My mistake this time around was trying to upgrade from WordPress Version 2.6 to Version 2.8.1. By skipping Version 2.7, I bypassed a perfectly simple upgrade button, which would’ve saved me a couple of hours of trying to manually compress, upload, extract, and recode a bunch of folders and files.
I’ll archive my 2009 articles to date and post a link ASAP. Here begins the blog again again again.
Today, in pursuit of 2009 Resolution #4 (”I shall cook something I’ve never cooked before, and cook it at least three times to fine-tune the recipe.”), I made sweet and sour chicken. I got the recipe from the internet:
Step 1. Chop a pound of skinless, boneless chicken into one-inch chunks. Put the chunks o’chicken in a bowl.
Step 2. Add 2 teaspoons of corn starch to the bowl. I used “Clabber Girl” cornstarch due to the Simpsons reference, which itself was probably a reference to this particular brand of cornstarch.
Step 3. Add an egg white to the bowl. Wonder what to do with leftover yolk. Look at it oddly in the realization that it is a single cell. Some of you bio majors can correct me if that’s wrong.
Step 4. Mix everything in the bowl together, making sure the chunks o’chicken are evenly coated. Let it sit for 15 minutes or so.
Step 5: Cut up a red bell pepper and a yellow bell pepper into one-inch chunks. Set them aside for now.
Step 6. Mix the following ingredients together in a different bowl:
Step 7: (I’ll quote directly from the recipe here) “Heat a large frying pan or wok over high heat until a bead of water instantly sizzles and evaporates.”
Step 8: Put a few drops of water on the frying pan to see if they evaporate. Wonder why, instead of evaporating, the water droplets are scurrying all over the pan, merging, separating, doing all kinds of magical tricks aside from evaporating.
Step 9: Pour 1 tablespoon of cooking oil on the pan. Watch room fill with smoke. Turn on fan above stove. Disconnect blaring smoke detector. Turn ceiling fan to max. Open windows and turn on floor fan, pointed towards window.
Step 10: When air has cleared, realize that my perfectly good frying pan is now scorched. Use it anyways.
Step 11: Turn down heat on pan so that it’s hot enough that water will sizzle and evaporate rather than seem-to-defy the laws of physics.
Step 12: Very slowly and carefully, pour another tablespoon of cooking oil on the pan.
Step 13: Throw the chicken on the pan, making sure to spread it out evenly. Let it fry until it browns on one side, then flip it. Let it fry until it browns on the other side.
Step 14: When the chicken has been sufficiently browned on both sides–which isn’t literally “brown,” but browner than it was before–put the chicken on a clean plate.
Step 15: Turn down heat to medium. Pour in 1 teaspoon of cooking oil. Throw the chunks of bell pepper in the pan. Add 1 teaspoon of ground-up ginger. Let it fry for a minute.
Step 16: Now add the pineapple chunks from the juice-less tin and the sauce from Step 6. Mix it together, turn the heat back up.
Step 17: When this mixture begins to simmer, put the chicken back in. Mix it around while frying. Check every so often to make sure the chicken is cooked all the way through (no hint of pink in the center).
Step 18: Wonder whether chicken is actually sufficiently cooked just because the center is white, decide that it probably is.
Step 19: Put in a bowl with some rice (the preparation of which I won’t describe here), make sure it won’t burn mouth, and eat. Be surprised that it turned out as well as it did, though it may have cost me a frying pan.
Here’s mine, in the pan and on the plate:
It was good, but the “Not-Chicken to Chicken” ratio might’ve been too high, around 2:1. If I can get it down around the golden mean (φ), I think I’ll be happier with the result. I have to prepare it at least two more times to fulfill my resolution.
Happy 233rd Birthday to the United States of America!
…
I got an e-mail from our President today. I’m on the barackobama.com mailing list because I contributed $14 to his campaign by purchasing a yard sign for my classroom (I’m on thejohnmccain.com mailing list for the same reason, but I only contributed $7 to his campaign because he didn’t charge me an extra seven dollars for shipping and handling). Frankly, I was expecting to read that in the spirit of Independence Day, I should support thus-and-such a policy, but thankfully there was no such politicking in the body of the letter.
However, there was a P.S.:
Our nation’s birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community. You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov.
Let me repeat the name of the website that, on this anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, the President suggests I visit:
www.serve.gov.
I suspect that no-one involved in writing, editing, approving or sending this e-mail saw the irony.
…
Actually, my head and neck hurt so much right now that I’m not sure “irony” was the right word there. If not, then let’s keep it simple and substitute “problem.” Either way, someone in either D.C. or Chicago needs to read a book.
…
It occurred to me a few days ago that since Michael Jackson’s death last week, I hadn’t heard anyone mention or play a particular song of his: “Leave Me Alone.”
Last Wednesday, I woke up pretty late, had breakfast, watched the tube, didn’t get around to taking a shower until 11:30 or so (AM, that is). As I was toweling off, I heard a loud noise come from the air conditioning unit behind my house. Usually it makes a noise right before the AC switches on, but this didn’t sound like that noise. The AC started blasted cool air in, so I didn’t think anything of it…
…until two seconds later, when I heard someone punch through the glass of my back porch door.
Now, I’ll grant that by the time the cops showed up (which was only thirty minutes later), I had some time to think about what had happened and what could have happened, and I was rattled. I will confess that for the last few days, I’ve left lights on later than usual, I’ve jumped up to look out the window at the slightest snap of a twig, and I’ve moved more valuables into secure storage. I’ve been paranoid.
But at the moment the glass broke, I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even angry. I was incredulous. I was shocked that someone actually had the nerve to break into my home–especially while I was still in it, and especially especially while I was soaking wet, stark naked and hadn’t popped in my contacts. At that moment, I summoned what I call “Teacher Voice.”
