Americans trampling each other for Chinese-made goods

Educators, we have a Herculean task in front of us. We have to contend with a culture that glorifies consumption to the point where we will trample our fellow man to get a discount on a DVD or flat-screen television.

I am truley sorry for your lots.

New seats for a new outlook...

Fun memories looking back on Dutton's memories.

"If you don't want to learn about Rome, you can go to hell!"

Throwing batteries! Yelling! Screaming!

At least now my run-ins with disrespect are less intense. Now it's mostly laughing and yelling.

But the new seats are quite positive so far.

Tests went well in the Office class. Attendance in the Java class has been really pathetic though! Don't know why... Most students are learning I think.

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My SAT program is coming along. I'm getting in the habit of working on the categories :)

So life is good.

The end of adolescence?

When does childhood end and adulthood begin?

Honestly, I felt like a child until my second year of teaching. It wasn't until I had my own classroom that I felt like an adult. When I was the beginning teacher, I felt powerless.

Newt Gingrich thinks adolescence is overrated:

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_45/b4107085289974.htm

The costs of this social experiment have been horrendous. For the poor who most need to make money, learn seriously, and accumulate resources, adolescence has helped crush their future. By trapping poor people in bad schools, with no work opportunities and no culture of responsibility, we have left them in poverty, in gangs, in drugs, and in irresponsible sexual activity. As a result, we have ruined several generations of poor people who might have made it if we had provided a different model of being young.

Two Americas

"We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. "

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20081110_america_the_illiterate/

I don't believe this is a new problem. This is more serious now than ever.

But we keep ignoring the role of innate intelligence. Can the lowest 20% read well enough to follow complicated issues?

10,000 hours....

One hundred and eighty questions tomorrow. Students will answer as if their future depended on it.

There's a certain wildness and laziness in my last period. Oh well, they won't pass.

Education

I knew Obama was going to win when nearly every car that passed by was honking for him!

It felt great to help out the campaign with phone calls or canvassing. I didn't do all that much, but I did what I could.

We all did what we could. Let's keep up the momentum in our classrooms, in the community, and in the country!