| Sunday, August 02, 2009 |
| I now know his name |
A long time ago--gosh, I forgot how long I have been doing this blog--I put in some of the bad poems I wrote back in high school. In May 2005, I posted them: http://mjb0123.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_archive.html.
Then interestingly, one of them came back to my mind today. It appears I now know "his name."
V
This is a poem I wrote after I learned of the first American casualty
during Desert Storm. I found it amazing that the name wasn't included in the
article.
V
(On January 17, 1991)
There is a man I know not of
Yet his death is everything.
To war he went
And great pride did bring.
There is a man I heard of
His death nothing yet everything.
To war he went
To America he did sing.
There is a man the world now knows
Following only the orders of the game.
To war he went
Yet I don't even know his name.
Today while watching Fox News, it appears that his name may be Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher. The article is here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536170,00.html. His info can be found simply on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Speicher.
I am somehow unburdened by knowing his name. It seemed to weigh on me, now that I know the answer. I remember writing the poem, as bad as it is, yet with full heart on the bravery and sacrifice of this man. Whatever article I read when I wrote it, I thought somehow it was horrible that the name wasn't there. It seemed the first of many unnamed casulaties, which made it even worse. I mean, even now, we don't know the names of the men and women who die for our freedom. Who was the second to die in the first Gulf War? Does dying second diminish the sacrifice (a resounding "NO!" screams in my head).
In January 1991, I was turning 18 in my senior year of high school. Talk of a draft circulated. My mother even said how I wouldn't go. And I remember thinking to myself that I would go if my number were called.
Now I know his name. It hit me back then and it hits me today. This guy was a hero. I am glad that knowledge has burdened me because it has always made me remember the sacrifice.
Rest in peace. Thank you for your service and sacrifice. |
posted by Matt Butcher @ 11:43 AM   |
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| Wednesday, July 29, 2009 |
| Set your phasers on stunning... |
Get Your Star Trek: The Next Generation PhasersWednesday, July 29, 2009 COMING SOON! We're at a bit of a loss as to the best lead for today's news. For example, we could say, "Step right up and get the weapon of choice for the Picard generation!" We could also say, "Behold! The final accessory for your Halloween costume after you grow Jonathan Frakes' beard!" Either way, the really important thing is that you see this Rubies Star Trek The Next Generation Phaser, which looks just like the Dustbuster-style weapon from the show. Fine late-1980s engineering and design show you the weapon of the future, as envisioned during Reagan's America. Don't miss out-- order yours today! Star Trek The Next Generation Phaser |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 10:11 PM |
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| Thursday, July 23, 2009 |
| Obama cartoon #1 |
Saying "We're sorry" may not be the brightest move right now, what with North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq. I am of the opinion that America voted for the rock star. I still don't think he had any experience in any of these matters. He is acting like I did my first year of teaching. I just hope he gets better in his career as I did in mine. Some of these politcal cartoonists have started to show this. The love affair is over. |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 2:58 PM |
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| Americans Against Food Taxes |
It is not enough simply to recognize that Washington, D.C.’s intended tax on soda and juice drinks is unnecessary, regressive and discriminatory; all hard-working Americans must also declare that this tax hike is unacceptable…as in, we reject it outright. It cannot be enacted. We won’t stand for it. This soda and juice drink tax goes against our interests and our wishes…and it’s our responsibility to tell Washington we won’t stand for it. We must act, and we must act now if we are to prevent this discriminatory and destructive tax from being made law. Fill in your information below and we will automatically send the following message to your legislators in Washington, D.C. You may also edit the message below before you hit send.
Click the link below to take action on this issue.:
http://www.votervoice.net/link/forward/nyagainst247390.aspx
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| posted by Matt Butcher @ 9:42 AM |
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| Wednesday, July 22, 2009 |
| An Obituary for a Gamecube |
Yeah, I know it's old, but we still had a Nintendo Gamecube. It was still awesome and a great gaming platform. It had Mario Kart for Pete's sake.
No, it didn't die from use or anything. It disappeared.
We moved recently, right? Well, we hired a couple of guys to help us get that heavy stuff down those three flights of stairs. I couldn't do it alone. I am not the strapping young lad I once was. We paid Labor Ready for a couple of guys to help us load up the truck. Turns out, it was a great use of money. Otherwise, we probably still would be moving bits and pieces.
