run a smarter extemp prep room

So you've been asked to run extemp prep. It's daunting. You have to post panels (rooms and speaking order) and topics (three per speaker, every 7 minutes), move speakers around in panels when their debate rounds run late, and keep anxious novices quiet and sane. If you fail, the entire tournament will run late.

Here are some tips to help you not fail.

1. When extempers enter, have them sign in by circling the number next to their code. This lets you immediately know who's late, and, more important who can be moved around. This is the single smartest thing you can do, which is why I'm placing it first.

2. Necessary materials: dry erase board and markers, masking tape (clear tape is too tough to peel off surfaces), scissors, pens, paper, a timer or digital clock, a booming voice, patience.

3. Announce the rules before you start posting. Re-announce them when the tardy teams show up.

4. Keep the rules simple. I have three: no talking, no electronic devices (such as cell phones or iPods), do not leave without permission.

5. Convince tournament authorities to provide an extra half hour between the first A rounds, if they're running successively.

6. Bring something to read when the first three speakers have already left and the pace slows down.

7. Place topics in at least two locations, so you aren't gored to death in the onslaught when you post Speaker #1.

8. Remind students to double-check the posting before leaving.

9. Circulate around the room to check for chicanery.

10. Have a direct way to communicate with the tab room, either via walkie-talkie or cell phone. It may save your life.

11. Do all these things well, and you will be cursed by your success and asked to run extemp prep forever and ever amen.

surely the Second Coming is at hand

I wasn't aware that registration is part of the process, but I guess it makes sense.

listen to my advice

1. It's good.
2. It's often free.
3. It comes backed with the best warranty in the business.
4. It's honest.
5. It's safe.
6. It's delivered in a nonjudgmental manner.
7. It's friendly.

Seriously: listen to my advice. But first, listen.

Your most valuable adjective should be "coachable." Especially if I am the coach.

crrrrrazy ed reform in HB 1410

The WEA is steamed about HB 1410 (2009-10), all 111 ed-reforming pages of it. (Really. You want to read the entirety of the 111-page bill? Go right ahead [pdf].)

What has the WEA in a froth is, primarily, the bill's destruction of the state salary schedule. Adios, degree-based salary advancement (pp. 36ff):

The salary schedule shall not provide increased salaries based on continuing education credits or academic degrees.

No grandfathering, mind you, for the teachers who dutifully went along with the old ways, spending hours, days, weeks, months, or years of their time to get that master's (pp. 41ff):

23 NEW SECTION. Sec. 205. TRANSFER TO NEW SYSTEM.
(1) Certificated instructional staff whose first employment with a school district commenced before the 2012-13 school year have the option to make an irrevocable transfer to the compensation system with salary allocations provided under section 204 of this act....

(3) Any employee subject to this section who has not transferred to the new compensation system by November 15, 2021, shall be automatically transferred effective September 1, 2022.

So you've got ten years to milk that master's for all it's worth. Yet the bill makes it seem like the state is trying to model compensation after the wider professional world, including...

19 (a) Results of the preliminary labor market survey and analysis conducted under this section and other information about average salaries for noneducators in comparable occupations in Washington, including noneducators at the beginning of their careers and various types of educational staff associates working in noneducational settings;

Here's a tip: in other professions, advanced degrees mean a higher salary. Heck, many companies pay for their employees' schooling.

There's more, including a fun phrase, "academic watch," that turns the bill into a miniature NCLB Act, rubrics aplenty, "team-based bonuses," recommended class sizes, Core 24 and much, much more.

The bill's status: it's been sent to the Education Appropriations committee. Here are their phone numbers and emails. They met tonight for a public hearing at 6:00. I wasn't there.

I was too busy reading the bill.

Olympia's best appetizers

Belt-tightening times mean smaller portions. That doesn't mean you have to give up flavor, though, when you're dining in Olympia. (Was that sufficiently newspaperish? I fear for our local rag, and am practicing.)

In no particular order, some of Olympia's best side dishes and appetizers. Suggest your own in the comments!


hot and sour soup, Little Da Nang
Tofu, green onions, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and more in a tangy, spicy broth. Pair it with the charbroiled pork sandwich, its perfect complement, for only $6.50.


beer-battered onion rings, Iron Rabbit
The best in town. Maybe the best in the state.


baked beans and potato salad, Ranch House BBQ
Why choose only one when you get at least two sides with every meal?


cheesy bread, Brewery City Pizza
With a little marinara on the side. Bring a couple friends, though. It's a big plate.


chips and salsa, Cancun Plaza
Chips are chips. But the salsas: an oniony concoction for bite, and a mild coleslaw for pizazz.





[Oh, and by "Olympia" I mean "The Greater Olympia Metroplex," including Oly, Lacey, and Tumwater.]

