Tag: licensure

God, ETS, eat a dick

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

ETS, the company behind these fucking Praxis tests, is one of the worst organizations in the history of the entire fucking planet, and by “organizations” I’m including the Nazis, the KKK, the Republicans, and whatever flavor of Communism might be most on your nerves at the moment. I hate these people to a degree I’m not entirely able to explain, at least not without the FBI taking a closer look at me.

I passed another practice test today, by a larger margin than the first one, and decided, fuck it, I’m going to go ahead and schedule this thing. The last time I looked I was able to schedule an exam the next day, so you can imagine my surprise when I logged in and discovered that I can’t get in before July 1 any longer. Which … fuck. This blog is already turning into the All Math Test All The Time website, and now I have to wait three more weeks? I’m ready now, motherfuckers. Let’s do this.

And then I went through their list of “requirements,” and …

… look, God damn it, I need these fucking testing companies to understand that their shit is not that fucking important. The fucking NSA doesn’t protect their shit as carefully as standardized testing companies do. They won’t let me have scratch paper for a fucking math test. I have to use a fucking whiteboard, which can be “erased in front of the proctor,” because … what? I might share questions with somebody? So the fucking hell what? Every test is fucking different, and you sell practice tests, you stupid dicks. Which is the actual reason, by the way, because extorting $120 out of me for the fucking test isn’t enough; they need more money from anyone who wants to study for these fucking things, like the blood-sucking rent-seeking fucking parasite scumbag shitstained vermin they are.

Make sure any other devices in my home that use the internet aren’t running?

Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not even going to try to do this. Avoid wearing jewelry? Fucking why? And what’s “dressed appropriately” mean? Are people seeking teaching licenses likely to have their dicks or tits out while testing, so likely that they need a rule about it?

Elsewhere, I am told that I am expected to be able to show the proctor “all four walls” in the room I am in, presumably because any wall they can’t see is obviously covered with posters explaining how to do the questions on the test. My webcam is part of the fucking computer, though, and I’m not sure how the fuck they expect me to point the Goddamn monitor at the wall behind it.

(Also, remember: approximately zero percent of teaching involves blind recall of facts in the complete absence of resource materials. If I forget anything I’m supposed to be teaching, I can literally look it up right in front of the fucking kids if I want to. These things should be entirely open notes; what I have memorized is completely irrelevant.)

God, I hate this fucking company.

In which I haven’t failed yet

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I was able to successfully get myself up out of bed and showered before 8:30 this morning. I had a cup of coffee and screwed around on my phone for a while, then spent an honest to goodness solid hour studying, and managed to successfully regain at least some of my knowledge of trigonometry in the process. I think what I’m going to do this week is spend the next couple of days filling obvious holes in my knowledge (“obvious” meaning “I remember knowing this, and now I don’t,” as opposed to, say, calculus, which is an entire domain of knowledge that I never really had a grasp of) and then take a practice test on Thursday. (Why Thursday? It’ll take a while, and Friday’s going to be busy. I’ll have time to study but not for an entire practice test.) If I do okay on the practice test, I may go ahead and take a shot at the real test next week and see if I can just knock it out. I only need like a 60% to pass, I think? If I do crap on it, I’ll stick with the original plan and study through June or until I can pass a practice test solidly. I don’t want to have to pay for this thing more than twice, and ideally, only once. I’ve also literally never failed a standardized test so I have some pride on the line here too.

In other news, school is out, and I’m finding that I don’t have a lot to say about that. This was a pretty good year, all told; it had its moments, like they all do, but my honors class was awesome enough to carry through the rest of the year and even my most annoying kids continue to pale in comparison with what I’ve had to deal with at previous schools. That said, I think I’m due for another round of reevaluating classroom procedures; everything I’m doing right now is still very COVID-informed and I’m seeing signs that certain policies may be starting to bite me in the ass a bit. I didn’t really try to reinvent the wheel when I changed districts, but I’m comfortable enough in the new place now that I think I can tweak some things. We’ll see.

