Mr-Williams.Net

Scandals of Higher Education

This is a link to an interesting article about admission practices at ivy league schools.

Basically, this article summarizes several other commentaries that expose the fact that our institutions of higher education are becoming more and more off limits to the average kid because they give preferential treatment to those with money and fame.

More significantly, this article also discusses that what appears to be preferential treatment is sometimes a result of fewer applications from middle and lower income families.

This is particularly bothersome to me because of my recent experiences. The student population at PVHS #1, where I taught last year, was primarily middle class and upper-middle class economically. When I asked my freshmen and sophomores to raise their hands if they planned to attend college, 99% of the kids raised a hand. Here at PVHS #2, where more families struggle financially, when I asked the same question of my freshmen less than half raised a hand.

The kids at both schools are very similar in ability, work ethic, and “issues”, but where my PVHS #1 students often thought they were entitled to a college education, many of my PVHS #2 students don’t even see it as an option. Hmmm…

Essay Trick

Watch the linked video for a trick that both teachers and students will find interesting.

I post it here because students will probably find out about this eventually, and teachers need to know about this so they can adjust their paper assigning strategies.

Often times in college I was assigned papers by length: “Write a five page paper on…” When I was a new teacher, I got tired of docking students points for adjusting font size and paper margins to make the page length requirement. I learned that assigning papers by paragraphs, and often giving specific formats for those paragraphs, produces much better papers.

I try to teach my kids that length isn’t as important as content and organization, and I do my best to teach them how to create/find good content and how to organize paragraphs and essays. Sometimes they struggle with good content and commentary, but I rarely get papers with a bunch of meaningless filler.

It’s March 14th.

Happy Pi Day!

Celebrate by memorizing the first 101 digits of everyone’s favorite circular factor:

3.141592653
5897932384
6264338327
9502884197
1693993751
0582097494
4592307816
4062862089
9862803482
53421170679

I’m pretty sure this is another one of my honors students. I know H is in the honor guard as she came to class in her dress blues this week, but the hat makes it a bit difficult positively identify her.

The Pahrump Valley Times does a great job of spotlighting our kids in their activities. Click here for the article about the this year AFI (annual formal inspection). Great job, cadets!

As my students, parents, siblings, wife, and friends know, I’m a bit spelling challenged; but I use technology to make that fact less obvious.

I fought this idea in high school, but I now know spelling is important, and as a result push my students to make sure they have no spelling errors in any final draft. I’m a stickler about it, but I understand my students’ frustrations: It’s hard to find a word like psychology in a dictionary or even on the computer when the first letter isn’t exactly obvious.

On that note, I think the person who puts up this website really takes spelling errors to heart. Not even I have gumption to put up website devoted to the spelling of one word, even if it might be the most misspelled word on the net.

For the record, I misspelled five words (not typos) in this short article while I typed it. Thank the gods of technology for built in spell check.

-Mr. W.

Reuters published an article about the conditions under which many teens work.

Personally, I think allowing/requiring teens to work isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I worked as a teen and I turned out mostly okay. Working gives teens a bit of extra money and often teaches responsibility; however, I’ve noticed that in many teens work becomes a priority over education, and as a result some of my kids have missed school either to go to work or to sleep in after a late shift.

-Mr. W.

The Reuters article is an interesting read, and there’s a preview to the article below the fold.
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Another one of my illustrious students made the Pahrump Valley Times. Yeah! I’d give his name, but it isn’t in the article and I don’t want to upstage the paper.

Addition to original post: The student wanted me to make it clear that he is only in the back because this was a cool-down time. The student is normally leading the pack.

That’s my student aide, Kelly. Congratulations!

This picture and the write-up below are from the Pahrump Valley Times. Click on the picture to go directly to the Times page of this photo and write-up. Names of the cheerleaders are below the fold.
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This research project will be a comparison/contrast essay where students describe and react to differences and similarities between life as a high school student in 2007 and life as a high school student for a person from an earlier generation.

Click here to get the .rtf of the research paper. This file can be saved to a computer and opened in almost any word processor, but it will look best in MS Word.

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Hey,

“This is a link to a CNN article about a study on the narcism of the Millennial generation, aka the “Y” generation, aka the kids currently in high school and college.

I think this is particularly interesting because my generation, Generation X, was supposed to be the epitome of all things “me”.

As a teacher, I see the major issues discussed in this article on a regular basis, particularly indifference to violence, entitlement, lack of work ethic, and social solitude even among friends.

My students are “good” people, but, like my generation but more-so, current high school kids will struggle to deal with a society completely focused on individual desires.

So, after reading this article, keep in mind the old adage made famous by the Spock himself: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.”