putting the "whine" in "winner"

Every teacher knows and understands.

Bill O'Reilly and the ruckus that wasn't

A high school dared to host a forum that, among other things, criticized aspects of the War on Drugs. Somehow, the event got tagged as a hotbed of treachery by everyone's favorite pitbull, Bill O'Reilly. Dave Kopel of Rocky Mountain News explains:

Caplis insists that teachers should have driven the students out of the auditorium because "within five minutes" the panel was promoting drug use and sex. In fact, the opening 10 minutes consisted of introductions and a presentation by Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, who simply critiqued counterproductive programs, such as DARE, which loses credibility because of its reckless exaggerations....

Appearing on Bill O'Reilly's Fox TV show, The O'Reilly Factor, Caplis did not even know the name of the school's good-hearted and excellent principal Bud Jenkins, but was sure that Jenkins and every administrator should be fired. Heedless of First Amendment case law, O'Reilly proclaimed that the panel's speech constituted a crime. The only crime was perpetrated by the O'Reilly producer who, attempting to ambush interview school board President Helayne Jones, criminally trespassed into her garage.

As a Boulder High parent, I have discovered that the school is a much more tolerant place than the average large high school. Respect for freedom of speech is part of what makes Boulder High special.

O'Reilly tells the world that Bud Jenkins is "the villain." As Boulder High students are learning, media scandal-makers sometimes tell you much less than the full story.

[via Instapundit]

one man wrecking crew

The surprise popularity of The Passion of the Christ a few years back and the solid success of Amazing Grace have led some to speculate that we're in the middle of a renaissance in small-e evangelical cinema. That is, until wannabe auteur Jason Epperson wrecks everything with a short titled "Getta Rhoom."

By making it this far in the competition, I have a newfound confidence level and I'm excited to show off what this Kentucky boy can do. I am a Christian and feel that God has blessed me and put me on this show for a purpose. I don't consider myself a Christian filmmaker necessarily, but a Christian who wants to make positive films.

Positive films about people with disabilities making asses of themselves and getting zapped straight to hell? Har har!

Oh, and don't blame me if you click on any of the other profiles to see how nominally bright directors fare when handed fancy equipment and a healthy budget. The world of TV commercials may never be the same.

[via The Hater.]

at the Elma Relay for Life

Tonight and into tomorrow, people from all over Grays Harbor will be walking to fight cancer. Last year's benefit raised an incredible amount--nearly $500,000. This year it should go even higher, due to remarkable commitment by all involved--walkers in the relay have to raise $150 just to enter--and also to the presence of the Mike Dean Project, medically proven to lift spirits with its unique blend of rock, blues, jazz, funk, and Bavarian Volksmusik. Off to drum I go.





No, we really don't play Bavarian folk music. I wish we did.

principal candidates: reason for optimism

CHS will have next year's principal before summer, it appears. The final three candidates are profiled in this morning's Olympian. Highlights:

Olympia native Nancy Faaren has been the principal at Fort Vancouver High School in Vancouver, Wash., for four years. Fort Vancouver has high poverty, high mobility and many non-native English speakers, she said. However, Faaren said she has made it a priority to ensure as many students as possible graduate by offering specialized programs to meet their needs....

Peggy Ellis has been the principal at Oak Harbor Middle School in Oak Harbor for four years. She said that in that time, she has helped the school improve its scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning....

If hired, Ellis said, she would try to increase the school’s career and technical education offerings as a way to connect more students to school.

Kirsten Rae has been North Thurston High School’s assistant principal in Lacey for two years. She also worked for several years as a teacher on Olympia’s west side at Capital and at Jefferson Middle School. She said her familiarity with Capital would be an asset. If hired, Rae said, she would work to bolster connections between Capital and incoming eighth-grade students and parents.

A leadership transition is always daunting, so it's good that the mood of the interview committees--both staff and students--is optimistic. With a raft of retirees, we'll have one of our largest groups of new hires headed our way in some time. Next year's CHS is going to be a markedly different place.

no kidney for you

The reality TV kidney show was just an after-school special / hoax.

