My day was salvaged when the call-out clerk found a $7 day for me at Redstone High. Even better, it was teaching American government! A subject on which I am both highly interested and knowledgeable about!

Of course, that makes it all the more frustrating when the students couldn’t care less. They didn’t even flinch when – by way of example – I mentioned the Detroit was closing half of its schools.

There was, however, one kid who seemed very interested in what I had to say. He watched me very intently.

He kept it up even after I gave everyone their reading assignment. Just watching.

Turns out he’s mentally handicapped.

I try to go to bed early every night so that I am ready for a 5:30am call. None came this morning, but one did come around 8. I reminded the call-out clerk that I lived in Callie, but she said it wasn’t a problem. It was a little bit of a longer drive than usual (ice on the roads), plus it involved refilling the gas tank and drive-thru breakfast (there was, fortunately, no line) so that I wasn’t dying of hunger throughout the day.

But when I got there, the principal told me that they had cancelled me because it had gotten too late. I told him that I hadn’t gotten the call until 8 and I had to drive over from Callie, but he told me that the clerk said she called at 7:30, making me look like a liar. It didn’t occur to me to look it up on the phone until I had already left, but the actual call-time was 7:54.

It wouldn’t bother me (what’s one school among 8 or so?) except that this is the school I like most. It’s the one that, if we relocated to Redstone, I would want to move into the jurisdiction of. Now I’m a bit worried that I may have burned that bridge. My hope is that the principal remembers that the last time (my first-ever assignment), I showed up quite early.

There are two downsides to subbing, particularly in Redstone.

The first is that, since it is not an insignificant drive and school in Redstone starts on the early side, I typically have to get up at around 6am. So if they call me at 5:30am (when the machine starts its calling), there’s not enough time to go back to sleep. This means that I have to go to bed on the early side in anticipation of a possible call. And since I never know if a call is going to come, I need to go to bed pretty early every night.

The second side is, on account of the drive, the fuel efficiency of the Forester, and taxes, “peanuts” is almost an overstatement of what I make. The two half-days I worked, once you take out taxes and gas, netted me $7 each. Less than I spent on dinner. Full days are the jackpot… only a little under $30. I would make more working minimum wage here in town. I’m not really doing this for the money (obviously), but that still stings a little.

Maybe this semester of maybe over the summer I will start seriously applying in Callie so that I can at least keep the gas money and save the time from the commute. One of the reasons I applied in Redstone was so that if I made a hash of it, I wouldn’t be burning any bridges within the community. Also, because their school system is larger, I figure it would be a way to gain some experience before I inflict myself on the community.

Of course, even if I apply at Callie and am put on their roll, teaching jobs would be fewer and I may still end up going to Redstone anyway. And really, in some ways having an excuse to go to Redstone is a good thing. I was going up there two weeks out of every three anyway. Now I’m going there twice a week (or so it seems). On the other hand, having fewer substitute teaching gigs wouldn’t be a bad thing in itself. I half-dodged a call when I was driving back from my Monday assignment because I needed Tuesday off to take care of a few things. The other reason is that I was on the road at the time. But it’s a thin line because I don’t want to dodge too many calls or (I suspect) I will be moved further down the queue. Which wouldn’t be bad because there would be fewer jobs and that’s fine, but could be bad because I may get fewer of the jobs I want (basically, the ones that I have a couple days notice rather than the ones I am receiving calls at 5 in the morning).

Part of me feels like I should get paid just for making myself available, if I’m going to be punished whenever I am unavailable.

But the other part of me keeps reminding me “this isn’t about the money.” It’s more about having something to do with myself, getting an idea if teaching is something I want to do, the learning experience it provides for me, and lastly when I start subbing in Callie becoming more a part of our community through a type of (lightly paid) community service. I had previously tried to volunteer at a “community center” which apparently is a domestic violence hotline. Part of the reason I was going to do it was to get out of the house, so you can imagine my disappointment when they excitedly told me “and it’s something you can do completely from home!” (it turned out that I was out of town when they had their orientation, which was probably just as well.)

