A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
Scope
Posts: 417
Hello
With sadness I have to share the following story:
I teach high school engineering classes at a new school
I coordinated a project with a local university, working with a faculty member there in the Mechatronics dept.
After spending a week with the Microcontroller kits, my students were going to design and create a -- very simple -- mechatronics project that resembles a real life application of this technology. The college students were going to review the projects at each of three stages of completion, offer suggestions, guidance and encouragement (this was initially to be accomplished by publishing their artifacts online while the final presentations would involve a visit to the Mechatronics building where the students would be presenting their projects in person to the college students and professor (a 22 mile journey from our school).
Two days into this project, the IT department at my school indicated they are not allowed to install the software enabling two laptops to communicate with the BOE's
After begging the principal and Director of Technology for our entire (large) school district, I have had zero cooperation - nothing
So, I told my students the project is cancelled
Then I told the professor at the local college the project was terminated and I explained why
His reply was "That is such a shame. Keep me informed if anything changes and we can try
and make something work."
I am so disgusted with my current school district. I have absolutely no respect for the administration - none. These 25 kits are just being wasted, my students are no longer going to get to interact with the college professor and his students.
And people wonder why students aren't getting a better education?
With sadness I have to share the following story:
I teach high school engineering classes at a new school
I coordinated a project with a local university, working with a faculty member there in the Mechatronics dept.
After spending a week with the Microcontroller kits, my students were going to design and create a -- very simple -- mechatronics project that resembles a real life application of this technology. The college students were going to review the projects at each of three stages of completion, offer suggestions, guidance and encouragement (this was initially to be accomplished by publishing their artifacts online while the final presentations would involve a visit to the Mechatronics building where the students would be presenting their projects in person to the college students and professor (a 22 mile journey from our school).
Two days into this project, the IT department at my school indicated they are not allowed to install the software enabling two laptops to communicate with the BOE's
After begging the principal and Director of Technology for our entire (large) school district, I have had zero cooperation - nothing
So, I told my students the project is cancelled
Then I told the professor at the local college the project was terminated and I explained why
His reply was "That is such a shame. Keep me informed if anything changes and we can try
and make something work."
I am so disgusted with my current school district. I have absolutely no respect for the administration - none. These 25 kits are just being wasted, my students are no longer going to get to interact with the college professor and his students.
And people wonder why students aren't getting a better education?
1024 x 527 - 189K
Comments
Did they give a "reason" for this. Or did you shoot off their kneecaps before they could even tell you why?
Can you bring in your own laptops? It should not be hard to find a couple of old laptops that someone is willing to donate to a good cause.
Is there any way that we could put together a bootable CD for this project that loaded the required software?
Jeff
I asked the IT person to install the software and drivers on two laptops via email (normally, I'm supposed to enter a formal IT request using the formal IT request software)
He replied he's unauthorized to install anything that's not on his list of approved software.
I asked the principal and Director of Technology to intervene - neither one of them even replied to my email (that was more than a week ago).
I could go on forever about the pathetic sources of technology provided to my students - for example, 18 out of 32 students in one class have to share 9 computers because their computers are inoperable (and this is after FOUR waves of IT requests begging for help - the IT department finally told me to stop sending in IT requests - I forwarded all these inter-office emails to my home email account for CYA purposes).
I'm desperately looking for another job or a lethal dose of cyanide - I seriously can't take this much longer - no kidding.
-Phil
Where abouts do you live? Maybe there are some nearby forum members who'd be willing to loan you a couple of notebook computers.
I have one I'm not ready to give away but I'd be willing to loan it out for several months if you were in the area.
+1 to this idea. I've done this on locked down machines and it works great.
Several years ago, I taught a class at a local art college (Otis) and Jim Carey donated HW boards for all the students. Most of them had laptops already, and I made (HA!) self-booting floppy disks so they could use the DOS version of the PBASIC editor without loading anything on their laptops. All their programs were stored on the floppy disk.
As a my dad is a Dean I am all too aware how school politics are and how a bad set of higher ups can Ruin a college.
Google would have not been " invented" had not there founders college not let them " tinkier"
At IHCC In Iowa we needed a set of PCs to use with ......... the BS2 editor ! ..
