Teaching

What is teaching? Why does it matter? How should it be done?

Trains - the ole 844 steamer

I've long had a soft spot for trains. These images come from the UPRR Facebook site. I voted to get them to come through Topeka/ KC with this classic steam engine (the 844). I didn't have a chance to see them either place - but caught it going through Lawrence yesterday - Didn't have time to bail out and snap a picture though - so I'm linking these photos. We were so close - but pictures or it didn't happen.

France '96;

Came across some long lost photos doing some spring cleaning. Thought I'd lost them. Can't believe it was around 15 years ago. I remember wine in France was cheaper than bottled water - though that may have been a thin rationalization.

I went in the off season - but still spent some serious cash. It was well worth it.


Notre Dame. Always under construction

day trip

A special thanks to the bloggers in Comp 1 who turned me on to Deanna Rose farmstead for children. And thanks to my wife, who takes much better pictures than I. We really like this place - and I can't believe it was so close and we never knew it was there. It pays to know other people with kids.

KC Disc Dog Photo Experiments

So the only camera I had when we stumbled across the Kansas City Disc Dogs demo in Southpark Last week, was the ancient 3 megapixel - which is enough a camera to outpace my talents as a photographer. So this is more of an experiment is image editing.



These dogs got serious air. The KC disc dogs group has a Facebook page, and they do free shows all over the Kansas City area.

Body art

I know stories of people not getting jobs (in banks, as nurses) because of their tattoos. I keep thinking this would make a good paper topic for the SRTOL paper, but I haven't seen it done well yet. Cracked has a funny post on this. See also my bookmarks.

The problem with a social D

A report currently excerpted on Doonesbury in the "say what" (a kinda WTF quote of the day) states:

The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations. We also know that of the 200,000... approximately half have a high school diploma or GED...

Some people, particularly students, sing the praises of the social pass - giving a low passing grade to students who have a score in the high 50%'s, but manage to show up the minimal number of times. I suspect this happens more with students who take the pass fail option - because they shoot for a 60% and we all know that the lower our expectations, the lower our performance.

A boss at a former school I taught at explicitly discouraged giving D's. This partly because novice teachers tend to worry about their students' grades more than the students do. When a new teacher, a GTA or someone insecure in their job gives a D it often means the student earned an F but the teacher lacked the confidence to enter that grade.

I don't think too many students expect the social D, but the few who do cause most of a teacher's problems.