Well Played!

Yesterday, my sister and I were walking around the park near my house.  She had her three young’ns, I my two hounds.  The ground was really slushy, but for the first time in days, the sun shone in the sky, and I felt comfortable walking in my yoga pants and hoodie.  A few folks had the same idea as we did:  kids scampered up and down the play structure and squealed; a woman speed-walked on the paved loop; and three skateboarding high-schoolers stood yakking in front of the water fountains.

I was only somewhat aware of the teens, until I was loading the dogs up into the back of my car.  I had my back to them when I heard one of them say, “Look at that FAT ass.”  I turned to see him staring at me, smiling, with bright eyes.  Another of the boys took off on his skateboard, yelling, “My DICK wants to be in THAT.”

So here’s what I did.  I shook my head, gave them a withering look, and said, “Pathetic.”

Wait, no.  I walked over and excoriated them with Shakespearean insults.

No, no.  That’s not it.  I beckoned sexily to the first speaker, only to knee him in the balls, grab him by the hair, and smash his skull against the picnic table.

Oh, wait.  No, I remember.  I didn’t say a thing, maneuvered my body around my car such that I was out of their line of sight, went home, and binge ate.  That’s right.  That’s what I did.

Sexy Grammar

Another word about prepositions, because I know that’s what really drives the traffic to my site:

Why do we Americans insist on adding one where there needs be none?  I mean, I understand a preposition’s use with verbs like get, make, or take.  But it baffles me when people say things like, “Let’s reflect back on our week.”  Doesn’t reflect already mean ‘look back’?  Can’t you just say, “Let’s reflect on our week”?

Same with refer.  Just refer.  Don’t ‘refer back’.

Or another one, ‘continue on’.  How else would you continue but on?

Get Some

What is the obsession with prepositions in our language?  I remember, when I went to Italy for that year, being astounded that there was an entirely different verb for every get-plus-preposition we use in English.  Think about it:

  • get in (a car)
  • get in (a college)
  • get out (of a car)
  • get out (“Get OUT!  I don’t believe it!”)
  • get up (from bed)
  • get up (…you know)
  • get down (off a ladder)
  • get down (boogie)
  • get at (an internal organ during surgery)
  • get at (“What are you getting at?”)
  • get to (a destination)
  • get to (“She really gets to me.”)
  • get on (a plane, a train)
  • get on (one’s last nerve)
  • get off (a train)
  • get off (…what one might do after one gets up)
  • get over (a wall)
  • get over (“I’ll never get over him.”)
  • get across (a river)
  • get across (your point)
  • get behind (a blast shield)
  • get behind (a cause)
  • get between (two parked cars)
  • get between (“I don’t want my hatred of your mother to get between us.”)
  • get by (a person in a grocery aisle)
  • get by (survive on little money)
  • get through (a tunnel)
  • get through (a tough time)
  • get around (“Here we get around by Vespa.”)
  • get around (“That Amy…she gets around.”)

Got more?

What Makes a Teacher Whose Students Perform Well on Standardized Tests?

I just finished reading this article,”What Makes a Great Teacher?”, from The Atlantic for the second time.  Lots of good stuff…yet, at the end, I still feel like punching somebody in the nuts.

Here’s what I’m taking away for my own teaching practice:

  • “[G]reat teachers…set big goals for their students. They [are] also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness.”
  • “Great teachers…constantly reevaluate what they are doing.”
  • “Superstar teachers [have] four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruit[] students and their families into the process; they maintain[] focus, ensuring that everything they [do] contribute[s] to student learning; they plan[] exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they work[] relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.”
  • “[O]ne way that great teachers ensure that kids are learning is to frequently check for understanding: Are the kids—all of the kids—following what you are saying? Asking ‘Does anyone have any questions?’ does not work…”
  • And as one interviewee said, “…it’s the mind-set that teachers need—a kind of relentless approach to the problem.”

OK, great!  I like it.  I’m for it.

And at the same time, the article is titled “What Makes a Great Teacher?”

The ONLY criterion used to evaluate teachers as great or non-great is student performance on standardized math and reading tests.  The author, Amanda Ripley, concedes in one sentence out of the whole article that “the data could never capture the entire story of a teacher’s impact”.  Damn straight!  What about the kids’ citizenship? creativity? tolerance? interpersonal skills? self-expression?

I want my students to perform well on standardized tests.  I do.  I think they have value:  they show whether students can read certain materials and answer certain types of questions about said materials and calculate and fill in bubbles.  But if my students have high growth and achievement scores on standardized tests, that makes me Effective at Getting My Students to Perform Well on Standardized Tests.  It does not make me a Great Teacher.

New Feature: Ask the Avid Bruxist

Reader Rachel asks

Today I’m consumed with the question: even though it’s so staged, corny and shameless that it causes me actual physical pain, why do I keep watching The Bachelor?

The Avid Bruxist answers

If I had TV*, I would watch it because doesn’t a size-2 girl with straight, white teeth and shiny hair—a person with no cellulite whatsoever—get rejected each episode?  Good stuff.

*I don’t have TV.  I mean, I have a TV set and DVD player that my friend Angie lent me when she moved temporarily to Spain, and I NetFlix the hell out of some shows, but I don’t get, y’know, channels.  Somebody told me recently that I could just connect my computer to my TV set and, voila, programs!  Here’s why I’m NOT going to do that:  I grew up without TV.  I came from parents who thought TV rotted the mind.   And my folks were right, of course, but the complete prohibition of it creates TV JUNKIES.  Exhibit A: there was a time in my childhood when the gods sent HBO(?!) to our 13-inch, black and white TV, and my siblings and I absolutely gorged ourselves on “Fletch” and “The Legend of Billie Jean” when my parents weren’t around.  We must have watched each of those movies 25 times.  (I can go note-for-note with Pat Benatar on ‘Invincible’.)  To this day, I have no governor on my TV consumption.  If I were to have unlimited programming, I’d probably be watching a rerun of Maury when Mr. Povich and his gang showed up to film the episode “It’s Official…I’ve Grown into My Couch”.

Viva Anita

I did a quick count yesterday, and I’m pretty sure I have

twenty-

one

readers.

Twenty-one is a legion, right?  I’m pretty sure twenty-one is a legion.

Anyhow, I’m completely tapped tonight, dear legion.  So I offer up a topic for the comments section:

Anita Baker vs. Anita Bryant

Discuss.