IT people would not install it . NO BS2 no passing class ,,,,,,, some one IT needs a new job..
each fall is a college auction .I ME ! I ended up buying the Old PCs From the college and getting reimbursed ! just to shoe horn on the needed software.
I just launderd computers for my Old college . So pathetic.
I pay more then a new Benz for college per year .. and I hope darn well all the stuff works and I can do my classes un-impeded .
If MIT can do it . any one can put in place a reasonable IT policy and not block just every port in the world
There was one hope as the people at IT at both IHCC and UNI are just off the rackmount normal geeks they over looked the idea of locking the BIOS so me and a Ext HDD or a USB stick and a reboot and VOLLA I am on Debian and a VM of windows and they ( IT) can go pound sand! . untraceable and I can have my cake and eat it too. /// and Hey as Iam not being loaded down by the site license of Junky norton those 4GB ram core 2 duos ran evin in a windows XP VM FASTER then the on computers internal OS! .
Granted OIT is a Poly Tech Institute not a vanilla liberal arts frat house university .. Most people here are like me soo geeky they are fluent in klingon .
if IT here tried to pull any thing like that . Well It would never work...
I really wish I had a way to help you put some sense in to those people whom are Dumbing down the College system .....
tenure Really has its bad side some days .
Peter...
Never, Never give up !!
I learned a longtime ago; when faced with "bad decisions" or "bad policies" of others, it is better to embrace them. You can do more good from the inside, than you can from the outside.
In this case; have the students show and document how much better off they will be without the added school work-load required of: Micro Computers, Embedded Systems, and Robotic Projects. Such projects generally will keep students away for other "important" after-school activities.
And, this might be an opportunity for the students to make this a very technical project; to find and interview other engineering classes in other school districts, which could better use one half of the BOEs. Maybe a trade for a working class-room computer could be arranged. Of course technical support requirements for the BOE's would need to be; locally documented, explained in detail presentations, and understood by the recipient school (similar to an inter-district football game). This outreach activity would surely be an interesting local-story for the local TV Media, as an example of inter-district cooperation. A good lessen for any student (and parent) to learn.
Who knows, your students may be helping another school district to produce the next Steve Jobs. I am sure your student's parents will concur (when they understand - NOT).
Also, another advantage, with a shortage of usable student computers, all students will learn at the same pace, and therefore teaching requirements are much less demanding, which will also produce much more predictable results and less variety of graded projects.
Good Luck with your efforts, keep us posted, . . . remember, when given Lemons, make Lemonade !
Eldon - WA0UWH
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This is a long shot, but I have 18 laptops I can donate.
8 of them are Fujitsu B series B3010D
10 of them are Fujitsu P series P1120
They all have Win XP Pro COA's, working batteries, chargers and touch screens. Unfortunately they are all lacking a PATA HDD. If you were to put a PATA HDD in there and install XP Pro, they would be just fine for the Parallax IDE. They're super light weight, and covered by Fujitsu quality care, so basically most of them are brand new on the inside.
Hit me up if that's something you would be interested in.
Actually if you just need a couple, I can throw in some used 2.5" PATAs and install XPP, couple extra batteries, etc.
You live in north county SD?
I can understand 100% why the school does this. I am sure there are many parents that have old computers that they have no use for anymore. Setup a program to get old computers, if setup right, people who give you old computers can get a tax break. As long as you do not put the computers on the school's network , I don't think the school will have a problem with it.
Al
No, Federal Way, WA.
Thank you for your comments, suggestions and offers to help.
I received an email from an assistant principal who spent 85 minutes in my classroom yesterday. It seems by all accounts the administration is assembling a collection of documents to support firing me. After the visit to my class, the assistant principal sent me the following message via email last night:
This is a cut-&-paste - I only replaced the names of administrators and the name of my school.
The first sentence is simply not true - period. It is true that I summoned the Health Department to visit my classroom as sewage is leaking from upstairs and being collected in a plastic trash can located in my classroom (photos). I felt this was a health risk to my students and after speaking directly to my principal about this more than a month ago, and asking the maintenance person at least five times when the plumber was scheduled to get this problem fixed, nothing happened. So, yes, I called the HD and they came to the school and took photos, notes, et cetera earlier this week. The administration knows I called the Health Department and they are very upset about this although I never told them I called nor did they ask me.