I don’t achieve Teacher Voice very often–only a very few of my colleagues can use it at will, and only one had truly mastered the art. The Voice is usually loud, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s forceful. It’s a voice that instantly gets all who hear it to cower in silence and do exactly what they’re supposed to do, instead of whatever mind-bogglingly stupid things they were doing already. The first time I remember using the Voice was in the fall of 2003, when a kid tried to get out of taking a test because she thought she had a field trip that day. The Voice was quiet and controlled that day, but it flowed through me and even made the single most rambunctious and vile student I’ve ever had behave like a lamb–even though it wasn’t directed at him! It was an awesome moment. (Actually, I just thought of an even earlier occasion from 2001, but I’m getting off track.)
Out of pure incredulity, I yelled “Hey!” in the Voice. I grabbed a lead pipe [NOTE: I realize I wrote that as if a lead pipe is a perfectly normal thing to have near your bathroom. I recognize that it isn’t, but better to have a lead pipe and not need one than vice versa.] and stormed into the den. There was glass everywhere, but the miscreant did exactly what he was supposed to do, which was disappear without stealing anything while leaving some evidence behind.
For a while, I almost wished the guy had gotten inside just as I’d gotten into the den with the lead pipe. But after the cops left, after sitting around for a few hours waiting for a repairman to work on the door, after pondering everything that could have gone wrong, it’s probably best that he just ran off.
Last week I attended a four-day Advanced Placement Achievement Institute (also known as a “seminar”) that was facilitated (“done”) by the College Board (“the SAT and AP guys”). Attendance was not mandatory, but I figured that a little more professional development (“training”) couldn’t hurt–especially when accompanied by a stipend (“pittance”). Besides, my administrative team (“bosses”) were attending, so I thought it might be productive (“useful”) to interact with (”suck up to”) them more directly than usual.
Aside from the stipend–that some attendees might not get–it was a near-total waste of time.
An e-mail from the district said that the purpose was to help us teach AP courses to “non-traditional” AP students. Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, “What’s a non-traditional AP student? One who doesn’t celebrate holidays? One who wears white after Labor Day? One who doesn’t doff his hat to a lady? Pray tell!” Okay: a non-traditional AP student is one who, up until maybe ten years ago, you wouldn’t expect to find in an AP class.
It used to be that in most cases, students would somehow have to qualify to take an AP course, whether through standardized testing, GPA, grades in prerequisite courses, or teacher recommendation. However, over the last several years there’s been less emphasis on qualifying to take AP courses, partly because the College Board began pursuing a policy of “open access.” The College Board’s 2002 Equity Policy Statement reads:
The College Board and the Advanced Placement Program encourage teachers, AP Coordinators, and school administrators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their AP programs. The College Board is committed to the principle that all students deserve an opportunity to participate in rigorous and academically challenging courses and programs. All students who are willing to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be considered for admission to AP courses. The Board encourages the elimination of barriers that restrict access for AP courses to students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the AP Program. Schools should make every effort to ensure that their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population.
This is a noble but imprecise goal–noble for obvious reasons, imprecise because it excludes any concern about the preparedness of students who take AP courses. How do you teach college-level content and skills to students who may not even read at a 9th grade level?
In the interest of open access, our district has dramatically increased enrollment in AP classes. However, it has done so without considering student interest or preparation–and when you take kids who are totally unprepared for an AP course (the equivalent of a college freshman course) and shove them into one, the result isn’t pretty. It’s less of a problem at my school than at other schools in my district, because my school is a college-prep magnet. But at the worst performing school in the district in 2008, just one out of 395 AP exams was passed–a rate of 0.25%. The four worst-performing schools in the district had a pass rate of 6%. The district as a whole had a pass rate of 23%. These numbers come from the front page article the local paper published right before this year’s exams, which raised much hue and cry.
Needless to say, the teachers around here are very interested in learning how to teach non-traditional AP students, students who aren’t prepared for AP courses, and classrooms where some students are prepared while others aren’t. After all, if we’re going to get blasted on the front page of the paper for our low pass rates, it’d be nice to know how to fix the problem, and who better to help us than the experts themselves from the College Board?
In four days, those experts said nothing about teaching AP courses to non-traditional students, to unprepared students, or to classrooms with a wide range of learning abilities. Actually, that’s not totally true: they mentioned in passing that they had non-traditional students. But there was nothing about how to change your teaching methods to help these kids… just an attempt to show some sympathy with us.
So what did they talk about? Some writing exercises, some physical exercises to get the blood pumping in the middle of a long class, some exercises with essay rubrics–nothing that I hadn’t already seen at several AP seminars over the last six years. Judging from the looks on the other teachers’ faces throughout the seminar, I’d say they also learned nothing new.
After Wednesday’s session, a co-worker and I confronted one of the College Board presenters. We told them about our district’s situation (i.e., kids are enrolled in AP courses without adequate preparation or interest) and directly asked him how to teach non-traditional students and unprepared students. His response was, “You can only control what you can control.” That’s a great answer if you’re simply trying to calm yourself down, but an utterly useless answer in terms of trying to help your students.
We were asked to fill out comment cards at the end of each day. At the end of each day, I wrote that “what they were teaching” didn’t match “what we were told they were going to teach.” (That’s an English translation of what I actually wrote, which was in Education-ese.) At the beginning of each subsequent day, they acknowledged that they hadn’t yet gotten around to the matter of non-traditional students, but that they would soon.
Well, they didn’t. I have rarely seen so much resigned despondence in a room. I know that’s oxymoronic, but I know what I saw: a collective look on the teachers’ faces that said, “You haven’t helped us; you haven’t helped our students; you have done nothing but waste our time.”