Quote

A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give the same measure as I have received--Albert Einstein

Beware of Parking

Apparently there's a new racket to (legally) scam people out of money these days in Dallas. A friend of mine has been a victim of this scam twice in the past week alone and 3 times total in the past year. Apparently apartment complexes contract with tow companies to remove cars from their properties that are not in compliance with their policies. In the past, this usually meant cars that were abandoned, broken down, parked in fire zones, or otherwise detrimental to the value of the property. I can perhaps understand towing someone who is in a fire zone or parked in a spot that is clearly marked "reserved." However, the new trend seems to find the most nit-picky parking errors and tow the car without warning. Just a week ago, my friend squeezed into a small spot in his apartment complex and because the car beside him had not parked correctly, he was over the line. The next morning he walked out to go to work and found no car....towed because of "double space parking." That was a $163 mistake that also made him over an hour late to work. Last night, the same friend was visiting his brother in another apartment complex. His brother just moved in about a week ago and doesn't have a car, so he wasn't even aware of the policies regarding parking. Now, this complex had more than ample parking. There were literally hundreds of vacant parking places. There were no signs posted regarding prohibitions of parking nor were any of the parking spaces marked with any kind of labels indicating "visitor" or "resident." A couple of hours later, my friend walks outside to find his car missing...again. A call to the police led to the discovery that again his car had been towed. This time for "unauthorized" parking. Another $171 down the drain. It is infuriating because he had no idea he could potentially be parking in the wrong spot. There was no warning, no explanation. It's not like when you park in a fire zone or a handicap spot without authorization...you are at least aware of the risk. In both these cases, he had no idea you could even be towed for something as minor and petty as this. Apparently this complex requires a "resident sticker" and if you don't have a sticker, you have to park in "visitor" parking. The only problem was it wasn't clearly marked which spots were visitor or resident. After he was informed of this policy at the tow facility, he later drove around the complex and finally found a section of "visitor" parking that was nowhere near his brother's apartment...it wouldn't have been safe or convenient to park so far away from where he could keep an eye on the vehicle....especially when there were MORE than enough so-called resident spots near the apartment. I might could even understand if they were having an overcrowding problem, but this was not the case. This was clearly just a money-grab...very irritating. A few months ago, his car was towed for an expired inspection sticker, though it had only been out for a day or two. Legally they are supposed to provide a warning and give the resident time to correct the problem in instances like that, so since they did not provide a warning, he ended up getting his money back on that case, but not without a lengthy hassle. When he was picking up his car from the tow facility, there was another girl there who had just been towed from a parking garage after only 15 minutes in a "Future Resident Only" spot....mind you, it was 11pm on a Sunday night...the complex office wasn't even open to accept future residents at that time of night, so what was it hurting for her to park there? What was it hurting for my friend to park in an otherwise empty parking lot just because it didn't say visitor? Was that really worth punishing them with an almost $200 fine?

I think this is ludicrous that these complexes can create these arbitrary parking rules and not even inform visitors and residents about the policies and then tow you without warning. Legally they are allowed to do this, but I think it is very shady business. Fortunately for my friend, he was able to somewhat afford the unexpected expense, but what about people who are barely getting by financially? This could be a major blow to the budget....just to line someone else's pockets. If they aren't able to come up with the money, their car can be sold in an auction, which could further complicate their situation for getting to work and staying above water. I think it is a very unfair practice that needs to be addressed.

Makes Me Want to Scream!!

Last night was my first class of the semester as I continue to wrap up this second M.Ed. degree in Reading. Although I've lost almost all motivation and interest in this degree, I plod forward, mainly just to finish what has been started. Unenthusiastically, I arrived for class with a professor that I have had 3 times before and who I can honestly say I haven't learned one solitary thing from in any of those experiences. So needless to say I'm less than thrilled about enduring another semester of this particular teacher repeating the same trite spiels and cliches and hearing the same un-enlightening lectures and completing the same mundane assignments as I have in the previous three courses. It doesn't seem to matter what the course is supposed to be about...we do the same thing and talk about the same thing in every class. So essentially I will have taken the same course 4 times and learned nothing. Sigh. Since last night was the first night, we discussed the syllabus (which I have memorized by this point) for basically 2 hours. My mind was so uninterested, so unengaged, so under-stimulated that I felt I was going to scream before the class was finally and mercifully released. It was literally torture and it is torture that I will have to endure every Wednesday night for the next three months. On my way home, I found myself driving like a crazy woman on the freeway with all the pent-up frustration and boredom of the previous two and a half hours seeking some sort of release. I began to think about our students and realized that more than likely this is how they feel after school each day. I know that there are teachers and schools out there that make learning interactive, interesting, meaningful, and engaging for students....but unfortunately in many environments--especially low-income, urban environments-- the focus is on drill and kill test prep which literally sucks any joy and life out of the learning process. Texas is transitioning from the TAKS test to a new high-stakes assessment called the STAAR this year. It is only the second week of school and I'm already STARR'd out. I'm already tired of talking about it, analyzing it, gearing our entire lives around it, and we are still 9 months away from test-time!

