Ouch!

The first time I saw this video I laughed AND thought it was very cute. It's rare that those two things happen simultaneously. I think part of the magic for me is that it reminds me of my two little brothers. Watching the video was like be transported back to when we were young as I could EASILY see Kelly and Donald doing this.

Odyssey of the Mind

This past Saturday Natalie and her team of Odyssey of the Mind teammates competed in the Regional OotM competition at Dixie Heights High School. This was our family's introduction into OotM, and I have to say, it's a) exciting and b) weird. It's a creativity competition, and in many ways, though it's less well known than the Governor's Cup competitions that Meredith and Natalie have both competed in, it is in many ways a whole lot cooler. It's kind of complicated, though, so I'm not going to go into a lot of details, but you can read more about it by clicking here and by clicking here.

Natalie's team finished second at the competition and is now on to the state competition a few weeks from now in Bowling Green. If they finish in the Top 3 there they will head to the "World" competition, which is in Iowa this year.

I filmed their entire performance yesterday and had planned to post it on this website, but I learned this morning (from an email from the school sponsor) that posting performances to the web is forbidden by OotM rules until after the World Competition. So for now, here's video of Natalie and the others winning their ribbons at the award ceremony. Natalie is easy to spot in the video. She's the only girl with white lettering on her t-shirt.

Terrific Article

I think this is supposed to be a satirical article, but everytime I get a workorder saying that the Internet is taking too long to open up on someone's computer, and I go there and find that it's taking maybe 6 seconds to open, I start to wonder if this article maybe isn't satire and is reality.

Click here to see what I'm talking about.

Murderer

I think I killed someone yesterday...

I pulled into the Kroger parking lot in an older, slightly beat up mini-van that was screaming Soccer Mom. As I pulled in I was listening to the radio tuned to 102.7 WEBN and blaring some ear-splitting hard rock. After quickly parking I jumped out in my best black suit. "Good afternoon!" I said politely to the gray haired woman who was loading groceries into the car beside me.

She looked at me with the same blank expression that cows look at passing cars. I think the three disparate elements (1. the van, 2. the music, and 3. the man in a suit), so different and following one after the other so quickly, were too much for her poor brain. I think I fried it.

I'm sure the whole thing was like some Rene Magritte painting come to life for her.

Laughed until I cried

Okay, some might be offended by this post, but I'm sorry. I just watched this and laughed until I cried. Please watch these videos in order.

Video One (MIGHT be fake)

Video Two (Pretty sure it's fake)

Our Failing Schools

I was flabbergasted by this little tidbit:

Yesterday I was talking with someone about what would be the most popular searches on the Internet right now. After we talked, I went online to see what actually WERE the most popular searches. One of the pages I visited was ask.com's page that lists the most popular searches for the last week (Here's the link, but unless you're reading it today you may find that the results have changed). Several of the items on the page didn't surprise me at all. If I thought about it for a while I think I would have guessed that Facebook and MySpace would be #1 and #2. I also wouldn't be surprised that the fastest rising search would be "Natasha Richardson" or "March Madness."

What DID baffle me was #6 on the most popular searches for the week: "How to get pregnant." What? Are we failing our students that much! It seems to me that humans for all time have been able to figure this one out without even trying. We have people going to the Internet to find out this information? And there are more people trying to figure it out than are looking for ebay or Craig's List?* Are our schools teaching children NOTHING anymore?

Weird.
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*What's even weirder is that there are dozens of webpages out there with that exact title!

Men's Hoops

You may have noticed over the last week or so (or maybe you haven't) that I haven't made a single post about the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament going on. That's because I don't really care and haven't paid it much attention. With Kentucky and Cincinnati both out of the tournament this year, there hasn't been much to get excited about.

That's not to say there aren't local teams still left. There are. Louisville in the number one seed overall, and Xavier has made it to the Sweet 16. And to be honest, I know more people who graduated from Xavier than I do from UC. Still, I just don't get as excited about those two schools as I do the Bearcats and the Wildcats. Maybe it's a cat thing--I'm a Bengals fan, too.

And for the not-too-interested fan like myself, the tournament this year doesn't have anything going for it really. There isn't that absolute Cinderella team that made it out of the first weekend into the Sweet 16. Sure, Arizona is a 12 seed, but c'mon--it's Arizona! This is a team that has had some recent success in men's basketball. It has been in the Sweet 16 nine of the last 16 years and in the Elite 8 six of those times. It's a high seed, but it's no Cinderella. And if you eliminate them, the next lowest seed is the 5th seeded Purdue. There's just not a lot of drama left.

In the first two rounds I watched about an hour of basketball total, most of it at the end of the day Sunday when three potential upsets were all happening at the same time. But other than that, it hasn't been worth it.

And I'm certainly not interested in UK's quest to win the title of "66th Best Team in the Nation!"

I think I'd rather watch NASCAR. Or professional wrestling. Or reality TV.

Or maybe I should find a good book.

Translation

I am pretty busy this week, so I don't have time to write something new. Instead, I thought I'd share something I wrote 11 years ago, when my older daughter was just a little tike. Lisa had been typing me an email, and she had Meredith on her lap. Meredith leaned forward and put her hands on the keyboard and when she lifted them up this is what was typed:

"jghgn134ynk j -
999999999777777777333333333333333
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp"

Lisa told me she didn't know what it was Meredith was trying to say. So I wrote the following reply, which is a supposed translation of what Meredith wrote.
---------------------------------------
TRANSLATION: Man, I hate this, this cough, this diarreah, this whole phase of my life that I'm in right now. Why can't Mom and Dad understand me when I speak? I try, but it's so difficult and frustrating getting through to them. It's so nightmarish, so surreal, like a Jean-Paul Sartre play.

