A good time, because well, I LOVE books :) By Catherine on 10/24/2007 08:38:00 AM
Most Fun Picture Books: Amazing Grace, Miss Nelson is MissingMost Poignant Children's Book: The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
Most Captivating Book of All Time: The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
Best Summer Read: The Golden Compass (Phillip Pullman)
Book Most Likely to Leave You Heartbroken: The Jungle (Upton Sinclair)
Capable of Restoring Your Faith in Crazy-Passionate-Fated-Love:
The Time-Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffinegger), Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)
Favorite Elementary School Titles: Bridge to Terabithia, Where the Red Fern Grows
Book I Never Wanted to End: The Amber Spyglass (Phillip Pullman)
Best Historical Book : Mary, Called Magdalene (Margaret George)
Another Elementary School Flashback: Open Windows, Open Doors
Quirkiest Memoir: Bitter Fame: the Life of Sylvia Plath
Most Underrated Classic: Fear of Flying (Erica Jong)
Best Short Story: "A Painful Case" or "The Dead" (both by James Joyce)
Book I Wish I Wrote: The Breach (Rob Taylor)
Best Play: The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)
Grooviest Book: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (Tom Wolfe)
Titles that Changed my Outlook as a Young 20-Something: Stone Butch Blues (Leslie Feinberg) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Labels: books
Oh, John Locke, I love you so By Catherine on 10/23/2007 10:17:00 AM
From Two Treatises on Government, 1690:The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end when they choose and authorise {sic} a legislative is that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of society... Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people.
Live it, love it, Locke it down.
Labels: government, John Locke, social responsibility
Hold lawbreakers accountable By Catherine on 10/23/2007 09:44:00 AM
This is from MoveOn.org:Hi, For years the Bush administration has been illegally wiretapping Americans' phone calls with the willing assistance of major telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T. Now the White House is putting enormous pressure on Congress to give phone companies retroactive immunity for all the laws they broke spying on innocent Americans.
Here's why: The pending lawsuits against these companies may be the only way we ever find out how far the Bush administration went in breaking the law. President Bush wants immunity for them to cover his own actions.
The problem is, some key Democrats are poised to help him do it. We need to speak out loudly against this move. I just signed a petition urging Congress to reject immunity for lawbreaking phone companies. Can you join me?
http://pol.moveon.org/noimmunity/?r_by=11472-7684402-mB9Jqj&rc=paste
Thanks!
I, for one, will be dropping Verizon as my cell phone provider in favor of a track-phone as soon as my contract is up on 12/9. I would encourage you all to do the same.
We are Americans, and we still have the first amendment on our side. Illegal wiretapping is yet another disgrace to be shouldered by the Bush administration.
Get involved by sending a letter to your local representative today.
Labels: ATT sucks, Bush sucks, move to Canada, verizon sucks
All right, I admit it. By Catherine on 10/04/2007 07:19:00 AM
I feel awful for Britney Spears.Not because I think she's especially talented, or smart, or remotely worth the time it takes to read the tabloid articles about her, because she's not. She's a press-whore and a nutjob, and her poor kids are the ones suffering. No, I feel awful for her because she's a drug addict, and there's no one on her side anymore willing to get her any help.
What's so glamorous about being a drug addict? All we hear about these days is Kate Moss and her coke use, Pete Doherty and speedballs, Amy Winehouse and Jack Daniels, Britney and her crystal meth. It's even discussed on local news, CNN, the Today Show. THAT'S NOT NEWS. This isn't funny or entertaining, it's pathetic, and these people need help, not constant media attention. So what if they've got more money than God? So what if, in some cases, there's talent? Who cares? What if it was your mom? Your best friend?
I'm swearing off tabloids, as of right now. They're like voyeur crack, and we love to watch people implode. Drug addiction is a sickness, one that effects many, many more people than just superficial Hollywood starlets and anorexic models.
And I for one am tired of feeling like I'm privy to the private lives of celebs, especially when all we read is their screw-ups and heartaches.
Labels: addiction, britney, tabloids
Good, I hope they implode under their own hedonistic hubris. By Catherine on 10/03/2007 07:07:00 AM
Check out who's losing money over their settlement lawsuits:The RIAA's four-year-old lawsuit campaign is costing the music industry millions of dollars and is a big money-loser for the record labels.
Well, good, I hope they've sued themselves out of business. There were at least 25 kids from UMass served with papers citing filesharing violations, but what I don't think the RIAA realizes is that if they made the product affordable, accessible, and widely available (like, say, for DOWNLOAD) their problem would go away. As it is, I will never, EVER buy another CD again. And I didn't even get sued.
