Sometimes ya make yerself a liar...

...but sometimes it can't be helped. I said I'd be away ten days, but then I came across this in the Houston Chronicle as I was scanning news about Katrina.

I'll let Alpha take it from here, but if he insists on doing this any more often than he does, I'm gonna insist he get his own damned blog....


Buried behind the third bullet in the article about the 700 laws the legislature DID manage to pass this session-cubed is this about teachers:

•The retirement eligibility age will be raised from 50 to 60 for teachers and other school employees hired after Sept. 1, 2007, to help cure a shortfall in the Teacher Retirement System. The new law also makes changes affecting some current teachers. For all but the more-senior teachers, pensions will be based on the average of the highest five years' salary, rather than three.


I'm trying honestly not to get too upset. After all, my teacher retirement is from a different red state entirely than Texas, I'm sitting (for the last night) on a lake in Minnesota listening to the acorns bounce off the roof of the camper, sipping vodka hand-crafted in Austin from a glass rinsed with vermouth hand-crafted in Italy. I'm retired. My benefits are (relatively) secure.

But I read that aggregation of new laws in the Chron, and I can't bring myself to laugh. I try. Honest I do. I should be able to laugh at follies that won't impact my lifesyle.

The same legislature that went back to the trough three times and couldn't resolve school funding somehow managed, in the name of fiscal responsibility, to (a) force burned-out teachers to work ten more years, and (b) reduce their retirement income.

I'm going to sleep on this one, hoping to somehow see the humor under the sun of a new day. I'm not optimistic. But if I keep writing, Amerloc's gonna make me get my own space...

You can sure tell...

...school's starting.

It's a mostly quiet week in the edu-blogosphere. All the teachers headed back to class, coming home too tired to focus, much less blog.

As you may be able to tell, my daily routine is to read the paper, then check the blogs on my roll to see what else is up. This week it hasn't been much. That's not all bad, of course, as it frees up time to browse through other edu-bloggers rolls too, and find places I'd never been before, or had forgotten about.

And of course, now I'm going to contribute to the silence....

Alpha and Beta have friends coming in later today to join them in camping here at the lake for the final weekend. I like those kinds of events, because Alpha sometimes lets me have a sip of his beer, and we get to go out on the lake in the boat more often than when it's just the two of them. Anyway, I won't be around much this weekend, and Monday, we're packing this little house up and hooking it to the car to start the trip home.

First stop will be at their daughter's in Nebraska. Her dial-up connection is even slower than the one here, so even though we'll be there a couple days, I probably won't even bother. I'll just go out back and play with Maggie, the bulldog pup.

Then it's off to Texas, to the new house Alpha and Beta bought. They still haven't set up any kind of connection there, so until they do, I'm out of luck. But it's going to be a cable connection, according to Alpha. But then he'll hog the connection to play that stoopid game he plays....

Anyway, it'll probably be ten days or so before I get back to anything resembling stable on-line time again. Be good to yourselves, my friends. Read widely, think deeply, and teach well. And if you come across an extra kibble or two, well...

After anger comes laughter

Yeah, so I read the paper and get irritated, then I go through the blogs I have linked (and then some others that I have bookmarked, if time allows), and I come across Brian's Tales From The Crypt , and some of the stories make me laugh till the tears run. Thanks, Brian!

Humans are too much like dogs.

Hot-headed. Instinctive rather than thinking. Blindly aggressive rather than rational.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article the other day on fetal pain, coming to the conclusion that a fetus can't feel pain until the hard-wiring progresses far enough - around the 29th week. This bothers those who are urging legislation requiring physicians to notify women requesting abortions that the fetus feels pain after 20 weeks.

So what happens?

Journal editor receives hate mail after fetal-pain article published

I understand writing to express concern about the motives of a couple of the authors, and their potential bias. But "horrible, vindictive" emails? What do those actually accomplish?

(1) They generate yet another news story about the study, exposing even more people to the results.

(2) They actually get me to blog about it, exposing two or three more.

In my very first post, I told you that Alpha and Beta had me fixed when I was barely a year old (I'm not going tell the "tutored" joke), and that I'd like to see abortion go the way of bleeding as a medical treatment. Writing hate-mail won't accomplish that.

While we're talking great teachers..

(we were, weren't we? Just a couple posts ago?)

Chris Lehmann did a helluva a job defining it two Augusts ago .

Sometimes I get to laugh...

...and spray an adult beverage on my monitor: This from Anamolous Noodge :

What does "engaged" mean?

Ms Frizzle last week asked how one identified a good teacher. I responded that “Students are engaged” without trying to define what that looked like or what it took to make it happen. I’ll try to rectify that here.

“Students are engaged” can put on many faces, not all of them easily identified (is that pup staring at the tree pondering the ramifications of a line of thought? Or counting the leaves?). Sometimes the only way to tell is to track what happens, what results are generated, over a period of time. Unfortunately, we’re looking for a snapshot here, not a feature film.

