I wonder, do I hate bad professional meetings more than I love good professional meetings, or vice versa?

If you can count yourself as a person has never suffered through the torment of a terrible professional meeting, raise your hand.

If your hand is up right now, please consider yourself blessed?

And now please put your hand down… your are making the rest of us feel like doing physical harm to you out of petty spite.

Let’s try it from the other side. If you’ve had the chance to be in the room where somebody really challenged your thinking, opened your mind, and stirred your soul, please raise your hand.

Now keep it up.

Now coochee-coochee-koo (I just tickled your armpit).

Hold a sec… gotta go wash.

Okay, I’m back.

Ain’t great PD the best?

So, is the high a better high or the low a lower low?

I’ve been through both and I gotta say… I just don’t know.

I took a yoga class the other day (gotta try to take care of the ol’ body as hard as I burn the candles at both ends) and the teacher said something which really got me thinking.

“Alan,” she said. I paused and waited. “You stink at yoga!”

Just kidding. (Actually, she certainly could have said that. Another story.)

Indeed, I was struggling with a pose, though. Not uncommon at all. And the teacher, in order to lighten the mood as I strained and grunted through it (btw, a person’s yoga practice is supposed to be peaceful and calm, even if you are working at your edge… miles to go before I savasana, as they say) told me that the performance of a person physically has virtually nothing to do with their actual quality as a human being.

“One could do double pigeon pose with ease and still be a serial killer,” she said. “Focus on the quality of your thoughts. Your thoughts matter more than your degree of flexibility.”

The quality of my thoughts. That really got me thinking about our schools.

See, we mistakenly correlate performance on academic assessments with “quality of student”… as if the quality of a student has no relation to the quality of person that this student is.

A kid could ace the SAT’s and still be an amoral, reprehensible slime. And another kid could get bombed by the SAT’s and represent the finest of what we hope young people ought to become. The fact that we are rewarding the former in schools and demonizing the latter without taking into account the “quality of their personhood” is ridiculous.

We reward academic performance as if school ought to have nothing to do with the quality of human being one becomes. And we hammer academic under-performance as if the quality of person one becomes plays no role of consequence in a child’s future life.

Would you rather raise a D student of kind and noble heart or an A student of depraved and narcissistic soul?

To me it seems a no brainer. Yet in our schools, who one is plays little to no role in contrast to how well one can academically perform.

As the great Yoda would say, “Off base we are, think I.”

I’ve come to a time in my life whereby I am realizing more and more that I will not be able to make it through all the books I hope to read.

Not even close.

To a certain degree, this bums me out. On the other hand, c’est la vie, right? I mean if this is the greatest problem I ever encounter in my life, I’d be the most blessed person to ever walk the planet.

This realization comes to the fore for me in a pronounced way right now because when I look out at all the time I have his summer to be a reader – and a writer – I realize that while it certainly is bountiful, it ain’t squat.

Time, not money, is life’s true currency and the rich person, I realize, is one who gets to spend their time as they wish.

With this thought in mind, I am going to try and be more thoughtful about the manners in which I spend my literary time. One thing I do know is that reading and writing fills my soul. (Teaching, too, but it’s summer break so I am not exactly pining to head back to my classroom but 2 days in to vacation.) Yet, with so little time to tackle so much, I am forced to be discriminating, if not downright snootily selective.

On the reading front, I am always on the lookout for something good but I have a giant list of titles which I never tackled… and by not having read these books, I feel, to some extent, incomplete. The first of which is The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. (Click here to identify what your “I must read ___________ book before I die” is.)

http://static.ning.com/socialnetworkmain/widgets/index/logo.gif); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-position: 100% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; “>Sadly, I don’t think I am going to get to write all the books I want to write either. I might even step away from the classroom to go full-time as a writer in the near future to make more headway on this front (writing is that meaningful to me) but even then, I still don’t believe I will get anywhere close to executing all the projects I have floating around between my ears.

For my writing projects, I choose them out of sheer ambition. Each book I write is breaking new ground (for me) so if I feel the fire in the belly for a project, and it is something which I believe will force me to reach, stretch and grow, I am eager to take it on. Funny how this doesn’t translate to becoming erudite though. My latest foray – the place where the fire has burned most brightly in the belly for me – has been YA comedy. After a host of books that range from deep grit to urban drama, I wanted to flex my funny bone – and prove (at least to myself) that I can write high quality humor. As many writers will attest, cranking out a make you laugh-out-loud book is one of the most challenging things to do. I like that challenge.

