Fire All The Teachers - How Unprofessional!

The current action of the Central Falls, Rhode Island, Superintendent and School Board to fire all 100 teachers in the "chronically underperforming" public high school is the most outrageous and unprofessional I've read about in a long time. It violates a central principle of good classroom discipline taught in all teacher preparation programs - don't punish the entire group for the actions of a few. It's not fair and the everyone knows it! When the socio-economic status of the Central Falls student body (the most significant factor in student achievement) is compared with other public high schools in the state, one has to wonder if this school board action wasn't more about contract negotiations than it was about student performance?

Living Well is the Best Revenge

My book, Plaintiff Blues, explains my desire for revenge and the fishing and hunting pictures on revenge page of the website illustrate my belief that living well is the best revenge. Shortly after my last post on April 5, 2009, I found additional motivation for working hard at living well. Life is too short to waste not living well! In the book, I briefly described a heart attack I experienced in 1999, followed by two stents. It was a bit of a wake-up call and a significant part of my reason for taking an early retirement from secondary school administration in 2001. This was at age 58. I've done some university adjunct instructing since then, but as the revenge pictures show, there's been a lot of living well since 2001. Ducks, geese, pheasant, deer, moose, tuna, salmon, halibut, walleye, bass, lake trout, muskie, catfish, mahi mahi - they're all there.

However, on April 7, 2009, I woke up with some minor chest pain and went to the ER, expecting another couple of stents. Not so easy this time. The angiogram diagnosis was severe CAD (coronary artery disease). The open heart surgery performed on Aril 9, 2009, included seven CABG's (coronary artery bypass grafts). Living well now took on a whole new dimension. Some minor setbacks kept me in cardiac rehab until September. However, by October we were back living well again. I caught the 51" muskie in early October, shot a limit of Canada Geese later in October and was there when the family caught the mahi mahi in December. Check the last three pictures on the revenge page of www.plaintiffblues.com.
Living well sure works for me.