Long, long ago, there was a college student who avoided homework by searching the internet or reading a book. With graduation, that college student thought any likes of homework would disappear. Alas, she became a teacher. :)
In education classes, no one told me that grading would become my new homework. Some nights I LOATHE it--like tonight. I have a stack of 110 ninth grade essays, and I have absolutely no desire to look at them. So I decided to read the blogs, and I'm so glad I did! Not only is Whitney back from the dead, but she's holding hands with a boy wearing a Pink Floyd shirt. Does life get any better than that? And she's engaged! (Ok, so my heart nearly stopped when I read that.) He looks cute, and you sound blissful.
After reading Whitney's comments about real life in DC, I couldn't help but reflect/rant on how different the real classroom is from the theory. Whitney, I bet we could discuss this for hours. Right now, Utah is in the middle of an awful voucher debate, and voting finally took place tonight. Public school teachers have been taking some hits--we were actually accused of "not caring about students" and being "money-hungry" since most of us are against vouchers for families that have an income of $150,000 (that's right--the law would even subsidize that high of an income). I had to laugh. Now, I'm not as vehement as other teachers on the whole issue, but "money-hungry?" Has anyone seen my paycheck? It even got more nasty--I was sent a pro-voucher flyer that said "You can tell a lot about school vouchers by looking at the people who support them. And the people who don't." What's on the back? Well one side (the pro side) has pretty pictures of Republican candidates and then groups/people listed like "American Family Heritage Association," "Traditional Values Coalition," "Mitt Romney," "National Right to Life," "Focus on the Family," etc. The opposing side had pictures of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore and lists/groups like "Planned Parenthood," "ACLU," "National Organization for Women," "Atheists United," "Democratic Party," "Atheist Alliance International," etc. (Nigel and I laughed about how it was just short of drawing a line down the center and putting "God" on one side and "Satan" on the other, which felt like the overall point.) The bottom said, "Who represents your values?"
Well, that's the latest from the Utah political arena. Other than that, I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving break. Sigh. I miss you all.
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Can I just say...tushay! I couldn't agree more. I hate grading. Bleh. Bleh. Bleh. It's ridiculous. Just so time consuming. The crazy thing is there is always more to do. You can always be doing something more. That's what is so stressful about teaching...besides having a class full of 20 third graders that all read at a first grade level. Ha ha...I'm not gonna lie that's stressful too.
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