Main » September 2004

September 30, 2004

Tests and stuff`

Well, we are back. The power went out Sunday due to the hurricane. We stayed through Monday and watched winds from a small tornado shatter a large pine tree in the back yard into three pieces. Later it rained about 5 inches and flooded the yard. Wind gusts of 70 mph blew lots of limbs and several smaller trees down. The mobile home came through fine. I went outside Sunday evening to put back the underpinning that had been torn loose in one place. I waded through thousands of mating frogs that were croaking and bleating their songs. The power came back on today and we brought the zoo back from the local motel we went to. It's good to be home.

Today was school as usual. The rosacea was still a problem from all of the excitement from the hurricane, but I'm moisturizing it. The cold air works wonders as well. I've upped the clonidine intake and plan on increasing the borage oil and antioxidents to help reduce inflammation. We had a rather peaceful day in class with a discussion of the Scope trial, followed by a lecture on taxonomy and a lab where students made a taxonomic key for several specimens. I'm having to reschedule tasks for the week since we did not have school Monday. I'm tired but surprisingly the stress level of last week is less. I guess a hurricane is not as stressful as administrators can be.

Plans for the weekend include finishing cleaning up the yard and watching the weather station for any more surprises.

Posted by at 01:45 PM | Comments (1)

September 26, 2004

We're Having Fun Now!

School has taken a backseat again to the new hurricane, Jeanne. I'm sitting here watching the occasional gusts and showers as the outermost bands are approaching St. Augustine. The kids went wild when they found out that school would be cancelled Monday and I spent most of the afternoon Friday 'beating them down' and trying to get them to complete a gene selection lab. It was a very frustrating day trying to motivate excited 9th fraders who basically wanted to just get out of there.

By Saturday night we had finished our hurricane preparations at home. I should have known better than to partake in a couple of drinks to relax me for sleep. The rosacea flared up tremendously and I suddenly looked like I had been pelted with scarlet paint balls on my face, shoulders, and arms. Ice packs, aspirin, clonodine, and chamomile cream helped to tame the symptoms during the night and most of the redness is gone now.

Power went out for a short while this morning but it is currently back on. The worst is expected in the next few hours, but NOAA has downgraded the threat so we are now expecting just 2-4 inches of rain and 50 mph winds. This may still cause some major power problems here since some trees weakened from Frances will probably take down some lines. Florida Power and Light did not have time to repair all of the previous damage and we have a lot of power poles here that are leaning at crazy angles and lines that have been jury-rigged together. I have my fingers crossed that we will escape any major power loss this time and we will not have to relocate all of the pets like last time.

When things get back to normal next week I am going to have to regroup and arrange a teaching schedule for the next few weeks that will cut a few corners on time. Sequencing material with all of these breaks is a major headache but I'll do the best I can to keep the kids learning and involved. No more hurricanes!!!

Posted by at 05:55 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

Genetics/Evolution

This week has been relatively sane but exhausting. The flushing is pretty bad in the afternoons now and I am using the arsenal of chamomile, creams, and clonidine. They help somewhat but the flushing is trying to hang on. I need a break!

The administration has kept a low profile this week, so the stress from them has been minimal. I have put a lot of energy into teaching and labs. Other than that, not too much new here. The kids have been attentive and they are generally working hard.

Posted by at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2004

End of the week- TGIF

It's been a rough week as my last post indicated. Today was better because I basically just ignored all of the garbage and concentrated on teaching. Emails from the office went right into the delete file. I've decided not to let their problems become my problems. As a result I actually had fun with the classes today. It's amazing how stress can disappear when you simply ignore all of the extraneous irritants caused by superiors. Teaching is the important thing and all of the other silliness is not important enough to care about. Now if I can just keep that in mind the next time all of the little stressors threaten to overwhelm me. Keeping a proper perspective in education is not an easy task. We are trained to jump at the slightest whim of administrators. Step back and look at the situation objectively and these silly actions that I thought were so important can be seen in their true light as unimportant fluff.

