Business as usual

It never ceases to amaze me how inefficient, ineffective, and inept public schools are.

So I needed the money to pay for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary bash and I signed up to teach summer school.

Today I was ready to quit.

Even though I was never a very good Boy Scout, I do live by their motto of "Be Prepared." If I so much as show a video clip for a class, I make sure that everything is set up and ready to go so precious time is not wasted.

You would think that something as important as a new computer-based summer school curriculum would be given great care and preparation. Yeah, right.

I worked over the weekend and came in earlier than the administrators to ensure that everything was ready for a smooth start.

I wish the school district cared as much. Not only was the software not loaded yet onto the computers they would be using, but once it was loaded, it didn't work.

Yep, I had to wing it for three hours; a lot of good being prepared did.

So Day Two would be better, right? In a word, no. We were still unable to use the curriculum and I have severe doubts that I ever will.

This is going to be a long three weeks.

Day Three update: I guess I am an optimist because I actually thought it would work today after talking to our district technical experts who would be working feverishly on the system.

Wrong. No improvement whatsoever. But here is the most amazing thing: the highly paid district mucky muck in charge of summer school came in to check this morning and she said, "I might have to call the company's representative to see what can be done about this."

MIGHT? You mean the vendor rep wasn't called the first day! How is this possible!

Bad education memories

I was reminded today of a very unpleasant experience that I had to endure in order to change careers and become a teacher: the state-required brainwashing otherwise known as a credential program.

The vast majority of a teacher's training in California is pure B.S. that in no way prepares one for the real world of the classroom teacher, but I digress. What really got my dander up today was a co-worker's recollection of one particular professor.

I am going to tell you her name because the rot she preaches simply can't go unpublicized: Dr. Mary Salisbury at Cal State Stanislaus. This lady is so left wing that my left wing friends were stunned at her comments.

Ms. Salisbury had some interesting things to say in order to prepare us as educators. My co-worker recalled how much of her required training consisted of telling the class how the U.S. deserved 9/11.

And I guess that while she ranted about the big bad evil U.S., she practically worshiped at the feet of a Middle Eastern student in the class who was also very vocal that we had it coming to us.

By the time I had to take the class, she had moved on from the subject of 9/11, but the America bashing continued. I mostly remember how she talked incessently about her recent trip to Uganda and condoms--that's right, Uganda and condoms.

I remember the overall message went something like this: "Uganda good, U.S. bad; condoms good, U.S. bad." It was pretty heady stuff, as you can see.

Oh, how I wish I had the time to go back and take another class from her now that I don't need her approval to get my credential. It would be so much fun to say all the things that I couldn't say then for fear of retribution.

I did actually disagree a lot compared to other classes where I kept my mouth shut and toed the company line.

I remember her going off on evil corporations--again, what this has to do with teaching 8th graders I will never know--who operate "sweat shops" in third world countries.

She never had any answer for me when I pointed out that the people in those countries are ecstatic about those jobs and communities actually lobby to have the opportunity to host such shops. (Logic is not a required subject in the credential program.)

Oh, how I wish I had a blog back then. You wouldn't believe the stuff they try to pass off as education these days.

"Yeah, that would be why."

Maybe I just expect too much.

Maybe I am just too far removed from 8th grade to remember that I too was once clueless.

Maybe.

So I have about 10 minutes left in my advanced language arts class and I decide to use the time to discuss some deeper questions associated with the short story we have just finished reading.

"We need to dig deeper into this story and I think it would be good to have an intellectual discussion about our opinions on some of yesterday's questions," I began.

"I don't see why we can't spend more time having intellectual--

--"WHAT'S INTELLECTUAL MEAN!" interrupts a student.

"Yeah, that would be why."