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The title of the talk turned out to be a bit clickbait-y, but do tell. (Newport News, that's the shipyard town, right?)
Yep, that's the one, although I was technically across the district line. Anyway, I started at $19K, which even in 1995 dollars isn't that much. Six or so years later, I get called into the assistant principal's office and the following conversation ensues:
AP: "Did you really tell [redacted] that he hadn't learned anything all year?"
KG: "Yes"
AP: "Well, it hurt his feelings."
KG: "Someone should hurt his feelings at least once a day. Then maybe he'd learn something."
AP: "What gave you the impression you're here to teach these kids anything?"
Me: "OK, then I want babysitting pay. $3 an hour per kid."
AP (pulls out calculator, then looks shocked): "That's never gonna happen!"
Me: "Then I guess I'm wasting my time here."
This is following the revelation that, because my students were scoring so high on the state standards test, I was rated one of the worst teachers in the state because the sole metric was "how many points did your students' mean test score improve since last year" -- mine had gone from 92% to 93%, a mere 1% improvement. Compare to someone whose students went from 40% to 50% -- they obviously improved ten times as much -- and that teacher was obviously ten times better at teaching!
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I've heard similar stories from La Principessa.
In other news, according to her Facebook page, Ms. Berard is separated.
[Makes "ka-ching!" gesture]
The title of the talk turned out to be a bit clickbait-y, but do tell. (Newport News, that's the shipyard town, right?)
As for Lawrence, I didn't know much about it going in and the presenters were speaking to people from Lawrence who were well familiar with the situation and didn't give much backstory, but apparently their school district was put under receivership, given a sharp shock of standardized testing and are being hailed in some circles (union-busting neoliberal privatizing circles) as some kind of model turn-around achievement. I'm sure charter schools were in there, too, but they were referring to schools by name, so I didn't really follow.
Anyway, the speaker, Amy Berard was featured in a Washington Post article (Teacher blasts popular classroom training program: It is turning us into robots.) that I haven't read yet, but, so Ms. Berard said, earned the journalist a nasty e-mail from Randi Weingarten.
Thanks to my, sadly ended (for now anyway), relationship with La Principessa, I had enough juicy anecdotes to turn into an amusing contribution to the discussion which made Ms. Berard laugh, which was gratifying, because she is pretty hawt . Mr. Comrade said she mentioned being married at one point, but I didn't see any ring when I went up and shook her hand.
It's the same all over the world (or similar) - the government's presently trying to turn all schools into academies, which are (I believe) very much like charter schools, whether the schools themselves want this or not.
Sorry to hear about you and La Principessa :( Ms. Berard's got a bit of a Tori Amos thing going on, it seems...
The title of the talk turned out to be a bit clickbait-y, but do tell. (Newport News, that's the shipyard town, right?)Yep, that's the one, although I was technically across the district line. Anyway, I started at $19K, which even in 1995 dollars isn't that much. Six or so years later, I get called into the assistant principal's office and the following conversation ensues:
AP: "Did you really tell [redacted] that he hadn't learned anything all year?"
KG: "Yes"
AP: "Well, it hurt his feelings."
KG: "Someone should hurt his feelings at least once a day. Then maybe he'd learn something."
AP: "What gave you the impression you're here to teach these kids anything?"
Me: "OK, then I want babysitting pay. $3 an hour per kid."
AP (pulls out calculator, then looks shocked): "That's never gonna happen!"
Me: "Then I guess I'm wasting my time here."This is following the revelation that, because my students were scoring so high on the state standards test, I was rated one of the worst teachers in the state because the sole metric was "how many points did your students' mean test score improve since last year" -- mine had gone from 92% to 93%, a mere 1% improvement. Compare to someone whose students went from 40% to 50% -- they obviously improved ten times as much -- and that teacher was obviously ten times better at teaching!
Kirth, that's terrible...
