Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

Today was the day of the Holiday Bowl. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is one of the many “bowl” games that are played in collegiate American football. In the professional league, the NFL, there is just one bowl game, the “Super Bowl,” but in college football there are at least thirty of these games.

I think at one time there were several large college football conferences each of which had between eight and twelve teams and, at the end of the football season, the champion of one college conference played the champion of another. At one time, this system was no doubt perfectly fine, but times have changed. We now have a multitude of college football conferences and, as I have already said, at least thirty college bowl games.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cornhuskers play in a conference called the Big 12. They are in this league with several Texas teams plus Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. Naturally, there are twelve teams in the conference.

This season Nebraska, I think, was the number three team, but, despite being only number three, they get to play in a bowl game with another team that did not win their conference. Nebraska won this “Holiday Bowl” 33-0, but the fact remains that there seems to be a bowl game for just about everyone in college football.

I am also not sure if anyone really understands how this system really works. I know I don’t understand it, but once all these bowl game are over, the results are put into a computer and then the teams are ranked 1-25. This does not seem a fair way of deciding a champion.  I think it is time to have a play-off system whereby a true champion can be decided through actually playing and winning. This is what we have in proper football, but, in the world of American football, everything has to be complicated. Where else could you have have a one hour game that takes four hours to play?

Getting back to the Holiday Bowl, Nebraska won the game and get to take home $2.3 million in prize money and a very odd looking trophy. I am told that Nebraska as a football power is on the rise again so we will now just have to wait until next season to see if this is true.

Today was the end of the semester at school. We are now on Christmas vacation until January 4th when teachers go back to school and then the students return on the 5th.

Semester has ended okay for me. I managed to get through the first semester of International Relations, although I have discovered that the curriculum that I wrote for it is way too long. At some point, it will have to be cut back. Right now, the I.R. curriculum I wrote is six units long and I only managed to get about two and a half done. Next semester, I plan on speeding things up and also making some cuts to the I.R. curriculum. That way I will be able to cover more of what needs to be covered. I am not too worried about the I.R. because I now know I have plenty to cover and don’t have to worry about running out of things to do. In fact, I actually really have too much material to cover for a semester long course.

The other two classes are doing well. I did manage to get the first two units of World Geography completed. This may not sound like much, but unit one of the World Geography curriculum covers a lot of material. All the other units are much smaller in the second semester if I spend three weeks on units three through seven I would still have about three weeks left to spare at the end of the year. This will not happen so the geography is pretty much taking care of itself.

As for my third class, U.S. History, I have had to speed things up a little this year. I would have liked to have been finished with both the Great Depression and the New Deal by Christmas, but, in the end, I only got done with the Great Depression. This is still a huge improvement on this time last year when I had only just been done with World War One. I guess I can learn from this and, if I teach U.S. History next school year, I can make sure I am done with the New Deal by Christmas.

Now that the Christmas vacation is here I do not have to worry about school for a few weeks. I made sure all my grades were done by today so I don’t have to worry about having to go to school over the Christmas break to work on grades. I think, overall, I am using my time more effectively at school. I now get most of my grading and a lot of my lesson planning done at school. That, of course, means I do not take very much work home or spend very much time working on creating assignments and PowerPoints at home. While some of that is still necessary, I am gradually  reducing the amount of work I have to do at home. If I have the same subjects to teach next year that should mean a lot less work for me since I will already have most of the materials available at hand. I have no doubt I will make some supplementary materials, but the core materials will be already be in place.

I guess I can now look forward to almost two weeks of no school and no school work!

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, a very unique American holiday. When I first arrived in the United States I had heard of Thanksgiving, but I had no idea of what is was all about. We do not have Thanksgiving in the United Kingdom.

Over the years, I have grown to like the Thanksgiving holiday. It gives a few days off in the middle of the school year, but, more importantly, I think it is the last holiday that has not been ruined by commercialism. If you look at Christmas it has been ruined by rampant commercialization to the point that I doubt that a lot of people do not understand what Christmas is about anymore.

