Thursday, November 11, 2004

subversives? Well I never . . . o.k. maybe I have, but only that once and the guy said I'd be o.k. . . . anyway.

Gameday #2 went off without a hitch. We played zombies!!! and Smnash Melee and much fun was had. I believe next time we go at it we are going to try to play a longer game. We'll see. I don't know how long this homework is for me, but I know that I am currently behind on grading and will be gone for the entire weekend. That usually means that I don't get as much work done. This does worry me a bit, and perhaps monday will be a day from hell getting work done. Who knows.

Today is Chowning's birthday . . . unfortunately it is also the day she gets her cast, so I will be playing the support role heavily today. We will hopefully be seeing the incredibles, and I'll see how she likes her gifts. So far it has been mix-CDs, but today she gets a new stuffed animal and a few clothes. Not exactly my best birthday gifts ever, but I feel constrained in a variety of ways.

On to my rant about public schools. It is constantly amazing to me how difficult they can make processes. I'm sure there is a reason for this. I'm confident that the people who are our administrators aren't idiots and understand how difficult it is to follow ansinine mandates and teach children with so many days missing. So I wonder what their side of the story is. What is it that makes them force this shit down our throat? Is it pressure from the county? If so the county can go fuck themselves because they are so removed from the students I don't think they have a good idea of what the students WANT. Many of the things that the administration pushes on the students are things that not only do they not like, but even the mature of them can't see the reason in so they can't rationalize it. So we're forcing education on the students and do it in a way that they do not like. We've created the adversarial relationship between the students and us and that just doesn't work for educating people. I shouldn't be trying to educate people despite the students, just like the students shouldn't be trying to learn in spite of the teacher, or despite the other students in the class (a slight reference to classroom behavior in HONORS classes). We also shouldn't be tryting to work in spite of all of the meetings they make us go to. I've never understood what the point of making things unecessarily difficult is unless it is for the sake of making you work harder. And I'm o.k. with that rationale, but I need to see the rationale in order to buy into it, and without buy in you don't get as much priductivity out of people (am I right Brad?).

So the big thing is now they don't have enough teachers next semester (or they have an over allotment of PE teachers) and as a result they want me to forgo my planning period and teach another class. That will put me with 3 honors classes and I AP. I'm not too keen on picking up more work, but it does pay more and that is good. I have 17 people currently signed up for AP, but this might also let me do something I've wanted to do for a bit. So, I think the other honors teacher and I are going to force the school to make two classes (during the same period) gender specific to see if we can increase the effectiveness of our classes. I'm sure there will be more about this later, but I have to go to the bathroom. Out.

M

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