a longer description? i don't even know what i'm going to write yet. I do know there will be typos. I don't reread or correct my blog. Otherwise it turns technical instead of my feelings and thoughts. Trust me, on stories and poems I'm a grammarholic, but this is freedom. Sometimes to keep it from getting too personal, I even turn my head away while I type. Gosh, I'm weird. I hope you find this somewhat entertaining, thought-provoking, and humorous.

I read your blog after seeing that you were nominated for a Quill Award for it! Congratulations on the nomination - and good luck!

I particularly enjoyed reading this segment of your blog since I've worked in a school system for 29 years. You seem to hit the "Pay for Performance" nail on the head. Virginia has played with that concept a few times but were unable to make it successful. Would people be paid more and kept on because test scores (mainly SOLs in Virginia) are high? Or would they be paid more and kept on because they are creative in the classroom and their students love coming to school - but their test scores are crap?

Being a bookkeeper/administrative assistant to the principal, I see both kinds of educators - and a number of other kinds. If I did my job like some of these teachers, my butt would be sitting on the sidewalk and my entrance fobb de-activated in a heartbeat. Yet, they have continued on for years. At least, in Virginia, teachers don't have tenure (continuing contract here) - but that continuating can be discontinued if the School Board so chooses. In the many years that I have worked here, I have only seen a handful of teachers who were discontinued - one was for sleeping with another teacher in the clinic - and getting caught. One was for dating a high school student - the idiot kissed her in the parking lot. There have been a few who did not get the certification that they needed and their waiver expired... but I don't know that I've ever seen a teacher fired for not being a good teacher.

I like the fact that you celebrate student successes, hug a kid who needs it, and go to ball games to cheer on your students. There are many facets to being a good teacher.

Keep rambling... err... preaching... err... blogging!
And good luck with the Quills!
Nita

You are on a holy mission. We,as a society, have lost the ability to think. Take our legislators. As a group, do they in anyhway resemble what a group of thinking people would come up with? I think not.

Did you know that we could end world hunger for annual donation to poor countries of 0.7 % of GDP(Gross Domestic product, a compolation of all the goods and services produced in a country). That is amazing yet 99.9% of folks have no idea. They come up with 357 reasons why it won't work, most of which are not valid. They loaned money to merchants of Bangledesh with an astounding repayment rate, well above what we have in this country. The person who did this received a Nobel prize for micro economics

I am amazed at the things we could do if we just think about it in a concerted and directed way. It starts with educators teaching folks how to think. We have lost the ability. You do indeed have a holy mission

In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is definitely proof that the mice are running planet earth and maybe the whole universe. We put rewards out for them to run the maze, not the other way around. I am not saying that we should be nice to our four footed fiends(non a typo), but mutual detente might be in order.

Here is to a new world order. We will at least be considered, until we run out of food

Haha, once again, we're so much alike it's scary. Too funny that we both vented our frustration via letters to the icky things we hate.

Too adorable to be left in a blog!

I hope tomorrow's prompt is to write a response to the fear letter. You've started it so I can just imagine a little bespectacled fuzzball in "creature relations" trying to assuage your fear while making a case for continued existence.

WS

Audra, Mice are a blast to trap. You can set out a long line in no time and run your traps twice a day. Best set: peanut butter on a Victor plastic pan, hair trigger, with pan end against wall. Best way known to overcome fear of mice -- take charge!

Hi Audra
I was checking through some blogs this round to see if people are actually writing letters. You are. You did. Your entry was awesome. I don't care for mice either. Don't tell anybody. I'm writing about something else.
I enjoyed reading your entry.
Regards
Joel aka Brother Nature

lol -- it went away - I think it was maybe a bite - or a freak temporary disfigurement.

How's Texas?

Hey, at least it's on your nose and not where the GYN would find it tomorrow.
And stop touching it for crying out loud.


The ZIT!! heeheehee.

well, I got the earthquake and volcano info from my tormented son so he could be lieing. He said it happened in Japan.

We might be separated at birth, lord knows i'm nothing like my family.