bosses day).
I fall somewhere in between those two, only I’m behind them by a combined 50 years or so.
My responses will be a mixture of their attitudes.
This is your last chance to turn back.
Are you sure?
Really?
Be prepared.
From my notes of day #2 of the student handbook committee –
Issue #1 after school policy.
Our administration has said that they don’t want a set policy on this.
Does that make sense? To me, no. Why not? I shall elucidate this.
I agree that our school should be a welcoming place to students. That is excellent and very noble.
However, when a couple claims to have had sex in nearly ever stairwell? I’m not sure I feel good about that.
The problem is that kids don’t want to be in class – just school (preferably when it is after 3:30 and 90% of the staff has vacated). Their home lives are shit, so they want to escape to school. I can understand and sympathize with this.
I just fear that our school is not secure. My sister, who inspects our school, has great fears about this. So does the administration. Given we have a school that isn’t secure and kids in the hallways until who knows when, six or seven?
I have heard podcasts on schools being a welcoming place for kids from poor, shattered homes. But the don’t just open the doors and turn a blind eye. Instead, the actually try to get the kids involved in some kind of programs after school to treat the problem rather than offering them a dark stairwell in which to mate.
Our assistant principal claimed that he spoke to both our janitors and they had received few complaints about janitors having to deal with students lounging around after school. Yet, I had a colleague who actually spoke to the janitors themselves and they stated several instances.
Issue #2 cafeteria policy
We are in a bind here. As our assistant principal said, “We don’t have enough room for all the kids who eat during first lunch.”
To which I wrote, “What kind of a school are we?” We can’t have colored paper. We can’t order enough supplies since our supply budgets were cut by half. We can’t keep kids out of the building if we want to.
What sense does this make? I know of no solution for this problem other than scrounge up some money for more tables or a larger lunch room or a way to put more students in second lunch. I mean we can get two of the nicest bathrooms in the state, but we can’t get an efficient lunchroom?
Another problem is that just our principal and assistant principal are left to police them and that’s not enough.
Here’s where I come in. I’m heading up a group to look into organizing teachers into groups to help out as part of our duty time. The problem is that I know of at least two teachers who won’t be part of this. They rarely make staff meetings because their programs are more important than the school at large. And they can get away with it.
But most, I hope, will help out with this issue. I’m looking forward to it.
Issue #3 – attendance.
Again we were told from above that we won’t go to mandated attendance. We won’t force a student out of school. That is the opinion and it’s no use fighting it. There is a truancy board in place to try and deal with this.
The bind administration is in – since they won’t go to mandated attendance, which would open a whole other can of worms (but would improve our attendance) – is that parents simply don’t see school (or rather their child being present) as important. They simply excuse their absences, regardless.
Not much you can do about shitty parenting.
Another problem is that the county attorney isn’t going to do anything about students who have missed massive amounts of excused absences.
So I will be more of an asshole in my classes to try and remedy this. I’ll also have to be a more organized asshole.
Here is my policy –
If you have an unexcused absence, you receive a zero, regardless of the assignment. And here is the dilemma. What happens if you miss a massive assignment and will fail – and it’s only the second week? According to the policy, the student should be bumped from the class. But do you think that will really happen?
Not bloody likely.
But I’ll try to cozy up to the good old boy network and maybe that will help my cause next year.
For every excused absence, students will be given two days to make up the work. Now this is a nightmare for me because I will have to be a more organized teacher. But I’ll do it.
To his credit, our assistant principal works hard with me on students who miss a lot of time. But the results our rarely good. Kids who miss class a lot rarely pass.
So that’s my policy – zeros for unexcused absences (I believe their was an uproar awhile ago when our assistant principal said that some kids who get suspended need work, yet some said that being suspended was an unexcused absence and there was no work for them to make up since they’d get a zero on any of it – though I suppose they could still do the work for the good of their education – but what are the odds of a kid doing work that they know they won’t get credit for?) and zero credit for work that is not handed in within two days.
I can live with that.
And that concluded our meeting.
That wasn’t so bad was it?
Didn’t think so.
But you were warned!
Tuesday
My Science Fiction class is watching The Matrix. Several of them are seeing it for the first time. How I envy them.
I used to show The Matrix with every Sci Fi class, but then everyone began to see it and get caught up in the trilogy craze. Since so many had seen it, I decided to stop showing it.
However, since kids no longer have a limited amount of films to watch (as I did when I was their age) nor do they watch as many films, one can now show more films without having to worry about kids already having seen them. This is especially true for movies released prior to 2000.
I told those who have not seen it, that I truly envy them. I never saw the film in theaters. I misjudged it from the trailers. I thought it was some type of kung fo film. Plus, it had Keanu Reeves (I gave up on him after Johnny Neumanic and Dracula) in it.
However, I rented it on a whim and was completely blown away. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.
When Neo (Reeves’ character) wakes up from “The Matrix” in the vat and sees what the world is really like, I was totally sucked in. It was so unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. As I type, that scene is taking place right now. I can only imagine what they are thinking.
I have had a few moments watching films like that – Pulp Fiction (mainly because of the dialogue . . . it was a movie where I could just sit there and listen to the characters talk) and Seven (when the detectives find that drug abuser and pedophile completely emaciated and strapped to the bed . . . I was so amazed that I just had to hang on for dear life for the rest of the film).
It’s still interesting, even though this is maybe the hundredth time I’ve seen The Matrix. But nothing is like that first time.
I told the students I envied them yesterday too when the read Rasmey Campbell’s “The Pattern,” which is the greatest horror story I’ve ever read. When the climax is reached and all the pieces fit together and that resolution slams into you, there is nothing like it.
I think we can have an excellent discussion on The Matrix later this week. One of its main messages is that we are our memories. If someone were to alter them, they would change our reality. Or if we could somehow transfer memories, our realities would be changed too. Let’s say you have the ability to buy someone’s memories of a vacation to the Caribbean, How would you know you didn’t really go? This is addressed by Philp K. Dick in his classic “We Can Remember it for you Wholesale” (which the movie Total Recall is loosely based on).
I like that idea, for I spend a lot of time in my memories.
******
We had our school handbook policy meeting yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised. Things went very well.
There seems to be a real faction among teachers. There are the ones who want the administration to set the rules for ALL. Then there are those who want to be able to set their OWN classroom rules. So far the administration has been very lenient and allowed the latter group to hold sway.
In my survey, it was clear that the teachers have accepted this. Now, they want certain issues (cell phones for one or attendance) to be handled by administration for all, while they want others (food in the classroom) to be handled by individual teachers.
I don’t know if this will be able to work.
On our committee there was a strong division too. One veteran teacher runs his class very, very effectively. He believes others should do just as he does: run a very tight ship, set your own rules, and only involve administration when your rules are repeatedly broken.
It works, as I said, very well for him. However, he has – as far as I know – all electives. He also –as far as I know – teaches mostly underclassmen. Even the upper classmen he teaches are there of their own volition since his classes are mostly electives.
So if he wants to get rid of a student, he can simply march them down to the student affairs office and have them removed since it is an elective class.
However, for those of us who teach required classes (and I don’t teach all required classes – Sci Fi is an elective and College Comp can be treated that way) we can’t simply march a student down and have them removed. What is administration supposed to do with them?
This frustrated me toward the end of the first quarter when I had a senior who was pushing my limit. It came to a head and I kicked him out. However, he was not removed from my class. Instead he supposedly spent his time working in the counseling office, which he didn’t and he failed (should have just been removed).
However, had this teacher marched this same kid down for his elective class, the kid would have been history. I also have a suspicion that had the teacher had that kid in a required class, he would have been gone too.
But this teacher tends to be in the minority. Most don’t run their classes that way. Most want to be able to have set administrative rules in place to fall back on our use as their own classroom rules. I am one of those.
In terms of cell phones, it was decided that all teachers have two options for cell phones in their classrooms. First, they can confiscate them. Or, they can give the offenders detention.
I am for the former solution.
This was decided on to appease both those who want the freedom to decide what to set policy in their classrooms (mainly, the previously mentioned teacher who gives detentions for cell phones in his classes) and for those of us who want a stiffer penalty from administration.
We’ll see how it goes.
******
In fifteen minutes, I’ll be off to a dentist appointment. Time for a crown. If I could make one of those little frowny faces with punctuation, I would.
That leaves a sub to oversee my third block College Composition class. They will complete their final in-class essay today. The prompt is -- A critic once said, “Some say literature is like a window [showing us new glimpses of the world around us]; some say it is like a mirror [reflecting our own beliefs and desires].” Using one of your novels you read, tell me if it worked as a window or mirror for you.
Then my fourth block Lit and Language 11 class will be reading Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” Talk about being envious!
I doubt they will get it on the first reading. So I have an assignment where they will re-read it after being given some basic information (that “the simple operation” where “they just let a little air in” is really an abortion; that the setting is as vital to the story as any I have ever read). Can't wait to see what they think of it then.
I used to show The Matrix with every Sci Fi class, but then everyone began to see it and get caught up in the trilogy craze. Since so many had seen it, I decided to stop showing it.
However, since kids no longer have a limited amount of films to watch (as I did when I was their age) nor do they watch as many films, one can now show more films without having to worry about kids already having seen them. This is especially true for movies released prior to 2000.
I told those who have not seen it, that I truly envy them. I never saw the film in theaters. I misjudged it from the trailers. I thought it was some type of kung fo film. Plus, it had Keanu Reeves (I gave up on him after Johnny Neumanic and Dracula) in it.
However, I rented it on a whim and was completely blown away. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.
When Neo (Reeves’ character) wakes up from “The Matrix” in the vat and sees what the world is really like, I was totally sucked in. It was so unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. As I type, that scene is taking place right now. I can only imagine what they are thinking.
I have had a few moments watching films like that – Pulp Fiction (mainly because of the dialogue . . . it was a movie where I could just sit there and listen to the characters talk) and Seven (when the detectives find that drug abuser and pedophile completely emaciated and strapped to the bed . . . I was so amazed that I just had to hang on for dear life for the rest of the film).
It’s still interesting, even though this is maybe the hundredth time I’ve seen The Matrix. But nothing is like that first time.
I told the students I envied them yesterday too when the read Rasmey Campbell’s “The Pattern,” which is the greatest horror story I’ve ever read. When the climax is reached and all the pieces fit together and that resolution slams into you, there is nothing like it.
I think we can have an excellent discussion on The Matrix later this week. One of its main messages is that we are our memories. If someone were to alter them, they would change our reality. Or if we could somehow transfer memories, our realities would be changed too. Let’s say you have the ability to buy someone’s memories of a vacation to the Caribbean, How would you know you didn’t really go? This is addressed by Philp K. Dick in his classic “We Can Remember it for you Wholesale” (which the movie Total Recall is loosely based on).
I like that idea, for I spend a lot of time in my memories.
******
We had our school handbook policy meeting yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised. Things went very well.
There seems to be a real faction among teachers. There are the ones who want the administration to set the rules for ALL. Then there are those who want to be able to set their OWN classroom rules. So far the administration has been very lenient and allowed the latter group to hold sway.
In my survey, it was clear that the teachers have accepted this. Now, they want certain issues (cell phones for one or attendance) to be handled by administration for all, while they want others (food in the classroom) to be handled by individual teachers.
I don’t know if this will be able to work.
On our committee there was a strong division too. One veteran teacher runs his class very, very effectively. He believes others should do just as he does: run a very tight ship, set your own rules, and only involve administration when your rules are repeatedly broken.
It works, as I said, very well for him. However, he has – as far as I know – all electives. He also –as far as I know – teaches mostly underclassmen. Even the upper classmen he teaches are there of their own volition since his classes are mostly electives.
So if he wants to get rid of a student, he can simply march them down to the student affairs office and have them removed since it is an elective class.
