Leaving the Rez!

[SeaMonkey]

As pzgndr has expressed, we have complicated our society to the nth degree with oppressive regulations.  Guess why your energy cost so much, specifically gasoline.  This has been my forte' for 40 years, how it has evolved goes beyond ludicrous, you would not believe what has transpired to take gasoline from 17.9 cents a gallon to today, a total calamity of regulation, most of it completely unnecessary.  But!!!!

Ah Ha!  The all important BUT?  So what do we do with 5.5 billion souls, how do we keep them busy, otherwise.....what will they get themselves into?  Can we really support that many humans with productive endeavors?  Or....do we need to create tiers of complications so that the "humans" will stay busy trying to decypher it all?  They used to call it "specialization", whatever, there's no doubt that the amount of knowledge available tends to overwhelm the normal individual who seeks a general intelligence level.

Just looking at it from both sides, but personally concluded that simple is better, adhering to KISS principles, now you know where the term "Good Ole Days" comes from![8D]

[junk2drive]

In other news, did you see that the Hopi code talkers are getting recognition?

[rhondabrwn]

Yes, in fact 17 tribes were used as code talkers in World War I and II. The first were the Choctaw. No native American language code was ever broken. Good to see the Arizona Senate recognize the Hopi.

Note that the Navajo Nation fully supports recognition for ALL tribes and have so indicated.

[rhondabrwn]

Speaking of testing issues and school reform, give this a gander:

Panel Finds Few Gains from Testing Movement

Not that this blue ribbon panel has discovered anything that every teacher in America doesn't already know.

Depressing how we can commit educational suicide, isn't it?

BTW... we just got our AIMS test scores back for our District and scores DROPPED this year by about 50% after all the mandates and forced lesson planning and two weeks of pre-test "Boot camp" and extensive computer test practice (Study Island) for at least 20% of all class time.... so much for the brilliant educational theories and reforms being forced down our throats. If they keep it up, I'm not going to be surprised if scores drop even more next year. Especially considering how many teachers are quitting. I personally don't feel like I was able to effectively teach this year under the new regime. The test prep alone pretty much blew away the whole 4th quarter for any meaningful educational efforts. We spent four full weeks on various tests (AIMS or NWEA) plus all the prep time plus the many, many "mini-assessments" in Study Island that had to be given and reported on every week to District.

I'll be interested in the administration's response to these results. Probably that it's all the teacher's fault and the next batch of "raw meat" for the grinder will be better (this has gone on for over ten years of staff turnover). Have I mentioned that 20 new teachers came in with me four years ago and I'm the very last survivor of that group? That's depressing as well.

If you read the linked article and the comments associated with it, you will see that poverty has a huge correlation to test results. We have 99.4% of our students on the free lunch program because they are at or below the poverty line. That fact, however, is officially deemed "irrelevant" and is just a "poor excuse" for "bad teaching". Widespread gang activity and drug abuse around here is also deemed "irrelevant" to our poor results on the tests. Sadly, this isn't just Pinon, this is happening all over our nation. We need to consider social issues when trying to fix our educational system, but we don't...just blame the teachers for everything.

Rant Rant Rant [:@]

[JWW]

thanks for that link, rhondabrwn.  Fascinating and totally expected.

[ilovestrategy]

Being a school custodian, I hear heartbreaking stories from teachers everyday. They also have to work in unclean environments because of the manpower cuts in custodial. Instead of cleaning everyday, we clean classrooms every 3 days and sometimes once a week because no sub coverage available if one of my custodians is sick.

They come in 2 hours before school opens, stay one or two hours after school is out and they take paper work home to finish at night. They come in on the weekends without pay to get caught up to be ready Monday.

Due to child protection laws they cannot discipline kids. We have one little boy that runs all over the campus and no one is allowed to run after him and nab him for fear of being sued or lose their job.

There is no way in Hell I would ever be a teacher.

