Veterans Day 2013

Fixing an error that was 31 years in the making.

Back in 1982, when I was ten years old, I took a hunters safety course, as mandated by the state of California if one wants to go hunting.  I actually had no intention at the time of going hunting; my father wisely thought it would be a good idea for my brother and me to just get the course out of the way so if, one day, we decided we did want to go hunting, we could just go hunting and not have to be under the gun (so to speak) and rush through the necessary hoops before one can obtain a hunters license.

As the years went by, I never did get a hunting license.  Don't get me wrong; anyone who knows me or has seen my video blog post on my gun collection is quite aware that I am quite the fan of firearms and shooting them for target and recreational purposes.  However, when it came to hunting, it just never appealed to me, and no, not because I am against killing the cute little forest animals.  I had no problem with that at all.  It was more the thought of having to get up at Oh-Dark-Thirty and then sit for hours on end, freezing my ass off, as I hoped maybe perhaps a game animal of some sort would come my way- a game animal that I would then have to drag out of the woods and pay an arm and a leg to have a butcher turn it into something edible.

So for literally decades, my little certificate of completion sat in our house somewhere as I graduated from high school, went to college, served in the Army, and started a family and a career in Sacramento.  But then, a year or two ago, I became very interested in hunting wild pigs.  As I considered the idea, I began to wonder what happened to that little hunters course card I received so long ago, as I would need it to obtain a hunting license.  Then, a few weeks ago, I was invited by a friend to participate in a guided hog hunt on California's central coast, which is to take place just two weeks from today.  After talking to my parents, it became quickly apparent that as far as my hunters safety course card from 1982, my proof went poof; we couldn't find it.  In the hopes that some record of the completion might be held by the state of California, I did some digging on the appropriate state government websites and found that that kind of information did not start being kept until 1989.  Bottom line:  I would have to take the California Hunters Safety Course all over again!  My brother-in-law was also invited to participate in this hunt, and he had never taken the course at all, so we did it together.  He and I took a very impressive online course that is endorsed by the state of California, and then this morning, we both attended the required follow-up class that was held at a sportsmen's club in Knights Landing, near Woodland, which is about 10 miles north of Sacramento.  After taking a 100-question test (I got a 93%; my brother-in-law got a 95%) we each walked out the door with an official little card that says we had passed the Hunter Safety Course.

Instead of waiting 31 years like last time, I went immediately to a Big 5 Sporting Goods store, where my brother-in-law and I both bought a hunting license, and a tag for a wild pig.  Now that my name is entered in the system as having purchased a hunting license, I will never have to show any further proof to get a hunting license again.

So to sum up: 31 years ago, my Dad showed a wonderful amount of proactive foresight by having me take the Hunters Safety Course so that I wouldn't have to rush to complete the course should I ever go hunting, especially after a short-notice invitation.  So how did that work out for me?  In the end, 31 years later, I had to rush to complete the Hunters Safety Course after receiving a short notice invitation to go hunting!

May someone read this and learn from my error that was 31 years in the making.

Oh, while at Big 5, I also bought a box of 20 rounds of soft point, 165 grain, 30-06 Winchester.  Hopefully, a couple of those rounds will end up in the vital organs of a California wild pig later this month!

What a school year I am having!

Quite frankly, I am experiencing one of the absolute worst school years of my teaching career.  The administration at my site - presumably on the orders of the uppy-ups at the District Office - have instituted a kinder, gentler discipline policy that is tearing my campus apart by putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.  The discipline policy is called "Restorative Justice," and it involves discouraging us teachers from suspending students from class for mere "chronic talking" and other seemingly small disruptions, and if a student is indeed removed from a classroom, that student is to receive a firm talking-to from our vice principal before being returned to the very same class during the very same period from which that student was removed.

I have six teaching periods in all.  Of those, four of them, I have to admit, are pretty darn good to pleasantly tolerable.  Another is barely tolerable to unbearable, depending on what mood they are in.  Then there is 7th period, which is a zoo full of feral animals.  I have never seen anything like it in my decade of teaching.  There are days where I am unable to actually teach anything until we are 20+ minutes into the period, and even then, I get out about 10 seconds of instruction before I have to stop for 20 seconds as the incessant chatter dies down enough for me to get in another 10 seconds of instruction before the chatter shuts me down for another 20 seconds, and on and on and on.

This has been my daily grind since the middle of August, and I don't see it getting any better all the way to May.

Couple that mess with my administration's enthusiastic embrace of the incoming Common Core standards, a squishy teaching philosophy called Equity and Access, and my school's adoption of the Middle Years Program, which is the middle school/early high school version of the International Baccalaureate program, and I don't know which way is up.

