- I could not turn in my homework because I was finishing it on the way to school and while passing a big truck it blew out the window.
- My dog ate the disk my homework was on.
- My lizard died and I just wasn't in the mood for thinking.
- I couldn't do my homework because it got dark inside and Mom didn't pay the powerbill.
- I took a nap afterschool and never woke up until this morning.
- "Mrs. GH, I have 5 brothers and we all play football. Do you know what our game schedule looks like?"
- You never told us we HAD to do it EVERY night.
- "I did my homework at my momma's boyfriend's house and forgot it there." Teacher to Johnny Banana, "Isn't your mom married to your dad?" Johnny's answer, "Uh-huh, but we see him when we get home." (Johnny was excused for that night's work)
- My right hand hurt so I tried to write it with my left and it didn't look good so I threw it away.
- My dad didn't do it for me last night like he said he would.
- I thought we were moving and I wouldn't be here today. (Remember people, I used to teach in da' hood and the population was quite transient.)
- Teacher to student, "You didn't get your reading log signed last night, Why?" Student to teacher, "I didn't think you'd want to see that I read my dad's Playboy?" (students was excused for that night)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Thursday Thirteen
Today is devoted to the 13 worst Homework excuses I have ever heard in my 8 years of teaching in the South Carolina Public School System. Have a chuckle or two at my former students' expense.
5 Things...
Before I can be tagged, I am copy/ pasting Jill's lists so I can be pro-active and go ahead and do mine before I get hit up for it ;)
5 Things happening in my life 10 years ago:
- junior at The College of Charleston
- dating Rob
- earning the name "Tic-Tac" (Blake couldn't say Nikki, remember?)
- living in a million-dollar estate (as the nanny)
- going to the beach at Folly or Sullivan's Island all the time!!!
5 things on my to-do list:
- check and see online if my package is in route to Fort Worth
- file the papers I graded yesterday to go home
- go online tolook for more WWII/ Civil Rights flipcharts
- graph the test data from my kids' scores today on the computer
- go to Blake's 6pm ballgame after leaving work at 6...can I make it??
5 snacks I enjoy:
- 100 calorie oreo pack
- celery and homemade ranch
- cold baby carrots
- fresh local strawberries
- honey mustard & onion pretzels
5 things I would do if I were a billionaire:
- pay off EVERYTHING!!
- buy a house in: downtown Charleston, Sully's Island, and on Lake Hartwell
- go ahead and pre-pay for my great-granchildren's college education
- TRAVEL!!! (Venice, Tuscany, Napa Valley, Africa...you name it!)
- VOLUNTEER when I FELT LIKE IT at a school wherever I lived.
5 bad habits:
- Blogging....is it really this addicting??
- used to be biting fingernails
- my sarcasm and overuse there of
- loving to shop
- leaving food in the fridge
5 places I have lived: (only 3)
- Fort Mill, SC
- Charleston, SC
- James Island, SC
5 jobs I've had:
- clerk at The Peach Stand
- short order cook at The Peach Stand
- pre-school teacher (OMG, hated it!!)
- 3rd grade teacher (2 years)
- 5th grade teacher (6+...)
Monday, April 28, 2008
Ten Things Tuesday...
Again Already...
- WARRANTIES!!! My Palm Treo that I gave myself for Christmas completely went on the friz last week....I mean, completely fried!!! Called Palm, spoke to several broken-English speaking Computer technotrons, and finally after being placed on hold and sent to the powers that be....all I have to do is send it to Palm and it's ALL COVERED!! Even if they have to replace the thing, YAHOO!!! My thumbs have been in withdrawal from texting my peeps this week=)
- Personal Days....I'm taking one today, when my husband's friends read this he'll find out too.
- Free Haircut at Aveda Institute this morning!! My favorite stylist graduated from the Charlotte Aveda school last December and I followed her to her very couture Charlotte salon....but every so often she needs models for her career days they hold each month back at Aveda=) Tadah, she needed me!!!
- My HD-DVR.....I have a lot of work to do this week in prep for E.O.G's, however, this weekend all of my shows will be right there waiting for me (Did anyone else just hear the tune to Richard Marx?)
- iTunes!!...how did we ever survive without this??? Where else can I find a Steve Tyrell 17-song album for $9.99.
- I found my shadowbox to put my Masters Flag, tickets, and pictures in for 60% off at Hobby Lobby this weekend. Now I just need to time to assemble.
- Jen, Jake, & the boys made it successfully from El Paso to Fort Thrill this weekend, PTL!
- Harris Teeter is now carrying Starbucks ground coffee on the coffee aisle, amen!!!