I'm so tired. I felt like I haven't slept in 134 days. That's an exaggeration, I know, but a little hyperbole never hurt.

I adore Elmo, though. And Bennie Bean Bag Bear. True, he's a little simplistic, and he's filthy and covered now with chocolate or something, but he seems to make Dad happy. I don't really have the heart to tell him that he doesn't really kiss him goodbye at the end of the night, that he's just so much fluff and stuff, but I suppose that's okay. Dad is old. Let him have his fantasies. He'll be in an old folk's home soon.

The only real relief I get out of life is the television. There I can escape this dreary life, this madcap world I'm living in, this Alice in Wonderland existence that no one understands, no one over the age of five ever really remembers. "It's the best time of your life," they say, "being a toddler. I wish I was a toddler again." Hah! What do they know of the pain that we endure? What do they know of a wet diaper, a diaper filled with brown syrup, a diaper that they cannot get to because of this affliction, this lack of dexterity and muscle control? What do they know of a world where everything that is interesting, everything that makes life worth living, is just out of reach, behind a doorknob that can't be reached, or in a drawer that is just beyond your fingertips? What do they know of awakening at dawn in a prison, a prison not just of my crib cages, but a prison of the mind as well. Oh, woe, woe is me! Woe is me!

Even typing this does not ease my pain. I need you, you reading this, to feel me. I'm banging as hard as I can! I'm typing as fast as I can! Can you feel me? Can you reach me? NO! NO! You don't understand. I have to make you understand. I'm going to climb up onto this desk and get closer to you! I'm going to make you undestand! I'm--no--she's pulling me down from the desk! Stop! I have to make them see, I have to make them know! I have t---

Proud of My Daughters

This past weekend was regional elementary (grades 4-5) Governor's Cup competition. Natalie competed in Language Arts and was on the Quick Recall (think team Jeopardy) team for her school. She didn't place in the Language Arts competition, but she and her team won first place in the Quick Recall competition. There is no state competition at the elementary level, so this is the end of the road for them. I was very proud of her.

But I was maybe even more proud of Meredith. Let me explain. She and her sister don't always (or even OFTEN) get along these days, and Meredith was not really excited by the prospect of spending the entire day Saturday watching Natalie compete. She whined about it a bit, but Lisa and I told her that Natalie had sat through all of her competitions for all of these years, and it was her turn, so she sat on the bleachers and read Harry Potter books, but she wasn't very friendly to her sister (which, as I said, wasn't unusual).

As a fourth grader, Natalie is one of the younger players on the Quick Recall team. While her coach is really good during the regular season about playing everyone for a significant chunk of time, Natalie pretty much only gets in to games during the district and regional when the game has been decided. Again, her coach is very conscientious, and she keeps track of the score. There are 30 questions per half, and as soon as the game is decided, she'll put in the non-starters. For instance, if Beechwood is ahead 23-15 with seven questions to go, she'll call timeout and put in the reserves because she knows that--even if the other team gets all seven of the questions left--Beechwood will still win 23-22.

This system worked out fine during the years that Meredith was on the elementary team, and it also worked out during the district competition a few weeks ago. However, this year ALL of the matches at the regional competition were very close and not decided until the last two or three questions. As a result, only the 5th graders had gotten in to the matches, and Natalie was getting frustrated and disappointed. We reminded her that her coach had told her and the other 4th graders that this might happen, that Meredith hadn't gotten in that much when she was in 4th grade, but that she had been the team captain the next year as a 5th grader. Natalie said she knew, but that didn't matter. She was still upset about it.

The final match turned out to be not that much different from the preceding matches. In fact, Natalie's team was down early by as many as 5 points, though they surged right before halftime and right after halftime to take a slim lead. Still, with seven questions left in the match, her team was only up by 5 points. They were probably going to win, but the younger kids were probably NOT going to get in.

But then I heard the coach stand up and shout "Time!" She looked up in the stands and shouted, "Natalie!" Natalie had her head down in disappointment, but she quickly raised it, wide-eyed, and ran down to get into the game. She was getting in the game! And before it was even decided!

The coach said something to Natalie and then headed back to her spot on the bleachers. As she did so she looked over at Meredith, who was sitting right beside me, and smiled a little smile. I turned to Meredith.

"What was that all about?" I asked her.

She smiled and shrugged. "I knew Natalie was upset, so I asked her to put Natalie in if there was any way possible."

Natalie was in for all of three questions. Once the game WAS decided with four questions remaining and Natalie's team still ahead by five, the coach called a timeout again, replaced Natalie and the remaining starters, and put the rest of the 4th graders in. So she hadn't been in that long, but it was okay. She was happy.

And I was, as I said, VERY proud of her, but even more proud of Meredith. She DID love her little sister after all.

Because I'm Black

I was thinking about a moment from my college days not too long ago, something that has stayed with me over the years and actually been a pretty big influence on me...

I graduated from a high school that was predominately white. In fact, out of my graduating class, which I would guess had about 150 or so students in it, off the top of my head I can think of about six or seven students who weren't white. So I didn't have a lot of exposure to anything other than a white viewpoint growing up. Sure, our teachers tried. We read Langston Hughes' poetry, and I remember reading Cry, the Beloved Country in English my senior year, but second hand experience just isn't the same. And I was friends with the six or seven non-whites in my graduating class, but--I think because they were so vastly outnumbered--they usually were fairly silent about all but the most overt racism.

