“All You Have to Do Is Teach the Book”  

the friendly Institute book request page says in an extremely appropriate blood-red font.  

As a literature teacher at one of those eternally-cash-poor schools, this Rand thing has me thinking of other possible sources for free books.  Let me think…who else out there might want to help?

• How about some L. Ron Hubbard? Note the cool Kraftwerk-era techno music.
• Whoo-boy!  Some fine folks are offering The Anarchist Cookbook online!
• Those slackers at the Church of the Sub-Genius are only offering bumperstickers and keychains.  Besides they have “church” in their title and we can’t have that.
• Getting back to things with “Philosophy” in the title, the Frederich Nietzche “Circle” has an Amazon page (and much of the work in free on Kindles)
• But we need something more Randian!  More low-brow philosophy meets high oap-opera fiction.  And without the sex, drugs and wrong style of free-thinking in Tom Robbins.  Where could we teachers possibly score free copies of such a combination outside of Ayn Rand?  Well there is the very first Google hit for “free books copies,” but we’re still talking churchy stuff here.
• Oh wait, here’s an interesting story.

The best part on the last link…

 In a column for the local paper, Wesley Scroggins wrote that Slaughterhouse-Five “contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame. The ‘f word’ is plastered on almost every other page. The content ranges from naked men and women in cages together so that others can watch them having sex to God telling people that they better not mess with his loser, bum of a son, named Jesus Christ.”

Problem solved folks…sign this literature teacher up for as many copies of Slaughterhouse-Five as possible.  This Wesley Scroggins fellow is such a good salesman he had me at “contains.”  

Perhaps deservedly there…that was pretty stupid.

But let’s get serious.  I, your humble blogger, used to live in “Portlandia.”  There’s no other way to describe Olympia, Washington.  We were all strident liberals all trying to stridently out-do each other with our liberalness.  We compared and critiqued each other on our composting strategies.  We sat around the telephone cable spool-as-kitchen table and verbally battled each other on how utterly devoid of race/class/sexism we were.

Every single White, Male, Twenty-something of us.  Every single White person who almost never had an interaction with any person-of-color whatsoever.

We were so &%^*#$@ brave.

And now I’m down here in beyond-imperfect Albuquerque, New Mexico, bitching and moaning about this and that, but let me tell you.

I want you to read this story from today’s Seattle Times from beautifully perfect composting-to-a-T Emerald City, Northwest USA, and then I want you to read every single *&%^$#@ comment to the story about illegal immigrants trying to get scholarship money.

Every single one.

And then you’ll know why I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico USA.  *&^%#$@-A right.

Oh, we got a B?   And my kid’s school got an A?

Come to think about it, I really like this new school grading system.   It’s meaningful and really shows all the hard work we’ve put in.  We deserve this B.  Look everybody, we got a B!  And my kid…his school got an A!  Whoo-hoo!  We’re #1!  We’re #1!  U.S.A.!  U.S.A.!

Now let’s go look and see which schools are worse than us.  This new grading thing is so cool.

Navin R. Johnson:  The new school grades are here!  The new school grades are here!

Schooteacher:  Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.

Navin:  Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 – Our School! We’re somebody now!  Millions of people look at these grades everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes schools. We’re in print! Things are going to start happening to our school now!

Schoolteacher:  Navin.  The grade means nothing.  Everyone knows it means nothing.  The only thing that will happen now is that everyone, knowing they are meaningless, will still complain bitterly about them and claim a conspiracy if their grade is a D or F, or jump and down and pat each other madly on the back inexplicably in celebration if given an A or B, this despite everyone’s complete understanding that the grade is meaningless. On top of that, everyone will try to see how many schools got worse grades and feel somehow superior to them, while those at schools with Fs will be subjected to show trial-esque shame and a ton of horribly boring meetings about the “crisis”.  Think Stalin, but with lots of response “*Parking Lots” and “*Plus Deltas”.

Navin:  What if the grade is a C?

Schoolteacher:  Navin, please stop.  Stop right now.

Okay, I can’t scriptwrite comedy.  Or much of anything else.  Have a good weekend everyone.  Try to sleep as best you can given the breathtaking excitement of anticipating these grades.  It’s like Christmas in Soviet Russia.  But weren’t they officially atheists?

*Sorry…very obscure teacher meeting references.

I don’t know if I can keep this to 140 characters, but it’ll be short.  Yesterday, I hear tell that high school sophomores will now be taking the SBAs, unlike previous years.  Evidently this news went out to high school teachers yesterday, about 60 days before testing.  

