Vergil’s Coffee

I’m checking to make sure that OPML editor can connect to a non WordPress.com WP blog. I was playing around with MarsEdit today and I got to thinking that I type better via outliner than straight textwindow. Anyway, this post is really for me, but if you enjoy it, leave a comment, eh?

And it does. Cool.

Just testing out something that I read on Days of our Lives blog on “How to write a post on Wordpress using Safari 3.0.4 - without screwing up text formatting.”

The idea is to turn off the “Use visual editor” under “My Profile.” So what if you get the “ugly” editor…it works now, eh?

And, that’s about all I wanted to blog on this.

And this is not a rant against not getting the Lilly Endowment for not granting my proposal “Writing a blank canvas: Arctic Canada and Northern Indiana” (There is little distracting about the landscapes of Nunavut, Canada and Northern Indiana. But in writing about place, I plan on crafting an non-fiction essay about the vast beauty of each in a longer article for publication).

Is that not a cool proposal? Well, apparently it didn’t make the cut, but I’m still living without having the summer Lilly grant experience. And I just a call from a teacher in my building who also applied for the Lilly Teacher Creativity grant and well laughed about not getting the “good” letter of acceptance. Sigh.

So, for fun, I thought I might recount the last six years of grant proposals:

2008: Writing a blank canvas: Write an article about Nunavat and Indiana landscapes

2007: Building an Inuksuk garden (visit Nunavat and then recreate the experience in my backyard).

2006: Running in Nunavat: See inuksuk and run a marathon in Nunavut.

2005: Jack London: Visit Glen Ellen, CA and write short stories.

2004: Get a private pilot’s license.

2003: Study and complete in the National Chess Championships in PA.

I’ve been hanging around the idea of going to Nunavut for the past 3 years and I have a feeling that once people see the promotions for the 2010 Winter Olympics, everyone will want to know more about Inuksuk. But, perhaps, I need to let that idea go for next year.

And, to the winners of the 2008 Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant: congratulations and enjoy the experience. I hear that it is a wonderful boost to your teaching.

Five years ago, a friend, colleague and department chair, Steve Kirkpatrick died after a battle with cancer. I mostly think of Steve when I’m running by the dam by the reservoir and I am reminded of his idea of saving the world. I think I posted this last year, but in honor of Steve, I’m posting his speech to the graduating class of 2002 (roughly 8 months before his death).

Thanks Steve.

Commencement Speech, June 2, 2002
Mr. Steve Kirkpatrick

Public speaking and its relationship to fear is an interesting phenomenon. If I were to ask you what the following people have in common–Albert Berkley, Barbara Helleen, and Arthur MacArthur–you would be hard pressed. The simple answer is that they are the only people who have died while delivering a speech. So, I feel relatively sure I will walk away from your commencement.

I would also like to point out that if Mr. Staley or Mr. Dwyer or Dr. Nelson had to lead a mule across this stage, they probably would have little trouble because the mule is calm, sedate, and not easily excited. On the other hand, if they were asked to lead a thoroughbred across the stage, they would probably have difficulty because they are known to be nervous, skittish, and all together difficult to handle. I want you all to know I am perfectly calm-not the least nervous.

Now that my state of mind has been established, I would like to thank the entire Concord community, the students, the parents, and the staff for their prayers, their hugs, and their constant concern. You have lifted me and stood by me. You have shown me the kindness that dwells in all of us. Thank you so much.

At the beginning of the 90’s, I was excited about the prospects of the future. I felt education and rapid change would play a major role in our lives and that is what I would like to discuss with you today.

The aim of the teacher is to prepare his students to do without him: to see life through their own eyes, to hear the day with their own ears, and to understand with their own minds. The good teacher recognizes the differences in his students, will seize the teachable moment and cause it to evolve. The good teacher places roadblocks in front of his children and encourages them to overcome.

Here it is important to point out that the state and national governments have mandated that language and math skills need to be improved and that tests are to be the measure of our success–the success of our children, their teachers, their schools.

