Why Do We Have to Do Work, Testing Is Over?

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My students are filled with righteous indignation this morning. Their high dudgeon is the result of finding out they have to do work, not only this morning, but this whole week. The students are under the impression that they should not have to do any work now that final exams and End-of-Grade Tests are over.

It was my pleasure to dissuade my students of that notion right off the bat. When they found out what the “work” they were going to be doing was, the students attitude about having an assignment changed. The assignment for the week is for the students to build a balloon powered racecar.

Building a balloon powered racecar, without using any actual model or toy car parts, is not as easy as one may think. It certainly wasn’t as easy as my students thought it would be, nor as easy as the video we watched made it look.

The materials available to the students were plastic water bottles, bottle caps, straws, plastic string, paperclips, glue, and balloons. The students came up with many interesting ways to assemble these cars. Unfortunately, none of them worked very well. I challenged the students to figure out what would work better, and to find it at home and bring it in tomorrow.

Because we are still on a modified schedule due to 8^th grade testing going on in the computer labs, my first class wound up staying with me most of the day. It is nearly impossible to keep middle school students working on a single project for several hours. Even I began to get bored with the effort after a while.

In keeping with the idea of keeping to the Science curriculum in these last few days of the school year, my students and I put the balloon racers away and are now engaged in a marathon session of “Grossology.” The show is disgusting, funny, and educational regarding some of the more stomach churning aspects of biology.

“Grossology” also succeeded in keeping the students engaged and relatively quiet, for a time anyway. Eventually, the grossness became more than some of the queasier stomachs could handle. It was at that point I switched to Social Studies and we replaced our “Grossology” marathon with a “Time Warp Trio” marathon.

I only hope that tomorrow the schedule will be back to something approaching normal so I will get to see my other classes.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Is It Wrong to Have Fun on Memorial Day?

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I have seen many articles, posts, and comments in the news, on blogs, and on social media, reminding all of us here in the US that Memorial Day is not all about cookouts, camping, and trips to the beach. These writings, memes, and posts remind us of the real reason for Memorial Day. Some of them include heart rending pictures of a war widow camped out next to her fallen husband’s grave stone at a national cemetery.

Indeed, Memorial Day has been set aside as a day for America to remember all those who gave their lives in military service to the defense of our country. The holiday began as Decoration Day in the aftermath of the American Civil War when General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, declared a day for the purpose of decorating the graves of fallen Union Soldiers.

Memorial Day was legally set as the last Monday in May by Congress in 1971, when Congress set most federal holidays on Mondays to create three-day-weekends for federal employees. In the years since, Memorial Day has become the unofficial start of the summer recreation season. As a result, many people feel the original reason for Memorial Day has become lost or diluted.

I tend to disagree. As I tell my students, what better way to honor the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for our freedom than to celebrate that freedom. The people I meet when camping on Memorial Day have not forgotten why they have this holiday to enjoy. Each one I talk to is thankful for the men and women who were willing to give the last great measure of devotion to our country so the rest of us could be free to have a cookout, get together with friends, enjoy a day at the beach, and otherwise celebrate all the things the sacrifices of those who died for us have earned for us.

Memorial Day is a day for us to reflect on the cost of our liberty, but I do not feel it should be a day to wallow in sorrow over those who were lost paying that price. Remember them, yes, remember them with pride and heart-felt gratitude. Raise a glass to their memory, praise them for their willingness to offer their lives for our nation’s freedom. And pray there will always be those among us who, when our country calls, will answer the call on behalf of us all.

My students understand well the old mantra, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana) Let us all take time on Memorial Day to remember what we have learned of the price of our freedom, and to enjoy that freedom in the name of those who paid that price for us.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, And Is Raining All Over Me

courtesy of  Pixabay CC0 Public Domain

On this Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, while on our camping trip, my wife and I are being rained on by Tropical Storm Bonnie. Admittedly, Bonnie as a marginal Tropical Storm – thank goodness – but she is bringing lots of rain our way.

It is still a few days until the official start of Hurricane Season on June 1^st, but Bonnie is our second Atlantic storm so far this year. Alex, way back in January, was the first.

As a Science Teacher teaching the Climate and Weather module it was pretty cool getting to track a Tropical Storm in January because it is so rare and the idea of it caught the students attention. Having Alex to talk about helped offset the fact that we didn’t have any real snowfall in our area this winter to discuss in class. I think we only had one day out of school due to ice conditions, and none for snow.

