Report from Louisiana: Teacher Shortage

Posted: September 5, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Besides the LSU one-point loss to Florida State last night, the other big headline in the papers this morning is the national teacher shortage.

At this point, when education officials and politicians lament about teacher shortages I just shake my head and move on. I might roll my eyes, too. I mean, why is anybody surprised that there is a teacher shortage?

I’ve beat this drum in this space before: I retired at 25-years from my teaching position. I could not do thirty years. I wanted to because I loved my students and I loved teaching. But when Louisiana public education officials pushed out the canned curriculum with script, pre-made, dull PowerPoint slides with scripted questions, which we were expected to “read with fidelity,” I was done.

Not to mention that the pay is terrible. The voters refused multiple attempts at a pay raise because we “knew the pay when we went into teaching,” and for multiple other reasons like inflated bureaucracy at the school board office. Top heavy administration. Created jobs for nepotism reasons.

No, instead of being paid like other professionals, we are given free donuts and soft drink coupons on teacher appreciation week. The local Sonic might donate some breakfast burritos for workshop day. That should do it.

Teachers are leaving not just because of low pay. They are leaving because they aren’t really allowed to teach.

They are leaving because their planning period has never been actually for lesson planning. (You don’t need to plan for lessons that are already prepared for you and your script written). No, planning periods are for meetings, “professional development,” and for covering other classes.

Teachers are leaving because classroom management is more challenging these days than ever before. Cell phones and air pods have changed the face of classroom management. 

Teachers are leaving because few people actually respect a teacher; they are thankful for you, sometimes. But they don’t really respect you.

Teachers are leaving because they have to create Amazon Wish Lists for basic classroom materials like paper, pencils, and markers. If you want a stapler on your desk, buy it yourself. If you need dry erase markers for your board, that’s on you, too.

Teachers are leaving because along with teaching you are also expected to support kids by being a class sponsor or a yearbook sponsor or a cheer sponsor or a club sponsor….all on your own time, after school hours, without extra pay. You are expected to do these things to prove that you love the kids and your school. I did them, and I loved my kids whether or not I was yearbook sponsor. But sometimes I was at school until midnight working on the yearbook. Without extra pay.

Teachers are leaving because the government has tied the hands of administrators is dealing out discipline. When a throw-down-girl-fight breaks out in your classroom over something that happened earlier in the day at lunch, and teenage girls are pulling hair and banging heads against the floor, furniture flying, endangering other students in the way, and those girls are hauled down to the office by the School Resource Officer, and the next day they are back in the classroom?  Who is really in control here? And by the way, you better beef up your classroom management because your administrator will tell you that if your classroom management was up to par a fight wouldn’t have happened. It’s your fault.

So, color me NOT surprised when you talk about a teacher shortage. I don’t regret my time in the classroom at all. There were times, with my students, that teaching felt like the best job in the world. But there were other times that teaching left you beat down and in tears at the end of the day.

It made the decision to retire at twenty-five years with an $500 per month pay cut in my pension easier. If I could have made to thirty-years I’d have gotten a better pension, but I absolutely could not do it. I was done.

And now, in the face of this teacher shortage, I never even consider going back.

Democrats are the vote-buying party

Posted: September 4, 2022 by John Ruberry in elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Willie Wilson billboard in 2016 on Chicago’s West Side

By John Ruberry

“Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters’ own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.” Milton Friedman.

“But it can also be said that the social largesse of the boss system, the food, coal, clothing, and jobs provided for the needy, was there when it counted–with no delay and no paperwork–for those loyal to the system.” David McCullough, at the opening of the PBS American Experience documentary, “The Last Boss.”

Democratic politics has gone from handing out free stuff, ploys used by machine politicians including James M. Curley of Boston and Richard J. Daley of Chicago, to handing out free stuff again. In between, the social programs created Franklin D. Roosevelt, proved to be a better and more popular distributor of goodies. Daley, unlike most of the other big city bosses, adopted to the times a bit; he was able to siphon a generous chunk of the funds from Lyndon B. Johnson’s Model Cities boondoggle, for instance. 

