A Letter

I don't normally email congressmen but the state senate published their proposed budget for the upcoming session and I simply couldn't say nothing. Here is a short version of how the budget proposal would affect just MY district (summarized by the district):

• The Senate budget cuts the district by $3.2 million
• The Senate budget will force the district to choose to cut either:
• 6 days out of the school year
• Eliminate sports (football, baseball, swim/diving, track, etc.); eliminate music, Discovery, transportation, other extra-curricular activities
• The Senate budget cuts teacher and staff pay by 3% by directing districts to furlough staff using layoffs or unpaid leave of absence days
• Districts—just like the county and city governments—must make cut to salaries by reducing the amount of time employees are at work (Federal employment laws prohibit employers from demanding employees work for no pay)
• Counties and cities close libraries, offices, parks and other services to cut pay for staff
• Closing schools for 6 days equal a 3% pay cut for all school district staff
• The Senate budget will also change how funding is provided to school districts:
• We would use a California-model called Average Daily Attendance
• No funding is provided to districts for students who are absent
• District very likely will have to hire additional staff specifically to track student daily attendance to comply with new state model
• Senate will work with state education office to define how average daily attendance is calculated
• The California model has been proven not to work—California’s dropout rate is 21.5%; Washington’s dropout rate is 5.1%

So it seems, basically, that some teachers would be laid off and those remaining in place would have a fairly serious cut in pay, and we would have to hire more people to keep track of attendance. As an alternative, the House budget proposal would cut $1million from the district.

My email went like this:
Senator Keiser;

I am a high school history teacher and I am begging you not to support the Senate budget proposal introduced earlier this week. This is my 9th year in public education, and my 4th year in Washington. I work at a high needs school with a 48% mobility rate, and 54% of students on free/reduced lunch. School provides a safe haven for many of my kids. Many of my kids get their only solid meal of the day in my school. Many of my kids stay after school because it is dry, warm, and safe, and they would rather be at school than at home. My students trust me, learn from me, and teach me to be a better person. The last thing they need is fewer days in school with fewer teachers that are even more overworked. I spend every school day working to get my kids to understand the basic democratic principles we believe they need in order to be good citizens of this country, followed by going to meetings to fill in the gaps left by overworked parents who can't or won't participate in their child's education. I spend every weekend grading, planning instruction, and modifying curriculum for all my students - even those with 1st grade reading skills who are expected to pass my 10th grade class. I spend every summer reworking curriculum, developing better lesson plans and going to classes to learn to be a better teacher. These activities are interspersed with reading the latest attacks on public education and its "failures" and reading about how my profession, this thing that I pour my heart and soul into on a daily basis year-round, is allegedly full of lazy slackabouts who do nothing but sit around and wait for retirement in between 3 month summer vacations. I am tired of hearing that someone lucky and/or rich enough to attend an Ivy League school can do what I do with minimal effort, despite the shockingly vast amount of evidence to the contrary. I am tired of hearing that our free public educational system, which was founded on the belief that all citizens in a democracy should have the right and responsibility to be educated participants in an electoral system, should be converted into a system founded on a belief that rich people are the smartest people, and should therefore be respected because they are rich. My students can tell you that that belief is called Social Darwinism, and is what led to things like racism and the Holocaust. I am tired of testing companies and their lobbyists convincing my government to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on more and more tests that accomplish nothing except unnecessarily stressing out students, angering parents, spreading false rumors about education, and driving an even deeper wedge between schools and the communities we are part of. If you want to save millions of dollars for the state of Washington, get rid of all standardized tests for one year. It would be far more effective than the Senate’s proposed budget, which retains all standardized tests but cuts both teacher positions AND teacher pay. Thank you for your time and consideration of this important issue.

I know it's long, but it could easily have been longer, and it's my first time. I don't know if politicians or their interns read these or if they simply go into a pile marked "support" or "don't support" but it is sent, nonetheless. Here's hoping it makes a difference.

Communist Propaganda

I was looking through some of the pictures on my camera and realized I never posted these...

