What Do Teachers Make? (a "Survivor" follow-up)

Yesterday's post might have been just slightly cranky-pants, so here's the follow up (also currently making the rounds of the Interwebz):



What do Teachers Make?

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One ma, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education.

He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.'

To emphasize his point he said to another guest; 'You're a teacher, Bonnie. Be honest, what do you make?'

(She paused for a second, then began...)

"Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents can't make them sit for 5 without an IPod, Game Cube, or movie rental.

You want to know what I make?" (She paused again and looked at each person at the table.)

"I make kids wonder.

I make them question.

I make them apologize and mean it.

I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.

I teach them to write and them I make them write... Keyboarding isn't everything.

I make them read, read, read.

I make them show all their work in math. They use their God-given brain, not the man-made calculator.

I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to know in English while preserving their unique cultural identity.

I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe.

I make my students stand, placing their hand over their heart to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, One Nation Under God, because we live in the United States of America.

I make them understand that if they use the gives they were given, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life."

(Bonnie paused one last time, then continued.)

"Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, with me knowing money isn't everything, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention because they are ignorant... You want to know what I make?

I MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

What do you make Mr. CEO?"

His jaw dropped, and he went silent.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Survival, Public Education Style

This has been floating around the Interwebz for a while.  Every time I see it I want to  send it to about a hojillion times to certain politicians and "pundits." Instead, I'll just share it with you. And let me remind you, this really ISN'T an exaggeration of survival as a public school teacher!

Next Season on Survivor...

Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for one school year. Each business person will be provided with a copy of his/her school district's curriculum, and a class of 25 students,with no aide.

Each class will have a minimum of five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.H.D., one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three students will be labeled with severe behavior problems.

Each business person must complete lesson plans at least three days in advance, with annotations for curriculum objectives and modify, organize, or create their materials accordingly. They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents, and arrange parent conferences. They must also stand in their doorway between class changes to monitor the hallways.

In addition, they will complete fire drills, tornado drills, and the drills for shooting attacks each month. They must attend workshops, faculty meetings, and attend curriculum development meetings. They must also tutor students who are behind and strive to get their non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the tests. If they are sick or having a bad day, they must not let it show.

Each day they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment to motivate students at all times. If all students do not wish to cooperate, work, or learn, the teacher will be held responsible.

Lunch will be limited to twenty minutes, which is not counted as part of the work day. The business people will be permitted to use a student restroom, as long as another survival candidate can supervise their class.

If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials before, or after, school. However, they cannot surpass their monthly limit of copies. The business people must continually advance their education, at their expense, and on their own time.

The winner of this season of "Survivor" will be allowed to return to their OLD job.

Pass this to your friends who think teaching is easy, and to the ones that know it is hard...

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Nearly Wordless Wednesday 4/6/11

Gray day, water and fog.

  Baker Reservoir, March 2011

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Pubic Libraries

 I am a looooong-time user of the public library. My mom used to take us to the bookmobile in the parking lot of  the Thrifty Drug Store near our house almost every week when I was young.

[Speaking of Thrifty Drug Store - or, Thrifty's, as it was commonly called - who remembers their awesome, cheap ice cream? They used a scooping device that pulled out the ice cream in a cylinder shape rather than in a ball, so when you got a double it was a big, tall cylinder on a flaky cake cone. Thrifty's ice cream is soooooooo a favorite thing!]

Occasionally Wombat would make the trek with us to one of the county's regional branch libraries, and those became regular destinations for me as a high schooler.

As an undergraduate I was a regular patron (both for checking out books and sleeping  studying in the carrels at the McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz and Central (now known as the Theodore Geisel - yes, as in Dr. Seuss! - Library) at UC San Diego. When I REALLY needed to get something done at UCSC I'd go to the "SciLi" (Science Library) because the books there were too hard for me to understand, so there weren't any distractions!

I worked for several quarters at the Science and Engineering Library at UCSD, and again, was able to complete my tasks quickly, since the books were beyond my brain power! Many of my friends from those days worked student jobs in campus libraries. Two of them have gone on to get master's degrees in Library Science and work in university and corporate libraries. A friend from high school now has a doctorate and works at the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress (and serves as a researcher for historian Doris Kearns Goodwin). NERD ALERT!!!

As a graduate student I spent many hours organizing research material and writing papers in the libraries at UC Berkeley (Oh, Doe, how I miss thee!) and Holy Names College... I can almost smell those places again just thinking about it!

It was amazing to experience the beauty of the new San Francisco Public Library, and I suffered through the year(s) of the Berkeley Public Library's main building move, renovation, and move-back. The Oakland Public Library gave me access to a series of ancient children's novels I hadn't read in 20 years.  I taught an immigrant man to read over the course of many weeks in the South Branch of the Berkeley Library, and took both The Little Mermaid and her late sister Pocahontas on many happy visits to the Berkeley North Branch.

Even in the age of eReaders (and yes, I use eReader apps extensively on my iPad and iPhone both), I'm still a near-weekly visitor to our county's public libraries.  Fiction books to read for pleasure, story books to share with my class, audiobooks for the car, cookbooks, reference books - every week there's something new for me to find at the library.

My current public library

 Public libraries are a great, and favorite, thing!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Mocha Freeze

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Mocha Freeze drinks available from the food court at or local Costco! Chilly, delicious, and CHEAP compared to the similar items from St*rbux.

(That's Mr. Mamie's giant thumb, not mine, BTW!)

Frosty AND frugal BOTH are favorite things!
 