Last month President Joe Biden, like a Democratic boss of old, in a legally tenuous move, announced that he would forgive $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt. That debt of course won’t disappear, federal taxpayers will get stuck with the tab.

You’ve heard about Dr. Jill Biden. The first lady uses that title because she has doctorate in education. Chicago has millionaire businessman Dr. Willie Wilson, who according to ABC Chicago, “is the recipient of a Doctor of Divinity degree from Mt. Carmel Theological Seminary, a Doctor of Humane Letters from Chicago Baptist Institute International, Honorary Doctorate in Humanitarianism from Swisher Bible College and a Doctorate in Humanitarianism from Denver Institute of Urban Studies and Adult College.” I haven’t heard of those schools either.

Wilson is a political gadfly. He has run for mayor of Chicago three times, including his current attempt at the office, as well as for US senator and president. But he is best known as a man who gives away stuff, through his foundation, of groceries, PPE masks, groceries, and gasoline. The local media falls for his ploy–and to be fair, they have been placed in a trap, as their audience likes freebies. Who doesn’t?

Oh, Wilson favors slavery reparations.

Laura Washington, a far-left columnist for the Chicago Tribune, rightly condemned the “Willie Wilsonization of politics” in a column ironically published two days before Biden announced his student loan debt forgiveness plan. And she didn’t stop with Wilson. First up was Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

From that Trib column, paid registration may by required:

Thanks to an “avalanche” of federal stimulus funds, Lightfoot is “running for reelection armed with a seemingly bottomless gift bag of giveaways that includes everything from gas cards, Ventra cards, bicycles, locks and helmets to more than $1,000-per-household in rebates to defray the cost of security cameras, outdoor motion sensor lighting, cloud storage and GPS trackers to hunt down vehicles in the event of an auto theft or carjacking,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June. 

Lightfoot’s “Chicago Moves,” is the city’s $12 million transit response to skyrocketing fuel costs and inflation. It will distribute up to 50,000 prepaid $150 gas cards and 100,000 prepaid $50 transit cards to Chicago residents. 

Earlier this year, Lightfoot pushed through a controversial guaranteed income program for low-income families. The pilot program will provide no-strings-attached $500 payments to 5,000 Chicago families per month for a year. The recipients were chosen through a lottery system.

For months, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is running for reelection in the Nov. 8 election, has ballyhooed a $1.8 billion tax relief plan in his campaign ads. It provides short-term tax reductions and freezes on purchases of gas, groceries and school supplies.

Pritzker’s “tax cuts” are quite dishonest. His gasoline tax reduction only delays a mandated tax hike–Illinoisans pay the second-highest gas taxes in the nation–until, how convenient, after Election Day. Gas station owners are required to post signs touting Pritzker’s tax “cut.” Those who refuse face a $500-a-day fine. The grocery tax “cut,” which also comes with a requirement that grocers post signage about it, although non-compliant grocers don’t face face a fine for refusing to obey. Next year, when presumably Pritzker has been sworn in for a second term, the grocery taxes return.

Because of unfunded public worker pension debt, both Chicago and Illinois face enormous fiscal challenges. In regards to those pensions, Lightfoot and Pritzker are doing what their predecessors have done worst–kicking the can down the road.

Amazingly, Pritzker is considering a presidential run. His chances of winning are dismal, I offer the reasons why here. But if Pritzker somehow succeeds in 2024, imagine all of the vote-buying possibilities for him! He already has the physique of Santa Claus. On the other hand, Christmas comes just once a year. The federal government is with us every day.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

An eloquent response to Brandon

Posted: September 4, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

Red State has a wonderful response from an immigrant who has just earned his citizenship in 2021 and considers himself a MAGA supporter.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/09/04/watch-american-explains-to-joe-biden-what-maga-is-about-n622397

Under the Fedora: Reality and Free Will in Germany, England, Jackson Miss, Portland Ore and Wilkes-Barre PA

Posted: September 4, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

Richard Feynman

One of the basic rules of existence is that reality doesn’t care what you think or how you feel or what your cause is. Reality IS.

