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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 28, 2013 11:32:47 GMT -5
WOW! Teach, you just scored another educational triumph.
I had managed to escape the meager educational system of my student days, and a semester each of freshman comp and lit at IU, and the apprenticeship into skilled trades, and 64 years as a reasonably avid reader, without ever being curious enough to actually look up the meaning of "rubric".
Congratulations on inspiring the further development of a student who had been given up on by most others as being beyond all hope. 8^)
Glad there won't be a quiz on the result of that search, as the main revelation from it was that I need an interpreter to define the terms used to define the term.
Brings to mind the time a niece was struggling with her middle-school math and I volunteered my help. I had always LIKED math, and had used trig quite a bit in my career, so I felt confident that middleschooler wasn't going to have too difficult a question........WRONG!
What the heck are "subsets" and what do those hieroglyphics mean?
My "rubric" for writers of technical articles is that they explain the term being investigated using language already in common use wherever possible, without inventing or redefining new ones to fit the application. I rated the author of the definition I found a 2. Would have been a 1, but I respected the effort he made in obfuscation.
Anyway, it's obvious that you are a dedicated professional with a great love for your calling, and I wish you the best of luck in dealing with the trials of that calling.
I think almost everyone can recall a particular teacher somewhere along their educational path who inspired them and brought the joy of learning the subject matter home to them. Sounds like you may be that teacher to a lot of kids.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 28, 2013 0:02:32 GMT -5
tenring, that's where my son went, yes. They seem to do well in many comparisons, but I never put much faith in the reviews by educational system critics. Sorta like going to see movies that got great critical acclaim.....never saw one that I liked.
I felt like I was in jail in high school, myself. At least the first part of it.
I actually went to Bloomington High School for two years, then had to transfer to tiny Stinesville. I later wished I had gone the whole time to Stinesville. The atmosphere was much better for learning, even though the school was so small that many advanced courses were not offered. No fancy labs, no football team, no pool, no marching band. My graduating class was 18 students, twelve girls and six boys. And most of them still go to the class reunions. I never had any desire to go to the Bloomington reunions.
There were no cliques at Stinesville.
At Bloomington, and at Martinsville when my son was there, the class was stratified into the jocks and the nerds and the hoods, and the farmers, with a few individuals falling into none of the groups. The putting on of airs took up much of the day.
At Stinesville there wasn't much opportunity for that kind of nonsense. I was the only one in the senior class who wasn't at least a second cousin to all the other members. No sense in getting all full of yourself in a crowd of your cousins...they KNOW who you are and you're not gonna impress them much. And the teaching staff knew each individual and had seen most of them for several years and knew their older sibs, and in some cases had taught their parents.
My status as a stranger in their midst lasted about ten minutes of the first day I was there. Might not have been quite that long. As soon as onemember of the class introduced herself and we exchanged a few words, and they saw that I wasn't some city kid all puffed up with trying to impress, I felt welcome. By the end of the first week I felt more at home there than I did after two years at BHS.
Nobody could pull much BS in that atmosphere. We still clowned and had fun, but actually got more serious learning done there than I did in the big-school scene, with all the "opportunities" provided by the size and numbers.
Something to be said for a more nurturing social atmosphere when dealing with teens. Time enough to get used to just being an anonymous number when they get to college. I suspect we'd be better off generally had there not been so much consolidation into mega-schools with so many lost kids trying to be recognized.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 27, 2013 15:33:19 GMT -5
Mixed feelings on them. As an atheist myself, of course I don't like the end result of more kids in religious based schools on the public dime. I'd say it's a pretty blatant violation of the principle of separation of church and state. And I think that principle has served the country extremely well including the faithful as well as the people of no faith like me.
OTOH, I do suspect that more efficiency and better results could be obtained by their attendance at almost anything else than the current government education system.
I have no doubt that the majority of teachers and administrators are good people with the best of intentions, doing as much as they can under the circumstances. But government agencies in all fields have proven themselves to gravitate towards being hamstrung by over-regulation, excessive paperwork, the need to cater to the lowest common denominator of student performance, and the tendency to be required to spend too much of the school day on matters unrelated to teaching the subject mater.
It was bad enough when I was a student, seemed worse when my son was one, and from what I hear hasn't improved since.
