Facebook rules

Terri W:
Do not post or say anything on any network, email, chat, text, website, WHATEVER unless you are willing for the whole world to see it.

chemprof:
For Facebook, I'd actually use a slightly different rule (borrowed from a friend who was going through a lot and who loved posting on Facebook): "Only good goes on Facebook." When I see my students getting into trouble, that's the rule they break.

Terri W on vocabulary in Master Reynard

Terri W wrote:

I'm currently reading Jane Fielding's Master Reynard: The History of a Fox to my kids as our night-time book, it's an elementary read-aloud from about 100 years ago ... and on many pages, there's at least one word I've never even *heard* before, let alone know the definition off the top of my head.

(Admittedly, it's generally the nature-related stuff like "furze" and "sett," but still...)

And the sentences!

"The glimpse I got of the face of the precipice showed that the ivy had lost all its leaves, the bared stems standing out plainly against the black fissures that seamed the great wall of rock besprinkled with sparks which in their fall resembled shooting stars."

Or this gem:

"Of course, had the matter of digging by day, in which lay the sting of the underground annoyance, been brought to an issue, we foxes had not a shadow of right on our side; because we knew that the earth belonged to the badger by right of excavation, and that we were there on sufferance only as long as he found us tolerant and agreeable."

None of our modern day early elementary readers have that kind of complexity. And the ones I quote above were not ferreted out for their uniqueness -- I just opened to random pages -- the whole book is like that.

My 4 year old was a little wiggly the first few nights, but now he's used to it and is able to follow the story.

LA Times Teacher Rankings

Marginal Revolution has a post about the recent LA Times teacher rankings here.

I'm interested to see what the fallout of this will be. Will other towns crunch the same data?

From Alex Tabarraok's commentary from the link:

I don't blame the unions for being up in arms and I feel for the teachers, for some of them this is going to be a shock and an embarrassment. We cannot simultaneously claim, however, that teachers are vitally important for the future of our children and also that their effectiveness should not be measured. As systems like this become more common students will benefit enormously and so will teachers.

They are already finding a few "Beloved Teacher Mrs. X"s who are ending up in the bottom 10%. But, we're told, that's okay, because they teach valuable "critical thinking" skills that are not measured on the tests.

Thank You, Karen Pryor

After hearing Catherine talk about Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, I decided it was time to give it a go. (I gotta say, Catherine, your recommendations are usually spot on.)

My local library didn't have it, but I was able to track it down via state-wide interlibrary loan. This is actually a good thing -- normally, I can buy a book or get it from the library, and then I put it off and never really get to it. But -- interlibrary loan! No renewals! Get cracking!

I started it this morning during my warmup on the treadmill, and only got about 10 pages in before I started running and it got too bouncy to read. Finished up, checked in with the family, wasn't thinking about it, then went to go take a shower.

Once in the shower -- BAM!

I got it.

When I'm depressed, I engage in "retail therapy," and I'm training myself to be depressed. When I'm nervous, I eat treats, and I'm training myself to be nervous.

What am I training my kids to do? What am I training my husband to do?

Catherine -- if you set up a discussion group, I am so in.


(This, admittedly, may seem a bit simplistic. But it was quite the "aha!" there in the shower.)