Tuesday, a van load of us went to the County Council again to speak about the ridiculous Makena development. This time we left for the meeting before school even started. Two of my kids spoke...they did well.
The Man was handing out these buttons that said Makena Yes, so one of my kids accepted one and did this to it.
A 6th grader after my own heart. She didn't show it to me until we got back to school.
I spoke as well, as usual, no one on the council listened to a word I said. But it was broadcast over the cable access network and someone sent me a positive e-mail about it. Those cats on the CC have about as much vision as...oh...I don't know...Rochester politicians, I guess. What can you do?
Oh...and to make it a complete day, I got a parking ticket for the school van. Pretty tough not to get one when they only hold the meetings during the day and it's all 2 hour parking...and the meetings are still well attended so you can't get out of there in under 3. Mark thought it was funny.
School's getting "funny". They just keep going further and further down that traditional path. In some cases by necessity - because of the macro-planning mistakes they keep making. In some cases they've just hired people who don't know how to let kids make decisions for themselves...then wonder why they act so immature.
The kids have just been a trip since I've told them I'm leaving. Good Lord, Nikki virtually stalking me. Another kid said she found my Facebook page. Oh well. I don't put too much weird stuff on there...do I? Now if she found the Stuart Bedasso MySpace page...that'd be a different issue.
I created the blog that I'm going to use to stay in touch with the kids. I took suggestions on what it should be called, but they didn't come up with anything that good. So it's called Schmoeology. Joe Schmoe is a recurring character in our class so I figured it works.
The school's board president told me that if I needed a reference to use him or if I wanted to come back to just let him know and he'd "make it happen." I'm not quite sure what he meant, but I was worried that there might be a white-slavery element to the offer, so I just thanked him and moved on.
On other teaching fronts:
*More Facebook strangeness: A handful of students I student taught found me on the FB. I've actually been having some interesting conversations with one. This internet thing may just stick around.
*Another student, this one from RSD, sent me an e-mail that was a link to some adware kinda application to put on your computer. I didn't open the link, but the contact came out of the blue, right when I'm having contact with students from the past. Strange.
*I just can't seem to keep my mouth shut. A couple of you guys sent me links to newspaper articles about the Metro school in Rochester that Bill Cala is working on through Nazareth College. The write-ups seem to suggest that the school would teach in the way the Charter School here is supposed to, so I just sent him an e-mail to let him know that I'm coming back to Rochester and that if he wanted to pick my brain about the day-to-day stuff to feel free...yeah...now I'm on the planning team e-mail list. Christ, I'm not even back yet!
I think that's about it for now. It's late and I'm going to bed. Rainy season has started...which I'm digging, actually. I love falling asleep to rain so I may actually sleep well tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment