Being OT on RCTN

I have. I spent most of my junior and senior year impersonating one of them. Junior year, he was close enough to retirement that he would sit and read a book and not teach. Senior year, he'd figured out that he had enough days off stockpiled that he could get paid straight through to retirement whether he showed up or not. We wouldn't know whether he was coming to work or not until his carpool arrived, and at that point, we couldn't get a substitute there in time for first period. Since all the other teachers in that department had assignments for first period, I was drafted to cover till the sub arrived.

There are also those who, one year out of college, grumble about a salary equal to or higher than I was earning (also with a college degree) after 10-15-20 years in the workforce. I had a hard time feeling sorry for them being so "poor" at 25, knowing that at 25, I was even poorer, and *I* didn't have the opportunity to earn an extra couple thou in summer. Hours at my day job fluctuated so wildly that I could not even commit to a second-shift job, because there were too many nights I didn't even get home from my day job till midnight. Besides, I had a second job working for DH's business, and a third job running my own typing service, things I could do whenever I got home from my day job, whether that was 6:30 or 12:30.

"Joan E." had some very interesting things to say about Re: Being OT on RCTN:

Your version makes more sense, since shoes are generally blunt weapons. :-)

Define "normal". :-)

They are, but even the regular classes cover a lot of material.

Yes, it is a good system, and I'm very grateful for that.

I think that because they have been adding strands to the curriculum. Probability and statistics used to be either not covered at all, or covered in only a very rudimentary way. Now, there's a prob/stat strand that starts in 1st grade. Geography and history used to ignore substantial chunks of the world. Now, those chunks have been added back in but they haven't subtracted away the strands that were there before. In order to prepare kids for a world where technological expertise is expected and required, they're teaching computer skills and typing in elementary school. High stakes testing regimes have caused schools to push curriculum elements into lower and lower grades to give kids more of a run at the tested elements. Obviously, there are regional differences, and I'm sure there are regions where curriculum expectations are inadequate. However, I hear about increasing curriculum burdens far more than I hear about inadequate expectations (and from parents, not from carping teachers).

I haven't made any argument that the additional stuff is harder to learn. I believe that *more* curriculum elements have been added. I think that this, combined with high stakes testing, can often lead to an inability to cover any subject with enough time and attention, particularly for children who need additional learning support.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm not defending management's choice, but don't you think it highly likely that the wait staff were *told* by management not to process transactions until the system was back up? I seriously doubt that the wait staff independently decided not to process transactions because they couldn't add and subtract. I suspect the problem was elsewhere. Now, that may be reflective of a lack of independence or initiative on the part of the wait staff. Many managers have been saying lately that where they used to complain that young employees weren't team players, now they feel that young employees have been so indoctrinated into working as a team that they lack initiative and won't blow their noses without reaching a consensus decision first. There are lots of those sorts of issues that I think are problematic. I would just be surprised if the particular example you cite actually had to do with staff inability to do basic arithmetic.

They *have* to pass the FCAT. From the Florida Dept. of Education website:

"Regarding graduation, the law is very specific in that no public high school student can receive a standard diploma from a Florida public school unless that student has met all academic requirements. This means that students must take required courses, earn the correct number of credits, maintain a passing grade-point average, and pass the required FCAT."

Best wishes, Ericka

I dunno. Ours has a excellent administrator to pupil ratio. I rather suspect it has something to do with voters voting folks onto the school board who will do a competent job of running the show and voting to fund the schools adequately when they have a chance to do so. Oddly enough, when voters demand accountability in *reasonable* ways, it often happens.

Best wishes, Ericka

I know what the law reads and I know what my teacher friend tells me. I'm sure you will agree that very unfortunately there are ways around the laws and some of the kids are being pushed through.

Yes, it's wrong to do that, but sadly it does happen.

Lucille

I'm reading all this discussion about education with lots of interest. In our family, three kids over a ten-period has given me a lot of exposure to both the best and worst of public education. We've had teachers who were "passing time" until retirement, and others who are very energetic and engaged (happily, the majority).

I'm working on an overarching theory here, so bear with me as I think "out loud." I suspect that the changes in education we're seeing reflect so much of modern thinking, and the thing that differentiates one group from another -- as much as education, money, geography, or other factors

-- is "imagination". People who live with imagination have a spark, a hopefulness, a creativity, adaptability, humor, and a sense of adventure in meeting a new situation. Without this imagination, we're just putting in time.

I think a lot of people in all walks of life are just putting in time. Wanting the things that their neighbors have or Madison Ave. tells them they want, swallowing the "news" that's fed to them in TV soundbytes, the ones who think they actually like Wonder bread rather than a nice, chewy pumpernickel...it's all a failure of imagination.

"Why didn't everyone just leave New Orleans when they were told to?" shows a lack of imagination that leads to understanding the life circumstances others might live under; the mediocrity of so many books that shoot to the top of the NY Times best-seller list shows a lack of appreciation for work of real quality (ditto music on the radio, movies, TV shows, etc., so much of which is endless recycling of old ideas); the knee-jerk political responses of both liberal and conservative thought show a laziness in extending thought beyond habit and a failure to imagine new or "other" circumstances.

