Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Covering the cop shop

Posted: September 14, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Over the past few years, my students’ attitude toward the police have changed dramatically. Even though a few of the students still profess some trust in cops, the vast majority have a distinctly hostile attitude, primarily based on recent reports about brutality rather than first-hand experiences.

“It doesn’t take much to see the absolute racial injustice with the police, so, if I were to cover a story with the cops, calling out that racial injustice might seem biased because I would be highlighting the negative, but it really is just shining some light on the cruelty and brutality that has been caused by the police,” one Black woman wrote on the class discussion board. 

A white woman responded: “I hear a lot about the ‘bad apples’ metaphor or people stating that there are good cops. My question is, if there are these good apples, what’s eventually going to happen to them when they are hanging around the bad apples? You turn into the people you surround yourself with. Again, the whole system is corrupt. There are no good cops in a racist system.”

Interestingly, a Black woman from an affluent neighborhood was one of a few students who defended the police. “My attitude towards cops is respectful. In general….I think highly of police because they have made it their purpose in life to protect others and to uphold the law. I know that at the end of the day if I am in trouble, I am calling 911 to help me.” 

Not only is it troubling that many of my students don’t respect the police, but somehow the budding journalists think they can get past their biases if they had to report about crime. Nearly all of the students think they should be fair and balanced in their reporting except when it comes to the police.

One woman justified her bias. “I would be reporting on police-adjacent topics through the lens of historically documented racism, corruption, and hyper-toxic masculinity,” she wrote. 

Historically, cops and journalists haven’t mixed well together. Cops don’t trust reporters to get the story right; journalists think the police try to cover stuff up. 

Now, however, a new chasm has occurred—one that I have been unable to bridge despite my best efforts. In the past, I’d bring in a police officer to talk to the class. But few students no longer want to listen.

Assorted Under the Fedora Thoughts, Realities, Francis, Drones, Speech and Ice Cream

Posted: September 14, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

If I go into some restaurants in some places they will demand I prove that I am vaccinated but if I go to the same place and insist I am a woman they won’t dare question it.

This weekend Pope Francis encouraged people to encounter Christ in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. My first thought was “How nice it is that Francis is saying something Catholic” but as I considered it further it was even better because it highlighted one of the few advantages of his papacy.

There are more than a few people who pay attention to Francis because he is at best, not kind and at worst antagonistic to the faithful. If Francis’ suggested gets any of them into Eucharistic Adoration it’s a big gain.

Let Francis get them into the door and I have faith Christ can do the rest.

Given the new information that Joe Biden’s Administration apparently killed a family that had nothing to do with the attack to look tough at the bombing in Afghanistan this tweet of mine after his Administration claimed to have hit an ISIS terrorist planner is looking pretty good.

My degree of shock at this deception is underwhelming.

Ben Stein has been banned from youtube for a week for questioning the upcoming vaccine mandate. He wrote a piece on the subject titled: I See Free Speech Disappearing Before Our Very Eyes.

He is of course correct but I’ve got to tell you, every move of censorship is an opportunity for some businessman with balls to move forward to fill the void left by big tech censors.

For those who say it’s not possible I have three letters A-O-L

Finally yesterday I went to Eucharistic Adoration and as I was getting ready to leave saw an eldely friend of my mother that I had not seen since COVID struck.

It did my heart good to see her and we talked a bit before I had to leave but the real funny thing is this.

I’ve 58 years old, I’m married 33 years, I’m old and I’m balding, but this lady still give me $5 every time she sees me and tells me to get my wife Ice Cream.

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.

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