Shortly before the controversial program was to air, Patrick Lodiers of the "Big Donor Show" said the woman was not actually dying of a brain tumor as claimed and the entire exercise was intended to add pressure on the government and to raise public awareness of the need for organs.

Nothing like a prankster with a social conscience.

improv and the art of the discussion

My brother, who's been laying down a theory-and-practice of effective class discussions, makes a useful analogy between improv theater and facilitated conversation.

The actors are everyone who participates in a discussion, including the discussion leader.

There stage is twofold: 1) The room that the discussion occurs within, and 2) the text that the discussion is about. The text is a type of metaphysical meeting ground for the discussion, and as such can function as a stage.

The script is the discussion itself, which makes improv theater a better metaphor than traditional theater. In improv, the script (including the conflict and the resolution) emerge from the actors’ contributions. It’s not fixed.

Another point of contact is the ethos of improv: the fundamental acceptance of whatever world the improv artists create while within the scene. "Yes" is always implied. (The denial of that world's reality, or "blocking," is a great obstacle to effective performance.)

However, this is also where improv and discussion part ways. Discussions require the basic acceptance and respect necessary for intellectual risk-taking, but participants aren't obligated to adopt their colleagues' hypotheses. A major purpose of the dialectic is to refine and sharpen ideas, which requires junking bad ones.

To take it further, as a teacher, it's therefore important to act out the acting--to model how to disagree without discourtesy, how to move forward without pushing others back. Improv takes practice.

interview buzzwords in Washington

A colleague from my days in Evergreen's M.I.T. program is moving back to Washington, and, of course, is looking for the edge in the job hunt. I haven't sat on an interview committee for a little while, and might not be hip to all the latest, so I'll put the question to the bright minds of this here blog. What's hot and not in educational buzzwords these days?

My school's been batting around "differentiated instruction" and "rigor" over the past year, but that's about all I can drum up. (I wonder if my distinct ignorance of pedagogical trends is helping or hurting my teaching.)

the short happy life of a tacky tie

1. Born the son of Good Intentions and Bad Procrastination.

2. Worn, briefly, if at all.

3. Retired to the tie rack for at least one decade.

4. Dispatched to Goodwill in a pre-dawn excursion.

5. Shelved a minimum of three months.

6. Discovered by someone with a strong stomach and a stronger sense of irony.

7. Born again.

secret shopped: Federal Way investigation nets guns, drugs

Eight students and two adults were arrested today for selling drugs, and offering to sell guns, at schools in the Federal Way School District.

The arrests were part of a seven-month investigation conducted by police, the Federal Way School District, King County prosecutors and Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

None of the guns were sold on campus, but some drugs were, said Federal Way police spokeswoman Stacy Flores. The youths sold drugs that included cocaine, marijuana, Oxycodone and ecstasy.

Two Federal Way officers worked undercover inside Federal Way, Todd Beamer and Decatur high schools the past seven months, Flores said. The officers set up deals with students while on campus.

This raises all sorts of questions--not only about the availability of drugs, or the proper role of police in school, but about how they kept things quiet for seven months. Administrators knew about the investigation, but did teachers? Did they become suspicious of the surprisingly cogent essays, the two-o'clock shadows, the mature insights offered in class discussions? Or were the undercover officers a little more subtle, sitting near the back, iPod blaring, scribbling pot leaves on the desk?

a spelling bee in any other form

It's Spelling Bee time again, and Josh had to point me to a Slate piece on the various kinds of orthographic and grammatical contests the world over. (As every linguist knows, English is uniquely tough on spellers, what with all those undocumented nouns slipping over our unprotected border and into the language.)

Cheap irony points:

Correction, May 30, 2007: The caption on the photograph accompanying the piece originally misspelled the name of 2006 spelling bee champion Katharine Close.

the bonobo drank Starbucks

I'm trying to figure out what's the most frightening aspect of this story: that apes might have a rudimentary associative understanding of English phonemes, or that an ABCNews interviewer doesn't know how many a "dozen" is. (Click to watch the video to see what I'm on about.)

a new project: Washington Teachers

I am delighted to announce the beginning of a new blog project, a collaborative effort involving (for now) three other Washington state teachers. It's called, appropriately, Washington Teachers.