The rosacea is much improved today, but the colitis is still causing some problems. I hope I can stay objective long enough to get my body systems back to normal. Sometimes I wonder if the high stress level will cut a few years off of my life. I don't want to be one of those teachers who are so burnt out from stress that they die shortly after retiring. I have five more years until I can retire with 60% salary. I don't know if I will teach beyond this point. Once I reach 30 years I will see how I feel about teaching and if I have anything else to offer the students. It gets a little more chaotic and tiring each year. Teaching today is much more difficult in this age of state testing, county mandates, and the 'image is everything' philosophy that permeates education. When I began teaching the instructor had full control of the classroom. Instruction was the important focus. Today we are so attuned to impressing the administration, parents, and students that actual teaching is of relatively minor importance. The 'best' teachers are those who teach for the standardized tests, assuring that the school makes that all important "A" grade. Who cares if the test material is mostly useless garbage that will not assist students in attaining a rewarding job? Image is everything. Keep great PR with the parents, be buddies with the students, and make sure the students look great on the state test. These are the keys to being a top teacher in the modern age. I just don't fit into this mold. I'm afraid that I actually care about the kids learning meaningful science material. While I feel that a good rapport with parents and students is important, it's not my top priority. I'm more of an old educational dinosaur than a modern educational lemming. Darn it, I guess that means that my chances of being elected teacher of the year are dim. I probably won't even have an administrator brag about my wonderful cooperation at the next faculty meeting. I'll just have to be satisfied with knowing that my students will leave my classes with a good foundation of science and hopefully with a sense of curiosity and wonder about the world around them. I'll settle for that.

Posted by at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2004

Back at the asylum

We have been covering various aspects of genetics this week. The kids have been doing well and it's a fun topic to teach. Now for the insanity.

The administration preaches about how important quality teaching time is for students. They then proceed to spend 15 minutes of class time reading insipid announcements about club meetings, yearbooks, and ring sales. Yep, this is the intelligent use of school time! They followed this display of educational strategy by 'dropping in' the classes unannounced. I just ignore them, but this really upsets the newer teachers. Any change in the classroom has the potential to cause chaos. By the time administrator #3 has 'dropped in', even I am getting a little miffed. Is this meant to enhance their knowledge of the classes or is it a message sent to the teachers that the administrators are in charge?

As if to reinforce the fact that the administrators are in charge, we have a faculty meeting in which we get a 15 minute speech about media copyright. Simply lovely! I need to be upstairs in my room grading papers and here I am listening to a speech that would be insulting to an elementary school student. I did not work for a master's degree to listen to this dribble. Ah, but it gets better. They let us know that most of our inservice and planning days have been taken away in order to satisfy the 5 days lost when the hurricane came through. Even with this, we will still have to work 2 extra days at the end of the year to make up the time. This will be without kids, so I am not certain what we will be doing. I suppose I could bring a deck of cards and play solitaire. These 2 extra days won't add any teaching contact time to help the students. Life is just getting better all the time here. Let's look at the attendance and grade program. We have told the administration repeatedly that this new program is slow and clumsy to use. It also occasionally averages the grades incorrectly. No matter. We are required to use this program because the county has invested a lot of money in it. This makes it all the more interesting when I go past one of the assistant principal's office and she is using the old program to edit student information. Now this makes sense!

Yes, this place feels like a mental institution in which the inmates are in charge. I love teaching but these silly and stupid acts mke the teacher's life very stressful. My rosacea is back with flushing. My intestines cramp. I have had constant heartburn for the past two days. I've just taken a prescription pill for a migraine. None of these stress-triggered problems have anything to do with teaching. It's not rational here. It's bedlam imposed by those who should know better. I really miss teaching lately. Maybe they will forget about us long enough for us to sneak in a little actual instruction. I've got to handle the stress better. And people wonder why teachers leave the profession. A dirty little secret we keep is that teaching and student interaction usually have little to do with the decision to leave teaching. It's all of the incompetence, the poor decisions, the total lack of rational actions that drive people away. I have to take a deep breath.
Relax.... Maybe a primal scream would help.

Posted by at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2004

May you live in interesting times.

