National Pun Day is March 4th!

Frank and Earnest by Thaves

National Pun Day is only a month away! Time to play with language and get punning!

Here is a pun from one of my favorite source for great puns!

Something I Wish Would Catch On

Candorville by Darrin Bell
I wish I could get my African-American students to sign-on to this.

Great Super Bowl

This Super Bowl lived up to the hype that surrounds it. The game was exciting. Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band provided an outstanding half-time show. We had a good party over at our place with a group of our best friends.

On top of that Obama's team won, or at least the team he was rooting for, and they did it in come from behind fashion.

Very satisfying evening.
Fortunately, our guests were nothing like Ernie here.

Super Pun

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria by Pab Sungenis
As I often say, I love a good pun, and this one is very, very good. I will be rooting for the Steelers, however. Their owner and their coach campaigned for Obama.

Getting Over the Cold

Well, it seems like I somehow managed to pick up my annual cold over the Ice Storm break. The only problem, other than the getting over it, that this presents is that Sunday we are having friends over for a Super Bowl party.

This morning I feel like I'm on the rebound, so I think we'll be able to pull it off okay.

The thing about Super Bowl parties is that the game is often the least important aspect of the entire event.

Back to Class

Back to school today. The ice held out as long as it could, but it couldn't stand up all that long to the Oklahoma weather.

We will have to make up 3 days which will mean, probably, that we will have one day in June.

Ice Day III, Oops!

Still Thawing
Maple in Winter
Looking out my back porch
Cat and I got up this morning and got around extra early to get to school on time and avoid any traffic problems. Around 4pm yesterday, we got an all call from the district announcing that classes would resume on Thursday.

When we got to Nortwest Classen where Cat teaches, no one was there. A call to her principal confirmed that, indeed, classes had been later cancelled by the district! Evidently, we didn't pick up the phone when the 2nd call came through.

Guess the sidestreets didn't thaw enough to make it safe for the buses to run. On the way home, I nearly slid into another car while trying to stop at a 4-way stop intersection.

Ice Day II

Our front year maple tree adorned with Oklahoma's state "flower," the Mistletoe.
Cars beginning to thaw.
We got another day off from school. As you can tell from the picture of our cars, the snow and ice are starting to melt, so it will be back in class tomorrow in all likelihood. The parents will be rejoicing!

I am glad that Rose State College decided to go ahead and call off all clases. That way I don't have to worry about driving on bad streets all the way to Midwest City. College, for some reason, doesn't do "snow day makeups," so a day off is a day off with no penalty.

Ice Day!

The view from my front poarch as the ice continues to fall.

No school today due to an ice storm that roare through the state. "Snow Days" really should be called "Ice Days" in Oklahoma since that's what we get here on the Southern Plains in the winter.

We likely will have no school tomorrow as the forecast calls for a "high" in the lower 20's. This would make this winter the third in a row where we have had multiple days of instruction lost to incliment weather.

Of course, we will make them up at the end of the year, but that means fewer days to prepare for the state "End of Instruction" (EOI) tests. With the number of days we seem to lose each term to the ice, I would not be surprised to see districts across the state "front load" the school calendar, starting school during the second or even first week of August in order to get in more school days prior to the EOI's.

Some are doing this already, and I'd like to see if they experience any more success because of the change. Our State Superintendent of Schools, Sandy Garrett, has advocated a longer school calendar. Perhaps we just need an earlier start.

Can Obama inspire my African-American students?

Will Obama spur my students to great achievement?
The online edition of Newsweek magazine asks if there will be An 'Obama Effect' on Blacks' Test Scores? By this they mean, "[w]ill he . . . goad black students to higher achievement, since he is living proof that working hard can pay off?"

I teach at a high school that is about 75%+ African-American. My initial and very anecdotal response is that, if such an effect will take place, it will not happen right away nor will it happen automatically. The habits they have which seem to be geared towards defeating my attempts to teach them seem too engrained for now. Mostly, I am talking about their habit to carry on sidebar conversations while I attempt to teach the lesson. Another habit they have is to constantly want to call attention to themselves by "showing off" their cleverness thereby avoiding doing work that challenges their comfort zones.