Students tend to enjoy the Climate and Weather module because we can make looking out the window or going outside part of the curriculum. It is a subject we can observe and experience in real time. The students get something happening all around them to attach the vocabulary and concepts to. The learn a whole new appreciation for The Weather Channel.

Bonnie is a slow moving storm and the effects of her are expected to linger in our area until at least Wednesday. That will allow me to spend some time reviewing what we learned about tropical cyclones early in the semester. I think the students will enjoy that even if they have already taken the final exam. It will give us something to talk about while they work on their balloon powered racers.

The downside of TS Bonnie paying a visit right now is that my wife and I are more or less confined to the camper for the rest of the weekend. Then again, it is also a reason for some enforced laziness. I see a lot of nap taking going on later today.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted  Educator

To Students Excited About a $15 Minimum Wage

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The message from the people who own the businesses who employ minimum wage workers is clear and simple – YOU CAN BE REPLACED!

Most of the jobs currently being done by minimum wage workers can be done better, more efficiently, with fewer errors, and with greater customer satisfaction by a kiosk or robot. Several fast-food companies, such as Sheetz and Panera Bread are already proving this to be true. The latest food vendor to field robotic service to customers is Pizza Hut of Asia. If you want the details, you can read the article “Pizza Hut Just Signaled…” here.

The scary thing for the minimum wage workers clamoring for the $15 an hour is that the robot can greet customers, take customized orders, and take payment, all without expecting a tip, making the experience fun, interesting, and less expensive for restaurant customers. Another plus, robots don’t have bad days or get surly with customers.

My wife had an experience at a fast-food restaurant yesterday at which the person serving her had a bad attitude, was discourteous, and got her order wrong. Had she had a robotic server, none of this would have occurred and my wife’s experience would have been much nicer. Her opinion of the business would definitely not have been negatively affected the way it was.

The server in question was a high school girl who was most likely in a bad mood because she had to work Memorial Day Weekend. I’m just guessing here. There are myriad reasons a high school girl might have been in a bad mood, but the one I offer seems reasonable.

My students have often asked me what I think about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I tell them the harsh economic reality is that if the jobs were worth $15 an hour, the workers would already be making that much. The problem the workers have is they know their labor isn’t worth $15 an hour so they want the government to force employers to pay them more than the work is worth.

I also educate my students to the fact that while those supporting the increase try to say that there aren’t that many workers at minimum wage so it won’t really be that much of a financial burden on business, what they don’t say is that every worker in the country making between minimum wage and $14.99 an hour, and every 40-hour-a-week salaried worker making less than $31,200 a year would have to receive a raise. Since thousands of firefighters, police officers, and teachers around the country, especially in smaller municipalities, make less than this per year, I encourage my students to imagine how those towns and districts are going to have to choose between huge tax increases or laying off essential workers.

Then I challenge my students as to whether they want to live a minimum wage life or if they want more. Not a single student indicates they want to spend their life working for minimum wage. That’s when I hit them with the importance of education. I tell them the taxpayers of our district, state, and nation are providing them with a free education worth thousands of dollars a year and it is up to them to use this free education to prepare themselves for a career that will let them reach their potential so they don’t wind up being replaced by a robot with a spicy name who can do their low or no skill job faster, better, and cheaper than they can.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Finally, Friday, Thank Goodness

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At this very moment it is 1:41 pm on Friday the 27^th of May 2016. I currently have my third period class in my room with me. I haven’t seen them as a class since Tuesday because of End-of-Grade Testing.

Today the 7^th Graders took the state quasi-mandated Science Final Exam. I refer to it as quasi-mandated because not all seventh grade students have to take it. The Exam doesn’t test how well the students learned Science. The Exam tests how well the teacher taught Science. The students don’t even find out how they scored on the test.

Technically, only my three Science classes were required to take the Science Final Exam because the two Science teachers at the other end of the hall also taught Math all year so they will be judged based on the Math EOG scores and their students only had to take the Science Final Exam so parents for my team wouldn’t complain that their kids had to take the exam and the students on the other two teams didn’t.

I only got to watch my homeroom take the Science Final Exam. Based on what I saw, the students took it very seriously and made a good effort. It took a lot of self-discipline not to read over a shoulder or two in an attempt to discern just what type of questions were asked on the test. Technically, I’m not supposed to be privy to the actual content of the test.

My teaching teammates gave me encouraging reports about the way my other Science classes worked on the Exam. I am hoping to get some very encouraging results next week when the scores come back.