However, for those of us who teach required classes (and I don’t teach all required classes – Sci Fi is an elective and College Comp can be treated that way) we can’t simply march a student down and have them removed. What is administration supposed to do with them?
This frustrated me toward the end of the first quarter when I had a senior who was pushing my limit. It came to a head and I kicked him out. However, he was not removed from my class. Instead he supposedly spent his time working in the counseling office, which he didn’t and he failed (should have just been removed).
However, had this teacher marched this same kid down for his elective class, the kid would have been history. I also have a suspicion that had the teacher had that kid in a required class, he would have been gone too.
But this teacher tends to be in the minority. Most don’t run their classes that way. Most want to be able to have set administrative rules in place to fall back on our use as their own classroom rules. I am one of those.
In terms of cell phones, it was decided that all teachers have two options for cell phones in their classrooms. First, they can confiscate them. Or, they can give the offenders detention.
I am for the former solution.
This was decided on to appease both those who want the freedom to decide what to set policy in their classrooms (mainly, the previously mentioned teacher who gives detentions for cell phones in his classes) and for those of us who want a stiffer penalty from administration.
We’ll see how it goes.
******
In fifteen minutes, I’ll be off to a dentist appointment. Time for a crown. If I could make one of those little frowny faces with punctuation, I would.
That leaves a sub to oversee my third block College Composition class. They will complete their final in-class essay today. The prompt is -- A critic once said, “Some say literature is like a window [showing us new glimpses of the world around us]; some say it is like a mirror [reflecting our own beliefs and desires].” Using one of your novels you read, tell me if it worked as a window or mirror for you.
Then my fourth block Lit and Language 11 class will be reading Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” Talk about being envious!
I doubt they will get it on the first reading. So I have an assignment where they will re-read it after being given some basic information (that “the simple operation” where “they just let a little air in” is really an abortion; that the setting is as vital to the story as any I have ever read). Can't wait to see what they think of it then.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Captain Pose
How soon they grow up. Here he is (a long with KoKo) prior to a choir/band concert. They're doing their impression of the "Captain" pose from the commercials.
Too Cute
Since Gail is getting her film developed after oh 15 years or so, Kristie is looking at baby pictures that she has never seen before. Quite a unique experience.
Here are a few of Casey Boy.
Here are a few of Casey Boy.
A Trip Down Amnesia Lane
Kristie and her best friend, Tricia (Check out that hat! I think Kristie is even amazed by it!). I shouldn't poke fun I had a mullet around this same time.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Kristie's imovie
Here is the second imovie I ever made. It was a little thank you to Kristie. You too will see why she is so wonderful and why I am so madly in love with her.
Sport dilemma
Another change I have undergone in the past fifteen years (five earning a degree and ten teaching) is definitely how I feel about sports.
One of my main goals in college was to be a head football coach. After all, I idolized all of my coaches in high school. If they said it or asked, I did it. Or tried.
I also think that I'm one of the few who actually loved practice. I mean I loved it. Most dreaded it and lived just for the games. I was never that way. Don't get me wrong, I loved competing on the field, but practice fascinated me.
In football, toward the end of my sophomore year, I began to adopt the attitude of trying to improve my technique and speed with every single repetition. So every practice became a microcosm. Could I pull faster? Could I use a better angle when blocking the nose tackle? Could I blitz more effectively? These became my obsessions in practice.
In an odd way, I think this has carried over to how I write. For I have the same attitude toward that. Well, maybe not all my writing (witness the multiple errors and rarely revised rants on here) - let's just say my serious writing, then. When I was working on my thesis, I honed every single sentence.
I mean that.
You might think that odd for a piece about 86 pages long. But that's the truth. I labored over ever sentence.
And that labor fascinated me, just like I was fascinated by my assignments on our offensive plays in football practice.
Outside of that, I have to admit it: I learned next to nothing from sports.
This is where my change in attitude comes in.
I just can't bring myself to believe that sports makes for better students and citizens anymore.
Can't do it.
Maybe in another fifteen years, I'll have changed my mind, but I doubt it.
Why?
Well, first I think many coaches get into coaching because they did well in their respective sport and the subconsciously want to relive that.
Or they get into coaching to win. I have a feeling that this is integral to the real problem sports generates in our culture - an all out emphasis on winning. Now, I know somehow people have come to believe that winning is part of the American Way, whatever that is. And though I don't personally buy that, I can see why many people believe that - they don't want to be associated with losers.
Yet, it's dealing with loss that makes one better, not gloating over a win. One of the rare positive messages I actually took away from sports occured in college. We were getting ready to trounce Hibbing in football. They were a perennial doormat. Our defensive coordinator was a bear the entire week. We tried to get him to lighten up, but he was all business. He made a point I will never forgot - "I could give a shit less if we beat Hibbing by 4 or 40. The high school team could beat them. What I want to do is beat the Vermillion's and Fergus Fall's of the world. We'll learn nothing from this game."
That changed me. I was all ready to enjoy romping on an inferior opponent. Yet, as our coach stated, what do we learn from that? The real goal is to beat a worthy - or better yet - a superior opponent.
But even that mentality seems to get lost in sports lately.
Now, there are exceptions. Our high school football coach is a perfect example. He molds young men. He teaches them that they are not just athletes or students. They are a part of a tradition - something larger than themselves. He teaches them how to be leaders - or followers - and how to maximize themselves.
Another example - my hometown boy's basketball coach found out that his elementary program was having an end of the season awards night. He told his volunteer coach that he'd bring his seniors there. It was surprise to the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Not only did the seniors show up to their party, but the signed autographs, took pictures with the kids, and spoke to them about being part of the basketball program. He even called the local paper so a reporter would show up to take some pictures for the next issue. Then the coach gave a plug for his summer basketball camp and told the kids that if anyone couldn't afford it to see him. Sure enough, a little boy came up to him and said that he wanted to go but his parents had no money. The coach told him that that would not be a problem and that he'd see him at the camp this summer! Then the coach picked up the bill. That is a class act.
If more did it like that, my attitude would change.
But I've seen that type of teaching and coaching become the minority. Instead, you get coaches who scream at kids and tell them they suck, or hold an awards night and only talk about their three star seniors, while two other seniors aren't even mentioend, or a coach who buys chewing tobacco in front of his players.
A colleague of mine dropped off an article from the Star Tribune on some suburban schools dropping athletics, and the outrage that it is creating.
Many response have been the cliché “sports are a vital part of our community.” I used to actually believe this line of thinking.
But I can’t bring myself to be that naïve anymore.
Three years ago, I was guilty of screaming like a moron at an elementary school basketball game. First, it was an elementary basketball game. Second, I was a fan, not the coach nor participating. Third, I was ashamed of myself. But, sadly, I wasn't the only one screaming like a moron. I had become one of those parents I often talked about. Now, I find myself shutting up now and just enjoying the game. But how many really do that?
I think of the parent at a boy’s basketball game who damn near bum rushed the court when he disagreed with a foul.
Or the parent who literally chased the refs off the court.
Or the parents who drank in their vehicles during halftime of a football game.
I just don’t buy that it’s a vital part of the community. My answer to that thinking is that people need to find better things to do with their time. If you honestly come out to support your son or daughter or local athletes – wonderful. But if there are no longer athletics, what is stopping you from finding some other way to support them?
My dad tried to drive this point home to me after wasting countless afternoons watching the Vikings win for 55 minutes before blowing the game. Finally, he just got more work done on Sundays.
As a Bengals fan, and the Bengals have done their fair share of losing in my time, I know how he feels. I will waste three hours watching or listening to the game - only to be frustrated with a loss or elated with a win. Why should so much of my attitude hinge on a stupid game?
My answer - I need to find more valuable things to do in my life. Enter my daughter on September 26th!
I am also sick of hearing this line of thinking, “If kids don’t play sports, then they’ll get into trouble out on the street.”
Now the problem here is that it assumes all kids are just teetering on the edge of trouble. If I am not mistaken, recently a wrestler exposed himself to a younger member of his team, several baseball players exposed themselves to their student manager, several burned an animal in a cage alive in the middle of a lake, others competed over who could have sex with the most freshmen girls . . . God forbid, what are athletics keeping these kids from? Killing or raping someone. Then I am most definitely glad that we have athletics.
But seriously, are you that foolish to believe if kids did not have organized sports that they would then be vandelizing property, getting drunk, smoking pot, and other things? Please.
I am also tired of coaches bamboozling their athletes into thinking that sports teaches team work, sacrifice, and pride. Again, in many instances this is true. But often, it isn’t. I think of some of our athletes in my hometown who are often brow beaten into submission. I’m sure those valuable lessons will make all the difference in their future lives.
Now there are plenty of coaches who try to teach their kids how to be good people as well as good athletes. But that is not the norm.
And isn’t that the job of parents anyway?
Too often sports have become a way for parents to live vicariously through their children, coaches to strive to win at all costs, or excuses for something to do in communities.
When our school is facing a fiscal crisis where the teachers have to sacrifice half of their classroom supply budgets (that means I’ll go light on pens, pencils, and Kleenex because an extra projector bulb will likely eat up all my allotted budget)– as well as having to go without colored paper next year (I’m not kidding) – I have a hard time feeling sorry for reduced budgets in sports – or even sports being cut all together.
I think the public would do well to remember that these are extra curricular, emphasis on the extra. Just like they are student athletes, but the emphasis seems to get lost on the first part.
I’m not trying to sound like one of those fickle curmudgeons who hate athletics. I encourage KoKo and Casey and attend all of their games. But I do so for support. I don’t live vicariously through them or think that we must win at all costs or that they have to turn their lives upside down for athletics.
I once wanted Casey to lift and succeed in football, not because it’s what he wanted, but because it was what I wanted. I wished that I had the opportunities in sports that he has. Pushing him to attend morning practices or lifting sessions, because I would have killed to have been able to do that as a kid, is not the way to go. Casey can only motivate himself to do that.
He hasn’t. And I can live with that. The important thing is what he wants and values, not what I wanted and valued when I was his age.
The same is true for KoKo’s trip to her grandparents’ this summer in South Dakota. Sure, she will miss out on her summer rec activities, but she would also miss out on a month of memories with her grandparents. There is no trade off there. It is an easy decision. It’s not like she is going to be a professional softball or volleyball player. But her grandparents won’t be around forever and she will always have this trip. That’s a memory that will last a lifetime.
I also know that athletes do great things. I just helped edit a little story for our football coach’s spring newsletter about an elderly woman who called him looking for some muscle to help her move. The coach contacted one of his seniors, and the player didn’t hesitate to assist her. But remember, in addition to being an athlete, he was a student.
That’s the really important thing.
You might make memories that will last you for a lifetime in sports (maybe), but you might also learn skills that will serve you for a lifetime in school.
Let’s just have a little perspective. That’s all.
I like to think of athletics – at any level –l in the same way Oscar Wilde viewed art, “art for art’s sake.”
Let’s drop the pretense that sports are morally redeemable. Play them for the sake of playing them – and all that entails.
Play in high school because it’s one of the few times in one’s life when you can. My dad never let me get a job when I was in high school because I would have the rest of my life to work. He wanted me to play sports (because, especially in football, he lived vicariously through me and my mom, left alone on the farm when Dad was out in the truck, loved my involvement in sports because it gave her a reason to get out of the house and off the farm) because it was the only time in my life when I really could.
But that is about as important as sports get.
One of my main goals in college was to be a head football coach. After all, I idolized all of my coaches in high school. If they said it or asked, I did it. Or tried.
I also think that I'm one of the few who actually loved practice. I mean I loved it. Most dreaded it and lived just for the games. I was never that way. Don't get me wrong, I loved competing on the field, but practice fascinated me.
In football, toward the end of my sophomore year, I began to adopt the attitude of trying to improve my technique and speed with every single repetition. So every practice became a microcosm. Could I pull faster? Could I use a better angle when blocking the nose tackle? Could I blitz more effectively? These became my obsessions in practice.
