ER

I do not know if anyone watched ER from Nov 20 (If you ahve not you can still check it out on NBCWebsite). On this particular epsiode there was a guy there with his wife and his wife's brother. The wife was having some problem and the doctors noticed something wrong with the husband and long story short it came out that the husband was a suspected child molester, although he was never convicted. Guess what this guys profession was....you guessed it a a male ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHER....out of all the jobs why didit have to be a elem teacher?

MMEET Scholars Wordle

Below is a Wordle image. Wordle takes the content of a piece of writing or an entire website and creates a visual aid of word choice within the writing. The larger the word, the more often it is used. I will post updated Wordles periodically as we post on this blog.

You may notice that words like "school" and "teachers" jump out right away. That's not surprising. What was surprising is the word "dress" taking such a prominent role, suggesting that many of our posts have had to do with image or appearances.

Conspicuously missing from the top 50 words is "gender." We still haven't reached a point where gender can readily be used to describe our identities or roles in the schools we work. Maybe if I expand the word count, we'll find a better representation of the words we choose.


Update: I did try it again using more words...

title="Wordle: MMEET2"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/315849/MMEET2"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

Number the Stars, scene 1

I was at the TRYPS play, "Number the Stars" last Friday and I was getting my kids settled into their seats and a woman approached me from another school district. She asked, "Does Grant only recruit male teachers?" We had three there that day, my co-teacher in the fifth grade and one of our fourth grade teachers. I said no, but I guess we should. Ha! Ha! She then proceded to give me the token response, "That is SO wonderful! We need more men in education." I told her that was true and then got back to watching out for my students. I am very lucky to teach at my school. It has been positive for so many reasons, one of which is the company of men that I am able to keep.

My life is better as a video game

I had a few minutes during my kindergartners' nap time and checked out an article on FOXNEWS.COM. In short, a boy's father realized a change in his son's personality and behavior after long hours playing "Call of Duty 4." As a result, Dad removed his xbox console. His son left on bicycle and was found dead in a corn field in Barrie, Ontario.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,448026,00.html

How can video games wrap up our boys so tightly that it constricts the role of the real world?

Who's at fault here? How can uninformed adults in a child's life be enlightened to the idea that giving that child the world can be the death of him?

I guess that is all I have to say.