Yesterday, I spent the day with Irene and D’Argo watching “American football” and, of course, eating lots of turkey. I was perfectly happy to spend my day doing this. The thing about Thanksgiving is that it is a holiday where American families get together. Irene’s family are all in New York and mine are all in the UK and do not really care or know what Thanksgiving is so I am perfectly happy with my Thanksgiving.

The one thing I do notice is that when I tell people my Thanksgiving plans they are often a little shocked. They expect you to be with lots of friends and family and not just your wife and cat. They even suggest going to a local Thanksgiving dinner provided by some charity in town. I assume they do this so that Irene and I will not be alone. The point is I am perfectly happy with my Thanksgiving and certainly don’t want to spend part of the day eating food with a group of people I don’t know just so that I am not “alone.”

So I had a perfectly good Thanksgiving. We had some good food and I got to do nothing all day, which was great. D’Argo finally got to go out for the first time by himself. I do have some reservations about this, but he seems to be staying in the local area so he should be fine. We had wanted to keep D’Argo in the house but he wants so badly to go out that we have finally given in. He does seem to be an outdoor cat and hates to be kept inside. We have now had him for just over a year and he has grown into a very independent cat. He will be going for his annual check-up at the vet soon so we will see how his health is doing and, hopefully, his adventures outside will not harm him in any way.

At Gering High School, teachers do, of course, have to have observations in order for the administration to see how teachers are doing in class. I have never been a fan of these observations because I do not think they accurately show how a teacher is teaching in class. What I sometimes think administrators fail to realize is that the very presence of a Principal or Assistant Principal in the classroom completely changes the dynamic of the room. I do think they have their place, but I do not think they are an accurate and fair way of assessing how well a teacher teaches (and neither are standardized tests for that matter).

At Gering, Probationary Teachers have to have two formal observations each year, one in the fall and and in the spring. Once you gain tenure, you are only observed every third year, but still have to fill out lots of paperwork to show how you are achieving professional development and meeting professional development goals (this is true in most school districts).

In addition to all this paperwork and formal observations we have, here at Gering we have what is known as the “informal walk-through” (I got one of these in my email yesterday). Every so often, one of the administrators will walk into your room to see what is going on. I honestly do not see the point of this and especially the little form I get in my email saying how I was doing. The issue I have about this is that teachers are supposed to be professionals, yet I always have this feeling that administrators don’t think teachers are doing their jobs properly.

I do wonder if this is the way other people are treated in other professions. After all, teachers have to have the minimum of a bachelors degree to teach and many, like myself, have a master’s degree too. I would think that, after all this education, a person would be trusted to do the job they have been entrusted to do with a certain level of independence. Unfortunately, in U.S. education this appears not to be so and teachers have very little control over what they teach and also in regards to school policy. I have worked in other school districts that often treated the teachers as little more than hired help. If this is the way teachers are to be treated, then you have to wonder why you need someone with a college degree teaching students.

A few weeks back, I wrote about how the Gering football team had won the last game of their regular season and had qualified for the play-offs. Gering won their first play-off game and so yesterday played another play-off game. This, of course, meant another half-day of school was lost, which is more time that students are not in a classroom.

What I found particularly offensive about these play-off games, is that the administration gave us the choice of staying at school and working or going to the game for which we would have to pay an entrance fee. You may ask what is the problem, well I feel that teachers and staff should be able to go to the game for free. In this case, those teachers that had passes to regular season games could not use them for play-off games.

I certainly was not going to pay to watch a game, so I opted to stay at school. It was not that big of a deal since, even if the game had been available to me for free, I think I would have chosen to stay at school. The point here is that these games and events should be open to school district teachers and staff for free. The reason for this is that the administration always harps on about how important it is for tacters to show there support to students. I might be a bit more inclined to support the Gering sporting event if the events were open to staff members for free.

Of course, the Activities Department has a program whereby a teacher can sign up to participate in at least two school sponsored events and, in return, get an activities pass to most school events. The issue here is that most sporting events I have no interest in and actually find boring. I think the problem is that the big sports are “football” and basketball, which I don’t understand and don’t care to understand. So why would I want to go to events I have no interest in?