Thursday, August 31, 2006
You Can't Fire Me!
Today marks a strange moment of transition in the life of the Invisible Ben. As of the close of business today, August 31, I will no longer be employed as a teacher at Underwood High School. My resignation paperwork will go through and there will be no more paychecks, no more benefits, and no more health insurance. Until tomorrow when my graduate student insurance kicks in.
I'll be out of the school system's hair for good and will probably have to alter the subtitle on this blog because I will no longer be an "educator" per se...just another one of the throngs being "educated." (Assuming graduate school doesn't chew me up and spit me out...)
Ordinarily, I would consider writing a more lengthy reflection on this semi-momentous occasion, but instead all I am reminded of is the fact that I'm moving on Saturday and have only just now finished packing all my books, DVDs, and CDs. The list of things I have yet to pack is much longer and includes things like clothes, kitchenware, and the ever popular office supplies. The goal is to get through packing these things today.
It's a big goal and it won't be solved by blogging. So I'd best get to it.
Tally-ho...and all that.
Today marks a strange moment of transition in the life of the Invisible Ben. As of the close of business today, August 31, I will no longer be employed as a teacher at Underwood High School. My resignation paperwork will go through and there will be no more paychecks, no more benefits, and no more health insurance. Until tomorrow when my graduate student insurance kicks in.
I'll be out of the school system's hair for good and will probably have to alter the subtitle on this blog because I will no longer be an "educator" per se...just another one of the throngs being "educated." (Assuming graduate school doesn't chew me up and spit me out...)
Ordinarily, I would consider writing a more lengthy reflection on this semi-momentous occasion, but instead all I am reminded of is the fact that I'm moving on Saturday and have only just now finished packing all my books, DVDs, and CDs. The list of things I have yet to pack is much longer and includes things like clothes, kitchenware, and the ever popular office supplies. The goal is to get through packing these things today.
It's a big goal and it won't be solved by blogging. So I'd best get to it.
Tally-ho...and all that.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
A Planetary Eulogy (or My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us...Nachos. And nothing else.)
Composed upon hearing the news today from Prague:
Some folks will surely joke and laugh
At Pluto's having got the shaft.
But music buffs must find it neat.
That now Holst's "Planets" is complete.
Composed upon hearing the news today from Prague:
Some folks will surely joke and laugh
At Pluto's having got the shaft.
But music buffs must find it neat.
That now Holst's "Planets" is complete.
Why I Could Never Be a Green Bay Fan
I hate packing. The process of boxing things up, throwing things out, and moving things around is among my least favorite chores. Unfortunately, it has also become a highly necessary one because in approximately a week I will be leaving the Invisible Penthouse, piling my stuff into my car, and driving up the highway an hour or so to Old Ivy University...my new home.
My new accommodations, though nice enough, will not be quite as palatial. I will be renting a room in a professor's house within walking distance of campus. There will be several other people living there as well, mostly fellow graduate students, and I will be sharing a kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room with them. All in all, it's an excellent deal. The rent is low, the people seem friendly, and I figure that the house's lack of air conditioning can probably be worked around. Plus, my room already comes furnished with a bed, desk, chest of drawers, and a bookshelf, which means that I can hopefully avoid renting a large truck to haul furniture and make multiple trips by car instead.
Despite this however, I am definitely going to be dealing with a decrease in available space, which means I need to winnow through my possessions and decide what items to keep and which to leave behind, dispose of, or sell. Sometimes, the decision is easy. I do not think I'll particularly miss my old cooler, purchased three years ago to haul dry ice to and from school. Or the hundreds of file folders I've collected over the years. Or several months of back issues of Time Magazine. Not to mention the monitor which has been collecting dust on the top shelf of my closet for over a year and a half. But what about the books?
There are few things more difficult for a bibliophile then clearing his bookshelves for a move. I can only take consolation that at least for a few, the choice is relatively obvious. Some of them I have passed on to other teachers who can use them more effectively than I will once I start graduate school. Other volumes are bulky hardcover editions obtained at libraries or other book sales which could easily be replaced on the shelves by a space-saving paperback. And a few books I may have loved as a teenager and simply held on to due to sentimentality...not because they are likely to be reread anytime in the near future.
But as challenging as the selection process may be, it is eventually completed. Then the question is how to dispose of the all the detritus of my past life, books and all, before I move. My girlfriend and I are holding a tag sale on Saturday where we will both put items from our lives up on the chopping block. (She just moved into a smaller place and found herself with an overabundance of furniture.) But if, after that, some things remain unsold then I'm not sure of the next move.
The books, ironically enough, will be the easiest to dispose of, despite being the hardest to winnow through. The library down the road will certainly be glad to take them off my hands as part of their used book sale. But the other stuff...that may be trickier. Some items may end up in the trash like the aforementioned cooler, which after an incident involving universal indicator still has an interior that smells like fermented cabbage juice. Others, like my bookshelves, will probably go on sale again through the magic of my apartment building's bulletin board.
Of course to get to that point, I need to make sure by apartment is vaguely presentable to outsiders and that means cleaning up all the scattered school materials, memorabilia, and so forth that litter my floor, desk, table...everything. I've filled up 5 trash bags so far with stuff to throw away...and there will likely be more. So much to shed, to cast off, to throw away.
I feel like a reptile shedding its skin. When I owned a pet lizard, he used to molt every few months and the dead skin would lie on the floor of his terrarium as he lounged on his heat rock or snacked on crickets. I wondered at times if it hurt to pull off one's entire skin, to change in effect, one's entire self. He didn't seem to care. He just ate his dead skin and moved on. I suppose I'll have to do something similar as I transition out of teaching and into being a student again. The self-changing part I mean...not so much with the consumption of dead skin.
But for now, that means more of my "favorite" task... packing!
Let the good times roll.
I hate packing. The process of boxing things up, throwing things out, and moving things around is among my least favorite chores. Unfortunately, it has also become a highly necessary one because in approximately a week I will be leaving the Invisible Penthouse, piling my stuff into my car, and driving up the highway an hour or so to Old Ivy University...my new home.
My new accommodations, though nice enough, will not be quite as palatial. I will be renting a room in a professor's house within walking distance of campus. There will be several other people living there as well, mostly fellow graduate students, and I will be sharing a kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room with them. All in all, it's an excellent deal. The rent is low, the people seem friendly, and I figure that the house's lack of air conditioning can probably be worked around. Plus, my room already comes furnished with a bed, desk, chest of drawers, and a bookshelf, which means that I can hopefully avoid renting a large truck to haul furniture and make multiple trips by car instead.
Despite this however, I am definitely going to be dealing with a decrease in available space, which means I need to winnow through my possessions and decide what items to keep and which to leave behind, dispose of, or sell. Sometimes, the decision is easy. I do not think I'll particularly miss my old cooler, purchased three years ago to haul dry ice to and from school. Or the hundreds of file folders I've collected over the years. Or several months of back issues of Time Magazine. Not to mention the monitor which has been collecting dust on the top shelf of my closet for over a year and a half. But what about the books?
There are few things more difficult for a bibliophile then clearing his bookshelves for a move. I can only take consolation that at least for a few, the choice is relatively obvious. Some of them I have passed on to other teachers who can use them more effectively than I will once I start graduate school. Other volumes are bulky hardcover editions obtained at libraries or other book sales which could easily be replaced on the shelves by a space-saving paperback. And a few books I may have loved as a teenager and simply held on to due to sentimentality...not because they are likely to be reread anytime in the near future.
But as challenging as the selection process may be, it is eventually completed. Then the question is how to dispose of the all the detritus of my past life, books and all, before I move. My girlfriend and I are holding a tag sale on Saturday where we will both put items from our lives up on the chopping block. (She just moved into a smaller place and found herself with an overabundance of furniture.) But if, after that, some things remain unsold then I'm not sure of the next move.
The books, ironically enough, will be the easiest to dispose of, despite being the hardest to winnow through. The library down the road will certainly be glad to take them off my hands as part of their used book sale. But the other stuff...that may be trickier. Some items may end up in the trash like the aforementioned cooler, which after an incident involving universal indicator still has an interior that smells like fermented cabbage juice. Others, like my bookshelves, will probably go on sale again through the magic of my apartment building's bulletin board.
Of course to get to that point, I need to make sure by apartment is vaguely presentable to outsiders and that means cleaning up all the scattered school materials, memorabilia, and so forth that litter my floor, desk, table...everything. I've filled up 5 trash bags so far with stuff to throw away...and there will likely be more. So much to shed, to cast off, to throw away.
I feel like a reptile shedding its skin. When I owned a pet lizard, he used to molt every few months and the dead skin would lie on the floor of his terrarium as he lounged on his heat rock or snacked on crickets. I wondered at times if it hurt to pull off one's entire skin, to change in effect, one's entire self. He didn't seem to care. He just ate his dead skin and moved on. I suppose I'll have to do something similar as I transition out of teaching and into being a student again. The self-changing part I mean...not so much with the consumption of dead skin.
But for now, that means more of my "favorite" task... packing!
Let the good times roll.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Liar, Liar...House on Fire?
So there's been a slight delay in the blogging of late. Part of this was due to my own busy schedule, consisting primarily of watching DVD's (Hooray for finishing 4 seasons of 24! Hooray for finishing 1 season of The Office!), studying French for my graduate program, and a steady diet of cheese fries paid for by my pub trivia habit. Part of it was due to family events; my cousin got married and the Invisible Family finally got to meet my wonderful (Invisible?) girlfriend! And I got to travel with said girlfriend down to the beach to experience the wonder of the Jersey shore. (Hooray for frozen custard! And fried Oreos! And sand flies! Ok...maybe not sand flies.)
And part of it was because my building was burning down.
Now before you ask, I am not joking. And no, I did not CAUSE the fire in question. In fact, when it started last Thursday, I was hoping to enjoy a quiet evening at home watching quality network programming on television. I was chatting on the phone with the girlfriend when I heard what sounded like a car alarm from the parking lot below my balcony. Strangely enough though, when I peered out on to the balcony to determine which car was causing the racket, the noise actually got quieter.
So it WASN'T a car alarm. That explains why it was going for a good ten minutes without stopping. But what else would make a steady, high-pitched beeping noise in the building? Some sort of klaxon or...?
Oh hell.
I went to the door and discovered that the fire alarm had gone off. What's more, a few people were knocking on doors down the hall to let them know that this was not a malfunction or a drill. There was a fire on the fifth floor. I went inside, said goodbye to my girlfriend and grabbed my wallet, cellphone, keys, and a yo-yo. (My girlfriend mocked me for the last choice, but honestly, I figured I'd be standing around outside of my apartment for a while. May as well practice the new trick I'd been working on since replacing my wornout string at the shore!) Then it was off to the stairs, descending the 17 flights or so to the ground floor. Around the 5th, you could start to smell smoke, and it just got stronger as I moved closer to the lobby.
I wish I had the foresight to have brought a camera to document the madness outside. After being corralled outside and dodging the firemen running into the buiding, I shuffled towards the garage to see if it might be possible to get to my car. Unfortunately, even if I could get in, approximately a dozen emergency vehicles had blocked off the road. Completely blocked it. A city bus had been stopped from completing its normal route because of this! The fire itself was visible from the ground floor, but considering it was only on the second floor, it doesn't seem quite as impressive. Still, the flames were pouring out the window and licking their way up to the third floor. A helicopter circled the building with a spotlight casting the pillar of smoke rising from the blaze in a stark white light. Police pushed us back further as the fumes filled the air and made breathing more difficult. I called my family just to let them know that everything was ok, except for my building being on fire. Then a quick call to my girlfriend indicating the same.
And I figured that would be that. My girlfriend had indicated that she would be willing to pick me up if I needed a place to stay what with my apartment playing host to what seemed like the entire city emergency response team. I figured that even if I wanted to take that option, the roads were not exactly accessible what with the ambulances and fire trucks jamming up major access routes. I told her I'd call back. And a few times, I tried...but I somehow always seemed to get voicemail.
