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This, dear readers, is from my good friend, Joe, who came to visit. If I have posted this already, I'll look and delete this one if I have.

Today was interesting.

Maybeth treated me to an inside view of our public education system. In some ways, the classroom antics are the worst I've ever seen. I've never seen so many kids just not care, not try, and take advantage of a genuine teacher. Then again, I've never been in a classroom with ~30 kids, which consists of both 4th AND 5th graders. Not to mention the arbitrary change in the year's lesson plans to teaching to a standardized test after the year has already started. Why don't we add the fact that this teacher is in her first year teaching?

Overall I'd say that Mb is doing a great job for being pulled in over 30 directions every day, all day long. Even with more experience, given her situation with the students, less than zero support from the administration, government education snafu, teaching to obtuse standardized tests, and general lack of resources I'd be hard pressed to expect more than Pyrrhic victory, let alone any success whatsoever. The fact that Mb has achieved what she has in this ridiculous situation so far is impressive to me.

Case in point on the administation:
As I write this one of the janitors comes in telling of a vacuum that just broke. The hose into the bag no longer has a latch, so it spontaneously removes itself during operation and spews crap all over. In reporting the situation our janitor friend is turned away with the boilerplate response: "There's no money for it in the budget."

So they're okay with not vacuuming. Interesting. Isn't it a telltale sign in the corporate world that the company is failing when they start looking to cut expenses by screwing the janitors?

Fortunately for me I got to work with a few smaller groups in tutoring math and stoichiometry...