ivan

the union doesn't send folks around to watch me teach for certain, but they do work w/ the state to establish qualifications to get/maintain a teaching license the union does work to offer/make us aware of professional development opportunities and agitates with the state to get us funding for it the union really only seeks to eliminate those who are grossly damaging their students (say by abusing them) ultimately, my union is a very remote and rarely-glimpsed organization to me, and is mostly important only when our contract is being renegotiated the bottom line is, neither the union nor state can have much of a culling effect on teachers. personally, i'm embarrassed by a # of social studies teachers i work with - they don't know what the fuck they're talking about, have no inate interest in the subject, don't read anything (that i can tell) and teach in a way that is utterly boring and off-putting. great - so we fire them. i won't complain, though what the process going to look like and how will it be fair? and anyway, now who's gonna take the job? there's not exactly a stampede of qualified applicants eager to do a better job. getting an education degree isn't necessarily easy and unfortunately there seem to be an awful lot of folks who look to get one not b/c they love learning, but because they don't know what to do. my last school had a us history job unfilled for more than a month. the job doesn't pay well, lend much prestige and it sure doesn't get you laid (well, ethically anyhow ) you can fire a baseball player who bats .200 and makes 3 errors a game b/c the major leagues, whihc offers a powerful wealth incentive, produces tons of guys who can do better. the current supply pool for schools is more like the little leagues though. another thing to remember - teaching/education is far more an art than a science, especially at the level of a classroom teacher - it doesn't submit well to the tyranny of metrics. i don't mind standardized tests, and in fact i was incredibly succesful in getting kids to pass them in my last state, but the results don't necessarily mean what you think. the defintion of "the welfare of students" is therefore itself rather fuzzy.

uh, hate to rock your world, but for kids this is true of everything that happens in school, excepting lunch and the dismissal bell you should come on in and teach a lesson to my class dude, you seem like you got it all figured out! if you hang around for the test to proudly measure your ROI you might be a wee bit suprised too. having spent a ton of time on all the things you mention in that last line, i'd still guarentee you a large # of my kids could not point out tibet, tell you who the DL is, or anything sensible about buddhism. and yes, i fail them for it. and yes, the rich parents go right on buying them bmws. the dirty truth is, you can lead a horse to water... field trips are inevitable "fluffy" as you say - montesorri schools though, which are private and enjoy incredibly high reputations as effective schools, base their entire curriculum on the constructivism school of learning, whihc stresses real world, "experiential" learning, which is exactly what you get from field trips a field trip can be a incredibly useful teachign tool - as w/ any tool, it all boils down to how it's wielded - if you have shitty teachers, you get shitty product. duh.

I am curious how teachers fighting for more pay makes the school system worse or un-good? I work for an increase every year, and I do not see a connection between that and the organization I work for needing to be "fixed". i would also ask, given that i'm in a union you dislike, despite its stated top priority being the welfare of students, how exactly do you think my organization is an absolute roadblock to your solutions?

i wasn't spraying...i think its flat ass rude to reserve cliffs... wasn't talking to you

so, out of curiousity, is there anyone you think WOULD be worth kids seeing in the glorious pursuit of ROI?

hardly radical - radical was french/chinese/russian revolutionaries burning down churches, raping nuns and crucifying priests, no? you have not elaborated more on the double standard, nor on why the other reasons for facilitating school children in seeing/hearing the dalai llama are bullshit

regardless, and while i like mountie-bashign as much as the next guy, the original post said "no spray" muthafuckas!

so he's not a world leader? i'd take my kids to see the pope, the patriarch or moqtada al sadr, though i think they're all full of shit. they and their ideas undeniably shape the world. i don't see a double-standard - please elaborate - christianity most annoys me in its "pushiness" (i know you don't need me to list historical examples of christians forcing their religion on the weak) - the dalai specifically discourages americans from turnign to buddhism and encourages them to pursue the values he talks about through the faiths they already understand.

