State Champs!

I have been fairly busy since my last post. I coach the boys JV volleyball team at LVHS. Our season finished about three weeks ago. As soon as that happened, I moved up to Varsity to be a bench coach for the playoffs. It is a nice change as I do not have to plan practices. It also allows us to work on details and issues that we don't have the time or available coaches to work on during the regular season. This Varsity team had a great group of kids. Most of them I coached either last year or at some point during this year before they got pulled up to fill in holes due to injury or grade issues. Entering the playoffs, we were not at all favored to go very far or be successful. Our division is weak; I don't even know when the last time we lost a division match was. Because of that, when we play teams outside our division, we can struggle. We won our first two matches in our Region; that automatically qualified us for the state tournament. Unfortunately, we lost in our Region finals. That gave us a #2 seed, having to play the #1 seed from the other region in the State Tournament. It was a crazy match against Palo Verde and we were on the ropes a few times. Our kids gutted it out, and after being down 2-1, we took the next two games to win the match 3-2. The fifth game was by a score of 17-15 and we were down 6-11 at one point (all matches are played best of 5 to 25; 5th game to 15. All games need to be won by 2). After this dramatic victory, we came into play Centennial the following night, again the underdog. This time, we had little problem defeating a team that beat us easily earlier in the season. We swept them 26-24, 26-24, 25-22 to claim the state title! As an athlete in high school and a coach for the past 7 years, I cannot begin to describe the emotions that ran through me. I cannot even begin to imagine what the kids were experiencing. The part about the whole experience that I will take with me the most is seeing how much it meant to those kids. They were underdogs and afterthoughts to almost everyone. They weren't supposed to be there. They didn't listen to anyone, though, except their coaches and their hearts and they did what no other team can say, they won state! Even though I know I am privileged to have been a part of such an experience, I am even more privileged to have known these student-athletes.

I'm Back, sorta

Well, I have been off the blogging bandwagon for quite some time. Actually, almost a year. The past year has been filled with a lot of goings on in my life which have kept me busy. Plus, I forgot my password and login info and have been too lazy to find them out. Although I am not going to post anything major here tonight, I felt it necessary to put something in, if for no other reason than to keep my account from being deleted. For the three or four of you in cyberspace who browse by my pages, stay tuned to this page over the next few weeks to find out exactly what it is that I have been doing to keep myself out of my blog (and out of trouble, for the most part)!

Next: the girlfriend

Telemarketing and Presidential Hopefuls

I received my first "telemarketing" call from a Presidential candidate yesterday. Hillary Clinton called and left a pre-recorded message informing me that she would be speaking in front of a group of teachers in Las Vegas on 2/22. Besides the fact that I generally don't care for Hillary or her politics, I was more perturbed by the fact that she was able to get a hold of my cell phone number, even after I had it registered with the no-call list (see below for more). What bothers me the most, however, is that my union decided for me it would be OK to give out my info. I don't typically care for unions, and I don't think mine even does me much good in the long run. However teaching Special Education increases the chance I will have of have legal action taken against me, so I find it necessary to be in it for the legal representation that it offers. I plan on informing them of my displeasure of this, but I doubt it will do any good.

(Cell phone numbers were recently released to telemarketers! If you want to be removed from the list, call 1-888-382-1222 or go to www.donotcall.gov If you call, you must do so from the number you wish to register.)

If I only had a brain...

Well, fresh off the presses out of Las Vegas, city of higher intellect, comes this story of two men trying to further their economic status. It reminds me much of the WalMart million dollar bill story that came out a couple years ago. However, if you want a million dollar bill, you can buy them here for less than 10 cents a piece. Although I laugh at these stories, it also saddens me that our educational system turns out people this stupid. In my class, we write checks for class privileges. It works as not only a way of promoting good behavior with positive reinforcement, it also teaches important life skills. My kids have yet to try to pass one of my class checks. These stories serve as good reminders to what happens to people who try to commit fraud.

Comparing T.O. to my students

Terrel Owens must not have felt that he was receiving enough attention from the media latley, so he decided to spit in the face of DeAngelo Hall. What a class act. I am not sure what Terrel Owens was like in high school or what his life was like growing up, but I can imagine and guess a few things. First, he was (or at least could have been) in Special Education. I don't say that in a deragotory way. I say that from experience as a teacher of students with emotional disturbances. I see so many parallels to T.O.'s behavior to that of my students it's not even funny (although I do laugh sometimes). One of the key characterstics that my students share is the need to bring attention to themselves in any way possible. T.O. seems to need to have the spotlight in his face all of the time. My students will often throw temper tantrums, argue, swear, yell at each other, yell at me, throw things, break things, etc, etc, etc (you can pretty much plug in the behavior of an angry two year old and that's what behaviors can emerge at any given time). For fun, I found an article highlighting some of T.O.'s calls for attention and thought I would compare that to behaviors I have observed in my classes throughout the years.

T.O.: 2004 - In an interview with Playboy magazine, Owens hinted that ex-teammate Jeff Garcia was gay, a claim he later recanted.
My classes: Students will always call others names, especially when they can't accept their own short comings. It is a way for them to put the blame for something they did on someone or something else in an attempt to avoid the real problem from being exposed.