...A calculator to multiply by three? D:
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The title of the talk turned out to be a bit clickbait-y, but do tell. (Newport News, that's the shipyard town, right?)Yep, that's the one, although I was technically across the district line. Anyway, I started at $19K, which even in 1995 dollars isn't that much. Six or so years later, I get called into the assistant principal's office and the following conversation ensues:
AP: "Did you really tell [redacted] that he hadn't learned anything all year?"
KG: "Yes"
AP: "Well, it hurt his feelings."
KG: "Someone should hurt his feelings at least once a day. Then maybe he'd learn something."
AP: "What gave you the impression you're here to teach these kids anything?"
Me: "OK, then I want babysitting pay. $3 an hour per kid."
AP (pulls out calculator, then looks shocked): "That's never gonna happen!"
Me: "Then I guess I'm wasting my time here."This is following the revelation that, because my students were scoring so high on the state standards test, I was rated one of the worst teachers in the state because the sole metric was "how many points did your students' mean test score improve since last year" -- mine had gone from 92% to 93%, a mere 1% improvement. Compare to someone whose students went from 40% to 50% -- they obviously improved ten times as much -- and that teacher was obviously ten times better at teaching!
You've GOT to be joking. Where was this, exactly?
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Comrade Longears will be pleased to hear that some of her Facebook photos feature her at a piano. The Nigerian Princess looked through her selfies and concluded that she was looking for a man, so I'll make sure to go back to Lawrence soon.
Anyway, that was yesterday. Went to the rally at the jail. Was briefly interviewed for The Guardian, which was neat, but I haven't seen an article from them. There was one adrenaline-filled moment when we were all marching toward the door and I thought, "uh-oh, we didn't make back-up plans for the film showing if we get arrested" but it quickly passed because it was a jail and you can't just walk into a jail because it's a jail and they lock the doors. Duh.
Fast food workers march on behalf of man who died in jail
Much longer piece that ran in something called CityLab that appears to be connected to The Atlantic:
The Death of Jeffrey Pendleton
Not many points, leftist bingo-wise, but we did learn that the friendly, overly talkative, slightly annoying retired SEIU guy we run into from time to time used to be in the October League, a defunct Maoist outfit best known for getting the official Chinese franchise after the Gang of Four were toppled, and most infamous for saying some kind of nice things about the Khmer Rouge once upon a time. I think their head honchos are mostly in the Progressive Democrats of America now. F*~*ing Maoists.
Later, the film showing was kind of a bust, but we raised $33 for Leonard Peltier, so, that's something, anyway.
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A couple more ed articles that tickled my fancy:
VIDEO: 41 People Arrested Protesting CUNY Cuts at Cuomo's Midtown Office
Which, I've heard, led Governor Cuomo to reverse himself and fully fund CUNY. Don't quote me on that, I haven't really been following it, but one of La Principessa's NYC professor comrades was involved in organizing it, so I've heard bits.
More than 1,000 Boston students march to protest cuts
Which I heard, again, don't quote me, led Mayor Walsh to reverse himself on high school cuts.
And, finally, from Chicago:
Fight for $15 to join Chicago Teachers Union's April 1 strike
Vive le Galt!
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Some might have seen my comrade, Kshama Sawant, opening up for Bernie in Seattle last night. "I follow Comrade Anklebiter's posts" you're thinking, "How could that be?" Rather than saying anything myself, I'll just link this article by the founder of Occupied Wall Street Journal on a Chavezista-funded television site:
After the Election: Can Support for Bernie Spur Social Change?
Which I like, not only because it cites unnamed Socialist Alternative oppositionists (not me!) but also because it answers a question earlier posed by Citizen X, namely, "who cares what the ultraleft sectarians think?":
"Because it punches far above its weight. The International Socialist Organization and Solidarity have been in the thick of important labor struggles in recent decades, involving auto workers, teachers, and Teamsters. Socialist Alternative has pulled Seattle’s politics to the left through local elections. If ever you’ve been to an antiwar protest, it was probably organized by socialists or communists."
Vive le Galt!
