Archive for March, 2021

Changing how we work

Posted: March 2, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Like more and more Americans, I decided to leave the big city and move to the hinterlands, where I can work via computer and save on taxes and housing costs.

Three years ago, I had proposed to my employer, Temple University, that I teach only online. I have taught online classes since 2005 and was good at it.

Unfortunately, my supervisor fought the plan. I challenged the decision throughout the bureaucracy, including a decision to join the teachers’ union. I finally got to teach one class a semester online after I filed a disability claim because of a bad back.

Fast forward to the pandemic. I was advising my colleagues and my college on how to teach online effectively.

Since I only have a few years left before I retire, my wife and I decided to move from Philadelphia to Muncy, Pennsylvania, a town of about 2,400 people in the north-central part of the state.

That move saves us about $1,000 a month on city taxes. Housing is half the cost for twice the space.

Moreover, research has demonstrated that students learn just as effectively online as they do in person. I’ve found that the discussion is far better online than in person because students don’t feel anxious about talking when they’re outside the classroom setting.

I teach asynchronously, which means there aren’t any silly Zoom meetings. I post prepackaged videos and study materials to a website. Students can work on the material at their own pace and refer back to materials they find challenging.

So far, Temple and other universities have not lowered the price for online classes—a reduction that should happen because virtual learning requires fewer buildings, less maintenance, and only a slightly higher increase in technological assistance.

I’m not alone in my desire to continue working from home. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly a quarter of all Americans worked from home during the pandemic. A new Bucknell University Freeman College of Management survey also found that workers over 40 preferred telework. In contrast, younger workers are more likely to return to in-person work when possible. For more information, see https://www.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/college_of_management/covid-19_telework_study_report.pdf

The survey of 400 people reported other interesting results:

–67% of those surveyed said telework helped improve the quality of their work. 
 –61% noted a productivity improvement.
 –60% said they performed their jobs better.

Coupled with the savings I and others made, I am more than happy to stay at home and continue teaching online. 

Obviously, some industries cannot be restructured for online-only work. But rethinking how we work has been at least one good effect of the pandemic.

Just a thought

Posted: March 2, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

For some reason this thought came to me at work last night

I’d bet real money that if you got in a time machine and traveled back to 1902 and told suffragette in the US and England that a century after women getting the vote you would see the following supported largely by the votes of women:

Gay Marriage
Transgenderism
Abortion

along with out of wedlock births becoming the norm and the nuclear family on it’s last legs and a large rejection of Christianity by the population I suspect they would have called you an alarmist.

And if they said those same folk would not be willing to define “woman” they would have laughed out loud at you.

Report from Louisiana: Teacheritis

Posted: March 1, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,
Photo by Dan Dimmock on Unsplash

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – I have about three months left in the classroom until I retire. I hope I can make it. It’s close…so close, yet seems so far away.

I have loved teaching; I’ve loved my kids, but I am so done with administrative decisions that devalue the human being in front of that classroom. I know every single job has its drawbacks and there are those ridiculous things that irritate a person everywhere they go. I’m not alone.

I am sure that part of my current negative attitude is more due to the fact that I’m about to be able to walk away than that my workplace is unbearable, because it is in no way unbearable. I love my admins in my school, my co-workers, my students, and my classroom itself.

And if this was a normal year, without Covid, it would certainly be better. But, y’all. I am exhausted just thinking about these next few weeks. This has been the most difficult year of my career.

Tell me if I’m being petty or ridiculous. It won’t hurt my feelings.

I have to be in my classroom or on duty to supervise kids at 6:55. I have first block planning, so I don’t have a class until 9:05, but that first block planning is often taken over by meetings, trainings, and on rare occasions covering another class. We will give the ACT test in two weeks and I won’t have a planning period then, but, mostly I have first-block planning.

My first class is at 9:05 and runs until 10:40. Next class, 10:45 – 12:15. At 12:15 students have lunch and beginning this week they will eat in my classroom as we attempt to make-up those snow days. I am required to have some instructional video or activity for them during this lunch period. And I must, of course, be in the room to supervise. Then my last class comes in at 12:40 – 2:15.

I have to go from 9:05-2:15 without a restroom break, unless I call someone, anyone, to come relieve me for a minute.

Not so bad, you think? Right? Hey, at least your day ends at 2:15, right?  No, not right.

Papers must be graded, lessons prepared, presentations done, copies made for the next day. Grades must be entered into the online gradebook, and then you have parent conferences or calls to make. There are the Behavior Tracking Forms to be filled out, emails to be read and responded to, and other random paperwork that comes across my desk. Time must be made to meet with or check on my mentor students. And don’t forget the cleaning and sanitizing because of Covid that needs to be done to the computers and desks.

Truly, I’m exhausted.

I honestly know on some level that it’s because I know the end is nigh, but really, it’s so easy to feel like the tasks just keep piling on. Nothing is ever taken away, just more piled on.

Okay, so I’m venting. 

I think it’s really best that I retire now, at 25 years, rather than go to 30 years for a little more money. I don’t think I have the tolerance or the energy to do all of this. I’m not sure I’m giving my students my very best anymore.

And that breaks my heart.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport, at Medium, and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Kurt Schlichter: A Great Piece That misses the point

Posted: March 1, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Bernard, if the right people don’t have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it!

Yes Prime Minster: Power to the People 1988

I like Kurt Schlichter. He’s a fun guy to be with a great writer and one of the worst things about missing CPAC is not seeing him.

But I have to disagree with the premise of his latest piece titled: This Administration Is Already a Failure: A sample:

 Biden has managed to disappoint the Left, he was always going to disappoint the Right, and he probably disappointed his wife when he failed to call her doctor as she handed him his morning mush bowl.

Like everything Kurt writes it a great read and you should check it out but his argument is based on an incorrect presumption.

If you work under the assumption that the Biden Administration (Reminder we don’t say “Joe Biden” because he’s no more in charge these days than I am) had a goal to produce a prosperous America while rewarding Americans that voted for him by that standard this Administration is an abject failure.

But that’s not the goal of this administration or the reason why so many people worked so hard to steal this election and/or cover up its theft.

The actual goal for said people is to ensure that the members of the elite DC swamp and their friends and family were restored to the government / special interest gravy train ensuring them a comfortable life full of wealth & status at the taxpayer expense that was interrupted by four years of the Trump Administration

Under that standard not only has this administration been a smashing success but I suspect you will see many more successes along those lines over the next 47 months.

Unexpectedly of course

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