So education isn't challenging? Hey, for a huge percentage of the "sheep" in our society, nothing is challenging and *they like it that way*...because they don't have the imagination to see or appreciate other approaches or the creativity to face problems with a sense of adventure and solve them through thought, work, and perseverence. In my suburban neighborhood, a Lake Woebegonish place where "all the children are above average", I sense this all around me. Just repeat something often enough, and it's true...and the newer and shinier something is, the better. People can't think "out of the box." And if they have problems, they keep them hidden, because it makes them "different", and God forbid anything be different because different means "flawed".

My first child went to the neighborhood high school - very competetive school, lots of homework, sends kids to the Ivies, etc. - but in this school, where the stakes to "winning" were so high, where square pegs are pounded and pounded to fit into round holes, while the education in facts and figures was top-notch, the life lessons were sacrificed. The place was soul-less and turned out clones of the parents/neighborhood. Nearly destroyed any love of learning for its own sake.

OTOH, the second and third children went/are going to an arts magnet, and their education was/is exemplary. NOT that the SAT scores were higher (they're not) or they went through Calculus III (they didn't). The school is much more mixed - racially, religiously, economically - and they're learning to get along with all kinds of people with all kinds of gifts and value other viewpoints and fresh approaches. This school really emphasizes community and respect and *values* the differences between people. Rather than being threatened by individuals, as the schools with "failure of imagination" do, they *revel* in individual differences and what gifts each person brings to the greater community. WHAT a difference! The teachers are outstanding, and I think it's because a.) the students are a self-selected group who *want* to be in that environment, so there are few discipline problems and b.) the teachers are a self-selected group - people with imagination who *want* to be challenged.

(I always think of this school of "The Island of Misfit Toys" from the Rudolph Christmas special...you know, the one with the elf who wanted to be a dentist? Bright kids who think "out of the box" would be

*miserable* in the neighborhood schools like ours - and in this setting they just thrive.)

(Sort of like r.c.t.n. and our collection of "eccentric aunties." Don't most of us want that role?)

Sue (I've met my quota for "thinking hard" today and it's not even noon!)

Columbus Day isn't observed in Iowa (AFAIK) except by the post office and other federal agencies. Schools are in session and none of my employers (both public and private) gave employees the day off. When I lived there we had no holidays from Labor Day until Thanksgiving (nope, no Veterans' Day either) so parent-teacher conferences were often scheduled the first week of November to give kids a break; it also put the conferences in roughly the middle of the first semester since the semester didn't end until approximately January 11.

While Columbus Day is observed > Um...there's a federal holiday in October--Columbus

"Columbus Day" as a "holiday" is a fairly recent phenomena. Remember, recent to me might mean different things to different people.

When I went to school, it certainly wasn't a holiday. I don't think mail is delivered, but other than that, our household works. Our neighbors go to work.

Dianne

em eye crooked-letter crooked-letter eye crooked-letter crooked-letter eye humpback humpback eye.

Like, how to take a standardized test so that the district looks better than it really is?

Could be. I'd just be surprised. There's been a lot of press out of Florida about kids not graduating because they didn't pass the FCAT. I also have relatives in Florida (including a SIL who teaches in the public schools), and they say that they're very rigid about these laws. Kids can leave school without passing, but they don't leave with a standard diploma.

Best wishes, Ericka

We'll talk off line! but DS got his chance at a travel hockey team because one dad decided his son was better than where he was placed.

Cheryl

I recall getting it off from school and spending a long weekend with my grandmother because of it.

Cheryl

Too bad so many of them aren't worth the paper their degree is printed on.

Cheryl

Brenda Lewis wrote:

With a heavy proportion of federal employees around here, it makes sense to give kids the day off here. If they didn't, lots of kids would be out on vacations with their off work parents. And, of course, many teachers are married to folks who have the day off. That part is obviously regional. When it comes to other days off, our kids have off two days in early November that they get a lot of mileage out of. Lots of our schools are polling places, so having election day off is necessary to accommodate all the voters without compromising safety. The teachers have in service days for that Monday and Tuesday. It's the end of the first quarter, so they are conducting parent teacher conferences as well as finalizing quarter grading. Between those two things, the teachers are *very* busy and hard at work those days, especially since many make themselves available in the evenings as well so that parents don't have to take off work to get to the conferences. In the case of my fifth grader, because the three teachers teach as a team (one does all the math, one does all the science, and one does all the social studies), they feel it is important enough for parents to meet with the whole team that they spend both those in service days from morning to night plus a few other evenings in order to meet with 60 sets of parents. I hardly begrudge those two days. Mind you, I *did* get PO'd last year when the school board decided to give back some unused snow days by declaring two days off in early June rather than just letting the kids out of school two days earlier (given that they were in school until June 23rd!!). Apparently there was some issue with how they handle end of year exams and graduation and such that prevented them from just letting school out two days earlier, but I would have much preferred that.

Best wishes, Ericka

Um, it's not just a matter of making the district look better. Schools who don't do well on the high stakes testing suffer lots of ugly consequences, including loss of much needed funding, thanks to No Child Left Behind. It's a matter of self preservation for the schools to find any way they can to make kids do well on those tests. This is especially true given that there are very few accommodations for students who have no chance of doing well on the test. Show up at the school the day before the mandated testing with only a minimal command of English? Oh, well. Your test scores count. Hope there are enough other kids who are going to pass the tests to keep the school making adequate yearly progress so they don't land in really hot water... You bet your bippy they're going to take time to make sure students can fill in those little bubbles under those conditions.

Best wishes, Ericka