I have described the goals of the blog thusly:

To provide a platform for committed, passionate teachers sharing ideas about education, politics, life, and the universe.

To focus largely, but not exclusively, on Washington state education issues, providing a unique perspective not found in any think tank, union, media outlet, or government agency.

To become a go-to resource for citizens interested in what teachers in Washington state have to say.

To rock the world one mouse click at a time.

Obviously, each member of the blog will have their own perspective and purpose for joining, their own idiosyncrasies and areas of emphasis. That's what makes this so exciting: The Science Goddess, Jeff Nusser, and Ryan Grant, the first three to join me, are not only great teachers, but perceptive bloggers.

We'd like to expand, too. We're looking for articulate and intelligent and creative teachers from the Evergreen State. Though we each have our own affiliations and commitments, we invite all viewpoints, as long as they're expressed reasonably and in good faith.

If you live and teach in Washington, and are interested, please contact me at decorabilia AT hotmail DOT com.

a new project: Washington Teachers

I am delighted to announce the beginning of a new blog project, a collaborative effort involving (for now) three other Washington state teachers. It's called, appropriately, Washington Teachers.

I have described the goals of the blog thusly:

To provide a platform for committed, passionate teachers sharing ideas about education, politics, life, and the universe.

To focus largely, but not exclusively, on Washington state education issues, providing a unique perspective not found in any think tank, union, media outlet, or government agency.

To become a go-to resource for citizens interested in what teachers in Washington state have to say.

To rock the world one mouse click at a time.

Obviously, each member of the blog will have their own perspective and purpose for joining, their own idiosyncrasies and areas of emphasis. That's what makes this so exciting: The Science Goddess, Jeff Nusser, and Ryan Grant, the first three to join me, are not only great teachers, but perceptive bloggers.

We'd like to expand, too. We're looking for articulate and intelligent and creative teachers from the Evergreen State. Though we each have our own affiliations and commitments, we invite all viewpoints, as long as they're expressed reasonably and in good faith.

If you live and teach in Washington, and are interested, please contact me at decorabilia AT hotmail DOT com.

students breathe in, wait for WASL scores

Once again we near that magical moment in June when the sun burns away the slaggard clouds of spring, when rhododendrons burst into song, metaphorically speaking, and when a young student's fancy turns to thoughts of the WASL.

Between June 8th and June 15th, sophomores and other interested parties, freshfolks excepted, will learn their individual results in Reading, Writing, and Math. (Science, which from a student's perspective counts for nothing, won't come out until September.) Sure, the legislature might have passed a law or two making WASL success semi-optional, but who wants to retake the darn thing or take remedial classes or build a portfolio demonstrating achievement or some other ungodly alternative?

Bonus for interested teachers:

Also on June 8, the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction plans to publicly release preliminary statewide results showing how students in the classes of 2008 and 2009 performed on the reading, writing and math WASL tests. However, those statewide results won’t be finalized until late August.

What a strange year it's been for administrators and math teachers, who've had to convince students to try their best just in case their scores counted. As an English teacher, I didn't fret much: yanking Reading and Writing from the slate, when passage rates were already reaching 80% or higher, was never really an option for Governor Gregoire.

Added: Oh, and if you want to know what your options are if you didn't pass, here's the handy PDF chart.

photo of Governor Gregoire signing National Board bonus into law

I got my box in the mail, just a pit stop in the Paperwork 500 otherwise known as National Board certification. I'll be certifyin' with the best of them next year, videotaping myself and writing endless self-assessments, taking tests that prove my literary and pedagogical mettle. (If the TRP can do it, so can I.)

It's nice to know that the sense of satisfaction and pride I'll have once it's all done isn't all I have to work toward. Now that Governor Christine Gregoire has signed SSHB 2262 into law, I'll also receive a $5,000 annual bonus. That'll help with a house payment.

The folks in the photo, as identified by Jim Meadows of the WEA, who sent it along:

Rep. Ross Hunter
Sen. Rodney Tom
Lucinda Young, WEA Lobbyist
Jim Meadows, WEA
Governor Gregoire
Terese Emry, OSPI
Laura Koch, Seattle NBCT, and kids

purple haze

Nope. A tie clip would only ruin the effect.

