Friday Night Lights Prove To Be Budget Busters

[This article was first published as Friday Night Lights Prove To Be Budget Busters on Technorati.]

To not like football, somehow seems un-American.

And if you hail from the great state of Texas, to say anything remotely negative about Friday night lights and high school football, well, that's akin to trying to yank the buckle off the belt in the South. (And if you don't know what that means, then maybe you need to dust off the Good Book.)

So before we go anything further, let me just say I do like football, and I'm even the proud owner of season tickets to my town's high school football games.

But while I may be a football fan, I am first an educator.  So I read with interest (and a touch of dismay) an article in The Dallas Morning News about how high school football revenue rarely generates a profit, and, in fact, sustains pretty hefty losses. 

Of the 31 schools the newspaper surveyed in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, only three schools generated revenue over a five year period. The rest lost between $132,000 to almost $11 million over those same five years. 

Of course, that kind of loss had to have been absorbed somewhere in all those school district budgets.

You know, the budgets that cut funding for classroom supplies. The budgets that cut teachers. The budgets that cut field trips. The budgets that cut electives. 

Yep, those budgets. 

What's even a little more disconcerting is I'm pretty sure Texas isn't standing alone on this one either.

Bare Bones Basic Edition of the Education Buzz–Life's a Carnival

Welcome to the Bare Bones Basic Edition of the Education Buzz–Life's a Carnival, an eclectic smattering of things buzzing about the EduSphere. 

I was going to do a clever Homecoming theme for the carnival, but I got sidetracked with all the madness from Homecoming stuff last week at my school.  If you're interested in that, just check out my post below, "Gummi Bears, Pumped Up Kicks & Things That Will Get You Fired," and you will see why we're just going to have the Bare Bones Basic Edition of the Education Buzz–Life's a Carnival this go around.

So here are some interesting posts, that were buzzing about the EduSphere…

• Seventh grade reading and writing skills is all you need to enroll in community college in Arizona. Yep, you heard that write right. Check out education guru Joanne Jacobs' post.

• While ICE.Teacher wanders and wonders about on Walking Wednesdays with her third graders, perhaps the rest of us should join her in pondering, "What if…" 

• J.M. Holland over at Emergent Learner talks about the importance of having foster grandparents in the classroom. 

• Jane Goodwin over at Scheiss Weekly weighs in on how to tell good parents from bad parents. 

• If you're a chemistry teacher (or even if you're not), check out the latest explosive post from our favorite science guy, Steve Spangler.

• Tim over at AssortedStuff has an interesting post on "Fixing the Middle Mess" (as in Middle Schools). 

• Mr. Teacher over at LearnMeGood discovered that sometimes when we answer the question, we have to question the answer in  "Um, that wasn't the question."

And for no other reason except for amusement, check out these 15 fictional professors that we wish were real.

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That concludes our Bare Bones Basic Edition of the Education Buzz–Life's a Carnival.

Join us here again on Wednesday, Oct. 12 for our next edition of the Education Buzz. Please submit your posts no later than Saturday, Oct. 8 by 5 p.m. CDT. Use this handy dandy form for your submissions and please keep in mind our submission rules…

1. No spam
2. Must be education related
3. Since the carnival may be organized around themes, not all submissions may run.
4. Please remember to post and link back to the carnival.

If you would like to host a carnival, pah-leese let me know by emailing me at mybellringers@gmail.com.  Also, don't forget to let me know if you find any broken links or problems with this edition of the Ed Buzz. 

As always…

“I’ve got this feeling that there’s something that I missed…”
–Snow Patrol

And, if I did, my apologies.

Teacher Spirit Week

This week marks Homecoming Week at our school. Yes, another fun-filled extravaganza. Can't you just feel the excitement?

Yeah, I thought so. 

