Everybody knows that teachers have the job of making sure that their subject is correctly implanted in their students' minds.  However, just as important in a good teacher is the ability to be a good role model in their students' lives.  After all, if a kid learns about chemistry but doesn't learn what it means to be a good person, then they're not going to make much of their lives.

So, how do teachers fulfill this important role?  In my mind, we have the responsibility to do the following things:

• Show respect for the beliefs of their students.  No matter how strong your political or religious beliefs may be, you have the responsibility to make sure that your students feel comfortable with their own beliefs.  There's nothing wrong with students knowing that you're a Democrat or that you are a practicing Christian - what's wrong is if you make it appear that these beliefs are the only proper beliefs, and that those who disagree with you are somehow flawed.
• Avoid intoxicants in any location where students may observe you.  Though I'm not a smoker or drinker, I am well aware that some teachers partake of one or both of these things.  Whether you believe that this is proper or not, I think it's safe to say that teachers should never practice either vice in the presence of students.  Doing so sends the message that these behaviors are appropriate in a school setting, and they're most certainly not.
• Obey the law.  If a teacher is seen peeling out of the parking lot after school, it's setting a bad example for students.  It's not enough to avoid stabbing somebody to death - we need to strive for compliance with even the smallest laws while students are present.
• Remember that there is no situation where teachers may not be observed by students.  By going into this profession, we should keep in mind that our students may be in any public location we visit.  Because of this, our behavior needs to be proper in all public settings.
• Don't be a dumbass.  Some things that aren't on this list may still count as being a dumbass.  Don't give somebody the finger in traffic, don't throw your trash on the ground, and hold the door for others when entering or leaving a building.  It's these little things that can sometimes make the most lasting impressions.

Remember:  Our job is to make young people into responsible adults.  It's a hard job, and part of the sacrifice that we make is that we need to hold ourselves to standards that other professions don't need to meet.  

At the time of this writing, it's 3:30 AM and I'm getting ready to head out for a trip with our science Olympiad team to Florida.  Because I know that the readership of this blog looks to me for guidance, here are the top five things I think that you should pack for a trip of this kind:

• Hat:  Always take a hat when you travel, because you can put it over your face to sleep, put your things into it when you're at the hotel, and generally look like a cowboy.
• Nasal spray:  I love this stuff.
• Pillow:  You may look like a loser with a travel pillow, but there's nothing better than it for a 15 hour bus trip.
• Kindle:  Reading is good.
• Travel charger:  See the "Kindle" listing above.

Wish us luck!

If you read this blog Tuesday, you know that the story focused on a family in the southern US who was having trouble with their son's attendance issues.  I wrote the blog story based on what the parents told me via email, which, obviously, gave only one side of the story.

As it turns out, one of the readers of this post is a school counselor (also from the South) who knows what this problem looks like from the other side.  She was interested in sharing her viewpoint, and I'm certainly glad that she did.  Below is her unedited commentary on the the blog post, and about attendance issues from the viewpoint of the school:

Today I bring to you the story of a blog reader from one of our Southern states (and I won't say which one to avoid angry email):  Apparently, this reader has a son who attends a fairly well-regarded high school.  He is a nice kid (according to the parents) and does well in school.  The only thing that drives her crazy about her son is that he won't get up out of bed in time to go to school.

She tried to deal with this in the usual ways.  She reasoned with him.  She warned himof the consequences of not making it to school on time.  She even warned her that she would call her school and get them to take action if he didn't change.  That didn't work, so she followed up and called the school.

The teachers assured her that they'd let her know if her son was late.  The counselor assured her that she'd let the parent know if there were any problems.  The mother followed up on a regular basis with these folks so that they wouldn't go out of their way to get in touch.  Apparently, all was well on their end.

Except that her son wasn't making it to school on time.  Apparently, despite the fuss she made, nobody had thought that this was important enough to take action of any kind.  At one point she even encouraged the school to give her son whatever punishment they wanted, and she heard nothing back.

Eventually, she got in touch with her son's counselor.  Though her son was, according to the counselor, a great kid and a good student, etc., the school has no attendance policy to govern lateness.  Because of this, there's nothing the school can do about this.  Lateness, according to them, is not a problem.

So she dropped the issue.  If the school didn't worry about her son's attendance and his grades were fine, then she didn't see why she would worry about it, either.  

The moral of this story:  If you want people to take your school seriously, take the concerns of the parents seriously.