We can all differentiate between curiosity and “so-what,” between enthusiasm and boredom, between hunger and satiation as facial expressions. Curious, enthused, hungry – those are signs of engagement. So, sometimes, are happiness and anger, pride and despair.

A yard full of pups, all with their tails wagging? That’s engaged. The same pups all growling? That’s engaged. All of them locked on point? That’s engaged. All quartering the yard, noses to the ground? That’s engaged. All of them lost in thought? Most are probably engaged. Some are thinking about the bone they buried yesterday. It’s hard to tell just looking at the snapshot. Come back later and take another one.

Any teacher, even a bad one, can engage students, at least sometimes. The trick is to do it consistently and productively, and that requires a number of skills.

•Ya gotta know yer stuff. I can keep my classes of pound puppies engaged for weeks at a time with Shi-Tzu jokes (as long as I can find enough of them on the internet to keep them fresh), but how productive is that? They’re not learning to decipher human-talk, they’re not learning to keep track of their bones, they’re not learning where they came from, they’re not learning where to leave messages for whom. So you have to know what you’re trying to teach, be it language or math or history or whatever, and keep the focus there. Of course, Shi-Tzu jokes make useful ice-breakers or transitions, but they can’t be the focus.

•Ya gotta know yer pups. If you can’t tell the difference between a lazy pup and an exhausted pup, you don’t know enough yet. If you can’t tell the difference between a distracted pup (aren’t they all) and a bored pup, you don’t know enough yet. And if you’re serious about being good, you’ll learn the differences and acknowledge them.

•Ya gotta know yer pedagogy. You don’t necessarily have to keep up with the ever-changing acronyms or the Flavor-Of-The-Month stuff, but you have to be aware of and willing to use different tricks for different pups. We may well all have been created with equal opportunities to succeed, but that doesn’t mean we were all born with the same skill sets. Some dogs just naturally track better than others. Some rat better, some retrieve better, some swim better. But they all need many of the same skills, and we have to either match our methods to their strengths or teach them to compensate for their weaknesses. And guess what? It’s better for them if we teach them to compensate for their weaknesses than for us to match their strengths. So you have to have a pretty good idea of how to evaluate and teach those compensation skills.

•Ya gotta be patient. All those pups aren’t gonna get it the first time. Or the second. Or the third. And it won’t help to keep doing it the same way over and over again. So you must be willing to do it over again differently. And again differently, if that’s what it takes.

•Ya gotta plan. Sure, you can accomplish a ton with a serendipitous moment or two, and you’d be a fool not to take advantage of those “teachable moments,” but to be consistent, you absolutely have to plan. You have to know where you are and where you’re going, and have a pretty fair idea of what it’s going to take to get from “A” to “B.”

•Ya gotta track progress. If you’re not keeping track, who will? The pups will sometimes lose track of how much they brought with them and how much you’ve given them. The boss certainly isn’t concerned with what they brought with them, only with what they have at the end.


I can't help but feel as if I'm missing a couple things here. Feel free to remind me...

Oh, yeah!

I'm back from another stint at the doggie motel, and the Carnival is up over at the Wonks . Tons of good stuff on the midway today.

Deep in the heart of NCLB

Angela , over at EEPPT, discusses the Texas foundations of NCLB. Some highlights:

"1) The Texas accountability system, based on mandated state tests, is a hyper-standardized system that has driven down the quality and quantity of education... The accountability system creates the impression of improvement by substituting real teaching for weeks and weeks of test preparation."

"2) The most perverse thing it does is reward principals for losing kids-- that is, principals are rewarded for getting their school scores up, even if they do it by pushing children out of school who jeopardize school ratings."


And there's a 3), and a 4), and a 5).

Fuzzy math (or is it furry?)

Got to go for a ride with Alpha and Beta yesterday, and noticed one of those signs along the highway. This one said "One of four babies dies from choice."

I won't talk about the use of language to polarize and divide - others have done it and done it better, but I thought to myself "Wow! One in four... that's 25%... That seems awfully high.... Wonder if it's true?"

So this morning, after my inspection tour around the neighborhood, I went looking for some actual numbers. Thanks to Google and the CDC, I got this:

"A total of 857,475 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC for 2000 from 49 reporting areas, representing a 0.5% decrease from the 861,789 legal induced abortions reported by 48 reporting areas for 1999 and a 1.3% decrease for the same 48 reporting areas that reported in 1999. The abortion ratio, defined as the number of abortions per 1,000 live births, was 246 in 2000 (for the same 48 reporting areas as 1999), compared with 256 reported for 1999. This represents a 3.8% decline in the abortion ratio. The abortion rate (for the same 48 reporting areas as 1999) was 16 per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years for 2000. This was also a 3.8% decrease from the rate reported for procedures performed during 1997--1999 for the same 48 reporting areas."