- Tornadoes touched down near our school yesterday and we were on lockdown in the hallway for an hour and 40 minutes. 100 minutes with 4th and 5th graders people!! Why am I thankful for that you ask??? For every minute that ticked by, we were safer one more moment and it was time that I spent in quiet prayer even thought I was surrounded by others. Thank you God!!!
- 25 more school days!!
Check out my friend X-Box Wife for her list of the blog-posse that celebrate each Tuesday our little lists of thanks.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Attitude by Charles Swindoll
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes." ~ C. Swindoll
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Cowboy Up!
**This was passed to me from a school board member in Rock Hill. He is a fellow blogger and snagged an interesting debate from a teacher blog in California. WOW, I love it!! Long, but so worthwhile as we look state testing time head-on!
http://ukiahcoachbrown.blogspot.com/2008/04/just-cowboy-up-and-get-to-work.html
Just "Cowboy up and get to work". I am often amazed at the ability of education pundits, those that haven't stepped one foot in the classroom, to constantly blame teachers for the problems of the educational system. While I fully admit that teachers could be doing more (God knows that I mentioned that we need to represent our profession better many times on this blog), I disdain the fact that society and the government constantly don't admit the other factors in the education of children; student apathy, parent apathy, little funding, and idiot testing, really matter.Take for instance Friends of Dave (blogroll), who is a fellow Ukiah blogger who made the common reference to "other jobs have less than favorable conditions so teachers should stop bitching" argument.
I think all too often in public education, we continue the same strategies year after year and we blame student apathy, parent apathy, too little funding or high-stakes testing for our failed teaching practices and educational strategies. If the goal of public education is to educate students, we can't stop trying simply because students or parents aren't making it easy. As I've said before, fireman don't ignore fires that are started by dumb decisions made by a homeowner. Police don't ignore calls from people who have made bad choices. Doctors don't stop treating fat people because they made bad diet and exercise choices.
First of all, California constantly makes the mistake of CHANGING teaching strategies that have worked in the past to satisfy.......well, someone who was bored I guess. You could hate "drill and kill" to death, but the memorization of multiplication tables sure worked a hell of a lot better than that "whole math" crap.Now for the "fireman, policeman, doctor" remark, which is often used when non-classroom related people decide to pop off about what's right for education. Last I remember, firemen, doctors, and police are all given the tools of the game to make learning work. No, I'm not talking about gimmicky learning programs or "one laptop per child" tools, I'm talking about schools that are palaces and not dirty, in disrepair, or straight out crumbling. I also don't remember doctors being told, "you don't get O2 today", cops being told, "you don't get bullets today", or firemen being told, "sorry, your allotment of water was used up this week". In many cases, a teacher is ill-equipped for the job, ill-supported for the job, and then told to preform. Donald Rumsfeld was basically fired for saying, "You go to war with the Army that you have, not the Army you want", but teachers are told that every day.And by the way, firemen are never blamed for starting the fire, policemen are never blamed for committing the crime, and doctors aren't blamed for people getting fat. Teachers are most certainly a target of blame for the lack of education of children, even though they have no control over a multitude of variables. Teachers still teach, firefighters fight fires, police control crime, and doctors treat patients, but only one of those is actually held accountable at the end of the day to entities that they have no control over; the other factors of a student's life. Firefighters aren't held accountable for the meth lab fire, they put it out. Police aren't held accountable for the domestic violence, they arrest the suspect. Doctors aren't held accountable for patients getting diabetes, they simply try and treat the condition. Yet teachers are somehow given lessor tools, more government oversight, less pay, and are supposed to be held to a greater accountability over things they have no control over?
The duty of public education is to educate. If our instructional strategies aren't working for large groups of our students, but other schools are having better success with the same students, we need to stop whining and making excuses and start looking to those successful schools for the answer. Schools aren't relieved of the responsibility to educating students simply because they're making it hard. Cowboy up and get to work.
Simply put, not nearly as easy to implement. I'm sure that the income of "successful schools" has plenty to do with it. Anyone that doesn't think that schools with money are more successful are in dreamland. Then add it Second Language Learners, increased Special Education populations, lack of money, sue-happy parents, towns with increased drug culture, lack of money, equipment from the 1990's, shoddy infrastructure, a district wide lack of vision or business sense, oh yea, and lack of funding. You say that California spends over half its budget on Education? Ok, when it walks into my classroom let me know. While your at it, let me know when you find a successful school that manages to operate through all these problems. I'll be glad to jump on board.In the meantime, until you make every effort to supply teachers with the tools needed to succeed, stop blaming them.
Oh yeah, while I'm making this blog post, I'm doing the following:
-updating my Moodle for the classes
-instant messaging with a student about an assigned book; Persepolis
-communicating with another student on Facebook about attending U.C. Irvine
-I also graded essays this evening.
Doctors, firemen, nor policemen take that kind of work home with them.Yee hah.