But today is Friday, and it won’t be long before the dismissal bell rings and the students will be on their way home. Shortly thereafter, so will we, the teachers. It is, after all, Memorial Day Weekend, which means 3 days off. After this week, we all, students and faculty alike, dearly need it.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Not The Challenge I Expected Today

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The last thing I expected when my class started taking the End-of-Grade Reading Test was the challenge of keeping several of my students awake while they were taking the test. I can’t say as I blame them for falling asleep. The quiet of the room and the dull nature of the passages they were reading were a combination seemingly designed to lure one to slumber.

One of the young men who couldn’t stay awake has had a long history of falling asleep in class. Oddly enough, yesterday he was wide awake for the Math Test. I hope he is wide awake for the Science Final tomorrow.

The second young man I had to wake up isn’t someone who usually sleeps in class. Quite the contrary. He is usually so wide awake he can become a distraction. But he is not a strong reader and that may have led to his lack of concentration and tendency to nod off.

The third young man who had trouble staying awake had a good reason. He’s recently developed allergies and is still adjusting to the medication. I’m proud of him for coming in yesterday and today to take both Tests.

The good news is all my students, including the three with the penchant for snoozing, finished the test on time.

There was some chaos following my class finishing the test. While I was in the test resource room turning in my materials, another staff member took my class to the cafeteria for lunch. By the time I got to the cafeteria my kids were done with lunch and on their way to the gym. We’d not been in the gym five minutes when the call came for me to take my class back to my classroom.

For the next two hours, we waited more or less quietly in my room, watching history videos featuring the Time Warp Trio. The Testing Session didn’t officially end for the school until almost two in the afternoon due to students who received extended time as a modification. I was very pleased at how well my students behaved during that time.

We have one more test tomorrow, the Science Final Exam. Then it will just be a matter of making it through four days next week and two days of the week after before the kids are done for the summer. I’m happy the school year is nearly over but I realized today how much I am going to miss this group of kids when they move on to 8^th grade.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

What’s Less Fun Than Watching A Math Test?

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When you read the question above you probably told yourself that there aren’t many things less fun than watching 25 students take a Math Test. You would be right. There are very few things I can think of that are less fun than watching students take a Math Test.

Lucky me, tomorrow I get to do one of them. Tomorrow my school will administer the End-of-Grade Reading Test to our students. Trust me, watching 25 students take a Reading Test is much less fun than watching them take a Math Test.

Watching students take an End-of-Grade Math Test has moments of action. The students are busy writing out calculations, using their graph paper, and when they finish the part of the test done without a calculator the administrator – that’s me -  gets to take them a calculator and clip the non-calculator part of the test booklet closed. You want to talk about nerve wracking responsibility. I have to get that paperclip on that booklet just right so it doesn’t fall off.

Once they have their calculator, the students are right back to work solving the test problems. As long as they are working, walking around monitoring them is at least somewhat less than coma inducing.

The End-of-Grade Reading Test offers none of the action and excitement of the End-of-Grade Math Test, at least not from the test administrators point of view. Once I’ve handed out the test booklets, answer sheets, and pencils, the only things I will have to do is walk around and make sure all the students are staying awake and call the three-minute breaks at the end of each hour. Most of the time the students will be sitting still and reading. Once in a while they’ll actually sit up, pick up their pencil, and bubble in the answer to one of the multiple choice questions on the test.

Einstein said time is relative. I know time moves as different speeds depending on which End-of-Grade test the students are taking. It moves so much slower when they are taking the Reading Test than when they are taking the Math Test. I just wish there was some objective way to prove it.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

High Stakes Testing Is Underway! Let The Accommodations Begin!

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Today begins this school year’s round of the so-called “High Stakes” testing. Though most of our students will not actually be testing today, there are a number of them who are taking the Career and Technical Readiness Exam required for certain elective classes. Also, our students with autism or other learning disabilities will be taking what is called the Extend1 exam. It is like the End-of-Grade tests the rest of the students will take only there are fewer questions and only two answers to choose from instead of four.

Tomorrow, the End-of-Grade tests start in earnest. Though we only have twenty-two homerooms here at our school, we will need forty-one separate testing areas because of the number of children who require testing in small groups, one-on-one testing, and read-aloud testing. These students are the children who have either a Federal 504 Plan or an Individualized Education Plan requiring them to receive such accommodations. All year long, they are taught in a regular classroom but are differentiated for in the difficulty, length of assignments, or time allotted to complete the assignments, as well as being given any tests in a one-on-one or small group environment.

While the philosophy behind offering these accommodations may be a kind-hearted and compassionate one, in the long run I have to wonder if it we are really doing these students a disservice. The students get used to getting the same credit for doing less work while they are in school and then have a hard time understanding why, when they get out of school and get a job, they are expected to work just as long and hard as everyone else if they want to receive the same pay.