I wonder why they think the iTunes Music Store phenomenon has taken off so well. I bought John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band: Live Peace In Toronto for $7.99 on iTunes, where it's something like $17.99 in Strawberrie's or Newbury Comics. Could it be, perhaps, that people are willing to spend their money if it's a matter of instant gratification? Spending less? Having a huge variety of individual songs, import singles, and rare B-sides at your fingertips? It's baffling, really, I can't understand why record sales are down.
Oh, yeah, and FUCK YOU RIAA.
For more information, check out:
The RIAA vs. John Doe: a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits
Recording Industry vs. The People
Labels: anger, filesharing, freedom, hatred, hubris, implosion, litigious assholes, music, RIAA, unfunny
On modifying tests, and the Revolutionary War (against Special Education) By Catherine on 10/02/2007 07:32:00 PM
So, today I modified three exams from teachers on the Revolutionary War. There's a couple of versions to each, so I spend a good chunk of today cutting and pasting from their original document files and trying to figure out what's most important to retain. For example, I decided that being able to define what "republic" means as more important than what year Cornwallis was defeated. (It was 1781, if you're keeping track.) These tests were huuuge, upwards of 100 questions each, which for students like mine is quite a lot more than they can handle, both mentally and emotionally.I can so vividly remember sitting in front of tests like that and feeling so hopelessly lost and overwhelmed I could barely focus. And I was considered "bright" or whatever. Maybe less bright than OCD. I am glad that I understand enough about certain specific learning disabilities that I am able to pare it down to the bare essentials for the students that need it. I worry though, that I'm cutting out too much. When will we make it so easy that we're no longer learning? Providing social and emotional support to students has been the job of the teacher for as many years as education has existed, though it has morphed from a Church-based curriculum to one based on the Platonic arts: language, literature, mathematics, and science. I can honestly say I am about leveling the playing field for some students, but unfortunately it may have gone too far for me, and I almost can't agree anymore.
I'm interested to find out some of the parents' stances, however, because I feel like it's slightly dishonest to say that some Special Ed programs don't push kids through the system. I disagree entirely with the whole premise of passing through on the minimum, but increasingly it feels like that is how we're expected to deal with the issues that arise. It's much easier to modify a test beyond recognition than to pay for two extra years of special ed services through the state Department of Education. I'm not saying at all that this breakdown is in any way the fault of the kids, but the parents and the system will eventually have to answer to someone. What
happens when the student is crushed because he has been passing along all these years, and then doesn't get into college because no one was honest with him about his abilities?
The Wall Street Journal did a piece on Special Ed a while back, and interviewed with a pair of parents who took the opposite stance as many of those I've worked with personally: they didn't want their child's unearned diploma:
"I felt proud because he had worked so hard," says Michael's
mother, Beverly, her voice breaking. "You don't want to take that away from him.
But you knew it wasn't real. What's he going to do in the future? Will he be
able to go to college and get a job?"
The Bredemeyers represent a new voice in special
education: parents disappointed not because their children are failing, but
because they're passing without learning. These families complain that schools
give their children an easy academic ride through regular-education classes,
undermining a new era of higher expectations for the 14% of U.S. students
who are in special education.
No one's denying that scores on standardized tests have gone up in the past nine years since the MCAS was developed, and in the past six since NCLB was instituted. But we're lying to students, we're lying to parents, and we're lying to ourselves as educators if we think that SpEd is the catch-all for students with disabilities. Inclusion, yes. Putting your child in a class where he or she clearly cannot grasp the materials presented in any way, let alone with enough understanding to have any real degree of retention, is a big, ugly lie. Providing a scribe or someone to read aloud to a child in study is he or she has a language-based learning disability? Sure! Sounds great. But passing students who put in minimal effort because they too have learned to dupe the oh-so-PC system is not:
"Mardys Leeper and Carol Merrill, former teachers at West Philadelphia High School in Pennsylvania, say a special-education administrator there ordered them to pass special-education students. Ms. Leeper says she made concessions for students with disabilities, such as letting them write shorter essays or copy paragraphs she wrote onto a word processor rather than composing their own. But when those students didn't make an effort, or skipped class, both teachers say they sometimes sought to fail them -- only to have the administrator insist on passing grades. The reason they were given: Students had met the goals of their federally mandated individual education plans, IEPs, spelling out goals and services for each special-education student."
Last year, with seniors, I saw this a lot. Not necessarily from the administration (see, NG, I don't blame you, I blame the system) but from teachers who were either so frustrated or felt so terrible for the student that they allowed a pass undeservedly. Something glaring that comes to mind is when we discovered at the end of the year that one girl was 5 credits shy of graduation. Miraculously, two days later she walked with her class: someone had changed a grade from her sophomore year to reflect passing (and therefore credit). But she didn't earn it. In fact, I don't think she or her parents ever even knew that this happened.
