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Report from Louisiana: on Reading and Education

Posted: February 3, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – With the resignation of Louisiana State Superintendent of Education John White, effective in March, many Louisiana educators are closely watching the process and the candidates for the post.

Personally, I shed no tears over John White’s exit. Under his tenure we have moved into Louisiana’s version of Common Core of which I have been a vocal opponent.

I am on year twenty-four right now, in my career, and plan to do one more and then leave the profession.  I have no desire to teach from a canned, scripted curriculum that assumes one size fits all in the classroom. The education profession has become something I no longer recognize; it might be better, it might not, but it’s left me behind.

As a secondary ELA teacher, it hurts my soul that my students no longer read novels. In tenth grade, only the PreAP, or honors kids, are assigned an entire novel and that is a summer reading assignment. In the classroom, my curriculum is based around two “anchor texts,” Macbeth, and then The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. We do actually read all of Macbeth but with Lacks, we only read the Prologue. We are required to read many, many scientific articles about ethics. We read a couple of short stories. We do a whole lot of graphic organizers.

So, it is my hope that the new Superintendent of Education will put an end to this nonsense and bring back actual textbooks rather than copied articles. But, it is also true that the new superintendent could double down and make this all worse.

The one thing that has made all of this bearable to me is that I am still fighting for my students. A couple of years ago I started a classroom library and in my classroom every child reads for fifteen minutes at the beginning of ever class period. Their reading is from a book of their choice and I’ve built a nice collection of both fiction and non-fiction.

My school is a high-poverty school and is Title 1. Most of my kids are not on grade level and many don’t have books at home. And you know what? The buy-in for my reading initiative has been awesome! It is pure joy to me to look out at my kids during that fifteen minutes and see every kid buried in a book, reading.  I hold them accountable only by their Friday reading response journals: every Friday each student writes a letter to me about what they’ve been reading all week. I often respond back, with a couple of sentences, and we have a sort of dialogue about their books.

Whenever a student finishes a book they’ve really enjoyed, they tell their friends and through word of mouth, interest spreads.

I now have students that have left my class and moved on come back to my room asking to check out a book. We have a school library as well, and some go there. But many of these kids now trust me to recommend a book they will like, or they know that I will order the next book in a series they’re reading. We’ve built a relationship around books. It’s pure joy!

I started out building this classroom library by going to thrift shops and pillaging every Little Free Library near me. I went to garage sales and estate sales. I ordered a lot of books with my own money, I wrote a grant and a local television station gave me money to buy books. I used my own blog and social media accounts to beg for donations and I set up an Amazon Wish List. Books flooded in. I was amazed! People I didn’t even know were sending me books. Many came from readers of this blog!  I still have my Amazon Wish List and I currently have a Donor’s Choose project running to add current titles to my shelves that kids have been asking for.

When I retire I’ve promised to donate my library to two other teachers in my department.

I will be closely watching the search for our next Superintendent of Education. It is my sincere hope that he/she also believes in independent reading, student choice, and teacher autonomy. Teachers know their students and know what they need. And what we don’t need is a one size fits all scripted curriculum implemented with an iron fist.

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

The Brady Jimmy G Debate is Over 3 Strikes and You’re Out!

Posted: February 3, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

For three years on Boston Sports Radio we have heard caller after caller excoriate the Patriots for keeping Tom Brady while Trading Jimmy Garoppolo to the 49ers.

We were told this despite two trips to the Superbowl and a single defensive stop from it being two rather than just one Superbowl win.

Well this year Tom Brady ended his streak of three straight superbowl appearances unless you count the following ad.

and Jimmy G and the 49ers were taking on Patrick Mahomes who Brady had beaten the previous year in Kansas City to advance to the Superbowl.

The game was pretty even until the 3rd quarter when the 49ers took a 20-10 lead and when Patrick Mahomes threw an interception with 12:05 seconds to go Jimmy G was given a golden opportunity.

With a two score lead in the bank all he had to do is lead a team whose strength is primarily the run down the field and eat up time and when on the 1st play of the drive the 49ers ran for six yards it looked like this would be the case and a short pass later, with 11:18 to go it looked like the game was over.