For those of you who love your moms, here are five things that you might want to give her as last minute gifts:

• The Hunger Games (book):  If you're kind of disappointing, this book will at least point out that you could have ended up fighting a bunch of other kids for survival.  Next to these folks, you're the son/daughter of the year!
• Kitten calendar:  Everybody loves kittens.  Unless your mother is evil, of course - in which case you should probably not be celebrating Mother's Day in the first place.
• Carton of cigarettes:  Note - this is only a good gift if your mother is in prison.
• Some dumb stuffed animal:  Though it shows you're lazy about buying gifts, it also says that you didn't forget entirely.
• Pistachios:  Moms love pistachios.  At least, that's what I hear.

That's it for this week's top five.  If you're a mom, have a good day, and if you're not, then wait until tomorrow to have a good day!

I was reading a discussion on reddit.com where various people were facing off about whether or not teachers are or should be considered overpaid.  Here are the arguments in a nutshell:

• Teachers are overpaid because the average salary of a teacher is greater than that of the average worker with a bachelor's degree.  They also get summers off, which means that they work less for the same money.  Added bonus:  Teachers can't be fired for incompetence because of union meddling.
• Teachers are underpaid because teaching is a lot harder than other jobs.  As for the summers off, that's not really so much of a perk when you consider that teachers work so many extra hours during the school year.  It's not really so much of a job as a lifestyle, and a lifestyle that requires so many sacrifices should have better compensation.

Both arguments make sense, and I'm not going to make the case that people on either side of the issue are being idiots with their viewpoints.  I'm not even going to argue the facts in either viewpoint - I concede that they are all true.

However, I disagree with the conclusions both sides make.  In my opinion, teachers make exactly the right amount of money given the circumstances of their employment:

• Consider this:  How much would you like a job that has infinite job security?  Something where it's virtually impossible to get fired no matter what happens in the outside world?  Thanks to teacher unions, this is one of the intangibles of teaching.
• And consider this:  How'd you like to get this job by taking a degree in college that requires nothing more than showing up in classes, with the occasional "research" paper?  Come on down to the world of teaching.
• Let's add another bonus:  Let's say that you only have to prepare one year's worth of lessons that you can repeat year after year in your job.  That sounds better to me than having to do new work every day.

I hope you see my point here:  The reason that teachers make the money that they do is that this is only part of their compensation.  The money is one thing, but the perks I mentioned above are others.  There are teachers (and I hope I'm one of them) that will never partake of the perks above, but all of us know teachers who do.  

In my mind, we teachers should quit whining about our salaries until the perks that I mentioned are removed.  Though teaching is a job that requires selflessness and hard-work, some minor changes to the profession would not only make us perform better at our jobs, but also make us worth more money.

Politicians and the public, remember this:  You get what you pay for.  Don't pay your teachers with incentives to mediocrity, because it's insulting.  Pay us instead (and with some more moeny, too).

I was out of school one day last week (see my post called "Poop" for an explanation why this is the case).  When I was gone, I sent another teacher my lesson plans and asked her to photocopy a packet for my students to do in my absence.  Unfortunately, due to the magic of technology, my email was saved in my "Draft" folder rather than actually having been sent.  This left my substitute with no plans for the day, which was understandably irritating to him.

Now, what would you do in this case?  If I were in his shoes, I'd tell the class to sit quietly and let them do whatever they needed to do.  My kids would have studied for their AP tests, done other homework, and/or quietly goofed off.  It's not an ideal outcome from an educational standpoint, but certainly not the end of the world.

Or, if you're this guy, you can do the following:

• Refer to my classes as "stupid."
• Tell my students that the reactivity of the elements on the periodic table is somehow related to their alphabetical order.
• Tell the students that, though he hasn't taken chemistry in 40 years, that the explanation of collision theory they were given must be wrong.
• Insist on having my students go over a worksheet for material they haven't even seen yet.  As a nice added touch, he made students come up to the front of the board and explain this material they didn't understand for ten minutes at a time.

My students, to their credit, handled this guy very well.  They didn't laugh at him when he was acting goofy and they didn't talk back to him.  They basically just humored the guy and ignored his weird behavior.  Though this guy seemed to think that my kids are morons, their unwillingness to hurt the guy's feelings shows me exactly the opposite:  That they're caring and responsible young adults.

I'm proud of my students.  Whether they're doing well or poorly in my classes, they all passed the test of what it means to be a good person.  And in the end, that's the only test worth passing.