I wandered around to the back of the building and ran into a neighbor who happened to be a fellow teacher at Underwood. We stood there watching the smoke and chatting until suddenly, to our surprise, the alarm stopped beeping. The fire must have been extinguished! And just when I thought to start walking back to the front to check out the scene, who do I see coming from the direction of the garage? Yes, despite our apparent communication failure and the trouble accessing the apartment's parking lot, my girlfriend had taken it upon herself to rescue me from an evening of damage control and secondhand smoke. (Hooray for my girlfriend!)
So everything ended up well in the end. After crashing at my girlfriend's new apartment (now with working air conditioning!), I returned home the subsequent morning to find a faint aroma of smoke filling the room and my desk lamp still on from the night before. It appears the property damage was restricted to the second and third floors, where boards are still up over the window frames since the firemen had to smash the glass to get inside. There are air purifiers in the lobby and it still smells smoky in the stairwells. But otherwise, things were ok. Which is good, because it would be a shame if my apartment went up in smoke mere weeks before I pack everything up to go to graduate school.
More on that score later.
So there's been a slight delay in the blogging of late. Part of this was due to my own busy schedule, consisting primarily of watching DVD's (Hooray for finishing 4 seasons of 24! Hooray for finishing 1 season of The Office!), studying French for my graduate program, and a steady diet of cheese fries paid for by my pub trivia habit. Part of it was due to family events; my cousin got married and the Invisible Family finally got to meet my wonderful (Invisible?) girlfriend! And I got to travel with said girlfriend down to the beach to experience the wonder of the Jersey shore. (Hooray for frozen custard! And fried Oreos! And sand flies! Ok...maybe not sand flies.)
And part of it was because my building was burning down.
Now before you ask, I am not joking. And no, I did not CAUSE the fire in question. In fact, when it started last Thursday, I was hoping to enjoy a quiet evening at home watching quality network programming on television. I was chatting on the phone with the girlfriend when I heard what sounded like a car alarm from the parking lot below my balcony. Strangely enough though, when I peered out on to the balcony to determine which car was causing the racket, the noise actually got quieter.
So it WASN'T a car alarm. That explains why it was going for a good ten minutes without stopping. But what else would make a steady, high-pitched beeping noise in the building? Some sort of klaxon or...?
Oh hell.
I went to the door and discovered that the fire alarm had gone off. What's more, a few people were knocking on doors down the hall to let them know that this was not a malfunction or a drill. There was a fire on the fifth floor. I went inside, said goodbye to my girlfriend and grabbed my wallet, cellphone, keys, and a yo-yo. (My girlfriend mocked me for the last choice, but honestly, I figured I'd be standing around outside of my apartment for a while. May as well practice the new trick I'd been working on since replacing my wornout string at the shore!) Then it was off to the stairs, descending the 17 flights or so to the ground floor. Around the 5th, you could start to smell smoke, and it just got stronger as I moved closer to the lobby.
I wish I had the foresight to have brought a camera to document the madness outside. After being corralled outside and dodging the firemen running into the buiding, I shuffled towards the garage to see if it might be possible to get to my car. Unfortunately, even if I could get in, approximately a dozen emergency vehicles had blocked off the road. Completely blocked it. A city bus had been stopped from completing its normal route because of this! The fire itself was visible from the ground floor, but considering it was only on the second floor, it doesn't seem quite as impressive. Still, the flames were pouring out the window and licking their way up to the third floor. A helicopter circled the building with a spotlight casting the pillar of smoke rising from the blaze in a stark white light. Police pushed us back further as the fumes filled the air and made breathing more difficult. I called my family just to let them know that everything was ok, except for my building being on fire. Then a quick call to my girlfriend indicating the same.
And I figured that would be that. My girlfriend had indicated that she would be willing to pick me up if I needed a place to stay what with my apartment playing host to what seemed like the entire city emergency response team. I figured that even if I wanted to take that option, the roads were not exactly accessible what with the ambulances and fire trucks jamming up major access routes. I told her I'd call back. And a few times, I tried...but I somehow always seemed to get voicemail.
