Lots of work and a little more teacher stuff

We spent the morning cleaning 15 years of junk out of the utility shed. It's being cleaned in preparation for mowing stuff. I have been paying someone to keep the 2 acres of yard trimmed but with what I pay him in one year I can get all of equipment I need and do it myself now that I have the time and energy. This afternoon we purchased a riding mower, chain saw, and weed eater. Yee hah!

I know I promised to end the teaching posts but something came up that I just have to blog about. This past Sunday the local paper posted a list of all school retirees. It even had several interviews with the teachers. Guess who was the only person not listed? Yep, you got it in one guess. I emailed the Human Resource person in charge of retirees about it. She wrote me back apologizing, saying she would send me an invitation to the retirement dinner I did not get and a listing of my jobs in the county. It would have been nice to have actually attended the dinner and had the information published in the paper. It crossed my mind that the superintendent of schools has been pretty pissed off about remarks I've made in the past on my teaching blog about things happening at the school that he seemed to feel reflected badly upon him. He even had his hired law firm threaten me with legal action if I did not remove a funny video I posted concerning the pitiful ESIS grading program we were forced to use after the school system spent a huge amount of money for this program that would not even correctly average grades at times. The supposed reason for the threat was that I allegedly used a proprietary photo of their sacred ESIS program in my video parody. Would you say that he was looking for absolutely anything to use in retaliation against me for my posts telling the truth? Surely he has a better character than that so it must have just been a coincidence. Would he also be so petty as to have my name removed from the published retirement list or am I just imagining things? Hmmm... no one else I am aware of was left off of the list, so why was I the only one? I'm sure it was just an honest error. Aren't you certain as well? Of course you are. Isn't educational politics an interesting sport? Now that I am not affiliated with the school system any longer I will have more freedom to post an occasional tidbit to keep the educational system honest. I talk regularly to a number of teachers so I'm sure I will be hearing all sorts of interesting things during the upcoming school year and I will be more than happy to verify them and then pass them along on this blog as time permits. I know how much the "powers that be" at the St. Johns County, Florida school system value the truth so I look at this as a public service on their behalf, though it will certainly not be the main focus of this blog.