I Hear Voices In My Head

I grabbed a beer with a friend yesterday evening, and this comic today reminded me of some of our conversation.  We have both experienced a "falling-out" from our evangelical church life and we noted that it changed the way we "hear" typical church speech.

I was never a fan of Christianeese, even when I claimed the name Christian.  However, now that I spend the vast majority of my time outside of Christian circles, I have become more sensitive to how awkward it all sounds.  Like Jesus indicates in the cartoon above, some phrases and terms just shouldn't be uttered by responsible adults.

The problem I see with even writing this blog is that no one will get it (unless you are in what Bishop Spong calls The Church Alumni Association).  If you are Christian, odds are you are fully immersed in this kind of dialogue.  You salt and pepper you conversation with things that God is "doing" in your life, or what he "told" you recently.  God is working in you, and you are trying to find the center of his will, or you are feeling guilty because you are just not serving him enough.  It all sounds perfectly natural... spiritual even.

Or, you don't travel in such circles because the few times in your life that you drifted into them... you quickly drifted back out.

I like how Jesus in the comic said, "... if your grown son ...."  I actually started to use that frame of reference a year or two ago to judge some of the things I heard said by various Christian artists, preachers, and church attenders.  How would I react if my son and daughter talked to me in such wording?

My daughter goes up to receive an award for a job well done.  Instead of a gracious thank you, she steps to the podium and points at me in the audience.  "This isn't about me, it's all about my dad.  I can't do a single thing without him.  My whole performance was garbage compared to him, and it is only of value because I am offering it to him."

or how about this one from my son....

"Oh Dad, I am so grateful that you chose to love me though my horrible-ness and wretched-ness. I am forever a failure before you and I am only worthy of your anger... yet because of my sister, you will talk to me ... I thank you for that!"

Gross eh?  I would be MORTIFIED if my children had that view of themselves or me. Yet that kind of talk goes on all the time in churches throughout the globe.

Or, there are the Christians forever running in circles, mumbling to themselves, trying to figure out "what God wants them to do". Does he want me here or there? Should I do this or that? What does he want? What does he want? What does he want?

I'll wager an answer for him since he probably has no intention of SPEAKING to you this evening.  I would venture a guess that he would like you to "MAKE A DECISION LIKE AN ADULT, STOP WHINING, AND LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ADULT CHOICES!"

Again, picture your adult children coming and asking your call about every detail in their lives... not advice, your call! You would really have to come to the conclusion that you had raised some truly helpless human beings if they were being that clueless.

The icing on the cake is that the person who speaks like this will tell you that God "told" them this or that. If one is a particularly intuitive person... they will get the reputation for being very close to God. Once you are at that status, anytime you "hear him" wrongly in future will be ignored and forgotten.

It is like this scene from South Park. Kyle thinks that his Grandma spoke to him though Jon Edwards (the psychic).  Stan goes to Jon Edwards to ask him to tell Kyle that the whole "speaking to the dead" thing is just a trick.

The Biggest Douche in the Universe
Get More: SOUTH
PARKmore...

"We all hear voices in our head. It's called intuition. Get over yourself!"

There Are Four Lights

Mom sits across from the teacher during parent-teacher conferences.  Her face is bruised.  She is staying in a shelter with her daughters.  Dad has a restraining order.

The teacher asks what help he can offer.  Mom bursts into tears.  "Just be kind to my daughter... please, be kind to her."

The daughter is 4 grade levels behind.  During the school year, she misses almost 40 days of school.

The next year, the district and the state look at the daughter's academic scores.  They call in the teacher to have him explain how he will rise to a higher standard of teaching, so that scores like that will not be repeated in the future.

History Repeats Itself

I could not help thinking that I have heard all of the arguments made in this "pro-marriage" video before - every documentary I have seen of the American Civil Rights movement; every time in history that I read of a majority group trying to make second class citizens of others; in every case these same words were used.

Fear....  THEY will wreck what you hold dear.  THEY are being uppity.  THEY should know their place.  THEY are less than us.  THEY will twist your children.

THEY

THEY

THEY

Sigh... we keep going around the same trees historically.  We keep reliving the same arguments, playing out the same scenarios, wrestling with the same tired issues.

There will always be a new THEY.

It reminds me of Matthew Broderick's character at the end of  Wargames, setting Joshua to cycle through endless scenarios that keep arriving at the same destructive conclusion.

If there is a God in Heaven, he must be watching this endless cycle flash past his eyes while muttering, "Come on. Learn, goddammit!"

