theme song mindfucks

Well, I took my English professor's advice and started writing everyday.  Awesomely enough I managed to write four different short stories in just a few days.  The jury is still out on whether they're crap or not, but I'm optimistic.  One habit I've decided to kick is my habit of waiting to see what my professor says about my writing.  I used to feel paralyzed, wondering if it was okay, wondering if there was some huge flaw that only he would end up revealing to me.  Now I'm more confident in my ability to find the flaws myself.  Even if they aren't immediately apparent I know I'll find them. 

Unfortunately some of my productivity came at the expense of Geology.  So I have to buckle down and scratch some rocks.  Z  z  z  z  z  z  z  z  z  z  z  .  .   .

As much as I think Communications is a waste of my time, it's times like these when I'm glad it's such an easy class.  My latest homework is picking three songs to put in the soundtrack of my life.  So, basically people are going to pick something that either reflects them or something they wish reflected them.  I decided that rather than pick songs from particular moments in life I'd go with more of a theme song.  You know, a song that could be played in the commercial for a movie about your life.

Joan Jett - Bad Reputation, of course.   

Dusty Springfield - You Don't Own Me. 

But those are all about my positive aspects.  I think my biggest flaws can be summed up by either Cat Power's Metal Heart



or

Death Cab for Cutie -- Expo '86

BUT, since almost all of my classmates are conservative, and since they are ALL SO FUCKING BORING, I think I'm going to post Dirty Sanchez's Fucking On The Dancefloor just to entertain myself. . .

And if someone mentions "Butterfly Kisses" I'm dropping some some Avenue D . . .

And of course PEACHES!!!!!!!!

Yes, we have a winner!! Peaches and Iggy Pop together are golden, pony boy.

intelligent life, interrupted.

I absolutely hate it when people show up unannounced and uninvited.  I always say I hate miniature golf and karaoke, but my intense dislike for those things pales in comparison to my real true hate for the times when people just pop on by.  My father has a habit of doing this although I've tried to make it very clear that he is wasting his time coming all the way to town without calling first.  The last couple of times this happened I wasn't home.  Prior to these instances I made a facebook posting announcing to everyone that most people at the door are Jehovah Witnesses or people trying to sell me stuff.  So, I'm never going to answer the door unless I am expecting someone.  So don't even try!!  

Also, I happen to not like wearing pants around the house when it's fairly warm outside.  Why?  Because I don't have to!  

Anyway, today I have a lot of homework to do and a lot of writing to do.  I mostly have a lot of homework to do because I've been doing so much writing.  Who wants to scrape rocks and measure fault lines on maps when you have a million stories brewing in your head -- all screaming to be let out?  

And I do mean SCREAMING.  Last week I had so many ideas hitting me at once that I started to feel sick.  I had to lie down and put a blanket over my head, and force the thoughts to stop.  Writing stories requires a sort of singular focus that is difficult for me.  My brain multitasks and I flip from word document to word document, alternating between stories, and sometimes it becomes too much.  Once in a great while I'll have a singular focus and I can write an entire story from beginning to end so easily.  Then all I have to do is type it up and since I type 100 wpm it doesn't take long. 

Anyway, someone is coming over who I can't get rid of.  Plus, my father emailed me asking if I would be around because he wanted to participate in this charity sale I was running and to pick up an Ann Arbor District library book he gave me months ago.  I told him, probably won't be around 'cause someone else is already coming over, the charity sale ended on Friday, and I returned that book months ago.  My suspicion is that he will still show up with some other excuse.  He likes to show up and look around, investigating for local gangsters, or searching for signs of my poverty, or whatever will help him confirm that I live some dangerous life in some dangerous part of the city -- oh the horror, the horror!  

He seemed excited the day he showed up at my work and learned that I didn't work on the first floor.  It was as if working at the top of a building indicated some sort of prestige, which in reality it definitely does not.  But my father is still stuck in stereotypes.  He believes people need agents to send out short stories to college lit magazines.  He also believes that colleges don't ask for your high school transcripts once you're a transfer student.  Both ideas are completely false.  Maybe they were true 20 years ago, or maybe they were never true.  Either way, I've learned to do my research and not trust the opinions of others.  

Anyway, all these intrusions are affecting my ability to produce what I want to produce today.  What I need to produce.  The clock is ticking.  I have to come up with answers to essays for my U of M application and those are proving to be the hardest to write.  They make me so nervous.  

I realized why U of M is my top pick of a school.  First of all, I've excluded any school outside of Michigan in my undergrad search simply because of cost.  Eastern Michigan is cheaper, and it has some good professors, and I've had good teachers and professors come from EMU.  BUT I know that wherever I go I'll find good and bad professors.  I also know that if I go to U of M there are more scholarships available for writing and lit majors.  But my primary reason for wanting to go to U of M is the student body.  I knew a girl who went to U of M for creative writing and she was quite smart, an avid reader, and an all around great person.  I feel that what has been most challenging at JCC is that I'm often in courses with peers whose abilities are so far below mine that the courses have to be tailored for them.  This inhibits my learning and it makes my A's seem pretty meaningless.  Even when I was taking Writing Experience II there were a couple students who should have been repeating remedial courses.  

I figure that U of M is my best shot at having classrooms with the highest number of intelligent students.  Students who are smarter than me.  Students who read more than me.  Students who are much better writers than me.  Then it wouldn't even matter if my professor sucked because I'd be able to learn by working alongside intelligent peers.

So you see U of M, it's not your athletic teams I like, nor your impressive list of faculty members, nor the beautiful buildings in the downtown setting so close to so many delicious restaurants serving eastern cuisine. It's not the appeal of dancing at the Necto, nor drinking Brasseire Blonde at Arbor Brewery.  It's your students.  It's your cream of the crop.  It's the people you attract from all over Michigan and all over the world.  I want to work with them.  I want to discuss Borges with them.  I want to make charts illustrating the effects of globalization in the steel industry with a U of M junior -- even if that student is nine years younger than me.  I want my creative writing peer reviews to come from U of M students, even when their review is rushed by their urgency to go to a football game or a kegger.  I will be 29 when I enroll in Four Year.  What I can offer as a 29 year old who has spent years on the same boring job, and who has already vowed to never be hung over again, is that I will never rush my way through an assignment because of social obligations.  In fact, my social life has dwindled by the simple fact that many of my friends have married off, some have had children, and most of us work steady nine to five jobs and we have learned the value of sleep.  I no longer go to bed at four in the morning, wake up at noon, and answer the door for friends while being dressed only in a sheet.  All I want, in exchange for my boring maturity, is to work alongside people who are smart.  What better place to find them en mass than U of M? 

 

Feeling Festivals in the classroom.

If I were to become a college professor, could I make students put money in a jar each time they use some horrible platitude to justify an argument?  I would make so much money!  

Sigh.  

I suppose platitudes are better than certain statements.  Statements that make me want to smack people in the heads with yardsticks.  Like, in Interpersonal Communications we're asked to give characters or people we know who either exemplify interpersonal competence or interpersonal incompetence.  A student said Martin Luther King jr. exemplified interpersonal competence, where as African Americans of "this time" represent incompetence.  That's it.  So, then when a few people (not the professor) call her out on it she said "I did not mean to be offensive or stereotyping.  End of discussion."  

Ugh.  Why do college courses so easily become what I like to call "feeling festivals."  

A FEELING FESTIVAL is where students don't use any logos or ethos, but rather pathos, and draw upon their own "feelings" to justify something.  These "feelings" don't even involve personal anecdotes, rather than just some gut instinct, such as: "I FEEL that someone who wasn't born in the United States won't have our best interests at heart, like someone born here would."  Then, when presented with evidence of traitors like FBI agent Robert Hanssen or, say, ALL OF THE SOUTHERN MILITARY LEADERS DURING THE CIVIL WAR, they say: "I understand what you're saying, but I still FEEL . . ."  

Last semester I was in a really good course with fairly smart peers, but there was still someone who FELT something so much that she continued to write an essay about a religion that doesn't even exist.  After she was shown proof that it didn't exist, even by the professor, she still wouldn't acknowledge the truth.  Her FEELING that it existed was just that great. 

A feeling festival also means that a student can say "I did not MEAN to do/make/say . . ." thus, they didn't do/make/say it, and so whatever dumb or offensive thing they did/said simply didn't happen. The weird thing about this type of feeling is that functions purposely to dismiss the feelings of others who may be hurt by the statement or action. 

And, of course, what is a platitude but a feeling.

So, why does this happen? 

Well, from my observation this happens primarily in courses where there are no guidelines on discussions or no instruction on how hard a student needs to work to be considered "participating" in a course.  My best online courses always involve at least a minimum word count that someone must write in order to receive full participation points.  It's rare, although not impossible, that a student can stretch out a feeling or platitude for 250 or 500 words.  Even better classes will have stricter guidelines that involve using source material to construct arguments or offering more specific ways to respond that is constructive and actually forces you to put some sort of effort into the course.  

Although a minimum word count wouldn't work as well in person, the idea of having some standards for participating and constructing responses or arguments can still exist and help avoid so many damn feelings.

Classes without these standards usually leave me remembering one reason why I dropped out of school in the first place--not to mention bitter, annoyed, and with this suspicion that school is worse for my brain than television.  

At least I enjoy television.  Well, some television.  So, okay, I guess school is a lot like television. Sometimes you get quality programming, and other times you get The Jersey Shore. 

Recipes for Success

Whoopie Pie with coconut frosting filling

So, I've been tasked to chair my group's committee for our annual charity fundraiser at work.  I'm so excited that I will finally have so much control over the campaign.  I'm also excited that we broke away from our usual group where only two people decide what we're going to do without asking for anyone else's input.  Inevitably, they can't do it all by themselves, and it becomes a disorganized mess, and they never try and engage and excite anyone else into action.  I mean, it's bad enough that it's ran like a dictatorship, but an incompetent dictatorship just doesn't make sense.  

But this year will be different.  This year I am bringing everyone on board.

So far I've asked everyone's opinions, taken notes, complimented people, and I even baked cookies to bring to the committee meeting.  One of the managers in the group repeatedly made remarks about her pay and perks being less than the manager who's our competition, so I think I can channel her hostility and frustration into something wonderful.  This time around everyone will be heard and we will crush the competition like a Ritz cracker beneath my boot!!!!  

Also, I finally finished something to give to my professor.  Unfortunately, I ran out of time to make a coffee cake, the cranberry orange bread didn't turn out too well, and by the time I had to leave for work my brownies were still too undercooked or warm or something.  (This new oven will take some getting used to.)  So, I only sent peanut butter filled whoopie pies and chocolate chip cookies with sea salt.  I also sent a card which looked pretty horrible because I re opened after forgetting to put the Mat's gift card in with it.  So. . . I ripped the envelope through the middle and taped it.  Also, I wrote the card with a pencil.  Also, I ran out of space on the card.  Also, I was ten minutes late to work so I was kinda in a rush.

Later I took my lunch break at work and made a phone call to the school.  The conference with the accreditors that visited JCC was weird.  The number I was given must have been wrong because I held on the line forever...I hung up and redialed a few times trying to make sure I was dialing right.  I listened to horrible music while considering the possibility that maybe this was a scientific experiment to see how long a student would wait.  I used my other phone to call up the school and figure out what was going on.  After dealing with one very nice but unhelpful person (about three or four times), I was finally on the line with them after they called me.  I'm not really sure what the point of the call was though.  It reminded me of work where people ask general questions that don't reveal much of anything at all.  Also, the students who I could hear talking all seemed to like easy courses.  I hate easy courses; they're insulting and boring.

It wasn't the best day but it wasn't the worst. 

I can't believe it's almost time to fill out college applications.  The idea fills me with dread!

Carbonized Coffee Cake

So, I bought a Thank You card to send to the English professor who has helped me with my writing outside of class for some time.  I debated over what to send at this time because although he said he'd be happy to write me a letter of recommendation I wouldn't receive it for months from now.  So, after gathering information on him (the places he likes to eat, his lack of allergies, etc.) I decided I would save a gift certificate to one of his resteraunts until after I'm totally done with JCC, but that I would still send a Thank You card now with a small gift certificate to Mat's (because in my research no downtown restaurant came up and I insist that everyone, even those in the sticks, receive an education about the actual city of Jackson), and I would send baked goods. 

On the one hand, I am excellent at making cheesecakes, tarts, tortes, and all those fancy high end items, but none of those travel well, so I decided I would make simpler things.  I nixed cookies because those seemed too simple.  I decided to try making Whoopie pies for the first time, hand pies, and an apple crumb coffee cake.

Oh yeah, and last week I installed a brand new oven to replace the oven that hasn't worked in five months.  Unfortunately, this oven doesn't turn off unless you turn it off at the gas valve.  The company that made it was supposed to be out here last week but after not showing up and not calling the customer service rep said the tech was hung up at another job, but half an hour later they claimed they had shown up and no one was home.  I don't know where the hell they showed up to, but it sure as hell wasn't here.  SO, I continued to use the oven to make a small test batch of whoopie pies.  Those came out pretty well, although they were much larger than I thought they'd be.  It's like carrying around a double whopper.  The hand pies were a complete and utter nightmare to make because they were so time consuming.  Putting the dough in and out of the freezer and refrigerator around five times was a little much.  Then when I finally tasted a hand pie I thought it would have been a lot better if it had been a regular pie with more filling. 

SO, on Sunday before making the large batch of whoopie pies, I made the apple crumb coffee cake.  I stuck it in what was supposed to be a 325 degree oven for 45 to 55 minutes, and I left it in order to do geology homework.  At forty minutes I came upstairs and smelled something burning.  Of course it was the coffee cake.  The top didn't look too bad, but the bottom was totally black and crunchy.  The oven decided that it would operate at about 400 degrees instead of 325, hence the carbonized coffee cake.  Well, that was too high to do whoopie pies, so after an entire day of work I gave up at nine o'clock at night.   I was feeling a little angry and feeling a whole lot of defeated. 

So now I'm going to try this all over again on Sunday, minus the ridiculous hand pies.  I'm also reconsidering adding cookies because they are harder to mess up, plus they travel well. Supposedly, a tech will be out this week, which means I need to ask for time off of work.  Suckfest.

Especially suckfest because I received the most awesome email I've ever received: an invitation from JCC to attend a discussion with some sort of VIPs who are coming to evaluate their online courses.  One of my former professors recommended me as a student who might be willing to attend, apparently.  Of course it's during my normal work hours, so. . . we'll see.  And by "we'll see" I mean that I'll see what kind of mood my boss is in today.  Work is a little stressful for everyone right now because about five different people have crawled up our department's ass to evaluate it or investigate it, or whatever they call it when they get five clueless people in a room to analyze data that will take them weeks to understand, rather than just asking one of us a simple question.  Efficiency in the private sector?  Yeah right, don't believe the hype.   

Endless "Education"

Tonight I saw both my brothers for the first time in a long time.  My oldest little brother is back from 14 months in Australia.  He gave me a bracelet he picked up on his trip to Bali.  My youngest brother is a sophomore at MSU's James Madison and he is kicking butt.  I watched them both force feed themselves "Endless Pasta" because they're always trying to put on more muscle mass.  

Anyway, I was seven minutes late to dinner and when I came in I saw one of my favorite teachers from high school.  His dark brown hair has gone gray, and he's shaved his beard, but I recognized him instantly.  About five years ago, during the busy Christmas shopping season, I ran into him at Meijer.  This time I avoided him completely.  The idea of him asking me what I was up to was too excruciating to consider. What would I have said?  "Well, I'm at JCC (Yes, I really have been going to school for that long), and I'm working a dead end job that I have no interest in."  Yes, I could have said that, but I didn't want to tell my favorite teacher -- a teacher who I worked my ass off for -- that ten years after graduating high school my life was just a disappointment. 

So far this semester, school is painfully dull and underwhelming.  I am learning things in Geology, but that's it.  I'm hoping Art History turns out to be worthwhile because otherwise this semester is going to drag on forever in the worst way.  At first I couldn't figure out why my communications class seemed so easy and so pointless.  Then, when I started listening to my classmates, I realized that it really seems as though I'm in class with middle school students.  This lack of intellectual maturity actually seems to make it worse considering that so far the only comments our topics receive are shallow and non reflective.  

Sometimes I start thinking about the holes in the bottom of my running shoes, and the medicals bills that need to be paid, and the oil that needs to be changed, and I grow really frustrated with how much I pay for classes that leave me feeling like I'm still in junior high.  Yet, I am not going to blow it off; I am going to be patient and try, try, try, try, to learn something or help my classmates with their learning experience.  The very least I can do is mix things up a bit since everyone else seem to share the same underdeveloped and unsubstantiated opinions.  It's weird; anytime I'm in a course where I'm not learning anything, I always want to take on the role of teacher. Someday, I know I will spend less time going through the motions of getting an education, and spend more time actually learning.  

Oh yeah--I joined Phi Theta Kappa.  So. . . goodbye $80.00 I'll never have back.  I hope I made a wise decision.   

suckfest fall 2011

So far, this semester bites, HARD.

First of all, there are way too many good books to read and such little time.  I want to read all of the books shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Jeffrey Eugenides (from Michigan!!) has a new book out called The Marriage Plot.  (That reminds me, since when did we switch from underlining books to italicizing them?  I was really out of the loop for that one.) 

Secondly: money, money, money!  I was signed up for fifteen courses, but then I dropped some credits in order to pay for it.  I set up a tuition payment arrangement, like I do every semester, but my fifteen credits payment was adjusted to be $825.00, which I definitely couldn't afford.  So, after dropping the courses I called and asked to have the payment plan updated which puts me at a cool $360.00 a month plan.  A week after updating it via phone I received an email confirming the update.  But a week after that I am debited for $825.00 smackers.  This put my checking account well into the negative.  That's totally awesome considering the number of other bills I owe this month. 

Thirdly, there are courses I can't take for a number of reasons.  One reason is money, another reason is that I didn't obtain the permission for a late sign up until it was SO LATE that there was no way I was going to be able to catch up in a five credit math course, and another reason is that my work changed their hours and there was no way I was going to be able to attend an early morning class I sortakinda wanted to attend.  Sortakinda because I could have used the letter of recommendation that would have inevitably come from enrolling in the course.  But sortakinda not because of so many reasons, including the fact that I've taken more literature courses than I need.  Plus, I have the syllabus and can read everything that would have been assigned, much of which I've already read, and I doubt I would have learned anything in that course, anyway. 

What I mean to say is that I am beyond that course.  Once upon a time I took a course with that professor and what first seemed great turned out to be really disappointing, like, disappointing on an existential level -- if that makes any sense. After that, I dropped out of school.  So, there's that.  Plus, I have dreams about the whole experience.  Maybe it's better to call them nightmares.  It's funny; there's no violence and gore, but everything in the dream always moves so slowly.  I'm always being stalked by something or someone, and I'm always filled with a sense of dread and despair.  I'm also uncomfortably aware that part of why I want that letter so badly is because I want some sense of closure.  I'm always after closure and I almost never get it.  I guess I want my closure to be this moment where I prove to myself that I can do really well in the class, and that I'm smart, and that any praise I received before wasn't utter bullshit.  I have this fantasy of being this deadly serious student who is absolutely relentless in this class, humorless and without mercy.  The idea of trying to leave community college without that is . . . difficult.  I've spent more than a year thinking about the moment I'd receive that closure and now the end of that arc has crumbled from between my fingers, leaving something less like closure and more like an abrupt and anti-climatic ending, one of those endings that leaves you saying FHAT THE WUCK??

Fourthly: work, scmerk!  Basically, I have every reason to believe downsizing is going to happen in a few months from now.  At first, I was really freaked out, but then I psyched myself up for a layoff.  I was going to quit in August 2012, anyway, and it's not like I make that much more than I would on unemployment.  So, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I started thinking about the things I could do with more time on my hands.  If layoffs occurred it'd happen right around the time when I start working on my college applications.  I could write a novel!  I could become a boxing champion!  So on and so forth.  Then I psyched myself up so well that when I started to see signs that at least *I* would not be let go, I started to feel sort of. . . disappointed?

See, I took a couple days off of work this month for my anniversary.  Then I signed up for early morning volunteer work on the day of my anniversary because it's what I want to do.  It's not that I want to sleep in all day and be lazy.  Instead, I'd like to do something I'm passionate about. 

The problem with having a job that you don't dread going to is that it's hard to get away from it.  Awhile back there was a job opening at a local nonprofit that I care about.  It was just doing clerical work, but it would have been a foot in the door.  Even if it didn't lead to anything, at least I would have been working for a group that I believe in and care about.  Yet, I didn't apply.  I just figured, well, I have a decent paying job with benefits now so why mess it up?  Not only am I not messing it up by not applying elsewhere, I don't even apply to move up at work.  I don't apply for higher paying positions.  I just stay in the same place because no one bothers me too much that I can't deal with them, and because I am in that dull numb zombie place where it's easier to just deny my desires than fluff up my feathers and pretend that I actually want to move up.  Really, moving up at work is the last thing I want to do! 

A lot of people would love to trade places with me, I know.  But I can't help but want so much more. 

Sometimes I think I shove my soul so far down into myself that one day my insides will explode and everything inside me is going to cover the entire city.  But instead of having guts and organs I'd be filled with red, green, and gold paint, peacocks, pinwheels, James Dean, a fedora, the three Stooges, malted milkshakes, a zebra, Tom Waits' piano, Mae West, and maybe the Golden Gate Bridge.

So, basically, I've decided that this year I'm going to pop my collar.  ALL MY COLLARS.  It'll be my signature look.  People will see me, recognize me, and say to their friends, "Hey, there's that douche bag who's always popping her collar."  Yeah.

Secondly, September and October will be devoted to getting my finances in order.   And thirdly, I will try and take my cool professor's advice and write everyday.  I'm going to try for at least 1,000 words -- not this crap!  Real, literary, nonblog writing.  Non-diary writing.  Non-censored yet non-gut spilling. 

Also, I didn't receive an invitation to the honor society, even though I have the GPA for it.  I'm not sure how all that works, but I emailed the professor in charge because I've decided to end this habit I have of being a passive student outside of the classroom. 

People who pop their collars should be aggressive or they might as well not pop them at all! 

 

This transformation is going to involve listening to copious amounts of old Ani Difranco songs. 

Michigan: Destroying Education One Good Teacher at a Time.

                       

My Aunt has an MA in special education and for more than twenty years she's worked in a public high school teaching "emotionally impaired" students.  Most of these students live in poverty, many have been abused, some are foster kids, and many of said students have one or more parents who are incarcerated.  In the past some of her students have gone on to prison themselves for crimes like rape and murder.  Obviously, her job isn't easy.  Recently, she's taken an administrative position, even though she never wanted to be an administrator, simply to get out from under the thumb of a principal who has it out for her.

