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| Last Friday night our school had the military ball in the Perris Fairground. The food was very decent and I am actually learning to enjoy loud music now, after chaperoning so many dances as a teacher.
After the event, one of my colleague’s husband stopped by and talk to me, about wanting me to be the advisor for Interact Club and National Scholarship Federation. He is the president of the Rotary Club in Perris, and Rotary Club is closely tied with Interact or something. I remember the Riverside’s Rotary Club offered full scholarship for my brother to go to college, but my brother turned it down to leave the opportunity for someone else. Due to this, I have positive feelings towards Rotary Club, and I agree to it, thinking that I will finally be a part of the Perris community and lead students to do more meaningful community service work.
I felt closer to my school as well. In my imagination this is a charter school that is different than other charter schools. That they will not make personale decisions base on budget reasons.
I cannot be any more wrong. This morning in our high school meeting, some experienced teachers were sharing that when the admin talk to them, the administrator joking said, “Oh, you are one of those expensive teachers.” It’s not hard to figure out what it implies.
With the given education budget situation, I cannot blame the administrator. It is really tempting to cut the teachers on the higher end of the salary scale as a charter school, since charter schools do have that option. But teachers are not dumb. We’ll find every opportunity to get out trying to find a more stable district job so one day we won’t be in those experienced teacher’s situation.
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Some update on the budget situation… my colleagues are saying the next year may be the heaviest lay off year for teachers in California history. This year alone close to 20,000 teachers in California got pink slips, but apparently the worst time hasn’t come yet. This coming November people of California will vote on a bill to increase taxes in order to prevent further cuts in education. Which I do not think the bill has a chance to pass at all. No one in their right mind would pass a bill to increase their own tax burdens. Especially in this kind of economy where people are getting more poor. Honestly if I am not an educator I would probably not support the bill neither. If the bill didn’t pass then CA public education have to take a couple of billion dollars more in cuts. Which means more teachers will get laid off, and class sizes will probably go over 40, or more furlough days. I guess this is actually a good time to work for charter, since at charters we don’t abide by the “last hired, first fired” policy. Regardless, everyone needs to tighten their belt next year.
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The unemployment issue is getting more and more serious. The 2012 college graduates will join the already large unemployed population that graduated the previous years. The economists kept on pushing back the year that we will eventually recover… now it’s predicted that our economy won’t fully recover until the year 2018. Is the American Empire really in decline or is it just another one of those difficult times we need to get through?
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Due to the special opportunity our school has, the teachers in our school have the option of going through California Cadet Corp officer training, and those training experiences and our education level can be transferred to California Military Reserve (basically the National Guard).
The idea of being a military officer always intrigues me. Even though I understand that wars are terrible (do I really, truly understand it?), I still couldn’t resist the temptation to look like Forrest Gump (I love the idea of wearing a military officer uniforms, active or reserve). Plus, whatever stipend the military give to the Reserve Officers can be tempting, especially in this economy (kind of like the tesserae in Hunger Games?).
National Guards do have a chance to go to war though. Even though I think putting down riots started by angry, unemployed mobs are more of a possibility right now.
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| This week I became a US Citizen. The people I have to thank the most are probably my uncle and my auntie.
Since they came to America first, they applied green cards for my family who were still in Taiwan. They applied the year I was born, and by the time I was thirteen our green cards were granted and our family immigrated to America.
Our family stayed at their house in Chicago for two years, where we began our journey in this new land that is full of promises and potentials.
There I had to learn to deal with bullies from every race, and to speak a new language. But it is a lot better than the reign of terror in Taiwanese classrooms where teachers hit you with bamboo sticks or glue sticks (for hot glue gun) for any scores below a 90%.
I am forever grateful to my family.
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Today I was at Rite Aid getting passport photos for my Visa to Taiwan this summer (now that I am a US citizen I actually need a Visa to go back). It happens that there is also an ice cream stand inside the store, and I couldn’t resist the temptation not to get some.
Eating ice cream actually brings back a lot of childhood memories at the moment. Due to asthma problems I had when I was young, I was not allowed to eat ice cream. Every time when my brother got it I would ask him to have his cone. Most of the time he was pretty nice to his older brother and left some ice cream inside the cone so I can secretly enjoy some without my parents knowing. I am pretty touched by his willingness to share especially if you ever tried to take away delicious food from a Taurus (金牛座) :P
I couldn't help but to also wonder what was my dad and my uncle's childhood memories' like?
