Writing Papers, Unions, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

That was a really ugly football game last night. The only thing Jay Cutler excelled at was chewing out his linemen and sulking on the sideline. He is a class act. But I've said it before and I'll say it again, Mike Tice should never rise above offensive line coach.

Sometimes writing a paper is like a dance. Each sentence seems to flow into the next, a rhythm develops, and soon you are lost in the music of it all. Sometimes writing a paper is like a street brawl. It gets ugly fast and you use whatever is at hand to bludgeon the opponent to death. And when the fight ends, you stand maniacally laughing over the lifeless carcass before you wonder what people will think when they see this cadaver/paper. This last paper I wrote was a street brawl. I might have lost a tooth on page 4.

One of the small things I miss about Chicago is that it was so solidly blue we never had to watch political ads. Here I'm watching a constant stream of attacks, feel-good stories, half-truths, and poorly-scripted conversations with "real people."

So, I am some issues with teacher's unions. I student taught/substitute taught with many bad teachers who had not changed their curriculum in 15-20 years (I did see Leningrad (you know, the city that changed its name back to St. Petersburg after the USSR fell in 1989) on a longitude and latitude test in 2006) and deserved to get fired but had tenure and protection from the teacher's union. That being said, I also understand that teachers in Chicago are underpaid, under-appreciated, and don't deserve to be evaluated based on standardized tests, which are horrible assessments that don't tell you much about how good a teacher is. Also, students in Chicago deserve better than 350 social workers who have a case load of around 1000 students. They deserve rooms that aren't 95 degrees and falling apart. And with the practices of big corporations lately, I no longer believe that companies/governments will make the right decision because it is right; they're too concerned with the bottom line. So, with all that said, one of my favorite folk songs:



Nothing is worse than a bad contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" It's embarrassing and uncomfortable for everyone. "The Pentagon's a big square, so that doesn't have a big hump." Say that one more time...the pentagon's a big square. That's like saying the octagon's a big triangle.

Okay, I'm going to practice my sermon. If you're in the greater Boston area this Sunday, come on over to Trinity Covenant Church in Lexington at 10:45! Later.