Each day this week is designated as a specific dress up day with a specific phase. Monday is Twin Day (Make 'Em See Double), Tuesday is Decade Day (Turn back the clock on the Indians), Wednesday is Super Hero Day (Show 'Em Who's Boss), Thursday is Favorite Team Jersey Day (The Warriors Can't Compete) and Friday is Panther Spirit Day (Make them see Black & Blue).

Well, all of that got me to thinking about how we could have our own little teacher dress up week complete with catchy little phrases. You don't even have to completely dress up for this. All you have to do is print out little stickers and wear them. It'll be our little secret.

Monday…Super Star Day Sticker

We could call it Teacher Spirit Week. It would go something like this…

Tuesday… Stupid Head Day

Monday… is Super Star Day
Grab one of those stinky starfish and toss 'em back. Yep, we're saving public education one stinker at a time.

Tuesday… is Big Fat Stupid Head Day

Highlight one educational policy/politician/bureaucrat that pushes an agenda that doesn't work. (I bet you can't pick just one.) On this day only, you have a free pass to say "Big Fat Stupid Head" all day and it won't stop my little timer. (Check out the counter on the right side of this blog.)

Wednesday… Double Trouble Bubbles Day

Wednesday… is Double Trouble Bubbles

Concentrate on just one thing that pops into the bubble above your head today. Repeat it like a silent mantra, and if it won't get you fired, actually say the bubble above your head just once. I bet you'll feel better.

Thursday… ECD Day

Thursday… is ECD Day–Emergency Chocolate Day

Bring some chocolate goodness to school and share it with a colleague or two. I bet you single handedly improve staff morale 110 percent.

Friday… Ninja Day

Friday… is Ninja Day

Today you'll actually have to semi-dress the part. Wear all black. Slap on your sticker and start your day saying, "I am Ninja Teacher. You can't see me. I fly under the radar. I am better, faster and smarter than you. When I shut my classroom door, the magic happens."

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Don't forget the next edition of the Education Buzz–Life's a Carnival will appear here Wednesday, Sept. 28. Please submit your posts no later than Saturday, Sept. 24 by 5 p.m. CDT. Use this handy dandy form for your submissions.

Week 1, Goals & Ninjas

Let's all do the dance of joy as we check off Week 1. Once again to my astonishment, I survived.

My Little Ninja Protector

OK, so maybe just maybe I wasn't so astonished, but now that Week 1 is done, I need to turn my attention to all those nagging things that need attending to before they become those kind of things none of us want. You know, like those things that will get you fired.

Somewhere I have sheet a paper that says I need to turn in some sort of department goal for this school year. Since I am a department of one, I asked myself, "Self, just what sort of goals should we have this year?"

If most of you are like me or my Self, you have goals that you turn in to the PBs. And by PBs,  I'm not talkin' about Peanut Butter here. No siree, Missy, we're talkin' about those Powers That Be.

Most of us write PB goals that sound something like this… "Students will learn blah blah blah that will provide them with blah blah blah to successfully integrate blah blah blah utilizing existing technology and resources blah blah blah…"

Given that formula, I can pretty much knock out my PB goals pretty speedy quick. Mine probably will go something like this: "Students will learn skills that will provide them with the tools to successfully integrate and expand their print journalism skills into a web-based journalism site."

We all know, though, that PB goals are not really real goals. While our PB goals are turned in and make their way to the bottom of someone's filing cabinet or in a box in Warehouse 13, our real goals don't get turned in anywhere. Hails bails, most of the time they don't even make it out of our brain.

So, shhhhhhh, I'll share mine with you. Drum roll, pah-leese… Richie's real goal for this school year is simply this…

I will become Ninja teacher. I will fly under the radar. I will not fly above the clouds. 

I even have a little Ninja guy my BFF Jennifer gave me. I wear him around my neck along with my ID badge and room keys. According to the little card that came with him, my little Ninja guy supposedly will hide me from my enemies.

Trust me, I need all the help I can get.

I even dressed in all black the other day. Stealth. That's me. I am Ninja teacher.