When performances become unsatisfactory, a free people will seek alternatives. The increase in home schooling seemed to be a positive some years ago. But I'm sure that contributed to the reduction in average performance of the students who remained in government schools at that time.
The increase in voucher students seems likely to do the same.
I'm not sure where "the answer" lies, or if there is one answer. It would appear that the incorporation of the computer into the classroom would have increased the potential for learning tremendously, yet I don't see evidence. There is occasionally some report from a classroom in some forward-thinking district that has combined computer technology and a selected student group to create some gee-whiz displays of genius, but the trickle=down into the average performance doesn't seem to arrive.
Kids are smart. I suspect the real lack is in motivation. They seem to be able to learn other dialects and versions of English that are unintelligible to older ears with ease, and can still manage to absorb technological changes with incredible speed, even if they can't make change or find their home state on a map.
I think the failure is neither in the personnel at the front line of the battle, or in the learning potential of the students, so much as it is in the system that attempts to convey the teachings, and maybe in the teachings that are offered.
I have long suspected that the emphasis on speaking, reading, and writing well has been under-stressed. I know when my son entered college, his professor informed him that he preferred students who had NOT taken high school calculus courses, because they were generally so poorly taught that the first semester was basically spent undoing the harm. Yet at the high school, they were convinced that calculus was a must for those on an engineering program.
And I recall when he was becoming really interested in selecting a career to prepare for, the guidance office was a complete waste of time, just as it had been when I was a kid trying to make the same choice. Advice such as "go into a field that you enjoy working in" always comes up. Since his work experience at the time was limited to mowing yards and flipping burgers, I suppose he should have given more consideration to a career in lawn maintenance or fast food. i suggested that he instead take the ad section of the Sunday paper and see what skillsets and educational background was in demand at the time, and the pay being offered to those who qualified. After some study, he decided on electronics engineering.
And that course actually was part of the qualification for his first job out of school, although he went on from there into a different field, and eventually into health safety and environmental management. He's done well and we're very proud of him. But I think the major factors in his success were more related to critical analysis , problem solving, and reading comprehension, than to any other benefits of his formal education.
I have long held the opinion that we would probably be better served if the high schools fed directly into apprentice programs of the employers of the real world, without the intermediate step of colleges. We seem to spend an awful lot of time and energy on studies that end up being completely immaterial to our needs in the workplace, and at a time in our lives when we may never again rise to the same ability to learn quickly. It seemed to work well for those of us who didn't go to college, or who went briefly but didn't continue, and ended up in skilled apprentice programs at large employers. We were generally a very well-motivated crew, since we'd already experienced a taste of life on the line without higher skillsets, and we were surrounded by older guys on the job who weren't shy about pointing out what we didn't know, and praising us when we surprised them in a positive way occasionally. That seemed like a much more effective program, with the students implementing the things they were learning or at least seeing the results of those skills being implemented every day in the workplace. Some guys went so far as to attend trade shows a few hundred miles away, to be even more informed on the latest technologies on the horizon, at their own expense! We wanted to LEARN the subject matter at hand, and BE a more skilled and better informed toolmaker, as a matter of personal pride.
This was in a union shop, and we knew we would be making the same money and doing the same job regardless of whether we were the best on our class or barely managed to stay in the program, but there was a natural sense of competition to excel. That was pretty much the opposite of the attitudes of the classrooms we had left just a few years earlier, where excellence in the classroom was more often an invitation to being ostracized socially or even bullied, and the motivation was slanted more to being the class clown.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 24, 2013 10:27:33 GMT -5
Rural King in Martinsville now has a gun counter and is selling guns. Started Tuesday, I think the guy said.
I get down there about once a week and didn't see any clue that it was coming until I was in there night before last for a plumbing part and walked over to check whether they might have gotten in some .22 ammo. They hadn't, and aren't expecting to for a good while yet. Guess I better not practice much between now and squirrel season or until supplies improve. Down to about 150 rounds and I'm not going to go to a gun show and pay 5X normal price.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 22, 2013 11:52:36 GMT -5
Dad is currently feeding the babies! Looks likehe's working on that black squirrel.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 20, 2013 12:17:40 GMT -5
Last report I saw said that the only report that identified the object seen as being a gun was the original one, and she didn't see the gun leave the trunk of the car.