It is true that I have told my class how unreasonable these rules are which prohibit them from interacting with the SPSU college students and professor.
It is true that on four separate occasions I entered long lists of issues - as I was instructed to do so - hardware and software problems that were preventing my students from accessing the software we use to accomplish our goals.
It is also true that the IT person has told me to stop submitting IT requests for help, that the situation is not going to improve and I need to just do what I can with what I have.
Students are given an allowance of 50MB hard drive space - many of my students cannot save their work unless they bring in a USB drive. It's true I told students I submitted a plan to purchase a 2TB drive for $100 that would give every student at least 20GB of storage space but the IT department said this was not an option and they refused to setup an intranet for my classroom with dedicated drive space for my students.
It's true I have at least 18 students out of 32 in one class sharing nine computers. This class has 32 students and 23 computers that are functional (on a good day). It's true, I have told my students this "double up" scenario is not ideal for a learning situation, especially considering the very congested arrangement of these workstations.
The principal thought it was a great idea to add eight more workstations to my 32 and these eight that were transferred to my classroom are unusable because their hard drives aren't large enough to accompany an image from the network server. Out of forty total workstations, only 23 are "sometimes operational."
After sending a letter complaining about this situation the principal came to my room, walked me to his office and in front of two of his assistant principals, he literally yelled at me and required that I sit in his office for 25 minutes while he went on and on about how I simply don't know anything about classroom management and how everything that was wrong in my classroom was 100% my fault. He told me that while teaching students if I allowed them to unplug their network cable and they were then playing games without being observed then that was my fault. He even suggested I stop using computers to teach the engineering curricula and he refused to allow me to speak so I could tell my side of the story - this was while two of his assistant principals were recording everything he said.
I could go on and on and on but what's the point?
I just want my students to have reasonable resources and that's entirely possible. Our school board is $75M in debt yet they are purchasing Doctoral education degrees for members of the school board. Yes, it's absolutely true that I've told my students that's not very respectable when they spend money like that yet they deny my students the resources necessary to provide them with "cutting edge technology" (a quote from one of the school district's brochures promoting my program).
I can't sleep at night - I feel threatened at work and this is the worst career situation I've ever, ever experienced. Before this job, I had no idea that jobs like this existed. My peers with similar situations are afraid to speak up. I've only been at this school two months and nothing is getting better.
Sorry for the lengthy nature of my comments but for now, maybe it would not be wise to accept donated laptops so we can continue with our goals because after Thursday, I may not even be employed there.
And that bothers me so much - I make every effort to report problems using their methods, I follow up with pleas for help and when nothing at all happens, then yes, I do speak out when things are clearly wrong, and I'll probably get fired for this? The only textbooks I've been given were published in 2000 - and that's "cutting edge?"
My wife and I have five adult children and we have chosen to invest our entire financial future into their well being - we're basically broke but our adult sons and daughters are doing really well. With one daughter a junior in college and another daughter waiting to start college in January, I don't know how I'm going to survive financially but I guess getting fired is my fault for . . . speaking the truth and standing up for wanting what's best - and achievable - for my students?
Yes, I'm frustrated and disappointed but as long as I'm there I will continue to do the best I can - I'm not giving up.
If the school district is that far in debt, I would imagine they have levy issues on this ballot or possibly upcoming ballots. Maybe more light needs to be shed on how fiscally unresponsible they are with their "functionalities" - the voting public has a right to know how their tax dollars are being directed toward their kids "education" a school system lives and dies by their levies. Sadly at some level, education always turns into politics...the kids take a back seat to money, power and egos.
If you do go down, I think you owe it to the kids in your classroom to let their parents know about the open sewage in the room. I'd be more than upset if that was the case in my daughter's classroom.
It's a sad situation that is being repeated around the country. There are good teachers and administrators and there are bad. Sadly, the good often leave the system or Re forced out and the bad gather cronies and rise to the top. I wish I could offer you some good advice or support.
Good luck!!
