lordbrook
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Posts posted by lordbrook
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Someone reassure me I'm not being a hypochondriac. I've had a sore throat since Thursday night. No fever, and I developed a dry cough and intermittent stuffy nose yesterday. I'm almost 100% positive it's a cold. But my throat is really red, I know for a fact I've been exposed to strep multiple times in the last 2 weeks, and I work with some kids who are immunocompromised. Going and getting a rapid strep test is reasonable, right? I feel like a huge weenie going to the doctor for what is almost certainly just a cold. I laugh at people who do that. Now I'm one of them.
That is the best reason for going.
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Ehhhh, I see these issues almost every day (my wife is a Middle School AP, and she's been doing the Master Schedule for 4 years) and I can KINDA see the other side. The problem is the position she wants. There is pretty much universally just one Health teacher (and in most cases they have to teach other classes as well) because it's a 1/4 elective. Because not every student has to take it every year and it's in a rotation with other classes there is only room for one teacher to teach it. Even if your wife is as or more qualified than this other teacher to teach it, you can't just bump a teacher out of a position for another teacher generally. Not sure how it is out there, but I know around here they are guaranteed their jobs after year 3 (aside from a lengthy firing process) so she couldn't just be bumped out the door, and she is more than likely not qualified to teach something else.
From my side of things (I'm in upper level HR) the move could in theory be done, but only under a couple scenarios. A) There would have to be another teaching position open where the current health teacher could be moved to, you can't just get rid of a teacher because someone else wants to teach what she is teaching. B) The other teacher would have to be qualified to teach that other subject. Basically (and I see this one happen all the time) if we are talking about teachers that are qualified to teach Reading and English (separate subjects here), the qualifications are the same for both jobs, so you can move them around at will. If your wife wanted to teach English instead of Reading one year, it'd be up to that department head, but they could move her into it no problem and move an English teacher into Reading. Going from Science to Health is much harder because you are crossing into other departments, and from a class with a much higher enrollment to a lower enrollment.
Sorry to encroach on your rant, just trying to make sense of why they would say that. Part employment law, part teaching logistics. These are the kinds of conversations that my wife and I get into all the time because the HR department in their school system is about worthless. Where in the private sector you can bring in someone more qualified and replace someone anytime you want, teaching is a whole different world when it comes to employment, as it should be, since it's the only profession in the country where their employer allows them to be harassed constantly, they consistently have their contracts ignored, and in some cases their job security is completely dependent on children and their parents and is totally out of their own control.
Sorry I've been doing a big upgrade at work so I've been off the web for a bit.
There is currently a Health teacher that is retiring at the end of the school year. Because there is a teacher that has been at the school for 6 or 7 years and asked to take over teaching health (I think my wife said she teaches Spanish right now) the principal said she gets the Health position because she essentially asked first. It's frustrating to me as a parent because I want the best person in there to educate my kids. I know this sort of thing happens all the time, but it pisses me off. I see it in my job in IT and it makes me mad in that area as well and I'm one of the older guys.
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Let me rant on a little bit more about my wife's position. We both got home yesterday evening and she told me she had spoken to her principal about varying her teaching for next year. She would like to start teaching health instead of just teaching science. Now before anyone says teaching health is just a way to not teach, my wife has a real passion for health. Like I said before she has an undergrad in Exercise and Sports Science and a masters in Health Education along with her other undergrad in Biology. She was a personal trainer for years while she was going to school and then an Exercise Physiologist at the Fitness Institute of IHC (a regional HMO) for 6 years prior to beginning her teaching career. Not to mention the fact that you could bounce a quarter on her abs and that's after having 3 kids and being in her mid '30s (yes I'm bragging). So she is beyond qualified to teach Health in Jr. High or Middle School or whatever you guys call it. The response she got from her principal; "Sorry but Mrs. X has her teaching endorsement for Health and has been teaching here for 6 years longer than you so she'll be teaching it next year." I understand that there rightfully should be advantages given to workers that have been loyal and done well, but this is just stupid to me.