Would a gun secured in the trunk of a vehicle even be against regulations at the school?
Sounds like someone got a bit carried away, but that's to be expected with the current climate of fear of guns and anyone who would possess one being engendered and used by the media to add drama to everyday occurrences and interest in their reporting.
I once saw several foreign-looking men in strange uniforms brandishing large knives in a menacing fashion. We were at a Benihanas. No one seemed concerned and as far as I know the authorities were never called.
The police reaction seemed overblown in view of the evidence of threat involved. Of course that is the expected response as well in the current climate. It was soon ignored when the novelty wore off and most of the students went on about their business without waiting for any official "all clear" announcement.
The next such alarm will bring less response and less compliance, due to the "crying wolf" aspect, until the alerts are ignored to the point of being yet another useless exercise, like the warning labels we all ignore on various product packaging, advising us against eating the product or putting it in our eyes.
Eventually, the authorities will downsize the response to a more balanced level and wait for confirmation of a threat before going into full red alert mode.
Then when a real threat DOES happen and the gun is real and so is the intent of mayhem, the response will be slowed by experience and when it's over the media will again raise the question of why it took several minutes for a swat team and other appropriate response to appear on scene.
And the world goes 'round...
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 19, 2013 12:41:59 GMT -5
Feeding time right now!
A rabbit appears to be on the menu this morning and both chicks are hungry!
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 19, 2013 12:27:16 GMT -5
onestar, thanks. I'll check out that option as well. As an old cookie fan of many years, the very term of voluntarily "deleting cookies" sounds unnatural and unappealing.
I'll have to weigh that against "deleting" the liberal rag website from my opening page routine. 8^)
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 19, 2013 12:16:46 GMT -5
timex, I agree that the shooting pen operators don't WANT to find CWD in their herd, and probably try very hard to NOT import it.
I don't WANT to have an accident when driving, either, and try very hard to avoid one. And I've been successful for many years now.
The problem arises when the unwanted thing that we try to avoid happens anyway.
If the operator has his life savings and the hope for his kids' college education riding on the health of his herd, and discovers one failing with what appears to be CWD symptoms, what are his options?
He can kill it and have it tested, and if it is indeed CWD, have his herd depopulated and his grounds adjudged pretty much worthless well into the future, and make himself liable for the results of having passed on the disease to others.
Or, he could suffer wind damage to a fence on the backside of his place that results in an expensive deer escaping to be lost into the wild. Into an environment that is unregulated and undocumented as to its freedom from CWD, since it's impossible to prove that none exists out there already.
Care to bet on which choice he will take?
And unlike in the analogy to driving, where there is no really no practical alternative in our modern world to using motor vehicles and living with the risks, there IS an alternative to allowing the high-fenced operations in the first place.
We don't permit Crazy Larry to open Crazy Larry's Fireworks Mfg. Co. in that empty building next to the school, even though the denial of a permit does limit the building owner's right to maximize his return on investment from his property.
The rights of the citizens of the state to a healthy environment have to have some weight at some point.
Denial of permitting a business that depends on the importation of antler growing genetic potential and interstate trade in breeders and semen is very much akin to permitting Crazy Larry's plant. Even if his office is in the building, proving that he REALLY doesn't want an accident to happen, it's a risk that doesn't need to be taken, and the potential damages are too high.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 18, 2013 23:25:26 GMT -5
Can't read the article. I haven't subscribed to the Indystar and have run out of my "complimentary" access to their articles.
I'll still click on the site while they provide my daily sudoku without subscribing. When they attempt to get me to pay for that, I'll be deleting the site from my favorites and no longer visiting it. If my clicks on their ad revenue rolls are not enough compensation, they can stuff their anti-gun socialist rag, and good riddance.
Come to think of it, there are plenty of other sources for free sudoku's, and I may not wait.
WRT the subject of the post, I did catch that news from another source. It's too bad that the deer pimps will continue to drag this stuff up repeatedly until they finally get it passed. Then in another few years we will be in the news as the next state to find CWD in our wild herd and the authorities will again be completely at a loss as to how it happened.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 16, 2013 21:41:06 GMT -5
Dropped by the nest that I've enjoyed watching the last four years, down near Gosport. No bird visible on the nest, and none seen during a half hour watching. The nest looks abandoned.