This is an old Chinese curse that seems very appropriate this week. Sunday hurricane Frances was close enough to cause high winds. The power went off around noon and the temperature began rising. No power by that evening so out came the candles and flashlights. The weather deteriorated the next day and we had several trees and lots of branches down with 75 mph winds. 8 inches of rain took care of the phone lines, so we were left with a radio for our only link to the outside world. Wednesday and we still had no power or telephone. Our mobile home suffered no damage but the yard looked like we had survived a mortar attack.

By this time we knew we would have to find air conditionaing for the animals. Afternoon temperatures were 90+ F inside and we were all suffering. We packed our 5 cats and Sir Francis the bunny into carriers. We also had a cockatiel, hermit crabs, and mealworms. All went well except for our little feral rescue Sebastian. He left claw marks on my hands as I tried to corner him. He was terrified and we finally trapped him in the bathtub. The others whined and growled but went peacefully. I knew that the animals would not survive the rest of the week in those conditions so there was no choice, but it broke my heart when Sebastian curled into a ball and tried to hide in the tub. He was so pitiful. We went about 60 miles north to the closest hotel with both a vacancy and electricity. It was a little like Noah's Ark when we started carrying all of the animals into the hotel. Most of the cats hid for the first day. Surprisingly, Sebastian acclimated well once he discovered the joys of watching the world from a 6th floor window ledge. By Friday all of the guys were at home in the hotel room. Sir Francis the bunny is bonded with our alpha cat Tommy and spent most of the time flopped next to him. Don't ask. It's too strange and confusing to explain in a blog! The story of Francis and Tommy is on our website at http://userpages.aug.com/albink

The flushing was pretty severe this week. Heat and stress are my two biggest triggers for rosacea. It's a tossup which was the main factor this week! Anyway, I've been beating down the symptoms since then in anticipation of going back to work tomorrow. It looks much better now, with a little pinkness and drying. We went back home Saturday and have been cleaning up. All is about back to normal for now, with just a few scarred trees and some water to show what we have been through. If we ever have to evacuate in the future with all of the pets, at least we will be a little better prepared for it. The important thing is that we all came through it ok. I feel that people learn from these types of life tests in important ways. Hopefully it will put the petty things of life into proper perspective.

So back to teaching Monday. Gregor Mendel, here we come!

Posted by at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2004

Last post for awhile

Today went well at school. We wrapped up photosynthesis and respiration with review questions. The next section deals with genetics, a fun couple of chapters. We will be extracting DNA from cells tomorrow after an introductory lecture on DNA structure, replication, and protein synthesis. This will lead us next week into classical Mendelian genetics and then genetic engineering. Cloning and gene replacement therapy are always of interest to the students since they hear about it on the news constantly these days. Movies such as Jurassic Park are also a great source for class discussions. We will plant corn seeds that are hybrid for the albino trait and compare the expected F1 percentages to actual values. Genetics is the hot topic in Biology today and it is a high interest subject to cover.

Hurricane Frances may hit close to us this weekend. The forecasts are still hazy but the most popular model now predicts class 2 winds going through my county. Schools are cancelled for Friday to allow families to prepare for the storm. With luck we will escape with no damage or power loss but in anticipation of hurricane force winds we will be busy finalizing our preparations. We live in a tied down mobile home about 13 miles from the coast. Normally we would think of leaving but we have 5 cats, a bird, a bunny, and other assorted animals here who would not be allowed in a shelter. The oldest cat is a geriatric 17 years old and the bunny is approaching old age at 7 years so they do not acclimate well to moves. We have decided to stay here and hope the storm misses us. I can't understand people who are willing to leave their pets in danger and evacuate. We simply don't do that. The house has taken tropical gale force winds before so a near miss would not be too bad except for the power loss and downed trees. With that possibility in mind, I will not plan on adding to the blog until the storm has passed us by this weekend. If all goes well I will write a note next Monday. It could be later if we have to grab the pets and run.

The rosacea is in check, with a hint of pink color and some dryness. Tiredness is my main problem this week and I'm looking forward to the holiday for a little extra rest if Frances leaves us alone. See you all Monday or when I can.

Posted by at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)