Here is a link to the Richard Wolff lecture I mentioned a week or two ago.
I'm not sure if you can hear it in the video, but there was a part in the lecture where Richard Wolff was explaining how political parties get the masses to vote against their own interest, by electing capitalist shill candidates, who then throw the voters under the economic bus. When he then explained that once people wise up, and the Capitalists can no longer get support through votes,... Before he finished his sentence, several goblins in the audience murmured, "the gun!"
He was recently on Celebrity Lefty Hearthrob Abby Martin's Telesur program, The Empire Files:
Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing Itself with Dr. Richard Wolff // Empire_File022
Speaking of Lefty Hearthrobs, I feel it is much more acceptable, and slightly less creepy, to link Ms. Berard's Twitter account rather than her Facebook page.
Alas, I don't.
Might as well plug CAJE's efforts to get a projector to make our film screenings better (and so that Mr. Comrade and I don't have to lug his television and PS3 across town each Friday):
I gave $50 in cash, which doesn't show up on the Gofundme, so it's closer to being done than it looks.
Also, not really the centenary until next month, but everyone else is already celebrating so:
5 Things You Really Need to Know About Ireland's Easter Rising
Vive le Galt!!!
Hello.......BROTHER!!!!
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Hello, stooge. So you finally got out of the Fun-Timey Reeducation Through Labor Supercenter, huh? Have you seen mom yet?
O' yes I have escaped. It was kindof like Cosco, except absolutely terrible, which isn't very hard to do. Unfortunaely I haven't seen mum yet.
Oh, you escaped?
[Makes furtive gestures to attract the attention of the Gray Gardeners]
Mom went to visit Cousin Toenibbler over at the new garbage heap they constructed at the other end of town. Here, let me draw you a map...
[Wastes time until the Gray Gardeners show up]
That's okay, I got this nifty GPS from the Cosco next door.
That's odd... I always thought that Conservative Anklebiter was just Doodlebug Anklebiter before he had his morning coffee... But here they are in the same place...
Also, judging by Conservative's greeting, he has a touch of Hulkamania. Hopefully, he can see a doctor about that...
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I always liked Flair more.
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Vive le Galt!
Comrade Anklebiter...
Based on the write-up of Galt... you're really not far from the truth, but I suspect we're in the 'early stages', when things 'looked somewhat normal' still.
We have a governor that was pretty much elected on the sole premise of 'those darn public union people have expensive pensions'. He keeps trying to drag the state under the bus of commerce like Walker did up in Wisconsin with 'right-to-be-screwed'.
Nevermind the fact that the reason the pensions are expensive is because for almost twenty years, a Republicrat governor and a Demican House speaker conspired to squeeze the cash out of the budget by taking the money from the pension fund to 'fund other things' so our procession of (nearly all) corrupt governors could look like they were cutting taxes. Just like the 'lottery money for schools scam'...
This would work as a nice Ponzi-style scheme, except pensions are for folks who are retiring, and as this thing has exploded over the years, more folks have pushed into retirement... no money + legal obligation to pay money = wreck worse than the Titanic. And yet who gets the blame for this?
Not the politicos that have been screwing up the pensions for the past few decades (along with their buddies doing the 'One Day Work for Pension for Life Plan'). Nope, the hard-working folks who put the sweat of their brows into something they were told was going to be viable. Promised, even.
State's been running without an official budget for almost a year, and it shows no signs of improving soon.
Please forgive the lack of links, there's far too many of them and this thing would be nothing BUT links if I put all the relevant ones in here.
I'm guessing you're in Illinois, Citizen Wei Ji?
I always liked Flair more.
The union brothers at work (oddly enough, not the union sisters) go around screaming "Can I get a Ric Flair?!?" which didn't make any sense to me until they explained it.
I've learned a lot about professional wrestling working at UPS.
I'm guessing you're in Illinois, Citizen Wei Ji?
And after all that hard effort to not name names or places, too.