One of the graduates of our school system got a job last year and was fired after six weeks for failing to show up regularly for work. When told he was fired, the student tried to tell his boss he couldn’t be fired because he had an IEP and his IEP had an accommodation for being allowed to make up work for absences. Imagine the surprise on that young man’s face when his boss explained to him that an IEP was only binding on the school system and had nothing at all to do with life in the “real world.”

Special Education teachers tell me that students with IEPs are expected to work just as hard as other students; it’s just that the IEP student cannot keep up with other students no matter how hard he or she may try. While this may be true, what I increasingly see is IEP students insisting they be given less work, easier work, or no work at all compared to the “regular” students. On the other side of the story, I see the “regular” students becoming resentful of the IEP students who flaunt their accommodations and brag about how they get the same grades without doing work that is as rigorous as the “regular” students. Worse, I see parents who come in wanting their children put on an IEP simply so the child won’t have to work as hard at school. Yes, it does happen.

We wonder why our students work ethic is eroding away. It isn’t really that much of a mystery. Why should a student work hard to get good grades when the student next to him or her does half the work and gets the same grades because the second student has accommodations? An adult may understand why, but to a middle schooler it just seems plain unfair.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Penultimate Monday

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Today is the second to last Monday of this school year. Oddly enough, there are three more Tuesdays. Next Monday is Memorial Day and there is no school.

This week is also End-of-Grade Testing Week here in our district. Our 3^rd through 8^th Graders will be taking a series of four-hour-long tests in Reading, Math, and Science, one test each day on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The “Official” time for each test is just over three hours. Students are given four hours to finish because field test questions are included among the actual test questions.

This is the first year since I’ve been teaching that I’ve not taught a subject that has an End-of-Grade Test. There is a two-hour-long Seventh Grade Science Test on Friday, while the Fifth and Eighth Graders are taking their Science EOG, but the results of the test do not appear on the students’ records. The results are only used in my evaluation.

Students often get stressed during this week. I’ve been doing my best to keep my students from getting anxious about the exams. Once upon a time their future academic progress could hinge upon the results of the EOGs. This is no longer the case here in our state. EOG results are no longer allowed to be considered when making promotion/retention decisions. As with the Science test, the results are now used in the teachers’ evaluations rather than as an assessment of student learning.

Even this use of the End-of-Grade Test is coming to an end after this year, sort of. The separate item on the teacher evaluation instrument for testing is being eliminated and the evaluation items it included are allegedly going to be spread out among the other objectives. What this effectively means is that the EOG will become a very long and arduous test the students must endure for no good reason other than to make the politicians and their lackeys at the State Department of Public Instruction look like they are doing something to make a difference when the truth is it makes no real difference at all.

The earnest hope of all the teachers and local school administrators I know is that the politicians and so called experts will realize that the current End-of-Grade Testing system is fatally flawed, does not accurately measure what the students have learned, and is far, far too long. Until then…

As always, I remain

The Exhausted Educator

Myth Busting in Science Class

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Today in science, as the capstone of our study on motion and forces, my students viewed a very special episode of Mythbusters.

The episode they saw that titled, “Presidential Challenge.” The Mythbusters went to the White House and met President Obama. The President challenged them to investigate and prove or disprove the legend of Archimedes Solar Ray once and for all.

In the secondary story, the junior Mythbusters try to prove or disprove the stunt performed in one of the Hellboy movies. In the movie, Hellboy punches an SUV moving at 30 mph, sending the SUV summersaulting over him and landing on its wheels.

My hope was that the students would be able to see how the Mythbusters used some of the same concepts and math we had covered in class in setting up the stunts for their Mythbusting. I was gratified to see the secondary myth calculations included some of the force and work calculation we had talked about just this week. The story also illustrated the use of levers, fulcrums, and the determination of momentum.

Many of the other concepts we talked about this semester, and especially this quarter were discussed. Most of the students remained interested and engaged. Many of them asked some relevant questions or made insightful comments.

The primary myth being busted, as it involved Greece and Rome, would have been more appropriate for Sixth Grade Social Studies, but the students enjoyed it, and it did give me a chance to point out how the Mythbusters were employing some of what we’d learned about earlier in the semester regarding radiant heat and solar energy. The students were also impressed with the appearances at the beginning and the end of the show of President Barrack Obama. A couple were skeptical about whether the President really did the show of if it was an actor. As far as I know, the President did appear on the show.

