PrObama!

There are a lot of teachers who complain about parents and society and video games and poverty and our consumer culture and Paris Hilton or whatever and I'm not really one of those teachers. I mean, it all has an impact, but it's not really anything I can control in my classroom. It's endlessly frustrating, of course, when you feel like NO ONE is acknowledging it at all as if we teach in little bubbles and learning is linear and the world isn't changing. And then we hear that it must be the teachers' fault when the tests don't come out right...'cause what else could be screwing it up?!? It's just so much more complicated than that.

So I was glad to read, "But there's one last ingredient that I just want to mention, and that's parents. We can't do it just in the schools. Parents are going to have to show more responsibility. They've got to turn off the TV set, put away the video games, and, finally, start instilling that thirst for knowledge that our students need."

I missed the debate because I went the Powderpuff football game, sponsored Mock Trial, and watched the end of the last girls' Varsity Volleyball game. I don't agree with Barack on pay for performance and I feel pretty iffy about the way charter schools are run (systematically...well, especially in Denver), but I think that the president does have the power to inspire people to be different kinds of parents, to lessen poverty in our country, and to change the culture a lot more than I do.

Also, I end up saying stupid things like "some people should just be sterilized," which I don't really mean. But I'd be first in line.