Guilty as charged, Comrade Anklebiter.
And, speaking of the Khmer Rouge, the son of the current ruler of Cambodia is visiting Lowell tomorrow and the Khmer community, which is quite large, is supposed to protest. I don't know much about him or his father, but there's always wikipedia:
EDIT: He's visiting in April, but there's a protest in front of the City Council meeting tonight.
...A calculator to multiply by three? D:
In his defense, I had a LOT of students in each class. And we were on block scheduling, so each class was 100+ minutes and met every other day. But, yeah.
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You've GOT to be joking. Where was this, exactly?
AP: "Did you really tell [redacted] that he hadn't learned anything all year?"
KG: "Yes"
AP: "Well, it hurt his feelings."
KG: "Someone should hurt his feelings at least once a day. Then maybe he'd learn something."
AP: "What gave you the impression you're here to teach these kids anything?"
Me: "OK, then I want babysitting pay. $3 an hour per kid."
AP (pulls out calculator, then looks shocked): "That's never gonna happen!"
Me: "Then I guess I'm wasting my time here."
What about this? You didn't really have this dialogue, did you???
What about this? You didn't really have this dialogue, did you???
That's pretty much how I remember it. Granted, that was going on 16 years ago, and I don't claim to have a photographic recall or anything, but something like that leaves an impression. I'd like to think he meant something else but that it got lost in the conversation?
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More locally-produced agitprop:
JUSTICE FOR JEFFREY: The people take the fight to Valley Street
and
Loving father of 3 shot dead by Lowell police: Why?
Also, finally found the article in The Guardian, but I didn't make the cut:
Protesters seek answers after homeless man's death in New Hampshire jail
Tomorrow, getting out of work early so we can storm the Nashua Police Department:
New Hampshire Justice for Jeffrey Pendleton
Last night, we dipped our first toe into Cambodian-émigré politics.
Kind of knew it would be weird, and it was. Turns out, the government of Cambodia was gifting the city of Lowell with a statue of some king of Angkor Wat. A local up-and-coming Cambodian-American Republican turned the issue into a political football in order to attack a standing Cambodian-American Democratic state representative who, if our local contacts are to be believed, had gone to the home country to negotiate the release of some monks. The Repub C-A had allegedly doctored a video of it so that instead of the Dem C-A saying "I have come to learn about why the monks are being held" he said "I am here to learn from you." So scuttlebutt goes, anyway. Beats me.
But it did spur me to learn quite a bit about Cambodia:
30 Years of Hun Sen: Violence, Repression, and Corruption in Cambodia
We left early and then watched as two CAJE members (local teacher who discovered labor theory of value on his own and lone black male member) gave podcasting a trial run. Mr. Comrade and I are certain that the latter is now a candidate member of PSL, but I started crying when they talked about the beginnings of CAJE and he testified to how much he had learned from "[another CAJE member], [the Nigerian Princess], [Comrade Anklebiter] and [Mr. Comrade]." [Sobs]
Anyway, got three contact sessions set up for the rest of this week, including with the NH Bernie supporter who had told Mr. Comrade he was a Massachusetts troll a whiles back, and I hope to make it two events in Boston (NEGROES WITH GUNS: Rob Williams and Black Power - Film and discussion and The Final Aim is Nothing: The Politics of Revisionism and Anti-revisionism) and then maybe put together a demo about this Perez thingy.
And, finally, Ms. Berard accepted my friend request!!!
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This op-ed by Norman Finkelstein made me chuckle:
“Why I Oppose Bernie Sanders, and Why I Support Hillary Clinton;”
Hee hee!
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Was scheduled to leave work early today, was kinda panicking, the disc of The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution that I had ordered from Netflix started skipping around the one hour mark and the replacement disc may (or may not) arrive the day of the film showing. Dropped by Barnes and Noble to hopefully pick one up with the gift card that I got for Christmas. They didn't have it, but maybe their store in Burlington had one. Wait while they make phone call. Clock is ticking to get to work. They're supposed to have it, but the clerk can't find it. Checked at the Newbury Comics and the FYE. Neither of them carry it.
