Cause we all need a smile now and then…

High Urinals

A group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, accompanied by two female teachers, went on a field trip to the local racetrack, to learn about thoroughbreds and the such, but mostly to see the horses.

When it was time to take the children to the bathroom, it was decided that the girls would go with one teacher and the boys would go with the other. The teacher assigned to the boys was waiting outside the mens room when one of the boys came out and told her that none of them could reach the urinal.

Having no choice, she went inside, helped the boys with their pants, and began hoisting the little boys up one by one, to direct “the” flow away from their clothes.

As she lifted one, she couldn’t help but notice that he was unusually well endowed. Trying not to show that she was staring the teacher said, ‘You must be in the 5th grade.’

‘No, ma’am’, he replied. ‘I’m riding Silver Arrow in the seventh race, but I appreciate your help.’

I love being able to use contemporary pics in my class… and in my blog. Today, let’s have a little class debate. Here’s our pic.

Backstory: A teen at a baseball game (supposedly NOT drunk or on drugs) calls his dad to ask, “Uhm, Hey Dad, should I run on the field? It’s like a once in a lifetime chance.”

Dad said, “Uhm, doesn’t sound smart, son.”

Son says, “Okay, Pop.” And then runs on the field anyway.

He avoids security for a wee bit and the above picture captures the moment.

Steve gets TASERED.

Question: Did Steve deserve it?

Here’s my class?

For side: Hell yes! What a bonehead. You run on the field at a major league baseball game in this day and age and you deserve whatever you get.

Against side: No way! Far too heavy handed. Cops always use too much force.

Not sure which side: If he was black or brown, they wouldda used real bullets!

Not sure which side: I hear dat!

For side: I tell you this. People are going to think twice about running on the field at the Phillies home ball park in the future. It’s a good deterrent against future idiots.

Against side: The U.S. government should not condone this type of brutality. I mean this isn’t a country where we string people up and attach electrodes to their genitals in order to get them to submit to our will.

For side: Actually, we do do that? In Gitmo.

Against side: I thought they closed that down.

Not sure which side: No, that was the Bay of Pigs.

Not sure which side: She never pays attention in history class.

Not sure which side: I don’t eat Pigs, Bay Pigs or any kind. But I’m not a Muslim. Just a vegetarian who eats chicken and sometimes steak.

Not sure which side: Bueller. Bueller.

Okay, so I made this whole whole conversation up.

But as you can see, Steve, the Phillies Fan Who got Tasered, certainly has my imagination going.

Does it happen to everyone in education that they lose touch at some point, like an athlete that doesn’t know when to hang it up, and they hold on for too long… to the detriment of those they have been hired to serve?

Thing about this issue though is that age, oftentimes, has very little to do with the matter of when someone should hang up their educational spurs. Truly, some people ought to take their chips off the table after but 3 months in this profession — and for a few, that’s 90 days too long in this field! Others need to stick around for another 2 decades even if they have already put in 35 years of service. (Let me tell ya, Boca Raton, Florida retirement with dinner served at 4:30 p.m. can wait.)

For a boxer, as the years roll on you lose hand speed. And you get punched in the head too many times and it becomes clear to even the most casual fans when a once-ferocious fighter simply needs to stay out of the ring.

Football players, baseball players, NBA superstars… Father Time and Mother Nature conspire to do ‘em in. As ticket buyers we see it and we let ‘em know.

But in schools, it’s not really the same. Like I said, some of the best folks we have in education are people who have been in this field for 30 years or more.

(If only they could NEVER retire.)

However, as I also said, some of people should have hung up their educational spurs when Nixon was president.

All in all, the big point is that time and age don’t necessarily translate to “excellence” in our profession. As too many of us well know, some of the best folks we have in our field have been in their jobs for less than 5 years.

And they are the ones who are first to get chopped when the budget cuts roll in.

Ouch! We butcher our most promising seedlings.

Yet, some folks in our field (no names — or organizations — mentioned) quite wrongly equate “years in the classroom” to “quality of work being done in the classroom” — as false premise as ever there was.

Age before beauty… it’s not right! And when common sense returns to public education — or finally rears its head, as some may argue — the idea that quantity of time in a class trumps quality of time in a class will be expeditiously bounced.

I love sports. Always have, always will.

And if you love sports the way I do you really get into all aspects of the game. This even extends to coaches and how they speak with the media.