Capital closed again; I miss most of the fun

This morning, I went with a group of CHS teachers to observe at Bush Middle School in Tumwater. We braved the snow and ice to watch eighth-grade classes in action, unaware that our colleagues across town were ushering students out the door, starting at 9:30, when city inspectors declared a "live load" of snow made the building unsafe in certain areas.

Unsafe for students, at least. Our observations finished, we returned to campus for meetings and to finish out the contract day. My sub had a sweet gig: first period prep from 8:00-8:55, and 2nd period from 9:00 to 9:30. Not bad for a day's wages.

The Olympian sums up the state of affairs thusly:

On Monday night, Superintendent Bill Lahmann told the school board at its regular meeting that he plans to ask the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to waive four of the five days that Capital was closed this month because of the roof collapse.

Lahmann said that the damage to the school's roof would be covered under Gov. Chris Gregoire's proclamation of an emergency because of the severe winter storm that began on Dec. 15.

The fifth missed day would be made up on March 6, which was scheduled to be a district-wide training day for teachers.

All the schools in the district will make up the three school days canceled just before winter break because of snow fall at the end of the year. Olympia's last day of school is scheduled to be June 18.

Now it's all up to Randy Dorn's crew. Hurrah!

the War on Drugs is rationally indefensible

After a long time thinking about it, and after reading Radley Balko's latest, I'm pretty much convinced that the War on Drugs is the United States' single greatest policy failure of the last half century.

Or, rephrasing the title of this post, the War on Drugs is indefensibly irrational.

the webbed tree of life

Taken tonight, as sleet combined with a bright light and curved branches to create a spiderweb-like tree--mere hours after I had read this article in NewScientist about how scientists are revising their view of life's ever-evolving web.

My wife and I share credit for the photo. I suggested the shot, while she braved the cold to set up the Gorillapod and Canon and take it.

no normal neckwear

Sometimes students ask, Don't you have any normal ties?

No. I don't.

[Originally posted here.]

more hard times coming

In today's email, teachers received news from Superintendent Bill Lahmann that the upcoming fiscal implosion at the state level is going to make recovery from our district's own turmoil that much harder.

The governor and state Legislature are facing a shortfall for the 2009-2011 state budget of about $6 billion, and it is likely to go higher. To provide some perspective, that represents approximately 15% of the entire state general fund budget.

This is not good news for our District or our community which is the home to many state government employees. More than 40% of the state budget goes to K-12 public schools so we will almost certainly see some budget reductions here in Olympia, as will every other district across Washington.

If the Legislature makes only modest budget reductions to schools and they allow the District to collect all of the funds approved by local taxpayers in our 2008 levy, we could avoid the most drastic cut options. (Our local voters approved a four-year levy in 2008 and they have continued to support funding for our District to the fullest extent allowed by state law.) On the other hand, if funds for the class size Initiative 728 are eliminated, the District could face a shortfall of more than $4 million in 2009-2010, in addition to other cuts. Obviously if this were to happen, we would need to consider options that would never be on the table in any normal budget year.

Add to that the continued fallout from the collapsing roof at CHS, and the potential for more missed days if it snows again--the City of Olympia says, no more snow accumulation or they'll shut 'er down--and you can guess why things have been a little quiet around the blog lately. Consider it mild case of shock.

(Oh, and it's bargaining time for the OEA. I don't envy the team one bit.)

they're all the same

Deep in an article describing three fish that, though radically different in appearance, are actually members of the same species, is a poignant truth.

Even stranger, males who reach adulthood don't eat at all. Having gorged as larvae, their jaw fuses and they develop a vestigial gut that only stores shells from previous meals. That's an advantage, Johnson said, because in the deep ocean "there's not a lot of food, you're better off taking your lunch with you." The males gorge as larvae and grow a giant liver, storing energy there to live on.

"This thing was basically a set of testes looking for the female," Johnson said.

No further comment.

because grammar matters

Put that modifier in the proper place. Or else:

After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House - a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got the words of the oath a little off, which prompted Obama to do so, too....

It happened when Obama interrupted Roberts midway through the opening line, in which the president repeats his name and solemnly swears.

Next in the oath is the phrase " ... that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States." But Roberts rearranged the order of the words, not saying "faithfully" until after "president of the United States."

[via Glenn Reynolds]

rating the inauguration

Dianne Feinstein, emcee
Energetic and smiling, she gets in the best line of the day: "This was the moment when the dream that once echoed across history from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial finally reached the walls of the White House." 8/10

Rick Warren, invocation
This was the guy? Really? 4/10

Itzhak Perlman / Yo-Yo Ma / Gabriela Montero / Anthony McGill, classical quartet
Why was the music by John Williams? That second rate hack cribbed from the same notes as Aaron Copland, when not stealing outright from the quintessential American composer. If you're going to use "Simple Gifts," might as well play "Appalachian Spring" instead. 6/10

Aretha Franklin, singer
Mediocre arrangement of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" can't keep the Queen of Soul from reigning. 8/10.

