1967 was a memorable year for me.
My school, Federal Way High School, gave me $50 for gas to go to the National Education Association convention in Cleveland, Ohio. The gas got me as far as Idaho. From then on I was on my own. Do you think they were trying to tell me something?
I finally got to Cleveland after a long drive in my little VW Bug. Even slept through a snowstorm in Idaho by sitting in the passenger seat wrapped up in my sleeping bag.
Mr. Chandler, the leader of our state delegation, was a very capable leader. He was well informed on Educational history and was highly respected amongst the teachers. So I waited for him to call a meeting of our state delegation to brief us on the issues to be discussed and on which we were to vote. No briefing was held.
Everyone got together and talked all night, simply socializing without booze or broads. But on the following day, I went to the auditorium to hear the important keynote speaker who had been paid a large fee to come talk to us about the future of the education profession. I was surprised to find very few of my fellow teachers in attendance.
They had gone across the street to watch a double-header baseball game at the baseball stadium when they should have been in the auditorium listening to their keynote speaker.
At the speech, the keynote speaker proclaimed that education was destined to become the dominant profession of the future - starting salaries would double in the next six years. None of which happened of course. Perhaps the members of the NEA were too busy watching sports players earn bigger and bigger salaries to care about their own?
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2 comments:
The college education system here in the states is one of the few true advantages the US has any longer. Unfortunately the K-12 education system with its low wages for teachers shows that your speaker turned out to be wrong. Teaching is not valued in our society. Because of that more than half of the PhD candidates now days are foreign nationals who in many cases take their knowledge back to their own countries. This does not bode well for the future of our country.
Some thoughts on blogging....
I used to blog daily (or more) at LiveJournal and had quite a community of friends there. I enjoyed it, but ultimately needed to give it up for personal reasons. Anyways....
- The more you read and comment on other's blogs, the more they will read and comment on yours.
- Make sure your blog is registered in Technorati. This will track readers and linkers for you.
- To that point... there will generally be many more readers than commenters.
- If Blogger supports Tags (I'm sure it does), these will cause your blog to come up in searches which will draw new folks to your blog.
- Your community of readers will take a while to cultivate. It won't happen overnight.
- Writing a blog is a kind of therapy that is also creative and fun. Do it for its own sake. If no one ever read it, it would still be worthwhile.
BTW, you are a very polished writer. As I'm sure you know, most bloggers have haphazard grammar and limited skills in writing. So it's a great pleasure to read your blog.
Take care!
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