In an odd way, I think this has carried over to how I write. For I have the same attitude toward that. Well, maybe not all my writing (witness the multiple errors and rarely revised rants on here) - let's just say my serious writing, then. When I was working on my thesis, I honed every single sentence.
I mean that.
You might think that odd for a piece about 86 pages long. But that's the truth. I labored over ever sentence.
And that labor fascinated me, just like I was fascinated by my assignments on our offensive plays in football practice.
Outside of that, I have to admit it: I learned next to nothing from sports.
This is where my change in attitude comes in.
I just can't bring myself to believe that sports makes for better students and citizens anymore.
Can't do it.
Maybe in another fifteen years, I'll have changed my mind, but I doubt it.
Why?
Well, first I think many coaches get into coaching because they did well in their respective sport and the subconsciously want to relive that.
Or they get into coaching to win. I have a feeling that this is integral to the real problem sports generates in our culture - an all out emphasis on winning. Now, I know somehow people have come to believe that winning is part of the American Way, whatever that is. And though I don't personally buy that, I can see why many people believe that - they don't want to be associated with losers.
Yet, it's dealing with loss that makes one better, not gloating over a win. One of the rare positive messages I actually took away from sports occured in college. We were getting ready to trounce Hibbing in football. They were a perennial doormat. Our defensive coordinator was a bear the entire week. We tried to get him to lighten up, but he was all business. He made a point I will never forgot - "I could give a shit less if we beat Hibbing by 4 or 40. The high school team could beat them. What I want to do is beat the Vermillion's and Fergus Fall's of the world. We'll learn nothing from this game."
That changed me. I was all ready to enjoy romping on an inferior opponent. Yet, as our coach stated, what do we learn from that? The real goal is to beat a worthy - or better yet - a superior opponent.
But even that mentality seems to get lost in sports lately.
Now, there are exceptions. Our high school football coach is a perfect example. He molds young men. He teaches them that they are not just athletes or students. They are a part of a tradition - something larger than themselves. He teaches them how to be leaders - or followers - and how to maximize themselves.
Another example - my hometown boy's basketball coach found out that his elementary program was having an end of the season awards night. He told his volunteer coach that he'd bring his seniors there. It was surprise to the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Not only did the seniors show up to their party, but the signed autographs, took pictures with the kids, and spoke to them about being part of the basketball program. He even called the local paper so a reporter would show up to take some pictures for the next issue. Then the coach gave a plug for his summer basketball camp and told the kids that if anyone couldn't afford it to see him. Sure enough, a little boy came up to him and said that he wanted to go but his parents had no money. The coach told him that that would not be a problem and that he'd see him at the camp this summer! Then the coach picked up the bill. That is a class act.
If more did it like that, my attitude would change.
But I've seen that type of teaching and coaching become the minority. Instead, you get coaches who scream at kids and tell them they suck, or hold an awards night and only talk about their three star seniors, while two other seniors aren't even mentioend, or a coach who buys chewing tobacco in front of his players.
A colleague of mine dropped off an article from the Star Tribune on some suburban schools dropping athletics, and the outrage that it is creating.
Many response have been the cliché “sports are a vital part of our community.” I used to actually believe this line of thinking.
But I can’t bring myself to be that naïve anymore.
Three years ago, I was guilty of screaming like a moron at an elementary school basketball game. First, it was an elementary basketball game. Second, I was a fan, not the coach nor participating. Third, I was ashamed of myself. But, sadly, I wasn't the only one screaming like a moron. I had become one of those parents I often talked about. Now, I find myself shutting up now and just enjoying the game. But how many really do that?
I think of the parent at a boy’s basketball game who damn near bum rushed the court when he disagreed with a foul.
Or the parent who literally chased the refs off the court.
Or the parents who drank in their vehicles during halftime of a football game.
I just don’t buy that it’s a vital part of the community. My answer to that thinking is that people need to find better things to do with their time. If you honestly come out to support your son or daughter or local athletes – wonderful. But if there are no longer athletics, what is stopping you from finding some other way to support them?
My dad tried to drive this point home to me after wasting countless afternoons watching the Vikings win for 55 minutes before blowing the game. Finally, he just got more work done on Sundays.
As a Bengals fan, and the Bengals have done their fair share of losing in my time, I know how he feels. I will waste three hours watching or listening to the game - only to be frustrated with a loss or elated with a win. Why should so much of my attitude hinge on a stupid game?
My answer - I need to find more valuable things to do in my life. Enter my daughter on September 26th!
I am also sick of hearing this line of thinking, “If kids don’t play sports, then they’ll get into trouble out on the street.”
Now the problem here is that it assumes all kids are just teetering on the edge of trouble. If I am not mistaken, recently a wrestler exposed himself to a younger member of his team, several baseball players exposed themselves to their student manager, several burned an animal in a cage alive in the middle of a lake, others competed over who could have sex with the most freshmen girls . . . God forbid, what are athletics keeping these kids from? Killing or raping someone. Then I am most definitely glad that we have athletics.
But seriously, are you that foolish to believe if kids did not have organized sports that they would then be vandelizing property, getting drunk, smoking pot, and other things? Please.
I am also tired of coaches bamboozling their athletes into thinking that sports teaches team work, sacrifice, and pride. Again, in many instances this is true. But often, it isn’t. I think of some of our athletes in my hometown who are often brow beaten into submission. I’m sure those valuable lessons will make all the difference in their future lives.
Now there are plenty of coaches who try to teach their kids how to be good people as well as good athletes. But that is not the norm.
And isn’t that the job of parents anyway?
Too often sports have become a way for parents to live vicariously through their children, coaches to strive to win at all costs, or excuses for something to do in communities.
When our school is facing a fiscal crisis where the teachers have to sacrifice half of their classroom supply budgets (that means I’ll go light on pens, pencils, and Kleenex because an extra projector bulb will likely eat up all my allotted budget)– as well as having to go without colored paper next year (I’m not kidding) – I have a hard time feeling sorry for reduced budgets in sports – or even sports being cut all together.
I think the public would do well to remember that these are extra curricular, emphasis on the extra. Just like they are student athletes, but the emphasis seems to get lost on the first part.
I’m not trying to sound like one of those fickle curmudgeons who hate athletics. I encourage KoKo and Casey and attend all of their games. But I do so for support. I don’t live vicariously through them or think that we must win at all costs or that they have to turn their lives upside down for athletics.
I once wanted Casey to lift and succeed in football, not because it’s what he wanted, but because it was what I wanted. I wished that I had the opportunities in sports that he has. Pushing him to attend morning practices or lifting sessions, because I would have killed to have been able to do that as a kid, is not the way to go. Casey can only motivate himself to do that.
He hasn’t. And I can live with that. The important thing is what he wants and values, not what I wanted and valued when I was his age.
The same is true for KoKo’s trip to her grandparents’ this summer in South Dakota. Sure, she will miss out on her summer rec activities, but she would also miss out on a month of memories with her grandparents. There is no trade off there. It is an easy decision. It’s not like she is going to be a professional softball or volleyball player. But her grandparents won’t be around forever and she will always have this trip. That’s a memory that will last a lifetime.
I also know that athletes do great things. I just helped edit a little story for our football coach’s spring newsletter about an elderly woman who called him looking for some muscle to help her move. The coach contacted one of his seniors, and the player didn’t hesitate to assist her. But remember, in addition to being an athlete, he was a student.
That’s the really important thing.
You might make memories that will last you for a lifetime in sports (maybe), but you might also learn skills that will serve you for a lifetime in school.
Let’s just have a little perspective. That’s all.
I like to think of athletics – at any level –l in the same way Oscar Wilde viewed art, “art for art’s sake.”
Let’s drop the pretense that sports are morally redeemable. Play them for the sake of playing them – and all that entails.
Play in high school because it’s one of the few times in one’s life when you can. My dad never let me get a job when I was in high school because I would have the rest of my life to work. He wanted me to play sports (because, especially in football, he lived vicariously through me and my mom, left alone on the farm when Dad was out in the truck, loved my involvement in sports because it gave her a reason to get out of the house and off the farm) because it was the only time in my life when I really could.
But that is about as important as sports get.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Ten years in the trade
Ten years in the trade: my evolution.
First year – It was all I could do to survive. What happened to me was what happens to most rookie teachers – I had all the classes no one else really wanted dumped on me. I found myself teaching six sections of Comp 10. They drove me nuts, but teaching the same thing over and over helped me refine my craft. I survived, but I thought a lot about quitting.
Second year – Much better. I had different classes that broke up the monotony. I knew I could survive, so I focused on actually teaching. However, I was still stuck in the idea that I had to act like I knew so much more than my students.
Third year – frustration. I knew I could do better, but I wasn’t. I was spending too much time working. I brought hours of work home. In short, I was burning out. I found myself coasting on things I had been doing over and over for two years when I knew I should be doing something more. So I applied for grad school and was accepted.
Fourth year – grad school. I learned more about teaching and writing than I ever thought possible. Renewal and rebirth. When I left teaching high school, all I wanted was to get out. At the end of grad school, all I wanted to do was get back to it.
Fifth and sixth years – transition. I was trying to mesh the theories and ideas I encountered in grad school with the reality of high school.
Seventh and eighth – hard work. I was enjoying teaching and feeling like I was really doing a service to my kids. This was driven home by a student who met us in Walmart and said that while my Brit Lit class was really tough, he thought it was one of a handful that he had taken that would really prepare him for college.
Ninth and tenth – frustration revisited. I started blogging to vent some of my frustration. Earlier, I was frustrated with myself and how I was teaching. Now I was becoming frustrated by the lack of support in the school. Now I am trying to help shape policy to make this school what it can be – not what it settles to be. John Merrow says there are three types of schools – excellent, barely good enough, and failing. We are barely good enough. We might like to say that we are excellent, but that is not true. We can do better and should. Now I have my second go around on LEEP. Now I am co-president of our education association. Time to see how we can improve things.
First year – It was all I could do to survive. What happened to me was what happens to most rookie teachers – I had all the classes no one else really wanted dumped on me. I found myself teaching six sections of Comp 10. They drove me nuts, but teaching the same thing over and over helped me refine my craft. I survived, but I thought a lot about quitting.
Second year – Much better. I had different classes that broke up the monotony. I knew I could survive, so I focused on actually teaching. However, I was still stuck in the idea that I had to act like I knew so much more than my students.
Third year – frustration. I knew I could do better, but I wasn’t. I was spending too much time working. I brought hours of work home. In short, I was burning out. I found myself coasting on things I had been doing over and over for two years when I knew I should be doing something more. So I applied for grad school and was accepted.
Fourth year – grad school. I learned more about teaching and writing than I ever thought possible. Renewal and rebirth. When I left teaching high school, all I wanted was to get out. At the end of grad school, all I wanted to do was get back to it.
Fifth and sixth years – transition. I was trying to mesh the theories and ideas I encountered in grad school with the reality of high school.
Seventh and eighth – hard work. I was enjoying teaching and feeling like I was really doing a service to my kids. This was driven home by a student who met us in Walmart and said that while my Brit Lit class was really tough, he thought it was one of a handful that he had taken that would really prepare him for college.
Ninth and tenth – frustration revisited. I started blogging to vent some of my frustration. Earlier, I was frustrated with myself and how I was teaching. Now I was becoming frustrated by the lack of support in the school. Now I am trying to help shape policy to make this school what it can be – not what it settles to be. John Merrow says there are three types of schools – excellent, barely good enough, and failing. We are barely good enough. We might like to say that we are excellent, but that is not true. We can do better and should. Now I have my second go around on LEEP. Now I am co-president of our education association. Time to see how we can improve things.
Morning Disaster
After showering, I ventured outside to let Kozy and Joker in. Only problem? Joker was not at the end of his chain.