Plus, I like fart jokes… so perhaps I can catch wind of how to approach such a massive, gaseous task.

Either way, I may also slow down on the blogging front as well. Perhaps less will be more? After all, cranking out 3 blogs a week as opposed to 6, well… is there really anyone who is going to miss my witty repartee?

Time is our currency… I think I need to be a bit more mindful these days. I sense the sands in the hourglass a bit more than I used to.

Last week I mentioned about me being up on stage speaking to a large group of big kahunas from all over the state. Basically district officers and principals.

Now one of the unspoken rules of public speaking is that it’s a good idea not to fight with the audience members. Pander, don’t provoke.

Let’s just say that my behavior onstage sometimes proves that I didn’t get that memo.

It started with a high ranking woman taking a bit of umbrage with my stance that using cell phones in class, as woven into the fabric of a lesson plan, is a much more sensible approach than banning cell phones outright. Why? Because cell phones are here to stay and they virtually demand their own type of literacy and if we can leverage the students’ love of technology and build a bridge between using their cell phone and using their brain to achieve an academic objective, there is nothing wrong with doing so.

Matter of fact, I believe we ought to do more of it. Prohibiting cell phones on campus just strikes me as a battle we will never win. Especially since most teens have their parents buy them their cell phones in the first place which automatically gives cell phone approval that trumps my own disapproval (if I were to disapprove, of course.)

Anyway, that set the stage. She took umbrage with my cell phone stance. And why?

“Because,” as she said, “she can remember back in the 1980′s when kids were doing drug deals in class with their pagers.”

Okay, I won’t even go there. We all know that’s an argument I wouldn’t dare touch because it’s be like take out a bazooka against a person that barely held a poorly constructed bow and arrow.

But then she continued and said, “For example, I just left a session where the person next to me was texting the whole time. I mean they missed the whole session while fiddling with their cell phone. And it was a good session, too. They missed some valuable stuff.”

Now the fight is more fair here, right?

Let’s take a look at her presumption.

First of all, the txt-er could have been tweeting the whole session because they were riveted and really wanted to spread the awesome info to 1,268 of their followers.

Or perhaps, they were taking note on their phone.

Maybe they were live-blogging?

Her presumption that because the person was txting they were missing out on the info could have been preposterously wrong.

Then again, this presupposes the inverse is true – that just because someone is looking at you, they are actually listening to what you are saying.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had my eyes lasered in on some kind of lame consultant as they fumble through a Power Point with an expression that beamed, “I am riveted by your genius!” while inside my brain, I was thinking, “I wonder if Subway is still running that $5 footlong deal. Boy, they have good pepperoncinis.”

In this day and age, a person on the phone is not necessarily a person on the phone and a person looking you in the eye might really be thinking, “McDonalds… I am lovin’ it!”

I am always interested in reading what other writers have to say about writing. Even if they are writers I do not really read.

For example, here’s a quote I just read from an interview with Mary Higgins Clark…

The first thing you have to do is write. So many people tell me, “I’m going to write a book as soon as…..” The three fatal words are as soon as…. As soon as I learn to use the computer. As soon as I quit my job. As soon as the kids grow up. As soon as the dog dies. But trust me, as soon as the kids grow up and the dog dies, there will be a new set of excuses not to write which will be equally valid. If you are a morning person, get up an hour earlier and use that time to write. If you’re a night person, go to bed an hour later. But don’t say you’re too busy, because you’ll always be too busy!

Now I do not believe I have ever read a book by this woman — but something like 100 million other readers in this world have, so even though she may “not really be my thing”, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have something valuable to offer me on the professional advice front. (In Mrs. Clark’s defense however, I betchya she has read The Hoopster so NAH! LOL!)

The big point to this all is that when it comes right down to it, she is SO right. I mean so many people ask me about being a writer, how one becomes a writer, where do I “get an agent”, “land a book deal”, and so on they it seems as though they forget one thing.

You need to write.

And write and write and write.

I only mention this because summer is coming and there are scores and scores and scores of folks who “have that book that they have always wanted to write… as soon as…”

Is that you? If so, when do you think the “as soon as” aspect of your life is going to disappear? Because time will. If you do not get started in 2010 the year 2011 will still arrive. Me, I’ve got books I’ll be working on all summer.

Mary Higgins Clark does, too.

Do you?

Putting your butt in a chair and actually writing is the how authors who have sold over 100 million copies of their novels do it, it’s how I do it (goodness do I wish that I was in the former category, instead of the latter in the first part of this sentence) and it’s how the runaway bestselling book of 2011 was tackled.

