Jared Diamond's "Collapse"

I'm currently reading Jared Diamond's Collapse. He has great prose and is remarkably clear and creative in his arguments. Regarding the environmental damage wreaked by mining companies, then ignored by the government and taxpayers, he says, "Only when the public pressures its politicians into passing laws demanding different behavior from mining companies will the companies behave differently: otherwise, the companies would be operating as charities and would be violating their responsibilities to their shareholders."

Amen! I look for a day when an honest politician could possibly get elected, even when telling us truths that may not be what we want to hear. May the public be wise enough to see beyond the lies of the pundits and the spin-doctors!

How to Get What You Want--Observations from Someone Not So Good At It

I have a colleague who I admire greatly for all she accomplishes. The number of activities she is able to balance is astonishing: she coaches two sports, heads the debate team, takes part in at least three ESOL professional development committees, volunteers for a girls' after school program, cooks fantastic food, regularly teaches an evening college course, and is a dedicated teacher. I can't even imagine trying to keep up with her!

Whenever I meet someone who I admire, I do something I am decidedly good at: I overanalyze like crazy! So over the past few years as I've known this colleague, I have hypothesized that her success, while partially dependent on her intelligence and energy, is largely owed to a perspective that sees beyond obstacles to the desired result.

Here goes more analysis: she is completely unafraid. She's been going for what she wants for so long that she expects success and has dealt with failure enough times to feel able to cope with it. She doesn't allow excuses or "what ifs" to keep her from what she wants. I am constantly finding reasons why something isn't feasible, from feelings of inadequacy to concerns about being overscheduled, or a sheer lack of drive.

There are certainly cases where what we want is out of reach. But in my current situation, opportunities abound. Why not take what I want?

The High School Switcheroo

In April, I had to choose between staying at my current high school with a schedule split between ESOL and French and going to a new school and staying with ESOL. It was a difficult decision because of the great ESOL department we had (good friends and fantastic teachers who had developed a highly efficient curriculum), but I finally decided that making the move would allow me to better progress in the job I valued most.

After two weeks at my new school (one week prep, one week with students), I keep making obnoxious comparisons between the two, saying things like "At my last school, we . . . ". So as a means of moving beyond such thoughts and comments, I made a comprehensive comparison of the two schools. I am fairly certain this will be unbearably dull to just about everyone, so feel free to skip over it and hope for more interesting posts soon to come!

	Old School	New School
Building	More recently renovated,one story means many windowless classrooms. I was stuck on a cart! Hallways are extremely narrow, resulting in crazy human gridlock (which is bad news when you’re on a cart).	More natural light, slightly more run-down. Fewer faculty bathrooms. I HAVE MY OWN CLASSROOM!!! THIS IS HUGE!
Technology	Interactive white-boards, at least on copy machine for each department, numerous lap-top carts.	No interactive white boards, only three fully functioning copy machines on the first floor, laptop carts seem sparse.
IT guys	Won’t speak to you without a formal online tech request, but highly organized and efficient.	Less formal, but they have already forgotten to set my passwords and issued me a laptop with a dead battery.
Security/Building Use Coordinator	Obnoxiously self-important at times; efficient to the point of being OCD.	Seems pretty lax. No attendance forms required during fire drills.
ESOL department	Young, motivated, well-informed group of 7. Larger department means everyone has three preps.	2 of us! I’m department chair, which means new responsibilities. Smaller department means four preps, significantly more work.
ESOL within the school	Most of the faculty is well-informed; principal and assistant principal over ESOL highly aware of ESOL issues.	No one seems to know (or care much) what is going on with ESOL, BUT we do have total autonomy. Counselors seem a bit clueless.
Student body	Highly diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and language background.	Largely white and higher income.
Potential for influence	Small. ESOL department already ran efficiently and the Biology team, who could have used some ESOL strategies, was not interested.	Larger. While the ESOL department is small, I see the level 1 kids for three periods. Some issues which were perhaps handled inefficiently before can be re-evaluated. Looking to develop relationships with other departments.

Updates!

I'm going to start posting again. First, I thought I'd link to my blog in China. While I was there blogger was blocked, so I had to use another blog site which unfortunately had a less pleasing layout:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/dtpettit/1/tpod.html