He pulled a vanishing act earlier in the week too. So I set out in my car, at 6:10 am, to search for the scoundrel. No luck, of course.
At 6:30, I had to call Casey, who was over at his dad’s, to continue the search while I got dressed. Just as I was about to leave, I saw his pick up pull up behind my car. Then I heard the back door open.
I assumed Joker was either returned or hooked back up outside.
Big mistake.
When I headed out to my car, I didn’t see Joker, nor was he downstairs. I decided to inspect his leash. I was curious to see how he escaped. I know I hooked him up. Maybe someone let him loose. But why? Usually he will manage to pull his collar off and run free. Yet, his collar was not attached to the chain.
As I looked at the chain, I saw that the clasp was a bit rusty and must have stuck. So that’s how he got away!
I happened to looked up and spotted Joker across the empty lot on the other side of the alley.
I called and he ran over.
What a way to start a Thursday.
*****
I hate this time of the year. For reasons unfathomable to me, our school graduates the seniors three days before the underclassmen.
Again, this makes no sense to me.
What are we supposed to do with a mixed class? If I have a class of 15 seniors and five juniors, am I supposed to make the juniors do extra work? Am I just supposed to show movies the final three days?
Of course, that doesn’t even take into account how much the students loathe those last three days. It’s hard enough to motivate them when they enjoy being in class.
It’s a no win situation and the education that takes place in those days is an insult to the very definition of ‘education.’
I am fortunate in that I have a junior class, so I will give them a final that week. Too bad for them. I’m old school. I’d like to see everyone get out on the same day and have that final week modeled after college finals. Every class either has final test or project that is due.
Of course, that would mean teachers have to spend that final week working rather than scheduling trips to the Dairy Queen (been guilty of this) with their classes or reserving DVD players and so on. But at least something educational would get done that final week.
My Science Fiction class only has a few seniors, so that is no big deal either. We will have an extra final project in there too.
Now my College Composition class has a handful of seniors in it. However, I am excusing all of my kids for those three days. Sure, it looks like I’m getting off easy. But I’ll tell you this right now, if anyone wants me to baby-sit their kids while they watch a movie or supervise them while they go to Dairy Queen and they can come in and grade the 30 8-12 research papers I have, be my guest. I don’t think I’ll have too many takers.
Besides, the Comp I class out at NCTC, which this class is modeled after, only meets three times a week and only for an hour. So we meet five times a week for roughly 80 minutes (I let them out 10-15 minutes early every day because second lunch is a joke and the kids need extra time to get there early or literally the food will be gone or they can travel somewhere off campus to eat). The college class ended last week. So if I give them three days off, I don’t see what the big deal is. Plus, we are given, or so I’m told, five ‘accommodation’ days to make up for the extra time kids have to put in here rather than out there.
And it’s no secret – the kids could go out to the college (where the school has to pay for books and tuition) and have an easier class than staying here and taking my class. A little reward is justified.
*****
This kills me.
A senior Science Fiction student just asked me if he could go over to the gas station to get something to eat.
“Uh, no. Seeing as how you missed the past two days and are missing the bulk of your assignments, I don’t think that would the wisest thing for you to do. Plus, I saw you here at 7:50, why not run over there then?”
He looked surprised that I wouldn’t let him.
Then a sophomore, who had given him some money to get something for him, said, “You should have just asked to go to the bathroom.”
Now the kid is dumb enough to say this in front of me.
I replied, “No dumbass. He should not have said that.” (And the great irony here is that the dumbass sophomore’s mom, who lives in the cities while her kid goes to school here, is going to call me during my prep – supposedly, she’s been meaning to do this for some time now – to see what I think about her son taking my College Comp course next year. Should be an interesting conversation.)
Even the senior knew how stupid this was. “Yeah, I ask to go to the bathroom and am gone 15 minutes. That makes a lot of sense.”
I should have said, “That would have made about as much sense as what you just asked me. How about being like Kyle or Brian or Brady – who have all of their work in right now and have submitted excellent imovie projects – speaking of which, I don’t believe you have started yet – even though you only read a 75 page novella and they read full novels – and they have attended nearly every day and you only manage to drag yourself here three times a week – and just doing what you’re supposed to – your work.”
I’ll save that one for later.
See, I turn cynical this time of the year too. It’s getting hard on me.
I just get beat down by this type of foolishness throughout the year.
******
I created my first survey via surveymonkey.com this morning. As part of our LEEP committee, I am now also part of the student handbook committee. So I decided to email some colleagues and get their ideas for what they would like to see addressed. Their responses were pretty predictable – cell phone usage needs to be addressed, our detention system is ineffective, students eating outside of the lunchroom are creating a mess in the hallways, and a few other issues.
So I took their ideas and tried to develop a survey dealing with their concerns.
The cool thing about surveymonkey is that I was able to email a link to my survey to the entire staff. Even better, in my surveymonkey, I am able to see their responses instantly.
I have to use this for my classes next year.
****
The real issue will be cell phones.
People here are barely away of what our school policy is. I have no idea, probably something like “Cell phones are not to be used in classes at LHS.”
Teachers are left to decide their own policies for cell phones in their classes. Now the problem with this is that some do and other don’t. And we are doing a real disservice to the students that way.
I am not against cell phones. In case of school shootings or other emergencies, parents should have a way to contact their kids or vice versa. However, I’m willing to be that 99.9% of the cell phone usage that goes on is not for emergencies. Instead, it’s for gossip, cheating, and just plane messaging. All non-essential things. I mean it wasn’t even that long ago that I didn’t even have a phone in my room!
However, we need a real policy for the entire school that all teachers can fall back on. I like the one Mrs. Sheridan just emailed me from EGF. There students have their phones taken and their parents have to pick them up.
Now that would be a pain to enforce. Certainly, you’d deal with some irate parents, but I bet you’d have your fair share of parents that would applaud the maneuver.
Plus, as with any tough love policy, one would probably only have to get tough for a few months before students understood the limits and lived by them.
That way I could teach without having to monitor kids a dozen times each class telling them to put their phones away or discussing or taking notes and, when looking up, noticing five cell phones out and kids texting away.
I think it’s a lesson in courtousy that we are teaching the kids.
Sara, who supervises people at one of the local businesses here, has real issues with adults using their cell phones. So much so that now that business has a cell phone policy, so why shouldn’t we?
We could send the policy out to all parents. We could stress it again during fall conferences and the open house. It would work. But we’d have to take it seriously and stick to it.
My guess is – and this is simply my personal feeling – is that it would call for us to have to man up and actually be mean and do something about a really difficult issue.
We’ll see.
PS
I just had to get after one of the girls, who should be watching a movie, but was showing another girl in class a picture that someone had emailed her via her phone. If we had a policy with some bite to it, I would not have to worry about such silliness.
I used to give a quiz for the entire class whenever I saw a cell phone out. But, honestly, I’d spend zero time teaching and all my time giving quizzes – well, that might not be that different from how some teach – but that would be a waste. Plus, my policy was really unfair. What about the kids who obey or who don’t even have cell phones? Why should I punish them?
I will gladly enforce whatever policy our administration decides. But it is not my job as a teacher to decide school policy. That’s why we have administrators, right?
I don’t have them give my tests or lectures, do I? So why should I have to make up policies for them?
I hope that will end now that I am on the handbook committee and am working to make school policy. I volunteered for this and want to help. Teachers deal with curriculum and motivating kids – they shouldn’t have to decide policy. Period.
He pulled a vanishing act earlier in the week too. So I set out in my car, at 6:10 am, to search for the scoundrel. No luck, of course.
At 6:30, I had to call Casey, who was over at his dad’s, to continue the search while I got dressed. Just as I was about to leave, I saw his pick up pull up behind my car. Then I heard the back door open.
I assumed Joker was either returned or hooked back up outside.
Big mistake.
When I headed out to my car, I didn’t see Joker, nor was he downstairs. I decided to inspect his leash. I was curious to see how he escaped. I know I hooked him up. Maybe someone let him loose. But why? Usually he will manage to pull his collar off and run free. Yet, his collar was not attached to the chain.
As I looked at the chain, I saw that the clasp was a bit rusty and must have stuck. So that’s how he got away!
I happened to looked up and spotted Joker across the empty lot on the other side of the alley.
I called and he ran over.
What a way to start a Thursday.
*****
I hate this time of the year. For reasons unfathomable to me, our school graduates the seniors three days before the underclassmen.
Again, this makes no sense to me.
What are we supposed to do with a mixed class? If I have a class of 15 seniors and five juniors, am I supposed to make the juniors do extra work? Am I just supposed to show movies the final three days?
Of course, that doesn’t even take into account how much the students loathe those last three days. It’s hard enough to motivate them when they enjoy being in class.
It’s a no win situation and the education that takes place in those days is an insult to the very definition of ‘education.’
I am fortunate in that I have a junior class, so I will give them a final that week. Too bad for them. I’m old school. I’d like to see everyone get out on the same day and have that final week modeled after college finals. Every class either has final test or project that is due.
Of course, that would mean teachers have to spend that final week working rather than scheduling trips to the Dairy Queen (been guilty of this) with their classes or reserving DVD players and so on. But at least something educational would get done that final week.
My Science Fiction class only has a few seniors, so that is no big deal either. We will have an extra final project in there too.
Now my College Composition class has a handful of seniors in it. However, I am excusing all of my kids for those three days. Sure, it looks like I’m getting off easy. But I’ll tell you this right now, if anyone wants me to baby-sit their kids while they watch a movie or supervise them while they go to Dairy Queen and they can come in and grade the 30 8-12 research papers I have, be my guest. I don’t think I’ll have too many takers.
Besides, the Comp I class out at NCTC, which this class is modeled after, only meets three times a week and only for an hour. So we meet five times a week for roughly 80 minutes (I let them out 10-15 minutes early every day because second lunch is a joke and the kids need extra time to get there early or literally the food will be gone or they can travel somewhere off campus to eat). The college class ended last week. So if I give them three days off, I don’t see what the big deal is. Plus, we are given, or so I’m told, five ‘accommodation’ days to make up for the extra time kids have to put in here rather than out there.
And it’s no secret – the kids could go out to the college (where the school has to pay for books and tuition) and have an easier class than staying here and taking my class. A little reward is justified.
*****
This kills me.
A senior Science Fiction student just asked me if he could go over to the gas station to get something to eat.
“Uh, no. Seeing as how you missed the past two days and are missing the bulk of your assignments, I don’t think that would the wisest thing for you to do. Plus, I saw you here at 7:50, why not run over there then?”
He looked surprised that I wouldn’t let him.
Then a sophomore, who had given him some money to get something for him, said, “You should have just asked to go to the bathroom.”
Now the kid is dumb enough to say this in front of me.
I replied, “No dumbass. He should not have said that.” (And the great irony here is that the dumbass sophomore’s mom, who lives in the cities while her kid goes to school here, is going to call me during my prep – supposedly, she’s been meaning to do this for some time now – to see what I think about her son taking my College Comp course next year. Should be an interesting conversation.)
Even the senior knew how stupid this was. “Yeah, I ask to go to the bathroom and am gone 15 minutes. That makes a lot of sense.”
I should have said, “That would have made about as much sense as what you just asked me. How about being like Kyle or Brian or Brady – who have all of their work in right now and have submitted excellent imovie projects – speaking of which, I don’t believe you have started yet – even though you only read a 75 page novella and they read full novels – and they have attended nearly every day and you only manage to drag yourself here three times a week – and just doing what you’re supposed to – your work.”
I’ll save that one for later.
See, I turn cynical this time of the year too. It’s getting hard on me.
I just get beat down by this type of foolishness throughout the year.
******
I created my first survey via surveymonkey.com this morning. As part of our LEEP committee, I am now also part of the student handbook committee. So I decided to email some colleagues and get their ideas for what they would like to see addressed. Their responses were pretty predictable – cell phone usage needs to be addressed, our detention system is ineffective, students eating outside of the lunchroom are creating a mess in the hallways, and a few other issues.