I don’t see any news reports about this change (although that could be search operator error), and perhaps this isn’t really news.  Still, it’s worth noting that we middle school teachers have been told for a few months now that testing was being cut back for us, in particular writing would no longer be tested at 6th and 7th grade, due to budget restraints. 

Communication has never been our strong suit, has it?  Thus the cutbacks in writing testing seem supremely appropriate.  Twitter über alles.   

• Mitt Romney
• Michele Bachmann
• Newt Gingrich
• Rick Santorum
• Ron Paul
• Rick Perry

It’s like going to a bakery that only offers variations of fruitcake.  Like going to a single’s bar…okay, I’ll stop now, this is “family” political analysis here.

Wow.

Conditions are such that Rick Santorum is “surging” to third.  Rick Santorum should never be surging.  For obvious, internet-related reasons, the words “surging” and “Santorum” probably should never be in the same sentence.  At least in a family political analysis blog.  More to the point, Rick Santorum shouldn’t be surging to third in a race with only two candidates.  He is, or should be, surge-proof.

It doesn’t take much of a conspiracy theorist to wonder why the two major political parties are comfortable with the Iowa Caucus being “first in the nation,” as opposed to say Vermont or 4th Street in Olympia, Washington.  That said, it’s gonna be hard to ever top a ballot like the one offered the fine Republican folks in Iowa this evening.   That’s some might fine comedy fruitcake on the bill of fare tonight, I tell ya.

P.S.:  As I understand it, Jon Huntsman is not on the “ballot” really in Iowa, waiting instead for the hotbed of political liberalism that is New Hampshire.  Yup, New Hampshire follows Iowa…is it any wonder why Burque Babble gave this politics thing up?

Part of that re-entry into the Educational Earth’s atmosphere is a look at the calendar over Spring Semester.  And what do we see?  Well, if you’re an APS middle school teacher, you’re looking at Spring Student-Led Conferences for April 19th and 20th.  That’s right…about fifteen weeks into a nineteen week Semester.  About a month before the long-awaited end of a school year.  In other words, way, way, way after the student cow has largely left the academic barn.

I teach 8th Graders.  Most of the very few readers of Burque Babble are old, and can hardly remember their middle school years at all, much less their academic mental state going into their last month as 8th Graders.  This being the case, let me tell you what it was:  zero.  You had zero dot zero zero zero academic involvement in your last month of 8th Grade.  Now some of you are really old and telling me “hey, Scot, 9th Grade was still considered junior high when I was in school.”  And to you really old people, I say…oh, well just replace 8th Grade with 9th Grade in your case.  And quit changing the subject, really old person.

But I digress.

The upshot here is that, due to the boundless scheduling wisdom of APS, my 8th Grade student advisees will not be “leading” their student conferences until  the fifteenth week of the Semester.  They will, therefore, simply be going on about how they did, instead of how they wish to do.  Not only that, they will be “leading” these conferences with zero engagement into both the process (because it’s so late) and their existence at a dumb old middle school, because they are so very done with middle school.  Parents, too, will largely be mentally absent from the proceedings, except to ask about high school…asking questions that we, as middle school teachers, will largely be wild-ass guessing in reply…as the high school folks won’t be there.

Well, that’s stupid.

The primary reason we’re having student-led conferences so late is standardized testing, and nothing trumps standardized testing.  That includes logic, meaning and purpose.  Nothing trumps standardized testing, despite the fact that just about everyone doesn’t give a rat’s behind about standardized testing when compared with things like “teaching kids” and “doing our job”.  I realize the news is all about tying standardized test scores to teacher evaluations and pay, but the reality is that the tests are the academic equivalent of doing one’s laundry or taking out the trash….nobody is basing their professional happiness and self-worth on it.   Nobody.

Meanwhile, in one of those “Duh…isn’t that obvious?” but still worthwhile endeavors, the newspaper in Omaha compared test scores with parent attendance at conferences.  And while the findings might be obvious, Occam’s Razor is still a good thing.  Simply showing a relationship between parent involvement and student achievement via conferences is exactly the kind of research that confirms what we anecdotally  ”know”, and illustrates the stupidity of  having Spring middle school conferences  in late April.  And it appears in a mainstream media outlet.  Hmmm….

Boy,  am I looking to those conferences, not to mention the 11 or so advisory classes I will “lead” over January/February/March and early April preaching how terribly important the Spring student-led conferences will be and how awfully vital it is that parents show up to hear things they already know through report cards and emails to teachers, not to mention the chance to hear wild-ass guessing answers from middle school teachers to their pertinent questions about high school.

