"Oh, ... this house is falling apart"

So, my house is falling apart.

It's probably been decades in the making, but my cute little duplex in Greenwood Village sits at a low point on really crappy clay soil, and with the recent rain, the basement floor has begun the pitch and buckle. What fun. Three years ago the floor dropped from under the furnace, and we had it lifted by A1 Concrete Leveling. Now, the floor has started rising in several places, pushing up on the finished walls that were not properly floated by a previous owner. So, we have bowed door frames, cracked drywall, and general weirdness. The garage floor has dropped five inches and now slopes toward the foundation, which has an eight-foot crack. The french drain system, foundation repair, compression grouting, and general repairs will probably go north of $30,000.

And, that's the joy of home ownership. At this point, all we can do is laugh, and explore all the options. Because, you know, I love my house. And, I hate my house. It's times like these that I wish someone had a foundation or non-profit or something whose sole goal was simply to help people out with crap they can't afford. But, you know, it could be worse. And, I have a nice house in a great community with a loving family and a good job. So, it could be a heck of a lot worse. In the end, we'll figure it out. "We've got heart."

What do you know? this house is falling apart

What can I say? this house is falling apart

We got no money, but we got heart

We're gonna rattle this ghost town

This house is falling apart

Not Your Average Backyard Shed

Outdoor living spaces usually encompass patios, kitchens, and lawns. But sheds?

The backyard shed is becoming more of an extended house and personal living space with the innovation of companies like Backyard Mama and Studio Shed. The phenemonon is featured in a great piece from Melissa Kossler Dutton where "Shed-sational spaces [are] ... outdoor buildings that go beyond storing tools to extending your home's options."

People looking to get more use out of their backyards are building or converting sheds for a variety of purposes. There are backyard pubs. "She sheds," when they're built by women. Home offices. Art or yoga studios. TV rooms. Studio Shed in Louisville sells prefabricated structures to people who want more living space or to enhance their backyard, said Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, the company's creative director. The buildings, which range in price from $7,500 to $20,000, offer flexibility and are less expensive than adding a room to the house, he said.

Jennifer and Eric Antonow added a shed to their Palo Alto, Calif., property because they can't afford a bigger house.

PARCC Needs to Drop the Second "C"

So, we all know that  "PARCC" - which recently voted to shorten its tests in time and limit it to only one testing window each year - stands for the "Partnership for Assessing Readiness for College & Career." And, that second "C" is really the problem. For, these tests, which along with the SmarterBalanced (buttery spread) program, are supposed to test readiness for college and career ... for students in grades 3 through 11. And, there is no logical way to argue that a standardized test that is basically bubbling in answers for math and reading passages (despite claims it's not a bubble test , or is better than previous bubble tests) can accurately predict and assess "readiness" for "careers." The reality is these tests are completely focused on narrow academic pursuits. They may assess readiness for university study in the same way the ACT and SAT do. But, these tests do not assess "readiness" for countless careers. From retail sales to cosmetology to skilled labor to contracting to culinary arts and other service industry professions, the reading of passages and explaining how to "solve for y" is not an valid measurement of "readiness."

So, drop the second "C," PARCC.

Don't Make Education Reform about Wages for College Degree Holders

It's not news that education reformers from Bill Gates to Arne Duncan are committed to sending more kids to college and producing more bachelor degree holders. A more educated population is never a bad idea, so this plan is tough to criticize. However, the problem is we're asking the wrong question and posing the wrong solution. In a recent report from the Pew Research Center, the findings focus on key reasons to go to college. But the data shows this is a wage issue at heart - an issue that didn't exist when the middle class was built in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Pursuing college degrees simply for higher wages is not sound policy. And assuming that more college degree holders will improve quality of life and strength of the economy is flawed as well.

Novels that Reflect the 2000s

A history teacher at my school was recently looking for a book that "defines or represents the 2000s" the way that Gatsby does the 1920s.  In thinking about it, I considered a few that have been considered indicative of the times.  Notably the work of Jonathan Franzen has "bookended" the decade with The Corrections in 2000 and Freedom on 2012.  He would probably be the one most often credited with capturing the decade.

We could also mention the work of Tom Wolfe who captured the 1980s with Bonfire of the Vanities, 1990s with A Man in Full, and the 2000s with I am Charlotte Simmons in 2006 andBack to Blood in 2012.  Back to Blood is about immigration and Charlotte is about a college freshman whose eyes are opened by her experience at a college and world far more liberal than she.

From my own view, I think TC Boyle is a great contemporary writer, but I don't know if he captures the 2000s exactly.  One interesting work recently is a satire by Jess Walter called The Financial Lives of Poets, published in 2010.  It is considered to be the first book written about the effects of the crash of 2008.  And, of course, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the first to directly take on the 9/11 tragedy.

Life as Metaphor

In an insightful column, New York Times, columnist David Brooks examines the significance of metaphor in our daily lives. As an English teacher, I couldn't agree more with his argument that "metaphors are central to our thought life." Our conscious understanding of the world is profoundly impacted by the way we use metaphor to understand the world. It molds our philosophy and perspective in life, and it impacts the way we live and work and play and vote and relate to each other. No one understands this better than George Lakoff whose book "Don't Think of an Elephant" has been a call to action for Democrats to take control of campaigns through the language they use. In many ways, it's about the metaphors.

Each year, I begin my AP Language and Composition class with a discussion of how they are expected to become "people on whom nothing is lost." Part of that task is understanding how people - including parents, teacher, marketers, and politicians - will always seek to manipulate others through language. Metaphor is one of the most effective ways to do this, and the example I use is the contrasting terms "estate tax" and "death tax." Both terms describe the taxes that are levied against inherited property. Long ago, the GOP under Newt Gingrich realized they could sway public opinion against the tax by shifting terminology from "estate" which the common associated with rich people to "death" which people associated with all people. A telling poll from 2004 revealed that 75% of Americans supported the "estate tax" whereas 75% of Americans opposed the "death tax." Clearly, words matter.

Often the language and metaphors we use to perceive a situation are quite separate from the reality of the issue. And when people are often given more direct information outside of the metaphors they have long used to perceive an issue, they feel enlightened and will even change their minds. As teachers, thus, the ability to understand the way metaphor functions in our perception of the world is perhaps one of the most important tasks we have as English teachers. It's not just about a great story or a grammar rule. The teaching of English must center on the use of language.

Kevin Liu Named 2015 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Champion

The best and brightest young American math minds met in Boston today for the Raytheon National MATHCounts competition.  While the mainstream media managed to completely ignore this incredible competition, there was coverage by the PR Newswire.

Kevin Liu, a 14-year-old eighth grader from Carmel Middle School in Carmel, Indiana, has earned the title of 2015 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS® National Champion after an intense, elite competition at the Sheraton Boston Hotel. This is the seventh year Raytheon (NYSE:  RTN) has served as the event's title sponsor, as part of a decade-long commitment to MATHCOUNTS and a larger effort to promote education in science, technology, engineering and math.

Liu won the final round of the 2015 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Competition by answering the question: "How many arithmetic progressions of six increasing terms include the terms 15 and 20?" He gave the correct answer, 15, in 17.9 seconds. As National Champion, Liu is the recipient of the $20,000 Donald G. Weinert College Scholarship and a trip to U.S. Space Camp.

It was an amazing display of lightening-quick mathematical problem solving, and it is the pinnacle of years of dedication for young men and women who commit to the study of math for the sheer love of computation and competition. For a country that is supposedly committed to improving academic achievement, especially in the area of STEM, it would be nice for a little more attention to the prowess of these young mathletes.  Sadly, the country - and media - are still strangely enamored of the Scripps National Spelling Bee while ignoring people with highly coveted math skills. The 2015 Championship for Kevin isn't online, but here's a look at the 2012 Finals:

Reading Makes Us Better

Of course, as English teachers we would love for all of our students to become "life-long lovers of reading."  In a perfect world, everyone would become as lost as we do in the pages of great fiction.  Yet, at this point we are kidding ourselves if we think that is a remote possibility.  Some people simply do not connect with reading novels the way others do.  However, in this STEM-oriented world of education reform, an argument must be made for the reading of literature; and there is a clear argument that "Reading Novels Makes Us Better Thinkers."

A group of Canadian scholars and researchers is supporting the cause of fiction by arguing that readers of fiction are more comfortable with ambiguity and less stressed about a need for closure.  Both these qualities pave the way for easier higher level thinking.  In fact, the "need for cognitive closure" creates less than optimum levels of of information process which in turn causes "decreased creativity and rationality."

Just what embattled English teachers need to hear.

Burke's Parlor Metaphor, and being "People on Whom Nothing is Lost"

As my students prepare for the AP Lang & Comp exam, here are some thoughts:

Like many teachers - especially English teachers - I do far more than teach my content. So much of my class, my students like to claim, is "not about English, but about life." Some people call that character education, others may call it shameless digressions into whatever I want to talk about. Either way, there is a method - and purpose to my madness - and it was best encapsulated by two great American writers and thinkers. Henry James once wrote about the need for a writer to be "a person on whom nothing is lost." That is a mantra in my classroom - especially AP Language and Composition where the ability to write open arguments is one of the class's raison d'etre. Basically, I am looking to guide and craft well-informed and astute young men and women who think a lot about a great deal of things ... and know what they "think about what they think." This is the essence of what Kenneth Burke in his Philosophy of the Literary From described in what has become known as "the parlor metaphor."

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

I was introduced to this via the College Board and former chief reader David Jolliffe who included the metaphor in publications for the yearly conferences. Jolliffe developed his ideas astutely in the helpful textbook Everyday Use.  The idea has been so helpful in getting my mind around AP Language because it perfectly encapsulates the Lang exam. There is, truly, a "discussion" going on in the pages in front of the students, and they must be able to "put in their oar" and then gracefully bow out. Of course, beyond the Lang exam, don't we always want our students to be well informed? Especially now, in a world saturated with content, isn't it appropriate for the education system to create "people on whom nothing is lost."