That is the best! picard/riker'08 - MAKE IT SO! Worf can be Secretary of Defence. Fuck it, let's rename the DoD back to the Dept. of War. would a screaming liberal like picard ever have so conservative a secdef?

That is the best! picard/riker'08 - MAKE IT SO!

he is a world leader, he is a major figure in world events that directly impact the usa, the religion he represents is poorly understand by americans and thus seeing him speak on it is educational from a social-studies perspective, his is not an evangelical faith nor is his visit to make converts or really even talk about buddhism at all. BULLSHIT. care to elaborate, your worshipfullness?

i just figured that, since no mortal would dare talk shit to chuck, that chuck had already flayed seagal w/ a vicious roundhouse and was now wearing his skin and enjoying going around, posing as a pussy, to understand what it must like to not be a god have you SEEN chuck and seagall at the same time in the past year or two?

just went and read them - still would be nice to know more of the details of what happened on that particuliar day - why didn't his partner go w/ him?

seems like an easy way to learn to ski on hood is to go up the cooper spur road than ride it right back down? certainly much cooler scenery when you hit the t-line.

portland rock and the smith rock guide there is no ice - ever... oregon high for mountaineering, but really just keep yer beckeys as all the real mountaineering is still up north (though hood is a most enjoyable diversion)

good memorial - looked a powerful guy - so who here has also done harvey?

15 minutes for a blowjob? man, she must have had quite the mandibulars! this kind of story is fox's bread'n'butter - seriously, who cares? you wanna see a blondie w/ a mole blowing somebody? there's probably 323,779,789 such tapes within a 10 mile radius of you at all time, no?

yeah, i'd say its a no-brainer that clinton woulda been better off to have come clean at the start (since he'd already gotten re-elected and couldn't be impeached for what he did), but then if he'd gotten away w/ it...

condolences - and yes, it seems as if you'd need a good deal more info, hopefully directly from the horse's mouth to have a valid opinion. it will take a long, long time before you can probably think clearly about what happened, and it is of course natural as a human to want to have someone or somethign to blame. try not to rush to judgement. i don't know anything about this mountain or route, perhaps you guys who have done it can explain the climb/area? i'm very confused as to their itinerary - is this essentially a mellow solo, and they split up and did it each at their own speeds? or did they just split up for different objectives? what exactly happened?

i doubt it, assumign they're rational, as the one kind of war we're actually damn good at is force on force, in the open, symetric warfare. the norm in international relations is tit for tat - if we bomb then, we can certainly expect missile/air strikes on us, possible terrorist style attacks, and increased support for attacks on us targets in iraq. they're not stupid, and realize they can hurt us much more w/ the later than w/ the former.

it won't happen - we're nothign if we're not slow, fat fucks, content w/ the status quo. luckily our status quo is you can say anything you damn well want, just don't let your assistant blow you while you're at work (funny, cuz the euros seem to have the exact opposite situation, no? i reckon i prefer our situation)

you're right! there's only one cause worth lining our kids up in the street for! Pulling the nazi card is beneath you. You've been hanging around that idiot too much. Besides, we smacked those guys down pretty hard if I recall... it's impossible to talk of people lining up in the streets and not think of all the reasons that states have done so in the past - the nazi example is the arche-type example, and hardly beneath me you dismissed it as femlib, but really, of the reasons states line up the masses, which is better: for war and hate, or peace and love? at any rate, what are you afraid of? that all those school chilluns will become dirty hippies? they most likely will remember for the rest of their lives that they saw someone so famous, and the experience will be a springboard to learn more deeply the issues involving buddhism, china, tibet, us relations with those 3, etc. - the alternative was spending another ho-hum, meaningless day doing something they won't remember even 24 hours later?

...and Republicans are hardly The Barron Vladimir Harkonnen either... maybe, but karl rove is definitely as bad as this guy: