About ethics

Two days ago, the Alabama state legislature made to changes to the state's ethics laws for teachers. This came after the Mobile newspaper ran an editorial claiming that, though the language was "subjective," the rank-and-file educators had nothing to worry about within the legislation, and tarred the association's challenge of the change with the damning taint of unionism.

The fact of the matter is that the new law is overly broad. It allows for dismissal of teacher for failure to supervise students sufficiently or using inappropriate language, for example. Who among us cannot think of an exemplary educator who could have been indicted and removed 0n those grounds? So the legislature, which has already succeeded in preventing any state employee, including teachers, from holding office, now wants the latitude to remove public school teachers at-will.

The two recent special elections in our area have both been won by large margins by far-right Republicans, one of whom argued with a school principal in front of a reporter in support of abolishing the state teacher's association. Both candidates claimed their cause was ethics reform, but what sort of ethics preclude schoolteachers in the state legislature and teacher's unions? I can think of no better model of citizen politicians. No, I think it is a backlash against Obama and perceived socialism. As a public school employee, I am scared.

NECC for the Second Time

Whenever I meet friends, they don't understand where it is I'm going or where I've been. I know "librarian meetings" and thoughts thereof are considered by some to be quite dull, so if that's you, you can leave now...

but if you don't consider that sort of thing quite dull, perhaps you'll agree that NECC was a wonderfully stimulating opportunity to hook up with LMSes who really know their technology. There, and at the Constructivist Consortium event at Sidwell Friends last Sunday, I met some amazing people, some of them I'd been in touch with via Twitter, & other who were there sharing amazing things they were doing with digital literacies.

Unfortunately, my excitement was tempered as I know I probably won't get to return to the conference (which from here on out will be known as ISTE, the name of the parent organization rather than NECC) since it always conflicts with ALA. Making that choice means you have to decide which relationship you privilege, school libraries within libraries writ large OR school libraries within schools. 

Some people say go to AASL  & ALA Midwinter, but go to ISTE not Annual. Other say, fly from one to the other. I tried that last year, it produced two deeply unsatisfying conference experiences. I am not sure what the answer is, but it was sad to leave NECC and my ed tech world friends for now.

A Social Reading Experiment

I participated in Mother Reader's Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge, albeit in a completey spontaneous and uncoordinated way. It was too difficult for me to differentiate reading time from time spent multi-tasking, especially as far as screen time was concerned, so I stopped trying, relying instead on approximate start times and end times for each volume.

Among my 7 books were one re-read and one false start, as well as one comic under the page limit established in the guidelines. I wish I had planned ahead and coordinated reading with some friends, but I enjoyed tweeting back and forth about Meg Rosoff. It is interesting to look at the results on the social web, and the tiniest bit jealous-making to see people reading Catching Fire. The crazy thing is that while I read 1606 pages, it feels altogether like I spent too much time NOT reading over the weekend.

Nine months a year

"Must be nice to have the summers off."

What a fiction! Of course, some of my colleagues might spend two scant months by the pool, but I will be working pretty much every week. School was over Thursday, but I was back yesterday for a couple of meetings and have promised to pop in Monday as well. I am going away Tuesday, so will not be accessible for the rest of next week. What will they do without me? Muddle through, I am sure.

I have been keeping summer at bay with school. It is easier to check out books and make small talk about Sara Zarr and Barry Lyga than scramble around putting together all sorts of presentations and handouts, which experience have taught me are absolute requisites, no paper handouts having been well-noted in evaluations.  And why am I running around the country like a madwoman, spending all my disposable income on supporting my own and other people's professional development? Once I am caught up in the conferences themselves, meeting all sorts of amazing librarians and authors, I will forget these doubts. For now, the pool is looking rather attractive.

Do Something, or the Squeeky Wheel

Last week, I had a personal triumph. After begging my local school tech contact time and again to defrag my student machines and remove the student profiles downloaded whenever even one logs in (and some on the computers had THOUSANDS of profiles, accumulated over 5 years of computer life), I was really at the end of my rope. I know our young people are ridiculously impatient when it comes to the school hardware, what with the slowness concurrent with live virus scanning and net nannying, but some of the machines had available disk space in the single digit percents. Students couldn't even log in...so I raised a cry, going beyong the building and getting almost instant help from my district computer services folks -- the same group had told me last fall it was the building contact's responsibility to maintain them. But it was a case where voicing my need worked well to rectify the situation.

This weekend, reading Barbara Ehrenreich's column "Trying to Find a Job is Not a Job," , I realized that I, too, was guilty of the passivity Ehreneich identifies a current phenomenon. Since I could grouse all the time, I worry I will be branded "the problem" or "the complainer." I have never asked my principal for anything for the library -- not one thing. But I need more computer furniture, new carpet, and money for books since we won't be getting any next year.

In the same vein, I have been too scared to call the faculty assigned to act as my dissertation committee. What if they are mean to me, what if they tell me no? It's all hazing, the doc. process, but I am going to screw my courage to the sticking post and do something. After all, it could turn out a lot better than I have hoped.