College was a different story. I attended Kentucky State University, which was an historically black college. It had integrated at the same time every other university in Kentucky had integrated some 25 years before, but it still had the reputation of being the state's "black" college. As a result, some 51% of the student population was African-American. And it was in college that I REALLY got first hand experience with African-American anger. It sometimes spilled out in my literature courses, especially if the authors were African-American. In fact, I enrolled in a 20th century African-American literature course one semester and only attended one class period. I was told by a couple of people, INCLUDING THE PROFESSOR, that I didn't really belong in the class, that I wouldn't be able to understand the class because I was white. In retrospect, I wish I'd stayed in the class, fought to be in there and participate and maybe even bring something important to the class, but I didn't. I was obsessed with graduating summa cum laude with straight A's, and I figured if my professor were that prejudiced against me that there was no way I was going to get an A. I withdrew the next day and took another Shakespeare course instead.

But I don't want it to sound like the whole time at K-State was bad, or that being a minority (of sorts) on campus was a bad experience. I learned more just from the cultural exposure than I could have ever gotten in any other way, and one lesson--as I said--really came out of all of it.

In the final semester of my senior year at K-State I did my student teaching. It was the only course that I took during that semester (as is the case with most student teachers). The vast majority of student teaching happens at the host public school, but we did attend a couple of sessions at the college campus before the student teaching assignment began and a few after the assignment began. My student teaching class of about 25 students consisted mostly of black students with myself and one other white student. The professor in charge of our group, the person from the university who would observe and evaluate us three times during our student teaching, one day during these meetings set out his expectations for us. He had the official checklist that he would use to evaluate us, and he went down the checklist describing what he was looking for. He discussed educational objectives and teaching materials and all kinds of things like that, but when he got to personal appearance he changed his whole demeanor and said the following:

"I'm going to be honest with you people. In the real world, you're at a disadvantage already. If this is a baseball game, you've got two strikes against you already. Why? Because you're black!" He stopped and glanced over at us two white students. I gave him a "Go on--I get it" motion with my hand, and he continued. "Because of that, I'm going to tell you this regarding your appearance. It is more important for you than for others that you be the best dressed, best spoken, best groomed person in your position in the building. Now, the principals and other administrators, they're probably going to be wearing suits, but I'm not talking about them and I'm not telling you to wear a suit. I'm talking about the other teachers at the building. On the FIRST day you're in your school, I want you to go into the teacher's lounge and look at the teachers in there. Find the BEST dressed teacher in the building, and I want you to dress a little bit better than he or she does." There were some smirks, and his voice raised a little and an edge came to it. "I'm not kidding!" he said. "Here's how I'm going to evaluate you on this. If while I am in your building you are dressed better than any other teacher I see, you will get an 'Exceptional' score. If I see even one person dressed as nicely as you you'll get a 'Satisfactory' score. And if anyone is dressed better than you--even one other teacher--you'll get an 'unsatisfactory' score. And I'm going to have the same expectation involving your grammar, your grooming, and everything else having to do with your outward appearance. Because you're black, you're already at a disadvantage, and because you're black, you will always, always, have to live up to a higher standard than the white people around you!"

I wasn't black, but I took to heart everything he said. He thought he was talking to the black students only, but I heard him loud and clear. I understood that he was giving us a very important piece of advice about how to succeed, and I still follow it today. I have modified it somewhat, though. I'm not a big believer in being better dressed than the best dressed person. I think you should be dressed AS WELL AS the best dressed person. Doing more is like someone wearing a bride's dress to another's wedding. It's just going too far. But I hear that professor's voice in every new situation I'm in, and I always aim to be appropriately addressed for the situation.

--------------------

I have no idea why I felt like sharing this with you. It's just something I was thinking about while I was driving to a meeting today. I had no idea when I started this that it would be this long, either. Sheesh, I'm wordy sometimes!

Funny Joke

Heard this yesterday, and I think it's VERY funny. Mostly because I also think it's true...
______________________

Q: What's the software engineer's motto?

A: If it ain't broke...then there aren't enough features!

Google Maps

A few months ago I mentioned my excitement that Northern Kentucky had finally made it into the world of Google Maps Street View. I checked yesterday and found that Google has been diligently working, and now Frankfort is included in Street View as well. Here is a house that many of the readers of this blog might recognize, even if the address is wrong.)

span style="font-size:100%;">You can click on the picture, hold that click, and then move your mouse to actually "look around." You can also use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out. Not much to see, though. It was a pretty ugly, cloudy day in Frankfort that day. We might want to have a moment of silence, though, for the chestnut tree in the side yard. The photo was taken before the 2009 ice storm killed it.

Begging for Technology

Yesterday I sent an email out to all staff in my school district detailing the new email system that the Kentucky Department of Education will be providing to all school districts beginning sometime in July. The new email system is really quite impressive, and it's more than an email system. It's going to include

• Email (of course)


• Online storage space, which the individual user can partition and keep parts private, share other parts with specific people, and share other parts with everyone


• Blogging capabilities


• Instant Messaging


• Desktop Sharing (meaning you can allow others to see YOUR computer on their desktop)


• A Social Networking Component (Think MySpace but for the school only.)

