It fell to Earth in some of the strangest places.

I just interviewed for an hour for an English position in an alternative safe school. It’s August. School has almost begun. I don’t want to make a change at such a late hour. My current district will be scrambling to replace me. But if I get the job, I’ll jump. The position sounds intriguing and the money would be a distinct improvement. The benefits are better, too. I’m getting old and shopworn as time passes and I don’t know if I’d hire me. I’ve made too many changes in the past. But I might get an offer nonetheless. My references are strong. I like alternative kids and I am sure this liking shows. I am more than willing to look past the infraction that got these kids expelled from their original schools.

Eduhonesty: I blame the internet. I am quite thoroughly endorsed since I love taking random college classes. Principals can search on my application endorsements and every so often someone finds me. I cannot help but want to explore my options.

For any aspiring teachers reading this post: Learn Spanish if you can. Take classes for fun when you are able. Pay the fee to add any endorsement for which you qualify. After three frustrating years looking for a history position, one of my favorite coworkers learned Spanish and found a bilingual social studies position almost immediately.

Passing by schools, I see parking lots filled with cars. We are all getting developed and with good reason: Teachers are required to have a certain number of professional development house (PD) in order to retain their licenses. Expectations and requirements keep going up too. My two masters’ degrees spared me from some of those hours in the past. In the future, I get no break for my previous education. I will need 120 hours of development for my next renewal, instead of 40. At an average of 6 hours per development day, that’s 20 days.

Eduhonesty: I don’t know how I feel about this. Continuing education has provided me with great ideas and strategies, some that I have been able to put into practice immediately. I love taking classes for enrichment.

On the other hand, after awhile these PD sessions become repetitive. I have an opportunity to go be developed for the next three days. They will pay me, so I probably should go. I’ve attended so many PD seminars on the topic in question, though, that I doubt the usefulness of parking my posterior in the latest uncomfortable chair. Who knows if the presenters have even taught in a public school classroom? I have been lectured at by men and women who have only taught college students and all I can say about those experiences is, “I’m sorry but until you have lived through a day in a room with twenty or thirty middle school students, please don’t tell me how to manage my classroom.” These are the same people who think you can easily break a class into four groups and then work with one group while the other three cheerfully do independent work.

Hah! I might even be able to make a mathematical law to cover this four-group suggestion: distance from the teacher is inversely proportional to time spent discussing romantic prospects and Justin Bieber. Bieber wins in this scenario, not the students. You can’t take your eyes off some kids and you shouldn’t take your eyes off others. I know this. Presenters who don’t understand what I am saying should not apply. I am especially suspicious because tomorrow’s presenters are coming from a publishing company.

But I’ll likely go. I just hope I learn something to justify all that time in a chair. I hate being stuck in chairs. That’s one reason I enjoy teaching. Possibly it’s also one reason I can make teaching work. I completely empathize with those kids who need to get up and move, even as I deny them their fifth bathroom break of the day.

Many people use these words interchangeably today but socialization stands for more than chatting with buddies in the lunchroom.(In fact, socialization as chatting is a substandard usage at best.)  Socialization also refers to a process in which children learn how to become productive adults, acquiring their personal identity by absorbing the norms and values of a culture and integrating these understandings into their behavior and social life.

Why am I bothering to draw this distinction? Probably because children don’t automatically mature into adults. Socialization is a societal, social and familial process. The role of schools in socialization has always been assumed, so much so that I am afraid the fact that our schools are exiting the process may go unnoticed.

What is whole child education? The definition has become murky. If we visit wholechildeducation.org, we will find that it is about every child’s right to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported  and challenged. While laudable goals, these expections talk about what we need to provide to/for our children. The goals only obliquely address what our children need to learn to do for us, themselves and others.

Once, whole child education included moral and ethical education. We are still educating students in these areas but mostly peripherally. We send students to the dean for various infractions such as fighting, cheating, lying and skipping class, among other behaviors. We practice PBIS, otherwise known as positive behavioral intervention systems, frequently with the secondary agenda of controlling classroom disorder; however, the only moral/ethical topic that comes up today in the classroom on any regular basis is bullying. We work aggressively in many schools to rein in bullying, because this always-crackling phenomenon has been supercharged by social media, and the ease and anonymity the internet provides. But we are dropping other topics.

We used to discuss a wide variety of behavioral considerations. For example, teachers would explain how to address adults and how what clothing to wear for different occasions. Teachers regularly took time out of their schedule to go over manners and “proper” behavior for a variety of contexts.