I get home from work every day so exhausted, all I want to do after I eat dinner and help my wife put our kids down for bed is go to sleep myself.  Hence the absolute dearth of blogging so far this fall.  I have so many blogging ideas constantly swimming in my head, and I barely have the energy to sit down and write them down.

This is one of those school years where I find myself wondering what else I could do for a living.

Seriously.

20 Years ago today: The Battle of Mogadishu

Hard as it may seem to believe, the Battle of Mogadishu, A.K.A, the "Blackhawk Down" incident, took place on this day 20 years ago, October 3, 1993.

I will never forget that day, as I had only been in the Army for about 4 months.  I had just completed Basic and AIT at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and had arrived a few days before to Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana to attend Postal School (I know, random).

Watching the bodies of our American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu was my wake-up call that the life choice upon which I had recently embarked was all too real.  Naturally, I looked at that horrific footage and thought to myself that the body being dragged through the street could one day be my own.

I own the movie Blackhawk Down, and it is one of my most cherished DVDs.  I read the book in the summer of 2000, and I had so much trouble putting it down that my wife (my girlfriend at the time) probably had thoughts of breaking up with me.

A couple Sundays ago, my family and I played hooky from our regular church to attend Adventure Christian Church in Rocklin in order to listen to a speech by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jerry Boykin.  Boykin is a soldier's soldier who was an original member of Army Delta, and took part in the failed Iran hostage rescue mission, was badly wounded in Grenada, fought in Panama, and was on the ground at the Battle of Mogadishu.  The day after the battle, Boykin was badly wounded by a Somali mortar shell that killed the soldier standing next to him.  Boykin spoke extensively about his experiences during the Battle of Mogadishu that coming from him, painted a mental picture of that day which was just as vivid as the movie.

God Bless the 19 American soldiers (2 of whom were awarded the first Medals of Honor since the Vietnam War), who were killed that day, along with all the Rangers, Delta, Aviation, and Infantry troops who took part in an operation that happened during a supposedly "peaceful" period in our nation's history.

I am forever astounded by the caliber of men who serve in our Combat Arms.

Flying Pigs Edition: The California State Legislature passes a bill with which I wholeheartedly agree!

Ever heard of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA?  This is federal law signed by President Obama last year in the dead of night that gave him authorization to have any American arrested without cause and held indefinitely.  Quite a violation of several Constitutional Amendments and the writ of Habeas Corpus if ever I saw it.

In response to these clearly unconstitutional provisions in the NDAA, I'll be dipped in sh** if the California State Senate passed by a bi-partisan vote of 37-0, and the California State Assembly passed by a bipartisan vote of 71-1, a bill that tells President Obama and the rest of the federal government that the aforementioned provisions of the NDAA will not be allowed to be enforced or executed in the state of California.

The only question now is if our illustrious Governor, "Moonbeam" Jerry Brown, will sign the bill into law.

OK, also, I would like to know who that one member of the Assembly is that voted No.

Was it something they ate? A description of my class from Hell

I had a such a good school year last year.  The overall behavior of my classes was stellar - my worst behaved class was better than many of what I considered well-behaved classes from years past.  We had not yet been hit by the threat of Common Core standards and our school had not yet plunged into becoming an International Baccalaureate (IB)/Middle Years Program (MYP) candidate school - all of which I disagree with my school taking part.

To top it off, I have the Class from Hell this year.  That would be a group of 33 Eighth Graders who descend upon my classroom like a bunch of Greek Harpies for 7th period, right after lunch.  They are especially hard to take because my classes before lunch are quite mellow and eager to learn, or at least eager to let me teach.  Not so with this 7th period class.  They are the worst behaved class I have had in at least 6 years, and possibly the worst I have ever experienced.

The class periods at my school are a scant 41 minutes long, and a couple times now, it has taken up to 15 minutes of dealing with talking, laughing, blurting, and general noise making (much of it of the anonymous kind) before I could even begin to think about trying to teach the day's lesson.  Since the school year began in mid-August, I have suspended five different students from my classroom, and all five have come from that 7th period class.  I have not suspended one student from any of my other five class periods.

A typical challenging class can seem like it is chock-full of troublemakers, but when you sit down with the seating chart, you usually come to find out that it is only 3 or 4 knuckleheads with whom you are dealing; the rest of the 30-or-so students are behaving themselves.  Not this 7th period class.  The other day, I sat down with my seating chart, and came to the conclusion that I have at least 11 hardcore knuckleheads, with another 5 or so sitting on the fence, ready to misbehave if any of the hardcores feel like giving me a hard time.  That is at least one-third, and up to one-half of the class!

