Painful

 

Yet Another Reminder That What We Say Is Important

I periodically forget how important what a teacher says is to students, how one throw-away comment can stick with them.  I don't necessarily feel responsible for their emotional reactions to such comments, but it's important to keep in mind that comments, especially negative ones, can have an impact far out of proportion to their intent.

That was brought back to mind today when I read this article:

Swimmer Penny Oleksiak won three medals for Canada at the Tokyo Olympics over the course of the last two weeks, giving her seven total Olympic medals.

The 21-year-old is one of the most decorated Canadian Olympic athletes and with that came a message to her high school teacher on Tuesday.

"I just googled ‘Canada’s most decorated Olympian’ and my name came up. I want to thank that teacher in high school who told me to stop swimming to focus on school (because) swimming wouldn’t get me anywhere. This is what dreams are made of," she tweeted.

"Also in reference to my last tweet no shade at all towards teachers in general, my sister is a teacher and I see her inspiring kids everyday.. Most of my teachers saw the vision and pushed me towards it. That one who constantly dragged me down though,, WOAT (Worst of All-Time)."

I don't think she was really thanking that teacher!

What Is The Purpose of a Grade?

Parents and students view grades differently than teachers do.  The former view them as a commodity to be hoarded, while the latter view them as a marker, a signal identifying achievement towards some set of standards.  Grades are not--well, they should not--be candy to be handed out to make people happy.  It's demoralizing when the government ignores this and allows grades to be changed willy-nilly:

High school students in California who ended up with bad grades last year now have the chance to change them to pass/fail, ensuring pandemic circumstances beyond their control don’t ding their grade point average or their chances of getting into college.

An emergency statute passed this summer requires all school districts to allow for the change, given the impact of distance learning on students.

Many high school students spent the entire school year online, some without adequate technology or support at home, including English learners, homeless students, foster youth and other vulnerable young people.

Shifting a letter grade to pass/fail means what would have been a D or F, for example, won’t be included in the calculation of a grade point average — a critical part of a college application. There are no restrictions on how many course grades or which courses can be changed...

Families can request the change for any course, even those required by the University of California, California State University system and many private colleges, which have agreed to accept the pass/fail grades.

The only reason I can think of to change a non-F grade to a "pass" would be to get a higher GPA for college admissions.  Why should we in education support that?  It doesn't matter what the reason was, the student clearly didn't learn a topic sufficiently if he/she got a low grade in the course.  Isn't measuring learning supposed to be what a grade does?  That's the case if the grade is a marker, but not if it's a commodity to be maximized.

If students got enough low grades then they are not prepared for college.  Shouldn't that be considered before granting them admission?

What this shows me is that education is not valued by our government.

Vacationing in Greece

Earlier this year, I considered taking a summer trip to Greece since that country was supposedly opening up to tourism.  Yes, this is only one data point, but it's a pretty bad data point:

A father has revealed how a £4,000 family break has turned into the 'holiday from hell' after being forced to quarantine with his partner and two young children despite the fact that he tested negative for COVID on six separate occasions.

Andy Stanton, 32 was randomly tested for COVID at the airport after arriving on the Greek Island of Zante with his wife Katrina, 31 and their two children; Olly, 3 and Isla, 4 on July 29 for what they thought would be the ideal way to overcome their lockdown blues.

Mr Stanton received a message telling him he was negative but just hours after checking into the four-star Caretta Beach and Water Park resort for their two-week break he was called by Greek health officials and told that he had in fact tested positive.

After being confined to their room at the resort, the family was then moved to a special quarantine hotel, where they have been forced to remain in a room infested with ants and mice. The have also described the food as so poor that their children go to bed crying each night on empty stomachs.

With temperatures on the island reaching 35C, Mr Stanton fumed that the air conditioning in their room does not work all the time while the WIFI is only intermittent.

He sobbed: 'We are desperate, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to us.

'My partner is crying each day and so are the kids and we shouldn't even be in quarantine because I have tested negative six times since arriving in Greece.

'We were so looking forward to this holiday after the long lockdown in Britain. The kids were so excited at having fun in a water park resort and they just don't understand what's going on.'

He added: 'The room we're in is so filthy that if you walk across the floor without any shoes and socks, your feet turn black. It's hot and sticky, there's no WIFI to keep the kids entertained and it's worse than being in prison.'

