The Education Post

• Teachers seem to get blamed for everything and it really annoys the piss out of me. Be a damn parent and help your kids. I know I helped mine. Don't drop them off at school  for 12 years and expect them to be magically prepared for what comes next.
• Speaking of "what comes next." What the hell ever happened to Vo Tech in the schools? Or shop, or an number of programs that taught SKILLS. Great, your kid went to college. Guess what: his mechanic (the one that dropped out of high school) makes more money per year than your kid. By the way, when it's 103 degrees outside and my AC doesn't work, I'm not going to waste time asking the guy who came to fix it if he has a college degree. 
• It's not about your kid having a great degree or money. It's about making sure your child can function on his own and pay HIS OWN DAMN BILLS. 
• I've taught 16 years and I have yet to work with a truly inadequate or incompetent teacher (and believe me, I am very opinionated about the subject.) And if you know one who was, I'm sorry. Truly I am. But schools will attract truly good teachers when they PAY them what they deserve. One of the easiest degrees to get is one in education. Just sayin'.
• My Juniors missed 30 minutes of my 7th period class one day last week to see a presentation by the class ring rep. Then for the next two days, Juniors missed part of their 1st and 2nd period classes to order the rings. Class.Rings. Who gives a damn?
• Students will pretty much miss a week of decent teaching at least twice this year for the Alabama High School Graduation exam. Oh, we know you've already passed the class and did a bunch of work and your teacher did a lot of work, too...but we'd like you to pass one more test......A YEAR LATER....to prove you learned something.
• I'm starting to feel like education is all about making money...for textbook companies and computer software folks. Funny how in the days of the one room school house kids would leave 8th grade with an 8th grade reading level. Now we have kids graduating 12th grade with barely a 4th grade reading level. Technology my ass. Bench+slate+McGuffy's = I can read.
• It doesn't matter what the numbers and population studies show, my students still think Spanish is a waste of their time. These same kids tell me they want to be a nurse or doctor. Jebus help them. (And their future patients.)
• Ummm. They do speak English. They just know that you don't speak Spanish. It's pretty easy to keep a conversation private if you know another language (at least in the States.)