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Between two takes of the SAT, three SAT II's, the GRE, the PRAXIS, and all the reporting fees, these people probably have about $850 of my money since 2004. And they totally have you over a barrel. If I don't take the PRAXIS, I can't get certified. So I grit my teeth and shell out the $130. And I hate them in the process.
My wife just paid for hers last night and we are down $220 for the test and study guide and all that crap. No test, no job.
Since this is a rant, let me rant for a moment. These Praxis tests are to verify that teachers can actually teach the subject they graduated in. Not a bad thing in general I would think. As a parent I know I wouldn't want Jack Black teaching my kids music because he didn't understand how to teach them math, so I get the need for the test. What kills me though is that generally speaking, anyone out there looking for a teaching job is going to know the subject matter well enough to pass a test on it. They just passed many tests on it or they wouldn't have the degree. What I wonder is why aren't the teachers that have been there for 20 years required to take any tests? They are the ones that are so jaded they are just going through the motions until they hit retirement age. Now I know that I'm speaking in generalities, but the anecdotal evidence from my wife confirms it. They (the multiple educational oversight boards both local and national) make it so that teachers have to jump through so many GD hoops for garbage pay that many of them say it's just not worth it. Is anyone surprised there is a problem with teacher retention? Prior to the economy crash nearly half of all teachers left the profession within their first five years. Now that number is decreased greatly but I would say it's due to lack of other opportunities rather than new teachers suddenly loving all the garbage they have to go through just to make a crap salary. Just to be clear, I don't think that all teachers that have been in the profession for a while have given up, I'm just saying that a lot of them have and they are the ones that are a real threat to the quality of education, not the new teachers that still have a desire to teach.
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ETS is such a racket. Praxis test fee: $80. Registration fee (non-refundable): $50. How can the freaking registration fee be almost as much as the cost of the test? Ticketmaster has nothing on these mobsters.
My wife has already taken and passed two of these Em Effers and she still has to take another two just to prove that she's qualified to teach 7th graders about cell division. I guess her two bachelor's degrees (Sports Science and Biology) and one master's degree (Health Education) aren't good enough. We have to pay for them too. WTF?
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Last night at the grocery store:
Checkout Lady to dumb biatch in front of me wearing Red Sox shirt: "Oh are you a Sox fan too?"
Dumb biatch: "Well we went to Boston a few years ago on vacation and ended up going to a game, so you KNOW I had to buy a shirt."
Me grumbling: "F&*%ing douchebags."
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I wish someone would give her some billy goats gruff to distract her so she'd shut up for a while.
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If I can physically see you chomping on your gum, chances are that you're chewing so loudly that I want to punch you.
Quit talking about my mom. Besides, the line to punch her for chomping her gum forms behind me, my sister and my brother.
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This doesn't sound normal. You don't have to be in severe pain or running a fever for it to be an infection. You should probably see a doctor or see if your oral surgeon can take a look ASAP.
Seconded. My mom let something like that go and yada yada yada, she now has a piece of cadaver bone replacing the part of her jaw that was eaten up by infection.
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Building a deck.
My nights and weekends are no longer mine. I'm a slave to the lumber.
I've been there and you have my sympathy. I've never been a slave to someone's wood though.
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You are advocating actually visiting areas and witnessing the culture before judging...not making generalizations based off of internet comments. Very different concept.
This is coming from Utah, so consider the source, but my nephew's dad is a police officer in the small city right next to mine. He retired after 20 years in a larger Utah city and started working again as a beat cop. He absolutely hates his job now. I asked him why when I was talking to him on Monday. He said because they get calls all the time about stupid crap. I asked him what the most common stupid call was. He said that anytime a black man walks in a neighborhood they get tons of calls about it. A black man. Walking. Stupid farking homogenous Utah bigots. That's what I'm ashamed of.