To wit:

Germany

In Europe in general and Germany in particular the greens have been fighting against fossil fuels and nuclear power for decades. Some of us have argued this was idiotic and noted that it only helped Russia but were laughed at.

They’re not laughing in Germany now:

Now the Greens are having to make a great energy leap. As members of the German government they are staring close up at the realities of soaring energy prices. They are having to face the prospect of the lights going off this winter, and of public buildings in major cities such as Hamburg already trying to ration the amount of electricity they use. The Greens’ demand that everybody else join them in a fantastical leap has now reversed into the Greens recognizing that their society simply is not ready.

England:

Today it emerged that Britons could be asked to limit energy use this winter to head off blackouts by avoiding using gas and electricity at peak times in a move that will hit every part of life.

At home people may be encouraged not to use washing machines, dishwashers and ovens between 2pm and 8pm while charging cars before 9pm is also not advised when similar measures were imposed in the US this year. Abandoning the family weekday dinner at 6pm or the Sunday roast at 5pm may be required and moved to after 8pm or swapped for a cold dinner or leftovers.

Green Energy is a great grift even better than BLM but if it doesn’t produce the energy people go cold and that means something burns.

Jackson Mississippi

It seems that Mayor Lumumba performed solidly on the revolutionary pronouncements part of the job — “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” he told The New York Times in 2020 — but not much in the way keeping the water treatment plants working.

According to our media, a major city in the United States of America 2022, does not have drinking water either because of heavy rain (who could have anticipated RAIN?) or racism.

Apparently the over 80% black population of Jackson figured electing an ultra radical, with the approval and celebration of white liberals all over the world was a great achievement. But said achievement pales in comparison to the engineering needed to provide water to tens of thousands a major city.

Being so fond of leftist you would think they would have taken WH Auden’s famous quote to heart:

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

W.H. Auden

Portland Ore:

Demetryus Bright recently took a job with the Portland Timbers as an account executive and moved his family from Ohio to Portland, hoping to escape the rampant gun violence. But after four months, his wife already wants their family to leave.

Bright says the homeless camps in the South Tabor neighborhood have him fearing for his family’s safety and that his car and home have been vandalized. He also said there have been fires on the street, including one that took place Tuesday night.“

It’s kind of disappointing. I worked hard to get where I’m at, to move my family 36 hours, to deal with this? No,” he said. “Gunshots and gun violence and that’s one reason we moved, to get away from stuff like that. And to feel safe walking to school, and to move to a nice neighborhood but it’s like there are people doing narcotics sitting outside. We can’t let our kids go outside and play on the front porch, let alone walk to school.”

Mind you the problems in Portland have not been a secret for years, at least if you read or watch anything other than the MSM yet this fool took his family TO Portland just four months ago.

Good luck selling that house of yours.

And finally in Wilkes Barrie PA where both Joe Biden and Donald Trump held rallies this week. Compare and contrast:

The real story here is that you don’t face any backlash from attending a Biden Rally, big tech, big government big education & the violent left et al will celebrate you for attending while you face the wrath of all for showing at the other

Yeah Joe Biden got the most votes in the history of the republic, sure he did.

A final thought about all of this. All of these are examples have one thing in common. The decisions that led to each of these realities were all made freely by the folks now facing these realities.

It’s a perfect analogy to Christianity, Christ offers forgiveness of sins and redemption but does not impose it, you are perfectly free to push away his extended hand and ignore his mother and the saint who offer to help you along that path to him. If you do Christ will stand back and await your call but till it comes he will let you face the reality of the world without him.

Free will.

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