Maybe one of these days I will be fortunate enough to get called to Jury Duty…

This is about that former teacher. Specifically, one Melissa Petro – an ex-prostitute turned grade-school art teacher whose news coverage has been pretty extensive.

Oddly enough… as long as she isn’t in the classroom singing the praises of her former career, as long as she isn’t dressing inappropriately, I don’t see her former career as a big deal. If she’s a good teacher, then she’s a good teacher. Apparently, the school’s administration – despite Ms. Petro no longer working in the industry – have decided she is “insufficiently contrite” about her former career (as noted in her Huffington Post piece regarding the shuttering of that particular section of Craigslist) and that she violated some “morals clause”, aka “conduct unbecoming a teacher”… by exercising her first amendment rights.

Meanwhile, what amazes me is the sheer amount of vitriol directed at Ms. Petro. You’d think she was a real nasty criminal or spreading germs around or something. And of course half of the politicians (including Michael Bloomberg) who were calling for her ouster have, let’s face it, their own long laundry list of nasty sex scandals that make anything Ms. Petro may have done look pretty tame.

Ms. Petro has resigned rather than go through the kangaroo court hearings process. CNN Video reports indicate that there may have been some “plea deal” or monetary offer from the Dept of Education for her to resign, which involves a prohibition on her filing a civil rights lawsuit against them – probably because the Dept of Education saw the case as generating nasty, bad publicity for them.

It went pretty well in the overall. The teacher, Mrs. Dawson, was apparently a sub for several years before becoming a regular teacher and so was conscientious. Unfortunately, the instructions were hand-written and her hand-writing was hard to read.

A while back Nanani and I (and Brandon Berg) had a conversation about what elementary school students call their teacher (whether they say Mrs. even if they’re not married). Apparently, some actually say Mrs even if you’re a man. I was never called Mrs Truman, though I was called Mrs. Dawson repeatedly. Others called me Mr Truman while others split the difference and went with Mr Dawson. Incidentally, there is a regular teacher by the name of Truman (this would be more surprising if you knew how much less common my actual last name is), so they were familiar with the name. One of the first graders in the other class was the son of the teacher. So when I met the other first grade class, I got a wave of “Hi, Mr Truman!” greetings. They were better with my name than my class actually was.

In other ways, though, I think being a man worked for me. With a couple of notable exceptions, the boys were better behaved than the girls. The boys seemed particularly eager to please. Even a couple that, when I first looked at them, immediately thought “these are going to be trouble.” The two trouble-making boys involved one boy that was… slow. Depending on who you believe, he either behaved very immaturely towards this other student or this other student was picking on him. The other student was pre-identified as something of a troublemaker. The slow kid was pre-identified as slow. Those were the only two pre-identifications I got.

Both the boys and the girls, but particularly the boys, felt the need to point out how very tall I am. One pointed out my huge feet. She later (I think it was her) rode on my feet by hugging me and stepping on them. She got a real kick out of it when I started to walk. I got a few hugs over the course of the (overall short) day. And those that were in afterschool daycare all yelled “Hi Mr Truman!” (outside of the classroom they were all able to remember my name?) whenever I walked past.

There were two girls that immediately set themselves up as my special helper. One was particularly smart (the only one not to miss a single item on either the reading or the math papers I corrected) and came across as something of a goody-goody. Ordinarily, I kind of look at kids like that with skepticism, but boy did I need the help. The second struck me as being kind of manipulative. Very socially aware. She taught me the magic action that makes the entire class be quiet and look at me (for some reason, the Dawson didn’t put this in her notes). Dawson gave me this magic blue card to give to the best student. I think I am more or less obligated to give it to the goody-goody. Another girl, not in my class, was also really helpful during reading (they track readers, so I got the best readers of both first grade classes for reading).

