Good Monday Moanin’ – Sept. 28, 2015
Class clowns, beauty queens, personal privacy & dead relatives
By Jeff Salisbury JeffreyLSalisbury@gmail.com
First off, being a child once… and a class clown, I speak from experience. Plus I was in therapy for several years.
Let me just say this: All children act… they act OUT… or they act IN.
Only a handful just ride the waves of their households and experiences in their families-of-origin day in and day out with no response at all.
Unless of course they are being medicated.
Life is just not that copacetic.
That said… this was an interesting read:
Class Clowns: Discover What’s Behind the Behavior
By Richard M Cash, Ed.D
Just about every classroom has one: the class clown. During middle school and high school, I was that dreaded jokester. In one of my classes, I convinced my classmates to follow my actions during instruction. At 10 a.m. I dropped my pencil—so did everyone else. At 10:05 a.m. I “sneezed”—so did everyone else. At 10:10 a.m. I yawned—so did everyone else. You get the picture. Every five minutes I performed some sort of “stunt,” and my classmates followed along. It didn’t take long for the teacher to catch on and remove me from class. I got what I wanted—a pass out of class!
Class clowns can be acting out for several different reasons. It’s important to learn where the behavior is coming from and try to negotiate with the student to either allow time for or eliminate the behavior. In my case, I didn’t want to be in class. The biggest reason was I didn’t like the subject and felt the teacher wasn’t making it engaging. Below, I’ve defined four types of class clowns with ideas for dealing with the behavior.
Read more here – www.freespiritpublishingblog.com/2015/09/15/how-to-handle-a-class-clown/
Oh the headlines the headlines the headlines…
The View mocks Miss Colorado and her monologue
The View Co-Hosts Facing Backlash After Mocking Miss America Nurse Monologue
I forced myself and went online… found and watched the candidate’s monologue… then I watched that portion of The View chat-fest which apparently opens each program … maybe it’s a female thing because I thought the choice of a “monologue” as a “talent” was highly unusual too and worthy of some female to female “ribbing” especially since Miss Colorado is a trained pianist. That was puzzling to suddenly switch talents in the middle of the whole contest. As for Behar she is known for and always uses sarcasm in her own comedic “monologues” – she’s a female Don Rickles. Only one of the other women had even seen the pageant – one, Raven Simone says she never watches pageants and consider anyone woman who participates demeans all women. Another said she rarely watches because having women “strut around a stage with skimpy bathing suits and their hoo-hahs hanging out” disgusts her. Clearly some nurses found it disgusting that the young woman who just graduated from nursing school as valedictorian of her class was being a bit mocked. She does hold a nursing degree and has volunteered in a nursing home and did have an encounter with an Alzheimer’s patient which was the basis for the monologue. That much is true.
What’s the phrase from Shakespeare? “Much ado about nothing.” Or as I noted, maybe it’s a female thing.
If you care to… here’s the link to read the “Open Letter to Joy Behar” http://accordingtokateri.com/2015/09/15/an-open-letter-to-joy-behar/
This is happening all over the country…
And parents must speak up… your child’s and your family’s personal data is being sold to the highest bidder.
Opt out of high-stakes tests! And it’s not just high stakes tests… it’s even tracking of apps your children are using on school district issued iPads and laptops and PCs —
Privacy Concerns Don’t Curb Use of Classroom Apps
Parents and lawmakers want more safeguards to prevent exposure of student data.
Laptops, tablets and smartphones each year play a more prominent role in schools, despite lingering concerns that private companies and government agencies are using such devices to collect massive amounts of data that can be used to profile students.
While chalkboards and paper flashcards were once mainstays for teachers in kindergarten through high school, education software has quickly changed the way children learn. Smartphone-carrying kids download mobile apps featuring learning assistants or project programs that can interact with a white board screen at the front of a classroom. At least half of kindergarten through high school teachers use a mobile app, website or digital game to teach in their classrooms, according to a report from the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt education firm.
