And Then There Are Those Times......

......when blog fodder comes from our local "newspaper". This is the newest paper in our little county, one that showed such promise when it showed up that we canceled our subscription to the other one that we had been getting for years. We may be rethinking that decision...

The front page main article today has the headline "Top officials not feeling economic pinch."

Several paragraphs into the article is this statement: "And this newspaper's review of public salaries throughout the county has shown that the pay of top municipal officials along with hundreds of local educators, has been virtually unaffected by the economic downturn."

The article hints that while many people have suffered from cutbacks and furloughs, some educators are living high on the hog.

You got it right ... according to this article, some educators are overpaid.

The article lists -- by name -- the top 90 public school salaries in our county.

And there I am, yours truly, listed at #60.

Now before you jump to all kinds of conclusions about how loaded I must be, keep in mind that we are a very small county, smack dab between a university community and the Atlanta suburbs. And I have a doctorate, not terribly common in our school district.

Nowhere does the article mention advanced degrees or years of experience.

Our state is a non-union state, so the ONLY way for teachers to get a raise in pay is to get another degree. Or teach for a gazillion years. Both of which I have done.

And let me go on record here as saying the ONLY reason I got a doctorate was for the pay increase. It certainly wasn't for the respect. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It wasn't for the title, because after almost six years, I haven't grown into being called "Dr." I'm thinking at this point that it ain't gonna happen.

Apparently my reward for having gone to college for about 10 years is having my name and salary printed in a newspaper, along with the implication that I'm making too much money and have not had to "suffer" in these tough economic times.

The news came from our outgoing governor this week that he wants to change teacher pay, to reward teachers based on students' performance rather than advanced degrees. Fine, but the devil is in the details. I am confident that I would still do all right if the achievements of my students were used to determine my pay. What achievements, however, are they going to use?

Graduation test scores? The same graduation tests they are talking about phasing out over the next few years?

End-of-course tests? Only two courses in each subject area HAVE state-mandated end-of-course tests. What about students in the other courses?

What about other areas in which students don't take standardized tests? How are special education teachers going to be evaluated, based on their students' performance? Foreign language teachers? P.E. teachers?

Yeah, good luck with that, Sonny.

I'm not even THAT worried about the proposal to pay teachers based on student performance. For one thing, I just don't think it's gonna fly. For another thing, our governor is in his last year and can't run for reelection. And finally, while it may sound extremely selfish, the new plan -- whatever form it may take -- goes into effect two years after I'm planning to retire. Think I'm going to continue to teach after I'm eligible to retire?

Not.

Most of the names up there with mine belong to principals and other administrators, head football coaches, and folks who teach on an extended year schedule and/or an extended day schedule. Yeah, they neglected to mention those facts too.

This newspaper article has made me feel icky all afternoon. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. It's not so much a matter of my salary being published for all the world to see, because teacher salaries are a matter of public record anyway. Anyone with enough time on his or her hands can find out what any teacher in the state makes. First of all, of course, that person must also be interested.

What has bothered me is the intimation that perhaps I don't deserve the salary I get. Like I just wandered up to a human resources person one day, and she said, "Here, let's pay you this much, just because we happen to like open-toed pumps and red dresses with polka dot trim."

Oh, and did I mention that after 20 years, an educator in our county "tops out" on the salary scale? If one chooses to retire upon reaching the 30-year minimum, that means that for the last 10 years of his/her career, there are no step increases. Only cost-of-living increases, if those even exist.

I was putting in some pretend dates (and some real ones) for my retirement last weekend, just playing around with a retirement predictor. In our state, your retirement pay is 60% of the average of your highest two years during your teaching career. For every scenario I put in, my highest two years were 2006-2007 and 2007-2008. What does that tell you? My salary has been going DOWN for the last couple of years. Anybody notice prices going down?

Another thing the newspaper article didn't take into consideration with these salaries is the furlough days that we have been socked with, with even more to come. Instead it hinted that we haven't been subjected to the furloughs that other public workers have had.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job. I love most of the teenagers with whom I work every day, and I especially love the fact that I work in a non-traditional environment with at-risk students. I love seeing a student who came to us as a drop-out walk across that stage at graduation to receive a real diploma. I love seeing the faces of the teachers who taught them in traditional school as they elbow each other and ask, "He GRADUATED? She FINISHED?"