When I told some of my school teacher buddies about me flying under the radar, there was a tad bit of snickering.

And maybe just a bit of smirking.

Oh all right, yes there was some betting going on, too, on just how long this Ninja thing will last.

Well, I just have one thing to say to y'all Ninja Naysayers and Haters, "I am Ninja… you won't hear me roar."

Back-to-School, Top 5 Dream Killers & Educational Polyjuice

Somehow I wish the start of the school year resembled the train to Hogwarts–filled with real magic, owls and wizardry.

Instead, my train resembles an out-of-control freight train like the one in that movie Unstoppable or that barreling bus in Speed.

Harry Potter summons his Patronus to protect him.

Still, my back-to-school runaway train is filled with its own magic of sorts–stuffed with hopes and dreams. But it's also filled with all that invisible stuff, too, and I'm not talking about Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility either. I'm talking about all that scary invisible stuff, and I know you know what I mean.

Instead of dementors, we have dream killers. Unfortunately, I have no wands to distribute and no Patronus to protect us.

If you will pardon the continuing Harry Potter references, then let's take a peak at the Top 5 Dream Killers or Things That Suck the Life Right Out of Teachers across the country this time of year…

#5… The Dolores Umbridge Budget…

I have teacher friends who are lucky to get no more than $50 for school supplies for the entire school year. Maybe those teachers can find and dispense those quills like the one's Hogwarts professor Dolores Umbridge used on her students—the ones that used her student's blood instead of ink. As an added bonus, there's a going green factor involved, too. Since the quill writes on your skin, you save paper and trees at the same time, and all that goes a long way to stretching that paltry budget—a much needed necessity since surveys show teachers shell out an average of $356 out of their own pockets for classroom supplies.

#4… Copy That! Or, Just Try To Copy That–The Hedwig Solution…

Is there a school district on the planet that can copy material in a timely manner without a presidential order or the copy machine breaking down? Now, I know you all know what I'm talkin' about. (Can I get an AMEN, brothers and sisters?) 

How many of you planned to give an assignment or test one day, only to discover the stuff you needed wasn't/couldn't be copied? How many of you then decided to go to Plan "B" only to discover that Plan "B" needed three more copies of something you had stashed in your filing cabinet. And, of course, in order to get copies you had to either (1) dash a 100 yards like the school's star runningback to the nearest copy machine or (2) turn it in the requisite five days before you needed it with the proper form filled out in triplicate. It would be easier and quicker to kidnap Harry Potter's Owl, Hedwig, and have her fly that paper right over to the nearest office store to be copied.

Oh, and before all of you techie types start tsk-tsking that if teachers would just use  all that paperless technology, this wouldn't be an issue, let me point you to Item #3.

#3… Technology & the Vanishing Cabinets

It's not that teachers don't love technology, they love working technology and access to technology, but those of you who read teacher blogs know the following:

(1) Teachers complain that most nifty educational sites they learn about and want to use tend to be blocked by their school districts so they can't use them. 

(2) Many school districts tend to buy programs that create more work, not less work.
(3) Technology never consistently works when it's raining outside.

(4) And finally, anytime a teacher plans a whiz-bang, over-the-top lesson using technology, that technology will invariably fail, and, it is at that point, that the teacher desperately searches for that vanishing closet. 

Now, I suppose we could go to our low tech filing cabinet and pull out that Plan "B" lesson. But, oh wait, remember? We're three copies short, and Hedwig is still cooling her wings and waiting over there at Kinko's.

#2…PowerPoints are Dementors…

Nothing sucks the life out of teachers more than attending a professional development session where the presenter shows a PowerPoint, gives them a hand out of that very PowerPoint and then reads the entire PowerPoint to the group. Just like a dementor, it sucks all the happiness and life right out of you. Given the choice between sitting through such a "presentation" and going face-to-face with a dementor, all of us would rather take our chances with a dementor because at least there's the hope of a Patronus saving us.