We spent a couple of weeks in class talking about Communism and the Cold War, and it was the first year that I think the kids kind of understood what Communism actually advocates. It is a surprisingly difficult concept to explain, especially since the kids tend to confuse economics and government. Ah Communism.....When I was putting these up in the hallway, the thought occurred to me that 40 years ago, I might have been fired for doing a project like this. As part of their assessment, the kids had to create a Communist propaganda poster (and analyze it on the reverse) that would encourage someone to turn to Communism. I liked this assessment because they had to show an understanding of both Communism and propaganda and I am always wildly amused by their posters. It also shows me what the kids DIDN'T understand. As I was trying to get them to see that Communism wouldn't work, I said that Communism would be like everyone in class having one bank account and everyone gets a debit card. You can take what you need, and we all help provide for each other. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize is that some of the kids thought that having one common bank account was LITERALLY what happened. **sigh**
Some of the kids understood the concept better than others. I particularly liked the above poster. I constantly try to get the kids to use the magazines we have in class to make posters, but they are a little reluctant to do so. I think this one really illustrates the main ideas I was looking for. Sometimes there is just a piece of a poster that sticks out to me. In the above poster, the dictator on the building cracks me up. There is so much detail in this poster but the guy is a stick person.

This above poster was drawn by my resident Communist. We had a somewhat....tense....relationship throughout this unit. =) It was good for him, I think.
Some of the kids used much more color and were more to the point. Despite the misspellings, I really like this one.

This one cracks me up. I love the little businessman and the farmer shaking hands while a factory spews pollution out and apparently all the earth's water evaporates. =) The one below is hands down my absolute favorite. It is unintentionally ironic. The kid that did this poster did not intend to make it so funny, but I ended up showing it to my entire department and I am saving it.

I love that the message of the poster is so encouraging...."join the communists and join us"....but that the poster itself is so uninviting. Ironically, it is a picture of the way Communism actually ended up working out, but we never talked about that in class, so he did this under the firm belief that this would be an encouragement to join Communism. I particularly like the Stalin-esque sun in the corner glaring down on all the downtrodden stick people under a smog filled sky.

Pure Awesome.

Post Election Insanity

My kids were CRAZY today. There was some kind of stupid game going on where the kids would scream "Obama" "McCain" back and forth at each other for no apparent reason. They refused to work and were so insane today that I wanted to pull my hair out. I'm glad to be done with today.

Then during 3rd period, the parent of a student in my 1st period came into my classroom asking for work for him. It turns out that this student "Jacob" had skipped his 3rd period class, and as the teacher in that class had a standing request to call Jacob's mom if he wasn't there, the teacher called mom, and mom came to school to track Jacob down. Not only did she track him down and drag his butt back to class, but she also dragged one of his little friends back too. Then she went to his classes to get his homework for what he had missed the day before (legitimate absence). She walked into my third period class to get his work and there's where it all went somewhat awry. My kids were kind of crazy because of the election (that's another issue entirely), and they were 19 minutes into their 20 minute work time, so most of them were finished and a few were almost done, and the others were talking. Wednesdays are block days and those are rough on teenagers who have a hard time sitting though 50 minutes, much less 100 minutes of class. I was literally about to stand up to move on to the next activity. She came in and within 30 seconds was yelling at my kids, telling them to shape up, calling them out, etc. I really didn't know what to do. I really didn't think they were being disrespectful...although they then started kind of laughing at her. I was sort of taken aback, and while I appreciate the respect she was attempting to show me, she left a negative feeling behind when she left that I didn't know how to deal with.

The teacher who had originally called her sent me an email saying that the same thing had happened in her classroom. I'm all for more parent involvement.....but still.

With Apologies to Colleen

One of my best friends is a government teacher and I have to apologize to her (and any other politically minded people) for the ranting I am about to embark upon.

I apparently am part of the most popular segment of society right now - the officially undecided voter. I am not registered with either political party, and as a result, I have been inundated with automatic calls from mostly Democratic candidates. I have never felt so popular in my whole life! So far, Christine Gregoire (running for governor), Darcy Burner (running for congress), and a few other random democrats have called me personally to request my vote! Sure, their voices sound suspiciously unemotional and they don't respond to any questions that I ask, but they call me! And today, an unbelievable event!

Michelle Obama called me.

No really! It's true! She really did! Alas, I wasn't here to answer the phone, but she left a very nice message....probably....I deleted it.

Which brings me to my main point, and a topic of lunch conversation today. I live in a very wet state, in fact, it's raining right now, and I firmly believe that this is the actual birthplace of mud-slinging politics. I am so unbelievably tired of political commercials, and the most common ones (as in 4 out of 5) are extremely negative, "so-and-so-is-the-devil-incarnate" kind of commercials. You know the kind, where they show the opponent giving a speech in slow motion, so their face is all twisted, and they add a few wrinkles and devil's horns (well, not so much the last one, but still...). I am so tired of hearing the same accusations back and forth - each candidate accusing the other of the exact same things they themselves are accused of.

