09 March 2011

Random Observations

Since I'm not really going to publish U-boats anymore, I thought I'd steal an idea from ESPN's Bill Simmons. Back before twitter, Simmons used to publish columns full of random observations. They weren't long enough for a whole column, but they were ideas he thought were worth sharing.

Therefore, I present to you, for the first and probably only time, Random Observations:

I can't believe how many parents of high school students sit in cars 45 minutes before school ends to pick their kids up. Why wait? To get a better spot, so your kid doesn't have to walk as far? Pitiful.

I sometimes think that trained apes would do a better job planning testing schedules than the so-called experts. Why should a student spend 45 minutes writing a rough draft, take a 5 minute break, and then spend 45 more minutes writing the final draft?

I had to watch Seniors for four hours while other classes tested. We may have watched Footloose.

I have a project where 11th and 12th grade students have to simulate living on their own. Ironically, they have to provide their own paper to print the project on.

The more you privatize education, the more the gap between haves and have nots will widen.

More kids believe they will be professional athletes than think they will get their doctorates. That's a sad indictment of society.

At lunch, I play Knowledge Bowl against the Knowledge Bowl team. They tend to win math questions, but I rule at everything else.

My student council sponsoring "Mustache March" was a great plan. High school boys thinking they could grow a good mustache was not.

The more students read, the better they tend to be at writing. Unless they read a lot of vampire books.

I think more and more students think that being done and being done properly are the same thing. The Soviets got to the Moon first. The Americans were the first to get there properly.

Several of my high school teachers would have been fired if they did what they did then now. I'm looking at you, Mr. Carter.

Dr. Dick should have called the Octagon of Punishment the Professional Octagon of Punishment. Then the OOP would have been the POOP.

Secretaries are the most important people in any school. They deserve more than a national holiday. They deserve their own nation. Except the mean ones. They deserve their jobs.

The internet is the best and worst thing to ever happen to education. At the same time.

You know what's missing from schools today? The smell of mimeograph. And accountability.

FoxNews contributors keep saying that teaching is a part time job. I wish Scott Walker could fire them instead of teachers in Wisconsin.

Eating lunch with mouth breathers means you're eating with people who eat with their mouths open. Don't blame them, they don't know they do it.

Pretty much every good teacher is either overconfident or underconfident. Very few are appropriately confident.

The crazier pop stars get, the more clothes teenage girls wear. At least until prom, when they get plenty trashy.

Nothing embarrasses a student more than talking about DBD in class. Unless you're talking about them DBDing, in which case they will be more embarrassed.

The more time I spend in schools, the more cynical I feel. Until graduation day, when all things are possible again.

Democracy is threatened most by an ignorant and uneducated populous.

Multiple choice tests are a great way to see if students know things, as long as you don't care if they know things. 

You want to know what DBD is. It involves what teenagers want to do at a dance. 

90% of students overestimate their own intelligence. The other 10% are asleep when you ask.


Well, that's all I've got for today. As always, thanks for reading!

2 comments:

  1. As always, thanks for posting. I absolutely agree with you about the internet...I think that applies to all of us, not just students. It's the best (and worst) of times.
    p.s. I'm going to need to know what DBD means.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DBD-
    Demokratische Bauernpartei Deutschlands

    That's what the internet told me.

    ReplyDelete