moving

I'm afraid I am making the switch to wordpress. I have been playing around with a blog on that host and I like it much more. I do not know if I will continue this one. I may keep it to post any non-Sureshot work, while my wordpress blog is exclusively related to my book. You can find that blog at: http://www.thesureshot.wordpress.com/

Long time no blog

It has been a while since I paid any attention to my blog, my writing or much else beyond family, work and church, but it is summer and I have the opportunity to once again make an effort to write, post to my blog, tweet, facebook and generally waste massive amounts of time on-line. It's great. So...I appologize to anyone who missed me, I hope to be reaquainted with you, and I promise that next time I will post my leave of absence so there will be no confusion. I hope to make up for lost time this summer. I have a lot of things planned, but we'll see how it goes.

This is crazy

I finished a chapter about whether the hiring process in the teaching profession is flawed. There certainly seems to be some problems there.

 

    Ideally a school should be able to hire and fire the teachers they decide are best for their institution. Instead they are beholden to a series of agreements and laws that force them to conduct much of the hiring and firing in the early spring, months before the school year begins and the actual demand for teachers in known. They are also unable to keep the teachers they want and remove the ones they decide are a poor fit, or are not producing enough. Instead they are forced to eliminate the most junior teacher without any other consideration. I heard recently that in one state the "teacher of the year" was pink-slipped because he was the most junior. If a school is forced to fire the best teacher the state has to offer because of a union agreement, or state law, then something is wrong.

    It creates a system in which the school that just made an effort to find the teacher they decided was the best for their school through a rigorous hiring process is forced to release that teacher at the end of the year, just in case they will no longer need him because they will be unable to release him in the fall. Furthermore they cannot release another teacher who may have grown complacent or even belligerent and spiteful. Nope, the school is forced to release the teachers they recently sought after and gladly placed in their classroom. Imagine baseball teams releasing their most recent draft pick to save money rather than the player who has not produced for the past few years and his past his prime. A team owner would likely not make that decision, but schools are forced to do exactly that. They cut the newest teachers who are energetic, and full of inspiration and insight from their recent studies, even though they are inexperienced.

    I would like to see some change in the way in which teachers are hired and fired in our schools. This may seem simple but it will not be easy. It will pit teachers against each other, but this is already the case so until we address this problem it will continue. President Obama mentioned getting rid of poor teachers and encouraging new and enthusiastic ones, but so far I have not seen a change. I was worried when I heard him make the point in his campaign that he did not know how much influence the union had over education. This is not the whole of the challenge, but it would do well to allow schools to have more influence over their own staff.

Valentine’s Day Sonnet

This was a sonnet I wrote for my wife on Valentine 's Day. For whatever reason, I have been writing them again. I like sonnets. Most of my students hate them and complain about having to write them for English class, but I try to redeem the form for them. They can be a little challenging, but I like the challenge of having to force poetry into a concrete structure. Anyways…here it is.

 

They say that today I should love you more.

Somehow this day, they call the day of love,

Supposed to increase my love from before.

They know all about what love is made of.

Two dozen roses can surely melt hearts.

Or loads of fancy chocolates perhaps.

Men don't forget to get them lovely cards.

Diamonds may be forever, but I'll pass.

Sure roses are red, but soon they'll be dead.

Candy is sweet, but how much can you eat?

Cards are great, but can't keep you warm in bed.

Jewels wonderful, until the bill you greet.

 

But none of these can say any better,

More than today, I'll love you forever.

Sureshot resurrection

I am hoping to resurrect the Sureshot this year. I have been brainstorming a plan to make it happen and will hopefully be able to stick with it this year. it should be easier than the past few years since with any luck we won't have a baby born this year and I will be able to devote more time to writing and trying to sell books. I have done a poor job of it in the past but still have hope for making some decent sales. This is probably it though. If I cannot get some sales done this year I suspect the book will be dead. I desperately want to sell 5000 and get the second published. It is just waiting. Sureshot the Assassin (the second book) is even better than the first, but the first is no slouch. Often I get positive feedback about it and still have people ask about the second. This needs to happen. I need to get there. It must be my top priority this year, and look, as I post this, a whole month has already passed. As part of my effort to keep Durbar alive I am going to write short stories about him that I can post here and hope to put into a news letter so I can keep interest going. It is going to be a long year. But I am confident I can get there. I also want to produce a "commercial" of sorts to post on Youtube, and might try and make some other things I can put up there. Lastly I am on the lookout for Role playing forums where people get together to role play characters and adventures. I hope to host some based on my story and Pavshia where the stories take place. Maybe all this will add up to something. I sure hope so. When Sureshot came out I gave myself 10 years to try and make a go at writing full time. That was 5 years ago. The clock is ticking. I am not down on myself because I have been very busy with family (4 kids in 6 years) but the time is now. If anyone out there has any ideas, let me know. Otherwise, look for Sureshot short stories and a Sureshot newsletter. Wish me luck.

