So my posts are few and far between. I try but I'm gone most of the time working and when I do get home the computer is hard at work doing the thing it does best: fulfilling Tyson's obsession with Ron Paul and providing the link so that Tyson can chat with people while I stare and watch. If I do get the computer, it's not like I have any privacy to sit and think about what I want to write; it's our only source of entertainment lately so when it's on all eyes are on it.
Tyson is away and I finally have the computer to myself, but I have so much to say that I'm lost for words. It's like looking a map of the universe and trying to decide the first place I want to visit.
So rather than say something interesting, I thought I would just ramble on about things that matter to me lately or that I've been thinking about a lot.
First, my first official review is coming up on Thursday at work. I don't know what to expect, I love the people I work with but there's something weird about going into the conference and trying to have a serious review when your supervisor just made a joke the day before about how you were going to fill his office with gas from farts. It makes it even more weird because I don't know if they'll bring up compensation and I don't know if it's a topic I can avoid. I tried searching online for the 'proper' way things are suppose to happen, but I had no luck. I don't know if it's standard to get a raise at your first review (of course assuming you do a good job) or if you're suppose to ask for a raise, or if it's too soon to even bring it up.
I was thinking yesterday that if they don't give me a raise, then no matter how much I love my job currently, it won't be worth it to stay any longer. The cost of living is way more expensive here than it was in Texas and at my current rate I'm making less money than I was as a first year teacher in Texas. Now the "perks" are something else and the stress level is like 1/10000th of that of a teacher, but there comes a point when you just have to do what's right for your future. Call me selfish, but I'm my biggest concern. I have to make sure numero uno is taken care of. I thought, if I don't get a raise, then I'll just stay until my lease is up and then move to New Hampshire and try again.
The other thing I've been thinking about lately is religion. I have a lot of strong opinions that I rarely voice about Christianity, and maybe it's just because it's the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, but abortions and politics as well. For a long time now I've had the opinion that Christians' shouldn't be so concerned about abortion. For anyone who believes in God or Heavenly Father, or whatever else you might choose to call him, I ask you what you honestly believes happens to those unborn babies? Do you think they go to Hell? NO! They get to go to the best place of all, Heaven. Isn't that why we were sent here? To be tested, to learn, to fail, to succeed? Instead of focusing so much on saving unborn children who are just going to go to Heaven and get to skip this "so called life" why not focus on saving the souls of their mothers who are already here? Besides that, doesn't it say in the Bible and (for the LDS) the Book of Mormon that agency, or the freedom to choose for yourself, is the greatest gift God could give us? Why are so many people trying to take that gift away from others? God gave them the right to choose, it was his gift, who are you to take away that gift? Also for the LDS, isn't that why we fought the war in Heaven? Because "the star of the morning" (see D&C) wanted to force us down the path of righteousness? We fought a WAR because we wanted to be able to choose the right instead of being forced down that path. We did this with the understanding that a few would be lost, but this was the path that was chosen by us, by Heavenly Father, by Christ. Now I, personally, wouldn't have an abortion but I would at least like to know that it is by choice and not force. Imagine the resent you would feel if you were forced to have a child that you didn't want; that poor child would either grow up being resented, adopted if they were lucky, in foster care, or some other unfortunate circumstance. I just realized how long this post is and I'm done.
If you give me the chance, I will choose the right. If you make me do right, I will covet the wrong.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Darn Good Luck
So it's another weekend almost gone; I had big plans to write a new blog entry about what's been on my mind lately: the presidential election, a potential move to New Hampshire, a story I heard on the radio the other day that really ticked me off, and the role of evangelicals' and Christians in general as they pertain to politics.
I don't really have the energy to write about any of it right now though. I've been struggling lately with my own life and trying to come up with a plan on how to get out of this slump...I have a good job, a degree, and it just isn't enough. We live in the ghetto, drive cheap cars, don't have a T.V., don't have any furniture, and yet every month we get more in debt because we have to use our credit card just to pay for basic food and gas since our expenses add up to more than our income. Tyson hasn't been able to get a job, and sometimes it's hard not to resent him for it. I do love him though, just something we have to get through.