It's really a dramatic difference over what we have now: an email system that also has a calendar and a contact list. It was such a difference that I concluded the email by writing, "I hope this gives a taste of what's coming for those teachers who have been begging for something like this!"

And my use of the word "begging" made me remember a moment in the early days of my educational career...

(If this were a TV show, this is the moment when the shimmering sound would play and the screen would have all of these wavy lines appear to simulate that we were going back in time. Maybe there would be some music playing in the background, something like R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon"...)

It was 1993, and I was sitting in on a facilities plan meeting at my high school. We were discussing what kind of changes needed to be made at the school, and as I recall I was sitting directly across from the building principal. And I don't remember what precipitated my comment, but I remember what I was saying to him, in tones so insistent that he was staring at me wide eyed (which I think is why I remember this so clearly). I was leaning across the table, forcefully saying, "I'm begging you! We HAVE to have an open computer lab! It would benefit our students SO much! I know we don't have a lot of space, but you can take my classroom if you have to! I'll give it up and become a traveling teacher! I'll help run a fund raiser to buy the computers! But we HAVE to do this!"

We DID have a computer lab in the building at the time. In fact, we had two, but one was used all day long by the business department to teach computer application skills, and the other was used all day long by the math department to teacher computer programming. But I had to argue, really argue if I recall, and badger and complain so that the administration would finally break down and get a third computer lab that anyone could sign up and use. I was one of only four teachers in the entire building who had a computer on their desk, and mine was MY OWN computer, not a district computer. I think the administration thought I was some kind of whacko.

"Why would we need an open lab?" the principal asked me. "Who would use it?"

"I would!" I said. "Think about it! My students could write essays using a word processor, and then they could SAVE them on a floppy drive. I could evaluate them and give them back and then they could go back to the lab and actually make the changes I suggested. Think how productive it would be for the students to actually MAKE the changes I suggested!"

"Why couldn't they just re-write the essay on paper?" he asked.

"They could," I said, "but would they re-write it a third time? A fourth? We could REALLY give students a glimpse into the whole writing process, including revision!

"But you won't use the lab every day," he said. "Who else will use it? Will it just sit empty the rest of the time? I can't see any of the other English teachers in this building using a 'word processor' with their students."

"You'll be surprised," I promised him. "I think they'll all start using it eventually. And math teachers could take their classes in to do spreadsheets and graphs. Social Studies classes could write essays, too. They make programs now where you can actually DRAW on a computer. Art classes could go in. Plus, there's software for education that could be purchased!" The idea of the Internet never occurred to me. I'm not even sure I'd heard of it in 1993.

He was skeptical, and I could see it in his eyes, but I recall him saying rather noncommittally, "Well, we'll see what we can do..."

(More shimmering sounds and squiggly lines as we come back to the present...)

The idea now that there would be resistance to a computer lab for students is laughable, but it's just another testament to how for we've come in regards to technology. It really has embedded itself into our lives in general and education specifically. Today, at that same high school, there are FOUR open computer labs, and every teacher in the building has at least one computer in his/her classroom, and most have three or four more AND some sort of projection device so that students can see what's on the teacher computer. Several of the teachers in the building have student response systems, little clickers like the audience members on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or America's Funniest Home Videos have that allow them to instantly vote. Teachers use these devices to get instant feedback on how well students understand material. In 1993 there were fewer than 100 computers in the entire school district. As of today there are exactly 1,121. Computers and technology are a common part of education now, and more teaching could be accomplished in a classroom without a chalk board than one without a computer.

And now teachers are begging for more. For more collaboration tools. For ways to communicate instantly with their students in all sorts of ways. And I find myself on the other side of that desk now, wondering who will use some of this stuff that teachers have been begging me for. But because I was on the teacher side of the desk back in 1993 and I remember that, I fervently believe that there are teachers out there who WILL.

And all of this just makes me wonder...what technology will teachers be begging for in another 15 years?

American Idol

I am writing this on Tuesday evening. I've just spent the last hour and a half priming the bathroom on the main level of the house for a new coat of paint. Last Monday Lisa ripped all of the wallpaper out of the bathroom. It needed to be ripped out. It was begging to be ripped out. It was maybe 40 years old and had an ugly, ugly pattern on it. This link is to a photograph of some wallpaper that is about as ugly. The wallpaper in the photo isn't exactly the same pattern as what was in our bathroom, but it's about the same on the Oh My God Scale. When we bought the house we knew that sooner or sooner we were going to take the wallpaper down.

Anyway, as I was working I heard Lisa downstairs watching American Idol and I thought, Hey, I want to watch American Idol rather than paint! Then I thought better of that statement. I've really gotten tired of that overblown talent competition. I've always hated the initial "tryout" episodes that alternate between talented individuals, people who THINK they're talented individuals, and people just looking to get on national TV for 15 seconds. I usually have skipped those shows and waited for "Hollywood" week.

This year, though, I've found even the talented singers a) not that talented and b) not that entertaining. And they don't seem to be growing, either. In past years it seems like there was always someone who got better and better each week, until after the second or third round it becomes obvious that this person is going to be the winner. Kelly Clarkson was pretty obvious in the first season, and when she sang "Respect" when there were still 30 people left I turned to Lisa and said, "There's your winner right there. We don't even need to watch the rest of the season." I also correctly chose Rueben Studdard and Fantasia very early on and watched them grow into winners.

In Season Four I wasn't so lucky. After going three for three in the first three seasons I told everyone I knew that I would pick the winner BEFORE the final 12 were chosen. I picked Constantine Maroulis, who ended up finishing sixth. He started strong but never really improved.

