My Orioles are in third place with a .500 record.
Damnit. One week of blissful being in first place. Ruined by the Orioles inability to hold it together and/or score runs through nine innings.
However, my Capitals are up 2-0 on the Rangers but knowing how badly they choke during the playoffs, I'm preparing myself for them not going all the way.
Besides sports, life have been stressful. I sent out 91, yes 91, emails yesterday to principals inquiring about openings. I have gotten 15 back saying they are not hiring this year. FML. Also, due to insane gas prices, I now have my bike but of course, good old Pittsburgh weather, decides to be raining so if I want to actually be healthy/green/save money, I have to get very very wet. It also sucks not having a lot of money. See but problem number 1 would solve problems 2 and 3. But due to states thinking that the way to solve their budget problems is to cut back on education funding, problem 1 seems like it will never go away.
My views of how government should look at education is summed up by the lovely West Wing quote
"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."
Why do governments think that they can skim back on education funding? Or better yet, why on Earth do they think that standardized testing is the best way to measure schools? Here is a clue: You can't measure a school as a whole. You have to measure the individual student. A school is made up of multiple people who think in multiple ways. Students don't all think the same way. They don't all sit down and say "Green is the color of power because money is green which means you have power." One student may say "No, green is the color of weakness because it the color of money which leads you to think only of money and nothing else." Both views are valid. Both are correct. Yet, our current system will only say that one of these views is correct. How is that fair to the one student that chose to think outside the box?
People will say that the standardized testing is the best way to measure teachers. False again. The best way to measure teachers is to talk to the students. It boggles my mind how so many teachers still teach even though nearly every single student dislikes the teacher. Now, I'm not saying that some teachers will be liked because they are "cool" but all of your good teachers will be liked by students. These are the teachers that push their students without their students know they are being pushed. The best teacher in the would could be teaching in Mississippi right now but we wouldn't know it because the students in his or her classroom fail their standardized tests. Yet, the individual student may have actually passed the class with a "D" because the teacher took the time to show the student that they can do more then fail. How is that fair to teachers?
The system isn't perfect and it never will be. But the closest government officials will get to making successful education policy is to listen to teachers that are currently teaching. Not those who got their doctorate years ago and the last time they actually taught in a classroom, Clinton was in office. Education is a constantly changing world and the only way policies can keep on top of them is to talk to those actually in the field, not those who taught when cellphones was something only rich people had.
~These lessons that we've learned here have only just begun.
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