The Cold, weather
Bracing but not a deterrent to a million-plus. 8/10

John Roberts, chief swearer-inner
Where's that paper? Not in this pocket.... Not in that pocket... Musta blown away in the wind... Oh, well, I remember how it goes.... 3/10

Barack Obama, president-electric
Duly rhetorical, somber, and uplifting. 9/10

Elizabeth Alexander, poet
I. Learned. To. Read. Poetry. In. An. Echo. Chamber. 2/10

Joseph Lowery, benediction
Finally, a reason to really smile. 10/10

sure is nice to have an orator-in-chief again

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I say that as a grateful teacher of speech, debate, and rhetoric.

Randy Dorn was never a member of Mothers Against the WASL

Jerry Cornfield is confused.

Randy Dorn pledged to toss out the WASL if elected to run Washington's public schools.

He won the job of superintendent of public instruction. He's ready to make good on his promise.

Wednesday he'll reveal details of an extreme makeover of the exam, beginning with a new name because, as he says, "WASL" is kryptonite.

Questions will be fewer in number, shorter in length and able to be answered and scored on a computer in his blueprint.

His goal is to have students spend less time taking it, teachers spend less time giving it and the state spend less money on it....

Which raises the political question: If it looks like the WASL, sounds like the WASL, reads like the WASL and counts like the WASL, isn't it the WASL?

How about we head over to Randy Dorn's campaign website, then, to see what Dorn actually promised.

We don't need to spend years figuring this out. Drawing on successful tests developed in other states, in my first year in office I will work with the state school board to replace the WASL with a testing system that is diagnostic, tied to technology, more fair, more understandable, and which takes less time so that testing doesn't dominate curriculum and the school calendar. We will then phase this new test in so there is no gap in accountability for current students.

It seems that Mr. Cornfield has projected certain anti-WASL sentiments on to Mr. Dorn. To be fair, though, I know a lot of people who knowingly glossed over Dorn's make-the-WASL-smarter stance, voting for anybody but Bergeson.

labor of nerdly love

My wife and I are nerds, who, almost superfluously, enjoy playing Scrabble. Case in point: the Anderson re-wedding of ought-five had a Scrabble(licious) theme, including a Scrabble cake.

But this takes it.

[via BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow]

interesting cases for the ICC resolution

What are some of the most interesting cases you've encountered while debating the Jan/Feb international criminal court resolution? List 'em in the comments.

Here are some I've seen...

The Violence Against Women Aff
Since women are the largest single oppressed group, we have a moral imperative and priority to right the wrongs committed against women by joining the ICC.

The IACHR Aff
This case focuses on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The reasoning is essentially similar to that of standard ICC cases. One potential advantage is that its jurisdiction is solely over member states; one potential disadvantage is that its scope is narrower, restricted to the Western hemisphere, so it may lack the strength and legitimacy of the ICC. (Here's the Convention that established the IACHR; articles 61ff cover the Court's jurisdiction.)

The Hegemony Aff
To preserve its strategic superiority, the U.S. ought to submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC. It's best to cooperate internationally rather than to try to maintain hegemony alone. (I've seen the Aff try to argue that the ICC wouldn't prosecute an American citizen anyway, since it wouldn't want to risk having the U.S. pull up its stakes and leave camp, but that would seem to make the phrase "submit to the jurisdiction" utterly meaningless.)

The Habermas Neg
Since discourse precedes the establishment of moral universals, and "submitting" means that true discourse is not achieved, the U.S. cannot submit to the jurisdiction of an ICC.

late on a Friday night

I think Olympia just might be the only place you can live where, after the last debater has gone home and you're trying to drive through town back to your apartment and a few hours' sleep, you have to detour around a protest.

Update: Because I was back at Federal Way early the next morning, I never had a chance to read the paper and learn what the protest was really about. Apparently it turned violent later that evening.

The demonstration was spurred partly by the death of Jose Ramirez-Jimenez of Olympia, who was shot and killed after a police chase in November in Lacey, participant Jeff Berryhill of Olympia said Saturday.

Some demonstrators held road flares, torches and signs; others played banjo and guitar. After gathering about 10:40 p.m. Friday and circling through downtown a couple of times, protesters made their way across the Fourth Avenue Bridge and up the Harrison Avenue hill, Berryhill said. The group was followed by Olympia police and was met by more officers at Thomas Street and Harrison Avenue, diverting them down Perry Street toward a police substation, he said.

Police say protesters then threw lit torches against the station wall and a police car, which were quickly extinguished.