And the Number 1 Dream Killer, the thing that sucks the life right out of teachers… drum roll pah-leese…

#1…Polyjuice Hocus Pocus Professional Development

Before school districts across the country open their doors to students, they first subject their teachers to professional development days, and you know from the intro to this blog and from my book, how I feel about that.

I always marvel how teachers from coast-to-coast are forced to attend meetings instead of working in their classrooms and getting ready for their students, or how they are subjected to speakers who try to sell them some alleged newfangled educational panacea that's sure to cure all the educational woes of the day. Sadly, most times these newfangled things are just the same old thing re-tooled, re-fashioned and re-named into something else.

It's all just…Polyjuice!  That's what it is.

Just like in Harry Potter where the Polyjuice potion temporarily allows the drinker of the potion to assume the form of another person, this educational Polyjuice allows these questionable theories to masquade as something new and successful.

Educational Polyjuice.

You might as well as hand out the snake oil.

Pep Rallies, Pope Reagan the Jedi Master & Soulja Boy

Students filled the halls in Spiderman, Superman and other comic book hero costumes. Pretty standard fare. It’s Friday in Texas (where we take our high school football games seriously), Pep Rally Day and, as with all Friday Spirit Days, we had a theme, and this one was, obviously, Super Heroes.

Andy (of the weekend old pizza fame) dressed himself as Pope Reagan the Jedi Master wearing a Pope hat fashioned out of construction paper that he just happened to have in the backseat of his car (makes you wonder about the boy, doesn’t it?), a Ronald Reagan face he ripped from Wikipedia and a black robe (which he pointed out wasn’t exactly a real Jedi robe, but would suffice in a pinch). And, of course, what ensemble wouldn’t be complete, I ask you, without an official Star Wars light saber? Yep, he had one of those too.

The entertainment editor who was accompanying Pope Reagan the Jedi Master just shook her head and said, “Don’t ask. Please don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”

And my editor, well, she just giggled and said, “Don’t ya just feel a blog coming on?”

Looking at the Pope Reagan the Jedi Master Super Hero creation just illustrates a point I’ve known all along…We certainly can produce creative thinkers and not squelch independent thinking in public schools.

Later that afternoon at the pep rally, the kids performed a skit and dance to “Crank Dat” by Soulja Boy…a catchy little ditty and dance. I marveled at all those Super Heroes dancing in perfect synchronization on the gym floor.

“Why didn’t I know about this?” I shouted to my Spanish teacher friend above the blaring music. “Wouldn’t it be fun to do this?”

She just rolled her eyes and sighed.

But even her less-than-tepid response couldn’t dampen my new-found enthusiasm. After a little googling here and a little googling there, I discovered an instructional video on YouTube on how to do the dance. (Shows you just how far I've ventured from the Coolness Loop.)

Confession #1: I added myself to the more than 9 million hits for the instructional dance video.


Confession #2: “My name is Richie and I'm a terminally old geek…” Yes, I admit it. I tried the dance at home and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, my daughter, I think, used the term “disturbing.” (She never lets me have any fun.)

There’s even a clever little Sponge Bob version with more than 8 million hits and the Barney version with more than 4 million hits. Can you believe even the purple dinosaur can dance the dance? I was crushed–even a fat dinosaur is cooler than me.

Confession #3: Not only did I watch the videos, but shhhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, I, ah, well I ah, rapped it. (Ok, so I tried to rap it as much as any old white woman can rap… “watch me crank it, watch me roll, watch me crank dat….” Ok, ok, so maybe, just maybe that’s an image you don’t want.)

This morning, when I was a bit morose about the whole I-am-so-out-of-the-Coolness-Loop as well as the I-feel-like-dancing-but-don’t-know-how-to-anymore syndrome, the Dallas Morning News had a story about Soulja Boy and “Crank Dat.” He talks about the clever videos his fans have made and notes that it takes a lot of time and effort to edit a video to make it look like Sponge Bob is saying the words to the song.