Park The Calculator

Tonight after class, I avoided asking a friend to drive me to the train station; though it was tempting.  It is a four block walk that I need.

In the morning, rather than doing a train switch to my bus stop, I walk the extra two blocks from where the Red Line leaves off. It is uphill, and with my backpack it provides a good workout.

In both cases, I could travel the extra distance by car or train, but I am choosing to hoof it instead. I am about to turn 43, and I am not getting any thinner. It is quicker and easier to travel by motorized wheel, but I need to burn the calories. My hobbies are all rather sedentary, so I take the movement where I can get it.

I was considering this as I was in my Math Assessment class tonight. So often in our schools, we encourage kids to pull out the calculator. It is faster, less tedious, and more accurate. Add a couple of parents recounting their difficulties in math at a school board meeting, and suddenly the little keypads are getting worked in everywhere.

Here is the problem though:

Wall-E. 

You know, the prophetic movie where in the future all humans are obese and cannot hold a coherent thought past the next 5 seconds?

Everything we do seems to be about making things easier. We will loop the parking lot 5 times to get four spaces closer. God forbid we walk that extra 50 feet.

Our bodies are getting soft, and so are our minds... because we keep looking for short cuts and leisure.  Contrast that with JFK's attitude that it is the difficulty that makes something worth doing.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. ~ President Kennedy

Touchpad VS Ipad and How the Tablet Killed My Laptop

A few weeks ago, I was able to snag an HP Touchpad during their firesale.  It just arrived a few days ago.  I am loving it.

For those of you not geeky enough to be aware, HP scrapped its Touchpad only a few months after hitting the market.  It began to sell its remaining stock of $499 and $599 Touchpads for $99 and $149.

Since I got my first Tablet (Ipad for free) last year, my laptop gets very little usage. At one time, I was beginning to believe that I would never get another desktop... why get a desktop when a laptop has all of its power and portability too?

However, I now believe that the Tablet has saved the desktop computer, and is sending laptops down the food chain. For my everyday web tasks, movies and music, reading, etc., I find myself pulling out a Tablet. When I need to do publishing or data work, I turn to my desktop. The laptop regularly gathers a fine layer of dust.

Perhaps it is because my HP Touchpad has the novelty of new that I presently use it more; but, as nice as the Ipad is, I think the Touchpad outpaces it on several levels. Which is a shame, since a year from now Ipad will still be head of the pack, and the Touchpad production lines will have long since been dismantled.

So where does the Touchpad outperform the Ipad?

Interface: The WebOS reminds me of how I used to feel about my Palm Pilot. There is a logic and fluidity to it's interface. I love the card system that it uses; it allows you to keep items open in a more natural sense than does the Ipad. I also like the status table in the upper right which allows you to make quick adjustments to screen lock, wifi, brightness, etc. Such things are more cumbersome to adjust in the Ipad. It also allows information updates to scroll across the upper screen, rather than interrupting what I am doing with a blue box in the middle of my screen.

Integration: WebOS weaves primary programs together elegantly. Facebook, Skype, Calendar, Contacts, etc.... all know each other is there and allows them to interface at appropriate levels.

File Transfer: No Itunes? Lovely! I wish the Touchpad had an SD slot, but at least when you plug it into the computer it acts as an external drive. Moving files back and forth on the Ipad is simply painful. With the Touchpad, I can quickly move 200 comics to the appropriate folder. To perform that same task on the Ipad would require me to load them one at a time through Dropbox or watch Itunes get overloaded by the quantity. So even though the Ipad has a good comic reader, I never used it because moving the files over was just too laborious. I use my Touchpad to read comics all the time, because moving an entire series over happens in seconds.

Volume: If I want to watch something with my Ipad while cooking breakfast, I have to attach external speakers. The Ipad simply isn't loud enough. The Touchpad has twice the volume capability of the Ipad.

Hulu: I get Hulu on the Touchpad, but Netflix on the Ipad. Netflix would make the Touchpad perfect.

Browsing: The Ipad has this extremely annoying trait of refreshing your screen, whether you want it to or not. So when perusing Facebook, I have a choice to make.... Do I want to look at the article my friend posted, or do I want to keep the place I have scanned through to on the Newsfeed? When I go to my friend's article, even if I opened a new screen to view it, the Ipad is going to take me back to the begining of my Newsfeed. Very frustrating if you have already gone several pages down. The Touchpad brings me right back to where I left off.

