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Dr. Bliss
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Post by Dr. Bliss » Mon Jun 22, 2015 12:36 am

So...you're saying you worked in pantyhose?
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Dr. Bliss
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Post by Dr. Bliss » Mon Jun 22, 2015 12:44 am

At that time in my life I was trying to get into pantyhose too. Didn't work out though.
"There ain't no sanity clause!" Chico Marx

MrMac
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Post by MrMac » Mon Jun 22, 2015 3:17 am

I'm sure that the "pantyhose" reference can be mined for some substantial humorous material...why the Bruce Jenner punchlines alone would be worth the effort.

But "Not gonna do it...wouldn't be prudent."

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stevelee
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Post by stevelee » Mon Jun 22, 2015 3:50 am

Joe Namath would be the sports reference.
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MakeIt-TakeIt Cat
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Post by MakeIt-TakeIt Cat » Mon Jun 22, 2015 7:10 am

You didn't have anything to do with making my first car--a 1974 Vega--did you?
I don't think the Doraville plant made the Vega and we had started making 1975 models if my memory is correct. Don't blame me, Mr.Mac! I made $9.18/hr at that job when minimum wage was around $2/hr. I was in tall cotton until the union decided to go on strike in middle to late August. The most I had ever made for a summer job before that was around $3/hr as a construction laborer which was pretty good for a summer job in the late 60s and early 70s..

catnhat
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Post by catnhat » Mon Jun 22, 2015 8:20 am

My wife's family "encouraged" their kids to do well in college by getting them summer jobs in a local pantyhose factory. So my wife spent one summer putting pantyhose on a pair of metal legs which then used a burst of steam to form the knees in the hose. No AC- July and August- she returned to school well motivated.

Edit: The family of Joe Bossong '85, and Huntley Bossong, maybe '87, still have the mill going. Huntley runs the day to day operations since his father and uncle have retired.

mccabemi
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Post by mccabemi » Mon Jun 22, 2015 9:02 am

Summers in Maryland are generally hot. Colder stretches in late May and early June could drop pool temps to upper 60's. Pantyhose were crucial for 2 hour swim practices. It's damn cold.

The English Channel tends to be in the 50's. That's unhealthy.

Speedy

Post by Speedy » Mon Jun 22, 2015 4:44 pm

I confess I don't know where the electric sheep thing came from, but I can offer this...

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/ar ... nce-dreams

mccabemi
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Post by mccabemi » Tue Jun 23, 2015 10:38 am

stevelee wrote:
mccabemi wrote:This incidentally, is why we have all this testing craze- because we do not allow the labor markets to function properly and then try to find a fix on the other end.
No Child Left Behind and the testing mania come from even more complex confluences. I facilely see it as a left-wing and right-wing conspiracy, but I realize that is over-simplification.

I will interject that I'm skeptical of the view that the main thing wrong with our schools is that we have all these bad teachers. I'm sure there must be some, maybe a lot. I come with the bias of having grown up in a Southern mill town of 16,000 people and encountering at worst one mediocre teacher in my twelve years of school there. A lot of the teachers were outstanding, and several were amazing. They influence my life to this day.

In terms of testing, I think the cure is worse than the disease. So much time is spent teaching to the test that it is a wonder that subject matter gets covered at all. I realize that some of the content will accidentally seep through the teaching to the test process, but hardly as much as if they could just deal with the purported subject matter.

The education-industrial complex certainly has their lobbyists, so the situation is unlikely to change much. Companies that make the tests sell books and software for teachers to use to teach the test. Etc.

A buddy in Pensacola called me the other day. He was on his commute home from his last day at school. He is now retired, and glad of it. He has directed bands at the middle and high schools and taught math and history among other things. The mix varied from year to year as needed, since he could do all those things well, and more, as you'd probably expect of a friend of mine.

We had talked at length in April as we often do, since he somehow manages to screw up his installation of TurboTax most years in ways that I have trouble imagining. This year he had downloaded the program to his wife's computer and couldn't transfer it to his somehow and couldn't find the password to download it to his computer, or maybe he'd have to pay for it again, or something. He also had it on an optical disc which his computer couldn't read somehow. OK, so there are things he's not super competent at, like remembering where he left a certain cable.

As I'm trying to get my mind around all the Murphy's Law corollaries we were encountering, he went off on a tirade on school testing and the state legislature. Five weeks before the end of the semester his students were being tested on material to be covered in the rest of the semester.

So if there are bad teachers, even worse teachers are the legislators who set educational policies they don't understand.

