Month: May 2016

Originally posted by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

February 23, 2015

(See Depressing Existential Teacher Movie Part I for context.)

DALLAS, Texas (AS) – There is a time in nearly every movie teacher’s career when he or she is driven by a sense of urgency to pour everything out in a lesson that takes a sudden, sharp turn away from the expected.  The teacher attacks the chalkboard with a violent passion.  Inexplicably, the students are mesmerized by the hypnotic tattoo of chalk against slate.  No papers are thrown while the teacher’s back is turned.  No attention spans crash during the long seconds it takes the teacher to finish writing.  There is a hushed moment of anticipation as if the teenagers know that someone is about to get real with them. They may not yet be willing to put words to what they are feeling, but they all know that they are being shown love, perhaps for the very first time.  It is a beautiful thing.  It is inspiring.  It is usually enough to cause most viewers to suspend their disbelief. Continue reading Depressing Existential Teacher Movie Part II: The Transcendent Moment

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

February 16, 2015

Disclaimer: This review makes no attempt to summarize the reviewed film’s plot.  Key plot details have been ignored.

DALLAS, Texas (AS) – Back in July, I mentioned plans for investing a few of the allegedly endless hours of free time with which society has graced me as an educator in embarking on a journey of discovery through a personal exploration of one of the least respected art forms in all of recorded human history: the teacher film genre.  The display of hubris in boasting of being a public servant with leisure time did not go unpunished.  Only a matter of hours after watching The Dead Poets Society on Netflix DVD, my motor vehicle was totaled in a low-speed freeway accident by an unlicensed teenaged driver.  Not only did I fail to seize that summer day, the following months were wrenched from my grasp as life became a hamster wheel of routine that had me running in an endless loop driven by the demands of physical therapy and work.

By the time the wheel slowed to a manageable pace, the dead poets had long since made their way back to the Netflix shipping hub in Irving, Texas.  It was time to move on to something new, and I was willing to take whatever low-hanging fruit Netflix happened to be streaming, which is how I found myself spending a late evening watching Detachment, an indie flick starring Adrien Brody. Continue reading Depressing Existentialist Teacher Movie Part I

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

February 1, 2015

Disclaimer: The Scapegoat will vigorously support the immediate termination of every single bad teacher in America on the day that a system is put in place that will ensure that their replacements will all be good teachers.

Dallas, Texas (AS)- A recent need to retrieve a piece of information that was stored in my shuttered Facebook account prompted a brief journey into the online world that I had happily kept at a distance for over a year.  Like the dog that returns to its vomit, I gave in, surrendering myself to voyeuristic temptation before once again deactivating my account.

Not much had changed since my last visit.  Facebook is still the perfect dance floor for the attention seeker who is looking to hook up with any enabler eager to engage in the social media two-step.  In the early scrolling, it looked like it would be an easy night for the chaperones.  The skirts were modest and nobody was twerking.  The boy who posted grainy concert photos of a band that he should have outgrown a quarter century ago was publically affirmed for having done something cool.  The girls who shared snapshots of not quite nearly identical step-by-step acrylic paintings that were produced while following a tightly rehearsed script delivered by an art instructor who was too young to share their wine were praised for their talent and creativity.  It was a dull, yet polite affair until some knucklehead had to ruin the evening by dropping a turd in the punchbowl. Continue reading Blame it on the Cannon Fodder

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

July 18, 2014

An anonymous source close to the Scapegoat has come forward with information that threatens to expose a global conspiracy which appears intent on shielding the American sheeple from the knowledge that most teacher movies are subpar entertainments that offer little in the way of artistic merit. The source stumbled upon this wide-reaching conspiracy while attempting to Google a list of the worst teacher movies of all time. The result of the search revealed this! While the intent of the Google search was quite clear, Google mocks the freedom lover by offering intentionally misleading results through the introduction of a preposition that changes the entire direction of the search. Worst teacher in movies? One would be tempted to pause to wonder where they found the gall if one wasn’t so alarmed by the discovery of this covert attack on our freedom. Continue reading Global Conspiracy Seeks to Silence the Truth!

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

JULY 10, 2014

I’m pleased to offer a collection of twenty STAAR-style expository writing prompts at my TPT store for the low price of $1.50.  The  prompts are available in PDF and PowerPoint formats.

PDF Linkː http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/STAAR-Expository-Writing-Prompts4th-Grade-1317105

PowerPoint Link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/STAAR-Expository-Writing-Prompts4th-Grade-1317429

Free Sample Link (PDF): http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/STAAR-Expository-Writing-PromptsFree-Sample-4th-1317149

 

Experimental File: Emojibra Bundle #1 TPT

Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM

July 7, 2014

It is 2014, the year that NCLB had scheduled for American students’ performances on high stakes bubble tests to reach a glorious saturation point marked by 100% passing rates.  We may not have hit our target, but according to some, we still have cause to celebrate. Here in Texas, TEA (Texas Education Agency) recently boasted about the tremendous gains that students have achieved in Biology and Algebra I.  Remarkably, 86% of Texas students who took the Algebra I exam in 2014 managed to pass the test, clearing one of the five exam hurdles that serve as a requirement for graduation in the state.  The proof is in the pudding,  one might say.  The trouble is that you have to read labels very carefully these days to know just what’s being served up to you.  As it turns out, the scores that TEA reported are even more misleading than the claims in a Kevin Trudeau infomercial. Continue reading Relabeling Failure Leads to Increased Success