Keyboard: The Touchpad uses a full virtual keyboard, rather than making you go to a second keyboard to use numbers or various punctuation.

It seems to me that the only place the Ipad outperforms the Touchpad is with its app and accessory selection... however, this does not pertain to the machine itself.

There is no doubt that the Ipad is a great machine... I just find the Touchpad to be better.

An Education Story Problem

Today class we will have a story problem in logic:

Mr. Zondebok has been assigned to teach his class skill "D". In order for a student to be successful at acquiring skill "D", research shows he or she must first be proficient with skills "A", "B", and "C". Seventy-five percent of Mr. Zondebok's class come to him lacking a proficiency in "A", "B", and "C".

One year he tries to teach "D" to those who are proficient, while simultaneously teaching "A", "B", and "C" to those who lack the proficiency. At the end of the year, though many students have shown gains in A, B, and C; only twenty percent of his students are proficient in "D". 

The next year, Mr. Zondebok tries teaching "D" equally to everyone, hoping his 75% lacking in A, B, and C proficiency will catch on. At the end of the year, those students who lacked proficiency in A, B, and C showed little growth, and only twenty-five percent of his class are proficient with skill "D".

Mr. Zondebok is labeled a failure.  New laws in the state mandate that Mr. Zondebok receive less pay for one year to motivate him to teach better. Next year, if he shows no improvement, he will be fired.

So class, here are your response choices. The problem is:

A. Mr. Zondebok is a failure as a teacher and deserves to be fired.

B. Mr. Zondebok has many students who simply cannot learn skill "D".

C. Mr. Zondebok and his students are caught in a system that advances students, regardless of proficiency, into subjects which require pre-requisite skills; thereby setting them up for failure.

America's politicians, both Republican and Democrat, have chosen A. It is the choice that is easiest for them to make.

Which do you choose?

Instruction Manual For Life

There are a lot of creative, poignant, and clever videos on Youtube. Sometimes though, one is just so good you have to blog about it.

In this short animation, we follow the life of a young person who was taught to live his life according to a certain book. Along the way his view of the book and his view of life expands.  His conclusions are, I believe, healthy.




I particularly related to the part where the two girls come to tell him that his cupboard is wrong.  He just sighs with exasperation.  Yep... been there.....

 HT: We Were Going To Be Queens

I Am A Teacher, Not A Surrogate Parent

Richard Rothstein wrote an excellent piece on education reform at Slate.  There are a number of things I would like to respond to, but highest on the list had to do with "super-teachers."  American educational reform is very focused right now on developing and hiring teachers who can bring to educational proficiency anything thrown at them.

In the article, Rothstein states that these educational reformers put on pedestals teachers like Jessica Reid:

"A Teach for America recruit, she engages each of her Harlem fifth-graders in Shakespeare, phones parents about missed assignments, and works into the night tutoring students, meeting parents, and creating ingenious displays for the following day's lessons. It's teachers like her who propel the most-disadvantaged children on to college. But such teachers can work their wonders only in non-union charter schools that are free to fire summarily those who, though well-meaning, are less than extraordinary."

I get this kind of teacher thrown into my face rather regularly when discussing the issue of educational reform.  The thought is that, regardless of a student's circumstances, a super-teacher can get past all the hindrances a student may have.  These teachers can leap poverty neighborhoods in a single bound!  Just look at all that teachers like Reid do!

Let's look at what she is doing.  She is working with the parents of her students and spends her evenings on the phone with them.  She tutors those students into the night.  She spends countless after school hours on lessons and assessments.

You might wonder how long someone can keep up a pace like that.

Apparently, not very long.  According to the article:

"Jessica Reid, quit her charter school job. She had worked days, nights, and weekends in a superhuman, often frustrating effort to prove that effective teaching alone could overcome the obstacles of child poverty. At 26, she found her role in the fanatical charter school crusade was taking too high a toll on her marriage and her own sense of balance."

Simply put, as much as she enjoyed teaching... she also wanted to give time to her family and her life.  Super-teaching quickly wreaks havoc on one's own family.

I think the article misses the point when it insinuates that it was "effective teaching" that was making the difference.  Was it really just the teaching?  What about all of the after-hours commitment with those students?  She was essentially being a surrogate parent to those families - spending time with both parents and children; and getting THEM focused on education.  She was doing for those families what the PARENTS should have been doing.