There are several reasons that I can think of for why this has happened - some of it specific to this particular class, and some it systemic to my school.

1.  Any secondary grade teacher will know what I am talking about when I say that sometimes, you just get a bad combination of students who are grouped together in a class period.  A class may be made up of individuals, but collectively, those individual students gel into a certain personality that can be one of positivity and productivity, or one of disruption and disrespect.  This 7th period class is of the latter.

2. This class comes in right after lunch.  God only knows what kind of screwed up food these kids just got done eating:  food full of high fructose corn syrup, excito-toxins like monosodium glutamate (MSG), food coloring, preservatives, caffeine, and whatever else, I can only guess.  They have filled up on the crap that they eat, and then they come to my class hopelessly hyped up.

3.  Many students at my school have figured out that we teachers really can't do all that much to them in the way of consequences.  One of the students from my 7th period class that I kicked out the other day, yelled out twice as he sauntered out my classroom door that he was going to get me fired.  This came a day after he threatened another teacher who kicked him out that the teacher better not call home.  Has anything happened to this student beyond the classroom suspensions meted out to him by the other teacher and me?  Nope.  Our administration does everything it can not to suspend students from school in an effort to keep our suspension stats lower; especially when it comes to our black students, and yes, this student full of threats is black.  And this hesitation to suspend black students is not just conjecture on my part.  At our big staff meeting the day before our first day with students, one of the agenda item over which there was much hand wringing was the disproportionate suspension rate of our black students.

4. Lack of support or outright hostility from the adults at home.  I have called home on every student I have suspended from my classroom, along with a couple other disruptive students who have come thisclose on several occasions to being kicked out.  The grandmother of the student who threatened me acknowledged that she doesn't know what else to do with him, however that didn't stop her from telling me that talking back "runs in the family," and that, "he really is a good boy."  Additionally, the grandma told me that one of our vice principals was "out to get" her grandson near the end of last school year.  Uh, no, actually.  I looked up the referral logs on this kid from last school year, and he was a holy terror last year, too.  But this sense of victimization runs rampant among the parents (or legal guardians) of these students.  Another student who I just suspended from class today, and for a second time overall, has no phone number that works, so I have yet to be able to talk to a parent.

Meanwhile, there are 20 or so well-behaved students in that class who every day sit in silent agony as I am forced to deal with their belligerent classmates who appear to have every intention of disrupting my attempts to teach, and the students' attempts to learn.  It is these poor students for whom my heart breaks.  

Is it too much to ask to know a country from a continent?

I teach World and U.S. History to 7th and 8th graders.  During the first couple of weeks of school, I hit them pretty hard on reviewing basic geography... for good reason.

It seems that every year, the students I receive - who were in 6th and 7th grade last school year - know less and less of what they should be expected to know by the time they reach these grade levels.

I mean seriously, how difficult is it to memorize the names and locations of 7 continents and 5 oceans?  And yet, by and large, my students haven't.  You can say that they are young yet, and shouldn't be expected to know this, and that is what I am there for... but you would be wrong.  They should know this basic information by the time they have reached middle school - and don't get me wrong; many have learned it.  But not nearly enough.

For example, last Friday, I put a two-part Bellwork question up on the whiteboard for the students to complete upon entering the classroom:

A. What are the three largest countries on earth in land size?
B. What are the three largest countries on earth in population?

I chose students randomly to see what their answers were; I did not choose volunteers with their hands raised.  I only wish I had a dollar for every time a student answered with Africa, Asia, South America, and North America.

As you can see, they don't even know the difference between a country and a continent.  I would even take a timeout and go over with them - multiple times - the names and locations of the continents and discuss the difference between a continent and a country, and when I asked for more answers to the Bellwork question, it was as if they hadn't listened to a word I said, as their guesses were again Africa and North America.

Kids used to just automatically know this stuff, but nowadays, it is almost as if ignorance is not only a sought condition, but an exalted one.

Remember, I am responsible for their state test scores!

By the way, the answer to A. is Russia, Canada, and the United States.  The answer to B. is China, India, and the United States.

County Sheriffs wrongly criticized for upholding the Constitution

The position of elected county sheriff is probably one of the most powerful government positions about which few people know.  They are the top law enforcement officer in their respective county, and can (and have) tell the federal government and state government to take a hike.

As our country in general, and some states in particular (*cough* California *cough*) have continued to disintegrate socially and economically, many Americans have looked for ways to try to stop the bleeding, especially at the local level.  Using the power of county sheriffs has been one of these major strategies.

One of the ways that Constitution-loving county sheriffs have attempted to pool together their power is through membership in an organization called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA).  The members of this organization know their constitutional role, both at the state and federal level, and do everything they can to stop those governments from exercising more power than the Constitution allows.

Naturally, the statists among us don't like this very much.  This became painfully clear in an editorial appearing in the Sunday, August 25th Sacramento Bee.  The Bee's editorial board calls the CSPOA, "a deeply misguided and ill-informed organization whose reckless rhetoric directly challenges federal and state laws."

The Bee's editorial board especially has their panties in a bunch because the California sheriffs who belong to the CSPOA have announced they do not intend to allow to be enforced in their respective counties any anti-gun laws that they have deemed to be unconstitutional - whether it be the U.S. Constitution or the California Constitution.

According to the Bee's editorial board, doing this is to, "pick and choose which laws to enforce," and that the CSPOA's stated positions about upholding the Constitution and protecting us from government tyranny and abuse are a bunch of "tripe," and "extremist rhetoric."

No, see, the way it works is that if a law is truly constitutional, then the Bee's editorial board might have a point in criticizing county sheriffs for not upholding that law.  But if a law is deemed to be unconstitutional, then a constitutional officer, such as, say, a county sheriff, has every obligation to refuse to enforce that unconstitutional law.  I commend sheriffs such as Dean Wilson of Del Norte County, John D'Agostini of El Dorado County, and Jon Lopey of my childhood home county of Siskiyou and 21 other California sheriffs who are named by the Bee editorial as members of the CSPOA.

How about a little historical challenge to the Bee editorial board's position on this issue?  As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Congress passed, and President Millard Fillmore signed into law a strengthened Fugitive Slave Law that decreed that slaves from the southern slave states that escaped to the non-slave northern states were no longer safe and could be captured and returned to a state of slavery.  Furthermore, any northern state citizen (even one who was totally opposed to slavery) could be deputized on the spot by law enforcement in order to help capture or subdue an escaped slave.  If that deputized citizen refused to help execute the Fugitive Slave Law, that citizen could himself be arrested.

This was a law that was totally unconstitutional, but it was passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President.  According to the logic of the Bee editorial board, a county sheriff in one of these non-slave holding states who refused to allow the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act to be enforced in his county would be guilty of "pick[ing] and choos[ing] which laws to enforce."  And if the sheriff publicly made his views against enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law known, he would be uttering so much "tripe" and "extremist rhetoric."

Now, I'm pretty sure I know what the editorial board's rebuttal would be to my argument:  They would insist that the gun laws the California legislature has recently passed or is attempting to pass are all constitutional.  Fine.  But the county sheriffs of the CSPOA can say that these laws are not constitutional and still refuse to enforce them.  The California State Supreme Court and even the U.S. Supreme Court can insist that the laws are constitutional, and the sheriffs can still insist the laws are unconstitutional and refuse to allow them to be enforced in their county.  Ultimately, it is up to the voters of the county to either agree with their sheriff's position by reelecting him or her, or booting that sheriff out of office in the next election, and replacing him or her with someone who will do what they are told by the federal government, the California government, and the Sacramento Bee editorial board.

That is what representative government is all about, right?

An allegory of a certain war

I was just going through some old papers of mine from my classroom, and I came across this gem.  See if you can figure out who is who in this scenario, and which war it is. I will decode it for you at the end if you need the help:

For years, Gilbert and Francis had been bigger and more powerful than Jerome; the couple never let Jerome play on the playground.  Gilbert and Francis would either completely ignore Jerome, or tell him that he was too little to play with them.  This always made Jerome angry; he decided not to put up with Gilbert and Francis' treatment any more.  Jerome began taking vitamins and working out regularly; he started to become bigger and bigger.  Eventually, Jerome was more powerful than either Gilbert or Francis.

Jerome finally felt confident enough to begin standing up to Gilbert and Francis.  When Francis tried to take Jerome's lunch money, Jerome pushed Francis to the ground and demanded her lunch money instead.  Francis became very fearful and asked Gilbert to protect her.  Jerome began to boast all of the time how he could easily handle both Gilbert and Francis.  Gilbert knew that it would just be a matter of time before Jerome began attacking him too.  Gilbert decided to ask his friend Russell to watch his back.  Russell agreed.

Jerome's little brother, Austin, realized how strong Jerome had become, so he began to push around some of his smaller classmates too.  One day on the bus, Austin was feeling annoyed by Sergio, so he tripped Sergio as he walked by.  Once on the ground, Austin sat on Sergio and told him that if he wanted to get up, he would have to say that Austin was his boss and that he would do whatever Austin told him to do.  Austin did not realize that Sergio's cousin, Russell, was sitting in the back of the bus and had seen the whole thing.  In order to protect his cousin, Russell felt he had no choice but to challenge Austin to a fight.