As it turned out, Jamie and Adam busted the Archimedes Solar Ray myth, but Jamie did make a point about how there may be a kernel of truth to the myth based on how blinding and distracting the reflected rays of the sun coming off the mirrors were. He theorized that the Roman fleet may have become disoriented and confused due to the blinding light of hundreds of mirrors, suffered many collisions and sinkings, and in the end turned and fled from home rather than press the attack.

We may never know if that was what Archimedes had in mind the whole time, but an episode of Mythbusters turned out to be an excellent way to end the week, and our lessons on Forces and Motion.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

What A Difference One Can Make

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All you teachers and former teachers out there will understand what I mean when I say one student being present or absent can make an enormous difference in the atmosphere and behavior of the overall class.

Incontrovertible proof of this came today with the return of a student who was the only child absent from my home room yesterday. This young lady is very rarely absent. Her absence yesterday was made obvious by the unusually good behavior of the rest of the class.

With her back today, the level of disruption and incidence of me having to get the class back on task, mostly those students sitting close to her, was demonstrably greater than yesterday. It is not that this young lady is deliberately disrupting, she just has a hard time understanding the need for her to pay attention and be on task with what is going on in class, and that she doesn’t need to comment on everything going on around her, or to talk to her near classmates about anything and everything that pops into her head.

This young lady tends to get very frustrated when I point out to her the manner in which she is disrupting instruction. Knowing her mother, and knowing how this young lady speaks to her mother, I understand why she feels that whatever she wants to say should trump anything else going on in class. Her mother lets her get away with speaking that way at home, and even to her at school in front of her teachers.

The young lady does have enough self-control not to let her frustration turn into an argument most of the time. She does have a bad habit of wanting to explain why she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing. She always has an excuse. That’s not unusual. Middle School students as a whole are full of excuses for being off-task, out of place, or not having their materials. What they have a hard time understanding is the teacher isn’t usually interested in their excuses, the teacher only wants the inappropriate behavior to stop.

This constant need to explain themselves, in other words – to give cause to their improper actions, is a manifestation of the decreased level of maturity compared to age these students suffer from as a result of growing up with parents and other adults in their lives who try to reason with them about things from a young age, an age well below the age of reason. This treatment of the young doesn’t teach them how to work things out and make good decisions, it teaches them that is permissible to argue unendingly about whether or not they should do what they are told. Talking back becomes an ingrained habit because the parents and other adults have taught the child it is okay.

When the child comes into the Middle School and brings this attitude with them, as the young lady I’m writing about today has, it becomes a problem in the classroom. Children with this attitude feel entitled to question the teacher’s decisions about nearly everything, from asking them to be quiet to assigning them a seat.  Some students learn early, and accept it as fact, that a teacher is not someone with whom they can argue and bargain to get their way. Others, like today’s subject, never learn the lesson. The balance from those students who get it to those who don’t is swinging further towards those who don’t every year.

Every year I have to work harder to make these students understand that they need to learn when and where it is appropriate to challenge and whom. What is making it tougher each year is more and more of the parents are siding with the students on this issue. But I will continue to try and instill in my students, including this young lady, what is appropriate behavior, and to try and help them understand how their oppositional, argumentative behavior will not serve them well in school or, eventually, in the workplace.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

When A Child Needs Special Consideration

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While at the Spring Band and Chorus Concert last night an announcement was made that because some of our students have strobe induced seizures, flash photography should not be used when taking pictures. I heard no parents complain and I saw only a couple of brief flickers of light while folks took pictures and realized those flickers were from the rangefinders on some of the cameras and camera phones. This came to my attention because I was trying to take some pictures myself with my camera, for the yearbook and music teachers, and one of my colleagues pointed out that my flash might be bothering the affected student.

“Student.” Yes. There was only one. I checked my camera because I was sure I had turned off the flash, and I had. Then I realized it was the tiny rangefinder light that was quickly turning on and off whenever I pressed the shutter release to take a picture. Not knowing how to turn that off, though I’m sure there’s a way, I’ve just never had to, I chose to stop taking pictures. The camera battery was nearly spent by then anyway.

This incident got me thinking about how well most people react when asked to stop doing something like using flash photography at a school event not because it will disturb the performers, but because some of those attending, particularly children, may be ill-affected by continuing to do the thing.

Most people, that is. At last night’s event I heard no complaints. Such is not always the case. During a previous concert I heard a parent who’d brought a camera with a fancy flash attachment mutter, “Why do the rest of us have to miss out on taking pictures because of somebody’s defective kid?”