The other girls, though, were loud. And far more rambunctious than the boys. I had to spend more time telling the girls than the boys to settle down. Another girl was constantly telling me “I’m gonna be sick” and was just gloomy. I thought she was sick, but the other teacher warned me off of indulging her on this. She apparently gets sick whenever anything stressful happens, which a substitute teacher constitutes. Both boys and girls abused bathroom privileges, but when I told them to be quick about it they were. I wasn’t going to risk an accident, and as long as they weren’t roaming the halls, it was a failing I could live with.

Relatedly, first graders think it’s awesome if you say, in lieu of “be quiet”, “everybody, be cool.”

I didn’t get everything done that I was supposed to. I couldn’t find a book that I needed and a little got lost in the information overload. Most unfortunate because there were times when I was struggling to come up with something for these kids to do. They finished their arts & crafts project in record time. Unfortunately, everybody started looking at me and it’s hard to get first graders to be quiet long enough to decipher long-winded, quasi-legible handwriting. That was the downside to the fullproof “everybody be quiet” word and motion. They all go really quiet, and they all look at you. You only get a few seconds before you lose them again. However, once I started reading them stories, though, it was all good.

Tomorrow is a full day. Fortunately for me, it includes an assembly and a Valentine’s Day Party. Unfortunately for me, three kids can’t go to the assembly and so I am not going to get that time to read up on the lesson plan for tomorrow (which I meant to bring home and type up, but forgot). The Valentine’s Day Party will have a local parent coming to help out. Because I forgot to bring the lesson plan home, however, I am going to have to get into work earlier than planned. I’m probably going to need to get up at 5:30am.

But on the whole, it was a surprisingly good day.

Thursday will (probably) be my first half-day as a substitute teacher. Friday will be my first full day. I would be a little less terrified if there’d been some sort of training program. Or a real orientation. The only orientation I got was a little get together at one of the elementary schools going over basic expectations. Which is certainly better than nothing. Oh, I also got a video about bloodborn diseases. Beyond that, the entire application and hiring process has been paperwork. Sent in your college transcripts. Submit to a fingerprinting and background check. Tuberculosis test. No interview. Congratulations, you’re hired! Call this 1-800 number and leave your name. I don’t even know how much I am going to get paid.

I’m going to spare you the details, but I will be substituting in Redstone (the “big city”, by Arapaho standards). If it goes well, I may try in small-town Callie. Apparently, Redstone has a real need as I have gotten some sort of offer for every day that I have been on their rolls. Due to the commute, however, I haven’t taken them up on it. The first official call came at 5am on Monday morning. I was having terrible sleep and wasn’t in my right frame of mind. It was for kindergarteners and the thought of my first day being with kindergarteners filled me with dread. So I tapped 2 on the robodial to say that I had a conflict. When a human called at 7:30, I told them I had car trouble. More on this in a second. In any event, the unofficial inquiry I had gotten Friday was for first graders. When I later woke up and thought about it, it became apparent that I might have to start small. That afternoon, I got the call for Thursday and Friday – first grade, again.

I got another call at 7:15 this morning, which I didn’t pick up. Remember that car trouble I lied to them about before? Well, it wasn’t a lie. It was prescient. Even overlooking the fact that they called too late for me to get there at the start of the school day, I didn’t have a working car. But I couldn’t tell them that because, in the course of another conversation I had with the call-out lady prior to the car trouble actually emerging, I told them that the car trouble had been fixed. A tangled web. So I didn’t answer. Car troubles fixed (the real troubles, really fixed this time), I will be ready if they call tomorrow morning and so Thursday may become my second day.

Part of me is wondering if I might get called on a daily basis. It’s sure starting to seem that way. This was intended to be a part-time job and as much an effort to get me out of the house as anything. What I suspect they pay me, minus gas and considering that everything I make is going to have nearly 40% taken out in taxes because it’s in our highest tax bracket, money isn’t the big issue here. And doing this day in and day out is simply not what I had in mind. On the other hand, it’s unlikely I will match for any job they call at 7am or later for because I wouldn’t be able to get there on time (would that I had remembered this when I came up with the car story). So we’ll see how that shakes out. At the very least I am hoping not to get a call for tomorrow so that I can start with a half-day to get settled in on a day where I am mentally ready rather than from a 5am call that has me waking up, looking up the school, rushing my arse down there, and a zombie in front of a bunch of hyperactive kids (if, like all the others, it’s a grade school job).