Maybe because of my wrong pick I didn't even watch the 5th or 6th seasons, but I watched again last year after the final 12 had been chosen, and during Beatles week (whenever that was) I chose David Cook to be the winner, and again I was right.

This year I said early on it would either be Danny Gokey or Lil Rounds, but I'm not so sure anymore. Lil has the best voice, I think, but I don't see her growing at all, and Danny is likable enough, but I think I'm just tired of the whole thing. Maybe I need to pick a new reality show to watch, something like Dancing with the Stars. I've only seen a few minutes of that show, but in that little bit of time I've seen two things it has going for it: 1) Attractive women dancing in skimpy outfits, and 2) the potential for somebody famous to fall and hurt themselves in an embarrassing manner.

Neither of those things ever happen on American Idol.

Somber Day

Yesterday was a very tough day (heck, it's been a very tough WEEK) at my work. I don't want to get into a lot of details on here, but there have been four deaths in three different locations in my school district, and two of those deaths were students (and though I didn't know either student, I knew the family of one of them very well). As a result, everyone is kind of in a state of shock, beaten down a little. It's hard not to be sad. One of the secretaries, who is always positive, said in a dreary tone about an hour ago, "I can't wait to get the hell out of this place today!"

As I wrote in my post yesterday, I was in a training out of the district all last week, so I was insulated somewhat from the feeling of gloom. There was one other person from my district in the training with me, and he and I talked about the tragedies a little bit, but mostly heard about it through email, which can make events feel pretty far away.

Even today, when I was back in the office, it wasn't the same as being in the schools where the deaths occurred. In the fourteen years I was in the classroom I dealt on several occasions with the death of students, including one time when one of the most popular senior boys in the school--a Big Man on Campus--died in an alcohol-related auto accident. He was in my homeroom and his locker--where he used to hang out in between classes--was right outside my classroom and became a shrine for mourners. There was no joking or laughter anywhere in the school for more than a week. And I imagine that school was like that today in the buildings where the deaths occurred.

I got a little taste of the mourning earlier today, though. The superintendent wanted to send a message out via our autocalling phone system to all parents letting them know about the deaths of the students and what the district was doing to help students cope. He didn't want the autocalling system to call the homes of the families of the deceased, though, as he felt this would do nothing but cause them more pain, so he asked me to find their phone numbers and remove them temporarily from the system. To do so I had to look up the students' phone numbers in the Student Information System. So I searched for each student and when the name appeared I clicked on it.

And there--because we had placed them into our SIS--was a photo of each student, along with that student's personal information. And that's when the reality of the deaths hit me, when I saw the students' photos. These two students were smiling happily in those photos, taken back in the fall on "Picture Day," unaware of what was waiting for them later in the year. And their birth dates! They were only a few years older than my older daughter. The temporary nature of this whole thing we call life hit me, and I desperately wanted to get home to my daughters, to hug them and tell them that I love them.

You better believe that I will do so when I get home tonight. Of course, you also better believe that my daughters will have no idea why I'm hugging them so tight, and when I tell them I love them they'll probably squirm out of my arms and say, in an annoyed tone, "We know, Dad! We know!"

But no matter in what tone they're said, those words will make my day!

Back to Work

Today will be my first day back to work after an entire week of not being in the office. I wasn't far away, just down the road in Independence doing training on the state's new Student Information System. And it's not exactly true to say that I wasn't in the office the entire week. I actually was there Monday night and Thursday night, but it was after the office staff had left, so I'll be seeing everyone today for the first time in more than a week.

I would also imagine that all of the people who knew I was out all week will be contacting me today with the problems they've had over the last week. And I have about a dozen things I've put off that I'll need to get to.

Fun, fun fun.

Getting Rich off This Blog

I just want you guys all to know this:

I am going to get rich off of this blog.

About three weeks ago I started experimenting with Google's AdSense, a program which pays YOU to make money on your site. You agree to allow Google to place ads on your site. In return, every time a user clicks on a link you get paid. This doesn't cost you anything, and Google keeps track of everything. Once you've made $100 on your site they mail you a check. You don't have to do anything.

I'm really excited because--after three weeks--I've finally cleared the first big hurdle. That's right: Friday afternoon my AdSense balance jumped over the dollar mark. The last time I checked I think I had $1.64 in earnings. After 21 days, that averages 8 cents a day. That means that in a year I will have earned almost 28 dollars off of this site, and sometime in 2013 I should get a big, whopping $100 check from Google! Which I'll have to claim on my taxes and which will further complicate my taxes and probably is not at all worth it, but still, I'm a PAID author now!

And that's something to be excited about.
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Oh, and technically, the Terms of Agreement say that I'm not supposed to ever encourage my readers to click on the ads on my page just to help me make money, so let me reinforce that now: Please don't do that. Click on the ads because they're wicked cool, not in order to make me money. That's just a nice bonus that I don't even want you to consider before clicking the link that only takes 5 seconds of your time.

Quote of the Day

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad,
and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my 'good behavior.'"

--Henry David Thoreau
Walden

The End of CATS Testing in Kentucky

If the Kentucky Senate and House can work our their differences, the state testing system in Kentucky will be no more. I've kept quiet about this whole thing, and I may still be talking too soon, but I have to say it now:

I'm glad.