I respect the fact that this is a historic election - that no matter what the outcome is, we will have a president or vice-president that breaks barriers that have never been broken before. But as shallow as it seems, I just want it to be over.

No more commercials
No more mud-slinging
No more phone calls
No more shove-it-down-your-throat politics

Bring On Tuesday!!!!

Beijing is SMOGGY

I love watching the Olympics in real time, even if they are on in the middle of the night, and being a teacher means that unless the Olympics are in the Southern Hemisphere (stinkin' Sydney), I can stay up really late to watch them. I'll even watch stuff like beach volleyball just to be able to watch swimming, track, and gymnastics. There is something about world class competition that gets me all choked up. Or maybe it is the sight of all the smog in Beijing. How do people live there if you have asthsma or allergies? It must be horrible! Even Los Angeles looks crystal clear and idyllic in comparison! My favorite Olympic events are of course, gymnastics and swimming, but sometimes you can see the most random events, that you had no idea were even recognized sports, much less actual Olympic events. One year I watched synchronized trampoline jumping. Seriously. I missed the opening ceremony, but thanks to the magic of digital cable, I can watch it tomorrow. I hear it was awesome.

On the other hand, this Olympics has me somewhat torn. On the one hand, Beijing did get the final nod 7 or 8 years ago in return for agreeing to do better with the human rights thing, and that has not happened. In fact, it's gotten worse. But it is hard, without actually being there, to know how much of what is reported regarding human rights violations in China is true and how much of it is media bias. I know that Christians in China are still denied their right not only to worship but are also imprisoned for even meeting together. But I also know that this is not really reported in the US, for whatever reason. What is reported is the issues with Tibet (which has little to nothing to do with religion in all reality) and the almost 60 year-long tension with Taiwan, but I am not sure how much of that reporting is due to the political beliefs of the US and how much of it is accurate reporting. We as a political nation can feel China breathing down the back of our necks, as it were, as they become larger and more productive than we are and I don't know how much of the information we get in the news is due to that particular issue. I guess, as with all news stories, you take all information with a grain of salt and a LOT of common sense and rational thought.

Which makes my job all the more important. If the kids who will soon be voting don't know how to logically process information and see past the bias that WILL be present in the news that they see, then we are doomed. Teaching them how to do that, even just getting them to realize and acknowledge that there is a bias, is a giant step forward, in my opinion. It is not easy to consciously set aside my own biases and beliefs to present all sides of a particular issue, but it is my goal to do that...all the time with every issue. It is my goal to make them think about the fact that there is ALWAYS another side to the story, and that whether or not you agree with it, it is your responsibility to examine that side before making a decision.

Which brings me back to China. I don't know what to believe. On the one hand, they are a progressive, vibrant nation and on the other hand, they are a domineering, oppressive oligarchical dictatorship. On the one hand, they are struggling with the same issues that have plagued every growing industrialized nation in the history of time, including our own, and on the other hand they are irresponsibly spewing industrial waste into the air and water and their economy is on a bubble that will soon burst and potentially cause a major world-wide depression. It totally depends on your perspective and your source of information. I guess for now, I'll just watch the Olympics and worry about global issues later...=)

Number 100

Post number 100....I'm pretty sure that's a sign I have too much to say. Someday I'll learn to shut up. But not today!!!! =)

So the class at UW is going fairly well. We have talked more about this second book, Palace Walk than we did about Leo Africanus and I feel like I understand it more, but we keep getting sidetracked onto random discussions and disagreements between one woman and the professor about the differences in Pakistani and Egyptian culture. Well, of course they're different, one is in Asia and one is in Africa, and possibly the only similarity they share is that they both happen to be mostly Islamic. And most Americans could tell you that not all Muslims agree about MOST things. So it all seems rather pointless. This same woman has the irritating habit of only saying half her sentence before starting on the next one or trailing off into nothingness. So I doodle a lot. I actually did math today...I figured out the equation to tell me how many sashing strips and squares I need to make any t-shirt blanket.

When we are on topic, I learn interesting things, like how Egypt and Britain handled the transition of power in the 1920s and 1930s, marriage and divorce traditions, inheritance procedures, and the private attitude of many Arab nations towards Palestinians. This last one was especially interesting. One of the major themes in Palace Walk is the attitude of the men about the women. See here for my take on it. The professor pointed out that this is an attitude that is somewhat apparent throughout all the novels we are reading and also is an attitude that is more or less apparent to Westerners as well. We talk a lot about giving freedom to Afghan women and how terribly the women in Iran are treated and so on. We are very concerned with the treatment of women in other places, especially places where women are treated differently than in the US.

It is true that women in most Muslim countries are generally treated very differently than women in any "western" nation. I would hesitate to use the word "cruel," at least not as a generalization, but that is the perception that we have about the treatment of women in places like Iran and Afghanistan. What is less clear to us is that those specific examples are somewhat extreme. In many places throughout the Arab (and Muslim) world (which, by the way, neither Iran or Afghanistan are considered Arab...by themselves or by others) women are looked on as people that need to be protected from the world. They are the outward manifestations of a man's character. They are his crown, his wealth, his status, and the reason that he is respected. This is a hard concept for us to grasp. Here, women are valuable in their own right and for their own reasons, which they work hard to attain. There, women are valuable because they make a man successful. It is through his children that a man gains worth, and a man cannot have children without a woman's presence in his home. His home is considered incomplete without a woman in it and it is through the women in his life that he gains prestige and respect in his community.

A woman without a man is someone to be taken care of, to be sheltered, to be protected. If a woman is not taken care of or if she chooses to live outside the traditional role of daughter or wife, then she is on her own. If she is not taken care of, it reflects shamefully on the husband or father who has abandoned her. If she chooses to live outside this role, then whatever happens to her is her own fault. So...how does this tie back to Palestine? Much like an Arab community would hate the actions of a rapist but blame the woman for being in a position to allow herself to be raped (she was outside the home, she was not with her husband, etc), the larger Arab community hates the actions that Israel did in conquering Palestine in 1948, but blames the Palestinians for allowing that action (the rape) to happen. Consequently, although there will always be talk from the larger Arab community about punishing Israel, it is very unlikely that anyone will ever do anything about it. Hence the reason that Palestinians have been in refugee camps for 60 years.

Anyway....I hope I don't horribly offend anyone by this, it was just a fascinating aspect that I had not considered about the likelihood of involvement in the Palestinian issue by other Arab nations.

By the way, I set the odometer (tachometer?) this morning before I left the house and it is 23 miles from my house to UW. I watch my gas level fall on every trip...**gulp**

An interesting take

I mostly consider myself a politically moderate person, but I probably lean slightly conservative on some issues. I stumbled across this article today by David Mamet and I kind of liked what this guy had to say.

Random Political Musings

*Disclaimer* I am not a fan of any of the three main political candidates still a part of this race and I dislike them all very much and equally.

That being said, here are some thoughts: Barack Obama recently parted ways with his old pastor and the man he has claimed as his "mentor" for the last 15 years. Obama has claimed to be a regular member of this church for the past 15 years of his life, but recently also claimed that had he heard the anti-American statements made by his pastor in many of his sermons, he would have spoken up and said something to him. This tells me two things; first of all that Obama is lying about something - either he was NOT a regular attender of this church, or he heard the things that were stated and did NOT speak up and say something, and secondly, even if he did not regularly attend this church, if this man was actually his mentor, there is no way that the things he stated from the pulpit would not have come out in one on one conversation, meaning that Obama would have had to have been aware of this man's beliefs, and continued to closely associate himself with him. Obama used this pastor to make himself more palatable to conservative Democrats, and this early in his campaign is already showing his willingness to change his beliefs and opinions with the vagaries of public opinion. In addition, his mentor made the following statements regarding the US government's treatment of African-Americans; "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." He also gave a sermon last December comparing Obama to Jesus. While I understand that a political candidate should not be held responsible for statements that supporters make, it still concerns me that Obama has repeatedly associated himself closely with this man. I also find it disturbing that so many people intend to vote for this man simply because he is black. My 16 year old sophomore students can see the idiocy of that plan, and yet so many people in this country do not. I would not object to voting for Barack Obama if he was truly the man most suited for the job, but I do not in any way support voting for ANYONE based on the way that they look, because that would mean that our political process has degenerated to the level of a popularity contest - and that is an incredibly dangerous position for this country to be in. There is no doubt in my mind that the economy will get worse, the danger of terrorist (or other) attack will get worse, and the instability of our entire social structure will get worse. Choosing a leader based on their looks, simply as a way of "evening the score" from past offenses committed two or three generations ago is unbelievably stupid and obtuse. It makes me almost agree with Voltaire, who distrusted democracy because it would give the uneducated masses control of the government.