Spending $5600 on a rat trap is not my idea of a fun vacation.  Perhaps if the British Museum offered up the Elgin Marbles, this family's situation would be resolved.

It's All Mask Theater

As the Instapundit says, (Maybe) I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis act like it's a crisis.

Moving the 'Rona Goalposts

Yes, this:

You Catch More Flies With Honey Than With Vinegar

Empathy.  Treating people as individuals rather than political or racial avatars.  I could support something like this.

Why won't it catch on?  Because division, not "healing", is the goal of so-called diversity training.

Mask Effectiveness

It's almost as if the whole mask thing is theater:

BTW, guess which type my district has procured for us....

Media Bias

This should be all the evidence you need:

Update, 8/2/21:

Update #2, 8/3/21:

Disciplinary Policies

We all know that black and Hispanic students, especially boys, are suspended from school at rates higher than Asian and white students.  Somehow, this is supposed to be a marker of racism rather than of cultural issues.  

Some view school suspensions as punitive, but any teacher can tell you that removing a disruptive student makes learning easier for everyone else, and there's a new study that demonstrates that:

To evaluate the net effects of classroom disciplinary practices, policy makers and educators must understand not only their effects on disciplined students but also their effects on non-disciplined peers. In this study, we estimate the link between peer suspensions and non-suspended students’ learning trajectories in a California school district where middle and high school students took up to twelve basic skills tests in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) over the course of the 2009–10, 2010–11, and 2011–12 school years. We find that Hispanic students, students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, English language learners, students enrolled in special education, and low-achieving students are disproportionately exposed to classmate suspensions (boldface mine--Darren). Analyses with student and classroom fixed effects show that student achievement in mathematics increases when their classmates receive suspensions, particularly suspensions attributed to disruptive behavior. We find no association between classmate suspension and ELA achievement. Because these results come from schools in which suspensions are relatively rare events, they may not generalize to settings with draconian disciplinary cultures. Nonetheless, our findings imply that suspensions, when used appropriately, can improve the academic achievement of non-suspended students, particularly for students from vulnerable populations.

Somehow it's racist to discipline minority students but not racist to make other minority students lose out on education because of disruptive students.  I do not understand the leftie thought process.

Pics of Me

I was told that during this trip I looked relaxed and happy.  While I was certainly both, here are some pics--you decide:

In addition to relaxed and happy, I also appear extremely well-fed.

Freedom Fest Road Trip--By the Numbers

Total days:  30 (6/29-7/29)

Total miles:  4,609

Average mpg:  13.9 (not bad when so much of it was towing!) 

Average speed:  44 mph

Nights in houses:  7

Nights in the trailer:  23

Number of loads of laundry:  3 

Wal*marts visited: 2 (corrected 8/3)

Audiobooks listened to:  6

Gas stations that sold marijuana:  1 seen (not visited!)

National parks/monuments/historic sites visited:  7

National parks/monuments/historic sites visited that I hadn't visited before:  6

Highest gas price paid:  $4.40/gallon on I-5 in the Central Valley of California

Lowest gas price paid: $2.85/gallon in Phoenix

Highest elevation:  Sandia Peak in Albuquerque, 10,378'

Longest stay in one location:  6 nights in Rapid City, SD

Since my purchase in February 2017:

Total mileage on my pickup:  27,374.3

Total mileage while towing:  10,384

 

Update, 7/31/21:  

Number of times I wore a mask:  1 (the cable car up Sandia Peak is considered "public transportation")

Competing Against Yourself

One thing that's really added value to my (so far almost) 30-day, 4000-mile trip has been the National Park Service App.  It allows online or offline access to information about hundreds of national parks, historic sites, and monuments across the country and in US territories.  I've especially enjoyed the information about hiking trails and driving routes.

My favorite capability, though, is that it allows you to keep a list of those places you've visited!  On this trip I've added Montezuma's Castle, Petrified Forest/Painted Desert, Petroglyphs, Florissant Fossil Beds, and Devils Tower to my list of National Park Service sites I've visited, and tomorrow I'm going to add Golden Spike National Historic Site to the list (being from the Sacramento area, that one holds special significance to me).  It will be my 37th.

I encourage you to download this app, mark those sites you've visited, and start planning on more!

Close Encounters

I left Rapid City yesterday morning and went to Devils Tower National Monument:

But wait, there's more:

For perspective, if you zoom in on those curved grooves above and to the right of my smooth pate, you can see a climber!