I was just close enough to hear his comment but not close enough to say something to him without causing a commotion. The other parents around him gave him some scathing looks, but none contradicted him out loud. I hoped as the words played back in his head that they’d shame him like I wished I could.

Sadly, I’ve heard this from parents at other times. We had a student with a severe peanut allergy and the school sent a letter home asking parents to refrain from sending peanut based foods and snacks to school with their children. The letter was more on the lines of a command than a request and had been endorsed by the School Board. Compliance was not optional. Some parents vociferously objected, saying they couldn’t understand why their children had to go without peanut based items because of one child’s allergies. They wanted to know why the child with the defect couldn’t eat their lunch alone in an isolated location so the rest of the children could enjoy the lunch they wanted.

This attitude bothered me, a lot. How dare one parent refer to another parent’s child as defective? The parent making the heartless comment would be deeply offended if someone referred to their child in those terms.

Why, when asked, is doing something to help ensure the safety of a student at their child’s school considered to be such an onerous task. I love peanuts, peanut butter, and peanut based snacks as much as anyone and probably more than most, but I would gladly give them all up to keep one of my students safe, just like I stopped taking pictures to prevent causing an issue for that one student at the concert.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Extortion and Diversion as Government Policy

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Extortion - The obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.

(http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Extortion)

While the Federal Government has, throughout the existence of the United States, predating even the Constitution, occasionally provided funding and direction for public schools, most often in terms of land grants for universities and colleges, until the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 it had not interfered all that much with education below the collegiate/vocational school level. The ESEA of 1965 held as its basic tenant that students from low-income homes needed more educational services than children from affluent homes.

(http://www.socialwelfarehistory.com/programs/education/elementary-and-secondary-education-act-of-1965/)

As with most of President Johnson’s rosy predictions about his Great Society, his prediction of the ESEA as a road out of poverty for millions of children from low-income families soon proved woefully inaccurate. Studies in the years following implementation of the Act showed the school improvements made with the funding had only moderate impact on those students’ scholastic achievement.

No one who understood the real impetus behind the ESEA of 1965 was surprised by the results. The Act was not as much about education as it was about political strategy to appease members of the civil rights community and influential members of the Democrat Party. Providing funds to improve education for poor children was a guaranteed way to attract support from those constituencies.

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of the ESEA of 1965 was the paradigm shift in how the federal government viewed its role in public education. Instead of providing general aid to all levels of public education, the Act provided a vehicle for increasing aid to certain sectors and withholding it from others based on the political winds of the day. It was this Act, more than any other federal legislation that led to the situation we find ourselves in today, where who gets to use which bathroom has risen to a question of such importance that the federal government is willing to extort compliance out of school systems in states that disagree with the federal directive to allow students of either gender to use the bathroom, locker room, or shower of their choice based on which gender they feel most like that day.

This extortion comes in the form of a threat to withhold federal education funding from the public universities, colleges, and public schools, thereby willfully endangering the education and future of all students for the sake of allowing a few, a very few, to potty where they please.

Distraction - a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.

(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/)

Meanwhile, nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise in Europe, a Muslim ‘invasion’ of Europe that may have been in the planning stages since the days of Saladin seems to be underway, militant Islam is spreading its Cult of Death further around the world, China is growing bolder and more militant, and a resurgent Russia led by a egomaniacal megalomaniac rivalled only by our own Donald Trump is playing dangerous military games with our Navy and threatening war if we continue to build a missile shield against Iran and other Middle Eastern ballistic threats.

And people wonder why our children have a hard time understanding what is truly important.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Monday Morning Counting Down

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Counting today we have only three Mondays left in the school year, thanks to Memorial Day on May 30^th. Teachers are trying to get last minute projects, papers, tests, and other assignments turned in, graded, and into the grade book before End-of-Grade testing starts next week.

Students are scrambling to get those same projects, papers, and other assignments finished and turned in. My home room students begged me to give them time to get their Math binders in shape this morning. The binders are due today. Mind you, if they had kept their binders in order all throughout the quarter turning it in would be a simple matter of bringing it to class and giving it to their Math teacher. Naturally, most of the students’ binders are a chaotic mix of notes, quizzes, tests, homework, and assignments stuffed into the binder in no particular order.

Employing my experience and wisdom gained through nearly a decade and a half of teaching middle school children, I have decided that letting them work openly to do what they could in this last hour before their Math class would save me a lot of aggravation. Were I to try and teach something new or review something old in science this morning I would be faced with a room full of students trying to completely their Math binders on the sly.

Better to let them have this time to help each other get their binders ready. It builds good will with the students, improves their opinion of teachers in general, and will aid my colleague whose unenviable task it will be to grade these binders by the end of the week.

