Texsox

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 23, 2014 -> 09:23 AM) Um, how about a day at a time like the vast majority of the population? Why do teachers get some special treatment just because they're teachers? I could walk into work tomorrow and they could say see you later, regardless of how long i've been there. We can be fired any day and for probably the same reasons as you might. Theft, violence, drunk on the job, being late, too many absences, etc as long as it is under specific policies and procedures. Part of the reasoning is the abuses that have occurred with political hirings. A new school board is elected and they begin firing teachers to clear room for their friends, supporters, and relatives. It's the same kind of trouble that happened under the old patronage system. If your candidate was elected you got that nice new job in streets and sans and your opponent's friends, supporters, and relatives were fired. Another reason is we are not allowed to quit mid year while under contract. Of course you could just refuse to honor your contract but you will never work in education again. I began working in education after 25 years in sales and marketing. I understand the public's desire to improve education and most of the teachers I work with are passionate about improving it as well. If there were easy answers they would have been implemented. You don't get a cow fat by weighing it and you don't teach kids by testing them. But the testing gives you reasonable objective data. But even then there is an inherit problem in comparing student performance between teachers. Just like baseball managers the manager of the year doesn't always win the WS. Great teachers in a school of poor children without parent support will have lower test scores than the worlds worst teacher in a district where parent's attended college and are involved with their child's education. Any system that begins ranking teachers based on their students will cause the best teachers to go find the districts with the best students. That may be a good thing overall for society, but it might not be. Are there teachers that shouldn't be teaching? Of course. But there are also a lot of great teachers in difficult, challenging situations.

It should be mentioned that number of years until you are no longer a probationary employee is measured in years not months. In most companies you are a probationary employee for three months or so. With teaching it is 3-5 years. We just now started signing contracts for next year. How many other people are effectively hired for only one year at a time?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ May 21, 2014 -> 08:53 PM) He's laughing all the way to the bank. Or crying into his glove.

Looking ahead, which seems really, really silly, his career could follow Frank's, plenty of time as a DH. There are a couple on the roster that will be coming off in the next year or two. The length of his career will be something to watch. Switching early to DH might mean a season or two more at peak offensive production, and the decline may be a season or two longer. But total, is anyone predicting more than 10 years? Maybe 12 -14. That doesn't seem long.

QUOTE (jamesdiego @ May 16, 2014 -> 02:20 PM) The only baseball league I'd want to see Bush in charge of, is a commissioner of a prison baseball league ....running it for his fellow convicts This would fit better in the 'Buster forum. I think if we are discussing Bush as commissioner it is fair to discuss how being an ex-President will help or hurt, but commenting on his career and legacy as President will lead us down a long and unproductive path that will see the thread closed. Again, I'm not saying that this discussion should be on Soxtalk, but it would fit better in the filibuster sub forum.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 16, 2014 -> 09:13 AM) Not originally, but that is a different story. Great point. Sox fans all know why a commissioner was named. There wasn't one until 1920 and he created the position. Landis kept baseball from integrating and I believe blocked Veeck from buying a team after Landis learned Veeck intended to integrate the players. The next guy (?) was more of a player's commissioner. Worked to make contracts fairer, etc. I don't remember any of the guys in the middle. And wasn't it Kuhn who was commish when the 81 strike and was regarded as an owner's commish. It seems like we've had commissioners who travel the spectrum from player to owner. I wonder where Bush would fit into the range. It seems obvious at first he would be an owner's commish, but he does have the resume strength to be independent. He has experience being the main guy. I'd like to see someone who would be independent, but that seems really improbable. I doubt his supporters would claim he was tarnishing the office of president by working for a paycheck after leaving office, and Dems shouldn't really care. There has been a Dem president or two who tarnished it while in office. I hope I didn't make a buster worthy post, but one concern will be he was a president and the connection seems important to his fit as baseball commissioner.

I didn't realize that Jerry and Bob Nutting are an item? Picky teacher thing, there should be a comma after Reinsdorf I wouldn't mind seeing Bush as MLB Commissioner. We have a few younger presidents now and post president careers will be interesting for a while.

It's only a matter of time before he gets a national cover.

Routine manager stuff. Seems like it's about the right time for the excitement of the season to wear off and everyone start thinking of the looooooong summer ahead. Of all the sports it seems like baseball has the worst grind. I know the NBA and NHL have to bad, but baseball is just so long.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 8, 2014 -> 10:20 AM) I've got pics from the SkyDeck on my FB page. I also did the CN tower in TOR on my honeymoon. They have a glass ring that runs through the floor where you can see all of the way to the ground from like 1300 feet up. Also road the roller coaster on top of the Statosphere in Vegas. I love heights. So do I, I love looking *up* at them.

We all should be skeptical, but in reviewing how long it takes to look through all the video tape of the Malaysa jet that is missing, I am skeptical, but can understand something coming up years later.

I believe the Mother's Day attendance and our member list show that not a lot of women are huge baseball fans. Brunch, gatherings at home with all the kids seem like a more likely scenario. Female fanatics like Steff are rare. Now Father's Day treating dad to a baseball game seems much, much more likely.

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.