When I was a kid, teachers were given respect and a good degree of autonomy in their classroom. If a kid acted up, it was the kid's fault. Now it's an occasion for the parents to complain about the teacher. If the state bureaucrats and legislators make dopey educational policy, it's the fault of the teachers, and they just need more micromanagement and busy work.

The real wonder is that we have so many good teachers left. I don't know how long that can last.
Teaching to the test" is a political frame I take issue with. If tests reflect standards and teachers are driven by standards, then what teachers really mean by "teaching to the test" is that they can't teach cool stuff that is unrelated to the curriculum. Teachers should just say that. Now, there are probably some merits to teaching "cool stuff" and I agree with you that you don't want politicians meddling into state standards. But teachers do need standards to drive instruction. Common Core was a great attempt to create universal standards and efficiencies across states. Its failure is likely in large part that buy -n to the standards is an "all or nothing" proposition. As a private school teacher I look and think about the standards often- mostly I think about the skills I want my students to develop. I pay more attention to the the parts I like and value, and less attention to the other stuff. I experiment more than public school teachers. I explore things I'm passionate about. The fault of standards tend to be they can be too prescriptive.

I have found little difference between the quality of public and private school teachers in Maryland and South Carolina. But the major difference, is that if parents complain about you in private school- it is a death knell. This is a VERY cheap, albeit somewhat imperfect method to evaluate teachers. Filtered through a high quality administrative team, it is a much more efficient way to think about hiring and firing than through testing, observation of lessons, ect.

Of course bad teachers are not the root of our educational problems. "Bad schools" are high poverty schools. The kids at these schools have tough lives; survival is more important than learning. Only saints choose to work in high poverty schools. If you're like me, you realize that teaching in these environments is extremely stressful, and it is far healthier to work somewhere else for the same pay. Public school districts suffer from this phenomenon and little is done about it. Poverty doesn't beget change on this front, but thankfully there are some saints.

jamesdhogan
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Post by jamesdhogan » Tue Jun 23, 2015 1:49 pm

mccabemi wrote:Teaching to the test" is a political frame I take issue with. If tests reflect standards and teachers are driven by standards, then what teachers really mean by "teaching to the test" is that they can't teach cool stuff that is unrelated to the curriculum. Teachers should just say that. Now, there are probably some merits to teaching "cool stuff" and I agree with you that you don't want politicians meddling into state standards. But teachers do need standards to drive instruction. Common Core was a great attempt to create universal standards and efficiencies across states. Its failure is likely in large part that buy -n to the standards is an "all or nothing" proposition. As a private school teacher I look and think about the standards often- mostly I think about the skills I want my students to develop. I pay more attention to the the parts I like and value, and less attention to the other stuff. I experiment more than public school teachers. I explore things I'm passionate about. The fault of standards tend to be they can be too prescriptive.

I have found little difference between the quality of public and private school teachers in Maryland and South Carolina. But the major difference, is that if parents complain about you in private school- it is a death knell. This is a VERY cheap, albeit somewhat imperfect method to evaluate teachers. Filtered through a high quality administrative team, it is a much more efficient way to think about hiring and firing than through testing, observation of lessons, ect.

Of course bad teachers are not the root of our educational problems. "Bad schools" are high poverty schools. The kids at these schools have tough lives; survival is more important than learning. Only saints choose to work in high poverty schools. If you're like me, you realize that teaching in these environments is extremely stressful, and it is far healthier to work somewhere else for the same pay. Public school districts suffer from this phenomenon and little is done about it. Poverty doesn't beget change on this front, but thankfully there are some saints.

Whoa! I didn't know that public education would be a topic du jour in the Stupid thread. If so, you guys better get out of the way.

I agree with mccabemi--teaching to the test isn't entirely a good/bad thing. I think it absolutely detracts many teachers from doing the "cool stuff," but in truth I never bothered with it. I figured I would teach my class as I saw best for my students, including a curriculum that best fit their needs and interests. (They didn't always see it that way, but alas, I was considered the professional in the room.) What happened on the test, well, happened.

I knew a lot of teachers whose students passed their classes and failed the standardized tests. I also knew a lot of teachers who were blockheads.

My problem? When students passed the standardized test but failed my class. I had no other response but to modify their grade to passing--allowing that if the State of North Carolina deemed them fit by its standards, who am I to disagree?

I taught all the cool stuff I wanted. I didn't have to bother much with lesson or unit plans, because I had an administrator who trusted me. The only course where I totally and publicly admitted that I taught toward the test was AP Language & Composition. It was a damn hard test, and I was proud to have it at the center of my syllabus. (In 2014, only 27.5 percent of test-takers earned a 4 or 5 on the exam's five point scale. Davidson only accepts AP scores of 4 or 5 for credit.)

