On a roll???

I figured since i have posted on almost consecutive days, i should keep the party going and move the thinking process along...

lets begin with my surroundings... second to last day of summer school (thank god) and im in my classroom...

ok, ive talked enough about summer school and kids and education, i dont much feel like doing that right now... this will likely make for a boring entry, but oh well...

damnit... outside of work, theres not much else to talk about outside of my work... theres not much else that i do... i work, come home to go to another job, then sleep... on the days that i dont have my second job, i workout... which might as well be considered work....

i never expected that i would think of myself as a workaholic... ive always been for the whole "work smarter, not harder" mantra, and tried to make work more of an intellectual duty than physical labor... but in some instances i guess it cannot be avoided...

This and That...

i guess there is no particular mood necessary to write... for i am in no particular mood, other than wanting to write... there is no pressing issue forcing its way to the front of the line, nothing droning out the other thoughts in my head like a mass of vuvuzulas at a world cup match...

really there is nothing there, save for my disappointment in the will of my summer school bunch to pass... im guessing there are misconceptions that these children have that have not quite been cleared up... that a) summer school is supposed to be fun; and b) summer school was meant to be easy...

there is no place that i know of, that you can arrive to unprepared, not having anything necessary to complete the tasks required, and still be successful... but that is exactly what these children are doing... no pens, no pencils, no paper... not even the paper i gave them with the information to learn on it...

sad, just plain sad...

might as well just give them some khakis and a blue shirt, and prepare then for a career at wal-mart.

Everything I needed to know...

I learned in summer school... sounds funny, but its true... there are some observations that i have made over these past 12 days that are very likely going to influence the way i approach teaching from now on... whats yet to be determined is whether or not these changes are good things, or bad...

#1 kids today are far too used to getting it their way...

ive had more kids try to negotiate grading terms with me than i hope to ever experience in my life... too many of our children are asking for extra points, looking for crack in a teachers armor, only to pounce on any weakness and expose the fleshy parts for their classmates to devour... ive seen others crack under the pressure, ive felt it myself... kids repeatedly asking the same question over and over, waiting for frustration to set in, and the teacher to fold...

#2 kids are wrongfully being treated as adults.

its far too often that i see children treating their parents and other parental figures as equals. daughters talking to their mothers like they're sisters, and sons dismissing their mothers as if their words have absolutely no value at all... it really saddens me to see and hear these conversations take place... even worse to see the results in the classroom environment... some of these kids treat their teachers as things less than equals... truthfully, teaching IS a public service position, but being a public servant shouldn't subject us to such disrespect as some of us receive on a daily basis... this has to be put plainly on the people responsible for their rearing... either there is a lack of presence in the household, and the children are left to raise themselves, or the children are given far too many freedoms too early, and have taken those liberties too far...

#3 education has become a right, and not the privilege it used to be

this is probably the biggest complaint i have with NCLB... the fundamental belief behind the legislature is that ALL children should be afforded the same educational opportunities.. the flaw is that the financial side has basically forced the hands of the districts to get maximum funding by dragging in people that truthfully DON'T WANT TO BE THERE... these kids then devalue the education provided by distracting the masses... education is too readily available to the masses... i think once we start denying people access to education, we will see a decided increase in scholastic activity amongst the kids...

#4 teachers are not paid enough

ok, so this may be the most selfish of my observations, but it is very valid... as the professionals responsible for the future of the country, we are highly undervalued... there has to be a strong increase in salary, this would attract a more qualified educator, further increasing the educational value... simply put, if you paid teachers more money, you would get better teachers...

ill stop here for now, more later...