So I took their ideas and tried to develop a survey dealing with their concerns.
The cool thing about surveymonkey is that I was able to email a link to my survey to the entire staff. Even better, in my surveymonkey, I am able to see their responses instantly.
I have to use this for my classes next year.
****
The real issue will be cell phones.
People here are barely away of what our school policy is. I have no idea, probably something like “Cell phones are not to be used in classes at LHS.”
Teachers are left to decide their own policies for cell phones in their classes. Now the problem with this is that some do and other don’t. And we are doing a real disservice to the students that way.
I am not against cell phones. In case of school shootings or other emergencies, parents should have a way to contact their kids or vice versa. However, I’m willing to be that 99.9% of the cell phone usage that goes on is not for emergencies. Instead, it’s for gossip, cheating, and just plane messaging. All non-essential things. I mean it wasn’t even that long ago that I didn’t even have a phone in my room!
However, we need a real policy for the entire school that all teachers can fall back on. I like the one Mrs. Sheridan just emailed me from EGF. There students have their phones taken and their parents have to pick them up.
Now that would be a pain to enforce. Certainly, you’d deal with some irate parents, but I bet you’d have your fair share of parents that would applaud the maneuver.
Plus, as with any tough love policy, one would probably only have to get tough for a few months before students understood the limits and lived by them.
That way I could teach without having to monitor kids a dozen times each class telling them to put their phones away or discussing or taking notes and, when looking up, noticing five cell phones out and kids texting away.
I think it’s a lesson in courtousy that we are teaching the kids.
Sara, who supervises people at one of the local businesses here, has real issues with adults using their cell phones. So much so that now that business has a cell phone policy, so why shouldn’t we?
We could send the policy out to all parents. We could stress it again during fall conferences and the open house. It would work. But we’d have to take it seriously and stick to it.
My guess is – and this is simply my personal feeling – is that it would call for us to have to man up and actually be mean and do something about a really difficult issue.
We’ll see.
PS
I just had to get after one of the girls, who should be watching a movie, but was showing another girl in class a picture that someone had emailed her via her phone. If we had a policy with some bite to it, I would not have to worry about such silliness.
I used to give a quiz for the entire class whenever I saw a cell phone out. But, honestly, I’d spend zero time teaching and all my time giving quizzes – well, that might not be that different from how some teach – but that would be a waste. Plus, my policy was really unfair. What about the kids who obey or who don’t even have cell phones? Why should I punish them?
I will gladly enforce whatever policy our administration decides. But it is not my job as a teacher to decide school policy. That’s why we have administrators, right?
I don’t have them give my tests or lectures, do I? So why should I have to make up policies for them?
I hope that will end now that I am on the handbook committee and am working to make school policy. I volunteered for this and want to help. Teachers deal with curriculum and motivating kids – they shouldn’t have to decide policy. Period.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Songs revisited
I guess I’ve done this in reverse. Reading more of the King column in Entertainment Weekly, I see that he offered his list of most played songs from his itunes library only after he had listed his favorite songs from his itunes library.
After looking at my most played songs (and I really had no idea what they would really be), I was amazed that they weren’t the ones I would have guessed. I mean how can you listen to a song over 200 times and NOT thing it was one of my most played or favorites.
So here is a look at the ten best songs from my itunes library.
10. “Sleigh Ride” – Johnny Mathis. A Christmas song??? True. It’s not even close to the proper time of the year (well, it did snow this week). However, this is an incredible song. I don’t care if it’s 90 degrees outside, if I hear this song, I am all hyped for Christmas. Mathis hits every note perfectly. I can’t help but hear this and think of Christmas tins and Norman Rockwell’s work when I hear this.
9. “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald” – Gordon Ligthfoot. Maybe one of the best songs written. Ever. The lyrics are hypnotic – and poignant. The music is equally hypnotic.
8. “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” – Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Brilliant. Beautiful. Epic. The best from a legendary band. Not only does the rhythm change throughout the song, but so do the emotions. It’s impossible to not feel relief, hope, and joy when listening to this.
7. “Hotel California” – Eagles. Scared the hell out of me as a kid. “You can check out anytime you want . . . but you can never leeeeeaveee!” What a great final line. The lyrics are brilliant and the entire song is a powerful symbol (for what, well, you have to decide for yourself on that one).
6. “Learning to Fly” – Pink Floyd. An underated song from Floyd. I hate most of their stuff – it puts me to sleep, but this song is brilliant. It’s a modern day version of the Icarus legend. The live version is superb.
5. “Tunnel of Love” – Bruce Springsteen. An underrated song from Springsteen. This wasn’t a big hit for Springsteen on his follow up to the massive “Born in the USA” album. But it’s a great metaphor for love and growing up. Beatiful. Gotta love the line, “You have to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.”
4. “Moonlight Drive” – The Doors. Another underrated song from a huge band. This song is hauntingly beautiful. “Swim out and drown tonight . . .” How fitting is that for Morrison? The keyboard is aloof and the drums and guitar delve into a rhythm that perfectly fits with the lyrics as Morrison croons sinisterly away.
3. “Moondance” – Van Morriosn. The rhythm and lyrics are hypnotic. I have no sense of rhythm, but this song gets me tapping my foot. This is another one from my Halloween playlist. Morrison’s images are great. The words just sound like they were meant to go together. It’s one of those songs that seems a lot easier than it really must have been to put it together and pull it off.
2. “Every Little Thing She Does” – The Police. I could have chosen “King of Pain” too, which is incredible. But this song gets the edge. Sure, everybody knows “Every Breath You Take,” but this one is maybe the best pop song of the 80’s. The lyrics focus on a young man who is madly in love with a woman for whom he is too shy to talk to. Now I’m biased. I used to listen to this because that was exactly how I felt about Kristie before we really met. I know exactly how this guy feels: “I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day and ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way. But my silent fears have gripped me long before I reach the pone, long before my tongue has tripped me. Must I always be alone?” How perfect is that? Well, it worked out for me because Kristie and I did get married in some old fashioned way. Though I feared the phone and tripped over my tongue plenty! Good thing Sara came through for me!
1. “Wish You Were Here” – Incubus. Excellence. Now I’m biased since this reminds me of my mother. When we first moved in to our house, I sat in our back yard with this song on my ipod. What I wouldn’t give to have Mom see this place. Then the morning we got married, I climbed up the little cliff behind our cabin, sat perched on a bolder, and again listened to this song. How happy Mom and Dad would have been at the wedding. And hat a great final line to the last verse, the singer equates life to a roller coast and ponders - “Maybe I should hold with care but my hands are busy in the air.”
After looking at my most played songs (and I really had no idea what they would really be), I was amazed that they weren’t the ones I would have guessed. I mean how can you listen to a song over 200 times and NOT thing it was one of my most played or favorites.
So here is a look at the ten best songs from my itunes library.
10. “Sleigh Ride” – Johnny Mathis. A Christmas song??? True. It’s not even close to the proper time of the year (well, it did snow this week). However, this is an incredible song. I don’t care if it’s 90 degrees outside, if I hear this song, I am all hyped for Christmas. Mathis hits every note perfectly. I can’t help but hear this and think of Christmas tins and Norman Rockwell’s work when I hear this.
9. “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald” – Gordon Ligthfoot. Maybe one of the best songs written. Ever. The lyrics are hypnotic – and poignant. The music is equally hypnotic.
8. “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” – Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Brilliant. Beautiful. Epic. The best from a legendary band. Not only does the rhythm change throughout the song, but so do the emotions. It’s impossible to not feel relief, hope, and joy when listening to this.
7. “Hotel California” – Eagles. Scared the hell out of me as a kid. “You can check out anytime you want . . . but you can never leeeeeaveee!” What a great final line. The lyrics are brilliant and the entire song is a powerful symbol (for what, well, you have to decide for yourself on that one).
6. “Learning to Fly” – Pink Floyd. An underated song from Floyd. I hate most of their stuff – it puts me to sleep, but this song is brilliant. It’s a modern day version of the Icarus legend. The live version is superb.
5. “Tunnel of Love” – Bruce Springsteen. An underrated song from Springsteen. This wasn’t a big hit for Springsteen on his follow up to the massive “Born in the USA” album. But it’s a great metaphor for love and growing up. Beatiful. Gotta love the line, “You have to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.”
4. “Moonlight Drive” – The Doors. Another underrated song from a huge band. This song is hauntingly beautiful. “Swim out and drown tonight . . .” How fitting is that for Morrison? The keyboard is aloof and the drums and guitar delve into a rhythm that perfectly fits with the lyrics as Morrison croons sinisterly away.
3. “Moondance” – Van Morriosn. The rhythm and lyrics are hypnotic. I have no sense of rhythm, but this song gets me tapping my foot. This is another one from my Halloween playlist. Morrison’s images are great. The words just sound like they were meant to go together. It’s one of those songs that seems a lot easier than it really must have been to put it together and pull it off.
2. “Every Little Thing She Does” – The Police. I could have chosen “King of Pain” too, which is incredible. But this song gets the edge. Sure, everybody knows “Every Breath You Take,” but this one is maybe the best pop song of the 80’s. The lyrics focus on a young man who is madly in love with a woman for whom he is too shy to talk to. Now I’m biased. I used to listen to this because that was exactly how I felt about Kristie before we really met. I know exactly how this guy feels: “I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day and ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way. But my silent fears have gripped me long before I reach the pone, long before my tongue has tripped me. Must I always be alone?” How perfect is that? Well, it worked out for me because Kristie and I did get married in some old fashioned way. Though I feared the phone and tripped over my tongue plenty! Good thing Sara came through for me!
1. “Wish You Were Here” – Incubus. Excellence. Now I’m biased since this reminds me of my mother. When we first moved in to our house, I sat in our back yard with this song on my ipod. What I wouldn’t give to have Mom see this place. Then the morning we got married, I climbed up the little cliff behind our cabin, sat perched on a bolder, and again listened to this song. How happy Mom and Dad would have been at the wedding. And hat a great final line to the last verse, the singer equates life to a roller coast and ponders - “Maybe I should hold with care but my hands are busy in the air.”
Thursday
KoKo and I are made from the same mold.
Saturday afternoon, KoKo was watching some of my student made imovies for their Edgar Allan Poe projects. Of course, she wanted to know more, so I told her all about “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.”
As a horror lover, she was fascinated (remember, her Dolls of Death she created?).
However, when it came time for bed, she was a little unnerved about the stories, especially “The Black Cat.” I suppose I should mention here that I told her all about the excellent Showtime version of the story from their Masters of Horror series. Well, that really freaked her out. Especially the part where the narrator takes an axe to his wife’s head. Oh yeah, KoKo squirmed while I told her about poor Pluto having his eye carved out too.
On Sunday, we busied ourselves with yard work. Yes, I know. I suck at it. But I managed to clean the gutters, rake up the leaves, work up the dead patches of grass (courtesy of our dogs), take out the trash, and a few other things. Of course, I accomplished them all in my own special random-abstracted way (just like KoKo).
However, late in the afternoon it came time to haul the leaves out to my dad’s to later burn. KoKo came with. As a treat, I hooked up my ipod to Casey’s stereo to play her a couple of stories from “The Price of Fear” by Vincent Price.
The first was the classic “Cat’s Cradle” (mentioned in a previous blog article). She had trouble following along because the language is not at her reading level, but she had me translate it for her whenever she had a question. The story happened to finish while I was dumping the leaves – she chose to stay inside and listen to the rest of the tale.
I figured that it was a one-time deal for her. I mean the shows were even before my time, so I didn’t expect her to really get into them.
I was wrong.
“Can we listen to another one?” she eagerly asked as I got in.