I'm worried about our car registration, Arizona law is that you register your car as soon as you're a resident. Needless to say, we haven't done so with either of our vehicles because we don't have the money. We would need to switch our car insurance to reflect our new residency status, which means higher insurance costs because everyone in Arizona is a retarded driver and there's tons of traffic no matter what time of day, and then register two cars and pay the taxes on them which would cost like $400 if not more on it's own. Our Texas registration expires this month, so pretty soon our cars won't be legal anywhere.
I'm also worried about our two dogs. They need more heartworm/flea preventative but we don't have to money to take them to the vet to get some. If we could just get he medicine that would be one thing, but taking them to the vet here in Arizona would also mean that we would have to get them registered (for a fee) or face a monthly fine.
I try to look at where the money is going, but the thing is I'm not one of those people that lives out side of their income. I have zero credit card debt, no student loans, no mortgage, I wear the same clothes that I've been wearing since I was in high school (with the exception of about 4 outfits that were bought for my job).
Sometimes I get upset because I think to myself, I'm only 22. I'm not suppose to have these worries yet. Most people my age are still in college or living with their parents. They haven't even thought about retirement or savings yet. Maybe it doesn't help that I work for a retirement firm, but all I can think about it that I'm going to be working till I'm 70 and then be too old and still too poor to enjoy life when I can finally retire.
I also get frustrated sometimes because my only goal right now is to improve my life and set myself and my family up for a better future but we can't even save $5; then Tyson gets frustrated because we don't have the social life with friends and parties that he wants.
I've worried about things like this a lot of my life, and somehow it always seems to work out. When I worried about how I was going to pay for college (I didn't want to take out loans), I went on to earn a full scholarship that paid for my living expenses as well as school. Sometimes it seems like I either have darn good luck with really bad timing, or just a way of pulling myself out of holes.
I can't wait for luck anymore, so I guess it's time to figure out to get out of this hole.
I don't really have the energy to write about any of it right now though. I've been struggling lately with my own life and trying to come up with a plan on how to get out of this slump...I have a good job, a degree, and it just isn't enough. We live in the ghetto, drive cheap cars, don't have a T.V., don't have any furniture, and yet every month we get more in debt because we have to use our credit card just to pay for basic food and gas since our expenses add up to more than our income. Tyson hasn't been able to get a job, and sometimes it's hard not to resent him for it. I do love him though, just something we have to get through.
I'm worried about our car registration, Arizona law is that you register your car as soon as you're a resident. Needless to say, we haven't done so with either of our vehicles because we don't have the money. We would need to switch our car insurance to reflect our new residency status, which means higher insurance costs because everyone in Arizona is a retarded driver and there's tons of traffic no matter what time of day, and then register two cars and pay the taxes on them which would cost like $400 if not more on it's own. Our Texas registration expires this month, so pretty soon our cars won't be legal anywhere.
I'm also worried about our two dogs. They need more heartworm/flea preventative but we don't have to money to take them to the vet to get some. If we could just get he medicine that would be one thing, but taking them to the vet here in Arizona would also mean that we would have to get them registered (for a fee) or face a monthly fine.
I try to look at where the money is going, but the thing is I'm not one of those people that lives out side of their income. I have zero credit card debt, no student loans, no mortgage, I wear the same clothes that I've been wearing since I was in high school (with the exception of about 4 outfits that were bought for my job).
Sometimes I get upset because I think to myself, I'm only 22. I'm not suppose to have these worries yet. Most people my age are still in college or living with their parents. They haven't even thought about retirement or savings yet. Maybe it doesn't help that I work for a retirement firm, but all I can think about it that I'm going to be working till I'm 70 and then be too old and still too poor to enjoy life when I can finally retire.
I also get frustrated sometimes because my only goal right now is to improve my life and set myself and my family up for a better future but we can't even save $5; then Tyson gets frustrated because we don't have the social life with friends and parties that he wants.
I've worried about things like this a lot of my life, and somehow it always seems to work out. When I worried about how I was going to pay for college (I didn't want to take out loans), I went on to earn a full scholarship that paid for my living expenses as well as school. Sometimes it seems like I either have darn good luck with really bad timing, or just a way of pulling myself out of holes.
I can't wait for luck anymore, so I guess it's time to figure out to get out of this hole.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Bridging the Gap
Wow, so many of my closest friends and family have no idea what it is I have been up to for the last 6 months, why I moved to Arizona, or what it is I even do here. I'm going to attempt to update you without boring you to death....and if I can figure it out I might even include some pictures. The difficulty is that I now have to figure out where to begin...
So back in about February of 2007, I made a decision that I would not continue teaching after the school year ended. Part of me is very disappointed in myself simply because by making that decision I grouped myself into a statistical category that contains a majority. Though the statistics very depending on who is your source, the consensus seems to be that more than 50% of teachers quit within their first five years of teaching. I've always prided myself in not being grouped into a statistical majority; I even wrote an essay about what the statistics say I should be based off of my background/upbringing and who I really turned out to be. That essay won me a full-ride scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin. Now back to the story...
I decided to quit teaching because I felt like every moment I spent teaching, I was loosing the content knowledge that supposedly qualified me to be a teacher. I earned my B.S. in Mathematics in 3 years with a 3.9 GPA and Highest Honors from the largest university in the country. I could write you a formal proof on the infinitude of primes, encrypt a message for you using RSA and modular arithmetic, and was the only student in the entire class to receive an "A" in two of my upper-division pure math courses. Yet with every lesson I had to teach, a little less I could remember about the subject that I loved so much that I decided to teach it so that a small portion of the kids in our country would for once have a teacher that knew what they were teaching.
I absolutely hated the politics involved that I believe to be the cause of this phenomena. There was a common saying in Texas that their goal as educators was to "bridge the gap" between high and low achieving students. What this meant to the majority of policy makers in the districts was that all funds and focus had to be dedicated to the low end of the group, thus raising their scores and achievements. Now you can read all the research there is online about and look at their statistics, but look at who the source is. Most of the research out there is funded by Department of Education, of course they're going to make their policy sound good. Would you believe a study that said Big Mac's were good for your cholesterol if it was McDonalds' that was funding the study? So this is what they are doing: imagine a scale, one of the old fashioned ones like this:
Now imagine one side is the low achieving and the other is the high achieving; obviously the end holding the higher achieving students would be higher up. Ask yourself what happens when they "raise" the lower achieving students up. Do the higher achieving students stay where they are? No, in order for one side to go up, the other must come down. I know this isn't a perfect analogy, but it makes my point in what I saw first hand happening by "bridging the gap". They didn't really care what happened to their high achieving honors students so long as the low achieving students made progress. This usually resulted in the high achieving students becoming, well, not as high achieving as they were.
I taught a very small class of very high achieving students, they were 8th graders taking Geometry. Now for those of you long past the years of remembrance, you are considered "average" if you take Geometry in 10th grade. These kids were brilliant. I envied the mind that most of these children had. You would think that the school would continue to encourage minds like these to reach their full potential. Before I decided to stop teaching, there were discussions going on in the district as to what would happen to the next group of kids destined to be in this position in the following year. The group was smaller, 3 kids shy of being able to create a class for them. While it was trying to be worked out what to do for these kids, the option of distance learning in a zero hour class came up. Now despite what you might think about the typical "nerd", these kids were different. They were the scholarship bound future Rhodes scholar type. They were in band, cross country, basketball, football, dance, theater, you name it.
A zero hour class would effectively make them choose between their academics and these VERY important electives because they both occurred at the same time, and well, unless you're Hermione Granger you can't be in two places at once. One of the facilitator's for the district that was in charge of the math education for the entire district said to me when I brought this up, "Well, it's there fault for trying to be so advanced". It was about then that I decided if I really wanted to make a difference, I would have to be a politician and rid the country of it's long standing, unconstitutional, Department of Education. I later realized that I didn't need to become a politician, but I could support one that believed like me. Go Ron Paul!