I’ll end on a question: certain sectors of American society have been claiming that attempting to impose any sort of penalties or punishments for the obvious criminality of certain individuals was going to cause widespread civil unrest. Locally, I am aware of one (1) house that is now flying a very small (comically so, in fact) American flag outside their house, upside down. Is anyone reading this aware of any civil disobedience or protests literally anywhere other than the tiny little group that’s been outside the courthouse in New York since the trial started? Any downtowns flooded with fash lately? Trucker rebellions? Anything at all?

Some bits and bobs

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics, TeachingLeave a comment

My head’s all over the place right now, so let’s do a bullet list.

  • Indiana voted on Tuesday. The Previous Occupant managed 79% of the Republican primary vote against an opponent who dropped out two months ago. I remind you that I Know Nothing About Politics before saying this, but it’s amazing how the polls say one thing and literally every other thing about this election says another.
  • Meanwhile, I was assuming my choice for Senate would lose because Indiana would choose the white guy, and they didn’t! Not only did Valerie McCray win, she won solidly, getting about 2/3 of the vote.
  • The sex pest won his primary too, unfortunately. I am probably just going to leave State Senate blank in November. Surprisingly, there is no Republican candidate, but there is a Libertarian running, and not only is he a Libertarian, he’s an engineer, which means he’s a jackass. It is possible to be either and not be a jackass but it is not possible to be both.
  • Today was a better day at school, not least because all of my knuckleheads from yesterday were excluded from class today. Today was the Math NWEA test, too, and for all indications it looks like it … went well? Possibly quite well? I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning because it takes 24 hours for results to be fully available to teachers but damn near every kid I talked to showed growth.
  • Meanwhile, I’m definitely taking the high school Mathematics Praxis test this summer. My boss hinted that we might have enough 8th graders taking Geometry next year to be able to make a class section out of it, and I will fight anyone who tries to take that class away from me. That means I need to get licensed to teach it, though, so there’s a test to pass and some paperwork to get done. I can take the damn thing from my house, though, which is spectacularly good news.
  • I have chosen violence, and will be wearing a shirt that just says KENDRICK to work tomorrow. I’m expecting fireworks. It’ll be fun.
  • The final meeting of my little club of gay weirdos at school was today. We had a pizza party. I thought I had ordered far too much food. They each turned out to be a million locusts wearing skin suits, and everything I ordered was gone in seconds. I’m really going to miss these kids.
  • We had a fight in the hallway toward the end of the day, and I raised my voice to such a level clearing the hallway that I was hoarse for all of fifth and sixth hour. I’m hoping I can talk tomorrow.

Okay. That sounds good. I’m gonna go read now.

On doing nothing of value

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

Stuffed-Animal-VACATION0616I’ve actually stayed pretty busy the last couple of days– I had the classroom portion of my CPR renewal class to attend yesterday and spent most of the rest of the day scanning dozens of documents and uploading them to the Indiana Department of Education’s slow, overworked server so that I can get my teacher licensure renewed.  This is the first time I’ve ever had to do this, as moving to Indiana meant I could let my Illinois licensure expire and my Indiana license was a 10-year.

This doesn’t change anything, mind you; I still have no plans to return to the classroom, but letting my license expire still seemed like a kind of terrible decision anyway.  I’m waiting for a bunch of recalcitrant ducks to get themselves lined up properly at the moment so that I can finalize everything, but in between now and then there is the World Cup to distract me– I’m sitting on my sofa with my laptop and watching soccer right now– so I’m pretty content.

I am taking next week off from work.  I am not doing this for any particular reason other than five things managed to piss me off in the first half hour of my day on Monday and I get two weeks of paid vacation this year.  I looked at the calendar, this upcoming week hadn’t been claimed by anyone yet, and so screw it– mine it was.  I’m actually going to go in for a few minutes Monday morning after dropping the boy off at day care because I have a pre-established appointment that is going to result in a (possibly somewhat sizable) sale, but after that I’m not going back in until the following Monday.  And frankly, with Sunday being Father’s Day, I don’t plan on spending a lot of time at work on Sunday either.  So I basically have a full shift tomorrow, part of one on Sunday, and maybe an hour on Monday and then I’m off for a week.

Plans include Dark Souls, working out a short story that is trying to pound its way out of the inside of my skull, soccer, and … that’s it.  At some point the family and I will go see Incredibles 2, which I’ve been eagerly anticipating for years.  But that’s all.

I’m pretty psyched about it, to be honest.