Ramblings of Daniel Ross-Jones
Archive for September, 2007
A nothing weekend?
Sep 29th
Here I am, on the cusp of a nothing weekend. I have nothing planned today, although I’m considering the opportunity to go down to Chicago tonight and go out in Wrigleyville with a friend of mine in from out of town. Tomorrow is a special partnership celebration for work, and other than that I’m free as a bird.
This is a strange feeling for a go-go-go person. Especially over the past few months, I’ve forgotten how important it is to take time to just sit still, to just be.
So instead, I’m going to clean up the apartment a bit, make a light lunch and head out to the park with the iPod to catch up on my reading. And I’m looking forward to it.
No money and being eco-friendly
Sep 28th
Motivated by a lack of quarters at the moment and a dwindling supply of clean clothing, I figured I should be able to wash my clothes in the bathtub of my apartment. Not knowing how to accomplish this, and having Google at my fingertips, I came across this blog post.
What a great idea — I figured there would be some environmental benefit by not using the dryer, but it’s such a simple, easy way to use less energy, and even get rid of some aggression by stomping on one’s clothes!
I like lists
Sep 25th
1. I have never had curdled milk in my refrigerator — until now. It was gross.
2. As of this week, I have a newfound hatred of church folk.
3. Tomorrow I’m going to Kenosha, and I better have some money in my checking account before then or else I’m going to be stranded without gas. (There is supposed to be $60 deposited from my investment account.)
4. The television show “Weeds” is hilarious and addicting. I’m sorry I didn’t have Showtime before.
5. I’m thinking of getting a seasonal job in retail or travel.
But here’s a different question
Sep 17th
The Waukesha Board of Education has announced a proposal to reconfigure two elementary schools in their district to grade grouping, rather than traditional enrollment boundaries. The theory, they say, is to allocate resources in a more efficient manner while controlling class sizes and being more “child-focused.”
Having benefited from a variety of educational settings — including traditional schools within attendance boundaries, or “neighborhood schools,” mixed-grade classrooms (both as cohort clusters, where first through third grades were in “pods” with the same students, as well as experiencing fourth and fifth grades in the same mixed-grade classroom), grade groupings in middle school and a comprehensive high school with a magnet program — my inclination is that the Waukesha plan will be met with success. As the article points out, libraries and other resources are targeted toward a specific enrollment and much of the wide age gap of bullying on the playground is squelched.
That’s not the question I have: what is with Wisconsin and K-8 schools? Milwaukee’s covered with them. In Minnesota, and I’d venture to say most places, a metropolitan tradition is for K-5 in elementary, 6-8 in middle and 9-12 in high schools. Variations include pre-K and K, 1-3, 4-5, 5-8, etc, but for the most part the “standard” is used. In rural areas with smaller populations and enrollments, a K-6 and 7-12 split is the de facto standard.
But K-8? That’s a huge gap to have in one school. Even splitting that up K-3, 4-8 is huge. I can’t imagine being an 8th grader in school with 4th graders, or vice versa. At my middle school, we had 5th graders in self-contained classrooms on the third floor, while 6-8 operated as the “middle school.” (Originally, the younger students were moved to the building to deal with overcrowding at the nearby elementary school. Subsequently, a district overhaul resulted in shuttering one elementary school and consolidating to single elementary, middle and high schools, and now even 4th graders are at CJMS.) But just by having the 5th graders in the building, it brought a certain “kid” element that caused strife, especially with the 6th graders.
Did the middle school concept skip Southeastern Wisconsin?
Its for children
Sep 12th
I just got back from the grocery store; I got home from work and remembered that I forgot to buy quarters so I could do laundry tonight. There wasn’t anything terribly unusual about going to this particular store — it’s where I normally go for quarters and to get a haircut at the in-store barber, though strangely enough not the place where I do my regular grocery shopping. Instead I go to a store of the same chain that is further from my apartment, simply because it’s the one I found first upon moving to Milwaukee.
My shopping habits are not the subject here, though.
As I walked in, there was a younger woman standing behind a table, soliciting donations for some charity or other. We’ve all seen the drill: buy this caricature paper cutout for $1 and write your name on it so we can post it all around the store. Paper cutouts on parade. I didn’t listen really at all to the gal’s barking, I simply said, “No thank you” and proceeded to the bank line behind her.
But then came the extra push. As I worked my way to the teller window, I heard her charging in my direction: “Its for children!”
Wham. Pull at the guilt strings. If I said yes, I look like I genuinely care for the children. “Oh, I had no idea. We must protect and save our precious little ones. By all means, please take my $1. Do you have a special if I buy $5 worth?”
Of course, there was always the alternate of acting as a hostile, evil bastard. Which in the end, by my lack of a response, I’m sure that was the avenue I chose.
Think about it, though; whenever an argument isn’t going your own way, pull out the children. Who can argue with them? So often it seems we are exploiting them for our own mental well-being. “I’m a good person, I gave $1 today and bought a cutout shape to go up on the grocery store walls. That surely counteracts all the rest of my bitchiness this week.” Maybe instead of doing things just for the children, we do them for ourselves and our own personal growth and discipline.
Or maybe we just accept the fact that we are selfish, evil, hostile bastards. Whichever works.