Hey, kids! It's a hot summer Friday, and you know what that means...

New movies!

For those of us who enjoy talking about (making fun of) movies as much as I do (you know what they say, loving something means you see the best and the worst), here are my favorite sites for the movies:

Film Values: Don't have much time and want to see the best movie out there? Don't have time to see movies at all but you don't want to be left out at the water cooler discussion? Taking the kids and don't want to be surprised at the bad parts? This site is for you. Includes complete plots and a value commentary.

Mr. Cranky: For a frank and sometimes rude perspective on every new film, Mr. Cranky believes there's no film too perfect for criticism.

CountingDown.com: The latest updates, to the minute, for all upcoming movies, including a countdown clock. (Sometimes this site is a little slow.) Only 4 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes, and 30 seconds to Spider-man 2... 29, 28, 27...

MovieTickets.com: Check out the times, theatres, and tickets available before you get there.

Happy watching!

Here are the potential business cards for my new site selling garden furniture and stone sculptures (LaurelHillDesigns.com). Take a look at these and leave a comment on your vote. We can't decide! They're PDFs.

By the way, if they stink, leave a suggestion instead :)

Tete a tete chairs

Stone lantern

* Finally, (see the previous blog) a teacher wrote in this morning with specifics on the true salary of local teachers. What is wrong with the newspaper and what are they getting out of quoting inflated figures? That's what I'd like to know.
The letter: Salaries are clarified

* Seen on a commercial last night:
"NO is just a couple of maybes away..."

So I'm sitting at home the other day recovering from traveling and read through the Letters to the Editor in our local paper. Looks like it's that time of year again for everyone to debate what teachers should and should not be making! What other job has its salary regularly evaluated in the public forum?

It's always insulting to read first the articles, which never accurately quote salaries. Somehow they manage to only state an "average" rather than minimum-maximum. And, now, they've started quoting salary including benefits, which is misleading at best.

That leads to people like this guy writing in (top letter) and making up an entirely new salary quote which is a fantastic amount of money for teachers to make. Too bad it's just that... fantastic. As in fantasy.

Considering our local paper will apparently never get it right, I felt compelled to write in and explain that no one figures salaries that way, that it's entirely inaccurate, and that future articles should take care before reporting inflated numbers. Not that they will. (My letter, bottom of the page)

The problem with constantly chewing over what teachers are or are not worth is that it reduces morale in people that deserve to have community support and forces them to be defensive about money that they rightly earn. This makes them sound like whiners because they're always justifying themselves, when really the last thing about schools that should be argued over is salaried professionals. Try curriculum age, administration interference, class size repercussions, book supplies, computers available, internet access, student behavior...

I'd like to see some true research and debate on those, instead of something that should already be settled in the public mind, and that is the right of a degreed, certified teacher to make a living.

I used to teach high school, and one of the best books that let me laugh about the whole experience was a funny, self-published book from a teacher in California called "Guerilla Warfare for Teachers." Teaching isn't like anything else, especially not the vision you might have of what it should be, whether you're good at it or not, in a good school or not. It's a life filled with drama; lives developing in front of your eyes; teenage emotions and yours conflicting; colleagues struggling to relate and make it through the day; administrators balancing their careers with yours; distant or over-protective parents calling; bills demanding pay from a meager checkbook; and the list goes on.

What people don't realize is that it's a 24-hour-a-day job. The kids never leave your mind, and everything reminds you of them or something you should do for them. When days are good, it's great; when they're not, it's awful. Everyone copes in a different way, but mostly it helps to talk about it. Some people do it more publicly than others. I wrote the paper several times during my tenure to complain about or explain an issue with the school board. Shortly after, I was censured by the principal, who had actually read my pieces previously published before I was a teacher.

What you learn is that most people, and most other teachers in fact, aren't willing to understand the stress and seriousness involved in the job and instead become the "happiness police." The other teachers pretend to agree but secretly show their lack of support in your struggles; they wear their silence like a badge, as though they are more of a survivor, can cope better than you. The outside world simply doesn't understand; everyone views their former teachers in an extreme, idealized light, whether positive or negative. It's always hard to imagine teachers have real lives outside the classroom, or are even human inside the classroom. Humor is a great weapon, but as we all know, within humor is truth, and the truth hurts. Enough of cliches for now.


This article is about another man's attempt to lighten the mood and speak realistically about the world of teaching. In his book, My Favorite Year, he relates stories gleaned from his years of teaching like how parents complained that he was too tall to teach kids, causing a child to have a brain tumor by using a timer in class, and unpatriotic for forgetting to lead the pledge one day. Funny stuff for some, but for others, not so much. Shortly after publication, he was hand-delivered a letter of "non-renewal" (school board speak for firing) and then finally allowed to stay if he didn't talk about his experiences anymore. Sounds familiar.

And so, in the spirit of solidarity, I've compiled a short list of Teaching Don'ts that I learned from my own career. Interestingly, teaching is one of the few careers and ways of life without its own comic... maybe I should start one... "The Rotten Apple"?

Don't...

• Talk about money. It's not about the money. It's about inspiring the next generation of CEO's whose floors will be cleaned by people who make more than you.
  
• Talk about parents. You are a people person, arent you?
  
• Talk about kids. Problems with kids only speak of your inability to inspire them.
  
• Doubt tabula rasa. Children are new to the world and aren't capable of wrong unless you taught them.
  
• Talk outside of the teacher's lounge. Especially not in public. Especially not in print.
  
• Stop laughing.

A short but thorough test with lots of possibilities from Star Trek to LOTR to Farscape...

Which Sci-Fi Character are you?

(I was Aragorn)

And... Which Medieval Job Would You Have?

It also has a helpful summary as to why those qualities are useful in the modern workplace.

Well it's that time again! Every 17 years the cicadas emerge to ruin summer slumber for everyone. On the upside, in Florida, the volume of their song doubletimes as a Heat and Misery Index to let you know if it's safe to go outside yet or not (Answer: If during 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., no.).

To celebrate in fun, here is... CICADAVILLE

Save yourselves!