I wandered around to the back of the building and ran into a neighbor who happened to be a fellow teacher at Underwood. We stood there watching the smoke and chatting until suddenly, to our surprise, the alarm stopped beeping. The fire must have been extinguished! And just when I thought to start walking back to the front to check out the scene, who do I see coming from the direction of the garage? Yes, despite our apparent communication failure and the trouble accessing the apartment's parking lot, my girlfriend had taken it upon herself to rescue me from an evening of damage control and secondhand smoke. (Hooray for my girlfriend!)
So everything ended up well in the end. After crashing at my girlfriend's new apartment (now with working air conditioning!), I returned home the subsequent morning to find a faint aroma of smoke filling the room and my desk lamp still on from the night before. It appears the property damage was restricted to the second and third floors, where boards are still up over the window frames since the firemen had to smash the glass to get inside. There are air purifiers in the lobby and it still smells smoky in the stairwells. But otherwise, things were ok. Which is good, because it would be a shame if my apartment went up in smoke mere weeks before I pack everything up to go to graduate school.
More on that score later.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
From the Unblogged Files of the Invisible Ben: Day #4 (Favorite Subjects)
Longtime readers would probably not be surprised at my assertion that the typical Underwood High School student does not possess a particular fondness for the realm of academia. However, this should not imply that students did not possess any preferences so far as their favorite classes or teachers. Nowhere was this more evident than among the school's honors students. The honors program at Underwood is rather tightknit, consisting almost entirely of teachers located on the northern side of the third floor. The program's director, one of my favorite people at Underwood, has a piece of prime classroom real estate smack dab in the middle of the hallway, perfect for the countless occasions where she is called upon to abandon the menial paperwork that keeps her academy running to regulate traffic.
Right next to her door, the honors program posts the names and pictures of each grade's "Students of the Month". Each student also has the chance to tell something about themselves including where they want to go to college, their hobbies, and their favorite teachers and subjects. The student profiles are shifted to the side with each month, so that by the end of the year there were 54 different students pictured. (2 for each grade per month for 9 months) Now around halfway through the year, I had an opportunity to have my last period class covered. (Given how miserable that class behaved in general, I appreciated the break!) And as I wondered toward my chemistry class on the third floor I noticed the decided to take notes of the subjects that the honors kids to that point had marked as their favorite. I wrote the tally on the back of a worksheet on electrochemical cells.
The results are as follows:
Social Science/Law: 3
English: 6
French: 1
Mathematics: 7
History: 8
Technology: 1
Journalism: 1
Music: 1
All Subjects: 1
Quick thoughts:
Longtime readers would probably not be surprised at my assertion that the typical Underwood High School student does not possess a particular fondness for the realm of academia. However, this should not imply that students did not possess any preferences so far as their favorite classes or teachers. Nowhere was this more evident than among the school's honors students. The honors program at Underwood is rather tightknit, consisting almost entirely of teachers located on the northern side of the third floor. The program's director, one of my favorite people at Underwood, has a piece of prime classroom real estate smack dab in the middle of the hallway, perfect for the countless occasions where she is called upon to abandon the menial paperwork that keeps her academy running to regulate traffic.
Right next to her door, the honors program posts the names and pictures of each grade's "Students of the Month". Each student also has the chance to tell something about themselves including where they want to go to college, their hobbies, and their favorite teachers and subjects. The student profiles are shifted to the side with each month, so that by the end of the year there were 54 different students pictured. (2 for each grade per month for 9 months) Now around halfway through the year, I had an opportunity to have my last period class covered. (Given how miserable that class behaved in general, I appreciated the break!) And as I wondered toward my chemistry class on the third floor I noticed the decided to take notes of the subjects that the honors kids to that point had marked as their favorite. I wrote the tally on the back of a worksheet on electrochemical cells.