I have a feeling I should start to take a hint. (More on that in a sec.)

In today’s world, it’s a simple truism of life. If you can’t “manage” the media (no one really “controls” it, but most coaches and players — the more high profile, the more important this is — do work hard to “manage” the media) you are cooked.

I guess this is why coaches so often devolve into politically correct blandness. When hit with adversity like a bad call by the officials, you know they swear like sailors behind the scenes but in front of the cameras, they all know that you will not last long if you don’t work to say the right things about the refs, your opposition, the higher-ups that own the teams, run the athletic departments at the universities and so on.

It’s like that scene from the movie Bull Durham where Kevin Costner teaches Tim Robbins how to speak in cliches. Funny, but true.

As a blogger, I seek the opposite. I am trying to be honest, unvarnished and forthright. But now that the stakes are so clearly set for me and my school about “raise your test scores or suffer the consequences” I feel as if I am at risk of being too blunt.

I want to provide a window. A look in. A means for folks to see what it’s like from a real classroom perspective in a manner that actually has some flavor, some spice, some opinion and works not to pull punches so that the reality of these circumstances can be exposed — and maybe we can all learn how to be better at what we do as a result. (I really view myself as a learner, first and foremost, and writing empowers me to be incredibly reflective about my profession.)

Yet, there’s a part of me that fears the approach I take to blogging could cause me trouble. For example, if I say that teaching undocumented kids in a Title 1 school who have parents that don’t speak English sets our teachers up to have lower test scores than people who teach in schools where the predominance of kids have college-educated parents who don’t live a community plagued by things like violence, transience, little formal education, and so on, I open myself up to criticism of…

– being racist
– having low expectations for my kids
– not believing in the power of young people
– being classist
– doubting the ability to turnaround our district
and on and on and on.

Never mind that I have taught at Lynwood High and worked with such kids for years and years and loved the job, the parents I’ve met, and the work immensely. But now that the NCLB screws are turning on our staff and all our jobs are apparently at risk — while teachers who work in schools with virtually no issues of like ilk to ours are not having their jobs held over their head if they don’t immediately raise their bubble test scores — am I being too blunt?

The playing field has not been equal for kids who live in America’s lower socio-economic communities since public education began.

And now a part of me feels as if the teachers of those kids are being demonized for it. Is the playing field of teacher accountability truly equal?

The New York Times just published an insightful piece on how “teenagers are different”.

Not to cast aspersions on this fine journalistic institution, but “No Duh!”

And then, in the field of adolescent brain biology, the Times just reported that a gent named Dr. Steinberg recently won the $1 million Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for his work in this field of study. He even gets to go to Switzerland to collect the cash and eat a few tasty meals along the way, I assume.

A million clams for that? Heck, if he gets this kind of cash for his insights, how much are the following 3 insights worth for me:

1) Dr. Steinberg says teenagers are not crazy, they are different.

I say teenagers are crazy — but their craziness actually represents a form of sanity and it’s really the adults in this world who are bonkers. To wit, I offer you Glenn Beck. Is there a teen loonier than that?

2) Dr. Steinberg says that “neuroscientific research is showing that over the course of adolescence and into the 20s, there is continued maturation of the brain.”

I say hogwash. If anything, most 20-25 year olds have their heads more up their butts that most kids between the ages of 13-19. I mean have you waited in line at a Starbucks lately? Those aren’t teens taking 11 minutes per customer to pour a cup of joe and bag a cranberry muffin… they are peeps years out of high school. Once again, case proven!!

3) Dr. Steinberg says that, “We’ve found that a certain part of the brain is activated by the presence of peers in adolescents, but not in adults.”

Oh really. Well, maybe some more adults should take a clue. I mean look at how this person is dressed… you’d never see a teen buckle to this level of “I don’t care-ness.” (And thanks heavens, too!)

All in all, I think my own astute findings deserve at least 25 grand. And considering it really only took me fifteen minutes to make these deductions, I gotta say, what in the world is this illustrious doctor doing with all his time being that he requires years to draw his conclusions whereas I pretty much bang mine out right off the top of my head?

Wait, I know… he’s GAMING! And I bet I know 100 teens that could kick his butt at Call of Duty 4 as well. Wonder what his “research” says about that!!

Doctor Schmoctor!!