My biggest disagreement with mccambi's post is more nuance. I don't think we should ever refer to teachers as saints. Saints (and martyrs, for that matter) endure terrible things in their lives, and their mission is what drives them. I would rather preserve the dignities of the profession of teaching. Quit calling them saints. Call them professionals. Pay them more to work in more challenging environments. That's what the private sector does, right? Got the brains and the drive to work 80-plus hour weeks on Wall Street? I'm guessing there's a bonus in your future. Got the brawn and the guts to labor in a coal mine? You can out-earn a whole bunch of liberal arts grads slinging char.

Likewise, if you go teach in a Title I school, working with some of the most disadvantaged kids, I think you deserve the title of professional, and you deserve the associated pay that comes with such a challenging task.

I could go on and on and on and on. And I probably ought not. This is, as so many others have said before, about basketball.
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i77cat
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Post by i77cat » Tue Jun 23, 2015 2:25 pm

"My problem? When students passed the standardized test but failed my class. I had no other response but to modify their grade to passing--allowing that if the State of North Carolina deemed them fit by its standards, who am I to disagree?"

Why shouldn't your standards be higher than the NC standards? I know a teacher who taught AP Calculus and was extremely tough. He'd finished all the material for the AP exam fairly early in the year. There were students who failed his class and made a 4 on the exam. One of his students was my daughter. She made a 5 on the AP exam but made less than an A in the course. He was among her favorite and most-respected instructors.
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jamesdhogan
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Post by jamesdhogan » Tue Jun 23, 2015 3:39 pm

i77cat wrote:"My problem? When students passed the standardized test but failed my class. I had no other response but to modify their grade to passing--allowing that if the State of North Carolina deemed them fit by its standards, who am I to disagree?"

Why shouldn't your standards be higher than the NC standards? I know a teacher who taught AP Calculus and was extremely tough. He'd finished all the material for the AP exam fairly early in the year. There were students who failed his class and made a 4 on the exam. One of his students was my daughter. She made a 5 on the AP exam but made less than an A in the course. He was among her favorite and most-respected instructors.
My department head frowned upon having students repeat graduation-required courses when they'd already passed the state EOC. And the guidance counselors had some logic that when freshmen and sophomores repeat a course, it increases the chances of their not finishing high school. I dunno. I wanted high standards, but then again, there's also a reason I left public schools to come work at Davidson. :)
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i77cat
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Post by i77cat » Tue Jun 23, 2015 3:57 pm

The EOC is a terribly low bar. It is sad, and pathetic, that your department head wouldn't sanction the grade that a student earned in your class.
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jamesdhogan
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Post by jamesdhogan » Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:07 pm

i77cat wrote:The EOC is a terribly low bar. It is sad, and pathetic, that your department head wouldn't sanction the grade that a student earned in your class.
Yep.

My last year of teaching, I had a principal who all but threatened my job if I didn't "do what it takes" to make a couple of football players eligible. (This was a different principal than my first administrator.) I told him I would do no such thing.

The rest of that academic year plays out in a neat story. One afternoon, I was voted Teacher of the Year by my colleagues. The next morning, the same principal had me escorted out of the school by sheriff's deputy for interrupting the educational environment.

There are a few steps between those two points in time, but again, I think the point is that sometimes what teachers want to do and what they have authority to do are two different things.
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stevelee
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Post by stevelee » Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:53 pm

It hadn't occurred to me that the teach-to-the-test materials might cover the subject matter better than the regular textbooks. Given the political processes that produce both, I can see how that might happen.

I've always been really good at taking multiple choice tests, and that certainly came in handy in helping to see that was able to spend eight years in a couple of rather expensive (so we thought then) institutions of higher learning. But I don't recall that talent as being of much use since.

In a sermon at a wedding I said that the questions that I was about to ask the couple were not multiple-choice, otherwise, like all the rest of us they would choose better, health, richer, etc.

My high school physics teacher also taught the highest level math class they offered back then in our high school. Thinking of that class can't help but remind me of the cheerleader who sat behind me. The satirical poetry I wrote during that class to entertain her then came in handy the next period in English when I'd turn it in for extra credit. But I am really trying now to get my mind back on the math class and why I brought this up. Oh, Mr. Davis, the teacher, every now and then would say that he was not allowed to teach us any calculus, but he would sneak in a taste now and then. He may have been pulling our legs, but I think he was really exploiting some state policy. In any event, presenting something to teenagers as forbidden fruit was a good way to pique our interest.
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