If We Get Diversity, Can We Get Rid of Ugly Teachers?

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The good looking teachers are sorely under represented.

I really really loved my fourth grade teacher, mostly because she was a hot babe.

A well organized group of Burlington, Vermont, parents hammered the school board there last month. See, the Burlington School District (BSD) has a serious problem. It has nothing to do with test scores. As far as I know, there is no more bullying on campuses there than at any other school in the nation. Costs have risen exponentially but that’s nothing new.

Test scores continue to wane but many Vermonters do not believe in testing. Can’t be the 3 Rs.

Hazing still happens but Vermont parents know a holistic approach that considers the target, the bully, and the bystanders creates a dialog that stops unwanted behaviors and that the state does have a model Bullying Prevention Plan. Can’t be bullying.

The Burlington School Board is proud their district spends “$2000 less per equalized pupil than the statewide average.” Can’t be money, either.

It turns out that nearly a quarter of the students in Burlington schools are children of color and that figure far, far outnumbers the faculty and staff. Fewer than three percent of the teachers and staff belong to a minority.

Parents say the school must hire more minorities to give students a more balanced perspective.

“Diversity improves the vibrancy and quality and excellence of our schools. Diversity in many areas: geographically, linguistically, politically, in terms of gender, in terms of religious orientation. All of that diversity enhances the pool of ideas and the creativity and vibrancy of any institution,” Burlington parent Stephanie Seguino told WCAX-TV News.

The BSD reports it “has dedicated significant resources toward diversity awareness over the past eleven years, beginning with the creation of a full time director. [In 2008] the Board of Commissioners appointed Dr. Dan Balon … to be the new Director [of diversity and multiculturalism], bringing over 17 years experience in education management, non-profit agencies, and diversity education on a national scale to the position.”

Apparently, an equalized pupil is not a measure of diversity but rather a simple accounting term.

By all appearances, Ms Seguino and the other parents believe Burlington still needs an affirmative action program for faculty hiring.

Hello?

Oh. Wait. That’s correct. We do need teachers to bring a cultural understanding to the multiplication tables/

From Wikipedia , “The term affirmative action refers to policies that take race, ethnicity, or sex into consideration in an attempt to promote equal opportunity or increase ethnic or other forms of diversity. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and education to public contracting and health programs. The impetus towards affirmative action is twofold: to maximize diversity in all levels of society, along with its presumed benefits, and to redress perceived disadvantages due to overt, institutional, or involuntary discrimination. Opponents argue that it promotes reverse discrimination.”

BSD children will grow up to invent green energy products and teach other children.

The New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) tests reading, writing, math and science in elementary and secondary schools. The annual achievement tests were developed to meet the Federal No Child Gets Ahead Act. The program is one of the primary yardsticks to measure school performance in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.

NECAP Scores: 15 (0.2%) BHS students qualified for the National Merit Scholarship Program last year and eight students (0.1%) won awards in New England’s Technology Student Association competition. On the other hand, 43% of Burlington students are “partially proficient” or “substantially below proficient” in math. 46% of Burlington students are “partially proficient” or “substantially below proficient” in science. A whopping 52% (that’s more than half for those in Burlington schools) of Burlington students are “partially proficient” or “substantially below proficient” in writing.

These children will elect representatives and pass laws.

By all appearances, Ms Seguino and the other parents believe Burlington will improve the 3Rs with an affirmative action program for faculty hiring where about 7 of every 16 Burlington students is “partially proficient” or “substantially below proficient” in math.

These children will pay off the deficit?

I may have jumped to an incorrect conclusion, though. Do you suppose President Barack Obama uses different arithmetic because he is black?

Louder Than … ?

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Caroline Cartwright, 48, a Tyne and Wear woman whose raucous lovemaking earned her an Anti-Social Behaviour Order and multiple arrests, declared that the order is a violation of her human rights.

According to court records, Sunderland City Council installed “specialist equipment” that recorded noise levels of between 30 and 40 decibels, “with the highest being 47 decibels.”

Lowest limit of urban ambient sound … 40 dB
Bird calls … 44 dB
Loud sex in the neighbourhood … priceless

The Game of Telephone

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“I have a cupcake in my briefcase,” I heard Missy say.

Missy and her husband Biff are here in South Puffin for a couple-three weeks of fishing. Missy loves her bling which dangles and jangles and actually seems to attract fish when she leans over the transom. She still has her job with the state but Biff is out of work for the first time in about 20 years. Naturally, they each brought a cellphone.

In the game of Telephone, according to the Wikipedia, “the first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first. The game is often played by children as a party game or in the playground.” Or by the Congress.

Missy actually said “My son got a cupcake for his birthday. I found it in the fridge.”

The game of telephone has become the game of cellephone.

Everyone in America today has at least one. It is impossible to walk down the street without tripping over Biff yelling into his hand or cupping his earbud to hear a friend at the beach or instruct a partner in Pipeline-istan. If people are far away or speak a different language, Biff knows they can understand him better when he yells.

I hate cellephony.