Time Machine

I recently watched "Hot Tub Time Machine," which was plenty funny even while using a silly concept. It was cute, had some good dry humor, through some bare boobs in to draw the 15 year olds and so was probably not the worst movie I've ever seen. For me it reminded me of how much I hate time travel as a plot point. It is one thing if you are trying to use time travel to make some sort of philosophical point. I like Christmas Carol, and Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, both which bend the rules of time, but when you use it to correct only to get the writer out of a corner he backed his self into, it is really annoying. Star Trek did it with their recent movie and it pissed me off. In Star Trek 4 they went back in time, but it was to correct a problem in the future. They went back and then forward again, and didn't travel around randomly changing the plot and course of the story as they went as well as the characters who are affected every time a change is made. It just seems lazy to me. It doesn't allow the reader to predict what might happen and not in a good way. Readers like to anticipate the next page, and like to be fooled, but also like to believe that the plot is possible. With time travel all of that is removed. You can't predict what might happen because rime travel is not based in normal human understanding. Even for the science fiction reader the plot and characters can get too complicated to follow. So I vow to never use time travel as a literary tool. Except that I have a story that features it a bit…ok, I guess you can use it, but don't expect me to like it. And "Hot Tub Time Machine" was still funny even if the idea of traveling time in a hot tub with drunken naked men is dumb.

Reform?

Another excerpt from my current project on reforming education. I have finished the second chapter now and am about 7500 words into the book—a pretty good start.

So perhaps the teacher education programs are at fault? The state has gone to great pains in creating a number of standards, regulations, requirements and paperwork for a prospective teacher to accomplish but is it really helpful? Are there new teachers who are qualified or are they lacking.

It seems there is a bit of both. While I don't knock the state for its efforts to try and account for every teacher and their training, it does not seem to be making much of a difference. In fact, there have been some teachers run off because they had been teaching a subject for a number of years without the proper qualifications. Many of these people left the private sector and became teachers. Some were engineers who taught physics, or former missionaries who taught Spanish. Others were chemists or biologists who desired to teach in order to pass on the skills and expertise that they possessed. Some of them quit teaching because they were unwilling to jump through the hoops. They knew they were good teachers. Their students knew they were good teachers, but they did not have the proper credential, and rather than do what was required in order to continue their job, they left the classroom.

To be fair to the state, the new requirements were made clear and there was ample time given to complete them, but for some it didn't matter. Perhaps they only had a few more years of teaching left in them anyways before they took time to spend with grandkids and travel, but for whatever reason some left.

I don't think that this is really the problem however. Still part of me thinks that there is a lack of proper teacher training. Now any veteran teacher will tell you that things were simpler when they began and that keeping kids alive and busy was the main objective, but still there can be some improvement.

The state knows this too and is trying to compensate for the lack of training new teachers arrive with by offering a mentoring program at the schools themselves. Even knowing that and knowing that some credential programs are not as good as others, I still feel as though the schools of education are not the problem. Most seem to be doing what they, and the State of California, feel is best to prepare a new wave of teachers. After all it is not an easy thing to take a recent college graduate who has spent her entire life as a student and get her to the other side of the classroom in one year. Teaching is a challenging occupation that takes years to master and so they might be doing the best job they know how.

In the end I can excuse the schools of Education from blame, and certainly hope we can refrain from "blowing them up." The problem must lie elsewhere, so please allow me to continue exploring my own journey to nail down the problem.

Reform?

Another excerpt from my current project on education:

 

    I was in my first year of full time teaching trying to teach a group of 15 and 16 year-olds modern world history. Whether I succeeded or not is a matter for debate, but at one moment I thought about giving up. In my 8^th period, the last class of the day, I had an exchange student from Germany, who in spite of learning history in a language that was not his first managed to score higher than any of my other students. Hans, was somehow an object of desire among the female students in spite of the fact that he was highly arrogant and sarcastic. At one point one of these female students decided to ask about exchange programs even though such a question was significantly off topic, not that such a thing was unusual.

Maria's hand shot up and without waiting for me to call on her she began, "Hey Mr. B?"

Figuring that she wanted to know something about World War 2, the topic of the lesson I responded, "Yes Maria?"

She perhaps did not really even know what we were learning that day since she had spent most of the period chatting with her cousin and the exchange student. "If I want to be an exchange student, to say…England. Do I have to learn the language?"

I paused stunned by the question, but trying to spare the student's feelings I calmly answered, "Maria, they speak English."

    He faced did not betray proper understanding of my answer and sure enough she wanted some clarification, "So I don't have to learn it?"

    I decided to try and clarify further so I repeated, "They speak English in England."

    At that point a few students had cued into the fact that this young woman was making a fool of herself. Her friend, upon hearing the laughter decided that she was in on the joke so she tried to pile on to Maria's embarrassment by adding, "Duh, of course you have to learn the language."

    By now most of the other students were aware of how ludicrous this line of questioning was, but for me, I had not figured out how to get through to her without making fun of her so I repeat louder and slower as though it was a matter of volume and speed that caused this young woman to fail to understand me, "They speak English in England."

    Still the girl looked confused. At last I had a new idea, "Maria, they speak English. You speak English." She nodded was the confused look fixed on her face, but I had no more time to try and illuminate her.

    It was at that moment that I decided maybe the students I was getting had missed a few steps on their way to my class.

Reforming Education?

Here is an excerpt from one of my current projects, on education:

 

I had some interesting interactions in my program that caused me to pause and try to make sense of the field into which I was heading. I was unable at the time however to gain proper perspective. One of the situations was in my class about how to teach second language learners as we call them. California especially, but other states as well have a plethora of students from a number of countries, speaking a number of languages. This poses a challenge for the teacher obviously because in any given class there may be a large proportion of students who did not grow up speaking English, and who's parents also do not speak the common tongue of this nation. In my student teaching experience, I taught a group of students who were entirely made up of second language learners. It was interesting trying to teach about the history of 20^th century America while my students had trouble understanding .

    Anyways, my professor was a woman who hailed from Argentina, but had since gained a college education in the United States through a doctorate program. She was the mother of two high school students at a local school. There were several things that bothered me about her and the class. The first was that she was never on time. It was normal for us students to be assembled in the class before she arrived and then took a few minutes to set up. She dismissed this as cultural, explaining that in Argentina no one is ever on time. Interesting. The next thing that piqued my attention was that she regularly denounced the American education system as unfair for immigrants and even extended it to the nation as a whole. I found this difficult to swallow as she herself was the product of the American college system had held lofty degrees and positions in education. Furthermore she drove a luxury SUV and her daughters attended what was commonly accepted as the bourgeois high school in the area. She was always adorned with jewelry and dressed in fashionable clothes. She seemed to embody the American dream and not the American nightmare she was selling. I was getting confused.

Teaching Book

I think I may need to write a book about teaching. It appears that there is a great interest in it right now as conversations about education get more intense. There are documentaries coming out about what is wrong with teaching and a great number of debates about funding unions etc. I myself find it a provocative topic, not merely because I'm a teacher, but because my first four years have been so tumultuous. I think I am going to have to write a mini memoirs about it then to share my struggles and insight with anyone who is interested in education. The challenge I have when I think about it and brainstorm what I might write is offending people I work with. On the one hand, I wouldn't be lying about them, only telling the truth as it happened, but on the other being written about in a book may make people upset. Should I care about that? Does it matter? I suppose I could write around the people and speak of things in more general terms, but that may not be as interesting. I get the sense people like conflict, and I have had a few in my short tenure as a teacher. Well, I'll keep thinking about it since I don't really have time to write it anyways. Maybe I'll even outline a bit. Or write a chapter or two. Fine, I'll write it.

Tired

I am not sure how some people do it. With the addition of our fourth child in just over six years, I seem to have no time for much of anything lately. My week consists of work, children's sports practices, church and if there's time, sleep. My motivation for other things has decline dramatically. I have a number of writing projects in limbo, books unread and obviously a neglected blog, but when I have time for anything I usually choose sleep. I imagine this will change eventually as the newest baby gets a bit older and we are able to sleep through the night again. For now though it is difficult. It is lamentable because of the things I would like to get done. So many books that are still unwritten. I don't know when they will get done. For now my main priority is rest. I hope it changes soon.