Or maybe I want to put it off because I am terrified. It’s been forever since I have been in first grade. All I remember about it is that the teacher was awesome, I met my future best friend Clint, and… that’s it. I can only partially mentally imagine what a first grader looks like. And of course all of the uncertainties have come back to me. Crap, what if my small bladder needs too much attention? What do first graders do, exactly? The good news is that the teacher knows that she is going to be out. Presumably she doesn’t want a sub taking care of anything important, so hopefully she has filled it with activities from the more frivolous side of the first grade.

Incidentally, one of the things that has me more worried about the Redstone school system is that there are two high schools in Redstone. The public one and a rather prominent Catholic one, St. Matthews. Given that Redstone is a seriously Catholic town, and a pretty poor one, I am hoping that the public high school isn’t filled with the dregs. On the other hand, it’s not like Redstone is full of scary people. Crime rates are very low. The children of a town down on its luck are less daunting a prospect than than the children of actual poverty.

I was going to write a post to ask if anyone knew of any great resources on the history of and constitutional restrictions on multi-member legislative districts in the United States. Before I could, however, I ran across this, which appears to be a rundown of everything I wanted to know. So if it’s a subject that interests you, have at it.

Mamapundit raises objection to a proposed Florida law grading parents as well as the kids. She comments thusly:

Parental involvement in children’s education is important, yes. However, the expectations of parents (read: mothers) in this regard have become increasingly burdensome in recent decades. When I was a third grader, my parents helped me with big projects, and they occasionally attended a school function. Today, however, “good” parents are expected to make involvement with their children’s school and classroom a kind of second job. I see many moms who volunteer at school several days per week. When they aren’t actually AT the school, they are selling candy bars and wrapping paper to raise money for the school. These moms know more about the minutiae of their kids’ classwork than the kids themselves, and they expect to spend hours each night sitting next to their children as they complete their homework. Prep for a school project – like the annual science fair – is a major family undertaking requiring intensive maternal involvement at every turn, as well as expensive and fancy supplies.

Sometimes it really does feel like we live in two countries. As often as I hear complaints about this, I also hear complaints from others (including educators) about how school is viewed as daycare and it’s the lack of parental involvement that is to blame for our education system’s failures. While some of that is passing the buck (educators have an incentive for parents to be blamed) and some of it is smug superiority (parents have an incentive to feel superior to other parents and none of them are going to think that they are the problem, it still rings true. Perhaps by sheer repetition.

Granju, though, is making the other argument. Never has more been expected of parents. And you hear these complaints, too. So-called “helicopter parents.” Ironically, these complaints also come from educators, though more of the upper level variety. Perhaps some of this is coming from parents that are resentful about being “judged” by having a job and therefore not being willing to work for the school district 40 hours a week, there is an element of truth to it.

These two ideas are not mutually exclusive. It’s more than possible to have one set of parents that won’t let go and another set of parents that simply doesn’t have time to care. It does make it, however, difficult to really approach from any sort of policy or public meme perspective. Talk about how parents should be more involved, and it’s those that are already involved that are most likely to listen. Talk about how parents need to be more laid back, and those same parents are not going to want to sacrifice any perceived edge that their involvement gives their kids while others may (to the extent that they’re listening) take it as a pat on the back for doing something right (if only by default and circumstance).

