Summer Update

Here I am halfway through my summer vacation.  If you wondered what would happen to a teaching blog when there’s no teaching, well, this is what happens.  No much.  I can’t wait to start teaching again so I have some content here.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some other links.  First, a friend had a link to a blog.  If you are a fan of grammar mistakes, maybe you’re also a fan of unnecessary quotation marks.

Next, a headline from CNN.com.  “Horrified mom sees baby for sale online.”  My first thought: Why was this mom looking for babies to buy online?  The actual story is about an adoption scam, so I think the headline is way more entertaining than that.

I’m thinking about a big post about artificial intelligence, the lonliness we feel in society, and how this affects students and people in general.  All of this brought on by finishing Age of Spiritual Machines.

Summertime Blues

So, in a stunning turn of events, I don’t have a job for the summer.  After picking up my laptop, going through a day of orientation, getting all the equipment necessary, I received a call last Wednesday morning informing me that not enough students signed up for summer school.  I was told that I might still have a job either at a face-to-face summer school or doing curriculum development.  I should get a phone call.  Well, summer school started today, so I guess I’m not doing that.  I haven’t gotten a phone call or an e-mail.  Just like that, my pay raise turns into a pay cut for next year.

What will I do?  Well, I do have a part-time (10 hours per week) job.  Other than that, it’s been a lot of gym, pool, sleep, read, tv, repeat.  At some point during the summer, probably closer to August, I’ll start going through the new textbook I’m using next year and make power point notes, worksheets, etc.  But school seems so far away that I can’t bring myself to do it now.  I mean, if I got it all done in July, what would I do in August??

On a personal side note, for some strange reason, grammar (especially syntax) errors in text just get to me.  I find them hilarious.  I can’t stop laughing when I read them.  “Children who laugh rarely are shy.”  Is it that children who laugh are generally not shy or is it children who almost never laugh are shy?
Now, I’m reading The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil.  Awesome book if you are at all interested in artificial intelligence or future technology.  In one section he was discussing computer recognition of language.  One of the first computer programs designed to parse sentences had trouble with the sentence “Time flies like an arrow.”  The computer gave these possible meanings to the sentence:

1. that time passes as quickly as an arrow passes;

2. or maybe it is a command telling us to time the flies the same way that an arrow times flies; that is, “Time flies like an arrow would”;

3. or it could be a command telling us to time only those flies that are similar to arrows; that is, “Time flies that are like an arrow”;

4. or perhaps it means that a type of flies known as time flies have a fondness for arrows: “Time-flies like (that is, cherish) an arrow.”

I couldn’t stop laughing at the pool.  Haha get it! Another one!  No, I wasn’t laughing at the pool, I was laughing while at the pool.

Music: “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield on Working Class Dog

08-09 Postscript

There’s something about not being near students every day that saps my creative energy for this endeavor.  Fear not, because summer school starts in two weeks and certainly there’s something to be said about teaching students you never really get to meet.

As of right now, I’ve had two and a half days off from school.  Since school’s ended, I’ve managed to totally redo my bedroom, go to the gym a couple times, sit my the pool for a couple hours, get my car worked on for the third (and hopefully last) time in a month, and spent an afternoon at a laundromat because my dryer is broken.  And I’ve read a good 300 pages of The Three Musketeers.  For those who think that teachers lead a charmed life during the summer, it isn’t all that exciting.  I have, however, remembered very quickly how to sleep past 6 am.

The end of the year passed rather uneventfully.  I did have three students fail for the year (all time high) but they definitely deserved it.  One of those students came to me on the last day and started begging, accusing, negotiating for a D.  It was actually quite amusing for a little while.  Every time I shot down one attempt she came back at me with a different tactic.  First, she didn’t deserve an F.  Then I had to accept an assignment that was 3 months late.  Then she made a mistake on the final and bubbled in the wrong test version.  Then I was ruining her summer and her life.  Finally she was going to get a letter from the assistant principal and her counselor that said she should pass.  At that point I told her to leave my room.  Really it was “Get Out.”  Repeatedly…because she wouldn’t.  After she left, I reflected on how she definitely deserved an F and how, now, I didn’t regret giving her one.  I guess her plan backfired.

I could go on about grades, and in all probability I will at some point, but for now I leave with this story.  It’s about an assault case between two homeless men.  The reason behind the assault?  An argument about quantum physics.  I’m pretty sure none of Einstein’s though experiments involved hitting somebody in the face with a skateboard.

edit: Since there are many people that cross this blog, and summer will be slow in terms of inspiring topics, please leave a comment with any story, topic, or post you might be interested in hearing about.  I’d love to make this blog a bit more interactive.

Teacher Pay Scale Explained!!

In the past I’ve written about teacher pay.  I’ll explain it further because it seems to be the number one search topic that comes to my blog.  For most places in the country, teachers get paid based on two criteria.  First is the amount of education that person has and second is the number of years the person has been teaching.   For example, say you wanted to teach in New Orleans:

Yrs Exp	Bachelor’s	Master’s	Master’s + 30	Specialist in Ed	Ph.D or Ed.D
0	38794	39594	40394	41194	41994
1	39394	40194	40994	41794	42594
2	39994	40794	41594	42394	42594
3	40594	41394	42194	42994	43794
4	41194	41994	42794	43594	44394

You’d have a scale like this.  Sometimes the “years of experience” are called “steps.”  Different school districts have different levels for the education level.  In New Orleans, you can get extra money for being an education specialist.  That’s nice…cause I think I’m one (no really, I have a master’s degree in curriculum development), but that’s not standard.  Most years the entire pay scale will increase for cost of living (COLA) increases.  If you are particularly desirable and you live in an area with many small school districts, you may be able to start at a higher step than you normally would.  This is equivalent to negotiating a higher starting salary at any other job.

Next year my school system will not be giving step increases or COLA increases.  We will not get compensated for our extra year of teaching experience.  Because of this, I decided to apply for online summer school!  It’s a pretty big pay raise (I need it) with a small amount of increased summer work (I don’t particularly need that).

Questions?