Chicago Teacher Tonic

The latest podcast is out! Go to www.chicagoteachertonic.com and click on the Podcast link to hear about summer malaise, school start times, a performance of the song "Countdown Blues," and just a little venting. And as always, pass along your comments!

The latest podcast is out! Go to www.chicagoteachertonic.com and click on the Podcast link to hear a companion piece to our latest blog post, a classroom reenactment, and a first for us: a musical performance of the song "Union Dues." And as always, pass along your comments!

A Revaluation, In Quotes

As the contentious interactions between CPS, the CTU, the pension board, the mayor, the governor, the state, and my buddy Ray (I can only assume, since he fights with everyone) continue, I’d like to address an issue that I think is broader, deeper, and, to me, more worthy of concern, and that’s the growing tendency on the part of many teachers and administrators at the school level to partake in a culture of victimization. Woe is me. They’re out to get us. And so forth. I’d like to address this development – to advocate for a kind of revaluation – via a series of four quotes.

Read the rest at www.chicagoteachertonic.com under the blog link and begin taking your life back.

Chicago’s Mayoral Election: Why I’m Voting for Willie Wilson, “and things like that.”

A curious, yet refreshing change: He utters a lot of words I don’t understand, rather than a lot I don’t believe.

And when he does say something understandable, it’s in reference to the “whiteys” in the crowd. Ha! Those who were offended are obviously a bunch of uptighty-whiteys.

Read the rest at www.chicagoteachertonic.com under the Blog section and join the growing groundswell for Willie.

Casting Call, by Jack Seeker

Visit any high school and you’ll swear a Hollywood casting director did the hiring.

It’s kind of eerie, really. But it seems every high school I’ve been in or worked in, the teaching staff insists on playing roles you’ve already seen in the movies, such as…

The “absent minded professor” who goes into so much depth he only gets up to the Civil War in a class that supposed to go to Vietnam

The self-absorbed teacher who goes on personal tangents that always reveal him to be a genius

The extra prissy teacher who’s constantly annoyed with someone

The young iconoclastic teacher out to change the system

Go to www.chicagoteachertonic.com and click on the Blog page to read the rest of "Casting Call" and, as always, respond!

The Tonic podcast is now on iTunes! Search for Chicago Teacher Tonic and listen to a year's worth of interviews and commentary.

Upon Arriving At The Waiting Room For Selective Enrollment Testing

Here we are. Some couches and chairs – the couches a little on the old side, a little ratty, like this may be a student lounge area, but not so bad, I suppose. We won’t be here long – you’ve either got it or you don’t, right Tyler? Take, for instance, that boy over there, and now over there, and – my God – over there, like this is a playground and not a room at an institution of higher learning – behavior which, if I was in charge here, would figure heavily in my determination of who is selected and who is not. Thank God Tyler has always exhibited a high degree of self-control (exhibit A: look how he sits right down, without being told, and commences to take in his surroundings, his eyes behind those glasses like built-in surveillance, scanning back and forth, not at all “freakish” as his uncle insists, he with the 3rd grader who is lucky if he can read at all, let alone at grade level ), a quality I would love to take credit for, but which, honestly, is one of those things, a genuine gift.

Read the rest at www.chicagoteachertonic.com under the Blog link and thank your lucky stars you're not "gifted" - at least, not very much.

On Lying

This past year we had ourselves an IEP meeting with a parent who regularly began her sentences with “I’m not going to lie to you” so often that I began to listen for it and grew restless when too much time passed without her saying it, which meant I didn’t absorb a whole lot else of what she said, which was no big deal, what with they’re being lies. No big deal also because the rest of what she said was one long sob story about family drug use, child neglect, etc., etc., and how she, as aunt, took over the children but the children were certifiable and she couldn’t take it a day longer, she’d just had it, all of it interspersed with asssurances that she was “not going to lie,” so that eventually, just to escape this travesty of a story, I began desperately to wish she would lie a little bit. Which is to say, lie a whole lot. Because the thing about all this honesty was it didn’t get us anywhere.

Read the rest of "On Lying" at www.chicagoteachertonic.com under the Blog link and reconsider who you can trust and how others' misinformation is your key to liberation.

The latest podcast is out! Go to www.chicagoteachertonic.com and click on the podcast link to hear Grace Lee Sawin of Chicago School GPS discuss the advantages and pitfalls of all our educational choices in Chicago; also, listen to some thoughts on the end of the school year, one child's Father's Day effort, and CTT's new sponsor.

Chicago Teacher Tonic's art contest is on! Click on the following link, http://chicagoteachertonic.com/?page_id=756, to view all entries and vote for your favorites. Voting will run through June and the top three vote getters win $50 gift certificates! Visit often and vote often for wonderful artistic accomplishments like these:

End of the Year Wrap-Up: Thoughts and Musings

People to Keep An Eye On (Or, in this post-9/11 age of heightened vigilance, some individuals who might warrant increased monitoring):
• Students who want to be teachers
• Half-siblings that are the same age
• Any teacher who, given self-directed time during a PD day, mentions: “I’d rather be with the students.”
• Administrators who blast out emails to faculty and staff between the hours of 10 pm and 5 am

Read the rest of "End of the Year Wrap-Up" www.chicagoteachertonic.com under the Blog link, including a few inventions to aid teachers in the classroom.

May Day: Some Thoughts Down the Home Stretch

Chicagoland: Rahm’s Reality

You mean to say that Rahm’s people worked with Chicagoland’s producers to portray Rahm in a good light? Really? Who would think a self-interested politician with a well-connected Hollywood brother would participate in a biased project intended to make him look good?

Read the rest of "May Day" at www.chicagoteachertonic.com under the Blog link, including some Buddhist Riddles and What If...?