The results are as follows:
Social Science/Law: 3
English: 6
French: 1
Mathematics: 7
History: 8
Technology: 1
Journalism: 1
Music: 1
All Subjects: 1
Quick thoughts:
- The history major part of me is thrilled to see that the study of history seems to be the most popular!
- And math isn't far behind? That's even better! Given the difficulties our students face in mathematics (as reflected in our test scores), I'm glad to see that our honors kids seem to like them.
- A few subjects are electives and therefore probably can and should not be judged the same way as fewer students have the opportunity to take, for example, journalism or music than English or Math.
- Not ONE student chose a science as their favorite class. Admittedly, one marked down biology as his second favorite. But this is just a shame, and not because they didn't pick me specifically as a favorite teacher when I marked down this list. What worries me is that not one student had an inspirational or enjoyable science class, whether in physical science, chemistry, or physics. The hard sciences, for some reason, are not proving appealing to Underwood students. My theory is that in contrast to English or history, these subjects require more than the acquisition of vocabulary and can be more difficult to connect to everyday experience. In addition, unlike the typical high school mathematics curriculum, where new terminology is subordinate to problem solving, in science the two go hand in hand...and the sheer amount of new material in any given unit can be overwhelming.
- These statistics are neither conclusive nor comprehensive. (After all, one of my students actually marked me as a favorite teacher in June. Not sure if chemistry was her favorite subject though...) Were I to consider this question again in the coming school year, I would compile the tally at the very end of the year instead of halfway. I also would not then take that tally and shove it a pile to be blogged before ignoring it for several months. Hindsight is 20-20, I guess.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
From the Unblogged Files of the Invisible Ben: Day #3 (Heated Violence)
Let the record reflect that it has been incredibly hot for the past two days and the weather shows no sign of breaking. They say on the news that the night time low tonight may be the highest on record...82 degrees. At night! Now that's hot, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyhow, because of the weather, the introduction to today's unblogged document will be relatively short. I don't know who wrote this. It is entirely possible they did not even write it in my class. But based on the heading the author appears to have been in my second period physical science class. This unknown freshman appears not to have finished his writing as his last sentence ends with a distinct comma, one of the few punctuation marks on the manuscript. The subject matter speaks for itself, so I won't comment upon it further besides saying that I hope this is not what my students are doing on these hot and hazy remaining days of summer.
2 period
Catch me on
Sombody goin die tonight
Ridin wit my crew yall
30 niggaz mask up
hopping out uhaul's
Running in your mommy crib
Taking everbody out
Couple minutes later
Cops Bringing body out
I dain't talking about handcuffs
talk about body body bag
This is what happen to the last Bull
That got me mad.
In DA street, niggas shady
gotta watch who you hang wit
Heard you gettin money now
Niggas get you bang quick
Yeah, I can switch it up
Nigga tryin copy me
Fresh forces on my feet
Jeans State Property,
Let the record reflect that it has been incredibly hot for the past two days and the weather shows no sign of breaking. They say on the news that the night time low tonight may be the highest on record...82 degrees. At night! Now that's hot, ladies and gentlemen.
Anyhow, because of the weather, the introduction to today's unblogged document will be relatively short. I don't know who wrote this. It is entirely possible they did not even write it in my class. But based on the heading the author appears to have been in my second period physical science class. This unknown freshman appears not to have finished his writing as his last sentence ends with a distinct comma, one of the few punctuation marks on the manuscript. The subject matter speaks for itself, so I won't comment upon it further besides saying that I hope this is not what my students are doing on these hot and hazy remaining days of summer.
2 period
Catch me on
Sombody goin die tonight
Ridin wit my crew yall
30 niggaz mask up
hopping out uhaul's
Running in your mommy crib
Taking everbody out
Couple minutes later
Cops Bringing body out
I dain't talking about handcuffs
talk about body body bag
This is what happen to the last Bull
That got me mad.
