On holiday

L woke me up this morning to announce that banks are closed today. L is five. Somehow, this important fact is of pressing importance. She asked me if there were holidays when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. I explained that there were no holidays because dinosaurs didn't have days of the week or months. In fact, they didn't keep track of time. They were as unaffected by bank holidays as a five-year-old is today.

Why do we keep track of time? If I remember my Daniel Boorstin correctly, it's to guide our productivity and to give us all the illusion of accomplishment even when the task at hand is not quite finished. That certainly describes the way I'm spending my Veteran's Day: grading an infinite pile of notebook paper reminiscent of this Ig Nobel scientific experiment.

mastery

It's nice to have a job in education that rewards employees based on their education. It would be even better if the masters teaching programs were more robust, relevant, and reflective. Currently, I think far too many educational graduate degree programs are exercises in disciplined budgeting and tedious prescriptive assignments that lack authenticity.

Maybe teachers of teachers are doomed to be so horrible because teachers themselves make ornery students.

Support

It is heartening to know about the programs and resources here in California for college-bound students who come from difficult, often contentious backgrounds. Regardless what you think about undocumented students, or more frequently legal citizens who are minors with undocumented parents, I'm glad to know that there are laws to help students follow the path towards legalization and resident status as well as clear rules about what aid they are not eligible for (all state & federal).

But what really impressed me was the system in place for students from foster care. I took for granted the luxury of coming home during winter break in college, but these students are not always so lucky. Besides scholarships and grants to help with tuition and living expenses, guaranteed housing, and academic support, these campus clubs also provide a mentorship program and much-needed social activities. I am thinking of a few students in particular and all that I can do to change the statistics. 70% of kids in foster care report wanting to go to college, but they are graduating at a low rate of 20%.

The good news is that the achievement gap between ethnic and racial groups is decreasing. I know that I can have a very real impact on a handful of students. Taking just a little extra time to help someone in a "special population" is not only doable but the right thing to do.

conferences

And now, we'd like to introduce the most important speaker of all: the outstanding teacher who does everything that you're supposed to be doing and more, who inspires not just his own students but anyone who comes within 50 feet of his charismatic vibe, and who has no social life or family left. Let's give him a round of applause.

controversy

I had a guest speaker on Tuesday. He talked about personal responsibility, work ethic, goal-setting, and civic service. It caused quite a bit of controversy, I guess, but my students ate up every word Obama spoke. It was a small class of seniors who will be first-generation college students. The words about growing up in a single-parent family, not having enough money, and making the extra effort to wake up earlier, work harder, and dream that impossible dream hit home with this group.

Surprisingly, it hit home with me, too. This was not a dramatic speech. nor was it particularly original or shocking. What struck me most was the sincerity of these ideas and how deeply I believed them. It's not just an idle speech to wonder how American students will and have contributed to society at large. In fact, as Obama mentioned the students sitting "in your place" 20 years ago, I realized--yep, that was me. Our generation who takes credit for Google, Facebook, and Twitter. In fact my friend Paul from high school is a developer for one of the afore-mentioned companies, and I reconnected with him just recently using one of the afore-mentioned services. That's me.

We saw ourselves in his words. And we saw him. Afterwards, a girl in my class said, I've never heard a president talk to me and talk like he understood me. It is a nice rhetorical move and a darn effective one to buy credibility with one's own personal story. Remind me again, why is this controversial?

Meanwhile, a respected colleague completely baffled me just a day later with her shocking story about how she glimpsed a license plate that read: NO GOD. Seriously? That's shocking? She doesn't know that there are atheists in the world? She's about as secular as you get in this tiny conservative town, but even she said she felt like she should be offended that the state of California allowed that plate. I couldn't even reply because I didn't have a clue where people were coming from. I've always grown up around atheists and have assumed that t-shirts reading "God is dead" are just as much part of life as, oh, the ichthus. My liberal-minded friends around the table made snide comments like, "That's awfully brazen to claim that there's no god at all" and "Maybe they'd have a better car than a Civic if they did believe in God." What? The narrator went on to explain how she wanted to take a picture on her cell phone but didn't want to crash, so instead she just called her husband with the news that she was tailgating someone about to be struck by lightning.

What amazes me is that both of these stories come as surprises to me. Yet again, I take for granted a set of shared values and expectations that others do not. It's a good eye-opener for me, though slightly disheartening. At the end of the day, as I lie down to sleep hopeful, but without a prayer, I think I'd rather live in a society engaging in healthy debate about banal topics than in one that accepts dogmatic statements without question.

The Terminator

It's never a good sign when the governor makes a special trip to your neck of the woods to pat everyone on the back for fighting the good fight and to survey the mess of your community that has now been declared a state of emergency.

By the way, Twitter is the best local news source I've ever seen in my life. I have our regional paper to thank for recognizing the beauty of a dozen 2-line stories and a few tinyurls over producing a newspaper that I actually want to buy. I'd pay to get Twitter feeds if it meant knowing that the fire raging down the street was 40% contained instead of wading through the mess of LA-area "coverage."

The good news: no deaths to report in our area. Other damage is harder to assess right now. I could smell the smoke in my daughter's hair when I hugged her this afternoon.

31

Here it comes. It didn't occur to me until last week that this year my age matches my birth date. I'm going to Baskin-Robbins to celebrate.