Tag Archives: Education

F in Exams

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Math

Find x

Find x

The elementary school tragedy that occurred in Connecticut hung like a pall all day on Friday. Some of my co-workers, the parents of similarly aged children were visibly sickened by news of this event. After work, I exposed myself to the media coverage, which had gone ape over this story. I was on my way to the MRH school district’s teacher Christmas party, to meet Anne at the Wood, I turned it off quickly. The teachers also sympthized with the victims of this tragedy, but they weren’t going to cancel their Christmas party, because of the actions of one gunman. That would be placing too much emphisis on an act by a man that craved such attention. Besides, the media frenzy was doing fine. 

Physics

Hannah sprays her new bike purple. The spraying of the bike gives it a negative charge and the paint a positive one. Why is this?
Positive – Spraying is easier than using a paintbrush.
Negative – Purple isn’t a good color for a bike.

The Wood is a trendy new bar in the ever more trendy Maplewood. It used to be a Laundromat. That ought to give you a feel for the exploding coolness of what was once Dan’s backyard. The already well lubricated faculty meeting was well underway when I arrived. Anne introduced me to her friends, while I sucked on my Urban Chestnut Wing-Nut ale. A political diatribe is brewing for this blog, but that beer quenched my political fire, at least for now.

Chemistry

What is a vibration?
There are good vibrations and bad vibrations. Good vibrations were discovered in the 1960s.

The graphic test question at the top and the interlude questions afterwards, all come from Richard Benson’s book, “F in Exams”. It is subtitled, “The very best totally wrong test answers”. I love that he has covered it Blue Book blue. On the cover the F in “F in Exams” is handwritten and circled with a big red felt tip teacher’s marker. The questions are all text printed, but the answers are hand written too. The doodles in the margins are great.

Technology

What is a computer virus?
An STD – A Systematically Transmitted Disease

After we made it out of the Wood, we headed off again to Left Bank Books in the Central West End. Anne wanted to pickup a book that she had ordered, but it hadn’t arrived. This is one of the pitfalls of local booksellers. Amazon would have had this book speeding to the eventual recipient days ago. On the other hand, if she had dealt with Amazon, she could never could have shown me Benson’s book. I’ll leave the correct choice of booksellers as an exercise to the reader. Please show all of your work.

History

Explain what is meant by the term “pastoral farming”?
It’s a farm run by reverends.

Cap-Pun[c|k]

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Drake Among Fall Leaves

Drake Among Fall Leaves

A national teachers union wants to create a rigorous professional exam for K-12 teachers that would serve the same function as the bar exam for lawyers. When I told Anne about a ‘bar exam’ for teachers, she said that she knew plenty of teachers that could pass an exam at a bar, say at Las Palmas, The Wood, or even the VFW Hall, because they have cheap beer. We all know that on a teacher’s salary cheap beer is an important consideration when it comes to bar exams. Anne of course, was only joking about the teacher’s bar exam. She then announced that she has fourteen days of school left until Christmas vacation. Excuse me, I mean winter break. I’m left wondering what took her so long to first voice her countdown.

Anne is healing slowly from her bicycle accident last month, but Anne tends to do most things slowly, except when it comes to things she wants to do and I am only lukewarm about. This is especially true early in the morning, but I digress. The title of this post is derived from the shorthand for capitalization and punctuation. Anne usually proof reads my post, but since she has been hanging with the fourth grade for so long, her once stringent editorial standards have relaxed a bit. After reading yesterday’s post, I asked her if she saw any errors. She said my Cap-Punc looked much better than her fourth grader’s and then she reread the post for content. Woo-Hoo! I’m smarter than a fourth grader. Wasn’t there a TV game show based upon that premise? [Fifth grade, fourth grade, what’s the difference? Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?] Maybe more accurately, I can claim: I write better than a fourth grader.

So, with my laze about day, except for all of the bicycling, I had the psychic energy to write a second post, this one. It’s after dinner and Anne the family chocolatier asked me if I wanted chocolate for dessert. I said that that was a stupid question, but then I corrected myself and said that there are no stupid questions. Anne then corrected me again, there are no stupid questions, just less than inspired ones. Like when after she has explained an exercise to her class and asks, “Are there any questions?” This response is less than inspired stupid [IMHO], “Can I go to the bathroom?” 

Anne clued me into the following YouTube video. I guess as counterpoint to the rant that she voiced and I recorded. In my way more humble opinion, I choose now to recant. Maybe, I am not smarter than a fourth grader. I’ve got to believe that somewhere in Dalton Sherman’s ancestry, there is a preacher man. He has the gift. I feel cap-punked now.

It’s Technical

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Sunlit Ballroom (3rd Party Photo)

Last week, I went to Shangri La for a workshop. It was for technical lead engineers, or was it for lead technical engineers, I forget. As I’ve written the surroundings were plush. However, the course content was a bit watery. Corporate education as devolved to a sorry state.

Looking around the classroom, I noticed a certain similarity among the participants. We were all stale, pale and male. All save one, but she was as far as diversity went in this instance. I later learned that the stale aspect of the workshop was to be expected. We were being taught how to train our replacements.

At one time this thought would have had me shaking in my boots, but that was then and this is now. Now time and demographics are on my side. Once, I was the new guy, at the end of a long row of desks. At the other end of this row was the head guy, the guy with the table. For most meetings, we would sit around his table and discuss the problem de jour. Now, I’m the guy with the table, except with the new modular furniture, the table is a tiny, wheeled shadow of its former self.

Joel, our contract facilitator, was a gifted purveyor of the curriculum. He is Seattle-based, Army trained and Microsoft vetted. A former tank commander in Desert Storm, he singlehandedly energized the white spaces between Scooby snacks and lunch.

I must admit that I started this workshop full of premeditated pushback. I did not want to drink the Kool-Aid and become some Stepford engineer. Throughout the white noise portions of those two days, I kept wishing that this meeting had been condensed to just the first morning. That they then had fed us a nice lunch and sent us on our way. This is what the Perma-Bear did. He decided that he didn’t have the bandwidth for this workshop and there was not enough value added for his time. I stuck it out and maybe learned something from this silo of brilliance.

It has been almost a week since the workshop and I have had some time to process. What is the DNA of an engineer? Is it the demanding contrarian, as I have voiced? Is it someone willing to popcorn it out? Or just someone playing whack-a-mole all day? What is the metric? What is the secret sauce? As an engineer, how do you tell what right looks like?

The workshop offered answers to all of these questions. I still reject the psycho-babble offered, but I am intrigued by the questions. How do you pass the baton?

Years ago, my friend Chris, worked at a metallurgical firm. It was the early ‘80s and the Japanese were running roughshod over Detroit. Chris’s middle age boss was all antsy and uptight about an impending visit by a delegation from Japan. Chris could not believe that anyone could care so much about their job. Afterwards, he related a funny story from the visit. Sometime previous, Chris or a peer had taped black paper over the window of a welder’s mask. It was just a grab-ass gag. Through serendipity that mask was handed to the Japanese representative to view an important procedure. He never said a word and no one learned of the joke until afterwards.

The mantra for this workshop was to advise, assist and check. The previous anecdote falls squarely under the third tenet. To advise and assist is more nebulous. Where do these two attributes end and interfere begin? How do you preload a person to be a good mentor? Maybe in this new role, I’ll learn and find out.

Shangri-La

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Overlooking the Missouri River in extreme North County was the retreat that I was privileged to visit this week. The mansion is called Vouziers (Voo-zee-ay) because its founder, Joseph Desloge, served in the French Army during WW I and was decorated for bravery near Vouziers, France. He built the mansion to look like a French Chateau. By the time that I arrived, ownership had long since passed from the Desloge family. I never entered the Chateau, but instead spent my time on campus. (I did walk its grounds.) I spent two days there, attending a workshop. Most of my colleagues have already attended analogous, educational exercises. So, I had some expectations, but in the world of education, I had arrived as a member of the one percent.

The Chateau (3rd Party Photo)

To say that the staff was solicitous would be a gross understatement. If the facilities had five-stars, then the staff earned six. They would greet you, saying “Hi” to you, to the point of making me feel self-conscious, but that’s just me. Walking in one day, a guy running a leaf blower turned it off and said, “Good Morning”. If a staff member met you more than once, they would address you by your first name. One could get use to this, in less than a day.

The food, I had heard about the food, ambrosia for the gods. I’d also heard about the overeating, so I laid low before lunch, and had a most excellent salad for lunch, both days. Because, even in this safe and secure environ, life is still short and uncertain, I had dessert first. Here is a shout out to son Dan, Crème Brule, served in Chinese style soup ladles. If you consider the advantage of the smaller volume of the ladle to its relative surface area, it equates to more Brule to Crème and isn’t that what a Crème Brule is really all about. Plus in ladle servings, why not order a six-pack?

The Campus (3rd Party Photo)

Food deserves two paragraphs. Even though I restrained my self at lunch, there was still the afternoon food. I think that this is the experimental end of their spectrum. One offering, had shrimp in gaspacho. The aperitif glass that worked well the previous day for carrot shooters, didn’t translate to the shrimp gazpacho. Each pot of coffee was numerically rated for its aroma, body and acidity. I was able to puzzle out that they served Kaldi’s coffee. I was only a day laborer. The facility is a hotel. I can only guess at breakfast and dinner.

This has been only the most ephemeral treatment of my two-day sojourn. It sets the stage, or maybe whets the appetite for more. In a future post, I shall endeavor to relate what I was taught, what I thought about the curriculum, and speak  more about what the class was actually about.

