Cringeworthy moment: Hearing your small child say, "I like your youtube video where you blah blah blah and blah blah and my favorite, chutney!" Do you remember when only adults were on the Internet? My videos do!
Category: Daily Life
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
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Public Education Is Not Free
To anyone who has ever said, "public education is free," I just wrote a $178 check so my son can take two exams.
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Is there a gender bias at the elementary school level?
I believe the perceived gender bias has less to do with maturity and more to do with active vs passive teaching. Boys tend to be active learners. As long as we continue to push this “test to learn” approach to education and rely upon worksheets, boys will have difficulty at the elementary level. Please do not get me wrong. Rocky Hill Elementary is a quality school. I have been an active parent there for 14 years and given numerous volunteer hours. I support our school.
Our society has an issue with men right now. It is unfortunate and wrong but sensationalism and fear has made it difficult for men to work with children. The harmful results can be seen in the faculty at Rocky Hill Elementary: http://rockyhilles.knoxschools.org/modules/tt/staffList/staffListSimplified.phtml
One regular ed male teacher to 32 fremale teachers. The ratio changes to 3m:38f if we include special areas. Jordan Haney is an exceptional teacher and highly sought after by the students. I can’t help but wonder how having more male teachers in the earlier grades would improve the boy students’ engagement to education. And ultimately we are not talking about maturity or bias but student engagement. An engaged student is a learning student. I recently saw someone’s story about being told their child should be on Ritalin. Their response to the teacher? “Have you tried being more interesting.” It’s a good point.
Ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius once said, “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; and involve me and I’ll understand.”
“Active vs Passive learning” http://www.units.miamioh.edu/celt/events/docs/CFLING/active%20vs%20passive.pdf
“the student/chaperone ratio is so high” If the school would return to inviting parent chaperons on the trip, this would be less of a problem.
“A study on gender disparities in elementary-school performance found that boys received lower grades than girls, even when their test scores were equal to or higher than the girls’” Read more: Do Teachers Really Discriminate Against Boys? | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discriminate-against-boys/
(same study as above…different article with more info)
“New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University published in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources suggests that it’s because of their classroom behavior, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts.” Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-girls-school.html -
Seeking advice on using US phones in Europe
To my European friends and my more traveled friends, my son heads off to London (7 days) and Paris (2 days) this weekend. My next quandary is cell phone. My plan currently allows my son unlimited texting and sending of pictures over SMS internationally. However, it does not include data or voice. What I learned today was that if he received a phone call (and doesn’t even answer it), he incurs international roaming charges.
So, do I:
- make him leave his phone at home?
- let him take his phone but remove the sim card so he is forced to use wifi?
- Have him jump into an EE store and buy a 30 day prepaid phone? I presume the tour group isn’t going to stop to waste an hour in an EE store letting everyone buy prepaid phones. — does the airport have these in vending machines?
- Beg a friend or relative to drop a prepaid phone by his hotel?
Are there other options?
1st person to post a Liam Neeson meme gets 10 points.
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Rule 79
My family has broken rule 79 which clearly states, "Never run out of toilet paper!"
"Kids, gather by the spray nozzle in the kitchen. And someone bring a step ladder. Dad is going to teach your how to use a bidet."
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A programmer’s nemesis
Rabbit holes!
A rabbit hole is a reference to chasing a problem, rather the solution to a problem, or allowing a feature to creep, that simply consumes an enormous amount of time for either little or no gain. I’ve just spent an hour in a rabbit hole and am not backing out every change I made in that hour. I’d like a refund please.
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What’s your verbal motivator?
Everyone has a verbal motivator. Some sort of spoken tick to get you to do something. For instance, I need to be programming but I’m hungry. Cereal has become disgusting to me but I can eat Frosted Flakes
if only we had some. Frozen waffles are pretty quick and easy but they are downstairs in the deep freezer and I don’t feel like walking. Besides, if they aren’t homemade, surely they are full of crap I shouldn’t be eating…but it’s okay for my kids. My doctor says I should avoid meat and eggs but that’s about all that is left in the kitchen right now. So my choice, eat coffee or….here’s the motivator…"eeeh, fuck"…cook bacon and eggs.
So yes, increasingly, my verbal motivator to myself is "eeeh, fuck."
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From the mouths of babes
Words I actually hear slip from my lips: "We should get together and flapjaw sometime."
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Lame Dad
There is a rare snow in Knoxville. I’m working from home. I type on my keys and see others posting pictures of the snow men they are building with their children and the sledding for their kids. I type faster instead of going outside with my children. While I feel lame, I look to my left to a stack of bills and know that the choices I make are to avoid being even lamer.
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The day thus far
Woke to no Internet or television. Troubleshoot. Programmed until my eyes bleed and my head exploded. Troubleshoot. Programmed more.
