Secrets of the City

Tim Walz is fantastic.

You really don’t want to read my opinion of that article and Mr. Walz. I’ll spare you all the anguish.

Quit hating on Vets, Maz.

No. Please maz. I’ve been waiting to chime until I saw where this thread goes. Let’s roll!

Signed,
High School English Teacher on Year Leave of Absence Who Loved This Article and Agrees Wholeheartedly With its Essence

His work on the power play in the playoff was horrendous!

No, no. I’ve done enough damage to your fragile egos for one day.

F that! This ego is made of sterner stuff than you can mess with.

Walz’s observation of more intellectual curiosity in a high school classroom than in Washington is spot on. We have to have “Washington Think Tanks” outside of the system in order to get any thinking done, since we’re presently being led by one of history’s truly dim bulbs when it comes to critical thought.

Did anyone catch McCain on the Daily Show yesterday? It was beautiful because Stewart was asking really simple questions, like: How does questioning the President equate to “not supporting the troops” but extending tours of duty isn’t scrutinized/criticized in a similar light? What struck me was that these were very reasonable questions that attempted to avoid the political angling that pretty much kills real conversation.

Maz – if you avoid Walz’s conjecture, you’re letting him win. Stand up for your Man, the great thinker. Come on!

I’ve left holes enough in this posting for you to drive a Hummer through. Have at it.

He had to forgo the time-consuming studies of crime in St. Paul in favor of drilling students on state capitals.

i’m not a worth adversary, nateek, but…isn’t this the point of NCLB in the first place? i mean, state capitols in High School? really? we need to get these kids the basics in the early grades, so they can apply that to the critical thinking that should take place in high school and beyond…right?

Out of deference to the environment, I decline, except to say that think tanks have been around since long before 2001. I think I can get through that one on my bike.

I almost passed out drunk on the steps of the Wisconsin capitol building, but I did not drill any of the UW students there.

i got kicked out of that nice hotel right next to the wisconsin capitol building for being drunk and surly. man i was cool back then.

Frankly I’m shocked Walz actually won, but he and Jim Webb are two of my favorite additions to congress this year. Here’s hoping they will be passing legislation to be signed by president Obama.

You must surely mean President Richardson.

I think the democrats should nominate Mrs. Bill Clinton. That’ll be fun!

I think the Dems could nominate a bag of chips and it would not only outperform Herr Bush it would win in a landslide over the likes of Rudy “I fucked over the firefighters on 9/11″ Guilianni, Flip Flop Mealy Mouthed McCain and the other Robot Religious Cryptofascists that are running.

I think if I went out and peed on the sidewalk the wet-spot I leave would defeat any Repub in the next election.

Plus I could sell the pix on e-bay.

Raindog… it’s been awhile?

Polls show that 50% of likely voters say they would not under any circumstances vote for Hitlery. Looks like the democrats will have to cheat again just to get close. heh

People, we have a Troll Defcon Five Alert. batten down the hatches.

Wow grote! Where did you learn to use the correct terminology? The only thing missing was “Alert One, Alert One!” heh

I have an uncle who was an education coordinator for the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity at Camp Pendleton, but is now in Saudi Arabia training Saudi Naval Officers. But since I rarely speak with him, I probably learned it watching T.V.

I hear every teacher talk about how accountability is a great idea, but they seem to think that it’s great only as long as it’s applied to other schools, and not their school.

And, yeah, most of my kids’ teachers seem to really want to teach the kids about the complexities of Iran and the unfairness to the poor if we don’t have higher taxation and how wind farms are better than burning coal, but the testing now being done makes them spend more time than they would like to waste on things like state capitals, and where to find Somolia on a map, and how to do long division . . . Frankly, it’s sort of been a nice change, because the kids are now getting more of those basics that they were simply missing before (”they’ll have calculators, they don’t need to do that . . “) and fewer “business is evil and pollutes” ignorant diatribes (from people who, in the face of the toughness of math and science and even sociology majors, opted instead for “education.”) What Waltz calls “nuance”, I call “stuff that’s more fun to spend your paid time on than what you’re supposed to teach.” I’d rather the kids learned the basics first.

And, the testing takes up too much time? Middle son recently had a few days of that testing. He asked if I could pick up some pop for him for school the next day, for the free time. “Free time?” I said. “Yeah, we take two hours of tests, and then the rest of the day is set up as a free day with movies, fun activities, and the like” he said. “No classes?”, I said. “Nope”, he replied, “not on those testing days.”

So screw that whole argument. If “testing takes too much time away from teaching”, then the parties do too, as do the surprisingly frequent teachers’ workshop days and half-days.

Oh, what a difference 15 years and 200 miles makes. My teachers mocked the foreign kids and told us we didn’t need to learn about Africa, because it wasn’t important, like England. And we had to tour the sewage plant.

The biggest beef I hear from school administrators, teachers, and Walz, is that the pass rate is the same for all kids. A kid like yours, Bobby, probably whizzes through the tests. Comparing him to a kid in special ed or ESL is silly and doesn’t measure the quality of the teacher or the school.