Let me give you an example of how this test is already taking over our school. The district decided to give some of the students some kind of beginning of the year assessment this week. (Teachers are telling me that the test basically covers concepts that the students haven't even been introduced to in previous grades so I'm not sure what the purpose of the assessment is other than to document that students don't know those concepts, which I don't think we needed a test to determine). I'm not sure how other schools are handling this assessment, but our administrator has decided that we need to go into full test-mode this week to model the environment of the STAAR which will be given in late April. The STAAR is going to be a timed test, unlike the TAKS. So our leader has decided that we need to start preparing students for that. Therefore, on the second week of school, we are in full test-mode all day every day this week. The students are not following their regular schedule, but are instead taking two tests per day. One in the morning and one after lunch. Most students are finishing the test within the first hour of being in the testing room and then are spending the rest of the allotted time in forced silence, bored and unoccupied. We have given up an entire week of instruction for the purpose of "practicing" for a test that is 9 months away. Furthermore, we will be doing this every six weeks for each common assessment (Do the math. That's over six entire weeks that will be dedicated to testing or practicing testing, and that's not including the end of semester exams or once a semester Benchmark exams). As if our students haven't been tested to death since they first walked into a school six, seven, or eight years ago. As if they don't know what to do when a test booklet and scantron are placed in front of them. In all reality, they don't know what to do when anything ELSE is placed in front of them.

Just as I wanted to scream last night as the professor said the same exact pet phrase for the one millionth time, I want to scream when I walk around this school. I don't see kids engaged in learning or excited about learning. I don't see creative instruction going on that will set the tone for another year of exciting exploration and discovery. What do I see? Kids testing. Is it common sense to anyone but me that if you test the kids to death, they will get burned out and apathetic before we ever reach April? Sadly, I know this isn't the case in all schools, but for those here in this district, there seems to be an unhealthy obsession with these statewide tests that in my opinion is severely limiting the quality of the education our students are receiving. Yes, on paper, our students are performing at acceptable levels, but I just know there is so much they're not getting that a test score is not going to reflect. And unfortunately this frustration I feel can't be relieved with a few minutes of road rage on the interstate.

And so the torture continues....

Inspiration

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a college graduation at Baylor University for a girl that I've known since I moved to Dallas and began working at CDM almost 9 years ago. She was in high school then and was one of the teenage staff members for our summer program. This girl came from what most would consider less than ideal circumstances, yet had determined that she wanted to attend Baylor upon graduation. Her road through college was not an easy one. She didn't have financial support from family at all (and we all know Baylor is NOT cheap) and at times didn't have the necessary level of academic preparation to handle the rigor of college courses. Without going too much into her personal story, let's just say her graduation was a long time coming...almost 7 years. There were many roadblocks, many obstacles, many times that she didn't know how she was going to be able to continue, yet somehow, she always was resourceful and resilient enough to find a way to finish what she had started. I didn't always agree with some of her choices along the way, but at the end of the day, I was as proud as I have ever been of anybody when she walked across that stage and got that diploma. As hundreds of graduates walked across the stage, I wondered about each of them and what it took for them to get there. Perhaps for some, it had been smooth sailing, kind of like myself who had the support system to help me navigate through the financial and logistical challenges of receiving a college education. But for others, perhaps no one really knew what they had been through to "see it through" to that day.

This weekend I finished a book that was quite inspirational and moving. In some ways, it reminded me of my friend, although her situation hadn't been quite as drastic as the author of this book. It was a memoir of a woman who is now about my age who grew up in New York in the 1980's in an absolutely deplorable situation. Her parents were heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol and she spent most of her childhood truant from school, hungry, and eventually homeless at the age of 15. She lived on the streets for several years and at the age of 17 had one high school credit. She had never in her life attended school consistently and had had no desire to do so. However at some point, the author found some motivation within herself to change the direction of her life and decided to go back to high school. After much searching and being turned away multiple times, she was accepted into an alternative high school, although she was still homeless. She didn't want anyone to know she was was homeless because she had spent a brief time in a group home and had determined that she would rather be on the streets than experience that again. (Meanwhile, her mother died of AIDS and her father ended up in a men's shelter, also HIV positive). Within 2 years, she caught up on all her credits and was able to graduate high school. She ended up receiving a New York Times scholarship and was eventually accepted to Harvard University, where she graduated in 2009.