They raised two eaglets last year, watched them until they were big enough to fly, then caught the last one in the nest alone one day, and the next visit two days later it was gone, too.
I'll check again in a week or so, but it sure looks like the pair isn't there this time.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 13, 2013 13:07:02 GMT -5
Can't even think of a GOOD reason why we do.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 11, 2013 11:36:36 GMT -5
danf, you caught me! 8^)
Yes. I never liked the idea of playing like it was some other time of day about half the year.
If we're going to do that, I think we should play like it's May about the second week of January, and save the heating bills and the driveway shoveling.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 10, 2013 20:55:14 GMT -5
I think this time I'll just ignore it.
Been retired for several years. Gonna list my retirement clock on Craigslist. Don't much care what time it is anyway.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 8, 2013 11:17:09 GMT -5
Confirmed to be mistletoe. I e-mailed the county extension agent down there, very nice fellow. He actually drove out past where we saw it to confirm his suspicion. The extension office is only a mile or so away, so I figured he would probably know what I was talking about for sure, even with it being difficult to describe.
I was being led astray by the pics I could find of mistletoe on the net, which all showed it to have leaves and to be more in no particular shape, but apparently the circular shape becomes much more visible during the late winter period when it has few if any leaves.
He said the mistletoe seems to take advantage of any cracks or breaks in the limbs to gain an entry, and the area has lots of it since the severe storm damage in recent years.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 6, 2013 10:14:37 GMT -5
This has been happening increasingly since the OBR went into effect, and has become even more common since the increase in antlerless tags. The bucks are obviously discovering that it's safer to retain their antlers and are being more careful with them.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 3, 2013 22:24:21 GMT -5
featherduster, that's another interesting possibility, although I was pretty sure that the things I saw were some growth of the tree itself rather than a nest of imported twigs.
I think I've about worked up enough curiosity now to justify a trip back to that territory with the tripod and camera to get some pic's and maybe ask some locals.
May be a few days. My jeep needs to visit the doctor, and I'm making a replacement piece for the tripod.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 3, 2013 12:40:34 GMT -5
Probably a good use of a smart phone, to provide visual evidence of need. I'd be out of luck with my current el cheapo phone that doesn't even take still pic's. But I'd take care of the critter in need anyway, and try to deal with the human stupidity later.
Put down our old cat a few years back. I never was a "cat person", but it was still a tough thing to do. He was fifteen, blind, mostly deaf, crippled, and seemed pretty uncomfortable all the time. A .22 LRHP to the back of the head in the backyard was WAY more humane, IMO, than bundling the poor thing into a basket for a car trip (that he always hated) and going to a vet to wait his turn for a shot that would take a couple minutes to accomplish the same thing the bullet did instantly...or the other "humane" option of treating his miseries and prolonging the clearly inevitable.
But I've heard of people doing the same favor for their beloved pets when the time came being cited and convicted of cruelty to animals. Certainly brings 1984 (the book) to mind, when "government speak" means pretty much the opposite of the truth.
Many, many disparities 'twixt what's legal and proper according to the law and what we know is the right thing to do in a particular circumstance. That's probably true the world over.
If you can look at the guy in the mirror and tell him your action was justified and correct under the circumstances, that's the most important thing.
If you have to explain to that face in the mirror why you let the critter lay there in misery for hours while awaiting a response from some civil authority.....well, congratulations on your legality. Hope it makes you feel better.
Your legal situation there may well place more weight on the legality than ours does here, in both the likelihood of a negative result from doing the right thing, and the severity of the resulting punishment. Each of us has to take those factors into consideration in determining our actions.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 2, 2013 13:51:42 GMT -5
The ones we saw were all apparently twigs of the tree it was in. They were leafless and and appeared "dead", or dormant as the rest of the trees at this time of year.
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Post by Russ Koon on Mar 2, 2013 11:40:55 GMT -5
danf, I think you may have the answer.
The pic's I see of witch's broom seems to most closely resemble the examples we saw along 27 in KY.
The only remaining difference is that the ones we saw almost all formed more perfect spheres with their twig growth, but I suppose that could be something specific to the tree species affected.
The witch's broom formations are composed of the twigs of the affected tree forming into the clumps or clusters, rather than some alien parasite plant, and that appeared to be the case down there.
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