Saturday, June 27, 2009

Harmless Fun

I feel like summer hasn’t even started yet.  This is the first June since I was 7 that I didn’t play golf, probably the first June ever that I never went to the pool just for fun, and also the first June in which the most exciting thing I did was drive to Grove City, Pennsylvania to film a dance recital for 224 Productions. 

I wrote that last sentence as a joke but unfortunately had to think for a second of something that was better.  Thinking about it though, I really did have a great time on the ride back.  Brent and I talked about many things, but my favorite happened to be the topic of what we did with our friends when we were young for what we called “harmless fun.”  “Harmless fun” was defined as something you did that you definitely shouldn’t have been doing, but really couldn’t get in too much trouble for, and if your parents knew about it (especially our respective pairs) they would act super mad but really would be thinking inside “thank God they are doing that and not shrooms” and would make you apologize to people or something embarrassing.

Anyway, we told of TPing and the usual mischief, but Brent and I both brought to the table one specific act that neither neighborhood gang thought up themselves…    

Brent and his buddies carried on the tradition of taking a pick up truck around town and piling up yard waste bags full of leaves into the bed.  They would then take all of the bags and rip them open in the middle of someone’s front yard.  I know everyone reading this is thinking, “how awful that would be to wake up and look out and see all of that, let alone pick it all up.”  Exactly right, AWFUL.  The tradition I speak of though is due to Brent’s first experience with this being picking up the leaves when a group of his father’s football players did it to his house when he was a kid.  This certainly doesn’t condone the behavior, but c’mon, it’s hilarious to think about. 

I then told the story of “dead homies.”  My friend’s parents used to stuff a pair of jeans and flannel shirt full of leaves and put a pumpkin head on them to make a dummy for the front porch at Halloween time.  We borrowed the dummy, replaced the pumpkin with a duct taped group of newspapers and a ball cap, and also taped an old pair of tennis shoes on him, then named the dummy “Dre.”  We would take Dre down to the bottom of High Point hill and place him under a streetlight just off of the road face down with an overturned bicycle laying next to him.  We would hide back in a wooded area about 30 yards from the road and roar laughing each time someone would come to a very concerned stop only to realize it was just Dre.  Another AWFUL act, something that would probably be frowned upon, but now that it is over and done with, again I say c’mon that’s hilarious to think about. 

Yes both stories are silly, immature little things we used to do.  However, they provided a million laughs then, and also got us back from Grove City, PA in good spirit. 


Disclaimer:  Please do not attempt either scenario.

Until next time,

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Properly Interviewed

I interviewed at Licking Valley Middle School this morning at 8:15.  A lot of things were going through my head on the way out there, probably much of the same things anyone going to an interview would have.   How do I respond to this, how do I respond to that, what if they ask me this, what sounds better this or that.

My biggest concern though happened to be whether or not I would actually get to show who I am.  I have always been pretty good at speaking with people.  I don’t really get nervous, I can talk about a variety of topics, I have experiences to share, and for the most part I think I come across as a confident person, which has to look good to a prospective employer.  I was concerned that I wouldn’t get the freedom to let myself shine in the interview.  In the teaching interview process, often times the first interview is a set 25 questions in which the employer is looking for key phrases or buzzwords that seem universal to the teaching profession.  I’d imagine I do an average job answering those questions, and probably more because of the confidence I answer them with than the actual key phrases I include (those phrases are most likely the ones that were in the text book we were supposed to read for the education courses at The Harvard, need I say more). 

Anyway, in the interview, we started with those 25 questions, and I feel as though I did a pretty good job.  A typical interview that I went through 3 years ago would have ended there, however in this interview that was only the beginning.  We chatted for another 30 minutes about teaching styles, district philosophies, where we each had come from, building goals, life goals, coaching experiences, and more.  I felt like I got the chance to truly show who I was, not just to answer the same 25 questions everyone knows are coming and can have a pre-planned answer to.   The Principal genuinely tried to find out what type of teacher he was hiring, and more importantly, he tried to find out what type of person will be representing his building to the students, staff, and community of Licking Valley Schools. 

If I am not the guy chosen for the job, then I feel like I at least was given a fair shot, and I did my best. I hope that most interviews are like this nowadays.  I have seen first hand in the past 3 years that the person is much more important than the teacher.  There are teachers that are extremely qualified for the academic portion of the field, but I truly believe that no matter how much of an expert a person is on the subject, if they don’t have the personality to relate to others, their message is not nearly as effective.

I feel confident that I showed myself as both a quality teacher and quality person.  (despite what you all would say about me)

Note:  I had to put that pathetic joke in just because when I wrote the last sentence I pictured my dad calling someone up to recommend them to an employer.  Then turning around and letting the person know that “I told them you were a good person, despite what everyone always says about you.”

Second note:  You know it’s a terrible attempt at comedy when you have to explain your lame joke. 

Yes, this is the person Licking Valley might get.  I hope middle school kids laugh at lame jokes.

Until next time, 

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

School District GM

I’ve been thinking lately as I go through the hiring/ firing/ application process about just that, the hiring/ firing/ application process for a school district.  A couple things come to mind…

1.  When you hire a teacher, if you are a well-paying, high quality district, you’re basically hiring a teacher for life.  Now, are there a few that don’t continue on for whatever reason?  Yes, but I’ve got to believe that with the way the economy is Today, the big districts are hiring the same teachers they will have in 25 years. 

2.  With that said, each district wants to save money so they are hiring teachers with say 5 or less years of experience.  Because of the way teachers are paid, by experience not performance, the young and more inexperienced are the cheaper ones to have on the books. 

So, districts are hiring the best of the cheapest teachers Today, then 25 years down the road all of these teachers are going to be getting paid a pretty nice salary, all at the same time.  There really isn’t any thought process of spacing out salaries such as one that would be used with a professional sports team.  This is kind of a scary thought for a teacher right now.  I do believe our economy is going to turn around, but still, it seems to me that districts are going to have to start subtly changing the way they pay teachers, or at some point they are going to have a ton of teachers making a ton of money, and will have no way of getting rid of them.

This is completely just a thought I have had, and I admittedly don’t know all of the science behind it, but I propose that a district hires a “GM.”  Each district should come up with a salary cap, and then it is this person’s job to keep them under the salary cap not only in the current year, but should also plan ahead.  For example, many districts now have the goal of keeping the average experience of new hires at 3 (for every person with 6 years experience you must hire one with 0).  That sounds good, but 27 years from now the district is paying all of these people the max salary.  The district GM would be responsible for not putting an exact number on the average experience, but would be responsible for advising the district when it would be wise to go ahead and hire someone with 15 years of experience, and pay them that way in order to maintain balance throughout the entire pay scale.  Big districts would benefit too because a lot of really good teachers get “stuck” in smaller districts because they would lose years of experience going elsewhere.  So, when you hire the person with 15 years experience you are only paying them for 15 more years or so, rather than 27.  Then you can hire someone with 0 years experience to replace them, and the new crop of teachers that were hired at the beginning of this ultra-confusing paragraph have 12-15 years experience and the process is spaced out better. 

I’m not saying every district has this problem right now, but with so many “experienced” teachers getting ready to retire (or so that’s the rumor) I think a thought process such as this might work.  I realize there are many more details that could have been included in this, and would have to in order to put it into operation. Who knows, they may already operate like this, but I thought I would add my 2 cents just incase anyone is looking for a GM (and it would only cost them the level of 3 years experience).

Until next time,