Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for May 06, 2014

You kids may think your 28+ years in Pitts arent much, but for the rest of us , it’s been a memorable ride! – If they want it to be more creative, they could take up origami… Teenage Student Paper Turtles vs… “the Shredder!”

They know you so well, Mr. Fogarty, because you’ve taught them for drawn-out yyyyeeeeaaaarrrrssss! ;)

Since you’ve taught this particular class for the last 25 years, when did you find time to teach seniors before now?

The Shred dude! He drank the last vial of ooze! Now we have to pretend to write essays!

“For the first time, Fogarty has pupils – in addition to the ones in his class…” ^

And they’re the only pupils that seem focused!

“Static Quo”“Silence Is Golden And We’re Jaded”

“♪…We Don’t Need No Stale Summation… ♪”“♪…We Don’t Need No Dumb And Droll…♪”“Day-Ohld! Day -Ohld Essay!”or“Down With Tradition ! Always !”

I scanned yester-thread. How sad it was, some of these bitter people scapegoating Tiff. Amazing that a cartoon character can attract so much vitriol. They must have gotten her confused with a girl they knew who stole their boyfriends.

This is why school is a waste of time.Is staying home and spending time with your family really so much worse than writing a heartless essay nobody will ever care about? >_<

He’s a camelion (sp.) !!! ;)

Ingredients for Banana-Raisin Bread:

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour; 1 Tbsp. double-acting baking powder; 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon (I use 1 tsp.); 1/2 cup each high-end margarine (I use salted butter sometimes) and granulated sugar (sometimes I use Baker’s sugar…Not confectioner’s, though); 1 large egg; 1 tsp. vanilla extract (Mmmmm!); 3 Very ripe medium bananas, peeled and mashed; 3/4 cup raisins (I just throw a bunch in without measuring it first…I’m a raisin-a-holic LOL.) ;)

“How did Knute’s shirt change from yesterday?”Sometimes it changes from one panel to the next. I think it’s a “mood” shirt that can read his thoughts!

“It even fits in well with today’s strip, too.” ^And matches the wallpaper nicely, too! It probably also pairs with a nice red…. a Chateau de Bartles and Jaymes….

No, no mistake, ReallyBad. I’d want to jump on them, too, for their overly disrespectful treatment of Mr. Fogarty. Kids like that are the reason that fewer and fewer people enter the teaching profession every year. Or if they’re already teaching, the reason that they leave.

"Fogarty:.“…and, the final essay is worth 95% of your grade.” ^Kids: "Whuh?… Oh! Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Now how do you plug this “ink-thingy and this big white rectangle into my computer?….”

In my AP English class (a longgggg time ago!) a 25-page paper was required. The class had been assigned the paper in the Spring (in a previous English class,) and was required to do the research for their paper over the summer. Here’s where things got “dicey”…I transferred into that APclass in September as I hated the regular English class I had been assigned to. The only Big problem was I had absolutely No research materials for this paper as I hadn’t been in the previous class! I know I passed the class because my report card for that year said so, but I was so stressed out trying to get everything together and doing the day-to-day lessons in Addition to the paper, that I don’t remember the rest of that class at all LOL =-O

Somehow I get this picture of Mr. Forgarty in a bar swapping “war stories” with Calvin’s teacher Ms. Wormwood.;-D

I just put my IS girl to bed, and I’m off to read some more of my book… ’Nite all!

This is one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost (1874 – 1963), “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.”

Not above La Dolce de Thunderbird. – C’est si bon! La douceur de vivre!

il n’est pas. le meilleur vin de la maison est “Wild Irish Rose”! (XD)

Dans le vin il ya accord. -After a glass or two, everybody is on the same side! (LOL!)

Bonne nuit, bonne soir, bonne journée!

Hang on, Fogarty! Only a few more days, and then you’ll be a free man, never having to deal with these unappreciative teens again….Sniff. Good-bye, Mr. Chips….

I like Knute for what he is showing to Fogarty :)

Perhaps the teacher doesn’t deserve that, but Knute certainly knows him well.

it changed to emphasize ‘shredder.’

What did they say that was rude? Luann is picking on her peers; Bernice is making a joke, with Knute piling on. Jokes are not rude.

I got tired of Mr. Fogarty long ago. I’m glad he is retiring and hope he doesn’t change his mind and go on to teach college. ~The topic is interesting though. What did high school mean to them? For Luann it was a place to meet boys, for Tiffany it was a place to meet boys, and for Bernice it was a place to be a smarty pants to Luann. For Knute it was a place to goof off, for Gunther it was a place to learn, and for Crystal it was a place to express herself. For Delta it was a series of stepping stones toward a successful future, and for Rosa it was something holding her back yet preparing her to help save the world. For Quill? Quill is just a prop like a Ken doll is a prop in a young girl’s collection of unreal people.

Luann, about 26 or 36 years from now, you will lean back on your lawn chair, drifting back in time, and maybe to this very moment, and smile!

BOY, Are “We” the SMART-ALECS Today, eh Kiddies?

And You, Mr. Foghat! Are You gonna Take THAT Guff from a Bunch of P.A.K.s???