As for the science lesson for today, it was going to be on Newton’s Second Law. Newton’s Laws have been around for centuries. It can wait one more day for these kids to learn it.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Obama Wades Into The Potty Issue

courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public Domain

The news today reported that President Obama is poised to issue a sweeping order demanding all public schools, from coast-to-coast and from pre-K to college, allow transgender, and those who claim to be transgender, to use the restroom appropriate to the gender with which they identify.

Naturally this has caused a huge kerfuffle across the political and idealistic spectrum. The liberal left is, for the most part, much in favor of the order. The conservative right, by-and-large, are appalled by the order. I don’t think those reactions surprised anyone.

After we watched the in-class news program this morning I asked my students if they had heard about the impending announcement from the White House. The level of the students’ disgust at the idea was enlightening. Not a single one was in favor of the law, and more than one, most notably among the female students, were vehemently opposed to the idea that a boy could claim to feel like he was really a girl and use the girls’ restroom.

My students were having a hard time understanding why President Obama and other left wing politicians are so much more concerned with the feelings of the transgendered than they are with the feelings of the traditionally gendered. One young lady told me that when this new rule goes into effect she guessed she would just have to quit using the bathroom at school. Several of the other young ladies in my class agreed with her. More than a few of the young ladies indicated that any boy who went in the girls’ bathroom would be made to feel very unwelcome.

I cautioned the students to be very careful about what they might say and do should this new rule be instituted.  It would be very easy for them to wind up with a write up for bullying if they made a transgender person feel threatened for using the bathroom they mentally and emotionally felt appropriate, even if the equipment they were born with indicated otherwise. I explained as best I could why truly transgendered individuals don’t choose to feel the way they do; it is in their genes.

Interestingly enough, not one of the young men in the class voiced any opposition to the idea of a girl to boy transgender student using the boys’ bathroom. Now I wonder why that was?

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Circulation Excitation

During my first class the other morning we were learning about the Circulatory System. This followed our study on Blood. While the students had seemed indifferent about what blood is made of, they seem excited to learn about how the heart works and how blood gets moved around the body.

courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public Domain

While the students asked many good questions, some of the questions had me shaking my head and trying hard not to laugh.

One student asked me if the blood vessels help hold our bodies together. He was looking at a drawing of the circulatory system in the text book and noticed how it looked like a net. I asked a few questions to determine how he’d come up with his question and was impressed with his thinking. He recalled from previous lesson on blood clotting how platelets underwent a chemical change to form fibrin and how the fibrin basically formed a net that captured other platelets and blood cells to form a clot to stem bleeding. He extrapolated from that knowledge the idea of the blood vessels acting as a net to hold the body together.

We decided after discussing his idea that it does seem as though the blood vessels could perform this function. However, I encouraged him to revisit his idea after we finished our study of the circulatory system.

Another student then asked, using an automobile metaphor, if our blood was more like motor oil than gasoline. He reasoned it was more like motor oil since it got pumped around our body like oil gets pumped around an engine over and over again where gas gets burned up and is gone. I’m still thinking about that one.

One of the best comments came from a young lady while we were discussing what happens to blood when it flows from the heart through the lungs and back. She likened the blood flowing to the heart as a car full of old fast food bags going to a drive up. The car stops at the trash receptacle to dump out the old used up paper bags and wrappers – the carbon dioxide - before pulling up to the drive up window to replenish with fresh food - oxygen.

It is classes like this, when the students start making their own connections and show a real understanding of the topic, that rekindle my excitement about teaching and, for a short time, I’m don’t feel quite so exhausted by my efforts to educate these kids.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

Sympathy Jeans

courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public  Domain

This morning two of my students wanted to vent about another teacher on my team. I told them how inappropriate it was for them to complain to one teacher about another, and that I would not be able to comment on or sympathize with them about their complaint.

The students said they understood why I couldn’t comment on the situation they wanted to tell me about, but said they appreciated being able to vent about it to someone. One of the students, a young man, then pouted and said he sure wished I could sympathize with them.

I joking told him my sympathy genes had been taken away when I became a teacher because keeping them would have caused me too many heartbreaks. The student laughed and asked me if that was why I always wore khakis, because the school had taken away my sympathy jeans.

After such a start to this Early Dismissal/Early Dismal Day – yes, another one – things seemed to be going well until it was time to watch the in class news program on the television monitor. I checked to see that the students on the right side were paying attention to the news, and had turned my attention to the students on the left side of the room when a ruckus broke out on the right side. Where only a second before peace had reigned, two of my male students were suddenly involved in a knock-down, drag-out, punches-thrown, blood-spilled brawl.