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Now I can drive those golf carts around in the resorts without the fear of going to get deported :P
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I was talking to Jasper about the AID summer program (LoL kind of sound like AIDS to me) that for Americans to teach English in Taiwan. Jasper told me it was an extremely meaningful event and everyone cried before they departed from their host schools. I am glad that I took the initiative to apply for the program and be fortunate enough to get in (both of my HS and College GPA are lower than the group average). My brother told me it will be a teary event; at first I didn’t believe him. But from Jasper’s personal experience I think my brother will be right. Sigh… hopefully I am not a jaded teacher yet and end up as the only one not shedding tears.
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| I’ve been thinking… what is the point of blogging? The writer knows that there will be people reading their blog, so consciously and subconsciously they won’t write or share whatever they truly felt in their hearts. I guess blogging is just a form of expression and… perhaps therapeutic, because apparently some psychologists and therapists ask their patients to keep a blog.
Recently there has been some… turbulences among the staff in my school. Of course, it is always about the money. Some teachers are not happy that our school employees pays a premium for health insurance that is a lot higher than other employees from the same district because we are a charter, and we have no union to bargaining for us.
For me it doesn’t really matter, because I am single and I don’t have a spouse or dependents to cover. But for the teachers who are covering for their spouse and their children, they are taking a huge hit every year because health insurance cost skyrocket year to year (most of Obama’s affordable healthcare laws don’t take effect until 2014, so I have heard). For the normal district employees, the split is 80-20, where the district will eat up 80% of the healthcare increase fees and the employees only eat up 20%. But for the charter, employees eat up 100% of the increase. Teachers who have families members to cover complain that they have to pay $800 per month out of pocket while teachers who work for the district only pays around $200 out of pocket every month for family coverage. Well, family is expensive… middle class poverty.
(By this rate I'll probably have to outsource my healthcare stuff to Taiwan)
Nevertheless, most of the school districts around the country are pretty much broke. Smaller districts I know are around $5 million dollars in debt in 2010. Larger districts like LA Unified are over $100 million dollars in debt. So, these public entities are definitely not self-sufficient nor fiscally solvent. On the other hand, most of the charter schools I know are not broke and do have money left over. Many education reformers see charter schools as the future direction of the American education system- fiscally solvent and a lot of them do produce pretty good test scores (probably through cherry-picking students though).
It’s such a dilemma… I do like the work environment and the energy in a charter school. Though there are handful of hard to deal with students, but at least we don’t have to deal with gang members and drug dealers who attend the regular high schools. On the other hand we do have to pay more if we need to cover our family members, and our salary scale cannot compare with the regular district’s in the long run. So it’s hard to say. Maybe it is the intention for charter schools to discriminate against older teachers who have families, because supposedly younger teachers have more time and energy to spend with the students and that our salaries are lower.
I am not too sure where I stand on the issue… it seems to me that even the charter school’s health coverage is still better than the average private sector’s health coverage. Why should the public sector get more? We should be people’s servants, not wasters of tax dollars. Yes, of course teachers and other public servants work hard. But who doesn’t? People in the private sector also work very hard if they want to keep their jobs. Plus, so many teachers are out of jobs right now. Basic economics tell us that this is not at free-market equilibrium, which means the compensation should go lower and not higher by market standards. My heart really goes out for those teachers or aspiring teachers who doesn’t have a job though… for many of them teaching is actually their dream job. Even though being a teacher isn’t my dream job, I will still cherish it and do my very best because I know I am holding other people's dream job.
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| In the past I often feel PowerPoint is an ineffective way to teach, since I dislike the professors who just read off the slides during college.
Recently I observed a teacher who did a great job using PowerPoint to teach chemistry. She have very structured note taking guide for the students and her PowerPoint included a lot of visuals and diagrams, which made the flow of the lecture very well. She also has a smart board so she can do the chemical equations directly on the PowerPoint, which can save the hassle of using the white board. I tried to use more and more PowerPoint as well, and I realized that students are much easier to manage this way since I do not have to turn my backs on them. Students also asked great questions related to the visuals.
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Was staying late at school today. When I left a student (or cadet) actually greeted me and reminded me to drive safe, which made me feel really warm and fuzzy inside. Church people remind me to drive safe all the time, but it feels different when a teen does it.
I feel the teens today are pretty rude. Quite a handful of students have very bad attitudes and some even steal stuff. A lot of teachers in my schools openly complain about the rude students as well. But on the other hand I am very thankful that a lot of my students are actually very sweet and polite, despite of what their classmates act like.
Perhaps this saying still holds true in low-socio economical area: “The worst day in a charter school is still better than a normal day at a public school.”
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| I like to collect some videos of myself teaching that way in the future when I make a class website I'll have a lot of resources. Khan Academy idea will soon spread throughout the education field.
Genie in the bottle
Wise man and the catalyst
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