A bit of news

There is some big news coming out of Rhode Island right now. A school district there fired all of its teachers in an effort to boost education scores. I think that is the wrong approach. Students begin learning at home. If the parents don't do anything with their children at home, the teacher in the classroom is already fighting an uphill battle. Add in the fact that many of the students are learning English as their second language, come from broken homes, and face other problems like drug and alcohol abuse and violence, its a minor miracle when anything good happens to those students.
Which is not to say that bad teachers shouldn't be fired. If they aren't doing their jobs, get rid of them. But to fire them all is not the answer. Students and teachers build relationships and sometimes a teacher is the only stable thing in a students life. If you get rid of that stability, you aren't really looking out for the student. But with the Feds breathing down the administrators necks, I can see where they're coming from.
Anyways, how about some positive news. Its almost March! Time is just flying by. We are gearing up for our state testing, which is coming up in April. The students and teachers here at MAK school are busting their butts in preparation for them.
Which opens up a whole new can of worms. High stakes testing. I am completely against it. Administrators are getting pressure from the bean counters in the government to raise test scores, so the administrators are in turn putting pressure on the teachers to prepare for these tests. I remember back in college some of the professors going off about how teaching to the test is horrible and totally wrong. Well, that's all I've done since I've become a teacher. And that is one of the main things that I have a problem with. We are teaching are kids to be robots who might be able to do good on a standardized test, instead of teaching them to be critical thinkers and problem solvers. And that is just depressing for me. I didn't get into teaching to have some bean counters telling me what to do in my classroom.
And then teachers are judged by their students scores on these tests. If the kids do bad on these tests, then the teacher must be a poor teacher, according to that rationale. Well, if thats the case, my 7th and 8th grade teachers were poor. (In fact, they were not poor teachers, I was a poor student.) In those grades, I thought I was cool being bad and not trying in school. In 7th grade, we took the California Achievement Test. I distinctly remember this: I filled in the bubbles on the scoresheet in a zig-zag pattern (A B C D C B A, etc.) I finished the test in about 5 or 10 minutes. Out of the four tests, I scored in the 7th percentile, 2nd percentile, 2nd percentile, and 1st percentile. That means that on one test, I scored better than 7% of the kids my age, on the next test I scored better than 2% of the kids my age, and so on. So what did this show? Were my teachers poor teachers? Did my school deserve to get punished for students getting low test scores? Of course not. I was the problem. I was acting like a little turd. It goes back to the old saying, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." It didn't matter how dedicated and bright and kind and caring my teachers were. I still bombed those tests, and it was no one's fault but my own. A little FYI for you all:  My little problem of acting cool and tough and not caring about school was solved in the 8th grade. I had failed my algebra class, and my parents were not too happy. My mom grounded me until the next report card came out. Six whole weeks of being grounded. I was mad, but it was the turning point in my school career. But it goes back to the parents. My parents disciplined me and I learned real fast. It didn't matter what the teachers were doing to me in school. The ultimate responsibility fell on my parents.
I think a lot of America is looking at schools and teachers to raise their kids for them. Parents need parent their kids, and give support to teachers to put the hammer on the students when they aren't performing. That will take care of a lot of our educational problems.

OK, enough about that stuff. Here are some pictures. This is a blueberry pie that our high schoolers sold as a fund raiser. It was a srumptious supper for me one night this past fall. Not as good as my mom's pie though.

When you think of Alaska in the winter you think of snow covered ground right? Wrong! This picture is 20 miles outside of Ruby. And no, they don't plow that far out. They only plow out to the dump, which is about 2 miles from town. This was a real wind blown area. You can see the big drift on the right hand side of the road, and the rest of it is bare gravel. It was pretty surprising running into this section of road, especially out in the wilderness.

Here is Max posing by his machine. He has a Yamaha Bravo 250. Those are super reliable machines and are the workhorse of bush Alaska. There are probably 25 or 30 of them in Ruby. And they are only about $3,500 brand new.

We were in this gravel pit 12 miles outside of Ruby shooting our pistols. I shot my 44 magnum and Max shot his 357 magnum. It was a lot of fun. Then there was a huge hillside of virgin powder, so I had to take advantage. Max snapped a few photos of me in action. I must report that the Tundra is excellent in the deep powder. The hill doesn't look big in this picture but anyone who has seen video footage of people riding in the mountains will tell you its decieving. There is a small gravel pile in the foreground and I am on the big hill in the background. Its a lot bigger and steeper than it looks in this picture. I might be trying to trump up my riding skills with that lengthy explanation, but I am still undefeated in the Bunker Hill racing circuit vs Bryzo and Helppi. And not to brag, but I could outride Jed and David any day of the week on any machine. hahhahhahha!

Here I am posing with mine and Max's machines. Now kids, make sure you always ride with a buddy, especially when you are way out in the wilderness. You'll also notice we have survival bags strapped to the backs of our sleds. You don't want to forget that stuff either. I am up on that drift that is shown in the earlier picture and Max's Bravo is down on the road level, so you can see how big the drift is.
Hopefully we can get out again this weekend, but this time go out even farther. We'll see though. I apologize for not posting in a long time. I'll try to stay on top of it better here. Until then, take care and remember, only two more days until Victory Friday!