Those 442 school days can't pass quickly enough.

Did He Say.....Warrant?.......

Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with a blog topic. Part of the reason is that I sometimes wait until it's time to go to bed, and then I go into a panic, knowing I can't go to bed until I write something. And it's hard to write something witty, clever, urbane, intelligent, poignant, thought-provoking, or even relevant with a 15-minute deadline.

And then sometimes my cell phone rings in the middle of the day, and a blog entry just happens.

Like today, right before lunch.

I didn't recognize the number, and normally I wouldn't answer my cell during the school day, because it's usually a student from my online course. Since we were going to lunch anyway, however, I answered it.

Me: Hello?

Man: Jackie?

Me: Ummm...no.

Man: I need to speak to Jackie ________. [Not really sure what last name he said, but it sounded like the wife of our recently retired sheriff, and I doubt that's who he was really looking for. She's also the principal of an elementary school. That has nothing to do with this story, but it makes the blog entry look longer. And somehow more important.]

Me: You have the wrong number.

Man: Okay, I'll just get my warrant.

**Click**

Did he say "warrant"? Is there anything else he could have said that sounds like "warrant" but is something else?

Can I be arrested for being the wrong number?

I don't know if it's the teacher, the mother, or the freak in me, but I wanted to fix this situation. I wanted to call the number back and say, "Listen, dude, Jackie really, really isn't here, and I'm sure she (he?) will be glad to surrender. That warrant won't be necessary."

Then I wanted to call back and say, "What number were you TRYING to call?" Then I wanted to call the real Jackie and warn him/her to RUN LIKE HELL!!!! turn himself/herself in.

I have this psycho irrational fear that someone will show up at my door with a real warrant, since it is patently obvious that I am aiding and abetting some criminal named Jackie.

All of this could have been avoided had I simply let the call go to voicemail. THE MAN would have heard my newly recorded greeting, clearly stating my name that is NOTHING like Jackie, and he would have realized that he had the wrong number. Then he could have called the CORRECT number, he could have had a calm, logical conversation with Jackie, and they could have worked out their differences.

As it is, I'm afraid that Jackie is just going about her (I'm convinced it's a "her," otherwise, why would he have thought I was Jackie?") routine, minding her own business, and when she goes to pick up her dry cleaning one afternoon, she's going to hear, "FREEZE! POLICE! PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!" and she will have to decide whether to throw her clean clothes on the ground or get shot. I hope she makes the right decision. Dry cleaning is expensive.

The policeman or detective or whoever goes to arrest her is going to be all hostile and stuff, because if she had just taken the call instead of dodging him, they could have worked things out. He'll be all like, "You should have taken my call, Jackie" and she'll be all like, "Well you could have placed one, Dumb___" which will make things go generally downhill, mostly because I'm using the word "like."

If you call me in the next few days and get my voicemail, don't be offended. Just leave a message. And if you see Jackie, please tell her....

Never mind. I'll let you and Jackie decide on the proper course of action.

But I Don't Even HAVE Actions!.........

I love photography. I really, really do.

I just don't understand it.

I know a good picture when I see it, and occasionally I even wind up taking a good photograph myself. But it's mostly accidental.

I have a very nice, very big, very expensive digital camera that I bought for myself when I finished my doctorate. (You wouldn't believe how many purchases were justified by the completion of that particular dissertation.)

And most of the time this very nice, very big, very expensive digital camera is set on "auto".

I should be ashamed to admit that. I AM ashamed to admit that.

Some of my favorite bloggers are people who probably don't know I exist, like Pioneer Woman (for God's sake, is there anything she CAN'T do?), a blogger who posts beautiful pictures from Alaska, and Bush Babe, who shares Australian life and culture with her readers. It was actually Bush Babe who prompted this particular post.

Their photography is wonderful, and they talk frequently about things like aperture, depth of field, light meters, texture, saturation, layers, and other things that I have not been able to get my head around.

And they talk about actions.

I know on some level that actions are things you do to digital photographs using Photoshop. I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't even know if they're talking about the very nice, very big, very expensive Photoshop, or the maybe-I-can-afford-this-if-I-stop-ordering-yarn-online-every-week Photoshop Elements.