I packed the Gamecub almost last. I was in the middle of like my tenth season in franchise mode for Madden 2007. I packed the console and the twenty or so games in a small white box and wrote "Nintendo" on the outside in magic marker.
I think one of those two guys walked off with it.
I am not 100% sure, mind you. I am 99.8% sure. It's been three weeks and we have not come across the box. There simply is just no other place it can be. We are all unpacked now. Plus, I have deliberately searched for the Gamecube alone. I'm off for the summer; I have time.
Maybe one of those guys thought it was a Wii or something. I would love to have seen his face when he opened it and said, "Damn, it's only a Gamecube."
And I gave those guys a healthy tip too. They earned that money, that's for sure, but they didn't earn my Gamecube.
So goodbye Gamecube. And Matt Butcher, Running Back for the Chicago Bears ho broke every single rushing record in NFL history on that Madden 2007 franchise, is retiring in peace. |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 5:35 PM |
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| Friday, July 17, 2009 |
| The Lost Tapes of the Moon Landing |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090717/ap_on_sc/us_sci_moon_video;_ylt=AjcuwobLS3PDw2R6g1BRgf8DW7oF
NASA says it must have taped over the original footage. Possibly the greatest achievement of mankind and it taped over them!
What's funny is that so many people think that footage was faked anyway. I wonder if there was new pressure for those tapes so they became "lost." This way, new technology could not debunk the authenticity of the tapes.
I love conspiracy theories. |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 7:18 PM |
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| Tuesday, July 14, 2009 |
| We want to succeed |
During summer school, I have the chance to catch up on my academic reading. Some ACT reports on college readiness and some other journal articles. I have to know what these places think of my English classroom.
However, I dislike the sweeping, broad strokes of disapproval without having much specific concrete steps on what teachers should be doing. I am one of those teachers who, if you tell me the kids need this stuff, I will put it into the curriculum. If you tell me to make sure a process is taught, I will teach it. If you tell me to take something out, I will do it. This year, I will be adding more grammar in the fall. I will be adding some more writing responses with specific requirements, especially for my new college-prep English I class. I will be adding more requirements to stuff we already do.
But what am I missing? I do not have a degree in pedagogy or English curriculum. I do not have all the answers. For instance, I am still trying to work out what the heck to do for a book report for independent reading that is rigorous, accountable, and that the kids can’t get off the internet or Sparknotes. I would love to have students read a classic on their own, but how do I know that they have read the book and didn’t just take it all off a movie or Sparknotes? Just give them a boring multiple choice test? There’s always a kid or several who figure out a way around it. I have tried everything—that I know of. I think this is rather pertinent—“That I know of.”
These studies want students to succeed. My district and I want our kids to succeed. I believe that the vast majority of our students succeed and try hard in everything they do. I have had two wonderful freshman classes in a row. The hard part, sometimes, is fighting apathy and recalcitrant students. Some students do every other 10-point assignment. Some must be mathematical geniuses in figuring out how to get the lowest D- possible, doing the least amount of work. There were times this last year with my regular senior English IV class that I could not understand the requirement of four years of English for these students. Even the good ones in that class still did only enough. When they still like to read the novel together in class rather than on their own, even silently during class time, simply because they hate reading, what can I do at this late stage?
Sometimes, grades do not matter to students. I find it excruciating when I have written on a paper of theirs, they look at the final grade of a C or something, then throw it away. Even after all my comments, they throw it away without looking. Even if they have the opportunity to turn in another draft, the standard phrase nowadays is “I’m good.” I actually had it once where I forgot the papers at home yet still had their grades in the computer. All they wanted to know was what the grade was. They never followed up to get their papers back. Even the F papers. How do I increase rigor here when they will not look upon recommendations for improvement?
So when this study came across my desk, I want some more specifics:
“For example, graduation requirements are often expressed in terms of credits (e.g., the amount of credits in various subject areas needed to graduate), rather than as specific academic courses (Potts et al., 2002). To the extent that high schools offer courses other than those in the college preparatory sequences, students may satisfy graduation requirements (i.e., amount of credits) without taking the specific courses that would best prepare them for further education (and work). That students choose such alternative coursework is clearly demonstrated in the percentages of students who took course combinations that may or may not have included the courses previously described.”