What Obama may do for them is to prepare the ground for their future achievement. They have witnessed a nation come together to elect a man whose life mirrors their own. They know, for example, that I, along with many other teachers of different races, worked for Obama's election. This has taken away some of the "Us v. Them" attitude that many have had, or at least used as a pretext, for lack of effort and achievement.

They are still teenagers, and as is true with teenagers throughout the ages, I am still "the enemy", the authority figure to requires them to conform to a certain standard of behavior, the judge of their efforts, the out-of-touch one who "doesn't understand what it's like to live in the modern world." None of that has changed.

But now, at least, I am a part of those who brought about something they wanted. We are united in one very important cause.

In one important sense, we are one.

Should I Go for National Board Teacher Certification?

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
I'm debating whether or not I will to become National Board Certified Teacher. It's a program would show that I meet high standards in my profession. It also means an extra $5000 a year from the state of Oklahoma.

I'd like to get involved in a course of study and reflection, but the program is very time-consuming, so I would have to drop or suspend some of my other responsiblities including my political ones.

So I don't know. I'm giving myself this next week to make a decision.

Call It "The Obama Effect"

I am starting to notice at least one positive effect of having a President Barack Obama. I've noticed a shift towards civility in our public discourse. We are starting to address one another with a degree of politeness and deference. The shift is not universal. There is plenty of nastiness out there. (Just journey over to the "Free Republic" forum to get your daily dose of invective.)

Of course, one would expect liberal discourse to take a term for the better since we have gotten the change which we so long have sought. But even among conservatives like Rich Lowery and Cal Thomas, I have seen a somewhat grudging acknowledgement that Pres. Obama is intelligent and sincere. That his policies, so far, have been positive and beneficial.

So, to do my part, I have added a new New Year's Resolution to keep my political discourse at a higher level. I have been guilty many times of "snarkiness" and have ventured the occasional petty insult. But I want to begin the process of changing that.

Basically, I wish to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. After all, as Mom often reminded me, my words reveal more about me than they do about anything else, or as I tell my students, "Trash is as trash talks."

My President and Me

At the Martin Luther King Day Parade in OKC
A photographer for The Oklahoman newspaper took a picture of me riding in the back of a pickup with a cut-out of Pres. Barack Obama at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Parade in downtown Oklahoma City.

Pete Seeger Sings "This Land Is Your Land"

I have long advocated that "This Land Is Your Land" should be declared our "National Folk Song." Pete Seeger and other artists performed this song on the National Mall as a part of the celebration of Barack Obama's inauguration.

Some Thoughts on the Eve of Obama's Inauguration

Those of us who believe passionately in social justice, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 looms as the "Great Wakenin' Up Morning." For 8 years, we have the Bush administration tear down environmental protection, attack human rights, turn our beloved nation into an agressor nation, employ torture, run our economy for the benefit of the rich and powerful and commit a host of other rapes of the body politic.

Now, it seems almost too good to be true, and it probably is.

One cannot help but appreciate the symbolism of the fact that Obama is being inaugurated as president on the day after we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. We will celebrate the birth of one of the most important figures in the American Civil Rights movement with one of that movements most important accomplishments. Yet we forget that Dr. King was in his time castigated, not only by those who felt he was moving too fast to advance civil rights, but also by those who felt that he moved far too slowly. Malcolm X called King's historic "March on Washington" in 1963 the "Farce on Washington" because he felt King has bowed to pressure to tone down the militancy of the event.

Right now, Barack Obama has become something of a blank canvas upon which those on the right have painted their worst fears while those of us on the left have pinned our greatest hopes on his administration. Neither side will everything they fear nor everything they hope for come to pass.

Above all, those of us who hope that Obama will truly bring about the change he has promised must realize that he cannot change all by himself, we must continue to be the change we seek in the world. We cannot now set back to enjoy the harvest of our planting and work. We must continue to work the fields to cultivate the growth of justice.

Cartoonists Craft

Daryl Cagle
I always admired a political cartoonist's ability to sum up a complex idea with the use of a picture and maybe a few words.

Yet Another Inauguration Cartoon

Non Sequiter

Another Good Obama Cartoon

More Great Obama Presidency Cartoons

Wow! I love this magazine cover!

The Nation
I have to get a copy of this issue!