Why?  Good question.  Her peers and friends have speculated that perhaps he hit on her once and she rebuffed him, and maybe she didn't even know it.  Sound like they're reaching?  Well, if you knew her you'd be reaching too.  Simply put, she is an amazing teacher and an amazing human being.  Not only has she been a teacher for more than twenty years, she's also been a coach, a youth group leader, a mentor, and served on countless committees for her school. 

Her principal -- a person with business experience, NOT experience in education -- actually evaluated her in front of his cronies and began this evaluation/interview by asking her to repeat what he says are her shortcomings, allegedly prompting her with "and. . .?" when she stopped.  Obviously, he is an encouraging and sensitive leader.

So, with the educational overhaul in Michigan, she got out while the getting was good.  It's sad because without her in the classroom many students will suffer.  She was a great teacher (after twenty-plus years the principal allegedly said to her "someday I think you'll be a good teacher"), and she had a great rapport with students, and anyone who knows her knows that.  Of course, she's also been teaching in a school district where a huge portion of the students are failing their standardized testing.  The reasons for this are numerous.  As I've discussed with her before, her school budget is pitiful and she rarely has access to the type of technology that students love on the rare occasions she's able to utilize it.   And, again, she's teaching in an impoverished district, where her own students tend to be the most impoverished or coming from the worst situations at home.  To expect that they wouldn't experience a disproportionate struggle is absurd. 

As Michigan moves closer to privatization and using high-stakes standardized testing to put a choke hold on tenure and teachers, I think we should all be questioning the legitimacy of using testing as an accurate evaluation of teacher performance.  The entire premise of evaluations these days rest upon the all-mighty standardized test.  Yet the evidence that high-stakes testing EVER produced results is in a constant state of unraveling.

Before the stylized and emotionally manipulative Waiting for Superman hit the box office its star, former DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee was promoting the success of high-stakes testing using the supposed success story of the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus whose proficiency in math went from ten percent to fifty-eight percent in two years.  The narrative of the poor inner city school district that thrived under high-stakes testing was everything Rhee and like-minded school reformers needed to appeal to politicians and the public in order to end unions and tenure. 

But here's the problem: Recent evidence indicates rampant cheating, not better teaching, was responsible for the dramatic increase in test scores. 

The news of cheating at Noyes hit the news on the heels of a report issued in Georgia that documented the systemic cheating that took place in forty-four of the fifty-six schools.  The report went beyond the statistical analysis in previous cases, and delved into the culture that was created after No Child Left Behind was enacted.  The report also shows that it was administrators forcing teachers into cheating, even gathering them into rooms where they spent the day erasing and rewriting answers. 

One would think that when supposed success stories used to prop up high-stakes testing turn out to be lies that some bright member of government would take notice, or perhaps an education reformer would admit that maybe they were wrong or, at the very least, more study is needed. 

Well . . . not if you're Michelle Rhee.  If you're Rhee you simply blame your "enemies" for somehow gathering every union sympathizing statistician to claim that the odds for  "winning the Powerball grand prize"  are better than the odds of having such a high number of erasure marks without alteration.  One problem with this conspiracy theory is that the developers of the tests actually have machines that are set up to recognize erasure marks and flag tests for an unusually high number of erasure marks.  So while Rhee and like minded defenders would like to explain this away as some sort of union driven character assassination, the facts don't support her delusions. 

Okay, so maybe it's really hard to let go of something you were once so sure of.  But even that theory doesn't make sense when you consider the cheating problem with high-stakes testing even before NCLB. After all, it was only 1996 when the Chicago Public School cheating scandal hit the fan.  Chicago had embraced high-stakes testing, before it became a national mandate, and it didn't quite work out.

So, where's the proof that high-stakes testing works?  In these cases a teacher who didn't cheat could have easily been fired, where as a cheating teacher could have been heavily compensated for producing inflated scores.

This idea of replacing the traditional education model with a business model has infected higher education as well, as evidenced by the growing for-profit college industry that churns out graduates with high debt and little hope of gainful employment.

Promoters of high-stakes testing and privatization fail to recognize the negative effect the high turnover of teachers has on students.  For many of the students in my Aunts course, they need solid long-term mentors because they already have enough failed relationships in their personal life.  Young transients spending a few years in Teach for America, or local college volunteers, aren't going to be around long enough for many of these students to create the stability so desperately needed.   

Since when has big business ever been good for children, anyway?  Remind me again, was it labor laws that stopped dangerous child labor, or did all the robber baron industrialists simply decide it was against their moral codes?

