Texsox

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 11, 2014 -> 09:04 AM) Non unless you are talking about taking pitches and hitting for averages, but I have yet to see a drug for that. Smoking pot? It helps everything else.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ May 9, 2014 -> 07:33 PM) I believe him and his wife and child were driving on a country road in the dead of winter in North Dakota and they ran out of gas. He got out of his car to flag down other drivers, and he noticed a windshield scraper lying in the snow near a fence. Went to it, dug up the snow underneath, and found a briefcase full of money. Am I close?

The sleeper? I am suppose to wake him up and deal with his fatigue and tantrums disrupting the class. Mom has been called, it is my fault. He goes to bed at 10:00 when she does. He wouldn't lie to her, just to us. Currently I don't know if I have a job for next year, the district has not passed out new contracts for 2014-2015. Most likely I will sign a contract sometime this month then in August find out what I will be earning. Teacher salaries could go up, down, or stay the same. How many people here accept one year contracts then find out what they will be earning? Anyhow the process in being retained in 8th grade in Texas is simple. You will be sent to summer school if you fail the standard state exams in Reading or Math. You may also be sent to summer school if you fail 2 or more of your core academic classes. If you successfully fulfill the requirements for summer school (all four weeks) you will be passed. If you fail summer school as well a committee is formed with your parent, a school administrator, and a teacher. They also can pass you to the high school, which they almost always do. Here's a couple facts about retention. The graduation rate for a child who is retained once drops to about 25%, retained twice and it is less than 5%. Once they are removed from their peer group, behavior and success drops like a rock. Also, academically they generally do not improve much, if at all. I have a student that has been retained twice who is now in my class for his second dose of 8 th grade ELA. He is 16 and in middle school with 13 year old boys and girls. He is failing all four subjects and failed state exams, mostly because he has given up, is lazy, and probably involved in gangs. Shall we retain him in 8th grade again? He will probably never pass 8th grade, how long would you have him interacting with 13 to 15 year old students? Until he is 18? 21? I know some will say it is my fault he is not passing this year, if I could somehow motivate him all would be well. But so far about all I have gotten him to do is stop bothering the other students. So the sleeper will probably be moved on, against everyone's wishes except the mom. The kid needs an attitude adjustment and academically he would do just fine, he's a bright kid. The other issue is crowding. Our campus is about maxed out, as are the other middle school grade campuses. So if we were to retain say 20 or 30 students that most of us would agree should be retained, we would either building more classrooms or move our average class size to over 30 from 28. Making classroom management that is already tough even tougher. And the public's solution is to get rid of teachers who aren't producing? The teachers on my campus in 8th grade and Language Arts (the only two groups I see on a regular basis) are all hard working. Some are stretched thin coaching and sponsoring, some because there is no one else who will take that duty. I see the problems, if the solutions were easy, they would have been implemented. But parents that believe standing up for their child means that the school is always wrong and their child is always right, even looking at video tape and looking at school work, who refuse to make their child do any homework or do not allow them to stay after school for tutoring because they are needed at home to care for a sibling, get a job, etc. make it very difficult.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 9, 2014 -> 02:37 PM) Good, tenure is a dumb system anyway. I had too many teachers in high school that were just showing up to cash dem checks. They knew their performance didn't mean anything and they taught accordingly (preemptive strike: obviously this is not true of ALL teachers). I understand the frustration and I wish I had a better answer after working as a teacher for five years. BTW, tenure doesn't guarantee someone a job, it guarantees a proper review before they can be fired. And now that teachers who buck that system and are new an innovative can be fired, what will be left? Will the system reward risk takers, or the teachers who strictly follow the curriculum and do what has always been done? Will it be the ones who cozy up to the administration and ones who try something different, ignoring what has been done forever? If the school has a strict policy against cell phones and a teacher actually has the students using them in class, thus breaking the rule, will they be chopped or rewarded? I don't have the answers. I went from Sales Management with a very easy accountability system to teaching. I can't give you a better system besides allowing subjective ratings based on educators that have watched the teacher in the classroom. But our society wants objective ratings. I have a student that brags how he can stay up all night playing video games. He gets about an hour of sleep, then sleeps through my class. If I wake him up he starts to smart off and disrupt the class. His mom will tell you straight to your face that her son sleeping in class is my fault and that she knows he is sleeping because she goes to bed at 10:00 and she doesn't hear him. There are a whole lot of factors at play, students, teachers, administration, parents, and society, yet we are trying to judge one piece of the puzzle. How do you compare my performance as a 8th grade ELA course with 35% English Language Learners (ELL), close to 50% English as a second language (ESL), and 60% reading below their grade level with a class in a richer, anglo, area with zero ESLs and ELLs? Once they start using test scores, I'm bailing for a school district where a greater percentage of the parents graduated from high school and college, which is the #1 most reliable indicator of a kid's success in school.

Just discussing rehab in general, not specific . . . Shouldn't the general idea be like spring training, starting out slow but playing to MLB level by the end? If the guy is producing from day 1 he probably didn't need to the rehab starts. The extension of that is in an ideal world if the guy isn't playing to his prior level it seems like it should be an easy trip back to the DH or back to more rehab starts.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2014 -> 03:28 PM) I've done the SkyDeck at Sears Tower, now I really want to do this... I SOOO want to do this! http://www.nbcchicago.com/entertainment/th...3Dfacebook-like Not just no, NOWAYONGODSGREENEARTHOHHELLNOf***INGWAY will I do that. SS, I don't even want you to post pictures after you do that on FB, because I moght accidentaly see them and crap my pants.

You can insert any team in that statement, even the Cubs. The Cubs have killed us based on the out of towners that were drawn in by the huge TV advantage the team had through most of the second half of the 20th Century. When my daughter lived in Lakeview we walked that area headng to restaurants and clubs, I have to say the neighborhoods around Wrigley offer more before and after game options. I don't want to see it, but I really think a suburban stadium would have the team drawing 35,000 a game. Perhaps somewhere in Schaumburg close to all the trains and expressways, is there land near Arlington Park?

Switching to Republican? Does this mean she will be wearing a red dress for the next scandal?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ May 7, 2014 -> 02:13 PM) They are just trying to get this out now way before Hillary runs so that it can be called 'old news' and a rebirth of the 'vast right wing conspiracy' if it is ever mentioned then. Exactly. Even though Hillary was not directly involved she should be attacked for having Republican family values by keeping her family together and not getting divorced.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 7, 2014 -> 01:30 PM) I'm sure in a 16,000 square foot house in Scottsdale, he has somewhere he can put it. lol. I wonder how much of that stuff he's picked up through the years and if they create a museum or shrine in their homes. It's kind of akward at some point. Plus as every married guy knows, isn't it really up to Jennifer

Pretty cool but I look at that tile and think, what the hell is he going to do with it?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 6, 2014 -> 07:45 PM) Not necessarily. Could be "Don't Know". I'm hoping it doesn't mean that 21% believe one of the conspiracy theories that terrorists or the CIA (for parts of the world they may be one and the same), are holding the plane somewhere. I do believe this may someday be thought of as the "Greatest Unsolved Mystery of the 21st Century"

You are exactly right from a common sense usage of the words. I'm looking at the statement from a purely linguistics point of view and being a bit snarky. The *right* area to search is *exactly* where the plane is. Not two feet away, but exactly there. If it is covered by six inches of silt then the right area is underneath the six inches of silt.

From CNN 21% of Americans believe there are survivors? Where are they? 54% believe they are searching in the right place? If that was true, the plane would have been found amiright?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 6, 2014 -> 06:00 PM) If there's one thing I've given Robin it's a free pass, right? Robin still has a job, so he's been getting a free pass.

Some excitement like this is good for baseball.

Greg, congratulation on hitting 10,000 non Ozzie posts. Manager receive too much credit and too much blame. I really hope Ozzie finds a full time media gig. I like exciting guys in the press box. Has an ex-Sox manager since Tony La Russa had a decent career after leaving the Sox?

^^ Baseball isn't cheap entertainment anymore. This is why the Sox need more bandwagon jumpers. The folks who come out to a game or two a season. Too many were drawn to the "Friendly Confines" and the neighborhood. They packaged the experience and filled the stadium. Yes, that meant the true, intelligent, Cub fans, and there are a lot of them, are drowned out by the idiots. But that's the crowds were competing for.

I noticed that the partiipants paid much closer attention in the Wilderness class than any other First Aid class I attended. It could be that the participants are more self selected, I really hope it was because people recognized the differences you mentioned. We estimated that in our program the most time it would take to get someone to a full trauma center was about 6 hours, and that was with a fluke wind condition on a sailing trip. There were scenarios that could happen on one of our fishing adventures that everyone's cell phones could be useless, that no boats passed by, that it would be much longer, but the chances were very slim that that could happen. Injury or illness at sea was the number one concern.

I don't think they should do anything special for the Cub / Sox series than they would for whomever the Rockies have an interleague rivalry with. When you start looking at the scheduling and looking at the entertainment value or the ability to sell tickets, you get one step further away from athletic competition and closer to show business. There is a blend that has to happen or the sport collapses, but I don't necessary want to sell the soul of baseball and athletics for staged for profit series.

OK, I'll say it. This series needs Ozzie.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Apr 29, 2014 -> 02:22 PM) I feel we hear this about every Olympics/World Cup and nothing is ever done. This. It seems like their are dire warning about every venue in the past 30 years. Then they pull a miracle out of their ass.

I found this quote that I thought added some insight on defining "rookie"

Always cool when someone can remember a game that was played years ago in such detail. I guess I was alsways killing too many brain cells to remember

When neither team had won a WS in forever, the game(s) mattered in the we suck less than you kind of way. Now, meh. It's just another series on the schedule. Too bad the Sox have to play in such a dump.