Stop the Flying Unicorns (STFU)

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Dear Reader, after another day in 6th Grade Paradise, and a 27 mile bike ride to calm down, I decide to attempt the essay that the students were doing. Attached is the graphic organizer, and the first draft of my 5-P essay. It might be a little too sarcastic, but it is only a rough draft. If you’re not sure about some of the references, ask the kids. – Anne

Stop the Flying Unicorns

Many people are unaware that flying unicorns even exist, let alone of the problems flying unicorns can cause. Flying unicorns are dangerous, both to themselves and other animals and humans. Flying unicorns are messy, causing huge messes when they fly over buildings and cars. Most importantly, these cousins of Pegasus drive a wedge between the haves and have-nots leading to feelings of entitlement. Here is why the flying unicorns must be stopped.

Flying unicorns are dangerous, since they have wings, hooves, and a sharp horn on their head. Any one of these could cause injuries. They are rambunctious, and inclined to silly horseplay. Of course, this is natural, given that they are indeed related to horses, but it frequently leads to accidents, either to themselves or other people and animals around them. Flying unicorns seldom follow the rules, because they think the rules do not apply to special animals like them. This is another reason they may be a hazard.

Another problem of the flying unicorns is the mess they make. Anyone who has seen bird droppings on their car windows will have no desire to have animals the size of horses flying overhead. While bird droppings are disgusting enough, imagine what your school would look like if a flying unicorn had “an emergency” on the roof or playground. What’s even worse, the droppings look like silly putty, and some kids might play with it and throw it around. Perhaps, with time, flying unicorns could be trained in proper bathroom behavior, much as cats are trained to use litter boxes. However, flying unicorns also have a propensity to mess with other animals’ stuff, breaking it and tossing it around. They are only playing, they say, but this is another facet of why the flying unicorns must be stopped.

Lastly, but most importantly, is the social problems flying unicorns cause. It’s a well-known fact, (as reported in The Journal of Mendacity Unlimited, March 2012), that flying unicorns can only be tamed by quiet, hard-working scholars. This is patently unfair, as it pits the one-percent against the other 99% who do not have these attributes. We provide our students with pencils, paper, erasers and tape to further their education, why should we not also let all of our students have the resource of a flying unicorn? While dangerously rambunctious and admittedly messy, flying unicorns are also beautiful and fun to play with at recess. What a sad sight it is to see some entitled students enjoying the rewards of recess as the sun glints off the horn of their own unicorn, while others are forced to be inside writing. The loud raucous cries of those students and their flying unicorns cannot help but distract those who, through no fault of their own, except perhaps noisy procrastination, have lost the privilege of recess.

In conclusion, I hope I have persuaded you, gentle reader, that it is of utmost importance that we Stop the Flying Unicorns! Say it with me, “Stop the Flying Unicorns! Stop the Flying Unicorns! Stop the Flying Unicorns!” The dangerous horseplay must stop. The huge messes and wasted resources must stop. The sense of entitlement that rides roughshod over the rights of others to a studious environment and productive education should, nay (neigh?) must stop! Flying Unicorns must be stopped.

MRH Superstar

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Anne is pictured above with her symbol of recognition, a chocolate bar. This is in response to the success of the standardized testing team. They succeeded in getting every student tested, save one, leaving almost no child left untested. It is always nice to receive recognition for a job well done. Being recognized with chocolate is even better. On another subject, Anne finished one knitting project and began another one this week. I can’t show any pictures, because both are intended to be Christmas presents.

Three months ago today, The Perma-Bear made a prediction. He predicted that by September 2nd, 2012, the bottom would fall out of the economy, the Great Recession would make its true self known as the Great Depression II, dogs would begin sleeping with cats, but I exaggerate. What he really said and then wrote on a yellow post-it was, “Ask me about the Starbuck’s index, September 2, 2012.” I had been extolling the virtues of the Starbuck’s index, when with a bearish harrumph, he sprang into action and threw down his gauntlet.

The Starbuck’s index or rather my version of the Starbuck’s index is a simple measure of economic health. The underlying idea of this index is that people with four or five bucks to spend on a cup of coffee represent a positive trend in a down economy. Each workday morning, on my way to work, I’ve stopped at my local Starbuck’s coffee shop and then counted the number of people in line ahead of me. Back in the fall of 2008 there was rarely anyone in line, when I strolled into the store. In the interim the line and my index has steadily grown both longer and more positive.

A quarter has pasted since the post-it was written. In that quarter the Dow has risen over 800 points. Today, I could barely get in through the door at Starbuck, because there were so many people in line, between 20 and 30, a personal record. Needless to say the Perma-Bear was not happy.

Continuing with the caffeinated flavor of this post, The Multiple-Sclerosis Society’s Saint Louis Chapter held its annual awards banquet last night. Team Kaldis, the bicycle team that Anne and I ride for, won first place, for the most dollars raised, $140K, and for the most number of riders, 143. A lot of the credit for this success goes to the team’s captain and our friend, Captain Don. This means that next year, our team will be the first one to start. This also means that Anne and I will be pasted by 100% of the other riders and not just 99%. Anne and I would also like to thank our own generous donors, whose generous contributions were rolled up into the winning $140K total.