But that convenience comes with a risk. Education apps and programs track students’ every response, developing profiles based on the answers they got right and the subjects with which they’re uncomfortable. Activists say this fact is not as widely known as it should be, and they want more accountability for the makers of education software, given that many apps for the general public sell data to third-party “data brokers” for unspecified uses.
“Any online app that a teacher signs up for a kid will collect their personal information, and depending on the state you live in that data can be shared from one company to another in an endless chain,” says Rachael Stickland, co-chairwoman of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. “We don’t know how it’s being used, but the enforcement and transparency mechanisms of these apps are insufficient.” Read more here – http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/09/08/privacy-concerns-dont-curb-use-of-classroom-apps
Now this IS crazy!
Public charter schools board in Ohio hires a for-profit management company and authorizes the company to use public tax dollars (per pupil allowance) to purchase school equipment and other property. You know… things like books, desks, tables, chairs, computers, copy machines, phones and so on. At some point the boards of 10 charter schools decided they wanted to go a different route – change management companies. The company “White Hat” (nice name eh?) tells the boards, “That’s fine. But we own everything.” The 10 charter schools had to close but not before their boards sued White Hat. It didn’t go well.
Ohio: Charter School Equipment Belongs to Private Manager, Not the Public
Dr. Diane Ravitch writes: The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that property purchased by the for-profit charter management corporation White Hat using public funds belongs to White Hat, not the public. I’m no lawyer, but this decision says to me that the schools’ stuff does not belong to the public, but to a private entrepreneur. I take that to be an acknowledgement that White Hat privatized the assets of the school. More evidence that charter schools are not public schools. If they were, their stuff purchased with public funds would belong to the public.
Read more here: www.dianeravitch.net/2015/09/15/ohio-charter-school-equipment-belongs-to-private-manager-not-the-public/
And here too: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/09/15/charter-school-equipment-ruling.html
Think that cannot happen in Michigan?
Think again. Former member of the Michigan House and now an attorney in private practice John C. Stewart confirmed with me it can. “People are just starting to realize this,” said Stewart who intends himself to run for the State Board of Education in 2016. He agrees that a Michigan charter-school authorizer and local board could easily find itself in similar if not identical circumstances. Annually, Michigan tax payers send at least a billion… yes… billion with a b… dollars into charter school coffers across the state. And POOF… the money is gone and all that equipment stays in the hands of the school management companies.
What a racket the for-profit charter school management companies have going don’t you think?
We already KNOW what works in our schools… happy, healthy and well-prepared students who come from happy, healthy and well-adjusted (preferably) two-parent households where education is highly valued. And then those happy and healthy students show up daily fully prepared and motivated to learn the lessons provided by happy, healthy and well-prepared school employees from bus drivers to cooks and custodians and classroom teachers and aides and building administrators who all work in modern, up-to-date schools stocked with the best textbooks, electronic devices and other equipment. And when they graduate they are ready to confidently face any and all challenges they might face regardless of how the world looked 13 years previous.
On a lighter not… my hobby is searching for dead relatives…
And thanks to the work of a cousin of mine, I happened upon an interesting “presidential” family tree research discovery…
27th President of the United States and 10th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court William Howard Taft (1857 – 1930) is my 3rd cousin 4x removed
Louisa Maria Torrey (1827 – 1907) mother of William Howard Taft
Susan Trask Holman (1784- 1849) mother of Louisa Maria Torrey
Jonathan Holman (1732 – 1814) father of Susan Trask Holman
Soloman Holman (1697 – 1785) father of Jonathan Holman
Lydia Holman (1745 – 1771) daughter of Soloman Holman
John W. Harwood III (1763 – ) son of Lydia Holman
Rufus Harwood (1790 – 1872) son of John W. Harwood III
Rufus Holman Wilforth Harwood (1828 – 1905) son of Rufus Harwood
Holman Rufus Harwood (1863 – 1940) son of Rufus Holman Wilforth Harwood
Harry George Harwood (1892 – 1962) son of Holman Rufus Harwood
Ardith Elaine “Ardy” Harwood (1925 – 2014) daughter of Harry George Harwood
Jeffrey Louis “Jeff” Salisbury son of Ardy.
###
Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" 