I don't own Birks, and I certainly don't have a trust fund... By Catherine on 2/24/2008 01:29:00 PM
This is really going to happen!Check out a good, succinct reason why.
Labels: firsts, hubris, politics
Interweb drama By Catherine on 2/10/2008 04:32:00 PM
It seems like there's drama everywhere on the internets these days, from Anonymous and the systematic pwning of the Church of Scientology, to the Chans and the Goons and the nerds over at YTMND debating who actually started it, to my own little bubble at Pathetic.Org, where one uptight admin has it out for everyone more talented than she. The Anonymous vs. CoS thing is pretty silly, albeit hilarious. I'll admit, I'm on the side of 4chan, and I've never said anything that nerdy in my life. It's just... the whackos are everywhere, and they don't even know they're whackos. Normally I don't get all up in arms over what people believe, but Scientology is a cult. Period. If you don't believe me, research it yourself.But Pathetic is a different story. I'm really bummed out, because normally everyone just gets along and no one really says anything terribly mean. A good chunk of the poetry posted is emotive bs, but the trick is not to leave feedback on those ones. Mine aren't exactly the stuff of Great American Literature, either. My mom always used to say, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. But now there's an admin with a grudge, and she's making it her business to be as rude as possible when doing her normal admin stuff. She did it to me and was rude about it, but it pales in comparison to leaving a comment like this after removing a member's picture:
Oh. And one photo was removed because, well, you're ugly. ;-) You know who you are. (If you have to ask, then no, you're not the one.)
Are you freaking kidding me? Are we in grade school? Is this not a more or less professional writer's community? Keep in mind, I found this out after browsing through on my own, though the person she did it to happens to be my editor. There are other sterling examples that I won't take the time for here, because it's such pettiness. This person is supposed to be keep the rules in order, and yet this is the behavior members deal with. I'm honestly considering removing my membership, because now that I know it wasn't just me, I'm pretty disappointed.
I like my lurking existence on these internets. I keep to myself and don't really talk to anyone, aside from posting here to people who know me anyway. When the interwebs get personal, I take myself away from them. Do you ever see me on AIM anymore? I thought a writing community was pretty easy. So much for poetry, I should just go join Anonymous.
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
Something I've been thinking about quite a bit By Catherine on 5/11/2007 08:07:00 AM
In a time in the history of the United States when achievement in schools is slacking, scripted standardized tests are enabling our youths' senses of entitlement, and NCLB is being flouted by the Iraq War, why are we focusing so hard on fixing a country that WE DESTROYED? We're allowing our own country to disintegrate before our eyes, into fundamentalist camps like Jesus's Army or into total apathy.What happened to loving America? We impose democracy on a region that has been enmeshed in foment for thousands of years, we allow our government to blatantly lie through their teeth about the reason we're doing it, and yet we can't muster up the courage to turn our critical eye in the other direction and look at ourselves and try to fix what is so broken about our own society. I think, in a way, I do love America... But I love it for what it used to represent, not what contemporary history has turned it into.
Our President is arrogant, unqualified, and too stubborn to see past the tip of his nose. In contemporary America, the Patriot Act dictates our rights and liberties, dismissing the Constitution and Bill of Rights with a lighthandedness that should be scary-- but yet, there are citizens, including some of my own family members, who truly believe that we are being better protected now that our phones can be tapped and our assets frozen without so much as an explanation why. I know I don't feel any safer, now that going to the airport with my best friend, an Egyptian, means we have to open her trunk and allow the guards to look through her things-- if anything, I feel less safe. I guess I'm just a libertarian at heart, but government, STAY OUT of my life! The GOP, as A so succinctly put it, wants to get back to their roots: fucking shit up for everyone who disagrees with the ludicrous party lines-- they espouse an ethos of intolerance to dissent... But where would we be, had the colonists never dissented in 1774? Where would African-American culture be, had the North and South not disagreed over slavery? Where would you be, dear reader, if you had not disagreed with your mom on where to go to college, or whom to marry, or what to become?
And furthermore, who is GWB or any GOP candidate (aside from Romney, who is personally antiabortion but says that he will leave current legislation intact) to tell me what I may and may not do with my body? They're all MEN! They don't even HAVE reproductive organs, so fuck them saying that abortion is killing a little person. Now, here's where it gets personal. I can think of very few situations where I could personally make that choice, but thanks to birth control and sex ed (as fucked up as it currently is), I was able to make the right choices and never have to be in the situation to HAVE to decide. I feel like Republican platforms are all about control: you can be anti-abortion, but still support the death penalty? I can't reconcile that, I just can't.
If I were to write to every GOP party member running for office today (some of whom don't believe in evolution, WHAT THE FUCK?) I would say, "Just because it makes YOU feel icky doesn't give you the right to dictate to everyone else what they can and cannot do." It's a juvenile, black-and-white mentality that I really can't abide, and since they're all men, it doesn't affect them ANYWAY. It's the same thing as them saying, "I feel yucky about this, so no one should ever be allowed to do it and we'll never speak of it again." I picture C and J's cat Shwoogy (who isn't very smart, hence the reason for the comparison) sticking his head under the ottoman and thinking we can't see him. I'd rather have a personal opinion (and mine is, I don't know if I could, so thank god I've never had to decide) and keep something like abortion LEGAL and SAFE and (hopefully) fairly rare than take away the right entirely and watch women suffer and possibly obtain them illegally, in an unsanitary conditions, by unqualified practitioners (or worse yet) try to do it at home.
This turned into a way longer rant than I anticipated... I know I don't exactly bring up any good points that aren't all over the internet already, but truly, this shit weighs on me. As a woman, an American, and a believer in the inherent good that our nation is capable of, I hope that 2008 can reestablish some of the faith that my generation has lost-- and that our troops will be brought HOME. Thanks for listening.
Labels: abortion, hope, Iraq, politics