My Hospital Stay

Sorry, I meant to take pictures during my recent, brief hospitalization, but I forgot.

I just checked out this morning from my first stay in a stateside hospital.

Thats right - I spent the night in the hospital and none of you came to see me.

Don't feel bad, though. It's better that you didn't.

I went directly to the sleep center, where I had an appointment for a sleep study, and where I was redirected to the registration desk.

I checked in to Woodland Memorial Hospital at about 7 last night for a sleep study. I arrived to find a Jessica, a beleaguered, but friendly, hospital receptionist trying to cover the lunch-break of the hospital operator and find three different obstetricians to deliver or consult on four different deliveries, reroute patients from the emergency room to the intensive care unit, and track down a back-up X-ray technician to help the on-duty X-ray tech already overrun with patients.

Jessica eventually managed to get me checked in and sent me back upstairs to the sleep center, where my polysomnograph technician, Matt, explained the routine to me, had me fill out some forms and watch a video, hooked me up to more than a dozen different sensors, had me try out a couple of different CPAP masks in case I needed to be fitted with one in the middle of the night, and sent me to bed. (My sleep number is 100.)

I tossed and I turned. I listened to Matt greet and explain the routine to another patient whose appointment was an hour later than mine. I fell asleep. I woke up. I fell asleep. I woke up and called Matt in to disconnect me from the machine so I could use the restroom. I fell asleep. I woke up. Matt came in to reconnect a sensor I had removed in my sleep, but I assumed that morning had already come and that I had to get up. I asked "What time is it, anyway?"

"Uh. . . about three."

"Sweet!" I went back to sleep, and when Matt came in again two hours later, it was because it was time for me to get up. He disconnected me from the sensor array. He had me fill out a survey about the previous night's sleep, and I was able to shower there at the sleep center and wash from my hair and beard the glue out that had held the various sensors in place.

All in all, it was a fairly restless night's sleep and I think that I was right to take today off of work, despite the extra work that creates, but I look forward to learning the results of the study.

Will I have one of the eighty different known sleep disorders?

I'll find out in four weeks.

Genetic Engineering

I support genetic engineering and believe that its inevitable risks will be outweighed by its benefits. Further, I believe that our long-term survival as a species, like that of any species, will depend upon our ability to adapt to our changing environment. Further, I endorse reading Richard Dawkins.

Whack-a-Mole

Remember the arcade game you played as a kid, before everything was digital? Plastic moles pop up from apertures in the play surface and, armed with a foam mallet, the player is tasked with quickly smacking each mole as it appears before it can retreat unharmed.

Some days, teaching reminds me of whack-a-mole. Johnny, get quiet. Sally, sit down, please. Javier, get to work. Louise, don’t punch your neighbor. Paul, raise your hand. Beth, please write on paper instead of the desk. Johnny, get quiet. Sally, sit down, please. . .

I don’t think I’ve seen whack-a-mole in an arcade for a long time. I guess it must not be a big money-maker. Perhaps some people think it’s stupid and futile. Maybe they just tire of the monotony and wish that damned moles would stay where they belong and cooperate long enough to actually learn something.

Those of you who know something of pedagogy may now be foolishly shouting at your computer screens. If so, stop. I can’t hear you. I know that teaching doesn’t have to be futile – that if students are engaged, they will learn and they will be eager to do so. They will be eager to come to school and eager to work hard toward a real goal.

The difficulty in this is teaching engaging lessons – teaching creatively – while adhering to rigid, often arbitrary, standards designed to demand (but not support) mastery of increasingly outmoded skills of the lowest cognitive order. Our current system, overly scripted and nit-picky, often does only a mediocre job of preparing students for late-nineteenth-century factory work, and almost never does a good job of preparing them for the ever-changing challenges of the early-to-mid twenty-first century.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that No Child Left Behind is not the solution. Moreover, I believe that tighter regulation is not the answer. The best parents want the best education for their children and will insist on it. Teachers are creatures of conscience and work hard to do everything they can for their charges.

I know that not every teacher is great. I know that not every parent tracks their kids' education as they should. I also know that this is a reasonably self-policed system and that the money spent on enforcing NCLB would do more good spent in the classrooms.

The number one change needed: smaller class sizes - fewer students per teacher. Every student needs one-on-one time with an adult every day. They need someone they respect to listen to what they say.

Students don't need me scolding them for talking out of turn. They need a turn to talk.

Granted, it wouldn't hurt kids to have enough books for each of them. Furniture with surfaces unmarred by graffiti would be okay. If we actually aspired to prepare kids for tomorrow, we could integrate computers into all of their work, and be sure that they each have free access to a computer at home and at school.

We could give kids responsibility for work that really needs doing and the recognition that they have done it.

Rumor has it that some children can see the bare breasts of the Venus de Milo or hear the words "shit" and "damn" without their heads exploding. We don't need to Nerf the world. Kids will punch each other. They will call each other names. They will learn that there are better alternatives and they will grow.

We don't give our children enough credit. We don't give them enough time. We don't afford them the resources they deserve. They don't get what they need because we don't have the time right now, or we don't want to spend the money.

Guess what: when they rob a liquor store, we'll find the time, won't we? We'll send them to court and appoint an attorney and we'll prosecute them and send them to jail where they'll be supervised and fed and sent to bed until they can be paroled, supervised, work at a job which does not satisfy so they can buy things they don't need, go broke, run out of options, and go rob a liquor store.

Coddling, scolding, insulating, berating - we've tried these tactics and demonstrated that they don't work.

Now, let's try teaching.


Photo copyright 1999-2003 PrintingForLess.com and Creativepro.com

Bambi Meets Godzilla

Just in case you've never seen it. . .
I've loved this movie since I first saw it, in part because of the creator's name, and in part because I have a profoundly dark sense of humor.

Wishes

We've all seen motivational posters, either in an actual office, behind a pointy-haired boss, or in the popular media. You may have seen spoof versions. I found some and wanted to share them with you. You can see a whole slew of them here.

Today

I went to visit the Yuba Sutter Center for Spiritual Awakening, a local branch of an international organization, The United Church of Religious Science. They are an amicable group, and certainly interested in doing good, but not a perfect fit for me. With strong trappings of Christianity, and profound, and fundamental contradictions in their doctrine. I've long longed for a group of community-minded people with sensible ideas about religion. These folks are good people, and definitely open-minded, but their practice is too formal for me.

I came home after this and watched the dogs play. Please to enjoy. This is more my speed of religious practice. Beyond all of the learning and theorizing and good intention, enjoying the moment is the kind of practice that makes life good.

There are wonderful resources for investigation of the beyond within - Carl Hall's Philosophy of Religion class at Yuba College was certainly both engrossing and edifying, and I have met individuals with whom I have shared profound conversations. I try to post here occasionally, but have yet to illicit a response. I enjoy reading and listening to Alan Watts. These are all good, but I have hoped to find a group with whom to meet regularly, with whom to talk about religious ideas, with whom to perform community service.

Perhaps I'll still find such a group. Perhaps I'll forge one myself. Perhaps I'll just get over the impulse. We'll see.

Rhonda!

Reuters reports that a seven-year-old macaw foiled a burglary when he hear a disturbance in the pet shop where he resides and started shouting for his former owner.