The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) was passed in 1990, my first year teaching. I remember politicians making big promises then about how education in Kentucky was going to be revolutionized, about how we were going to transform education, how in 2012, when KERA came to full fruition, every student would learn at expected levels and schools would be so different and student learning so much more advanced that people in 1990 could not even comprehend what the school of 2012 would look like.

I was a starry eyed, naive twenty-two year old in 1990, but even I knew what a load of junk the whole line was. I remember hearing that on Opening Day of the very first year I taught, and I remember counting in my head and thinking, 2012, huh? It didn't bother me for three reasons:
1) It was 22 years away.
2) I knew teachers could retire after 27 1/2 years, and if the poop really hit the fan in 2012, I would only have to make it through 5 1/2 more years and then I could retire.
3) I figured that the state would either adjust the scores to MAKE everyone proficient by 2012 or they'd just dump the testing system altogether just before the due date.

We were well on our way to the first part of number three above, but now it looks like we've decided to take the dumping the test route now.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a resistor. I'm not a cynic. I'm just a realist. I always knew the idea that everyone could learn at a proficient level was ridiculous, and I also knew that the kind of revolution in education was not going to happen by just legislating change. Change doesn't work that way.

Let me give you a "for instance" here. In 1990, KERA mandated that grades kindergarten through third grade be eliminated. Studies showed that trying to herd students forward in learning based on the year they were born didn't really make any sense. Some students needed additional help in classes, but "holding a student back" a year had a stigma attached, so KERA mandated that the four grades of kindergarten through third grade be eliminated and replaced with a staggered system of four grades called P-1 through P-4. That's great. But what did most schools do? They just renamed kindergarten P-1, renamed first grade P-2, renamed second grade P-3, and called third grade P-4, and then continued with business as usual. Students who weren't ready to go to P-2 (first grade) at the end of P-1 (kindergarten) were given a P-2 classification the next year but were placed back in a P-1 teacher's room. Thus, they didn't fail. They WERE P-2 students, just in a P-1 class! That's not change. That's just giving something old a new name, like calling a retarded person mentally disabled. Nothing's changed about the student. It's just the label.

There are dozens more examples I could give (In fact, I meant to focus on the writing portfolio, since that was my area of expertise), but I didn't mean for this post to be THIS long, so I'm going to stop now. So I'll just finish up by saying that, though others in my Board of Education office will NOT be happy with this major change, including both of my bosses, I am secretly (at least as secretly as I can be on a public blog) elated.

Good News for Sensible Kentuckians

A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about how much I was hoping that Kentucky's Senate Bill 68 would NOT make it out of committee. The bill, if you don't recall or didn't read the original post, would make it illegal for non-married sexual partners who are living together to adopt or marry. The bill was supposedly created to protect the welfare of children, but it was pretty much common knowledge that it was really designed to prevent homosexual couples from adopting. I had all kinds of problems with this bill, which I discussed in the previous post.

I had a bit of a scare earlier this week when the bill DID get a vote in its committee and was sent to the floor. Worse, the committee added an amendment to INCLUDE children who had already been placed in a foster home. This would mean that those children would be removed from a foster home for no other reason than that the two adults fostering them might not be married.

Fortunately, I found out late yesterday that the bill is now officially dead. The Senate leadership did not put a vote on the bill on the final calendar, meaning that it will not be voted on. It's a victory for common sense.

Of course, there's always next year.

Read more here.

Foster Family

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we've been fostering a dog since Friday for a friend of the family (with the idea in the way back part of our heads that we might actually adopt the dog in the end). Here's a photo of the dog.

Her name is Xena (Yes, as in the warrior princess), and she really is a sweet dog. She is about the size of a full grown beagle, but she's a six month old puppy, so I think she'll get a LITTLE bit bigger.

There isn't really anything negative to say about this dog, other than that it has pretty clear guard dog tendencies. It wants to growl and bear its teeth if you surprise it.

We had a dog with a similar behavior for years and years. Her name was Kita. But the difference between Xena and Kita is that Kita would growl and bark UNTIL she saw a familiar face, and then she would almost immediately recover and become a happy, fun-loving dog. Xena, even after she recognizes us, wants to growl and fake lunge at us for another minute or two.

All in all, though, in three days she hasn't peed or pooped anywhere in the house, and that's better than any other dog we've kept recently.

More details as they become available...

Lent

A lot of people look forward to the end of Lent, usually because they can get back to enjoying whatever it is they gave up for Lent.

I have a different reason this year for anticipating the end of Lent, because the end of Lent will mean the end of restaurants advertising Friday fish specials, and the end of the following McDonald's commercial, which everyone in my house (except me) thinks is hilarious and walks around singing all the time:



If you've never seen that before and you just found it as irritating as I did, count yourself lucky: I'm hearing it sung by my wife and kids 10 times a day!

Busy Weekend

Okay, I know, this is really two days in a row without any kind of coherent post. But I have an excuse, really! It's been a very busy weekend. Here are some of the things we did this weekend:
1. We fostered a dog for a friend. I'm writing this Sunday evening, and she's downstairs barking right now.
2. The girls had a sleepover Friday night and Saturday morning.
3. We worked in the yard for about 4 hours Saturday afternoon, clearing debris. I even removed an old tree stump with my trusty ax!
4. Meredith got sick, maybe strep throat.
5. Saturday night Natalie and I went to a performance of BYE BYE BIRDIE.
6. Natalie had Odyssey of the Mind practice Sunday afternoon.
7. I let a shepherd's hook swing around and hit me in the face, blacking my eye.
8. There was a tornado warning Sunday night, though no tornado. It was nice to know, though, that we'll have no trouble hearing the warning siren if there even is a real tornado.