Nothing like envisioning those eleventy advisory classes to put a damper on one’s last-minute Spring Semester planning.  Oh well, maybe watching some of the Uncle Fred’s Brakes & Mufflers Shop Bowl football game today will take our minds off the many existing hindrances to being an effective teacher.  Pass the last remaining drops of eggnog, please.

P.S.:  The “Again” in the title refers to last year’s middle school Spring conferences, which were cancelled altogether in indirect response to last year’s snow day fiasco.  I’d go into details about it, but the memories are still too painful.  Suffice to say, those cancellations told us everything we need to know about how important these vital conferences are.

Last Summer I toured with a gentleman who rode the bicycle you see here…and now it has toured its way into my house.  Clicking through another therapeutic red flag on the bike touring craziness continuum, I’ve bought a foldie.

This makes four bicycles for me, now, as I try to keep up with my wife who’s up to five horses (albeit some are boarders).  After one ride in the delicious 55 degree weather yesterday I can report fun was had.  I also ache a bit in places my old bike(s) never explored, but am hopeful a few positional tweaks and repetition will soothe them.  The great touring advantage of a foldie, is, of course, being able to put the thing in a typical suitcase for flight.  I can also report that changing a 20″ bicycle tire has a novelty about it that helps overcome the mundane nature of such things.  It’s a bit like playing with toy trains or teaching kindergarten.

More on “Bike Tour 2012″ I suppose, as my inability to suppress glee about it grows to an irritatingly unmanageable size.  I apologize in advance.

P.S.:  Yes, for those looking very closely, we do feed our cats on the kitchen table.  Doesn’t everybody?

But, then again, without Burque Babble your humble blogger might have been found by this time ranting at city council and school board meetings, creating awkward silences at your front door while trying to get you to sign inane petitions, or pitifully sitting, almost alone, at some book signing held at some very-soon-to-be-closed bookstore.  1000 empty exercises in blogging seem pretty full compared with all that, really.

So, how to celebrate?

First, a little resolution to fit both the occasion and the season:  the internet will have to endure more blogging from Burque Babble this Spring Semester and beyond.  I could go into the whys and wherefores of it all, but resolutions should be brief and I feel self-conscious enough just bringing up the 1000th post thing.

Second, let’s celebrate with some YouTube, as it, more than perhaps anything else, has led to the near-death of writing on the interwebs in anything beyond 140-character nibbles.  Here’s Miles, along with a very, very young Tony Williams and the rest of the “Second Great Quintet” playing “Autumn Leaves” in Milan, 1964.  I was three years old in 1964.  I believe Tony Williams was about nine years old.  Nine, and just about running the “Second Great Quintet.”  Good thing Tony didn’t know about blogging.

Enjoy the Miles, your weekend, the New Year, and, if you’re willing to endure the many uninteresting bits, the next 1000 posts from Burque Babble.

Much of the proposed money, about $2.5 million, would go toward new student tests given several times throughout the year, creating a standard profile for each of about 180,000 students that would be used when a student transfers to another New Mexico school.

and here’s how KOB put it:

Most of the money would go to weekly or even daily assessment tests for kids from fourth grade up to high school.

Of course the distinction above matters not to those not giving or taking the tests, but there’s a wee bit of difference between “several times a year” and “even daily assessments”.  And speaking of nuts & bolts, what about the non-SBA testing APS students already endure three times a year in reading and math?  Will this testing be on top of that testing, which is already on top of the overly-publicized standardized testing, and, in the case of some students, already inarticulately overlaid by the “gold standard” national test?  That’s more layers than the cake at a Donald Trump wedding.

All of which, I guess, weaves nicely with the added incentive for kids to stay in school:  taking the PSAT for free.  Man, I can’t count the number of students over the years who have told me: “Mr. Key, I would have stayed in school and gotten that diploma, if only the government had made it more possible for me to take more tests.”

Instilling a love of learning through the filling in of little circles with #2 pencils has to be well-documented in the oft-mentioned “studies”, right?  I sure would like to read such studies, but I’m gonna be too busy planning the 17 minutes of curriculum I can fit in-between the 973 hours of testing that will go on in my classroom Spring Semester.

Maybe I can fit in a poem next term.  A short one, anyway.  Haiku really.

P.S.:  Not to tell journalists how to do their job or anything, but could the Journal , KOB and other media types at least consider the idea of contacting local anti-testing entities when replicating testing-related press releases?  Or, for context, take a look at the layers of testing already on the academic plate for students today?