If They Don’t Do the Essays, Fluke ’em and SEE How They Like REPEATING Their Senior Year.

And Then Maybe Lu will get to the Prom on TIME for Once….,

According to the website of the National Educational Association (and maybe Google?) today is ‘thank a teacher’ day. Ironic, considering the current arc, isn’t it…

-Not being a teacher or an expert on curricula, I’m not sure I can respond to the Common Core issue. Given the ‘experiment’ that Jeb Bush launched in Florida, though, using the so-called ‘FCAT’ tests, I’d be less inclined to put my faith in standardized written tests.-When I was a kid in Pittsburgh, we started high school by taking aptitude tests. Rightly or wrongly, they divided us into segments that were roughly a ‘general’ education curriculum (for those less able in math, science, etc, and most likely not going to college), a ‘business’ curriculum (lots of classes that would be useful to former secretaries, but also basic bookkeeping), ‘college’ and vocational (oriented toward car repair and the like.)-But the good thing was that a skillful teacher and end of year tests meant that you could move around. I started out in the ‘general’ and ended up taking some Advanced Placement English and History classes, thanks largely to good teachers.-Many of the test we took were NOT ‘taught to’ the way the FCAT has been and the Common Core will be. There was a curriculum that the school district had approved, and the mid term and end of year tests did test for comprehension of that curriculum. But other materials were included, too.-The constant emphasis on tests every few weeks in Florida leaves little time for kids to be taught anything other than what is on those tests. I would probably never had ended up in AP classes under this regime, because there is no opportunity to show that you can do anything other than memorize and parrot. Standard tests aren’t about grasping information and figuring out how to use it to solve problems, which is what you need as an employee. Standard tests every few weeks are just about memorizing and showing that you’ve been able to memorize.-The irony is, now, we have constant access to the internet to look up stuff (yes, it’s not always right, but neither was Encyclopedia Britannica, or World Book, if you remember those sources of data). So the metrics we are measuring probably are not telling us if the student can succeed in the workplace, because what we need to measure is not memorization. We need to measure the ability to reason.

“.., that leaving it up to the teachers and teachers unions doesn’t work. So is Common Core one possible approach?” ^Certainly an alternative!

I forgot to also include an anecdote that shows that it is possible to “fulfill and be fulfilled” as a teacher.

My wife is a teacher’s assistant at a school for children with special needs. It runs the full spectrum from physical, to emotional, to behavioral. Many of the kids there are “functionally capable” and have the mental ability to function in society, but have other challenges that may (or in some cases have) prevented them from being in the “general” school system. To deal with what is termed as a “crisis” (a child acts out, has an emotional “breakdown”, or perhaps begins to become a physical threat to themselves or others), they have strategies in place to deal with it. Sometimes it just takes walking and talking with them to “depressurize” the situation and have them work their frustrations out in a structured and safe manner, or in the case of a physical threat, are taught “holds” to keep the child from being able to cause damage to property/people (even in public) and to keep from harming themselves. I mention this, to indicate the kind of environment that my wife and many others willingly submit themselves to for the sake of helping those that would otherwise be considered “an outcast” not only in the general educational system, but also in the general public.

I have volunteered my services (clerical and even labor) for them, and have also gotten to know many of the teachers and staff, and some of the students themselves. I have seen that many of these children have had a stunning transformation at the hands of teachers and staff who don’t give “busy work”, but actually take the time to teach and to help these kids to see the value in dealing with frustrations, challenges, etc. and they actually begin to take on jobs (among other things) and have actually had a stunning transformation in their attitude and in their approach to life, and are now out there working, and living their life, as they have graduated. – That’s why I say that though many places are mired in “red tape”, being used as “guinea pigs” for some agenda, there are many places that are not, and make a case that there is a bridge between teacher and student, for the betterment of both.

Hmmm…. Anti-Climactic, it would seem. :-) I really wanted to know the outcome of the prom, and it’s participants… :)

I see where it was announced in the Sunday strip that Fogarty would be retiring from Pitts HS. Maybe, but perhaps we’ll see him take on a Part Time job at Pitts CC (where Lu will probably be). I can’t see Greg totally dumping Fogarty (after all, he was there before Lu was there). If Lu is supposed to resemble Karen, does Fogarty (at least in part) resemble Greg? If so, I’d think he’d still want his voice to be heard. Maybe Karen is resisting that, but we’ll see.

Anyway, I hope this arc lasts only a short time. Bring on the graduation and the revelations for the gang, as well as Brad and Toni’s wedding!

“..it’s the teachers and administrators who’ve perverted the intent to improve and provide some metric for that improvement…” ^No, that is what I’m saying. It comes from these ones. – “..but all too often are choosing the easier path of ‘teaching to the test” . ^This too is what I’m saying.

