Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Report from Louisiana: Canned Curriculum Fatigue

Posted: September 13, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin  

SHREVEPORT – I highly recommend retirement.

I retired from the classroom after twenty-five years this past spring and could not be happier about it. Not everyone is cut out for retirement, or so I hear, but so far, I am loving it.

Part of the equation is that it was definitely time for me to leave the classroom; Common Core scripted lesson plans were not for me. My very nature rebelled against the canned slides, the prewritten questions, and the dull activities, the endless annotation of a “text.” I railed against all of this for the last five years of my career. You don’t realize what a burden this sort of thing places on you until you get away from it, until you strip away those bindings.

As younger, newer teachers come into the profession, this method will be the only one they know. They won’t know any other way to design lessons because they’ll never have to actually create a lesson. And the rebels, the old guard, like me, we are leaving in droves.

The result will be students that all learn the same material the same exact way.

That makes me sad, but blissfully happy that I am no longer a part of it.

When school began this fall, I thought I would miss it.  I do not. As much as I loved my students, it was time for me to go. The boring, canned lessons create more classroom disruptions. A bored kid is going to either go to sleep, pull out his phone, or act out. I no longer had the energy to battle this.

I worry a little about what is happening in education today but not so much anymore that I think I can do anything about it. I used to believe I could make a difference, that I could change things. Truth is, I could make a difference in my little room with my own students, but that was it. The future of education is in the hands of the big guys like Pearson, like Bill Gates…people with agendas and companies that write tests and publish books.

It isn’t about what is good for the kid anymore, I don’t believe.

To those teachers still in there fighting the good fight, you have my support and my best wishes.

Meanwhile, I’ll be enjoying retired life. I get up when I want to, I don’t have to wait until a bell rings to go to the restroom or to each lunch. Lunch can be whatever time and last for however long I wish. I can spend my days in a hammock reading a book, at my computer writing a masterpiece, planning delicious meals for my family. I can travel on a whim. I can spend the entire day sitting on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin drinking a beer and watching the boats.

And for me, that’s much better than standing before a classroom of bored students reading a canned slide and having them annotate a dull passage for the third time because some suit in some office thinks that’s how kids learn.

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

9/12 Thoughts Under the Fedora

Posted: September 12, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I’ve never liked 9/11 ceremonies. It always seemed that it was celebrating the enemies victory. My thought was we should crush and destroy them first and then when they are finished remember the day, particularly those who died in PA fighting back.

I accidently ended up at a 9/11 prayer service on Friday where the church that I go to Friday Morning Mass had their school kids file in for a service as a group of us were praying a Rosary. We were allowed to stay but frankly I wish I didn’t. 9/11 was painted as more a natural disaster done by people for no rational reason instead of the deliberate attack that it was and furthermore while they remembered those who died not a word for the soldiers who fought for us to prevent its repeating. It’s as if they were grooming these kids to be victims. I expect this from a public school but not a Catholic one.

One thing I mentioned in the last paragraph needs to be repeated and emphasized. For all the critiques of Afghanistan and Iraq the primary goal of both of those conflicts (at least in my mind) was to prevent another such attack here. Instead of launching attacks against civilian targets in the US for two decades terrorists concentrated on fighting the best Army the world has ever seen and for the most part dying in the attempt to beat them. Say what you will abut the various decision made but that primary goal was maintained for twenty years.

Like many others I would like to hear a clarification of the remarks of President Bush concerning domestic extremists specifying exactly who he means. Given he was using the same language as the MSM I’m not surprised a lot of people are angry at him, but unlike others I don’t regret my votes for him at all. He was the right man at the right time and as per the goals I outlined above left both Afghanistan & Iraq in a condition where they were in no position to repeat or support such an attack. It took Obama to give away the victory in Iraq and now Biden is dong the same in Afghanistan. Poor remarks not withstanding if Bush had still been in charge neither of these things would have happened.

Finally I’d like to say I was shocked by articles going on about Islamophobia yesterday during the same period that we have seen slaughter & slavery in Afghanistan as soon as the Islamists took command, a slaughter that if nothing else confirms that any “phobia” concerning Islam is well founded. Alas I could not be surprised. If the 40,000 plus people killed by radical Islamists since 9/11/01, the 219 attacks in 23 countries last month killing over 1500 and the 116 killed in attacks this month doesn’t catch the media’s eye why would I expect the slaughter in Afghanistan involving us to do so particularly on 9/11.

Four Vaccine Mandate Thoughts (and one Tom Brady thought)Under the Fedora

Posted: September 11, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I came home from work after midnight Friday at 12:35 AM to see the Biden Administration vaccine mandate story (I see no news or net during my work hours, I highly recommend this btw) and immediately thought: The goal here is to generate a violent reaction or even an assassination attempt in order to improve the Democrat party’s poll numbers in general and Joe Biden’s poll numbers in particular. I suspect if we don’t take the bait (and we shouldn’t) you’ll see a false flag of some type.

