chatter from the Library Monkey

doing good

Two things happened today (Friday). Continuation for the eighth graders and in the middle school meeting a discussion of retaining students in the middle school.

It is clearly one of the problems of school. Moving kids on that have not passed their current year. There are reasons to do it, most often it is “because they are smart.” That is, if the kid would apply his or her self, s/he would have passed. That is probably true, but so what. Jobs/work is the easy to grab analogy in this situation. How many people have gotten a raise because, ‘they are capable of doing the work’ ? Ultimately the world is what we prepare students for. While I say we spend way too much time preparing kids to play baseball, it is clear to me that moving a kid to the next grade when they haven’t learned anything from the current one is doing a disservice for all.

Another reason they move a kid up is to keep them from shaving in fifth grade. That wouldn’t be the clinical term, but I don’t know the clinical term. There is one kid at my school who I would guess has a 40 average across the board (enhanced by the fact that his mom took him on vacation the week before all his final projects were due) and they are moving him up because he is a big kid.

I have two thoughts on this. First — kind of mentioned already — how prepared are students if they haven’t learned anything. It’s not like these kids are going to suddenly going to catch up on their own.

The second reason to hold the kid back. Let’s start setting an example. If you want to spend all day making jokes, maybe you ought to see your audience getting younger.

The question is asked, “are we doing the student any good by holding him back?” depends if you want them to learn cause and affect.

The Tigers lost last night, hopefully they are back on track tonight, especially since Whitesox lost, but the Cleveland Indians just took a lead in the 11th. If they win, the Big Cats will have to win tonight to stay in third place.

Gratitude (3)

long goofing off

It’s funny I spend much of my off time here in front of the computer, but lately writing a post is not in the forefront.

I had the joy of chaperoning again — on an overnight. I figured out why I get sucked into it. It is because I want to go where the trip is. This time it was the Envirothon in Cobleskill. I always wonder what an Envirothon was and it was fairly bright kids going. I thought it would be fairly safe. I didn’t think that the other chaperone/teacher was really the person who would need the watching.

I guess that is an exaggeration. The problem is the teacher really is just a kid. I realized this on Wednesday night when the kids decided that their activity would be to see if they could jump over a hedge. The teacher went down and instead of stopping them, or trying to get them to be a little more careful, instead she took pictures of them jumping. An act that actually encourage those who weren’t going to do it, to do it.

One of the things I would have to say up front is the organization listed their would be activities. There really wasn’t activities. So there was a lot of time to fill. The very worse of all was the fact we were on a college campus and there were no tours or information about the place.

That said, the teacher was insane:

we were suppose to leave at 10:10 a.m. she wasn’t ready to leave until 10:40

She mentally thought that was okay because we weren’t suppose to be to the college until 2:30 p.m., but she calculated the trip travel on a car going 65 mph, not a bus going 55 mpg

I don’t think she looked at the materials because even though the oral presentation was at 2:30, you were suppose to be there 15 minutes early — we were not

Timing was an ongoing problem since she did not have a watch

As soon as we left she announced she had left the packet with such info back at the school

I had to carry around an itinerary the whole time, because not only did she not know about how to bring a watch, she didn’t seem to care about a schedule (which was available at registration)

She never read the rules, one of the kids had a rather large knife — any knife would have got us disqualified. When I mentioned this

She was often telling stories that the team (all boys) loved — “did I ever tell you about the time my dog had a tick on his penis”

She could have gotten the problem that the students needed for the oral presentation in February, she didn’t get it until a week before we left.

She lost the plastic bracelets we were suppose to show for the meals — twice. I eventually told one of the kids to hold the bracelets.

It was a pretty funny trip, but annoying, because I had to become the voice of reason. A couple kids kept talking about trying to catch a feral cat. It was at that point I realized these were National Honor Society students, that perhaps should not be.

The Tigers have been playing a little better of late including sweeping a series from Seattle (one of the few teams playing worse than the Tigers.)

Gratitude (3)

Spinning the wheels

Finally got out on my bike. Quite surprised how easy it was.…hilly here and I thought that I might not be able to make it up some of the slopes. My knees are a bit tender, but okay.

Not sure how they will feel tomorrow and/or after volleyball tomorrow night.

I am really proud of myself, I didn’t think much about school at all. Good vacation. Of course after Monday I didn’t think about writing a scene for a musical either. I didn’t read much (but baseball forums). I wrote maybe a couple poems… I didn’t get sunburn, so all is well.

Great weather makes me lazy. I should plan on a little camping trip. Maybe in a couple weekends kayak out to an island…

The Tigerslost a second one in a row. Score was 5.3, but it didn’t seem that close…really. Cleveland lost again, but I guess I need to start paying more attention to Chicago. The Big Cats are 5.5 games back of them, the same distance to a wildcard berth. The irony is I did my green sock rally tiger (Titus Tiger) once and they scored. I should start it out every inning

time to shower and sleep

Gratitude (3)

We need a winner

The Tigers now have a four game losing streak

There was an interesting turn of events this week — things I have been saying for months and years, seem to have become popular.