That led us into “Waxwork,” a particularly grisly story about a writer who hatches the idea of spending the night in London’s House of Wax Horrors for some inspiration. He happens to know Vincent Prince, and that his how the story happens to be narrated to us, and drags him along. While getting the initial tour, the guide explains some of the infamous waxworks, one being a notorious doctor who slit the throat of his hypnotized patients.
Of course, the writer says that he saw the statue move. Price and guide laugh it off, saying that his imagination is already getting the best of him and that he is in store for all kinds of optical illusions over the course of the evening.
We learn that the doctor in question was a French physician who was captured and sent to the guillotine, but managed to escape. In fact, a few copycat murders have recently taken place in London.
Price bids adieu to his friend and heads back to his hotel. Earlier in the morning, he receives a call from the waxwork museum. It seems something awful has happened (you guessed it, right?).
The writer’s throat, you guessed it, has been slashed. Price finds his friend’s small tape-recorded stashed among the statues.
He listens to it and from there the story of the writer’s night in the museum resumes. Apparently, the doctor’s statue indeed does move. For it is the real killer, not just a wax replica.
The doctor begins to explain to the writer that he was walking down the street when he noticed a policeman eyeballing him. He dashed inside the museum, noted his was facsimile, yanked the fire alarm (nicely foreshadowed earlier in the story), hid the statue and hopped in its place. Even if he did move, no one would believe it, right?
Of course, he ends up hypnotizing the writer who is screaming wildly at the end of the tape.
Price resolves never to return to the museum again.
Nice, eh?
KoKo loved it.
Of course, I had to stay downstairs until she finished showering in the basement that evening – just to make sure nothing leaped out at her. And, of course, I had to go downstairs to turn down the furnace since there was no way KoKo was going to brave it down there alone to do it.
I tried to reassure her that there was nothing down there, but, remembering all too well how I felt after watching some of George Landis’s ingenious “American Werewolf in London” with my brother (I ended up in the kitchen, scare silly, after about 20 minutes, but I couldn’t resist peeking in now and then to see how things were going – and they weren’t going well) or watching a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” on HBO while my family was doing yard work (I was hypnotized until one man, who had been taken over by “The Thing” (which attacks and then perfectly imitates its host) convulses. The doctor attempts to revive him, but as he is applying the shock treatments, the man/thing’s chest opens up into a mouth and bites the doctor’s arms off. By that time I was out the door and dashing to help with the yard work – interesting how thing have kind of come full circle with the yard work, eh?) Maybe ten years from now KoKo will be blogging about her experience sitting in the cab of Casey’s pick up, scared silly, from “Cat’s in the Cradle” just waiting for me to get back in.
Now one of these nights we just have to watch the film version of “The Black Cat.” I also can’t wait for her to see some of the suspense/horror classics: “The Thing,” “North by Northwest,” “Seven,” “Jaws,” “Candyman,” “The Silence of the Lambs” . . .
Saturday afternoon, KoKo was watching some of my student made imovies for their Edgar Allan Poe projects. Of course, she wanted to know more, so I told her all about “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.”
As a horror lover, she was fascinated (remember, her Dolls of Death she created?).
However, when it came time for bed, she was a little unnerved about the stories, especially “The Black Cat.” I suppose I should mention here that I told her all about the excellent Showtime version of the story from their Masters of Horror series. Well, that really freaked her out. Especially the part where the narrator takes an axe to his wife’s head. Oh yeah, KoKo squirmed while I told her about poor Pluto having his eye carved out too.
On Sunday, we busied ourselves with yard work. Yes, I know. I suck at it. But I managed to clean the gutters, rake up the leaves, work up the dead patches of grass (courtesy of our dogs), take out the trash, and a few other things. Of course, I accomplished them all in my own special random-abstracted way (just like KoKo).
However, late in the afternoon it came time to haul the leaves out to my dad’s to later burn. KoKo came with. As a treat, I hooked up my ipod to Casey’s stereo to play her a couple of stories from “The Price of Fear” by Vincent Price.
The first was the classic “Cat’s Cradle” (mentioned in a previous blog article). She had trouble following along because the language is not at her reading level, but she had me translate it for her whenever she had a question. The story happened to finish while I was dumping the leaves – she chose to stay inside and listen to the rest of the tale.
I figured that it was a one-time deal for her. I mean the shows were even before my time, so I didn’t expect her to really get into them.
I was wrong.
“Can we listen to another one?” she eagerly asked as I got in.
That led us into “Waxwork,” a particularly grisly story about a writer who hatches the idea of spending the night in London’s House of Wax Horrors for some inspiration. He happens to know Vincent Prince, and that his how the story happens to be narrated to us, and drags him along. While getting the initial tour, the guide explains some of the infamous waxworks, one being a notorious doctor who slit the throat of his hypnotized patients.
Of course, the writer says that he saw the statue move. Price and guide laugh it off, saying that his imagination is already getting the best of him and that he is in store for all kinds of optical illusions over the course of the evening.
We learn that the doctor in question was a French physician who was captured and sent to the guillotine, but managed to escape. In fact, a few copycat murders have recently taken place in London.
Price bids adieu to his friend and heads back to his hotel. Earlier in the morning, he receives a call from the waxwork museum. It seems something awful has happened (you guessed it, right?).
The writer’s throat, you guessed it, has been slashed. Price finds his friend’s small tape-recorded stashed among the statues.
He listens to it and from there the story of the writer’s night in the museum resumes. Apparently, the doctor’s statue indeed does move. For it is the real killer, not just a wax replica.
The doctor begins to explain to the writer that he was walking down the street when he noticed a policeman eyeballing him. He dashed inside the museum, noted his was facsimile, yanked the fire alarm (nicely foreshadowed earlier in the story), hid the statue and hopped in its place. Even if he did move, no one would believe it, right?
Of course, he ends up hypnotizing the writer who is screaming wildly at the end of the tape.
Price resolves never to return to the museum again.
Nice, eh?
KoKo loved it.
Of course, I had to stay downstairs until she finished showering in the basement that evening – just to make sure nothing leaped out at her. And, of course, I had to go downstairs to turn down the furnace since there was no way KoKo was going to brave it down there alone to do it.
I tried to reassure her that there was nothing down there, but, remembering all too well how I felt after watching some of George Landis’s ingenious “American Werewolf in London” with my brother (I ended up in the kitchen, scare silly, after about 20 minutes, but I couldn’t resist peeking in now and then to see how things were going – and they weren’t going well) or watching a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” on HBO while my family was doing yard work (I was hypnotized until one man, who had been taken over by “The Thing” (which attacks and then perfectly imitates its host) convulses. The doctor attempts to revive him, but as he is applying the shock treatments, the man/thing’s chest opens up into a mouth and bites the doctor’s arms off. By that time I was out the door and dashing to help with the yard work – interesting how thing have kind of come full circle with the yard work, eh?) Maybe ten years from now KoKo will be blogging about her experience sitting in the cab of Casey’s pick up, scared silly, from “Cat’s in the Cradle” just waiting for me to get back in.
Now one of these nights we just have to watch the film version of “The Black Cat.” I also can’t wait for her to see some of the suspense/horror classics: “The Thing,” “North by Northwest,” “Seven,” “Jaws,” “Candyman,” “The Silence of the Lambs” . . .
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tuesday
This season we have become addicted to American Idol.
Last night was the top three. We are unabashed David Cook fans. Syesha’s performances have grown tiresome. David Archuleta is just too juvenile. The kid can sing with the best of them, but his youth and dorkiness and bland Christian rock vibe have worn out their novelty. Once I read about his father interfering with the song selections and arrangements, I really started pulling against him. He’s better singing a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync or Yani song.
David Cook is the best performer – by far. When he sings certain, classic rock songs or adult themed songs, he shows just how boyish Archuleta is. Cook’s best attribute is that he can do anything. Archuleta is maybe the best vocalist, but if he were to do a real rock song, such as something by Zeppelin or AC/DC, (if his father would ever – God forbid – permit it), he would never pull it off. However, Cook could sing an old R&B song or a blues song or an adult. Plus, he is so comfortable on stage and in the spotlight.
He could release an album and sell a million copies tomorrow.
******
Leave it up to KoKo. Last night she emailed me a list of songs she wanted me to download for her. In her email she managed to type, “I love you” three different times!
******
Stephen King’s last column in Entertainment Weekly, was a top ten list of the most played songs on his itunes library. That got me to thinking about my top ten most played songs. I actually have no idea what they might be, though I’m willing to bet that “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” is up there and maybe “Cult of Personality” and “Hotel California.” There might be a lot of Iron Maiden too. Though this just counts the times they are played on my computer, not on my ipod. If there were some way to track the songs I’ve listened to on my ipod too – that would be an interesting list!
Top ten
10. “Rock DJ” – Robbie Williams (148). Love this song. The video is scary as hell. Williams is dancing around with some models and then starts ripping chunks of flesh off until he is just a skeleton. I’m not a big pop song guy, but this chorus is great. The lyrics are nonsensical, but I listen to this just about every time I run.
9. “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” – Jim Croce (155 plays). I never really got into him until Kristie. We bought his greatest hits collection one night and I’ve never looked back. Actually, I came across this song when we first moved in to our house and were painting and listening to the oldies station. A great song and a great story. I like it more than the more popular “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”
8. “Green Eyes” – Coldplay (164). Kristie loves this song. So do I. It reminds me of her, even though she has beautiful brown eyes. Coldplay is so soulful and original. “A Rush of the Blood to the Head” is one of the greatest albums of the last decade.
7. “Heaven Can Wait” – Iron Maiden (165). I knew there’d be plenty of Maiden on here. This is off their classic 1986 album, “Somewhere in Time.” I started listening to this more not just because it’s one of the best rock albums of the ‘80’s but also because Mom got it for me for Christmas ’86. Good memories. Plus, “Heaven Can Wait” is one of their best songs, especially live. Great sing along.
6. “Stranger in a Strange Land” – Iron Maiden (167). More Maiden off the same album. This song has one of the greatest riffs, almost bluesy, which is unique coming from a metal band. Plus, it’s a cool story – not based off the novel. Instead, it’s the story of a Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon who leaves his homeland and is lost in a land of snow and ice – only to have his mummified remains found by future explorers. It’s also one of their more ‘radio friendly’ songs.
5. “Southern Cross” – Crosby, Stills, & Nash (180). I thought it would have been “Suite Judy Blue Eyes.” But it’s “Southern Cross.” Great song. Spiritual almost. Enough said.
4. “Sea of Madness” – Iron Maiden (181). A third Maiden song! All off the same album. This one is of their best ‘unknown’ songs. I doubt that they have even played this since the “Somewhere in Time” tour. But it has a hellacious riff to open the song and then it’s all kicked into high gear.
3. “Wasted Years” – Iron Maiden (195). Last Maiden song. Their biggest single off the “Somewhere in Time” album. This threw a lot of Maiden fans for a loop since it is unlike just about anything they ever did before – it has a strong melody and synthesizers, but the riff is insane. It’s radio friendly, yet still is metal.
2. “Spooky” – The Classics IV (196). I placed this on my Halloween playlist, which accounts for the nearly 200 times I’ve listened to it. I hear this and instantly think of murky October skies, pumpkins, gold, brown and red leaves, and a bite to the air. The best time of the year.
1. “For What It’s Worth” – Buffalo Springfield (208). A classic ‘60’s tune. This might be the greatest of the 2,838 songs on my itunes library. Neil Young’s guitar is poignant. You can almost feel the turmoil of the time in the notes. Great lyrics. All in all, it’s about the most perfect rock song.
Last night was the top three. We are unabashed David Cook fans. Syesha’s performances have grown tiresome. David Archuleta is just too juvenile. The kid can sing with the best of them, but his youth and dorkiness and bland Christian rock vibe have worn out their novelty. Once I read about his father interfering with the song selections and arrangements, I really started pulling against him. He’s better singing a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync or Yani song.