I have been given the LIBERTY to rearrange my work schedule (4 nine's and a four) so that for 9 weeks I can fill in at charter school science class to teach high schooler''s basic robotics and electronics. (the original teacher had to leave for a full time job at another charter school 4 hours away, and they were going to cancel the class).
There's 20 kids in my class. 13 of them are like sponges, soaking up every word. 5 of them are, at a minimum respectful, but don't have a whole lot of interest (it's an elective class). And of course there's the lunatic fringe of 2 or 3 who don't want to be in school at all..
Public schools don't get it, that's why Charter schools sometimes step up and fill the gap. In this schools' case, I have complete LIBERTY to install ANYTHING I WANT TO on the laptops (which are three years old, max). I'm told: "what's the harm? "we'll re-image it later if it gets messed up. no big deal."
I live by the phrase..."Get your government off my LIBERTY!" - think of what we could accomplish if the power of Liberty were un-leashed once again! :thumb:
It pains me to see how we - as a nation - are dooming future generations to a life of (at best) - mediocrity.
Chin up! Fight the Good Fight - do it for the kids - if we don't, who will?
-MattG
hear!!! Hear!!!
Jeff
That said, I am extremely sympathetic to your situation and per other suggestions, it might be time to see what the union can do. Stay the course wisely, Brother.
I don't belong to a union and I do not pay for "teacher insurance" or whatever it's called.
Who knows, maybe a better job is out there somewhere, I'll figure out how to find it and will soon be enjoying a great new career.
That's my hope and dream.
As far as "what if the school district sees my posts" - I honestly don't see how that could possibly be reason for them to fire me. If I'm telling the truth, then why would they want to shut me up or fire me if they're doing their job. The administration - and teachers - should have nothing to hide. I do appreciate the heads up to remain smart about publishing too much information - thank you.
I was promised a position that was a "first class" program which was a far cry from the truth. Yes, I will admit my frustration and I have spoken with some parents and students about situations that are occurring that are incredibly wrong - the bottom line is what I've said is all 100% true and I've never disclosed the name of the school or my district - nor do I plan on doing so, or see that as necessary.
However, I will never regret standing up for what's right and telling the truth. Somebody needs to do it - the problems are outrageous, and there seems to be no end in sight, especially as long as nobody else is speaking up, getting involved or making a conscientious effort to right the many wrongs.
I will consider asking a lawyer if he or she wants to take this case but I really don't like that option although it does seem to be a safe way to proceed, unfortunately.
Based on what you have posted here, my father's long experience and my own with various educational institutions, I have some simple advice: Get out while you can.
Small bureaucracies like schoolboards, homeowner's associations, and yes school administrations can be some of the most totalitarian institutions known to Man because they are small enough to avoid transparency but powerful enough to attract control-freak egomaniacs to supervisory positions. You seem to think that truth and openness will protect you. Trust me, they will not. They have lied to you, ignored your reasonable requests, and reacted with outraged indignity and threats when you have pressed them on important stuff that really needs to be done. It is obvious that the place is overrun with tinpot fiefdoms. You will not change them.
There are lots of places that aren't like this. You might have to accept a lower salary, move, or move out of education, but you don't have to be and shouldn't let yourself be treated like this. You cannot beat this kind of small bureaucracy from the inside. It's sad for the kids, but you need to look after yourself because you can't enrich kids if you're being crushed to dust yourself.
Be careful. Even though you haven't named the school or any individual, your employer could claim that it would be very easy to identify the school and therefore the Principal, et al. And as such you could face disciplinary action for 'bringing the school (or whatever, whoever) into disrepute'.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting a comment like this but it's like a breath of fresh air.
Thanks so much - I really needed to consider that perspective and focus on that point of view.
And, I also appreciate everyone else's comments as well.
Last week my 29 year old son was encouraging me to "take a leap of faith" and start my own business. I did this the first time back in 1989 when I got laid off - that lasted ~16 years and I loved it. Maybe it's time to return to my roots and pick up the sole proprietorship business again. Encouraging food for thought. I already have one secured part time job offer teaching adults but it doesn't start for several months. I will investigate building momentum.
Meanwhile, my darling wife suggested I take the person up on his offer to obtain a couple of laptops and continue with the project.
Thanks again everyone!