Another one bites the dust?

Several years ago, when the bully who was principal was replaced, the replacement was a man we respected and we were thrilled that he was going to lead our school.

The district had a great deal of faith in his ability which is why they talked him into taking our school. But they didn't tell him they had applied for a school improvement grant and he would be reporting to a state person and would not really be in charge.

He became discouraged fairly quickly and was never the savior people had hoped for.And the district replaced him with a good ole boy crony who was a disaster.

Well, disaster has finally done enough damage that they showed him the door. Another principal, one the teachers and parents have hoped for years would come lead the school has finally agreed to and there is celebration that a savior has come.

He leaves a school that he has turned into a jewel to come fix the problems at our school. I wonder how the district will sabotage him.

Which is worse: murder or cell phones?

OK, sounds like an obvious question.

We were sitting around, complaining about kids and their cell phones, when someone made an interesting observation. If you murder someone while you are a teenager, you probably go on with your life with not much of an impact. But failure to pay attention to your education will hinder your adult life more.

Flawed test

I gave a pre-test this week. You know, one of those where they will look at the test and pretest and evaluate me on the growth of the students.

Except.

Some of the questions were beyond flawed.

Compare _____________to ______________ and state the relationship.

a)
b)
c)
d)

And, yes, the blanks were how they appeared on the test - non-questions with non-answers.

And somehow my students could answer these questions. Probability being what it is, they even got some of them right (according to the answer key because I sure couldn't tell).

But I am certain this will be a valid assessment of my ability.

Pros and Cons of Outlook Groups

A new year has started. One of the department chairs has decided to add outlook groups - four of them - in order to keep herself organized.

I am having a real problem with this.

I can't delete emails in these groups (excuse me, conversations). I cannot even see the groups at home if I have looked at all of the postings. And I cannot sort the postings into folders that make more sense to me.

I will find another way to organize myself but I wonder if anyone sees an upside to groups?