Because of the fact that even if I take an online course (like I want to), I might not be any better at photography than I was scuba diving, I am no way in Hell going to reluctant to fork over the $700 or so that the real Photoshop costs. But the snob in me doesn't want to settle for Photoshop Elements if these other folks are using the real thing.

Pioneer Woman even has her own set of actions. Did she make them up? Is she going to sell them worldwide and go on a tour for that TOO? COULD SHE PLEASE JUST SUCK AT ONE THING?

I want to take some pretty pictures. And have a bazillion followers on my blog.

Mostly I just want actions.

It's Not Iowa, Is it?........

When Katydid and I first started cycling, we heard stories about RAGBRAI and how much fun it was and how we ought to do it someday. Katydid moved away, but I rode in RAGBRAI in 2004. It was everything people said it was, and more. It is a moving party of an estimated 20,000 cyclists across the state of Iowa every July. I told Hubby it was something I had always wanted to do once in my life. In 2006 I started working on him early to justify going back again. I wrote a couple of posts about RAGBRAI, like this one and this one, that has just brought tears to my eyes upon rereading it. And I wrote it. Maybe the tears are because I don't write like that all the time.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah....

Now I have an opportunity to do a bicycle ride in Wisconsin this summer. I told Hubby I would never ride in RAGBRAI again. But that didn't exclude all the other 48 states, did it? (BRAG is an absolute given.) He's retired now, he can even go with me (and take the comforts of the motorhome along with us) if he wants to. I'm not sure it would be much fun for him, but I've been on many a golf & gambling trip that weren't much.... okay, so I did have fun.

My first thought was that if we went to Wisconsin I could go see my cousin Dana (short "a", rhymes with banana) who lives in Green Bay. My favorite .... wait, do any of my cousins read this blog? ..... okay, my very favorite cousin in the whole world. Upon further research today, however, I discovered that the area where we would be riding is 6 hours away from Green Bay. Bummer. But I'm still thinking about it.

The downside is that Katydid can't go. She is using one of her weeks of vacation to do BRAG, and the other is for a cruise with the Barracuda in March. Poor choice in my opinion, but nobody asked me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I will only consider the bicycle trip to Wisconsin if at the very least either Rozmo or VT can go. Hubby taking the motorhome along would just be a plus.

As long as it isn't Iowa, it's fair, right?

Roger That......

At last night's gymnastics meet, I saw my old (he probably wouldn't appreciate that) high school English teacher. He taught me both 11th and 12th grade English, whatever we took back then. I know we read Macbeth my senior year (as is still the case in most high schools), because I was on hospital/homebound (nasty bout with something the doctor couldn't figure out but may have been mono, despite a negative blood test) during that time and I finished the play before the rest of the class did.

Mr. Bailey was the smartest teacher we had ever known. But he was also REAL. And I still have a hard time calling him Roger. I remember that even as high schoolers, we were amazed at how much he knew about so many different things. He was funny, too, making fun of himself sometimes. I remember that he would put a funny ending on a word and then say, "Oh, there I go, slipping back into my native tongue." He was tough on us, but he taught us lessons that we never forgot.

I remember a vocabulary lesson in particular. He was teaching the word "dearth," and he was making fun of an administrator who didn't even know the meaning of the word. When Roger ordered some textbooks, the administrator said they didn't need them, because "we have a dearth of those already!" Roger was laughing when he told us the story, and I've never forgotten it. He swore it wasn't our administrator at the time, but I'd be willing to bet my next two paychecks that it was. That was the same administrator who marched up to a car my brother was sitting in during a rainstorm, demanding that they get out of the car and go into the school. Jack looked up and couldn't help himself - he burst out laughing. The principal, Mr. Underduck as we affectionately called him, was standing there in the rain with a clipboard over his head. And an umbrella folded up under his arm.

Roger taught me everything I know about writing. He taught me that you're never finished with your writing, and you're never finished writing. Once I handed in a very neatly written essay, only it was written on steno pad paper. (Does anyone out there remember stenograph paper? I mean besides Katydid, because she's the only person I ever knew who could actually take down shorthand.) Roger refused to accept my paper. This was in the time period when NO ONE had computers .... because they hadn't been invented yet .... and very few people had typewriters. But he certainly wasn't going to accept an essay written on steno paper. He made me rewrite it. And I respected him for it.