I agree that academic skills are important. Our children need to read better, write better, and do math better. However, we are leveling downward and praising that as common sense. We educators spend a lot of time discussing rubrics, aligning the curriculum, and assessing student academic skills with the single goal of raising test scores for that is how our success is to be measured by our state and national government. As a result, I have seen hard working teachers and students labeled failures in much the same way that a business labels parts defective.

Our children are not flawed or inadequate. The focus has moved from the child to the subject matter because that is what is to be tested. Students and their schools work hard and for the most part do an excellent job. What is needed from Washington and Indianapolis is a change in the paradigm that student, teacher, and school success is best determined by a paper and pencil exercise. We need a new mandate that emphasizes the building blocks of our society: compassion, sacrifice, integrity, and justice. This is how the success of our society will be measured by future generations.

Many of the thoughts that I tend to dwell on and can’t shake revolve around change. Whether thinking about the fall and the leaves turning from green to red or a young child and her desire to be a paleontologist or astronaut, of one thing I am sure, change has a heart and soul of its own and yet it is part of every fiber of our being. It is powered by Aristotle, Newton, and Edison. It gains energy from our grandmothers and grandfathers as they are reflected in our hearts and smiles and laughter.

Sometimes as I think about change and my classroom, I ask my students to fill in the blank to this sentence, “I remember a time when there was no such thing as

When I fill in the blank, I say television. My students say,” computers, and I imagine you parents might say calculators. If my wife’s father were to have answered this question, he could have said automobiles or airplanes, almost everything that is a part of the twentieth century. Change is not happening at a leisurely pace. It has become a stampede and as a result significant problems have occurred. Drug abuse, alcoholism, stress related illnesses, and in many cases the idea that bigger and quicker is better, and that hard work is not needed, and worst of all that morality is relative. I don’t mean this to be a sermon but there are laws we have been given that cannot be broken. These are the laws that God has given to us and at no time did he mean to have a friendly discussion over whether he was right or wrong.

I think my mother’s advise is important in these times, “Keep it simple.” Say, “Self, what is important–really important to me?” Most would respond with answers relating to God, our families, or our country. But how do you spend your time? Did you pray today? Tell your family you love them? Did you vote when you had the opportunity? Everything that detracts from what we value subtracts from life–makes your life more complicated.

I want you all to understand that each day I see beauty in all its glory. I see children. I see their smiles, hear their laughter, feel their innocence. Each day I tell myself my job is easy. Each day I hold up by hand and tell those near me to save the world. It sounds incredibly difficult, like bringing peace to the Middle East or eliminating prejudice. But, the beautiful part of it is that saving the world is easy. All you have to do is place a smile where there wasn’t one, plant hope where sadness lives, instill confidence where belief has been shaken, wipe a tear, or pat someone on the back for a job well done.

We must be careful of how we walk, for the footsteps we leave behind become the path future generations tread.

And I blame it on @rherdman for suggesting that I give it another try and I, once again, remember why I didn’t decide on using Thunderbird: importing address contacts.

I know it’s not that big of a deal, but it is. I use GMail and since my defection from .Mac mail, I’ve used Google’s mail service with really no complaints (much cheaper than .Mac mail). Up until a couple weeks ago, I would access GMail through the web interface, but I grew tired of all things web-based. So, I figured out how to use mutt and sendmail and fetchmail and I was a happy camper doing all thing CLI.

But, @rherdman said that he uses Thunderbird and I thought: “Heck, I’ll give it another try.” And I remember that not only did I find importing contacts to be a pain, but the fact that it lists Eudora as an import option made me slow-mo 5 years ago.

Sure, Thunderbird is open source and I should be patient (new site and new focus for 3.0), but if I am going to use a desktop app for my mail, it actually makes sense (I know, I will gasp too) to use Apple Mail (boo me off the stage). Contacts and such are system-wide, cocoa-blessed goodness and it is a workable program. Heck, I’m not a power user…I just need something that allows me to write/send/file emails. And, Apple Mail makes better sense.

And that’s primarly why I don’t use Firefox (another gasp): not all things Apple. Cocoa-apps make better sense instead of duct-taping everything together (I do use Camino on occasion, but Safari is plain too fast and too Appleish to ignore).