What this gets me thinking about, though, is the degree to which, if this continues, it will further create a disparity (along economic lines) among the youth. Maybe not, if the helicoptering actually doesn’t do any good. In the Sigmoid view of the world, though, it’s that sort of hyperinvolvement that gets kids to do the right things to get into the right college and avoid the abject failure that occurs with regard to anybody that doesn’t go to an Ivy League (or perhaps Public Ivy) institution. As with most things, while dramatically overstated and false in scope, it’s hard to deny there being some truth there. You may not have to go to an Ivy League of Public Ivy, but it sure is helpful to have a degree of direction and if you go to a commoner university to get into the honors college or have a realistic game plan to get into a good field upon graduation.

I am an example of how having on-guard parents can make a real difference. Academically, I was headed absolutely nowhere until my parents put their foot down and my father watched over me to make sure that I was going what I needed to be doing. Had I been raised by another set of parents that didn’t do that, it’s likely I would have ended up a college dropout and in a much worse situation than I ended up in. Mom would later put the foot down when I started making noise about going to trade school instead of college. Well, she wouldn’t have stopped me, but she urged me strongly not to and had the moral authority for me to listen. On the other hand, in an alternative Sigmoidian view, my experience is irrelevant because the entirety of my failure or success is due to my genes.

Anyhow, all of this is the long way around saying that if competition between upper class (and upper middle class) parents has never been greater and more and more is expected of the parents, while it becomes increasingly common among working class families and below to let the school districts (inadequately) raise their children, this portends bad things for the future of equality. I know that this is hardly an original thought, but considering all of the objective factors that make it harder for people from poor families to get ahead, the consideration of the additional layers added by hyperparents who believe that their livelihood exists in the success of their parents and that State College is death, is pretty depressing.

On the other hand, Granju’s kids attend Episcopal schools, which are both private and Episcopalian. It’s not hard to imagine that her experiences are not universal. I went to a very strong public high school, which followed a moderately strong middle school, which followed a pretty strong elementary school. Past grade school, the expectation of parental involvement was pretty slight.

I visited with two sets of kids during my trip to Colosse. The first was my college roommate Hubert’s twins. The second was the three kids of my other college friend, Al Cavanaugh. Hugh (re-)introduced me to his daughters as “Will” while Al went with “Mr Truman.” I’m not at all offended with the former, but the traditionalist in me prefers the latter. It was how I was raised to refer to people my parent’s age. But these days, even if a parent wants to go that route it can be problematic because a lot of adults insist on being called by their first name with children. So it might not be a tide worth fighting.

I am getting older and more and more of my friends have kids. We were all raised with Mr and Mrs, but their kids haven’t been. So an age-peer will refer to my mother and father as Mr or Mrs Truman, but their toddler kids go with Bill or Susan.

I’m too lazy to look it up, but a couple of blog posts have been written on the subject. James Joyner (or one of his professorial co-bloggers at Outside The Beltway) spoke disapprovingly of the trend of college professors either wanting to or being encouraged to go by their first names with their students. The idea behind this trend being that you don’t want hierarchial relationships and it should be considered a relationship among equals. Joyner, a former professor, pushes back against this because teachers and students are not equals and it does nobody any justice to assume otherwise. Heebie-Geebie from Unfogged, a mathematics professor, expressed appreciation that a former student referred to her as doctor rather than shifting towards a first-name reference.

In the student-teacher relationship, I am more of the same mind of Joyner and Geebie. One of the irritating things about college was when students would challenge professors as presumptive equals. My friend Karl was – until the professor finally lost patience and put him in his place – so bad about this he almost ruined the class we took together. That’s not to say that what professors say should go completely unchallenged, and questions should definitely be asked (“Have you considered this?”), but by and large they are there to teach and you are there to learn. Any questions and challenges ought to be in an effort to better understand what they are trying to say. Not to prove that you, and undergraduate student, know more than they do. First-name bases – to the extent that they make a difference – seem to encourage the latter behavior.

Yesterday I went to orientation to be a substitute teacher. This was for the Redstone elementary schools. One of the things they kept harping on was dress code (which essentially boiled down to “no t-shirts or jeans”) and the insistence that, whether you prefer it or not, you are to be addressed as Mr or Mrs. The point being to establish authority. I’m not entirely sure how necessary this is with elementary school kids, though. Don’t get me wrong, I approve of both (preferring the Mr and Mrs and being a fan of non-casual dress codes generally), but it strikes me as the area where it makes the least amount of difference.