Alas after a one yard run on 1st down Jimmy G was given two changes to get the 1st down for the 49ers. He failed forced out of bounds on a three yard scramble and then throwing incomplete forcing a punt with Nine minutes and one second to go, only managing to eat three minutes.

Strike One.

That was more time than it took Patrick Mahomes to drive down the field and score a touchdown for Kansas city making it 20-17 with 6:17 to go

But even so it was not a problem. Jimmy G had the lead and the ball with 6:17 to go. He was in the same spot as he had been five minutes earlier. All he had to do was get a few 1st downs and Kansas city would not be able to stop him from winning the game.

he had a two score lead so no matter what happened he would have another chance to put it away and when the 49ers ran for five yards on 1st down it looked like once again they would be in great shape to finish the chiefs off.

However instead the ball was entrusted to Jimmy G who managed to throw two incomplete passes giving the ball back to the Chiefs having run less than a minute off the clock.

Strike Two.

Now Patrick Mahomes had the ball and five minutes and eighteen seconds to take the lead and he did so with a five yard pass to finish a seven play 65 yard drive whose only fault was leaving two minutes and sixty seconds for the 49ers to come back from a 24-20 deficit.

Now here was Jimmy G’s chance to be Tom Brady. He had 2:50 seconds on the clock and three time outs. If he could drive the team down for a touchdown his two previous failures would be completely forgotten and he would get the win and his 3rd Superbowl ring only this time it would not be a gift from the greatest quarterback who had ever lived.

He started well driving to the 49 Yard line of Kansas City with a 1st and ten with 1:56 to go and four chances to pass his way into football immortality or at least four chances to advance ten yards and keep moving. The Result?

  1. Incomplete
  2. Incomplete
  3. Incomplete
  4. sack

To add insult to injury Kansas city only needed two running plays to turn their 4 point lead into an 11 point one and the ball once again was in Jimmy G’s hands to try and pull off a miracle, the result?

  1. Incomplete
  2. Interception

Jimmy G was 0-5 with one sack and one interception in his last 5 pass attempts furthermore with the game on the line during three 4th quarter drives he was a combined 3-9 for 36 yards and one sack. 3-11 with a sack and an interception if you count the forlorn hope.

Now I ask each one of you who has been calling WEEI or the Sports Hub or any other radio station for the last three years one simple question.

Do any of you seriously believe that if Tom Brady had been at Quarterback on those three drives that he would have failed to come through at least once?

Lets ask the chiefs

3 3rd and 10’s three first downs against this same Kansas City team only one year removed from the Superbowl win.

Or how about one more example. With a lead in hand last year and a chance to ice the game in last year’s Superbowl

Now don’t get me wrong. Jimmy G is a good quarterback and it would not surprise me to see him once again with a chance to win a Superbowl.

But can we finally stop hearing Patriots fans cry over the Patriots trading away Jimmy G and insisting that the Patriots would have done at least as good or better?

Answering John Nolte’s Point

Posted: February 2, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Yesterday I discovered John Nolte’s piece: Nolte: Impeachment Proves Nancy Pelosi Is an Idiot which is in stark contrast to my piece yesterday titled: The Left is Damn Lucky to Have Pelosi.

I read the Nolte’s piece and thought his points needed to be answered if I was going to dispute them.

First: Impeaching the President with No Crime

Impeachment wasn’t Pelsoi’s idea. With the Mueller report being a dud and the progressive caucus insisting on impeachment the idea is to glam onto something fast. This was it

Second: Impeaching the President for Asking for a Judicial Ruling

Pelosi not only knew that impeachment was a loser, but knew that the longer it went on the worse it would be. Litigation would only drag out the damage.

Third: There Was No Quid Pro Quo

This is true but irrelevant, when you’re making it up the point is just to make the argument and let the media carry it. They could have impeached him for a nosebleed in the capital, as long as it was impeachment.

Fourth: Rushing Impeachment

The question assumes the goal was to remove Trump Pelosi knew it would not happen (See #2) That impeachment will be done one day after Iowa give the candidates a reason to ignore it as old news.

Fifth: Sitting on the Impeachment Articles for a Month

I’ve got to admit this one confused me too, but again this move was driven by the big brains using twitter and was glammed onto by the base. Once the media was all into this she was too. This was all about appeasement of them.

