Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

Today I am sitting at home not at school, resting. Why am I not at school? Because yesterday I got into a car accident and wrecked my car. I am pretty sure it has been totaled, but I will have to wait for the insurance company to assess the damage before I can be sure.

Basically, I was pulling out of the McDonald’s onto 10th Street in Gering when I got hit by another car on the driver’s side of my vehicle. The sun had just risen and the glare was pretty bad and, even though I looked and then looked again, I did not see the other car. Both myself and the driver of the other vehicle had to be taken to the hospital and I have been told to take a week off work to recover. Fortunately, there were no major injuries, although I did suffer a shoulder injury and some whiplash.

I am pretty sure I will make a full recovery, but I am pretty bummed about the whole thing. I really liked my little car and don’t know when I can get a new one. I also think it will be months before the insurance is all sorted out and I will not get another car until that is all sorted out and paid off.

Today marked the end of  of the third quarter and tomorrow is a Work Day for the teachers. Again, I have made sure that my grades are complete so all I will have to do tomorrow is get them verified and then I am done. This weekend will also be the start of our Spring Break.

For some reason, Gering Public Schools does not combine Spring Break with Easter. As a result, we get two long weekends. This year, one is in March while the second will be in April. I am afraid I find this a little bizarre to say the least. Almost every other school district gives their students (and staff) a full week in either March or April (depending when Easter falls) for Spring Break. This gives people the opportunity to go on vacation or just stay home to get ready for the last part of the school year.

The problem I see with dividing the time off like they do at Gering is that a lot of kids get pulled out of school anyway, thus missing up to four days of school. The argument has been made that giving them a whole week in the Spring would allow them to forget what they have spent most of the year learning. I don’t buy this argument. If that was so, then you can make a much stronger case for getting rid of the long summer vacation (as some people do). I don’t think taking a whole week in March or April will make much, if any, difference to how much learning the kids retain.

Once again, it does not really matter what I think. Each and every year, teachers are asked what they think of the next year’s school calendar and each and every year our suggestions and ideas are ignored.

On Wednesday, there was a meeting for Probationary Teachers that was organized by our Union, the Gering Educators Association. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the rights of non-tenured teachers. The meeting was held at a local pizza place so I got the opportunity to eat free pizza and learn more about my rights and responsibilities as a teacher.

When I got there, I found there I found that the turn out was pretty low. We had another snowstorm on the day of the meeting  and the roads are still pretty bad. In the end, only three other teachers turned up. I was still a little  surprised because, despite the conditions, I thought more people would show. I found the meeting very informative and I got the business card of the regional union rep for the Nebraska Education Association or NEA, the state union to which our local union is affiliated. So if I have any serious problems in the future I know who I can contact.

Also, we had another faculty meeting on Wednesday. Not surprisingly, the ESU #13 Winter Conference workshops came up. I could hardly believe it when one of my fellow teachers said how great the “Energizer” was with his presentation. When she started talk about the great things she had learned that she would use in the classroom, I was started to wonder if I had even been in the same workshop. I still say that workshop was dreadful and that the presenter only wanted to sell us his products.

Today was the annual ESU #13 Winter Conference. ESU stands for Educational Services Unit and the one that covers the Panhandle of Nebraska was the 13th to be established in the state.

Every February, they hold numerous workshops for teachers and other educational professionals in the Gering/Scottsbluff area to support our “professional development.” Every December, we get asked which of these workshops would we like to attend and, unfortunately, this year I forgot to tell my Principal my preference, so he put me in what he thought would be the best workshop for  me.

Until this year, all we had to do was fill out a sheet telling the administration what workshop we wanted to go on, but, this year, we had to go see the Principal and “request” the workshop of our choice. I say request because several teachers told me that when they went to the office with their requested workshop the Principal insisted on them attending something else instead.

So I go to the workshop at the Gering Civic Center to see what the presenter, Carl “Energizer” Olsen, has to say. Anyone who decides to use the term “Energizer” as a nickname immediately raises a red flag for me. Sure enough this guy did not fail to disappoint.

Almost from the beginning, I got the feeling he was trying to sell me something from the collection of products he had set out on tables in the room. He also spent much of his presentation demonstrating his products claiming they could be used in the classroom to attract and maintain students’ attention.

I had several issues with the “Energizer.” First off, I found his presentation to be dull. I find most workshops to be dull so, to be honest, it may well be just me and I will try not to hold that against him. The next issue concerned where he spent most of his career in public education. For most of his time in education, he was a Middle School Guidance Councilor and, while that means he would have had regular contact with students, it also means that he had little to no experience of actually teaching and managing a classroom. I do not like people who have had no real experience of teaching in a high school setting telling me the best ways of how to teach.

The other issue I had with the “Energizer” is that a lot of his products would not be used safely in a classroom. Some of his products create magic tricks and one involved the use of fire. I can just imagine the trouble a teacher would get into if they used such things at our school.

The final issue involved the afternoon break. The main reason for taking this break was not so we could stretch our legs and maybe grab some coffee, but so that the “Enerqizer” could try and sell some of his products to the people present.

At the end of the day, I asked one of my Social Studies colleagues what he thought of the presentation and he said that it had been one of the worst in his 25 years of teaching. I think that pretty much says it all.

We have had the new cats for almost two weeks (Puck) and a week (Harvey) and things appear to be getting better. Puck is the most well adjusted and I think that is because he has been here longer. Things are a little more difficult for Harvey, but he seems to be adjusting to his new home.

At the weekend, we could not get Harvey out of the upstairs bathroom and he was sleeping on the kitty litter. When he did come out of the bathroom, he peed on the bedroom carpet, but I think that was just nerves. He is now using the litter box. He is also now coming downstairs and has finally started eating and drinking. We were really worried because, for the first two days, he would not eat or drink. Finally, on Sunday, he drank some water and, later in the day, he had some food.

Harvey seems like a very friendly cat and he is very affectionate. From what I have found out, he came from a farm out by Mitchell, Nebraska and was part of a litter of four kittens. He is about eight months old so he is still a kitten and not fully grown just yet. Both Puck and Harvey seem to be getting along better. There is less hissing and they seem to at least tolerate each other. Hopefully, their relationship will continue to improve.