David Cook is the best performer – by far. When he sings certain, classic rock songs or adult themed songs, he shows just how boyish Archuleta is. Cook’s best attribute is that he can do anything. Archuleta is maybe the best vocalist, but if he were to do a real rock song, such as something by Zeppelin or AC/DC, (if his father would ever – God forbid – permit it), he would never pull it off. However, Cook could sing an old R&B song or a blues song or an adult. Plus, he is so comfortable on stage and in the spotlight.
He could release an album and sell a million copies tomorrow.
******
Leave it up to KoKo. Last night she emailed me a list of songs she wanted me to download for her. In her email she managed to type, “I love you” three different times!
******
Stephen King’s last column in Entertainment Weekly, was a top ten list of the most played songs on his itunes library. That got me to thinking about my top ten most played songs. I actually have no idea what they might be, though I’m willing to bet that “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” is up there and maybe “Cult of Personality” and “Hotel California.” There might be a lot of Iron Maiden too. Though this just counts the times they are played on my computer, not on my ipod. If there were some way to track the songs I’ve listened to on my ipod too – that would be an interesting list!
Top ten
10. “Rock DJ” – Robbie Williams (148). Love this song. The video is scary as hell. Williams is dancing around with some models and then starts ripping chunks of flesh off until he is just a skeleton. I’m not a big pop song guy, but this chorus is great. The lyrics are nonsensical, but I listen to this just about every time I run.
9. “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” – Jim Croce (155 plays). I never really got into him until Kristie. We bought his greatest hits collection one night and I’ve never looked back. Actually, I came across this song when we first moved in to our house and were painting and listening to the oldies station. A great song and a great story. I like it more than the more popular “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”
8. “Green Eyes” – Coldplay (164). Kristie loves this song. So do I. It reminds me of her, even though she has beautiful brown eyes. Coldplay is so soulful and original. “A Rush of the Blood to the Head” is one of the greatest albums of the last decade.
7. “Heaven Can Wait” – Iron Maiden (165). I knew there’d be plenty of Maiden on here. This is off their classic 1986 album, “Somewhere in Time.” I started listening to this more not just because it’s one of the best rock albums of the ‘80’s but also because Mom got it for me for Christmas ’86. Good memories. Plus, “Heaven Can Wait” is one of their best songs, especially live. Great sing along.
6. “Stranger in a Strange Land” – Iron Maiden (167). More Maiden off the same album. This song has one of the greatest riffs, almost bluesy, which is unique coming from a metal band. Plus, it’s a cool story – not based off the novel. Instead, it’s the story of a Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon who leaves his homeland and is lost in a land of snow and ice – only to have his mummified remains found by future explorers. It’s also one of their more ‘radio friendly’ songs.
5. “Southern Cross” – Crosby, Stills, & Nash (180). I thought it would have been “Suite Judy Blue Eyes.” But it’s “Southern Cross.” Great song. Spiritual almost. Enough said.
4. “Sea of Madness” – Iron Maiden (181). A third Maiden song! All off the same album. This one is of their best ‘unknown’ songs. I doubt that they have even played this since the “Somewhere in Time” tour. But it has a hellacious riff to open the song and then it’s all kicked into high gear.
3. “Wasted Years” – Iron Maiden (195). Last Maiden song. Their biggest single off the “Somewhere in Time” album. This threw a lot of Maiden fans for a loop since it is unlike just about anything they ever did before – it has a strong melody and synthesizers, but the riff is insane. It’s radio friendly, yet still is metal.
2. “Spooky” – The Classics IV (196). I placed this on my Halloween playlist, which accounts for the nearly 200 times I’ve listened to it. I hear this and instantly think of murky October skies, pumpkins, gold, brown and red leaves, and a bite to the air. The best time of the year.
1. “For What It’s Worth” – Buffalo Springfield (208). A classic ‘60’s tune. This might be the greatest of the 2,838 songs on my itunes library. Neil Young’s guitar is poignant. You can almost feel the turmoil of the time in the notes. Great lyrics. All in all, it’s about the most perfect rock song.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Saturday
Friday evening Shannon and Tricia came over. We decided to have dinner at Third Base in Brooks (excellent ribs). After dinner they presented us with our first baby gifts. Tricia found two journals for Kristie and I to write down our thoughts about the baby before she is born and during her first few months. She also included her first pairs of socks and two bibs. It was wonderful and very thoughtful.
After dinner, we took a little drive south on highway 59. When we reached country road 49, we headed west. This brought us about a half mine south of Dad's farm. Tricia and Shannon had never seen it. So we took a quick drive around the gravel pit.
I was worried that hunters would wipe out the population of geese that Dad has do passionately harbored there for the past decade. I'm sure many have been hunted (especially now that Dad is gone). No respect for the dead, I guess. But you know some hunters (couldn't resist that little dig).
Kristie thinks there is one, who actually used to a good friend of Dad's, who likely hunts there now that Dad is gone. At first, I wouldn't believe it, for the man is quite a nice person. However, I am reminded of a scene a good friend of mine (who happens to be a relative of the man in question) witnessed one day. They were having lunch at the house belonging to the brother of the man in question. There my friend saw the man actually sneak a coupon his brother had received in the mail (it was for a large discount on a new truck) off the counter and into his pocket.
Kristie also reminded me that this very same man once bought his mother a new washing machine and charged her interest while she paid him back for it - despite still living in her house.
A person doing those things would have no problem driving onto our land and slaughtering a few guess.
While there were fewer geese than I had expected, there were quite a few ducks. We even saw a majestic crane walking in the water.
Next, we drove by the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried.
What an evening.
Then we returned home to find Casey and all of his paintball buddies over. They were preparing for their first paintball tournament of the season (in Bemidji).
Given the snow that is now coming down, I don't envy them. But they're hardcore.
Meanwhile, KoKo has a softball tournament today in Fosston. But given the cold, damp conditions, we decided to stay home.
So much for global warming, right?
After dinner, we took a little drive south on highway 59. When we reached country road 49, we headed west. This brought us about a half mine south of Dad's farm. Tricia and Shannon had never seen it. So we took a quick drive around the gravel pit.
I was worried that hunters would wipe out the population of geese that Dad has do passionately harbored there for the past decade. I'm sure many have been hunted (especially now that Dad is gone). No respect for the dead, I guess. But you know some hunters (couldn't resist that little dig).
Kristie thinks there is one, who actually used to a good friend of Dad's, who likely hunts there now that Dad is gone. At first, I wouldn't believe it, for the man is quite a nice person. However, I am reminded of a scene a good friend of mine (who happens to be a relative of the man in question) witnessed one day. They were having lunch at the house belonging to the brother of the man in question. There my friend saw the man actually sneak a coupon his brother had received in the mail (it was for a large discount on a new truck) off the counter and into his pocket.
Kristie also reminded me that this very same man once bought his mother a new washing machine and charged her interest while she paid him back for it - despite still living in her house.
A person doing those things would have no problem driving onto our land and slaughtering a few guess.
While there were fewer geese than I had expected, there were quite a few ducks. We even saw a majestic crane walking in the water.
Next, we drove by the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried.
What an evening.
Then we returned home to find Casey and all of his paintball buddies over. They were preparing for their first paintball tournament of the season (in Bemidji).
Given the snow that is now coming down, I don't envy them. But they're hardcore.
Meanwhile, KoKo has a softball tournament today in Fosston. But given the cold, damp conditions, we decided to stay home.
So much for global warming, right?
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Our new addition
Here she is --
Isn't she cute?
Already dressed for Halloween! That's my girl. (Actually, this is of the bone structure of her skull).
Here you can see her profile quite well.
Maybe the best of the bunch. Taking it easy in Mom's belly.
Isn't she cute?
Already dressed for Halloween! That's my girl. (Actually, this is of the bone structure of her skull).
Here you can see her profile quite well.
Maybe the best of the bunch. Taking it easy in Mom's belly.
1984?
Frightening.
Is Orwell’s world of Big Brother and 1984 really that far off? I remember reading Orwell’s book – which is among one of the most depressing I’ve ever read – and thinking Things can’t ever get like this. Can they?
From what I recall, the world of 1984 is ruled by Super Powers who have a stranglehold on the world’s wealth. In order to burn up some of their vast reserves, they routinely go to war or have civil strife. Of course, everyone is controlled and governed via Big Brother, and, as the Borg once said, “Resistance is futile.” And it truly is.
The older I get though, and here I go with the pessimism for today, I begin to worry about these incredibly huge industries we have.
My father feared Walmart. As a truck driver, he knew the danger of one store or business becoming so large and powerful that they could eventually gain a monopoly over ever facet of business.
I thought this was foolish, until he told me that a truck driver friend of his said how Walmart will open a Super store in smaller communities (like this one or Crookston) just to drive out the smaller chains (Kmart and Pamida, the latter has closed both here and in Crookston. Not to mention some of the smaller hardware stores). This, I guess, is just the shark-like nature of business. However, what Dad related to me next really scared me. Apparently, his friend said that the next step, which he had seen occur in larger areas, is for Walmart to then shut down their Superstores in the small towns. This forces the small town residents to travel back to the larger areas, like Bemidji or Grand Forks or Fargo. The frightening thing is the malicious nature behind this.
They could just let the smaller stores be instead of ruthlessly driving them out of existence.
But when you have that much power and money, I guess they can do that.
Now whether that is true, I don’t know. It could be a conspiracy theory.
But what truly frightens me is Exxon.
Check out this
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/companies/exxon_earnings/index.htm
That’s 10.89 BILLION dollars of profit! Maybe Orwell wasn’t that wrong. Especially when you read this –
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/interference-at-the-epa.html
I guess when you have enough money, you can buy enough lobbyists and fund enough politicians that you can even begin to manipulate the truth. Now that is truly 1984-ish.
Is Orwell’s world of Big Brother and 1984 really that far off? I remember reading Orwell’s book – which is among one of the most depressing I’ve ever read – and thinking Things can’t ever get like this. Can they?
From what I recall, the world of 1984 is ruled by Super Powers who have a stranglehold on the world’s wealth. In order to burn up some of their vast reserves, they routinely go to war or have civil strife. Of course, everyone is controlled and governed via Big Brother, and, as the Borg once said, “Resistance is futile.” And it truly is.
The older I get though, and here I go with the pessimism for today, I begin to worry about these incredibly huge industries we have.
My father feared Walmart. As a truck driver, he knew the danger of one store or business becoming so large and powerful that they could eventually gain a monopoly over ever facet of business.
I thought this was foolish, until he told me that a truck driver friend of his said how Walmart will open a Super store in smaller communities (like this one or Crookston) just to drive out the smaller chains (Kmart and Pamida, the latter has closed both here and in Crookston. Not to mention some of the smaller hardware stores). This, I guess, is just the shark-like nature of business. However, what Dad related to me next really scared me. Apparently, his friend said that the next step, which he had seen occur in larger areas, is for Walmart to then shut down their Superstores in the small towns. This forces the small town residents to travel back to the larger areas, like Bemidji or Grand Forks or Fargo. The frightening thing is the malicious nature behind this.
They could just let the smaller stores be instead of ruthlessly driving them out of existence.
But when you have that much power and money, I guess they can do that.
Now whether that is true, I don’t know. It could be a conspiracy theory.
But what truly frightens me is Exxon.
Check out this
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/01/news/companies/exxon_earnings/index.htm
That’s 10.89 BILLION dollars of profit! Maybe Orwell wasn’t that wrong. Especially when you read this –
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/interference-at-the-epa.html
I guess when you have enough money, you can buy enough lobbyists and fund enough politicians that you can even begin to manipulate the truth. Now that is truly 1984-ish.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Yardwork SUCKS
That about sums it up for me. I got some raking done. Before I did that, though, I had to run to our small grocery store to get some garbage bags for the leaves. I bought the biggest bags they had - 33 gallons.