So, I might use Apple Mail again for a spell, but it might get in the way of why I decided against all-things GUI app and why I’ve been at the command line: effeciency. I whip through my mail via mutt and I’m done. I don’t save as much and I typically take care of any urgency immediately instead of letting the Inbox grow (zero is better).

Sorry Thunderbird: A late fall release isn’t working for me even though I gave you only 5 minutes of my time. Try you again at 3.0. Apple Mail, let’s take you for a spin. Mutt, I have a feeling you’ll be seeing me again very soon and I’ll reset that crontab.

Tonight the 7-year-old informed me that Mom said “We could get a four-legged guinea pig” and I told him that his mother “wasn’t right in the head.”

He thought that was funny and went and told Mom what I said and she laughed.

Don’t try and read into the 7-year-old’s compound adjective of “four-legged,” I think he just meant…well, I haven’t seen a three-legged one before. I am serious, though, about another varmint thing in the house. And when Lois informed me a couple minutes later that I could be the “good” guy and be the one that takes the credit for getting the hamster-thing, I still said that she wasn’t right in the head.

And she laughed and left for a meet-up with her mom and a friend.

We did like Weebie a lot and the boys did too. Weebie played with the cats and I think even starred in a few of our movies. But, like most Weebie-sized pets, he died–on Evan’s 8th birthday. It was a sad affair with Weebie losing his eye sight and then, technically dying on Evan’s birthday, but we sort of hid Weebie from view (or said that Weebie was resting) and then pronounced him dead the day after May 23rd.

I think my aversion to small things dying came at an early age…around the same age of Evan when Weebie died. Here’s how I explain the story in a piece I wrote in 2003 and I’ll set up the context by including the first two paragraphs of “Mickey Rat” and then the last three paragraphs.

View Larger MapWashoe Court two blocks into an arc at which we lived. There were a dozen houses to the left of us stretching to the McCann’s house that bordered Neotomas Avenue. To the right, were three houses: the Davis’ (who were Catholic which didn’t mean really anything to me except that their boys got to wear grey slacks and sweater to St. Eugene’s school), the Robinsons and the Germans (who remind me of the kids’ obsession with Radley house). Brad Frost and I once played ding-dong-ditch on the Germans, Brad tripped when we made the get away and broke his arm in the process. Washoe Court straightened out and ran parallel for about thirty feet and then made way for another court in which Esther, our babysitter for a few years, resided. Fred, her husband, rarely talked much and her sons didn’t torture us as much as taunted. Washoe Court then rejoined the paralleling and yielded two more houses until it reached Ne0tomas also. Brad Frost, my best friend of 6 years until we moved to the River, was our neighbor to the left; the Ramseys, the Smiths and a couple houses down were the Gradys. We didn’t play with those two blond wavy-haired boys much at all. That’s why it’s still so strange on what possessed them to make us hate them so much and we were a fairly mellow family.

Apparently we lived in a “custom-built” house that we designed and built by some lawyer who lived in it for about a year before selling it to us and moving to the City. I’m sure the neighborhood was happy to see a cardiologist with his young family move into 2546 Washoe Court. There would gatherings and barbeques and parties and some showing of the gathering wealth of the Judson family. I remember by father telling me how to grill a t-bone steak on our custom built, brick grill complete with a heating oven for things like potatoes below the grill behind a 2 x 3 foot black iron door. I also remember wheelbarrowing those bricks and heaving them off the 20 foot cliff in our backyard 8 years later due to age and atrophy and erosion…

It was around this time that the Jason, our half calico bred cat, wasn’t enough of the wild kingdom for my brother. We housed various lizards and snakes in our room, but we were quite fond of our rats which became so numerous that Mike built a shed in the back yard by the fence we shared with the Frosts. We housed the 100 or so rats in a large, Plexiglas aquarium and several cages. We feed them the usual pet store rodent food along with peanut butter which they would lick off your finger. My mother even donned a “Mickey Rat” t-shirt that she got at a flea market in Sebastopol and even though it might have been an editorial message toward the early Disney World, I always looked at it as sort of a family shirt celebrating our rats.