[Perturabo]

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

Speaking of testing issues and school reform, give this a gander:

Panel Finds Few Gains from Testing Movement

Not that this blue ribbon panel has discovered anything that every teacher in America doesn't already know.

Depressing how we can commit educational suicide, isn't it?

BTW... we just got our AIMS test scores back for our District and scores DROPPED this year by about 50% after all the mandates and forced lesson planning and two weeks of pre-test "Boot camp" and extensive computer test practice (Study Island) for at least 20% of all class time.... so much for the brilliant educational theories and reforms being forced down our throats. If they keep it up, I'm not going to be surprised if scores drop even more next year. Especially considering how many teachers are quitting. I personally don't feel like I was able to effectively teach this year under the new regime. The test prep alone pretty much blew away the whole 4th quarter for any meaningful educational efforts. We spent four full weeks on various tests (AIMS or NWEA) plus all the prep time plus the many, many "mini-assessments" in Study Island that had to be given and reported on every week to District.

I'll be interested in the administration's response to these results. Probably that it's all the teacher's fault and the next batch of "raw meat" for the grinder will be better (this has gone on for over ten years of staff turnover). Have I mentioned that 20 new teachers came in with me four years ago and I'm the very last survivor of that group? That's depressing as well.

Wow. It sounds like an extremely toxic environment to work in. I have never imagined that school may be even more miserable experience for teachers than it's for students.

I don't think any tests can eliminate bad teachers, as usually bad teachers are simply abusive, neglecting or horribly boring (like in just talking about the subject for the whole lesson without any pause, change of tone, etc.). There is very few such teachers but somehow I've never seen them getting kicked out for their incompetence.

ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn

If you read the linked article and the comments associated with it, you will see that poverty has a huge correlation to test results. We have 99.4% of our students on the free lunch program because they are at or below the poverty line. That fact, however, is officially deemed "irrelevant" and is just a "poor excuse" for "bad teaching". Widespread gang activity and drug abuse around here is also deemed "irrelevant" to our poor results on the tests. Sadly, this isn't just Pinon, this is happening all over our nation. We need to consider social issues when trying to fix our educational system, but we don't...just blame the teachers for everything.

The problem is that their plan to fix the social issues is probably to educate people so that they could get better/any jobs. If poverty and decay of society creates conditions where it's exceedingly hard to bring up kids to be good students and it's exceedingly hard for kids to learn, then their plan can't work as it's a vicious circle, so they probably conveniently ignore any information that suggests that it's impossible to make these kids learn just by being a good teacher because it could turn out that they are completely helpless or have to implement some gigantic welfare programs. And now they can just say, "Look, we're trying to give these kids a fishing rods but these horrible teachers don't teach them right."

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

Unfortunately I see a lot of bureaucratic micromanagement requirements creeping into most all facets of our lives, not just education. Nowadays there are ISO standards, training and certification requirements, performance metrics of all sorts, assessments and evaluations, etc. etc. Sometimes I question if we should have so many experienced and talented folks providing oversight and "help", rather than providing the resources down where the "rubber meets the road" and getting things done. And I speak from having been on both sides, as licensee and regulator. We keep raising the bar with all these oppressive requirements to the point where nobody can seriously grasp the whole thing. It's like the damn tax code; who can possibly understand it all??

Regulation and standardisation has two sides.

For example, I don't understand how it's possible that people in different schools or even different classes in the same school can learn different things just because there's a different teacher.
It creates a lot of problems with inter-changeability.
As a student, I think I should be able to grab info from any textbook or any school website on specific subject and be able to pass exams/get good grades in my school and obtain useful knowledge.
Similarly, I should be able to quit my school (for example because I can't afford it any more) and go to another school that has the same subject and be able to smoothly transit.

But no. To learn anything useful for that specific school one has to have special notes from the special classes done by that specific teacher because everyone has to teach and demand something different. Or be unable to transfer to another school because it turns out that they had to do subjects in different order.

And the textbooks...
I wonder who writes the, because I'm pretty certain that they aren't written by teachers. Stuff that is perfectly explained on 2 pages of school notes will usually take up 20 pages of study-book which will usually fail at clearly explaining stuff. It's ridiculous.
I have much absences due to poor health and I usually have trouble with finding good learning materials because of lack of standardisation and because of ridiculously poor quality of textbooks.
Why not have public domain books that could be downloaded and printed by anyone that would have clarity and brevity of lesson notes?

Then there are different levels of requirements, again depending on specific teachers. So, a student with the same knowledge will pass with one teacher and fail with another.
So, the schools create incompetent graduates or have unreasonable requirements depending on a teacher, either way it wastes time and money of students, parents and employers and makes scores and degrees meaningless.

[SLAAKMAN]

If you read the linked article and the comments associated with it, you will see that poverty has a huge correlation to test results. We have 99.4% of our students on the free lunch program because they are at or below the poverty line. That fact, however, is officially deemed "irrelevant" and is just a "poor excuse" for "bad teaching". Widespread gang activity and drug abuse around here is also deemed "irrelevant" to our poor results on the tests. Sadly, this isn't just Pinon, this is happening all over our nation. We need to consider social issues when trying to fix our educational system, but we don't...just blame the teachers for everything.

Sounds like the same over-regulation & thought control used by the former Soviet Union. Damn shame we cant seem to shake our fascination with the Nanny State.

[rhondabrwn]

We had a nice teacher get-together this afternoon. Plenty of food and tons of griping... no one is happy, but are afraid to go elsewhere because of the poor job market and massive teacher lay-offs around the nation. Next year's new level of regulation doesn't inspire confidence in anybody.

On a positive note, I'm driving down to Snowflake tomorrow to sign the lease/purchase agreement on my ranch. Time to lock it down Looking forward to my upcoming move, but despairing over the amount of packing up I have to do. My boardgame collection alone took up 8 medium boxes and I'm still not done! Five more boxes for my DVD collection, and I still have tons of old S&T's, Moves, Fire & Movement, AH General, plus other old gaming magazines. Hope to sell most of this stuff in the coming year.

There were a few teary moments though... I opened Tactics II... remembered the "good ole days"... smelled the musty aroma of the counters.. and proceeded to sneeze my head off [:D] That was one of my first wargames... THE first was the hex Gettysburg version, followed by D-Day, Tactics II, Dispatcher, and then original Chancellorsville. Found them all for $2.77 in a drug store toy section of all places... no idea how AH wargames ended up in a Haag's Drugs in Kokomo, Indiana... but it sure changed my life towards following my big brother into Military History! I bought out the store over the next year with a 50 cent a week allowance that I saved religiously for the next game. After the first war titles came Air Empire, Le Mans, U-Boat, and even Civil War (with the plastic pawns for units). Seems like Africa Corps was the next published, that cost $4.95 in those days (that's a lot of allowances).

Don't you just love moving... it's so cathartic [:)]

[SLAAKMAN]

Youre a woman after my own heart Rhonda. I bought all those & then some on a lawnmowing allowance that started back in 1971 when I was 12 years old. Avalon Hill & SPI will never die. O The Good Ol' Days!
[:D]

[rhondabrwn]

Last Day at Pinon Middle School...

Final act of stupidity though - I got pressured during a break from today's final teacher planning retreat day to participate in a game of "Ultimate Frisbee" in the gym. I had avoided physical games all week because I just knew that if I started running around I'd screw up my knees, heels, or something and be in pain all summer.

Well, I tried playing goalkeeper... went up in the air to block a shot and got hit by a male teacher who knocked me about ten feet into a door post. Now I've got possible cracked ribs, two messed up knees, a hurting elbow, jammed fingers, and generally can barely move around or sit without extreme pain. Just when I need to pack and get ready for my move to the ranch!