--from Courses Count: Preparing Students for Postsecondary Success, ACT Policy Report, 2005. http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/CoursesCount.pdf.
Potts, A., Blank, R. K., & Williams, A. (2002). Key state education policies on K-12 education: 2002. Washington , DC : Council of Chief State Schools Officers.
Of course they are going to choose basketweaving if it will fulfill a requirement. I remember my college writing course, I believe it was ENG 384 with Dr. Bruce Leland. He was an outstanding teacher and we all liked going to his class. I even helped him present to the IATE convention back in 1995. His class required three of these little flimsy paperback books, about $12 each, that included supplemental reading for discussion. We never talked about them and we were never tested over them. Nobody read them—I remember one girl did and she was furious that they were not used in any way for the course. Now, I am sure those were decent and thought-provoking reads. I am sure they enhanced the subject material. But come on, who the heck is going to do more than they have to do? And we were third-year college students trying to get ahead. A high school student will figure out the easiest possible way. We do it all the time. I read the Cliffs Notes for many books.
I honestly believe some students have figured out that they don’t have to strain themselves to get by. I had some English IV kids that could easily have taken the College Prep class of English IV but didn’t want to do the extra work. I know some math students are taking Pre-Algebra in their senior year because they have messed around enough to fulfill the simple requirements. And if they look bad in math, they don’t have to do as much.
Now this whole thing did come back to haunt me once. I remember Mr. Hickey’s Algebra I and II classes. We had 30-question problem sets every night for homework. Catch—he would only grade 4 randomly chosen problems. We would write down what we had on our paper for those 4 and turn them in. I learned that I didn’t even have to do the homework—just writ down all the problems (because we couldn’t use our books) and do them in class really quickly. I aced. Problem was that he knew it but couldn’t figure out a way around me. Then comes College Algebra and I am barely getting Cs. I just couldn’t hack it anymore. He said to me once, “This is because you never did all your homework in Algebra I and II so you don’t have a firm foundation.” I was getting straight As in Algebra I and II but somehow I wasn’t doing enough. You couldn’t have explained it to me at that age though. I only understand it now, many years later.
The other problem I see with some of this data is that they recommend taking math classes and science classes that most students do not take until their senior year. Yes, they are planning on taking them, but that doesn’t really help when they take the ACT at the end of their junior year, now does it?
Also, I would really like to point out that some students never take these tests seriously. Maybe not the ACT, but any of the other reporting data tests. Eighth graders know that the test doesn’t affect them in any way that they can see, so they go through it fast or not as completely as they probably could. I remember, I think my sophomore year, Matt Adrian connecting the dots on his standardized test just so that he could finish early and read his latest Stephen King novel. Nobody ever said he was stupid in school. He just knew that the test did not affect him. How do we express to kids that their score is going to be lumped into some vast set of data to be interpreted by bureaucrats and people that they have never even heard of, let alone what the heck a “bureaucrat” is.
So what exactly do I do? I mean, exactly. No, they don’t have to give me daily step-by-step lesson plans. I do want them, however, to express specific items in assignments that I can concentrate on.
My answer to most of this is to tell people to stop telling me what we are doing wrong. Start telling me what to do right. When you say to increase rigor: HOW? When you say to get students ready for college: HOW?
My biggest thing: Why the heck does each district have to reinvent the wheel here? In fifty states, in countless districts and classrooms, we have not figured out precisely what to do? There has to be some perfect model for rigor and college readiness—present it to us. I would be happy to work with it. But I simply cannot create it on my own.
Or, if I do, I guess I would be rich. Because I would sell it and you would all pay me. |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 1:09 PM |
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| Summer School |
Ah, yes, teaching summer school. Cramming a whole semester into two weeks. Ahh. Just seems like America, eh?
It’s good money though. I have the kids working hard, with a set list of things to accomplish. And I just sit back and help when they need it. The only hard part is the grading, especially the worksheets. Takes forever to grade those.
However, to keep me sane at home, I have found several awesome browser-based internet games that are sort of like Age of Empires.
Evony at http://mjb0123.evony.com/
Travian at http://www.travian.us/
EV Online (a space game!) at http://www.supremestrategy.com/
I love turn-based games. I actually played a bit of postal games where you mailed in your moves. Did one about gangs—can’t remember the name—and plenty of postal chess. The cool thing with these games is that you can update your city and it works while you are away. You only have to login every once in a while, if you want.