But there are standards being pushed that have changed the landscape, too. Growing up in the 70s, the Public TV that I had actually featured learning skills and concepts that drove many points home for me, as well as social concepts and teen issues, and an emphasis on civic awareness and the many wonderful things that can be found to explore and learn about in the place we lived. This was supplemental to the curriculum of the day in the schools. – Now , not only have they taken out all of those things, but it’s been replaced with “infomercials” and “merchandising vehicles” in the form of “dumbed down” programs for kids on Public TV. Not only was there TV for kids, there used to be TV for teens (3,2,1 Contact and many more). Now , there’s hardly a trace. But this has also found it’s way to the classroom, with concepts that are also at times “dumbed down”. “Political correctness” has found it’s way into Public TV and the classrooms (no more Cookie Monster or Oscar the Grouch liking trash), so that a teacher would get in trouble for “straying beyond” and finding effective teaching beyond the “approved” methods of the “textbook”, so that the words could “come alive and mean something” beyond the classroom. Combine this with the “distractions of the day” in the media and other places, and he result? That case in NC of the football player that only had to write a “stream of consciousness run-on sentence pretending to be a paragraph” to "pass a ‘class’ " to keep playing football. Also in many who now know how to text and create “hashtags (#)”, but don’t know how to spell them… It’s no one “scapegoat”. It’s (as usual) a combination between different things…

This link leads to a program that was used in supplement to school work about alcohol education, called "Jackson Jr. High. It went beyond this (on other installments of the program) and showed the dangers of irresponsible behavior when teens got older and encountered situations dealing with alcohol. It drove home the point of “health and safety”. There were many films like this shown in schools and on Public Television. This is important, as these were shown in classrooms for discussion and to see how we all felt. There may have even been a worksheet to do in conjunction with viewing these films, etc. Combined with the ‘standard textbook’ method, believe me, we all were paying attention. But these days, such methods seem to be forgotten. People are being “taught to pass”, or to “learn by rote”, and not “taught to understand”.

“Common Core” is not implemented in all states. Mostly for the reason that some don’t want to be “dictated to” by the Federal government when it comes to how they handle their schools. Some feel that it’s not effective. But many states have “held off” until more can be learned about it’s total effectiveness, in comparison to other methods (past and present)….

In college, I had a Psych teacher who assigned us a lot of paperwork…most of us thought he didn’t read the stuff….so a friend put "(Teacher) is a bas$&*@# in the middle of the essay. The prof circled it in red and put “Is that so”?? He go an A on the essay!!

Yes. You and I actually discussed it a while back on here. I’m in agreement at how convoluted that stuff is!

It’s understandable that folks want to make sure today’s kids are being readied for tomorrow’s economy. But those who are pushing the idea that the only way to ensure that is constant use of standardized testing to be certain that kids retain a collection of facts are NOT measuring how well kids will compete in the workforce. They are measuring how well kids memorize, period.-There are better tests around than both the FCAT (which was foisted on Florida by a man who wants to be President, incidentally) and the standardized tests for Common Core. The existing Advanced Placement (AP) tests for science are the kind that allow the grader to give a kid credit not only for a correct answer but for how the kid reasoned. -My brother teaches college science and had no classes one summer, so he signed up to grade AP chem tests. The kids submitted their handwritten documentation of how they arrived at answers, and he was instructed that he was able to give them credito for their reasoning even if the final answer wasn’t the one that the test expected to see. So what was being measured was reasoning ability, not simply ability to memorize a formula.-I fear that those who are insisting that our kids will fail in the market place if they don’t score well on these standardized memory tests are, in fact, failing our kids. ‘Thinking’ jobs seem to be moving overseas faster and faster. Some blame tax loopholes that let companies do this, but I’m thinking that part of the blame is that they recognize that the workers they need won’t be available in a country that values memorization over reasoning ability.

Ha ha! “Contemporary Gender Studies”. A degree in “the birds and the bees!”…..

Heh, heh!!! True!

-I have to gently disagree, Dave. If more people understood world history, we would not be repeating what started WW 1 and WW 2 right now. We would have understood what it means when a dictator (pretending to be the representative of his people) insists that he has to invade another country to ‘protect his interests’.-No, we don’t have to bomb someone back to the stone age to head off a world war. All we need to do is explain that we will be conducting readiness training in the same area that Russia is about to invade, and we’ll call it off when Vlad the Impaler takes his soldiers home and gets off the field….

How did Knute’s shirt change? The same way Sir Dudley’s flag changes colors or images thereon @ Mythtickle… a very competent, asture and imaginative cartoonist changes it for him.

-Given the mess we have with our foreign policy right now, I think we should not allow anyone to run for President, VP or Congress who has not studied world history. We are embarassing ourselves right now….

Actually, it should be “College Collapse Disorder.” Bees gather in colleges, not colonies. Ants do the latter.

“The strip is like an ongoing Rorschach blob. Nothing much is happening in it, and the onlookers are therefore reading all their own high-school issues into it.””*RB – ouch!!!

Out with the old, in with the new.

Swahili cuisine…..

Re: a degree in “bees”…that is truly needed as we are losing so many hives in such a short period of time…and, as far as I know, no-one knows how to successfully fight what is causing the hives to collapse… ;)

Yep, you’re right about the beating the batter too much…it does toughen the bread… ;)

Re: “hockey pucks” … ;P

Glad to see your “Imagine Nation” replicator device is also still working!… But.. I can’t seem to reach my fork in…

Shredder? Isn’t he supposed to hand the graded essays back to them?