I'd like to be more hopeful, but it seems to me that Michigan is intent on killing public education, and the best I can hope for is resurrection, someday, when these so-called reforms fill us all with regret.

Metacognitive Reflection: Eng 132. The Argument Essay.

I reached the fourteenth single typed page of my essay a day after it was due and it was then that I realized I needed to par down my essay to a simpler argument rather than going on to propose a long grand solution.  

In the past I might have decided not to turn a paper in, completely sinking my grade and blowing off the class.  The fact that I finally recognized what needed to be done in order to complete the project is, to me, a skill that I am coming closer to reluctantly mastering. 

The process of writing this essay began in our previous unit when I researched narrowing curriculum in the US.  Having recently read Freakonomics, I was very surprised to find out that systemic cheating had occurred during high-stakes testing prior to No Child Left Behind while our current Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was managing those cheating schools. Yet, despite Duncan's previous experience, high-stakes testing is still a part of every public school in America post-NCLB.  It made me wonder if such major advocates of high-stakes testing legitimately believe it can measure and improve schools or if it's a political war on unions and the public school system.  

Despite my suspicions, I didn't want to be so pointed about my theories on the agenda of some advocates of high-stakes testing.  The reason being is that I wanted to write an article that would have a broader appeal than the article that I offered a rhetorical analysis on in our previous unit.  

Trying to discuss unions, public schooling, and teachers in our current political climate seems impossible to do rationally.  Many voters are desperate for jobs and are uneasy about the future of our economy.  Plus, I've seen concepts of social justice in education routinely criticized by educators and civilians alike.  Even the mention of "social justice" is a good way to be labeled a liberal and thus conservatives close their minds and tune out.  That is why I decided to appeal to our economic concerns when addressing the need for cultural education and a diverse curriculum.

The debate over education seems to be everywhere but I tried not to assume too much about my audience.  I wanted to explain concepts in a way that almost any adult could comprehend.  I included statistics for the purpose of ethos, my own analysis for logos, and discussed hungry children for the purpose of pathos.  

My use of pathos was influenced by a report on children living in poverty that aired on 60 minutes.    

I considered using more pathos but I decided to use restraint as a result of our reading discussions.  When I read an essay that relied too heavily on pathos I was turned off and felt like I might as well have been reading a greeting card, so I tried to minimize the pathos and use it primarily in my conclusion. 

One thing that helped me understand audience and argument was our assignment of reading three sample essays and discussing them in our group.  I really liked that because I was able to read different styles and see how each author transitioned from each supporting paragraph. Our classes overwhelming rejection of the pathos saturated anti-gay marriage article helped me understand that without ethos and logos even readers who share a similar point of view my be turned off by such empty and manipulative arguments.

While I didn't introduce research that contradicted my argument, I felt that I acknowledged the voices of others when I discussed the noble intentions of high-stakes testing advocates.  I felt like I was using peer review response guidelines I used in class where I can alternate between offering a compliment and then criticism.  Although I sometimes find that difficult to do, it is a practice that I will use in future courses and essays when I want to reach a broad audience. 

Online Learning Will be the Death/Birth of Me!

I had surgery a week ago and all the research and reading I thought I'd get done turned out to be a total bust because I've pretty much spent the week in a haze of pain, painkillers, and anesthesia induced nausea.  During my time off of work, I struggled to do any school work, or to concentrate on anything school related.  Yet, I did manage to complete a small paper, take a test, and offer a few responses to my classmates work.  I didn't feel so bad when I realized that my Creative Writing teacher has not been in since July 20th.  On July 20th my professor promised to respond to numerous assignments that week, and yet, nothing.  I've decided that I'm going to email her and make sure she isn't having anymore"technical difficulties." 

So, the other day I came across an article in The Chronicle about how community college students fail more online learning classes than in person classes, and are less likely to graduate.  This doesn't surprise me, but some of the comments pissed me off.  I'm particularly prone to being pissed off given that I've had such a difficult time with an online course this semester, and I've come to see how difficult it is for students to succeed when a professor decides to go AWOL throughout the entire semester. Some commentators like to point out how many students just aren't as technically savvy as they're alleged to be.

First of all let me say "DUH" and "not so fast!"  My DUH comes from knowing that a lot of students taking online courses are ADULT LEARNERS of all different ages.  Some of them did not grow up with the internet or texting.  And as one commentator pointed out, many people who don't end up in the brick and mortar environment are not people from wealthy or privileged background, and thus they may be less likely to have grown up using the latest technology.  BUT without online courses THEY WOULD NOT AND COULD NOT BE THERE. 