Got a Worker's Comp form so might go to the hospital tomorrow for x-rays, but I suspect it will just be a matter of healing naturally as I don't think the pain is sharp enough to be an actual cracked or broken rib. I'm going to try and work through the pain and go down to Snowflake tomorrow as planned to spend the day learning about the solar and wind power systems and how to work and maintain everything. Hope I can do it!

Other than that, I checked out this afternoon and am officially no longer a teacher. School is over for me.

[Yogi the Great]

Look at it this way Rhonda,

Those physical injuries will heal, the mental injury and stress of teaching will stay with you for the rest of your life! [:D]

My daughter teaches in Florida. All kidding aside you should be very proud and I'm sure that you made a positive difference in the lives of many children. Teaching is a very honorable and one of the most important professions there is. We do need to get back to education for the children and for our future. There is little doubt in my mind that government and unions have slowly done great damage to our educational system that we must find a way to recover from.

[&o] In the end, you can take great pride and satisfaction in your career. A job well done under difficult circumstances that will allow you to look back and realize that your life mattered and gave children a chance to succeed.

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: Yogi the Great

Look at it this way Rhonda,

Those physical injuries will heal, the mental injury and stress of teaching will stay with you for the rest of your life! [:D]

My daughter teaches in Florida. All kidding aside you should be very proud and I'm sure that you made a positive difference in the lives of many children. Teaching is a very honorable and one of the most important professions there is. We do need to get back to education for the children and for our future. There is little doubt in my mind that government and unions have slowly done great damage to our educational system that we must find a way to recover from.

[&o] In the end, you can take great pride and satisfaction in your career. A job well done under difficult circumstances that will allow you to look back and realize that your life mattered and gave children a chance to succeed.

Thanks Yogi

Woke up this morning and my ribs are still hurting... how long does it take to heal from bruised ribs anyway? It's really cramping my moving schedule!

[junk2drive]

At our age anything takes 6-8 weeks.

[sabre1]

Ribs are extremely painful. Like J2D said, at minimum 6-8 weeks, and even after that you will know you hurt yourself for quite awhile. Just love being the bearer of bad news.

Messed up my ribs all the time in my wrestling days. You just suck it up and keep going. (that was in my YOUNGER days...much younger days.)

[rhondabrwn]

Does anyone recommend trying to bind them up in some fashion? Or do I just go about my slow, painful, daily routine?

[SLAAKMAN]

Does anyone recommend trying to bind them up in some fashion? Or do I just go about my slow, painful, daily routine?

Contact a doctor and get an opinion. There could be a hairline fracture that might not heal right or some other problem. Im doing a little research into using DMSO for my arthritis so here is another possible remedy; [:D]
http://www.dmso.org/

(Doesnt aging suck?)

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: SLAAKMAN

Does anyone recommend trying to bind them up in some fashion? Or do I just go about my slow, painful, daily routine?

Contact a doctor and get an opinion. There could be a hairline fracture that might not heal right or some other problem. Im doing a little research into using DMSO for my arthritis so here is another possible remedy; [:D]
http://www.dmso.org/

(Doesnt aging suck?)

I've got a doctor appointment next Monday (right after my move) so I'll get it checked out then.

Thanks for the advice guys (and, yea, aging does suck!). [;)]

[SLAAKMAN]

Youre welcome Rhonda. In the meantime here are some lovely vampira's to comfort your beleaguered plight;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiafSX-v7Qw
[:D]

[Jeffrey H.]

ORIGINAL: SLAAKMAN

Does anyone recommend trying to bind them up in some fashion? Or do I just go about my slow, painful, daily routine?

Contact a doctor and get an opinion. There could be a hairline fracture that might not heal right or some other problem. Im doing a little research into using DMSO for my arthritis so here is another possible remedy; [:D]
http://www.dmso.org/

(Doesnt aging suck?)

Funny, she's headed for a horse ranch. I'll be there's lots of DMSO available through that place.

Are you using that stuff SLAAK ?