Talk radio

Now that I have joined the ranks of the commuters, I feel like I'm an adult. I even listen to talk radio all the time now, and yes I love it. I think Doug Wright is awesome! KSL Newsradio 1160 really has become my favorite pre-set. Haha.

Anyway, the other day I turned on the radio at night and the man (not my beloved Doug Wright) was talking about teachers. In a gist, these were his comments. "Teachers do so much more than we give them credit for. They are overworked and under appreciated." Now, I was so happy he was saying this. I was like, Yes! Good, stand up for us! but he then went on to say "This is exactly why we need to link teacher's salaries to their success rate. We need to have a way to compensate the teacher's with high test scores and punish those who aren't performing well."

Okay, I've known this is a big issue for a long time, but this did not make me happy. There is absolutely NO way you should be compensating a teacher based on standardized test scores. Not all children in your classroom, no matter how effectively you teach, will receive "adequate scores" as outlined by the government.

Let's say, for example, that a teacher has many students for whom English is their second language. They may progress leaps and bounds past where they began in the course of a school year, but chances are they won't score as high as native English speakers. Test scores, then, would indicate the teacher is not a "good" teacher, since the whole class isn't in the exact same place.

So the government is going to punish me for being an ESL specialist? Because I have an ESL endorsement, I may have many ELLs in my classroom. Even if I do my best and help them progress past their initial level, my salary will be lower than teachers with a classroom composed mainly of native English speakers and "gifted" children.

It just doesn't make sense, and I haven't even touched on alternate assessments yet, which is something else to consider. If the salary needs to be linked to something, link it to how much students progress through the year, not on their final test scores.

How can I jump on the bandwagon and kill this idea?

Please pass the Dramamine...

It's exciting feeling like my world is tilted to the right.

It's interesting having to reorient myself every time I turn my head.

It's fun feeling the Earth move underneath my feet every time I take a step.

It's fantastic falling over for no apparent reason...

It's great getting sea sick just from walking across campus.

Hooray for Eustachian tube disorders!

I'm not eloquent. Please bear with me.

As I'm sure we all know, Obama was recently elected to be the next President of the United States of America-our dear country. We aren't all democrats, and I know we all don't agree with everything Obama says, but please , "can't we all just get along"? The country is probably not going to be obliterated. There is no need for us to move to New Zealand. I am of the opinion that we all just need to accept this President and support him regardless of whether or not we voted for him.

Okay, Obama is the President. That has been established, and maybe our country will run into difficult times. But those times are going to be so much worse if 49% of the country is sulking for the next four years over the fact that their candidate did not win. Let's be mature. This is a democracy. The people have spoken. Let's give him a chance before we all flee the country. Please.

Disenchanted

This post will probably not be the most eloquent one you've ever read, but it's just something that is on my mind.

The other day on the local news (I don't know what channel) they did a "special investigation" report, where a news anchor went to Herriman to uncover some huge scandal of nepotism that was going on in City Hall. Or something. Anyway, it showed clips of the news anchor calling and interrogating officials on the phone, adding up all the bills for building, and doing various undercover work.

The main idea was that the city of Herriman hadn't had three bids to build their library and another building, instead they just gave the job to someone who already worked in City Hall. I am not saying I agree with what the city did, but I strongly disagree with the way the news anchors handle it.

I do not think it is the place of a news anchor to investigate something like this. Wouldn't this be considered "creating their own news"? Isn't there something wrong with that?

Call me crazy, but I think there would have been better ways to handle the situation. I don't like how the news people went and attacked the city of Herriman and made it sound like their government and administration was corrupt and then broadcast it across the state.

There are people whose jobs are to investigate situations like these. Sometimes it makes it to the news, but it usually doesn't start with the news.