Friends from NOME! The Wehdes came by to visit us for the week. The were in Minnesota anyway visiting family and since Morgan has really kept up with the two girls by IM and email, they came down to visit.
And I am going to do volleyball again. Head Varsity coach for Midland High School. I must be nuts. No, I’m kidding, it will be a great time. Actually, probably a better time than Nome considering the away travel in Alaska every weekend. I will only have two Saturdays here. That’s what I think was so long about the Nome season is that it was almost seven days a week every week.
There’s a schedule! http://www.highschoolsports.net/defaultcal.cfm?ct=s&schoolid=IL613752657&spt=18&lvl=1&division=2 |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 3:42 PM |
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| Wednesday, July 01, 2009 |
| Found Rare Hitchcock |
Found it!
http://www.archive.org/details/Suspicion_1_01_Four_O_clock
I have been looking for this off and on for years. In my quest to watch all Hitchcock-directed movies and TV shows, I finally found a copy of this TV episode. It is from a show called Suspicion from 1960, an episode entitled "Four O'Clock."
It is now in Public Domain and available for download at the Internet Archive. They also have a few more of his films.
Now I just need to keep working on finding some of his really early and really rare stuff to watch. |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 9:57 AM |
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| Wednesday, June 24, 2009 |
| Moving yet again |
We are so excited for the move this weekend.
No, not to another state! We are moving about 45 miles north of Normal, to one of the three towns in my school district, Lacon.
Just very excited to be in a house, finally. And I will not have that long commute anymore.
I will even be coaching volleyball again in the fall because I will be close and in-district.
Excited about the move, yet hate moving. Friday will be the tough day and then it is all settling in from there. |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 11:29 PM |
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| Outrage over Arlen Specter |
I've been thinking about this for weeks.
The GOP, specifically Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an email (4/28/09) newsletter, "Arlen Specter has put his loyalty to his own political career above his duty to his state and nation."
The newsletter also says, "As recently as April 9th, Senator Specter said he would run in the Pennsylvania primary next year as a Republican."
I don't care what Arlen Specter does. He's not my Senator. However, I do think that he is wrong for changing parties in the middle of a term.
I honestly think that is dirty. That is wrong. If he wanted to change--fine. But he needed to wait until the next election cycle. He needs to go through the primary with full disclosure.
I believe the people of that state have a class action lawsuit on their hands--either fraud or bait-and-switch.
Many times when I have voted, I have been able to vote strictly by party--in fact, in many places, you cannot vote in the primary of another party. Also, how many times have people voted without really knowing who was who and voting strictly along party lines? I admit to this, especially on some of those "lesser" elections, like judges or comptrollers, where there is a dearth of information even in local papers. I am willing to bet that some people in that state voted for Specter solely based on party.
So voting for one party clearly does not mean anything anymore if the person can switch in the middle.
Which brings up my own little conspiracy theory--what if one party decided to run "moles" in each primary? Especially in smaller venues? If they put personable people in both primaries or elections, win, and then change later?
Scary, ain't it?
I just think the whole thing lessens and cheapens the vote. If I vote for someone based on their stances, and they switch their agenda in the middle of a term, I believe that to be wrong. If the President got up today and said he was becoming Republican, I would welcome outrage. It just isn't right.
Even if the politician voted for issues differently than constituents expected based on party affiliations, that's fine. That's understandable to vote singly on separate issues. But you don't change your whole party affiliation in the middle of a term. It's not right and I believe that those constituents have a class action bait-and-switch lawsuit.
http://www.gop.com/ |
| posted by Matt Butcher @ 7:13 AM |
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| Random thoughts about all that I can muster. As William Shatner once said, "Get a life!" |
| The Butcher Shop |
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Name: Matt Butcher
Home: Normal, IL, United States
About Me: An English teacher with a zest for life. Family. Comic books. Stuff.
See my complete profileSubscribe
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"This above all: To thine own self be true." --Shakespeare
"If it don't kill you, it only makes you stronger" --Nietzsche by way of Bruce Willis
"I am not a number, I am a free man!"
--Number Six
"For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar."
--Tennyson
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
--Shelley
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and as sweet as love."
--Turkish Proverb
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
--Tennyson
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Quote of the Day
When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
Victor Hugo
(1802-1885) |
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