So it's not like we've been sitting around here doing nothing.

I promise to write something better tomorrow.

Spring Forward

I didn't write anything today because I lost an hour over this weekend due to the clocks moving forward, and this is the hour I decided to lose. Except this doesn't really take an hour, so I think I got ripped off.

Glad it's the Weekend

Most days the technology runs pretty smoothly in my district. I'm sure that's all because of the tireless work of the technology staff!


Not so yesterday, though. Yesterday, the following happened:

1) The Kentucky Department of Education's Domain server failed, meaning that from noon until the end of the day we had no Internet service at all other than our own district's website.

2) The Student Information System, a piece of software that houses pretty much every piece of data concerning our students (grades, attendance, discipline, special education plans, etc.) has been having problems for four days, and pretty much quit working altogether. KDE is planning to do some work on it over the weekend to fix the problem.

3) The cooling fan on one of our important servers went out yesterday, causing the server to stop working. This particular server pushes out anti-virus updates and Windows updates to every machine when they are re-started. Since the server wasn't running, any machine that restarted got stuck at the startup point, waiting for either an update from the server or a message saying that there were no updates. So every time someone rebooted their machines I got a phone call. I had the server replaced within an hour of hearing about it, but still, it was one more thing to handle.

As Chief Information Officer in my district, I usually get to decide what I'm going to do on the job. Sometimes, on days like yesterday, the job decides for me.

I think I'm going to stay as far away from these things as possible today.

When is an Amendment NOT an Amendment?

A week ago or so I made a post about how vehemently I am against Kentucky's Senate Bill 68, which wants to make it illegal for unmarried sexual partners who are living together to adopt or foster a child. The bill is supposed to help protect children, but its real intent is to keep homosexuals from adopting children. Since homosexuals cannot legally marry in this state, they thus would not be able to adopt under SB 68. My lack of support for the bill no doubt angered all of my conservative friends, and I even heard from some of them. Today I'm going to tick off the other side by taking a stand AGAINST the California Supreme Court.

I was a little dismayed when I read a few days ago that the California Supreme Court is going to review the amendment banning gay marriage in California which was passed this last November. I'm dismayed NOT because I think the ban on gay marriage should exist (I'm actually undecided about gay marriage at this point), but because if the court chooses to overturn the amendment I believe it will have dire consequences for democracy as a whole.

This new amendment is not the first time that California voters have voted against gay marriage. In 2000, Proposition 22 stated that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This proposition was passed by the people with 61% of the vote, a fairly wide margin of victory. The people of California had spoken.

After eight years of contentiousness, though, the California Supreme Court overruled the proposition early in 2008, stating that it unconstitutionally denied rights to a group of people. And I DO NOT have a problem with the Supreme Court doing that. The constitution is sort of the rule book of the people, and the Supreme Court is charged with interpreting the rules. If they say that the proposition is against the rules, then it is.

But the people have recourse. Via an amendment they can CHANGE the constitution, thus changing the rule book that the Supreme Court must go by. And that it exactly what happened back in November. Opponents of gay marriage said, "Okay, Supreme Court. Our proposition is against the California Constitution, huh? Well, we'll just try to change the Constitution, then." So Proposition 8 came into being.

The proposition originally was almost identical to the older Prop 22. Prop 8 originally stated, "Proposition 8 amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." California's Attorney General, though, an advocate of same sex marriage, changed the wording (as was his right) to read as follows: "Proposition 8 changes California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry." Most pundits assumed that the negative spin in the new language would almost certainly doom the proposition, and polls taken by experts confirmed that the majority of people were against the ballot initiative.

However, what polls say and what the voters actually do are often different things, and when the final votes were counted, 52 percent of the voters had voted in favor of the ban. It was official. The constitution of the state of California had been changed. Marriage was for men and women only in that state.

But hold on! Now it's back in court again. The California Supreme Court is holding hearings on the idea that this wasn't an AMENDMENT to the constitution at all. Rather, it was a REVISION, a much stronger thing, and REVISIONS to the constitution are not allowed!

This whole argument is malarkey. If the California Supreme Court can rule that THIS amendment isn't really an amendment, what's to prevent it from ruling that any other amendment is not actually an amendment? And thus, what's to prevent the court from doing pretty much whatever the hell it wants? Imagine the power we'll be putting in these few jurists hands!

Advocates of same sex marriage should abandon this line of attack. If they think they are right and that same sex marriage should be allowed, then they should set out to educate people and to change minds, and then they could put on the ballot at a future date their own proposition to revise the amendment, this time making marriage by homosexuals legal. But trying to skirt the whole idea of amendments is a bad idea, and I guarantee you that if they're successful the groups against this amendment will find themselves in the opposite position on some future date.
And that's why I hope (though I don't expect) that the California Supreme Court will rule that this is a valid constitutional amendment. If they rule that it is not, democracy itself could be in peril in California.

Walk on Water

I'm writing this late Wednesday night, and I've been staring at the computer screen for low these many minutes, and I think I just have to accept the fact that

I have nothing to say.

It's nothing to be ashamed of really. It's not that I'm suffering from writer's block. It's not that I'm too busy to write. It's just that I've been waiting around all day for inspiration to strike, for some topic to come to the forefront, and the truth is I don't have anything to say.