I'm having a crisis of faith-- I want my work to be meaningful, but I also want it to be honest. I wonder what I have to do to reconcile these issues, which become more disheartening for me every day, for the rest of the year until I get my own classroom, out of the realm of Special Education. That doesn't mean the problem goes away-- no, in fact I daresay it's even more difficult for academic teachers, because they're constantly strapped with providing accommodations that are either unnecessary or quite inconvenient. I guess I'll find out. I love being a teacher, despite my earlier comments, and I have hope that somehow I'll figure out how to make a difference in spite of the challenges teachers are faced with everyday.
{Please ignore my earlier rant, I was entirely too frustrated with all of the issues I've since brought up here to think clearly and not sound like a prima donna. You love me, right? RIGHT? Oh, God, rejection! No!}
Labels: dreams, education, frustrations, learning, modifications, politics, revolutionary war, school, special ed, STRESSSTRESSSTRESS, unfunny, wall street journal, working through the block
I'm in a bad mood today, don't mess with me. By Catherine on 10/02/2007 05:05:00 PM
Work today put me in the worst. Mood. Ever. Suffice it to say that if I can get away from this job and into my own room anytime between now and Christmas, I'll go for it. Even if it involves driving significantly farther than my current 15 minute commute.The Technorati post was so that I could verify that this blog belongs to me; they said I could delete it later, so I did. The ad is ugly, but won't be so prominent once I have a few minutes to move things around and make it so it fucking matches the color scheme. Google does not make this whole "generate more traffic" thing easier. And I don't know why it's for Hindi ringtones. I don't think I've posted about anything Hindi recently. Or ever, for that matter. I think AdSense might be illiterate. The question was posed, "will I make money." If by money you mean a few pennies, yeah. It's more so Solvo can get a wider variety of traffic, since they're not about to stick ads on their site. Mine's just a blog, I can share space with Google for the greater good.
And by greater good I mean Adam's business. I don't care about money, I just want to write... But my job kills my creativity, and I come home pissed off and exhausted.
Know any start ups who need an Executive Editor? I so want to quit. And since I'm done sounding like my Mother, I'm leaving to babysit. Again.
Someone find me a vacation please.
Labels: bad mood, SolvoMedia, technorati, unfunny, upset, wanna quit
Monday musings By Catherine on 10/01/2007 04:42:00 PM
To keep up with the Joneses (verb): From Wiktionary
Do you ever feel like you're surrounded by people who just slog through life, placing one resistant foot in front of the other in the joyless pursuit of the Joneses? The general vibe of life seems to be, "Let's just get it over with." I, for one, would die of a stroke if I allowed myself to think like that.
I like the idea of living comfortably, but around here, it's different. There's a natural contrast between having no debt and having modest surroundings and the idea behind "Joneses." All around us, more and more particleboard house-in-a-boxes are popping up, in spite of an economy that predicts that lifestyle will be very, very difficult to maintain in the near future. The media is consumed by it, the people are consumed by it, and even children can fall into the trap.
As I reread this, I realize this little essay is going to get me on some McCarthy list, but whatever. They haven't managed to repeal free speech yet... I suppose that's something that contributes to the problem though, and increasingly our youth is being taught, No, you don't actually have the right to free speech. My students are studying for their Revolutionary War test this week. They're learning about Thomas Paine and all his Common Sense; Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, all of whom had faith in America as a nation of learners, dreamers, and philosophers. These were freethinking, intellectually curious men who worked toward a vision of an equal, learned nation. Yet increasingly, we're stifling the needs of the youth and finding ways to make everyone feel "special"-- perhaps the most disingenuous and dangerous path to choose, as it leaves us with relatively little to strive for.
Two weeks ago, this story hit the press, sparking the controversy yet again. One person got to the heart of this particular issue, but it does not address the problem on the whole:
"The growing sensitivity to political correctness has led some school districts to overreact to students bearing political symbols of any kind... Surely, sophisticated high school administrators should be able to differentiate between apparel that could cause a ruckus and those that are clearly patriotic in nature."Clearly! Unfortunately, the issue is more widespread than that. Censorship leads to quiet, and quiet inspires apathy... When left to our own devices, we're a slothful species-- and I'm no less guilty than anyone else, I just try to be a bit more conscious of it. The last thing we need in this country is more apathy. Disinterest and a lack of civic-minded individuals to institute change has gotten us into a war with a country we shouldn't have invaded, a President-- no, an entire administration-- who has blatantly lied to the American people, and a socialized education plan that ignores where help is needed most, because those places can't provide the results required to get the help. What kind of cycle are we perpetuating, here?
Isn't it enough that we're all struggling so hard to keep up with the Joneses? I bet we'd find it less important, if we'd look beyond the bubble.
If you're ready to join the Young American Angst Association, check out:
No Child Left Behind
National Coalition Against Censorship
Banned Books Week @ Amnesty International