However, those proved to be pitifully too small.
So what to do with the leaves already raked up? I crammed them into our large garbage can. They'll have to wait until I can brave Walmart (hey, it'll be worth it, Legos just came out with the new Indian Jones sets for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It can't be all work and no play.) and grab some decent bags.
On top of that, our plastic rake broke. I noticed the teeth gradually began to break off. After 20 minutes the rake was ruined.
Then I turned my attention to trimming the trees on the burm (not sure if that's spelled right. It's the chunk of lawn between the street and sidewalk). They have this black fungus growing on the branches.
Soon, though, I realized after about ten minutes of trimming that they damned tree was going to be limbless if I didn't stop.
So I hauled the branches to the backyard and stacked them there.
Defeated, I headed to the house.
Now I can get some real work done - reading and writing.
**********
One reason I am not handy whatsoever is that I simply never paid attention whenever Dad would drag me along on one of his adventures.
Instead of watching him replace the starter on the pick up, I'd stand idly by handing him the wrong tools while I thought up stories in my head or analyzed who the Bengals were going to draft.
That was the way of my youth. I never paid attention. I was miles away in my head.
This was especially true when we baled hay. Dad would sit on the tractor carefully examining the swath as the baler gobbled it up. I waited for the bales and stacked them when they came out, but I was on autopilot. I was really dreaming up bands or making up song lyrics or story lines for horror stories. I really was a million miles away.
Once after baling, Dad had me drive the tractor in while he adjusted some of the bales on the hay rack. I was so wound up in a daydream that I didn't even notice, when I circled us around to the hay shed, that he had actually jumped off the hay rack and unhooked the trailer. Dad just stood watching me idly putting along on the "A" without a care in the world. I think I made it about 50 yards before I snapped out of it and looked back to see Dad standing there holding the hitch and just shaking his head!
*********
Now why would anyone want to do yard work when they could read this --
I read this horror story last winter. Stephen King said it was phenomenal. So I found it for free on the internet and printed it out. I read it one night while home alone with the wind howling and the snow coming down. Though it is set in the summer deep in the south, I forgot all about the snow and the cold and was instantly transported to this old house, which appears on the the cover of this comic just like I imagined it in my head. Only there was more of a redish glow to the sky.
However, those proved to be pitifully too small.
So what to do with the leaves already raked up? I crammed them into our large garbage can. They'll have to wait until I can brave Walmart (hey, it'll be worth it, Legos just came out with the new Indian Jones sets for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It can't be all work and no play.) and grab some decent bags.
On top of that, our plastic rake broke. I noticed the teeth gradually began to break off. After 20 minutes the rake was ruined.
Then I turned my attention to trimming the trees on the burm (not sure if that's spelled right. It's the chunk of lawn between the street and sidewalk). They have this black fungus growing on the branches.
Soon, though, I realized after about ten minutes of trimming that they damned tree was going to be limbless if I didn't stop.
So I hauled the branches to the backyard and stacked them there.
Defeated, I headed to the house.
Now I can get some real work done - reading and writing.
**********
One reason I am not handy whatsoever is that I simply never paid attention whenever Dad would drag me along on one of his adventures.
Instead of watching him replace the starter on the pick up, I'd stand idly by handing him the wrong tools while I thought up stories in my head or analyzed who the Bengals were going to draft.
That was the way of my youth. I never paid attention. I was miles away in my head.
This was especially true when we baled hay. Dad would sit on the tractor carefully examining the swath as the baler gobbled it up. I waited for the bales and stacked them when they came out, but I was on autopilot. I was really dreaming up bands or making up song lyrics or story lines for horror stories. I really was a million miles away.
Once after baling, Dad had me drive the tractor in while he adjusted some of the bales on the hay rack. I was so wound up in a daydream that I didn't even notice, when I circled us around to the hay shed, that he had actually jumped off the hay rack and unhooked the trailer. Dad just stood watching me idly putting along on the "A" without a care in the world. I think I made it about 50 yards before I snapped out of it and looked back to see Dad standing there holding the hitch and just shaking his head!
*********
Now why would anyone want to do yard work when they could read this --
I read this horror story last winter. Stephen King said it was phenomenal. So I found it for free on the internet and printed it out. I read it one night while home alone with the wind howling and the snow coming down. Though it is set in the summer deep in the south, I forgot all about the snow and the cold and was instantly transported to this old house, which appears on the the cover of this comic just like I imagined it in my head. Only there was more of a redish glow to the sky.
Sunday procrastination
Kristie is taking a nap. I came up to the office to attempt to balance my checkbook. Kristie takes pride in balancing hers to the nearest cent. I'm happy if I'm within ten dollars.
My dad used to religiously balance his check book (as well as mom's). I'd get up on a weekend, and I'd see Dad sitting at the table in his pajamas (Hanes tank top and briefs) with one leg crossed over the other and a steaming cup of coffee next to him while he poured over the checkbooks.
I'm the total opposite. I might balance it once a month. Maybe.
I try to write everything in the check register, but the instant cash withdrawals kill me. So does on-line bill pay.
Kristie is pushing me to take switch to Wells Fargo and bank almost exclusively on line and with a check cards.
I have one word for that: disaster.
I can't keep my ancient checkbook straight. How am I going to manage all of that?
I'm far to random abstract for that business.
Currently, my online bank statements have me at around a grand in checking. However, in my register, I am at two hundred. Where did the 800 dollars go? I even went back and tried to recaclucate things. I found an extra 60 dollars (I wrote down the same instant cash transaction twice).
I could go back further into my checking account, but that's too much work.
Instead, here's my plan: don't write out any checks for a couple of weeks and wait until all the checks come in. Then I'll see what my online account says. If it doesn't match my register, I'll go with the online account.
Makes sense, right?
Now on to the thing I hate even worse than balancing my checkbook: yard work.
I'm just not cut from that cloth. I'm bookish and insidish. Tools have always felt awkward in my hands. Engines and mechanical things are beyond any and all comprehension.
On Friday, I had to man the concessions booth for a bit until Kristie showed up for work. The coach had all of the coolers and tubs full of candy out. I just had to get things set up. One of those things included starting the gas grill.
Now I have a deep seated fear of propane gas. I'm not sure why. Oh, wait. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my father always used to check for propane leaks (I'm not making this up) by lighting a match around the nozzle on the tank. I never saw how it ever turned out because I was usually about twenty yards away by the time he fished his lighter from his pocket.
I followed the directions and turned the nobs to the right locations and pressed on the little red button a dozen times.
Finally, the man who worked the concession booth the day before said I had to light it with a match.
Then the flashbacks started.
Ah, no way. Hope no one is hungry for hot dogs this afternoon, were the thoughts in my mind.
There was no way I was going to do that.
So what if I can't light a propane grill? I thought as the man stared at me oddly, probably thinking, I bet he doesn't know how to light a propane grill.
Can you write sonnet? How about a research paper? Do you even know what MLA means or how about onomatopoeia?
But as crustyprofessor once blogged, there just never seems to be an English teacher emergency.
So my skills did me little good.
Finally, the man took pity on me and helped me move the grill behind the stand (and out of the hellacious wind) and fire it up -- all the while I was standing a good ten feet back - and ready to bolt at any time.
Alas, my manly skills are nonexistent.
But I'll give this yard work thing a try. I'll rake some. Pick up dog poop. Maybe sweep out the garage. I should clean the gutters out, but I have a fear of heights from helping my father (here we go again) plastic the windows on our old farm house. Since the ladder never reached even close to the upstairs windows, Dad would (and I'm not kidding. My sister can attest to this too) start up the 730 and pull it around to the house. Then he'd place the ladder in the loader bucket (here's where I came in). I had to hold the ladder in place while he hoisted the bucket up.
I was not insane enough to even stay in the bucket longer than I had to. Once the loader was extended and the ladder was in position by the windows, I was out of there.
Of course, Dad would climb up there and plastic the windows while I watched and tried to imagine where the best spot for him to land would be. Usually we had already placed straw bales around the house by this time, so I hoped those would cushion his fall. Then I was ready to dash into the house and dial 911.
So maybe I'll just put off cleaning out the rain gutters today. My brother in law now owns the 730. I have the ladder, though. I'm just glad our windows aren't that high.
My dad used to religiously balance his check book (as well as mom's). I'd get up on a weekend, and I'd see Dad sitting at the table in his pajamas (Hanes tank top and briefs) with one leg crossed over the other and a steaming cup of coffee next to him while he poured over the checkbooks.
I'm the total opposite. I might balance it once a month. Maybe.
I try to write everything in the check register, but the instant cash withdrawals kill me. So does on-line bill pay.
Kristie is pushing me to take switch to Wells Fargo and bank almost exclusively on line and with a check cards.
I have one word for that: disaster.
I can't keep my ancient checkbook straight. How am I going to manage all of that?
I'm far to random abstract for that business.
Currently, my online bank statements have me at around a grand in checking. However, in my register, I am at two hundred. Where did the 800 dollars go? I even went back and tried to recaclucate things. I found an extra 60 dollars (I wrote down the same instant cash transaction twice).
I could go back further into my checking account, but that's too much work.
Instead, here's my plan: don't write out any checks for a couple of weeks and wait until all the checks come in. Then I'll see what my online account says. If it doesn't match my register, I'll go with the online account.
Makes sense, right?
Now on to the thing I hate even worse than balancing my checkbook: yard work.
I'm just not cut from that cloth. I'm bookish and insidish. Tools have always felt awkward in my hands. Engines and mechanical things are beyond any and all comprehension.
On Friday, I had to man the concessions booth for a bit until Kristie showed up for work. The coach had all of the coolers and tubs full of candy out. I just had to get things set up. One of those things included starting the gas grill.
Now I have a deep seated fear of propane gas. I'm not sure why. Oh, wait. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my father always used to check for propane leaks (I'm not making this up) by lighting a match around the nozzle on the tank. I never saw how it ever turned out because I was usually about twenty yards away by the time he fished his lighter from his pocket.
I followed the directions and turned the nobs to the right locations and pressed on the little red button a dozen times.
Finally, the man who worked the concession booth the day before said I had to light it with a match.
Then the flashbacks started.
Ah, no way. Hope no one is hungry for hot dogs this afternoon, were the thoughts in my mind.
There was no way I was going to do that.
So what if I can't light a propane grill? I thought as the man stared at me oddly, probably thinking, I bet he doesn't know how to light a propane grill.
Can you write sonnet? How about a research paper? Do you even know what MLA means or how about onomatopoeia?
But as crustyprofessor once blogged, there just never seems to be an English teacher emergency.
So my skills did me little good.
Finally, the man took pity on me and helped me move the grill behind the stand (and out of the hellacious wind) and fire it up -- all the while I was standing a good ten feet back - and ready to bolt at any time.
Alas, my manly skills are nonexistent.
But I'll give this yard work thing a try. I'll rake some. Pick up dog poop. Maybe sweep out the garage. I should clean the gutters out, but I have a fear of heights from helping my father (here we go again) plastic the windows on our old farm house. Since the ladder never reached even close to the upstairs windows, Dad would (and I'm not kidding. My sister can attest to this too) start up the 730 and pull it around to the house. Then he'd place the ladder in the loader bucket (here's where I came in). I had to hold the ladder in place while he hoisted the bucket up.
I was not insane enough to even stay in the bucket longer than I had to. Once the loader was extended and the ladder was in position by the windows, I was out of there.
Of course, Dad would climb up there and plastic the windows while I watched and tried to imagine where the best spot for him to land would be. Usually we had already placed straw bales around the house by this time, so I hoped those would cushion his fall. Then I was ready to dash into the house and dial 911.
So maybe I'll just put off cleaning out the rain gutters today. My brother in law now owns the 730. I have the ladder, though. I'm just glad our windows aren't that high.
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