So most of that turned out to be a rant about education, but I have so much to say. I will try to post a few times each week and slowly update everyone. Here's a picture of me and Tyson for those of you that haven't seen us in a while. I'll add more later.
So back in about February of 2007, I made a decision that I would not continue teaching after the school year ended. Part of me is very disappointed in myself simply because by making that decision I grouped myself into a statistical category that contains a majority. Though the statistics very depending on who is your source, the consensus seems to be that more than 50% of teachers quit within their first five years of teaching. I've always prided myself in not being grouped into a statistical majority; I even wrote an essay about what the statistics say I should be based off of my background/upbringing and who I really turned out to be. That essay won me a full-ride scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin. Now back to the story...
I decided to quit teaching because I felt like every moment I spent teaching, I was loosing the content knowledge that supposedly qualified me to be a teacher. I earned my B.S. in Mathematics in 3 years with a 3.9 GPA and Highest Honors from the largest university in the country. I could write you a formal proof on the infinitude of primes, encrypt a message for you using RSA and modular arithmetic, and was the only student in the entire class to receive an "A" in two of my upper-division pure math courses. Yet with every lesson I had to teach, a little less I could remember about the subject that I loved so much that I decided to teach it so that a small portion of the kids in our country would for once have a teacher that knew what they were teaching.
I absolutely hated the politics involved that I believe to be the cause of this phenomena. There was a common saying in Texas that their goal as educators was to "bridge the gap" between high and low achieving students. What this meant to the majority of policy makers in the districts was that all funds and focus had to be dedicated to the low end of the group, thus raising their scores and achievements. Now you can read all the research there is online about and look at their statistics, but look at who the source is. Most of the research out there is funded by Department of Education, of course they're going to make their policy sound good. Would you believe a study that said Big Mac's were good for your cholesterol if it was McDonalds' that was funding the study? So this is what they are doing: imagine a scale, one of the old fashioned ones like this:
Now imagine one side is the low achieving and the other is the high achieving; obviously the end holding the higher achieving students would be higher up. Ask yourself what happens when they "raise" the lower achieving students up. Do the higher achieving students stay where they are? No, in order for one side to go up, the other must come down. I know this isn't a perfect analogy, but it makes my point in what I saw first hand happening by "bridging the gap". They didn't really care what happened to their high achieving honors students so long as the low achieving students made progress. This usually resulted in the high achieving students becoming, well, not as high achieving as they were.
I taught a very small class of very high achieving students, they were 8th graders taking Geometry. Now for those of you long past the years of remembrance, you are considered "average" if you take Geometry in 10th grade. These kids were brilliant. I envied the mind that most of these children had. You would think that the school would continue to encourage minds like these to reach their full potential. Before I decided to stop teaching, there were discussions going on in the district as to what would happen to the next group of kids destined to be in this position in the following year. The group was smaller, 3 kids shy of being able to create a class for them. While it was trying to be worked out what to do for these kids, the option of distance learning in a zero hour class came up. Now despite what you might think about the typical "nerd", these kids were different. They were the scholarship bound future Rhodes scholar type. They were in band, cross country, basketball, football, dance, theater, you name it.
A zero hour class would effectively make them choose between their academics and these VERY important electives because they both occurred at the same time, and well, unless you're Hermione Granger you can't be in two places at once. One of the facilitator's for the district that was in charge of the math education for the entire district said to me when I brought this up, "Well, it's there fault for trying to be so advanced". It was about then that I decided if I really wanted to make a difference, I would have to be a politician and rid the country of it's long standing, unconstitutional, Department of Education. I later realized that I didn't need to become a politician, but I could support one that believed like me. Go Ron Paul!
So most of that turned out to be a rant about education, but I have so much to say. I will try to post a few times each week and slowly update everyone. Here's a picture of me and Tyson for those of you that haven't seen us in a while. I'll add more later.
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