Was racing to get to work on time, got a text from my boss saying take the whole day off. Relief. Still anxiety-ing out about the movie, though, so I drive to Burlington. Clerk asks me if I need any help. I say, "Well, you probably just received a call from Nashua..." "Oh yes, I couldn't find it." He tells me all the places he looked. I tell him thank you, but I'm going to look anyway. Five minutes later, find it. Anxiety level goes way down.
[Exhales]
I saved the film showing!
Now, just chillax until it's time to storm the police department...
Comrade is my twin brother, but complete opposites.
Sadly, there was no storming. Rally was in a different city, different set of people came, about the same amount. Nowhere near as intense. A little bit anticlimactic, tbh.
But...two of the new people who came were my Buddhist Monk former player and his wife and their two babies whom I had never met! They're named Aurelia (aged 2) and Barrington (six months) and they are adorable even if they were named by hippies.
Even better, he wants to play D&D again. Huzzah!
Comrade Kshama in The New Yorker:
How the Minimum-Wage Movement Entered the Mainstream
Meanwhile, in France...
Protests Erupt in France over Proposed Labor Reforms
Vive le Galt!
And one Mr. Comrade pointed out to me on Czechoslovakia 1968:
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For example, Comrade likes to Rock 'n Roll. A hot dog makes me lose control.
Got my picture in the NYT--
Unable to Pay $100 Bail, Homeless Man Dies in New Hampshire Jail
--and pix AND a quote in The Nashua Telegraph. My mommy bought five print copies and brought them home, but their website is behind a paywall for me.
And now I'll go look at the pictures of the CTU strike.
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Think I'm going to skip the events in Boston. Kinda tired, kinda broke, kinda need to do my taxes.
Film showing last night brought in $35 for Ed Poindexter.
Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, 1947—2016
“When It Gets to This Point” by Mondo we Langa
We're reconsidering Friday Night Films for another day of the week. Maybe Monday Night Movies? Tuesday Night Talkies? Thursday at the Theatre? Not sure yet.
Anyway, after the day of airport worker strikes and the day of Chicago teachers strike (Ms. Berard put a photo out of her wearing red high heels and a sexy red skirt to show solidarity with the CTU--yowza!!!), April 15th is going to be the (inter?)national day of fast food workers strike, except in New England, where we do it on the 14th to not interfere with the Boston Marathon.
This year, we're organizing the bus stop in Lowell.
A member of the Workers World Party came up to Nashua and did an interview with the strikers. Which means that my life's dream of getting Red Steve Kirschbaum and his flatbed truck up to a demo I've organized is one step closer to fruition.
The WW comrade also pointed out an article they ran about police brutality in Nashua a decade and a half ago.
Vice News piece about the followers of Juan Posadas:
The Socialists Who Think Revolution Will Come When the Aliens Get Here
I changed my FB profile picture to something distinctly more The-Big-Lebowski-ish and Ms. Berard "liked" it. She then changed her photo to something more sexy-ish and I "liked" it. I wonder if this is how cyberromances begin...
And if it is, I also wonder what La Principessa would do if she found out that I was dating yet another 39-year-old 8th-grade teacher who is estranged from her husband (who cries a lot?--at least, she cried when I saw her speak)?
Hmmm.
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You've got it bad, got it bad, got it bad
You're hot for teachers!
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You've got it bad, got it bad, got it bad
You're hot for teachers!Like Bernie?
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I want to rock and seize the means of production!
Tonight, meeting at the Nashua Labor Coalition to build for Justice4Jeffrey and the April 14th strike, tomorrow the Granite State Organizing Project's Manchester meeting.
Glad to see another J4J event popped up on the coast, even if I can't go:
and our first Monday Night Movie:
Let the Fire Burn--Monday Night Movies
[DJdD]I invited Ms. Berard[/DJdD]