In DA street, niggas shady
gotta watch who you hang wit
Heard you gettin money now
Niggas get you bang quick
Yeah, I can switch it up
Nigga tryin copy me
Fresh forces on my feet
Jeans State Property,
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
From the Unblogged Files of the Invisible Ben: Day #2 (Divine Guidance)
As mentioned in my previous post, summer vacation is a time for administrators and teachers to reflect upon changes that will take place in the coming school year. With August officially upon them, the administrative team at Underwood is almost certainly weighing some vital changes to the school's faculty and staff. Since the partial adoption of site selection, a joint administration-teacher committee must approve new appointees following an interview. All well and good, but consider the sheer number of staff vacancies they need to fill. The following is only a partial list but based on the end of year retirement dinner and staff buffet, Underwood will need to find at least:
Along with the vacancies listed above, there were a few personnel shuffles at the end of the year. One of our chief disciplinarians has been demoted to the role of noon time aide (NTA for short). There had been complaints that he played favorites with students, ignored certain violations of the rules, and had generally been ineffective. He is a proud man and I'm not sure the demotion was justified, but there it is. I'm not sure how many noon time aides will be back next year. They fill a strange niche in the school hierarchy as a third party, beyond the administrators and teaching staff, off of whom students might play. Some interact with the students as though they were members of their own family. Some act like friends. Some just ignore them and try to get some reading done. In any case, they are typically less than effective at curtailing hallwalking or other violations of school rules, but at least there's an adult there to call for help if things get seriously out of hand.
The NTA's have hearts in the right place, I'll give them that. However, sometimes their tactics leave something to be desired. Consider the following document I found one NTA distributing to students in her hallway on the third floor near the beginning of the year. I've kept it on file since then in hopes of writing a more extensive discussion of the role of religion in the Underwood community. I may still pick that up later, but for now I'll simply say this. I like the idea of teaching our students to have a stronger sense of morality, and most of the "Commandments" below hold at least a nugget of value regardless of one's religious beliefs. That said, distributing religiously-themed literature in public schools during the regular school day strikes me as crossing the line. There are all sorts of guidance that authority figures in our schools should be providing to student, but.I really don't think "divine" is on the list.
In any event, read on and form your own opinions.
As mentioned in my previous post, summer vacation is a time for administrators and teachers to reflect upon changes that will take place in the coming school year. With August officially upon them, the administrative team at Underwood is almost certainly weighing some vital changes to the school's faculty and staff. Since the partial adoption of site selection, a joint administration-teacher committee must approve new appointees following an interview. All well and good, but consider the sheer number of staff vacancies they need to fill. The following is only a partial list but based on the end of year retirement dinner and staff buffet, Underwood will need to find at least:
- 3 English teachers
- 3 Math teachers
- 2 Science teachers
- 2 Special Education teachers
- 1 Art Teacher
- 1 Business teacher
- 1 Vice Principal
Along with the vacancies listed above, there were a few personnel shuffles at the end of the year. One of our chief disciplinarians has been demoted to the role of noon time aide (NTA for short). There had been complaints that he played favorites with students, ignored certain violations of the rules, and had generally been ineffective. He is a proud man and I'm not sure the demotion was justified, but there it is. I'm not sure how many noon time aides will be back next year. They fill a strange niche in the school hierarchy as a third party, beyond the administrators and teaching staff, off of whom students might play. Some interact with the students as though they were members of their own family. Some act like friends. Some just ignore them and try to get some reading done. In any case, they are typically less than effective at curtailing hallwalking or other violations of school rules, but at least there's an adult there to call for help if things get seriously out of hand.
The NTA's have hearts in the right place, I'll give them that. However, sometimes their tactics leave something to be desired. Consider the following document I found one NTA distributing to students in her hallway on the third floor near the beginning of the year. I've kept it on file since then in hopes of writing a more extensive discussion of the role of religion in the Underwood community. I may still pick that up later, but for now I'll simply say this. I like the idea of teaching our students to have a stronger sense of morality, and most of the "Commandments" below hold at least a nugget of value regardless of one's religious beliefs. That said, distributing religiously-themed literature in public schools during the regular school day strikes me as crossing the line. There are all sorts of guidance that authority figures in our schools should be providing to student, but.I really don't think "divine" is on the list.
In any event, read on and form your own opinions.
