Education in Vermont

From True North Reports: http://truenorthreports.com/north-bennington-gets-the-green-light-for-independent-school This could be a good thing for parents, students, and education in Vermont if it leads to more choice for parents and a little healthy competition in the education market.

 

Golf Tournament

I’m hoping this works as a way to publish information about the Rutland Area Christian School golf tournament on Friday May 20 (there should be a poster/image/pdf file showing).

Email me if you have more questions.

RACS 2011 GOLF POSTER.pdf

 

Blogging A-Z: T is for Tumor

It used to be that whenever I heard this word I thought about Arnold Schwartenegger exclaiming, “Eet’s naught a toomor, eet’s naught!” in response to some petulant child in the classic movie, Kindergarten Cop (there is no debate about the amazingness that is this movie).

Of course that all changed in February of 2008 when we discovered that Meredith had a mass in her brain that was causing debilitating headaches and episodic vomiting. It has been a strenuous ordeal since that discovery, but I’ve realized that it is too important to laugh, and be able to laugh, to have to take away a funny line, or joke, every time something becomes “personal” or “sensitive”. I will still laugh when I think of that scene from the movie and I may even quote it from time to time, but I do confess to having a whole series of serious thoughts whenever I hear the word tumor used in an off-handed way.

I recently heard a joking conversation between two kids at school recently that used a brain tumor as an excuse for not getting something, or being un-smart, and I had to think for a minute about what I was going to say to them. Of course the real problem was their questionable use of self-depreciation as an attention seeking device, but the tumor part slowed down my response to the situation.

Was I offended, I asked myself.

No, not really.

This was just a couple of kids being foolish and the fact that they stumbled on something that is very personal to me did not mean that I had to take offense. It would have been different if I had already told them my wife’s story and then they joked about brain tumors.

There is plenty of truly offensive “stuff” out there so before you get offended by something said in an off-handed manner, take a moment and decide for yourself if it’s worth get upset about. It doesn’t mean you have to laugh, but getting upset may not be worth it.

Posted from WordPress for Android

 

Lunch blog

Argh!

The internet is down at school and all of my lessons today were using the internet. That figures.

Oh, and the lessons that don’t require the internet…well they’re stores on the server which I also don’t have access to.

Grrrrrrrr….

Posted from WordPress for Android

 

New York Mom Fights Middle School That Banned Her Bike Rides With Son

A New York mother is fighting back against her school district after administrators and officials told her she and her son didn’t have the right to bike to school together — and that his safety, even beyond school walls, was out of her hands.

via New York Mom Fights Middle School That Banned Her Bike Rides With Son – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com.

Like most things, the “details” of this case are not entirely open and shut, but focus on the phrase, “she and her son didn’t have the right to bike to school together”.

Arguably, we are not born with a right to bike to school, but individuals in this country are constitutionally guaranteed the right of liberty.  If she and her son choose to ride their bikes to and from school it should be none of my business, your business, the school’s business, or the state’s business.

I can only hope that the ridiculousness of “laws” like these that begin to show the futility of our government running a public option for health care.

 

4 Charged in Beating Death of Chicago Honor Student

The graphic video of the afternoon melee emerged on local news stations over the weekend, showing the fatal beating of Derrion Albert, a sophomore honor roll student at Christian Fenger Academy High School.

Tragic.

Before 2006, an average of 10-15 students were fatally shot each year. That climbed to 24 fatal shootings in the 2006-07 school year, 23 deaths and 211 shootings in the 2007-08 school year and 34 deaths and 290 shootings last school year.

Tragic.

FoxNews.com article

 

Seventh Grader Sues School Over Right to Wear Pro-Life T-Shirt

Seventh Grader Sues School Over Right to Wear Pro-Life T-Shirt – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com

Posted using ShareThis

The article describes some of the pertinent events of the law suit, but it only represents a very brief summary of the events that led to the suit being filed.  Even so, let me extrapolate the gist of the article for you here.

First, here is the image that was on the T-shirt:

Now, I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the images on the shirt.  In fact, one of the concerns from the school’s point of view is that it is a k-8 school and that some of the material could be inappropriate for younger children.  So, I thought about it.  Would I want my own children (ages 3 and 2) to see those images?  Absolutely.   Why wouldn’t I show them an image of what we all looked like when we were in utero?  Of course, I would prefer to do it on my own terms instead of an image on a T-shirt, but from the perspective of inappropriateness, I think this pales in comparison to other images that I’ve seen on T-shirts in schools.

The basic events go like this:

• Girl wears shirt to school
• Administrators (we used to call them principals) confront the girl at breakfast time and bring her to the office
• Administrators order the girl to remove the shirt and not to wear it again
• Girl removes shirt to comply with the order
• Mom sues the school on behalf of her daughter

Those are the bare facts.  I hate to make assumptions, but I’m assuming that they (the administrators), while insisting on the girl to remove the shirt, did not do anything additionally inappropriate.  We’ll see.  I’ll try and follow this story, but I suspect that it may not make any headlines beyond this because of the topic and because the law suit will likely take months to develop.

What, dear readers, are your thoughts on this shirt?  On the law suit?