Yup, I was right. By Catherine on 1/10/2008 12:40:00 PM
I fail at New Year's resolutions. BUT the good news is that Virginia and I are really starting, really really, tomorrow. I know Friday seems like a weird time to start gymming, but this was a particularly busy week at work and a particularly sad week personally, so what better time to start than when you already feel like crap? I used to feel great after working out, very refreshed and surprisingly energized, and looking really good didn't hurt either. I'm ready, it just took awhile.That being said, we went to Katie's wake on Tuesday. It took two hours to make it through the line, and the whole thing was too heartbreaking to put into words. Add in the fact that the family was Catholic (translate: open casket) and I was sufficiently freaking out.
I was never exposed to enough Catholicism to understand it well, or to get anything spiritual out of it-- no, what I got out of being Catholic was a lot of guilt feelings and a healthy dose of repressed sexuality. Oh, right, and a TERROR of death and dead bodies. My granddad died when I was 6, and I think I knew enough about the mystery of death not to question what it meant. But what remains with me, to this day, the moment I relive at every wake and funeral and Catholic church service, is when I saw my precious Bup, the nicest and gentlest man I knew, who doted on me like I was Queen of the Nile, laying in his casket, cold. Cold, cold. I touched him, not expecting him to feel like that-- it was shocking, and I couldn't even cry. The whole time, I just sat there, with my eyes on fire... But I couldn't cry.
The big man who grew up next door to him in Southie, the priest, gave the services and then gave me a rose. I brought it home and put it next to the one my Bup gave me, encased in clear fiberglass and with a short string of pearls wrapped about the stem. I still have that rose sitting on the bookshelf in my living room. I still think about my Bup all the time. I wonder, is he proud of me? Would he like who I've chosen to be my mate? Would he love me like he did when I was 6 or would he be disappointed that I didn't go to law school like he wanted and that I don't have more discipline in my daily life? I'd give just about anything for one more day with him, as long as it didn't end with an open casket.
Labels: bad mood, death, unfunny
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
sitting on babies with a fireplace poker at my side By Catherine on 3/31/2007 11:27:00 PM
There really is nothing scarier than hearing weird noises while you're home alone with three kids who aren't yours in a big drafty house with very little furniture. Add to the equation that you have more affection for these kids than a good portion of your family, the noises keep happening, and you don't know the code to the house alarm.This is why I have the fireplace poker handy. If I really have to hurt someone, I will. Or I'll grab the baby and the smaller child and barricade myself in the biggest one's room with the phone AND the poker. I really wish the Dr. Duo would get home. I keep checking the girls like they're going to be gone when I go up there. I'm not usually a spaz when I babysit-- hell I yank teeth and clean poop and still smile and sing the sunshine song.
Intruders, however, are another story. If I pretend he's the giant parasite from Silent Hill, I'll be fine.
I think maybe the hero in that game had a fireplace poker at one point, too.
I'm starting to think I need to be tranquilized for this paranoia...
Labels: babysitting, unfunny
Having a stroke from the MCAS By Catherine on 3/22/2007 08:44:00 AM
You know, sometimes I wonder if standardized testing is worth the hassle it creates. For example, some little toast-for-brains decided this morning that it would be wicked freaking funny to pull the fire alarm during the exam.Let's discuss what an idiot this kid is. Not only is he likely to be expelled, but it's not as warm as you'd expect outside either. Oh wait, right, it's March, in Massachusetts. It's not fucking warm at all. Although it's supposed to warm up today, there's still a foot of snow on the ground, and the mountains created by the plows are still pretty significant. What a little asshole.
Also, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the scores are invalid now. Maybe not ALL of the testing from the previous two days will be thrown out, but knowing the amount of bureaucracy inherent in the public schools and the Department of Ed tells me that some of the sophomores will have to retake at least today's portion of the English exam.
Mr. H looked like he was having a stroke. Were I not freezing my nips off, it would have been funny.
Long story short, I really hope this kid gets caught. Or, if he's a sophomore...
I hope he fails the MCAS.