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If you want to amuse and amaze yourself, here are five things to keep you busy this week:

• Infectionator 2 (web game):  You're controlling the zombies who are trying to destroy the world.  Highly addictive.
• Sansa Clip+ MP3 player:  I don't have a cell phone, but I've got about three of these things.  If you want lots of music in a small package, grab some of these for about $25 online and go nuts.
• Dumpsters:  We just had my driveway done and there's a gigantic dumpster out in front of my house.  It's kind of amusing because 1)  It's too heavy to be moved, even by the company that dropped it here; and 2) My neighbors hate it.  If you want to make a nuisance of yourself, I highly recommend getting a dumpster delivered to the street in front of your house.
• Window air conditioners:  The top floor of my house gets hot in the summer, so I need a little something to keep my bedroom cool.  That's where the air conditioners come in.
• Hats:  I'm trying to become a hat guy, so I've been trying out different hats.  If you see me, please tell me that my hat looks awesome so I will be inspired to continue my efforts.

And that's it for this week.  Next week, we'll explore the magical world of hex wrenches.

Once again, it's time for the education roundup, where I discuss some of the strange and unusual things that have happened in the world of education over the past few weeks.  For those of you who are students of educational silliness, I bring to you...

• Transsexual teacher, burlesque dancer, forced to resign (KOB News):  When she was hired, she was a man, and during the teaching process, transistioned to being a woman.  And, somewhere in there, became a showgirl.  One complaint was enough to get her fired, and she has settled with the district for a bunch of money.  I'd make a comment about how this is either correct or completely unfair, but to be honest, I have no idea what to think of the whole thing.
• 16 New York Teachers Accused of Sexual Misconduct Still Teaching, City Struggles to Fire Them (Huffington Post):  Apparently, acting out the prison rape of a student isn't enough to get you canned in NYC.  And for you stalkers out there, sending multiple text messages and following a student to her job is apparently A-OK.  Zero tolerance, it seems, only applies to students.
• Virginia's new high school graduation requirement - one online course (Washington Post):  Though I'm not opposed to online education, I wonder why this was seen as such an important thing for students.  After all, you can claim that students need to get tech-savvy for the information age, but it seems to me that simply going online and uploading essays isn't exactly rocket science - or something that students don't already do on a regular basis.  Instead of pretending that this is a special educational opportunity, let's just call it what it is:  A way of teaching students without paying for more teachers.
• Columbus High principle reassigned after sharing video at staff meeting (WRBL News):  Who would have ever guessed that showing "You can't fix stupid" in a staff meeting would have negative repercussions.  I guess this principal made his point in two ways.
• Danish school fined for forcing Muslim student to eat pork (World Bulletin):  A culinary school expelled a Muslim student in 2010 for refusing to eat pork.  Their reasoning had some validity:  If a student doesn't know what pork tastes like, how can they be expected to cook it properly?  The answer, of course, is that they can't.  However, because a Muslim chef most likely would never cook pork in the first place, the expulsion doesn't really make any sense.

That's it for now, or until educators (or the people who hate them) cause a new ruckus.

For those of you who are a little squeamish, you may not want to read the rest of this post.  As you might have guessed, it includes a story about pooping.

For the rest of you sickos, here's a little story from the life of Mr. Guch:

Two days ago, my son was feeling really sick.  He clearly had to poop, but nothing was happening on that front.  Now, he has a history of constipation, but this was something far worse.  I figured that things would work themselves out, so didn't worry about it except to give him some laxative.

Yesterday was worse.  I took him to daycare, but when I picked him up our daycare provider told me that Steve had been running a low grade fever and that he had not been himself.  When he saw me, he ran into my arms and cried.  He also writhed around in pain.

At that point, I decided to take him to the emergency room.  After all, this behavior was unheard of for my son, and he was clearly in agony.  I got him checked in, and we waited (and waited, and waited).  All the time, my son was either writhing around or nearly passed out on the floor.

Until...

The writhing got worse.  My son screamed a bloodcurdling scream, causing everybody to look over.  He rolled around the floor, shrieking as loud as he could.  It was terrifying.

Then, nothing.  He tentatively got up off the floor, walked over to me, and put his finger in my nose.  Then he giggled.  I knew he was cured.

So, what was the problem?  When I changed him, I found that he had pooped out, all at once, two fist-sized poops with the consistency of modeling clay.  Apparently, they had been blocking him up.  For the next half-hour I questioned him to see if he was truly OK - he was.  Problem solved, we went home.

So, what in the world does all of this have to do with education?  Think of my son as the teaching profession, and the poop as our country's educational reform policies.  Right now, we're all writhing around in pain, as the policies get more and more out of hand.  However, nothing lasts forever, and when these policies are finally and inevitably eliminated, the teaching profession will quickly bounce back unharmed.

Teachers, don't worry about education reform.  We'll get through it, and as soon as its stinky filth passes through the colon of of public policy, we'll get through unscathed.