The streets of Olympia were fairly empty otherwise; when it's as cold as it was, people mostly crowd in the clubs or huddle near the entrances, smoking. From what I could see, there were very few spectators, and the demonstrators were able to block only one street.

a lack of political will

Suppose it turns out that, legally speaking, acts sanctioned by the Bush administration at Guantanamo constitute torture. Actually, you don't really have to suppose:

In her interview, Crawford acknowledges that it was "the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health that led to her conclusion. 'The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. … This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him. … It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge' to call it torture." What Crawford has done here is astounding. She has repudiated the formalistic (and perennially shifting) definitions of torture as whatever-it-is-we-don't-do. She has admitted that there is a medical and legal definition for torture and also that we have crossed the line into it.

What then?

The answer to that question takes you to a very different place when the act is torture, as Crawford says it is. Under the 1984 Torture Convention, its 146 state parties (including the United States) are under an obligation to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." These states must take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. The convention allows no exceptions, as Sen. Pinochet discovered in 1998. The state party to the Torture Convention must then submit the case to its competent authorities for prosecution or extradition for prosecution in another country.

The former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army has spoken. Her clear words have been picked up around the world. And that takes the prospects of accountability and criminal investigation onto another level. For the Obama administration, the door to the do-nothing option is now closed. That is why today may come to be seen as the turning point.

All LDers should be watching this situation closely, since it puts a sharp edge on the debate over the current resolution. It's entirely conceivable that a former president and high-ranking officials, never mind the soldiers, doctors, and citizen contractors who participated, could be prosecuted under international law. They won't, of course, since the U.S. will never allow it. And Barack Obama isn't going to press the case.

Just last weekend, Obama signaled in a television interview that he was not inclined to launch sweeping new criminal investigations of detainee treatment and interrogations that took place under the Bush administration. "My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."

What then?

Update: Eric Posner (U. Chicago) lists five reasons Eric Holder, the incoming Attorney General, is unlikely to prosecute torture charges.

LD mailbag: retribution and the ICC

Regarding the current resolution, a reader writes:

I'm really struggling with this topic, but I think I have an idea for a case. However, I'm afraid that I'm misunderstanding the topic or this idea isn't addressing it in the entirety that it needs to. The resolution has been reading to me that the question for the affirmative to answer is whether or not the US should (I'm defining ought as "moral rightness") submit itss citizens to the jurisdiction of an ICC. My idea is to have a value of cosmopolitan justice and criterion of retribution with the premise that justice is the highest value of any society, making it the highest value of the world/global society, and that the way for justice to be best achieved in this situation is for retribution to be fulfilled because retribution will give the just due to those who have harmed. My question is about the retribution part; I'm afraid I'm simplifying the debate too much because I'm seeing all of these other arguments that are much more complex. I see many other arguments about how submitting will support human rights, but is it wrong to interpret the topic as a response to injustice? Obviously, if there is a need for a court, then it's after the fact; the time for preserving rights is past, and now all that can be done is to punish those who have harmed. I interpret the debate to be that the US should submit if more justice will be achieved by doing so; one of the biggest benefits of an ICC is that there is an opportunity for retribution that wouldn't exist without it. The rest of my points are set up to prove that more justice is achieved for both US citizens and the rest of the world by submitting, so do you think that this could work? Or, like I said earlier, am I missing the point of the debate?

I think there's much to work with here.

1. Philosophically speaking, retributivism is perhaps the strongest justification of punishment, it a moral duty, and thus fulfilling the burden of "ought" in the resolution. Utilitarian theories (often based on deterrence) are a harder sell, since they require an empirical confirmation that the Court actually deters crime, and can be shown, absent side constraints, to justify horrific punishments to maximize deterrent value.

2. I don't think your doubts about retributivism are due to its weaknesses, but rather due to a misconception of the strength of rights-based affirmatives. It's much easier to show a duty to right a wrong than to show a positive obligation to prevent a wrong, especially in a world where national sovereignty is still alive and well and realpolitik holds sway.

3. One way retributivism might flow to the Neg is to argue that the ICC (and international jurisprudence, generally) prohibit the use of the death penalty. The worst atrocity crimes, including murder, merit at most life in prison without parole. If we have a moral duty to punish proportionally--almost always a key tenet of retributivist theory--and if mass murder requires the death penalty, then the U.S. should not submit to the jurisdiction of a court that will fail to carry out justice. (Even from a utilitarian standpoint, it could be argued that the ICC's inability to sentence criminals to death reduces its deterrent value to nil.) For a retributivist defense of the death penalty, start with Kant.

4. Varieties of retributivism (and the title of an anti-death-penalty retributivist piece.)

5. More on the different justifications for punishment, from the SEP.

Your thoughts and questions, as always, are appreciated.