~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Quote

Last weekend a bunch of Mr. Mamie's family was in town from up north for a family event. We went out to dinner the night before with some of them, and this quote is from a cute 7 year old niece:

"Today has been a FANCY DAY! We stayed in a fancy hotel, and we ate at a fancy restaurant!"

The "fancy hotel" was a Best Western, and the "fancy restaurant" was Olive Garden... I love how easily some kids are made happy!  And, I think this little girl needs her own copy of Fancy Nancy - I'll have to see what I can do about that.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Spring Trees 2

The flowers on the trees are in full bloom - love a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Nearly Wordless Wednesday 3/30/11

Love the baby buds and little leaves on the cottonwood tree in our front yard!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Fresh Bread

 Our St. Patrick's day Irish Soda Bread, with the first slice gobbled up straight from the oven:

Freshly-baked bread is for sure a favorite thing!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Kids' Art

I love that kids in our school get to do REAL ART with a REAL ART TEACHER. Thanks to an incredible grant program, we have both visual and performing art specialists in our school, and our kids are exposed to some amazing activities and concepts.

For the past couple of weeks in art the class has been working on a really cool cactus painting. First, they drew the cactus using a series of oval shapes. Then they painted each shape with watercolors.  The next week they glued spikes onto the cactus, and then added ink to the outlines of the cactus. Finally, ink was used to create details on the cactus.

Paining the cactus with watercolors:

Gluing on spikes:

Drawing the outline and details with ink:

Finished art:

 Kids' art, and the great experiences they have creating it, is absolutely a favorite thing!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Menus 3/28/11 - 4/3/11

Monday, 3/28: Hobo Hash (from the freezer), steamed green beans or broccoli, green salad.

Tuesday, 3/29: Cheap eat out (Mr. Mamie has class); YOYO/CORN for GrandmaT.

Wednesday, 3/30: Chicken Enchilada Soup (from the freezer), cornbread, green salad.

Thursday, 3/31: Asian Chicken, Yellow Rice (a HUGE favorite here!), green salad.

Friday, 4/1: Basil Cheeseburgers OR Southwest Turkey Burgers OR Healthy Turkey Burgers (the patties are frozen in the freezer; everyone can choose their own), sweet potato fries done the oven (from the awesome giant bag of frozen sweet potato fries sold at Costco), various burger toppings.

The weekend is up in the air, as my birthday is on Saturday and our plans are not firm yet.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Great Kids' Books

I have an extensive classroom library, far more books than any one kid could read in a year. Alas, that doesn't stop me from always spotting MORE books that I think the kids would love.

This is but a small sample of my classroom library:

A couple of weeks ago I saw this cool pop-up book of inventions on a clearance table at Barnsie:

It was SO PERFECT becasue we had just had a theme about inventions/inventors in our reading series! I didn't immediately buy it though, 'cause the month's book budget had already been spent, and Mr. Mamie and I are really and truly are trying to stick to our budget allocations. Stoopid financial responsibility thing!

I showed the book to Mr. Mamie when we met up awhile later, and tried not to sound too bereft about not getting it... but I guess it didn't work, since he pulled out his wallet and said "Well, I have enough random cash in here, let's go buy it!" SO WE DID! To heck with budgeting and responsibility!

One of my favorite things as a teacher is seeing kids get ALL INTO books, and this awesome pop-up has been immensely popular with the whole class... I wish I could show you the expression this little cutie's face as he's pointing out something in the book - so excited and precious!

 

Great kids' books and great kids who love them are FAVORITE THINGS! And husbands who buy book for my classroom are my most favoritist of all!!!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favorite Things - Cookie Scoop

HOW did I ever survive without a cookie scoop?! This thing is AWESOME! I picked mine up at The Walmartz about a year ago, and it's become one of my favorite kitchen implements.

Great for cookies, of course:

 

Also works for falafel:

 

And no doubt for many other things as well! 

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Nearly Wordless Wednesday 3/23/11

Essential: Dry-erase board on the fridge with my to-do list.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Favortie Things - My "Sous Chef"

Niece loves to both cook AND eat! She's quite skilled in the kitchen, and can do many tasks independently and even more with a small amount assistance (Nephew, meanwhile,  needs explicit directions and supervision for heating up a can of soup).  Before she was in school full-time, she and GrandmaT made several batches of cookies every week.  We all miss those days! But during Spring Break she came over to help me make a huge batch of my favorite style of chocolate chip cookies (recipe coming soon!). We decided that instead of baking them all right away we'd freeze some "dough balls" could be pulled out of the freezer for fresh-baked cookies on a moment's notice.

Here's my favorite "sous chef" rolling up a ball of cookie dough:

And a few other memories of Niece cooking or eating, two of our favorite past-times!

October 2004, sitting at a picnic table outside of Wombat and GolfDad's RV (or "house-car," as Nephew called it back then). This was a couple of months before they bought their house here in The Village. That's GrandpaE and Golf Dad in the background. Plenty of food on the table!

 March 2006, at my old townhouse. All the family was over for a spaghetti dinner. Niece preferred her noodles plain, though! She's on the couch with GrandmaT.

May 2009, on my front patio with a big ol' burger! That's Great Uncle J in the background; he and Great Aunt C were here from California for a visit.

 October 2009, eating "breakfast for dinner." Niece is our master scrambled egg chef!

Summer 2010 - Niece made and decorated a cake for one of her parents (I can't remember the occasion). Nice job!

Having a niece who likes to hang out in the kitchen with me is for sure a favorite thing!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)