Soulja Boy who is 17 also said something about still dreaming of becoming a computer animator. Image that, him with his gajillion bucks for a dance I can’t dance and a song I can’t rap (or understand for that matter), still has a dream of being a computer animator.

All of that got me thinking (never a good thing) about those YouTube videos. And then, of course, I got to wondering just how old those creators are who made those videos. And then naturally I got to wondering if they were like Pizza Andy–creative, independent products of our public school system or whether they were mere anomalies–self-taught products of a media saturated society?

And while I pondered the educational value of all of that, my daughter informed me she learned how to spell bananas from Gwen Stefani (you know, “Hollaback Girl”… And no, I’m not going to sing it to you.)

Bananas? B-a-n-a-n-a-s…

I’ll let you decide what that says about public education because the whole thing quite frankly just makes my head explode.

Clock hours & Bong Hits For Jesus

No wonder I'm so-o-o-o tired.

I decided to use my higher level math skills and added up the number of hours I worked for the month of September. Once I factored in (notice the math terminology to make me sound smart) Labor Day–a holiday for most people, I figure that the "average" person worked 192 hours. (Notice I am not going to step into the quagmire of defining "average" person.)

Somehow I managed to clock in 265.5 hours–that's 73.5 more hours than the "average" person. It's that yearbook newspaper thing, and then there's that planning preparation thing…oh yeah, and don't forget about that grading thing…

I think I need a nap–this sudden realization sent me from tired to exhausted–and all that math didn't help either. Sigh.

But, in the spirit of my promise to myself to be more upbeat and think happy, positive thoughts… Well, let's see… Oh yeah… Ya gotta love a job that let's you write: "Bong Hits For Jesus" on the board.

Climbing the Great Wall & Heads in the Freezer

Although I have never been out of the country, yesterday I sat atop the Great Wall of China and felt the exhilaration that comes from being 24 years old again.

You see, I live vicariously. While some parents live their lives through their children, I experience life through my former students. Not only do I revel in those experiences, I can honestly say I've learned more from my students than I have ever learned from any professional development session or teacher inservice.

Yesterday, I just happened to get an e-mail from one of my favorite former students, Jonathan Magee, and with it was a photograph of him sitting atop the Great Wall of China. What a thrill.

Of course, hearing from Jonathan sent me down a memory lane of former newspaper deadlines and threats of heads in the freezer, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start with an advanced organizer (don't you love that teacher lingo?) to keep you focused on the topics at hand…

•Teachers say the darnest things
•Kids repeat the darnest things
•I am not Jeffrey Dahmer

When Jonathan was on newspaper staff, we had a particularly rough deadline. I was exasperated and teetering on the outward edges of my sanity when I shouted at the newspaper staff: “If you don’t get this paper done, I’m going to cut off your heads and put them in the freezer and you won’t like it, not one bit.”

Silence.

A few smirks.

“Well, you won’t,” I said, slightly faltering, “like it.”

“Eewww,” one girl said. “That’s just nasty.”

“I think it’s illegal,” another said.

Sleep-deprived and stress-depraved, we all laughed, but from that point on, the staff was not rated by who was in the doghouse, but rather whose head was in the freezer. We even had levels. The higher up you were on the shelf, the more trouble you were in.

Jonathan was so enamored by the entire freezer motif that he actually wanted to shoot mug shots of all staff members, make cut-outs of their heads, fashion a makeshift facsimile of the inside of a freezer and move people’s heads around according to their standing on deadline.

I should have known the freezer thing would come back to haunt me, though. The school had a tradition during football season of honoring the top five seniors in class rank before a home game. The senior selected his or her most influential teacher who then accompanied the student out to the 50-yard line. The announcer would say something nice about the student and read something that the student wrote about the teacher.