Rushing to the scene I quickly separated the two, aggravating my arthritic hip in the process, though I didn’t realize that until after the adrenalin wore off a little later. I immediately called for the Assistant Principal to take care of the two boys and the Custodian to take care of the spilled blood. Then I asked the two boys what in the world they were fighting over.

What I learned when I asked was hard to take. The two of them were fighting about who could beat who in a fight. These are two of the last boys I would expect to see get in this kind of trouble. Both are reasonably well behaved for their age, have caused no issues before, and are, or were, friends.

I have a feeling the question of who would win in a fight was brought up by one of the young ladies in class who was enjoying the attention of both boys. Since each claimed they would win in a fight between them, I guess the one boy chose the moment the in class news program started to prove it would be him. It turned out to be neither. Now they both get to stay home for five days and have this on their previously clean records. Since I wasn’t wearing my sympathy jeans, I don’t feel all that sorry for them.

With only 8 days until the End-of-Grade Tests, and only 19 days until school ends, it is sad they had to go and choose now to lose control. I’m just glad, as big as one of those boys are, that I didn’t get hurt other than a little tenderness in my hip when I stopped the fight.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator

When Your Students Are A Couple

Photo (c)2016 DW Davis

Do you like my little helper? He’s a cute little guy, isn’t he? His belt with the big buckle is a wrist watch.

This little panda bear doll belongs to one of the boys in my third period class. It was given to him by one of the girls in my third period class. The boy has carried it around with him all day, every day, since she gave it to him.

The two students are “dating.” I don’t know how much actual going out on dates they do, but they are a couple according to middle school etiquette about such things. Both are well-behaved youngsters, get good grades, and refrain from public displays of affection – as far as I know – while they are at school.

Now and then I will bring the little panda up to the front of the room and let him sit on the table. Today I thought it would be fun to set him up at my laplet and let him watch the Pandacam at the National Zoo. That is where the young lady bought the stuffed panda for the young man.

The rest of my students get a big kick out of the way I treat the panda as though it were real, small but real. When they ask me why, I tell them I am doing grandpa practice so when I have a real grandchild I’ll already know how to act. When I say that one or two of them volunteer to be my grandchildren.

Sadly, some of my students are already being raised by their grandparents because their parents are too wrapped up in living their own lives, too strung out on drugs, or worse, in jail, and cannot be a mother or father to them. The pressure on us as teachers to fill the void can be daunting. The important thing is to let them know we care.

I think I do that in one small way by showing care for the little panda bear. Perhaps in the students’ minds they think that if I can care about a silly little stuffed bear, how much more I must care about them.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted educator

And This Day Just Goes On

The time f I n a l l y came for the students who were to take part in SLIME TIME to go out to the Soccer Field for that event. It was supposed to start at 10:30am but the seventh grade students were not called to go until nearly 11:00am. Naturally the delay meant 30 minutes of being able to get nothing done at all in class because I expected the call would come the minute I tried to start any teaching.

Following the call for the students participating in SLIME TIME I was left with only a handful of students. My joy was short lived though. Within moments of my participating students leaving, the non-participating students from my colleague’s classroom came over. My colleague had been tasked with chaperoning SLIME TIME.

I was thus challenged with keeping 20 students engaged and learning, while their classmates were outside enjoying this beautiful day, for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Enhancing my challenge, the non-participating students were, for the most part, the behaviorally challenged students. They felt they should not have to do any work while their peers weren’t. I cannot say I disagree.

My first attempt was an educational science video review of Scientific Investigation, the Scientific Method, and several other concepts we’ve covered this semester. Included with the instructional part of the video were a story of the Ice Man of the Alps, a murder investigation from the 1800s, and the Wright Brothers process for inventing the first airplane. This video did well to get us through until we were called to lunch at noon.

After lunch it was a different story. On the plus side, 2 students had signed out and gone home. On the minus side, the students left with me didn’t want to watch any more of the video.

Now, Bill Nye the Science Guy had always been a hit with the students and we did study Genetics this semester, so I thought a Bill Nye video on Genetics might hold their interest. It did, for about 10 minutes. I fear it wasn’t interesting enough to keep these students from getting restless.

Cartoons have always worked well to edutain the students. The Magic School Bus never lets me down. But even the Magic School Bus had a hard time holding the students interest today. I will be so glad to get back to our regular schedule tomorrow.

As always, I remain,

The Exhausted Educator