Homework & Fur babies

I should be doing my homework. I am taking classes to earn my Initial Administrators Licence, and possibly a 2nd Masters degree in Education – the paperwork is confusing, but I think the licence program is part of a MA program, which I didn’t have to apply for because it is through my Alma Mater, where I earned both my BA and MA, as well as completing all my state licensure requirements for teaching …. I honestly just wanted the licence, but hey, if I earn a 2nd MA that would be sort of awesome.

I am a bit frustrated with my classes. I am not entirely sure what I am supposed to be learning, and this homework assignment is a bit crazy making.

I am a teacher, and I like to think I am pretty good at my job. A big thing for me as a HS English teacher, well as a teacher in general, is clear expectations. As in, “This is the assignment. Here is what I expect. Here are examples. Here is how it will be graded. He is a rubric of all of the above for your reference. Now, how may I help you best?” And this is after a hell of a lot of instruction, discussion, and class work to prep for said assignment.

My assignments for the Admin program have been “Write a paper in APA format. 5-7 pages.” Current Topic – Continue Improvement Plans (CIP) for ‘your’ District.

I don’t know what these are called in other states, but a CIP is meant to be a plan where a district or school looks at where they are struggling, and actually comes up with a plan on how to fix the issue. I have a problem in that the CIP for my District is pretty much a complete work of fiction – and I told this to my professor, the head of the IAL program, in front of the entire class and two teachers from my district who are doing this program with me. I was on the CIP team in the past, and I wanted to do an honest evaluation of what was going wrong, and how to fix it – and the entire team sat for 6 hours being instructed by our them Superintendent to essentially make shit up.  Me: “We are not doing this, so we can do this to start to fix the issue…” Superintendent: “No. We are doing this. Write this in the plan. We are doing amazing at this…” I got so pissed that after the first work day of it, I resigned from the team. When the school board chair asked me why, I told him, and he defended the superintendent because the man had been his football coach and “father figure” when he was a kid in high school. I call BULL SHIT..

Back to my paper. What are the guidelines? “Write an evaluation of the CIP for your District. Be thorough.”

And what do I want to be doing? Playing with my fur babies.

 The light puppy is no longer a puppy. She is our Shiba Inu, and she is SMALL – only 16 pounds. Boo is the same age as my niece, 10 years old, and they almost share a birthday. She got her name as a puppy due to needle teeth and the desire to maul, causing “Boo-boos.” We decided it was also short for Kabuki, an assassin character in a graphic novel series my boy and I both really enjoy.

The dark puppy is our youngest, is an Alaskan Lee Kai and he is almost 2 (will be in March). We adopted him about a month after my corgi died. That royally messed me up, and I am still not okay – but this little wolf makes it a lot better. Fen is probably to most lovey dog I have ever met. All he has wanted to do since we brought him home was be with the girl dog. He has to be around her and touch her as often as possible; when he was a puppy and half her size, that was tolerable to her. Now Fen is twice her size, and sometimes, she is really over the puppy touching her. – Fen is short for Fenris, which is the diminutive form of Fenrir from Norse Mythology, so Little Wolf…. My boy sort of let me name him, in that when I pick names for dogs they seem to really fit. A lot of people where he works ask if he is named for a character in Dragon Age II, which he says no…. But I am sort of obsessed with the games, and in the Elvan Language in the game ‘Fen’ is wolf…

 

~Sigh~ Again, I mostly wanted to test out a few features here. And I needed used this as a distraction from being angry at my homework assignment. It is due December 8th, so I have time, but damn it – I actually have a 4.0 in all my graduate level work so far in my life, and I want to keep that…

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November 24, 2017

We have a Shiba too! They are the best!

November 25, 2017

Wow, that CIP thing sounds intense, and what gets me is, they appear to want ways to fix the structure of it, etc, but, when offered they “poo-poo” them? ==Makes no sense to me. Fur babies are both beautiful and I love them, lol.

November 25, 2017

Thank you for the note 😀. Sorry if this is long, I am testing this out since I fully signed up.

The CIP work is intense, but if it is used correctly and honestly, it can be used as a great plan to recognize the problems and start figuring out how to fix them. Too often everyone just wants to deal with the “symptoms,” but never want to deal with the cause. I am working on pissing off a lot of people in my district because I want to hold up a mirror and make everyone take a good long look at where we really are so we can actually do the right thing by our kids.

AND, I love my fur babies too. They will probably be featured a lot.