Jonathan picked me so there we stood on the 50-yard line with the superintendent of schools standing on one side and a school board member standing on the other.

Throughout the stadium, the announcer’s voice boomed: “Jonathan says that, ‘Richie pushes everyone to do their work to the best of their abilities with an odd combination of friendly coercion and blunt threats of having their head put into a freezer. However….”

My students in the stands laughed; others gasped; Jonathan giggled. After catching a nervous glance from my superintendent, I assured him that he was welcome to come and inspect the freezer in the journalism room, that I hadn’t yet lopped off any heads nor had I stashed any in the freezer.

I dreaded the day when Jonathan graduated.

You see, I had him programmed into my speed dial. Jonathan was one of only two students who I have religiously and regularly baked a cheesecake for from scratch. Really and truly from scratch—not a box in sight. Call it the barter system. I bake you a cheesecake; you fix my computer. I bake you a cheesecake; you tell me why this software program went batty. I bake you a cheesecake; you tell me how to make the printer actually print. I bake you…well, you get the picture.

Jonathan went off to college and later went to study abroad. So much for speed dial. His current e-mail places him in Hong Kong working for the International Herald Tribune and doing—as always—exceptionally well.

While I’m happy for him, there still isn’t a school year that goes by that I don’t miss something about Jonathan. Here’s a short list of things I learned from Jonathan…

•It’s important not to take yourself so seriously. Take time to laugh at yourself.
•Never say anything you wouldn’t want to have repeated on a football field.
•You should probably stay away from sentences that mention any body parts.
• It’s good to occasionally feel that edge of panic and to depend on a kid. It develops a certain sense of empathy since children depend so much on adults.

Snake oil & motivational speakers

Snake oil.

Sadly that’s what first pops into my mind as I sit through yet another motivational speaker on the Welcome Back Day for teachers. Now mind you, I have nothing against motivational speakers. In fact, this one rates pretty high on my rating scale of smiley faces–probably worth eight smileys. (He was much better than the handshaking guy I listened to a few years back, but that’s an entirely different story.)

Still, sadly the fact remains, that I can’t shake that snake oil image. I like a good yarn as much as the next person, but I tend to wonder if we don’t have a bit of the Janet Cooke’s Jimmy working here. (Remember her? The Washington Post journalist who had to return her Pulitzer Prize once it was discovered that the main character–an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy –was not a real person. It made for a great story, but that’s all it was–a story. It was a sad day for journalism and marked the beginning of a series of fourth estate betrayals.

But let’s get back to the issue here. While listening to yet another sad story about how a teacher ripped the heart out of her fifth grade student, I marveled at my own educational history. I must be some sort of anomaly because I never had a teacher tell me I was a failure at life and would never amount to anything. Did I face mean teachers? Yes. Insensitive ones? Sure. Incompetent ones? Of course. But don’t you pretty much find those types of people in all kinds of professions? That’s just life, isn’t it?

So, let’s raise our hands and ask…Where exactly are these teachers and how come every motivational speaker had a teacher who channeled the Wicked Witch of the West? And then let’s ponder how come that teacher was always followed by Glinda the Good Witch of the North who inspired them to be all they can be? (And while we’re at it, just where in the Sam Hill are those ruby slippers anyway?…Sorry, got off track.)

But you see what I mean? It’s a bad version of good cop/bad cop. In the gazillion years–ok make that 22 years of teaching–I’ve never run across a peer who face-to-face, toe-to-toe told a kid, “I don’t like you. You’ll never amount to anything.” Now that is not to say that teachers (sadly again, myself included) from time to time haven’t thought, “Geez, you’re such a big, fat stupidhead.”

