Agog Amidst A Gig

Posted on by August 11, 2010
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Mamacita says:  I love to attend conferences; I don’t know how people “keep up” with all the new “stuff” in any profession without going forth and finding out.  Quite honestly, I believe that to fully appreciate the honing of one’s skills by attending conferences, we simply must attend more than one kind of conference.

In other words, we attend some conferences for certain reasons, and we attend other conferences for other reasons.  Often, these reasons overlap, and just as often, they do not.  Don’t expect every professional need you have to be satisfied by every conference; you need more than one, to wit, a combo of conferences.

In the long run, however, by attending various types of conferences for various reasons, I have learned far more than I ever learned in graduate school.

At first, everyone at every conference was new to me; even those whose blogs and websites I’d been reading for a while, but had not actually met, seemed new in many ways.   No matter what kind of conference it was, though, I felt I already knew these people somewhat because of their online presence.

Now, since I’m no longer a conference newbie – well, not as much of one as before –  I feel almost as if it’s Old Home Week when I go to a conference.  It’s wonderful to see familiar faces, and just as wonderful to see unfamiliar faces which I know will be familiar at the NEXT conference.  I’m far from being an A-list writer,  but the actual A-list people don’t seem to know how A-list they are and are really, really nice.  (This attitude can be different, though, depending on what kind of conference you’re attending and what kind of expectations you bring to the table.)

I guess you might say I’m thoroughly hooked on conferences.

They have greatly enhanced my ability to do my writing gigs, my social media gigs, my watchdog gigs, my teaching gigs, my help-my-students-become-writers gigs, and my time-to-surf-and-find-new-things gigs.

At each conference, I’m agig agog at the awesomeness of the attendees and presenters.  I’ve never met such smart people in my life.

For a small-town chick like me, it’s been a whole new world.  Alert Aladdin at once.

Another reason I love conferences is that because I’m a small-town chick, there really isn’t anybody close to home who understands what I do for a living.  At conferences, I can have actual conversations with actual people who actually understand!

Conferences help me hone my mad skillz.  Come with me next time and we’ll hone together.

Political Incorrectness and Me (Fair Warning)

Posted on by August 8, 2010
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Mamacita says:  Many of you will not like this post, and for that, I’m sorry.  Then again, actually, I’m not sorry, because I believe I am right. I welcome anyone’s counter-argument, but if your intention is to enlighten me and change my mind, dream on good luck.

I love airports, and I love riding on airplanes.  Or, would that be riding IN airplanes?  See, students, prepositions are quite important.  If I were to ride on an airplane, I’d be in all the papers under the headline “Nutter Straddles Boeing 747” or some such.  Or, would that be, I’d be WITH the headline, or ACCOMPANIED BY the headline. . . .   PREPOSITIONS, people!

I love meeting people.  I’ve met the nicest people on planes, in fact.  I love it when they turn to me and strike up a conversation, or just smile and mind their own business.  I firmly believe that most people are good people: kind, fair, considerate, and eager to help others.  I also firmly believe that all people have a right to what they pay for, and NO right to what someone else has paid for, without prior permission from the person who paid.

The thing is, when I saw this woman shuffling down the aisle – or perhaps UP the aisle, or through the aisle (take your pick) I knew exactly where she was going to sit.  Right.  By.  Me.

Beside me. Near me.  Attached to me.  Glued to me.  Pressed against me.  Melting against me like a caramel in the sun.  A really, really big, sweaty caramel.

I have never cared for political correctness.  I think it cheapens and weakens the language, and turns situations that fully earn the attention deserved by idiocy and selfishness  into something that believes it merits sympathy, and catering to, rather than derision, or possibly (shudder, and what were you THINKING!) common sense.

So here it is, and bring it on.  This is not a new issue; people have been debating it for a long time.  Where do I stand?  Right here.

Perhaps it is time for airlines to sell their space according to the amount of space each passenger will need.  Not weight, although I know they used to in the beginning, and maybe it was wiser than the “equality” of now, with all seats the same size and price; I think airlines should sell the space by measurement.

Perhaps there should be a row of different-sized seats at the ticket booth, and a description of such including measurements, on the internet, and people could “try on” the seats, and the passenger will pay for whichever size suits his/her, well, ass.  Or needs.  Small ass, small price.  Huge ass, huge price.

Parents with small children could purchase an extra-large space to accommodate their children and “things.”  People who want to work while flying could purchase an extra- large space.  People who just plain don’t want other people’s elbows touching theirs could purchase a large space.  And – here it is – large people could purchase an extra-large space so they don’t trespass on someone else’s paid-for space.

Small people with no accouterments could purchase a small space.

Average people could purchase an average-sized space.

All passengers would be required to stow only ONE piece of whatever above his/her own rented space.  In other words, the space over one’s seat belongs only to the person in that seat. Nobody has a right to space above anybody else’s seat. (I hate it when I try to stow my one bag above my seat and discover that someone from the back of the plane took my space.  USE YOUR OWN SPACE. )

And if you weigh 395 pounds and your right buttock and side-boob cover more than half of the body next to you, you should be required to pay for the space you are covering, and the crushed person should get a discount.  So much money per square inch of ass, for example.   If you are over or under-sized, why can’t you inform the airline of this fact BEFORE entering a plane that’s at capacity?  And why should anybody have to share paid-for space with someone else who didn’t pay for that space?  Kevin Smith, indeed.  And he wasn’t as large as my seatmate’s right arm alone.

This woman, today, reached over and pushed up the armrests, and somehow sidled herself into the middle seat.  When she sat, only her buttcrack well, what else could one call it? was in her own paid-for space; one buttock was in my lap and the other was in the lap of the man on her left.  Her body pushed me against the wall and window so hard, my cheek was smashed against the glass.  Her side-boob and upper arm covered over half my body, and on her other side, the body of the man by the aisle.  The two of us were unrecognizable; I was mashed against the wall and window, and the man was mashed and pushed almost into the aisle.  My left arm was underneath her and I had to leave it there because the only other place for it was on top of her boobs.

Milk of human kindness, etc. etc. blah blah blah.  She was trespassing into spaces that weren’t hers.  She should have been required to buy three tickets.

Am I being unreasonable?  I don’t think I am.  However, I think she was.

Please don’t beseige me with “wah wah wah” because I don’t care to hear it unless you’ve got a better argument than “self esteem. ”  People should be required to pay for the space they take over, on an airplane.  Period.  Whether the passenger requires more space for children, workspace, breathing room, or ass – those people should be required to pay for that space.  If it turns out that the flight has space to spare,  these people could be given a refund for all but one purchased seat.  Otherwise, in a packed plane, let people pay for whatever space they cover, and people who cover less space should pay less than people who cover two or even three spaces.

“I have a right to fly, boo hoo, just like everyone else, wah wah.”  Sure you do.  But if you take up more than one seat, you should have to buy more than one seat.

Honest to boo; I didn’t even have a place for my feet.  I rode the entire way with one foot resting on top of the other.

And now, let it begin.  More people will side with this woman than with her victims.  Why is that?  I’ve been wondering that for a long time now.

I’m not a mean person; really, I’m not.  Well, not usually.  But I do believe, and quite firmly, that on a plane, nobody has a right to an inch that someone else paid for.  You want it, or need it?  Buy it.

Hands Off My Pencils or You'll Be Sorry

Posted on by August 2, 2010
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Mamacita says:

School will be starting soon – or maybe it already has – for most kids, and each year at about this time I like to re-run this post about an issue that really, really makes me want to kill somebody and put his/her head on a post in the WalMart parking lot bothers me a lot: community supplies in the classroom.

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite days of the year (besides Christmas Day) was the day the newspaper posted the list of required school supplies, and Mom took us to Crowder’s Drug Store to buy them.

I loved looking at that list, and Mom always let me be the one who got to put the little checkmark beside the items as we put them in our basket.

Prang paints. Check. Paint pan. Check. Rectangular eraser. Check. Blunt-tipped scissors. Check. Etc. Check.

On the first day of school, I loved bringing my beautiful shiny school supplies into my new classroom, and I loved arranging them all inside my desk. I loved to look inside my desk and just savor the sight: all those cool things I could draw with and paint with and write with. . . and they were mine, all mine, and nobody else could touch my things unless I gave them permission. Me. I was the boss of my desk things. I took such pride in my school supplies, and mine were usually still looking pretty good even at the end of the year. They were mine, you see, and I had a vested interest in them; therefore, I took pains to take care of them. Back then, down in lower elementary, the school supplied only the special fat pencils and the weird orange pens.

When my own children were little,  I looked forward to Buying School Supplies Day with just as much delight as I did when I was a little kid. New binders. New pencils. And the most fun of all, choosing the new lunchbox. My own children loved the new school supplies, too. I think it is of vital importance that all children have their own school supplies; it is the beginning of them learning the pride of possession and the importance of caring for one’s own things in order to keep them for any length of time.

It’s not like that in many schools nowadays. I learned, to my horror and dismay, that many teachers do not allow their students to have their own supplies now; the little sack of a child’s very own things is taken from the child on that first day, and dumped into the community pot for all the kids to dip into and out of. There are no “my scissors,” there is only a rack or box of scissors for everyone. “Look, there are the scissors I picked out at Walmart; my name is engraved on them; I wish I could use them but they’re so cool, other kids grab them first every time. . . .”  There are no more personalized pencils or a child’s favorite cartoon character pencils to use and handle carefully; there is only a big on chewed-on germ-covered pencils grabbed at and used by everybody in the room.

And since nothing belongs to anybody, who cares about taking good care of them?

I fully understand that the community pot of supplies is much easier for a teacher to control. I wasn’t, however, aware of the fact that teacher convenience was any kind of issue here. I taught in the public schools for 26 years and I never expected things to happen for the convenience of me; that wasn’t why I was there.

I fully understand, too, that some children’s little sack of supplies won’t be as individualized or cool as another child’s sack of supplies.  I know for a sad fact that some children will never have their own little sack of supplies, at least, not one brought from home.  That’s life; that should not even be an issue. Some children’s shoes aren’t as cool, either; do we throw shoes in a box and let the kids take pot luck with those, too? I understand that in some classrooms, a child’s packed lunch is sometimes taken apart and certain things confiscated or distributed, lest some child have a treat that another child doesn’t have.   When my kids were in grade school, my mother would occasionally stop by at lunch time with a Happy Meal for them – and for me! – and I was told this had to stop because other children didn’t have that option.  Well, you know what, my children were often envious of another child’s dress or shoes or lunch or cool pen, but I would never have tried to ensure that other children would never be able to have anything my own kids couldn’t have.  Good grief.  Such insanity!

Teachers should keep an eye out for those kids who don’t have supplies, and the school should supply them, but after that point, they become the child’s own and he/she should be required to take good care of them, just as any and every kid should be required to take care of his/her things. Children who take good care of their things should not be required to supply children who had their own things but didn’t take care of them properly. As a little child, I was horrified at the thought, and as a parent, I’m even more horrified.  It was like a reward for being negligent! Every year, I donate tons of school supplies to my neighbor’s children’s school; I’m delighted to do this,  and I recommend this to all of you.  Perhaps, if schools have enough donated supplies, our little children will be allowed to keep their very own supplies once again.

When I was a child, I had very little that was my very own. Everything that was supposedly mine was expected to be shared with anybody else in the house that wanted it at any given moment. But at school? In my desk, in my very own desk, were things that were inviolably mine, and I can not even describe for you the sensations that went through me when I looked at those things that my teacher had ruled were mine and only mine. Kids who violated another kid’s desk were quite properly labeled ‘thieves,’ and they soon learned what happens when a person put his hands on property that was not rightfully theirs.

Things are very different now. I hate it. The rare teacher who takes the time and trouble to allow his/her students to have their own things is often castigated by the other teachers who are taking the easy ‘community property’ route. Kids are sharing more than gluesticks and pencils, too; I don’t even want to THINK about the incredible pot-o-germs they’re dipping into daily. Gross. My child using a pencil some other child gnawed? I guess so, because teachers who don’t want to bother with a child’s private property are forcing the kids to dump it all in the pot for everybody to use. “Don’t be selfish.” “Share.” Well, you know what? I don’t like that kind of forced sharing. I had to share everything, EVERYTHING, and that little pile of school supplies was my only private stash of anything. I do not feel it was selfish, or is selfish, to want to keep school supplies that were carefully chosen, to oneself.  Children who have their own things learn to respect the property of other children.  Children with no concept of personal property tend to view the world as a buffet of delights awaiting their grasping, grabbing hands.  Both tend to grow into adults with the same concepts learned as children.

This business of everything being community property in the classroom causes problems in the upper levels, too. Junior high, high school, even college students, are expecting things to be available for them without any effort on their part. Upper level students come to class without pencils, erasers, paper, etc, because they’re used to having those things always available in some community bin somewhere in the room. They have never been required, or allowed, to maintain their own things, and now they don’t know how to. The stuff was always just THERE, for a student to help himself to. And now that they are supposed to maintain their own, they really don’t know how. Plus, why should they? HEY, I need a pencil, Teach, gimme one. No, not that one, that other one there.       Indeed,

Well, it worked down in the lower grades, with community property. You just get up and help yourself; everything in this room is for me, ain’t it? Gimme that pretty one, I want it.

But guess what, kids, it’s evil enough down in the lower grades, but it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, work at all when you hit the upper grades. I’d like to have a penny for every hand that tried to help itself to things on my desk, because, well, they were there. I’ve even had students who opened my desk drawers, looking for supplies. Not poor kids who didn’t have any; just a kid who didn’t bring any and expected everything to be supplied because, well, down in the elementary, everything WAS.

Oh good grief, teachers, let the little kids keep their own things, put their names on them, and learn how to be responsible for them. Secondary teachers and future employers will greatly appreciate it.

I know that in some cases, it’s not the individual teacher’s decision – it’s a corporate mandate.  This is even more evil.  It’s like a national plot to make future generations needy and dependent and reliant on others to fulfill all their needs. And don’t we already have more than enough of THOSE people?

Let me sum up, as Inigo Montoya would say:  Community school supplies are wrong on every possible level.  Period.

Parents, if I were you – and I am one of you – I’d buy the community bin stuff at the Dollar Tree instead of the overpriced educational supplies store in the strip mall that the school supplies newsletter instructs you to patronize.  Send them to school and let them be dumped into the bins for mass consumption and germ sharing.  Then you and your children go shopping and pick out the good stuff.  If your school informs you that it’s against their policy for any of the children to have their own supplies, you inform the school that you don’t give a rat’s ass about such a policy; you did your chipping in and now you’re seeing to it that your children have their very own stuff and that you expect your children’s very own stuff to harbor no germs except your own children’s germs, which will be considerable, but that’s another topic.  What’s more, if your children come home and tell you that their very own supplies are not being respected and are in fact being accessed by others without permission of their rightful owners, you should high-tail it to that classroom and raise bloody hell.

I am happy to see to it that all of the children in the room have adequate supplies, but I can’t stress strongly enough that each child needs and deserves to have his/her very own personal private stash of supplies that nobody else can ever touch.

Do I seem overly obsessed about this topic?  Darn right.  The very concept of community school supplies makes me so furious I become incoherent.  Which is apparently happening right now so. . . .

The Kraken: Released

Posted on by July 24, 2010
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I have no sense of feng shui.  I wish I did.  Sometimes I pretend I do, but I’m always found out by people who really do have it.  Ask my sisters.

I’ve always thought that a person’s home should represent that person.  Perhaps I have carried this a bit too far in the decor (heh) of my current home, but hey.  I happen to like having all those bookshelves in the bathroom, and having push-button talking pictures on the walls in there.  I like my orange sofa and my red chair.  I am able to comprehend that they do not match, but the liking compensates for the ferocity of their clashing.  I like more than a dash of funk in my surroundings.  I want my house to be tasteful but groovy.

I read somewhere that having lots of pictures of friends and family members framed and hanging or sitting about the house isn’t cool.  Says who?  I LOVE seeing beloved faces on the walls and on the tabletops.

Sometimes I look at the pictures of rooms in magazines and sigh; they’re just so, well, RIGHT.  The colors match and the accessories match and there’s not a pile of shoes in sight.  In fact, those pictures seldom show any indication that anyone actually lives in those rooms.  I think this is because no one does.

In houses wherein people actually live, there are signs of life.  There is the pile of shoes under the table (well, that’s where I keep my shoes, anyway) and there are magazines, and there are books with markers in them, and there are laptops on the coffee table beside little piles of earrings.  The cushions have been known to live most of their lives on the floor or tossed behind the sofa.  Sometimes there’s an indentation on one end of the sofa arm because if the sofa is comfortable, people lie down on it.  Why isn’t there ever any cat hair on the furniture in those pictures?  What’s a home without a cat?

The kitchens are always pristine in magazine pictures.  You never see bowls of cat food and spilled water on the floors.  You never see spilled cereal mixed with cat hair and dust under the kitchen counters.  People walk across kitchen floors barefooted and never have to stop to flick off “something” clinging to the sole of their foot.

You never see ten thousand boxes of half-eaten cereal sitting around in a magazine picture.  The tables are always absolutely clear and clean, with perhaps a bowl of fruit or a vase of fresh flowers.  In my house, a bowl of fruit would last about ten minutes, and although I love fresh flowers in the house, I chose to have cats, and cats love fresh flowers, too.  In fact, they refer to a vase of fresh flowers as “the salad bar.”  Sigh.

Also?  Those magazine rooms always have curtains at the windows.  I’ve never had curtains.  However, I will have them soon enough.

We’re moving.  But I digress.  I’m also scared of the concept.

Having only to choose, and it’s a choice we are all free to make, I have chosen to LIVE in my house and to encourage others to do likewise.  We could do better, naturally, and not a day goes by when I don’t wish for just a little touch of magazine perfection, but ultimately?  We live here.  And if you stop by – and I certainly hope you do – I want you to make yourself at home, too.  Keep your shoes on; YOU are more important than a speck of dirt your shoes might track in.  (I never feel really welcome if I’m told to remove my shoes.)  (If you have white carpet, that’s a choice YOU made.)  (Not even if it were free.)  (Nope.)  I love my guests more than I care about a carpet.  Besides, I’d rather vacuum up a little dirt later than have to smell your feet all night.

I am always so very sorry for children who live in a house with white carpet, unless the adults who chose it aren’t really all that fussed about keeping it white.

We are currently downsizing to the max here.  My big house is packed to the gills with the accumulation of many years, and the house we are renovating from the skin out is a LOT smaller.  I am not a person who can live sanely with clutter and piles of “stuff,” (I read magazines with scissors in hand and the minute I finish, it goes in the recycle bin) and my husband saves everything.  You’ve seen “Clash of the Titans?”  (The original; not that insipid remake.)  We are the Titans.  I am also the Kraken.  And I have been released.

You’ve been warned.

People have been shopping at my house via FreeCycle like mad these past few months.  Do any of you need anything?  Whatever it is, I bet there’s one here, somewhere.

In the meantime, come on in. The love seat is occupied, but you can sit on the orange sofa. Put your feet up on the coffee table. Sure, you can take your drink into the living room. We live in this house. While you are here, you can live in it, too.

Pity the house that discourages comfort and living.  Pity the sanitized magazine house.

I much prefer a home.

Dear house in town: Steel your nerves.   We’re coming to turn you into a home.  (I’m sure you’re already breathing easier with all that ghastly wallpaper gone.)

Too Bad, So Sad. . . .

Posted on by July 21, 2010
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Mamacita says:  So many people have emailed me (doesn’t anybody comment any more?)  about the following lines from a previous post that I decided to feature them by themselves.  Yes, my readers are the boss of me.

There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.

It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.

Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .

You Want A Creation Theory? I'll Give You A Creation Theory!

Posted on by July 19, 2010
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On my Flickr page, there is a picture of a dulcimer.

Mamacita says:  Back in the day, all middle school/junior high students had to take shop and home ec. They entered high school, and life, knowing how to use a hammer and nails, how to put together a simple meal, how to sew a straight seam, how to take a few simple tools and create something new or improved with them. These are life skills, not frills.

There are all kinds of creation, and an essay or mathematical equation or scientific proof are only some of them, and not necessarily the most important ones, either.

Back in the day, all elementary students were taught about basic musical and artistic base-line skills. Students were taught to read music, and to mix colors together to make new colors. Students were taught the lyrics to hundreds of songs, and how to sing harmony, and they were also taught how to recognize different artists by their personal styles and quirky signatures.

Schools used to require the students to memorize poems, and stories, and to write original ones, too.

Students entered high school knowing the rules for games, and about sportsmanship.

Cheaters were the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth.

They still are, but public opinion has changed quite a lot, and sometimes cheaters are exalted. This must cease. (insert smirk here, for who is going to stop it? Those with the power to do so are the same ones who often exalt it. Those with the power are sometimes the cheaters.) (Principal who insisted that plagiarists retain valedictory position, for example.) (Superintendents with no internet knowledge who make judgment calls based on. . . well, nothing.)

Cheaters are the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth. They may have achieved a victory now, but the wheel of life keeps turning, and the fly on the top will be the fly on the bottom eventually. And vice versa.

Ahem.

Doing away with woodshop and home ec and music and art, to make room for more and more practice sessions of ISTEP and review sessions for those subject areas that are covered in the mandated standardized tests, has done nothing but remove a few areas wherein some students found success, and replaced them with more areas wherein these students will certainly fail.

Not everybody is a rocket scientist or a writer or a mathematician. Some people are musicians and artists and craftsmen and carpenters and chefs.

And what is a rocket scientist’s or a writer’s or a mathematician’s life without music and art and furniture and food?

I firmly believe that every student should be exposed to as much and as many diverse areas of curriculum as is humanly possible according to the limiting laws of physics. Every person should know how to cook, and sew, and use simple tools, and recognize good music from bad, and look at a piece of art and see beyond the lines and borders.

Why are our schools casting the artistic and hands-on students aside in full favor of the academic students? Yes, schools ARE academic, but schools are also the institution that is supposed to prepare our students for the future, and the future depends on people who can read, write, do the math, understand basic scientific functions. . . . and feed themselves and others, and create beautiful objects for practical and impractical use, and nourish the soul and heart as well as the brain.

Only the finite can be ‘tested;’ therefore, only the finite is stressed and even allowed in our schools, these sad, sad days.

Maybe this is why so many of our young people drop out; the schools are offering nothing for them, only for those whose talents lie within the very limited boundaries of the ISTEP test.

Maybe this is why so many of our young people vandalize; they were taught nothing about what real art is, or even respect for it.

Maybe this is why so many of our young people listen to music that isn’t really music; they’ve never heard real music. It’s a fact that when the schools dropped music as a required subject, the recording industry took up the slack, and which of these has our kids’ loyalty now, hmmm?

Maybe this is why so many of our young people associate a song with a video; they’ve never experienced the joy and wonder of learning a song within a group and having it branded on the memory like a wonderful dream, and associating it with an experience rather than a television program..

Maybe this is why so many of our young people disrespect those who make their living with their hands; the school wherein they sat for years and years never emphasized it or showed them the importance of it. On Honor Day, the prizes for those who did well in ‘those’ kinds of classes were smaller and less shiny than the big trophies for “Most Improved Math Student,” or the many “Way To Show Up, Kid” self-esteem awards.

Maybe this is why so many of our young people are anorexic and bulemic and obese and existing on lard and salt and cholesterol; they were never taught the essentials of human nutrition and how to create it themselves.

Maybe I’m being too judgmental; it wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe I’m being too simplistic; well, of course I am. But even in a judgmental and overly simplistic mindset, I still think maybe I’m on to something here.

My dulcimer was created for me by a student named Rusty, who was pretty much nothing but a big illiterate hood, by academic and behavioral standards. He failed everything but woodshop, but in the woodshop he shone like a star. Put a pencil in his hand and he could do nothing but break it in two and throw the pieces at someone. Put a piece of paper in front of him and he would probably wad it up and spit it across the room. Ask him to spell a word and he would stare helplessly. But put him in a room full of hammers and nails and glue and pliers and saws and complicated directions, and he became a genius, a maestro wielding a screwdriver, and making beauty out of a piece of raw wood.

Our shop kids used to make dulcimers; it was their big project. Beautiful musical instruments, fashioned by the hoody crud of the student body. The kids were then taught to play them, and taken around to nursing homes and business clubs to perform.

No more, of course. The woodshop has been closed and locked for many years now. There just isn’t time for it any more, what with computer tech and ISTEP prep. Besides, all field trips have been done away with. (Except for athletics, of course. You really don’t want to get me started on THAT one. . . .)

Students like Rusty, who shone at nothing but hands-on, now shine at nothing. This isn’t right.

In our schools, we have fantastic musicians and artists. Back in the day, we cherished and nurtured these incredible talents. Now, we brush them aside and pull these kids from the studios and make them study only academics, because the arts aren’t tested. And if a subject isn’t on the test, it won’t be offered; at the very least, it won’t be taken seriously.

There are six or seven periods in the school day. Three or four subjects are ‘tested.’ The State has mandated “Advisor/Advisee” time, daily; that means our kids will get some serious counseling by some seriously untrained non-counselors. Some students will have as many as three study halls every day. This is inexcusable.

Of course, to do it all up properly would require the hiring of a few more teachers. We can’t DO that; those athletic buses and the athletic director’s five full-time assistants and the superintendent’s company car and $100,000+ salary take a lot of money.

And in many schools, the ‘special’ teachers (art, music, etc) are shared by several buildings. Ask my Tumorless Sister about her schedule back when she taught at the elementary level, why don’tcha. It’s a moral disgrace. As parents, and as citizens, we should make our outrage at this misuse of talent known, with our voices and our votes.

Our children are more than a piece of paper with a few numbers on it.