You can’t hit any home runs if you don’t swing the bat.

The “as soon as…” syndrome — will it bite you in the butt this summer?

Think about the immense accomplishment of safely putting a human being on the moon and then returning that person back home to planet earth. Truly, it’s almost unreal when you think about the size and scope of the achievement… and yet, we did it.

But to listen to teachers in America today say, “There is no way to measure teacher effectiveness,” you’d think that interplanetary travel was nothing but a puny science activity compared to the beast that evaluating the professional work a 7th grade English teacher in Anaheim, California would be.

I just don’t buy it.

I mean right now I can fire off an email through a mobile, handheld device from the center of Detroit, Michigan that could be read in China, forwarded to South America and then replied to by a person in Israel all within a matter of minutes, yet gathering reasonable insight into the professional performance of the math teacher down the hall is entirely unachievable?

It’s not.

And we should stop saying it is.

Obviously, this opens up a whole can of worms as to “how” we can measure teacher effectiveness (because that is the real question) so over the course of the next few days, months, and so on, I will speak to a variety of the “how it can be done” aspects to this conversation.

Not that I actually have all, or even any of the answers.

But I do know that the first thing we all must recognize is that yes, it can be done. It is not impossible. It is not beyond human capability. It is not a smaller feat than inventing the wheel, discovering fire, harnessing electricity or slicing bread.

So how about we ask that all teachers in this country take a deep breath and admit the obvious: it’s possible. Truly, before we are able to measure teacher effectiveness, we are all going to have to calmly acknowledge that yes, indeed it can be done.

It might not be easy.
It might not be quick.
It might not be cheap.
It might not be impeccably flawless beyond the pale of any and all criticism (because so many other things in this world have risen to that level so why shouldn’t measuring teacher effectiveness do the same? Author’s note: dripping sarcasm.)
But it is not impossible.

I do wish cooler heads would prevail for this national conversation. Before we can measure teacher effectiveness we are going to have to realize that splitting the atom, mapping the human genome and getting a taxicab in New York City in the pouring rain have all been done.

Measuring teacher effectiveness can be done as well. The question is not one of “if” but of “how”.

And like I said, more on that in the posts ahead.

For those of us with students who don’t think they’d ever want to consider a career in writing, this article might be an arrow in your quiver to help inflate a student’s sense of why knowing how to properly punctuate a sentence is a skill that they might want to have in their professional, job hunting arsenal.

After all, who’s going to want to read reviews about sensie bud from a person that doesn’t even know how to correctly incorporate a lucid and illuminating appositive phrase?

That’s right, a new day is here with new, 21rst century jobs out there for the taking and as marijuana clinics boom all over the country we now find ourselves in need of weed connoisseurs.

The day of the critic has arrived. Don’t laugh, because just as cars need reviewing, restaurants need reviewing and wine needs reviewing so do the multitude of different styles and offerings of the wacky tabacky!

Wanted: Pot Critic

Experience Required:

• lots of smoking
• lots of toking
• having visited lots of laser light shows while blazing out of your mind on Thai Stick a plus.

Skills Required:

• joint rolling
• bong loading
• pipe stuffing
• able to self-edit manuscripts because your bosses will probably be too high to actually read what you write.

Hours:

• whenever, dude

Okay, I jest. But the thing is, the city of Los Angeles has seen an explosion in “medical dispensaries” this year and they have become so popular that there is a very real job out there to be a Bud Critic. (Read this article and be amazed: 966 clinics are now open in L.A.) I mean from what I have heard some of this pot will hit you like an elephant gun and some will simply give you a “mild, light buzz, you can still remain semi-coherent” buzz. Users want to know what’s what and what to expect.

Imagine not knowing the difference between having two beers and having two shots of Arkansas moonshine. This is where the erudite dope folk come in. They will have sampled the goods, smoked the various strains, and done their “get high as a friggin’ kite homework” in order to be a guide, a judge and a navigator for other users journeying through this very green forest.

Do we turn our noses up at wine critics? Will weed experts be welcomed into society with the same open arms? Will there be a stigma to be a stoner or is this just a new brand of cultural connoisseur?

Either way, the job requires a person to be able to write… and do it well.

And really, look at those hours.

As Joseph Campbell once famously said, “Follow your passion!”
As the military once famously said,” “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”
Or, as Cheech and Chong once famously said, “Hey man, how am I drivin?… I think we’re parked man.”