But that really shouldn’t be much of a shocker either. I think those thoughts can pop into your head regardless of your profession. In fact, I often think that about other drivers while maneuvering through rush hour traffic. (I have patience issues.) But to actually have those words reverberate across my vocal chords or any of my teacher friends, well, I don’t think so. Otherwise, I might encounter a nasty bit of road rage involving Mr. Smith & Wesson in the traffic “situation.” In a classroom “situation,” I’m sure my rather large behind would be sitting in the principal’s office. And, it wouldn’t be pretty, and I’m not just talking about my backside either.

It all just makes me wonder why we listen and gasp mesmerized by these witchy teacher stories. This doesn’t mean that these incidents haven’t occurred. I’m just saying that apparently these happen disproportionately to motivational speakers. Sort of a badge of the trade, I guess. So now that I’ve reached this epiphany, I’ll have to cross that field off my “Potential Things I Could Do If I Didn’t Teach” list.

Regardless of this new insight, I still joined in the laughter and felt a few tingly sensations once or twice as I listened to our speaker. I applauded, nodded in agreement, smiled and even stood for the ovation.

Snake oil. Not a cure, but it sure feels good.

In the beginning…my first blog entry

I doubt that I would have survived these 20-plus years as a public high school teacher if each and every day I didn’t ponder, “Is this the day?” You know that day–The Day to actually set your hair on fire and run screaming from the classroom. That day.

And now that I am just about to start my third year at my still-new-to-me school district in my new facilities, the irony is not lost on me that my classroom door is just mere feet from the emergency exit to the parking lot. So, you see, I really could set my hair on fire, run out the door, hop in my trusty blue mini-van and leave in a puff of smoke. If you love that kind of twisted humor, then I think you’ll like reading this blog.

Now that school is gearing up, I’m trying to shift my focus back to the classroom and my incoming students. I must say this focusing thing seems to get a bit more difficult each year. I know I’m not the only one. Kids have problems, too. Can’t you just hear the pens scribbling across prescription pads dispensing medication to treat ADD and ADHD in an attempt to find a magic pill to focus kids back on education? While I have no quick fix solution, sometimes I believe we should remember a simpler time when all a teacher had to do to focus students was to pop a bell ringer – an instructive little ditty that required no hands-on teaching from the instructor–on the overhead. Ah, those were the days, when kids labored over the day’s journal entry, math problem or some other bell ringer, while teachers throughout the school had a small, but important block of time to take care of things from attendance to handing back papers to recording grades.

My bell ringers always provide a small window of opportunity for me to exhale or inhale (depending on whether hyperventilation was in order for the day). Bell ringers also gave me a chance to survey the classroom scene and ponder whether this was, you know, “The Day.

Educational experts (defined as anyone and everyone who has ever sat in a classroom) like to ponder, too, and whine about the problems facing our public school system. They offer a wide array of this and that, believing they have the perfect solution to the problem du jour.

But I have a secret: perhaps instead of dissecting our educational system, we should just celebrate our successes, laugh at our shortcomings and learn from our mistakes and failures. This blog, Bell Ringers, is intended to provide stories from the trenches of more than two decades of classroom experience, three school districts, eight principals, four superintendents and hundreds of children. I’d also like to hear your stories, too, because we all need to celebrate, laugh and learn together.

To get us started, here’s one of my favorites: In my old school, I had just completed my allotted 20-minute lunch block with my lunch-bunch buddies when one of them — a social studies teacher — started talking about her morning class. She was lecturing about how prices have increased over the years. She used stockings as an example, except she used the word “hose.”

“I was telling the class about how the cost of hose had risen over the years, and I didn’t understand why most of the class was giggling,” she told us, “until my student teacher told me the class thought I was saying ‘ho’s’ as in prostitutes instead of nylons.”

Unfazed, she told the class it didn’t really matter which ones she was talking about — the point being that both have increased in price through the years.

Now, there’s a teacher for you, as well as a mini-lesson plan for laughter and learning – two things we certainly could use more of. Hopefully, you will find both here, and we can all survive another day.

And, should we fail? Well, we can always set our hair on fire and run screaming from the building.