Tag: education

Here we are, in the midst of what I have always considered to be the worst part of a Spring semester.  January and the start up has gone by the wayside and Spring Break doesn’t arrive until March.  In between we have the long hard slog towards midterm exams.

It is also the time in which that “extra” stuff gets emphasized.  “Oh, by the way…” starts piling up work for next semester.  “If you are not too busy…” add to it.

I get to be the center attraction in a Women’s Studies class discussion on gender in the next couple of weeks.  Once more into the cage, Dr. LabRat.  Maybe we can have a fruitful discussion about the meaning of the phrases “real women” and “real men.”  But I’m only the specimen, so that’s probably unlikely.

More beyond…

Originally posted as part of Teacher’s Lounge at Daily Kos

Since that surge is working so well, I guess we’re just going to have to keep surging. Forever. According to The Hill:

This year’s battle over Iraq war funding officially kicked off Wednesday as Defense Secretary Robert Gates reluctantly offered a price tag for the first time: $170 billion for fiscal 2009.

Speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Gates only gave the number after Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) pressed him, but rejected his own estimate right off the bat, calling it a number that “will inevitably be wrong, and perhaps significantly so.”

“I will be giving you precision without accuracy,” warned Gates.

Levin insisted that he give his best estimate for next year’s war-funding needs.

“Well, a straight-line projection, Mr. Chairman, of our current expenditures would probably put the full-year cost, in a strictly arithmetic approach, at about $170 billion,” Gates responded.

Of course, Gates made clear that the number could be wrong; and I’m guessing he didn’t mean wrong as in an overestimate. But the Administration is very conscious of the drain on our federal budget. Not the drain from the war, mind you, the other drain. On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Bush wants to do something about it. Like slash and burn. You know- the low priority stuff.

President Bush plans to unveil a $2.5 trillion budget today eliminating dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, including funding for education, environmental protection and business development, while proposing significant increases for the military and international spending, according to White House documents.

Overall, discretionary spending other than defense and homeland security would fall by nearly 1 percent, the first time in many years that funding for the major part of the budget controlled by Congress would actually go down in real terms, according to officials with access to the budget. The cuts are scattered across a wide swath of the government, affecting a cross-section of constituents, from migrant workers to train passengers to local police departments, according to officials who read portions of the documents to The Washington Post.

And one very important person is already on board.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I hope we in Congress will have the courage to support it.”

On Thursday night students, faculty and staff at Bloomfield College gathered for a discussion of the issues and the candidates in the current campaign.  I have to admit I missed it.  I was in the midst of becoming rather ill and in need of horizontal collapse.

I do have to admit that Edwards and Giulliani dropping out on Wednesday ticked off the students who were preparing the event for Thursday.  Students always hate it when work they’ve done becomes irrelevant.  But at least those students were able to participate in the issues discussion.

This event and other events are the brainchildren of a collaboration between the political science, history disciplines and women’s studies disciplines and Student Government.  The candidate event kicks off Black History month for us.

What if they had a special week and nobody noticed?

Last week was No Name-Calling Week.  From all appearances, at least on the level of the blogs, there wasn’t much notice.  Name-calling is de rigeur.

Which raises a good question.  If adults demand their right to call people names as part of what they think is intelligent debate, why would we expect the children to behave any differently.

It would probably be prudent of me not to mention that fact.  I’ve never been accused of being prudent.

I think about the children.  Big surprise.  I’m a teacher.

Race, religion and the intertwined aspects of freedom, justice and ethical prosecution of due process within a democratic framework seem to always evoke a variety of reactions among people — sometimes violent, sometimes vehement, and sometimes quite touching and sublime.

In addition to the regular interactive dance of race, religion and ethics that we see in everyday life and through our media filtes, we also have a new horizon to explore — the one afforded to us through the use of “new media” such as the blogosphere.

Two examples worthy of your attention and your help with dissemination are now posted over on ePluribus Media. Make the jump for more details.

Thursday was first day of classes, Day #2.  School actually started on Wednesday, but of course we only met the students and teachers in our classes that meet on Wednesdays.

So I walked into my morning class…Computer Literacy at 10 am…and watched as my students slowly arrived, making myself useful by passing our syllabi.

I was not expecting anything out of the ordinary…such as, for example, all the students to show up on that first day of class.  I was hoping for something bigger than 50%.  In fact, ever single student registered for the class was in class and seated by 10:05.

The students helped me up from where I had fainted from surprise (no, not really).  Then one of them called me over to her computer station and informed me of a problem.  “I am visually impaired,”  she said.  “So am I,” I said.  “What can I do to help?”

There is no one thing I can say I like about working in higher education.  The sense of accomplishment I feel when a student succeeds at learning can be as exhilarating as any drug I know.  I would hope it would only be surpassed by the feeling a student has in learning the material.

The knowledge that I am doing something worthwhile in this world, something that, I hope and choose to believe, can only improve the lives of those I teach, for the benefit of the world at large is why I became a teacher in the first place.

But right up there towards the top of the list is the fact that every year provides two or three opportunities for me and my students to have a fresh start.  Last semester and last year is in the past and it is time to start anew.  

Don’t get me wrong.  If there were not winter breaks, I’d not have survived to be as old as I am.  I’ve spent the last month or so of every semester with my mind on its knees begging for rest.  But rest never happens.  It can’t.  I’m a teacher.

Being a teacher is a 24/7 thing.  One doesn’t turn one’s mind off when not in the classroom.  One eats, sleeps and dreams teaching.    At least I have always assumed other people are like me.

So when “rest time” comes, all that really happens is refocusing.  The time is meant to be used and the teacher in me will fill it with work.  

Originally posted at Teacher’s Lounge

One of the reasons I put such a high value on commentary is that there are times when a comment or two can snap things back into focus…or at least remind us of another time and another focus that perhaps needs to be revisited.

At the end of this semester, besides being 60 years old, I will have been a teacher for 32 years.  I have taken it as an article of faith that what I have been doing is trying to find more and better ways of expound upon Truth.  I have told the same stories over and over again in a myriad different ways, looking for the light bulbs and trying to measure their luminosity.

Outside the classroom the world becomes my classroom and Truth is no longer restricted to learning mathematics or computer languages, but rather about life in general.  In particular I have focused on what goes on in the human brain.  The only one I happen to be able to experiment upon is my own, so there is bound to be bias in my sample.  But I have concentrated on the possible, not on the probable, so I’ve not considered that too much of a flaw.

I turned in my grades at 3:45pm on Wednesday afternoon.  I had 45 minutes to spare.  Some years I have less than that.

The truth is I generally run out of motivation to grade prior to actually having to do the grading.  In some respects, the lack of interest some of my students display drains me of the motivation I think I should have.  As much as we would like to have students who think that they should give maximum effort in each of their classes, that’s very often not the case.

I gave three incompletes this past semester.  That’s three more than I usually do.  I will do just about anything to avoid giving an incomplete.  I think I’ve mentioned before my hatred of paperwork.

Originally posted as part of Teacher’s Lounge