There is no orientation for the secondary schools, but it came up that (while presumably the Mr and Mrs honorifics are still required) they are much less worried about dress codes. That struck me as odd since that’s the place (in K-12 at any rate) where kids are most likely to challenge the adult-kid nature of the relationship. That strikes me as where it would be most important to draw every distinction you can.

When Econoholic sent me this Near York Times article on law school, I wondered if Half Sigma had already commented on it:

In reality, and based on every other source of information, Mr. Wallerstein and a generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated.

And with corporations scrutinizing their legal expenses as never before, more entry-level legal work is now outsourced to contract temporary employees, both in the United States and in countries like India. It’s common to hear lawyers fret about the sort of tectonic shift that crushed the domestic steel industry decades ago.

But improbably enough, law schools have concluded that life for newly minted grads is getting sweeter, at least by one crucial measure. In 1997, when U.S. News first published a statistic called “graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation,” law schools reported an average employment rate of 84 percent. In the most recent U.S. News rankings, 93 percent of grads were working — nearly a 10-point jump.

In the Wonderland of these statistics, a remarkable number of law school grads are not just busy — they are raking it in. Many schools, even those that have failed to break into the U.S. News top 40, state that the median starting salary of graduates in the private sector is $160,000. That seems highly unlikely, given that Harvard and Yale, at the top of the pile, list the exact same figure.

He had. To his credit, he was sounding off this warning years ago. Not just about law school being a scam for anybody that doesn’t get into the Top-14 schools (an argument I think he takes a few steps too far), but about the statistics the law schools put out more generally.

Slate has a similar article from last year:

The students might be litigious—no surprise there—and overwrought. But they’ve got a point. The demand for lawyers has fallen off a cliff, both due to the short-term crisis of the recession and long-term changes to the industry, and is only starting to rebound. The lawyers that do have jobs are making less than they used to. At the same time, universities seeking revenue have tacked on law schools, minting more lawyers every year.

That has caused some concern among lawyers who think the accrediting organization, the American Bar Association, is doing the profession a disservice by approving so many new schools. (Contrast that with medical schools. They come with much higher startup costs and tend not to be money-makers. Relatively few students get medical degrees every year, and demand far outstrips supply.)

The job market for lawyers is terrible, full stop—and that hits young lawyers, without professional track records and in need of training, worst. Though the National Association for Law Placement, an industry nonprofit group, reports that employment for the class of 2009 was 88.3 percent, about a quarter of those jobs were temporary gigs, without the salaries needed by most new lawyers to pay off crushing debts. Another 10 percent were part-time. And thousands of jobs were actually fellowships or grants provided by the new lawyers’ law schools.

Relatedly, we have this:

Guy goes to law school, guy racks up a huge amount of debt, guy has no idea how he’ll pay off his debts. Sound familiar? Okay, here’s the twist: the guy failed the “character and fitness” component of the Ohio bar because he has no plan to pay off his loans.

What the hell kind of legal education system are we running where we charge people more than they can afford to get a legal education, and then prevent them from being lawyers because they can’t pay off their debts?

Because it’s not like Hassan Jonathan Griffin was in a particularly unique situation when he went before the Ohio bar. A year and a half ago, we wrote about a man who was dinged on his character and fitness review because he was $400,000 in debt. That’s an extraordinary case. Hassan Jonathan Griffin owes around $170,000. He has a part-time job as a public defender. He used to be a stockbroker. He’s got as much a chance of figuring out a way to pay off his loans as most people from the Lost Generation.

If Griffin can’t pass C&F, Ohio might as well say that half of the recent graduates in the state don’t have the “character and fitness” to be a lawyer…

There’s something ironic about making the choice of representing those that cannot afford their own representation as causing someone to fail a “character and fitness test”.