But it’s cheap! Every cellphone company in this country advertises the best network and the lowest rates. The average $39.99 cell bill last month cost the consumer $103 and change.

But it’s reliable! T-Mobile blamed a software glitch for the outage that left about 5% of its customers unable to send or receive calls or text messages last week. Of course, no cell carrier mentions the millions of individual dropped calls unless some other network does the dropping.

But it’s perfect for people watchers! I love to eavesdrop on conversations; cellphones make too too it easy to listen to just one side.

The game of cellephone we play doesn’t bring more cumulative error, rumor, and gossip than, say, Facebook or television or the blogosphere because our errors are personal, not viral. In the end, though, it’s all about me. Or thee. All I want is for my call to go through when I push send. All I want is to be able to tell if it is Missy or Biff who answers. All I want is to hear the words they say. After all, the simple copper line attached to a Bakelite™ speaker and microphone and the magneto my grandfather cranked did that with amazing accuracy and 99.72% uptime.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to get a bite of that cupcake. I hope it’s chocolate.

Flu Banks

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Wall Street bankers got yet another bonus thanks to the U.S. Government. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and others received thousands of H1N1 vaccine doses ahead of doctors, hospitals, and senior centers.

CDC Director Thomas Frieden is now urging health officials nationwide to make sure the vaccine goes only to high-risk groups.

So. Is this is the G.R.A.F.T. Act or ObamaCare in action?

Being Boppa

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It pleases me enormously that my nearly 20-year old granddaughter is not embarrassed to call me Boppa. She does it not only in public but even on Facebook.

“Boppa” has a history.

Wilbur Groendyke Dunning was Bill to his family of four other brothers and a sister. All the boys sounded alike on the phone, so when one called us in Westtown, he would say, “Hello, Art, Bill, Pres, Sid, June.” June was Frank, Junior, named for their father. He usually stopped when the right one answered. He was the second eldest.

He married Ethel Barnard and raised a couple of kids in the stone manor house of her father’s farm. They had chickens, a lot of grass to mow, and a dog named Monte who would lick the butter off a piece of toast and bring it back for more.

Bill Dunning started teaching chemistry at Temple at the beginning of time. He retired, then returned to teaching at PMC (now Widener) until his second retirement about the same time I was flunking freshman Chemistry at Stevens. I was not at the time smart enough to ask for help. He enjoyed working with his hands in the dirt as much as he enjoyed working with college kids. We had a pretty serious vegetable and flower garden in Westtown.

All the Dunning boys were athletic. Sidney, the tallest, turned down a major league pitching contract because they played ball on Sundays and the five of them together were tall enough to have fielded a pretty fair basketball team.

Interesting man he was. Ordained an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Frankford six months before my mother’s birthday. Invented and patented “red gas,” an anti-knock ingredient for gasoline that might have prevented our pumping tetraethyl lead onto our roadsides for decades. Rode the train every day to school. Transcribed hundreds of books into braille for the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind.

I had it good as a kid. My own folks moved back to the family home shortly after my grandmother whom I called “Da” died in 1953. Everyone shared the chores and I always had a built in babysitter. Boppa was usually home when my folks were out and vice versa. And my dad’s parents were just down Street Road at the station house on the Pennsey.

He made sure I had my own copy of Christopher Robin while I lay on Da’s bed eating Fig Newtons and pulling Jason’s tail. Jason was a great, golden-fleeced tom cat, the kind that comes but once a generation. I’m often not sure whether to identify with Christopher Robin or Pooh but I learned enough to make sure our cat, Ruff, was another.

He bought me my first slide rule when I entered Stevens. Keuffel & Esser manufactured its last slide rule in 1975. I still have Boppa’s first and my last. A slide rule does not depend on batteries.

He taught me, years before I had figured out that I would teach, too, that the teacher must stay a chapter ahead of the student. And he taught me how to coil an extension cord in a chicken laying box so it would not tangle.

Boppa was a quiet, private Victorian gentleman of strong will and strong opinion. I only once heard him complain — about a truly lousy honors chemistry course my high school snookered me to take — and that was after I had been graduated from college. He did not accept specious logic at the dinner table, at church, or in the news. He did volunteer at church, in the Township, and with friends. He did not like Dial soap because their commercials promoted “wishing everyone did.” He did speak Latin and read German.

In 1982, after living in the same house for more than 60 years, he took stock. “All my friends have died,” he said. “All of my brothers except the oldest have died. I have nothing more to keep me here. Let’s move to Florida.” 18 months later, after selling the farmhouse in Westtown, he and my folks started another great adventure, one that would last until his 100th year. He bought a little house in the middle of the Keys. I’m sitting there now, watching an egret preen on the rail of the boat next door.

Barnard/Dunning/Harper generations ran about 30 years each for a couple of centuries so he was 60 years old when I met him for the first time and he became Boppa. I guess I’m old enough to grow into it now, too.

Buying the first text book. $1.95
Buying a slide rule. $29.94
Remembering history. Priceless.

Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.