There used to be a time when teachers and principals alike were outraged by the Standards Test roll-out called ‘No Child Left Behind’.
The character (both versions) and specialness of a school is white-washed. Acceleration of development for gifted and talented is given the shaft. Even Venn diagrams (read: logic!) were to have been given the chop, prior! Etc., etc.
Music, art, literature, newsies, these are the things which can’t be measured, nor should they be, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be.
HANKIE
And of course, tenure is a bad idea for the lowest 10% of teachers, who are limping along sans fear of being inept. We call that trimming fat in business, cutting weight in fishing, there’s a word for it in every industry I can think of, off-hand, except for the schoolhouse slob, which is protected by the institution much to the she grin of teachers, and principals, alike. It’s a good idea if performance is at a minimum bar, but if you’re a total slob, your meritocracy had ended.
This is distinct from protecting the maverick, the REAL golden goose of nigh every school, who is often times are target, or the ones speaking out against unrighteousness. Those ARE to be protected, and it’s a fine balance from the vantage of the macro, certainly. It’s too bad unions tend to self-corrupt in nearly every industry, does the business world perhaps have something to offer as to solutions?
God bless the good fruit. I intend to write more soon as to the why, but in the mean time, here is some filler content I had written prior, a lesson plan, if you will… 
"We used to listen to this song on the way to MVHS when it first came out. It was about a half hour drive from Fort Collins. I was about 13. My mom was the assistant principal there and so the perk for me was I got to hang out with the self-proclaimed web masters at the brand new school. This was a wonderful social, tech, and yes of course computer game opportunity for me. And there’s something magical about a school that doesn’t have all the scuff marks riding high up on the walls yet. Old schools are cool too for equal and opposite reasons, but a school only opens as new one time before they quickly begin chewing on the doorknobs or punching the locker doors in. “Savages,” I remember one not-so-nice math teacher had called us. Well, I was offended. An aside, one time one of the punk mouse looking kids stood up and called her a “bloody savage” back, and he was immediately sent to the principal’s office there at Webber JHS. In a word, he was our hero that day. I’m sure he taught her a lesson in humility if she was a good teacher, being also a student of her kids whether she admitted it or not.
Us webmasters at MVHS, we got to set up and maintain all the computers before the grand opening. Back then these computers were lit. All the bells; all the whistles. I’m sure by now they’ve all since been replaced. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware as worthless now. That’s the pace of tech. It’s faster than fruit at the grocery store, and schools of the area and era paid top dollar to cut edge.
I remember how exciting and fresh it was to install Windows over network onto all those computers in industrial fashion. That’s the hindsight cool part. To go back…
But back then for me it was about having immediate and much older friends. You know, giants. Actually they were mostly pretty scrawny, but I was the scrawniest of scrawniest where I was I think the youngest in a troupe of teenage nerds. And so that made them really cool by my measure.
We spent a lot of time playing TFC. Team Fortress Classic back then made me squiggly. I had known about girls since about kindergarten, being always unable to disregard my inner casanova, but back then I was a lot more chill about that genre then when the dramatizations of HS and college would send me into orbit. To paraphrase Paul Simon, this would eat up years of my life. Well before those systems came online my passions were gaming, building computers, and those girls were just a casual compartmentalization. If anyone is taking notes, remaining cool about it would have always been the better strategy, barring some immediate supernatural ability to tame the reality of the fly to the flame.
So gaming, computers, and cool ass friends, this was a job that I was perfectly willing to get up at the butt of dawn to attend! We admittedly spent most of our time playing TFC or some other title, but I just liked TFC. It took me many years of practice to regain my dexterity, being now just shy of 6’ 3". I was in kindergarten through elementary, soccer, very good at scuffing the knees on the blacktop parking lot with my Lopez homies for only kindergarten, and on to knocking over kids by the shoulders over at McGraw, a school my dad would later become principal at, a school my dad had prior been a teacher at, the former in reverse of the latter. I wasn’t the most dexterous at this time of TFC, so I liked to play the role of the engineer. I wear that hat a lot these days, full circle.
My best friend in kindergarten, his dad was the PE teacher. He used to carpool us to school pretty darn early in the dope shag carpet and red velvet seat van, while I had spent the years prior attending his mother’s daycare. Peanut butter jelly sandwiches, cheetos, kool-aid, and a rambunctious mix of kids who would grow up to be fairly stand-out or at least above average, in hindsight. Maybe it was the Hawaiian Punch.
Some of my first memories are squashing bugs on the cement, hitting my dome on the old school satellite dish in the yard, a gal who used to suck her thumb raw who ended up a nice young lady, having the supernatural power to withstand dust storms by using my eyelashes on partially-closed eyelids to see when others were blinded, and speaking of superpower developing my patented kung-foo move whereby I would swivel my arms in circles the one opposite the other to the fear and wavering of my opponents going on years forward in the rough and tumble zoo called recess.
Fast forward again to my years spent as a webmaster and gaming on the good old Gateway 2000 at home, I remember I got in big trouble one time with my dad. I had left the console open on the game. He was mad, not for the grotesque violence, which it was by that era’s standard (it’s child’s play beside today’s games), but by the language. Kids really don’t pay attention to the foulery and filth going on in chat, it’s cultural and mostly just raging, but when you leave console open it shows these blips of fitted capitalized rage as the sum total of all the language, and it was FOUL. So, I got in trouble and for a time I wasn’t allowed to play."
… And SPAM! ROFLcopter
"I wasted many years playing video games and chasing girls. Though if it wasn’t for the sum total of the all, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. My first mastery was computers. I can say that, not in some cocky manner, but because I spent my 10,000 hours at it. And this mastery in turn has bled into other masteries. And while I’m still learning new tricks in computers, and in being a gentleman, and in art or physics or dancing or playing on the water or whatever else it is that my busy mind wants to do and my tamed passions have become tempered to become, I am me. And I am never going to stop learning until that no longer serves me, either. I hope the same for you, being human is messy and joyous and sad and hopeful and all of these things which could never possibly be enumerated in a sentence or paragraph or the Holy Bible or all of the works of all of the creators of all of the music in all of the kingdoms in all of the times that could ever be accumulated. I am blessed.
So this song brings me a bit of nastalgia. It represents, for me, a time of great changes. A bridging of the ages. Simpler times before hormones began to control me a bit more than I would have liked. Older teenagers who shared in the joy of gaming, and teenagers who would become my age who hoarded the x-box and would haze the younger kids before me and a couple of childhood friends put the kibosh on all of that evil just shy of involving the police. Those same childhood friends falling in and out of their own grace; and I the same. A bond between my current self and my childhood self which is usually forgotten, but hopefully is never fully destroyed until of course it doesn’t matter one way or the other anyways.
This song is for many others something else, and for still many more it means nothing at all. But for me, this and these are a few of the tangents which take me away from the present day, if only for four minutes, thirty-six seconds.
~~~~~~~
Come home now. God bless.
23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
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8 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. "
