Category: Blog

I have a bunch of really good blog entries are they are ALL ON THE OLD SERVER!  I am going to try to figure out how to move them over, but it might not happen until Spring Break — only a few weeks ago.

This sort of thing makes me crazy, but probably gives the least painful outcome.  Though I’m afraid he’ll try something like this again… so many do.

One thing I’ve done since day one, is to think of my students as babies — even the 21 year olds, and yes, I’ve had 21 year old students in my classroom.  In Texas, as long as you haven’t graduated, AND you don’t give a discipline problem, you have the right to be in the classroom until you are 21 or you graduate.

Quoted from http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/021608dnmetursuline.3358120.html:

Ex-Ursuline Academy teacher gets probation for sexual contact with student | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News

If Mr. Novinski successfully completes his probation, he will not have a criminal record. He is not required to register as a sex offender.

 

But as a condition of his probation, he is prohibited from teaching or doing counseling work.

I like to play it very safe on my blogs, but did comment on this with my real name, though the comment hasn’t shown up yet. 

Dallas ISD Blog | The Dallas Morning News

 

Ward English, associate principal at Skyline High School, has this to say about alleged cheating at his school.

 

You need to read the memo. 

Ward was dean at my school for several years, when I worked very closely with him.  When I was teacher tech, the deans relied heavily on my technology expertise, and the ones we have had since then have relied on me some.

First, I have my own policy in similar matters — if a kid gets put in my class in the middle of the semester, I’m always kind grade wise.  It happens too often.  In fact, whenever I know a kid’s schedule was screwed up by adults, I’m not only kind in grading, but do what I can to fix the situation.

I will say that over my 16 years, several athletes have been placed in the wrong level of technology class and they honestly couldn’t handle the work.  Many have been special ed — remember I teach CS and it’s not always the right placement. On several different occasions administrators have asked the following question:

“What can this kid do to pass your class”?

One or two times, I’ve honestly said, put them in the appropriate class (which I usually name) and I’ll give the kid a 70.  The good news is that all parties involved are relieved, me, the kid, the parents AND the administrator.  And the kid does better in the right class.  Though sometimes I have to smooth over the feathers of the receiving teacher. 

On other occasions I’ve said, “the kid needs to do this work, and I’m available at these times”. The kid always shows up at the time and place indicated, often with a teammate to help him.  And I help too, but the kid does the work.

Those two answers have always worked well for both me and the kids.  Even when I teach math.

We’ve had one other school year since I’ve been teaching, when we had finals after Christmas, however, I don’t remember the schedule being this odd.  We just returned back from finals, MLK, AND a teacher workday, meaning we haven’t had a full day of class since last Monday. Yesterday was our first full day. 

The good news is that my students did fairly well on the district finals.  A lot of kids passed their finals who were not passing with me — my policy is to make sure you pass the entire semester if you can pass the district final because they ARE hard.

That’s other thing my district does well by the way. Our students are mobile, especially when apartment complexes are offering free rent, and can you blame their families?  We’ve also tried to have a standard curriculum, but we didn’t really have the funding for it.  However, we had had the district finals. By the way, one of my projects right now is to create a standard curriculum, which is going well, but seems like a daunting task.  I’m on week 6 of 36 weeks!

The worse part of our schedule, is that the work ethic of my students is terrible.  Even before this week, they were waiting until the last minute.  Though I do think I’ve always had a group that does this, this year seems worse.  However, I also have to remember I haven’t had a student load this high in years, especially when it comes to webmastering.  I do not believe I’ve ever had this many webmastering students, and I just got 5 more.  Two had me first semester in previous years, the others all failed the other webmastering teacher at some point.

More good news, I"ve managed to convince administration to drop Webmasteirng as an option on the choice sheet, though I bet we have to keep a section open next year for those who failed it.  They really can’t come into the second semester of CS.

I’m really glad I went and I participated.  I wish I had more knowledge going in, and had better expectations on what we were doing etc. but now I do.  I’ll definately participate again next year.

I hope other people besides Microsoft start doing this type of event.  For example Adobe/Macromedia.  While I think that Microsoft has good tools, hosting their sites tends to be a bit more expensive.  However, Verio did provide hosting free for two years.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

One of the things I really like about my district is how we handle fires.

We put them out.

Seriously.  We had a fire at a middle school at a gym, and it shoulds like day went on as scheduled.  Luckily we weren’t keeping them long, so didn’t really have much to deal with.

So we don’t evaculate the entire building.  Most of the time, no one knows what happened until the next day, and learning goes on as much as possible. 

I’ve been spending the weekend at the "We are Microsoft Charity Coding" event. They believe it is the first of this kind of event.

One of my classes asked me why and my best response, and the one that was gotten was:  "well, you don’t see me running a race or building a house do you?  Seems like sitting around and writing code would be the best way to ‘give back’."  Not that I don’t do that on a regular basis.  (Let’s see, I have phone number for a runaway’s phone on my cell, and the district currently owes me $1,800.)

It would be best to look at their website to see what it was about.  It’s wearemicrosoft.com.  I’ve spent the day transferring lots of content from an old website to a new one. 

Some things learned: I did learn how to use some newer technologies — and how not to use one.  BUT, this isn’t for someone who isn’t confident in their abilities.  You start on the project on Friday night, and the deadline is 3:00 pm on Sunday. 

They’ve done things really well — the work area is fairly comfortable, the caffeine is plentiful and in lots of varieties — it was really nice to be able to get Diet Cokes and not have to worry about refilling the refrigator, the food is plentiful, but they don’t follow the schedule well, I’ve figured out that the schedule means they are going to order the food and it will take an hour after that to get there.  That’s okay, but hard on diabetics.

I think I would do it again.  The charity I ended up on was the right one for my current skill level, and I was able to produce some good websites.  However, I need to work up to what is really needed.

This is one of the many reasons I love my district.  I’ve actually helped to put out two different fires in the past 16 years — and each time, business went on as usual. One was in the kitchen, and was a toast fire, I pulled the kids out of that room and into mine while their teacher called for help and then put out the fire.

The other one was a restroom fire.

Fire damages Lincoln High campus in Dallas, classes to be held | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News

WFAA-TV reported that firefighters had knocked down the flames by about 7 a.m. Lincoln High School’s main building next door appeared undamaged.

Jon Dahlander, a Dallas school district spokesman, said school was to open today and that final exams were expected to take place as scheduled. Today was the last study day before exams.

I first applied for the subscription in October, and through lots of paperwork screwups on the Dallas ISD side and the Microsoft side, I’ve finally got a subscription.  Am downloading some of the software now, and it IS a really good program.  It’s been expanded quite a bit since I was a member before — I’d gotten a year’s subscription from a grant, and didn’t have the money to renew.  I think in the future, I’m going to go ahead and pay out of my own pocket, and not worry about getting reimbursed.  It’s worth the approximately $300.00 for the software itself.

For the first time, I went to our annual AP Scholars recognition program.  I went because the principal said to, and because I had not been to the Meyerson Symphony center.  Free food wasn’t bad either.

It was a SUPER program.  They had great speakers that kept it short and simple.  The best was the keynote speaker who had graduated as valedictorian of Pinkston High School in 1991.  She went through her history, how she got there and hints from other people. 

I’m really glad the district does this.  I hope the students appreciated being recognized.

Oh, and why I didn’t I go in the past. When I left industry I swore I wasn’t going to work at a job that took up 24 hours a day of my time.  Funny,I reflect on this week, and I only spent about 3 hours doing MY STUFF. It’s Thursday, and Tuesday night I graded and last night I was at the ceremony.