As we watch America’s children cut in line,  ignore people who are talking to them, and sit on benches awaiting restaurant tables while elderly women with canes stand nearby, we ought to pause to wonder if socialization is being neglected. We have always have rude children, of course, and all children have moments of rudeness. But the current testing juggernaut has resulted in many schools running back-to-back academic instruction, often scripted instruction, without leaving time for other topics. This opportunity cost from relentless, test-based teaching may be invisible, but its effects are not.

As I watch families sit silently at restaurants, the children glued to phones, pads and other electronics, I wonder: Who will socialize our children? Parents may mistakenly believe schools will pick up and carry this ball while schools expect parents to take charge. In the end, I’m afraid sometimes nobody is in charge and the effects have become readily observable.

In professional development, we often hear that there is no teaching without learning. We need to remember that the reverse may also be true: Except in rare instances, there is no learning without teaching. As we script in more obligatory math minutes and more test-prep essays, if nothing else, we ought to make certain that topics for some of these essays relate to morals, ethics and behavior. Many of us remember the famous words from John F.Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Our students need to absorb these words and their underlying message: Life in society carries responsibilities as well as privileges.

Speaking as an old-school teacher, I miss the days when we taught geography, handwriting and manners. Our children may be able to survive without cursive writing, but I’m tired of adolescents who cannot tell Africa from Asia and who think they live in the country of Chicago. I’m also tired of children who don’t say please or thank-you, and who don’t wait their turns. (I’m sorry if this p.s. seems whiny.)

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. We are creating curricula and charter schools around the idea that academic studies in these areas will save America’s students. STEM is no silver cross that will ward off all the vampires of unemployment and underemployment, however, and we need to be careful that our STEM focus does not become another well-meaning, expensive set of programs that produce relatively little bang for the buck.

Eduhonesty: In the end, studying engineering will prove vastly more useful to most college students than studying archeology. But as we move towards a STEM-oriented curriculum, we need to remember that students learn best when presented with material one step above where they are currently operating. Handing everyone harder algebra books at a younger age will only produce more innumerate, confused and angry students. After years of watching No Child Left Behind and after serving on a math curriculum committee chosen to select  my district’s math books, I know that desperate districts may pass out those algebra books without regard to student learning levels. I’ve seen versions of this scenario too often now.

Great ideas can be wrecked by faulty execution. Great ideas don’t work for everyone. Great ideas don’t always fulfill their purpose for that matter: Ask the many thousands of STEM graduates who just lost their jobs at Microsoft.

I support pushing the STEM agenda at our students. The fact that foreign students are now dominating many college programs in STEM areas should be a wake-up call. But if STEM becomes just another acronym, another buzzword in a frantic push without focus on individual student needs, those foreign students will continue to fill up our universities.

We have to fix test-driven curricula before we will be able to make any STEM- orientation a reality. How do I know this? I am going to be given a book next year that my math students cannot read, a book that is years ahead of most of their actual learning levels. I know from experience that an unreadable book might as well be no book. I’ll be scrounging lessons off the internet as I work around a mostly useless book. Consequently, my students will not be moving closer to a STEM career. More likely, they will be getting ready to drop out of high school.

Question for the day: Why don’t we look at those countries whose students are filling the halls of our universities and find out how the educational systems in their countries work? Why don’t we emulate China? Why not let teachers teach students in a more rational order, allowing students to retain new knowledge by putting that knowledge in context? Instead, we are handing them “rigorous” books that might as well be wreaths of garlic for all the help those books will provide them in this technological age.

(My apologies to those districts who are doing a great job of preparing students for STEM careers. Many students near where I live are going off to top universities to study science, technology, math and engineering. We still do a great job in many zip codes anyway.)

Many schools now start during the middle of August, as districts attempt to cram in as many weeks as possible before the state standardized exam. Weeks after that exam are often regarded as relatively useless. They don’t add points and administrators cannot rely on students to retain information from late spring for next year’s exam.

Eduhonesty: This represents another perfect example of the stacked deck that faces financially-disadvantaged American school districts. Many classrooms in my district reach eighty-plus degrees in August, September and even October. These same rooms may see similar temperatures during late April and May. I have had a rule in the past: Above eighty-five, we go outside if at all possible. From eighty to eighty-five, the same rule holds, but allowances can be made for quiz and testing needs.

Many August and September minutes are wasted in these classroom-saunas. Students are often glassy-eyed and whiny from the heat. (I’ve seen ambulances called for two of them over the years.) If we go outside, we lose transition minutes. Students are less attentive under trees. The girls complain about dirt and bugs. Some boys do too. Papers are blown into fields. My words may fly away, taken by the wind, as students chat, taking advantage of the lack of seating charts.