If, upon seeing these pictures, 5 musical notes didn't immediately pop into your head, you're a young'in!

Freedom Fest So Far

Among other speakers so far I've heard and seen Kristi Noem, Corey DeAngelis, Maj Toure, Larry Elder, John Mackey, Naomi Wolf, and Ayaan Hirsi-Ali.  To say that the conference has been intellectually stimulating would be an extreme understatement.

Update, 7/24/21:  It just got better and better.  The conference is over now but you can add James O'Keefe, John McWhorter, and Mark Perry to the list.  What a treat!

Whom We Honor, We Craft In Stone

Michelangelo once said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."  Today I went to Mt. Rushmore to see the statue that was in a mountain:

After Mt. Rushmore I continued about 11 miles down the road to the Crazy Horse Monument.  The monument is on private land and is financed by donations--it's been a work-in-progress since 1948 and is nowhere near done:

It should be quite impressive when it gets done.

Just A Reminder

This guy was the first presidential candidate of the party that was formed in opposition to slavery:

The Republican Party has been the party of individual rights since its founding.

Next Phase

After enjoying Albuquerque, I made it to Colorado Springs in time for my son's 25th birthday.  Here's a picture of him, my mother and me:

And in what was the quirkiest of fates, the parents of a former student of mine, a student who eventually graduated from the Air Force Academy, saw me on Instagram and invited me over--because they now live in Colorado Springs!  Mike and Cris, thank you for the hospitality:

Then it was off to Denver, where I spent a day and a half with a friend of mine since high school.  I left this morning, and after a solid day of driving, camp is now set up at the Three Flags RV Park just outside of Rapid City.  I have a free day tomorrow to go have some fun, then Freedom Fest 2021 starts on Wednesday!

Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant

I've written previously about California's proposed racial/racist math framework.  Enough people opposed this dreck and now the state Board of Education is tucking tail and running.  Oh, they'll be back when they hope no one is looking, but make no mistake, this is a victory:

The California Board of Education is set to push back against implementing an overhaul of its mathematics curriculum after opponents argued the plan needlessly inserts politics and social justice initiatives into lessons.  

"California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way. This postponement means the State Board of Education has heard the message loud and clear. STEM leaders don’t want California students left behind by introducing politics into the math curriculum," said in a statement Dr. Williamson M. Evers, a senior fellow of the Independent Institute. 

The California board is slated to postpone implementing its proposed Mathematics Curriculum Framework during a Wednesday meeting, pushing final action on the curriculum to May 2022, according to the board’s agenda for this month.

Turns out it's based on bad research:

The push to create “equity” and more “social justice” in public schools in America's largest state rests on this basic premise: “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” declares the current draft of the California Math Framework, which also states that it rejects “the cult of genius.”

Informed by that fundamental idea, the 800-page Framework calls for the elimination of accelerated classes and gifted programs for high-achieving students until at least the 11th grade...

But the Framework, which could be adopted next year, claims its recommendations are based on the latest, seemingly unimpeachable findings of advanced social science research. Phrases such as “researchers found,” “the research shows” and the “research is clear” are sprinkled through the Framework, which states unequivocally: “The research is clear that all students are capable of becoming powerful mathematics learners and users.” If true, this evidence would provide a powerful rationale for adopting the Framework's proposals, which, given California's size and prestige, is commonly seen as a model for other states.

A review of much of the research cited, however, reveals that what the Framework describes as “clear” is often actually pretty murky, hotly disputed, or contradicted by other research, misleadingly stretched to cover situations for which it was not intended, or, in some instances, just plain wrong.

Good riddance.

The Pikes Peak Region

I lived here in Colorado Springs when I was stationed at Fort Carson from 1987-1990.  There's so much here--Pikes Peak (drive or hike up), Garden of the Gods, the Air Force Academy, the US Olympic Training Center, Old Colorado City, and so much more.

A Swiss friend once told me about the Switzerland that they sell to tourists, and then the Switzerland for those who live there.  Here are a couple shots of the Pikes Peak Region for the tourists, taken today:

Can you see why they call it Garden of the Gods?  You can see Pikes Peak in the background of the first picture.

Not too far away is the Florissant National Fossil Beds.  I was expecting mammoths and such, but mostly there are petrified redwood trees and a valley that millions of years ago was a forest, then a lake and now...

There are plenty of prehistoric fossilized fish, leaves, insects, etc.

Overcast, cool temps, great scenery--a good day.