Yes, I must admit I was quite misty-eyed by the time I reached the end of the book and completely inspired by this woman who overcame pretty much the most heart-breaking childhood anyone could imagine...with really very little guidance or support until she got connected at the alternative high school. Her resilience, her ability to keep going, her ability to set a goal and envision a different life for herself was amazing. This kind of self-determination is rare, but I saw it in my friend from Baylor....I see it in my former student Dezeray (who I talk about all the time)...and then there are others that perhaps I don't see it yet, but it's there. All we have to do is help them uncover it...give them a direction to take it. As educators, we can never assume that a kid isn't capable of this kind of story. Many times in her search to return to school, the author was turned away because she was too far behind, had a history of truancy, a troubled past. She wasn't "worth" the risk, worth investing in....yet because someone gave her one more chance she ended up at the most prestigious university in America. Every single day in my work in education, a kid surprises me. Every day. We tend to get jaded, disillusioned, disenchanted....yet we have to be careful to never assume a kid is "too far gone". Somewhere behind all the baggage, bad choices, abuse, neglect, lack of opportunity, whatever the case may be...somewhere behind all of that, there are kids who have something else. A mental toughness. A determination to change the trajectory of his or her life. A willingness to finish what is started. It is up to us to expect that out of every kid because we just never know who is capable of Harvard or Baylor or beyond.

Hmmmm....Blank

I have been thinking about blogging for quite some time but I can't ever seem to think of what I want to write about. So I don't write anything. I don't know what happened between me being an 8 year old novelist in my closet back in the day and now, but it just seems so much harder to write now than it did then!

Explanation of the post below this one...at our camp this summer we had a book club and I had the girls create a "glog" which is an interactive poster type thing as a sort of book report. (Go to www.glogster.com if you would like to know more about this). I thought the girls did a great job and I wanted to post their glogs on my blog (sounds like it could be a future Dr. Suess book) but couldn't quite figure it out. As you can see, the size was too large and I am not smart enough to figure out how to fix it. Anyways, it was a fun project and I highly recommend having your kids do something like this instead of your traditional report.

Summer flew by. We had another great summer program, I took a quick trip to Southern Oregon to see Crystal, and now we're back at school! I am attempting to scrounge up some motivation from somewhere for being a school librarian but I seem to be having a difficult time grasping any. There is actually something I would like to request people's prayers about but would rather not publicize on the blog at this point (not that thousands of people read it or anything) but if you could just keep me in mind over the next week or so...it would be appreciated!

Upcoming things to look forward to as fall approaches....
-Labor Day weekend in Farwell
-Possible Texas Rangers game in September with the Fletchers
-Possible Texas A&M football game with Buddy and Rosco
-Possible possible camping trip with the -Fletchers and Tricia somewhere between here and Missouri???
-Texas State Fair

So maybe I will start having something to blog about again soon!

Brieanna's Glog

A Reader's Dream Come True!

Some of you may have heard me mention the "MET Project" over the past year or so. I won't go into the details now, but basically, this was an extremely intensive, stressful, complicated national research project that our district chose to be a part of. I was designated as the school project coordinator (participation was supposed to be voluntary but that's not how it was presented to us...it was more of a directive) which ended up being one of the most, shall we say, challenging experiences of my professional life so far. Anyways, after 18 months of headaches, frustrations, etc. etc. the project is finally over and I can focus on the perks!! As the SPC, if I met certain deadlines along the way, I could receive extra incentives. I ended up getting four Barnes and Nobles gift cards, as well as a new Ipod Nano Touch. The gift cards hadn't been in my hands but a couple of hours and I was on my way to Barnes and Noble to redeem them for my long-awaited one of these.....



Isn't it beautiful?? Definitely worth all the stress of the past year to be able to get this almost free. I fortunately was able to get the latest version of the Nook Color, which has so many neat capabilities that it is almost as good as an Ipad in my opinion. Not only can I view books, magazines, and newspapers in color and with a touchscreen, but I can store music, photos, and files on the Nook, I can access Pandora and the web and watch streaming video over it, I can email from the Nook...it is amazing! It is everything I hoped it would be! The only downside is not being able to purchase books quite as cheaply as say used books from Amazon, but I think that as e-readers become more popular, there will be more available for free from public libraries and other sources.

I'm so excited about my new toys...just in time for summer reading! And working out with the cute little Ipod! Every now and then hard work actually pays off!! :-)