Districts with money and air-conditioning will not lose these late summer and early fall minutes. Their students will not be falling asleep in the afternoon, at least not en masse. Teachers will not need back-up lesson plans for days when in-class work proves impossible.

I just received an unexpected call about a teaching position in a middle-class area. Last spring’s heat can be added to other reasons why I interviewed for the position. That heat may figure into my acceptance if I receive an offer.

A few years ago, my district was in danger of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of government money because the number of our free/reduced lunch students did not match the food being dispensed in the cafeteria. The Principal held emergency meetings with staff to emphasize that huge $$$ were on the line.

“You have to make sure your students get their lunch tickets,” he said. “Then you go down with them and make sure they go through the line.”

“But they don’t want to eat,” a staff member said.

“They just throw the lunches away,” another one said.

“Then they throw the lunches away,” he replied. “We have to fix these numbers.”

Eduhonesty: I understood my Principal’s point perfectly. The numbers of free lunch students had to match the number of lunches dispensed to these students. We could not appear to be neglecting to feed low-income students. The government had given us money to make lunches. The existence of these lunches had to be documented.

Still, teachers were aghast at the wastage. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, as the old saw goes, and teachers understood that you can follow a student through a lunch line, but you can’t force feed him when he gets to his table.

I particularly enjoyed one new teacher’s attempt at a solution:

“At my last school, we counted lunches by counting milk cartons. Couldn’t we just throw away milk instead?”

Very few students ever eat the apples in my school’s lunch line. On some days, garbage cans in the lunchroom are overflowing. While we are considering the wacky milk idea, maybe I will add one wacky idea of my own: Why don’t we sell school lunch garbage to pig farmers to get extra income to fund after school programs? If that doesn’t work, I’m sure we could convince farmers to take our trashed food and pay transportation costs. Wastage would go down and, with luck, the price of pork would go down too.

This is a replay of sorts, but ought to be on the radar:

I ate a number of school lunches last year. Most teachers don’t unless they have a separate cafeteria nowadays, but I grew up on macaroni drowning in milky Velveeta, along with spaghetti smothered in Campbell’s tomato soup, often with canned green beans or peas. I can eat damn near anything that doesn’t try to eat me back.

School lunches helped my weight-loss program. The baked chicken, bland beans, and dubious fruit worked for my diet. At times, I thought my plate might contain less than 250 calories.

Eduhonesty: While fine for a teacher on a diet, the new, healthier lunches often don’t have nearly enough calories for a growing boy or girl, especially since students are tossing large chunks of these lunches in the trash.

Of course, fasting once a week does seem to improve the longevity of rats.

I’ve stayed out of the school lunch fray. I respect Michelle Obama’s motives. Too many children are eating Flaming Hot Cheetos for breakfast.

Here’s one snippet of a much larger problem, though:

My school supplies fruit and vegetables at lunch. Often we have these tiny, substandard apples that are likely all my district can realistically afford. Students get virtually unsalted whole wheat pasta with boring red sauce, a small apple, an unsalted, overcooked vegetable and milk, for example. A lot of this food will end up in overflowing garbage cans as other students pass around Cheetos brought from home.

Eduhonesty: Those apples drive me nuts. They’re sorry excuses for apples and I am sure we are turning kids off apples in droves. Apples can be delicious but, by the time school is over, some of these kids will never go anywhere near an apple. The associations will be too unappetizing.

Technology exists that can render cellphones useless in a classroom. We can block phone signals. We can shut these electronic distractions down.

Eduhonesty: Forget all these varied and futile attempts at cell phone policies. Forget trying rules that allow phones in the hallway and cafeteria, but not the bathroom or classroom. For one thing, I guarantee the conversation/thread that started in the hallway will often not shut down after crossing the classroom threshold. Forget dealing with excuses like, “My mom wants me to have it in an emergency.”

Fifteen minutes of secret texting a day is 1 1/4 hours in one week or about a week of school by the end of the year. The student texting is probably communicating with another student in the building who is also losing a week of school. Block the calls.

I am falling into a rabbit hole outside of cyberspace. Without going into details, posts will be sketchy this month. I will seize those moments I can, picking a few sound bites that I’d like to get out there.

I’d like to start with the House on Mango Street, a novel that is frequent middle school reading in our country. We can do better. The protagonist gets raped by a clown. The book contains numerous errors in grammar, many intentional but nonetheless fundamentally incorrect.

Eduhonesty: If we want our students to learn grammar, we should not hand them books that don’t follow the rules we are attempting to teach.