(BTW, that pic above shows a map — as identified by little red marijuana leafs — where all the pot clinics in L.A. currently are open. The explosion is so large that there are now two of them within walking distance of my house… each open less than a year. Can’t say I’m the biggest fan at all of the ubiquity but then again, I never even bother to count the bars. Fodder for another post, I guess.)

I often make my way through this world as a consumer looking up and wondering, “Does the CEO of this company actually know that this is how his/her business is running right now?”

I mean do they fly commercial on their own airplanes like regular schmoes (I mean folks) like me do without warnings being sent to the flight crew that the big kahuna is on board so they better look sharp? Do they roll through their own drive-thru hungry for some dinner, have cable schedule a home repair that leaves them locked down at the casa for a nebulous 5 hour window on a weekday, or walk the aisle of their grocery store with a squiggly wheeled cart and then wait 10 minutes in the express lane for the lady with 17 items (in a 12 item limit line) to write a third party personal check from an international bank with only an expired library card as an ID to verify the purchase?

Do they? Do they? I swear, I doubt it.

Yet, they make those of us in the lower classes – like me – do it all the time.

So here’s a proposal. I say we make every principal and every vice principal in America’s public schools (grades 6-12) teach one class. That’s right, let ‘em teach one class.

They wanna know how the school is really operating under their leadership, let ‘em have to walk a mile in a real teacher’s moccasins!

Now obviously, this assumes that they could do it. I’ve had a host of principal’s and VP’s in my day and some of them seem like they surely could have stepped up and riffed cogently about direct objects and the such in a semi-intelligible manner. And then I’ve had others who seem like they’d have trouble unscrewing the dry erase marker cap.

Please don’t ask which side outweighed the other, either. (But to be fair, those dry erase marker tops are trickier than they look.)

But really, could there be a better way to actually see what’s going on at ground zero other than actually being at ground zero once a day? And none of this teach for a week nonsense. I am talking about taking responsibility for the education of 38 kids 1 time a day for 36 weeks. (Hey, they’re asking me to do it 5 times a day next year.) Would the benefits of insight not greatly outweigh the problems of schedule for these folks? I men how can a person truly and effectively be an administrator if they have no idea what it feels like to be “administrated” by their own concoctions.

And really, would any school remain the same if this rule were introduced? Would NCLB not be entirely re-written if the folks doing the writing actually had to teach some real kids before, during and after they wrote and implemented this legislation? How would the national standards that are being written look if the people writing them actually had to teach each and every one of them to proficiency within the scope of one school year?

And ya know what, let ‘em teach the honor’s classes, I don’t care. Those kids’ll drive a person bonkers just as easily as a a person working with the “below proficient” kids will. You can’t sandbag here. Put your boots on the ground for one period a day and walk the daily walk. I have a feeling it would create revolutionary change for the better.

I know many of these people used to do it. But now that they no longer have to do it, they seem to have forgotten what it feels like to be asked to a buncha things that don’t really seem all that intelligent/practical/feasible and so on to do.

I figure at best, the dictates from above would show some empathetic common sense for what’s going on below. And at worst, we’d at least be provided with simpler-to-open dry erase marker tops.

So much talk goes on about improving education but what is an educated person in society today? I mean, what constitutes smart? Intelligent? Worthy of admiration?

Is “smart” a person with a graduate degree from an Ivy League School? What about the Ivy League graduate who cheats on his wife, drinks and drives, evades paying taxes and gets in trouble with the law for things like embezzlement?

Do we consider the high school dropout who works 3 jobs for near minimum wage intelligent? What about if he puts food in his the mouths of his kids, coaches pee wee soccer, attends PTA meetings even when it might cost him wages and always stays on the right side of the law when it comes to being a part of America’s citizenry?

Have we not muddled our interpretation of these ideas?

Does character education not play an important role in school education? Does it not need to play a more important role?

These days I really wonder, is a Wall Street scoundrel who bilks investors out of millions, stealing life’s savings from the unsuspecting, any more or less contemptible than a gun-toting car-jacker?

Would I rather have students well educated in terms of character with low academics or students well educated in terms of academics but of poor character?

The answer seems self-evident (if it’s an either/or choice). Yet character education is completely NOT A PART of the way in which my school is evaluated. I mean why isn’t there some sort of standardized test for this aspect of school? While there are numerous ways we, in the world of public education, seem to be failing our kids, it seems to me that the neglect of this arena of school might end up being the most calamitous.