Sixth: Demanding the Senate Do What She Refused to Do

This actually made a lot of sense. Given that all of this was a joke it was necessary to cast blame on something other than the house case for Impeachment failure. John’s fallacy here is the same one that many Nevertrumpers make. The audience for this pitch was not average people, it was the far left people who insisted on impeachment. Pelosi needed a scapegoat and this plan plus she had the media to push it.

Seventh: Terrible Choice of House Managers

This is again where John missed the mark this was the perfect pick for house managers. You needed managers who were hyper partisan who would satisfy the loony base from districts that are safe. What you didn’t want was to put a serious congressman from anything remotely resembling a swing district or a congressman who had the potential to be a national face of the party to try and justify this shit storm.

This wasn’t about raging incompetence, or age or even uninforced errors. Unlike the impeachment managers in 1996 who still believed that we had a shared set of values, Pelosi knew that this was a loser from day one. She held it off for as long as she could and when she figured out that the damage to her caucus from a divide would be greater than the damage from failure and there was always a million to one shot that the President’s team would do something stupid enough to make things work.

So she did it as fast as possible to minimize the damage to the party as a whole and to the members with the most potential in the future. Furthermore as I noted in yesterday’s piece she could have gone full “I told you so” and used this as a platform to destroy the progressive left who put her in this spot.

Instead she was amazingly the adult in the room. She is taking the hits from the Nolte’s because she knows that she can absorb those hits while others in the party, who deserve them considerably more, can not.

That’s old fashioned leadership reminiscent of an earlier era, granted leadership in a bad cause but leadership nonetheless.

Why Agnostics Hate Prayers

Posted: February 1, 2020 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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What people would pay for prayers, from PNAS study by Linda Thunström and Shiri Noy.

Would you pay someone to pray for you? That was the focus of a recently published study, which asked this very question to almost 500 people in the wake of Hurricane Florence. The study separated Christians from atheist/agnostic people, and presented each person with the option to pay for prayers and/or thoughts from different people. On average, Christians would pay more for prayers, and specifically from prayers from a priest, while atheists and agnostics would pay for Christians to NOT pray for them.

While we might comically imply there is a new income source for priests, the paying to not pray is disturbing and highlights two issues. First, atheists don’t believe in the power of prayer. While that’s not a surprise in itself, it does mean we (specifically Catholics) have done a terrible job advertising how prayer works. The second, and more troubling side, is it highlights that atheists and agnostics simply don’t like Christian people.

Contrary to what the media would tell you, prayer does in fact change things. The Catholic Church has been rigorously testing for miracles, and especially for medical miracles (the ones most people think of), most don’t survive scrutiny. For the Catholic Church to declare a miracle, prayers have to be offered to one Saint or person, the condition has to have no chance of healing on its own, and the condition must quickly be cured (as in, it can’t take a long time to heal). A good recent example was the miraculous curing of Dafne Gutierrez, who prayed to St. Charbel and had her sight restored.

I bring examples of these up with my friends who are agnostic, and it surprises them, which means that Catholic media is failing to promote these instances. How do we not have a repository of images, miracle stories and the like? How do we not have social media accounts pushing these stories out for the world to read? Catholic miracles are called out in our Catechism to inspire us, and yet we act like the man who buried his master’s talents. Given the prevalence of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, this is inexcusable.

Worse still is the image that agnostic people have of Christians in general. Ask an agnostic person what their image of a Christian is, and you will likely get some flinching. The media has been bashing Christianity forever, and while Christians might ignore it, the effects are playing out now. More people than ever are identifying as atheist or agnostic, and worse, more agnostic people say they won’t associate with Christians. This, despite the fact that many of the same people know lots of good Christians that they see every day. We are, again, poorly advertising ourselves and our lives, allowing the media to make us out to be the boogey man for atheists and agnostics everywhere.

Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, can in fact die out if we don’t fight for it. The media will gladly hide our miracle stories so that prayers become nothing more than good thoughts in most people’s minds. Worse still, the media will continue to incite violence against Catholics, like the attack on St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989. It’s not enough for us to live good lives, but we must also show those that have no faith that our lives are worth living.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Catholic Church, or any other government or non-government agency.

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