Hope?

I received an email from Lori Knight at the Del Sol Review the other day. She told me that she was still plowing through their slush pile, and that my story, "Bluff," which had been there since July, was still waiting to be read. She told me to have patience. I know this is probably the wrong attitude, and that I should just take it for the rejection it eventually will be, but I can't help seeing it as a glimmer of hope. Perhaps it will be the next publication. Perhaps it will be the next rejection. I'm an optimist, so here's looking forwards to the next big publication!

Grades are Due

Yes, grades are due. I have a love/hate relationship with grades.

Being an AP teacher, I get to see kids that are obsessed with grades every day. They hunger for them. They fight for them. They scam the extra credit in an effort to be 1/10th of a point higher than the kid down the aisle, because that 1/10th of a point might lead to a better scholarship, or a higher place on the dais come graduation, or acceptance into a better school. I can see the stress, but it eats me up. I even give loads of advice, both in person and on my AP Blog (see the latest post at http://apenglishnews.blogspot.com/ ), but it still kills me.

But the actual process of calculating grades is another story. In a weird, counter intuitive way, I really enjoy tapping those numbers into my spreadsheet. I dig watching the formulas calculate the grades, etc. What I really hate is when my students do poorly. I believe that, contrary to popular belief, most teachers are not mean spirited. We wish for student success, and agonize over student failure. The results of such agonizing can either be the lowering of standards, thus ensuring higher grades, or grade inflation, a pandemic reaching from higher education to elementary schools. It seems we all have a thing about grades.

I don't know the answer. I only know that Excel is calling to me even now, and the numbers are just waiting to be crunched.

Re-Inventing Schools

The inevitable problem with 21st Century Skills, as seen at Blaugh.com. I recently went to the Re-Inventing 21st Century Skills Symposium in Washington D.C., and spent a lot of time talking about skills that kids need to succeed in the Friedman-esque flat world. I can envision my colleagues reacting to the presentation we have to put together with this kid in mind. I hope we can push beyond this type of thinking, though, because there is a whole new world waiting out there.

It kind of hit home, too, when one of my co-attendees told us about seeing the homeless sleeping in Rock Creek Park during his morning walk. Ironic that two thousand educators were sitting in a ballroom discussing DNA based computing and less than a mile away people are struggling to survive. I guess we all got a dose of perspective along with our excitement.

I hope that we are successful in firing up our colleagues. I would hate to see all of the good intentions we came home with fall apart.