Nothing much happened today. I DID get into an argument earlier today with someone over the topic of whether or not a person could walk on water if he/she believed it possible. It was a pretty pointless argument, and I think that in itself points out the kind of day it's been. On a busy day, with a REAL topic of conversation, I wouldn't have had time for such foolishness.

Maybe something important will happen today, Thursday, that I can write about tomorrow.

Troublemaker

I can't begin to tell you how relieved I am that former Cincinnati Bengal T.J. Houshmandzadeh has signed with the Seattle Seahawks and will not be a Bengal next year. That guy was a troublemaker. And truth be told, he never really bought into the philosophy of the Cincinnati Bengals, nor into the long term goal of the Cincinnati Bengals, which appears to be to remain in the bottom half of the NFL for as long as possible, and to break the Arizona Cardinals record for longest stretch between playoff wins.

T.J. just never really was a Bengal, and there are several reasons why:

1) Work Ethic. T.J. tried WAY too hard to be a Bengal. He ran crisp routes on every play. He never quit playing no matter how far ahead or behind the Bengals were. He always stretched for that extra yard. He wasn't afraid of a little contact. For goodness sake, he BLOCKED for other players! That's not the way we do things in Cincinnati, T.J., and it's about time you figured that out and got out of here.

2) Attitude. T.J. always seemed to care about the team, about winning, and we all know that's not the way the Bengals work, either. He should have taken a page out of the Chad Johnson playbook and been a little more me-centered. Maybe he should have gotten himself some props, maybe done a little dance when he scored a touchdown in a game when the Bengals were down by 30 points. Maybe he should have stormed off the field if the ball wasn't thrown in his direction for two series in a row. Maybe he should have punched a coach! I'm not sure what he should have done, but he should have done SOMETHING to show that winning was not his top priority. No matter how good of a football player you are, you're never going to fit in as a BENGAL if you're trying to win!

3) Clean Cut Reputation. Here's where T.J. may have failed the team the most. In all the years that T.J. played for the Bengals, how many times did he get arrested? None. How many temper tantrums did he have with the media? None. Sure, he may have been upset during losing streaks, but he never really went off on anybody. How many times were there stories of him beating his wife or taking drugs or causing a scene in a local bar? Doesn't he know that this kind of clean behavior is detrimental to the whole team? Doesn't he know that his clean cut image makes the other players on the team look WORSE in comparison? Doesn't he owe it to the other Bengals to at least get caught with marijuana at the airport from time to time, if for no other reason than to take some of the heat off of other receivers like Chris Henry? It sounds to me like T.J. is a little bit of a SELFISH player, after all! (Oh, and Carson Palmer, you better be listening to this one, too!)

So I say good riddance to T.J. With him thankfully finally out of the picture, maybe we can get back to doing what the Bengals do best:

Losing.

Interesting article

Here's an interesting article I read Monday (And in a related note, 60 percent of the people in the world have recently either driven out of their lane on the highway or walked into a closed door!): http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41586/113/

A Quick Piece of Advice

Whenever someone begins a sentence with the phrase

"I'm not a racist, but..."

you can be pretty sure of two things:
1) The person is a racist.
2) Whatever comes after the phrase is going to be a racist statement.

With that in mind, here is a bonus piece of advice: If you ever find yourself tempted to begin a sentence with that phrase, don't, and don't say whatever you were getting ready to say afterward.

Governor's Cup

Yesterday was the grueling marathon of an event that is elementary Governor's Cup (Uh, upon re-reading, I've decided that might be the ugliest sentence I've ever written). Natalie and I arrived at a local elementary school (though not that local. Redistricting moved us into a weirdo district with several schools that are miles away from us) at 7:45 AM, and the whole thing wasn't over until about 3:30 PM. Natalie competed in one written test, Language Arts, and she was on the Quick Recall Team.

The Quick Recall matches were pretty exciting. There were five teams in the double elimination tournament, and the top 2 went on to regionals. Natalie's school got a bye in the first round, so they took on a winning school in the second round. Nat's team easily won the match, but there was some controversy as the opposing team's captain had a broken buzzer button and no one realized it until just before the end of the first half. The Governor's Cup rules are clear that in such an event the score stands as it was scored, but there was plenty of grumbling from the other team that the match would have turned out differently if the buzzer had worked.

In the third round Natalie's school played a local private school that has always been a nemesis, and after falling far behind early, Nat's team fought valiantly back, pulling to within one point, but finally losing by two. This sent her school to the loser's bracket, where it had to face the team that they had "cheated" in the previous round. This time Natalie's school soundly beat them with all buzzers working, which made everyone, I think, perversely satisfied.

The victory meant that Natalie's school had to play its nemesis AGAIN, and this time, since her team had previously lost, it would have to win twice to claim the championship. And that's exactly what happened. In the first rematch her team won fairly easily, and in the rubber game of the series the match wasn't decided until the last four questions. It was an exciting time, but for the third year in a row her school won the Quick Recall Match (It was also the third year in a row that the team won the overall trophy!).

After the Quick Recall tournament ended the day was almost over. All that was left was the presentation of awards. Natalie received medals both for the team victory in Quick Recall and for her earlier Language Arts test: she scored a 5th place medal, which isn't bad for a first timer. She goes on now to compete in the regional competition in both Quick Recall with her team and in Language Arts as an individual.

Below is a video of Natalie receiving her Language Arts ribbon. It was recorded on my cell phone, which isn't designed primarily as a video capture device, so the video and audio quality is lacking a bit, but you'll get the idea.