Posted by jimvining at 4:01 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Education News
http://ukiahcoachbrown.blogspot.com/2008/04/just-cowboy-up-and-get-to-work.html
Just "Cowboy up and get to work". I am often amazed at the ability of education pundits, those that haven't stepped one foot in the classroom, to constantly blame teachers for the problems of the educational system. While I fully admit that teachers could be doing more (God knows that I mentioned that we need to represent our profession better many times on this blog), I disdain the fact that society and the government constantly don't admit the other factors in the education of children; student apathy, parent apathy, little funding, and idiot testing, really matter.Take for instance Friends of Dave (blogroll), who is a fellow Ukiah blogger who made the common reference to "other jobs have less than favorable conditions so teachers should stop bitching" argument.
I think all too often in public education, we continue the same strategies year after year and we blame student apathy, parent apathy, too little funding or high-stakes testing for our failed teaching practices and educational strategies. If the goal of public education is to educate students, we can't stop trying simply because students or parents aren't making it easy. As I've said before, fireman don't ignore fires that are started by dumb decisions made by a homeowner. Police don't ignore calls from people who have made bad choices. Doctors don't stop treating fat people because they made bad diet and exercise choices.
First of all, California constantly makes the mistake of CHANGING teaching strategies that have worked in the past to satisfy.......well, someone who was bored I guess. You could hate "drill and kill" to death, but the memorization of multiplication tables sure worked a hell of a lot better than that "whole math" crap.Now for the "fireman, policeman, doctor" remark, which is often used when non-classroom related people decide to pop off about what's right for education. Last I remember, firemen, doctors, and police are all given the tools of the game to make learning work. No, I'm not talking about gimmicky learning programs or "one laptop per child" tools, I'm talking about schools that are palaces and not dirty, in disrepair, or straight out crumbling. I also don't remember doctors being told, "you don't get O2 today", cops being told, "you don't get bullets today", or firemen being told, "sorry, your allotment of water was used up this week". In many cases, a teacher is ill-equipped for the job, ill-supported for the job, and then told to preform. Donald Rumsfeld was basically fired for saying, "You go to war with the Army that you have, not the Army you want", but teachers are told that every day.And by the way, firemen are never blamed for starting the fire, policemen are never blamed for committing the crime, and doctors aren't blamed for people getting fat. Teachers are most certainly a target of blame for the lack of education of children, even though they have no control over a multitude of variables. Teachers still teach, firefighters fight fires, police control crime, and doctors treat patients, but only one of those is actually held accountable at the end of the day to entities that they have no control over; the other factors of a student's life. Firefighters aren't held accountable for the meth lab fire, they put it out. Police aren't held accountable for the domestic violence, they arrest the suspect. Doctors aren't held accountable for patients getting diabetes, they simply try and treat the condition. Yet teachers are somehow given lessor tools, more government oversight, less pay, and are supposed to be held to a greater accountability over things they have no control over?
The duty of public education is to educate. If our instructional strategies aren't working for large groups of our students, but other schools are having better success with the same students, we need to stop whining and making excuses and start looking to those successful schools for the answer. Schools aren't relieved of the responsibility to educating students simply because they're making it hard. Cowboy up and get to work.
Simply put, not nearly as easy to implement. I'm sure that the income of "successful schools" has plenty to do with it. Anyone that doesn't think that schools with money are more successful are in dreamland. Then add it Second Language Learners, increased Special Education populations, lack of money, sue-happy parents, towns with increased drug culture, lack of money, equipment from the 1990's, shoddy infrastructure, a district wide lack of vision or business sense, oh yea, and lack of funding. You say that California spends over half its budget on Education? Ok, when it walks into my classroom let me know. While your at it, let me know when you find a successful school that manages to operate through all these problems. I'll be glad to jump on board.In the meantime, until you make every effort to supply teachers with the tools needed to succeed, stop blaming them.
Oh yeah, while I'm making this blog post, I'm doing the following:
-updating my Moodle for the classes
-instant messaging with a student about an assigned book; Persepolis
-communicating with another student on Facebook about attending U.C. Irvine
-I also graded essays this evening.
Doctors, firemen, nor policemen take that kind of work home with them.Yee hah.
Posted by jimvining at 4:01 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Education News
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Funky Cockatoo
I get the funniest things e-mailed to me, and when my office quiets down I usually get a belly laugh out of all of them. Thank Mother for this one!!
She won!!!
Okay, so she did it! When everyone was counting her out, she up and pulled out a victory in Pennsylvania....way to go Hillary=) Now onto my border state, North Carolina. Good ole' Bill is in the state today campaining for her and Senator Clinton herself will be in the Queen City (Charlotte, for you foreigners) next Monday. I wonder what the protocol is for taking professional development leave to go see such a professional, hmmm???
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