T.O.: 2005 - After hinting that he might hold out of training camp, Owens shows up with a bad attitude, refusing to acknowledge the media or speak to his teammates. After a confrontation with head coach Andy Reid, he was suspended for one week.
My classes: If they don't want to be at school that day (there might be a test or maybe they just didn't sleep well) they will have a bad attitude at best and do what they can to get themselves suspended for at least a week.

T.O.: 2006 - On July 5, Owens released a tell-all book revealing his side of the story associated with his time in Philadelphia.
My classes: There are always two sides to every story. It is usually best to make sure you are wearing your hip-waders when listening to their side however.

T.O.: 2006 - On September 26, Owens was taken by ambulance to Baylor University Medical Center for what was thought to be a suicide attempt. The following day, Owens denied trying to kill himself, claiming a mixture of pain pills and supplements caused him to be "out of it" when talking to emergency respondents
My classes: Students will often talk about killing themselves. 99% of the time I know it is not serious, but I still need to report it. I have never had a student actually go through with this threat, it is just a call for attention but still needs to be taken serious. Notice all of the attention T.O. received after this.

T.O.: 2006 - On December 16, in a victory over the Atlanta Falcons, Owens spit in the face of cornerback DeAngelo Hall.
My classes: I actually had a student fill up a water bottle with urine and dump it out on a study carrel in the corner of my room (those are the desks with sides, like mini-cubicles).

The last incident had me "pissed" off (bad pun intended). Although I did not see who did it, I know exactly who it was. I know my students and their behaviors well enough. I had two choices when this incident happened. I could have acknowledged that it happened and brought attention to it or I could ignore it. I ignored it, until after school in which I cleaned it up. I never once mentioned it. You see, much like T.O., this student wanted attention. This same student used to write in pencil on his desk, "fuck off" all the time. (He did at one time branch out his horizons and write, "fuck the world"). Funny thing is, it wasn't hurting anyone, so I ignored it and it stopped. It still arises from time to time, but not in the frequency it was at the begining of the year. That student has not yet tried to repeat his actions because he does not get the desired outcomes. As mad as it made me, I realize this kid has mental issues. Some things are his fault, some are not. He needs attention for doing the positive things that he does, like his school work or helping me with my recycling.

This is why I state T.O. could have been in special education. He needs attention. Early in his career he was getting it for all of the positive things he was doing on the field as a player. When that attention started to wane and shifted to other people, his negative behaviors started increasing so that he would be back in the spotlight.

Disappointment

Today was commencement at that other university in the state in which I finished my MA in. I wasn't really planning on going, but I had a fellow teacher who was in my cohort whose husband passed away a couple of months ago and it was important for him that she finish and walk so I went as moral support because I knew it would be an emotional time for her. It wasn't too much different from any other graduation. They still have Graduate and Undergraduate ceremonies at the same time and there were about 3,000 grads total. To speed things up, they had two readers. Although I understand the need to get things going (it was a 2 1/2 hour ceremony), the readers were terrible. They would run over each other and call names at the same time (probably happend about 50 or 6o times. Additionally, I don't think they had language experts reading the names. When my name was read, it was mispronounced, badly. I have heard my name misprounounced because admittedly it isn't an easy name to say. However, the mispronunciation was not one that is common. As I crossed the stage, I just shook my head in disgust and think I even muttered, "that's fucking bullshit," to myself. I wonder if the lipreaders were able to see that on the jumbotron that they were televising the ceremony on. I think if I were a parent who jsut shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to see my kid better him/herself, I would be a little pissed off. The amount of diversity at unlv is pretty large, so I can't even imagine how many foreign and ethnic names got butchered today. Oh well. The important thing is that the university that I care about got it right. This proves once again where the academic superiority is within the state of Nevada. Plus, I didn't pay for any of the "degree" so I guess I can't complain too much. At least my diploma was spelled correctly.

Walk of Shame

Well, tommorrow should be an interesting day at work after Nevada's disappointing loss to unlv. I can only imagine that my inbox will be flooded with comments. Unfortunately, they will be deservedly so. I watched the game on television and I was disappointed by the team as a whole. It looked fairly obvious that Faz is still hurt. It was the first time I had an opportunity to see McGee and I was impressed with what little time he was on the court. Poor ball handling. Poor shooting. Poor effort in the first half. Needless to say, despite the fact that we are still a better team, unlv deserved to win that game. Kruger had his troops prepared and Fox didn't. He marched them into what could have been an (even more) embarrassing bloodbath had the team continued their poor play into the second half.
Despite that, it may not be the worst thing for the team in the long run. We needed to lose eventually. Yes, I would rather it be against anyone besides unlv, but it still needed to happen. If the kids on the team truly understand the importance of the Nevada/unlv rivalry, then this will make them a better team. This minor setback could be what propels us up to the next level. Even though we have been playing good ball, it hasn't been dominating. We play well enough to win, but realistically we haven't been sending any messages that we are a legitmate contender. We need to regroup, refocus, and retalliate with a beating of St. Mary's. Reading the RGJ, you would think that the world has come to an end and we are near total collapse. Embarrassing, yes. Time to panic, no. Everyone needs to keep their heads and chins up. My chin will be up Monday as it prepares to take all of the shots that will be coming my way. As a proud Pack member, I will take it like a man and stand by my team.

On a side note, I will be going to the Rose Bowl. I will be having a very long day at work on January 2nd (still not as long as tomorrow), but I will experience one of the greatest traditions in college sports.