My NOT SO FAST comes from the fact that many of my professors are the ones completely clueless to technology.  My constantly MIA professor has never articulated where she'd be keeping any course materials, and her syllabus is written to be creatively absurd and obtuse, rather than being helpful or providing any understanding of where to find course materials. 

Following a long period of silence and no assignments, I found a message to us explaining our professor's long absence by clicking buttons at random.  Where this message was located was not even a place that she regularly updated and when I copied and pasted the instructions to our message board another student asked me where I had found them, thanked me for posting them, and said that she would not have seen them otherwise.  I've had a course with this student before and I can assure any asshole detractor out there that she is not a technologically inept slacker. 

This course has been a complete nightmare.  The near constant absence of my professor has hindered my learning at every turn.  But what really gets to me is that this is a professor that is so beloved by her face-to-face students, but if it wasn't for teaching awards and ratemyprofessor.com I'd never have guessed it. 

So, the way I see it there are numerous issues.  The first issue is difficulty with technology.  On one hand, this may largely be the fault of the learning institution that fails to adequately train their teachers.  But on the other hand, teachers should take the initiative to learn the technology on their own.  After all, every online student is told they need to be "independent self starters," so it's reasonable to expect online instructors to take the same initiatives expected of students.  

The second issue to me seems to be that *some* professors confuse "flexibility" with never having to attend courses.  An online course allows me the flexibility to "attend" at two in the morning, but it does not mean I don't have to show up, do the work, and engage my fellow classmates in discussions.  A professor telling me that they've been on vacation all week and thus haven't been available (of course mentioning this after the fact is especially priceless) is not going to cut it.  I have no problem when a professor tells me ahead of time that they're going to be on the road for the day and thus can't be reached, but to say that you can't be bothered for a whole week or two is a bit ridiculous.  Get a blackberry or a laptop and take it with you if you must take extended vacations when class is in session.  And if you're a professor that tells students to communicate and also makes it clear that there are "NO EXCEPTIONS" to certain course requirements and due dates, then I am going to find this hypocritical behavior particularly insulting.

Are there students that confuse "flexibility" with not having to attend or participate?  Of course, and the consequence is failure. 

Not having a professor participate or grade assignments in a timely fashion makes it difficult to learn because without grades or comments a student can be on the wrong track and have no idea.  It also puts so much of the learning process on the shoulders of students.  If all of my classmates were intelligent and engaged learners then I wouldn't mind so much, because when I'm in a class with a high number of intelligent students my experience is more valuable, but sadly that is not always the case.  If I'm in a course where I'm supposed to learn by discussing our course topics with a student who refuses to believe that the FCC is a government agency, then how am I supposed to learn from that or ever develop a factually accurate, let alone meaningful, dialogue? 

If a professor isn't there to provide guidance, or credibility, then we're stuck in a situation like that (and yes, that has actually happened). 

Although I've had many better experiences with other professors, there are still very few instances of professors that try to develop a community of learners in online courses.  I guess I could say the same thing is true in person, too, but I find that it's particularly important online, especially given the fact that online students do tend to be non traditional students with full time jobs and families, and all the reasons in the world to give up on education.  Plus, in person students find more opportunities to connect through campus organizations like the honor society, Men of Merit, Sisters in Strength, athletics, student government, and the Writing Fellowship program.  While I'd love to participate in the latter, the required course is offered only during the weekday afternoons while I'm at work.  If this course was offered at night, in the very early morning hours, on weekends, or online I could swing it, but otherwise forget it.

So, when I read an article about the failure of online students and an alleged professor wants to lay the blame on students assuming online courses are going to be "easy" I get a little pissed off at the simplification.  

The good that has come out of this partially craptastic semester is that I've realized that perhaps my calling in education is in online learning.  I've come to realize that a focus on technology or online learning doesn't mean I need to sacrifice my interest in special education, either.  In fact, my visually impaired uncle and his girlfriend have been able to utilize new technology to surf the web and keep in touch with us and a larger community of visually impaired friends.

A lot of technophobes are afraid that the internet will isolate people, but they fail to recognize how much connection can be created through the internet, and they don't recognize its amazing potential to diversify the classroom.  But it doesn't mean that we don't need professors, and it doesn't mean we don't benefit from community and discussion.  Those are two myths that need to be busted because a successful online course is not a correspondence class, nor is it independent study. 

While I'm stuck at JCC I'm going to try my hardest to make a case to my professors and to the administration as to why strengthening online courses is so important.  And this time, when I nominate a professor for the faculty of the year award, I'm going to nominate a professor for an online course and I'm going to have hard data measuring the success of the course, the professor, and also the importance of legitimizing online courses, professors, and thus online learners. 

Yes, I will spin this semester's steaming pile of shit into gold!  Yes Yes!