Shortly after Russell confronted Austin, Gilbert felt obligated to back up Russell, and, in turn, Francis felt obligated to back up Gilbert.  At the same time, Jerome jumped in on the side of his cousin, Austin.  Soon, everyone on the bus was fighting as well.  The conflict eventually spilled over into the schoolyard.  Before it was over, there were a lot of medical bills, as well as property damage to the bus and to the school.  Russell was transferred to another school before the fighting ended, but he too had been badly beaten up.  By that time, Gilbert, Francis, Jerome, and Austin had just about beaten each other to a standstill... until a foreign exchange student named Amerigo arrived to visit the school.  Amerigo, who had recently begun taking vitamins, and working out like Jerome had done, took a look at what was happening and decided to jump in on the side of Gilbert and Francis.  Together, a badly beaten up Gilbert and Francis, backed by a strong and fresh Amerigo, eventually beat Jerome and his friends.  Jerome wound up in the hospital.

Gilbert and Francis decided to make Jerome pay for all of the damage that they said he had caused.  They sneaked into Jerome's hospital room and broke both his legs in order to ensure that he could never hurt them again.  They threatened to break his arms too, unless he agreed to pay for all of the damages that the fight had caused to everyone.  Jerome was aware that he did not have any money left - nor would he be able to make additional money because of his broken legs - but he agreed to the terms anyway.  Gilbert and Francis also made Jerome agree to never go back to the playground and also to give away all his vitamins and workout equipment.  Jerome reluctantly agreed, and Gilbert and Francis felt much better.

Several months later, Jerome had his casts taken off his legs.  He secretly began to take vitamins and work out again, and he started to feel much better.  He began to think....

So, give up?

Here you go:

War: World War I
Gilbert: Great Britain
Francis: France
Jerome: Germany
Russell: Russia
Austin: Austria-Hungary
Sergio: Serbia
Amerigo: United States
 

A true story to get teachers back in the mood for the imminent return

Warning!  This post contains brief but intense profanity:

I begin teaching students this Wednesday; my wife will see her students for the first time on Friday.  The number one issue that always makes me a bit hesitant to start another school year is the inevitable incorrigible student I will receive and will have to deal with (usually accompanied by an equally incorrigible parent).

These thoughts took me back to an incident that happened at my wife's school near the end of the school year back in May.  My wife teaches 1st grade in a part of Sacramento that has what, in Educationese, is considered a "low socio-economic status."

My wife had a difficult enough year with behavior issues, but she got off easy compared to her next-door teaching partner, who drew a much tougher bunch.  Sometime in early May, my wife's teaching partner had to take a day off for whatever reason, and had a substitute teacher fill in.  This substitute was an imposingly large black man, who you would think would not have to worry about taking any guff from the students.

Yeah, right.

At some point during the day, my wife received a call from this substitute, who had been told in his instructions to call my wife should he encounter any insurmountable problems.  My wife walked in the classroom to see the worst-behaved student in that class - a little black girl (and a FIRST grader, mind you) - standing on top of a desk, with both her middle fingers raised, yelling at the substitute:

"FUCK YOU, YOU UGLY BLACK MOTHERFUCKER!!!"

Remember, everyone:  The teacher is responsible for the test scores of this student.  If she does poorly on her standardized tests, the teacher, the principal, the school, the district takes the hit for her failure.  Not so for the student and her parent(s).

This is what we teachers face every day.

Why the dearth of blogging this summer? Backpacking and Camping!

And other assorted journeys.

June:  Upper Loch Leven in the Sierra Nevada, Northern California.  2 days, 1 night - 5 mile round-trip hike

Early July: Cliff Lake, Sky Lakes Wilderness, Southern Oregon.  5 days, 4 nights - 11.5 mile round-trip hike

Late July: Lake Helen and Bumpass Hell.  Lassen National Forest, Northern California.  1 Day - 3 mile round-trip hike.

Early August: Porcupine Lake, Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Northern California.  4 days, 3 nights - 3 mile round-trip hike, along with a 20 mile round-trip drive along a treacherous dirt road to reach the parking area.

That about sums things up.  Now I am again ready to blog about education and politics (and the intersection of the two).  Seeing as how this year, I will be saddled with International Baccalaureate/Middle Years Program, Common Core Standards, Equity and Access, and Safe and Civil Schools requirements, I am sure I will have plenty to bitch about!

See you in the trenches.