Meme-less

I am meme-less today and staying away from the quiz site. I couldn’t resist the 80s band one but have found, to my horror, that I am actually a bit jealous of Faith for getting to be Depeche Mode. (World in my eyes is a fabulous song!) Kingfisher Cove, Spanglemonkey and Michelle snagged U2; this talented band has too many great songs to name. (a couple are Electrical Storm and In God’s country) So, I am relaxing today after calling in “sick” and YES, I am still congested and coughing. I did feel a lot worse last week, but today’s half day required no substitute. My school had decided to do a Step Up To Writing seminar and I just couldn’t get intrigued about that. This is the new catch phrase for what we old teachers called organizing one’s writing. It has gimmicks like colored dots and catchy names–but otherwise, it simply teaches students to have topic sentences, supporting evidence and a conclusion. Ofcourse, it is all geared to the writing section of the WASL because in not too many years, all students must pass it. Our “lucky” younger daughter is in the first class that will have to! Now, Alison is an intelligent young lady, but struggles with tests and doesn’t like to read or analyse anything so I am understandably concerned. (and I don’t like feeling worried about a test that may or may not survive under the pressure of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.) Sometimes, I would really like these education experts to volunteer to take over the actual teaching and testing of the students for a YEAR–let them go into the trenches where students don’t show up for school or do so impaired, where some parents don’t have the time or energy to parent so WE are expected to build assets and parent their children, where the test is hard enough that many of these experts(including our own President) probably couldn’t pass every section of it. I know that I couldn’t pass one of the two math sections without a major refresher course! Maybe I need to distract myself by doing another quiz and it will tell me the following: I have an OBSESSIVE personality. Isn’t that a big surprise?