Brad and I are either riding our bikes or trying to throw rocks over the power lines that hovered the court when I hear my sister or brother yelling something. Stephany is running toward me and I come with her, half running in slow motion. We’re headed toward the shed and Mike walks past us looking down. I feel death and I see images of saws with blood and white and red rats with unblinking eyes and mouths agape and heads with no bodies and I turn and ask Stephany. She says Mike heard it was the Grady boys and my mom comes out and is upset and we’re half happy because we never did liked the Grady boys but more than that we ask ourselves “Why?”

The Judson mob, all four of us, led by my mother, head to the gated front yard of the Gradys drab green house and my mother is talking/shouting and the offenders are summoned by their mother and admit to the crime and I find out later that for their punishment the Grady boys are put on restriction for one day. We clean up the crime scene and make the unanimous decision to let the remaining 11 rats go free. I remember it was the next day and in sort of ceremonial fashion, all of us, Mike, Stephany, and I make a speech and then set our pets free. And I remember the fog and the rats heading down the edge of the incline that lead toward the wilderness of the Santa Rosa Creek. We stood there for a while and then made our way back into the house past the shed and what was left of my father’s brick grill.

I think we’re safe if we just stick to one gineau pig. It looks like the boys will be getting a living Easter present.

It was given to me from a former colleague’s husband who worked in DC when the love-years of NoChildLeftBehind were being birthed in the aisles of Congress. NCLB was the thing to rally behind, leaving no one behind. And yet, even though some knew that the emphasis on high-stakes testing was bad, the idea of NCLB was something to believe in (or vote in).

And I’ve worn my NCLB lanyard to secure my ID picture for these years until the day that the act gets repealed and torn apart because of what it has done to US education: trying to measure all peoples in all places the same way. And the result is to reward the rich schools and punish everyone else. And when, as I explain to some people who let me explain, NCLB is no longer the reigning educational law of this land, I will stop wearing my NCLB lanyard.

It’s been the albatross around my neck and an editorial statement for the past years.

But, I have a confession to make: NCLB has been great for education.

I know, I said wtf to myself when I realized it too. So, I’ll state it again: NCLB has been great for education.

It hit me two weeks ago when I was running, I think, along the canal in Goshen. And I was thinking about the part in John Stossel’s “Tampering with Nature” when one guest was telling us why all the Green Peace activists were trying to scare us with the images of polar bears and ice melting. And he said it was that if there was fear, then people (or lawmakers) will allocate money for that cause…lots of money. And then it hit me: Same goes for NCLB.

Because of NCLB, the overall public perception of US education is that our kids are struggling to keep up with the world economy (and, btw, look how horrible the US economy is). And if our students are struggling and the teachers are struggling and the schools are struggling, then something needs to be done right now…or else! So, let’s look at these charts that show how horribly our students are doing, how badly we compare to every other nation in the universe (of, don’t worry about where these stats came from or if they are measuring accurate data). The DATA shows how bad it is.

Now, enter NCLB and we have created a lot of jobs for people to advise schools how to run their educational centers more like an efficient business. Textbook companies are cranking out an incredible amount of “technology-based” software to help your students use technology to achieve state standards and pass that qualifying exam.

And, let’s allocate lots of money for teachers to go to conferences and for staff development. (Which, probably, is the reason why I get to go to a cool conference in Georgia in May).

NCLB emphasized the need and now we have funds for lots of stuff to help schools get better. And that’s my confession. For I’m not sure if there wasn’t a perceived crisis in education, that schools would have received the money to do some good things.

Unfortunately, we have paid a lot of money to outside experts whom we will dub “guru” and smile and take in all that they might have to say so that schools can “get better.” Tomorrow, I will sit in on one such presentation for a nationally-known company whom people swear by as being the way to fix schools. And I think, unlike good business, that this company does not have a money back guarantee on their program. My feeling is that, like most educational reforms, experts are willing to give advice for a large fee and a nice PowerPoint presentation; but like a Rainmaker, will not be around when the results fail to meet the promises.

Next slide.