So in 2000 (the most recent numbers available), the ratio looked like this - 246:1000. Now if I have a beef-bone-to-pork-bone ratio like that, it means I have 1246 bones total, or 19.7% beef bones, a little less than one in five.

I realize two things:

(1) We're not talking dogfood here, we're talking about a far more serious human issue.
(2) Regardless of which side of the abortion issue you count yourself on, everyone would prefer (too weak a word) an abortion ratio lower than 246:1000.

My point, of course, is that "One of five babies dies from choice" would have been just as forceful, and far more accurate. This isn't an issue that needs sloppy math to distort the reality.

On a lighter note, there are three red squirrels and two grey squirrels begging to be chased. That's a 3:2 ratio, but still five squirrels total :)



Edit: There's a 2004 look at partial numbers here: Houston Chronicle

Edit2: And FactCheck puts the record straight... On the numbers. No one seems to want to deal with the suggestion that the biggest reason given for requesting an abortion is economic...

Now can I go chase squirrels???

More top-down BS

From Mrs. Ris over at Mentor Matters:

"...the county wants each classroom teacher to set up a classroom site on this same Blackboard system.... by Back to School Night! For some of us, that's within the first weeks of school. Without any training, we have to get something up ASAP. Now, I don't mind, I like figuring this stuff out, but the technologically impaired are going to freak out! "

There’s no doubt in my mind that every school district, every school, and every teacher, should have a web presence. Even dog-teachers (or is that teacher-dogs?). However, that web presence is meaningless unless it’s maintained and updated regularly. That requires comfort with and enthusiasm for the implementation.

So here we have an educational administration that “wants” something valuable. They implement it with a timeline that will, first of all, frustrate the living hell out of the “technologically impaired,” who will turn to the Mrs. Ris’s in the rooms next door pleading for help.

I don’t mind talking someone through the process – actually, I rather enjoy that kind of teaching – but some of those “T-I” teachers are deliberately so. They’ve realized that they can use ignorance as a crutch and get someone else to come running to bail them out every time. And here comes the frustration for those of us who “like figuring this stuff out.”

I’m sorry, but I really think this has to be developed laterally – teacher sharing with teacher- rather than from the top down.

Word Games

Thanks to Susan Ohanian for this look at what some of the verbage about public education might really mean.

The Carnival of Education: Week 28

is up over at

Ticklish Ears

Terrific job, David!

They can't even count bones..

...according to the Dallas Morning News theCharter school finance report is flawed

One school counted 66 million bones when they only had 9.6 million....

A dew claw is 10 only every OTHER time!!

Stirring the pot.

This has been around quite a while.. just thought it might generate some discussion....

Staying in a strange kennel...

....for a few days while Alpha and Beta go off on an adventure of some sort.

It's a mixed curse. Yeah, the two-legs I love most are gone, and I worry about them and whether they'll come back or not, but there's a dog I never met before next door who has had some interesting stories, and the two-leg here is really nice too.

Alpha was gone all day today, and when he got home there was more steel-on-wheels behind the one we ride in. At least he didn't smell like stranger dogs...

Someone Has To Do It...

Polski found this in the San Diego Union Tribune:

"A high school football coach in West Linn, Oregon, has been placed on two years probation by the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, for licking the bleeding wounds of several student athletes.
This teacher, Scott Reed, must also attend a class regarding the risks of blood-borne pathogens. Reed must supply the OTSPC with written verification of his attendance at this class.
Three students reported Reed had "licked the blood from wounds on a track team members knee, a football players arm and a high school students hand." Reed would not say why he licked student blood from their wounds."

And he says:

"Seems to me that this behavior also should be noted to be endangering to students. The human mouth is not noted for its cleanliness and if Reed was licking open wounds of students, this could become a cause for infection.
I wonder WHY he still even has a teaching credential in Oregon? This type of behavior should not be condoned or allowed by a professional educator."

Of course, I say, "If they're too stoopid to lick their own wounds...."

Ahh... Minnesota summers

The mist rolls across the east end of the lake, the BigBirdsThatSwimAwayTooFast wind single-file across the water, honking their way to graze on the grass shoots they find on the low ground. It's chilly right now: Alpha has those little bumps he gets when it's cold out, the ones that make his skin rough like sandpaper when I lick it. The sky is mostly empty of fluff and shade-makers, a little breeze brings mostly green smells, but some bird-smells, too, and a squirrel-smell from NotMyYard.

A dog's life is a good life.

Alpha and Beta finally agreed with what I've been telling them for months: my night-house is too small. So they left the door open last night and I slept under the table where there's room to stretch and turn when I need to. Of course, when I heard Alpha stir, I hopped on the bed to see if he was awake yet. He wasn't, but it was warm there between him and Beta, so I stayed and napped until he did wake up. It didn't take nearly so long this morning to stretch out the kinks.

A dog's life is a good life.