Feierabend good, but good isn't good enough as M's lose

Gotta hand it to Ryan Feierabend, who looked positively Moyeresque at times tonight, getting the Angels to flail helplessly at sick circle changes. One wee mistake pitch to Shea Hillenbrand, though, put Los Angeles* up for good, as the M's offense mostly spun its wheels against Ervin Santana.

For a few minutes in the first, Santana looked like he was going to fizzle out, but a rocket up the middle by Johjima doinked off the mound and into a double play, leaving the bases full with only one run in. At that point my internal pessimist said, that's it, he'll settle down and the M's will suddenly go cold. I didn't want to be right.

The long reach of Julio Mateo from beyond the grave--you brought this on yourselves, Mariners.



*Of Anaheim

outlawing "murderabilia?"

No matter what you think about banning inmates' sales of their possessions to collectors and freaks, you have to agree that the word "murderabilia" just doesn't have the right ring to it.

[via Obscure Store]

a bright idea? starting high school later in the day

NewScientist updates the sleep research suggesting that high school should start around 11:00 a.m.:

It is comforting to think that teenagers are sleepwalking through their lives by choice, because at least that means we should be able to persuade them to lay down their games consoles and go to bed. But if that is the case, how come their peers in the developing world, in areas that lack basic electricity let alone PlayStations, still stay up late into the night? Is it possible that teenagers just cannot get to sleep earlier? Evidence is emerging to suggest that is indeed the case: teenagers are biologically incapable of going to bed at a sensible time....

Being a teenager is a tiring business. Though experts recommend that adolescents get at least 9 hours sleep a night, only 1 in 5 get that amount, with many saying that they have less than 7 hours on school nights. If late nights are bad for British and Australian teens who have to be in class at 9 am next morning, they have got to be worse for youth in the US, where schools start as early as 7 am, and in much of continental Europe where an 8 am start is the norm. No wonder the most recent survey, published by the US National Sleep Foundation in March, found that more than a quarter of 11 to 17-year-olds fall asleep in class at least once a week, and that over 50 per cent say they do not get enough sleep and feel tired during the day.

The situation is so bad in the US, says Mary Carskadon from Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, that around half of teenagers display symptoms of narcolepsy - a major sleep disorder caused by a defective signalling pathway in the brain. She recently took groups of teenagers into her lab to run "nap" tests on them. Normally, when people drop off they quickly progress into bout of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and then enter REM. When she tested adolescents in the mornings, many fell immediately into REM sleep. "It is exactly what patients with narcolepsy do, but these kids don't actually have narcolepsy," she says....

In December 2004, Till Roenneberg at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, suggested that... our degree of morningness or eveningness changes with age.... [finding] that around the age of 20... people start sleeping at steadily earlier times. Women reach this turning point at an age of 19.5 years on average, while for men it comes at 20.9 years. "Most young children are morning-type people - they wake early and are at their most alert in the morning," he says. "Around the onset of puberty, there is an alteration in the body's clock so that teenagers are shifted forwards, becoming evening-type people." They perform better later in the day, in the afternoon or evening, and find it hard to sleep before 11 pm, midnight or even 1 am.

The article goes on to explain the potential biological explanations. It also gives a voice to skeptics:

Other researchers point out that the changes Carskadon found could simply be a consequence of staying up late. "Nobody knows why teenagers are so delayed, but there is no evidence for a biologically programmed delay in melatonin production," says Jo Arendt, a melatonin expert at the Surrey Sleep Research Centre in Guildford, UK. "It is probably a question of choice - the later they stay up the later they will naturally wake up."

Either way, the effects of sleep deprivation are all too real. David Goldstein, a psychologist at the University of Toronto in Canada, has found that a shift in the body clock can have profound effects on how people perform. He has shown, for example, that on average, people drop six or seven points on intelligence tests if they take them at the wrong time of day for their type. "Adolescents, who are usually evening types, perform very poorly in the morning, which is the time of day that they are usually assessed for examinations," he says. For teens who are on a knife edge between being accepted on a course, passing an exam or getting a job, that six-point handicap could make all the difference. "There are some kids whose teachers have simply never seen them at their best, and that is a terrible shame," Goldstein says.