Sunday, May 15, 2011

Smart Phone Dumb Teacher

Okay I was tired of Kenya making fun of my $19 phone. I know the teacher's contract. I know by virtue of my age and tenacity I make the most money of anyone in the school,(except the principal and custodian).

But I had the cheapest phone. I wanted a Smart phone. I didn't need a smart phone. I figure it this way. I spent the first 70% of my life with a phone that went brrrinnggg, brrrinngg. It was attached to a wall in the foyer of our four room apartment. I put my jacket on my head when I didn't want my mother to hear what I was saying. She probably heard anyway- truth to be told I had a very boring adolescence. The only secrets were in my head- I didn't do anything she couldn't have listened in on. The next 25% percent of my life I spent with a continuing progression of basic cell phones, almost all of which came to untimely ends.(Which is a very good incentive to buy the cheapest model available.)

But everyone else had a sexy phone. And I wanted one too. So we spent a sum total of 10 hours at various cell phone outfitters until my husband got the best deal. In his opinion. The argument that I made the most and had the least- phonewise anyway- didn't inspire him to open his wallet any wider.

Okay so by Tuesday- I had my smart phone. I did miss a few phone calls because I didn't quite know how to answer it fast enough. I couldn't get my voice messages since on Wednesday night a parent called to tell me her son was missing and in a panic (mine as well as hers) I entered some password into the voicemail set up that I could not replicate ever again. I couldn't get the phone service to reset the phone since I could not answer the question- what was my husband's nickname as a child.
The name I did give the not-so-helpful assistant on the help line- was something that started with a verb that referred to fornication and ended with the noun that describes the exit organ of the digestive system. And there were quite a few adjectives in between.

Oh yeah- missing child, not really missing- just detoured in the pizza store on the way home from after-school.
And my husband reset my password using some secret 7 digit password.(Due to anonymous nature of this blog- I will reveal that the very secret password is the number 1 through 7 in consecutive order- had I known that earlier the not-so helpful-assistant might have continued to think that I was respectable lady)

Wednesday was the administration of the State Tests. Lots of blogs I browsed this week, talk about the aggravation, the futility, the burden of the ridiculous pressure the whole education community suffers from high stakes testing.

Those blogs expressed that point far better then any attempt I could make to do so. My comment on the high stake tests- Teachers as well as students suffer greatly from the enforced abstention of texting during the hours of the test.

And me did I abstain?

Actually if I learned anything this week it was that no one texts me.
(Not even my husband, who upon hearing we had free texting and I that I am the only breathing soul in the school who receives no text messages all day long, promised to text me he loves me at least twice a day)
No such text received yet.

So here's how all the above fits in with Teacherfish blog.

I decided that I would use my new smart phone, to capture pithy observations as I flitted through my day sans computer but with cell phone in hand. I downloaded a notepad app, practiced swyping and made this valuable observation while riding to school on Thursday:



17 minutes A day.that's the amount of time the average hhigh school student spends actually reading. Ij heard that statistic when I was in graduate school. That was more than three decades ago. But I thought of it yesterday when I was rewarding with wilma and kenya.s group.
I gave up. I gave up on english class. They weren't reading seventeen minutes, they weren't reading seventeen seconds. So I took them out. And now w read. Maunder bort seventeen committees worth, but everyone reserves every everyday.

I was thinking about that because I berated a story on the need

Gourd that reason I started taking the ki,.<

I think I heard a story on NPR about the irrelevancy of teacher education programs and actually teaching. I think I was trying to make the point that I still was affected and made decisions based upon the very excellent training I received 35 years ago

What I do actually know was that I missed my stop and had to walk back quite a bit to school.

Oh and Kenya was only slightly impressed by my new Smart phone. Apparently my husband's choice of the budget service did not make his cut.

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