When I first applied to graduate school to work on my masters, I didn't have many professors from my undergraduate program who knew who I was. One of the many disadvantages of attending a large university. So I asked Roger if he would write me a letter of recommendation. A few months later, I saw him at a Mexican restaurant in town, and he said to me, "Honey, they're gonna think you're Socrates." He was so enthusiastic and had such a wicked sense of humor.

We were seniors the year the first Star Wars movie came out. We had Roger for creative writing, and Roger gave us an assignment to write a short story. One of the **ahem** nerdy **ahem** boys in our class wrote his entire story in R2D2 language. Roger laughed, admitted that it fulfilled the requirements of the assignment, and gave him a grade for it. He also told him not ever to do that again. I think many teachers would have given him a hard time and made him write a different story. Roger just admitted he hadn't seen all the loopholes and took some of the responsibility. But he still laughed about it too.

I had been teaching about eight years when an English position opened up at my alma mater, and Roger called me and suggested I apply for it. By that time my old school district had achieved a reputation for excellence that made it THE preferred place to teach in this part of the state. I thought I would die if I couldn't teach there at some point in my career. There were 255 applicants for that one English position. It came down to me and three other people, one of whom was one of my best friends and co-workers at that time. She got the job, and I would like to think it's because she had her endorsement to teach gifted students and I didn't. Yeah, that must be it. I have since come to the conclusion that I would never have lasted in that school district, alma mater or not. Because it (to a lesser degree now, I think) is considered a dream job for a lot of people, the politics are precarious. And I don't do politics very well. Still don't know when to keep my mouth shut.

Roger finally retired from my old high school a few years ago, though he continued to teach part-time for a couple of years beyond that. I don't know how many years he had taught before he came to us; probably not very many. But I've been out of high school for almost 32 years, so he clearly went way beyond the 30 years necessary to qualify for retirement. I admire that, but I'm certainly not going to copy it. I'll be out of there as soon as I qualify. Not because I don't like what I do, but because I'll still be young enough to travel and do some other things that are difficult to do because I can't just take a week off any old time I want to.

If I ever write and publish the book I've always wanted to write, I will dedicate it to Roger.

Deja Vu All Over Again.....

Exactly one year ago tonight, I wrote this post about our first gymnastics meet of the season and how although we won, we really just sucked less than the other team, and it pained me to post our winning score of 195.425.

Fast forward to tonight, when we really, really sucked but sucked just barely less than the other team and squeaked by with a winning score of 195.15. Ouch.

Once again, floor exercise was our nemesis. We had to count a 9.15 because we also had a 9.1. From a senior. Granted, she was limping after her floor routine, and I think that was the issue on her first (and second) tumbling pass. Courtney McCool absolutely saved the day with a 9.925 on floor. If she hadn't nailed that routine, we would have lost our home opener for the first time in about a bazillion years.

We've got a lot of work to do before an SEC match on the road next Friday night against a team that loves to hate us.

Oh yeah, I said that last year too.

For those of you who couldn't care less about college gymnastics, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

"Snow" Day.....

I'm really not one to look a snow day in the mouth, but seriously.....



This is how much snow it takes to close schools in Georgia.




I did take it sort of late in the day, when the sun had come up, but since the temperature never got out of the 20's, not much of it had melted.

In our school district's defense, one of the largest school districts in the state, which is right next door to us, had called off school for their students, and they NEVER CLOSE school.

Also in their defense, the roads were quite wet, and with the temperatures in the teens overnight, many of the roads were glassy. I guess. We didn't venture out all day, until it was time to go out to eat. Friday night is for eating out, icy roads be damned.

Also in their defense, the school district is going to have to furlough us again this semester, and we've heard it may be as many as five days. That's big bucks. We had also heard (not because we are told these things directly, mind you) that they were going to use any snow days as furlough days, because it's a lot easier to do that than to figure out how the hell else they're going to furlough teachers without pay and without disrupting the school schedule for students.

So I'm thinking they were ready to call off school when those first flakes fell, only they didn't share that with us EITHER. No, I had already turned the t.v. off at halftime of the BCS National Championship game because I thought I had to get up this morning.

At any rate, it was a free day off from school, and I guess I shouldn't complain. I did a little tiny bit of crocheting, played on the Wii Fit, played about a million games of Jewel Quest, made some homemade hot chocolate, and didn't feel one bit guilty about not doing anything more productive than that.

We may have some snow days in May.