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My baseball team in 1977 was the Orioles. I didn't watch much baseball up to that point, but I started following the O's. I was seven at the time so it was mainly casual, but I've been a fan ever since.
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OMG this is one of the funniest threads I've read. Ok here are my 3 office bathroom personalities. I don't know the names of these guys, so I've given them names.
1. Homeless Pat Riley. He is balding and overweight but he slicks his (remaining) hair back just like Pat Riley. He always talks on his phone while he's in a stall, even while flushing. I would hang up on anyone if I heard a flush.
2. Sh*tbreak. This guy takes a crap about 50 times a day. I swear he is in there all the time for like 30 seconds each time, then he just rinses his hands for <1 second instead of washing. I feel like I need a full body condom just to walk into the bathroom.
3. Mad Mudder. This guy takes the bathroom destroyer cake. He's an old dude that does nothing but drink coffee mixed with hot chocolate all day. He absolutely wrecks the toilet. I would go home sick before using it after him. You can always tell when he's in the stall because it sounds like a knife fight; all grunts and splatters.
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1. If the kids are 2, glare at the parents...not the 2 year old.
2. If they are teenagers, glare away.
3. If they are my teenagers acting like that, say whatever you want...they deserve it.
If it's my teenager doing that, don't worry because I've already cuffed him in the back of his rude head. If anyone had ever touched my two year old and they weren't a doctor or a paramedic it would have been ass whuppin' time.
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Why do I have to see Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian when I go to a news site? They have done NOTHING in their lives to allow them to breathe the same air as me much less be on a news site. They are famous for being the kids of rich families. Sometimes I'm ashamed to be human.
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I'm with you. I hate him even more now that I can't even properly enjoy the Pats losing because it means I have to listen to his self-indulgent trash talking for another week.
I was so torn with that game. I wanted both teams to lose. Ryan needs to just shut his gob and coach football. Where did the Tom Landry coach model go?
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My wife got hired less than one week after graduation. She's amazing.
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I'm not biased. I've never met a person who hasn't thought my daughter wasn't adorable. My profile picture is almost a year old, but she's not any less cute. She's probably more so now that she can communicate verbally.
Adorable. You can borrow my guns too.
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Yea, I'm always getting, "Oh, you're in trouble in a few years"..My little girl is a cutie, though I'm a tad biased. See my profile pic, and you'll see thankfully she looks nothing like me.
Dude you better buy a gun in 10 years or you can borrow some of mine. She's adorable and will need proper dad protection. I'll probably be in prison for murdering some teenage punk by then so I won't need them anymore.
Dr. FLK congrats on another girl. I actually wanted healthy babies and we got them. 2 boys and 1 girl and they're all just wonderful. My brother in law was disappointed when his first was a girl and I wanted to punch him. Oh and BTW, my daughter is more athletic than both my boys.
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There are much bigger celebrations that go on' date=' and the refs don't even think about grabbing for their flag. There's no guarantee that we would have scored the 2 point conversion, we had several other opportunities in the game to get at least one more score, and defense took most of the day off, but there's no way you can make that call at such a crucial juncture in the game unless there's no question it was excessive.
And the best part was the explanation, that he was "drawing attention to himself." Isn't the attention already on him, seeing as how he just scored, no matter what he does after he scores? And I gotta feel bad for him, I'm sure he feels absolutely terrible about it. Oh well.[/quote']
That was a joke, and I couldn't have any less of a preference for who won that game. Sports are exciting, and I'm not there to watch robots. We're not talking about the choreographed celebrations the mid '80s Redskins had that involved the whole team. Sheesh
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I hate having my co-worker go to Japan for a month on vacation and now I have 4 weeks of doing the work of two people. :angryfire:
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We just took the kids on a whirl wind tour of all 5 National Parks in Utah in 5 days. Man what a great trip.