I have taught in wealthy and poverty schools.  In either circumstance, I found this to be generally true:  Show me a parent who is intentional about their child's education and I will show you a kid who is doing well.  Show me a parent who is ambivalent about their child's education, or simply can't make that time happen, and I will show you a student who struggles.

America can keep dreaming of super-teachers who will make all of their problems go away.  Teachers who will spend evenings tutoring their children, making sure they are read to, review their homework... Who knows, maybe we can even get the super-teacher to do the windows.

Here is a reality check my dear America.... I have my own children who need my attention.  They need me to read to them, review their homework, play outside with them, be a Dad.  My wife needs me tending to my family in the evening... not spending it on the phone or back in my school's neighborhood tending to others.

This is why I am still in teaching after 20 years.  I keep it all in perspective and I maintain life balance.  I know when to say no.

I watch the super-teachers come and go.  No one can be a surrogate parent to all of those needy children.  I love my students.  They get my very best teaching when I am at school.  But they don't get my life... that is reserved for my family.

I truly love teaching... but I already have a family in which I am the parent.

I hope America can refocus its efforts before they drive every good and hard working teacher from poverty areas.

Thank You From All Of Us In Room 216

A few weeks ago, I put a request out to Facebook friends and readers of my blog.  I was looking for folks to donate books to my class via an Amazon wishlist.  Not long after, Amazon boxes started piling up in our school office. :)  My students unboxed, sorted, and labled over 50 books in the past 2 days!  To say they are having fun would be an understatement.

My only concern has been how to thank all of you.  Unfortunately, none of the packages or invoices (except for two) gave any indication of WHO sent them.  This happened when one friend sent an order last year, but I assumed the lack of identity was a fluke.  However, it seems to be the norm (and Amazon won't tell me).

My original plan was to have the kids write thank you cards, but aside from a few folks who told me they intended to send books, I have no idea who all of you generous folks are!

We wear masks because on the Web we need secret identities! :)

Hopefully, if you sent books, you will see this; so you can know how grateful we all are and how effective these books will be in our classroom.  In their short time here, these books have already gotten tons of use!

Again, thank you for your generosity.  As much as I am concerned about teaching the technical aspects of reading, I also know that it is equally, if not more, important for a child to develop a personal culture of reading - that reading would move beyond route dynamics to a pleasure filled experience.  Every year I have students who turn that corner for the first time, and I know that part of that shift is due to having good books on hand and available when those moments come to fruition.  Your donations give those moments opportunity.

Thank YOU!

“He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.”

- Barrow

“He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.” 

 ^{- Barrow}

“When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.”

 - Christopher Morley

“When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.” 

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

- Dr. Seuss

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” 

 ^{- Dr. Seuss}

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

- Maya Angelou

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” 

 ^{- Maya Angelou}

Belief O Matic II

I just did the Belief Net Belief O Matic survey.  I did it 3 years ago too.  Things have changed a bit since then.  Here I am now:

2011

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (94%)
3. Mahayana Buddhism (89%)
4. Theravada Buddhism (89%)
5. Reform Judaism (86%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
7. Jainism (79%)
8. Sikhism (78%)
9. Neo-Pagan (78%)
10. New Age (76%)
11. Baha'i Faith (71%)
12. Taoism (69%)
13. Secular Humanism (68%)
14. Orthodox Quaker (67%)
15. New Thought (66%)
16. Hinduism (65%)
17. Orthodox Judaism (60%)
18. Scientology (59%)
19. Islam (53%)
20. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (53%)
21. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (46%)
22. Nontheist (44%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (38%)
24. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (34%)
25. Jehovah's Witness (34%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (27%)
27. Roman Catholic (27%)

I am disappointed that Conservative Christian was not on the bottom! :)  Yikes!  My Thetan levels have doubled over the years!

Here I was in 2008:

1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (94%)
3. Bahá'í Faith (92%)
4. Orthodox Quaker (87%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (77%)
6. Reform Judaism (66%)
7. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (66%)
8. Theravada Buddhism (65%)
9. Mahayana Buddhism (65%)
10. Jainism (64%)
11. New Age (61%)
12. Neo-Pagan (61%)
13. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (59%)
14. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (58%)
15. Seventh Day Adventist (56%)
16. Taoism (56%)
17. Orthodox Judaism (55%)
18. Sikhism (53%)
19. Islam (49%)
20. Secular Humanism (49%)
21. New Thought (47%)
22. Jehovah's Witness (46%)
23. Hinduism (41%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (40%)
25. Roman Catholic (40%)
26. Scientology (32%)
27. Nontheist (32%)