During my 2nd break at work I’ve been reading Albert Bushnell Hart’s Essentials in American History and I literally just got to the chapter of Fort Sumter. Hart talks about the cultural differences and believes of the two sides going into the Civil War and I couldn’t help but be stuck at the parallels to today. I submit and suggest that the efforts to purge the military of conservatives by this administration has been in anticipation of using them to enforce actions against Americans. I know how that sounds but a lot of things we might have thought unbelievable just ten months ago have proved to be under the Biden Administration to be possible.

The real giveaway in the mandate to companies & to Federal Workers is the exemption of the Postal Service from said mandates. If this was a public health crisis you would not exempt a group of people who have daily contact which the American public to a greater degree than any other group.

Of course the day Kamala Harris declared to the world that she would not take any “Trump Vaccine” was the final nail in the coffin of a non-politized national health policy. On the day when we face a disease that kills like Smallpox or Ebola the price of this will be paid.

Update: A Biden admin official now says the postal service IS included in the mandate via OSHA not via the EO.

I’m curious to see what actually happens

Something I think is worth stressing. I think it’s fairly well established that at least in the short term the various Vaccines (or as I would more accurately call them “COVID SHOTS” as they are more like flu shots than actual vaccines) are safe and effective. If they were not given that there are about 100 million or more Americans who have taken them we would be seeing millions of people with bad side effects instead of thousands.

That being said it’s also well established that:

  1. The survival rates of COVID are extremely high
  2. The vast majority of COVID patients who are not in high risk groups will not die from this virus
  3. The vaccine does not confer an immunity from either getting or spreading COVID

Furthermore we do not know the long term affects of said vaccine and that if you’ve already had COVID and fought it off your own immune system will already have the antibodies to keep it away, in fact the whole point of any vaccine is to produce antibodies that your system is not.

Given these facts it is perfectly reasonable for people to choose to get the vaccine if they are

  1. In an at risk or high risk group
  2. Feel safer getting the vaccine
  3. decide the cost benefit ratio favors getting the vaccine

And it is perfectly reasonable for people to choose not to get the vaccine if

  1. They are not in a high risk group
  2. Are more vulnerable to the known side effects
  3. Decide the cost benefit ratio favors not getting the vaccine
  4. Want to wait a few more years as the knowledge of and thus the Science will improve

The very fact we even have any type of shot available is a triumph that is worth celebrating and if the powers that be hadn’t turn COVID in general and this Vaccine in particular into a political football people would be making would be making good choices based on these considerations and celebrated for it.

Finally Is it safe to say that we have now established that while there will in fact be a day when Tom Brady is unable to perform at the level of an elite quarterback in the NFL that barring injury said day will not come this season.

This silly Federal mandate is creating potentially deadly local confusion

Posted: September 9, 2021 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The Obama administration set an all time record for issuing federal mandates which unconstitutionally reached down to the local level.  One of which, the renumbering of highway exits, is just now being implemented on the local level here in my state.  On the surface this mandate seems rather innocuous.  In reality this mandate is creating a lot of confusion.  Over the labor day weekend this confusion had the potential of killing someone in my town.

The town I live in is bisected by a major highway and in my town there are three exits from that highway.  Ever since that highway was built fifty years ago the exits were numbered 1, 2 and 3.  Now they are numbered 2, 3, and 5 because the Obama administration decreed that all exits are now numbered by the mile markers they are at.

Renumbering exits after fifty years is causing a lot of confusion for town residents and motorists which can be comical.  This renumbering is causing a great deal of confusion amongst the police and fire department in my town and this confusion could potentially have killed someone over this past weekend.  I heard it unfold over my police scanner.

Instead of informing the units that an accident happened at a certain exit or the best access is this number exit the dispatcher for the police and fire departments now tell all units that “the incident is at the new exit number which was this old exit”.  This takes extra time which is not good during an emergency.  The dispatchers try real hard to use this system for every call but they do not always.  Neither do the police or fire units.  Sometimes the dispatchers use just the old exit numbers and sometimes the new numbers.  The police and fire units do the same.  This has caused a great deal of confusion since the exits were renumbered a month ago.

This past Sunday evening there were two major roll over accidents on the highway at roughly the same time.  Police and fire units were called in from two surrounding towns.  Dispatchers and emergency units kept mixing up old and new exit numbers.  Units were sent to the wrong exits.  This created delays in response time.  This could have resulted in someone’s death, luckily it did not. 

Because everyone is so used to the old system after fifty years and during a stressful emergency situations people tend to fall back on old habits I can see this happening for years despite having top notch dispatchers and first responders in my town.  This could easily be happening in towns and cities across this country because of s silly federal mandate.

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